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“Brittle Bones” won the 2024 Colorado Authors League award for Mystery: Cozy/Amateur Sleuth.

Chapter 1

Darcy Moreland glimpsed the yellow police tape flapping in the cool autumn wind and slid her baby blue Audi into a parking spot behind Detective Hank Nelson’s black Ford 150 pickup. She grabbed her notepad and clipped her press badge to the collar of her denim shirt as she ran up to the house and ducked under the crime scene tape.

“Hi. Darcy Moreland, KCWY News.” She flashed her brightest smile at the officer standing on the small, covered porch and gestured to her laminated ID. “What’s up?”

The uniformed woman by the door looked stoic. She was about the same age as Darcy, mid-twenties, and wore her glossy black hair cropped short.

“Can’t comment, ma’am.”

“Is it a death?  As I was driving by, I recognized Detective Nelson’s pickup out front. He works homicide, doesn’t he?”

“Can’t comment, ma’am. Please step behind the yellow tape.”

“Aw, come on. Throw me a bone here. I need enough information to call it into the station. A camera crew will be here eventually, and this way I can impress my boss. It’ll make me look enterprising.”

The young officer opened her mouth to reply, but Detective Hank Nelson interrupted, slamming through the wooden screen door.

“Don’t let her con you, Clark,” he said on his way past. “Her boss is one of her old college friends. Trust me. Enterprising wouldn’t even hit the top ten adjectives he’d use to describe Ms. Moreland.”

Hank took Darcy’s elbow and steered her off the three small steps of the porch.

Hank Nelson, infuriating as he was, was still disconcertingly handsome with his dark brown hair and icy blue eyes. They had started dating last summer during Cheyenne Days while they were both investigating the murder of a young girl. Just the look of him could make her heart beat faster and heat rise up her back. She could feel her cheeks flush.

“Who do you think you’re pawing?” Using feigned anger as a defense from her traitorous hormones, Darcy pulled her elbow from his grip and narrowed her eyes.

“I know exactly who you are.” Hank stared down from his six-foot something height, stuffed his hands into his back pockets, and smiled. The lines around his eyes crinkled in his tanned face.

Darcy squirmed. This man had seen her almost naked last summer. It was distressing and distracting. She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus.

“Right now, I’m a reporter,” Darcy blustered, “and I would like to know what is going on at this crime scene.”

“I’ll just bet you would.” Hank bowed to the inevitable. “For the record, we know nothing yet except that there is a body we are extracting from the basement.”

“Body? As in dead body?”

Hank laughed. “If it were alive, we’d walk it out.”

“Feeling sassy this morning, Nelson?”

“That would be Detective Nelson to you, Ms. Moreland. Right now, I’m a detective and I would like you to move your cute little butt away from my crime scene.” He smiled at her when she winced. “We have no more information to add.” He lifted the tape and nudged her through to the other side, turned, and walked back up toward the house.

“What do you mean, extracting? Was it buried?” Darcy raised her voice but didn’t dare follow him beyond the yellow tape.

Hank turned and walked back. “Yes, it was buried. A contractor found it when he was checking the foundation. We are done now.” 

“Don’t you wish.” Darcy tapped the station’s speed dial number.

“Wendy, Darcy Moreland. Can you have Zach send a crew to 515 East 18^th? We have a body buried in a basement. Thanks.” Darcy turned her phone off and grinned into Hank Nelson’s adorably frustrated face.

“I’ll just wait out of the way till my crew gets here.” She propped herself against the front fender of her car.

“Do that.” Hank said and disappeared into the house.

She might as well get a feel for the neighborhood and the house, she thought. Glancing down the street in both directions, she admired the golden yellow of the leaves broken by an occasional splash of red on the trees lining both sides of the street. Old-growth trees matched the old houses on both sides of the street. Her eye followed the path down to Celebration Park where the street dead-ended for about three blocks.

The park, originally called City Park, because it was the only park in Cheyenne at the time, had the obligatory swings and things for the kids, but it also boasted a small lake that was inhabited by a large community of ducks and geese. Darcy remembered reading that when it was first allocated as a park, it had a series of canals that young courting couples could float away on a lazy summer day. Hampered by floods later, the boats disappeared, and the canals were joined into one lake.

