Page 45 of Immortal By Morning
“You take work home and do it on your own time?” Crispin’s voice was heavy with disapproval.
“Now you sound like Barb,” she said, smiling faintly as she thought of the restaurant owner who had pretty much adopted her after she’d run away from home at almost sixteen. Smile widening, she told him, “She’s constantly giving me hell for working long hours past what I’m being paid for. She says I’m letting Gina take advantage of me.”
“I agree with her,” Crispin said firmly. “Everyoneneeds time to themselves to relax. It is important for your health. Gina should not be taking advantage of you that way.”
Abril clucked her tongue with irritation and shook her head. “Gina doesn’t order me to work after hours. In fact, if anything she’s constantly trying to send me home early to go chill when we aren’t busy,” she assured him, and then added, “But in return, when we are busy and I don’t get everything that I need to get done during work hours, I do take work home and do it there. But it’s my choice.”
Crispin didn’t look pleased, but didn’t argue the matter further, and instead said, “We will be able to identify most of them. Several had wallets or purses nearby with IDs. Many who did not bore past injuries that might help give them names. One of the skeletons had an obviously broken, but healed, ankle. One had their arm broken in the past, but it too was healed. There are screws in the hip of one victim, which will definitely ID them, but there was not really anything on any of them to tell us how they died.”
Abril’s lips pursed with dissatisfaction. It would’ve been nice for them to have been able to tell how the people died, but she supposed that was a lot to hope for. Sighing, she pointed out, “So, they could have been shot or stabbed in spots that would damage organs, but not bones. Or they could have been suffocated instead of choked. Or they could have been poisoned or drowned...” She shook her head helplessly, her mind coming up blank on any other ways a person could be murdered without leaving signs on their bones. There were probably a ton of them, though.
Crispin nodded agreement, but his gaze was wandering to the sliding glass doors again, and she wasn’t surprised when he said, “We should not need more than another twenty minutes or so to get the rest of the bodies out of the ground.” Turning back, he offered her a smile and continued, “Supper should be ready by then. In the meantime, you just sit down, relax, and enjoy your coffee.”
Before Abril could ask him what dinner was, he was pressing a quick kiss to her forehead and saying, “I should get back out there to help. We have bagged nine bodies so far, but every time we remove one, we seem to uncover another beneath it.”
“Nine?” Abril asked with horror. It had been bad enough at three or four, but nine? That was the size of a bloody baseball team. Gina was not going to be happy when she found out about this. In fact, she might very well decide she wasn’t living in a house where mass murder had taken place, and sell.
Abril almost groaned at the thought, because it would mean she would be the one getting the Realtor in, preparing the house for sale, going through tons of new houses to get a short list of ones Gina would like, then touring them herself, before Gina went out with her to see the best of the best and waiting forever for the woman to choose a house to move to. It had been a nightmare buying this place last summer. She was not happy at the prospect of having to go through it again.
The sound of the door closing caught her attention, and she glanced out to see Crispin crossing back to where he’d been when she’d first seen him out there.
And she hadn’t got to ask what was for dinner, Abril thought with a cross between annoyance and amusement.Deciding she’d find out for herself, she walked back to the built-in double ovens in the wall across from the far end of the island. She had felt the heat coming from them as she’d passed on the way to the coffee machine earlier, so knew that was where the smell was coming from.
The dials for both the upper and the lower ovens were on. She started with the lower oven, inhaling deeply of the lovely scents that immediately poured out at her along with the heat when she tugged the door open.
“Oh my,” she murmured with pleasure as she peered in at the contents. Three nine- by thirteen-inch ceramic baking dishes were inside. Each of them was filled to the brim with lasagna, the cheese on top bubbling, and beginning to turn golden.
Smiling, Abril closed that oven and next opened the upper oven door. She’d expected foil-wrapped loaves of garlic bread to go with the lasagna, so her eyes widened incredulously when she found two more large baking dishes of lasagna there.
