Peach Clobbered

by Anna Gerard

  “It’s Harry.”

  Gemma halted so abruptly I almost fell over her. “Harry? Our Harry? Harry Westcott?”

  “Yeah, it’s him. He was still wearing his penguin suit.”

  “Damn it, boy,” she muttered, almost to herself. “I warned you. How in the—never mind.” She broke off as she realized I was staring at her in confusion. “None of that’s important right now. Let’s go.”

  We reached the alley a few moments later. Not unexpectedly, other passersby had stumbled across the scene in my absence. Maybe half a dozen people were standing beside the nuns now, gaping at the fallen man … and, in the case of a few of the bystanders, recording the action with their smartphones.

  Bunch of ghouls. Probably putting it up on YouTube, I thought in angry dismay. Suppressing my first impulse to grab every single phone and stomp them all into oblivion, I instead called, “Reverend Mother, Gemma’s here to help.”

  “Please move aside, folks,” Gemma commanded as she pushed her way past the knot of lookie-loos. “I’m a nurse.”

  I stayed back, ready to serve as bouncer if necessary. Besides, I didn’t want a closer look. Though my view of the victim was fairly well blocked now by Gemma and the nuns, I could see the penguin head lying to one side.

  Les Miserables redux, I told myself, fleetingly recalling the other time I’d seen that penguin head rolling around.

  The sound of sirens was growing louder. Gemma was tugging on a pair of disposable latex gloves she’d pulled from her first aid kit. She glanced back at me from where she knelt beside the motionless man.

  “Nina, run back to the square so you can direct the paramedics.” To Mother Superior, she said, “Reverend Mother, can you and the other sisters make sure everyone stands at least ten feet back?”

  “And no photography,” she added with a businesslike glare at the guilty parties. “There’s a man clinging to life here.”

  While the nuns swiftly reassembled to form a gray barricade, I rushed off to do as Gemma ordered. I’d barely reached the square again when I saw strobing red and blue lights.

  I began waving my arms to catch the cop’s attention, ignoring for the moment the shouted questions from some of the nearby business owners who’d heard the commotion and were peeking outside their shop doors.

  The deputy squealed his cruiser to a stop a few feet from me, parking up on the curb. Thankfully, he’d turned off the siren, though he’d left the blue and red lights flashing. Bald, tall, and broad, and wearing a belt packed with pistol, handcuffs, and who knew what else over his tan-and-brown uniform, the African American cop radiated competency.

  “You the one who called, ma’am?”

  “Yes. The victim’s back there in the alley,” I explained and pointed. “A nurse is taking care of him while we’re waiting on the EMS guys.”

  “Good. You a witness? I’ll need to talk to you once I secure the situation.”

  He gave a brisk nod and immediately trotted off in that direction. Meanwhile, I could see down the main street two more sets of flashing lights headed toward the square.

  Thank God, the paramedics.

  I did a little jumping in addition to my arm-waving now. Between my gymnastics and the lights and sirens, it was pretty evident to everyone around the square that something big was going on. Fortunately, the EMS trucks reached me before any curiosity seekers did.

  “This way!” I shouted, pointing as the lead vehicle slowed, and the female paramedic in the passenger’s seat leaned out. “The victim’s in the alley behind the antique store.”

  I followed on foot and watched as they swiftly parked and rolled out the big guns … meaning, of course, a gurney piled with bags of portable equipment. The deputy had already moved the growing crowd away from the mouth of the alley to the opposite street corner. Gemma still hovered over the motionless man, the nuns circling the pair.

  He must still be alive, I thought in relief. Maybe he had a chance if they got him to Cymbeline General fast enough.

  As I watched, two of the blue-uniformed paramedics promptly descended upon him with IVs and portable monitors. Gemma scrambled to her feet and huddled with the other two EMS officers. Apparently satisfied she was leaving Harry in good hands, she stripped off the latex gloves and gathered her gear.

  “How’s Harry doing? Will he make it?” I ventured as she reached me.

