As if on cue, Katherine and Baxter’s adorable goldendoodle scratched at the door. Katherine rose to let him out. The sun was setting over the ocean as Archie came over and promptly laid his head in Toni’s lap.
“Look at you.” She rubbed his head. “How do you know?”
“He’s very empathetic,” Katherine said. “You probably have a lot in common. Henry sounds like a wonderful person who would make an excellent father. What’s the problem?”
“He’s too good.” Megan narrowed her eyes. “Right?”
Toni nodded. “I hate to be cynical, but I just feel like… no one can be that decent, right? What am I not seeing?”
Katherine smiled. “I think you’re overthinking this. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Like you said, it’s not like you have boyfriends coming out your ears. He works with your cousin and knows your family. You’re not going to be able to hide the pregnancy forever, and they’re gonna know who the daddy is.”
“I know. But just… for a while, can we pretend it’s not real? I’m trying not to get too attached to the idea anyway. The chances of miscarriage when you’re older are a lot higher.” The mention of losing the ephemeral baby already felt like a splinter in her heart.
Megan nudged her arm. “You want this.”
Toni took a deep breath. “It’s not what I imagined. At all. But I think it’s fate, you know? This is probably it. This is probably my last chance to be a mom. And I always imagined I’d be a mom. I think… I’d be a fool not to take it.”
Katherine’s smile was wide and glowing. “You’re going to make a wonderful mother.”
Toni blinked back the tears that threatened her eyes. “I don’t know how to do much domestic stuff, you know? And this is like… super domestic stuff.”
“You’ve got us,” Megan said. “We got your back; you can ask me anything. And I have three kids who will make awesome babysitters.”
“And I am a very enthusiastic aunt,” Katherine said. “I’m also excellent at helping with homework.”
Toni held up a hand. “Okay, can’t go there quite yet. Can we talk about the severed finger for a while? That’s a lot less scary than thinking about babies.”
After Katherine got a ginger ale for her, Toni sketched out her morning, starting with the call from Nico at the farm.
“So someone was messing with his tractor and lost a finger?” Katherine winced. “Painful. But why wouldn’t they have taken their finger and gone to the hospital? In all but the worst cases, they can usually reattach them.”
Megan made a face. “Really though? They don’t turn black and fall off?”
“That does happen, but the success rate is quite high. Around seventy percent or so. Vascular surgeons can do amazing work. They might have sent him up to San Francisco…” She turned to Toni. “I’m assuming, but I shouldn’t. Was it a male finger?”
“It looked pretty big to me. I’d say probably male.”
“Could you tell which one?”
She shrugged. “Not a thumb. That’s about it.” She closed her eyes. “No.”
“No what?”
“No, there’s something else about it that seemed different.” She kept her eyes closed. “What was it?”
“Not a thumb,” Megan said. “Was it a clean cut?”
“No. Ragged, like it had been torn off. Or… bitten?” That. That was what she’d noticed. “The nail was really neat. Like, really neat.”
Katherine frowned. “So probably not someone who works with his hands.”
“But someone who was trying to tamper with a tractor?” Megan shook her head. “I’d expect anyone who knows how to disable a tractor to have workingman’s hands.”
“Neat. Clean.” Toni could see it in her mind now. “I’m pretty sure he’d had a manicure. His cuticles were all neat like mine are when I get my nails done.”
“You get your nails done?” Megan asked.
“Every time a Dusi or Lanza woman gets married, I do.” She reached for another piece of bread. “He had a manicure, neat fingernails, and clean hands. No grime on the finger other than a little grease from the engine and dirt.”
“Who would want to mess with your cousin? Didn’t you say this would mess up his pinot noir harvest?”
“I texted him before I came over,” Toni said. “He’ll be okay since his neighbor loaned him his old rig. They’re going to have to work late and finish up first thing in the morning, but they did get most of the fruit today. And tomorrow morning shouldn’t be too cold.”
“Is Henry out there with them?” Megan asked.
“Don’t know why that would be important.” Toni nabbed a piece of cheese. “Drew Bisset was at the scene.”
“Isn’t he the one who predicted the Cove was gonna go back to ‘normal’?” Megan used air quotes around normal. “Oops.”
“I mean, people do lose fingers,” Toni said. “It’s probably one of the more common agricultural accidents.”
“But this guy was messing with someone else’s tractor, got his finger torn off, and left his finger in the tractor!” Megan said. “Who does that?”
“Makes you wonder,” Katherine said.
“Makes you wonder what?”
“Why?” Katherine lifted her shoulders. “If someone came into the emergency room with a detached finger, they’d ask him how he detached it, but I doubt they’d ask that many questions. He could just say he was fixing a tractor. They’d never know he was doing anything criminal.”
“So you’re wondering why he didn’t seek medical care?”
“And wondering why he left his finger behind.”
Toni said, “Maybe it fell in the engine and he couldn’t get it out because he was bleeding everywhere.”
“Was there a lot of blood at the scene?”
Toni thought about it. “No.”
“Hmm.” Katherine looked troubled.
“Maybe it got cut off and someone took it,” Megan said. “Or the finger got lost on the way to the hospital.”
“You think someone accidentally misplaced a finger?” Toni asked. “Maybe left it on the roof of the car and drove off like it was a cup of coffee?”
“Did any of the local clinics report someone coming in with a missing finger?” Katherine asked. “If they didn’t, that leads us to a whole other set of questions.”
“Like what?” Toni asked.
“Well…” Katherine’s eyebrows went up. “The most obvious one would be: Was the person alive when the finger was detached?”
Aaaaaand there went Toni’s stomach again. “I’m gonna say that’s something Drew can figure out without us.”
Chapter 4
Toni woke up on Saturday morning and stretched with languor in the sunbeam that crossed her bed. Her foot hit something, and Shelby gave her an annoyed yowl when she fell off the end of the bed.