Murder of a Small-Town Honey srm-1

by Denise Swanson

  Looking over her shoulder, Skye struggled to free her­self from his grip. The stranger had emerged from the squad car and was now leaning against the trunk. When he saw her looking at him, he waved.

  The officer holding her had a name tag on his tan shirt that read "Deputy McCabe." He was not the type of per­son Skye would have picked for protection. Not only did Deputy McCabe strike her as missing a few buttons on his remote control, but physically he reminded her of Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. She would have preferred Marshal Dillon from Gunsmoke. All those years of watch­ing reruns as a child had left an indelible impression on her.

  Skye pointed to the man by the squad car. "See that guy over there?"

  Barney Fife didn't answer.

  "Is he a suspect? He got into the police car with me."

  Still no response from the deputy.

  "Did you guys forget you told me to wait there in the squad car?"

  Deputy McCabe took his time before speaking, examin­ing the man by the car who was now engrossed in writing something in a pocket-size notebook. "Why, that there is the coroner, Mr. Simon Reid."

  She frowned. "Doesn't the coroner have to be a doctor?"

  "Well, Miss, I don't know about places like Chicago or New York, but around here the coroner has always been the owner of the funeral parlor."

  Shaking her head in disbelief, Skye thought, Being back in Scumble River is worse than I imagined. Things here truly are fifty years behind the times. Before she could pur­sue that line of thought, Chief Boyd emerged from the trailer and joined them.

  "Why, Skye, honey, what are you doing standing here in the hot sun? We don't want you passing out on us. You were white as your mama's sheets when I first got here. I told you to wait in the squad. That's why I left the air-condition running."

  Skye blushed. When Chief Boyd had first come to town as a twenty-three-year-old patrolman, she'd been convinced she was in love with him. Back then Walter Boyd was a handsome young man who filled out his crisply starched police uniform superbly. He had warm brown eyes, curly black hair, and a gorgeous year-round tan. But his most at­tractive feature was his kind and generous nature.

  The summer she was fifteen, Skye discovered his work schedule and managed to turn up wherever he took a break or stopped for a meal. He was always a perfect gentleman, never mocking her or taking advantage of the situation. Nevertheless, she was embarrassed to remember how lovesick she had acted, and she now found it difficult to look him in the eye. She also had a hard time calling him anything but Chief Boyd.

  Time had been kind to him. His uniform still fit excep­tionally well, revealing only a hint of thickening at his waist. The silver in his hair made him look, if anything, more distinguished.

  "Sorry, I didn't know Mr. Reid was the coroner, and he frightened me when he got into the car without any warn­ing."

  Deputy McCabe gestured toward her with his thumb. "Yeah, she thought he was the murderer. She shot outta that squad like a bat outta hell."

  "What do you find so amusing, Deputy?" Chief Boyd asked. "That seems a sensible precaution, considering we don't have any idea who the killer is and he might think Miss Denison saw more than she did."

  Skye shivered. She hadn't considered that the murderer might think she was a witness.

  Chief Boyd turned to her. "Why don't you go back and introduce yourself to Simon? He has some questions he wants to ask you. I think he moved to town after you left. His uncle, Quentin Reid, up and died about eight years ago. Quent never married, and he didn't have any kids, so Simon inherited the funeral home. Simon is Quent's brother's boy."

  She nodded to the chief, understanding his reasons for the genealogy lesson. In Scumble River you were an out­sider, and not to be trusted,, unless you could prove your connection to someone from town.

  Gritting her teeth, she walked over to Simon and held out her hand. "I'm Skye Denison. Chief Boyd said you wanted to speak to me?" It was hard having to face a per­son you had just run away from.

  Simon straightened and took her hand in a firm but not crushing grip. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Simon Reid, the coroner."

  Raising her eyes to his, Skye discovered that he was well over six feet tall and very attractive in a Gary Cooper

  sort of way. The silence lengthened, and she realized that she had been staring at him for several minutes. Blushing, she looked away.

  He did not seem the least bit uncomfortable with her in­spection. Instead, he leaned back against the fender and crossed one long leg over the other. His next statement sur­prised her. "Miss Denison, tell me about the blood you had on your hand."

  For some reason his self-confident attitude irritated her. "I prefer Ms. Denison. Why do you need to know about the blood, Mr. Reid?"

  "Do you know what a coroner does, Ms. Denison?"

  "No, Mr. Reid, I do not know what a coroner does. Something with dead bodies, I presume."

  His slight smile did not reach his eyes. "To save a lot of time explaining why I'm asking the questions I'm asking, I'm going to explain the duties of a coroner to you, Ms. Denison."

  Nodding, she waited for him to continue.

  "The number one duty of the coroner is to conduct the inquest, but at the crime scene we take vital signs, draw blood—directly from the heart if possible—and take urine samples from the bladder."

  "You don't perform the autopsy?" Skye shifted from one foot to the other. This was getting a little more graphic than she liked.

  "No, we need a licensed medical examiner for that. We hire a guy from the county hospital to do the actual cutting. He uses the specimens I've collected at the scene to run toxicology screens and lab tests."

  "So, what do you want to know? I was in the trailer all of five minutes, so I didn't see much. I can't even tell you what the victim looked like."

  "I'm most interested in your description of the blood. Wally mentioned that you had quite a bit on your hand when he arrived." Simon moved closer.

  "Yes, I must have stuck my fingers right next to the wound while I was trying to find a pulse, but I couldn't see what I was doing because the body was under the vanity. I know you're not supposed to move injured people, so I didn't want to drag her out from the knee-well." Skye explained all this in one breath, still feeling as if she should have done more.

