Page 63 of The Scenic Route
“Deputy Donkey-Face?” Lou repeated with glee. “Is that Boaz? I thought Laurence was bad, but he quit, and the new guy they hired to replace him is like Laurence squared. Wait! Youfound the body? Thereisa body? Oh no, talk fast! A customer just pulled into the parking lot. Wait—it’s just Rory. But still talk fast because I need to knoooooowww.”
After meeting Bennett’s amused gaze, Felicity turned back to Lou. “I’m not sure how much we’re allowed to say?”
“You’re not law enforcement or anyone’s lawyer, so talk away.” Lou waved a hand as if physically brushing off her concern.
“I don’t know much.” Felicity sat on one of the counter stools as Rory came inside.
“Hurry up, Ror,” Lou said without taking her fascinated gaze off Felicity. “She’s about to serve the tea.”
“Isn’t that your job?” Rory asked seriously as she settled onto the stool two down from Felicity.
“It’s a euphemism.” Lou sounded as if she was used to translating for Rory’s literal outlook.
“We were watching the compound this morning,” Felicity said, still feeling like she shouldn’t be sharing the story. Even though she knew Lou was right, she still expected the sheriff to burst in to arrest her if she shared the details. “I got bored, so we walked around a bit. I saw something strange, and when we went to investigate, it turned out to be some human bones.”
“How’d you know they were human?” Rory asked, not challengingly but like she was actually curious.
“Well, the skull was a skull,” Felicity explained. “And the vertebrae were pretty obviously human—too big and flat to be a deer or elk or anything.”
“There was askull? A human skull?” Lou sounded equal parts horrified and fascinated.
“There was.”
“Anything else?” Rory asked. She seemed unusually talkative today. Dead bodies apparently brought out the social butterfly in her. “Other bones?”
Felicity shook her head. “We didn’t look too hard, although we did see a piece of fabric that looked like it came from a red-and-white flannel shirt.”
“Just the head…” Lou turned to Rory. “Any chance it belonged to Willard Gray, do you think?”
“Could be.” Rory pursed her lips in thought before turning to ask Felicity, “Were the vertebrae from the neck or lower on the spine?”
With a blank expression, Felicity stared at her. She was about to admit that she had no idea and ask who Willard Gray was when Bennett spoke. “Lumbar, probably. Possibly lower thoracic, but I doubt it.”
“Oh.” Lou looked a little disappointed. “Not Willard’s then. His spine was intact except for the very top part.”
Felicity wasn’t sure who to question first—the women about Willard Gray or Bennett on his excessive spine-identification knowledge. Since her fascination for her new husband outweighed her interest in some headless dead guy, she raised her eyebrows at Bennett. “Do you moonlight as a chiropractor?”
He shrugged. “I like anatomy.”
Lou gave Bennett a stern look. “That’s not a good, non-serial-killer thing to say at all.”
Swallowing a giggle, Felicity said, “He’s considering getting a van too.”
“Oh, honey, no.” Lou looked honestly horrified by this, and Rory nodded in serious agreement with her friend.
Unable to hold back, Felicity laughed out loud. Bennett gave her a chiding look that just made her giggle harder. He shook his head, but she could tell he was trying not to smile.
“You know,” Lou said, making Felicity realize that she and Bennett had been doing that annoying stare-into-each-other’s-eyes thing. “I wasn’t originally on Team Felicity and Her Stalker, but I kind of get it now.”
Rory eyed the two of them. “He’s fine. Not even close to the weirdest guy I’ve met.”
“That’s a pretty low bar, with some of your gun shop customers and your strange hermit neighbors,” Lou said, clucking her tongue, but then her irrepressible grin reappeared. “We got off track. Hurry and tell the rest of the dead-body details before the after-school crowd arrives.” She and Rory leaned toward Felicity, their avid gazes fixed on her, and she instinctively leaned away from them until her back bumped into Bennett’s chest. It was warm and comfortable, so she just stayed there.
“That’s pretty much it,” she said, holding out her hands in a shrug. “The bones looked sun-bleached, so I think animals dragged them from somewhere else, or maybe they got washed there in the spring snow melt runoff. I’m just guessing though. For all we know, that skull could be a hundred years old.”
Bennett disagreed in a grunt, and Felicity craned her neck to look up at him.
“No? Why not?” she asked, honestly interested in his opinion.
