Page 70 of Skin and Bones

“Honestly,” I sighed, hands on my hips. “You five are impossible.”

“So Jason Brooks asked you to dinner?” Dottie asked, not even trying to hide her interest as she dumped broken china into her palm. “My, my. He always did have an eye for the pretty ones. And you are partial to older men, aren’t you dear?”

“I have no interest in Jason Brooks,” I said firmly.

“Men like that are always trouble,” Bea said, adjusting her turban. “All charm on the outside, something else entirely underneath.” She waggled her penciled eyebrows. “Though the charming ones do know their way around a?—”

“Thank you, Bea,” I cut her off before she could finish whatever inappropriate observation was coming. “That’s quite enough.”

“Just saying.” Bea shrugged, her bangles jingling with the movement. “A woman should keep her options open. Though I do think the sheriff here is much more your type. More substance, less polish. How old are you, Sheriff? Our Mabel does tend to go for more mature men.”

“You don’t have to answer that,” I told Dash. I felt heat creeping up my neck.

He looked at me and smiled, and I felt the shiver of anticipation race down my spine.

“I’ll answer the question,” he said. “I’m thirty-eight.”

“There you go, Mabel,” Bea said. “Old enough to know a thing or two about what women like. Why all these celebrity women who need daily doses of collagen are trotting around with twenty-year-olds is a mystery to me. I’d take an experienced lover over an enthusiastic lover any day of the week.”

My face was on fire and I felt the growl rumble in my throat before I could help it. “Don’t you all have something better to do?”

“Not really, dear,” Deidre said, adjusting her glasses. “This is the most excitement we’ve had since Walt thought he spotted a Russian spy at the Piggly Wiggly last summer.”

“That woman was speaking in code,” Walt insisted. “No one legitimately needs seventeen cans of creamed corn.”

Before anyone could respond, Dash’s phone rang. He checked the screen. “Saved by the bell,” he told me. “We’ll finish this conversation later.” He stepped into the hall and said, “Harris,” into the phone.

No sooner had the door closed behind him than Dottie’s phone began to buzz. She glanced at the screen and her eyebrows shot up toward her hairline.

“Well I’ll be,” she muttered, answering with a brisk, “Simmons.”

We all fell silent, watching as Dottie’s expression transformed from mild interest to intense concentration. She reached for a pen and began scribbling furiously on the back of an envelope, nodding and occasionally interjecting with “Yes,” or “I suspected as much.”

“Send me the full report,” she finally said. “And Janet? I owe you a bottle of that Kentucky bourbon you like.” She hung up, her eyes gleaming with the fevered excitement I’d only seen in Walt when he talked about Soviet espionage.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That,” Dottie announced triumphantly, “was Dr. Janet Friedman. She’s been the senior medical examiner in Charleston since I retired. She owes me a couple of big favors, so I had the sheriff get a warrant so she could look at the autopsy files of Elizabeth Calvert and retest samples that were taken.”

“You’re a genius,” I said, feeling a surge of excitement from whatever news was to come.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I actually am a genius.”

“Goodness gravy, Dottie,” Walt said, exasperated. “We’ll all die before you tell us. What’d the woman say?”

“What I suspected all along,” she said. “Elizabeth Calvert didn’t drown in the harbor. In fact, she didn’t drown at all. Cause of death was strangulation, which should have been very easy for the original medical examiner to determine. But the interesting thing is she had particulates of water and spores on her skin and clothing that can only be found in Osprey Cove.”

“Osprey Cove?” Bea asked, looking puzzled. “That’s miles from where her body was found.”

“Exactly,” Dottie said, slapping the table for emphasis. “She was killed somewhere else, then transported to the marina. And here’s the real kicker—Janet found epithelial cells under Elizabeth’s fingernails. DNA. She fought back, scratched her attacker.”

“That’s incredible,” I said, “But DNA testing wasn’t common back then, was it?”

“Enough to where it was standard operating procedure to preserve samples,” Dottie explained. “And here’s what’s really interesting,” she said, lowering her voice as if sharing state secrets. “Janet’s team just completed Vanessa Garfield’s autopsy. Cause of death confirmed as manual strangulation, with hyoid bone fracture and petechial hemorrhaging consistent with significant force applied for at least two minutes. But the bombshell?”

She paused for dramatic effect and I thought Walt was going to come across the table for her if she didn’t speed things up.

Dottie smiled before she continued. “The DNA recovered from beneath Vanessa’s fingernails is an exact match to epithelials preserved from under Elizabeth’s nails. Thirty years apart, both women fought the same killer in their final moments.”

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