Death is in the Air (Secret Seal Isle Mysteries Book 5)

by Lucy Quinn

  “Yeah, all right, sure,” Deputy Swan replied, his voice now tinny but clear through the phone’s speaker. Clear but oddly slurred. “Go ahead, speaker me. Ha! Speaker me about all this, will ya?” He laughed, the sound high-pitched and grating, and Cookie frowned at Hunter, who nodded. The good deputy, the island’s only law enforcement officer, was evidently three sheets to the wind… again.

  “Hello, Deputy Swan,” Cookie called out, and she stifled a laugh at the sound of a swift thunk. At a guess, she’d say that Swan had been leaning back in his office chair, feet up on the desk, and had abruptly sat upright when he’d heard her voice. She had that effect on some people. Especially the hapless deputy who didn’t like her much even when he was sober, which, in her experience, wasn’t all that often.

  “Why, Miss James,” he replied after a second, his voice a little wobbly. “What a surprise.” They heard a loud slurping sound, followed by a very satisfied lip smack. “Care for some egg nog?” he asked as if they were standing in his office. Just how drunk was he?

  “No, thank you,” Cookie replied. “But you go right ahead.” She was guessing that the holiday drink in question was heavily fortified.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” They were treated to the sounds of Swan’s gulping and swallowing and sighing again. “Anyway, reason I called your boyfriend is because I just got a call. Somebody found a dead body.”

  “Somebody?” Hunter cut in. “Who, exactly?”

  “Not sure,” Swan answered, making Cookie bite back a groan. “Ted, maybe? Or Fred? Or Bill? I think it was one of those three. Though it might’ve been Mary. I wrote it down, but my handwriting’s terrible.” He giggled like a twelve-year old. “Anyway, figured you’d want to know since it’s a murder case.”

  “How do you know that, Deputy? A dead body is hardly enough evidence.” Hunter explained slowly and carefully, which Cookie knew meant he was actually fuming inside at the audacity of the deputy assuming he’d take a random case. “I’m FBI, remember? This is your jurisdiction, not mine.”

  “Aw, come on, don’t try to pull that crap on me. The body is missing an ear. I doubt anyone cut it off as a souvenir.” Swan complained in what was nearly a whine. “I know Watkins deputized you last time you were here, and I’m guessing that’s still in effect.” Watkins was Swan’s boss, the sheriff over in Hancock on the mainland. “Which means you can cover this little thing for me, right?”

  Hunter started to say something in return, but Cookie shook her head. “Of course, Deputy,” she answered as sweetly as she could manage, pitching her voice so he could hear her clearly. “We’d be happy to handle it. You just sit back and relax and we’ll take care of everything.” She’d been deputized as well, and knew there wasn’t much point in relying on Swan to handle the matter. He’d have been in way over his head with a case like this anyway.

  “Yeah?” Swan sounded suspicious, but after a second he said, “Okay, great, then. Thanks.” There was a clatter, no doubt him fumbling to place the phone back on the receiver.

  “Wait!” Cookie shouted. At first she was afraid she’d been too late, but then the deputy came back on.

  “What now?” he demanded.

  “The body,” Cookie reminded him, rolling her eyes at Hunter. “You haven’t told us where it is yet.”

  “Oh.” She heard the rustling of paper. “It’s over on Little, just off Main. Number five, out in back. Can’t miss it. Good luck!” And then he hung up.

  “That man is a disgrace,” Hunter muttered as he tucked his phone away. “I’m tempted to call Watkins and tell her to fire him.”

  “She won’t,” Cookie pointed out. “He’s the mayor’s nephew, remember? Besides, where’s she going to find another deputy to replace him?”

  He glanced at her, his eyebrows raised.

  Cookie shook her head, laughing as she backed away, hands up. “Oh, no. I know where you’re going with that. I don’t mind helping out now and then, but I didn’t leave the FBI so I could become a full-time deputy out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Plenty of people do,” Hunter said, turning to study the town where it was laid out below them. “Leave the big city behind, retire to a nice quiet post out in the country. Suits you better than working the local inn.”

