“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned in sailing school, Connie.”
“Nonsense! It’s like riding a bicycle. It’ll come back to you.”
“Let’s hope.”
“I thought about selling Sea Song, you know, after Craig died. But he loved her so much! He must have said it a million times: ‘That Tartan’s a good, sturdy bay boat, Connie. Should last us for years.’ That’s why I don’t think he’d have minded my paying off the loan with part of his life insurance settlement. Sometimes I wonder, though. You know what they say about sailboats: It’s a hole in the water where you throw your money!”
By then we had reached the Nichols farm, where trucks and cars were parked higgledy-piggledy along both sides of the road, their tires half on the asphalt and half on the grassy shoulder. A crowd of approximately twenty people had gathered, and I noticed Connie’s friend Hal, still in his truck, deep in conversation with three firemen clustered in a disorderly huddle outside his window. Yellow crime scene tape stretched from the battered Nichols mailbox to the telephone pole at the foot of the drive. A uniformed officer stood nearby. He was young and trim; the sleeves of his uniform strained against the muscles that bulged in his upper arms. He looked perfectly capable of discouraging anyone from wandering too close to something he shouldn’t. Farther up the drive, next to the house, sat a fire truck, an ambulance, two Chesapeake County patrol cars, and a dark silver Ford Taurus.
“What do they need the fire truck for?” I asked the officer, whose name tag said “Braddock.”
“Routine.”
I stepped closer. “And the ambulance? I found the body, Officer Braddock. I don’t think an ambulance is going to help much.”
“Also routine.” He smiled a straight, white, gap-toothed grin, causing the deepest dimples I’d ever seen to appear suddenly in his cheeks. He looked about twelve years old. “I’ll need to get your names,” he added.
Braddock wrote our names at the bottom of a long list.
“What’s happening up there?” I asked.
“Nothing much. We’re waiting for the medical examiner and the ECU.”
“What’s the ECU?”
“Evidence Collection Unit.”
While we were busy distracting the talkative Officer Braddock, a young boy seized the opportunity to slip under the tape. “Hey!” Braddock was on him in two steps, catching the youngster by the waistband of his jeans. “Out you go, young man!” The kid smiled and shrugged as if to say, Well, it was worth a try!
Connie and I stepped back then to join the others milling about on the road, creating a significant traffic hazard. A heavyset woman in a flowered dress had just emerged from a car parked a short distance away. When she caught sight of Connie, she waved and struggled up the hill.
“Ellie Larson,” Connie informed me. “She owns the Country Store with her daughter, Angie. Angie must be minding it today.”
Ellie arrived, wheezing and out of breath. She dabbed at her forehead with a crumpled tissue, leaving specks of white behind. “Just driving by and saw all the cars. Someone having an auction or a garage sale?”
“Hannah was walking the dog this morning and thinks she saw a body in the old cistern out back.”
Connie turned to me, and I got to tell my story all over again, concluding, because I knew Ellie would ask, with “No, I don’t know who it is!”
Ellie looked thoughtful. “Not many people have disappeared around here in the past few years. Some teenage runaways is all, but they always turn up. Except… well, except for the Dunbar girl.”
“What about her?” Connie asked.
“She disappeared about eight years ago. It was after the homecoming dance at the high school. Hasn’t been seen since. A pretty, curly-headed girl. Looked like a cherub. Do you think it could be Katie Dunbar?” Ellie looked at me expectantly.
I felt the chill returning. “If she’s been dead for eight years, it’d be a little hard to tell, don’t you think?”
Connie took off one sandal and tapped it on the side of her leg to dislodge a stone. “I remember her now. Pretty, yes, but not terribly bright. I used to see her down at the Royal Farms convenience store. She worked as a cashier evenings and weekends.” She lowered her voice. “Gosh! There’s Katie’s parents now.” She jerked her head to the right.
I turned in time to see an older man in denim overalls climb out of a battered red Ford 4 × 4. A toolbox was bolted across the back of the cab; plastic buckets and miscellaneous pieces of lumber with red rags tied to their ends protruded over the tailgate. A woman I took to be Mrs. Dunbar sat in the passenger seat, but she seemed reluctant to get out. As if to persuade her, Mr. Dunbar held out his hand. Mrs. Dunbar slid across the seat to the open door on the driver’s side, took his hand, and alighted from the cab clumsily. I could see she had been crying, and she kept wiping her eyes with a huge white handkerchief. Wet splotches dotted the front of her quilted jogging suit, and she seemed to be having trouble walking in the thick-soled shoes she wore. Mrs. Dunbar’s hair was so pale it was hard to tell if it was white or blond. It was clamped high at the crown with a fluorescent plastic butterfly clip, and strands had escaped and fallen in a disorderly way around a face that was as pink as her outfit and almost as puffy. The Dunbars stood together next to their truck, looking lost. I had seen that look before. It was the haunted look of a shell-shocked veteran, the same look that had stared out at me from my own mirror in those tortured days after Emily had run away from home for the first time and I thought we’d lost her forever.
“It’s Katie. I know it’s Katie. Who else could it be?” Mrs. Dunbar clung to her husband and continued to sob hysterically, tears falling too fast to wipe away. After a bit she returned to the pickup and, leaving the door open where any passing car would knock it off, sat in it, her ungainly feet dangling out the side.
Mr. Dunbar patted her knee. With one motion he took off his hat, scratched his head, and stuffed the hat into his back pocket before approaching Officer Braddock.
“My daughter’s been missing eight years, Officer. She disappeared eight years ago last October. Is that her? Is that her you found?”
“We don’t know yet, sir. We don’t even known if it’s human remains.” He was distracted for a moment by a late-model dark blue Crown Victoria that pulled up to the drive, its turn signal flashing. “Here’s the medical examiner now, sir. Maybe we’ll have news for you soon.”
Braddock untied the crime scene tape and trailed it across the drive so that the doctor could drive through.
“Dr. Franklin Chase,” Connie said. “Junior. His father delivered Paul and me umpteen years ago. Took over the practice when his father retired.”
“What’s an obstetrician doing identifying bodies?”
“He’s a GP, Hannah. We elect our medical examiners in this county. Probably the last county in Maryland that hasn’t switched over to forensic investigators. No special qualifications needed for medical examiners, either. Hell, you could be a medical examiner if you could muster enough votes.”
I watched the doctor climb out of his car. He looked to be in his thirties, handsome in a baby-faced sort of way, and prematurely bald. “He looks competent enough.”
“He is,” Connie told me. “Although I don’t think Frank entirely approved of his old man. Frank is all modern equipment and newfangled remedies. Goes off to medical conferences all the time. His father was more old-fashioned; he mixed modern medicine with herbal remedies and homeopathy. Even kept a herb garden behind his house.” She waved at Dr. Chase, and he saluted in return. “Of course it’s sadly neglected now.”