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I choke out a laugh and shake my head. “Noted for the record. Detective Malone? Did you catch that?”
“I got it,” he snickers. “But Henry held Hillary while we were there just a few minutes ago. She cried for her friend. She cried for her husband. Even with Henry trying to block the exhumation, I’m struggling to point this at him.”
“Your instincts?”
“Not Henry Wade,” he answers easily. “I can’t see it.”
“So I guess we keep looking.”
My computer dings with an incoming email from the courthouse. Mayor Lawrence has been copied in. Detectives Fletcher and Malone. Their Lieutenant Fabian. And me, the chief medical examiner.
“We’ve got our court order, Archer. The body is where we go to get answers.”
“How soon can you start digging?”
Instantly, I look to Aubree. “Let me talk to some people and organize machinery,” I tell him. “I’ll have an answer for you within the hour.”
“Good. Thank you. Are you thinking you can dig this week, or in thirty days? Give me a ballpark.”
“Give me that hour to line up our ducks.” Hugging my cell between my ear and shoulder, I push up to stand and reach across and grab my desk phone. Handing it to Aubree, I dial Seraphina’s extension. “If everything aligns, we might dig this afternoon.”
“This afternoon?” Archer’s tone rises an octave or two. “Today’safternoon?”
I step around my desk and grin. “Today’s afternoon. Clear your schedule and wait for me to call you back. In the meantime…”
“What?” His voice turns suspicious, while at my desk, Aubree moves fast as she delegates grunt work to the George Stanley’s best assistant. “In the meantime, what?”
“When was the last time you ate?”
“Breakfast,” he responds with a huff. “Same time you ate.”
“When was the last time you had water?”
He sips something now, purposely slurping so I get to hear. “Does the water in coffee count?”
“No,” I growl. “I’ll call you back soon.”
Killing our call without saying goodbye, I drop my phone into my pocket and turn back to watch Aubree.
“We’ll also need crowd control,” Aubree orders Seraphina. “This is turning into a high-profile thing, and with Holly’s case belonging to the now deceased Neil Thomas, the media will want to know why we’re digging her up.”
“Don’t forget a religious representative,” I remind her. “Better yet, request Pastor Dooley. He married Henry and Holly back in ‘86. He also married Henry and Hillary a year later.”
Aubree looks to me with a frown. “How could you possibly know that?”
I flash a wide grin and head toward the door. “Being married to the lead detective comes with its perks.”
Snagging my coat from the rack, I swing it on and open the door. “Let’s go. We need to find some heavy machinery and a person who’ll operate it for us.”
ARCHER
Five o’clock, March third. Exactly seven hours from the time the court order dropped into our email. That’s when Minka wrangles up enough staff to dig up a cemetery and make it legal, as opposed to some kind of grave-robbery type situation.
Spotlights have been set up, since the sun is still apt to go down early in the evening.
Temporary walls have been erected to keep the crowds away.
Two dozen additional uniforms stand by on the outside of what is basically a circus tent, minus the wild colors and performing animals. They walk the perimeter to keep everyone but authorized personnel out, and when the media try to get a little noisy, the officers are to back the cameras up and keep them away.
