A Deadly Discovery

by J. C. Kenney

  “Will this put me in mortal danger? No offense, but I prefer to stay in one piece.”

  I laughed. God love her, Sloane always knew the perfect thing to say at the perfect time. She was the best friend anyone could ask for.

  “How about some cross-training? I want to take a ride to think things through. I could use a partner to bounce ideas off of.”

  “Is that all? I can totally do that. You promise no guns or weapons of any kind will be involved?”

  “Cross my heart. I’m dealing with a lot of loose threads and you’re so good at listening and helping me figure things out. When we’re done with the ride, I’ll buy you lunch at Big Al’s.”

  “Be there in a half hour.”

  Since Sloane was an elite-level trail runner, she had to be mindful of her nutrition. With the national championships coming up in a couple of months, discipline with her training and diet were more important than ever. Normally, she wouldn’t step inside a burger joint unless it was the off-season. And even then, it was with reluctance.

  Things were different with Big Al’s, though. The diner’s owner, Al Hammond, spent most of his time over a grill with a spatula in his hand. When he wasn’t crafting the greatest burgers in North America, he was pouring coffee and chatting with customers.

  It was during one of his chats with Sloane that Al had a brainstorm. He worked with Sloane to craft a meal from items already on his menu that were healthier than his typical burger and fries. After some trial and error, they came up with a platter that featured an omelet made of egg whites and chopped vegetables, whole wheat toast, and one’s choice of turkey bacon or turkey sausage.

  They called it the Running Winchester.

  The dish became an instant hit, thanks in no small part to the tie-in with Rushing Creek’s most famous athlete.

  While I waited for Sloane, I took the bike into the courtyard at the rear of my building to give it some overdue TLC. To make things more fun, I put Ursi’s harness on her and let her explore the surroundings while I worked.

  Since I moved back to Rushing Creek, I’d ridden an average of two thousand miles per year. That was a lot of wear and tear, so I took my bike to Brown County Cyclery, the local bike shop, twice a year for professional maintenance. I’d never truly appreciated how complicated a bike could be until I became so dependent on one. My mechanic told me a typical bike is made up of over eight hundred separate components. Without proper maintenance, any one of those parts, from a tiny wheel bearing to a brake cable, could fail and leave me in a ditch somewhere.

  I never wanted to end up in a ditch, but if it was going to happen, it wouldn’t be because I failed to maintain my trusty steed. When one included my recent mishap, I’d crashed four times in my life. Never once had it been due to a part failure. I intended to keep it that way.

  By the time Sloane arrived, I was buffing the bike’s frame so its black paint job shined like the sun.

  “What up, girlfriend?” Sloane and Ursi met in the middle of the courtyard. My feline leapt into my bestie’s arms.

  “Hey, Allie.” Sloane waved as she cuddled the cat.

  “Just about done here.” I tossed the polishing rag into a bucket and hugged Sloane. “I’ll let you two have some alone time.”

  “It’s only fair since your mommy gets to have me all to herself on our bike ride.” Sloane kissed Ursi on an ear. They carried on a private conversation as they followed me upstairs so I could stash my cleaning supplies.

  It took Sloane and Ursi five minutes to say goodbye to each other. I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help being cheered by their antics. Their connection was undeniable and made me happy, even if it made me feel like a third wheel sometimes.

  As we buckled our bike helmets, I threw down the gauntlet.

  “You know, Sloane, one of these days I should just go to the Humane Society, adopt a cat, and drop it off on your doorstep. That way you can have your own. And Luke won’t be able to say no since it was a gift.”

  “Not a bad idea.” She took a drink from her water bottle and threw a leg over the top tube of her twenty-seven-speed, triathlon-style bike. “But then I’d need Aunt Allie to come by and clean out my fur baby’s litter box when I’m out of town. If you’re good with that—”

  “Good point. Maybe not the best idea, after all.” I loved Ursi with all my heart but often joked about how I wished I would have trained her to go potty in the toilet instead of in her litter box. Flushing was much easier than scooping. In reality, training one’s cat to use the toilet wasn’t a good thing for the animal for a variety of reasons. So, I stuck to the tried-and-true litter box.

