by Edie Claire
"Your attempted inquisition of me. Wanting to know everything Detective Peterson and I found out yesterday."
"So you're going to share?"
Maura reached out and grabbed a donut from the box Leigh had risen before dawn to acquire. "Hell, no. But I thought I'd take you up on the free breakfast, anyway."
Leigh groaned. "Knock yourself out."
A ball of black fur landed heavily in her lap, and she put out a hand reflexively to scoop it up. Her Persian, Mao Tse, was getting on in years. After the highly unpopular introduction of the barbarian dog two years ago, Mao had registered her protest with a self-imposed exile to the master bedroom—which Leigh had since kept both dog- and child-free in her honor. For Mao to discover an empty Leigh-lap in the middle of the kitchen on a quiet morning was a rare find the cat wasted no time capitalizing on.
"Did you find any other prospects?" Maura mumbled while she chewed.
"I found a guy who's ready to testify that he saw Gil, yes."
The detective's eyes widened. "Seriously?"
"He could be serious," Leigh said without enthusiasm, reaching for a chocolate-frosted. "But I'm guessing no, seeing as how he prefaced his contact info with for a good time, call."
Maura spewed some donut crumbs. "Could still be legit, you know," she said when she'd recovered. "He might have actually seen Gil and want your body. Good thing you had Killer there with you." She pointed a thumb toward Chewie, who was laid out flat on the linoleum by the detective's feet, snoring. "This guy doesn't have your phone number, does he?"
Leigh frowned. "How dumb do I look?"
Maura grinned, but made no comment. "I'll take care of it, then. Guys like this make my day."
Leigh let that one go. Maura took a lot of grief for her size, but being a he-woman did have its perks, and being able to intimidate the crap out of perverts was one of them.
"Maura," she said thoughtfully, "is there anything else we can do for Gil? Cara's pretty frantic, under the circumstances."
"I know she is," Maura replied. "But Peterson's good, and I plan to be watching over his shoulder, whether the department likes it or not. He's got a full day's worth of search warrants to execute, so I'm sure something will turn up. The best thing you can do is keep trying to find a willing witness to Gil's alibi." She leaned over the table. "But that's all you can do. Any of you. Understood?"
Leigh offered her trademark salute.
"You know," Maura said with a frown, reaching for her third donut. "I never do believe you when you do that."
Leigh grinned. "Yeah. I know."
***
"We won't!" the Pack responded in unison, complete with eye rolling, as they piled out of the van and sprinted through the rain to the front door of the animal shelter. Leigh bit her lip. She hadn't meant to transmit her own anxiety, but clearly, she had given one too many admonitions about their staying out of the woods. She wished it hadn't been necessary, but she couldn't help but be suspicious of Ethan and Allison's sudden desire to pull an extra shift—and Matt and Lenna's sudden desire to accompany them. She would have said no if the shelter manager hadn't insisted she was short-staffed and could use the extra help this morning. Leigh knew that, unlike the majority of child volunteers, the Pack actually did help. And it was entirely possible that Matt and Lenna weren't looking for trouble so much as a way to get out of the house and escape their mother's unprecedented foulness of mood.
Leigh closed the van door, pulled out onto Nicholson Road, and headed for her Aunt Bess's house. The children's preoccupation for a few hours was timely, as she had a mission of her own to conduct this morning. A mission which had nothing to do with one Brandon Lyle—or at least, she hoped it wouldn't. The dog park was still a good idea, and she wasn't giving up on it. She couldn't very well abandon important plans every time she tripped over a body, could she?
She navigated the private road to her Aunt Bess's house warily as usual, mindful of the potholes that were quickly filling with the morning's rain. She had a fleeting fear of being trapped on the wrong side of the creek, but she suppressed it. It was July, for heaven's sake. And it hadn't been raining that long.
With her gaze kept firmly on the road, she didn't notice the visitor standing on Bess's porch until she was parked in the driveway. The man was gesticulating wildly. He was also holding a shotgun.
She fumbled in her bag for her cell phone, stuffed it into her pocket, and stepped out of the car. She would have called 911 if she didn't know who it was. Knowing who it was... well, it never hurt to have one's phone handy, did it?
