Starke Naked Dead (Starke Dead Mysteries Book 1)

by Conda V. Douglas

  One small bullet hole scorched into the skin on Derek’s chest.

  I bent closer. So small, the bullet hole resembled a bloody bit of dirt that had adhered to his chest. A deadly bit of dirt. Bile crept up the back of my throat. I swallowed hard. I unloaded Great Grandpa’s gun and pocketed it. That helped, a bit. There’d been too much violence in this cabin.

  Did Rupert shoot Derek? Did he even have a gun?

  Yes, there, half hidden under a rouge polishing cloth, a .38 rested on the workbench amongst my father’s leather mallet and wire cutters. Almost casual, as if placed there as an afterthought.

  Had Rupert walked out and left it behind? Why? And I still couldn’t imagine my father blasting away. But if Rupert hadn’t shot this naked man, who had?

  Why was Derek naked? Was Rupert searching for something? I hated to imagine what and where.

  Was Derek the threat that had made Rupert insist I sell the necklace?

  The walls of the one-room cabin closed in, cold and dark, a coffin. I needed to get out. I needed to find Lester. I needed—

  The crunch of a car driving over the dirt road came through the open door. Through the tiny window, I saw Lester’s Jeep pull over beside the line of cars parked in front of the cabin.

  My knees wobbled. I put my hand on the bench to steady myself. Had Aunt Maddie made good on her threat to call the cops?

  I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand. That might be for the best. All I needed to do was turn the necklace over to Lester and—wait—what if the necklace provided a motive for Rupert to kill Derek? I believed my father would never kill anyone on purpose, but would Lester?

  Lester sat in the jeep. He shook his cell phone. Even from inside the cabin, I could see the irritated frown on his face.

  If anyone had asked me yesterday if my father would ever kill anyone, for any reason, I’d have said no. However, I’d have never believed he’d hand me a necklace worth millions and demand I sell it, either. That same necklace rested in my apron pocket.

  Lester got out of the Jeep.

  Where to hide the necklace?

  I checked the little room, now a crime scene and bound to be searched as one. Where? The chinks between the logs where the wind swept through? Too small. The pine wood floor, scuffed and marred from a century of use, rested on dirt.

  Lester walked around the two cars. His shoulders stooped, as if all his thirty years of being the Arrester pressed down on him.

  Where had my father hidden the necklace before?

  Lester headed for the cabin door.

  I stepped to the fireplace. The stone facing was set in rock-hard mortar. Buddha, help me.

  Buddha did. I spotted a thin sliver of an indent in the ashes underneath the fire dog. An edge of the fireplace ash trap. The ash on the necklace must have come from the trap. Quick but careful not to disturb the old, dry, cobwebbed logs, I opened the trap door with one hand and tossed the necklace in with the other. I fluttered the ashes back over the trap.

  My head thwacked on the fireplace stone. “Ow.” I ducked and scuttled out of the fireplace.

  Tears in my eyes, I rubbed the crown of my head and scurried back to the workbench. I dropped my hand into my pocket just as Lester appeared in the doorway. I tried to look both casual and innocent. At least as much as was possible when sharing space with a dead, naked body.

  He paused, one foot raised mid-air. “Dora, what are you doing here?” He stared at the body in the chair and then at me, wide-eyed, his mouth slack. His foot came down with a thwack.

  I scrunched my face tight, so wanting to blurt out the story of the necklace. Lester could make it all better, just like he did when I was little.

  I bit back the words. I wasn’t little anymore. Well, I was still short, but that didn’t count.

  “I can explain.” Wait, no I couldn’t.

  Lester put his foot down. “You can?”

  “Um.” Nothing came to mind.

  Lester pointed at the body. His finger shook. “Explain that?”

  “It’s not what it looks like. I mean, I know it looks like a—dead guy—but—”

  Lester stopped pointing and used that hand to rub his face. He stalked inside.

  “Rupert didn’t shoot him?” I winced when I heard the question mark.

