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“Dead body?” Cassie asked.
“Yes,” the dispatcher confirmed. “They found it in a hidden room in the lodge. Based on the clothing and size of the bones, Molly McKinnon and Parker Bailey suspect it’s a female. I can send someone over to the gym to get the sheriff.”
Cassie’s heart sank to the pit of her belly. Female. Could it be Penny? She tamped down the bile rising in her throat. No. It wasn’t Penny. She had to believe that. “Get the sheriff from the gym,” Cassie said. “In the meantime, I’ll head to the lodge and at least secure the site.”
“Will you be okay?” Marnie asked. “Some people get all crazy after seeing a dead body. This will be your first.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” Cassie said, poking her thumb toward her chest even though Marnie couldn’t see her. Since she’d quit law school to come back to Eagle Rock to join the sheriff’s department, there hadn’t been a whole lot of dead bodies to see. She’d hoped that coming home would put her in a more advantageous position to chase down clues than at a university hundreds of miles away from her hometown.
Being in Eagle Rock hadn’t made finding Penny any easier. She was still missing, and Cassie was no closer to finding her than when she’d first come back to town. She couldn’t help but think she’d thrown away her education to settle for the position and pay of a deputy in the sheriff’s department. And all for nothing.
Still, Cassie wouldn’t give up. Penny’s body hadn’t been found. The body at the lodge wasn’t Penny. The fact that they hadn’t found Penny’s body was a reason for hope. She wanted to find her friend. Alive.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Cassie said.
“Roger. I’ll get hold of the state crime lab,” Marnie said, ending the call.
Cassie would be lucky to get to the Lucky Lady Lodge before the sheriff. She knew that as soon as he heard about the bones, he’d be out there in a flash.
All the more reason for her to hurry.
She gathered her pen and pad, slung her bullet-proof vest over her shoulders and passed through the door, pausing long enough to lock it.
Moments later, she was in her SUV, shooting northwest through town, heading for the lodge.
And here she’d thought being a deputy was getting downright boring, sitting around, waiting for something to happen, for a lead to surface or for pigs to fly.
As she pulled in front of the lodge, she was met by a handful of men and one female, covered in a thick layer of white dust.
She dropped down from the SUV and hurried toward the woman she barely recognized beneath the dust. The gentle smile, exposing white teeth, helped Cassie identify the female as Molly McKinnon, her lifelong friend.
The two women had grown up together in Eagle Rock. Cassie, Dezi, Gabbie, Liza, Bella and Penny had been inseparable…until they’d split up to go to college. Penny had lasted a semester before following her college boyfriend from Missoula to LA. He’d been convinced he was God’s gift to the film industry and needed to be closer to the action to land parts.
Molly rubbed her hands on her dirty jeans and then held them out. “Cassie, I’m so glad you came.”
Cassie took her hands and squeezed them gently. “What’s this about a body?”
Molly turned toward the back of the lodge, leading the way down a maze of corridors with a flashlight. “One minute, I had everything I needed for an afternoon of demo. We were making good progress until one of my guys knocked down a wall leading into what we suspect was a hidey-hole used back in Prohibition days. Anyway, Drake poked around at what was left in the hidden room and came up with… Well, you’ll see.” Molly crossed the room, stopped short of the back wall and pointed the flashlight into the cell beyond. “She’s in there.”
“Are you sure it’s female?” Cassie asked.
Molly snorted softly behind Cassie. “I don’t know a whole lot of guys who wear dresses or high heels. At least not in these parts. Here, you’ll need this.” She handed the flashlight to Cassie.
Moving past Molly, Cassie held her breath and entered the stone cell carved out of the mountainside.
The body was nothing more than bones with mummified skin stretched over it. It had to have been there a long time for the skin to mummify. The dress was nothing Penny would have worn. The pattern was too floral and old-fashioned.
Definitely not Penny. Some of the tension leached out of Cassie’s body.
Without touching the body, clothing or anything else, Cassie took pictures with her cell phone and bent low, looking for anything that might help them identify the woman.
Cassie’s heart contracted for a split second. Then she shook her head and drew in a deep breath. It wasn’t Penny. This body had been here a long time. Penny had only been missing for four months. It took longer for a body to reach this level of mummification, didn’t it?
The body had decomposed to the point it had mummified in the dry, cool confines of the hidden stone room. A few strands of hair clung to the withered scalp. The dust created in the demolition of the wall made it impossible to determine what color the hair had been. Even though the dress was covered in a thin layer of dust, she could see the pink and lilac flowers beneath it. She looked closer. Was that a stain in the fabric?
“Hellooo!” a voice shouted from somewhere else in the Lucky Lady Lodge.
Cassie stepped through the wall joists. “That will be the sheriff.”