The houses fronting this old neighborhood street were a hodge-podge of Victorian gingerbread and red-bricked-bungalows. 515 was of the latter variety. Although two story spacious, it squatted on the corner plot like a roosting hen.

The eaves, painted a dark green to match the wood trim on the door and window frames, hung low over the small front porch. On either side, the newel posts and short banisters looked like guards rising out of red-bricked bases rather than welcoming arms.

No peeling paint or broken gutters, Darcy thought. Whoever owned it maintained it well. The yard was a little scruffy, but that could just be the result of the warm fall weather and the continuing drought that was always plaguing the Plains states.

Darcy breathed in the air, savoring the soft, musty, dried-leaf smell of the season. Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the welcome glow of the sun. She leaned back across the hood of her car and let the warmth soak through her. The crash of a door slamming wrenched her from her autumnal daze.

Shading her eyes from the glare, she saw a white van emblazoned with the KCWY News logo splashed along the sides. Darcy took two steps toward it before she froze, her welcoming smile slipping from her face.

“So, sweet cheeks, where’s the action?” Bryce Adkins, Darcy’s least favorite person at the station, sidled over from behind the van and propped his butt against the front fender of her car.

Darcy shot Adkins an I-want-to-barbeque-your-balls-for-breakfast look. “Off the paint job,” she said, waving her hand as if batting away an annoying bug.

Adkins stood but watched the front of the house like a cat at a mouse hole. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

“Seriously,” Darcy planted herself, blocking his line of vision. “This is my story. I called it in, and I requested a crew, so back off Adkins.”

Adkins aimed his perfect Chiclets smile at her. Darcy wondered for a moment if all that smarmy charm actually ever worked on anyone, anytime.

“Technically Darcy, you haven’t checked in at the station yet, so I convinced Zach to give this to me. I think he has you slated to do a feature on the quilting club or something like that.”

Darcy clamped her jaw shut, and by sheer force of will swallowed the inappropriate phrase that wanted to fly from her mouth. Adkins looked so smug; she knew what he was telling her was essentially true.

“Dead body found in the basement. Knock yourself out.” Darcy turned away and pulled out her phone. Hitting Zach Horton’s number on speed-dial, she listened to it ring as she stomped through the rustling leaves in the gutter.

Pickup was swift. Darcy smiled.

“Yeah, Darcy. I figured it was you. I had to give it to Adkins. His uncle said he wanted to see him get more important face time. Since Uncle Arnold pays both our salaries…” Zach dribbled off, surprised Darcy hadn’t interrupted him yet. “Darcy? You still there?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I figured it was something like that. Call you back in a minute. Okay?” Darcy stuffed her phone in the back pocket of her black dress pants. She moved toward where Adkins stood by the side of the house and listened to his ramblings for a moment. 

“It is our guess that this house has been the scene of a murder, but the police are, at present, unavailable for comment and we don’t have confirmation of whether the body is that of a male or female. We will continue to follow this story for you. This is Bryce Adkins reporting for KCWY News.”

Nice non-story story, she thought as she passed. Darcy’s focus was on the coroner she recognized from last summer. He had just finished a phone conversation, then walked over to talk to an investigator on the scene. Darcy edged closer, keeping her back to them.

“Close down the scene as soon as they’ve finished taking photos and got whatever samples they need, Detective Connors,” the coroner said. “I’ve called Dr. Dan Moss at the Community College to do a consultation, but I doubt he’ll be able to tell us too much since he’s only a regular anthropologist. We’ll probably have to send the remains to Laramie. I think Professor Villars at the university is the closest forensic anthropologist we have, but I like to use the local boys first.”

“Okay, Chuck. And thanks.” Detective Connors disappeared back into the shadowed dimness of the house without ever noticing Darcy.

Walking up to the coroner, Darcy stuck her hand out. “Darcy Moreland, KCWY News.  I was wondering if you would mind answering a couple of background questions for me?”

Charles W. Thompson peered closely at Darcy’s laminated ID clipped to her shirt. He was a tall man in his late forties, Darcy guessed. Prone to premature balding but what little fringe left was pale blond and went well with washed out blue eyes. He looked like he’d been left out in the sun too long. Mr. Thompson looked behind her for a camera crew and relaxed when he didn’t see one.

“It depends, Ms. Moreland. What would you like to know?”

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Type of Story: Review

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