The Suggestion Box (Volume 1)

Part 2: Two Sisters (3)

Based on the following Suggestions:

Names: Tammi & Tina Carmody
Places: Pierce's House, rural countryside
Times: 4AM, Early morning
Objects: Bloody shirt, tabby cat, pile of bones

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Tina immediately dove for the telephone and rang up the Flathead Lake sheriff's office. Once she received confirmation that one of the lawmen would make his way out to the little boarding house, she hung up and went to find her sister.

Tammi was in the kitchen, filling the sink with water. Tina reached in front of her and stopped the faucet.

"Would you mind explaining what is going on?" she demanded of her sister. "Where did you get that shirt?"

"I... found it," Tammi murmured blankly, "outside." She moved to dunk the garment in the water. Tina caught her wrist.

"Stop! Don't you know what that is?" Tina asked.

Tammi blinked at her sister. "It's blood!" she said. "I've got to clean it off!"

"No, you goose! It's evidence!" Tina pronounced the word with especial vigor. "We've got to keep it just as it is till the Sheriff gets here." She bundled the moist fabric into a sheet of butcher paper and carried it back into the front room.

"Meanwhile," Tina continued, "you can tell me just what happened. Starting—" she raised a hand when Tammi began to speak, "with this morning. That was far too early for even you to awaken, and you've been in a dither all day! Tammi, what happened?"

With a heavy sigh, Tammi explained everything to her sister: the clap in the night, the sound of the cat (though she left out the part about the search for the phantom intruder), and the discovery of Esmie in the early dawn.

"So," Tina interposed when she had finished, "When you told me you had been up early to let Esmie in, you had been up for over three hours?" The horror and concern in her eyes made Tammi uneasy.

"I did nod off at the table for a bit, just before you came down," Tammi supplied softly.

Tina reached forward and grasped her sister's hand. "Oh you poor dear! You're going to bed early tonight, I'm sure! Anyway, I know the part when I came down and let the cat in and saw the bones. What happened after I closed the door?"

Tammi saw that her sister was trying to help her establish the story in preparation for the arrival of the Sheriff. It wouldn't do to forget any detail, especially if there was a murderer on the loose. She accepted her sister's coaching. Sweeping a silvery lock up into the dark mass of hair where it belonged, Tammi recalled every detail.

"I walked out and was just going to pick up the dead bird—it still had a few feathers on it; I think it might have been a quail—from the road, and when I looked up, I saw the shirt in the bramble... only at the time, I didn't know it was a shirt."

"All right," Tina prompted her along, "And what made you go and see what it really was?"

Tammi fought to keep herself calm; she could feel the old fears creeping back up, her demeanor slipping at the memory. "Well, I—I remembered the clap, and then I realized it must have been a gunshot I heard...though it was the first time I let myself think that. I so badly wanted it to be just a branch breaking or something tame like that. I walked over there, picked up the white thing—" Tammi gulped. "And then I saw the blood. It was all over the branch. And then it was the first time I noticed that the shirt had blood on it." She looked at Tina, "Then I came inside and found you."