"I'm surprised there aren't more people out here," Curt said a couple hours later, after an extra-large pizza with green peppers for him and sausage for me, when we'd finally gotten around to that walk on the beach. By then, the beach was empty, and the ocean was nothing but an endless mass of black. The night sky was purple and studded with stars, and the breeze had picked up just enough to make my gauzy white ankle-length skirt billow romantically out behind me like a fluffy cumulus cloud…if I'd been wearing a gauzy white skirt.
I was actually wearing denim shorts that stopped just short of my knees. My hair was mostly in a ponytail, except for the strands that had worked themselves free and kept blowing into my mouth, along with the sand, which was somehow getting into other places it had no business being. Not really what I'd imagined when I'd envisioned a walk on the beach with Curt.
On the other hand, things could only improve.
Which they did, considerably, when I glanced at Curt. Of course he looked fabulous. The ocean breeze didn't slap him in the face; it ruffled his hair gently and adorably. He had a five o'clock shadow that managed not to look scruffy and just enough of a tan to make his arms practically glow in a turquoise T-shirt. He was wearing low-slung jeans, and his feet were bare. He didn't even seem to notice the broken shells crunching underfoot. I was scoping out every step, hoping there were no jellyfish lying in wait. I hated jellyfish. So far, so good.
Until I tripped and fell flat on my face, which could only enhance my sex appeal. I spit out a mouthful of beach and lay there for a few seconds, wishing I could burrow right into the sand, out of sight like a flea. And speaking of sand, when had it gotten to be so lumpy and hard? I must have tripped over a horseshoe crab.
But it didn't feel like that under my hands. It felt more like…
I looked down and saw a bent knee.
I let out a shriek and scrabbled backward, away from what I was pretty sure went with a bent knee sticking up out of the sand at night on a lonely beach. I stayed on my hands and knees, gulping deep breaths. I'd seen knees before. I'd even seen dead knees before. Well, they'd been wearing clothes, but they'd been there, attached to their owners, who'd also been dead.
I took another peek. Light pink, no hair, on the small side. So a woman's knee.
Curt grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me to my feet. "Are you all right?"
I shook my head and pointed. "Is she…?" Why couldn't I say dead? Of course the knee's owner was dead. She wasn't moving. No one took a nap underneath a foot of sand.
Curt immediately dropped to his knees and started clearing sand away with frantic strokes. "Help me uncover her head. She might still be alive. Move it!"
Right. She might still be alive. I crab-walked over to him and moved some sand around. I didn't think so. Nothing about that knee said alive. Sure, it looked perfectly normal, but then how long did it take for knees to decompose? Probably a while, since it was exposed to all that healthy salt air. Probably salt air helped to preserve a body.
"I can't believe you found another body," Curt muttered.
"I didn't find it," I said. "It found me. And can we talk about that later?" It's not like I'd meant to trip over a knee. Who expected to trip over a knee during a walk on the beach? Naturally it couldn't have been Curt who'd done the tripping, because Curt never tripped over anything. You could tie his ankles together and he'd still probably move like Baryshnikov.
"Stop grinding your teeth," Curt told me.
"Do you have to be so damned graceful?" I snapped. Okay, I wasn't handling this well. But I wasn't ready for any of it. If I wanted to fall over dead bodies, I would have stayed home. This week wasn't supposed to be about murder and—
My pulse ticked up a notch. What had made me jump straight over tragic accident to murder?
It could easily be a tragic accident. I'd read awful accounts of people who'd dug trenches in the sand only to have the walls collapse and suffocate them. It was possible. Godawful, but possible.
Curt had stopped digging. I nudged him. "Don't stop now. Maybe she's still alive."
"You can stop now," he said. His voice was flat.
I glanced up at him and then down at her, and right away I saw what he meant. He'd uncovered the head and shoulders, and I could see ligature marks encircling her throat.
This had been no tragic accident.
I glanced at her face and my jaw went slack. "I know her," I said in a faint voice.
Curt frowned. "What?"
"I know her," I repeated. "At least I knew her. We went to school together." I sat back heavily, my head hanging down. Curt's arm went around my shoulders. He didn't say anything. "Her name is Annie Hollander," I said. "I haven't seen her in years, but she hasn't changed much." The absurdity of that made me want to shriek. Hasn't changed much, except now she's dead.
Curt's arm tightened slightly.
I pulled in a shaky breath. "It's not like we were friends or anything. Not really. I mean, she was nice enough, but in every class there's someone that, I don't know, doesn't quite fit in. That was Annie." I took another peek at her face, smooth and blank in death. That little mole below her right eye was still there, as was her blonde hair. Annie hadn't had natural golden blonde hair in school. She'd been more a dishwater blonde. She didn't have the California girl blue eyes, either. Annie's eyes were brown. And she'd been a little heavy all through school. She didn't look heavy anymore.
"She's prettier than I remember," I said softly. I reached out to touch her hair, but Curt's hand on my forearm stopped me.
"Don't," he said. "You want the police to be able to find out who did this."
I nodded and withdrew my hand, but I kept looking at Annie and thinking about high school and about mean girls and bullies. I hadn't been a mean girl or a bully. That would have been hard for someone with my looks, and I'd had no desire to foist my insecurities on someone else anyway. But high school was a cruel place, and both mean girls and bullies had found Annie, at various times, in various ways.
"Listen to me," Curt said. "We have to go back to the house to call the police. I can do it, if you want to stay with her."
I shivered. "I don't want to wait here. I'll come with you." No way was I waiting alone in the dark with a dead person. That had cheesy horror movie written all over it. I took Curt's hand and let him pull me to my feet. I gave Annie one last look before we headed back to the house. My sadness was overwhelming. It wasn't fair that this should happen to someone like Annie. Even though she'd moved like a wraith through high school, I knew she'd been in AP classes and had been accepted to almost every college to which she'd applied. She'd had a future.
And now she didn't.