Corpse in a Crate

by Winnie Reed

  Still, I cupped a hand around my mouth to muffle my voice before answering her. “Nate’s cousin is walking around. The one he spent such a long time fighting with over their uncle’s will. He’s right across the street, looking like he’s about to step into a cute little craft brewery or whatever it is. He hardly looks like the type who would do something like that on a Friday night.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I took in every detail of him, studying him from head to toe. “For one thing, he’s dressed in what looks like pajamas. Plaid, baggy pants and a thermal long-sleeved shirt.”

  “It’s a little warm for that kind of outfit,” Darcy snorted.

  “I know, right? He’s wearing a stained ball cap, and glasses on a chain around his neck. And just like Raina said, he always has the day’s newspaper under his arm. It’s there now.” Seriously, how long did it take the man to read the daily paper?

  “He doesn’t sound like a man on his way out for a night with friends,” Darcy mused.

  “Exactly.” What was he doing? Maybe this was his Friday night ritual; he sounded like a man who relied a lot upon rituals, his daily schedule. He didn’t like to have it broken, from what I heard.

  Maybe it was about to be broken. By me.

  “I just want to get a look at him,” I whispered, jogging across the street and waving to an approaching car as I did to thank them for not running me over.

  “Don’t be too obvious,” Darcy warned. “People with that sort of money could snap their fingers and have a lawyer shoving paperwork down your throat before you knew which way was up.”

  My older sister, always the sensible one. I would normally have rolled my eyes and done exactly what I wanted anyway, but she made a good point and I wasn’t stubborn enough to ignore it. This man sounded like a real piece of work—and from what I’d seen so far, what I’d heard about him was true.

  The last thing I needed was for him to decide I was an enemy.

  “I’ll take it easy,” I promised. “He doesn’t need to know I know anything about what happened today.”

  “Sure,” my sister snorted. “You’ll handle it in your normal, subtle way.”

  “You know, I’m going to start taking your little quips personally if you don’t cool it.” I ended the call, tucking the phone into the pocket of my dress—I’d changed for dinner and stepped outside to give Raina some privacy while I waited for her to join me.

  It looked like she would be the one waiting for me. I hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long.

  Chapter Six

  The one word that came to mind when I stepped into the brewery was hipster.

  Not that I had a problem with that. In fact, I’d found hipsters to be some of the friendliest people in the whole entire world; welcoming, accepting, intelligent and normally ready to have a friendly conversation.

  Living in a community whose success was based on tourist season, I knew how unfriendly people could be when they put their minds to it. I’d seen all types.

  The pair of girls behind the bar were both dressed in black, one of them with piercings all the way up both ears and the other wearing a fedora and a really smart necktie. I always wished I could pull off that sort of look, but I never felt like I had the style for it.

  All around the brewery’s dark interior were young people sipping beers, sharing plates of appetizers and towers of nachos that made my mouth water just looking at them. Maybe this was where we would have to stop for dinner. I wondered if they had decent desserts.

  After all, dessert was my favorite part of any meal.

  It wasn’t difficult, finding Kevin Patterson in the middle of so many young, hip, laughing customers. He stuck out like a sore thumb, bellying up to the bar with a flourish.

  And as it turned out, he wanted to attract attention. I had only just settled myself into the stool near him when he started talking. “Did you hear about all the police activity at the Patterson farm this afternoon?” he asked no one in particular.

  At first, I cringed for him; nobody was paying attention. Whether that was because they knew him and therefore knew better than to take him seriously or because everybody was having too much fun to listen, I didn’t know.

  Regardless, it didn’t seem to bother him any. All he had to do was raise his voice a little bit. “Yeah, from what I hear, they found a body in the attic. The think maybe my cousin, Nate, had something to do with it.”

  Well. That was enough to bend a few ears. Just like that, the conversation around him went quiet, with several people turning to look at him or at least angling their bodies so they faced him. Still, most of them wore amused expressions, like they were used to seeing him around and knew he had to be taken with a grain of salt.

