Annie had forgotten that she’d done that.

“I figured, what if something happened to the guy’s head before anybody got here?”

Annie closed her eyes, then slowly opened them again. “First of all, it’s not a head. It’s part of a skull. And what could possibly have happened?”

Lucy pursed her lips. “Lot of things! A dog could have come along and carried it away. Or a coyote.”

“We don’t have coyotes here.”

“Somebody saw one in Edgartown.”

“And you think it swam across the harbor?”

“I doubt they would have let him on the On Time. Not unless he had a round-trip ticket.”

Jibber-jabbering with Lucy should have provided some distraction, but it didn’t. All the while, Annie wondered whom—or what—the skull might have belonged to, how long it had been in the seaweed and on the shore, and what the circumstance of death had been.

“Hey,” Lucy added, “wouldn’t it be creepy if you found out the guy was killed while you were sleeping in your new place that’s a few short steps from the beach?”

Annie shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “That’s enough, Lucy. I’m going inside; my feet are cold. It’s too early in the season to be shoeless in the sand.” But as she turned to leave, Earl ambled over.

“This is a fine way to spend a spring afternoon,” he said. “And not too great for business.”

“At least we haven’t opened yet,” Annie said. She hoped she’d also asked the drivers of the “official vehicles” to shut off their flashing lights; North Neck Road had seen enough of those.

“It might take them that long to finish, though,” he said.

Then Lucy stepped into the conversation—of course she did. “Will they put the guy’s head in one of those big black bags like on CSI?” she asked. “Or do you think they have smaller bags for body parts?”

“Lucy,” her grandfather said sternly, “be nice.”

Annie noticed that Lucy had glanced over at Jonas as she’d spoken. Perhaps she’d hoped to garner some attention from Taylor’s good-looking son.

“I heard the Statie say he’d notify the medical examiner in Sandwich on the Cape,” Earl said. “If he has to come over, it’s going to take a while.”

“Let’s hope not,” Annie said. She knew little about Cape Cod, other than it was the southernmost chunk of land in Massachusetts and was attached to the mainland by two bridges. It was also the last leg of the trip from Boston to Woods Hole to get the ferry to the Vineyard. In spite of all the times she’d driven the route, she hadn’t paid much attention to the Cape other than to feel it seemed to take forever to get from the Bourne Bridge to the Steamship Authority terminal.