buildings.”
She didn’t want a shop in town. Nicky wanted the privacy and quiet that she thought she’d get at the Granger Ranch. She’d healed here before, and she could do it again.
“Mrs. Marlow?” Loretta, again. “You really, really, really need to get down here right now.”
Nicky froze for a moment. One really would have alarmed her, but the trifecta of reallys meant something was wrong. Maybe it was nothing more than a spider or a repair that needed to be done.
Garrett stayed on the stairs to make his call, but Nicky didn’t press in his mother’s number. Instead, she hurried to the kitchen. She immediately got confirmation that this was more than a spider issue or a repair. Loretta was even paler than she usually was, something Nicky hadn’t believed possible. Kaylee obviously hadn’t thought this was anything worth waiting around for because she was already playing on the back porch.
“What’s wrong?” Nicky asked the woman.
Loretta shook her head and pointed to one of the rooms off the kitchen. Nicky hadn’t been in this one yet, and the door was shut.
“It’s in there,” Loretta said.
So, maybe a critter sighting and nothing major after all. Well, unless the critter was a grizzly bear. Pushing that uneasy thought aside, Nicky threw open the door. It was a small butler’s pantry with cabinets and countertops on both sides. Loretta’s flashlight was on the floor, and it was still on, blaring light around the narrow space.
In the center of the cabinet rows was yet another door. That one was open. And Nicky picked up the flashlight so she could aim it at whatever had spooked Loretta.
“Holy shit!” flew out of her mouth before Nicky could stop it.
“What is it?” Garrett asked. Until he spoke, she hadn’t even known that he’d walked up behind her, and Nicky nearly knocked him over when she ran back into the kitchen.
“There’s a skeleton in the closet,” she managed to say. “A real one,” she had to add when Garrett stared at her.
Nicky felt her stomach lurch. That was the only warning she got before she puked on the freshly mopped kitchen floor.
GARRETT NOW KNEW there was something worse than having a body buried in the yard. It was having a second body in a closet. Unlike Z.T.’s, Garrett figured this one wasn’t there by choice.
It was certainly something he hadn’t planned on encountering when he’d started his day. Ditto for the widows and the toddler. Just one of those things would have been bad enough, but the shit storm had provided three all at once.
Along with some sobs, tears and a few oh my Gods.
Garrett had to admit that he’d contributed to the oh my Gods. And he’d had some serious unsettling moments. That unsettling had eased up just a little though when he realized the dead body wasn’t exactly fresh. It was a skeleton, an old one from the looks of it, and he was wearing men’s clothes. Specifically, boxers with hearts on them and a straw hat. At least this wasn’t someone who’d died recently.
Garrett didn’t know anything about this man, but the sick feeling continued to roll through him. Not enough to vomit as Nicky had done, but close. A guy was dead. And it didn’t help that his last minutes on God’s green earth had been in this house on Granger land.
“Everybody stay back,” Chief Clay McKinnon called out.
The widows, minus Loretta and Nicky, were peering into the kitchen from the back door. Thankfully, Loretta had had the good sense to take Nicky and Kaylee upstairs so they wouldn’t have to be near the corpse.
Garrett stayed back, too, in the dining room. Far enough away from the puke smell but still close enough if Clay needed anything from him. Not that he probably would. Clay was not only his soon-to-be brother-in-law, he was also an experienced cop and knew what he was doing.
“I’ll get the medical examiner in here,” Clay said. “Along with a photographer. Did anyone touch the body after it was discovered?” he added to Garrett.
“No, I’m pretty sure no one did.”
Even though Garrett hadn’t actually been side by side with Nicky when she’d seen the skeleton, he knew from her reaction that she’d gotten out of there as fast as she could. He would have the bruise to prove it, too, since her head had slammed into his shoulder. As the high school quarterback, he’d been hit by two-hundred-and-fifty-pound football players who hadn’t rammed into him as hard as Nicky had. And as for Loretta, well, she definitely didn’t look like the corpse-touching type.
“Any idea who the guy is?” Clay asked.
Garrett had to shake his head. “No one’s lived here for nearly fifty years, since my great-aunt Matilda.” He paused, frowned. “You think he’s been dead for that long?”
Clay lifted his shoulder. “Hard to tell without some testing. The fabric on the boxers and hat are rotting, but they’re still mainly intact. There don’t appear to be any signs of trauma to the body. No bashed-in skull, broken neck or bones busted from bullet wounds. There’s also no dried blood around him, but over the years the rats and insects could have eaten that.”
That brought on some more oh my Gods from the widows.
Maybe this would get them all out of there. Fast. Garrett cursed himself. These women had already had their spouses die so this was probably hitting them harder than it was him. Still...they had to go.
He hated to think about something like that now, but having them there wouldn’t make this easier. Plus, Clay wouldn’t want them hanging around while he was conducting an investigation.
“This is a clusterfuck,” Garrett heard Lawson say as he walked up behind him. “And it’s about to get more clustered. Belle and Sophie are on their way. They’ll be here any minute.”
Garrett groaned because his mother didn’t usually make situations better, but she might know something about this. It was more than a little unsettling to think that, but it was equally unsettling to realize that over the years he’d camped out in this house. Had brought two girls here. Hell, once Roman and he had had a party. All while there’d been a dead guy in a closet.
“Your great-aunt was married?” Clay asked Garrett.
“No. Not that I ever heard anyway. She didn’t stay here long. According to what my mother told me, my great-aunt moved off after only being here a few months, and then she passed away in the seventies.”
Clay lifted an eyebrow, and Garrett immediately figured out why. Maybe the reason Aunt Matilda had moved was because she’d killed a man and left the body behind. Hell. Not exactly a good thought to settle his stomach.
“I’ll search local records and ask Belle about it,” Clay went on, “but since I haven’t lived around here that long, maybe you can help fill me in. Are there any longtime missing persons that the older townsfolk have mentioned?”
“No,” Lawson and Garrett said in unison. “Anything like that would still be gossiped about,” Garrett added. “Maybe the guy was a repairman or something. He could have slipped and fallen, and Matilda might never have even known.”
Yeah, he was reaching, but he didn’t want to consider the worst. That a man could have been murdered.
“Decomposing bodies stink,” Clay said. “If she was here when he died, she would have definitely known.”
Another round of oh my Gods from the widows.
Garrett heard the footsteps behind him, and for a split second, he thought his mom and Sophie had already arrived. But it was Kaylee making her way into the dining room.
“Mommy puked free times,”