  Gemma gave me an odd look. “I don’t know. That’s between him and God and the surgeons. But, Nina, that’s not Harry lying there.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Confused, I craned my neck, trying to see past her to the still form being worked on by the paramedics. I could hear clipped muttering from them … BP, vitals, shock, internal bleeding … none of which sounded very positive. Who they actually were working on, I couldn’t tell from my vantage point. All I really could see was the costume. But why would someone besides Harry have been wearing the penguin getup?

  And, more importantly, who was that someone?

  “What are you saying?” I demanded in disbelief. “If it’s not Harry, then who in the heck is lying there with a knife in his chest?”

  “Yeah, who?” came a now-familiar voice behind me.

  I swung about and gave a startled little shriek.

  “OhmygodHarry!” I cried for the second time in less than thirty minutes, feeling myself sway a little in shocked relief. Harry Westcott was standing before me, definitely not stabbed. “Thank God you’re alive!”

  And before I realized what I was doing, I leaped forward and gave him a big hug.

  My first reflexive thought was that he might be on the lean side, but that was definitely muscle beneath the black T-shirt he wore over his black bike shorts. My second thought was that he was cold. Not in attitude, though I was aware he wasn’t actually hugging me back. But his exposed skin and even his shirt felt way too chilled for someone standing outside in the Georgia noontime sun.

  My third thought was that I was making a total idiot of myself.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, and quickly released him. “Nothing personal. I was just shocked to see you. I mean, I’ve been thinking that you were doing the old knocking-on-heaven’s-door thing, and then I find out you’re alive …”

  I trailed off, feeling my face flush, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he was peering past me at the motionless man on the ground.

  The paramedics had cut the penguin suit all the way off him and had stabilized the knife in place with what looked suspiciously like duct tape. On a count, the four paramedics lifted him high enough to slide him onto the gurney, leaving the faux-fur costume behind on the ground like a shed skin. Then, raising the wheeled stretcher to full height, they came rolling in our direction.

  The three of us stepped back as they rushed past. Between the paramedics and all the equipment piled on the gurney, I couldn’t get a good look at the patient’s face. But once they’d gone by, I could see the back of the man’s head—a head that looked surprisingly familiar.

  “You’re kidding!” I choked out. “He was the guy in the penguin suit?”

  “He? He who?” Harry demanded.

  Gemma nodded, her graying locks bouncing. “Shocked the heck out of me, too, when I expected to find Harry and saw him lying there instead.” Then, with a glance at Harry, she asked, “Baby, are you okay? You look like you’re shivering.”

  Indeed, he had his arms wrapped around himself as if trying to keep warm. The sight reminded me how his skin had felt unusually cold, as if he’d been standing under an air-conditioner running full blast.

  “Yeah, well, you’d be shivering, too, if you’d spent the past half hour locked in a walk-in freezer.”

  “Wait, what?” I exclaimed.

  I’d been saying that a lot recently, I realized. For her part, Gemma looked equally confused.

  “What are you talking about, Harry?” she demanded, planting hands on hips. “What freezer … and who locked you inside it?”

  “The walk-in at the Taste-Tee-Fre
eze. It was getting pretty hot out, so I took a break to get some cold packs to stuff inside the costume. I went into the freezer looking for them, and someone slammed the door shut behind me.”

  “On purpose?” I asked, frowning. “Are you sure? Maybe someone thought someone else had left the door open by accident, and they closed it.”

  Harry snorted. “Yeah, or maybe it was the wind.”

  He glowered at me and then turned back to Gemma. “We can talk about that later. What I need to know right now is, who was that guy wearing my penguin suit?”

  “Oh, I thought I told you,” Gemma replied. “Though I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, since he’s the guy in town everyone loves to hate.”

  Gemma and I looked at each other; then, in chorus, we answered, “Gregory Bainbridge.”

  Chapter Nine

  By the time the paramedics rolled off in a blaze of emergency lights and a fury of sirens, the deputy who’d been first on the scene had dispersed everyone but us and the nuns. Now he was unrolling bright-yellow crime scene tape.

