The Branson Beauty

by Claire Booth

  He pulled out her phone and set it aside. They would have to go through that back at the office. Then a handful of hard candy, two sticks of gum, a little mirror. And a gift. He pulled out the small, square package, wrapped in birthday paper. The little folded-over card said, Happy Birthday to my favorite old bird. Love you always, Mandy. He took a picture, then carefully unwrapped it. Inside the box was a beautiful brooch, a delicate hummingbird in flight.

  He replaced the lid and put the box back in the purse’s first compartment. The second was closed with a zipper. He undid it, but he knew what he would see. No gun. The purse didn’t weigh enough. Camo Callie’s loaner would have fit, perfectly, in that empty divided pocket. He growled in frustration. Where was it?

  He sat heavily in one of the kitchen’s two chairs and absentmindedly snapped the latex of his gloves as he stared at the purse and its contents. Great discovery, but it didn’t help him at all right now. He could hope it was covered with the killer’s fingerprints, but the way this case was going, he doubted he’d get that lucky.

  He hoisted himself out of the little chair and went to the door that led directly to the dining room. The knob would not move under his hand. He tried to twist it again. Definitely locked. He quickly walked out the hallway door and down to the dining room entrance. He broke the evidence tape on the door and shoved it open. Ignoring the rest of the room, he went to the kitchen door and knelt in front of it. This side of the knob had a keyhole. He whipped out the key ring and started jamming keys in it. The sixth one worked.

  He sat back on his heels and stared at the knob, which was still covered with black fingerprint powder. Alice must have been able to lift some pretty good prints—there were several still clearly visible on the brass finish. Good. Then he turned. The entire room was coated in black powder. Because there were prints everywhere. On the water glasses, the backs of chairs, the walls, the window shades. Everywhere.

  He moved around the long table, still on his knees, and stopped where they had found her. He slowly rose and placed his feet where he guessed the killer had stood. One foot forward and one foot back. Better balance that way. He reached his arms out in front of him. The killer had been in front of her. He’d done it face to face. And it had to be a he. The only women on the second deck did not have the strength or mobility to overpower a young person in top physical condition.

  He curled his fingers around an imaginary neck. It took a lot of something to choke the life out of a person while you looked them in the eyes. A lot of fear. Or a lot of hate. Or a lot of love. He’d learned early on that the last of those was just as often a reason for killing as the others. And quite possibly the most painful of them all.

  He squeezed his hands into fists and dropped them to his sides. He did one more sweep of the entire room and then quietly stepped outside. He locked the door, carefully replaced the crime-scene tape, and trudged up the stairs to the pilothouse. There was nothing there, except Albert’s aviator sunglasses, folded neatly in the middle of the well-worn seat of the captain’s chair. He sighed, then dug out an evidence bag and put them inside. He took it and the bagged purse and headed down to the dock. Tucker was standing at the gate, waiting.

  “You done?” he asked.

  “For now,” Hank bit out. He didn’t bother with a good night as he turned to start the climb up to the road. “What an asshole,” he heard Tucker mutter behind him. Hank smiled in the darkness. He’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Duncan stomped into the kitchen, where Hank and Maggie sat with their coffee. It was just before six and the kids were, remarkably, still asleep. But they wouldn’t be for long with all the noise Dunc was making.

  “Where is that darned Walkman?” he rummaged through the desk in the corner that was the dumping ground for everything they didn’t know what to do with. “I thought I put it…”

  He looked up and noticed the two of them sitting at the table. “Oh. You two seen my Walkman?”

  Maggie shook her head. Dunc grunted and headed toward the living room. Hank turned to his wife. “He doesn’t mean an actual Walkman? That plays tapes?”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “Goodness knows how old it is now. Mom tried to get him to upgrade to a portable CD player about ten years ago. He wouldn’t. Said it was too bulky. Said his Johnny Cash tapes worked just fine, thank you. And even those were a sin against the purity of vinyl.”

