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bounced around and it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at.
    I gasped.
    A faint ringing sounded in my ears and the acute pain in my knee throbbed in time with my racing heart. My fingers, frozen in curious horror, clutched the edge.
    Someone had already filled the bottom of the cistern with cement. And lying beneath it, with a silent scream etched in stone, was the outline of a body. Splayed fingers pressed frantically alongside the face, as if a living person had been trapped under ice and now tried in vain to smash through. A ridge of toes formed one foot, the rounded tip of a shoe, the other.
    I couldn’t rip my gaze away. An uncontrollable shiver coursed through me. I ground my fingers into the ledge, but nothing could stop the scream from coming. The piercing noise bounced against rock and concrete as I gave voice to the stifled cries of the body so long forgotten.
    The scream came to a stop. I felt the blood drain from my head. I loosened my death grip and slid slowly down the rock wall. My cheek scraped along, soaking in whatever coolness it could gather from the stones as I fought back the darkness.

  5
    I crouched against the wall of the cistern in a near fetal position.
    “You okay?” Lloyd shook my shoulder. My temple bounced against the same sharp rock that had nailed my knee.
    I swatted at his hand. “How can I be okay? There’s a corpse in my cistern.”
    I breathed. In. Out. In. Out.
    Why my basement? Why couldn’t they have buried the body in somebody else’s basement? No wonder I’d gotten such a deal on the home. I was living on top of a cemetery.
    Lloyd scratched his head. “I kind of figured you bumped your knee when you let out that scream. I didn’t realize you’d hit your head.” He turned to the gaping men beside him. “Dial 9-1-1, Josh. I think she’s got a concussion.”
    His red-haired assistant flipped open his phone and dialed.
    I lifted my arm to wave off the call, but the kid was already giving the address.
    “I don’t have a concussion,” I said. “Just tell them to bring a jackhammer and a body bag.”
    I leaned my forehead against the knee that wasn’t throbbing. Like I really needed to start my life in Rawlings exhuming someone’s cast-off relative from the nether regions of my home. If wind of this got around, I’d have a devil of a time trying to sell the place.
    Whiner, I chastised. Go ahead and fling a body at me. I’d handle it, and even make it to my advantage somehow.
    I looked up. The kid had ended the call. The trio stared down at me. The looks on their faces reflected the same shock and outrage that I’d felt moments earlier. As well they should. Rick Hershel had a bunch of explaining to do. How dare he not mention the body on the seller’s disclosure?
    I slapped a hand to my mouth. “Oh, my word.”
    The men lunged back as if afraid I’d vomit.
    Could the body be Jan’s? Would Rick have buried his own wife in the basement? Jan hadn’t been available for the closing, after all. And the concrete at the bottom of the cistern was of fairly recent vintage. Probably poured when the rest of the waterproofing had been done a year ago, or maybe even after. Who knew how long Jan had been missing?
    Rick had certainly had the opportunity.
    I hated to think about it. The guy had seemed scruffy, but nice. And so lost without his wife. The split had definitely been her idea, not his.
    Perhaps theirs had been, like Heathcliff and Cathy’s, a case of obsessive love. That would qualify as a common enough motive for murder, even in this modern day and age.
    I dusted grime from the floor off my hands. You just couldn’t tell by looking at people if the heart of a killer beat in their breast.
    Poor Jan.
    I held out an arm to the contractor. “Would you mind? My knee feels like its ready to burst.”
    He reached down and pulled me to my feet.
    “What a mess.” I shook my head and leaned against the wall of the cistern. Even through the stones, I could