Bought The Farm (A Rainy Day Mystery Book 1)

by Jeff Shelby

  “Knee’s a little bit banged up,” he informed me, his brow furrowing.

  I glanced down at my jean-clad legs. How on earth could he tell that?

  There was a rip in the fabric, exposing a small patch of angry-looking, scraped skin. I flexed my leg and winced. Yeah, it actually was a little banged up.

  “You should probably get something on that,” he said, nodding at my knee. “Ointment or something, just in case.”

  “I have some stuff back at the house,” I told him.

  I did. In a box. Somewhere. It was one of those upstairs boxes that had been relegated to the “later” stacks.

  “Can I help you with something?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to be rude, but I also didn’t want him peeking in on the bones in the bungalow. I was still trying to figure out what was going on, and the last thing I wanted was to have to explain the odd discovery.

  His cheeks flushed and he grinned. “Sorry to just barge in on you down here.” He thumbed toward the door and the truck still idling outside. “Brought you one of my old coops.”

  When I didn’t respond, he added, “For the chickens? You said you wanted chickens, right?”

  I nodded. “Oh. Chickens. Yes, I want chickens.” I hadn’t meant right away, but apparently Gunnar Forsythe had taken my interest seriously.

  “I have a couple of old ones laying around,” he said.

  “You do?” I repositioned myself, trying to hide the pile of bones from his sightline. “Just laying around?”

  “Yep. One thing you learn living out here,” he said, “is to never throw anything away that can be reused. It’s good wood, good screens. Anyway, I stopped at the house but you weren’t there. Saw your car in the driveway, though, so figured you’d be out and about. I didn’t want to just drop it off without knowing where to put it or if you even wanted it, so here I am.”

  “That’s awfully nice of you,” I said, and I meant it. Gunnar was a sweet man, a good neighbor. He’d brought me eggs, he’d just brought me a chicken coop, and he was definitely easy on the eyes.

  But I still didn’t want him in my bungalow.

  I pointed to the open door. “Why don’t you show me it? I don’t know the first thing about chickens or where the coop should go or anything.”

  He nodded, smiling, those dimples slicing his tanned cheeks. My knees buckled just a little at the sight. “Sure thing. It’s in the bed of the truck.”

  He turned and I followed him, breathing a quick sigh of relief. I’d deal with Mr. Bones later.

  “I’ve always loved this little building,” Gunnar said. “You have plans for it?”

  “Not yet,” I said. I took a step and my knee protested. “I was thinking about turning it into a little studio or something.”

  “Really?” He spun back around, which was absolutely the last thing I wanted him to do.

  I took a step back, hoping I’d repositioned myself in a way that hid the body. His eyes scanned the room, and he nodded and smiled. “I could see that. Lots of good natural light, especially once the windows are cleaned up. You an artist or something?”

  “Or something,” I said. “Why don’t you show me that coop?”

  He nodded, giving one last sweeping glance of the interior before turning back to the door. I took another deep breath, relieved that we were on our way out, when he froze.

  “Rainy,” he said as he turned back around. A look of concern crossed his face and my pulse quickened because I knew what was coming.

  “Why is there a skeleton in here?”

  FIVE

  I decided honesty was the best policy.

  Only because I didn’t have any other options.

  “I…I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was out for a walk and thought I’d peek inside and it was just…here.”

  Gunnar was still frozen in the doorway. “Is…is it real?”

  “I don’t know.” I was starting to sound like a broken record. “I mean, I’m not a forensics expert or anything but it sort of looks real.”

  He took a tentative step away from the doorframe. His complexion had paled just a bit, and one eye twitched, once, then twice. “Maybe it’s a Halloween prop or something…”

  “A prop? What would it be doing out here?”

  “The Konrath’s have kids,” he said. He was still tiptoeing closer to the skeleton, as if moving that way would somehow make it less noticeable that he was inching forward. “They threw Halloween parties all the time.”

