The Bones of Others

by Vickie McKeehan

Hiller slid the gear into Drive and floored the accelerator. All the while Whitfield and his men ran after the van.

  In a quick sweep, Hiller saw all three men scurry to a black luxury SUV and then heard the screech of tires as the trio peeled out after him.

  The chase was on as Hiller quickly took a right on Surrey before taking a left on Ninth. Because he’d grown up here, he knew every roadway, every back alleyway, and every trick to maneuvering through the traffic-clogged streets.

  It took all that and more to shake the determined men inside the Mercedes M-class that tried to catch him. Good thing he had a head start. He avoided the Magnolia Bridge altogether, kept to Fifteenth Avenue at speeds that reached well past eighty-five.

  As the businesses whirled past him in a blur, he made a right into where more industrial buildings sat mostly vacant at this time of night until he took a side street to Taylor. At Taylor, he fishtailed once before circling back through a parking lot, jumped the curb to head southeast in the opposite direction on Elliott Avenue. Once he got to the split, he gunned the van taking Mercer east all the way to the 99. Once on the 99 he headed due south.

  It was then and only then that he allowed himself a glance up and studied the rearview mirror, knew he was home free. Fancy driving had allowed Hiller to leave Ronny Wayne Whitfield and his henchmen in the dust. This time. Now he just had to figure out how he intended to avoid the man from here on out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Josh had to accept the fact that Skye felt compelled to go out every night to roam the streets. It wasn’t something he was keen about despite what he’d said. Having the woman he cared about put herself in harm’s way every night took some getting used to. So he supported her effort and understood the why of it. He wished he could go with her. But he couldn’t patrol Seattle until the wee hours of the morning on four hours of sleep and run his company during the day.

  Besides, the woman had a rock hard head when it came to discussing anything that hinted she’d make a change to her routine. Even the mention of taking her out of her element simply pissed her off. She’d already reminded him no less than a dozen times she’d been doing this for several years without any input from him.

  While that might’ve been true, it didn’t make watching her sail out the door every night and into some of the meanest neighborhoods Seattle had to offer any less worrisome.

  Some nights all he did was toss and turn, restless, edgy, stressing every minute she was out there alone. But he’d seen her in action firsthand and had to believe she could handle herself because thinking otherwise would get him exactly squat.

  Because arguing with Skye Cree was a waste of time and energy.

  After some discussion though, he had gotten her to agree to cut back on her time so that she’d leave the loft at around nine p.m. and be back by three and in bed with him. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement by any means, but Josh considered it a small victory she had agreed to it at all.

  They took turns sleeping at each other’s places. And every day they made slow and steady progress toward building trust and getting to know each other a little better. There were still things she held back. He didn’t worry about it too much. At times he thought he was on the verge of getting her to open up only to get right to the brink and before he knew what was happening, she’d shut down again. He supposed it was her nature. Add in the fact she hadn’t had anyone since her parents to talk to on a deep, emotional level and he could understand why she kept her distance.

  That’s one of the reasons they made the most of every minute they got to spend together.

  Saturday mornings and getting to sleep late went hand in hand. But when you hadn’t really gotten off to sleep until four a.m., it was a must. Then when your stomach wouldn’t stop rumbling with hunger, it was time to get up and refuel, take care of the basics.

  “I’m starving,” Skye muttered still half asleep.

  He smoothed back her hair from her face and said, “How about you snuggle back down, get some more shuteye while I run out and get us some breakfast burritos from Juan’s down on the corner. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds wonderful.”

  “It does. Because no one makes big, fat, breakfast burritos with everything on them better than Juan’s. Plus, I can call in the order before I leave and they’ll have it ready for pickup.”

  “Juan’s should really consider adding delivery.”

  Looking over at her, he couldn’t resist it and ran a hand down her thigh. “How about in exchange for picking up breakfast, we spend the rest of the day snuggled between the sheets. Not leave the house—at all for any reason.”