  But how much longer would that attitude last once he got started?

  Which was exactly why I did what I did next. Picking up the pint of summer ale the bartender in the fedora poured for me—the sign above the bar said it was light and refreshing with notes of grapefruit, which sounded good to me—I asked, “How do you know so much about it already? If it only happened this afternoon?”

  Though I had done everything in my power to sound casual and friendly, Kevin’s deep-set eyes narrowed, taking me in.

  “How do you think?” he asked, sounding like he had never talked to anybody so stupid in all his life. “They contacted me, of course.”

  I raised my eyebrows, watching him over the rim of my pint glass as I took my first sip of what was truly one of the better beers I had ever tasted. “Oh? Do they think you had something to do with it?” I asked once I’d swallowed.

  I heard a few chuckles and soft snorts around me, but Kevin clearly did not find me so amusing. “And who are you again?”

  “I didn’t say, but it doesn’t matter. Just somebody enjoying a nice beer.”

  He scoffed, slapping his newspaper down onto the bar. “Sure, you’re just a tourist. Anybody worth their salt would know without being told why the police would contact me with this news.”

  Yikes. Was that how I sound when I talked about tourists? Like they didn’t deserve the time of day just because they didn’t live in Cape Hope year-round? I made a mental note to watch the way I thought about people after being dressed down so quickly.

  But I wasn’t about to be deterred by his rudeness. “You’re right, I’m only in town for the weekend, but your story is so interesting I couldn’t help but ask. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  “I don’t take well to being the butt of sarcasm,” he grumbled.

  I bit my tongue before I could advise him against dressing like a bum and making a fool out of himself in front of strangers if that was the case. Something told me my keen observational skills wouldn’t be appreciated.

  He removed his cap, revealing a head full of thin, graying hair. It had been the same dark shade as Nate’s at one time, I could see. He might have been really handsome in his younger days, the way his cousin was now. But time and gravity had gone a long way toward helping him show his age.

  Not to mention the fact that he struck me as a very unhappy person. Difficult. That sort of personality tended to show itself on a person, to age them.

  “So tell me,” I said, drawing a little closer to him but not so close that he would feel like I was invading his personal space. No sense in seeming too eager. “Why did the police contact you right away? What did you have to do with it? Did you used to live in the house?”

  He shook his head, placated now that I was addressing him with what probably sounded like more respect. “Land should’ve been mine, all of it,” he informed me, and there was still a ton of bitterness in him over the whole debacle. That much was clear.

  “Really?” I asked, taking another sip of my beer. It was practically impossible to sound casual, like this was just nothing more than two people shooting the breeze at a bar. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be nothing more than a tourist without the first clue about the family’s difficult history.

&n
bsp; He seemed gratified by my attention, nodding hard. His eyes lit up, too, dark marbles sparkling in a pasty face. “My uncle left me that land in his will, good farmland. Orchards. Not that I planned to do anything with that, mind you. Not personally.”

  “Farming doesn’t suit you?” Was I teasing this man? Was I actually sounding flirtatious?

  It didn’t matter, because it worked. He was warming up to me by the minute, by the second. With his elbows on the bar, he leaned a little closer—and I did what I could not to move away accordingly. “The green I’m good with isn’t grass. It’s cash. Cold, hard cash. I guess you could say I have a green thumb when it comes to that.” He laughed hard at his joke.

  I laughed along with him, though more softly. “How nice for you,” I managed to smile.

  “I might’ve sold it,” he shrugged. “Who knows? Now, I’ll never have the chance. My cousin took the land out from under me, but it looks like he might not get the chance to do anything with it, either.”

  “How did he take land out from under you? You can’t just steal land.”

  “Sure, you can, if you have the right lawyers and enough money to keep a will tied up for seven entire years, just out of spite. But now that his precious farmhouse is a crime scene, it seems to me he’ll know what it feels like to sit on his hands and feel helpless.”