  “Really?” I asked hopefully. “Then maybe that’s it.” I marched toward the bones, confident that the sun and my mind had been playing tricks on me and that the skeleton on the floor was simply remnants of a Party City prop.

  I stooped low, examining the skull. It was faded, more gray than white, and it looked weathered; a little dirty, even. The skeletons I’d seen for Halloween displays were less realistic looking, but it had been a while since I’d decorated for a kid’s party. Like everything else, maybe those props and decorations had become more realistic over the years.

  I reached out to pick up the skull.

  “What are you doing?” Gunnar asked. His tone, mellow and smooth before, held a note of urgency.

  “What?” I asked as I extended my fingers. “It’s just a decora—”

  My fingers closed over the bone and it wasn’t plastic I was touching. It wasn’t resin, it wasn’t cement, it wasn’t foam molded to look like something else. It was solid, heavy in my hands. There was nothing inorganic about it.

  I shrieked and dropped it back to the floor and it rolled away, like a lopsided bowling ball. I was on my feet, leapfrogging away, not caring that my knee was screaming in protest.

  “Don’t throw it!”

  “Oh my god, it’s real.” I looked at Gunnar, and I’m pretty sure the panic was evident in my expression because he mirrored a look of horror.

  “It is? How do you know?”

  “Because I felt it!” I couldn’t explain or put it into words, but I knew we were looking at a real skeleton.

  “You’ve…you’ve touched a real skeleton before?” he asked, his eyebrows disappearing under the brim of his baseball cap.

  I shook my head. “Well, no, but…”

  “So then we don't know for sure that it's real,” he said.

  “It felt real,” I said, still fixated on the skull. “It's not some plastic thing you'd hang up at a kid's party.”

  Gunnar's mouth twisted back and forth for a moment. “I don't know. The Konraths threw some pretty big parties. They kind of went overboard for their kids.”

  “So, what? They brought in real dead bodies?”

  He winced. “Well, no, of course not. I'm just saying it might be...something else.”

  I disagreed with his assessment. The skull had felt real, and the longer I looked at the bones, the more they started to look real, too. They were the right size for human bones. They weren't connected by string or plastic hinges. They didn't look like they'd collapse if I stepped on them.

  They looked like human bones.

  I shivered.

  “What do you want to do?” Gunnar asked.

  “First, I want to not touch them again,” I said, taking a small step backward. “Second? I think I should call the police.”

  Something crossed Gunnar's face that I couldn't read entirely, but I got the impression he wasn't on board with that.

  “You don't think I should?” I asked. “Call the police?”

  “It's the sheriff you'd need to call,” he explained. “And...well, it's not really my decision, I suppose. You should do what you think you need to do.”

  “But you don't think I should,” I said. “Why?”

  He toed the floor for a moment. “I just...you should do what you want to do.” He glanced at me. “Sheriff Lewis is who you'll need to call. And, hopefully...he'll know what to do.”

  I couldn't pull what he actually meant from his words. I wasn't sure what the issue was, but I could tell he really wasn't in favor of
my making the call. Maybe he was just unnerved by the potential human pile of bones we were standing near or maybe there was something else. I wasn't sure.

  But I'd already made up my mind.

  I was calling Sheriff Lewis.

  SIX

  Sheriff Donny Lewis tipped up the brim of his hat with his pipe and said, “Yep. Those look pretty real to me.”

  “Really?” I asked. “You can tell from all the way out here?”

  I'd pulled out my cellphone and dialed 9-1-1 immediately after Gunnar suggested Sheriff Lewis would hopefully know what to do. The operator routed me directly to the sheriff's office when I informed her that there was no immediate danger, and Lewis had answered the phone himself.

  “A pile of what?” he'd asked after I'd spit out why I was calling and who I was.

  “Bones. Like in our bodies.”

  “Ma'am, are you certain?”

