by Sam Cheever
Lis and I and Cecily looked at each other, and Cecily sighed. “So much for sneaking into the house unnoticed.”
“We should call the police,” Lis said, eyeing the corpse with surprising calm.
“The police are right outside,” I reminded her.
She grimaced. “I suppose they’re going to think we killed him.”
Cecily’s eyes went wide. “Do you think?”
I shrugged. “Mayor Robb doesn’t like me very much. I’m sure he’ll try to pin it on me.”
That, actually, was a pretty big understatement.
We stood there for a long moment in silence, each of us caught up in our own thoughts.
Cecily looked from me to Lis. “You two are taking this really calmly.”
I shrugged. “This is like my tenth dead body. I think I’m getting numb.”
Lis nodded. “I think I’m getting vicariously numb through Joey. Plus, I survived the cutthroat world of modeling. I’m pretty sure that made me immune to anything except the most violent kind of event.”
Cecily nodded thoughtfully.
“What about you?” I said. “You’re handling it better than most people would.”
She snorted out a laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “I deal with politicians every day. You could probably drive a stake through my skin, and I wouldn’t even feel it.”
I chuckled, understanding completely.
Then, I sighed. “I guess we’d better go get Arno before that poor woman in there does damage to herself.”
The server was still shrieking as if someone was yanking her fingernails out one by one.
Lis, Cecily, and I stood as far away from the group by the table as possible. I tried to make myself really small and disappear into the woodwork. Or, failing that, into the next room, if possible.
Mayor Robb kept flinging death glares in my direction as if it was my fault a dead guy ended up on his kitchen table.
Granted, Martin Robb and I both knew I didn’t like him. We both knew the feeling was mutual. But only one of us believed that I’d resort to murder to get rid of Deer Hollow’s duly elected mayor.
Cecily slid me a look of pity. “Wow, he really doesn’t like you.”
I chewed the inside of my lip.
“He blames her for that whole mess last month, which he totally got himself into, by the way,” Lis said in my defense.
I bumped shoulders with her. “Thanks for the trust and support. It appears to be in short supply right now.”
Standing near the doorway to the butler’s pantry, Arno fixed me with a glare over the head of the woman he was interviewing. It was the shrieking server from before. She kept throwing accusatory looks our way as she answered his questions, leaving me to wonder what horrible things she was telling the deputy.
Even Hal, standing near the corpse with the sheriff, was throwing me speculative looks. I fought the urge to shrug and look innocent.
“Why does everybody think I killed this guy?” I murmured to myself.
I must have spoken louder than intended because Lis put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. Even in her leather flats, my bestie towered over my five foot four inches. She was tall and slim and, even in the throes of becoming a murder suspect, she was impossibly beautiful in a plain cotton sundress that hugged her curves and flared out a couple of inches above her knees to showcase perfect legs.
Beside her, I felt like the ugly bumpkin, despite the fact that I was wearing my favorite summer dress and pretty white sandals. My strawberry-blonde hair curled around my shoulders, slightly frizzy in the humidity but mostly behaving for once. A sheen of sweat covered my face, and my stomach gurgled with nerves. I was starting to understand why Arno didn’t want me anywhere near his murder investigations. Not only was I approaching a professional level in finding bodies, but I had a tendency to draw killers like bees to the queen.
Arno patted the distraught server on the arm and turned toward our little group. He stopped to let the guys with the gurney past before fixing a laser gaze on us and heading our way with long, angry strides.
He didn’t even look at Lis when he approached. His gaze was locked on me. Still, he hadn’t completely gone over to the dark side. He kept his voice low when he started berating me. “Why do I think you’re behind this?”
I felt my eyes go wide. “You think I killed that guy?”
His brown eyes narrowed accusingly. “Of course not. But if you hadn’t been snooping where you don’t belong, you’d have never put all of us into this position.”
Okay, that did it. “All of us? Exactly how have I inconvenienced you? Maybe you should stop browbeating me and focus on finding the guy who really caused this problem. The killer.”
Arno lowered his head and his voice. “The sheriff is talking about removing all citizen consultants from the payroll. Between what happened last month and now, with you popping up in the middle of another murder, you may have just single-handedly cost Hal his gig and lost me a valuable asset.”
“That’s not fair,” Lis objected.
Arno made a motion for her to keep her voice low.
She glared at him in a way that told me he wasn’t going to be enjoying girlfriend bennies anytime soon. “Joey’s not any more at fault for this than she was for the last mess the mayor got himself into. If you’re looking for a scapegoat, then you don’t need to be looking for it anywhere around my friends or me.”
Arno paled slightly beneath his tan, but he pinched his lips together and shook his head. “Melissa, you need to stay out of this and let me do my job.”
Oh, no, he din’nt!
Lis stiffened, her beautiful face turning red. “Did you just call me Melissa?”
He had. And I could tell from the look of horror on his face that he realized just how big a mistake that was. Nobody was really sure why, but Lis had always hated her real name. Something about having been named after a crazy great-aunt with a penchant for coyote-ugly type bar behavior. And she especially hated when someone used it in a chastising tone as Arno just had. Nobody with a lick of sense did that.
