by Kate Bell
I stared at him in silence for a few seconds and then looked at Henry again. “We better call the police,” I squeaked.
“Yeah,” he said, but neither of us moved. I had never seen a murder victim before. Then I noticed my pie, smashed on the floor beside him. Had someone fought him over my pie? That seemed harsh. I would have made another one. Grandmama’s pie keeper was smashed on the floor as well. I swallowed back the lump forming in my throat. I loved that pie keeper.
“Okay, I’m going to call the police now,” Charles said, but he stayed rooted in place.
“Yeah, you do that,” I said. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. There was so much blood.
Finally, Charles moved over to the phone on the wall and picked it up. His hands trembled as he dialed. After a few moments, he spoke slowly, with a quiver in his voice as he answered the 911 operator’s questions. I looked back at Henry. One arm was across his stomach while the other was out to his side. Did he just move his arm? My eyes must be playing tricks on me, I thought.
Charles placed the telephone receiver against his chest. “They want us to check for a pulse.”
“What?” I asked, my head whipping around toward him. “Uh uh. No way.” I shook my head at him. Henry was clearly dead. I didn’t need to touch him to figure that out.
“Do it!” he hissed at me.
I shook my head. He was on his own with this one. He sighed loudly and then spoke back into the receiver. “He’s gone.” After a few more questions, he hung up the phone.
“You should have checked,” he said, not taking his eyes off Henry.
“You should have,” I said, looking away from Henry. “I can’t stay in here.” My head was swimming, and I needed air. I left through the back door and hoped the police showed up soon.
Charles followed me, looking a little green around the gills. I imagined I looked the same way.
“This is terrible,” I said, hearing sirens in the distance. “Maybe we should go around front so the paramedics see us?”
Charles nodded and followed me to the front of the restaurant. We stood near the planter that the gardener had been working on the previous evening. A gardening hoe and some potted mums still sat along the edge. The flowers were in yellows and oranges. Perfect fall colors. I sighed. Henry would never see another fall. I didn’t know Henry very well, and I wondered if he was married. I couldn’t remember hearing that he was.
“Was he married?” I asked Charles.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. He married a gal from Chicago three years ago.”
“Oh.” They were practically newlyweds. That made it worse somehow. I thought of all the emotions his wife was soon to go through and I felt tears spring to my eyes. I blinked them back and looked toward the sound of the sirens.
Chapter Three
A cold shiver went through my body. It was a horrible tragedy. Sandy Harbor was a small town, and I couldn’t believe anyone local would murder Henry Hoffer. Perhaps a stranger passing through town had done it. The 95 ran along the edge of town. It would be easy enough for someone to pull off the highway and murder someone. Maybe they were looking for someone to rob. Henry might have worked late, and the killer, seeing a light still on at the restaurant and only Henry’s car in the lot, decided it would be an easy take. Then things might have gone from bad to worse and Henry had ended up dead. As cantankerous as Henry was, that wasn’t hard to imagine.
Three police cars pulled up to the front of the restaurant, followed by an ambulance and a black unmarked police car. I hugged myself. All I wanted was to go home and go to bed. Forget about running. Forget about everything.
Yancey Tucker got out of the first police car. George Feeney and Stuart South were in the others.
“Allie, Charles,” Yancey said, nodding first at me, and then Charles.
“Yancey, Henry Hoffer was murdered,” I said.
“Where’s he at?”
“Around back in the kitchen,” Charles said. “I got a key to the front here though. We can go in this way, it’s faster.” He produced a large ring of keys from his front pocket and stuck one in the front door lock.
A tall man in a dark suit stepped out of the unmarked car after finishing a conversation on his cell phone. Suit wearing was rare in these parts and I had never seen him before. He had black hair and a serious face and he walked straight to me.
“I’m Detective Blanchard,” he said and stuck his hand out.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said. I smiled at him and shook his hand, but he didn’t offer me any pleasantries.
“Can I get your name?” he asked.
“Allie McSwain. I didn’t know Sandy Harbor had a detective,” I said. I was puzzled. Where had he come from? Sandy Harbor had a population of less than twenty thousand and everyone knew everyone. The detective was a stranger here.
Detective Blanchard glanced at me and then looked in the direction the others had gone.
“Did you find the body?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Let’s go into the restaurant, shall we? I have some questions for you,” he said motioning toward the front door.
Detective Blanchard opened the door for me and allowed me to enter first. I could still smell pine cleaner and now lemon polish in the air. Henry must have stayed late to clean.
We followed the others back into the kitchen. I would rather not have gone back in there, so I hung out by the door to the kitchen and looked at my feet.
“Ayup, he’s dead all right,” Yancey announced.
The back door swung open, and we all turned toward it to look. Martha Newberry appeared and when she saw Henry on the floor with a knife in his chest, she gasped.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she said, looking from Henry to the policemen. She clutched her pink handbag to her chest and made a low sound in her throat. She swayed on her feet as she looked at Henry.
“Mrs. Newberry, perhaps you might not want to come in here right now,” George Feeney said and stepped over the body to take her arm.
