Bone Deep. Janice Kay Johnson

she was an amazing actress. Grant would swear she’d been shaken to her core.

      Hugh Riley had disappeared from the face of the earth that morning four years ago, after driving away from the nursery just before 10 a.m. He didn’t get pulled over by the highway patrol or cross the Canadian border, he didn’t use his ATM card, he didn’t show up at any nursery or plant farm, including the one he’d supposedly planned to visit. Not one single witness had reported seeing his truck. He pulled out of the nursery, turned west toward I-5, and apparently crossed into some other dimension.

      A single tear had slipped down her cheek that day as her voice sank to a whisper. “He didn’t signal. That’s one of my pet peeves, when other drivers don’t. I watched him go, and was irritated because he didn’t signal.” Her teeth sank into her lip so hard, Grant had expected to see blood. “And there was hardly any traffic. He didn’t even have to wait, so no one else would have seen his blinker anyway. It was just…” A shudder racked her, and she didn’t finish.

      Just his usual carelessness? Just a slap in my face, because he knew I was watching and liked to piss me off?

      It hadn’t seemed to matter, what she didn’t say.

      And still didn’t.

      Grant’s problem was, he hated not being able to figure out where this damn bone had come from. But like it or not, that was police work. Hell, that was life. Not all mysteries got solved.

      Live with it, he told himself.

      “THE PATHOLOGIST AT THE hospital says the bone is human,” Kat told Jason Hebert. “Right now, Chief Haller is leaning toward thinking someone lost a finger accidentally.”

      “Whoa.” Her young employee curled his hands into fists, as if making sure none of his fingers were hanging out there in danger. “That would really suck, wouldn’t it?”

      “Yes, it would. Fortunately, we don’t use many power tools here. Now, hadn’t you better get back to work?” She nodded at the handcart loaded with forsythia that he had been hauling to the front. With their early, cheerful yellow bloom, they sold as fast as they could be put at the entrance to draw attention.

      “Oh.” He blushed and bent to pick up the handle. “Yeah. Sure. I just wondered. You know.”

      “I don’t blame you,” she said, smiling. “It was a weird thing to find.”

      “Yeah.” He grinned. “Too bad it wasn’t in the bonemeal!”

      She pretended to laugh, and he must have been convinced, because he chuckled as he pulled the heavy cart away.

      God. She wished Grant would discover some county road worker had lost a finger accidentally, as he’d suggested when he was out here. She wanted to know where the damn thing had come from, so she could put it out of her mind. She wanted, with a passion that startled her, for that bone not to be her husband’s.

      Kat picked up a sign that had fallen from beside a bare-root rose and thrust it firmly back into the shavings. And I thought I wanted to find Hugh.

      Had the search become habit more than a real need to know what had happened to him? Maybe when people disappeared from your life, you should just let them go. Maybe her mother had been right after all, not even trying to find Daddy.

      With a sick knot in her belly, Kat knew that if Hugh had been murdered and his bones turned up somewhere in a shallow grave, she’d have to relive the original investigation and the suspicion that had, inevitably, focused on her. Back then, it had made her furious and kept her from sleeping at night, even though she knew she had nothing to do with Hugh’s disappearance and nothing to feel guilty about except maybe not having a better marriage. She’d gotten so she hated Grant Haller, constantly showing up with a few more questions.

      If that finger bone was Hugh’s… But it couldn’t be. That made no sense at all. Finding it in her compost was cruel mischance, that’s all.

      But the queasy feeling stayed in her stomach as she waited to hear from Grant.

      George Slagle was back at the nursery today. It seemed he’d wanted her personal advice on what tree to choose.

      “That kid who was trying to help me probably knows more about rock bands than he does plants,” George said dismissively. “They’re going to cost a pretty penny if I put in a whole row of the damn trees, and I don’t want something I’m going to have to tear out five years from now.”

      “That’s smart of you,” she said. “I do teach all my employees about the plants I sell, but I’m glad to help you, George.”

      “You have problems yesterday?” His eyes had an avid glint, as if he wanted to be the first one in town to know her troubles. Was he back today to be nosy and not because he wanted to buy those damn trees? “I saw Chief Haller’s car out front.”

      “Nothing big. You know how it is.” She shook her head, hoping he’d assume she was talking about shoplifting. “He bought a nice daphne yesterday for his own yard while he was here.”

      Apparently her suspicions were unfounded, because she was able to turn his attention to ornamental trees. She wasn’t surprised to find that he had his mind set on the typical spring flowering cherry or pear; he wasn’t interested in foliage or fall color. He liked pink. She steered him to a prunus cultivar with a columnar shape and semidwarf stature that wouldn’t outgrow the narrow strip or make passage on the sidewalk impossible, and promised delivery of eight trees as soon as he had the holes dug. He hinted that she might give him a price break, as a fellow chamber of commerce member, and she deftly sidestepped.

      After he left, having paid full price but still smiling, Kat’s oldest—in both senses of the word—employee murmured, “I think he was flirting with you.”

      They were having a momentary lull at the cash registers, although through the open double doors Kat could see several customers filling flats with annuals.

      Flirting? “Is that what he was doing? Oh, ew.” She frowned at Joan. “You didn’t hear me say that.”

      “Deaf as a post,” her friend and right-hand woman promised with unfailing cheer. “I’m just saying.”

      “He’s got to be sixty!”

      Batted eyelashes were incongruous on Joan’s round face. “May-December relationships can work, you know.”

      “Am I May?”

      “You just turned thirty-three. You might even be June. And, hey, at sixty, he’s not December, either. Maybe October.”

      “God.”

      Joan leaned an ample hip against the counter. “Were you planning to tell me about that finger bone?”

      “Didn’t I…? No,” she said, remembering, “you weren’t here yesterday. Well, I gather Jason has beaten me to it.”

      “And it really is human?”

      “So Chief Haller says.”

      “You’re okay?” Joan asked, tone tentative. “You’re not thinking—?”

      “I’m fine. And no, I’m not thinking. Shoot,” Kat added. “I never connected with Annika yesterday. I’d better give her a call.”

      “She was by half an hour ago when you were with George. She left flyers for the garden club meeting.” Joan gestured toward the table that held reference books, business cards for other nurseries and informational bulletins.

      Kat glanced that way, then said, “I’m going to be in the office for a few minutes, then in greenhouse four if you need me.”

      Kat hadn’t been back in the greenhouse since yesterday, her taste for potting seedlings having evaporated. But the work had to be done, business was slower today, and as long as she was brooding she might as well occupy her hands with something useful.

      Once she made it there, she discovered that nobody