Page 7 of In Safe Hands
“Before I tell you, you have to promise not to think I’m crazy.” In the warm morning light, Daisy was beginning to doubt what she’d seen.
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” He took a sip of coffee.
“Fine.” She cupped her mug in both hands, since her fingers felt cold. “I’ll just tell you the facts, exactly how I saw things, and you can come to your own conclusions.”
“Works for me.” Setting his mug on the counter, he boosted himself up next to it. “Let’s hear it.”
“Okay. So, I’d just beaten the stuffing out of Max—whom I love, by the way. Thank you again for him.” When Chris just waved off her thanks, she continued. “I went back to my room around three thirty, and I saw the squad parked outside. Since no one was in it, I waited for the deputy to return.”
“No weirdness yet.”
She frowned at him. “It’s coming. Now, listen. About five or ten minutes later, I saw someone walking along the side of the house.”
“Which one?”
“The for-sale one. Number 304.”
“No, which side?”
“Oh! The one facing the Storvicks.”
He made the “continue” flick with his hand again.
“This person is dressed all in black and is carrying a very large, tarp-wrapped object over his shoulder.” It was hard to resist adding “body-shaped” to the list of adjectives. “He opens the back of the squad and puts the…object inside.”
“Wait.” Chris frowned. “The deputy was dressed in black?”
“Yep. Did I mention that this was weird?”
“Did you recognize him?”
She shook her head.
“You’re sure it’s a him, though?”
“Yes. Almost a hundred percent sure. Unless you have some really tall and built female deputies?”
“No. There are two women with the department, but I don’t think you could mistake either for a man.”
“Then he was male.”
Although the frown between his eyebrows remained, he waved for her to continue.
“While the guy is putting the object into the back of the SUV, a boot falls out of the bottom of the tarp.”
“A boot?”
“A boot.” As much as she wanted to stay objective, Daisy couldn’t take it anymore. “A boot! From a foot! Which is connected to the possible dead body that this guy was taking somewhere, probably to join the headless guy in Mission Reservoir!”
So much for sounding levelheaded. Daisy shut her mouth with a snap, but the words were out, and she couldn’t suck them back in, no matter how badly she wanted to.
After staring at her for a long moment, Chris took a sip of his coffee. His maddening calm made her want to rip his mug away from him and throw it across the kitchen. Daisy reminded herself that tossing coffee around would not help the goal of making him think she wasn’t crazy.
“A body.”
“Yes.” Since her attempt at a factual retelling was already blown, she figured she might as well tell him everything. “Whatever he was carrying in that tarp was shaped like a person. When he dropped it into the back, it even flopped around like a dead body would.”
“Hmm.”
