CHAPTER 3
By the time Gran and I made it back home, she was worried sick over being away from Gramps for too long. She rushed to his bedside, checked his oxygen, and straightened the medicine bottles that lined his dresser. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Half-starved, that’s how I am. Where the hell have you been? Been waitin’ on my breakfast.” A wheezing noise escaped between every other gravely word.
She patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry to have worried you, Fergus. But the most terrible thing happened—”
“Tell me about it after you get my food, will ya?”
Gran looked my way. “Can you help him while I fetch some breakfast?”
She scurried off to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Gramps. Wilco hobbled over to give him a friendly introductory sniff, but Gramps pushed him away, tossed aside the covers, and swung his spindly legs over the bedside.
I rushed to his side. “Let me help you.”
He batted my arm away. “Just hand me my wheels. I need to get to the pisser.”
I gritted my teeth. I’m not sure what I’d expected. He’d ignored me when I came home the night before. Did I think the light of day would bring a new attitude—an embrace, some small talk, a nice word or two?
Biting back a retort, I retrieved a walker parked against the far wall and handed him his portable oxygen pack. Gramps used to be a hulking figure, tall and broad with muscles well-honed from years of manual labor, anything from construction jobs to farm work, whatever came his way. But a forty-year pack-a-day habit caught up to him. The cancer had eaten most of his lungs, reducing him to a shriveling mass of bone and thinly stretched skin. His eyes had a sickly yellow tinge, and his nearly white hair was wiry and sparse from a couple of failed chemo attempts.
I hovered nearby, biting my lip as he pulled himself upright. He grunted and murmured a curse or two. Wilco stayed close. He seemed intrigued by Gramps. Why? Did he smell death on him, the type of decay that starts deep inside the body even before the last heartbeat?
Gramps was fully standing now. I backed off as he picked up the walker and plopped it back down again. A small bell tied to the handle made a ringing sound. It must’ve been something Gran rigged to keep track of him when he was on the move. She was always worried he might fall. Ring, ring, thud. Ring, ring, thud. Gramps paused and squinted down at Wilco, who was limping next to him. “What’s wrong with that stupid dog now?”
Instantly, my inner monster writhed, and I swallowed back the words I wanted to say: You mean a stupid dog who is loyal to his kin, demands nothing but love, and doesn’t smoke himself to death? I bit it back, spit out, “He hurt his leg this morning. I’m taking him to the vet. Gran asked me to take care of you first.”
“I don’t need your help. She takes care of me just fine.”
“She’s upset. There was a dead woman up in the rocks. Wilco found her. That’s where we were this morning. The police detained us for questions.”
He stopped and leaned heavily against the handles of his walker.
I continued, “They think it’s Sheila Costello. Her brother was there with us. He’s pretty upset.”
Gramps narrowed his eyes. “Dub’s wife?”
“Guess so.”
“Dub made a mistake when he married that woman. Nothing but trouble, she was.”
My jaw muscles clenched. “Well, she won’t be trouble anymore. Someone shot her in the head.”
“Jeezus.” It came out as one long wheeze followed by a coughing spell.
I snatched a couple of tissues from the box on the dresser and took them to him. “Was she not getting along with Dub?”
“Hell if I know. It ain’t none of my business.”
Meaning they weren’t getting along. Otherwise he’d have said so.
Gramps lifted his shoulders and sucked in air. “I know she wasn’t much on this place. We weren’t good enough for her.” He didn’t look at me, but we both knew he’d shot the accusation my way. “ ’Spose she, at least, came by that naturally. She was from that clan down in the Carolinas. They live different from us. Big mansions and money like it’s growin’ on trees.” He pressed his lips together and inhaled through his nosepiece, sliding his eyes my way. “He should’ve stuck to his own, married a girl from here.”
“Maybe no girl from here would have him.”
