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Oh, God. She didn’t know I’d been the one to find the body. How much had Sheriff Taylor told Ruth? “Are all the kids out? I just passed Linus.”
She nodded. “Dakota and Michele are with my parents in Branson for the day. The rest are down on Riverfront Street for the Jubilee. I already texted Emma Ray and told her to keep an eye out for Linus.” She sat on the arm of the divan, her delicate features making her appear fragile, but I knew she wasn’t.
Ruth Thompson was one of the strongest women I knew.
“I found the…” I shook my head and tried again. “It happened at the restaurant after closing last night. I found … I went outside to take the trash and … I wish the sheriff would have told you.”
She gulped, her head bobbing as if nodding agreement. “Do you think it’s him?”
I shrugged, the gesture wholly inadequate for the situation. A sweet smell wafted in from the kitchen. It had a strange but familiar bite to it. “What is that?”
“What?”
“The smell?” I followed the scent into the kitchen. Ruth made her family breakfast every morning. I know, because I often joined them. The room always smelled of home cooking. Not today. Instead, it was the spicy, sweet, and pungent scent I’d smelled the night before. I let my coyote slip forward and inhaled deeply. Strangely, my senses seemed sharper, more acute and I nearly gagged as the scent-memory took me back to the scene of the murder.
“Chavvah, tell me what you’re trailing?” As a deer shifter, Ruth’s olfactory senses weren’t as developed as mine, but how could she not smell this?
I spotted a clear jar filled with what looked like wood chips about the color of raw almonds. “What is that?”
“Sassafras root,” she said. “Why?”
“I smelled it, Ruth.” My skin tightened with a shiver. “At the restaurant last night. I smelled this.” Even over the scent of exposed flesh and blood. Although, I didn’t say so. Was it significant? Did this prove the dead man was Ed? Had he chewed it before he’d been killed? Had the aroma come from his mouth?
“Butch won it this morning from one of the carnival games. The street fair opened up around eight today. He brought it home and then grabbed his brother and sisters to go back. Except for Linus.”
“Then Ed wouldn’t have eaten it last night?”
“Ed doesn’t even like root beer, let alone sassafras. He says it’s too much like licorice.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Ed didn’t like it.” Her creamy complexion turned a milky white as the blood drained from her face.
“Sit down,” I told her. I pulled out a chair from the table. “We don’t know it’s him.”
“In all the years we’ve been married, he has never not come home and never not called if he was going to be late. This isn’t like him, Chav.” A choking sob rose in her throat. “I can’t lose him. I just can’t.”
A kick at the door had us both turning to the noise. A man stood on the other side of the kitchen screen door, scraping debris off his boots onto a mud mat. He lifted his head and pushed his way inside. “Can’t lose who, Ruthie? Did something happen to one of the kids?”
My throat grew thick. Ruth jumped up, knocking her chair off its legs. “Ed!” she shouted. Relief, disbelief, joy—and just a touch of anger—colored her voice. She launched herself into his arms and kissed him hard, intimate. I tried to fight the grin on my face but gave up after Ed’s arms wrapped around her, and they both decided they were the only two people in the room.
Before they could drop their clothes, I cleared my throat.
Ed set Ruth down, the biggest, dreamiest smile on his face. “If I’d have known getting stuck in Timbuktu would create this kind of reaction, I would have done it much sooner.”
Ruth’s face turned red. Ed had said exactly the wrong thing. “You jerk!” she yelled. “I thought you were dead. Dead!” She beat her fist on his chest. “They told me—” She wheezed in a breath. “They told me!” she accused him.
Ed pulled his wife into an encapsulating embrace, keeping a good hold as she fought against him. He kept saying things over and over, like, “I’m all right. It’s all right. There, there. I’m here.”
When Ruth stopped struggling, he just held her while she sobbed into his chest.
“Chavvah, what’s happening?” he asked me as he stroked his wife’s hair. “Why did you all think I was dead?”
“I found a body last night. He was out back of the restaurant. The sheriff thought it might be you.”
“Did he look like me?”
“No.” I shook my head as if trying to shake the memory. “He didn’t look like anyone.”
Ed’s expression grew puzzled. “Then why me?”
Ruth leaned back. “Because the man had been skinned alive, your ID was under the body, and you didn’t fucking come home last night!”
