34

“I just want to borrow him.” Ida braced herself as the German shepherd barreled toward her. Even so, she staggered back when he reared up and rested his front paws on her shoulders.

“Down, Fergus.” Fergus belonged to her friend Bert. The dog lapped at her face, dropped to the floor, raced to the dining room, and snatched a loaf of bread left unprotected on the table.

“No, Fergus,” Bert said. “Drop it.” The dog shook the bread, tore the wrapper, scattered slices across the floor, and started gobbling.

“Sit.” Shoving at the dog, Bert scrambled to gather bread before the dog got it. With all food stashed in the trash, Fergus flopped down and rolled on his back with his feet waving in the air.

“He’s not a cadaver dog.” Bert rubbed the dog’s stomach. “He’s not even trained.”

“No kidding,” Ida said. She explained what she wanted to do.

Bert handed her a leash, then had to be persuaded not to come along. She wrapped the leash around her wrist as Fergus dug in his claws and dragged her toward her car.

“Just calm down!” Maybe this was not a good idea. Another one of those thoughts that seemed brilliant at first, but, past the point of no return, started looking like a mistake.

Fergus, excited about going for a ride, but nervous that he might end up at the vet, panted and drooled on her seat covers, occasionally on her arm as she drove out to Kelby Oliver’s house. Something was dead out there, probably in the cornfield, and she wanted to find it. Even though his pedigree was dubious, he had a German shepherd’s nose, and she thought he could take her to the source of the smell. He stuck that nose she was counting on out the window and panted. As she rolled into Kelby’s graveled driveway, the dog crouched on the seat and flattened his ears. Ida climbed out and opened the rear door. Fergus looked up at her with mournful eyes.

“Come on, dog. Out.” She tugged on the leash. Fergus slunk from the car, belly hugging the ground. This wasn’t going as planned. Ida thought the dog would smell the odor and take her to the source, but he dropped and wouldn’t move.

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to find the funny smell?” She tugged on the leash and managed to get the dog into a sitting position.

“That’s better. Now, let’s go, find it.”

The dog threw back his head and howled. The mournful sound sent shivers along the back of her neck. With words of encouragement, coaxing, and disgusting baby talk, she urged him toward the cornfield. He wanted to go off to the right, toward the outbuildings. “Not that way, you dumb dog. This way.”

She tugged. Fergus would have none of it, and kept scrabbling toward the barn. “No, this way. Come on. Don’t you want to see what it is?”

Apparently not. The dog kept straining the other way. She gave up and followed. They went toward the barn. Fergus stopped, put his muzzle in the air and sniffed, then took off like a shot. She had to sprint to keep up with him. He ran around behind the barn, stopped to sniff the air, and galloped along a stone path, choking himself against the collar.

“Slow down!”

He dragged her to an old wooden silo at least forty feet high. She heard a buzzing sound. At a small panel door, he snuffled along the crack at the bottom where grain dribbled out, then threw back his head and howled again. She squatted and tried to see inside. Flies. Oh God. Millions of flies. She kept shoving the dog aside, he kept scrambling back. She could make out the back pocket of blue denim.

Whoever was buried in the grain had obviously been dead a long time. Ida jerked on the leash to take Fergus back to the car. Now he didn’t want to leave, and she had to drag him, toes digging in, all the way back and hoist him in. She went to the house, up on the porch, and banged on the door. “Ms. Oliver? Kelby?” Nothing. She banged again. No response.

Should she go in and see if the woman was okay? Would that compromise the crime scene? What if Kelby were hurt? Lying on the floor bleeding, and speed was necessary. She started in, then stopped and called it in.

*   *   *

Reaching for the phone when it rang, Susan knocked over a mug of coffee. “Damn it!” Receiver tucked between ear and shoulder, she snatched tissues and blotted furiously before papers got swamped by the spreading puddle. “Yes, Hazel.” She tossed soggy tissues in the trash.

“Ida just called in to report a dead body.”

“Oh, Lord, did she get somebody killed?”

“Apparently, this one’s been dead for some time.”

“Who is it?”

“Unknown.”

Susan got location and directions. “Where’s Parkhurst?”

“In his office.”

She picked him up on her way out.