  “Uh-huh. The wisdom is strong in this one.” Sloane laughed and I couldn’t help chuckling at the reference to Star Wars, which she loved so much. “Lead the way, Master Jedi.”

  “I thought I was your Kickboxing Crusader?”

  “You are, but if you solve a case from back when we were in middle school, you deserve a promotion to Jedi.”

  On that empowering note, we got moving. I chose to head north, though I didn’t have any specific destination in mind. While we pedaled, I brought Sloane up to speed with what I’d learned. She listened without comment until I finished my report. She was such a good listener, I had no doubt she could repeat my report practically verbatim.

  Before we got too far out of town, we turned east. Sloane asked a few questions to clarify some things. When we rolled to a stop at a four-way intersection, she took a drink, then tilted her head to the side. Something was on her mind.

  “Have you visited the spot where they found Valerie?” When I said no, she wagged her finger at me. “We should go. Right now. I mean, you’ve always gone to the spots where your other murder victims were found, right?”

  My other murder victims. Holy cats, what had I become? The thing was, Sloane was right. While the circumstances of each murder had been as different as could be, I’d still gone to the scenes of every crime I’d worked on.

  Each time, I’d learned something valuable, too.

  “Indeed. I’ve been so focused on what happened back then, I haven’t thought much about the here and now.” I took a drink from my water bottle. The cold liquid invigorated me. “I think you get Master Jedi level, now. Shall we?”

  “Race ya!” Sloane took off in front of me. With her arms resting on the handlebars and the rest of her body tucked close to the sleek frame of the aerodynamic machine, she jetted away like a rocket.

  My bike was a multipurpose workhorse, not a speedy thoroughbred, so I had no chance of catching her. That was fine. She’d get in a quick, high-intensity workout and I’d catch up at the forest’s gatehouse.

  And pay the admission fee. Which was only fair since she was the one who was helping me.

  At the forest’s entrance, we pulled to the side to study the map the gatehouse attendant had given us. Solid green lines marked the paved roads that wound through the property. Hashed lines indicated the horse trail. Dotted lines were the hiking trails.

  I pointed to a spot in the upper right-hand corner of the map. “This is where Connie told me they found her.”

  Sloane let out a long whistle as she ran a finger from where we were to where they’d found Valerie. “Man. That’s pretty out of the way. Your perp would have had to drive and then hike to get there.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” I looked around. The gatehouse, a small wooden structure with a cedar shingle roof, hardly evoked images of Fort Knox. The gate was nothing more than a steel tube attached to a short metal post so it could swing open and closed. There was a length of chain at the end of the tube to allow the gate to be locked to a wooden post on the other side of the road from the gatehouse.

  “Assuming the current setup is similar to what was in place back then, it wouldn’t have been hard to cut the chain and drive through undetected.”

  “If it was the middle of the night, for sure.” Sloane snapped her fingers. “Do you think we could check to see if they have, like, maintenance rec
ords from back then? Maybe there’d be a copy of a work order to fix whatever damage your perp caused getting through the gate.”

  “Spoken like a true construction titan.” When Sloan’s father died, she inherited his estate, including a hundred acres of prime real estate she was now developing. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  To simulate what the murderer may have done, we rode our bikes twenty miles per hour, the posted speed limit, until we reached the relevant trail head. Then we hiked at a brisk pace until arriving at an area cordoned off by the all-too-familiar yellow police tape. A little part of me died at the idea that nobody had bothered to remove the tape when the police released the scene.

  “Twenty-five minutes, give or take.” Sloane slipped under the tape and marched straight to the area of overturned soil that had made up the de facto grave. “Then, if you assume he needed another five or ten minutes to find this spot, we’re talking an hour just to get in and out.”

