Tarnished Remains Blurb
Shandra Higheagle is digging up clay for her renowned
pottery when she scoops up a boot attached to a skeleton. She calls in Weippe
County detective Ryan Greer. The body is
decades old and discovered to be Shandra’s employee’s old flame.
Ryan immediately pegs Shandra’s employee for the
murderer, but Shandra knows in her heart that the woman everyone calls Crazy
Lil couldn’t have killed anyone, let alone a man she loved.
Digging up the woman’s past takes them down a road of greed,
miscommunication, and deceit. Will they
be able to prove Crazy Lil innocent before the true murderer strikes
again?
Chapter One
Shandra Higheagle leaned on the
shovel handle, staring into the pine forest to her right. She loved her
excursions up Huckleberry Mountain to collect clay. She’d purchased this land
two years ago for this pocket of clay. The yellowish mud, when cleaned and
purified, enhanced her art. Using Mother Nature’s bounty to make her
inspirations come to life enriched the overall appearance and authenticity of
her work. That she used natural clay and formed pottery as her ancestors once
had, made her pieces unique and sought after.
Enough musing and wasting time.
She raised the shovel, sunk the metal blade into the ground six inches, and
pulled out a shovel full of yellow clay. The packed soil held enough moisture
to cling to the shovel. She knocked the blade against the top of the bucket,
dropping the clay in. A good shove with her foot set the spade into the ground
for another scoop. The metal grated on something hard; possibly a rock. She’d
hit a few while digging clay in this pocket.
Wiggling the shovel, she shoved
again and pulled up another chunk of clay. Her artistic imagination saw a chunk
on the side that resembled the shape of a cowboy boot heel. Shandra chuckled at
her imagination and knocked the shovel against her plastic bucket. The chunk
broke apart and a boot heel fell to the outside of the bucket.
Shandra eased down onto her
knees beside the bucket. Using her trowel, she broke up the rest of the chunk.
Nothing.
Perhaps someone—years ago—while
riding or hiking up here lost a boot heel.
She stood, picked up the shovel,
and sunk the blade into the ground not far from the last scoop.
Instead of the usual high
pitched zing of the metal slicing through the soil, there was the sound of a
stick breaking. She shoved the blade farther with her booted foot. Another
crunch, and she shoved down on the handle, freeing a section of clay larger
than her usual scoopful.
Tingles raced up her spine at
the sight of something white sticking out of the clay. She lifted and tipped
the shovel, dumping the clod on the ground.
Her dead Nez Perce grandmother’s
face flashed through her mind.
“Ella, what have I stumbled
onto?” Shandra asked her grandmother.
She picked up her trowel and
knelt beside the chunk of clay. Slow, small cuts with the trowel soon revealed
she’d dug up a leather cowboy boot with intricate detailing and the foot it
encased.
She’d made a thorough search of
all the Native American burial grounds before purchasing this ranch on
Huckleberry Mountain. There wasn’t any record of an Indian burial ground on the
property. She’d made certain. With that information, and seeing the detail on
the boot, she was pretty sure this wasn’t an Indian.
Reaching into her back pocket,
Shandra slid her cell phone out. One faint bar of coverage up here.
Nine-one-one or Detective Ryan
Greer?
Admitting to herself she wouldn’t
mind seeing the detective again, she punched in his number. They’d met a month
ago when she’d been a suspect in a gallery owner’s murder. They’d come away
from the event friends. She also wasn’t shy to admit, she’d like to explore her
friendship with the handsome detective a little more. They’d spent several days
after his last case in Huckleberry talking, riding horses, and getting to know
more about one another. She hadn’t heard from him in several weeks.
“Detective Greer.”
“Ryan, it’s Shandra Higheagle—”
“Shandra, I’ve been meaning to
call you. Work has been dragging me out in the early hours and dropping me into
bed close to midnight.”
She smiled at his boyish need to
explain why he hadn’t called. “I’m afraid I’m going to add to your work.”
“Don’t tell me you found another
dead body,” he said in a joking tone.
“I’m afraid I did.”
