Bone Deep. Janice Kay Johnson

away. Only one other person had been scheduled to work that day—the nursery had been considerably smaller four years ago—and he hadn’t yet arrived at work. Only Kat had seen her husband off.

      Her story might all be so much fiction.

      Grant kept coming back to the problem of where the bones had been to stay so clean. If she had her husband’s body stashed…where? In an outbuilding the police had somehow missed? Then how did that bone end up in her wheelbarrow? And why?

      Just for size, he tried on the concept that she had killed Hugh in a fit of rage, say, because she’d discovered his latest affair. Okay, then why were bones appearing now? Grant would swear she was genuinely rattled. Did someone else know she’d killed him? Was it possible she was resisting blackmail, and these bones were a form of pressure on her to pay? Someone might be saying, I know what you did. I know where the body is.

      He wanted to believe in her. He’d always wanted to, since the first time he met her and had been stunned speechless. Police Chief for less than three months, he was being introduced at a city council meeting when he saw Kat in the audience. He’d never thought, She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, because she wasn’t. Rachel, his wife, was conventionally prettier. But Kat had something. Some magic that had captured him from that moment.

      He’d felt sick when he found out she was married, not letting himself think about the fact that he was married, too. That he’d moved out to Washington State to please Rachel, whose family was in Seattle.

      What he had to face now was that he didn’t really know Kat. She was an intensely private woman who had held herself together better than he would have expected when her husband vanished. At the time, he’d told himself she knew or at least guessed that Hugh was running around on her, and, while perplexed and shocked, wasn’t exactly grieving.

      But he’d been wrong. She hadn’t let go of her cheating husband’s memory for one minute, not in the almost four years. She clung to it with a fervor that bordered on obsession. She must pore over the damn newspaper every single morning looking for snippets about human remains found down in the Auburn Valley or up toward Blaine. Dissatisfied with police performance, she’d hired a private detective to find her husband and spent God knows how much before the investigator confessed to having found exactly nothing.

      Had it all been more elaborate fiction, embroidery intended to convince police and townsfolk alike that she truly was the baffled, grieving wife? Or—damn it—was it possible she’d never known that Hugh screwed around on her? Maybe she’d genuinely loved the guy, and the flicker of attraction she’d felt for Grant had been one of those things, unimportant except as a source of shame for her.

      His pride alone made that an unwelcome thought. Grant was thirty-seven years old, and had never in his life felt anything like this for another woman, not even the one he’d married. It was bad enough that Kat clung to the belief she was still a married woman, but he hated like hell to think she didn’t feel anything special for him at all.

      But he knew it was possible. She might be uncomfortable with him only because he’d kissed her once, because she’d responded. Or, even more likely, because he’d had to consider her a suspect in Hugh’s disappearance.

      Just as he had to now.

      Brooding, he faced the fact that there was a limit to how much time he could give to this. No crime had actually been committed; it all might still turn out to be nothing but somebody’s nasty idea of a joke. It wasn’t impossible to acquire bones. He’d heard that there were still whispers about Kat and her missing husband, about how much more successful the nursery had become without him. She kept to herself, too, which meant she wasn’t universally liked. And she’d gotten a lot of attention with that award. Could it have triggered enough temper that someone had decided to give her a scare?

      Man, he wished that explanation would turn out to hold water. It was unpleasant as hell; finding out you were so disliked would be a shock—but not near as big a shock as some of the alternatives.

      He made another trip out to the nursery, knowing it would be useless. He was right. None of the staff admitted to having been out to the greenhouse in which Kat had been working. Presumably it was a customer who’d tried the door yesterday, maybe belatedly noticed the Employees Only sign. Or she was right, and the person who’d put the bones in the potting mix had stayed to see her reaction…or had come close to being caught in the act and had hidden beneath one of the long plank tables, waiting for a chance to slip unseen out of the greenhouse.

      Grant found Kat out front of the main building, rearranging a display of spring blooming shrubs designed to trap the unwary into buying something they hadn’t intended, like the sweet-smelling whatever-the-hell-it-was-called that was sitting in his driveway at home waiting to be planted. As he watched, she hefted the five- and ten-gallon pots with ease, despite her slender frame. She was filling holes, he realized, replacing plants that had sold.

      He stepped forward, and when she saw him apprehension immediately deepened the color of Kat’s blue eyes.

      “Are you leaving?”

      “Nothing else I can do out here. I could talk to the customers you know were at the nursery both days, but if I do it will start a storm of gossip.”

      Yesterday’s snow had been a mere skiff, but the temperature hadn’t risen since much above freezing. Today Kat wore faded jeans and a sacky sweatshirt as well as work gloves, not enough to maintain her body heat unless she kept moving. Even so, Grant was pretty sure her shudder was just that, not a shiver from the cold even though she also wrapped her arms around herself as she’d done yesterday when she was scared.

      “The fact that you’ve been out here three days in a row already has people giving me funny looks.”

      “Tell me what you want,” he said. “Do I push it now, and the hell with gossip? Or do we wait for the other shoe to drop?”

      “It will, won’t it?” She hugged herself tighter.

      “I’d say so. Unless someone just wanted to give you a little scare.”

      She gave him a look. “Little?”

      “It could get worse.”

      He felt guilty immediately, seeing the way she flinched. A part of him wanted to step closer and pull her into a comforting embrace. But he didn’t dare until he could be sure she didn’t have anything to do with her husband’s disappearance.

      His mouth twisted in something like amusement. Yeah, just imagine how she’d react if he tried to take her into his arms. The result would probably be something like trying to cuddle a feral cat. Teeth and claws would fly, and he’d bleed.

      “Yes,” she said, so quietly he scarcely heard her. “The way people looked at me back then, I knew what they were thinking.” Her eyes met his. “What you were thinking.”

      Grant shook his head. “I was doing my job, staying open-minded. No more, no less.” That was a lie, of course, but she wouldn’t welcome the truth.

      “And is that what you’re doing now, too?”

      His jaw tightened. “Yes.”

      “But you’ll let it go if I ask you to?”

      “Yes.” After a pause, he added, “For now.”

      After a moment Kat nodded. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

      “Have you been working in any of the greenhouses?”

      “No.” He saw the helplessness on her face and how much she hated feeling it. “Every time I dip a trowel into potting mix or compost, I’m going to expect—” She didn’t have to tell him what she expected. Her eyes searched his. “You don’t think he could be alive, do you?”

      Surprised, Grant rocked back on his heels. “Do you mean, he’s the one doing this?”

      “I had a dream last night.” More softly, she corrected herself. “A nightmare. Hugh was