“What kind of chip?” a woman asked, matching his tone.
Smirking and laughing behind their hands, the crowd seemed amused by this guy. Their questions were encouraging, like they wanted to prolong the show.
The man on the porch pinched his fingers together into a beak shape and then jabbed them repeatedly at his own eye. “They insert tiny little cameras into their eyeballs and use them as spies.”
“Why would they do that?” another man asked, as the crowd laughed softly, slightly uncomfortable now.
“To watch us, of course. They’re always watching us. You all think you’re safe in your fancy suburban homes. You think they don’t know what you’re doing?”
“They’re watching us through the eyes of pigeons?” the same woman asked.
Maeve showed up then, charging over from the direction of The Inn. “Willie, get off my porch.”
“Maeve!” The man threw his arms wide and wrapped himself around the pub’s owner.
“Good god, Willie, you stink.” She pushed him off and then flapped her hands at the crowd to disperse. “What kind of crackpot conspiracy are you spouting now?”
“It’s not crackpot,” Willie whispered. “And it’s not a conspiracy. Well, it is. It’s a conspiracy against citizens. You didn’t hear everything from the start.” He leaned in close, looked left and then right, and asked, “Have you ever seen a baby pigeon?”
Maeve held up a hand in a stop gesture and then pointed north. “Go home, Willie.”
Willie grumbled as he descended the porch steps. He crossed close to us as he left, and Meeka must have gotten a whiff of him. She whined, backed away, and hid behind my legs.
“I gotta get supplies,” Willie objected.
“Then get your supplies,” Maeve stated calmly, “and go home. You’re upsetting people.”
The man did as she said and walked away, mumbling to himself about the government the entire time.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“We call him Blind Willie,” Maeve said with a tired sigh.
“He’s a villager?” How long would it take before I had met everyone who lived here?
“Not only is he a villager”—Maeve deadheaded a pot of petunias on the deck—“he’s an Original.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not even a little bit. Apparently, he showed up one day shortly after Lucy let people move here.”
“Let me guess, Gran let him stay because he had nowhere else to go.”
“It was less that he had nowhere else to go and more that they couldn’t make him leave. I guess he’s super rich but decided he didn’t want to deal with society any longer. He built himself a little shack at the far northwest edge of Whispering Pines. He promised to not bother anyone if your grandma let him stay. It doesn’t hurt that he gives the village a boatload of money every year to let him stay on that little plot of land.”
“Has he always been like that?”
She paused, debating her response. “Not like this. He’s become socially awkward in the extreme. He gets flustered around people and has a hard time expressing himself. I’m not exactly sure what his set up is up there, but he seems familiar with what’s going on in the world. He’s staying connected somehow.”
“Why do you call him Blind Willie? He’s not blind.”
Maeve shook her head and tossed a handful of dead petunia blossoms over the side of the porch. “We nicknamed him ‘Blind Willie’ because he says we’re all blind, that we don’t see the truth of the world.”
“So he’s a fortune teller?”
“No, he’s just a crazy old conspiracy theorist.”
That made as much sense as anything else in this village.
“This is the first I’ve seen him,” I said. “Does he come around often?”
“No. In fact, his visits are so seldom, I forget about him until he shows up again. I guess he’s got a stockpile of supplies up there. Probably a fallout shelter in case of nuclear war as well. He wanders into town when he needs something, or if he has a new threat he feels we need to know about.”
Unable to hold back any longer, I laughed and then felt bad. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh at someone with mental problems.”
“I don’t think it’s a mental thing,” Maeve assured. “He’s just happier alone. He never causes any harm, other than offending people’s nostrils. Don’t think the man ever takes a bath.” She gestured toward the pub. “I’ve got to get to work. See you later, Jayne.”
I looked down at Meeka who was looking up at me. “See? Stopping by a gathering around here is always worth the trip. Let’s go find that nun.”
~~~
As the guy with the flat top had said, the nun was at the beach. It was early enough in the day that there were only a few parents with kids there. She looked so peaceful sitting by herself in a secluded spot, facing the water. She appeared to be meditating with her legs crisscrossed and her habit hiked up above her knees. I almost hated to disturb her.
“Excuse me?” I kept my voice soft, didn’t want to scare the poor woman.
She turned slowly, as though she’d known I was there and was waiting for me to say something. Her face split in a big smile.
Five foot six, blue eyes, straight teeth, straight nose . . . nice knees.
I couldn’t tell much more about her due to the habit.
“Sheriff O’Shea. Blessed be. How lovely to finally be face-to-face with you. I’m Agnes Plunkett.”
The few times we’d seen each other, she was always riding through the commons on her bike. I’d wave and smile. She’d shout out “Blessed be” or “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” The juxtaposition of the Roman Catholic attire and the Wiccan greeting only further piqued my curiosity about this woman.
“Please, sit.” She gestured at the sand next to her.
I hadn’t planned to sit but didn’t feel like I should disobey a nun. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a couple of questions I need to ask you.”