  “Hmm, burrow for a burrito. I could get on board with that. You make the run to Juan’s, I’ll start the coffee. How’s that?”

  As Josh started to throw on a shirt and jeans, she added, “I want the sunrise special with guacamole. And plenty of salsa. Don’t forget the salsa.”

  He slipped on his tennis shoes, grabbed up his keys off the nightstand. “Be back in a flash,” he added as he walked out of the bedroom and was gone.

  She heard the elevator ding open and close behind him and wondered if she had time for a quick shower. Reluctantly she threw back the covers, crawled out of the cocoon, and headed into the closest thing to a rainforest she’d ever get to see. She didn’t understand how anyone could spend a scant five minutes in that shower and not want to set up camp. But she’d give it her best shot. She played with the buttons on the panel to set the water temp a tad hotter. As Pearl Jam battered the senses through the speakers, she closed her eyes and did her best to imagine standing naked under a waterfall in a green and balmy rainforest.

  Michelle Reardon waited until she saw Josh get into his Fusion hybrid and leave the parking garage. Once she watched the car disappear out of sight, she took out the key to Josh’s building she’d pilfered from Annabelle just two short days before the woman’s death, and made her way to the elevator, pushed the button for the penthouse.

  On the ride up, Michelle formulated her plan of action. If the bitch was upstairs in Josh’s bed and she was pretty sure Skye was there, Michelle would take out Skye Cree the same way she’d dealt with Annabelle. How dare the slut attach herself so quickly to Josh Ander after everything she and Josh had been to each other since last Thanksgiving? With Annabelle out of the picture, the two of them had been free to share their feelings and innermost thoughts as well as sex. Michelle knew sex was a powerful bond men couldn’t resist. As long as she gave Josh hot and sweaty sex, he would be at her beck and call. At least that had been true before the whore scum had shown up.

  Michelle intended to make Skye Cree pay for that. Making a move on Josh had been a major blunder on Skye’s part. And the stupid man had fallen for it. Stupid man would have to be dealt with as well, Michelle decided as she stepped off the car and into the open area of the loft. The moment she stepped into the entryway, she knew instantly Josh had been screwing the black-haired bitch. The smell of sex emanated all the way from the bedroom. Seething, Michelle made a decision. She’d have to take more drastic measures than she had with the timid, mousy-haired Annabelle.

  Having made up her mind, she tromped into the kitchen to get the knife she’d need.

  Skye had just finished drying off when she thought she heard the floor creak out in the hallway. She hung the towel on the rack, checked out her image in the mirror and decided to put off turning on the blow dryer to deal with the long drawn out process of drying her massive hair until after she got dressed. So she headed into the bedroom to pull on a pair of yoga pants and a top. But she hadn’t even reached the dresser when she heard a noise beyond the bedroom door as far away as the kitchen.

  Since her shower had taken all of ten minutes, she wondered how Josh had gotten back so quick from Juan’s when the place was usually packed this time of the morning, especially on a weekend.

  When the sound became more pronounced, when she heard the opening and closing of what sounded like drawers in the kit
chen, Skye decided to check it out.

  Before she’d even opened the bedroom door though, Skye heard Kiya’s growl in warning along with that voice inside her head that all but screamed out a threat—nearby.

  Skye threw back the bedroom door, expecting to see a bold, daylight burglar. Instead she spotted the cute blonde Michelle Reardon making her way from the kitchen into Josh’s living room, an eight-inch carving knife gripped in her fist.

  The two women locked eyes.

  “You sure you want to start this because I’ll take that big-assed knife away from you and kick your bony tail end all the way back across Lake Washington,” Skye cautioned. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “I used my key. My key,” Michelle repeated. “Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  “Yeah, it tells me you’re one part liar and another part thief. Josh never gave you a key. If he had he’d have asked for it back that day out on the sidewalk when he told you to get lost. Apparently Blondie, you’re as dense as a stump.”

  “You stay away from Josh Ander. He belongs to me!”