  “I’ll need you folks to move over here to the corner,” he said, pointing. “As soon as I get a perimeter set up, I’ll want to take your statements.”

  Then, when Harry started toward the abandoned penguin suit, he barked out, “Sir, do not touch the costume. We’ll be bagging that as evidence. Now please join the others.”

  “Great, there goes the job,” the actor muttered, but left what remained of the mascot outfit where it was. He let Gemma take him by the arm and lead him over to where the sisters huddled together.

  “Don’t worry, baby, you couldn’t of worn it again, anyhow,” I heard her tell him. “Not all cut up and bloody. I’m sure Jack will buy another one to replace it.”

  So where was Jack, anyhow? I wondered. Surely there was enough commotion going on that he and Jill would at least have stuck their heads out of their shop to see what was going on. And having done that, wouldn’t they be concerned about Harry?

  But Gemma was taking up the slack in the comforting department, though her manner was unmistakably maternal. As I watched, she gave Harry’s bicep a comforting pat, and I recalled her saying how she’d been his babysitter when he was young. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help but smile a little. It was obvious from Gemma’s solicitous manner that she was stepping back into that mothering role. But as we joined up with the somber-faced nuns, she let go of Harry long enough to give her sister-in-law a hug.

  “How you been, Laverna … er, Sister Mary George? I’m sorry it’s been so long since I made it out to the convent for a visit.”

  “Now don’t you fret, Gemma,” the nun replied with a soft smile, returning the embrace. “I know how busy you are with the coffee shop and your family. And you can still call me Laverna … at least in private.”

  Then, smile slipping, she added, “Do you think Mr. Bainbridge is going to pull through?”

  “The blade actually went in right below the rib cage. My guess is that it pierced his liver, probably nicked a lung, too. He was already in pretty bad shape by the time Nina brought me over. With the internal bleeding that’s going on, I doubt he makes it to the ER.”

  “That’s distressing news. Mr. Bainbridge is not a kind or honest man, but he is a child of God. We all will continue to pray for intercession on his behalf. And we’ll pray just as hard that our sheriff finds the culprit who did this to him.”

  The deputy, meanwhile, finished marking off the crime scene site and taking pictures from various angles. Sticking the camera and remaining roll of tape in his belt, he marched over to us. “Folks, I need statements from you.”

  Since I was technically the first on-scene, I went first. While the deputy took notes, I gave him the best description I could of the screaming woman who’d gone AWOL on me—straight brunette hair, middle-aged, plump, pink sleeveless blouse and black walking shorts—and how she’d led me to Bainbridge.

  The deputy shot me a skeptical look. “You know you’re kinda describing yourself, don’t you?”

  I bristled a little at that. No way was I middle-aged, and while I might stand to lose a pound or five, I definitely wasn’t plump.

  Coolly, I replied, “It’s strictly coincidental about the clothes. Oh, and she had a tattoo of cartoon bears around her right … no, left … upper arm. I don’t have any tattoos.”

  “Doug,” broke in a brusque voice, “why don’t you hit the restaurants with that description, and I’ll finish questioning your witnesses.”

  The newcomer was female, about my age and height, and wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses. She appeared to be a good fifty pounds heavier than me, though I suspected the extra weight was mostly muscle. Her brassy blonde hair was pulled back in a tight French braid that looked surprisingly girlish in contrast to her tan uniform shirt and brown tie and pants. And in case we didn’t figure it out from her air of command, the big gold badge on her chest marked her as the local sheriff.

  Deputy Jackson—I’d seen his name badge, which was engraved with the last name—meanwhile had snapped to attention. “You bet, Sheriff. On that right now.”

  The sheriff waited until he’d rounded the corner before addressing us.

  “Good afternoon, folks. I’m Sheriff Connie Lamb. Sorry to keep you from your lunch, but as you know, we’ve got a situation here. I need to get statements from anyone who knows or who saw anything.”

  “Excuse me, Sheriff,” Mother Superior broke in, dabbing at her forehead with a crisp white handkerchief, “but is it possible to move to a shaded spot? It’s getting warm here in the alley, and several of the sisters are rather elderly.”

