Riptide

seen the Powell girl around town, but he
    hadn't met her. She looked harmless enough, he thought, remembering
    how she was squeezing a cantaloupe in the produce department
    at Food Fort when he first saw her. She was pretty enough,
    but right then, she was as white as his shirtfront last night before
    he'd eaten spaghetti. She'd opened the front door of the old Marey
    place and was standing there staring at him.
    "I'm the law," he said, and took his sheriff's hat off. There was
    something odd about her, something that wasn't quite right, and it
    wasn't her too-pale face. Well, finding a skeleton could put a person
    off in a whole lot of ways. He wished she'd stop gaping at him
    like she didn't have a brain or, God forbid, was hysterical. He was
    afraid she would burst into tears and he was ready to do just about
    anything to prevent that. He threw back his shoulders and stuck

out a huge hand. "Sheriff Gaffney, ma'am. What's this about a
    skeleton in your basement?"
    "It's a woman, Sheriff."
    He shook her hand, pleased and relieved that now she appeared
    reasonably under control and her lower lip wasn't trembling. Her
    eyes looked perfectly dry to him, from what he could tell through
    her glasses. "Show me this skeleton who you believe with your untrained
    eye is a woman, ma'am," he said, "and we'll see if you're
    guessing right."
    I'm in never-never land, Becca thought as she showed Sheriff
    Gaffney down to Jacob Marley's basement.
    She walked behind him. He was nearing sixty years old, and was
    a walking heart attack. He was a good thirty pounds overweight,
    the buttons of his sheriff shirt gaping over his belly. The wide black
    leather belt tight beneath his belly carried a gun holster and a billy
    club, and nearly disappeared in the front because his stomach was
    so big. He had a circle of gray hair around his head and very light
    gray eyes. She nearly ran into him when he suddenly stopped on
    the bottom step, stood there, and sniffed.
    "That's good, Ms. Powell. No smell. Gotta be old."
    She nearly gagged.
    She kept back when he went down on his knees to examine the
    bones.
    "I thought it was a woman, maybe even a girl, since she's wearing
    a pink tank top."
    "A good deduction, ma'am. Yep, the remains look pretty old, or
    maybe not. I read that a dead person can become a skeleton in as
    little as two weeks or it can take as long as ten years depending on
    where the body's put. It's a shame that it wasn't airtight, you know,
    a vacuum back behind that wall. If it had been, then maybe some

thing would have been left of her. But critters can get in most
    places and they were looking at a whole bunch of really good
    meals with her. Lookee here, the person who put her down here
    hit her on the head." He looked up at her, expecting her to see
    what he'd found. Becca forced herself to look at the skull that had
    snapped, probably during the upheaval, and rolled away from the
    neck.
    Sheriff Gaffney picked up the skull and slowly turned it in his
    hands. "Look at this. Someone bashed her but good, not in the
    back of the head but in the front. Now, that's mean, really vicious.
    Yep, violent, real violent. Whoever did this was mad as hell, hit her
    as hard as he could, right in the face. I wonder who she was, poor
    thing. First thing is to see if any of our own young people went
    missing a while ago. Thing is, I've been here nearly all my life and
    I don't remember a single kid just up and disappearing. But I'll ask
    around. Folk don't forget that. Well, we'll find out soon enough. I
    think she was probably a runaway. Old Jacob didn't like strangers--
    male, female, it didn't matter. Probably found her poking around in
    the garage or maybe even trying to break in, and he didn't ask any
    questions, just whacked her over the head. Actually, he didn't like
    people who weren't strangers, either."
    "You said the blow looks violent, and it's in the front. Why
    would Jacob Marley be enraged if she was a runaway, or a local kid,
    just hanging around his property?"
    "I don't know. Maybe she back-mouthed him. Old Jacob hated
    back talk."
    "The white jeans are Calvin Klein, Sheriff."
    "You're saying this is a guy now?"
    "No, that's the designer. The jeans are expensive. I don't think
    they'd go real well on a runaway."
    "You know, ma'am, many runaways are middle-class," Sheriff

Gaffney said, and heaved himself to his feet. "Strange how most folk
    don't know that. Very few of em are poor, you know. Yep, the storm
    must have knocked