A Berry Horrible Holiday

by A. R. Winters

  “What’s with that guy?” I whispered when we’d gotten past him enough to be out of earshot.

  Zoey shrugged. “He is kinda cute.”

  “You mean in a deranged killer sort of way?”

  Zoey shrugged again. “A lot of the most successful deranged killers throughout history have been pretty cute.”

  “You’re twisted, Zoey, but none of that answers my question.”

  “Which was?”

  “Why’d you out me to your in-person fan club?”

  “You’re one of my favorite people.”

  That was super sweet of her to say, but it still didn’t answer my question. “You’re avoiding the question,” I challenged her. I wanted a straight answer.

  “I’m not avoiding.” She glanced over her shoulder again, and I did the same. The geek squad was still there. “You always almost get killed when trying to figure out who’s channeling Norman Bates.”

  I shivered as long-buried images from the movie Psycho filled my mind.

  “What’s that got to do with them?” I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder.

  “I figured you’d be less likely to get offed with them following you everywhere.”

  Ahhhh! Now I felt like an ungrateful idiot. How to say thank you?

  “You got me my very own stalkers, and I didn’t get you anything,” I teased.

  Zoey snorted a giggle.

  I smiled. My thank you had been received and accepted. Then a new thought occurred to me. “How am I going to get anyone to talk to me with these guys hovering over my shoulder?” Getting people to confide in me was the backbone of my investigative process.

  Okay, let’s get real. It was my only bone in my investigative process.

  “People talk to you. You’re like human ipecac.”

  I stopped in my tracks, turned to her, and scowled. “Thanks.” I might have actually said the word thanks this time, but I sure as heck didn’t mean it.

  “What?” Zoey asked, throwing her arms wide. “It’s a compliment. You get around people and they spill their guts.”

  Exactly what every eatery owner longs to hear: people spill their guts because of them.

  I continued to scowl.

  “Okay!” Zoey finally relented, and she turned to the group following us. “Go.”

  The group of three looked at each other. Between their panic and seeming completely lost, the whole lot of them had puppy-dog eyes. The middle one stepped forward. He was skinny everywhere except for his belly, which protruded in a soft bulge. “Go, and do what?” he asked.

  Zoey turned a questioning gaze on me.

  I sighed. These guys were part of the Citizen’s Justice League. That meant something to them. They could have just as easily stayed wherever they’d come from, but they’d left their lives behind to travel here in order to be a part of a mission. They’d wanted to find answers to questions that had answers.

  Questions that had answers were rare in today’s world. So many issues today became more confusing the longer you studied them.

  But when it came to murder, well, couldn’t get simpler than that. A person either did or did not kill Doug. Yes or no.

  In a world that almost never seemed to make sense anymore, there was something really beautiful about that.

  Knowing that, I couldn’t turn them away. I had to let them help.

  “Go and… and…” And what? “Listen. Watch. Pay attention. But don’t let people know you’re watching them. Act natural.” Doubts crept in. There was no way these guys would blend. They were too… eager. “And, uh, act like you don’t care,” I added. “Then, at the end of the day, come and tell me what you’ve seen and heard.”

  The middle one’s face scrunched up. “Sounds boring. What about taking down the bad guy? We could break into the rooms.”

  “Oh!” the fellow next to him exclaimed. “We could whip up a batch of truth serum. I know a formula. We could slip it into the food at dinner.”

  “Yeah! Yeah!” exclaimed guy number three. “Anyone who says anything sketchy, we could dose them with a sleeping agent, move them to an isolated interrogation spot, and… and… make them listen to Jingle Bells five hundred times. That would drive anyone to confess.”

  “No!” I yelled as they started high-fiving each other for coming up with what they were dubbing the coolest, most radical investigative plan of the century. “No!” I said again, louder this time.

  I turned to Zoey and shook my head. She turned to the guys. “Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “You blew it. You’re benched.”

  The trio’s expressions clouded over with confusion.

