Trace Their Shadows by Ann Cook Page B

to get your statement, Miss.”
    With the tail of her shirt Brandy wiped John’s forehead again. Professional of the deputy to pretend he didn’t notice the whole back of her shirt was missing. “I’m with the Tavares Beacon,” she began and described as completely as she could how they had found the bones. “The Sheriff will probably want to know if anyone’s missing around here,” she added. “The answer is, yes.” She glanced up toward the dormer windows. “A girl——her name was Eva Stone——vanished here in 1945.”
    The EMS van’s siren keened in the distance. By the time they could hear it bucketing down the lane and see the reflection of its blue light against the metal fence, John’s chest was heaving again. Deputy Martin leaped once more to the grassy slope and strode toward the parking lot.
    To Brandy the medical team’s efficiency seemed awesome. Attendants in white uniforms swarmed up onto the platform. As John was eased onto a stretcher at last, her eyes again filled with tears. Sick and weak, she leaned for support against the boat house wall.
    “This your boyfriend?” a technician asked.
    “Not exactly.” Her voice came in a whisper. “A good friend.”
    He stooped to pick up one end of the litter. “Now don’t worry. He’ll get treatment on the way to the hospital.” In seconds they were bearing John back across the lawn.
    She trailed behind to watch the van door slide shut and the white emergency vehicle spurt back down the lane out of sight, siren wailing. Brandy suddenly remembered the girl on John’s dresser. She ought to be told, as well as his brother and his parents. On the way back to the pier she realized she was bone weary, but her task was far from over. The deputy had taken a roll of yellow and black tape from his car and was carefully stringing it around the boat house.
    “Marking off this whole area,” he explained. “The medical examiner will be here in the morning. He’ll tell us the sex and age of the skeleton.” He drove a stake into the soft ground and attached the last section of tape. “Detectives will want to inspect everything. They’ll need to reach the home owner, if they haven’t found her already.”
    Brandy ducked under the tape and started for the boat slip. “Mrs. Langdon’s husband is at the Comfort Inn,” she said. “They’re separated, but he may know where she stays in town.” She dragged herself through the boat’s aluminum gate. “I’ve got to take this boat back to a trailer park on the Dora Canal. Then I’ll be going on to the hospital to see how Mr. Able’s doing.”
    Deputy Martin grinned. “I think you’ll be safe on the way back. The sergeant says you were followed when you came across the lake to report the bones. If anyone was trying to scare you off, they’ll know it’s too late. By now everyone in the area’s been waked up. A motorcycle race couldn’t make more noise than the dogs and EMS. Signal if you have any more trouble. I’ll alert the sergeant to have someone watch for you.”
    After Brandy had lifted the lines from the posts, she edged the boat out of the slip without looking back. She no longer trusted her senses. The moon is down, she thought. Time for night’s black agents. After half a century, was someone still trying to hide a bloody secret?
    Yet the danger to John, not a ghost or a murderer, drove her across the black waters. As the boat plunged on toward the dim shoreline, she gripped the wheel and focused on steering toward the tall, lighted cylinder of the old Tavares courthouse.
    In twenty minutes she had signaled to a deputy on shore and received an answering wave of his beam. Cruising on for a quarter of a mile, she nosed into John’s boat slip, tied up, and clambered onto the pier. Before his trailer steps she paused. In the loose dirt around them were a man’s footprints. A fine detective I’d make, she said to herself. I can’t even tell if they’re John’s or someone