Taking the Fall: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 1)

by Laney Monday

  19

  We parked in a shady spot in the back of the library lot, where the pickup was partially obscured by a red plum tree. This location also provided us with an excellent—though long-distance—view of the windows into the library’s back room. And that was where Stacey Goode seemed to do most of her work—going through the return box, scanning books and DVDs, sorting them onto carts. Blythe and I were both wearing sunglasses and pretending to read. Well, Blythe really was reading, but I was too antsy. I kept checking the time on my phone. Stacey was due to end her work day and exit the library any moment now.

  Blythe lowered her book a little and said, “Bren, I’ve been thinking. I really want to solve this thing too, but … we already know where Stacey lives. What else are we going to find out by following her home from work?”

  “Where her son goes to daycare, maybe? She might be friendly with some of those other moms. Maybe we could figure out how to bump into one of them and squeeze out some more information about Stacey.”

  “Maybe,” Blythe said skeptically.

  “What else are we going to do? I can’t just do nothing.” I held my hand up. “We can’t just wait for the police. Not with this. Not here.”

  “You’re right. But maybe we should rethink this. Come up with a better plan,” Blythe said.

  But I wasn’t paying much attention. Through my brand new binoculars, I watched Stacey sneak a look at her phone. Her expression and demeanor changed dramatically as she appeared to read a text message. I flicked the binoculars’ dangling price tag out of the way and zoomed in for a better look. After discovering this morning that Stacey worked in the back—which made total sense, considering her personal skills—I’d paid out the nose for these at a touristy Bonney Bay bird enthusiast shop. It was either that or drive forty-five minutes to Walmart. Maybe the binoculars were turning out to be a good investment after all. The way things were going now, I just might cut off the tag and keep them.

  I smiled at my sister. “Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. I’m not the only one watching the clock.” I handed the binoculars to Blythe.

  “Ooh. She looks nervous.”

  “Yep.” Stacey Goode had started giving her fellow librarians distracted looks, and paying an awful lot of attention to the clock on the wall above the book carts.

  “Maybe she’s just anxious to see her son. Or a hot date, or … ”

  “Or meet up with an accomplice.”

  Blythe bounced up in her seat. “Here she comes! She’s got her purse. She’s waving good-bye to the other librarians!”

  I tossed my paperback onto Blythe’s lap and started the truck. We were right by the back parking lot exit. I hoped I had time to pull out before Stacey clocked out and came out the employee door on the side of the building.

  “What if she goes out the front of the parking lot?” Blythe said. “It’s an easier shot out of town.”

  “That could be a problem,” I agreed as I maneuvered out, trying to be quick without drawing attention by gunning the engine or making the tires squeal.

  Just as I backed into a shadowy driveway around the corner from the library parking lot exit, the red Prius cruised by. “Yes!” I said. I waited for another vehicle to appear on the little back road. I knew that was what you were supposed to do—not follow too closely, get some other cars between you and the suspect. But no cars came.

  “Why is there no traffic here?”

  The movies make it look so easy to follow someone without them noticing. I’d like to see 007 try it in Bonney Bay.

  “Small town woes,” Blythe mumbled. Then, “Hey!” Blythe’s face lit up. “What’s she doing, fifteen miles per hour? Maybe it would be easier to follow her on foot.”

  “It’ll definitely be easier to keep her from catching onto us. But I don’t know how long I can maintain fifteen miles per hour.”

  Blythe frowned. “You’re right. But look, she’s headed downhill. Do you think we could see where she goes if we park at the top of the hill?”

  “Maybe, if she gets far enough downhill, and if you can get to a good vantage point with the binoculars. But then we’d be so far away—unless we split up.” I quickly pulled over. “Here. Take the wheel. I’ve got my phone. Text me and keep me updated on where she goes.”

  “Brenna!”

  “I’ll keep my distance. Go! Hurry!”