  “Maybe,” Cookie admitted, though she felt a stab of irritation at him for questioning her life choices. “But I don’t really want to be stuck behind a desk, twiddling my thumbs while waiting for the next cat that needs to be pulled from a tree. Come on.” She started walking, moving fast to restore some of the heat that had seeped out of her while they’d been idle. After a second Hunter caught up, his long strides making it easy for him to keep pace. “Little and Main is this way,” she said.

  “I thought this town only had the one street,” Hunter commented as they walked back down toward the main drag.

  “It does, really,” Cookie agreed. “But there’re a few small side streets, practically alleys. A lot of them don’t have official designations, but people have named them anyway, to make it easier.” She paused at a corner. “This is Little.”

  “I can see why,” Hunter remarked, following her past the bait shop. There were several houses tucked away on either side of the narrow alley, which was barely wide enough to fit a single car. They stopped at a two-story house that was no more than a box covered in yellow siding that might have been cheery once, but was now dingy. A single, tarnished-metal number five was askew just to the left of the one front window. “In back, he said?” Hunter asked as they skirted the front walk and cut around to the side.

  “He did,” Cookie confirmed over her shoulder. She stopped suddenly. “But I think he probably meant on the side.” She gestured toward where several trashcans were stacked in a wooden corral by the side door—and where several seagulls were pecking at something on the ground. Something pale and flesh-colored. “Damn,” Cookie muttered.

  “Get away from there!” Hunter shouted, stomping over, and the birds scattered at his approach. Cookie was right behind him, and they could both clearly see the birds’ target sprawled half out of a trash can that had toppled over somehow. All Cookie could tell at the moment was that it was a female with short, messy dark hair.

  “That’s our gal,” she told Hunter as they carefully stepped closer, trying to avoid disturbing any potential evidence. Though most likely the seagulls had already done that for them.

  “How do you know?” he asked, crouching down to one side of the body. “We haven’t even seen her face yet.”

  “Don’t have to,” Cookie replied. She squatted on the other side, and pointed toward the woman’s head, careful not to actually touch anything. “Check it out.” The hair had fallen back on that side, revealing the woman’s ear—and the dangling strands of silver and amethyst that hung there.

  “It’s an earring,” Hunter acknowledged. “So?”

  “So,” Cookie answered. “It’s a match to the one Winter found in her wine.”

  Hunter scowled but pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to brush aside the hair on the woman’s other side. “You’re right,” he admitted after a second, standing and tucking the pen back away. “Other ear’s gone. This is our vic.”

  Cookie sighed. “And here I was really hoping it was just some weird ear accident or an act of passion. Like our very own Van Gogh.”

  Hunter shook his head, but she ignored him as something in her peripheral vision caught her eye. She turned and spotted a neighbor poking her head out of her side door. And even though they were at least twenty feet away, Cookie could tell that the woman was staring right at them.

  3

  At first Cookie expected the newcomer to retreat, or even shriek. After all, here she and Hunter were, him in his suit and tailored overcoat, her in her usual jeans, flannel shirt, and heavy parka, both of them standing over what was clearly a dead body. But the stranger wasn’t fazed, and instead of backing away or crying out she stepped outside, pulling her door shut firmly behind her and marching a
cross the connecting strip of lawn.

  As she drew closer, Cookie studied her. Average height, slender build, chestnut-colored hair—except that, as the woman approached, Cookie revised her assessment to a little short, wiry build and obviously dyed brown hair. The eyebrows were what finally clued her in on the woman’s identity, however. They were very precise, each one a perfect brown arch except one was higher than the other. Like they’d been drawn on, and not very well.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gibbons,” Cookie called out. “It’s Cookie, Cookie James. From the inn.”

  “Hm?” Mrs. Gibbons stopped beside them, wearing an old, threadbare bathrobe. On her feet she wore slippers shaped like lobsters, bright red as if they’d already been boiled. The woman pulled her bathrobe more tightly around herself, but otherwise she barely seemed to notice the cold as she fixed Cookie with a beady green eye. “Oh, yes,” she said finally. “Cookie James. From the inn.” She sniffed. “What are you doing here? Is that Petra? What happened to her?”