  “You don’t like your cousin very much, do you?” I asked, sounding as sympathetic as I could. There was a hardness to him, a gleam in his eyes that didn’t strike me as entirely balanced. He brought to mind a fanatic. That was the closest word I could think of to describe him.

  “Would you?” he laughed, sounding bitter and frustrated. “He took from me what was mine. I guess he’s about to find out what karma is like. What a shame. The golden boy of the family, caught up in a murder investigation.”

  Now, there was no way for the people around the bar to ignore my new friend. The very mention of the m-word shut down conversation all around us.

  “Murder investigation?” the bartender with the fedora asked, quirking an eyebrow. “Are you serious? Your cousin Nate? He could never kill anybody.”

  “You think not?” he asked with a smile that reminded me for all the world of a shark. I could see this man murdering the competition in a board room, no doubt about it. He must’ve been something in his prime.

  Rather than wait for the confused girl to reply, Kevin turned to me with a smirk. “You see how it is?” he asked, sounding disappointed but resigned. “Nate can do no wrong. Nathan is the good one, Nathan is the one with all the potential. The only reason my Uncle George left me anything was to say he hadn’t completely left me out of the will. That was his idea a little joke, leaving me land that would be ultimately useless to me without the farmhouse sitting on it. “

  He raised his voice, clearly wanting the entire bar to hear him. “You’re all about to see that my wonderful cousin isn’t as wonderful as he’s been made out to be all these years. You’ll find out what he’s capable of, mark my words.”

  “What’s this all about?” A young man stepped out from the kitchen, one in a tight, black T-shirt with two arms full of really interesting and intricate tattoos. I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t help admiring them, wondering if there was any meaning behind them.

  He didn’t notice me. He was too busy paying attention to Kevin, and to the ruckus he seemed intent on starting. “I don’t want to stir up any trouble here, Mr. Patterson,” the man murmured. He was as discreet as he possibly could, standing with his back to most of the room rather than embarrassing the man.

  If there was one thing I’d learned in my life, it was that some people just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Some folks couldn’t be helped.

  “I have every right to be here!” Kevin insisted, lifting his glass from the bar and drinking deeply of the amber liquid inside. Terrific. He was already loud enough while he was sober. I shuddered to think of what would happen once he got a couple of drinks in him.

  Clearly, the manager or owner or whoever he happened to be agreed with me. “If your idea of a good time includes shouting about murder and family arguments, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir.”

  I had to give the guy credit. He had every right in the world to ask Kevin Patterson to get the heck out of his establishment and could even threaten to have him removed bodily if he didn’t comply. But instead of doing that, he practically bent over backward to be accommodating and polite.

  Not that it mattered. “I know my rights! I’m not the one under investigation for murder!”

  “Neither is Nate,” I retorted, and instantly wished I had kept my mouth shut. Call it a character flaw, but I never could stand to hear innocent person get accused of something they had nothing to do with. Maybe it was the result of a childhood spent hearing about people who’d gotten a rotten deal from the police or negligent lawyers. That was the sort of dinner talk I’d grown up with thanks to having a detective for a father.

  And goodness knew I was familiar with how quickly rumors flew around a small town. He wasn’t doing his cousin—or his family in general—any favors.

  Kevin fixed me with a stern glare. “How do you know?” he demanded, his brows knitting together. “Who are you?”

  Mr. Tattoos stepped between us, facing Kevin. “Sir, that is none of your business. I asked you to leave, and I’m only going to say it nicely once more. Please, go. People just want to enjoy themselves here.”

  Kevin didn’t care about that. He cared about staring at me, trying to intimidate me. He’d picked the wrong girl. I wasn’t about to shrivel under his stern glare. He held my gaze as he gathered his newspaper, slapping his cap on his head.

