Sandpiper Way (Cedar Cove #8)(96)

“I won’t.” She wasn’t the type to faint because she saw a spider or even a bat. She figured his big find was something along those lines, since she knew bat colonies lived in caves.

“Good.” He kissed her and his lips were cold against hers.

When he broke away, he said, “Sometimes…” But he let the rest drop.

“Sometimes what, Shaw?”

He shook his head. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Tell me now,” she urged, wrapping her arms around him.

He exhaled, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead against hers. “Sometimes when I’m drawing, I think about the two of us working together. Both of us artists…”

The image blossomed in Tanni’s mind. At first being inside the cave had felt a bit frightening. It didn’t when Shaw kissed her. “I’d like that,” she said warmly.

He kissed her again.

This time Tanni broke it off. “You were going to show me something, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember.” He was breathing hard.

“First tell me—is it good or bad?”

He grimaced. “Bad.”

“Bad,” she repeated. “How bad? In what way?”

“You’ll see.” He paused. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone. But I called Anson and he said I couldn’t ignore it. I decided he’s right.”

Tanni was beginning to feel anxious; his tension was definitely communicating itself to her. Why was he being so mysterious?

“You ready?” he asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, with no idea what to expect.

“Don’t be afraid, okay?”

“There’s no one else here, is there?”

He hesitated before he answered. “No.”

He pulled a flashlight out of a heavy plastic bag in the corner. Then he took her hand, fingers tight around hers, and led her deeper into the cave’s interior. The light bounced against the sides, creating eerie shadows that seemed to loom over them.

As they moved forward, her feet made splashing sounds, and she began to tremble. If it was from the cold or from anxiety, she couldn’t tell.

They ducked around a corner and into a smaller cave, and Tanni stopped.

“How’re you doing?” Shaw asked.

“I…I don’t know. How much farther is it?”

“Not very far.”

A sense of foreboding filled her. Her heart started to race and despite the cold, sweat broke out across her forehead. They crept forward and suddenly Shaw came to a halt.

Then she saw it. For an instant she assumed it was a dead animal. Mere seconds later, she realized she was standing next to a human skeleton—probably that of a man. He sat propped up against the side of the cave, a baseball cap on his head. It had slipped to a jaunty angle, which looked grotesque—there was no other word—and she could see clumps of hair that clung to the skull. His clothes were in shreds and he wore a pair of tennis shoes.

She gasped and turned to Shaw.

“You okay?” he murmured.

“We have to tell the sheriff,” she said, trying to quell the hysteria that wanted to rise.

“He’s been here a long time.”

“It doesn’t matter how long he’s been here—he was a human being, Shaw. He died in here alone and…afraid.” She wasn’t sure how she knew that but she did. “We’ve got to call the sheriff.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “You’re right. But I almost don’t want to disturb him, you know?”

Frankly she didn’t. This man had not died peacefully, and he deserved some kind of justice, a decent burial, some acknowledgment. “Come on,” she said urgently. “Let’s go. My cell’s in the car.”

An hour and a half later the road by the forest was lined with law enforcement vehicles, their red lights flashing. Tanni counted four different cars. The deputies had hauled out several large lights and carried them to the cave once Shaw had shown them the way.

Shaw and Tanni sat in Sheriff Davis’s vehicle, holding hands. After a few minutes, the sheriff opened the door. He’d spoken to Shaw while a deputy questioned Tanni; apparently their stories aligned because he’d allowed them to stay together.

“How long have you known about the body?” Sheriff Davis directed his question to Shaw.

“Three days,” Shaw said. It was the same answer he’d given earlier.

“Let me ask you again—you didn’t move the remains? You didn’t touch anything?”

Shaw said he hadn’t.

Sheriff Davis wrote that down on his pad.

“Who is it?” Shaw asked as two uniformed deputies carried out a body bag and brought it to the waiting ambulance.

The sheriff shook his head. “I can’t say.”

Tanni exchanged a look with Shaw. “Does that mean you’ve identified the body and can’t tell us?” she asked. “Or that you don’t know, period?”

The sheriff frowned. “Don’t know, period.”

“What about your missing persons file?” Tanni suggested. Surely there was some explanation.

The sheriff closed his pad and placed it inside his shirt pocket. “We’ll find out what we need to know soon enough,” he informed them. “There hasn’t been an unsolved murder in this town since I became sheriff, and this one’s not going to be the first.”