"They wouldn't tell me a blasted thing!" the man was shouting. He was an older man, well past seventy, with deeply wrinkled, sun-damaged skin and dark eyes that brooded under bushy white eyebrows. Shabby clothes hung from his lean frame like a scarecrow, but his quick movements revealed a body as able as his spirit was willing. "Wouldn't you think we'd have a right to know," he railed, "seeing as how they're murdering people right here on our own doorsteps now?!"
"Now, Clem," Aunt Bess retorted, her voice calm, but firm. "You know perfectly well the police aren't going to answer our every question about an ongoing murder investigation. That's just silly. Some things, we have to find out for ourselves."
Leigh's eyebrows rose as she mounted the stairs and dodged under the porch roof out of the rain.
"Well, I was out there last night, wasn't I?" Clem fumed. "Got my flashlight and looked all over, soon as I heard. Should have known nobody was going to tell old Clem except the five o'clock news!" Chaw-stained spittle sprayed from the old man's lips as he talked, lacing the straggly white beard below.
Bess's eyes narrowed. "Now, don't you give me that line of horse pooey!" she said fiercely, dropping her previous facade of calm. "I knocked on your door three times yesterday, and the police tried, too. If you had a telephone and an answering machine like the rest of the modern world, you might not miss so much information!"
"Devil's work!" he spewed. "Bunch of techno-nonsense!"
"You figured out how to use that digital converter box fast enough!" Bess retorted.
The man's shoulders slumped slightly. "I gotta watch my shows, don't I?"
Bess sighed. "I left you a note to come and see me—it's your own darn fault you ignored it. Now, cut the self-righteous act and put away that fool gun before I crack it over that extra-thick skull of yours."
Clem uttered a low, growling noise, but to Leigh's relief, he leaned the shotgun obediently against Bess's porch rail.
"You remember my niece, Leigh?" Bess asked, her voice now all sweetness. Clem did not look up. He had yet to spare the newcomer a glance. "She's the one who found the body," Bess finished.
Clem looked up.
"What'd it look like?" he barked.
Leigh swallowed. "Um... he looked... dead."
Clem's eyes bugged. "Where was he? On my land?"
"Um... I—" Leigh looked to Bess for assistance. She wasn't supposed to be divulging crime scene information. For all she knew, the police were limiting what they told Clem for a reason. But Bess, curse her, looked every bit as expectant as he did. Bess had already given Leigh an earful for tipping off the detectives about the video before informing her dear, devoted aunt that there had been a murder in the first place.
"It was out near the pond," Leigh answered vaguely. Surely the five o'clock news had offered that much already.
"Really?" Clem said skeptically, his beard twitching.
"Don't sound so shocked!" Bess interjected. "If the body had been found on your property, the police would have contacted you first thing."
Clem grunted. "I don't know that. I don't trust the police!"
Leigh was not surprised.
"For all I know," he continued, "they whacked that young hustler themselves, and now they're trying to pin it all on us landowners! Well, I pay my taxes, and I'm telling you right now—"
"Clem," Bess said reasonably, with no trace of sarcasm, "Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, don't you thi
nk it's much more likely that a man like Brandon Lyle was murdered by a personal enemy? A business associate he'd double crossed? A jealous lover?"
Someone trying to protect their land? Leigh stifled the comment. Clem's shotgun was still within reach. Furthermore, such motive would apply equally to her own "eccentric" Aunt Bess, and one suspect in the family was enough.
Clem uttered a growl. "I don't frankly care who killed the bastard, as long as they stayed off my damn land while they were doing it! And the police had better stay off as well. Waking me up with their banging... lucky some heads didn't roll then, I'd say! Nobody trespasses on my land, understand?" He fixed his gaze on Leigh again. "Nobody!"
"Oh, leave her alone, you old coot!" Bess chastised, planting both hands on her generous hips. "She'll think you're serious."
"I am serious!" he bellowed.
"You're a pumped-up bag of wind!" Bess fired back. "You're just mad because you didn't hear the police coming. And because you didn't hear anything the night it happened, which we both know is because you're deaf as a post and too darn stubborn to get a hearing aid!"