He opened his mouth to snap back, but a sharp inhale sent him into another coughing spasm. I watched without a pang of regret. Sure, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Yeah, okay, he’s dying. Give the old man a break, Brynn. Yet for all my inner tongue-lashing, still I hated the old man for what he’d done, and I couldn’t let it loose.
“Fergus!” Gran shot back into the room and inserted her small frame between us. Either she’d been listening in on our conversation, which isn’t difficult to do in a compact mobile home, or she’d sensed an impending fight. She’d always played the peacekeeper, running constant interference between Gramps and me. It was her role in the family. She played it well.
With a simple look and light touch, she redirected the situation. “Come on now, Fergus. Let’s get you situated so you can eat your breakfast.” She shuffled him off to the bathroom. Glancing back my way, she said, “Meg left a message. Said she had to leave, but could give you a lift tomorrow before her shift.”
Crap! I’d forgotten about my car. Meg had driven me home from Mack’s Pub the night before. Good thing. I was drunk off my ass, and the road between McCreary and the tiny municipality of Bone Gap, where my grandparents lived, where I used to live, where I guess I lived again now, was a viciously curving tract of highway infamous for its treacherous switchbacks. It was also a great deterrent for visitors. Which is why my Irish ancestors had chosen to locate in the area generations ago.
Gran continued, “And I called Dr. Styles for you. He said he’d be happy to take a look at Wilco. I left the address on the counter. Why don’t you head on over there now? You can take our car. I can handle things here.”
I thanked her and headed for the kitchen to gather my stuff. Just before walking out the door, I turned back to see her help Gramps settle into his favorite recliner. As she tucked a blanket around him, their eyes met. Then Gran leaned forward and rested her cheek against his. For a second, a tender gesture, so full of love, fluttered between them like an autumn leaf on the first snow of the season—a glint of vibrant red and gold, too fragile to endure the cold end to come.
* * *
I parked Gran’s Buick and glanced hesitantly toward the wood-frame barn that served as Doctor Styles’s clinic. The building might have originally housed only eight to ten stalls, but it had been restructured into a clinic and painted in the typical barn red. I steeled myself. Our last stint with a veterinarian ended with Wilco practically tearing the arm off the poor doctor. Hopefully, this time would go better.
Or maybe not. Wilco balked when I opened the car door, his nose furiously twitching as he hunkered down with his black head between his front paws. Even from here, his powerhouse of a sniffer picked up familiar and terrifying scents: antiseptics, other animals, disease . . . Who knew what that nose could detect? I clipped him to the coil leash on my belt and gave a gentle tug, but he dug in deeper. I leaned into the car and hefted him out as gently as I could, holding him like a baby, placing him on the ground. This was the same dog that earlier, out in the woods, had stood on alert, prepared to pounce and rip the flesh off anyone who threatened me; now he stood quivering, with his tail tucked nervously around his hind leg. PTSD sucked.
The front door of the clinic opened and a middle-aged man in khakis walked out to greet us. “Brynn Callahan?” He approached with a smile. I stood and gripped his hand. He was clean-shaven, with salt-and-pepper hair, a strong jaw, and a ready smile. “And this must be Wilco.” He bent down a little closer, made eye contact, but didn’t reach out to pet him. Smart man. Dogs, like humans, have a sense of personal boundaries. They don’t want their space invaded by strangers, any more than you or I’d want someone to reach out and tousle our hair upon first meeting. I felt a little more at ease.
He invited us to follow him inside and patiently trudged along as I half walked/half dragged Wilco through the door. “A reluctant patient, huh?”
“Clinics set him off. He’s not had the best experiences with vets. Nor they with him,” I added as a not-too-subtle warning.
“I understand. Why don’t we pass the normal check-in then and get right to it. I hate to prolong his agony.” He chuckled. “Or mine.”
We were in a sparse waiting area, separated from the rest of the building by a paneled wall. A beat-up leather sofa was parked against one side; a desk, a copy machine, and two tall file cabinets lined the other wall. Dr. Styles walked over to the desk and snatched up a pair of reading glasses and a clipboard, then motioned for us to follow him through a door and out into an open area. We made our way toward a row of doors that lined the back of the barn.
