by Darci Hannah
Jack closed his notebook. “Mr. Bloom. Mr. Bloom, look at me, sir. What troubles me is that you have two hours—two crucial hours—that no one but you can account for. That in itself is not so unusual. However, when coupled with the fact that you were heard arguing with Mr. Carlson, and that your croquet mallet was found beside the body, you understand how this might look suspicious? But,” he said, aiming a grim smile at Dad, “I’m not convinced we should close the books on this one just yet. You weren’t the only person wandering about the grounds last night, and if you left Mr. Carlson back at the processing sheds around nine p.m., you obviously weren’t the last person to speak with him. The Cherry Blossom Festival always attracts a crowd. I understand the inn’s full, and that you have a substantial amount of staff working this weekend as well. Then there are the locals who participate in the festival and love to get involved.” Jack closed his notebook, tucked it into his pocket, and stood.
“Last night it was too dark to see much of anything,” he went on. “Today, hopefully, I’ll be able to find a bit more evidence at the crime scene. With any luck I might even be able to convince a forensic unit to take a look. That will help.” Jack locked eyes with my father. “Like I told you last night, I want the Cherry Blossom Festival to continue on as if nothing’s happened, with the one caveat that nobody’s to go near the crime scene. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is to go beyond the yellow tape.” This he said looking directly at me. “To do so would be a crime. Is that clear?” He shifted his focus back to Dad. “Keep out of that part of the orchard. Until I can take a closer look at the body and go over the crime scene once again, I want everyone to remain here and continue on as if nothing’s happened.” Jack looked at his watch. “Right now, however, I have a meeting at Door County General with the county coroner. I’m bringing him our key piece of evidence, the croquet mallet found at the crime scene. Once I speak with him, and after he has a look at the mallet, I hope to have a better understanding of what went on here. Also, I’m going to need to take a look at your guest book as well as a list of all your employees.”
“Of course,” Dad said. “We keep all the employee records in Sorensen’s office. I’ll make you a copy.” Dad got up, impatient to leave the room and the difficult line of questioning. He was nearly to the door when Mom broke in.
“Jack … Officer MacLaren, why don’t you go with Baxter and I’ll see if I can’t wrap up a little of that coffee cake for you? After all, it sounds like you’re in for quite a busy day.”
At the mention of coffee cake, a smile lit up Jack’s face. “Thanks, Mrs. Bloom. I’d appreciate it.”
“Well, it’s the least I can do after all you’ve done for us.” Mom took Jack by the arm and escorted him out of the sunroom. The moment Dad and Jack were out of earshot, Mom popped back in and wasted no time getting to her point.
“Whitney,” she whispered, panic touching her face and constricting her voice. “Go with Jack. You know what he’s like. He’s a dear boy, but do you really feel he’s qualified for this sort of thing? There are nineteen guests, not to mention the staff. Oh, sure, young MacLaren’s good at handing out speeding tickets, finding the occasional stolen bicycle, and giving seminars on gun safety to hunters, but … well, this time it’s murder, and the murder weapon belongs to your father.” Her eyes were tearing up at the thought. “Not to mention the fact that he lives all alone in that odd little station of his doing God only knows what all day.”
“Jeez, Mom. Jack’s a professional!” I didn’t know why I’d picked that moment to defend him, but I had. Probably because the alternative was too ridiculous to even consider. “I know it’s hard to believe,” I added, “but he’s obviously been trained for this.”
“I know,” she whispered, casting a nervous glance at the French doors to the hall. “But you’re so smart and clever, Whitney.” The look on her face, the utter confidence, was disturbing. “And don’t forget,” she pressed on, filling with pride and a suspicious amount of purpose—kind of like Mel Gibson portraying William Wallace as he rallied his ragtag lot of Scotsman to the slaughter—“you, Whitney Bloom, were number two!” Two fingers with cherry-red painted nails sprang to action in front of my face, as if I should be heartened by the thought that I had graduated second out of a class of only forty students. Mom clearly was not the competitive sort, nor was she living in the real world.