  Hank knew all about his father-in-law’s beloved record collection. His back still seized up when he remembered having to move those ridiculously heavy boxes out of the old house and into this one. He curled his fingers around his mug and grinned. “What do you think he’d do with digital? We should get him an iPod.”

  “An iPod? One of those little glass things? No, thank you,” Dunc said as he walked back into the kitchen, triumphantly waving his Walkman in the air. He clipped it on his waistband. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

  “Yeah, there’s a reason for that,” Hank said. “Tape is about the crappiest way to listen to anything. I can’t believe that thing even still works.”

  “Works fine. The tapes only get gummed up every once in a while.” He clamped on the big foam earphones. “Now I’m going for my walk. Got Everybody Loves a Nut all cued up.”

  Well, that is certainly appropriate, Hank thought as he pointed at the frosted-over window. “It’s gotta be ten below out there.”

  “It’s only fifteen degrees, you pansy. I checked.”

  Maggie laid her hand lightly on Hank’s sleeve.

  “Can’t you take a break for another day or two, Dad?”

  “No way,” Dunc said. “I have to get my miles in. Walkin’ the inversion of my age, I am.”

  They both stared at him in confusion.

  “Every week, I walk seventeen miles. I’m seventy-one. Get it? I flip-flop the numbers. If I miss more than a day or two, I can’t catch up.”

  He disappeared into the mudroom, humming as he went. Hank grinned at his wife. “Well, doctor, when he slips on that icy hill at the end of the street and turns into the Wabash Cannonball, at least he won’t be my problem.”

  Maggie smacked him on the shoulder as she stood up. “I don’t need any more problems, you wise-ass.” Then she kissed the top of his head. “You better get out of here before the kids get up, or they’ll want you to stay and do your talking banana.”

  Hank drained the rest of his coffee. He didn’t have time for the talking banana. That was the thing about kids. Do something once on a whim—like sticking Cheerio eyes and a mouth on a half-peeled banana and doing an Adam Sandler impression—and you were stuck doing it every morning for the rest of your life. He hustled out through the garage just as he heard little feet trotting out from the bedrooms.

  * * *

  “All units. Table Rock Lake. East shore. Exact twenty unknown. Witness reports large explosion heard.”

  “Union-two-oh-four, copy. Is fire responding?”

  “Affirmative. Appears to be something behind the trees, possibly out on the lake … stand by … caller pretty far away from the scene. He states it appears to have come from the same area where the Beauty came in for emergency docking. Over.”

  “Union-two-oh-four, responding. Six twenty-three A.M.”

  Hank stared in horror at the radio on his dash. What the…? He yanked the wheel, barely making the turn down the state route to the lake. He had been planning to go straight and check in on the Brysons before heading back to the boat, but now … The back end of the car fishtailed before he got it back under control, loosening his grip on the wheel only long enough to turn on his emergency lights. He pressed his foot to the floor, and the car shot along the ice-crusted roads toward a horizon that was turning red. And it wasn’t the sunrise.

  * * *

  The air reeked of oil and charred wood. The noxious fumes pricked at his eyes and tickled his nose—which had miraculously cleared, so he could smell every horrible scent wafting thr
ough the frigid air.

  “It looks like it got blown apart pretty good.” Larry Alcoate appeared at his side.

  Hank didn’t look up from the water. “What are you doing here? Nobody was hurt.”

  “I’m emergency services, and a big-ass explosion qualifies, even if there are no injuries. I wasn’t going to pass up seeing this.” He gleefully rubbed his hands together. “This has been the best week ever. Rescues and explosions and snowstorms. It’s better than KC.”

  Well, it is certainly different than KC, Hank thought as he turned a full circle on the dock. There was no deputy in sight. No one had been guarding the boat—the crime scene, his crime scene—when it exploded. And now it was at the bottom of Table Rock Lake. Fantastic.