  “Uh, really? I must’ve missed that part. I’m pretty sure I was standing three feet away when I heard him kick your ass to the curb.” But the look on the blonde’s face told Skye the woman might not be playing with a full deck. She’d seen that look on the streets in the eyes of some of the homeless women who suffered from dementia. But Skye didn’t think Michelle was suffering so much from dementia as much as delusions, big ones.

  “You did no such thing. Josh was in a mood, a snit. That’s all it was. He gets that way from time to time. If you’d been with him longer than two weeks, you’d know about his dark side.”

  “Josh has a dark side? Maybe you should clarify that for me.”

  “I think he did something to Annabelle, made it look like a heart attack. The authorities let him get away with it.”

  Oh Josh, thought Skye, you’ve been dealing with an unhinged woman for months and didn’t even know it. But Skye kept her face bland when she demanded, “How do you know it wasn’t a heart attack? Maybe Annabelle’s heart just gave out.”

  When the woman just stood there, Skye figured she needed to get Michelle talking by any method that worked. “People have heart murmurs, weak hearts run in families, it can be genetic. Maybe Annabelle had rheumatic fever when she was a kid. That weakens the heart muscle some. Any number of things could’ve happened to her. Why don’t you tell me what you think Josh did to her…exactly.”

  Stony silence.

  Okay, thought Skye, she’d already surmised Michelle’s ulterior motive. She needed to ruffle a few of the woman’s unhinged feathers. “So how long before Annabelle died did you want Josh for yourself? Did Annabelle know you had a thing for her husband? How did she feel about a friend jonesing for her hubby?”

  Just as she hoped would happen, she hit Michelle’s crazy button. “Shut up! You stupid bitch, shut up! You have no idea what you’re talking about. Josh wanted to be with me. We had to get rid of Annabelle because she was in the way of us being together.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Josh yelled from the other side of the room. He stood frozen just inside the entry, holding a sack which Skye assumed held the breakfast feast he’d gone out to get. “What the fuck did you do to Annabelle?”

  Michelle started tugging on her hair with one hand, wrapping it around her own fingers while she still clutched the knife in the other. “I…I…did it for us.”

  Josh threw the bag on the hall table and advanced on Michelle. “Us? There was never any us. You were supposed to be Annabelle’s friend, Michelle. You hung out with both of us. From the moment Annabelle met you in the bookstore, a couple of months after we got married, she felt sorry for you. That’s why she always invited you over here.”

  “I…I…no, no…that isn’t right. It wasn’t that way at all. We watched movies together. We popped popcorn. You wanted to be with me, not Annabelle.”

  “I was fucking nice to you because you were a friend of Annabelle’s! Nothing more than that! Answer me, Michelle, what did you to Annabelle?”

  Michelle’s eyes glazed over even more than they had been. “I…I might’ve given her a few sleeping pills before giving her…a shot. I shot her up with succinylcholine. I used to be a nurse.”

  “Succinylcholine? That paralyzes,” Skye stated.

  But it was the wrong voice for Michelle to hear right at that particular moment. At the sound of Skye’s words, Michelle went into a rage, moving on Skye with all the finesse of Norman Bates’s mommy in Psycho, the knife raised to do the most damage.

  It all happened in under a minute.

  Skye pivoted, blocked the blade and took out Michelle’s legs from under her. The woman did indeed land on her bony ass.

  By that time Josh had rushed over, planted his shoe on the wrist that held the knife. He reached down, jerked it out of Michelle’s grip. “Call the cops,” Josh directed. “I want this piece of shit out of my house and locked the hell away for good.”

  “Already on it,” Skye told him as she punched in Harry’s number.

  “Didn’t they do an autopsy?” Harry Drummond wondered several hours later after joining Skye and Josh at the kitchen table where they sat, drinking coffee. So far, he’d taken them both through Michelle’s arrest and interrogation, replayed what the lead investigator, Brad Jones, had told him about the woman’s statements once they’d gotten her into a downtown interview room. As far as Harry knew, the woman was still confessing and acting Baby-Jane-Hudson-crazy.

