On Pins and Needles

The knapsack itself was a well-worn canvas bag and, although Josh was careful not to disturb anything so that the scene would be intact for the forensics unit, there was a local news pa per sticking out far enough for him to read the date without touching anything. It was a June news pa per. Eighteen years old.

After his arrival on the scene and his initial look into the grave Josh had radioed Millie Christopher—the woman Megan Bailey had referred to as his secretary—and had Millie look for any missing persons reports that might be on file at the office.

Millie said she’d look, but she knew for a fact that in the entirety of her thirty-eight years as the sheriff’s girl-Friday, the only missing persons case there had ever been was a teenage girl who had turned out to be a runaway in 1982.

So much for hoping for an easy lead.

The forensics unit arrived then and Josh met them at their van, introducing himself and filling them in as he took them to the site. Once they got to work he was left to stand by and oversee their first few chores—taking pictures of the scene from all angles, and closely ob serving and describing in notes the placement of everything. Nothing could be moved until that was accomplished.

Within moments of the arrival of the forensics unit, two state patrol cars showed up, too. The officers had heard over their radios what was going on and had come to see if they could help. They couldn’t, but they stayed around anyway, adding to the number of on lookers. One of whom, of course, was Megan Bailey.

Her sister hadn’t returned yet but Megan had set up a card table with beverages and bran muffins for anyone who might want them.

Josh was tempted to shout over to her “What do you think this is? A tea party?”

But he refrained. It wasn’t as if she appeared to be enjoying this because she didn’t. On a rational level, Josh knew she was only being consider ate of everyone’s comfort. But still, just having her there—even out of the way beside her back door—was damn distracting.

At least it was damn distracting to him.

No one else seemed to pay her much mind beyond quick trips to the table to accept her hospitality before getting right back to work. But for Josh it was a different story.

Here he was, in the middle of some thing as big as a potential homicide and his thoughts—and eyes—kept wandering to Megan Bailey.

She’s a flake, he told himself impatiently. Allergy elimination acupuncture—that was how she made her living, for crying out loud. With a gazillion bracelets on one wrist and those nutty-looking wooden clogs on her feet instead of regular shoes. A flake. That’s what she was all right.

It didn’t matter if she had gleaming blond hair that was so silky and flawless that even the flood lights made it seem to glow. It didn’t matter that she had skin like porcelain or high cheek bones the color of summer roses. It didn’t matter that she had a small, sculpted nose or lips that gave off the sensuality of a siren. It didn’t matter that she had a perfect, compact little body with just enough up front to make a man wonder. And it sure as hell didn’t matter that she had long-lashed doe-eyes the pale color of cream stained by blue berries.

The only thing that mattered was that she was a flake. A flake with a body buried in her backyard.

And even if she hadn’t had a body in her backyard, she was not the kind of woman he should be distracted by.

He’d learned his lesson the hard way. Taught in painful detail by an off-the-wall woman. He definitely didn’t want anything to do with another one.

Plain, down-to-earth females—those were the only kind he intended to give a second look, and Megan Bailey was a long way from that.

So why was he standing there, watching her open a soda can for the lead forensic investigator and noticing how delicate her hands were? Why was he straining for a look at her shape through the gossamer draping of her dress when he should be straining for a look at his crime scene? Why was he memorizing the way her hair fell around her shoulders rather than memorizing every word that passed from one forensic investigator to the other? And why on God’s green earth was he paying more attention to a detail like her earlobe and the sweet spot just below it than to the details of his own job?

He didn’t know why. He only knew that even though he felt as if he was being derelict in his duties, he still couldn’t tear his eyes off her….

“I think we can start to move ’im out, see if there’s anything important underneath ’im, and get everything to the lab now.”

The head of the forensic team’s voice yanked Josh’s attention away from Megan and his confused reveries, and back to what he was supposed to be concentrating on.

“Anything you can tell me yet?” he asked.

“Not much. So far there’s no obvious indication of cause of death—like a bashed-in skull. But these are hardly optimum working conditions. Hope fully we’ll be able to tell more at the lab and won’t need a forensic anthropologist. There are only a handful of those in the whole country. For now the best I can do is put the time of death at June, eighteen years ago.”

“Yeah, I saw the date on the news pa per, too.”

The team leader shrugged. “You probably already guessed it’s the skeleton of a man, too, from the clothes. I’d say he was in his midfifties. Probably Caucasian. Not well-off. We haven’t gotten into the knapsack yet, could be some thing in there will tell us more.”

Josh nodded. “Just let me know as soon as you find anything out.”

“Your case. You’ll be the first.”

The septic tank crew seemed to have finished up, too, because they were clearing out as Burt Connors stood talking to Megan Bailey at the card table. Josh crossed to them and drew both glances.

“Find anything out?” Burt asked without preamble.

