Chapter 4
Chapter Four
J enny watched from her porch as additional people from various state agencies showed up to investigate the skeleton. The sheriff wanted the cross-section of the cypress trunk housing the skeleton to be removed intact. The upper part of the tree needed to be cut down first, which was why six tree trimmers had arrived with climbing gear, chainsaws, and woodchippers. The raucous buzz of chainsaws echoed across the grove as limb after limb crashed to the ground. Soon, a crane on the back of the fire engine would lift the excised section of the tree onto the flatbed truck.
Jenny had been waiting for a break in the activity to pull Tommy aside for a quiet word, but the day got more hectic as the hours passed.
“When are we going to tell them about the egg?” Hemingway asked as he joined her on the porch steps.
“I’ve been waiting for Wyatt to leave.”
Why was he still here? After briefly consulting with the sheriff’s deputies, Wyatt retreated to watch the ongoing action from a distance. She zoomed her binoculars to study him as he paced around the perimeter of the yellow tape.
He didn’t walk with a limp anymore. When they’d been dating, he still limped from a wound he got in Iraq when a roadside explosion flipped the jeep he’d been riding in. Wyatt had shrapnel embedded in his leg but still carried a fellow soldier over his shoulder to safety. It made his own wound a lot worse, requiring two surgeries and earning Wyatt a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
He seemed completely healed now, and if nothing else good came from this day, at least she had the satisfaction of seeing Wyatt completely healthy again.
“I’ll go let Tommy know we need to talk to him,” Hemingway said. “I’ll ask him up to the house, where we can speak in private.”
Hemingway began strolling toward the activity. She watched through the binoculars as he approached Tommy, both men putting their heads together. Hemingway gestured toward the house, and Tommy nodded, clapping him on the back.
A couple of the firemen joined them, and whatever Hemingway said must have been hilarious because others joined in to shoot the breeze even as Hemingway started typing something into his phone. A moment later she had an incoming text:
Tommy will be over in a couple of minutes.
She lifted her arm high to send Hemingway a thumbs-up, then dashed inside to unload kitchen dishes from the drying rack before Tommy arrived. If all went well with the egg, maybe she could soon afford a dishwasher for this old place, but in the meantime, she wanted it looking tidy.
Footsteps thudded on the front porch, then Tommy knocked on the screen door. She took a fortifying breath, bracing herself to confess how she and Hemingway took a Fabergé egg off that skeleton.
To her shock, Wyatt stood on the other side of the screen door, and he had the imposing sunglasses on again. She’d be tempted to turn him away except it would make her look like a coward. She steeled herself and opened the screen door.
He spoke first. “Yeah, Jenny, what do you need?”
“I asked for Tommy.”
He shook his head. “The medical examiner just arrived, so he’s busy. What do you need?”
Revealing the egg to anyone was going to be difficult, but doubly so to Wyatt, the most hidebound rule-follower on earth. She learned that on their first date when she tried to jaywalk across the street. He instinctively pulled her back from the curb, then walked with her to the end of the block. They had laughed about it at the time, but now his obsession with rules wasn’t so funny.
She stepped back from the door and gestured for him to enter. At least he removed the scary sunglasses, sliding them into his shirt pocket as he stepped inside, glancing around the front room in surprise.
“You cleaned up in here.”
A laugh escaped. “It was a big task.”
Her grandfather had been a hoarder. She’d grown up in the jam-packed farmhouse, so overstuffed chaos seemed normal to her. After he died, it took years to clear everything out. Much of it was high-quality vintage collectibles, so it couldn’t be quickly liquidated.
Wyatt scanned the interior of the parlor and dining area. “I never noticed how big this room was. It has good bones.”
It did. Crown molding, large baseboards, and wainscotting surrounded the family room. The original pine floors had been refinished, and she and her brother furnished the room with a new sofa, a rocking chair, and a couple of craftsman-style end tables. Sunlight filtering through the window blinds cast a glow over the walls newly painted in shades of ivory and soft beige.
An awkward silence stretched, and his physical nearness awakened a thousand dormant emotions. Wyatt’s rolled-up sleeves exposed his strong forearms, something she’d always found intensely attractive.
She tamped down the memories and braced herself to get this over with. “Hemingway and I found the skeleton yesterday,” she admitted. “We didn’t call it in right away because . . . well, it obviously wasn’t a medical emergency. We actually forgot to mention one tiny detail of what we found.” Her mouth dried out and it was hard to keep speaking. Wyatt’s jaw tensed, and his eyes went hard.
