by Lena Gregory
“I’m all right, thank you.” She glared at Hayes. At least Leo had thought to ask if she was hurt. “I just fell.”
He touched her chin lightly and tilted her head to examine her face more closely. “Your cheek is just scraped, but it looks like your chin might need a few stitches. Do you want an ambulance, or should I just have Savannah pick you up and take you to the hospital?”
Gia had no intention of going to the hospital. She just wanted the interrogation she was sure Hayes was set on over with so she could go home. “I’m fine. Really. Thanks, Leo. I have some butterfly bandages in my first aid kit. Right now, I just want to answer whatever questions you guys have and go home.”
Leo held her gaze, staring into her eyes. “Are you sure? These wounds need to be cleaned out good, or you’ll get an infection.”
“Positive. I’ll take care of it, thank you.”
Captain Hayes watched the exchange, arms folded across his chest. “Can you show me where the body is?”
Gia started to turn, but Bryce grabbed her arm. “I can show him. Why don’t you sit down?”
“Thank you.”
Hayes studied her another moment before following Bryce down the trail and around the curved shore.
Gia sat back on the stump.
Leo squatted down in front of her, his face lined with concern. “What happened, Gia?”
“I had my hand wrapped in Thor’s leash, and he took off after a squirrel. Before I could loosen the leash, I tripped over a root and fell.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
She offered a small smile. “I’m fine. Just tired and sore.”
His blue eyes twinkled. “You know that’s going to be funny later, right?”
“Yeah, but right now is too soon.”
Leo smirked but his eyes remained somber; then he turned away as another police vehicle arrived.
Detective Hunter Quinn jumped out of his jeep and strode toward them. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Leo stood. “She’s fine. She just fell.”
Hunt stopped and examined her face, then frowned. “Don’t even tell me you found her?”
She nodded. Though she was relieved to have Hunt there, she’d hoped for a more personal greeting, maybe even a little comfort.
Hunt looked back over his shoulder and pointed at the black SUV blocking the trail. “What’s Hayes doing here?”
“Said he was camping with his son in the forest when the call came in,” Leo said. “Didn’t you catch his radio transmission?”
“I was close by, but I wasn’t in my truck. I only caught the original call. Where is he?”
Leo gestured toward the trail that led around the lake.
Hunt sighed and looked at Gia. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Positive.”
He nodded once and then took off after Hayes.
Gia watched him go. “Is he okay?”
“What do you mean?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know…. He seems a bit distant lately.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Gia let it go. Maybe Hunt was only acting distant with her. The thought didn’t sit well, but what could she do? As far as she knew, she hadn’t done anything to make him pull away. Not that there was much to pull away from. Maybe she’d simply read more into their friendship than there really was.
Raised voices intruded on her pity party.
Bryce emerged from the trail and rejoined his friends.
“I’ll be right back.” Leo patted her hand, then stood and headed toward Bryce.
Gia started toward the trail. Whatever was going on down there, she wanted to know. The sound of Hunt and Captain Hayes yelling at each other reached her before she even left the clearing. Maybe she should back off and let them go at it without her eavesdropping. Or maybe they weren’t yelling at each other. She glanced down at Thor standing beside her, then rounded the curve into the trail with him at her side. As soon as she could see the men through the trees, she stopped. No sense alerting them to her presence.
“I already said no.” Captain Hayes stood facing Hunt, red-faced, his finger against Hunt’s chest.
“But—” Hunt stood his ground, jaw clenched. If his rigid posture was any indication, he was just as angry as his captain.
“No buts. I don’t want to hear it.”
Hunt took a step back and shoved a hand through his dark hair. “We have to search the house as soon as possible.”
Captain Hayes stepped toward him, obviously unwilling to let the matter go. “I am not kidding, Detective. If you go anywhere near that woman’s house without a search warrant”—he gestured toward Marcia Steers—“you will be off the force so fast you won’t know what happened.”
Hunt leaned closer until he was face-to-face with Captain Hayes, then spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t know she was killed here. Right now, we have just cause to search the deceased’s home without the warrant.”
Gia held her breath. She thought briefly of interrupting, not because she didn’t want to see Captain Hayes get decked, but because she didn’t want to see Hunt get into trouble.
“Look, Detective Quinn, the medical examiner hasn’t even arrived yet. I’ll make a determination about the warrant after he examines the body. And I’m warning you, you’d better not run off half-cocked and do anything stupid.”
“As the lead detective on this case, it’s within my rights to decide—”
Hayes held up a hand to stop him. “If you were the lead detective on the case, it would be your decision, but you’re not.”
“What!” Hunt exploded.
“As of this minute, you are no longer assigned to this case. In any capacity. Now leave, or I will have you escorted off my crime scene.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I just did.”
“On what grounds?”
Gia started forward. If someone didn’t step between these two, they were going to end up brawling.
