Chapter 5
Once the morning shift was over, I revisited my To Do list. I hadn’t crossed anything off of it, but today I was determined to do just that—starting with photographing the park for my and Miguel’s engagement party. I’d gone home to pick up Agatha, and now my little fawn pug and I hiked uphill toward Skyline Park. I’d parked down by the pier so Agatha could get in a little extra trotting time. Her tail was curled into a spiral, and her bug eyes practically glowed with pleasure. There was nothing better than a beautifully temperate summer day in Santa Sofia.
We maneuvered around tourists. I knew they were tourists by the Santa Sofia swag they wore, the way they dillydallied, cupping their hands at their foreheads to gaze through shop windows, and by how they exclaimed at the wafting breeze kicked up by the Pacific. The locals weren’t exactly jaded by the breeze and the faint crashing of the waves, but they weren’t in constant awe, either. Truthfully, we just kind of took it for granted because the bliss of living in coastal California was our everyday life. We could appreciate it without experiencing the rapture of a tourist.
I say this, but I admit that I walked on the beach regularly, always mesmerized by the vastness of the ocean and the frothing whitecaps slicing through the water. I had a favorite spot near the pier where Baptista’s Cantina & Grill, an upscale Mexican seafood restaurant on the pier, was located.
This spot on the beach, and these huge rocks dotting the landscape, had been my mother’s favorite place to think and just . . . be. It had become mine, too. Agatha and I started there, then took side streets to avoid some of the meandering people.
The farther from the beach we got, the fewer people we encountered. On such a clear day, everyone wanted to be on the sand or in the water. The businesses along Pacific Coast Highway and near the public beaches were bustling. But Agatha and I, we were heading east and away from all that congestion.
By the time we reached Skyline Park, we were both panting. Those hills are harder to climb than they look. They can be killer. We stopped at the entrance to the park, where there was a human and dog drinking fountain. I turned on the low spigot for Agatha. As she lapped, I bent to the fountain to quench my own thirst.
I turned my back to the park and took in the panoramic view of the Pacific before me. From the vantage point of the park, it was spectacular. Once I’d gotten my fill, I turned on my heel, gave Agatha’s leash a gentle tug, and we headed into the park. Before long, I was clicking away, taking shots of the park from different angles. It was as much an exercise in capturing the light as it was in envisioning the space filled with friends and family.
The white gold of the engagement ring on my left hand glinted in the sunlight. My father had proposed to my mother with this ring. Thirty-nine years later, Miguel had proposed to me with it. He’d hidden it in an ornament that he’d surreptitiously hung on my Christmas tree, surprising me with it on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I had to pinch myself. I’d gone to college in Austin, Texas, started a business, married Luke Holden—then divorced the cheater—and had moved back home to Santa Sofia after my mother’s tragic death. Rekindling a relationship with Miguel had been the furthest thing from my mind, yet that’s exactly what had happened, and now happiness fluttered inside me like joyful butterflies flapping their colorful wings.
Because now Miguel and I were getting married! In a million years, I never could have predicted a future with Miguel as one of the outcomes of moving back home. It goes to show you, life is full of unexpected surprises.
Before the wedding, though, came the engagement party. And Skyline Park was the perfect location for the shindig. I spun around. Whoever had done the landscape design for the park deserved an award. Pink and white crepe myrtles lined the walkway, creating a veritable wall of flowers encircling the gazebo. Columbine, daisies, and native orange and yellow poppies gave low-lying color. Meticulously shaped boxwoods lent a sense of permanence to the flowing beds, and beautiful white flowers hung like bells against a decorative lattice wall.
The gazebo itself was the location of the town’s Christmas tree. It didn’t come close to rivaling the one displayed in Rockefeller Center each holiday, but it was beautiful, nonetheless.
I turned to face west again, the expanse of the Pacific before me. This was the clincher. On a scale of one to ten, the ocean backdrop made the location a ten and a half.
The party was timed to capture the setting sun in the distance. At twilight, the twinkling lights in the trees would create a magical feeling. The spot was beyond perfect.
It was also just a few blocks from the bread shop. Convenient, given the fact that Olaya was planning a bread wall—a concept that I was sure she had invented and that would become Pinterest and Insta-gram famous by the time she was done with it. It had happened with her Van Dough Focaccia, flatbread she decorated with veggies to look like Van Gogh paintings. I had every reason to suspect it would happen with the bread display she’d conceived.
She also had something extra special planned for the event. It was top secret, and no matter how many times I’d tried to sniff out a clue, she had her lips sealed tight. I was stumped—and I was pretty good at sniffing out clues, if I did say so myself.
Agatha trotted along beside me, stopping when I paused for a photo op, moving again when I did. She was my shadow. “It’s perfect, right?” I asked her, bending to scratch her head.
She looked up at me with her marble-sized eyes. Her perpetually downturned mouth and saggy jowls gave the impression that she wasn’t interested and that she was terminally depressed. Her curlicue tail told a different story. It was the barometer by which I gauged her happiness. Pugs didn’t wag their tails. They hung straight down if they were scared or unhappy. At the moment, Agatha’s tail was curled into a tight spiral, an indication that she was a very happy camper.