  “Agreed. And then another half hour to dig the grave.” I took some photos of the scene.

  I shuddered as an image of a shadowy figure lowered a bag with a young woman stuffed inside into the ground, then covered up his work.

  Anger flamed inside me. I wanted to punch something that wasn’t my kickboxing bag. The monster who committed this horrific crime. The police who gave the original investigation at best a half-hearted effort. The Rushing Creek community, who merely shrugged, then turned a blind eye to Valerie’s fate.

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten to center myself. If I wasn’t careful, the flame would grow until it was out of control. That would only lead to poor decision-making and rash actions, neither of which would help Valerie. The cool analytical mind of Allie Cobb, literary agent, was what I needed, not an enraged caricature of myself, playing the part of the deceased’s avenger.

  After a few moments, I opened my eyes. With Sloane beside me, we walked the crime scene’s perimeter.

  “To keep a body hidden for twenty years tells me two things. One, this wasn’t some random spot to dump a body. Whoever did it made an effort to bring Valerie here. To this spot.”

  Sloane furrowed her brow, apparently deep in thought. After a few seconds, she looked at me with wide eyes. “Which would mean the killer knew it was safe to get rid of her here. He would have to know the area pretty darn well to make a call like that.”

  “Indeed, which brings us to the second point, my dear Watson. The murderer had to have used a shovel to dig deep enough to keep the body hidden all this time. That begs yet another question.”

  “Where did he get a shovel?” Sloane rubbed her temples. She was a sensitive soul who tried to focus on positive things for the sake of her mental health. My bestie had provided invaluable help, but she was near the end of her emotional reserves. I needed to get her out of there.

  “That, too. I also want to know where Valerie was murdered.”

  “I get it. Was she killed here, like maybe a lovers’ quarrel got out of hand, or someplace else, and the body was brought here?”

  “Bingo.” I put my arm around Sloane and guided her back to the trail. “Now, how about that lunch I promised you?”

  She didn’t need to be asked twice. Her long legs and rapid pace made it tough for me to keep up. That was okay. I was ready to put the haunting scene behind me as much as my bestie was.

  As we pedaled back to town, I found myself asking the same question: What did I learn from the trip?

  Given the location of Valerie’s grave, I was convinced the murderer was someone local. Granted, that didn’t help a lot since all my suspects were local, but it reinforced the notion that focusing on Rushing Creek residents was the way to go.

  While I wasn’t certain, I was pretty sure Valerie had been murdered somewhere else. Sure, Sloane’s scenario that Valerie snuck into the forest with a lover, got into a dispute, and was murdered in the heat of the moment wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. It seemed to me, though, that someone who committed a crime of passion would have dumped her by the side of the road and hightailed it out of there.

  In the scenario that was more probable to me, Valerie was strangled someplace else. The killer needed to get rid of the body, so he stuffed her in the equipment bag, took her into the forest, and buried her.

  That took some thought from someone who had ice water in his veins.

  By now, I also had no doubt the murderer was male. The violence of the crime made me think it was much more likely committed by a man. I’d spent over a decade reading manuscripts involving criminal acts of all sorts. I’d often fact-checked the stories to ensure plausibility. That experience now had me convinced a man committed the brutal acts that took Valerie’s life.

  We took a right-hand turn, and a few minutes later came to a stop in front of Big Al’s. Sloane had let me spend the time on the ride working out the myriad puzzle pieces in front of me instead of chatting. God love her.

  While I locked our bikes to the rack, a few more pieces hovered above my imaginary puzzle. With a click of the lock, they dropped into place.

  A profile of the murderer was becoming clearer all the time, like when I wiped the condensation from my bathroom mirror after a shower. A male, from the area. Using a Rushing Creek baseball equipment bag wasn’t a coincidence, either. Those things weren’t available for public consumption.