Arno was toast.
“Cecily?” Mayor Robb called from across the room. When she looked at him, he jerked his head to summon her over.
She and I shared a commiserating look. I watched her join her boss and then, after a brief, low-voiced conversation, follow his stiff, angry strides out of the room.
Hal joined me as Lis stormed from the room, leaving a grim Arno behind. When the cop glowered in my direction, I glared right back. “Don’t try to blame me for any of this, Arno Willager. All I did was come into the kitchen for a drink of water and a peek at the house. I didn’t have anything to do with that poor man on the table.”
Arno sighed. “I need to take your statement. Do you want me to come by your place later?”
“That will be fine,” I said, my tone clipped. I was sorry for the man who was being loaded onto a stretcher for a ride to the morgue. Very sorry. And I was sorry that Arno was on the hot seat again, with both the mayor and his girlfriend. But neither of those things were my fault, and I was tired of being treated as if they were.
Hal took my arm, urging me toward the door. “Let’s go home. We need to feed Ethel Squeaks anyway.”
“Doesn’t Arno need your help?”
Hal shook his head. “Let’s go.”
“But…”
He fixed an intense look on me. “Joey, let’s go. I’ll explain later.”
His message was clear. There were things going on that I didn’t know about. Again. And he couldn’t tell me about them until we were alone.
“Okay.” I let him slip his fingers through mine and gratefully left the big fancy house behind.
3
“It’s just really bad timing,” my PI told me as we drove toward home. “Mayor Robb’s been chirping in the sheriff’s ear to get rid of me anyway.”
I tensed with righteous anger on Hal’s behalf. He was a darn good PI, and he’d been a h
uge help to Arno on the cases they’d worked together. “That’s just wrong. You’re saving him tons of money because he doesn’t have to hire more deputies. He should be grateful.”
Hal’s smile was grim. “He doesn’t quite see it that way, honey.”
“It’s because I came forward with evidence against him in the Kat Leonard case, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to lie, Joey. That didn’t help.”
I chewed my lip. “Okay, I’ll take the hit for that. But I honestly don’t know what else I could have done.”
He reached over and clasped my hand in a big, warm grip, squeezing it. “You couldn’t have done anything else. Robb’s dirty. We all know it. But he also got really lucky because it was easy to pin everything on his wife. Eventually, his luck’s going to run out.” Hal’s hand on the steering wheel tightened, showing white knuckles. “I’m going to make sure of that.”
“Are you shut out of this case?” I asked, feeling better.
“Not yet. Arno and I will keep my contribution to the investigation quiet. But, even if the sheriff says I’m out, I’ll keep working it. I just need someone to hire me to investigate.”
I grinned. “If that happens, I have a dollar bill with your name on it.”
Hal laughed. “You really know how to dazzle a guy. How could I turn that down?”
“You’re worth every penny. Besides, there are perks.”
He waggled his dark brows at me, and it was my turn to laugh. “Get your mind out of the sewer, Amity. I was talking about the pibl and banana cream pie.”
“I knew that.”
“Mm-hm.” I chuckled. “I’ll even let you buy me that pie. That’s just the kind of girl I am.”
“How did I get so lucky?”
“I have no idea.”
Arno looked beat when he finally arrived at my house two hours later. I felt bad for him. He’d really needed the day off, and a party with Lis on his arm had been just the ticket until it had all gone haywire in a most spectacular way.
“Have you ID’d the victim?” I asked as I handed Arno a cup of coffee.
“Yeah. He’s the owner of the catering company for the party.” Arno sipped his coffee and lowered himself wearily to a stool. “This tastes great. Thanks, Joey.”
“It’s the least I can do,” I told him with a guilty smile. “I’m sorry I found another body and wrecked your pseudo day off.”
Arno shook his head. “Obviously, it’s not your fault.” He looked up from his mug. “Unless you killed him?”
“Why do I detect a hopeful note in your question?” I asked, laughter in my voice.
“I’d be sad to put you in prison. And I’m sure Amity would miss you.” He shrugged, his lips twitching. “But if you confessed, I could close the case and go try to make up with my girlfriend.”
I barked out a laugh. “Sorry to disappoint. And, just FYI, the full name thing with Lis is on a level with murder in her book. Her mother used to crank it out whenever she was trying to get Lis’s goat. Lis hates it.”
“It’s a dumb thing to get so riled up about,” he groused.
I shuddered. “Good heavens, man! Don’t let Lis hear you say that, or the road back will be long, twisty, and filled with man-eating potholes.”
Hal chuckled. “This is why somebody wrote the book about women being from Venus.” When I threw him a glare, he quickly said. “As a Martian, I’m sure all we’re dealing with is a cultural difference.” He patted Arno on the shoulder. “And we all know that the best way to make it up to a Venetian is to prostrate ourselves before them and declare our complete idiocy.”
“Don’t forget chocolate,” I added helpfully.
Arno didn’t seem even a tiny bit amused by our banter. “If we could get back to the case?”
Shrugging, I said, “It’s your funeral. Romantically speaking.”