“Certainly.” She extended her legs straight in front of her, revealing hot pink polish on her toenails. “What can I help you with?”
“There was a man who used to follow you on a unicycle—”
“Barry,” she confirmed. “Quite a character, isn’t he?”
This coming from a nun with hot pink toes.
“I’m sorry, but I have to ask, are you really a nun?”
“A nun?” She looked at me like I was nuts. “No.”
No? “Why do you wear a habit then?”
“I used to be a nun. They kicked me out.”
Was it the pink toes? “Dare I ask, why?”
“Oh, you can ask. Never any harm in asking. I don’t care to talk about it though.”
“Why do you still wear a habit?”
“Just because they didn’t want me to be a nun doesn’t mean I don’t want to be one.”
I considered this for a moment. “Can you be a nun without a church?”
She sat tall and pushed her shoulders back. “I set up my own. An un-church, really, since it’s not affiliated with anything organized. We pray together and mostly discuss the benefits of being a good person.”
“Here in Whispering Pines? I haven’t heard of it.”
“I don’t advertise.” She leaned over to me. “You’re probably aware, there’s another religion that dominates here.”
“Every time I see you, you shout out ‘blessed be.’ I figured you were Wiccan.”
“I find their greetings charming.” She smiled and gave a content wiggle of her shoulders. “Not everyone here is Wiccan. Are you?”
“No. I’m not affiliated either.”
“Oh,” she clasped her hands together, “you should come to un-church. Tell me, what are your feelings about religion?”
“Another time, maybe. What do you know about Barry?”
Her shoulders sagged and her smile drooped. “Uh-oh. Did he get himself into trouble?”
As gently as I could, I explained what had
happened. Halfway through my explanation, Agnes clutched a rosary and began rocking back and forth while whispering softly. Praying, I assumed.
“Agnes? I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to figure out what happened to Barry.”
“He was a good person,” Agnes offered. “Conflicted about many things in his life, which was why he came to un-church.”
“What was he conflicted about?”
She gave me a look that left little doubt that she was indeed a nun. Or used to be. “I can’t tell you what he told me. I can assure you, he wasn’t doing anything illegal.”
“Was a man named Angel part of his conflict?”
She considered this a moment. “You know how there are sometimes people in your life that you can’t seem to stay clear of even though you don’t care to have them around?”
I nodded.
She nodded.
“You really can’t tell me anything about Barry that might help explain his death?”
She closed her eyes, seemingly debating the request, and rocked slowly, forward and back, her hands clasped in front of her heart. After a minute, she opened her eyes.
“I can’t think of anything that would indicate his death was due to nefarious circumstances.” She gave a single nod, letting me know that was her answer. Then, probably sensing my frustration, she added, “If I felt there was something going on, I would direct you to someone who could share what I cannot.”
Really, I was more frustrated that everything regarding Barry led to a dead end than that Agnes was bound by a self-imposed confidentiality agreement.
“Thank you for your time, Agnes.”
“Not at all. Consider coming to un-church sometime. It may benefit you.”
I responded with a smile and then whistled for Meeka who had been entertaining herself by chasing the little waves washing up on the beach. Every time she did that, I thought of the hot lava game we played on the monkey bars at recess. Don’t touch the ground. It’s hot lava! In Meeka’s case, Don’t touch the water. She’ll give you a bath!
A thankfully un-smelly Meeka and I made our way back to the station where we found Lupe Gomez sitting on the bench by the station’s front door. She was here for the summer to report on our little village for Unique Wisconsin, the online magazine she worked for.
“Morning, Lupe. Let me guess why you’re here.”
“I hear there was a death yesterday. What can you tell me about it?” Her accent, usually slight, was strong today, which told me she was agitated over something.
“Your late-breaking instincts must be on the fritz. It took you this long to find out about it?”
“No. I was on deadline last night to turn in my next article for the website.” She dropped her head back and smoothed her hands over her normally tidy, now disheveled braid. “It was giving me a hard time. Took forever until I was happy with it. Anyway, I’m moving on from the circus carnies to the fortune tellers.”
“They’re great.” I unlocked the front door, crossed to the strip of light switches on the wall to my right, and Lupe followed me inside.
“They are, but they aren’t why I’m here. What’s the deal with this death? Is it another murder? Do you need help finding answers?”
A few weeks earlier, two of the village carnies were murdered. It shook the entire village. I had just taken over as sheriff, had no deputy, and desperately needed help. Lupe, being the ace reporter she was, used her investigative skills to help me get answers from the other carnies. She ended up using those interviews to write short biographies about the carnies.
“I don’t know what happened this time,” I told her as I took a seat at the deputy’s desk straight across from the door. The station was a simple rectangular building with a large central room and two jail cells to the left of the front door. My office, a small bathroom, and an interview room to the right. People had a tendency to sneak in and startle me if I sat in my office, so for now I used the desk in the central room. “This one is confusing me. I can’t get any traction on what happened to him. If you want to dig around and ask questions, I’m happy to take the help.”
