“And by Katie’s kids, you mean Dominic.”
“He let the air out of my tires once.”
“He handcuffed me to my chair.”
Alex laughed. “And since you did find another dead body today… I thought picking up some popcorn and vacuuming was the least I could do.”
He finished vacuuming the last few strips of carpet, then I handed him his glass of wine and we sat down on the couch. He took two black Styrofoam containers from his paper bag and opened them up.
“For you, Madame, I have a piece of Mazzarelli’s Death by Chocolate cake, some fresh whipped cream, and one fancy plastic fork.”
I cut away a corner of the cake, dipped it into the whipped cream, and stuffed it into my mouth.
“Oh, my mother…”
He was watching me, apparently enjoying this. “That’s a good thing?”
“My mother’s not a good thing. But this cake… wow. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He took his first bite, and had a very similar reaction to mine. “Oh my mother is right.”
I pulled up Bachelor in Buffalo on the DVR, and it was every bit as ridiculous and awesome as I had hoped. Alex and I ate our cake and drank our wine while we laughed at the show. But when the show ended, I found myself looking at Alex, wondering about this man who had found his way to my weird little town and somehow into my weird little life.
“What?” he said.
“I feel like you know a lot more about me than I know about you.”
“I don’t know about that. You know I grew up in Salmon. Wanted to be a cop. My folks are gone. And now I’m here.”
“Wow. I stand corrected. Five whole sentences. Practically an autobiography. I’m serious, Alex.”
He leaned over in a way that made me nervous. “If you were serious, this wine glass wouldn’t be empty.”
“Pay to play?”
He winked. “Something like that.”
I went to the kitchen, veered to the bathroom again, and did another pit check. They definitely didn’t smell good. But hey, maybe his pits didn’t smell good either? Maybe our pits would cancel out?
I checked the rest of me in the mirror. It would take a lot more than a splash of water to bring this up to grade. I would have to rely on the wine. And lighting.
I took the wine back to the living room, turned the lights down a bit, poured us each another glass, and tucked my feet under me as I cozied onto the couch.
“So what do you want to know?” he asked.
“You told me about your parents. I don’t remember any mention of siblings.”
“I’ve got an older sister. Shelly. Married with three children. Lives in Denver.”
“And you and Shelly get along?”
“Of course.”
“And her kids?”
“Two boys and a girl. I see them three or four times a year. This is easy. Anything else?”
“Anything?”
He paused. “Almost anything.”
“Have you ever had to shoot anyone?”
His face fell.
“You have?”
He nodded soberly.
“More than one?”
He nodded soberly again.
“Wow… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m lucky. I know that I stopped bad people. Really bad people. I rest easy.”
We went back to sipping our wine.
“Favorite color?” I asked.
“Yet another hard-hitting question.”
I laughed. Then grew deadly serious. “Pretty evasive on the whole color question.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Because I don’t have one.”
I threw a pillow at him. “Liar! Okay, let’s stop messing around. Favorite movie?”
“Shawshank Redemption?”
“Good choice. How about a food everyone loves that you can’t stand?”
“Pumpkin pie.”
“What? Pumpkin pie’s almost as American as apple pie!”
“It’s got a weird texture. Like I’m swallowing my own tongue.”
“Okay, weirdo. Pumpkin pie aversion noted. Hmm… CNN or Fox?”
“Barbecue,” he said firmly.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “I’d rather sit down with people over barbecue and beer and talk things out.”
“Thought that was going to be another weird answer… turned out good. Now for the tough one.”
He took a long sip of his wine. “Give me your best shot, Walker.”
There was one thing I was particularly interested in knowing. When he wasn’t being Sheriff Kramer, the lawman who got annoyed with me for being better at solving murders than he was… when he was just sitting around being little ol’ Alex… did he think about me?
And if he did, what did he think?
But I couldn’t possibly ask that. First, because that would be the kind of honest that people call “desperate”—and I had entirely too much pride to ever let someone see me being desperate. And second, because I was hoping that him showing up tonight with chocolate cake had already answered my question.
But there was something else I was interested to know. How did I guy like Alex Kramer make it this long without being… well, already attached?
“You’ve got nothing else?” he asked.
I was a professional investigative journalist. I was willing to walk right up to a mob boss and ask him about his business. But talking to this nice man who sat a mere two feet away from me, sipping wine… this was hard.
Just do it, Hope.
“Have you ever been in a serious relationship?”
He stopped his wine glass midflight. “You mean, with a…”
“Girl, Alex. Have you ever been in a serious relationship with a girl?”
“Ahhh, a girl.” He took his sip. “Define serious.”
“Now you’re messing with me. Serious. You know, ever been married? Been close to being married? Have you ever been in love?”
I said that last part a little more aggressively than I’d intended. I shrank back into the couch while Alex mulled the question over, like he was working figures in his head. Which made no sense to me. It was a pretty simple question.
Then, without warning, he smiled one of those make-me-go-wobbly smiles, scooted closer to me, and started to lean in.
I didn’t know what I was expecting—but I was not expecting that. My heart tried to leap out of my chest, and I found myself shaking.