  I stared right back without a single word as he tried to stare me down when he stood. It wasn’t easy keeping my expression neutral. At least, I hoped it was neutral, but there was no telling. He looked at me like I was less than human. That wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I took well.

  Once he was gone, the guy with the ink sleeves winced, turning to me. “Sorry about that,” he murmured, one eye fixed over my shoulder like he was looking to be sure Kevin left. “If his family didn’t own half the town, I wouldn’t have to treat him with kid gloves.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him, even if it was anything but okay. I was trembling all over with pent-up frustration. “I’m a little too old for intimidation.”

  He held up one hand to shake. “Tim Jernigan. Nice to meet you.”

  “Emma Harmon. Is this your brewery?”

  The pride in his smile was obvious. The look of somebody who’d worked hard to get where they were. It brought Mom to mind. “It is. If I had my way, only one Patterson I would ever allow to step over the threshold.” His eyes narrowed behind thick-rimmed glasses.

  “Nate?” I ventured with a smile. “I’m new to town, but I met him earlier today. He’s an old friend of my best friend’s, and we happened to be there at the wrong time this afternoon. I couldn’t help but ask Kevin the questions I asked. I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind.”

  Tim shook his head. “Not at all. It’s about time somebody challenged Mr. High and Mighty when he starts shooting his mouth off. I can’t exactly do it if I want to keep this place open.”

  My heart went out to him. I wondered how long my mother would’ve managed to stay in business if she was always beholden to the wealthier people in town. Afraid to insult them in case they decided to take it out on her by closing her business down.

  For such an idyllic, sweet little town, there was some serious discomfort floating around. I wondered how many other people had stories to tell, stories of the Patterson family and their talent for squeezing people until they got their way.

  “Let me tell you, we could use a place like this in Cape Hope. That’s where I’m from, in Jersey. The town could use another youthful business. It’s a great place,” I grinned, “but a little dusty sometimes. Young people want to get away to a quiet resort town just like older people do, but they’d still
like to enjoy a good beer and a plate of nachos. For that matter, so would the older residents.” Just the mention of the word nachos made my stomach rumble.

  He stroked his goatee, thoughtful. “Hmm. I might have to look into expanding that way. I’ve been looking for a new location.”

  “There you are! I’ve been looking for you.” Raina breezed into the bar the way she usually did, looking like she had just stepped out of the stylist’s chair. She was perfection, as always. Nobody could’ve guessed she’d spent the afternoon on the phone with her father and other family friends, trying to drum up support for Nate.

  “I thought I’d come over here and wet my whistle, and it was worth the trip,” I added with a wink in Tim’s direction. “This beer is wonderful.”

  “Oh, you like that? I came up with that one myself.” He looked so proud of himself, too.

  I turned to Raina with a smile. “It smells amazing in here. Can we order something to eat?” And while we waited for food, I would fill her in on what she had missed.

  Exactly why was Kevin Patterson so determined to spread rumors about the event at the farm? What did he think he would get out of getting people talking about his cousin?

  And had I just made the worst sort of enemy? I didn’t think I needed Raina to confirm that one for me.

  Chapter Seven

  “Please tell me you don’t think you’re going to solve the mystery.”

  Joe was lucky he couldn’t see my face, twisted up in a scowl the way it was. I stuck my tongue out for added effect. “Do you think it would break your neck, honestly, if you tried for once to not be sarcastic?”

  “Gee, why would you say that?” he asked, sarcasm practically dripping from his voice.

  Darn him. No matter how determined I was to be annoyed, he managed to say something like that and leave me fighting off a giggle. “Okay, okay. No, I’m not trying to solve a mystery. I only want to make sure Nate gets a fair shake. Raina was so upset for him yesterday, and I’m sure she still is. We’re supposed to be going out for brunch in a little bit, but I can tell you she didn’t get much sleep last night. All I heard was her bedsprings creaking as she tossed and turned.”