“Mom, that … that doesn’t mean anything,” I protested, but she cut me off.
“Whitney, it’s like this. It’s apparent that Jack has reason to believe your dad might not have killed Jeb, but I don’t want to take any chances. I can’t run this place alone,” she said, “and now there’s the orchard to think about. And unless you want to move back home and help run this place, I think you should go with him to his meeting with the county coroner.”
Fudgesicles! The woman had a point. I leapt from my chair, tossed back the rest of my virgin mimosa, and dashed out of the sunroom.
Six
What in the name … ?”
There was an incensed look on Jack’s face the moment I ambushed the front seat of his police-issue Ford Expedition. Thanks to my hectic life in the city, and my penchant for disregarding time, I was forever chasing down cabs. I had gotten pretty good at catching them too.
“I thought … ” I said, and paused to buckle my seat belt. I then turned my brightest smile on him. “I thought I’d join you. No, no, don’t step on the brake. I’m not getting out. Think about it, Jack. You have a daunting task ahead of you. I’m sure you’re an able detective, and a fine policeman, but I think you’re in a bit over your head here.”
“Over my head?” he repeated, clearly insulted by the notion. It was then I recalled that Jack MacLaren didn’t like to appear anything less than fully capable.
“I’m sorry to be so blunt, Jack, but let’s face it. You’re a small-town cop and murder is a big-time crime.” I was trying to make a point. MacLaren was having none of it. Instead he lifted a ruddy brow, cocked his head, and looked utterly skeptical. For a detective, he was being pretty thick, I thought. “Listen,” I cajoled, attempting to put him at ease. “I grew up on that orchard. I helped plant half those trees. I know those processing sheds like the back of my hand, as well as every nook and cranny of the inn. You need me. And for what it’s worth, I know a thing or two about solving crimes.” This last statement was a classic case of stretching the truth, something all savvy advertisers use to their advantage. I’d read a lot of mysteries and watched a fair amount of crime shows on TV, so I wasn’t entirely ignorant about how to go about solving a crime. But I’d never been an active participant. Now, however, I was ready to roll up my sleeves and dig in, and in order to do that, I felt that I needed to see the body. I needed to know what had happened in the orchard. And I was determined to get my way.
Unfortunately, Jack wasn’t taking me seriously. In fact, he was laughing so hard he had to pull off the road.
“Seriously, Whit,” he said, as soon as he could breathe again. “I appreciate the offer, but what exactly is it you think you can do here?”
I crossed my arms, tilted my head, and said, “Look. In advertising we’re taught to look at demographics in order to figure out a product’s target audience. Anything can be solved by demographics, Jack, including the likeliest suspect for murder. Think of murder as a product to sell. The first thing you need to figure out is who needs that product … or, in our case, who needs that person dead? Who benefits most? Everything is a factor—age, sex, race, religion, political inclination, culture, education, income, family … what part of the country a person lives in. I didn’t want to say anything back there, around my parents, but, um … I believe I can help you.” I cast him a knowing look.
“Really?” For some reason, this too seemed to amuse him. “By putting your advertising skills to the test? Could you possibly be equating the murder of a man to a feminine hygiene ad?”
At the ment
ion of that ad my face grew unnaturally hot. Dang it! Why did he have to bring that up again? Trying to ignore his ironic grin, I said, “Unlike you, I have a friendly face and a knack for getting people to talk. There are a lot of people staying at the inn, not to mention all the staff. Somebody must have seen something. I know you’re going to need to talk with everyone there, everyone you can think of, to see if you can find someone with a motive. Why not let me help?”
The smile came off his face and his eyes hardened. “Are you telling me how to do my job? You the girl who ran off to Chicago to pursue a career in advertising, who created the most shocking Super Bowl ad of last year? By the way, how’s that working out for you, Whit? Because I hear you changed jobs and are now selling cherry pies on the internet to pay your rent. This isn’t a game. You may not care, but Jeb Carlson is dead—murdered on my watch—in my town!—and I’m going to find the devil who did it. But I can’t do that with you tagging along driven by your own guilty conscience.”
