There was no pulse.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Maggie asked.
I turned to look at her. “Yes,” I said.
“Should we…pull him out of the water?”
I shook my head. “No. I think we’ve already touched more than we should have.”
She held out her hand and I grabbed it, stood up, and climbed carefully back up the steps. Maggie glanced back over her shoulder at the body and then we went out into the storeroom. I wiped my hands on my jeans and pulled out my cell phone. She slumped against the wall.
“We should probably go wait by the front door,” I said after I’d made the call.
Maggie nodded without saying anything and we made our way back to the front of the building. I leaned by the door, watching for the first police car. I was afraid if I sat down I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. She dropped onto the steps, leaning her elbows on her knees.
“What was Jaeger doing in the basement?” she said after a minute.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Seeing how much water there was for some reason, maybe.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. We were just down there at the meeting a couple of hours ago.”
“You said that you didn’t think Jaeger was going to let this sponsor thing go. Maybe he was looking for—something, I don’t know—something he could use to make his case.”
Maggie shook her head. “In the basement? In four feet of water?”
A police cruiser came around the corner then, no siren, pulling in at an angle behind my truck. The paramedics were right behind them. I wasn’t really surprised when Ric and his partner got out of the ambulance and grabbed their gear.
I’d seen the police officer that had responded around town and in the library a few times with his kids. He was tall, with dark hair cut close to his scalp and the kind of posture and assured bearing that suggested he was ex-military.
Heller? No. Keller. I couldn’t remember his first name.
Maggie got to her feet and pulled out her keys. “I’ll take them,” she said as I opened the door. “You should sit down.”
“Ms. Paulson?” the officer asked. I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes.
I nodded. “The uh…body’s in the basement.”
Maggie gestured toward the storage room. “This way.”
Ric nodded hello, but didn’t say anything.
“Please wait here, Ms. Paulson,” Officer Keller said. The three of them followed Maggie through the empty store to the back of the building.
Movement out on the street caught my eye. Another vehicle had pulled in at the curb. I realized it was Marcus’s SUV just as he got out of the driver’s side.
I met him on the sidewalk, trying hard not to limp. “Hi,” I said. I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that this was the second body I’d found in as many days.
He gestured at the building. “Hi. What happened?”
“Maggie and I found one of the artists—Jaeger Merrill—in the…uh basement. It looks like he fell down the stairs and drowned.”
He exhaled slowly. “That’s two bodies in two days, Kathleen.”
I shifted uneasily—and painfully—from one foot to the other. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t blaming you,” he said, quietly.
I cleared my throat. “I thought you’d still be out at Wisteria Hill.”
Marcus shook his head. “Dr. Abbott and her team are finishing setting up a grid to search the area where you found the remains. There isn’t anything I can do out there right now.” He gave me a quick, appraising once-over. “How are you?”
“Just a little stiff.”
His eyes narrowed as though he didn’t quite believe me but for once he didn’t challenge what I’d said.
“Marcus, do you think those bones actually could be Roma’s father’s?” I asked.
His mouth moved and he pulled a hand back over his hair before answering. “This stays between you and me,” he warned.
I nodded. I’d kind of expected to get his stay-out-of-my-case speech. Maybe we were finally moving beyond that.
“Dr. Abbott doesn’t think it’s a smallpox burial site. She doesn’t believe the bones are that old.”
I rubbed my fingers over my bandaged thumb, picking at a loose edge of adhesive tape with one nail. “So it’s possible?”
He shrugged. “It’s just way too soon to tell.” He gestured toward the co-op building. “So why were you here?”
By now I was used to the way the conversation could abruptly change course with him. I looked back over my shoulder. “I brought the truck down to help Maggie take some things over to her studio at River Arts. She had some orders from the co-op Web site to pack.”
“Okay.”
“After we had the truck loaded, she wanted to check on the basement again. Larry Taylor may have a line on a pump, but there’s more rain in the forecast and there’s a lot of water down there already.”
“Who found the body?”
I stuffed my hand in my pocket before I could pick off the tape that was holding the gauze in place on my thumb. “We both did. When I realized Jaeger was dead, Maggie and I went out into the storeroom and I called 911.”
He nodded and looked around as though maybe there was something important here on the sidewalk. “The body was in the water?” he asked.
“Partly. His…feet were on the stairs. He…uh…was faceup, just the eyes and nose out of the water. There was water on the steps. They’re old—just painted wood—without any safety treads so they get slippery.”
He nodded again. Marcus never wrote anything down, that I’d ever seen, but he remembered everything. His blue eyes were focused on my face, but I could see that his mind was already working, shifting through my words. Just then Ric came out the door, stopping to pull off a pair of blue latex gloves. He looked at Marcus and gave a quick shake of his head.
“Do you want Maggie and me to stay around?” I asked.
Marcus patted his pocket. Looking for his phone, maybe? “No you can go. Where are you going to be?”
“At River Arts for a while,” I said, pointing down the street. “Then the library. Then home.”
“I suppose I’d be wasting my time to suggest you take it easy for the rest of the day?” he said, almost smiling at me.
“Pretty much,” I agreed, and I did smile back at him.
Ric joined us. Like Marcus he looked me over quickly. “How’s the ankle?” he asked.
“Better, thank you,” I said.
“What about your thumb?”
I pulled my hand out of my pocket and held it up so he could see the bandage was still in place.
“Try to keep it dry,” he said.
I nodded. Ric turned to Marcus and Marcus looked at me. I was about to be dismissed. “I’ll talk to you both later,” he said.
“All right,” I said. Maggie was waiting by the door and I walked over to her.
“I thought you said Marcus was out at Wisteria Hill,” she said.
“He was, but the anthropologist has more work to do out there. It’s going to be a while before they figure out…” I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.
“Before they figure out if it’s Roma’s father.”
I thought about what Marcus had said. “They need to be certain how old the remains are first.” I was picking at the tape on my thumb again without realizing it. I jammed my hand back in my pocket.
Maggie looked past me at Marcus and Ric still talking on the sidewalk.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Is it okay?”
“Uh huh. Marcus said we could leave. He’ll have some questions later.”
“I should give him my keys,” Maggie said, running a hand back over her short blond hair so she looked a little like a poodle that had just had its head scratched.