Page 36 of Forgotten Path
“To Doc.” Brianna took a tentative sip. “That’s actually pretty good.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.” Steffi feigned outrage, but she was smiling.
Brianna leaned across the counter and dropped her voice to a whisper. “So whathappened?”
“I guess he took a tumble down the ladder from that loft.”
“Did you see him?”
Steffi shook her head. “No. I used the spare key to unlock the door, and the smell ….” She shuddered and stopped.
“What were you even doing there?”
“A friend of Doc’s came in this afternoon, asking about him—”
“Bodhi King?”
“Right.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a doctor, like Doc.” Steffi tilted her head and squinted at Brianna. “Did you know Doc was a medical examiner?”
“Is that different from a regular doctor?”
“He’s a regular doctor, but he’s also a coroner.”
Steffi was slipping back and forth between the present and past tense when she talked about Doc. Brianna understood. It was impossible to keep the fact that he was gone, really gone, cemented in her brain. It kept flitting away, and then she’d remember.
She considered what Steffi had just said. “So, Dr. King is also a coroner or a medical examiner or whatever?”
“I looked him up after we found Doc. He’s like famous.”
“Really?”
“I mean, notfamous.He’s an internationally renowned forensic pathologist who specializes in consulting on impossible cases.”
“But that’s not why he’s here. Or is it?”
“No. Like I said. He knows Doc from a case, and they became friends. People in the medical examiner’s office or the police department or whatever got worried because Doc never came back home to Sugarloaf Key. Can you believe I didn’t even know where he lived?”
“Yeah, I can, actually,” Brianna said as she realized she’d never once asked Doc Ashland anything about himself.
“Sugarloaf Key is far from here.”
“I know.”
They lapsed into silence. The door opened again, and Steffi craned her neck to scope out the newcomer. After a second, she raised her arms above her head and called out, “Bodhi, over here!”
Brianna swiveled around and spotted a tall, lanky man with curly hair that came almost to his shoulders, weaving through the crowd. He wore a backpack slung over his shoulders. He looked like a graduate student in philosophy or medieval poetry or something equally esoteric.
“That’s him?”
“Yep.”
“He doesn’t look like an internationally renowned forensic pathology god.”
“Yeah, well, Doc Ashland looked like an aging surfer.”
