Bone Deep

He stepped forward, and when she saw him apprehension immediately deepened the color of Kat’s blue eyes.

“Are you leaving?”

“Nothing else I can do out here. I could talk to the customers you know were at the nursery both days, but if I do it will start a storm of gossip.”

Yesterday’s snow had been a mere skiff, but the temperature hadn’t risen since much above freezing. Today Kat wore faded jeans and a sacky sweatshirt as well as work gloves, not enough to maintain her body heat unless she kept moving. Even so, Grant was pretty sure her shudder was just that, not a shiver from the cold even though she also wrapped her arms around herself as she’d done yesterday when she was scared.

“The fact that you’ve been out here three days in a row already has people giving me funny looks.”

“Tell me what you want,” he said. “Do I push it now, and the hell with gossip? Or do we wait for the other shoe to drop?”

“It will, won’t it?” She hugged herself tighter.

“I’d say so. Unless someone just wanted to give you a little scare.”

She gave him a look. “Little?”

“It could get worse.”

He felt guilty immediately, seeing the way she flinched. A part of him wanted to step closer and pull her into a comforting embrace. But he didn’t dare until he could be sure she didn’t have anything to do with her husband’s disappearance.

His mouth twisted in something like amusement. Yeah, just imagine how she’d react if he tried to take her into his arms. The result would probably be something like trying to cuddle a feral cat. Teeth and claws would fly, and he’d bleed.

“Yes,” she said, so quietly he scarcely heard her. “The way people looked at me back then, I knew what they were thinking.” Her eyes met his. “What you were thinking.”

Grant shook his head. “I was doing my job, staying open-minded. No more, no less.” That was a lie, of course, but she wouldn’t welcome the truth.

“And is that what you’re doing now, too?”

His jaw tightened. “Yes.”

“But you’ll let it go if I ask you to?”

“Yes.” After a pause, he added, “For now.”

After a moment Kat nodded. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

“Have you been working in any of the greenhouses?”

“No.” He saw the helplessness on her face and how much she hated feeling it. “Every time I dip a trowel into potting mix or compost, I’m going to expect—” She didn’t have to tell him what she expected. Her eyes searched his. “You don’t think he could be alive, do you?”

Surprised, Grant rocked back on his heels. “Do you mean, he’s the one doing this?”

“I had a dream last night.” More softly, she corrected herself. “A nightmare. Hugh was reaching for me, only he was missing a finger.”

“I didn’t know your husband well. You did. Was he capable of coming back and doing something like this just to get at you?” He’d spoken mildly, but he’d tensed at her question.

“No.” Her voice became stronger, more definite. Some of the rigidity left her body. “No. Of course not. 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.

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT HER husband, right?”

Kat froze where she was, with the corner of a toolshed between her and the speaker. She knew the voice, and she knew who Melinda Simmons was talking about.

“Well, sure.” That was Jason Hebert, sounding puzzled. “I mean, someone told me he, like, disappeared.”