  Rather than answer, Cookie turned slightly. “Mrs. Gibbons, this is Hunter O’Neil from the FBI.” She glanced once at Hunter before turning her attention back to the woman.

  “Mrs. Gibbons supplies milk and cheese to the general store,” Cookie explained to Hunter. “Butter, too. She delivers directly to some customers, though. Like us.” She knew that Mrs. Gibbons had several dairy cows on a little farm outside of town, farther out on the island in one of the few spots that had usable soil rather than rock. She’d just assumed the woman lived out there herself, but it seemed she had a place in town instead. Cookie figured it made more sense for her to live among other people than with nothing but livestock.

  “Yes.” The older woman sniffed, but her usual disapproving expression faded into a soft smile. “Your mother’s butter cookies are the best I’ve had since I was a little girl.” She pursed her lips and zeroed in on Hunter again. “FBI? You’re the same fella who was here for that drug bust a while back. And then you were back for that dead boy under the bridge, weren’t you? I remember seeing you there, taking charge, giving orders.” She nodded to herself.

  Cookie knew the woman was a busybody, always eager to gossip about her neighbors, and wouldn’t be surprised if she had information about the woman’s untimely death. “Petra?” Cookie asked her. “You said this woman’s name was Petra, right?” She shifted to glance down at the body, which still lay face down. “Petra Peabody?” Now that she’d uttered the name out loud, Cookie’s memory kicked in. Petra was an artist and owned a little gallery down by the dock. She mostly sold paintings done by the local artist colony, typically island scenes that evidently went over big with the tourists. The body at Cookie’s feet was the right height, the right build, and had the right hair color. Plus, she remembered that Petra liked dangly earrings, complicated ones like the one Winter had found on the ear that fell into her drink.

  Mrs. Gibbons sniffed again. “Petra Peacock, I called her. On account of her always dressing so flashy. And ’cause peacocks can be downright rude.” She rocked back on her heels and straightened a little, brushing self-consciously at her hair. “Did you know she didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving?”

  “Oh?” Cookie asked politely. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and then had to stifle a laugh when Hunter did exactly that from Mrs. Gibbons’s other side.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Gibbons was too wrapped up in sharing her gossip to notice. “Sure,” she replied now. “I brought her a pie. To be neighborly.” She crossed her skinny arms over her equally narrow chest. “Pumpkin, it was. Made it myself.”

  Mrs. Gibbons sold pies along with the dairy at Thanksgiving. And if Cookie’s memory served her right, the older woman’s pies were actually quite good, too.

  “I felt sorry for her, with so little family on a holiday.” Mrs. Gibbons sniffed again. “Never even said thank you. Didn’t give my pie plate back, either; just took the thing, nodded, and shut the door. Right in my face.” She scowled at them, at the body, and at the building behind them. “That fella of hers didn’t say anything, either. Didn’t even move from the table, not so much as a hello or a wave.”

  “What fellow was that?” Hunter asked, speaking for the first time. Mrs. Gibbons jumped at the sound of his voice, though she tried to cover her surprise by tucking the bathrobe more securely around herself.

  “No idea,” the woman replied. “Looked foreign to me. Scandanavian, maybe—with that white-blond hair and those pale eyes, like a Husky in a nice suit. They were just sitting there when I knocked, facing each other across the table, no food in sight. No table settings, either. I tried inviting ’em over, figured it was the least I could do, but they didn’t answer. Just took the pie and that was that. Shut me right out.” She shrugged. “I saw ’em later that night, slipping out quiet as ghosts. She didn’t come back for three whole days.” She frowned. “Hope they actually ate the pie instead of just letting it sit and go bad.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Gibbons,” Cookie said. She stepped forward, deliberately placing herself between the neighbor in front of her and the dead body behind her. “We appreciate the help. If you think of anything else we should know about Petra, could you let us know? Just call up at the inn. If we’re not there, my mom should be, and she can take a message.”

  Mrs. Gibbons peered at her, eyes narrowing, both brows lowering until they were almost even. “Trying to get rid of me, are you?” she said shrewdly, then nodded. “Well, can’t say I blame you. Need to keep everyone from tampering with the evidence, am I right?” She grinned and tapped her nose. “Watch a lot of crime shows, I do.”