“I just have a small operation here,” Styles explained. “I’m a country doctor. I used to specialize in bovines, but now I care for horses, pigs, sheep . . . and dogs, of course.” He peered down at Wilco, who limped along, his head swaying as he incessantly whined. “Mostly I travel to see my patients. But I do treat a handful of animals here. I handle most everything myself, but I have a part-time assistant to help with office work and such.” He opened the door to one of the rooms and motioned for us to enter. The well-lit white examination room had a counter at one end with cabinets above it and little else. No exam table, like a typical vet office. From the sounds of it, most of his patients were a bit too big for a table anyway.
“I brought his records with me, if you want to have a look.” I never travelled anywhere without Wilco’s medical history. I handed the records over, then gave Wilco a reassuring pat and a quick hug. “His shots are up-to-date. No allergies that I know about.”
“Excellent. If you don’t mind, I’ll make a copy of these before you leave. Just in case Wilco needs to stop by again. Your grandmother mentioned on the phone that you might be staying a while.”
“Yeah. For a while, I guess.”
He leaned against one of the cabinets, glasses perched on his nose as he scanned over Wilco’s records. After a while, he set the records aside and approached Wilco, holding out his hand and letting my dog take a good whiff. “He’s deaf.”
“Yes.”
“He’s got quite the story. I’m sure you both do.” He opened a nearby cabinet and pulled out a muzzle. “Just a precaution.”
“A two-hundred-pound bite force isn’t something to mess around with.”
He smirked. “Agreed.” I clamped my hands on Wilco’s neck, holding his head in place while Styles secured the muzzle. “Okay. Let’s see what we got,” he said.
I watched as he gently prodded along Wilco’s front right leg, mumbling to himself as he worked. “Pad’s okay, metacarpus and carpus seem fine, elbow joints okay, aw . . . see how he reacted here? I’m willing to bet he’s pulled a tricep muscle. I’d like to take an X-ray, just to make certain, though.”
“Sure.” I gulped back my reservations. I had about three hundred dollars left to my name. A vet bill could easily be more than that. I should’ve been out looking for a job today.
We moved to another room, where the doc tried to gently lift Wilco onto the X-ray table. Wilco stiffened, widened his stance and put his head nearly on the floor. He let out a few whimpers at first, which quickly turned to a deep growl, and then his muscles rippled with tension. His pupils enlarged, his tail stiffened and bristled. He lunged and snarled through the muzzle.
“Whoa, boy.” Doc Styles took a few steps back.
I tightened my grip on the leash, grabbed him for an instant by the scruff, followed by long strokes down his back. Instantly, he settled. Then his taut muscles quivered and turned to full-blown shakes. Trembling, he hung his head, his eyes unfocused as he let out a series of high-pitched whines. “He’s terrified.” I looked around, wondering what had set him off. My eyes settled on the large X-ray machine that hung over the examination table. Wilco had had dozens of X-rays after the explosion. I’d been recovering from my own injuries at the time. We were apart for the first time since we’d been matched together. I have no idea what happened to my dog during those weeks. I looked at Styles. “I think maybe he’s having a flashback.”
Doc seemed to understand. “Do you want to continue? I can give him something to calm him. Just a light tranquilizer. It’ll wear off quickly.”
He opened a small fridge and took out a vial and syringe. He filled it, pinched at the meaty part of Wilco’s haunch, and inserted the needle.
The shakes softened, then ceased. Wilco lowered himself to the floor. I ran my hand along his side and stared directly into his eyes, now dulled, as the nightmares that haunted his days chased through the trails of his mind. Flashbacks. Anything could trigger them. I knew how real and horrifying they could be. I felt his pain, the injustice of it all. Wilco had only ever done what was commanded of him. He was trained to serve, to please. He didn’t deserve this. Neither of us did.