  I didn’t give her a chance to argue any more. I sped off, mentally patting myself on the back for wearing running shoes this time. I clutched my phone in my hand, since I was wearing pocketless running shorts. It was a warm day, and besides, I’d thought I might end up doing some on-foot snooping. Dressing as a jogger was a pretty good cover. Heh, I guess Blythe’s not the only one with planning skills. This time Brenna Battle was prepared! Well, except that I’d forgotten my phone holster. My phone vibrated with a text. I slowed my pace a bit so I could read it.

  “In a tree! See her!”

  I waited for more. My heart beat faster. My sister was in a tree! There are women less outdoorsy than Blythe, but I can tell you it’s pretty difficult to imagine her in a tree. She certainly never climbed one when we were kids. I barely kept myself from texting back, “Do u know how to climb a tree? Can u get down?”

  Instead I texted, “OK,” and kept running until I got another message.

  “Lost her corner of Gardenia & Main. Meet u there.”

  I GPSed it, selected walking, and turned up the heat.

  My lungs were on fire by the time I spotted my pickup parked along Gardenia Street. Blythe was crouched behind the truck, waiting for me. She smelled like a Christmas tree. There was a big glob of sap on her rear end, and pine needles stuck in her hair, which now resembled a late eighties teased ’do.

  “That way,” she whispered, and pointed to a side street. We ran to the corner, paused, and peeked around an ornamental block wall covered with flowering vines. The red Prius was parked just a few feet away. I barely caught a glimpse of Stacey disappearing around the corner in the distance, far down on the end of the street. “Come on!” I took off, and Blythe, in slightly less practical khaki shorts and canvas slip-on tennis shoes, trailed behind.

  When I reached the next corner, I crouched behind a parked car and surveyed the street. No sign of Stacey. Dang it. There were two more connecting streets she could’ve made a turn onto. I had to find her. Stacey had parked a block away, and left her car on foot. Kind of like she didn’t want anyone wherever she was going to spot it. Kind of like what we’d just done.

  Blythe caught up with me and joined me in my hiding spot.

  “Right or left?” I whispered.

  “You didn’t see?”

  I shook my head.

  Blythe put her scratched-up, pine-sappy hand on my shoulder. “Go with your gut, Bren. It seems to be onto something today.”

  I grinned, only partly because of how her serious, earnest face looked, framed by a net of pine-sapped, tree-teased hair. “Right,” I said.

  But once we’d turned right and found cover behind another car, there was no sign of Stacey. I was just about to pronounce my gut good for nothing but digesting junk food, when Blythe said, “What was that?”

  I frowned at her.

  “I heard something,” she whispered.

  I held my breath and listened. I heard it too! A faint clatter. I skittered around the car in a crouch, toward the sound. I ended up on my belly behind a lawn fountain, watching Stacey Goode standing on her tiptoes around the side of the house next door, pulling on the window frame.

  Blythe joined me on the meticulously kept lawn, behind the burbling fountain. Who has lawn fountains? Retired people, that’s who. Half this town was probably retired people. How long would it be before one of them spotted us lying here in the grass like a couple of snakes?

  Stacey jerked backward with the window screen in her hands. It had finally popped free. She set it down against the side of the house.

  “What is she doing?” I said.

  “
Oh, wow. She’s breaking in!”

  She wasn’t exactly breaking anything, but yes, technically speaking, Stacey Goode was breaking in. Even as we watched, she hoisted herself up onto the window ledge and disappeared inside.

  “Should we call the police?”

  “Not yet,” I insisted. “Let’s give her some time.” And us some time to investigate.

  “Right. She might incriminate herself even more.” Suddenly Blythe gripped my arm hard. “Bren! What if she kills someone? What if she’s going in there because whoever lives there knows something, and she’s going to shut them up for good?”

  “Nobody’s home. The carport’s empty. That little garage is too small to hold a car. They probably just use it as a shed.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll just take a peek and see what she’s up to.” I got up and darted over to the house Stacey had broken into, then flattened myself against the wall and inched sideways toward the open window. I took care not to bump the screen Stacey had leaned against the side of the house. My heart beat double-time as I peeked inside. Stacey was less than six feet away, with her back to me. The room was set up as an office. I ducked back out of view and gave Blythe a thumbs-up.