  “You’re out,” Zoey clarified. “Head back to the tent. Don’t kidnap anyone for interrogation on your way.”

  “At least not without me,” she mumbled as she turned her back on them and began to walk.

  Petulant sulking ensued for the wannabe crime fighters, but they turned and retreated in the direction of the tent.

  I sighed in relief, caught up with Zoey, and fell into step beside her. It was then that I realized where we were heading. The mulch trail. We were getting closer to the place of Doug’s death—or at least Doug’s body—with every footfall.

  “Any ideas on who did it?” I asked Zoey.

  “Was gonna ask you the same.”

  “There’s that thing that Rita said.”

  “What thing?”

  “That she....” I thought, trying to recall what she’d said. “That she liked him, as in before now, before this weekend.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Zoey fell silent, then, “Think he liked her back?”

  I thought a moment, recalling her words. “She said she’d thought he liked her, but…” I felt like I was grasping at imaginary straws. I hated that.

  “But what?” Zoey prompted.

  “I don’t know. Once upon a time, she’d thought he liked her. But when we saw her in the kitchen, she wasn’t sure he’d ever liked her. So, something had to have changed between them in time that she thought he liked her and her becoming uncertain about whether or not he’d ever liked her.”

  “You’re making my head spin,” Zoey complained. “Liked, didn’t like—what does it matter? Feelings change. People change.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think him changing was what this was about. If he liked her and then changed and stopped liking her, that doesn’t mean he never liked her. But she was doubting whether or not he ever liked her. That means…” What did that mean? I was making my own head hurt.

  “We need to talk to Michael. See if we can learn more from him,” Zoey said.

  But that would come in its due time. We were well on our way down the mulch trail. My gait grew stiffer, and my whole body tensed with every step. I’d seen death so many times now, but it never got easy.

  Brad was there. So was Sheriff Palke, but she was huddled in talking with one of her deputies. As for Brad, he was extending a hand to help a man climb the final steps of the steep hill I’d fallen down. The man was someone I hadn’t seen before. He was more than half as wide as he was tall—and he was pretty tall. His shiny black hair was slicked across the top of his head, and he either had a mustache or the biggest fuzzy caterpillar I’ve ever seen had crawled under his nose and died. His eyes were beady, and his lips were plump.

  Joel remained at the bottom of the steep hill, taking picture after picture. He seemed absorbed in his work.

  “Thank you,” the round man told Brad for the help up.

  “Were you able to figure anything out?” Brad asked.

  “Well, that’s really something that needs to be discussed with the sheriff.” They both glanced in the direction of Sheriff Palke. Her conversation with her deputy looked to be heating up. “But I think I’ll give her a minute.”

  Zoey stuck her hand out. “Zoey Jin,” she said. “I’m a freelance tech specialist.”

  “Oh, yes. Nice to meet you. Peter Marshal. Coroner.”

  Smooth! Zoey had gotten him to reveal his name an
d profession without him even blinking an eye.

  “Don’t you guys usually do your analysis in the lab?” Zoey asked.

  Peter shrugged. “Usually, but for undetermined deaths.”

  “Undetermined?” The one-word question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. When everyone looked at me expectantly, I had no other option but to continue. “I mean, the guy was buried head-first.”

  “Sure,” Peter said with another shrug, “that’s how he ended up.”

  “Ended up,” Brad asked, glomming onto Peter’s choice of words.

  Peter’s lips pressed together as his gaze searched the open sky. “I really shouldn’t have said that,” he said, rocking on and off the balls of his feet.

  “So he didn’t die from being buried?” Brad pressed.

  Peter leveled his gaze at him, then he gave Brad a toothy, friendly smile. “This is a very nice B&B. I’m sure you paid a lot of money to be here. Wouldn’t it be best to simply enjoy your weekend?”

  “Enjoy it with a killer on the loose?” I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. But I didn’t care. What the man was suggesting—to relax and pretend we were safe and all was well—was absurd. Worse yet, it was insulting.