  “I'm certain that there is a pile of something that looks and feels like human bones is in my cottage.”

  He sighed heavily through the phone. “I was fixin' on getting my lunch here pretty soon.”

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything.

  “I guess I could hop on over before I go pick up my fried chicken,” he finally said. “Alright. I'll be out there soon. Hang tight.”

  Gunnar and I hung tight until the sheriff pulled up in his old pickup truck. When he pushed the door open and slid out of the front seat, I was surprised that he did so without a walking aid of any kind. He looked to be closer to 80 than 70, his back and shoulders rounded over, with a protruding belly beneath the white shirt of his uniform. A large brimmed hat sat on top of his head and he walked with a slight limp. He greeted Gunnar by name and removed his hat when he shook my hand. Then he stuck the pipe in his mouth, barely visible under his thick white moustache, and peered in through the open door of the bungalow.

  He sucked on the unlit pipe for a moment. “Sure. Bones are bones, aren't they?”

  “I really wouldn't know,” I told him. “That's why I called you.”

  Gunnar rubbed at the back of his neck, his gaze fixed downward.

  Sheriff Lewis cleared his throat. “Well. Yes. Of course you did. Have to say, I'm not really a bones fella.”

  “I wouldn't think most people are,” I said.

  “Orthopedists,” Gunnar said. “Orthopedists are. And chiropractors.”

  The sheriff chuckled at that, but I did not.

  “My hope was that you could tell me what they are,” I said. “And assuming they are human, then how they got there.”

  He sucked on the end of the pipe again, his fleshy cheeks twitching. “Hmm. Yes, of course. We'd probably have to call in some specialists for that kind of thing, though. People who know more than I do.”

  At that moment, I was thinking that the list of people who knew more than him was very, very long.

  He squinted in through the door again. “Come to think of it, maybe they aren't real, after all.”

  I frowned. “And why would you suddenly change your mind?”

  The sheriff shifted his ample girth from his left foot to his right. He sucked hard on the end of the pipe and I realized that if he replaced the sheriff's hat with a top hat, he'd bear a pretty good resemblance to Frosty The Snowman.

  “I'd just think it's highly unlikely that there'd be a dead body in your place,” he said.

  “Why's that?”

  He pulled the pipe from his lips. “Ma'am, I understand you're new around here. But I assume you purchased this farm in this area for a reason. Am I right?”

  “Uh, sure.” I’d had lots of reasons, but I didn’t think now was the time to go into them with a sheriff investigating why there was a skeleton on my property.

  “And I assume one of the reasons was that you really liked the area. Thought living here would be a nice thing. Friendly folks, decent weather, pretty country.” He rattled this off as if he were reciting a grocery list.

  I nodded.

  “Now, I'm not sure if you're the type to go digging, but if you were, you'd have also learned that not much bad happens around here.”

  I wasn't sure if I was the “type” he was talking about. I'd done some basic research about the area and all of the little towns when I’d first started looking, but truth be told, I'd used the eye test more than anything. I liked the location and I loved the look of the farm.

  My farm.

  “Sheriff, with all due respect, I don’t know where you're going with this,” I said, my hands on my hips.

  “Where I'm going is that we haven't had a murder in this county in over sixty years,” Sheriff Lewis said. “I'm finding it a little hard to believe that the streak has been broken.”

  I waited for more of an explanation.

  The sheriff, though, just smiled at me and popped the pipe back in between his lips.

  Gunnar shoved his hands in his pockets and looked like he was trying to figure out a way to gracefully exit this train wreck of a conversation.

  “Sheriff,” I finally said, expelling a breath. “I appreciate that this is a nice place to live and that statistically, we should all feel safe. But none of that explains the bones in my bungalow.”

  The smile dimmed on his face.

  “I would respectfully ask that you step inside and take a closer look,” I continued. “It's why I called you.”

  He pulled the pipe from his mouth and frowned at the door to the bungalow.

