Sara didn’t say anything and went into the house.
“Is she going to be okay?” Kate asked.
“Sure,” Jack said. “She just needs time alone to calm down. She’s had years of signing autographs and giving interviews, so it’s culture shock for her to come back here and be considered less than best. But to be fair to Lachlan, very few of those old-time bigots are left. Unfortunately, one of them happens to be the sheriff.”
He went through Sara’s backpack and withdrew a small camera. It was black with a silver top and it had dials and buttons on it.
“That looks like something James Bond would use.”
Jack grinned. “That’s what I thought when I first saw it. But it’s modern and it’s digital. I want to take some close-ups of those skulls.” He looked down at her muddy feet. “Mind helping me?”
“Not at all.”
“Not superstitiously scared?”
“Minds like the sheriff’s scare me more than bones.”
He nodded in agreement as he lowered himself into the big pit, then helped her down.
When they reached the roots, she watched him adjust the knobs and buttons. “I got the idea that you didn’t know how to work a camera.”
“Please don’t tell Sara that I know aperture from shutter speed.”
“She’ll be jealous?”
“Worse. She’ll put me to work. I’ll be made into her camera assistant and have to carry fifty-pound bags full of lenses. Last time she told me to shoot something, I left the lens cap on. I said I’d better just use my cell phone. That sends her into a ten-minute lecture.”
He picked up his crutches, handed her one, leaned on the other and began taking pictures. The light was fading fast.
Kate knew he was trying to put humor in the atmosphere after what the sheriff had said, but she wanted to know more. “It seems that you and I, the Wyatts and the Medlars, are the lowest in this town.”
Jack gave a smile, but it was forced and there was a muscle working in his jaw. “We are. I grew up with Henry Lowell as my stepfather, but that didn’t erase—”
“Your father? Alastair told me about him.” She could see that Jack didn’t like that and she tried to cover herself. “Alastair had nothing but good to say about you. Except that you were ugly.”
Jack didn’t smile. “I’m certainly not a blond Viking.”
“I exaggerated all that to distract my mother.” She lowered her voice. “My mother’s memory of Aunt Sara doesn’t seem to fit with the way she is now.”
“If you thought Sara was a pain, why did you come? For her money?”
Kate cut him a look that made him laugh. “Actually, I wanted to learn more about my father. I only recently found out that he had a sister. Money and being famous had nothing to do with it. And besides, I needed a change. It just all seemed to fall into place at the right time.” She paused. “What’s that?”
Jack had his eye to the viewfinder. “What’s what?”
“There. To your left. Sticking out of the mud.”
He looked but saw nothing, but then the light from his angle was different. Kate, still holding his crutch, made her way to the far side. “When we get back, I’m going to soak my feet in a pot of hot water. It’ll take hours to get the mud out from under my toenails.” Bending, she used her thumb and index finger to pick up what she’d seen. It was hard to tell what it was. She slogged back to Jack.
“Skeletons don’t scare you but mud does?”
“Last night it took me two hours to file and polish my nails, so yes, mud turns me off.”
Jack took the thing from her fingers, put it against his T-shirt and rolled it around to clean it. “Sure you didn’t drop this when you ran out of here after I untangled your hair? What did you think had you? An alligator?”
“Of course not!” she said much too quickly.
He was obviously amused by that. “They don’t climb trees. They—” He looked at what he’d cleaned. In an instant, the expression on his face changed from teasing to pure, unrestrained horror.