Blue veins started to pop out on Clem's weathered temples, and Leigh's body tensed. Her Aunt Bess had always had a way with people—even crazy ones. But no one was perfect.
"Now, stop bullying my niece and get back on your own precious property and off of mine," Bess continued, her tone steely. "Before I start asking questions about how my extra gasoline cans keep going empty!"
Clem's gaze dropped like a rock. He scowled, swept up his shotgun, and stepped off the porch. Then he turned around and fixed Bess with another bug-eyed stare. "You'll tell me everything later, won't you?"
Bess returned a smug, conspiratorial smile. "Don't I always?"
Clem turned his back and stomped off.
Bess opened the door to her house and gestured Leigh inside, much to the delight of Chester, who burst from his captivity to spin around Leigh's ankles in greeting. "Would you like some tea, kiddo?" Bess offered, her voice merry.
Leigh shook her head. "Aunt Bess," she said nervously, "aren't you just a teeny bit worried about living next door to an armed lunatic?"
Bess's lips pursed. "Don't be ridiculous, Leigh. You've known Clem since you were a girl! He's perfectly harmless."
Leigh gritted her teeth. It was true that Clem had lived in the neighborhood even longer than Bess had, but the word "known" was an overstatement. In the last three decades, she might have glimpsed the man half a dozen times in the distance through the trees. His existence in her mind had always been on par with the wicked witch and the gingerbread house... smart children stayed out of his woods. Period.
"The man scared Hook's PR woman half to death!" Leigh retorted. "Sooner or later he's going to wind up in jail for brandishing a weapon like that."
Bess waved her hand in dismissal. "Clem's half deaf. He probably couldn't understand a word she said. But I agree he can't keep waving that fool gun at every person who bangs on his door. He couldn't hear with his telephone anymore, so he got rid of it. Idiot won't listen to me when I tell him there are devices—" She broke off suddenly. "What's up, kiddo? You didn't drive all the way out here to lecture me about the company I keep. I have your mother for that. Are Cara and Gil all right?"
"I wouldn't say Cara is," Leigh answered honestly, remembering the bags she'd seen under her cousin's eyes when picking up the kids this morning. "She's still terribly worried about Gil. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I want the animal shelter to build a dog park, and I need your help."
Leigh explained the plan, which Bess took to immediately. "It's a splendid idea!" she agreed. "But you'll need to talk to Anna first. She has to approve any structures built on the property—that's in the lease."
"I know," Leigh agreed. "That's why I need you. I was hoping you could introduce us. I met her a long time ago, at the shelter's grand opening, but I doubt she would remember me, and if she's a tough sell, I figured your influence couldn't hurt."
Bess puffed herself up. "Well, it's nice to know you give your old aunt credit for something, at least."
Leigh sighed. Her Aunt Bess could forgive lots of things, like a neighbor pilfering gasoline, or a teenaged niece borrowing plaid polyester pants for a seventies party and "forgetting" to give them back. But there were two things Bess never forgot. The first was cruelty to an animal. The second was withholding juicy information she knew perfectly well she had no right to hear in the first place.
"I said I was sorry," Leigh repeated. "Maura swore me to secrecy until she could talk to you."
Bess arched one eyebrow. "Mm-hmm. Well, she's talked to me. Asked a boatload of questions and didn't tell me dip squat. I understand your not wanting to get into it last night with the others around, but now we're alone. So, shoot!" She plopped her ample rear end down on the couch, sending the requisite three cats flying off the cushions below.
Leigh pushed two more aside and joined her. "What is it you want to know?" she said without enthusiasm, wishing she could think and talk of something other than Brandon Lyle. She didn't know how morticians did it. No matter how many bodies she was unlucky enough to see, the last one creeped her out as much as the first. Brandon's sightless, staring eyes kept popping into her head... his waxy face, frozen into an expression of utter shock...
"Yoo-hoo, kiddo," Aunt Bess's voice cooed. "You were telling me the leading police theory as to who killed Brandon Lyle."
Leigh shook her head. "I was?"
Bess nodded innocently.
Leigh sighed. "Maura won't tell me anything, either. But Cara and Gil are thinking maybe a loan shark. Brandon did seem pretty desperate for money."