  “You’re welcome to leave,” Peter said, seemingly without a care in the world.

  “Leave?” Sheriff Palke’s voice cut through our conversation at the same time the deputy she’d been speaking to strode past us toward the B&B. “Nobody’s leaving. Not yet.”

  Great… We were at risk of being murdered, but as long as that didn’t interfere with Sheriff Palke’s investigation, I guess all was fine.

  Her beauty noticeably dimmed before my eyes.

  Peter took the deputy’s place. Sheriff Palke and he began talking with their heads close together at a volume I couldn’t hear.

  Zoey looked from me to Brad then back again. She wagged her cell phone in the air. “Gotta make a phone call.” She drifted away and appeared to do just that.

  I wondered if she was actually on a call or if she was only faking it for my benefit. If she had something special set up on her phone to allow her to have cell phone reception in a spot where nobody else did, I wanted it. I made a silent vow to ask her about it later.

  “How’s the romantic weekend going?” Brad asked. He shifted into a standing position with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted wide. A smug half grin pulled at his lips.

  “Pretty incredibly, actually,” I said. “I can’t remember when I’ve been happier.”

  Brad’s arms fell to his sides and his grin left him. “Really?”

  Ha! Served him right for making fun of our ruined plans. Brad wouldn’t think it was so funny if he’d been in Joel’s shoes.

  “Why would you care how things are going anyway? You’ve been staying busy.” My gaze flicked to Sheriff Palke.

  Brad’s lopsided grin returned, and he shoved his thumbs in the band of his jeans. “Don’t care for the competition there, Berry? Can’t imagine what that’s like.”

  Heat flooded my cheeks. I was sure they’d turned crimson. Getting called out for my hypocrisy had not been my intent. I wanted to know if he was serious about Sheriff Palke. I knew they’d just met, but these things happened. Besides that, she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, even if her beauty had dimmed for me.

  “Brad, I…” My words fell away. There wasn’t anything to say. The only thing there was to do was let go. Brad’s heart would remain mine or he’d give it to someone else. I had to accept the possibility of a life without him.

  “Berry,” Brad said, his voice low enough to send shivers up my spine.

  He moved close enough for me to feel his heat but didn’t put an arm around me. I really wanted that arm.

  “I get it,” I said when he didn’t say anything more. I turned my gaze toward the sheriff, watching her under my lashes. “She’s into everything you’re into. She can understand what it means to face the things you face and do the things you do.” I crossed my arms sullenly with the need to self-comfort. If Brad wasn’t going to do it, I’d do it myself.

  “Berry,” Brad said again, this time his voice even lower than the last.

  I closed my eyes and imagined I was leaning against him. It was the best I could hope for now. “You don’t have to say anything.” I could see the writing on the proverbial wall. It was in all caps and five feet high.

  Brad sighed. “Berry, I—”

  “He drowned?” exclaimed Sheriff Palke.

  “He drowned?” Brad echoed, his attention fully on the sheriff and the coroner. I was forgotten.

  The coroner’s expression was dour. He’d taken pains to keep the information reserved for the need to know, and he had not included us in that group.

  I leaned over the edge of the hill, doing my best to see where it was that Doug had been buried. But I couldn’t.

  Brad left me to join the sheriff, and the coroner literally and obviously rolled his eyes at the inclusion. It didn’t deter Brad, though, and the sheriff didn’t seem to care either. Instead, she included him in their hushed toned conversation.

  My heart sank heavier into my chest.

  I’d been so absorbed with not being able to choose between Brad and Joel that I hadn’t even imagined what it would feel like to lose one of them.

  It felt intensely, dreadfully awful. I wanted to be at home in my bed in my pajamas with my sweet, darling, vicious kitty Sage sleeping blissfully on top of the curve of my side. I wanted the covers pulled up over my head and my favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry’s waiting on me in the freezer.

  “Did I hear her right?” Zoey asked, returning to my side. “Doug drowned?”

  “That’s what it’s sounding like to me.”