* * *
Later that evening, I remained in Gran’s car, staring at the trailer, my hand stroking Wilco, who lay half asleep on the passenger seat, still exhausted after his ordeal. The diagnosis was a muscle pull, just as the doctor had initially thought. The treatment was an anti-inflammatory drug and rest. But no fracture was good news. So was the invoice. It was a third of what I had expected to pay. Doc Styles must have given me a break.
It was half past five now, and the sun was already setting, making it easy to see inside the lit front room. Gramps was in the recliner, with the television going. I didn’t see Gran but imagined she was in the kitchen getting supper ready. I dreaded going inside.
After the visit with Dr. Styles, I’d been in no shape to do anything productive, so I went through a drive-in outside of town, got a plain burger—no bun—for Wilco and a burger with everything for myself and then drove the two of us to a ridge that overlooked the valley. We spent the afternoon relishing our burgers (well, Wilco inhaled his) and enjoying the landscape between naps. Once the sun edged toward the horizon, we reluctantly headed back. Now I sat in front of Gran’s place, not wanting to get out of the car.
Movement from inside the trailer next door caught my eye. Doogan’s trailer. Or at least the trailer he was renting from our old neighbor, who, according to Gran, had come into a little money and upgraded to a double-wide a couple lanes over. I thought back to earlier, and how upset Doogan had been about his sister. I hadn’t offered much in the way of condolences. I imagined him inside, alone, heartbroken. I roused Wilco, and we ventured over to his front door.
“What?” He stared at us through a crooked storm door. His stringy dark hair was tied back off his face. His sleeveless T-shirt clung to him in patches of sweat.
“Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”
He pushed open the door. “My sister’s dead. Murdered. How do ya think I’m doin’?”
I hesitated, confused by the invitation of an open door and the unwelcoming tone of his now heavily brogued words.
“Well, are ya comin’ in, or what?”
I stepped inside. Wilco, still groggy from his shot, ambled to the corner and plunked down. Kevin’s front room looked like a gym: a weight bench, racks of dumbbells, and a punching bag on a stand in the corner. “You training for something?”
“Just working off some steam.” He grabbed a towel off the bench and wiped down his face and arms.
I swallowed hard and shifted. “I didn’t say too much out there today, the shock of it, I guess, but I am sorry about your sister. I just came over to offer my condolences. And to see if there’s anything you need.”
His words lost a bit of accent and aggression as he answered quietly, “I’m fine. Thanks.”
“Did the sheriff have anything else to say?”
Doogan didn’t look my way. Instead, he walked over to the front window and gazed out into the darkness. “Not much. Just asked a bunch of stupid-ass questions. I went with him to break the news to Costello.”
“How’d that go?”
“He put on a good act, but I could tell he didn’t give a crap. Not really.”
“You don’t think he loved your sister?”
He continued silently staring outside. I moved closer and followed his line of vision. A row over, between two other trailers and beyond a vegetable garden gone to weed, was Dublin Costello’s place. “Do you think Dub killed her?”
He wheeled around, his tone louder again. “Why do you ask that?”
I took a step back. “You don’t seem to care for the guy.”
He hesitated before answering, “My sister . . . she’d changed.”
“Changed?”
He frowned slightly. “We’re from the Murphy clan in South Carolina. Our parents met the Costellos, I don’t know, years ago at some gathering or other.”
That made sense. Different clans often met up for celebrations or holidays, providing some of the camaraderie we Travellers can never feel with settled people.
He shifted and went on. “Sheila used to call Ma at least once a week. Just to check up on things with the family. We’re close, ya know?”
The ties that bind, as Gran always says.
He continued. “At first everything seemed fine. She and Dublin were getting to know each other and all that.” He glanced at the floor. “It was an arranged marriage.”
Yeah. I knew only too well how that went. “How old was she?”
“Nineteen, almost twenty. The baby of the family.”