I explained all that I knew regarding Barry, holding back on the specifics of where and how his body was found. It aggravated Lupe that I held back, but that way only the guilty party and I knew those details. If someone supplied that information to her during an interview, it could mean we had our killer.
We were just finishing a very short list of people she could talk to when the front door opened and Martin Reed walked in.
Chapter 8
It hadn’t even been an hour since the council meeting ended. Flavia must have run all the way home and told Martin to get his butt over to the station. I could just see it. Her shin-length, tent-like dress hiked up to her knees, her blonde hair coming loose from the bun normally pulled so tight her eyes were squinty, as she raced through the commons, over the bridge that crossed the highway, and all the way to the last road on the left just before the creek. Now that was a show I’d stop everything to watch.
“I hear you’re looking for a deputy.” Reed gave his standard cocky grin, and all I could think was please, don’t let this be a mistake.
“You’re looking good, Reed.” I matched the grin the best I could, but no one could pull off cocky like Martin Reed. When I first met him, he was pale, scrawny, and sickly-looking. Much like his mother. I figured he had a disease of some kind or he was wasted from drug use. Turned out, he simply didn’t take care of himself. Now, a healthy tan replaced the pastiness. His medium-blue eyes sparkled. While he was still thin, he also had developed some muscle. “Looks like you’ve had an awakening of some kind.”
“Almost dying was good for me, I guess,” he said. “The doctors told me that if I wanted to recover fully from the poisoning, I had to treat my body well. I work out every day now and turned vegetarian.”
Lupe stood in front of me, her nut-brown eyes wide and blazing, her mouth hanging open. “Who’s he? He’s hot.”
My stomach turned a little bit.
“Lupe Gomez, village reporter at large, meet Martin Reed. Martin used to be the deputy here.”
I stood back and distracted myself with happy thoughts—Meeka playing in a field chasing butterflies on a warm spring day—while Lupe and Martin checked each other out.
“So, Reed,” I interrupted the budding . . . whatever it was. “You really feel ready to come back to work?”
“I’m begging you,” he clasped his hands together. “I need to start working again. Being at home with my mother all day is making me crazy.” He paled, glanced at Lupe, and turned red. “I’ve, you know, been staying with her while I recover. Getting back to work, earning a paycheck again, will let me get out of there again.”
Again? He was so full of it. Reed was twenty-three years old and had never left his mother’s house. Nothing like the desire to be alone with a girl to kick the motivation for one’s own place into overdrive.
“Lupe”—I stepped between the two of them—“I need to chat with Martin alone for a bit. If you don’t mind.”
She glanced around me at Reed and gave him a smile I had never seen on her face before. Sweet and sappy didn’t begin to describe it.
“No problem.” She giggled. Something else she’d never done in my presence. “I’ll come back later.”
Oh geez. I knew there would be a problem of some kind bringing Reed back here; I had no idea it would be of a romantic nature.
I gestured for him to follow me into my office. I sat at my desk, and he took the chair across from it.
“I assume your mother discussed my conditions for you coming back?”
“She did. Look, Jayne—”
I held up a finger, stopping him before he could say another word. “First rule, you need to call me Sheriff now.”
He gave a humble nod. “Sheriff, I’ve thought a lot about all of the complaints you had about me. Mother has told me everything you said at the council meetings. I think I know more than you give
me credit for, but I understand why me not having formal training is a problem for you.”
He was saying the right things. Did he mean them? Or was he simply really tired of living with Flavia? I fully understood the desire to get away from that woman.
“I’m not expecting you to apply to the academy or anything like that. I do want you to have a better understanding of the law and the expectations of a deputy. If you’re willing to review some online material I found, I will deputize you. You’ll do everything you used to do for Sheriff Brighton and probably a little more.” I paused so he could consider the proposal. “That’s it. That’s my offer. Do you agree?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll agree to whatever you want if it means I can come back to work.”
I printed out a list of all the online things I wanted him to review and handed it to him.
“All of this?” he asked of the two-page document.
“Fortunately, the tourists are behaving themselves, other than our standard drunk and disorderly folks. It shouldn’t take you that long. If you agree to review everything on that list, I will put you back on the payroll right now.”
Reed jumped to his feet and stood at attention. It was cute, really.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a salute. “I promise, you won’t regret this.”
“I will hold you to that. I can get a list of candidates from Madison in a heartbeat.”
I was about to expand on that but bit it back. He just said Flavia told him everything that went on at the council meetings. If that was true, he knew the difficulties I’d been having finding someone.
“Your computer login hasn’t changed,” I told him. “Start studying. I have paperwork to do.”
A couple hours later, I realized I’d forgotten to pack a lunch. I went out into the main room and whistled for Meeka who appeared from beneath her preferred cot.
Reed jumped, startled by my whistle.
“Sorry,” I said. “That’s her favorite place to sleep, especially when it’s hot outside.”
Original Secrets: A Whispering Pines Mystery, Book 3 Page 7
