| |
And here I thought that the worst thing we’d deal with today would be the lost kids. Or maybe the billionaires’ sons coming in to cause trouble, just ‘cause they can.
Having drawn his usual short straw, Di had been chosen to accompany the mayor’s body back to the local doctor’s office, which doubled as the town’s morgue, when necessary. He rather suspected he’d been chosen because everyone knew how much he hated having to hang out with dead bodies. Or possibly because Doc MacDougal freaked out everyone on the force except Di and Alex Martinez.
Right now, Doc MacDougal was staring at the body with her arms crossed, as Di looked anywhere else around the rec room which was set up in the other half of her basement. Fortunately, with only one dead body, they weren’t being forced to call the pool table into service, too.
Although he’d never seen that happen, she’d threatened it before. She was a woman with a strange sense of humor.
Di had always thought it a rather bizarre set up for the MacDougal kids, but they seemed fine with it—the ones who had grown up and moved out not seeming to do so because they wanted to get away. Knowing that there was occasionally a dead body in their basement was apparently declared “cool” before they went back to their video games with their friends.
Of course, this ridiculous situation was forced on them by the size of their town. Although there was a county coroner, he wasn’t usually brought in, unless there was a really obvious murder. For just a random death, Doc MacDougal would do.
Given the look on Emma MacDougal’s face right now, though, Di feared that he was going to fail the sheriff’s departing orders to, “Make sure that damn woman doesn’t start digging up theories. We’ve got enough to deal with here.”
Of course, that none of the department besides himself, Alex, and Mac Welles had done a darn thing to calm the visitors down after the mayor’s collapse was, as usual, ignored, now that the moment had passed.
Per department regs., he’d used his soothing voice to calm the crowds and then had gotten one of the billionaires’ wives to emcee the “Best Dressed Pooch” show on the second stage, while they moved the mayor away from everyone’s line of sight. By about fifteen minutes later, everyone was back to lemonade, funnel cakes, cheering for their favorite dog costume, and buying their metric weight in tchotchkes like nothing had ever happened.
Still, Di wondered, trying to keep to his instructions, “So, whatcha think, doc? Heart attack?”
Given the mayor’s lifestyle, it wouldn’t have been surprising.
Sadly, Emma raised one eyebrow at him, but it said more than enough. She was an attractive, middle-aged, white woman with copper hair and green eyes, and—although she was probably at least a foot shorter than Di—Di felt outmatched every time he was around her. She was clearly so much more intelligent than anyone else in town.
Although the men of Prospector’s Rest would not usually have agreed to a female doctor in their midst, she had inherited the role from her father, who’d told everybody in no uncertain terms that they could get over it. Now everyone in town’s general practitioner, Doc MacDougal’s place had been set for the last twenty years, and everyone had mostly adjusted.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t freak the bejesus out of them, anyway.
“I know what we all saw,” she said finally. “And I know what this looks like. And it’s true that Pocket had every bad habit in the book.”
Gazing at Di steadily, she shook her head.
“But he was absolutely healthy as a horse, nonetheless.”
“Even with . . .?” Di began, although she didn’t let him finish. Mayor Pocket’s love of large steak dinners, alcohol, cigars, and whatever lady would give him the time of day was pretty well known. It didn’t seem like the recipe for a healthy lifestyle to Di.
“Didn’t matter. He had the devil’s own luck.”
When Di stared at her, she shrugged.
“Genetics. Whatcha gonna do? Some teetotaler nonsmoker could lose the genetic lottery and end up with diseases you don’t even want to know about, whereas Pick’em had a clean bill of health every time.”
For a second, Di pondered this and finally realized what she was actually saying.
“So you don’t think this is natural causes?”
To his embarrassment, his voice broke a little as he said it. In his two years on the force so far, there had never been an actual murder, only a couple of accidental deaths and an occasional idiot whose last words were, “Hey y’all! Watch this!”
The thought of the gentlemen of the Prospector’s Rest Police Department having to deal with an actual homicide made his blood run cold—especially because he was very aware that it would be the ones with the least brains running said investigation.
Although he was trying not to feel slightly green around the gills, he managed to ask, “You’re going to have to do an autopsy, aren’t you?”
Her tone still entirely flat, she shrugged.
“I don’t know what you mean. I would never dream of doing such a thing without official permission, Officer Goode.”
Still waiting for the rest, Di saw her tilt her head up to scream, “Si-laaas!”
Then, she smiled at him, before she went on.