  He turned away from the polluted water and saw Lovinia standing off to one side, her hands stuffed in her green ski coat. He wondered how long she’d been there. He’d actually gotten to the scene before her, which was rare.

  “Hey, Lovinia.”

  She snuggled deeper in her coat and gave him a sympathetic smile. “Not the best way to start your day, is it?” she said.

  He shook his head. “No. It’s not.” He gave her a rueful grin. “I did beat you, though. That’s something.”

  She chuckled, and her gray curls bounced against the turned-up collar of her jacket.“Don’t get used to it. I decided to finish reading the newspaper first, otherwise I would have beat you.”

  Hank turned his back on the oil-slicked water. He knew that wouldn’t make it go away, but focusing on something other than a crime scene for a few seconds always helped him clear his head for the investigation to come.

  “Six is awfully early to be up reading the paper when you’re retired,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t sleep much anymore. Not since Walter died.” She shrugged. “I just try to keep busy.”

  Hank knew her husband had died shortly before Hank became sheriff. “When did you two move down here?”

  Her smile was wistful this time. They’d come to Branson about five years earlier, she said, and bought the house out on Roark Creek just a little northwest of Branson. Walter loved to fish and she loved to hike, and they’d intended to spend their retirement enjoying the beautiful Ozark Mountains and area lakes.

  Lakes.

  They both turned and stared at the decidedly un-beautiful water in front of them. “When’s the state fire marshal going to get here?” she asked.

  “Not for a couple of hours. And when he does get here…” He swung his arm wide, taking in the black water, the burnt flotsam, and the charred gangplank, which reached out from the dock like a severed limb. “This is what he’ll get. One big, wet, inaccessible mess.”

  “That’s for sure.” Bill Freedman walked up, pulling gloves out of the pockets of his blue water patrol parka and putting them on. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get a diver down there. Weather’s too iffy.” He glanced up at the sky, where a wall of storm clouds was advancing slowly from the south. “And the visibility down there. Awful. No point putting somebody in danger just to confirm that the boat’s a goner.”

  Hank gritted his teeth. “It’d be for a bit more than that, Bill. Why’d it explode all of a sudden?”

  Bill shrugged. “Probably something to do with hacking the paddle wheel off. Poor thing couldn’t have liked that much.” He started to turn toward the water and then stopped. “Actually, you tell me. Didn’t you have somebody down here … you know, guarding it?”

  Hank’s scowl deepened. When he got ahold of that fat, insolent Good Ol’ Boy …

  * * *

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words were followed by a stream of cigarette smoke as GOB exhaled directly in Hank’s face. “I finished my shift and came home. Nobody told me to do no different.”

  “So you just left the boat unguarded. You left a homicide crime scene unsecured.”

  GOB shrugged. “It was all taped up. That’s secured.”

  Hank literally counted to ten before speaking again. “You should not have abandoned your post.”

  GOB crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the railing of his front porch. “Look, nobody authorized me overtime. I wasn’t staying and not getting paid.”

  “All you had to do was call in and ask.” Hank knew he was about to veer into soapbox territory, but he couldn’t help himself. “I find it very sad that you put money over the safety of this county’s citizens and the sanctity of the investigation.”

  “Sanctity?” GOB snorted. “This ain’t church, boy. This is a job. This is business. You authorize the overtime, I stay. You don’t, I go. Seems simple enough that even a city boy could understand.”

  Hank’s fist clenched of its own accord. He forced it to relax. “It ain’t church? Funny, it seems to me like it’s exactly that. The breaking of one of the Lord’s Commandments, isn’t it? And we are charged with finding the killer.”

  GOB shook his head. “Nope. You are charged with that, boy. This … all this is on you.” He jabbed his finger at Hank’s chest.

  I am very aware of that, Hank thought, but I will not be poked at by a lousy, lazy law-enforcement apostate. He slowly raised his own finger and leveled it at GOB’s face. “Because of your devotion to duty, you can report for your next shift at the county jail in Forsyth. That will be your new permanent assignment, one more fitting for someone with your … initiative.”