“Why, I was just stopping by to help Henry clean this morning. He called last night and said I didn’t need to come by. But I felt bad about it, so I stopped by to see if he needed any help after all. Oh, dear,” she said again, her face crinkled up with emotion. Martha was elderly with blue tinted curly hair and pink rouged cheeks.
Poor Martha went pale. I doubted she had ever seen anything like this. She picked up work from Henry a couple days a week, helping him to keep the germs at bay. She was a widow without any children and I thought she was probably lonely all on her own.
“Why don’t we go into the dining room?” George suggested.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I was just…oh, I don’t know! I seem to be a bit addled at the moment, forgive me.”
“That’s quite all right,” he said and steered her toward the kitchen door that I was leaning on. As Martha passed the kitchen counter, she reached out for a pink covered Pyrex dish that sat there.
“Oh, this will ruin,” she said, picking it up and taking it to the refrigerator. She averted her gaze from Henry’s body and slipped the dish inside. Poor thing. Whatever was in that dish was already ruined, having sat out on the counter all night. She wasn’t thinking straight.
George led her to the dining room, patting her on the shoulder. Martha was too frail to be working a job. It was a shame she felt she needed to.
“I would like to speak with the two of you,” the detective said, motioning toward Charles and me, and he led us to the dining room.
I glanced over at Charles. He was still wide-eyed. I took a deep breath. I didn’t feel like conversation, and apparently neither did Charles. We followed the detective back to the dining room. George and Martha sat at a corner table at the other end of the room, and he got up to fetch her a glass of water.
The detective motioned to a booth and nodded at me. I swallowed hard.
“Charles, I’ll speak with you in a moment. We’d like some privacy,” he said when C
harles looked like he wanted to take a seat beside me.
“Oh. Okay, sure,” he said and walked off. He busied himself straightening papers around the cash register, but his eyes were on the detective and me.
The detective began by taking my personal information and making notes. “Ms. McSwain, what is it you do for a living?” Detective Blanchard asked. He had brilliant blue eyes, and he looked at me very intensely.
I smiled at him. “I’m a blogger.”
“What do you blog about?” he asked.
I felt my smile tighten. Why was it still so hard for me to tell someone that the man I had loved more than life itself had died? “Grief.”
“Grief?” he asked, eyebrows twitching.
My smile tightened more. “My husband passed away several years ago and to help me get through it, I began writing a blog on grief.”
His eyebrows furrowed, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I find it therapeutic and other people seem to find it helps them with their own grief.” I clenched my teeth. Why did I always feel the need to explain myself? Shouldn’t the fact that I had lost and grieved be enough? And why was this oaf confused by that?
“Yes, of course,” he said and made a scribbled note. His handwriting was terrible, so I couldn’t make out what it said. I began to squirm a little. Why did he feel like he needed to keep notes on what I was saying when it had nothing to do with Henry’s murder?
“Ms. McSwain, how is it that you find yourself here at the restaurant at 5:00 AM? It doesn’t open up until six, correct?” he asked, not looking up at me.
I swallowed. “Well, I had made Henry a pie, and I wanted to stop by on my way to the running trail to ask him how he liked it.”
“Oh?” he said looking at me now. “Were you and Henry, friends?”
“What? No. I was a customer. You know, it’s a small town where everyone knows everyone. My friend Lucy suggested I approach Henry and ask him if he would like me to bake pies for his restaurant.” Darn that Lucy.
“I see. A business venture then?” he scribbled again.
“Yes. A business venture.” I suddenly felt like a third grader that had found herself unfairly sent to the principal’s office.
“And would that be your pie smashed on the floor next to the murder victim?” he looked me in the eye on this question.
I forced myself to smile. “Yes, it would be. People usually have a more positive reaction to my pies.” I laughed, trying to lighten the mood, but got only a blank stare in return from the detective.
He looked at me for what seemed a long time before he continued. I made a mental note that the detective wasn’t much for humor.
“And where were you last night?”
My mouth dropped open, and I quickly shut it again. Why was he asking me this question? “I was home. I watched some television and went to bed around nine. I always get up early to run,” I said, feeling like I had to explain the early bedtime. After all, I might have been middle-aged, but I wasn’t dead yet. I had a reason for it.
“I see,” he said and scribbled in the notebook again.
“A lot of people run,” I added lamely.
He looked at me and nodded. “Is there anything you would like to add, Ms. McSwain? Anything that you feel would be of help?”
Yes, how about, I didn’t do it! What I actually said was, “I can’t think of anything else.”
“Great, I’m sure we’ll be in touch. You can go now.”
I looked at him for a minute, and he looked back at me passively. I quickly got to my feet, and I gave Charles a wide-eyed look as I passed him. The detective called him over. Charles looked nervous, and he had a right to be. I felt like I had been probed by a space alien. Surely that detective couldn’t suspect someone like me? I had never even had a traffic ticket.
Chapter Four
I didn’t go home after speaking to the detective like I had planned. Instead, I drove over to a little corner coffee shop that served the strongest coffee in the state. While waiting in line, I called my friend Lucy.