“Not yet. But I’m going to need a few preliminary questions answered,” Josh said, aiming the statement at Megan.

“Can we do it inside? It’s getting kind of chilly out here,” she responded, crossing her arms over her middle to rub them with those long-fingered hands he’d been watching before.

Some thing caught in Josh’s throat at the sight, and what he really wanted to do was put his arms around her and warm her up himself….

He nixed that idea in a hurry, wondering where the hell it had come from in the first place.

Then he said, “Yeah, no matter how nice the days are this time of year, April nights cool off plenty. If you can’t take it, go ahead in. I’ll be there as soon as everybody out here is gone.”

Megan’s eyebrows rose slightly at the gruff ness in his tone but he couldn’t worry about that. She didn’t have to like him. He didn’t want her to like him. As far as he was concerned she was part of a murder investigation and that was it.

Josh turned back to the excavation site then. And as he retraced his steps he told himself to use this time before he went in to question Megan Bailey to get a handle on whatever this was that was going on with him.

She’s a flake, he repeated to himself as a reminder of why he had no business noticing the things he’d been noticing about her, or thinking the things he’d been thinking about her. Why he should know better than to notice those things or think those things.

But neither the fact that he considered her a flake nor the fact that she might be involved in some way with a murder, kept him from wishing the state patrolmen, Burt Connors’s crew, and the forensics team would hurry up and clear out of there.

Because the sooner they did, the sooner he could get back to Megan Bailey.

And be alone with her again….

Megan sat in her kitchen, trying to sort through what had happened today.

There was no denying that returning to Elk Creek had been fraught with complications. The house had been in such disrepair. Worse than room after room of cobwebs, four broken windows, and a need for new paint inside and out, there had been problems with the electrical wiring, old appliances that had refused to come out of retirement, and the need for a whole new septic system.

Not only had she and Nissa had to do all the home repairs they could possibly do them selves, they’d also had to set up their office on top of it—complete with more cleaning and painting and furniture moving—because they hadn’t been able to afford to hire help.

Certainly clients hadn’t been clamoring to their door and they hadn’t been met with a warm reception.

And now this.

Someone was buried in the backyard? Megan didn’t know what to make of that. Especially when Josh Brimley turned officious and contrary on her. As if she’d had some thing to do with it.

Did he think she and her sister had brought the skeleton with them and planted it behind the house for fun? Or maybe he thought it was part of some hocus-pocus or voodoo ritual since that’s what he considered the practice of acupuncture.

Well, fine. It was good to know from the start what kind of man he was. That he was not the kind of man she would ever allow to get close to her again. The next man she let into her life was going to be accepting and tolerant and receptive. He was going to be open-minded, liberal, enlightened and unbiased.

In short, he wasn’t going to be anything like Noel.

And so far, Josh Brimley seemed a whole lot more like Noel than not.

Hocus-pocus and voodoo, Megan thought, taking offense now to what she hadn’t taken offense to when he’d said it earlier. And that facetious, if you can’t take it…

As if she should stay standing out in the chilly night air as punishment. As if, under the circumstances, she didn’t deserve to come in out of the cold.

He might be incredible to look at, but now she knew what was under the surface—he wasn’t just a skeptic who could be won over to the idea that there were viable alternatives in the world, to the fact that not everyone had to be a carbon copy of everyone else. He wasn’t a person who could learn to appreciate diversity. He was judgmental, close-minded, and suspicious. Suspicious of her, of all things.

Megan had worked up quite a head of steam by the time the knock came on the back door just then.

“Yes,” she called in a clipped tone that lacked all welcome.

And when Josh Brimley opened the door and stepped inside, she didn’t stand to greet him and she absolutely refused to offer him some thing to drink to warm up—like a cup of the spice tea she’d fixed herself.

But what she did do—much to her own dismay—was become instantly aware all over again that he was jaw-droppingly handsome and brought with him a heady, primitively sensual masculinity that alerted everything female inside her.

Not that she was going to let that make any difference to her. Now that she knew what he was made up of.

“I need a few questions answered,” he informed her bluntly as he closed the door behind him.

“So you said,” Megan answered in the same stern voice he was still using on her.

“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, pointing with a nod of his head to the chair around the corner from her at the square oak table her father had made by hand.

“Suit yourself,” was Megan’s curt reply.

But for some reason, her response seemed to amuse him. He was fighting it, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth just the same.

“Are we getting defensive here?” he asked then.

“Since you seem to want to treat me like some kind of criminal, I guess we are, yes.”

He shot a glance at the wrist of the hand she was using to grasp her teacup and said, “I don’t see any hand cuffs and I haven’t hauled you into the station. How am I treating you like a criminal?”

“Your attitude.”

“My attitude. My attitude is that I’ve just found a body buried in your backyard and I have some questions about it. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”

“I haven’t lived here since I was twelve years old. What do you expect me to know about it?”