Bess considered a moment, her lips twisted. "Nope," she announced finally. "Not buying it. They said on the news—not that my own niece would tell me—that he was shot in the back. A loan shark would want him to suffer, would want him to see it coming. No, I'm thinking it was more heat of the moment. A crime of passion."
Leigh squirmed. "I'd really prefer it wasn't. We don't need any more suspicion on Gil. Or on the church members who were at that meeting. What if one of them is nuts? Even more nuts than Clem?"
Bess dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. "Not that kind of passion, silly. I'm talking the classic. The usual. Love triangle."
Leigh watched the sparks fly in her aunt's mischievous eyes. This was why Leigh got into trouble so often. It wasn't just bad luck. It was heredity.
"Brandon was cheating on his wife with his administrative assistant," she offered.
Bess's face lit up like Christmas. "Well, there you have it!" she said gleefully. "Now, we just have to figure out which woman killed him, and prove it."
"No, we most certainly do—"
"The first thing I need to know is exactly where you found the body," Bess began, getting to her feet. "Because everyone knows that the killer always returns to the scene of the crime. And with my handy new gadgets, we can have 24/7 surveillance, easy as pie!"
"Aunt Bess—" Leigh began hopelessly.
"Do you want to help Gil get out of this mess, or don't you?" Bess interrupted. "You know how worried Cara is. Looking for witnesses is good, but this is better, and it's not even illegal. At least, I don't think it is. The cameras will be on my property, after all. Anyway, grab some boots and an umbrella and follow me. Just point out the spot and I'll get the equipment moved before nightfall. Who knows... we might even catch Ferdinand and the other feral cats in the bargain!"
Leigh continued to sit, the wheels in her head spinning. Maura's disembodied head hung somewhere over her right shoulder, growling menacingly. But Cara's puffy-eyed visage was floating to her left, sobbing with worry.
Leigh's jaws clenched.
She got up and grabbed an umbrella.
Chapter 12
"I've always liked your aunt," the older woman standing before Leigh said fondly.
"Yes," Leigh agreed, "she's a real peach, isn't she?" Her words were not entirely sincere. She had
been hoping that Bess would do more than make a brief introduction on Anna Krull's porch, assure Anna that Leigh's upcoming suggestion was brilliant, and then promptly disappear. Leigh knew perfectly well that Bess's suddenly remembered "appointment" was nothing but an excuse to go back and hustle her camera equipment to the pond. Bess would be watching every raccoon, squirrel, deer, and drunken teenager that approached the spot for weeks.
"Why don't you come on in and sit down?" Anna offered, leading Leigh the short distance to a worn couch in a small living room. "Would you like something to drink?"
"No, thank you," Leigh said as she sat, glancing around the room with widened eyes. Its interior was not what she had expected. She knew that, although the Krull family had once been prosperous farmers who owned all the land for miles around, Anna herself had been left with only a modest legacy, as her wastrel father and grandfather had sold off most of the land to pay their gambling debts. The outside of her house was always neatly kept and planted with seasonal flowers, but there was nothing fancy about it, and the car parked in her garage was half as old as Leigh. The house's furniture looked even older, which made it all the more surprising that the living room bubbled from end to end with state-of-the-art saltwater aquariums.
"Just a little hobby of mine," Anna explained, taking a seat beside her guest. "I adore fish. They're so quiet, you know. Seahorses are my favorite. I breed them."
Leigh studied the myriad bumpy-skinned creatures who clung to wispy sea plants with their tails, bobbing slightly in the artificial current. Her head filled immediately with nosy, more than likely inappropriate questions, but her hostess seemed ready for business. "Now, then," Anna said briskly. "What can I do for you? Bess says you have a fundraising idea for the shelter. You took your Aunt's place on the board, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did," Leigh answered, happy to know that Anna was keeping up with things, even if she rarely visited the facility. The road-front property on which the shelter sat was worth a nice chunk of change, and not just to Brandon Lyle. The shelter was fortunate that Anna not only wanted to hang onto it herself, but was willing to lease it so reasonably. "We're all very appreciative of how generous you've been with your land. I can't tell you how much."