He sighed. “Robb has no idea why someone would stab the caterer in his kitchen. Except for a five-minute lapse when he disappeared into the house to take a call in private, Robb has the very best alibi there is. He was within eyesight of the sheriff and me the whole time.”
“Five minutes is plenty of time to stab a guy and return to the party,” I said helpfully.
“Yes,” Arno agreed. “But why? He has no obvious motive, and it was a real buzzkill on the party.”
“What did the woman you spoke to in the kitchen have to say?” I asked.
Arno frowned. “The server?”
I nodded.
“She was pretty upset…”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I said, wincing.
“We don’t have an easily discernable motive for her. Other than stepping into the butler’s pantry to grab supplies, she didn’t leave her station all afternoon.”
“She didn’t notice the body when she came into the kitchen?” I asked. “How is that possible?”
Arno shook his head. “She says no. And given how she was shrieking, I’m guessing she’s telling the truth.”
“Or she was putting on a really good act,” I said.
“Did you see him right away?” he asked, narrowing his gaze on me.
I thought about it and then shook my head. “Not right away, but within a few seconds.” The table he’d been draped over was tucked into a little alcove that looked out over the backyard. It was easy to see if someone stood in the doorway and looked around as we had. But if you hurried in and went straight to the pantry. “I guess it’s possible she missed him.”
Arno nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. Have you ever heard of a phenomenon called hyperfocus?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a real thing. When somebody is really concentrating on a task, their brain shuts out everything around them. We see it all the time from victims of a crime. They’re so focused on what’s happening to them, they could literally walk right past an enormous pink elephant and not see it.”
“Like tunnel vision?” I asked.
He nodded.
“But that generally happens under extreme stress situations,” Hal noted.
Shrugging, Arno said. “This was the young woman’s first week on a new job. She was nervous about screwing up. She desperately needs to keep the job with the caterer. Everybody’s stress initiators are different.”
I wasn’t ready to discount the server yet. If she’d killed the caterer and then heard us coming, she might have ducked into the pantry so she could pretend she’d been there all along. “Did she have any blood on her?”
Arno shook his head. “Not that I could see. But there wouldn’t have been any spray. He was only stabbed once. Castoff generally comes from a follow-up strike.”
“What about the weapon?” Hal asked.
“Regular kitchen knife. Big, with a serrated edge. It appears to have come right out of the knife block on the center island.”
Which meant it likely hadn’t been premeditated.
“Do we have a TOD?” Hal asked.
“He’d been dead for less than an hour. In fact, he was still warm.”
In my humble opinion, that news made it seem even more likely the server was the killer.
“We need to find out more about this Jonathan Calliente,” Arno told Hal. “Clients, finances, friends, enemies. We need to figure out if he was the intended target or if he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Hal nodded. “I’ll get started on that right away.”
Arno stood, rubbing a hand over his face. “I have about a hundred party-goers to interview. Wish me luck.”
“You’re going back to the party?” Hal asked, surprised.
“No.” He frowned. “Robb insisted his guests be allowed to leave. Sheriff Mulhern backed him up. So now we get to contact each of them individually and interview them on their own turf. Robb just added days of legwork to our investigation.”
I bit my lip to keep from asking if I was allowed to help with the investigation, preferring to fall back on the “what Arno doesn’t know won’t hurt hi
m” defense. I was pretty sure the last investigation, the one I was supposed to stay as far away from as humanly possible, had finally cemented the “Joey’s going to end up entangled in the case anyway, so we might as well embrace it” rule.
Still, I didn’t want to push my luck.
4
We entered Sonny’s Diner a couple of hours later and stood at the door looking around the crowded restaurant. The owner, Max, waved at us from the order window, pointing to a booth in front of the window. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she called over the noise of lively conversation.
I waved back, giving her a thumbs up. Hal placed a hand in the small of my back, gently nudging me forward. I saw why a beat later, when the door flew open and two men in ball caps stumbled in, swearing loudly and laughing. The smell of sour alcohol wafted over us, and I wrinkled my nose.
Sliding into the indicated booth, I grimaced at the stickiness of the table. I looked around for Jimmy, the busboy, but he was nowhere in sight.
Max sent the rowdy drunks toward the counter with a glare and hurried over to us, her face flushed and glistening from her activity. She shook her head, flinging a rag down on the table. “I’ll tell you what. It never fails,” she groused, handing us our menus. “There’s some kind of flu going around town, and both Jimmy and Verna are at home sick.” She shoved a frizzy strand of yellow-white hair off her face. “So, of course, half the town decides it’s a good night to come in.”
I looked around the place, seeing a number of tables with no food and a few vying desperately for Max’s attention. “Do you have someone else you can call?”
Max sighed, looking older than her fifty-some years. “No. Everybody’s either sick or on vacation.” She shook her head and tugged her order pad out of her apron. “I’ll survive. Dinner just might be a bit slow tonight. I’m missing cooks too.”
I looked at Hal and he nodded. I shoved to my feet. “What can we do to help?”
Max started to reject my offer and then stopped. “You know what? If you’re serious about helping, I’d really appreciate it. Can you take some orders and cart some food for me?”