“Twelve years old, huh? My brother Scott is thirty and he was in your class in elementary school. That’d mean you and your family moved away eighteen years ago, right?”

“Has the interrogation begun?”

That made him chuckle. Clearly at some point he’d begun to enjoy himself.

“I don’t think this could be considered an interrogation. But that is one of my questions, yeah.”

“Eighteen years ago—yes, that’s when my family left Elk Creek,” she supplied what was no secret. “What month?”

“June. Right after school let out for the summer.”

“What do you remember about that time?”

Megan rolled her eyes. “This is just silly.”

“Humor me,” he suggested, his tone cajoling now.

She took a deep breath and decided it wasn’t going to do anyone any good to go on being hostile. Besides, Josh Brimley was getting too much pleasure out of it and she didn’t want to contribute to that.

So, after a sigh, she said in a calmer tone, “What I remember about June, eighteen years ago, is that I didn’t want to leave. That my parents had turned an old school bus into a mobile home so we could live on the road going from one cause to another because they’d decided that being here was basically living with their heads in the sand and they couldn’t go on doing that when there were so many social and environmental in justices that needed to be ad dressed. They wanted to be active, not passive, and that meant not staying in Elk Creek.”

“How about the exact month you left? Do you remember anyone being around besides your mother and father?”

“My sister.”

“Anyone besides your mother, father and sister?” he amended.

“No.”

“Think about it.”

“I don’t have to think about it. I don’t remember anything except not wanting to go.”

Josh Brimley’s navy-blue eyes stayed on her, as if he knew better and would stay in a stare-down with her until she told him the truth. But that was the truth—she didn’t recall anything but being miserable at the thought of leaving her home to live in a bus and be taught by her mother rather than staying in one place and going to school like everyone else.

Maybe her continuing silence finally convinced Josh that she didn’t have any more to say on the matter because after a few moments he seemed to decide to make an attempt at sparking her memory rather than merely waiting her out.

“What about friends your parents might have had or maybe an uncle or a cousin? Do you remember anyone like that being around?”

“Neither of my parents have a brother and even if they did, both their families steer clear of them because they think my folks are lunatics. And as for friends, what I do remember was that there weren’t a lot of people around Elk Creek who my parents were close enough to to call friends. Their friends then and now are other people like them.”

“Okay, they didn’t have a lot of friends around town—that’s one thing more that you’ve remembered than you had a minute ago. Keep thinking about it. Did they maybe have a visit from a friend from some where else? Maybe who was here and then gone just before you left?”

“I don’t remember anyone. It was a long, long time ago. Do you remember who might have been around your house when you were twelve? Who your parents hung out with? Go ahead, June, eighteen years ago—tell me what you remember about it.”

Josh held up both hands, palms outward as if to ward off an attack. “Okay, point taken,” he conceded.

“Finally,” Megan said on another sigh.

“But I’m going to need to talk to your folks,” he said then.

“I know you’ll probably see this as my being uncooperative,” she prefaced. “But talking to my folks is easier said than done. They’re on board a ship off the coast of Peru trying to stop the dumping of waste solvents. It isn’t as if I can just pick up the phone and reach them.”

“How can they be contacted?”

“There’s a number I can call to have word sent out to the ship and then my parents will have to contact me when they can.”

“Then that’s what you’ll have to do.”

Just like that, Megan thought. He gave the order and she was supposed to follow it.

But she’d had a lifetime of role models who bucked authority at every turn and it wasn’t easy for her not to follow in those same shoes. Some thing about just the way he’d given the order made her feel contrary.

“I don’t see why I should have to bother them,” she said. “My parents didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened here any more than I did.”

“There’s someone buried in your backyard,” Josh said with forced patience, explaining the obvious and then adding to it. “And in the grave, along with the skeleton, is a news pa per dated June, eighteen years ago. That puts the time of death at the exact month, the exact year that your parents high tailed it out of town. Those are a whole lot of reasons why I need to talk to them.”

“They didn’t hightail it out of town. They left because of a strong social con science and a belief that they could make a difference in the world. Nowhere in that are they the kind of people who would bring harm to another human being, let alone bury them in their backyard and hightail it out of town.”

“Even good people can do bad things under certain conditions, Megan.”

She tried not to like the way her name sounded being said by that deep voice of his for the first time.

“My parents don’t do bad things under any conditions. They wouldn’t even hurt a fly. In fact, if one gets indoors, they chase it around until they can catch it in a cup and set it free outside. They’ve pro tested for the rights of people who are being abused or neglected or treated in any way unfairly. They’re against doing bad things.”

“I under stand that it’s impossible to believe the worst of your own family. But the fact is, someone was buried in your backyard at the same time your parents opted to take to the road. Now that may be circumstantial, it may be purely coincidental, but I’ll still need to talk to them about it.”