  Gunnar covered his mouth with his hand and I wasn't sure if he was smiling or if he was trying to keep himself from saying something.

  Sheriff Lewis grunted, glanced at me, then stepped into the room. I followed and Gunnar brought up the rear.

  The sheriff walked slowly to the pile, moving to his left first, then back to his right. I wasn't sure what he was doing, but at least he kept moving forward. When we reached the bones, he looked at both Gunnar and me, as if he thought we might be able to tell him what to do. When we didn't give him any answers, he sort of bent over at the waist to take a closer look.

  “Hmm,” he finally said. “Those are definitely some bones.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “They are.”

  “And you may just be right,” he said. “They do sorta have that real look to them.”

  “I picked up the skull,” I told him. “It was heavy. It's not plastic.”

  He put his gaze on me. “You picked it up?”

  “I was trying to see if it was real.”

  He looked at Gunnar. “You touch any of them bones, Gun?”

  “No, sir,” Gunnar said, shaking his head.

  The sheriff grunted, then went back to studying the bones. He pursed his lips. He tilted his head to the right, then to the left. Then he put the pipe back in his mouth and stood up.

  He cleared his throat. “Yep. They absolutely could be real.”

  While I didn’t know how he'd come to that conclusion considering he'd done less than I had in inspecting them, I was at least relieved that he was taking it a little bit more seriously.

  “But I have to tell you, Ms. Day,” he said. “These bones? They look pretty old to me. I'm not sure it's worth getting excited over.”

  “I'm definitely not excited over the idea that there might be a corpse in some state on my new property, Sheriff,” I told him.

  His cheeks flushed with color. “I just mean that if this happened some time ago, then it might not be something you really have to worry yourself about.”

  I replayed his words back in my mind, wondering if I'd heard him wrong.

  Nope.

  I'd heard him just fine.

  “So you're telling me that you don't think I need to worry about finding a dead body on my property?” I finally managed to spit out.

  He scratched his chin. “Well, as I said, these bones look pretty old to me. So I'm not sure it's anything we have to worry about. I can call Tom Barnard—he runs a junkyard and does some hauling—and see if he'd be able to come out an
d clean it all up. You might have to pay him but—”

  “Hold on,” I said, interrupting him. “Just hold on a moment.”

  The sheriff switched the pipe from the right corner of his mouth to the left.

  I looked at Gunnar. “Are you hearing this the same way I am?”

  Gunnar squirmed, uncomfortable under both my gaze and Sheriff Lewis's. “Well, I'm not sure. I will say that I'm not sure hauling it all off in a pickup truck is the best of ideas.” He glanced at the sheriff. “I mean, I'd assume you'd need to do some sort of investigation, Donny. Even if it is an old body, it could be a missing person or something along those lines. And that would require some testing and analysis and other stuff. Right?”

  “Exactly!” I said, grateful that he was on my side. The side of logic and reason.

  The sheriff rubbed at his stubbly jaw, then pulled the pipe from his mouth and slotted it into the shirt pocket right next to his badge. “I'm just not sure this really requires a full reporting.”

  “But there are bones—”

  He continued on as if he hadn’t heard me. “And if the bones are very old—”

  “But you don't know they are,” I pointed out. “You're just guessing.”

  He snorted. “But they look old.”

  I took a deep breath, then exhaled. I wasn't sure who Sheriff Lewis was used to dealing with, but if he handled everything the way he was handling this, I was very worried about my new hometown.

  “Sheriff, I'm going to be candid with you,” I finally said. “There is literally no reason why this discovery shouldn’t be investigated. I'm going to need someone to report what I've found. I was hoping it would be you, but if you have an objection to doing so, I will find another law enforcement agency to contact and let them know that I have bones on my property that appear to be human and that my county sheriff was uninterested in investigating. I am happy to go that route if necessary, but only if you're telling me you won't be looking any further into this.”