  “What kind of water?”

  “Oh wow, that’s a great question.” I perked up. A puzzle to be solved wasn’t exactly Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, but it would do in a pinch.

  “I figured he’d been buried alive. Was kind of hoping for it. We haven’t had one of those yet.”

  While Zoey’s comment was true, it was also disturbing. “Zoey, I worry about you.” Then the facts of the situation seized my imagination and took over. I frowned as I leaned over the edge of the hill again. “You think the soil down there has a lot of groundwater in it? Maybe the hole he was shoved in had filled in with water.”

  “So you’re thinking he could have drowned while being buried alive?”

  Chapter 14

  “Would make sense, and it would keep things simple. I mean, killing someone comes with a lot of personal risk. If a person is found out, they could lose everything they like about their life. So why kill someone and then complicate it by… by… doing that?” I wagged a floppy hand in the direction of where I’d found Doug.

  “That sounds personal.”

  “Yeah, it does,” I agreed.

  “We need to talk to more people.” I thought a moment. “Let’s find that guy Doug was working with.” I thought another moment. “Tom… no, Tim. Doug’s orchard assistant.”

  We put Brad and all the rest to our backs and left. We weren’t part of their merry band of crime solvers and wouldn’t be included in their reindeer games. We’d have to figure things out without them. We always did.

  “Any ideas on where to look for Tim?” I asked.

  Zoey pulled out her cell phone. She didn’t have a signal either, like the rest of us. We walked a few steps. She stopped, lifting her phone here and there. We walked a bit more, then she started typing. “The Justice League guys should get this. They’ve got a signal booster in the tent.”

  I peeked over her shoulder.

  Zoey typed, “Looking for orchard assistant. Keep an eye out. Tell us when found.” She hit send.

  Flashing dots appeared almost immediately, letting us know that a return incoming message was on its way. The dots flashed and flashed but no message came in. Then finally, it appeared.

  Zoey swore as she stared at her phone.

  I
gasped. “Oh my gosh. They didn’t.”

  “Idiots!” Zoey fumed, but then she laughed. “I kind of like them.”

  A picture filled the screen of Zoey’s cell phone. It was of Tim. He was sitting in a chair. His hands were tied behind his back. His ankles were tied to the chair legs. He had a blindfold on and a cloth bag of something hovering over his head.

  “What are they doing to him?” I asked.

  “Interrogating.”

  “And the thing over his head?”

  “Most likely melting ice. It’ll drip on his head. It’s distracting. Makes it harder to keep your lies straight.” She sighed. “They grow up so fast. I taught them that trick just yesterday.”

  “Come on, mama,” I said, snagging Zoey by the arm and pulling her along after me. “They don’t have any drugs or anything weird and dangerous to work with, do they?”

  “Just electricity,” Zoey said.

  I quickened my pace. We reached the tent just in time to see several of the geek squad members fighting to force Tim’s feet into an old metal washtub. What looked like miniature car battery booster cables lay stretched out on the ground nearby.

  “Stop!” I said.

  It was the distraction Tim had needed to break one leg free of their collective grasps. He swiped a leg sideways, knocking one abductor’s head into another one’s. Then, with his chin held high—presumably letting him peer past the bottom edge of the blindfold and down his face—he smashed his heel into another abductor’s back. With an “Oof!” the guy fell forward, face-first into the filled washtub. That’s when Tim stood up. The chair lifted with him, but he didn’t try to use it like a weapon. Instead he shifted his weight onto his airborne foot so that it firmly came to rest atop the guy’s head—trapping the abductor geek’s head under the water.

  “Check out the MO on this guy,” Zoey said. “Maybe he drowned Doug.”

  “Drowned?” Tim barked, swiveling his head toward Zoey’s voice. It distracted him just enough that the remaining geek squad morphed into flying monkeys and tackled him. The lot of them ended up in a pile of limbs and groans. Even though Tim was at the bottom of it all, he nonetheless was able to shift the mountain of human weight aside.