  Blythe pointed frantically to her phone screen. She mouthed something.

  “Crazy Eric?” I mouthed back. I was pretty sure that’s what she was saying. “Here?”

  She shook her head and mouthed again. “Map app says it’s Crazy Eric’s house!”

  Crazy Eric’s House! Stacey Goode was breaking into the home of our favorite police officer. Why on earth would she do that?

  I turned back to the window—right as Stacey turned around. Our eyes met. It was too late to duck down. She’d seen me. My phone was already in my hand. I tapped on my camera app and snapped a picture of Stacey standing there in Doyle’s office. What else was I going to do? A woman who might very well be a murderer had caught me catching her. I needed some ammunition. Or possibly some future proof of who had a motive to cause my demise.

  Stacey’s mouth—at first open merely in surprise—twisted into a vengeful snarl. She leaped toward the open window, and I flew back, sending my phone whirling over a bed of rose bushes.

  “Run!” I screamed at Blythe.

  “Not without you!” she screamed back as she scrambled to her feet.

  I needed to get my phone, but Stacey was tumbling out the window after me. Blythe and I could take her, but what if she was packing? Besides, I didn’t really want to have to explain to Riggins—or Crazy Eric—what I was doing on his property if we caused a commotion. Doyle would find a way to nail us for this for sure. I ran to Blythe, and she took off at full speed. I looked over my shoulder and saw no one. Where had Stacey gone? Back into the house? Had she skulked off somewhere to call the police on us? Surely she wouldn’t dare, not with the knowledge that I had her picture on my phone. My phone! Had Stacey seen me drop it? Was that where she was right now, getting my phone?

  I darted back to the house, scanning the bushes for Stacey as I drew near. I didn’t see any signs of her. I got down on my hands and knees in front of the rose bushes and immediately regretted my choice of jogging shorts. Something jabbed into my shin like a little dagger. It was all I could do not to scream. I stood and pulled a dead rose thorn out of my flesh, and blood streamed down my leg. Lovely. Just lovely. I stayed on my feet and bent my head cautiously to look under the bushes. Lots of thorns and rose petals. No phone.

  I was debating the merits of hunting down Stacey and throttling her until she handed over my property, when a gruff male voice said, “Can I help you?”

  I just about jumped out of my shorts. An elderly gentleman stood before me, holding a dirt-caked shovel. A friendly neighbor? I tried to smile.

  “Oh,” I said. “You scared me.”

  “You know what scares me? What scares me is some strange lady crawling around in the bushes, and right next to an open window. What’s that screen doing there, anyways?”

  “Uh … Oh, that is strange. The window sure is open. Now, that’s not very safe. But I was just looking for my phone. Can’t find it, though. Guess I’ll be going.”

  “That phone?” The man pointed at a hydrangea bush beyond the rose bushes. There, nestled in its branches, was my phone.

  “Oh, thanks so much. I was just, running,”—he looked at me like, Yeah, I’ll bet you were running, Missy. Running from the law—“and it flew right out of my hand.”

  He grunted and leaned on his shovel. I grabbed my phone and turned around to say good-bye, and hopefully get out of there before he decided to call the police, but something rammed into the back of my head. I was falling. It was so dark.

  20

  I felt cool. No, cold. I shivered, and an awful shudder of pain went through me. It seemed to originate in my head. Oh, no. I was going to barf. I rolled over and threw up. On the ground. What was I doing on the ground? And why did I feel like somebody just beat the stuffing out of me?

  A new wave of pain, followed by its lovely twin, nausea, seized me, and I reached out, trying to grip the ground. To get hold of anything solid. Wood. That’s what I felt under my clammy palms. Finished wood. A deck. It hurt to open my eyes much more than a slit, but I forced myself to survey my surroundings. I recognized those rhododendrons flowering above me. And the wooden benches Blythe and I had sat on. Why was I not surprised that I’d eventually ended up lying in this weird little spot, helpless and in pain?

