Witching For Love On Valentines Day by Colleen Cross

Author:Colleen Cross [Cross, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988272719
Publisher: Slice Publishing

CHAPTER 14

The next few hours were a blur. Aunt Pearl drove Lucky home in my Honda SUV. The Shady Creek Medical Examiner and the Shady Creek Police arrived soon after. The ME’s preliminary determination was that Steven McCoy’s cause of death appeared to be drowning, but that still needed confirmation. An autopsy would confirm whether water was present in his lungs, which would indicate that he had been alive when he entered the water. His manner of death, whether accidental, homicide, or something else, was still an unknown. That would be confirmed only once the autopsy was done. Determining the manner of death could be quite complex. The presence or absence of other injuries, as well as evidence at the scene, would all require analysis and assessment.

Given the unusual circumstances, the Shady Creek crime scene techs were called out and worked the scene, a precautionary evidence-gathering operation to definitively rule out—or rule in—foul play. Was Steve’s death a tragic accident, murder, or was there another cause, like the Rocklin curse?

I stood by the pool gate, shivering from my frozen, sore butt. I anxiously watched from a distance. I held a faint hope that if an engagement ring had really fallen into the pool, the police would surely find it. The alternative of it being gone forever was also a possibility. The idea filled me with dread. I inhaled the frigid air and tried to calm myself as I waited for Tyler to finish talking with the Shady Creek CSI techs. They seemed to be packing up with no apparent ‘ah ha’ moment of finding a diamond ring. The ME had already removed Steve’s body and it was enroute to Shady Creek for autopsy.

I wasn’t convinced that Steve’s death had been an accident. I didn’t believe it was the Rocklin curse, either. Each of those outcomes seemed wrong, but with my thoughts still scattered, I couldn’t quite figure out why I thought that way. I wasn’t ready to share my concerns with Tyler just yet.

Aside from the obvious quirk of Steve wanting to swim outside on a frigid February day, there were other things that troubled me. The patio was still covered with a thin layer of frost from the previous night. My bum print was still visible on the pavement, as were the footprints from the police, which were confined to a clearly marked path. I now realized that, prior to their arrival, there had been no other footprints around the pool—including no footprints that could have been made by Steve. The only visible prints were Mom’s, obvious because of her small feet as well as the distinctive tread on the soles of her clogs.

Steve was fit, but he was still a big man, heavy enough to have made marks on the frost-covered concrete. His tracks should have remained visible for hours. Yet Mom and I talked to him inside the house just a few hours earlier. Then Mom had seen him again, just minutes before she found him floating in the pool.

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