My stomach turned. Dublin was a few years older than me, so he was nearly fifteen years older than Sheila. Endogamy was a way of life for most Travellers, and our clan was no exception. Couples were often matched at birth. Or at least as young children, as I was to Dublin Costello all those years ago. I rubbed down the sudden prickles on my arms. Thankfully, I’d taken a different route. Not that military tours weren’t dangerous, but the service family around you supported you, and you were not only given the means of defending yourself, you were expected to. What I did might have disgraced my grandparents, but if I had married Dublin, that might have been my body out there today. I’d experienced Dub’s temper before. I had no doubt he was capable of such a heinous crime.
Doogan went on. “Something must have changed between them, though. About a month ago, Sheila asked if she could come home. She wouldn’t say why, but Ma said she seemed upset. We all figured she was just homesick. But then her calls stopped, and no one could reach her.”
“That’s why you came up here?”
“Yeah. I came as soon as travel season was done. Finished a roofing job down in Alabama and came straight here. But by the time I got here, she’d gone missing.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and lowered his gaze. “I called home this afternoon. The news about killed Ma.”
I reached out to touch his shoulder but pulled back and folded my arms across my chest instead. What could I say? Sorry about that? Things will work out? It’ll be okay? Hollow words or outright lies. Nothing would ever be right about this, and I knew it. He knew it. “Did she say things were bad between them?”
“It wasn’t like Sheila to complain. She was a good girl.”
A good girl. A Pavee’s way of saying she was obedient. Like most Traveller women, Sheila was probably groomed from a young age to accept her role in the clan, which would mean bypassing any education beyond state-dictated schooling and settling into the role of wife and mother at a young age. In our culture, the woman was the heart of the family, the man the head, and what he said was the law. I’d been brought up the same way, taught to respect the traditions of our clan. As a youngster, I hadn’t thought it was such a bad thing; guess I assumed it worked. Yeah, it worked alright—if the man your family matched you to wasn’t a violent-tempered drunk. For me, it didn’t work. Guess I’ve never been the obedient type. Wasn’t a good girl.
I pointed to a pair of military-grade binoculars on the windowsill. “You’ve been watching his place.”
A shadow crossed his face. “I don’t trust the guy. He’s claiming that Sheila had a boyfriend.”
“Who?”
“Says he doesn’t know. He just thinks she was cheating, but I know better. She wasn’t like that.”
“Even if she was lonely?”
He faced me with an incredulous look. “Not a chance.”
I recognized where he was coming from and believed him. After all, she was a good girl. If she was obedient enough to marry as she was told, she sure wouldn’t be the type to sleep around. “Did she ever mention any friends?”
“No. Not that she ever talked about. Don’t think she made many friends here.” He folded his arms and steeled his eyes on Dub’s place. “I’ll wait until the body’s released, then I’ll take her home for burial. Coming home was her last wish, and I intend to make it happen.”
A set of headlights sliced through the darkness that now buried the neighborhood. The sheriff’s car pulled in front of the trailer. Doogan quickly pushed past me and headed outside. I motioned to Wilco and followed.
Pusser stepped out of his SUV and crossed the yard. The light from Doogan’s open door spotlighted the sheriff’s stoic features. He was wearing a navy blue wool watchman’s cap and a poorly fitting overcoat. He worked a toothpick between his lips as his gaze swept from Kevin to me. “Ms. Callahan. Mr. Doogan.”
“What is it, Sheriff?” Doogan wanted to know.
“The medical examiner’s come up with something. I wanted to discuss it with you.” Pusser frowned my way, then glanced toward the open door behind us.
Doogan didn’t invite him inside, and he didn’t tell me to leave, so I stayed put. So did Pusser.
“Just tell me what you’ve found,” Doogan said.
Pusser shifted his feet, then pulled out his cell phone. He scrolled for a second, then tapped on the screen. “This is a photo of a tattoo. The coroner found it during the initial examination. It looks like a round cart or a wagon of some sort. Do you recognize it?”
Doogan’s brows furrowed. “No.”
“May I?” I moved in closer to look at the screen. The tattoo was distorted, but there was no mistaking the symbol. “It’s a gypsy caravan. It’s a common Traveller symbol.”