  “Exactly,” Cookie agreed. Then something occurred to her. “There was a girl helping out at the gallery,” she said. “Tall, streaked hair, eyebrow ring. Do you know where we can find her?”

  “Heh, yeah, that’d be Brooklyn,” Mrs. Gibbons confirmed. “When she’s not at the gallery you can find her at the Clip, Dip”—she glanced over at Hunter, then leered and looked very deliberately at his crotch—“and Rip.” She waggled her misaligned eyebrows at him suggestively.

  Cookie and Hunter had been to the salon to question people several times in recent months.

  “Good to know,” Hunter told her gravely, and nodded in what was a clear dismissal. “Thank you, ma’am. Now if you’ll excuse us, please.”

  With one last sniff, the busybody turned and huffed her way back to her own house, sweeping across the step with all the hauteur of a grand dame. The effect was ruined, however, when after shutting the door, she immediately pulled back the curtain so she could peer out of the small inset window.

  “I feel dirty,” Hunter complained once the woman was gone. “Like I need a dozen showers. Scalding. Stat.”

  “Ah, she’s harmless,” Cookie replied. “Loves pointing out people’s flaws and telling them to anyone who’ll listen, but that’s it. And she knows a lot about what goes on here on the island.” She shook her head. “But I know what you mean.”

  “I texted Jared,” Hunter said, keeping his voice down in case Mrs. Gibbons was trying to listen in as well as spy on them. “He said he or Barry would be over here pronto.” Jared Delgado was the Hancock medical examiner. The island was too small and usually too quiet to require one of its own, just like it didn’t need its own sheriff. Barry was his assistant—the same Barry whom Scarlett had turned into a tongue-tied teen. For half a second, Cookie considered texting Scarlett and telling her best friend to meet them there, just to see the look on Barry’s face when he arrived. But dead bodies weren’t really Scarlett’s thing.

  Cookie studied the scene again, trying to unravel the events that led to the dead woman sprawled on the concrete. “Whoever killed her stuffed her in the garbage,” she said after a second. “Then they stashed the can with the others. But they didn’t put it in the corral, leaving it unprotected. Maybe with the body inside, it was too heavy for the killer to lift.” Cookie frowned, thinking. “A heavy wind could’ve knocked it over, or stray cats or raccoons or some other animal pull
ed it down trying to get to the body inside.” She shook her head. “If it hadn’t been for the can being knocked over, the cold temperatures would have stalled decomposition, and we might not have known about her for months. Even Mrs. Gibbons hadn’t noticed, and she knows everything.”

  “Yeah,” Hunter agreed, rubbing a hand over his bald scalp. Despite the cold, he never wore a hat. “Which means even if it wasn’t premeditated, somebody did this to her and then had the foresight to hide the body.” And that meant planning instead of panic, which definitely tipped the scales toward murder instead of just a tragic accident.

  “We should check out the salon,” Hunter said as they waited for either Jared or Barry to arrive, but Cookie glanced at her phone and shook her head.

  “They’ve already shut down for the day,’ she said. “They close early in winter, since the sun sets so fast. We’ll have to hit that tomorrow. How about the house?”

  Their feet thudded on the wooden step up to the door, but when Hunter twisted the handle he said, “Locked.”

  They could destroy important evidence if they had to force their way inside. Which meant they needed to find out if Petra had owned the place or rented it. If she’d rented, they’d get a key from the landlord. If she’d owned it, they’d have to get a locksmith. Cookie was sure there was one in Hancock, and of course Dylan could probably work some magic on the door, though she hesitated to suggest that to Hunter. But for now it meant the house would have to wait.

  Cookie and Hunter had been on plenty of stakeouts together, but she couldn’t remember one this cold. The two of them jogged in place, clapped their hands and stomped their feet while they waited for the ME to come over on the ferry.

  “Finally!” she exclaimed when the white ME van pulled up in front of them and Barry jumped out.

  Hunter shook the young man’s hand then pointed toward the side of the house. “The vic is over there.”