“Your relationship with the deceased. Everyone knows you two were hot and heavy until Ms. Steers strayed,” Captain Hayes blurted. “And don’t think it’s escaped anyone’s attention that the two of you have been sneaking around again.”
His words stopped her dead in her tracks. Apparently, it had escaped her attention, but it certainly explained Hunt’s behavior of late.
Hunt shoved the captain.
He stumbled back but regained his footing before he could fall into the swampy wetlands and yanked his radio from his belt. “That’s it. You’re out of here. Now.”
Hunt turned and stalked away before Captain Hayes could call for help.
Gia froze.
When Hunt reached her standing on the trail, his gaze met hers. He held their stare for a moment, then continued down the trail without saying a word.
Momentarily shocked at the anger in his eyes, Gia stood and watched him storm off. Then she hurried after him.
A group of officers and a short man with glasses and a black suit blocked her path as they made their way toward the crime scene.
When she was forced to step aside to allow them room to pass, Hunt rounded a bend in the trail, and she lost sight of him.
Thor fidgeted wildly at her side, getting himself tangled in the leash.
“It’s okay, boy.” She unwrapped the leash from between his legs, then weaved her fingers into his thick fur and waited. No matter how badly she wanted to reach Hunt, or how rattled she’d been by Captain Hayes’s accusation, she wasn’t going anywhere until the crime scene techs passed.
Leo trailed behind the group. He stopped as soon as he spotted her. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Sorry, I uh…” She what? Was eavesdropping on Hunt and his captain arguing? Her head was reeling too badly to t
hink straight. “Wanted to see what was happening.”
“Yeah, well, until we have a better idea of what’s going on, I don’t want you wandering around out here alone.”
“I’m not alone. Thor is with me.”
“Gia. You know what I mean.”
“Fine. I won’t wander around anymore. I promise.” Not like there’s anything left to see here anyway. But she couldn’t help but wonder what had Hunt acting so strangely. If he was really seeing the woman who now lay at the edge of the swamp, her heart ached for him. At least, it did when her anger receded for a moment.
“Come on.” With a hand on her elbow, Leo gently guided her back toward the clearing. “I still need to ask you some questions, then I can have Savannah pick you up if you want.”
“Actually, my car is in the main parking lot at the front of the park. Would you mind just dropping me off there?”
“No problem.” He led her back to the log she’d been sitting on when he’d arrived.
Bryce and his friends were nowhere to be found. Apparently, the police had finished questioning them and sent them on their way.
“Now, tell me what happened.”
“I already told you—”
He held up a hand to stop her and pulled out a notepad and pen. “From the beginning. Just walk me through everything.”
Gia sighed, resigned to spending a while longer in the mosquito-infested forest, and swatted a bug off her forearm. A small lizard darted up the log beside her, then launched himself onto a bush.
She needed to get this over with and go home. “I was walking Thor down one of the trails over there….” She gestured in the direction of the trail she’d been following. “Thor ran after a squirrel and I fell. I was going to turn back, but I realized I was almost to the lake and thought it would be quicker to head back on the main trail. All I wanted to do was hurry up and get home.”
Leo nodded but obviously didn’t take the hint since he simply waited, pen poised over his pad.
“When I reached the lake, I started along the edge of the water. That’s when I tripped over the body. I screamed, and Bryce came running over and called the police.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“Not until later, after I left the trail and sat down here. Then I saw Bryce’s friends and a few stragglers who must have shown up when they heard the commotion.”
“Okay.” He finished scribbling something on his notepad and flipped it closed. “That should be good for now. You need to get those cuts cleaned up before they get infected.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I get home.”
Leo tipped her head up and frowned. “Why didn’t you just let go of the leash?”
“I tried. It was wrapped around my hand and it tightened when he took off. I was trying to unwind it when I tripped on a root.”
Leo tucked his notepad into his pocket and held out a hand.
Hoping that was the end of his questions, Gia put her hand in his and let him help her stand.
“Come on. Let’s get you home, though I still think you should have a doctor take a look at your chin.”
Thankfully, he let the matter drop when she ignored him. He petted Thor’s head, then started toward his car with Gia and Thor at his side. “I doubt you have to wrap the leash around your hand that tightly to walk with him on the trails. Not like he could get hit by a car or anything out here, and he seems to listen when you give him commands.”
“He usually does, but sometimes he gets excited and jumps up when he sees someone new, and I didn’t want him to knock the old woman over.”
Leo stopped walking and faced her. “What old woman?”
Uh-oh. Why’d she have to go and mention the woman? She’d almost been home free. “An old woman was coming out of the woods. But she couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder.”
“Why not?”
“She was tiny, frail, and hobbling along as slow as molasses.” The phrase Savannah always used popped out her mouth before she even realized it. “If not for the walking stick she was leaning on, she’d have…”
Leo’s pad and pen came back out. “Stick?”