I took that to mean she approved of the location. “Good call. I agree, one hundred percent,” I said to her. I started walking again. She pulled out ahead. School was out, so anyone who could be at the beach was at the beach. That meant the park was blissfully empty. I let out some slack, giving Agatha a wide berth. She took advantage of it, stretching the retractable leash attached to her purple harness to its full fourteen feet. While she sniffed the bushes and plowed through the flower beds, I continued to snap pictures from different spots. The bread wall—which Olaya had explained to me, but which I couldn’t quite visualize—would face east, the ocean behind it. We’d set up pub-height tables, eliminating the need for chairs and encouraging mobility and conversation. It was harder to park yourself at one table if you were standing. At least I hoped so.
“Ivy!”
I turned to see all six feet of my fiancé approaching from the parking lot on the east side of the park. If I had to describe him, he’d fall somewhere between Enrique Iglesias and a youthful Mark Harmon, only far more handsome than either, separate or melded together. His olive skin contrasted with my fairer coloring, his hair about a million shades darker than my mop of tousled light paprika curls.
I lifted my camera again and pressed the button. Capturing Miguel—or anyone—unposed was my favorite kind of photo to take. He swung his arms, his gait steady and determined—a perfect reflection of him.
“One day you’re going to get tired of taking my picture,” he said as he came up to me.
He cracked a smile as he said it, and it widened as I replied with a saucy, “Never.”
He planted a kiss on my cheek, then bent lower and said, “Hey there, Ags,” as he rubbed his fingers over Agatha’s back. Standing again, he draped one arm around my shoulders and gazed at the Pacific. “Nice.”
We never got tired of living on the coast. “It is. Absolutely perfect.”
“I have less than an hour,” he said, pulling me into motion. As the owner of Baptista’s Cantina & Grill and its sometime chef, mid-afternoon was just about the only time Miguel could sneak away.
Despite his limited time, we ambled along the park’s walking path, Agatha alternatively leading the way or lagging behind as she sniffed and marked her territory. At the cross path to the gazebo, the leash grew taut again. Agatha had her nose buried in a cluster of poppies. I tugged the leash, pressing the lever to retract some of it, but she resisted. Her stout body was stronger than it looked. She held her ground, pulling me forward instead of the other way around.
“What do you see, Ags?” Miguel asked. Agatha ignored him. She scooted deeper into the flower bed, her head disappearing behind a shrub. The curlicue of her tail had unfurled, her tail now pointing straight down.
I drew in the leash so I’d have more control once I got close enough and could get her to come with me. A few seconds later, Miguel and I stood just outside the bed. Agatha was having nothing to do with listening to me. “Agatha! Come!” The command was solid, but I’d never consistently trained her, so she didn’t actually listen.
I stepped gingerly into the bed of poppies so I could grab her, trying hard not to trample them anymore than Agatha already had. I retracted the leash so it grew shorter still, and I yanked again. She was solid and strong, and she stood her ground against my effort. She sniffed at something. “Come on, Agatha,” I started to say, but the words froze on my lips.
“Oh no. Oh my God.” I spun around, my free hand flapping in the air at Miguel. “Call Em. Call York.” I felt the color drain from my face. “Hurry. Call 911!”
Miguel didn’t ask for a reason. He dug his phone from his pocket and placed the call, only then galumphing through the poppies, not caring one iota if he stomped them into the ground. When he reached me, he pulled up short and drew in a breath. Because he saw what I saw—and what Agatha had apparently smelled.
The toes of a pair of shoes poked out above the yellow and orange petals, reminiscent of the Wicked Witch of the East’s ruby slippers pointed skyward. These shoes were attached to a pair of legs, which led to a torso, and ended with a head.
The face at the top of the body was that of Josh Prentiss.
* * *
Captain Craig York folded his beefy arms over his chest. He stood with his feet wide and looked quite a bit like the trunk of an old oak tree firmly rooted in the ground. His feathery blond hair fluttered in the light breeze. He looked more like a ’70s TV star than a modern-day deputy sheriff. “You have an uncanny ability to find dead bodies, Ms. Culpepper,” he said acerbically, which seemed to be his standard way of speaking to me.
I guess I couldn’t really blame him for his general abrasiveness. After all, it was true that I’d stumbled across more than my fair share of corpses since I’d come back to my hometown. If I could share the wealth, I certainly would. “Agatha actually found this one,” I said.
York looked around. “Agatha who, and where is she?”
I scooped up my pug, who I’d finally managed to extricate from the poppy field. I lifted her into the air. “Captain York, meet Agatha.” I turned my gaze to the pug. “Agatha, this is Captain York.”
