“You just always seem to be turning up dead bodies, Erica,” Rhonda Cooke, deputy at large, said. She leaned back in her chair and plopped her feet up on the corner of her desk. “How do you do it?”
A couple of hours had passed since I had found groundskeeper Peter Clarke and Kit Kat. Kit Kat was still alive when I had found her—I could still feel the small bump of her pulse under my fingertips—but the ambulance had taken her away, and we had yet to be given an update.
Now I was seated in Otter Lake’s sheriff’s department being questioned by Rhonda.
“Well? Erica? How do you do it?”
“Rhonda, I’m really sorry,” I said, rubbing my face with both hands. “But I don’t have time for this, so could we please skip the thinly veiled questions? Just say what you want to say.”
Her face dropped into something pretty earnest. “No, I really want to know how you keep turning up dead bodies.” She dropped her feet off the desk and leaned toward me to whisper, “It could help my career.”
I gripped the arms of my chair. “I can’t do this right now. I have to find out what’s going on with Kit Kat.”
She nodded but waved me down. “Erica, I know you’re worried, but I promise, as soon as we know something, you will. In the meantime, you have to help us find whoever did this.”
I slumped back in the chair, resting my head against its hard wooden back.
“Erica? That you?” a voice called out.
I shot up, giving Rhonda a quizzical look. She just closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Tweety?” I shouted, leaning back to look down a hallway. I couldn’t see anything … well, except a hand waving into the open space.
“What are you doing here?” the hand asked with a point.
“Ms. Bloom,” Rhonda said. “Please ignor—”
I lunged across the desk toward her and hissed, “Don’t you tell her about Kit Kat until we know if—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “Not unless you’re going to let her go to the hospital.”
“I can’t authorize that,” Rhonda whispered back.
“Then don’t you say anything,” I said, slowly sitting back in my chair.
Rhonda considered me for a moment then said, “Erica, don’t take this the wrong way … but you’re kind of freaking me out right now.”
“I’m done playing.”
She looked at me sideways. “Okay, what does that mean? And before you answer, I feel I should remind you that you’re talking to a police officer.”
“Nobody,” I said, jabbing a finger on top of the desk, “messes with my family, Rhonda.” I watched her eyes widen with concern. “I’m gonna find whoever did this and—”
“What’s this about finding a body?” Tweety shouted from the hall. “I told you to stay out of it!”
I struggled to figure out what to say. Probably sticking as close to the truth as possible was the best bet. “Yeah, I found a body.”
“Another one?”
I didn’t answer.
“At least they can’t pin that one on me,” the voice cackled from the back. “Are they trying to pin it on you?”
I looked to Rhonda for the answer. She shrugged. I kept my eyes on her but turned my face to the hallway. “Too soon to tell.”
“Okay, okay,” Rhonda said. “Could we please get back to—”
“So who was it?”
“Peter Clarke,” I shouted. “Do you know—”
“Erica! Stop it!” Rhonda yelled. “You just can’t go telling her police stuff until we’re ready to tell her police stuff!”
My eyes whipped back to hers. She popped her hands up.
“Don’t listen to her,” Tweety shouted. “Now, who did you say got offed?”
“Erica,” Rhonda said, setting her jaw. “Don’t answer that.”
I considered Rhonda for a moment and took a breath. I wasn’t upset with her. She was just trying to do her job. Besides, the less I said to Tweety the better. I really didn’t want to let anything slip about Kit Kat until we had news. It would kill her. “You’ll hear the whole story soon.”
“What kind of answer is that?” Tweety shouted. “Erica? Rhonda?”
Rhonda clunked her head against the desk. “All day it’s like this. Yap, yap, yap.” She flung her head up. “Okay,” she said, dropping her voice. “Let’s ignore Tweety and get back to the questioning. Why don’t you tell me again why you were at Hemlock Estate.”
“Hemlock Estate!” the voice screeched from down the hall. “What were you doing at Hemlock Estate?”
Rhonda jumped to her feet and leaned across her desk, shouting down the hall, “Tweety, I’ve told you about a thousand times already, I ask the questions.”
“Ah, you’re just jealous,” Tweety shouted back, her hand giving a dismissive flop in the air.
“Jealous?” I asked Rhonda, who was lowering herself back in her seat.
“She questions everyone who comes in,” Rhonda said tiredly. “Okay, so fine, she was right about Mr. McCloud’s stolen wallet being in his other back pocket, but for the most part she’s just a real pain in the—”
“I get it,” I said, holding my hands up. “All the more reason for us to work together to get her out of here. But I can’t do this right now. I gotta go.”
“You can’t just go, Erica.”
I dropped my chin and raised my eyebrows, “You arresting me?”
“No, but Grady, he said to keep you here until he got back.”
Suddenly the door swung open just as I was saying, “I don’t care what Grady told you—”
—and Grady was saying, “No handcuffs, but I want a guard on her room.”