he heat and the closed-in space finally got to him. Zach gave up and took off his shirt. His back ached from the bent-over working position and sweat covered his face, neck and torso. He'd known it was a crazy idea, finding the body of a ghost, but over the course of the past few weeks, he had actually come to believe they would find the little girl, Carrie Ann Whitt, buried under the house.

Inwardly, he cursed, called himself an idiot and a fool. There were no such things as ghosts. This was all just some crazy series of coincidences. He had half a dozen people down here breaking their backs and for what?

A big fat zero, no doubt.

He hefted another shovelful of dirt. With so many people working, they had covered more than three quarters of the grid squares on his printed plan. Everyone was hot and sweaty, tired and wishing this was over. But no one was willing to quit until they had covered every inch of ground under the house.

He was working again with Liz, though he had argued with her about it. He didn't want her down here busting her ass for nothing. He couldn't believe he had actually convinced himself they were going to find a body down here.

"Hey, Zach. What's that god-awful smell?" It was Sam, glancing around and oddly sniffing the air.

For the first time he noticed it. Not the foul, unmistakable odor of a rotting body. A thirty-six-year-old corpse would be decayed well past that stage. Instead the odor was heavy, cloying. Such a nauseating smell it made the bile rise up in his throat.

"Roses…" Liz said, looking across at him, a trace of fear creeping into her eyes.

"Smells awful," Ben said. "Like a decaying compost pile, only worse. And kind of sickening-sweet."

Miguel made a kind of hissing sound in his throat. "I have smelled it before."

So had Zach. The night he had come with Liz to the house.

"Maybe they're doing something to get ready for the Rose Festival," Sam said hopefully. "It starts next week."

Liz looked at Sam and shook her head. "She's here…" Her gaze darted around the tight space beneath the house. "The smell comes…whenever she appears."

Ignoring the nauseating odor and the conviction he heard in her voice, Zach jammed his shovel into the dirt, more irritated than ever. But instead of the blade sinking in, he felt a sharp jolt of resistance.

He tried again, more gently this time, felt an object beneath the blade.

"You find something?" Sam moved toward him beneath the floor joists as Zach jumped the two feet down into the square they had nearly finished digging.

"Hand me the hand rake and trowel." Kneeling in the dirt, he took the garden tools Sam handed him while the others moved toward him, forming a group around the edge of the hole. Liz stood above him, her face gone pale in the eerie glow of the lights.

Raul moved one of the light poles into a better position, fully illuminating the grid square, while Zach carefully began using the trowel, digging around the area where the shovel had hit, then using the rake to clear some of the dirt away.

"This is weird," Ben said, glancing around. "How can it be getting cold in here?"

Goose bumps rose across Zach's bare chest. How, indeed? he thought, remembering the night he had spent in the house, remembering what he'd read about cold spots and beginning to feel as uneasy as Liz. Around the hole, it wasn't just cold, it was freezing. Zach ignored it and continued to dig.

"Can you tell what it is?" Raul asked, leaning over the hole, looking a little uneasy himself.

"Can't tell yet." But little by little, the object began to appear, something dark that looked like a piece of rotten leather. There was something underneath it. "Toss me the brush."

Pete went to get it, brought it back and handed it to Zach. Clustered around the square on their hands and knees, everyone watched as Zach used the trowel, rake and brush to uncover more and more of what lay buried in the earth.

"What is it?" Ben asked.

Ignoring the freezing temperature and the sight of his breath in the lights, Zach dug a little more, brushed the dirt away, and uncovered a square piece of metal that rose above what appeared to be a hunk of rotten black leather.

"It looks like a buckle of some kind."

Liz made a sound in her throat. "Oh, God, it's a little shoe buckle." Her gaze was riveted on the rusted chunk of metal, and he knew in an instant what they had found.

"The day she disappeared…" Liz said, "Carrie Ann was wearing…" She swallowed. "She was wearing a pair of black patent leather shoes. I think that's what that bit of leather is, and that's the buckle that must have been on top of her shoe."

He dug a little more, revealing bit by bit what they now all believed lay beneath the dirt. The shoe was mostly gone, eaten away by time and insects, but there was enough of it to recognize what it had been. He brushed away more dirt, exposing the first glimpse of bone, and heard Liz's sharp intake of breath.

Undisturbed for all these years, protected beneath the house from animals and weather, the body would remain pretty much the way it had been placed in the homemade grave. Though most of the clothes would have rotted away and the flesh would be gone, the bones would remain in the position they had been in from the start.

The moment the anklebone appeared, Zach stopped digging. He carefully removed a little more dirt from the area and saw that a shinbone followed. Smaller than those of an adult, they could only be the bones of a child.

"Time to call the sheriff. Wouldn't you say so, Ben?"

Ben nodded gravely. Like everyone under the house, he was eager to leave. "I'll make the call right now." Moving toward the access hole in the closet, Ben hauled himself up and hurried off to use the phone.

They left the site exactly as it was. Crouching low, Raul and Pete followed Ben. They had almost reached the exit when Raul paused.

"That sounds like a train."

"Can't be," Sam said. "Track was abandoned years ago. The tracks aren't even there anymore."

The flashlight in Miguel's hand began to tremble. "It comes some nights…about this time. It comes down the track that is not there."

"I'm getting out of here," Pete said, scrambling toward the exit, Raul close on his heels. Following the boys, Zach grabbed his shirt and pulled it on over his head, noticing for the first time that the temperature had returned to normal. He reached for Liz's hand to help her out through the hole, and realized she was trembling. He looked over to see tears in her eyes.

"Time to go, love," he said gently, not wanting to be down there anymore than the boys.

Liz looked back at the shallow grave. "I knew she would be here…I knew it…but I prayed I'd be wrong."

Zach squeezed her hand. "It's all right, baby. If it's Carrie Ann, she'll finally be able to go home."

Liz nodded and the tears in her eyes ran down her cheeks. Zach helped her out of the opening into the house and climbed out behind her.

As much as he ached for the dead child and its mother, at the moment all he could think of was how the hell they were going to explain all this to the police.