York let out an exasperated sigh that effectively communicated just how much he didn’t appreciate my . . . well, my anything. York and I weren’t friends. We weren’t exactly enemies, either, but I hadn’t been able to look past the fact that in the not so distant past, he’d set his sights on Miguel for a murder he obviously hadn’t committed, and York couldn’t . . . or wouldn’t . . . get past the fact that I’d helped exonerate Miguel of said crime, pointing him in the direction of the real killer.
It also didn’t help that I was besties with his boss. At best, he and I tolerated each other. I pointed to the flower bed, where a uniformed officer had cordoned off the area. “The body’s over there.”
“So I see,” he said dryly, as if it wasn’t completely obvious where the corpse was.
He left Agatha and me behind and plowed straight through the already pulverized flowers. Emmaline had arrived about ten minutes prior, and since Miguel had to get back to the restaurant, she had already pulled him in front of a nearby crepe myrtle, interviewing him first. A short while later, Miguel gave me a kiss on my cheek. “See you later,” he said, followed by an entreating, “and maybe consider not getting involved in this?”
I gave a wry chuckle, because not only did I have the uncanny ability to stumble across dead bodies, in the words of Captain York, but because I’d also had a hand in bringing a few people to justice. And by a few, I mean seven. Or eight, depending if you count the crime or the people involved in said crime.
“Falling on deaf ears, am I?” Miguel asked, reading my expression.
I wrapped an arm around his neck, hugging him and Agatha at the same time. “No, you’re not. I don’t plan to get involved.” And that was true. Other than the fact that Josh Prentiss was a Yeast of Eden regular (Group A), I had no connection to the man. Which meant I had no stake in solving his murder.
Other than the fact that a killer was at large in Santa Sofia, of course.
As soon as Miguel left my side, Emmaline strode up. She hummed a few bars of “Here I Go Again,” an old Whitesnake song we’d warbled along to once upon a time. She stopped humming, looking me square in the eyes. “And here we go again. What is it with you and dead bodies?” she asked, her words mirroring Captain York’s sentiment.
“It’s not like I go around planting them so I can discover them later.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “So I can eliminate the possibility that you’re actually a serial killer and everyone we’ve arrested for murder since you came back to Santa Sofia is really innocent?”
I dipped my chin in a solid yes of a nod. “It would be very bad for your reputation as sheriff if your sister-in-law was a deranged sociopath. Rest assured, I’m one hundred percent not a serial killer.”
A little humor broke the tension, but Em got serious again as she turned to look at the evolving crime scene. “Tell me what happened.”
So I did, retelling the same story Miguel had just shared with Captain York. “Miguel and I booked the gazebo for the engagement party, which you know. We met here to scope it out and finish up the planning. The party is Saturday. Which you also know. We walked around with Agatha on her leash. When she went into the flower bed and wouldn’t come out, I went in after her. That’s when I saw the body. Miguel called 911, and we stood guard until your people got here.”
“Not many folks in the park today, so that’s good.”
A small consolation that mattered not one bit to the deceased. Still, I nodded.
“Thanks, Ivy. We’ve got it from here. I’ll need an official statement—” The word “again” was implied. She raised her arm and called to one of her deputies. “Deputy Johnson, take Ms. Culpepper’s statement.” She looked back at me. “After that, you’re free to go.”
In the blink of an eye, Emmaline had gone from the familiar and relaxed interaction with a friend and sister-in-law to the steady, professional, and mirthless Sheriff Davis. I’d seen it happen more times than I could count. “Okay,” I said as she headed off to join the team around the body. Fifteen minutes later, I finished telling my story again to Deputy Johnson, a forty-something woman with straight dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail and equally dark eyes that bore into anyone caught in their line of sight. She asked for my full name, address, and cell number. “In case we need to reach you later.”
I thought it strange that she wouldn’t know my connection to Emmaline, who already had my information. Maybe she was new. Then again, she probably needed it for the official paperwork. I gave her the info. “And Agatha,” I added, watching her write down my pug’s name.
She grimaced. “I’ve never seen the appeal of pugs. Flat-face snorers. No offense.”
Agatha snorted, clearly affronted, but I said, “Oh gosh, none taken.” I’d heard it all before. People either thought pugs were adorable . . . or abhorrent. There wasn’t much in between. It was true, the breed tended to snore. How could they not, what with their distressed airways? And then there were the skin folds and bulging eyes, two things many people found unappealing.
I was firmly in the pugs are adorable camp. It wasn’t their fault they’d been selectively bred to have these problems. It also wasn’t their fault they’d been overbred. They still needed love and care, and I was happy to give Agatha every ounce of love I had in me, whatever anyone else felt.
The deputy left me, striding off for further instructions from one of her superiors. I sat on a bench on the opposite side of the walkway, the grassy expanse separating me from the crime scene. From here, I watched the beginning of the investigation unfold. More of Emmaline’s people came. They kept the growing crowd of lookie-loos away from the bed of crushed poppies and the dead body.
I stayed and watched for another thirty minutes. By that point, I couldn’t see through the throng of people surrounding the cordoned-odd area. I stood and tugged on Agatha’s harness. She grumbled, but rose to her feet. With her tail curled again, we left the park.