Oh no. The woman had been leaning so heavily on the stick, Gia hadn’t thought of it as a weapon. “Please tell me Marcia wasn’t beaten to death.”
“Marcia?”
Ugh… Now she’d have to pry her danged foot out of her mouth before she could get out of there and go home.
Leo raised a brow and gestured toward the log she’d just vacated. “Maybe you’d better sit back down. Apparently, we’re not done talking.”
Chapter 4
Another hour and one lecture later, Gia was finally out of the woods. Literally.
She flopped onto the chair behind her desk at the café and gingerly poked at her chin. She’d already gone home, cleaned out the small gash and closed it with two butterfly bandages, cleaned up all of the other scrapes and cuts, and iced her knee, then dropped Thor off at doggie day care and headed into the café.
Though they were closed on Mondays, and Marcia Steers would obviously not show for their scheduled meeting, Gia had to do something. No way could she just sit around waiting to hear what was going on, and she needed something to distract her from thinking about Marcia.
She shook off images she couldn’t bear to think about. She had plenty of work to do.
She’d start with planning the menu for the week. She shuffled through the papers on the side of her desk and pulled out the notepad she’d jotted ideas on. She’d been trying to decide on a few new items to introduce, but couldn’t decide what. Her first thought was a pancake bar, which would feature all kinds of toppings. Her kids’ menu was limited, and she thought the pancake bar would be a good draw, but no matter how she tried to rearrange things in her mind, she couldn’t find a way to fit it in plus have room for people to walk around it and fill their plates. She scratched it off the list, for now, anyway.
Next on the list were breakfast burritos, tacos, and quesadillas. She wrote down salsa in parentheses beside them. The key to making them different would be a homemade salsa people couldn’t resist. She’d have to play around with some recipes. She tossed the pad on top of her growing to-do pile for later.
Next up came running an ad for a cook. As much as she loved cooking, it was time to hire some help in the kitchen. If she was going to become a true member of the community, she’d have to spend more time interacting with her customers. Who knew? Maybe Boggy Creek would feel more like home if she got to know her neighbors.
She sipped her coffee, then set it aside and opened her laptop. Okay. What exactly was she looking for? She opened a new document and typed experience. She’d already learned her lesson about hiring someone with no professional cooking experience. Though in all fairness, Maybelle had told her she’d worked breakfast for years.
Yeah right. If you counted cooking for her husband and a pack of boys as experience.
What else did she need? She had no clue. The few employees she’d already hired had pretty much just come in looking for work. At least Willow had worked out. She closed the laptop. Maybe she didn’t need to run an ad after all. Maybe Willow could ask around at school. Of course, how many college kids would have professional cooking experience? She sighed and flipped the computer open again, then minimized the document and searched for help wanted ads. She scrolled through the ads.
Fast paced environment popped out at her. Yes, she definitely needed someone who could move quickly. The thought of Maybelle standing in front of the toaster, arms crossed, waiting for each piece of toast to pop up so she could butter it brought a dull throb at her temples. She added ability to multitask to her list. Maybe creating an ad wouldn’t be as difficult as it seemed. She added friendly and outgoing to the growing list, then saved the document, slid her chair back from the desk, and opened her center drawer. She
should have thought to take a couple of ibuprofen when she’d bandaged her chin.
Maybe it wasn’t thoughts of Maybelle that had brought on her headache but the fall she’d taken in the woods. Either way, she’d never be able to concentrate unless she did something about it. She shook a couple of caplets into her hand, then recapped the bottle and dropped it back into the drawer.
It landed on a folded piece of printer paper with Gia scrawled across the front. Weird, she didn’t remember putting that there. She rolled the bottle of ibuprofen aside and unfolded a hastily scrawled note:
Gia–I have to meet with you. Alone. If you get this before I talk to you, come to my house as soon as you can. You’ll find a spare key on the porch and documents you’ll need on the table. Marcia.
Documents? Marcia hadn’t mentioned anything about documents when they’d spoken. And why would she have left a note if she was just going to ask Gia to meet her anyway? Unless…
What had Savannah said? She’d caught Marcia coming out of Gia’s office. Maybe Marcia had only intended to leave a note but had been forced to talk to her when Savannah confronted her.
She remembered the way Marcia had constantly looked back and forth, keeping a close watch on the doors. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted anyone to see her talking to Gia or overhear their conversation.
“Hey.”
Gia jumped, and a small squeal escaped.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Savannah winced. “Ouch. Leo wasn’t kidding, you really did bang yourself up.”
Gia waved her off. “It looks worse than it is.”
Savannah raised a brow but refrained from any further comment. She knew exactly how Gia felt about hospitals. “What are you doing here? How come you’re not home resting?”
“I had work to do.”
“Well, if you feel well enough to work, I guess you feel well enough to listen while I scold you.”
“Hey! What’d I do?”
She ticked a finger back and forth. “It’s not what you did do that has you in trouble, it’s what you didn’t do.”