Just before it switched over to voicemail, she picked up. “Huh?” she mumbled.
“Lucy,” I whispered. I got to the front of the line and ordered a vanilla latte from the young woman at the register.
“Huh?” I heard Lucy repeat.
“Ya want that with whipped cream?” the woman asked.
“Yes. Lots. And lots of vanilla syrup and milk,” I answered. I needed the caffeine that was in the nearly thick as mud coffee, but I also needed it to be palatable.
“What’s going on?” Lucy asked, sounding a little more awake now.
“Lucy, I need you to meet me down at the Cup and Bean coffee shop. Now,” I whispered into the phone. I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping. There were about a dozen other customers in the shop and they all seemed absorbed in their own lives.
“Why? I’m still in bed,” Lucy said and yawned. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Lucy, this is important. I need you. Right now,” I said.
She must have heard the fear in my voice because she sounded more awake now. “I’ll be right there.”
“Three ninety-five,” the woman behind the counter said, ringing up my drink.
I smiled at her and ended the phone call with Lucy without saying anything more to her. She would be here. She always was. I smiled at the woman and dug in my purse for my debit card. Where was that thing? I searched my wallet and then the pockets in my purse. I glanced at the woman and smiled. “I’ve got it right here. Somewhere.”
She gave me a terse smile back as two more customers got in line behind me.
I dug down among the random receipts, gum, and breath mints and glanced over my shoulder, giving the people behind me an apologetic smile. Finally, I found it at the very bottom of my purse and handed it to the cashier.
After she ran it through the reader, I grabbed my drink and found a small table in the corner. I nervously looked at Facebook on my phone while I waited for Lucy.
My daughter Jennifer had posted several pictures of herself at a party. I would have to speak to her about that. She needed to be studying, not enjoying college life. My aunt Mary posted pictures of her roses and my mother posted a recipe. I sighed. I was addicted to Facebook, even though there wasn’t much of anything interesting on there.
I stirred my latte and glanced at the clock on the wall. It had been ten minutes since I had called Lucy. I took a sip of my drink and grimaced at the bite of the coffee. It wasn’t the best coffee in town, but it was the strongest, hands down.
Just when I was thinking about pouting about the length of time it was taking her to get here, Lucy breezed through the door. Her blond hair was in a messy bun on top of her head and she wore sweats and a wrinkled tee shirt. Lucy loved me enough to rush out the door without making herself beautiful. She waved at me and stepped up to order a drink.
I sighed. Telling Lucy my troubles would make me feel better, even if it didn’t change anything.
She bought a cup of black coffee and came over and sat across from me.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
I leaned toward her. “Henry Hoffer was murdered last night,” I whispered.
“What?” she exclaimed.
“Shh! Keep your voice down!” I hissed.
“How do you know?” she whispered.
I licked my thumb and reached across the table and rubbed it under her right eye. She really needed to remove her makeup before going to bed at night. She brushed my hand away and spit on a napkin and started cleaning up under her eyes.
“I found his body,” I whispered, glancing around to make sure no one heard me.
She stopped mid rub, eyes wide. “What? How?”
“I went by to see if he liked my pie and there he was. Lying dead in a pool of blood, a steak knife in his chest.”
“Oh no! That’s horrible. What do the police say about it?”
I shook my head. “There was
this detective there. I didn’t know Sandy Harbor had a detective, did you?” She shook her head, and I continued. “I think they might blame me.”
“What? How could they blame you?” she said too loudly.
I shushed her again. I looked around to see if anyone was listening and I made eye contact with old Mr. Winters’. He got up from his table across the room and shuffled toward us. Stopping at our table, he pulled out a chair and sat down and looked at me.
Lucy and I stared at him.
“You know, Henry and his employee Charles Allen had an argument the other day. I have never trusted Charles, myself. He has shifty eyes. I bet he did it,” he said, his voice shaking with age.
Lucy and I glanced at each other again.
“How could you hear us from all the way over there?” I asked.
He pulled his hearing aid out of his ear. “This is the Sound Tone 5000. The most sensitive hearing aid on the market.”
I nodded, mouth open. “Well, what did they argue about?”
“Money. Henry was tight with money and Charles hadn’t had a raise in a couple of years. So I hear,” he said and leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile.
Who knew old Mr. Winters was a gossip? I glanced at Lucy. “We have to be going now. Thanks for the info,” I told Mr. Winters and patted him on the shoulder as we left.
“Hey, that shoulda been worth a coffee, at least!” he called after us.
“I’ll catch you next time,” I called over my shoulder.
Out on the sidewalk, I leaned in close to Lucy. “Charles showed up not sixty seconds after I discovered Henry’s body.”
Lucy gasped. “Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know. But if there’s a chance they’ll blame me, I intend to investigate,” I said.
“Okay. I’m with you,” she said.
Lucy was Ethel to my Lucy if that makes any sense. We were going to figure this out before I ended up in an orange prison jumpsuit. I don't look good in orange. It clashes with my red hair.
Chapter Five