And that’s when his phone rang. It caught me so off guard that I jumped and spilled my remaining wine down the front of my shirt.
Alex fumbled for his phone, then answered. “This is Sheriff Kramer.” A long pause. “Are you certain?” He shot me a glance. Then: “Sure, I’ll be right there.”
He stood up and shook his head.
“That went much faster than I figured. That was Dr. Bridges. They got a dental match, and Bubba and Mary were right. Positive ID. That corpse you found was Wanda Wegman.”
“And you have to go now?”
He put his cowboy hat on and shrugged. “Well, Dr. Bridges found something else, and I’d better get started on it.”
“Started on what?”
“My investigation. Dr. Bridges found evidence that tells us this definitely wasn’t an accident. Wanda Wegman was murdered.”
Chapter Ten
Dominic woke me up the next morning with a gentle technique I like to call Jumping on Aunt Hope’s Face. What made that experience even more enjoyable was the solid ten or fifteen minutes of sleep I’d enjoyed before the human alarm clock attacked me.
To say it was a bad night’s sleep would be an understatement.
It felt like I spent the entire night replaying the strange events of the day in my head. I, Hope Walker, had basically been mom to three kids for an entire day. Okay, sure, I’d also spent part of the day following up on a goat murder, and of course there was the small matter of unearthing a human skeleton. But despite all of t
hat, I had survived—and more importantly, so had the children.
And then, who should appear at my door but Sheriff Kramer? Not to complain about how I was getting in his way. In fact, he didn’t come as “Sheriff Kramer” at all. He and his brilliant green eyes and his smile that made me go weak… they came as Alex.
Oh, and let’s not forget the chocolate cake.
It was hard to believe, looking back on it, that we’d just sat on the couch eating cake and drinking wine and laughing at the TV like normal people. It had been so long since I’d done that, I’d forgotten how good it felt.
And then he’d leaned in.
That had caught me off guard… in the best possible way.
A cute guy shows up at your door with late-night chocolate cake? I suppose most women would consider that a sign. Especially if that woman was a professional investigator. But after Jimmy’s accident, I closed that part of myself off, and for a decade now, all I’d done was work. As if by working hard enough, and well enough, and long enough, then maybe, just maybe, the pain would go away.
But now I’d returned to Hopeless. To people I cared about. To Granny, and Katie. And along the way I met this incredibly handsome—and infuriating—man.
And he leaned in.
I think I know what was going to happen. I mean, he showed up at my house with chocolate cake, right?
But I wasn’t sure.
Stupid Dr. Bridges. Why did he have to choose that moment to call? It was a Saturday night! Can’t murder investigations wait until Sunday?
Unless…
What if it wasn’t Dr. Bridges? What if Alex was lying? Maybe he’d actually given someone a signal. Hey, if it’s going really bad, I’ll lean in, and then you call and I’ll pretend I have work to do.
Maybe he leaned in and saw a big chunk of chocolate cake in my teeth and he gagged. Or worse, maybe he leaned in and got a whiff of my pits.
Maybe the pits didn’t cancel out after all.
Argghhh!
Back and forth and around in circles my brain went. Until finally, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, the neurons in my brain stopped firing and I fell asleep. Only to be awoken by a five-year-old’s knees ten minutes later.
Thanks for that, Dominic. I still prefer you to stupid Dr. Bridges.
I grabbed Celia from her crib and stumbled downstairs to the coffeemaker. Dominic disappeared, no doubt to plot something nefarious. Lucy wasn’t around either—probably reading a book.
According to Katie’s schedule, the kids usually ate pancakes and sausages and eggs on Sundays, but the chances of that happening were about the same as the chances of me making pancakes and sausages and eggs on a Sunday.
I put two bowls of cereal out for Lucy and Dominic and yelled for them to eat their breakfast. Then I strapped Celia into her high chair and started feeding her. I kept my eyes open just wide enough to make sure I was still feeding a human child. I was hoping if I kept my eyes half closed, maybe I could get something close to half sleep.
To my surprise, Dominic was not plotting my untimely death. In fact, he and Lucy had been orchestrating an even bigger surprise. When they ran down the stairs and presented themselves before me, they looked great. Lucy was wearing a long blue dress with a pretty white bow, and Dominic was wearing long corduroy pants, a button-down shirt, and a tie.
Maybe I really was asleep. This had to be a dream.
“Are you two distracting me while some kind of deadly creature wraps itself around my neck?”
“Even better!” Dominic said.
“Yep!” said Lucy. “We’re ready for church!”
“Church?” I said. “You guys go to church on Sundays?”
“Silly Aunt Hope,” said Lucy. “Everybody goes to church on Sundays.”
I had to respectfully disagree. “Everybody does not go to church on Sundays,” I said as I shoveled another bite of rice cereal into Celia’s big chubby cheeks.
“Granny and Bess are always there,” Lucy said.
“And Pastor Lief is there,” Dominic added.
Lucy giggled. “He has to be there. The mayor’s usually there too.”
“Well that’s not going to make me run to church.”
Lucy smiled. “There’s someone else who’s usually at church.” She looked at Dominic, and the two of them giggled. “Sheriff Kramer.”