  I gave a commiserating nod. In addition to the growing heat, the noontime sun was beginning to do its job on the nearby dumpster, so that the faint whiff of rotting garbage I’d noticed earlier was rapidly becoming a tsunami of stench.

  To our mutual relief, the sheriff nodded. “Certainly, Reverend Mother. Let me have a quick word with Deputy Mullins first.”

  She paused as a second deputy approached. This one was a young and wiry redhead wearing Horatio Caine/CSI: Miami–style wire-rim shades with black lenses … which accessory, I suspected, he’d deliberately chosen to play up the resemblance. I’d also have wagered that he practiced whipping them on and off in front of a mirror, à la David Caruso’s iconic character.

  The two conferred a moment; then the sheriff said, “Deputy Mullins will assist Deputy Jackson with the crime scene. Why don’t you folks walk back over to the gazebo with me so we can chat?”

  The nuns made their statements first, taking their respective turns beneath the nearby shade tree where the sheriff was holding court. Gemma was next up but was back at the gazebo within minutes.

  “Your turn, Nina,” she told me.

  Sheriff Lamb was talking on her shoulder mike as I approached. I heard her say “Roger that” before she clicked it off and turned her attention to me.

  “Thanks for your patience, Ms. Fleet. I know you already gave Deputy Jackson a statement, so I appreciate your hanging around to answer my questions.”

  I nodded. We both knew this wasn’t really a voluntary exercise, that she could make us all stay if it came to that, but I appreciated the polite fiction.

  She flipped back a few pages in her notebook and then paused, fixing me with a look. She’d taken off the mirrored sunglasses—the better to seem less intimidating to us witnesses, I guessed—and I saw with interest that her eyes were the same ice blue as Mattie’s one pale orb.

  “You’re Nina Fleet,” she confirmed, though I winced as she pronounced in the old Nee-nah way.

  “It’s Nine-ah, actually,” I corrected her, winning a nod and a scribble on her pad that I hoped was a pronunciation guide and not a note that said troublemaker.

  She looked up again. “Any connection to Cameron Fleet, the professional golfer?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. He’s my ex-husband.”

  I’d considered going back to my maiden name after th
e divorce, but I had been a Fleet almost as long as I’d been a Chatham and had professional contacts under the former name. I had known that decision would leave me open to discovery, but I’d been lucky thus far. Besides my real estate agent, Debbie Jo, only a handful of people in town knew of my relationship to Cameron Fleet.

  Those folks were golfers themselves or else fans who followed the tour on television. As such, they also had heard and read all the breathless tabloid accounts of Cam’s philandering. The only upside of the whole situation—other than the generous divorce settlement, of course—was that, as the wronged wife, I usually got the sympathy vote.

  Fortunately, Sheriff Lamb fell into the sympathetic category.

  “Funny how it used to be just the football players and baseball players getting the bad press about their personal lives,” she observed with a snort. “But now the pro golfers are giving those boys a run for the money. First Tiger, then Cameron, and I’m sure there’s a few more the media hasn’t figured out yet. Makes me glad I never let anyone put a ring on it,” she finished, waggling her diamond-free left hand for emphasis.

  Then, just as I was feeling a warm glow of sisterhood with her, the woman abruptly changed tactics. “Why was Mr. Bainbridge at your house yesterday?”

  I stared back at her, momentarily speechless. I hadn’t expected this question … mostly because I didn’t recall mentioning my encounter with Bainbridge to anyone. Definitely not to Gemma or any of the sisters. But apparently someone had seen the real estate developer’s car parked in front of my house the day before and made the sheriff aware of that fact.

  I managed a shrug. “I didn’t invite him over, if that’s what you’re asking. I never even met the man until he showed up on my doorstep yesterday looking for, how did he put it, a friendly face?”

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured, scribbling. “And what do you think he meant by that?”

  “It was pretty self-explanatory. He knew I was new in town, and he was hoping I’d have an open mind about the whole ‘evicting the nuns’ thing. I guess he was tired of being the guy that everyone hates.”