There was some truth in that statement. That’s why it hurt so much, and my face grew even hotter under his scrutinizing gaze. “Are … are you calling me a loser, Jack?”
“No. Not a loser. Overreaching’s the term I’d use. You always shoot for the stars and sail right over them, and when you finally land in reality, you can’t accept it. You can’t accept it and then you run away. And now you can’t accept the fact that I don’t need your help.”
He’d cut too close to the bone this time, and he knew it. Curse Jack MacLaren for reminding me of all my faults and failures!
“Very well,” I seethed. “Have it your way.” I unbuckled my seat belt and reached for the door handle. “Go ahead and work this case yourself. After all, being by yourself is what you’ve always excelled at. And you’re wrong about me. I’m devastated by Jeb’s murder. He was a great man and a dear friend, and the thought that my dad is being blamed for it is more than I care to think about. I don’t want to see him go to prison. A man like Dad couldn’t survive it. It would destroy my family. But I doubt you even care about family. I doubt you care for anything at all but yourself.” I pulled on the door handle.
Jack locked the door. “Whitney. Christ! I’m sorry. Please … don’t … ”
My plan had backfired, and so had his. And I didn’t ever want to look at him again. All I wanted was to get the heck out of his SUV. I opened the lock and threw my shoulder into the door. Jack locked it again.
“Whitney, look at me. I haven’t seen you in years and yet here we are bickering like kids again. It was kind of our thing—all the teasing, arguing, and challenging one another. I also recall that you were the only one to laugh at my jokes and had thick enough skin to be my friend. You of all people know I’m not an easy person to be around, and I’m afraid time hasn’t helped that any. And it grows worse when I get frustrated and scared, like I am now.”
With one hand wrapped around the door handle and the other wiping the tears of anger blurring my vision, I said, “You’re … scared?” I didn’t believe it.
He gave a solemn nod. “I am. Deadly so. There’s a murderer on the loose in Cherry Cove,” he added very softly, “and I have no idea who or where he is. I’m in charge of this investigation, yet I’m having a hell of a time getting backup. Jeb had the audacity to be murdered on a Friday night. Sturgeon Bay could only send one patrol officer to help me, the other four being busy with drunk and disorderly calls, and it took two hours to get an ambulance to the orchard because I’d already declared the body dead when I examined it, and a dead body is code for an ambulance driver to take his sweet effing time. And do you want to know the worst of it? I don’t think your dad murdered Jeb. I believe he had little or nothing to do with the murder. However, thanks to a group of gossiping guests, plus the fact that your dad’s prized croquet mallet was found beside the body, everybody has jumped to the obvious conclusion. Sergeant Stamper, from the Sturgeon Bay station, has been quick to call the whole mess a case of second-degree murder, and it might very well be. But I doubt it. I think something else went on in that cherry orchard.”
I looked at him and sniffled. “Really? So … so you really don’t believe my dad killed Jeb Carlson?”
Jack’s lips pressed into a grim line and he shook his head.
“Then what do you think happened?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m going to need to collect as much evidence as I can get. Last night, by the time I was called, it was too dark to see much of anything. I need to get out to the orchard and take another look, but first I have to head down to Sturgeon Bay. I called the county coroner last night and asked for an autopsy. I wanted it done right away, before Jeb’s family comes up from Sheboygan to claim the body.”
“Who’s the county coroner?” I asked.
“Your grandma Jenn’s neighbor, Doc Fisker. He’s old but good, and he’s susceptible to bribes.” As Jack spoke, he jerked his thumb toward the back seat of his police SUV. I looked there and saw a familiar bakery box on the seat. “Cherry pie,” Jack continued in answer to my unspoken question. “One of Grandma Jenn’s. That pie is like gold around here. Shameless, isn’t it? But that’s how things work. If you want any real police work done, you bribe ’em with pastry. I should be on my hands and knees going over the orchard with a magnifying glass and a fine-tooth comb, but no, I’m buying cherry pie at the Cherry Orchard Inn instead. Things like this never happened back in Milwaukee.”
