"Where is she? Where's the woman who lived here?"
He frowned, shook his head dumbly. I picked my way through the
wreckage, stepped out into knee-high brush. A gust blew my candle out.
In the dark I stared at my back yard, the crumbled pit that had been
the barbecue grill, the tangled thickets that had been rose beds--and a
weathered length of boards upended in the earth.
"What the hell's this...?" I fumbled out a permatch, lit my candle,
leaned close and read the crude letters cut into the crumbling wood:
VIRGINIA ANNE JACKSON. BORN JAN. 8 1957. KILL BY THE DOGS WINTER 1992.