  “There was, but I don’t know if they did a toxicology screen or not. They just called me a couple of days after she died and told me her heart had given out, stopped.” Josh snapped his fingers. “And just like that she was gone.”

  “Doesn’t sound like they submitted toxicology tests for analysis. But you’re welcome to contact Brad to get the specifics of your wife’s case, Mr. Ander. This belongs to Brad now. I do know succinylcholine has been known to mask a heart attack so you might want to prepare yourself for an exhumation of the body. After the statements this Reardon woman’s made so far, if this were my case, that’s what I’d do, an exhumation to be certain.”

  Harry picked up his mug, sipped the liquid inside. “I do know this much. Michelle told the lead investigator after they got her to the station that she befriended Annabelle that day in the bookstore because she’d seen you and decided she liked what she saw. In her warped mind, the best way to get to you was to go through Annabelle.”

  “Get out,” Skye exclaimed. But when she looked over and saw that Josh had tears in his eyes she reached over, squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry, Josh. But at least you know now Michelle murdered Annabelle and why.”

  “Well, look kids, it’s been a blast but I still have a little girl to find. If I were you I’d let Brad finish interviewing Reardon, let him wade through a ton of paperwork after the interrogation and confession is complete before following up. But I’d say a clever defense attorney will probably go for insanity.”

  “Damn it,” Josh said, still holding his head in his hands.

  “Yeah. Ain’t society grand?” Harry said before disappearing through the door of the kitchen.

  After Harry left, Josh continued to sit and stare into his cup, and mull over the last two years. “Annabelle was nice to her,” Josh muttered. “I couldn’t count how many times she invited Michelle over here for dinner, and yeah, to watch movies. The woman hung around like a third wheel. I didn’t think a thing about it. I should have.”

  “Stop it. Maybe all those dinners weren’t Annabelle’s idea. Think about it. Michelle probably did the ‘oh poor me I don’t have anything planned tonight routine.’ More than likely played on your wife’s sympathy. You said it yourself, Annabelle felt sorry for Michelle. The woman obviously used that to her advantage,” Skye offered. “Just out of curiosity…and you’re under no obligation to come clean here but…”

  “What?”

  “How lon
g exactly did it take for you and Michelle to…hook up after…?”

  Josh swallowed hard and looked away. “Eight months. She showed up one night after I’d finished off a bottle of wine by myself. That’s no excuse I know but…you were right the other day when you said I had a problem with alcohol.” He ran both hands through his hair. “Plus, I’d been feeling sorry for myself. At times, I still do. Michelle is the reason I was in that damned alleyway that night.”

  “Ah.”

  “I was avoiding going back inside. Right before that she’d followed me into the men’s room. It pissed me off. I got out of there and left her standing with her dress undone, offering up herself to me in the bathroom. I didn’t want to go back to the table, Skye. At the time I thought the back door was my best option. I’d been out there brooding about twenty minutes or so when the gang showed up.”

  “She’s obviously unhinged.”

  “She is. But you know what? I want her to pay for what she did to Annabelle. I want to see her wearing one of those ugly jumpsuits for life spending it in a tiny cell.”

  Skye laid her hand on top of his. “Believe me, Josh. I know exactly how you feel.”

  Over the next several hours Skye left Josh alone so he could deal with calling Annabelle’s parents and telling them what had happened with Michelle before they caught wind of the story from the media.

  Their relationship might be new but Skye could tell Josh was hurting. The pain in his eyes, the humiliation in his voice at having to admit to his in-laws that he’d slept with the woman who had killed Annabelle made for an uncomfortable conversation.

  But when it was done, Skye went over to where he sat at his home office desk and pressed up against his back.

  “Sorry, I was on the phone so long.”

  “Don’t be silly. You had to call them. It was necessary. They deserved to know the truth, and to hear it from you.”

  “Yeah. But that was the hardest call I ever had to make. To get the evidence against Michelle, they’re on board with the exhumation. You know what they told me?”