In Her Bones (Hale Hastings Mystery Thriller #1)
Prologue
The rumble of the pickup truck hitting each and every divot in the dirt road caused Vera Carver to bounce up and down as she gripped the steering wheel.
She had the windows rolled down, her thin gray hair fluttering in the breeze.
At seventy-two her three children were always warning her that she needed to slow down, to settle into retirement and maybe pick up a safer hobby. Like knitting.
But that wasn’t Vera, and Vera always did things her own way.
“Move over, ya old bag!” a voice called from the passenger side window.
She looked over to find a man in his late forties driving alongside her, his beat-up Subaru Outback halfway in the ditch as he navigated along the wide dirt road.
He wore his seatbelt, which she could only see because he had removed all the doors on his POS car.
“Get stuffed,” Vera shouted back, watching with glee as Rusty Hargrove made a sour face at her. Then she hit the gas, flying out in front of him just in time. The wide dirt road narrowed down as trees began to line the edges.
Thankfully, Rusty had enough sense in his head that he didn’t take any risky moves just to ‘beat her’ to the campsite. They wouldn’t be the first ones to arrive, anyway.
Even as she had the thought, she caught up to the dust of another Gambler driving ahead of her, navigating the maze of logging roads to reach their final destination.
Vera wasn’t impatient the way Rusty was, and though there was room to go around the dusty white van covered in stickers and Christmas lights, she chose to follow behind instead.
She did steer just far enough into the middle of the road that Rusty couldn’t speed up and pass both of them just to tick him off.
No matter what her children said, Vera knew the truth.
Retirement was a death sentence if you couldn’t find a way to have fun and stay active.
That was why she had joined the Gambler 500.
That, and the fact that they did so much good for public lands.
Her husband Boyd had loved these forests, and they had spent so much time out here camping, fishing, and hiking.
Vera didn’t have it in her to do all that anymore, but she still had enough fight left in her to come out here with the Gambler crowd and help with the cleanup.
The fact that she already had Boyd’s old truck on hand meant she didn’t have to put any money into joining, either, which was the whole point of the Gamblers.
Spend less than $500 for your vehicle and haul away as much garbage as you can.
It was a rally cry she could certainly get behind.
As the van in front of her pulled to the side of the road, Vera blinked, realizing they’d already made it to their destination.
Careful not to slam on her breaks with Rusty right on her tail, Vera passed the white van at speed and then slowed down as she drove through the winding campground looking for a spot to park.
The place was filled with Gambler vehicles; cars and trucks that barely looked like they ran, decorated in the most insane ways.
She spotted a little Jetta that had a rocking chair tied to the top and she snorted.
Drivers were everywhere, laughing and shouting at each other as they met up with friends they hadn’t seen in a while.
And all around the campsites was a mess of knocked-over garbage cans, empty beer bottles, toilet paper in the trees, and half-burnt balls of tinfoil and paper plates scattered all around the fire pits.
She shook her head as she exited the campground proper and came back around to park on the opposite side of the road from Rusty.
Turning off the truck, she swung open the door with gusto before she carefully made her way down using the assisted step her son-in-law had installed for her after a near-fall last summer.
They did worry too much, but Vera appreciated it, nonetheless.
No use being too proud to take advantage of some help every once in a while.
Especially if it made the kids feel better about her going off on her own like she was the wayward child who needed supervision.
“Did ya get lost?” Rusty asked as she planted both feet squarely on the ground.
“No, but you should!” Vera shot back, and Rusty glared at her for a moment before he broke, an ear-to-ear grin splitting his face as he launched forward and threw his arms around her.
“Ah, I love it when you’re mean to me,” he said, stepping back and gesturing towards the group gathered at camp site one. “Shall we?”
Vera nodded and turned to leave, but Rusty paused to pull his keys out and hit the lock button on his car. It beeped twice, and Vera glanced behind them at the door-less Subaru before looking back at Rusty with a skeptical expression. Locking his car wasn’t going to do anything to keep someone out.
He wiggled his eyebrows, making a silly face at her, and Vera couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
“Alright, you cretin, let’s go,” she said, feeling breathless and vibrant. If only the kids would come out to one of these rallies with her, they would see what it was like. Maybe then they would understand.
They’d picked a good spot for it today. As far as Vera understood it, the campsite and surrounding woods had been absolutely trashed by some teenage rager the weekend before.
By the look of the knocked-over garbage cans and claw marks on the trees in the area, at least one black bear had come through as well.
The noise of the other Gamblers would have scared off any wildlife at this point, though, so she wasn’t afraid to wander off into the trees a little.
Carting her trash bag with her, Vera carefully stepped over fallen branches and avoided stepping on new saplings as she followed a trail of trash strewn from campsite four all the way back into the trees.
She hummed to herself as she worked, remembering Boyd’s voice as he strummed a guitar and sang to her over a campfire all those years ago. She always felt closer to him out here.
“He-ey mama,” she sang along to the memory, unselfconscious this far away from the others. Bending over she felt the old ache in her back as she plucked an empty chip bag out from under a pile of twigs and shoved it into her trash bag.
Straightening up, she groaned and stretched a little before she turned in a circle, looking for any last bits and pieces she may have missed. There was always something. A bottle cap, a bit of tin foil.
A plastic Halloween prop.
“Lord have mercy on these children,” she said to herself, putting on the thick southern accent of her own mother.
Boyd would have gotten a kick out of that.
He never had liked Henrietta Gowen and she hadn’t liked him either.
It was only their mutual love for Vera that had kept them civil in each other’s company.
The prop—a skeleton hand that looked like it could have been attached to the kind of full-sized plastic skeleton one might find in a science lab—rested on the ground beneath the edges of a blackberry bush. If it hadn’t been for the bone-white coloring, Vera might have missed it entirely.
“Guinevere!” Rusty’s voice called from behind her, and she turned to find him standing amongst the trees with a concerned look on his face. “You still kickin’ or did you kick the bucket?”
“I’m fine, Robert,” Vera replied, a note of irritation in her voice as she scooped up the plastic hand and headed back towards him.
Rusty was just as bad as her children sometimes, always checking on her.
He made a face at her for using his first name, but fair was fair.
If he wasn’t going to give her the courtesy of calling her Vera, she wasn’t going to bother calling him Rusty.
“What you got there?” he asked, nodding down at the toy in her hand.
“Those kids must have brought a friend to their party,” Vera joked, holding up the hand and pretending to swipe at him with it.
She froze halfway through the motion as she looked at the thing properly for the first time.
It was heavier than the hollow plastic she had expected and there was still skin caught between the fingers, gray and old. Dead.
She let go of the boney wrist with an embarrassing shriek, watching the skeletal hand drop to the dirt at their feet. Her whole body shook as she recognized it for what it was. Somewhere out there was a body with only one hand, and Vera Carver had found its match.