"Anyway, how did you know I was here?" Lucky asked, switching the skull to his left hand. He held out his right to her to shake.
Susan glanced down at the hand, which clearly had skull-of-death cooties on it, and shook her head. Then she pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of her pocket and pulled them on.
"It's sad that I know that those are nitrile gloves," I muttered. "That means I've been at way too many crime scenes in my law-abiding-citizen life."
She laughed. "Or it could just be that I mentioned I have a latex allergy when we were at lunch one day. And I knew you were here, Lucky, because Elmer called me from the Pit Stop, to tell me that 'one of those wild Army boys from the swamp' was out there getting gas and had a skull on his dashboard. Also, he wanted to complain about how Sue-Ellen Bishop had been off work with a cold for almost a week, and who takes off work for a mere cold, and here's what's wrong with the modern generation."
I winced. Elmer Krantz was in his eighties and, to hear him tell it, every single one of those years had been filled with trials and tribulations. Since he owned the Pit Stop, I ran into him sometimes, and it was always a test of my patience and Southern manners to remain polite. Aunt Ruby had worked for him, part-time, for a while. She always said the trick was to drown him in sweetness until he didn't know which way was up. I didn't have that knack, so I usually just smiled, gritted my teeth, and got away from him as fast as I could.
She took the skull and turned it one way and then the other, eyeing it closely. "I took off to find you and saw your truck turn into Tess's parking lot, so here I am."
"And I'm glad to see you," I told her, edging around her and walking over to open the door. "And I'll be even happier to see that skull leave my shop. Nice to see you. Have fun with the evidence."
A rare smile spread across her face. "Tess. I'd think a little old skull wouldn't bother you after the year you've had."
"It's a cumulative effect. And, is it? Old?" I nodded at the skull "Ancient? Maybe some old guy who wandered into the swamp hundreds of years ago and got lost and died?"
"Maybe. But I've seen enough to know that this is probably a gunshot entry wound on the back of the skull. So, unless our victim died by falling backward on his gun, this is probably a homicide."
The muscles in my neck and shoulders started to knot themselves into a stress-induced tangle. "Oh, goody. And where's the rest of the body?"
"Skeleton," Susan reminded me. "But, yeah, Lucky, whereisthe rest of the skeleton?"
He blew out a breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Um. Yeah. It's in my trunk."
Susan raised an eyebrow. "Should I just get out the handcuffs now?"
"No! No, I know about not disturbing the crime scene or whatever, but I followed the gator after I took the skull away from him, and he went back to a nest he'd been wallowing in at the edge of the swamp. And the rest of the skeleton was there. Or, at least, a lot of bones were there; I don't know if it's a full skeleton, or even all the same skeleton, or some animal bones, or what. I shooed him off and grabbed what I could, because I figured disturbed by me was better for you, evidence-wise, than eaten or destroyed by a gator. Then I took the boat back to the dock, wrapped the bones up in a tarp, threw them in the trunk, and here I am."
Only Lucky, Jack, or one of their crazy friends would talk so casually about taking a skull away from a gator and 'shooing' it. I'd had too many encounters with gators recently to be anywhere that casual about it—the more I saw of them, the scarier they were. Especially when they were leaping at me.
Except Fluffy. Our shop mascot, a taxidermied gator who'd seen better days, currently sported a blue, sparkly beret on her head, a pink ribbon around her neck, and purple-polka-dotted duct tape that covered the bullet hole in her tail.
"Okay." Susan headed for the door, which I was still holding open. "Lucky, let's transfer the bones to my car, and then you can take me out to the swamp and show me where you found the skeleton. Tess, take care. I'll see you soon."
"Hey—lunch? Monday, maybe?"
She hesitated. "Maybe. If I'm not too busy with whatever this turns out to be. We might catch a break, though. We had a little money left in the budget for the year, so I hired a magical resonance expert to come out and look at the decades of junk piled up in the evidence room. Sheriff Lawless had no rhyme or reason, that I can tell, to how he categorized evidence or even what he decided to keep. Since I can't reach him to ask about it, I thought I'd have an expert take a look. Maybe we can clear out a lot of that crap."
She couldn't reach the former sheriff, because he was currently taking up space in an FBI Paranormal Operations special holding facility for very bad people, and I hoped he never, ever got out. He'd been involved in my late boss's—Jack's uncle's—death.
Lucky wandered over from the knives and weapons case, where he'd been studying a particularly fine dagger with a camel-bone handle, which gave me hopes for a sale. Hedidhave a thriving swamp boat business these days, so instead of only seeing him in the shop when he wanted to pawn his guitar, I sometimes saw him when he was in a shopping mood.
"What's a magical resonance expert?"
"I can take this one," I said. "Mrs. Kowalski, the evil witch, came over to the shop and performed one when we were trying to figure out who killed Jeremiah. At the time, we didn't know she was involved in his death. But, basically, it's a test to see if there's any trace of magic in a place."
"Right," Susan said. "Or if magic users have been there in the timeframe determined by how powerful the witch doing the testing is. This expert I have coming down is extremely good. I read an article about how she once picked up traces of magic used more than a century ago, and the subsequent investigation confirmed her results. She's really good, and we're lucky to get her. Her schedule is insanely packed."
"Wow, that's great. I kind of wish I could see her in action," I said. "I think that stuff's fascinating."
They both looked at me with identical skeptical expressions.
"Well, it is, when it's about an old skeleton, not somebody I love," I said, throwing my hands up in the air.
"Sorry. Police business. I can't have civilians in the evidence storage room," Susan said. "She'll start work Monday morning and be here for two days before she goes down to Miami for a vacation with her family."
"Sounds great! Let me know. And good luck with your immediate future." I couldn't repress a gleeful smirk, and Susan narrowed her eyes.