  Valerie’s murderer had been a member of the Rushing Creek High School baseball team. Now, it was up to me to figure out which one.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sloane and I were seated in our favorite spot in the diner, the booth farthest from the entrance, so we could talk without being disturbed. Whether we liked it or not, we were both local celebrities or sorts, and folks enjoyed stopping by to say hi.

  Sloane was the famous one. Between her incredible exploits on the professional trail-running circuit, her donation of land that became a city park, and her careful stewardship of the property that was being developed, everyone in town loved her. Due to her humble nature, the fame often put her ill at ease.

  I encouraged her to welcome the good wishes and adulation. She was a truly kind person and deserved all the goodwill that came her way.

  I, on the other hand, was more infamous that anything. Folks generally appreciated my efforts to support the community, like my regular book donations to the library and membership on the 9/11 Memorial committee. Those activities didn’t get me on the front page of the Brown County Beacon, though. Which was totally fine, by the way.

  Most people knew who I was for one of two things. I was the eccentric single woman in her thirties who took her cat for walks and didn’t own a car. I was also the pushy busybody who may have solved a few murders but had rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in doing so.

  So, Sloane was Rushing Creek’s Wonder Woman. I was Batwoman.

  That was okay. She was the yang who brought the light. I was the yin who carried the dark. In reality, we were besties who never seemed to have enough time to just chat. That made the corner booth in the back our dining spot of choice.

  “I heard there’s a freshman girl at Rushing Creek who’s becoming quite your protégé.” I took a long sip of my chocolate milk shake. The mocha-tinged decadence was delightful.

  “It’s awesome. She started with the cross-country team in middle school because her friends were doing it. She caught the running bug and won the all-conference meet last fall. And she has fun running. That’s the most important thing.”

  When Sloane was in town, she set aside one workout per week to run with the local youth. The goals were to teach proper running form and how to be a good sport. In the year Sloane had been leading the runs, participation had grown from one girl to over two dozen youth, both boys and girls.

  The emphasis on fun was just the latest example of my dear friend and sister-in-law having her priorities in the right place. If the kids wanted to get competitive, Sloane was quick to remind them the competitor was the clock, not each other.

  She was
filling me in on the group’s latest run when Maybelle Schuman came through the front entrance.

  “Don’t turn around. Gossip Central is in the house.” I sunk lower in my seat and sent up a prayer she wouldn’t see us. Our lunch had been so pleasant. I didn’t want it interrupted.

  “Allie, there you are.” Maybelle waved and bustled toward us.

  So much for our quiet lunch.

  The woman took a seat next to Sloane. “I saw your bikes outside and wanted to see whether or not you heard.”

  Sloane and I exchanged a quick look. My bestie took a sip of her green tea and focused on her omelet. Whatever Maybelle had to say, Sloane wasn’t interested. Having been on the receiving end of some nasty rumors not so long ago, she despised gossip.

  I, on the other hand, had to keep my ears open. The older woman was a potential source of information, even if her stories needed to be viewed through a thick lens of skepticism.

  “Heard what?” I braced myself for something scandalous as I took a bite of my burger.

  “The police arrested Ronald Spade for the murder of the poor Briggs girl.”

  I swallowed so fast I almost choked. Sloane sucked in a sharp breath.

  Maybelle’s eyes were wide. I was all too familiar with the look. She was dying to spill the beans but wanted me to take the bait. I’d learned the best way to handle situations like this was to engage but not feed the flame. Otherwise, I risked getting sucked into fire.

  “That’s certainly news. Thanks for letting us know.”

  Her rumors were usually half right at best and flat wrong at worst. There was often a grain of truth deep down in them though. I just had to sift through the muck to find it.

  “Yes, it’s kind of you to tell Allie.” Sloane patted Maybelle’s hand. “Where did you hear about this?”

  It was a deft move on my bestie’s part. A display of compassion while asking for sources.

  “I saw it with my own eyes. I was out for a walk, going past the municipal building. A police car pulled up. Mr. Spade was in the back. Chief Roberson and Officer Wilkerson walked him into the station.”