Page 28 of Trouble Comes in Threes

“Did you or your husband bury an animal while you lived there?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We didn’t have any pets.”

“Is there any way your husband could have buried something?”

She pursed her lips. “You say it’s in a box?”

“A fancy carved box,” Neely Kate said.

Margaret shook her head. “No. Bill’s too cheap to bury something fancy. If he’d wanted to get rid of it, he would have sold it in a garage sale.”

“What about your children?” Neely Kate asked. “Could they have buried something?”

“My kids were toddlers when we lived there. I think I would’ve remembered owning a fancy box, let alone one of them burying it.”

“What about your neighbors?” I asked. I could tell she was getting annoyed with our questions, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask one more.

She snorted. “When we lived there, a feeble old man lived next door. I heard he died a few months after we moved out. There’s no way he would have been outside, burying a box in the dirt.”

“Well, thank you for your time,” I said, then handed her one of my business cards. “If you think of something that might help us find the owner, feel free to call or text me at this number.”

She took the card and looked it over. I knew she wouldn’t be calling. In fact, I suspected she’d be dumping the card into the nearest trash can as soon as we left, but it felt like the right thing to do.

We walked away, and once we were out of earshot, Neely Kate said, “What do you think?”

“I think she’s telling the truth. I don’t think the Fredricksons buried the box.”

“No, I meant, do you think there’s an animal inside?”

I stopped and turned to her. “It’s not big enough, Neely Kate.”

“So maybe it’s not a dog,” she conceded. “What if it’s a hamster or a gerbil? One of those would definitely fit into that box.”

Unfortunately, she was right.

“I mean, maybe we should take a moment to think this through,” she said. “How would you feel if someone showed up at the office with a box that held the bones of your momma?”

“No one’s showing up with the box holding my mother’s remains. She’s in a six-foot-long casket.”

“You know what I mean. For all we know, it could hold the ashes of a person.”

Crappy doodles. She did have a point.

I narrowed my eyes. “You just want to open the box.”

She shrugged, trying to look innocent. “Given this new train of thought, it seems like the right thing to do.”

I stabbed her shoulder with my finger. “If you want to call Jill Thatcher and ask her if she wants us to open the box to make sure there’s not a dead animal inside, go ahead, but I won’t be making that call.”

She stuck her lip out and crossed her arms, then let out a sigh. “I guess you’re right.”

“So now we move on to the next person on the list. Did you look them up?”

“Not yet.”

“So how about we finish shopping, then go to a restaurant and have a working brunch? Afterward, we can go to my consult at one, then talk to whoever we find next before your consult at three.”

“Sounds good.”

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