The Wrong Bones (Widow's Island #10)

The Wrong Bones (Widow's Island #10)

Melinda Leigh




1


Deputy Tessa Black rubbed a gritty eye. Ten o’clock wasn’t a late hour for most people, but when she wasn’t working the night shift, Tessa was usually in her pajamas by nine.

She drove through the dark, quiet town of North Sound, scanning the businesses for signs of trouble. Not that she expected much. Off the coast of Washington State, Widow’s Island was smaller, less populated, and more remote than the neighboring San Juan Islands. September was the tail end of the summer season. Tourism fell off. Kids settled back into their school routines. Most businesses closed by six, even on a Saturday night. Since she’d gone on shift at seven in the evening, she’d issued a single parking ticket and responded to a noise complaint about a rooster that crowed at all hours.

She turned onto a side road and cruised down a residential street that bordered the graveyard. As she braked at a stop sign, movement caught her attention. She squinted through the windshield of her patrol vehicle. Her headlights shone across the flat expanse of the cemetery. Headstones cast long shadows. But she saw nothing.

Tessa turned left and accelerated. A figure darted across the road. She braked hard, and the vehicle lurched to a stop. For a few seconds, she breathed through the rush of adrenaline. Her heart slammed against her breastbone. A boy of about twelve faced her from the middle of the road. Behind him, two more boys stood, momentarily frozen in the glare of her headlights. They reminded her of the small black-tailed deer that overpopulated the island. She half expected the boys to run away, but instead they rushed toward her.

She slipped the vehicle into park and climbed out. “What’s wrong?”

Before she could finish her question, the boys clustered around her, all talking—no, whispering—at once. She made out the words ghost and ghoul and raised her hand. “One at a time, please.”

She recognized the tallest boy as Dean Kemp. His family owned Island Market. The other two kids also looked familiar, but their names eluded her.

Tessa focused on the Kemp boy. “Dean, tell me what happened.”

“We were playing flashlight tag,” Dean said, breathless as if he’d been running hard. He pointed toward the north. “Bobby dared me to touch Elias’s headstone. When I got closer”—he glanced around, then lowered his voice further—“I saw something digging in a grave nearby. I think it saw us.” His voice shook as hard as his body.

“A man? A woman?” Tessa asked, her nerves prickling.

The kids jerked their shoulders and gave each other questioning glances.

“I dunno.” Dean swallowed. He cast a fearful glance over one shoulder, as if expecting to be chased, then turned back to Tessa. “I couldn’t see the face. It was wearing a black hood,” he whispered, “like the grim reaper.”

It?

“Are we going to get in trouble?” one of the boys asked in a small, trembling voice.

Technically, anyone on the grounds at night—including the boys—was trespassing. The cemetery was closed after dark, but there was no gate. No one physically locked up the property at dusk. The three deputies on Widow’s Island had better things to do than chase kids out of the graveyard, as long as one of them wasn’t vandalizing anything. Besides, Tessa and her two best friends had spent plenty of evenings trying to scare each other in the cemetery when they were teenagers. There wasn’t much for kids to do on Widow’s once they were bored of flashlight tag.

“Not from me,” Tessa assured him. Widow’s Island had a very small law enforcement presence. They needed community support to effectively police the island. The last thing she wanted to do was discourage these kids from talking to her. “What was the person doing?”

“Digging up a grave.” Dean’s sun-bleached hair was too long, and the wind blew his bangs across his eyes. The other two boys’ heads bobbed.

“Where exactly did you see this person?” Tessa asked, lifting her gaze to scan the dark cemetery.

The boy pointed across the graveyard. “Over by the statue.”

Tessa knew exactly where he meant. A life-size statue of the town founder, shipbuilder Elias Bishop, had been erected in the center, where the Bishop family plots were located.

“Wait here.” Tessa locked her vehicle, then turned in the direction he’d indicated.

“You’re going in there?” Dean asked. All three boys looked horrified.

“Yes. I’ll be right back.” She strode away, her steps silent in the grass. As she walked, she used her lapel mic to update dispatch, which was located on the mainland with the actual sheriff’s department. Tessa and two additional deputies worked out of a satellite station to serve the five thousand residents of Widow’s Island. The truth was that rural law enforcement officers were used to going it alone. Backup was often too far away to be useful in a practical sense. Deputy Kurt Olson was off today. Widow’s third deputy, Bruce Taylor, had gone off shift at seven. Either of them would come if Tessa called, but it would take more than twenty minutes to drive out to the cemetery.

After notifying dispatch, she used her cell phone to text her fiancé, park ranger Logan Wilde. As park ranger, Logan was part of the island’s small law enforcement community. The state park bordered the cemetery on the far side, and an evening scouting activity had kept him at the park office late. If he was still at work, he could be here in a few minutes. Graveyard activity was likely nothing more than a prank or vandalism, but she would always choose to have backup if it was an option. She put away her phone and eased her flashlight from her duty belt.