“Without condemning them with premature conclusions,” she said as if it were a condition she was applying.

“I’m not condemning anyone and I don’t have any premature conclusions. I’m just beginning at the be ginning.”

She couldn’t refute that reasoning, even though the contrary part of her still wanted to. Besides, she knew when she’d lost a fight.

But that didn’t mean she was just going to roll over without getting a little some thing in return.

So she said, “Say please.”

“Say please?” he repeated, sounding partially amused again and partially in disbelief of what he was hearing.

Then he leaned across the corner of the table, putting his extraordinarily handsome face within inches of hers. They were almost nose to nose and he was near enough for her to smell the lingering scent of his after shave and a sweet ness on his breath as he said, “In case it’s escaped you, I’m the law around here. I don’t have to say please when it comes to this. If you don’t do what I tell you to do I can charge you with obstruction and put your little fanny in jail.”

Megan angled her chin upward in answer.

It was an act of defiance. But what she hadn’t factored in was that that act of defiance also accidentally put her mouth in close proximity to his. So close that it suddenly occurred to her that he could kiss her without much more effort.

And the trouble with that realization was that once it was there in her head, it left her unable to think about anything else.

Until she reminded herself that they were in the middle of a tug-of-war.

“Say please anyway,” she insisted.

Josh smiled. A slow, lei surely smile that was oh-so-sexy and made her wonder if he’d just read her thoughts.

Or maybe he was on the verge of arresting her and looking forward to it.

Then he said, “Please,” in a husky whisper that gave her goose bumps.

She rubbed her arms as if she’d caught another chill, worried that he might see the goose flesh.

“I’ll do what I can,” she finally conceded as if she didn’t have a single other thing on her mind.

But Josh didn’t back away even after he had her word. He stayed leaning across the table.

And the longer he did, the more those thoughts of kissing gained strength. Strength and potency and vivid ness as she began to wonder what it might be like to have him actually do it. To have him kiss her…

Then, abruptly, Josh stood and went to the door.

Megan didn’t move to follow him, to walk him out, because she was struggling to regain the equilibrium she seemed to have lost in those thoughts of him kissing her.

“I’ll need to talk to your parents right away so make sure you get on it ASAP. Please,” he added with the hint of yet another smile.

“I’ll put in the initial call tonight,” she told him without a fight this time because she was locked in her own internal battle against this wholly in appropriate and unwarranted reaction to the man.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Oh great, now she was thinking about him touching her, too….

Megan managed a nod as she watched his big hand close around the knob to open the door again.

Then, as if he’d just had a flash of memory, he said, “Don’t do anything to the grave site. I’ll need clearance from forensics before it can be tampered with or filled in.”

Once more Megan nodded, not speaking as she marveled at all he was still inspiring in her even now.

He hesitated a moment as if he had something else to say. But in the end he went out the way he’d come in, closing the door behind him and leaving Megan alone in the kitchen again.

When she was, she breathed another sigh, this one a deep sigh of relief to be out from under the powerful effects of his presence.

And that was when rational thought kicked in again.

Was there anything dumber than getting carried away by a man who not only thought she was some kind of oddity, but who also seemed to think her parents were capable of some thing as awful as killing someone? she asked herself.

No, there wasn’t anything dumber than that.

But that’s what had just happened, hadn’t it? In the middle of him questioning her and trying to find information that in criminated her family, she’d been imagining Josh Brimley kissing her. Josh Brimley who had accused her of practicing hocus-pocus and voodoo.

It was worse than dumb. It was insane.

And it wasn’t going to happen again, she told herself firmly.

Josh Brimley was not just some nice guy she’d met in passing. In a way he was the enemy and she’d better not lose sight of that fact.

She’d better not lose sight of what kind of man he was.

Because while she might have faith that she could win over Elk Creek’s citizens to the benefits of acupuncture, she knew better than to put any effort whatsoever into trying to convince a man who viewed her as an oddity that that wasn’t what she was. And when that man also suspected her parents of a horrible crime on top of it, she really knew he was someone to stay away from.

The trouble was, loitering around the edges of her mind was the last view she’d had of Josh Brimley walking out the door.

The view of a rear end to die for.

And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake off her appreciation of that….

Chapter 3

“WHEN’RE YOU GONNA DO somethin’ ’bout them allergies, boy?”

Josh held up his hand in acknowledgement of his mother speaking to him as he sneezed three more times. Merely walking into the kitchen the next morning and being in the proximity of the mudroom where his brothers hung their work coats was enough to send him into a paroxysm of sneezing.

When it finally subsided, he said, “I don’t have the time to do some thing about it now.”

He hadn’t told even his mother about his appointment the previous day with Megan Bailey and her needles. And certainly now there were more important issues that needed to be dealt with.