“No. Just the fact he didn’t acknowledge me at all when I waved.” Betsy tried to remember anything that might help. “Why?”
“What time would that have been?” he asked.
Time? She had no idea what time it was even now. “Maybe?—”
“Evans!” Kennett shouted as he straight-arm waved from the other end of the lot, then pointed at a dumpster.
“Wait here.” The deputy hurriedly walked in that direction, pausing only long enough to point other patrolmen toward the customer’s car.
She scanned the inventory again, then looked at Cain’s questioning profile. “I wonder what’s going on down there?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Probably just need to piece together what happened to that car.”
He hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t faltered one bit. Yet she noticed something about his stance had tensed. A second later his phone rang. “Yeah?”
Another second later, he jerked his head up as he turned in the direction of Deputy Evans and Kennett. Shoving the phone in his pocket, he ran in the same direction. “Stay where you are, Betsy.”
“What’s wrong? Did they find something?” She ran behind him.
“Go back. I told you to stay there.”
She kept pace with him. “Why?”
“We’ve got a dead body in the dumpster.”
Never flinching. Never slowing. She processed the information like a true lawman’s relative. Faced the statement and its implications head on. Her car lot had just become a crime scene, yet she’d kept her emotions intact.
Cain reached the container and hoisted himself to a straight-arm brace on the rim. Too short to see anything but the top part of the trash bin, Betsy dragged a ready-for-recycle tire over next to Cain. She stepped on top and peered into the dumpster.
A chill ravaged her body, and this time she gagged. Could this night get any worse? Hell no. Well maybe. Oh, hell yes. Nighttime could always get worse. Bad things happened to people at night. She knew that for a fact.
Shaking her head, she steadied herself against the metal of the dumpster. “That…that’s him.”
“Who?” Cain asked.
“The customer. Someone’s killed my creepy lookie-loo customer.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Betsy flung her hand out to push the snooze button. How could it be time to get up already? With all the police questions and the coroner’s removal of the body, she hadn’t made it home till after midnight. Hadn’t crawled into bed till almost two. She pounded the snooze button again. Why the heck wouldn’t the noise stop?
The noise stopped and was immediately replaced with the distant sound of her outgoing message on her answering machine. Guess the noise had been her phone. She glanced at the dial on her clock. Who the heck would be calling at five in the morning on a Sunday? The phone on the nightstand rang anew just as the cell phone which she kept next to her pillow at night vibrated.
Without looking for caller ID, she flicked the cell phone on to speaker phone. “Leave me alone. I need some sleep.”
“So do I. Not gonna happen any time soon.”
“Cain?”
Betsy rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling. He sounded wide awake and agitated. As he’d said yesterday when she’d hung on his doorbell, this better be good. She wasn’t in the mood for any more of his questions. “What do you want?”
The phone on the nightstand stopped ringing.
“Throw some clothes on and meet me at your front door in five minutes.” A phone in Cain’s background rang and he answered. “I’ve got her on the cell. We’re on our way.”
She closed her eyes, tugging the blanket over her shoulders. On their way? She wasn’t going anywhere right now except back to sleep. “This will have to wait till later. Bye.”
Click.
