Gone and Done It Read Free

right to moan and groan a bit. I’ll do my job.” He swore again. “My wife’s gonna skin me alive. Hold on a minute while I have Tamika dispatch patrol units to your location.”
    I sagged against the side of my truck, wishing Carolina Byrd had put her entryway in a different location. What were the odds that the one place she wanted her tree planted was right on top of a dead body? And the body had been down there a long time. Those stout roots overlaying the skull hadn’t sprung up overnight.
    “Baxley? You there? Virg and Ronnie are on their way. They’re out by the four-way stop.”
    Exhaling a shaky breath, I blinked the tears from my eyes. Ten minutes and help would arrive. Ten minutes and I wouldn’t be responsible for this dead person. I could hold on for ten minutes. “Okay.”
    “What can you tell me? Can you identify the body?”
    Shadows lengthened around me. A marsh hen cackled eerily. “There’s not much left. And I only exposed part of the skull. I don’t know what else is down there.”
    “That means visual identification won’t work. We don’t have any local missing persons except for the Gilroy kid, and I doubt she’d be planted out there. It might be someone who was passing through. Say, do me a favor. Use your psychic mojo stuff and get me an ID.”
    My knees trembled. “I don’t want anything to do with this. Plus, soon as I get involved, you’ll tell me I’m interfering with police business.”
    “Go for it. I don’t see the harm here. If we’re down to bones, it’s more than likely a cold case. Probably not a homicide, or we’d have heard about it while we were growing up.”
    I gripped the phone tighter, wishing it was as easy to control my knee-jerk reaction to the naïve sheriff. “This isn’t something I do on command. I’m not a parlor trick people trot out at their convenience.”
    “Don’t get your panties in a knot. I just thought you could save us all some time and money.”
    A few months back,Wayne had asked me to become a deputy. I’d refused the job because being surrounded by the negative energy of criminals wasn’t how I wanted to spend my workday. I much preferred the good vibes from plants and animals.
    But that was before my well pump starting acting up, before I noticed that my daughter’s new-last-fall school pants were too short, before the dentist said Larissa needed braces. Any one of those expenses would break a single parent’s budget.
    The idea of receiving a steady paycheck had been worming its way deeper in my thoughts. With my deceased husband’s Army benefits tied up in governmental red tape because there was no body, I had to be creative to pay the bills. December had been a good month, chock-full of pet-sitting jobs, but January, February, and March stretched out before me like winter doldrums.
    I cleared my throat and jumped in head first. “Speaking of my special talent, I’ve been thinking. What are the chances of me hiring on as a consultant for the sheriff’s office?”
    “We don’t employ any consultants.”
    Despite his flat tone, I forged ahead with my idea. “This could benefit both of us. I need money; you need help solving cases. So? If I help you with cases, you’ll pay me?”
    He hesitated for a moment. “I’ll think about that. You could run up a lot of hours, sitting on your tail, in the name of trying to solve a case. Even if I used discretionary funding, it would eat up money the department could spend on equipment or supplies. You’d have to close cases before I paid you, and we don’t have many murder cases.”
    Way down Misery Road I saw flashing lights on two vehicles. Sirens blared. I huffed out my displeasure. “Dang. This doesn’t bode well for my checkbook balance. You can’t promise to pay me unless I close the case for you. I can’t promise that kind of result.”
    He sighed heavily. “That Virg and Ronnie comin’?”
    The warbling sirens were louder now. “Yeah.”
    “You okay?”
    I took