“I’m just going to be down here playing video games with my son, while you’re upstairs availing yourself of my homemade lemonade and the club sandwiches I made for lunch, like a good officer should.”
Sighing, Di said nothing. While he wanted to believe that Mayor Pocket had simply keeled over, if the doc and smartest woman in town—which, by default, given the town’s men, made her absolutely the smartest person in town—thought there was something else going on, he couldn’t argue. Besides, she’d already set him up with a perfect alibi: “I didn’t know what she was up to, sir. I was just eating lunch.”
Seriously, that’s what should be on our uniform patches—us chowing down.
As he was about to leave, the doc’s son arrived. As soon as he saw the body and his mother’s expression, he let out a “Yes! Take that, Professor Poopy-pants! Who says I’ll never get near an actual body?”
Her arms crossed, his mother continued to stare.
“You still need to get your grades up.”
“Yes’m,” he acknowledged and then brightened. “Can I cut?”
“Not even a little bit.”
And she waved Di off upstairs to her kitchen, where he was more than happy to escape.
Emerging back into the brighter part of the house, he was a bit relieved to be away from the scene below but also slightly in shock to see that Mac Welles was already at the doc’s dinner table, raising a glass of, probably, orangeade to him. She’d never have touched the lemonade.
“There’s lemonade in the fridge,” she pointed out, clearly knowing his tastes.
“Silas let you in?” he wondered, as he followed her instructions and tried to fight down the way his face felt hot whenever she was near.
“Like anyone locks their doors around here.”
As he returned with two sandwiches for them, she rolled her eyes, confirming.
“But yep. He did.”
Taking a sandwich Doc MacDougal had probably made as backups for her kid’s friends, should they stop by, and starting to unwrap it, Mac didn’t say anything more. But Di wondered.
“Um, did the sheriff send you by?”
Maybe he wanted to get the mayor’s effects or something?
Although who they’d give them to was a bit of a mystery. If the mayor had any relatives, he’d kept them under wraps.
“I told them I wanted to take Peewee home and get him out of all the craziness.”
Actually, this made sense. Although the dog somewhat lived at the station, Mac was known to take him in from time to time when there were too many people around. He was so little he might get stepped on, otherwise.
“Um, they bought that?” Di wondered, unwrapping his sandwich more slowly.
Mac gave him a look which spoke volumes.
“Like they notice what I do?”
She had her legs propped up on another of the dining room chairs, as she tossed the plastic wrap from the sandwich neatly into the trash behind her back. As, had Di tried it, it would have all unwrinkled and fallen on the floor in a pathetic heap, he was impressed. Not that he was ever not impressed by anything and everything Mac did.
“I’m sorry about that,” he apologized for the neanderthals they both worked with, and she stared at him hard over her sandwich.
“You didn’t do it and don’t encourage it. It’s not on you to apologize.”
While he knew this was true, he felt bad, anyway.
Maybe I don’t encourage it, but I don’t stop them, either.
Although, granted, he wasn’t certain how he could, outside of maybe a baseball bat to the head.
Clearly leaving this behind, she stared at him with interest.
“So what’s the word from MacDougal?”
As she asked, the door to the basement was firmly closed, which Di was quite grateful for, as he didn’t want to know any of the details.
“Um . . .”
For a second, he paused.
Do I tell her? She’s not exactly sworn in, is she? Then again, she’s brighter than everyone who is, including me, so . . .
Sighing, he gave in. If Mac wanted to know something, he’d tell her. If she wanted to know the names he’d given the three birds who came to his feeder daily, he’d let her know.
Correct answer: Tweetie, Smoochie, and Sourpuss. My life is nothing if not embarrassing.
Thankfully, she didn’t ask this.
“She says the mayor was in perfect health.”
Sighing and looking sad, Mac took another bite of the sandwich.
“Genetics, man. Life ain’t fair.”
As Mac’s dad had passed away five years ago of a heart attack, she said it with feeling.
“Yeah, sorry,” Di said again, only to bring on her look. But to stop himself from apologizing for apologizing, he merely shrugged.
“So she thinks this isn’t simply his bad deeds being revisited on him,” Mac mused, leaning back in the chair and making it further through her lunch.
As Di was caught between wanting to tell her everything and not knowing what to say, he said nothing.
“Who do you think might have done it?” she wondered, before shrugging. “Whatever it is?”
For a second, Di glanced around the very empty kitchen and through the windows to the outside. But, if there were anyone anywhere which wasn’t the fête, he couldn’t see them.
“Well, you know . . . um, knew . . . Peckham.”