Good Lord, had they invited the entire neighborhood for dinner? Probably not, she acknowledged as she closed the door. But they must be expectingsomecompany for dinner. There was no way they could imagine that seven men and one woman would eat five large lasagnas in one sitting. That was just crazy.
Shaking her head at the thought, Abril carried her coffee over to the island and sat down. She was debating turning on the TV to pass the time while she waited when her gaze fell on the digital clock that sat on the shelf below the TV. It was 5:50. Lilith’s dinnertime was always six o’clock.
This thought had her glancing around for the dog.She would’ve expected the Lab to be sitting, staring out the sliding doors at the men digging up her treasured bones. She had been lying on the living room floor next to her when she woke up from her nap. Abril knew the dog had started to follow her when she’d headed into the kitchen, but wasn’t sure where she’d got to since then.
Deciding it would be a good idea to find that out, she stood and headed out of the kitchen to search for Lilith.
Abril took a sip of coffee, her eyes sliding to the remote control by her hand. She briefly considered turning the television on to fill the silence in the house, which made her glance at the clock to see what would be available on the idiot box. It was 5:58. So, mostly just news. Which they should really call bad news, she thought, because they never had anything good to say on the news shows. Other than that, there would only be reruns of old sitcoms. None of which interested her. Besides she would have to feed Lilith soon.
The thought made her glance around for the Lab, wondering where she had got to. She was pretty sure Lilith had come into the kitchen with her after her nap, but the dog was now nowhere to be seen. Afraid of what she might be chewing on or getting into on her own, Abril stood and headed out of the kitchen to search for her.
Twenty
“Have we got them all?”
Lucian’s question had Crispin glancing up from closing the bag on the last body of bones they’d dug out of the ground. He followed his uncle’s gaze to his cousin Jeanne Louise Argeneau-Jones, who was pushing what almost looked like a lawn mower across the dirt. Appearances aside, what she was pushing back and forth across the excavation site in rows was not a lawn mower. It was a four-wheeled radar surveyor, or at least that was what Jeanne Louise had called it. All he knew was that it had ground penetrating radar and had shown them where the last eight bodies had been.
Lucian had apparently had the forethought to tell Mortimer to check with the science guys at Argeneau Enterprises to see if there was an easier way to find any skeletons buried next to the house without digging up the whole damned area. They would have basically had to dig out the entire foundation for the fifty- bytwenty-foot extension that was going in to be sure they got them all or at least ensure the construction crew wouldn’t be finding more bodies.
Jeanne Louise had been the answer. One of their top scientists at the family company, she’d arrived shortly after Abril had lain down to nap. Within moments, the men had all moved out into the tent to watch Jeanne Louise push her radar machine around. At first, they’d merely marked each spot she said the surveyor indicated there were bones, but once she’d finished a row and started on the next, they began digging to remove the skeletons marked behind her.
It had all worked rather well, and quickly. They’d dug out the original four and eight more bodies in the last couple of hours to a count of twelve. Their serial killer had been prolific. Jeanne Louise had just finished marking where the last body was and had headed inside through the back door to use the bathroom when Abril had appeared at the sliding doors. Now that they had finished removing the skeletons she’d found, Jeanne Louise was just completing a last run with the radar machine to be sure they hadn’t missed anything.
“That’s it,” Jeanne Louise said finally. Glancing to their uncle then, she added, “At least there are no more in the excavated area. Do you want me to check around outside the tent?”
Lucian was silent for a moment, his gaze moving to the back of the tent as if he could see through it to the undisturbed yard beyond. It hadn’t been dug up yet, but Crispin knew the addition was supposed to run the length of the side of the house and twenty feet out.
“Yes, and another ten feet beyond that,” Luciandecided. “We will get the bone bags in the van and take down the tent while you do that. Hopefully there are no more, but if there are, it is better to find out and deal with them.”