  Lester ran his hand over his silver hair. “If not Rupert, then who?” He shuffled, an old man, over to Derek’s body. He stared at it for a long moment then shifted his stare to me. “Dora, I asked what are you doing here?” That tone brooked no argument or equivocation. Lester’s eyebrows drew together into a familiar frown. That frown had kept me out of trouble and in school while I grew up.

  Think fast, Dora. Inspiration smacked me again. “I panicked when I saw you drive up, Sheriff.”

  “Why?” Lester asked. “And why have you got ash in your hair?”

  My short curly hair, a perfect trap for ashes from the ash trap. I ruffled my hair. “Because of this.” I pulled the gun out of my pocket. Not an answer to either of his questions. But a gun provided a good distraction.

  Lester took a step back.

  “It’s okay.” I held it out toward him by the grip. “It’s not loaded.”

  “Freeze!”

  TEN

  I jumped and dropped my gun. Poor Great Grandpa’s pistol sure got kicked around these days.

  Lester turned, his hand on his holster.

  “Mallard,” Lester and I said.

  Mallard stood outlined in the doorway, his gun out and pointed in my direction.

  “Don’t point that gun at me,” I said.

  The gun didn’t move.

  “Stand down, Mallard,” Lester said.

  Mallard lowered his gun. He lifted his chin toward Derek. “Is that guy dead?” he said, his voice squeaked on the last word.

  “Yup,” Lester and I said.

  “And naked?” Mallard asked, his voice so high on “naked” it was almost inaudible.

  “Yup,” Lester and I said.

  “Did you shoot him, Dora?” A single drop of sweat rolled down Mallard’s cheek. How could he sweat in this freezing cold?

  Lester’s mouth twisted. “Dora wouldn’t do that. Not Dora.”

  “Not me.” I worked hard not to look over at the fireplace. The necklace seemed to radiate heat from its hiding place.

  Mallard blinked at me.

  “Really, really, really bad karma,” I explained.

  “But…” Mallard pointed with his gun at my dropped gun. “What about that?”

  “I know Dora.” Lester gave me the shadow of a smile. “I practically raised her.”

  I smiled back. “You and Aunt Maddie and the whole town of Starke.” Everyone save my parents.

  “But, boss—Sheriff, didn’t you find her here? Armed?” Mallard used his gun to point at Great Grandpa’s revolver.

  “I’m not holding a gun.” I spread my arms wide.

  “It’s your gun on the floor,” Mallard argued.

  “It’s not my gun. It’s Aunt Maddie’s gun and it’s not the only gun,” I said.

  Mallard blinked again. He should get that tic examined. “Well, yes, Dora, we’ve got guns,” he said. He spaced every word in case I didn’t understand.

  “I meant that gun.” I pointed at the gun on the work table.

  It wasn’t like they weren’t going to find it. Odd that the cops hadn’t spotted it before, save for Derek’s body being a major distraction.

  Mallard made a distressed sound deep in his throat. Lester sighed.

  Mallard holstered his gun at last. “We need to call the state police.”

  Lester crossed his arms across his chest. “No.”

  “No?” Mallard looked at me as if I might explain.

  I raised my eyebrows and shook my head.

  “I’m not going whining to the state police,” Lester said. “Not after thirty years as Lester the Arrester.”

  I could understand Lester’s bitterness. For decades, he’d been the only law in Star
ke. A month ago, he’d been forced to accept a geeky deputy. No wonder he’d quit when the town council refused to give him a leave of absence.

  “Are you questioning my ability to perform my duties?” Lester continued. “When I tried to call you, my cell didn’t work. Did you follow me, Mallard?”

  I wondered at Lester’s flip-flop in attitude from yesterday, when it seemed he wanted Mallard to take over.

  “When Godiva—weird name—told us her brother had headed this direction but hadn’t returned and so you came up here to check,” Mallard said.

  What would a nudist want with my father? I realized a possible answer. To buy some of Rupert’s jewelry. Had Derek’s death just been a misunderstanding?

  “You haven’t answered my question, Mallard,” Lester said.

  Mallard rested his hand on his gun holster. “I know you’ve got the experience, Sheriff,” he stroked the gun butt, “but this guy Rupert is a mountain recluse, so after you left, I got to thinking you might need backup.” He pointed at dead Derek. “Don’t you think I might’ve been right?”