“Were you happy in Milwaukee, Jack?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “For the most part I was.”
“Then why are you here? I mean, if you were so happy in Milwaukee, why did you end up back in Cherry Cove?”
Jack lowered his head, pretending to look at his hands. “I came back,” he said, turning to look at me, “because my dad got sick. Mom needed me here.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry!” I covered his hand with my own. “Is he better? I always liked your dad, although I hardly understood a word he said.”
“Oh, that was his accent. Scottish, you know. Raised in Glasgow, and although they claim to speak English there, they’re really just fooling themselves.” A soft smile touched his lips.
“No. I mean, there was that too, but your dad’s really smart. He’s probably the smartest man I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, Dad was pretty smart,” Jack said. He looked out the window.
“Was? Is he … ?”
“Last year. He was twenty years older than my mom—you know, well beyond the acceptable creeper range, right? But somehow they managed to make it work.”
I had always liked Jack’s parents. His mother, Inga, had been in her early twenties when she’d come to Cherry Cove from Sweden. Inga and my mom had both been waitresses at the Swedish Inn. Jack’s father, a brilliant chemical engineer from Scotland, had come to Cherry Cove on vacation, dined at the Swedish Inn, and fell madly in love with Inga, or so my mother had told me. Inga was still one of my mom’s closest friends.
“Naturally Mom was devastated, and I didn’t have the heart to go back to Milwaukee,” Jack continued. “That’s when the good people of Cherry Cove got together and demanded that the Door County Sheriff’s Department put an officer on the peninsula. A short while later a position was created, and I was the lucky man to fill it.”
“Jack, why didn’t you tell me your father died?”
“Um,” he said, pretending to think, “probably because you moved to Chicago and I don’t have your phone number, or your address. Anyhow, I thought your mom would have told you.”
It was my turn to look glum and utterly abashed. “She probably tried. I’m not very good at taking her phone calls these days.”
He studied me with his soft, amber-colored eyes. I’d always thought Jack the heartless, selfish one between us, but apparently I was wrong. He’d given up his entire career as a detective in Milwaukee to be with his pa
rents in Cherry Cove, while most of the time I was too self-absorbed to take even a phone call from mine. The thought hurt more than I liked to admit.
“Well,” Jack said, breaking the silence with a touch of humor, “that sure sounds like an issue that’s gonna require a lot of serious professional help. Unfortunately I don’t have a psych degree, but I’ll tell you what, Ms. Whit-less Bloom. If you think you can handle it, I’ll even let you tag along with me to the morgue. But that’s it. I heard you tell your dad you want to find Jeb’s murderer, and I know you well enough to take that threat seriously, but for your own good I’m not going to let that happen. In spite of what you might think, police work is dangerous. And no civilian should stick their nose in a case involving murder. That being said, I admire your tenacity, Bloom. Do you still want to see a dead body?”
It was a challenge, one I accepted with a nod.
“Very well. Buckle up.”
Seven
As Jack’s Ford Expedition raced toward the comparative metropolis of Sturgeon Bay, I turned my mind to the real problem at hand: which was, quite simply, that I had no idea what I’d been thinking. A few minutes ago, thanks to Mom, I’d been convinced that I wanted nothing more than to insert myself into this troubling case of murder in the cherry orchard. Now that I had, however, I was having second thoughts. I mean, I was in an actual police car—correction, a police-issue SUV—with an actual qualified detective at the wheel—who was packing heat!—and who was bound and determined to examine a dead body. A DEAD BODY!
I didn’t like dead bodies. I didn’t even like seeing them on all the TV crime shows I watched, and those were fake dead bodies. Now the thought of staring at one—an old, baggy one with its head bashed in by a gold-plated croquet mallet—seemed beyond ghoulish. The thought sent a slight shiver of disgust down my spine, and I might have gaged as well.
