“What’s wrong?” I said, standing. She just pointed.
I strode over to the tent and looked in. Then I turned around and raced to the edge of the woods to throw up. I still contend that is any sane woman’s reaction to finding a very, very dead body.
Chapter Nineteen
I’M ASHAMED TO say that I did not hold it together as well as Lizzie did. That fifteen-year-old girl led me out of the woods and back to the castle, where I babbled to McGill and Shilo about the awful scene we had discovered. McGill called Virgil, and before long the cops were at the castle yet again, this time in the bright light of day. Fortunately, Lizzie, her face white, her lips compressed, assured them she was able to guide them back to the scene—I would have had no clue how to find the encampment again—but I made McGill go with them, so he could make sure she was all right.
My story this time, as related to a sheriff’s deputy, was brief, because the body had been there awhile before we arrived on the scene. We found it, that was all. I paced after that, then went to the kitchen to make a big pot of coffee. Shilo and I had discovered a commercial coffee urn in one of the closets in our perambulations of the castle, and it was about to come in handy. I made several dozen mini muffins, too, with the mini-muffin tins I had bought the day before, and heaped them in a basket and set them on the kitchen table. I set out as many coffee cups as I could find, then called Janice Grover at Crazy Lady Antiques to see if she had a box of old mugs I could buy or borrow. Unfortunately, all I got was an answering machine. It was just make-work anyways, something to keep my mind busy as it shied away from the terrible sight I had seen in that tent.
Who was the dead body in the tent? Had he or she died alone, or been killed?
I paced along the flagstone terrace of the castle, as Shilo tried to make me feel better by avoiding the topic. A cold breeze swept up the lane, tossing the tops of the trees, and clouds began to scud along the vaulted blue, closing the scene in with ominous darkness, very Hollywood horror movie like. All we needed was a crypt, a coffin, and thunder to make it complete. But through it all, as I paced, Shilo talked about McGill, Ridley Ridge, and then McGill some more.
I whirled and gazed steadily at her. “Do you think that body is . . . could it be Rusty Turner?” Had he gone no farther than the woods near the castle and died of a heart attack or stroke? Or had old Uncle Melvyn murdered him and left his body there to rot? Given the conflict between them, it was a legitimate concern.
“We don’t know anything yet,” Shilo pointed out.
Finally McGill and Lizzie emerged from the woods as a light rain began to spit down. I hopped down off the terrace and raced to them, hugging Lizzie. She rocked back on her heels and stared up at me, a question in her eyes. What the question was, I couldn’t say. “Are you okay, Lizzie?” I asked, staring down at her. “You don’t need to be strong, or anything, just tell me how you feel.”
“She was great,” McGill said, one hand on her shoulder. “She led Virgil and his boys right to the spot, and told them what she found and how, and pointed out where you had thrown up. We stayed a few minutes, and then I asked Virge if it was okay if we came back here.”
She shrugged, more to get McGill’s hand off her shoulder than anything else, I thought.
“Do you want to go home?” I asked. Her face looked a little pinched and white, and she nodded. “I’ll drive you.” I turned to Shilo. “Can you tell the sheriff where I’ve gone, if he asks?”
She nodded yes, her arm through McGill’s, her head on his shoulder.
I retrieved my keys—I had already changed my clothes, so I was fit to meet a grandmother—and pointed out my rental car. “You’ll have to guide me,” I said, sliding in to the driver’s seat as she settled in on the passenger’s side.
She didn’t answer. I glanced over as I started down the long, curved drive. Tears were rolling down her pale cheeks. I let her silently cry, concentrating on driving in the brief shower, until we reached the turn-off to her grandmother’s home, which was on the outskirts of Autumn Vale. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked, glancing over at her.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” She sniffed. “It was just . . . when I thought about someone dying all alone in that tent, just lying there . . . it was awful. Do you think he was old or young? Did he suffer?”
I pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road and turned to face her. “It’s one of those things that we might never know. It’s a terrible tragedy, but it’s just as possible the person died in their sleep, and didn’t even feel a thing.” I didn’t think so, but there was no point in saying that to Lizzie.