Was there any chance at all that Hugh Riley’s body had been right here at the nursery all these years, missed in the intensive search he and his men had conducted?
If it had been… His jaw tightened. If this bone was her husband’s, Kat Riley would have to be the principal suspect in his death.
Yeah, but then why would she have called today to report finding this bone? Why not make it quietly disappear?
Because one of her employees had seen it, Grant remembered. He’d talk. She couldn’t dump it.
Damn, he hoped this bone wasn’t human.
One of the employees spotted him and when he said he was looking for Kat, called to a skinny teenage boy who had an air of suppressed excitement. Grant would lay money he was the budding forensic anthropologist.
“She said she’d be in her office,” the boy told him importantly.
Grant nodded. “Thanks.”
In the years since she took over management of the nursery, Kat had made big changes, including the expansion of a small gift area into a spacious indoor shop that included an attached conservatory with tropical plants for the house. He bet she’d done well with Christmas shoppers, since she now stocked the work of a dozen local artisans as well as gardening tools and gadgets, a vast selection of pots and garden statuary, seeds, bulbs and fertilizers.
He had to be directed to the door to her office, which, almost hidden behind a rack of hand tools, said Employees Only. When her husband disappeared, Grant had spent plenty of time out here, but what had been her office then was now part of this expanded gift area.
He lifted his hand to knock, then hesitated. Damn it, why her? He kept thinking that eventually he’d feel only indifference when he saw her, but that hadn’t happened yet. The sight of her last week at that banquet, wearing a peach-colored sheath that bared a mile of legs and the top swell of her breasts, had been like a gut punch. He’d almost bent over at the pain.
Kat Riley was tall and lush and vibrant. Some people might have called her thick, glossy hair “brown,” but it had a copper gleam in sunlight and some strands as pale as dried cornstalks, others as dark as mahogany. He’d sat directly behind her once at a chamber meeting and, lost in fascination with her hair, missed ninety percent of what was said.
No loss, of course, and thank God no one had asked him a question.
She had great cheekbones, deep blue eyes and a mouth he thought would have gentle curves if she ever let it relax. He wasn’t sure her face was entirely symmetrical. The details didn’t seem to matter. Some combination of physical characteristics and personality and—hell, who knew?—chemistry made her irresistible to him.
Once, he’d thought she felt the same.
He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders and knocked.
“Come in,” she called.
When he opened the door, it was to find her standing behind her scarred oak behemoth of a desk as if she, too, had braced herself.
She looked at him coolly. “You didn’t have to come yourself.”
Stung by how obviously she wished he hadn’t come himself, he only shrugged. “I was arguing with my budget. Any excuse.”
She nodded, the movement a little jerky. “This is a waste of your time anyway. But I have a kid working here who’s taking Anatomy at the college, and when he saw the bone he was just sure it was human.” She rolled her eyes, as though to say, Of course, I never thought anything that stupid.
Not surprising she was sensitive about having to make this kind of call. She’d spent the past four years riding every law enforcement department in western Washington about any human remains that turned up, making sure they remembered that her husband had never been found, dead or alive.
He’d been peripherally aware of the bone lying there right in front of her, but now he said, “Well, let’s see it,” and reached across the desk.
The moment he really looked, Grant knew. Well, crap. He turned the small bone in his hand, seeing the way she stared at it as if it were a black widow spider. Oh, she knew, too, on the same gut level he did.
He didn’t tell her how many bones he’d seen. Didn’t like to think about the killing field in Bosnia where they’d dug up forty-eight complete skeletons. A few men, mostly women and children. Most of his nightmares involved human skeletons, whole or shattered to fragments.
“I’m no forensic scientist,” he said, “but I think your kid’s right. It looks human to me, too.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered, and sank into her chair as if her legs had lost strength. Her unblinking, shocked gaze stayed riveted on the bone in his hand. “How could it be…?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get it looked at to be sure, then ask some questions.” He set it down on the desk and pulled a small spiral notebook from his breast pocket. “Where did you find it?”
He relaxed a little when she explained that it had been in compost she’d shoveled into a wheelbarrow that morning from the piles in back that were regularly replenished by Wallinger’s. Grant’s men had dug through those heaps of compost, bark and shavings after Hugh’s disappearance. No body. So this bone had nothing to do with her. Cruel chance had made her the one to come across it. Hell, most people probably would have thought, animal bone, shrugged and tossed it out.
And maybe it was an animal bone.
He had her walk him to the greenhouse where the wheelbarrow sat, and with her permission combed through the dark, damp compost carefully to be sure the rest of the finger wasn’t in it.
“Show me which bin you got this batch out of.”
Back outside, shrubs in big black pots marched in rows, evergreen separated from deciduous, all carefully labeled so purchasers would know the eventual size, sun and soil needs and time of bloom. Then flowering trees, some already budding, were heeled into ridges of shavings. Half a dozen customers prowled out here on the back forty. He knew several of them, including Pete Timmons, one of his own deputies who happened to be off today. Pete returned his nod, but eyed Kat speculatively. She clearly noticed, because her cheeks flushed.
Grant was most surprised to see George Slagle, who owned the lumberyard and hardware store in town. There’d been talk that George resented Kat’s nomination for Business Owner of the Year, considering his revenue was likely two or three times hers. And Grant knew his house had been landscaped by the builder and probably maintained by a yard service. George was no gardener.
Some woman Grant didn’t know spotted Kat and called, “Can I ask you something?”
She smiled and held up her hand. “Give me a minute and I’ll be right back. George, nice to see you.”
George nodded, looking a little unhappy.
She was good, Grant mused. She must be thrumming with tension, but she’d exuded the friendliness and helpfulness that brought return customers.
Behind the last greenhouse, a row of bins, each five or six feet wide and maybe eight feet deep, had been constructed with railroad ties. Lower fronts allowed access. Kat pointed to one, with the compost getting low.
“Go help that woman,” he suggested. “I’ll dig through this.”
She