Bone Deep. Janice Kay Johnson

Hugh was a nice man. He’d be horrified to think an idea like that had ever crossed my mind. It was just a nightmare.” She sighed. “Not Hugh, but somebody wants to see me upset.”

      “Kat.”

      Along with the sound of her name, footsteps crunched on the gravel behind Grant, and he turned to see the editor of the weekly newspaper coming toward them. Mike Hedin was thin and intense. He’d been a reporter at the Seattle P-I before getting caught in a round of layoffs that preceded the eventual demise of the city’s second major newspaper. The Fern Bluff weekly, Grant couldn’t help thinking, had to be one hell of a comedown. Hedin would never get a Pulitzer nomination from here.

      “Chief Haller.” His gaze darted between them. “I’m glad I caught you. I picked up the list of this week’s police calls, and the nursery isn’t on it.”

      Grant had made damn sure it wasn’t. Kat’s mystery was not going to appear in the newspaper, not if Grant could prevent it.

      “No, it isn’t,” he said. “You’re out here on a cold day.” And wasn’t it interesting that he, too, had visited the nursery three days in a row.

      Kat had gone very still, a small creature hoping to go unnoticed.

      Hedin flushed. He was prematurely balding, and the red swept up over his bare pate. “Yes, well, I was hoping to interview Kat about the award. Just a follow-up. What strategies she thinks have increased business, any changes she envisions making this year, that kind of thing.”

      Well, hell, Grant thought in stunned realization; Hedin had a thing for Kat. Face facts: he and Mike Hedin probably weren’t alone. No, she wasn’t beautiful, not exactly, but she was sexy, even on the days when she wore shapeless overalls or, like today, a man’s sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up four or five times. And, while she was very good at being friendly, she also had that touch-me-not air that could seem like a challenge.

      His eyes narrowed. The sweatshirt was Hugh’s. He’d be willing to bet on it. She still wore her husband’s clothes.

      Question was, why? Because they were there, and comfortable? Or as another way to hold on to his memory?

      He was suddenly, deeply offended by the sight of that faded blue sweatshirt long enough to hang halfway down her thighs. Hugh Riley hadn’t deserved her devotion. Although he had left behind a house in town and the nursery out here on the flood plain. Kat no longer had a cheating husband, but she hadn’t lost her home or her livelihood along with the husband.

      She had motivation to have killed him, no question. But, damn, Grant did not want to believe she had it in her.

      “I’d better run,” he said, hoping his disturbing thoughts didn’t show on his face.

      She looked briefly dismayed, or maybe that was in his imagination. Then her mouth curved into a smile, presumably because Mike still waited, hopeful for her attention. “Thanks for coming.” She bent to reach for a pot on a flatbed cart, but instead straightened. “Oh. Did you get that daphne in the ground?”

      That was what the shrub was called. Daphne. “It’ll have to wait until Sunday.”

      “If it gets too cold before then, you might want to stick it in the garage. They can be delicate before they’re established.”

      So she’d said. Or maybe it was the other nursery worker who’d told him that, he didn’t remember. Grant was beginning to see the damn plant as a challenge all its own, as if Kat and her employee both doubted his ability to make the sweet-smelling shrub happy.

      “I’ll be careful,” he promised, although how you could be careful when you stuck a bush in the ground, he didn’t know. As far as he was concerned, things he planted either grew or they didn’t. If they didn’t, something else would. But this daphne he’d coddle with infant formula if he had to. If it died, he wouldn’t admit it. He’d go buy an identical one somewhere else and plant it.

      As if, he thought bleakly, getting in his car, there was any chance at all that Kat Riley would ever stroll in his yard wondering where that shrub he’d bought at her nursery was.

      There was one upside to the appearance of those bones. If it turned out Hugh really had been dead all these years and Kat accepted that she was a widow and not a wife… Well, then, things might be different.

      Assuming, of course, that she hadn’t killed him and already knew full well she was a widow.