Back Against The Wall. Janice Kay Johnson

he’s a typical absent-minded professor. It had gotten so the garage was so crammed full of stuff, you could hardly set foot in it. So my brother and sister and I are spending the weekend sorting and getting rid of things. You know.”

      It had to have been the brother who’d called, then. “Where’s your father?”

      She looked surprised. “He’s in the house. He’s not much good at this kind of thing.”

      Okay.

      “You see, we found...” She visibly stumbled over what they’d found. “Well, I guess I should just show you.”

      Now, there was an idea.

      “Let’s do that, Ms. Marshall,” he agreed and followed her lead through the gate and alongside the house, past a garbage can and a recycling container.

      He let himself get a little distracted by Beth Marshall, who had a truly womanly body. No matchstick arms here. He wouldn’t describe her as plump, though, just curvy. He happened to like his women curvaceous instead of the currently fashionable stick-thin, so he savored the sight of her while he could.

      Two people waited anxiously in the backyard, along with mountains of packed boxes that had been labeled Thrift, Keep and the like. The man said, “Beth?” and then saw Tony behind her. “Somebody came.” He sounded stressed. Tall, lean and handsome in a way that might be polished if he weren’t also sweaty, dirty and disheveled, this had to be the brother. His arm sheltered a young woman, a cute blonde with blue eyes that were puffy and a scattering of freckles across her nose. The youngest of the three, Tony guessed, and probably considered prettier than Beth by most people.

      He introduced himself again and got their names. Matt Marshall and Emily Marshall. Were neither of the sisters married? He let his gaze slide to Beth’s left hand. No ring. Did any of them still live at home?

      “Okay, let me take a look,” he said.

      Matt started to move, but Beth shook her head. “I’ll show him.”

      “You should sit down.”

      “I’m okay.” She gave an unconvincing smile. “Just bruises. Really.”

      “Bruises?” Tony asked, once again following her, this time through a side door into the shadowy confines of the garage.

      Glancing over her shoulder, she wrinkled her nose. “I fell off the stepladder.”

      “Ah.” He hated to envision her creamy skin blotched with the ugly colors of bruises.

      Concentrate. He looked around. The siblings had cleared close to two-thirds of the garage, assuming it had been completely full to start with. Boxes and what looked like a lot of crap were still packed against the far wall. Tony mentally transferred the piles out in the backyard into here and thought, Holy shit. Beth had been understating the problem. Which made him wonder what the interior of the house was like.

      Not his problem.

      He saw the stepladder right away, and took in the single sheet of wallboard that subtly didn’t match the rest. Stains at the bottom, where bodily fluids would have pooled. Instantly snapping into cop mode, he had a bad feeling he wasn’t wasting his time after all. Didn’t look like he’d finish mowing his lawn today.

      Beth hovered behind him as he mounted the ladder. He was careful not to touch the wallboard and snapped on the military-grade flashlight he carried in his left hand. It lit a slice of the interior between two-by-fours.

      Despite what he’d seen in his years as a cop, the mummified human hand made his skin crawl. He could see some of the wrist—and the top of a head, the hair blond, stringy, dull but still attached. The size of the hand and arm bone and the length of hair made him believe he was looking at a woman.

      How long had she been walled up in the garage of this house? And who was she?

       Chapter Two

      BETH SAW THE detective go utterly still. When he finally stepped down and faced her, his expression had been wiped clean, but she could feel his tension.

      “I need to make a call or two,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d wait outside, Ms. Marshall.”

      However pleasantly phrased, it was an order. She nodded and hurried out into the sunlight.

      “What?” her brother demanded.

      “I don’t know. He looked, said he has to make calls and asked that we wait out here.”

      “Damn, it’s hot,” Matt muttered.

      Beth saw how pink Emily’s face was. Her own face felt too warm. They should have long since renewed their sunscreen. After putting it on first thing this morning, she’d dropped it in her tote bag, currently sitting on the workbench. “We could go inside, get something to drink,” she suggested.

      “Make conversation with Dad?”

      “Would that be the worst thing in the world?”

      His mouth tightened. “Let’s just sit in the shade.”

      “I’ll get the cooler. We can at least have drinks.”

      While a police detective decided what to do about the dead woman encased in the wall of the house, she thought, semi-hysterically. Whoever she was, she might have been there the whole time Beth and the others had lived here. As a kid, she’d never have noticed that the wallboard looked a little different. Although...didn’t she used to leave her bike there? Often letting it tip over and bash the wall?

      When she went into the garage, she saw the detective’s broad back and his phone at his ear. Somehow he heard her, though, because he swung around, his dark eyes locking onto her.

      Until now, she hadn’t fully let herself notice how handsome he was. Coppery-brown skin stretched over some impressive cheekbones and a strong jaw. A lot of the Hispanic farmworkers she saw in town were stocky and on the short side. The detective had to be close to six feet tall and athletic in a broad-shouldered, lean way. As his name suggested, he had black hair and the darkest eyes she’d ever seen.

      He also carried an alarmingly large gun at his hip.

      Trying to hide her shiver, she scurried to the small cooler, lifted it for his inspection, and waited for his nod before retreating outside with it. Matt and Emily had pulled folding lawn chairs against the back wall of the house, where the sun, high in the sky, granted them a meager two feet of shade. Since there wasn’t a third chair—they’d come across these in the garage yesterday—Beth sank cross-legged onto the stiff, brown grass and opened the cooler.

      “Who wants what?”

      Emily peered over her shoulder. “Diet cola.”

      Matt took an energy drink, Beth water. Her body sighed in relief to be sitting, but she became more aware of the painful spot on her butt where she’d landed on the concrete floor, and one almost as bad on her shoulder. Plus, her nerves felt as if they were being stretched on a medieval rack. What was the detective saying? When would he come out to talk to them? Meantime, she prayed her father hadn’t noticed the new arrival, wouldn’t emerge to see what was going on. It was bad enough to imagine Detective Navarro interviewing Dad, but Beth didn’t need the stress of dealing with him right now.

      Matt stared straight ahead. Beyond him, Emily curled forward, clutching her drink and seemingly studying the grass, or maybe her feet. Beth’s gaze darted from her sister and brother to the corner of the house that hid the side door into the garage, to the brick patio, then back to start all over again. What probably wasn’t more than a couple minutes felt like an eternity.

      Detective Navarro appeared, even more intimidating than he’d been when she first saw him. Beth wished he had a more expressive face.

      Emily straightened and stared at him.

      Matt