Nineteen

I ran through Zelda’s side yard, screaming, “Zelda!” The grass was still wet with dew, causing my sandals to slip and slide.

Trixie continued to bark, and Gingersnap let out a long sad howl that set off other dogs nearby.

And then I saw a hand on the ground.

“Zelda!” Her name rose from my throat involuntarily. Not Zelda!

As I neared, my breath came nosily. The hand lay palm down. Surely Zelda’s hand wasn’t that large. It looked like a man’s hand to me.

Trixie, Huey, and Gingersnap sniffed around the base of a pine tree, the large branches hanging over their backs. I fell to my knees. My gaze followed the blood-spattered hand to an arm clad in a short-sleeved black T-shirt.

I pulled aside a low-hanging branch and peered in the shadows beneath the tree.

He lay on his stomach, his face turned toward me. There was no doubting the bloody mess that was Hank’s neck. His eyes were wide-open, his expression one of surprise. I didn’t think there was any point in CPR, but I felt his wrist for a pulse out of an abundance of caution.

It was cold.

Shuddering, I pulled away from the grisly scene and, for the first time, noted blood on the grass.

“Trixie? Holly, is that you?”

I looked over my shoulder to see Zelda stumbling toward me. Her long blonde hair was mussed, as though she had just rolled out of bed. She wore an oversized T-shirt long enough to cover her rear. “Holly, what are you doing?”

She screamed when she saw the hand. “Who . . . who is it?” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, Zelda. It’s Hank.”

“What?” She must not have believed me because she knelt on the grass and looked under the tree branches. She pulled out fast, a trembling hand covering her mouth. “He was massacred!”

That was a good word for what had happened to him. Zelda was so pale that I feared she was in shock. I took her arm and helped her to a lawn chair.

“Trixie! Gingersnap! Huey! Come!” I pulled out my cell phone and called 911.

I described Trixie, Gingersnap, and Huey finding Hank’s body and told the dispatcher that I thought he was probably dead given the amount of blood I saw.

That brought on a torrent of tears from Zelda. I hung up the phone and stroked her hair, hoping like crazy that she didn’t have anything to do with it. I hated that the thought even crossed my mind, but they had been married, and he had been a royal nuisance to her.

Dave was the first person on the scene. He strode into Zelda’s backyard, taking in every little detail.

I left Zelda, motioned to Dave, and walked over to the trees where Hank lay.

Dave kept his calm. “When did you get here?”

“Maybe five minutes before I called nine-one-one.”

“You see anyone?”

“No. Only Zelda. She looked like she had just rolled out of bed.”

“What were you doing back here?”

“Trixie jumped off the golf cart, and other dogs followed her. They found him.”

He nodded. “Figures. Can you wait with Zelda, please?” Dave pulled out a camera and photographed Hank’s hand and the grass.

I hadn’t taken two steps when he said, “Holly? I changed my mind.”

I turned back.

“Hold up the branches so I can get some shots of him before he’s moved?”

I lifted the branches and got a much better look at poor Hank. Murder was never pleasant, but someone had whacked him in the worst way. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could have inflicted the bloody wounds on his neck and back. “You don’t think it could have been a bear, do you?”

“Bears are not in the habit of hiding their kill. A bear wouldn’t have pulled him under the tree like this.”

“How do you know that’s what happened?”

“Holly! Look how dense the trees are. If he had rolled under them to protect himself, he might have lived. The tree limbs aren’t hacked up. I’ll bet the autopsy shows that somebody clobbered him from behind and then kept at it when he fell to the ground.”

When the rescue squad arrived, I hustled Zelda and the dogs into her house. Her cats—I counted seven—were appalled and scrambled away, with the notable exception of Leo, who was convinced he was the king of Wagtail. I had never seen him run from a dog.

I put the kettle on for tea and watched the goings-on in the backyard through the window. “You’d better get dressed, Zelda.”

Without a word, she left the kitchen. I could hear the stairs creaking as she walked up them. I used her wall phone to call Ben’s cell phone.

He sounded groggy.

“Are you up yet?”

“No.”

“I think Zelda’s going to need a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“Because I just found her ex-husband dead in her backyard.”

Ben wrote down Zelda’s address and promised he was on his way.

Zelda’s kitchen was as sunny and cheerful as Zelda herself. The cabinets had been painted a soft green. There were no upper cabinets, only shelves that hung over white wallpaper dotted by old-fashioned cream medallions. Neatly arranged dishes, mugs, platters, and spices occupied the shelves. A Victorian-style lamp hung over the country kitchen sink. Herbs grew in little mismatched pots on the windowsill behind the sink.