  Mallard had judged, juried, and condemned Rupert already.

  If I could only find my father, I could warn him. I needed to find him to get answers. I needed to find him to save him.

  ELEVEN

  I wiped the fingerprint ink from my hands, or tried to. “Was all this mess necessary?” I asked Mallard. He’d insisted I follow him down to the old police station while Sheriff Lester waited for Doc Byrne at my father’s cabin.

  When there first was a sheriff in Starke in 1882, he operated out of his two-room home and used his fruit cellar as the cell. We now sat in that long ago sheriff’s front room. A heavy plastic tarp hung between this first room and the rest of the building. The sheriff’s office, same as every other place in Starke, faced major renovation and expansion. And change.

  “The mess of you at your father’s cabin with a murdered man, or the mess of the fingerprint test?” Mallard asked.

  I glared and scrubbed harder. I needed to find where my father was. I needed answers. I didn’t need Mallard’s sweaty attitude.

  Mallard ignored me, instead intent on scanning my prints into the system, my own piece of immortality. He worked at a steel desk pushed into the corner of the office, where three computer monitors fought for space with a scanner and two printers.

  “My fingerprints will be in Rupert’s cabin, anyway,” I said.

  “And maybe on the gun that killed that man.”

  I paused mid-scrub. How desperate was Mallard to find a killer and close the case? Would anybody do as the killer? Would I do?

  I sat back on the old wooden office chair, the one that missed a caster. It listed hard right. I straightened up. “Hey. I passed the gun residue test.”

  “Maybe you wrapped that red cloth around your hand when you fired the gun,” Mallard said without missing a key stroke.

  “That’s a rouge cloth.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said red. A rouge cloth is for polishing…” Oh boy, I was getting as bad as Nance. Her pontificating must be catching.

  “You were with the body when it was found.”

  “Anybody could have been found that body,” I said. I realized as I spoke how wrong I was. Maybe Mallard wouldn’t notice my mistake.

  “Who?” Mallard asked.

  In answer, I reached out and touched Mallard’s well-pressed, if somewhat damp, sleeve.

  He paused, finger poised over a keyboard, the keys blackened by fingerprint ink. Mallard had a little trouble with the fingerprinting kit. No practice.

  “You actually suspect me?” I asked.

  He looked at me and sighed. “You were found in your father’s cabin, with a gun, standing over a dead man.”

  I leaned away from him, took a deep breath, and sucked in the nasty ink smell. I choked. “You’re not a Starker. You don’t know me,” I said between coughs.

  Mallard got up and got me a paper cup of coffee from the coffeemaker that had stood on top of the stainless steel cabinet for as long as I could remember.

  “You can’t suspect me.”

  “Why not?” Mallard handed me the cup. “I’m not Lester. I don’t remember when you were an adorable kid, although you’re cute now.” He blushed to the roots of his sweaty hair. Pretty cute himself.

  Ohm, I saw Mallard as cute? Sweaty Mallard? I needed to meditate more.

  I smiled, despite myself, and then bit my lower lip. “So, are you going to interrogate me?”

  He smiled back. “Interrogate you? Where’s my big rubber hose when I need it?” A fresh line of sweat broke out along his forehead. “I mean, I didn’t mean, um…” He looked as if he might sweat himself to death.

  I stifled a tiny giggle, amazed I could still laugh. In the cup, the coffee rolled back and forth, a tiny, oily sea. I humpfed. “I never killed and never will kill anyone.” I sniffed the coffee.

  The rancid stench reminded me of when, after school, I’d come here and share a cup and a cinnamon roll with Lester. Comforting.

  “So you say, and so Lester says, but I say the evidence needs to speak first.”

  “Now you sound like a TV show.”

  Mallard sighed. He gestured at the monitors on his desk. “I don’t want to be sheriff. I’m the techie guy. I’ve even written—well added to—a police program. And now there’s a dead naked guy. If I only had the money to develop…” He looked at his beloved computers, every monitor with a different screen saver.