“This was on the body?” Doogan asked.
“On the small of her back. It’s a little over an inch wide.”
Doogan frowned. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“There was something else.” Pusser shoved his cell back into his coat pocket. “Did your sister ever have abdominal surgery?”
“Abdominal surgery? No. Why?”
“Because the medical examiner found a scar from an abdominal incision. He guesses it was from some time ago.”
“A cesarean birth?” I asked.
“Doc thinks so,” Pusser said.
“That’s impossible. Sheila’s never been pregnant. We would have . . .” Doogan’s words trailed off. His eyes lit up with hope. “You mean . . . ?”
“We’re still working on identification,” Pusser said. “Much of the body was pretty far gone, and since you said she’d never had any dental work done, we’re having to run testing on the tooth enamel, which is time-consuming. It should help us pinpoint an age. But the coroner suspects the victim was older than your sister. Confirmation’s gonna take some time, though.”
Doogan’s head bobbed up and down. “I understand, Sheriff. But I know for a fact that my sister’s never been pregnant.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Seven months ago. At the wedding in South Carolina. There’s no way. It can’t be her.” He swiped at his face, his skin flushed, sweat beading along his hairline.
Pusser held up his hand. “Let’s just wait until we have more information. I haven’t talked to the husband since our initial findings. Maybe he’ll have more information.”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Sheriff. My sister didn’t have no baby! There’s no way she was pregnant before she got married.”
“Okay, okay. I believe you.”
Doogan’s eyes zeroed in on the sheriff. “So . . . my sister’s still alive!”
Pusser looked down and shuffled his feet. “I’ve got all my resources out there looking for her,” he said.
“She’s alive, I know it!” Doogan turned back to the door. “I’m goin’ to call my mother. Let her know the good news.”
Pusser watched him go inside, then turned to me. His face was grim. “Got any opinions?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a cop.”
“Ex-cop. Marine.”
He spat out his chewed toothpick and pulled a plastic cylinder from his coat pocket and extracted a fresh one. A whiff of cinnamon stung my nostrils. “If you say so, Ms. Callahan. But being that you’re an ex-cop, Marine, you know damn well that it doesn’t look good for his sister. If she didn’t leave Bone Gap on her own, then she’s probably already dead.”
My chest tightened. The sheriff was right. But I wasn’t in some damned combat zone where dead, decaying bodies covered the ground like litter. I was home, where things should make sense. I refused to give up on Doogan or Sheila yet. “There might still be hope.”
His mouth twitched at the corners. “Y’all seem pretty chummy. Thought you’d never met Mr. Doogan before today.”
“I haven’t.” Then I realized what he was thinking. “I live right there.” I pointed to our trailer. “I’d just come home and thought I’d see how he was doing.”
“Just being neighborly, huh?”
“Yeah. Just like, you know, neighbors.” What’d he think? That we all lived like heathens out here, hopping from one trailer to another, boozing it up and having wild sex parties? McCreary people always thought the same thing about the Bone Gap Travellers. Why did I expect Pusser to be any different? No wonder I’d escaped this mountain years ago. I had to take crap from both sides: the settled residents’ prejudice, thinking we were all immoral, and the Pavee stigma of me being born from my mother’s sin against the clan’s creed.
I crossed my arms, and he lowered his gaze, bent down, and ran his hand between Wilco’s ears. I half hoped my dog would take a chunk out of his arm. “If you really want to do something to help the guy,” he said, “then you’ll get this dog of yours back out there and see if he can sniff up another body.”
My arms dropped. My heart did the same. Another body? Visions of torn flesh and eyes glazed with death strobed across my brain. He had no idea what he was asking. I forced my eyes to take in the evening’s litter of lights in the trailers around us, inhale the smells of propane and diesel oil, rotting leaves and peat. My inner monster sneered, “Sounds like you’re pretty eager to assume Sheila’s dead. Anxious to clear your docket, Sheriff? Or maybe a gypsy girl just doesn’t warrant the time.”