  The puffs of cigarette smoke stopped coming, and Tucker began to turn purple. Outrage … or a heart attack. Hank doubted he’d get that lucky. He slowly lowered his hand and walked away from Tucker’s small frame house, leaving his deputy to stew in a preexisting pot of anger that he knew he had just set to boiling.

  * * *

  By the time he got back to the boat, the fire marshal was there, staring at the water much like everyone else. A big, burly man with gray hair, he was even less receptive than the water patrol to Hank’s suggestion that a few divers be sent down to look at things. The guy pulled at his mammoth mustache and adopted a look that Hank was sure he used when teaching at whatever fire marshal training school they sent stupid rookies to. There were such things as priorities, Mustachio explained. No one was hurt, no one was killed. The boat had been severely damaged the day before, and it was quite possible—no, quite likely—that as a result, gasoline had leaked and something had ignited it. Did the boat have a generator? That could have malfunctioned. Provided an ignition source.

  Hank pointed out—perhaps a little too loudly—that the boat was also “quite likely” insured, and was worth a darn sight more in burnt pieces than it would be moldering in dry dock with an amputated paddle wheel. Mustachio nodded with what Hank took to be feigned sympathy and turned away to ask Freedman how the wife and kids were doing. Hank stood there, alone on the crowded dock, and stared at the water. It was flat and slick and shot through with oily rainbows, and for the moment, completely impenetrable.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Hank rang the doorbell again and waited. The little front porch was swept clean of any blown snow. A fake ficus, all glossy-leafed health, swung in complete incongruity next to the icicles descending from the eaves. He blew on his hands and swung his arms as he waited. Finally, the lace curtain in the front window twitched. He pulled the badge off his coat and waved it at the movement. He heard a heavy scraping, and then the door swung open.

  He introduced himself, and the Beauty’s private dining room cook led him into a living room full of more ficus plants and way too much flower-print furniture. He sat where instructed, in a huge, overstuffed easy chair with lace doily things on the arms. He avoided them and put his hands in his lap.

  “Goodness,” Mrs. Pugo puffed as she pulled a wooden dining table chair out of the entryway and sat across from him. “I’m sorry about that. I got no locks, you see. And well, this business…”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“… this murder … well, it just has me in a fright. A real fright, I tell you. So I shoved the chair under t
he doorknob. I didn’t know what else to do. That seemed to work. It would work, wouldn’t it, Sheriff? It would keep the bad folk out … wouldn’t it?”

  She clasped her hands and turned huge brown eyes toward him. Short and round, she looked exactly like one of those plump, kindhearted housekeeper/nanny/godmothers in Disney films. All she needed was a flouncy little cap and a singing crab. She blinked and waited for his approval. As he was busy sinking ever farther into his excessively cushioned seat, she actually had to look down at him from her perch on the solid wood chair. He felt that the positioning did not do any favors to his authority as he explained that while it had been a very good idea, a chair was no substitute for a good deadbolt and perhaps she should think about going to the hardware store today to get one.

  She nodded solemnly and then dived right in. “I expect you’re here to talk to me about that sweet young thing?” Hank nodded and asked when she had first seen Mandy on the boat.

  “Oh, it was before we launched,” she said. “All the sudden, she comes bursting in the kitchen door. She was white and trembling, like a ghost that had gone and scared itself. I sat her at the table and got her a glass of water. She looked like she was going to be sick. I didn’t have much to do right then, so I sat with her. Plus, I was worried. I didn’t know what was wrong with her.”

  It had taken Mandy quite a while to tell the good Mrs. Pugo what happened. “Oh, I just felt so bad for her. She was so upset. She didn’t want anybody to see her, and I can’t say I blamed her. To give that horrible boy the satisfaction of embarrassing her? Not if I had anything to say about it.”