Munching and staring into space, as she pondered, Mac added, “Made enemies like he made friends, yep.”
For a second, though, finally allowing himself to think about it, Di wondered.
“It’s one thing not to like someone. It’s another to actually do something to them.”
And, in a town of 300 . . .
. . . or thereabouts . . .
. . . it seemed likely that anyone who was dangerous enough to cause real harm would have stuck out a mile. But in Prospector’s Rest . . .
“I can think of at least three people who wanted him dead,” Mac put in calmly.
Di put down his sandwich and stared.
“Seriously?”
Mac shrugged, and Di sighed.
“Do I have to beg?”
For a moment, Mac smiled at him.
“Suspect #1: Hilary Underwood.”
Di’s stare didn’t lessen.
“The owner of Fit ‘n’ Knit?”
Granted, she was around the mayor’s age and had been “seen around town” with him for a while. As the owner of the town’s main crafts supply store, she sold to both the artisans and the visitors who decided they’d like to try their hand. She even ran classes in knitting for beginners. But what she didn’t seem like was a killer.
“Trust me. A woman scorned,” Mac assured him, while finishing her sandwich, and he realized he’d completely ignored his own and tried to get back up the interest in eating. “Mayor Peckham threw her over for that billionaire divorcée who moved in last month. I think she rather fancied herself as the mayor’s wife, with the status to go with it. That had to sting.”
Granted, there wasn’t a lot of status to go around in Prospector’s Rest, but this probably would have leapfrogged her to the upper levels of the local ladies, nonetheless.
“Still doesn’t mean murder, though,” he mumbled, and Mac shrugged, moving on.
“Suspect #2: Hampton VanRowe.”
Di frowned.
“That VanRowe kid’s father?”
Mac nodded.
“That VanRowe kid’s father who threatened to bring in a hit on the sheriff when his son got arrested and made a huge stinking scene at church on Sunday about how much he’d given to the mayor’s reelection fund.”
Granted, Di could sort of see this. VanRowe was an angry, toxic billionaire with a new McMansion he’d blasted off half of the top of a mountain to put in place. His son was everything which might be expected out of his overprivileged offspring who’d always lived utterly consequence free.
But it wasn’t even like the Prospector’s Rest Sheriff’s Department had been the ones to arrest him. They’d merely provided the overnight jail cell for the state police when his son was being held on human trafficking charges.
Nothing the son had been arrested for had even happened in town. He simply happened to have been hiding out at his father’s McMansion when he’d been arrested.
Clearly knowing all of this, Mac shrugged, answering what he hadn’t actually said.
“Yes, but he was angry at everyone involved, and the mayor was a good scapegoat.”
And it was true. VanRowe seemed like the kind of guy who’d seriously hold a grudge against such a scapegoat. But still . . .
“He seems more like the type to shoot somebody or hire someone to, than do . . . well, whatever got done today. If it was, anyway.”
It wasn’t like they had anything but suspicions right now.
Ignoring this, Mac went on.
“Suspect #3: Adeline Perry.”
Di stared at her.
“The merry marijuana brownie maker?”
Mac nodded.
“One and the same. Remember, she apparently gave some money to the mayor’s reelection, since he said he knew some people in the state house he’d talk to about changing the laws.”
“In North Carolina?”
Di shook his head.
“I think she’s been having too many of her own brownies.”
“Granted,” Mac nodded. “But, if the mayor didn’t die of natural causes—and he certainly doesn’t seem to have been shot or anything else—that means that it was probably poison.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And we all know how much Adeline loves to give out samples of her baking.”
True, the woman’s bakery was very popular during the festival—even without the still-outlawed marijuana products. It would have been simple to slip the mayor something that way, but . . .
Realizing he was getting way ahead of himself, Di shook his head.
“But there’s still a million miles between ‘I don’t like you’ and ‘I’m going to actively try to kill you.’”
Really looking at him now, Mac leaned forward, her arms crossed on the table.
“Does this mean you’re going to look into it, though?”
Di grimaced.
“How can I? Even if the doc comes back with something, it’s not like I have anything to do with it. The dog has more authority than I do.”
But Mac’s smile was seductive, and he felt himself being led distinctly down the primrose path.
“Not even if I help you search?”
Swallowing hard, Di shivered.
Dang. If that woman wants me to practice jumping off a cliff for her, I’d do it.
Knowing he was giving in, he sighed.
Um, maybe I can only get fired?
But, knowing his goose was well and truly cooked, as he would follow MacBeth Welles’ siren song to any number of watery deaths, he gave into his fate.