“What?” he asked, not in the friendliest of tones.
“There was a fancy jeweled egg right beside the skeleton,” she said. “We took it out for a better look.”
“You did what ? Where is it?”
“Follow me.” She never would have secured the egg in the gun safe if she’d known Wyatt would be the lawman on the scene when she turned it over. Wyatt had a whole slew of reasons he hated guns, even though he carried one for his job. He stayed on the far side of the mud room while she turned the dial on the gun safe.
Nervous energy caused her to flub the combination twice before she got the door open. Several antique rifles and guns were lined up beside the newer rifle she used for venomous snakes. The cereal bowl with the Fabergé egg sat on the top shelf. She used both hands to lift it down. The sapphires and diamonds flashed beneath the overhead light.
Wyatt looked gob-smacked as he paced inside the tight confines of the mud room. “That was in the cypress tree,” he finally stated in disbelief.
“Yup.”
“And you took it,” he accused.
“I did,” she said, starting to get angry too. She was doing the right thing by reporting it to the authorities, and he didn’t need to sound so personally offended.
“You tampered with a crime scene,” he accused.
“It didn’t look like this when we found it,” she said, walking into the front room to set the bowl on the coffee table. “It looked like a muddy rock. It wasn’t until we rinsed it off that we got a good look at it.”
“That’s why you leave crime scenes alone,” he bit out. “That’s why you go straight to a telephone, call 911, and don’t touch anything. A child knows that. What you did is called tampering with evidence and destroying a crime scene.”
“Knock it off, Wyatt. What I did is called basic human curiosity. I found something interesting on my property and brought it inside for a better look. In the morning I called the cops.”
“Now you might want to call a lawyer.”
She scoffed in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”
“You tampered with evidence.”
“And you must have had your heart clinically removed and your brain lobotomized by the state. Have you never done something daring and impulsive? What about Morocco?”
“Oh, shut up about Morocco,” he snapped, his temper threatening to blow.
Bringing up Morocco was a mistake, and she held her hands up in concession. “I take it back,” she conceded. “Forget I said the word. It was a mistake and I’m sorry.”
His mouth was a hard, angry line as he stared at the egg. “I’ll get Tommy to come up here, and don’t touch that egg again.”
The slamming of the front door echoed in her ears long after he left.
Things went downhill after that. Tommy arrived with Wyatt in tow. There were no more volcanic outbursts like with Wyatt, but Tommy was clearly annoyed. She and Hemingway dutifully answered all his questions about the egg’s location in the tree.
“Who else knows about this egg?” Tommy asked.
“Just the four people in this room,” she said.
Tommy looked toward Wyatt, who leaned against the back wall, still in a snit. “I want to keep this quiet,” Tommy said. “The medical examiner says the skeleton is at least a couple decades old. We don’t know if foul play was involved or not, but this is a very cold case. We need to start gathering information, and that egg will bring the crazies out of the woodwork if news of it leaks.” He looked directly at Jenny. “Don’t tell anyone else about this egg. It will be secured in the evidence bureau, and knowledge of its existence will be limited to only a handful of people. Do the two of you understand that?”
His tone irked her. “I’m fine with staying quiet for now, but you should know that Hemingway and I intend to file a claim to keep the egg. It was found on my property, and according to Florida law, that means I’m entitled to keep it unless someone with proof of ownership shows up.”
Tommy raised a brow. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Jenny. Once we identify the skeleton, the egg will probably go to his heirs.”
The odds of the dead person being the legal owner of a treasure like this was slim. It made the news when rich people disappeared, and whoever was in that cypress tree hadn’t caused a stir when he disappeared.
“I still intend to file a claim for ownership,” she told Tommy.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Wyatt grumbled as he pushed away from the wall. “Jenny, Hemingway, you’re both obligated to follow the sheriff’s order and keep silent about the egg.”
He slammed out of the room without another glance at her. Tommy opened the flaps of an evidence collection box and lowered in the egg, still resting in its terrycloth-lined cereal bowl. He issued another terse warning regarding staying quiet about the egg before leaving.
“Somehow I don’t think we’ll be getting Christmas cards from them,” Hemingway said after the rumble of Tommy’s departing cruiser faded into the distance.
Jenny shrugged. She was already a leper in Wyatt’s eyes, but perhaps the silver lining from his anger over the egg was that he hadn’t glanced again at the burned patch in the west grove.
It was a good thing that she and Hemingway had thoroughly documented what they found last night, because as Tommy drove off, she had a worrisome suspicion that powerful forces would try to ensure she never saw that egg again.