Page 57 of Echoes at Driftwood Cottage

“Whatever. Can we go to bed now?”

She tittered with laughter and ran a hand along his arm. “You didn’t need to stay up. You could’ve gone to bed without me.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“You want fun. I’ll show you fun.” Rowan leaned in closer, her body brushing against his in the process.

Daniel tried to ignore the electric wave that shot through him, but he couldn’t, especially when she shifted and pressed her lips to his. “There’s a reward for staying up late.”

“It’s almost midnight,” he pointed out as she led him from the dining room into the bedroom. “I stayed up really, really late.”

She grinned and tugged off his belt, then pushed him onto the bed.

Chapter Fifteen

Exhumations were Brent’s least favorite part of the job. But he still got up early the next morning to get it done, showing up at Eternal Gardens to greet the county’s forensic exhumation team headed by Muriel Strafford, a forty-something forensic pathologist with graying black hair pulled back into a tight bun.

Muriel was a stickler for details. The two had worked together many times during his stint as sheriff in Santa Cruz County and more recent times, like today, when they’d teamed up to do exhumations in Pelican Pointe.

A gray, soupy fog hung in the air as the no-nonsense Muriel shoved a protective hazmat-looking suit into his chest. “At least it’s not pouring down rain. Right?”

“There is that,” Brent remarked while looking around for a place to put his stainless-steel coffee thermos. He used the base of a bronze statue to set his oversized mug while he slipped on the white suit over his street clothes.

“Seven-day forecast says we’re heading for warmer weather soon,” Brent noted, zipping up his protective gear.

“I hope so,” Muriel murmured. “I have a three-day surfing competition next weekend.”

“You’re always full of surprises.”

“That’s me.”

He watched her trudge off to instruct her team on how to set up screens around the child’s grave in preparation for the backhoe to start digging. Hoping to ward off curious onlookers, he scanned the horizon. But there was no one around to appreciate the extra precaution. Not at this hour. It meant that the transfer of the casket to the shell used on its way to the medical examiner’s lab would remain completely private.

Brent waited—pacing inside the screened-off area and sipping his coffee—for the digging to start. During the runup before excavation, two team members marked off the spot, laid down tarps for the dirt they would remove, and lined up the backhoe before scraping off the top layer of soil to make it easier to break the hard surface.

The process took almost an hour before the digger ever reached the casket. But even before that event, Brent had a sense that something was off, especially when he spotted Scott in the distance, overseeing the operation. No one else seemed to notice a ghostly figure hanging around, certainly not Muriel who seemed focused on the task at hand.

But, spooked by the sight, Brent did his best to ignore the goose bumps that ran up his arms, choosing instead to attribute the chills to the cool June morning.

Maybe catching a glimpse of Scott should’ve been a warning because it all went wrong from there. When the crane operator lifted the casket out of the ground to make the transfer to the shell, the lid popped open.

“Don’t anyone panic,” Muriel called out. “It happens sometimes when people go the cheap route on the casket.”

But when she stepped over to supervise, Muriel went very still. “Chief, you’d better take a look.”

That eerie feeling came back. Brent heard gasps coming from the crew and noticed the empty coffin.

He walked over to get a better look at the vacant casket—still suspended in mid-air by the crane—and glanced down into the hole. As he stood there glaring at the black earth, something stark white poked through the dirt. It was the slim bones of a hand.

“We have remains underneath the casket,” Brent bellowed before raising his voice louder. “Muriel, I need someone down there to dig. Now!”

In response, Muriel bobbed her head toward another team member. “Lower yourself in there carefully. Try not to disturb any of the bones. Looks like we might have an intact skeleton.”

On his knees, the forensic assistant brushed away the soil, revealing more bones that made up a complete arm.

Brent continued to watch in horror as Muriel’s team unearthed more and more bones until they revealed a rib cage. It wasn’t long after that discovery that the top of a skull appeared, then another.

His heart pounded in his chest as he watched Muriel gingerly drop down into the hole to get a closer look. For the longest time, she examined each intricate part of the skull while the rest of the team huddled around the hole, whispering among themselves, their faces grim.

---