*   *   *

He pulled the Bronco into the gravel drive and parked behind a Jeep with a huge German shepherd inside, head out the window, barking furiously. Ida, standing beside the car, had a hand on the dog’s collar trying to shut him up. And, by God, if that wasn’t a guilty look on her face. What had she done now?

“Your dog?” Susan said.

“Belongs to a friend.” She explained she’d borrowed him to find the reason the crows were circling. “The body’s back this way.”

Susan, Parkhurst at her heels, followed Ida past the barn and along a path to a hugely tall structure—crumbling wood with a perilous-looking ladder going up one side. The air was thick with the odor of decay. The loud buzz meant swarms of flies.

Osey, squatting near a small opening by the ground, stood when they approached. “Been dead a while.” A wooden panel had been removed in pieces and grain had spilled out. Gunner, their Emerson student who moonlighted taking crime scene photos for the PD, snapped away.

Parkhurst grunted. “In this heat, decomposition wouldn’t take long.”

When Osey stepped aside, Susan took his place and tried to make out details. She couldn’t see much. Buttocks, clad in blue denim. Female, apparently. Completely buried in grain, millions of maggots wriggling away at their work. Killed first and the body shoved in here? Pushed in and the grain released to kill her? Susan hoped that wasn’t the case. If she was buried alive, she suffered an agonizing slow death.

Susan turned to Osey. “Who is she?”

He looked at her in his deceptive, slow-witted way. “Don’t know. No way to tell what she looked like.”

“Have you talked to the owner of this … this…?” She waved a hand up the crumbling building.

“Silo. Applegate sold out and went off and just left the wheat.” He scooped a handful of kernels and rolled it in his hand. “I’d say that’s criminal.”

He let the grain trickle through his fingers, then brushed his hand against his pants. “Whoever she is, she’s a city person. Farm people know to stay away from a silo. They’d never go in a rat hole.”

“Kelby Oliver owns the place now,” Susan said. “What do you know about her?”

“Not much. Moved in and kept the doors bolted.”

“Uh…” Ida took a step nearer.

Susan switched her attention to Ida, who quickly erased a guilty look. “What?”

“She has a stalker. Kelby. Ms. Oliver. I talked with her sister.”

“Who was stalking her?”

“Her sister doesn’t know, but Kelby moved here to get away from him. He threatened to kill her.” Ida related what she’d learned from the real estate agent.

“Is this Kelby?” Susan gestured toward the body.

Ida shook her head. “Can’t be. Whoever this is has been dead a while. I saw Kelby yesterday.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I called where she works, but she was a no-show this morning.”

If a stalker was intent on killing Kelby, but Kelby was still alive, who ended up dead in the silo? A mistake? An accident? Practice?

Suddenly Ida gasped and reached for her gun. Susan turned to see what the problem was. Inside the silo, a huge black snake was gliding its way over the grain.

Osey, with a “what’s your problem” look, pushed Ida’s gun gently down. “Rat snake. Good guys. Good to have around. They keep the rodent population down. Probably wouldn’t be a kernel left if it wasn’t for these guys.”

Maybe not such a bad deal, Susan thought, then they wouldn’t have to remove it grain by grain. She and Parkhurst went through the house but found nothing that gave away who Kelby Oliver was. No letters, no snapshots, no address book. A woman with no clutter of identity. Had she killed the person in the silo? Who was the dead woman, and why was she killed?

“Two people were living in this house,” Parkhurst said. “Clothes in one bedroom, personal things. Shoes, jumble in drawers, chest with socks and underwear. In the second bedroom, an item or two hanging in the closet, meager pile of clothing in a drawer. Stacks of books by the bed.”

Susan agreed. “Two toothbrushes in the bathroom. So, who is the second person?”

“Female. Friend, maybe?”

“Kelby wouldn’t even let in visiting neighbors. It would have to be someone she knew. Maybe the guest is dead in the grain.”

“She’s been dead for some days,” he said. “Why didn’t Kelby report her missing? Wouldn’t you go looking for your visiting friend if suddenly she didn’t show up for dinner?”

“Unless the friend had told me she was leaving, packed up, and then was killed by someone lurking in the bushes.”

“Or because Kelby Oliver killed her.”

Susan had a bad feeling about this. “We need to find Kelby.”