  The aquarium with the swimming “dog fish,” little fish bodies with dog heads, I liked the best. Hmmm, if I took my Dog Face Mountain pin and shortened the nose just a bit…

  I sipped the coffee. Ugh, the taste reminded me of the muddy mire of a memory lane. I set it down on the edge of Mallard’s desk.

  Mallard picked up the cup and pulled me back to the moment. “Coffee spills,” he said as he placed it on the cabinet. “So why did you go up to your father’s cabin, Dora?”

  “It’s my father’s cabin. Do I need a reason?”

  “With a murdered man in the cabin, yes.” Mallard looked at me, his face all cop.

  “Um…” I clutched at my Ohm pin on my apron. “Um…”

  “Why were you in the cabin?” Mallard asked again. Every ounce of sweat seemed to have dried on the man.

  The pin cut into my palm. Ah. I remembered my partial true reason. “I went up to get more jewelry to sell to Nance.”

  “Jewelry…Nance,” Mallard said. His eyebrows leapt up. “Oh, I remember, for the rent.”

  “That’s right, that Nance.” Who, I hoped, waited in Boise for me to arrive. She’d have to wait a bit longer.

  Mallard pointed at Great Grandpa’s gun that rested next to Rupert’s .38, both sealed in evidence bags, on Lester’s roll top desk. “For this you brought a gun?”

  “I forgot I had it.”

  “You forgot you had it?” Mallard’s eyebrows drew together and started sweating again.

  “It was in one of my pockets.” I held open one huge apron pocket to demonstrate its capacity. I gulped. That pocket recently held the necklace that now rested in the ashes, trapped.

  Mallard peered inside and then looked at his center monitor. “And Starkers say I’m crazy because I find working with computers easier.”

  “Or maybe it’s because you talk to your monitors,” I let slip out.

  His back stiffened. “Your excuse would be more believable—”

  “It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth.” A bit of the truth.

  “—if you tell me where Rupert is,” Mallard continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “How would I know where he’s gone?” I answered.

  “He’s your father,” Mallard said.

  “Yes but…” My shoulders fell. “After my mom ran off…” I looked down at the floor. “Rupert went looking for her and then he came back.” I blinked back a tear. “Only he didn’t.”

  “What?” Mallard asked, his voice low.


  “He changed. He—” I stopped. I remembered, too well, when Rupert returned. I’d been ten years old and bereft of both parents since I was seven. I’d so hoped to have one parent back in my life. Instead, he’d retreated to this cabin and shut the door.

  Now Mallard reached out and touched my arm. “People change, Dora. Things happen to them and they change.”

  “Sometimes not for the better.” I swallowed back bitter coffee dregs as I realized what I’d said.

  “It may have been a mistake,” Mallard said. “Your dad may have panicked.”

  He echoed my own fear that Rupert, already terrified, would blast away at an innocent.

  I sniffed. The smell of fresh pine wood wafted from the absent back wall of the station from behind the heavy tarp hung there. Behind it, the old original bedroom had been torn down to expand the sheriff’s office into a modern facility. I coughed again.

  Mallard patted my arm as if that might help. “So, you need to tell me where he might be. Would he head into the mountains?”

  “Oh no, no, no.”

  Mallard’s expression returned to its usual confusion. “He’s a mountain man, right?”

  “No, he’s a recluse. He couldn’t survive off the land.” I clutched my Ohm pin. “It could snow any day.”

  Mallard frowned. “I thought everybody wanted it to snow.”

  “Snow would be a death sentence for my father.”

  “Ah, so, Rupert will be hiding someplace under cover. Do you know where?”

  “No. I don’t know.” But I’d find out. When I found Rupert I’d find my answers.

  Where could Rupert run? I’d always believed his cabin was his only sanctuary. After he gave up the search for my mother, he retreated there.

  Could I ask Aunt Maddie where Rupert might be? No, I didn’t dare. I knew her reaction to me finding a dead body in his cabin. Not great. Not good. Not repeatable.

  Mallard sat back in his chair. I noticed his had all its casters. “Are you sure, Dora?”

  I sniffed again and caught a faint scent of old cinnamon roll. I realized who I could ask. Who might know where Rupert hid.

  “What is it?” Mallard must have read my expression.