Pusser jerked upright, his pockmarked face exaggerated in Doogan’s porch light. “Don’t get me wrong, Callahan. I hope to hell we’re not too late. Then again, if she’s out there, buried in those woods somewhere, Doogan deserves to know. Otherwise, he’s going to spend the rest of his life looking for her. And that’s no way for a man to live.” He took a step closer, his nostrils flaring. “Believe me, I know.”
* * *
Gran was at the kitchen sink, finishing the supper dishes, when I came inside. “Let me do those. You’ve got to be exhausted after everything today.”
“I am tired. But keeping busy helps keep my mind off things.” She held up a wet plate. “Want to dry?”
I snatched up a towel and joined her at the sink just as she finished scouring a pan. Her washing. Me drying. Just like old times. It felt as if nothing had changed. Yet so much had. Still, I felt happy standing next to this woman with wrinkled laugh lines and piercing blue eyes, skin fragile as tissue paper, and a mind as tough as oak.
Wilco had found a warm spot near the stove and curled into a ball. He slept quietly, motionless, his chest slowly rising and falling. He seldom slept so peacefully anymore, and at first I thought it was his meds, but then I realized why he slept well now: He’d fulfilled his task today. Now he was at peace with himself, maybe for the first time in a year or more. How ironic that the only way he’d been trained to feel good about himself was to successfully find a dead body.
Gran prodded me from my thoughts. “How’d it go with Doc Styles?”
“Oh, good. Seems it’s just a sprain. He gave Wilco some pills.”
“I’m glad it’s not more than that. That dog’s been through quite enough already.”
The smell of tangy beef and fresh bread hung in the air. My stomach growled.
Gran heard it. “You missed supper.”
“Sorry. I wanted to stop in next door and pay my respects to Doogan.”
“Of course you did. How’s he doing? Poor man. I feel for him, I do. Losing his sister that way. I can’t think of anything more terrible.”
“Actually, the sheriff stopped by with some promising news.” I took another wet plate from her hands. “They don’t think it was Sheila.”
She looked up from the sudsy water, her eyes wide with question. “Not Sheila? But I thought Kevin was sure.”
“No, not completely sure. It was hard to tell much of anything. . . the body was . . .” I busied myself drying the plate. I’d spared Gran the gruesome details earlier. Not telling her about how deteriorated the body was, how animals and insects had gnawed it beyond recognition. “They couldn’t tell much about her except the color of her hair.” I pushed away the image of the woman’s hair, red and tinged redder by the blood it’d soaked up from her fatal wound.
“The color of her hair? Sheila was a redhead.”
“Yeah, and so was the woman we found. But that’s irrelevant now. The coroner found a couple of other identification marks.”
“Marks?” She picked up another plate to wash.
“A tattoo of a gypsy wagon on the small of her back. And something else. An old scar on the body. Apparently, the victim had delivered a baby by C-section. Doogan swears his sister never—”
Gran turned to me and dropped the plate. It hit the floor and shattered into pieces.
“Gran, what is it?” I tossed aside the towel. “What’s wrong?”
She brought trembling fingers to her face. Her features crumbled. “I didn’t . . . I really didn’t think she’d come.”
I grabbed her hands and held them in mine. They were ice-cold. “Who? Who are you talking about, Gran?”
She looked toward me, but her gaze settled somewhere beyond me, the crystal blue of her eyes glistening as she spoke. “When I wrote to her that he was failing, I thought . . . well, I knew better than to even hope she’d come.” A shudder quivered down from her shoulders to her fingertips. Then she moaned as she repeated, “What have I done? What have I done?”
I gave her a little shake. “You’re scaring me, Gran. Tell me what you’re talking about.”
She focused on me. “That dead woman . . .”
“What about her?”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, God forgive me . . . my baby . . .”
“Gran? What are you saying?”
“The dead woman . . . I think she’s your mother.”