Watching Dave through the diamond-paned glass made it all seem even more surreal. It was almost as though no one had brutally murdered Hank, and I was watching a film.

I grabbed a mug off a shelf. It said There’s always room for one more cat. Zelda certainly lived by that motto. I searched for black tea to calm her nerves. She had a collection of herbal teas, some which I had never heard of before.

I finally found a box of organic black tea. I was pouring water into the cup when Zelda returned. She had changed into a blue sundress with a cabbage rose print.

“They’re going to think that I murdered Hank. I can’t pay a lawyer. Whoever did it is going to get away scot-free, and I’ll end up in jail. I wish I had never met Hank.”

I poured milk into her tea and added a spoonful of sugar. “We’ll work something out. Don’t you worry about that. Oma and I will stand by you. I called Ben.”

I poured a second cup of tea and leaned against the sink sideways so I could keep an eye on what was happening in the yard. “Did you kill him?” I tried to sound ever so casual about it.

“No!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Ben in the backyard, speaking with Dave.

Ben walked toward the kitchen door. I opened it for him.

Zelda dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Thank you for coming, Ben.” She sniffled. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I guess because I loved Hank once.”

Ben sat down at the table, and to my complete surprise, he took her hand and said, “It’s okay to cry. You’ve had a big shock.”

I made tea for Ben and handed the mug to him. He sat with Zelda quietly while she composed herself. What happened to the insensitive, geeky guy I knew?

“Tell me what you did last night,” he said to Zelda.

“I was at Tequila Mockingbird with Axel Turner.”

“What time did you leave?”

“I don’t know. When they closed. Around two, I guess?”

“And then?”

“I walked Axel to the Wagtail Springs Hotel, where he’s staying, and then came home and went to bed.”

“Did you hear or see anything during the night?”

“Nope. We might have had a little too much to drink. I fell asleep and didn’t wake until I heard barking this morning. Then I heard someone yell my name.”

“Who?”

Zelda looked at me. “I guess it was Holly. When I came downstairs, she was in the backyard.”

“Okay. I know I asked this before, but I want you to think back very carefully. Did you hear anything last night? Did you notice anything at all out of the norm?”

Zelda’s forehead crinkled with worry. “No. Nothing. Really.”

“When did you last see Hank?”

“When Holly lured him away last night.”

Ben set his tea down on the table so hard that it splashed out of the mug.

I grabbed a dish towel and wiped it up.

“You want to explain that?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. Hank was lurking around Zelda’s house. He had been a pill the night before when she was out on a date, and then he followed them out on the lake! Zelda asked me to distract him so she could get away and meet her date without being followed. I pretended to be Zelda and left by the front door while she sneaked out the back way. No big deal.”

Ben covered his face with his palms. “So you’re the last one who saw him?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. When I got to Hot Hog, I stepped inside to see if he would walk by, but I never saw him.”

Ben swallowed hard. “And then where did you go?”

“I’m not a suspect. Quit acting like I am. I went to Tequila Mockingbird to see if Zelda had made it there without Hank.”

“Great. Very good. So people saw you there?”

“Sure. I talked with Macon and Nessie . . .” My voice trailed off.

“Who’s Nessie?”

“She’s staying at the inn. Lots of jewelry, has a little dog named Lulu.”

“Oh yeah. I thought she was going to propose to me when she heard I was a lawyer.”

“She was showing us a picture of her daughter, Celeste, and the doctor she met here. But the guy wasn’t a doctor at all. It was Hank.”

“You told her that?” Ben asked.

Zelda finally perked up. “Yes! She brought a picture on her phone over to me to verify that it was Hank. She couldn’t believe he had conned them.”

“And then?” asked Ben.

“Then Nessie and Sky left in a big hurry.”

My phone rang, and all three of us jumped at the sound. Oma wanted to know what was taking me so long with Gustav’s pain meds. I promised to get them right away. “I have to run.”

“You can’t leave,” said Ben.

“Of course I can. You take care of Zelda.” I gave her a hug before Trixie, Gingersnap, and I left via the front door. I had my doubts about leaving Huey with Ben, but Zelda would watch out for him.

I drove the golf cart the remaining blocks to the green. We all hopped out and walked across the grass to Heal! on the other side. Trixie and Gingersnap roamed with their noses to the ground.

When we reached the sidewalk on the other side, Trixie dodged to the right and ran a little farther than she should have. My heart sank when I saw where she went.