I stopped the spoon just as it was about to hit Celia’s lips. “Sheriff Kramer goes to church?”
“Mm-hmm,” said Lucy.
“And what time does church start exactly?”
Lucy looked up at the clock. “Thirty minutes.”
I jumped up from my seat. “Hurry up, kids! We’re going to church!”
When my life’s story is written, I hope there’s a special chapter for that time I thought I could take three children to church by myself. This is probably why God made it so people normally have children one at a time instead of as litters. Dogs can have litters, because they never have to change diapers during church. Dogs don’t have to keep their giggling children quiet during Pastor Leif’s sermon. And dogs definitely do not have to confiscate a straw from a five-year-old boy who’s just launched a gigantic spit wad at the mayor of Dog Town.
There were many other eventful things crammed into that service, but if I mention them all it’ll feel like I’m just showing off.
I’d love to say that getting to see Sheriff Kramer made everything worth it. But having the guy you like see you act like a complete spaz for an hour straight isn’t my idea of modern courtship.
When the service finally ended, Granny was laughing so hard I thought her teeth might fly out of her mouth. And two people were headed directly for me. Mayor Wilma Jenkins and Sheriff Alex Kramer.
Unfortunately, Wilma got to me first.
“I bet you put that little creep up to that, didn’t you?”
“For your information, Wilma, Dominic is not a creep. He’s more like a psychopath—like the kind of people you do business with. Also, if I had been behind it, he wouldn’t have launched a spitball at your head—it would have been a rock.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“What good would a threat do to a woman backed by Tommy Medola?”
Wilma stepped closer. “I do not need a man backing me.”
“Hey, I saw you finally got someone to sell on the tree side of Moose Mountain. You make Mrs. Greeley ‘an offer she couldn’t refuse’?”
Wilma frowned. “A generous offer. We made Mrs. Greeley a generous offer. And she accepted. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“I heard Mr. Clowder and the rest aren’t too keen on selling. That throws a wrench in your plans.”
“They’ll come around. You can’t fight progress. With a name like Hope, one would think you’d understand that.” She glanced over her shoulder and saw Sheriff Kramer waiting to speak to me, then looked at me with a little twinkle in her eye. “I see…”
As Mayor Jenkins waltzed away, Sheriff Kramer took her place.
I had a cherubic child plastered to my hip, several wet spots on my chest where Celia had used my top as a binky, and a five-year-old standing beside me, looking for targets to take out with a loaded straw. I was a mess. But it was good to see Alex.
“Morning, Sheriff.”
He pointed at the children. “I recognized these three faces, but I don’t believe I’ve seen the likes of you around these parts, Ms. Walker.”
“These parts being church?”
He smiled. “Indeed. Hey, listen, about last night…”
“Yes?”
“I just… I wanted to say sorry for dropping in unannounced like that.”
“You’re… sorry?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Just, I’m not sorry about dropping by.”
“Good.”
“But I am sorry that I had to leave when I did.”
Me too. “I guess murder investigations trump Bachelor in Buffalo.”
“I think Dr. Bridges was pretty excited
he found something on his own.”
“What exactly did he find that was evidence of a murder?”
“Lucy!” whispered Dominic loudly. “Aunt Hope just said ‘murder’ in church.”
Lucy and Dominic looked up at me with wide eyes.
“Am I not supposed to talk about murder in church?” I asked.
Lucy leaned over to Dominic. “Maybe she’d know the rules better if she came more often.”
Alex smiled. “From the mouths of babes.”
I glared at him. “Shut up.”
“You’re not supposed to say ‘shut up’ in church either,” said Dominic. “You’re really bad at these rules.”
“Perhaps we should step outside where there are fewer rules?” Alex suggested.
I hustled the little animals outside onto the sidewalk, and Alex stopped beside me, rocking back and forth on his cowboy boots.
“So…” I said. “You have big plans today?”
“Big murder investigation plans.”
“Those are my favorite kind. Too bad I’m watching children all day.”
“You’d rather be investigating a murder than taking care of adorable children.”
I leaned in. “I know that sounds super terrible… but yes, I really would.”
He put his cowboy hat on and smiled. “Well, duty calls.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Last night?”
“Oh, well… um… I meant, what did Dr. Bridges find? Why’s he so sure it’s murder.”
“Oh. Well, once he got all the dirt cleared away, he found a broken knife blade stuck between her third and fourth ribs.”
“She was stabbed?”
“It appears so. But I suppose that’s for the sheriff to find out.” He tipped his hat. “Enjoy your babysitting, Ms. Walker.”
“Enjoy your murder investigation, Mr. Kramer.”
As he climbed into his pickup truck and drove off toward Bubba’s, I was sad to see him go. I was also sad he got to go ask people questions about the murder, and I didn’t. Did that make me a bad person? Almost certainly.
Time to double down on that bad person thing.
“Kids, raise your hands if you’re hungry!”
Lucy’s and Dominic’s hands shot into the air.
“Perfect,” I said as I turned my little crew toward Buck’s Diner. “Because I’ve got just the place to go. And if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get to start our own murder investigation.”
A Hopeless Discovery Page 6
