Dead Girl Running (Cape Charade #1)(26)

Destiny visibly trembled, and her voice trembled, too. “That’s Priscilla’s ring.”

“Who’s Priscilla?” Kellen asked. Someone they knew, obviously. Then she remembered. “Wait. Priscilla, the assistant manager before me? The one who left without notice?”

Destiny nodded her head, up and down, up and down.

Xander went to the pitcher of lemon-infused water and poured glasses full. He put them on a tray and started around the room, offering them like fine wine.

“I never thought…” Mara took a glass and tossed it back like a shot. “That woman was such a—”

“Don’t speak ill of the dead,” Ellen warned.

“Right.” Mara gathered her thoughts. “She disappeared one day and we all thought… Well, her car was gone and her cottage was cleaned out, and we thought… But that’s her ring. Her toe ring. She always wore it, a Celtic knot with a purple topaz. She said it was her lucky ring.”

Destiny crouched down in the chair and covered her face with her hands.

“She hid it under the sole of her shoe. She must have done that when she knew she was in trouble.” Sheri Jean waved Xander away and turned to Kellen. “What did you say killed her?”

Kellen thought about those hands cut off at the wrists. “I don’t know. I’m not a coroner.”

“The question isn’t what killed her, but who.” Mara leaned down, wrapped the shoe in the towel and placed it on the table again. With the tweezers, she picked up the ring and placed it beside the shoe.

“Why do you think it’s murder?” Frances asked.

“Kellen said it was,” Mara answered. “She said it wasn’t a natural death, and I have to say I agree. Why would Priscilla hide her ring in her shoe if she wasn’t trying to send a message?”

“Definitely murder.” Kellen accepted a glass of water and sipped, a wonderful dampness in a mouth that had been dry for too long.

Destiny lifted her head out of her hands. “Was her other shoe out there?”

“I didn’t see it,” Kellen said. Because she hadn’t wanted to look. “But as gloomy and wet as it was, I didn’t spot this one, either.”

“I wonder if she hid any messages in the other shoe,” Destiny suggested.

Kellen had her phone pulled out before Destiny finished speaking. “I’m texting Lloyd Magnuson and Temo right now. If it’s out there, they’ll find it.”

“Good thought, Destiny,” Mara said.

“The killer can’t be one of us!” Ellen said. “It must be a stranger. A vagrant! There are always weird people floating through town.”

“It could be a guest.” Destiny took a glass, too. She tried to take a drink, but her teeth chattered on the edge. “Some of them are not nice people.”

Kellen’s phone chimed. She checked the message. “Temo’s got the other shoe. When Lloyd gets back with his car, it’ll go to the coroner with the other remains.”

“Shouldn’t we examine it?” Frances asked.

“It’s evidence in a murder investigation. I suspect we shouldn’t have messed with the first shoe.” Kellen saw the look on Frances’s face. “I know. I half want to look, too.”

“How did it happen?” Sheri Jean was working it out in her mind. “Priscilla came in, all smiles, volunteered to take the tour. I sent her off with the group. One lady said she got sick out there, that she was white and sweating. She dumped the group, went to her cottage and…”

“Someone was there and abducted her!” Ellen said.

“And packed up her bags and drove her car?” Sheri Jean scoffed.

“So she packed and got ready to leave, and he jumped her?” Ellen was on the trail now. “Forced her in the car, forced her to drive, took her somewhere and killed her?”

“Or she stopped in town on the way out and he grabbed her there,” Destiny whispered.

“Maybe it was your boyfriend, the one you left the door open for,” Frances taunted.

“It wasn’t!” Destiny straightened out of her hunch. “In September, he was in Seattle at community college. He didn’t come home until Christmas.”

“Flunked out,” Frances told Kellen.

Xander placed the tray with the extra glasses on the table within easy reach and sank back into his meditative pose.

“Where was the body found?” Mara asked.

“On the grounds above the beach.” Kellen would never forget the scattered bones, the shattered remains of a life. That image would never fade from her mind, and yet, how could she have survived a whole year—and forgotten?

“Maybe she washed in from somewhere else,” Destiny said hopefully.

“Or out of a cave,” Mara suggested.

“We cannot solve this crime.” Kellen stood, legs apart, arms folded over her chest, and spoke the way she had in the past when facing an impossible battle. “We’re not going to waste our time trying. Speculation will get us nowhere. None of us are experts. The body is in an advanced state of decomposition. In all likelihood, this will remain an unsolved murder.”

Mara and Sheri Jean agreed with her.

The others were uncertain, groping for a way to make this come out right.