“Where? Are you in danger?” His
demeanor went from joking to all business.
The sound of tires dragging
against gravel proved he was out in his SUV somewhere in Weippe County.
“I’m on my property digging
clay. No, I’m not in danger. This person looks to have been here a while.” She
gave him all the details.
“I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t
do any more digging.”
His siren shrilled in the
background.
“Go to the ranch and have Lil
bring you up.”
“Will do.”
Shandra closed her phone and
stared down at the bone and the leather boot. “Who are you and why are you on
this mountain?”
Even though Ryan told her not to
dig any more, her curiosity got the better of her. At least she’d read enough
about archeological digs and even helped out at one in high school to know to
use her hands and go slow to not damage any evidence.
In the time it would take Ryan
to get here, she could have something more than a foot and boot for him to
investigate.
~*~
Ryan pulled into Shandra’s
ranch, his siren still shrieking and lights flashing. The serene cabin and
studio in the middle of the forest made him feel like an interloper. He
switched off the lights and siren immediately and then the engine.
Crazy Lil, Shandra’s hired hand,
approached the car with a scowl. “What you scarin’ all the animals for?”
Ryan stepped out of the vehicle.
Crazy Lil’s head came to the middle of his chest. For a small woman she gave
off a larger presence. He knew little about the woman other than she worked for
Shandra Higheagle and all the locals called her Crazy Lil—but not her employer.
He’d met Shandra under the worst
of circumstances a month ago when an overzealous newbie tried to arrest her for
murder when she was found in the same room as a recently murdered gallery
owner.
His heart picked up pace
remembering his first encounter with the intriguing woman and the days they
spent together after he solved the case.
“Wanna wipe that grin off your
lips and tell me why you came screaming in here?” Crazy Lil smacked him in his
solar plexus, causing air to whoosh between his teeth and lips.
“There’s no need to hit an
officer of the law,” he snapped, rubbing his chest. “Shandra called. Said she
found a body and wanted me to come check it out.”
The woman’s face paled. “A
body?”
“Yes. She said to have you bring
me to her. She found it where she collects clay.” Ryan waved to the passenger
side of his SUV. “Hop in.”
Crazy Lil shook her head. “Can’t
get there with a vehicle. Have to ride a horse.”
“How does Shandra bring down the
clay?” He knew the woman was tenacious, but he couldn’t see her packing buckets
of clay off the mountain.
“She’s got horses.” Crazy Lil
rolled her eyes and turned toward the barn and corrals. “You can ride Oliver.”
She whistled.
One horse trotted to the corral
railing and hung his head over. He had some age on him judging from the gray in
his red coat and the sway in his back. Ryan might have worked in the big city
of Chicago, but he grew up on a ranch forty miles from this mountain. He knew
horses, and he knew how to ride.
“I don’t think that sorrel will
make it up the mountain without someone on his back. Let alone carrying me.” He
waited for a response from the woman.
She spun about. “You gonna talk
or you gonna help me saddle up the horses?”
Ryan studied the woman marching
into the barn. She was either an ornery, abrupt, no-nonsense person or socially
inept. Given what Shandra had said about the woman growing up on the ranch and
rarely leaving, he’d go with socially inept.
He hustled into the barn behind
the woman and was relieved to see two younger, spryer geldings in stalls. One
was the horse he’d rode when Shandra gave him a tour of her property.
“Do I get Duke? He and I got
along fine the last time I rode him.” He walked to the stall with the bay
horse, hanging a wide, white-blazed face over the gate.
“You might as well, you aren’t
riding my horse.” Crazy Lil pointed to a saddle hanging over a stand. “Use that
one.”
Ryan picked up the halter
hanging by Duke’s stall and opened the gate. “Hey boy, remember me?”
Fifteen minutes later, Ryan had
Duke tacked up and his gear stowed on the saddle. He threw a leg over his mount
and followed Crazy Lil up the side of the mountain. This was his first trek
into the mountains for a body. He hoped whatever Shandra had stumbled into
didn’t get her caught up in trouble. The woman seemed to be a magnet for
murder.
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