A Perfect Square Read Free Page A

body floating a few feet away. “Reuben, any idea what happened here?”
    The big man turned now, and Deborah had the oddest sensation that he’d been preparing himself for this moment, which was a ridiculous idea unless he had something to hide. Of all the people she knew, Reuben was the most forthcoming. He worked and he worked. There was little else in his life, and she couldn’t remember a time when there had been.
    Of course he visited with his family on Sundays, but other than that he didn’t even like leaving the farm.
    “No,” Reuben said.
    Taylor stood and backed away from the girl. Deborah understood enough about murder scenes to realize he didn’t want todisturb any evidence. Pulling out his pad and pen, he turned to her. “You found her first?”
    Deborah knew Taylor was testing her story, since she’d just told him who found the body. She shook her head and repeated what she’d said a moment earlier. “No, Esther did. We were driving up with a casserole, and we’d stopped to pick some flowers. Esther and the children walked over here while I waited with the buggy.”
    “You had no indication that something was wrong?”
    Deborah smoothed out her apron, looked back at the children. “Actually Cinnamon was acting a bit
naerfich.
I thought there might be a snake nearby.”
    “All right. So Esther had been here with the kids — “
    “Maybe five minutes when I heard her scream.”
    “And what happened next?”
    Deborah felt Reuben studying her as closely as Taylor was. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to replay the scene, as if she were seeing the way a quilt would piece together. She knew the first time she told this story would be the most accurate, as each retelling of a story tended to stray further from the truth.
    She’d heard Callie say so, based on the Agatha Christie books she read, but didn’t Deborah know it from experience with her own children?
    Pulling in a deep breath, she pushed on. “I ran down the path, thinking one of the
kinner
might be hurt. But Leah was clutching Esther’s hand, and Esther was the one who had screamed. Joshua had plopped down on his bottom in the grass.”
    Her pulse began to accelerate as she allowed her mind to drift back over the scene. Even though she was standing by the girl’s body now, telling of its discovery seemed somehow more urgent.
    Why was that?
    “And then?” Taylor didn’t step closer. His voice was calm, focused, recording the facts that would begin to lead them down the path to the discovery of this girl’s fate.
    “Esther had one hand over her mouth, the other hand holding Leah’s. When I arrived by the water, she pointed toward the pond, so I followed her gaze. I thought maybe she’d found a dead animal or … or, I don’t know what. I never thought it would be a person … a girl.”
    Spiders tiptoed down her spine as she voiced the thought she’d been holding back. “What if she’s someone we know?”
    “We’ll find out soon enough,” Taylor said, his voice grim. “So are these Esther’s footprints?”
    He pointed to the imprints in the mud leading down to the body.
    “No.” Deborah felt the heat creep up her face. “I stepped a bit closer to see if I might know her. I’m sorry if I messed up your crime scene.”
    “Don’t worry about it. You had a natural reaction to be concerned about the girl. Looks to me like the grass was trampled down on this side by Esther and the kids, but we’ll have the crime techs check their shoe sizes to confirm that. I noticed a wider path going around the other side — “
    “
Ya
. Looks as if someone had dragged something through the weeds.”
    Taylor paused, his eyes assessing her solemnly. “You didn’t walk that way at all?”
    “No. I stayed here, on this side.”
    “Should be able to collect some forensic evidence then. I suspect whoever dropped her off at this site — or killed her here — did so from the pond’s other side and she floated this