  “Brenna!” Riggins cried. Then he called over his shoulder, “Over here! She’s here! He hurried over to me as he barked a bunch of police-ese into his radio.

  I opened my mouth to warn him about the throw-up, but it was too late. He’d already knelt in it. Great. The pain and nausea already made me wish I’d never been born. Now I found myself wishing a person actually could die of embarrassment.

  Riggins must’ve felt the puddle, because he looked down at his pants, then shifted to a different spot. But he didn’t look disgusted. I expected a curse word or two. Instead he said gently, “Are you hurt?”

  “Somebody hit me.” My words sounded slow and slurred to my own ears. Something was definitely wrong with me.

  “Who hit you?”

  I tried to focus, to form clear words. I didn’t understand what had happened. But the answer to that question was important; I knew that. “I don’t know. Didn’t see.”

  “They hit you from behind?”

  “I think so.”

  “Brenna!” This time it was Blythe.

  Why did she smell like a pine tree? She smelled the puke and crinkled her nose, then knelt down on the safe side of me. Riggins was talking into his radio again. About the victim. And an ambulance. Me. He must be talking about me.

  “No ambulance!” I said.

  “Brenna, if you’re hurt—” Blythe attempted.

  “No ambulance. I refuse treatment.” Visions of endless medical bills danced in my already throbbing head.

  Riggins frowned at me. “You refuse treatment?”

  “That’s right. Blythe, am I bleeding?” I lifted my head so she could look.

  She gingerly parted my hair with her fingers. “No. But Brenna, it’s not that simple. Someone assaulted you. You’re evidence. We have to have you examined in order to report it, right Officer?”

  “Right,” Riggins said firmly.

  My own sister was conspiring against me with the cops. What next? And what was up with her hair? It looked positively mangled.

  Riggins lowered his voice. “It’ll help your case. You could be in a lot of trouble.”

  “Trouble?” I said.

  “We got a call about you breaking into a house. Officer Doyle’s house, to be exact.”

  “I didn’t—”

  Riggins held a hand up in a gesture for me to stop. “Brenna Battle, you have the right to remain—”

  “Are you serious?” I looked into those sad brown eyes. He was serious. I shut my eyes and groaned as Riggi
ns read me my rights.

  “Don’t worry, Bren.” Blythe smoothed the hair back from my forehead. “We’ll get this straightened out.”

  I insisted we couldn’t afford to take an ambulance ride, on top of the inevitable two-thousand-dollar CT scan, and Riggins took pity on us and agreed to help Blythe stuff me in the back of his cruiser for the ride to the closest ER, twenty minutes away. Blythe was reluctant to leave me in the police car alone, but I assured her I needed her to follow behind so she could drive me home as soon as they released me. If they released me. Dear God, I’d never felt so under arrest, sitting in the back of that police car with the sound of my rights being read still ringing in my ears. Blythe must’ve realized that, but she probably couldn’t bear to remind my concussion-addled self that I would not be free to go once the doctors were done with me.

  Was I going to have to go down to the station to “get booked?” wasn’t that what they called it? I can’t go to jail! I wanted to scream. I felt sick again. Riggins looked at me in his rearview mirror.

  “Need some air?” he said. I didn’t answer. He lowered my window anyway.

  I’d been X-rayed and scanned to the hilt, and I was lying on a gurney in a room in the ER, waiting for the results. Blythe had been by my side the whole time. Riggins had left to go do some more investigating. Lucky for me, the Bonney Bay Police Department was short-handed.

  Once I’d asked Blythe what was up with the pine-needle hair-pins, she’d whispered a reminder to me that she’d been climbing a tree, and then it had all come back to me. Well, all except the important part—who had knocked me unconscious.

  Blythe pulled a stool up to the gurney and squeezed my hand.

  “We have to figure out who did this to me,” I said. “Someone dangerous is out there.” And they were probably after Blythe, too. I told Blythe the last thing I remembered, the neighbor with the shovel confronting me.

  “I think Doyle is trying to convince everyone that you were hit by someone who saw you breaking in and confronted you—or that you even confronted them and they came out on top.”