  "All I want you to do is to picture the blood on your hand right after you first saw it."

  Skye closed her eyes and tried to think about the earliest instant she looked at the blood on her hand. After a long pause she said, "It was bright red. At first I thought I'd cut myself."

  "Good. It looked like new blood. What was its consis­tency?"

  She tried to reconstruct the scene in her head. "It was runny, more like chocolate syrup than molasses but not as thin as oil."

  "Great. That's exactly what I needed to know."

  "Why?"

  "It will help pinpoint the time of death," Simon said, then added, "I hope."

  "I don't understand why it took you so long to get here. It was over an hour and a half since I found the body and reported it to Chief Boyd."

  "The police have to take all their pictures and gather their evidence before they call me to take the body. I've tried to convince them that they should notify me immedi­ately and let me examine the scene, but we have so few homicides I haven't been successful."

  "How many murders have you handled as coroner?"

  For the first time Simon looked uncomfortable. He cleared his throat before answering. "This is the first mur­der, but I've done suicides and accidental deaths."

  Skye raised one eyebrow. "That's not quite the same thing. You must be feeling somewhat anxious. There have

  been so many cases lost in court due to the evidence being spoiled at the scene. I read an article in Time magazine a few years back that said something like sixty-five hundred murderers each year go free, most because of coroners who were not well trained. I didn't realize at the time that many were not physicians."

/>   "The only thing I'm nervous about is you. We didn't get off to a very good start." His golden-hazel eyes sparkled. "The reason the funeral director in small towns is usually also the coroner is simple. We own the hearse and we have a place to store the body."

  He was attractive, and as everyone kept pointing out, there were not many appropriate men Skye's age in Scum­ble River. She surreptitiously glanced at his left hand. He wore no wedding band. Of course, that didn't prove any­thing. One strike against Simon was that he reminded Skye of her ex-fiance. It had been only a few months since they broke up, and the pain was as sharp as ever.

  She smiled. "I'm sure you didn't mean to scare me ear­lier, and I am sorry for screaming and running away when you got into the car."

  He waved away her apology with a gesture of his hand. "No problem. After what you've been through, I'm sure most girls would have been frightened."

  Girls! Biting her tongue, Skye managed a thin smile in response to his chauvinism and decided to change the sub­ject before she was forced to tell him what she thought about that remark.

  The shock of finding a body had worn off, and her nat­ural curiosity was beginning to take over. Tilting her head to the side, Skye looked up at Simon through her eye­lashes. "Why, how gallant of you to be concerned for my feelings."

  She wondered what he was honestly thinking as they smiled at each other. She would bet money he couldn't fig­ure out her real thoughts.

  After a few minutes of silence, Skye opened the door of the cruiser. She sat sideways, with her feet still outside the car. "How did Mrs. Gumtree die? Is there any way it could have been an accident? I realize the trailer was trashed, but could she have done it herself, then fallen somehow?"

  "I don't see how it could be anything but murder. She was stabbed in the jugular vein. That's why there was so much blood."

  Skye paled slightly, but her inquisitiveness won out. "Was she robbed?"

  "They don't think so. It looks more like a search than a burglary."

  "Isn't that odd? What would anyone be looking for? Who around here would even know what she had with her?" Skye leaned forward, intent on the puzzle.

  "That's not all that's odd. When we finally got her out from under that dressing table, she turned out to be in her thirties, not her sixties."

  "Are you sure it's Mrs. Gumtree? When I saw her per­forming yesterday, she looked like Granny from The Bev­erly Hillbillies, only shorter."

  "It's her, all right. We found the wig and makeup she used to make herself look old. Also, she was wearing the costume." Simon took a small notebook from his pocket.

  "Do you know her real name?" Skye stretched her neck, trying to get a look at the pad from which he was reading.

  "No. We asked Charlie, and he said there was no formal contract for her appearance today since she wasn't getting paid. So, they have no idea who she really is. The only thing we know for sure is she isn't in her sixties."

  "I guess they'll have to get in touch with her agent."

  Simon continued almost to himself. "She was really a very tiny person. I haven't measured her yet, but I'd guess she wasn't even five feet tall and couldn't have weighed ninety pounds."

  "Then almost anyone could have killed her," Skye said.

  CHAPTER 4

  Call Me Up

  Around five, the police finally allowed Skye to leave. Even though she was hungry, she did not want to see anyone she knew or answer any more questions. This nar­rowed her options to driving to Kankakee, which would take almost an hour, or returning home and hoping she could find something in her fridge.

  As soon as she reached her cottage, Skye showered and changed into a pair of old denim shorts and an orange University of Illinois T-shirt. She slipped her feet into rub­ber thongs and went to explore the food situation. A chunk of cheese, a few slices of salami, and half a box of crack­ers tossed onto a tray made up her meal. She added a glass of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and walked out to her deck. After placing her dinner on a side table, she settled into a cushioned lounge chair and tried to forget the past eight hours by gazing at the river and allowing her mind to go blank.

  As she felt the muscles in her neck and back relax, she thought how lucky she'd been to get this cottage. Discover­ing it was the only good thing that had happened to her since she'd found out she would have to move back to Scumble River. She'd rented it sight unseen through a newspaper ad and had been relieved that it was even better in real life than the picture and description promised.

  The owners were from Chicago. Before their messy di­vorce they had used the cottage as a weekend hideaway.

  Neither was willing to sell it, give it up, or share it, so until they could come to some compromise they were renting it. Skye hoped they wouldn't achieve any common ground until after she could figure out a way to leave Scumble River.

  She loved the unusual octagonal shape of the house. And the deck reaching from the left of the front door, around the side and all along the back, made her feel almost like she was living in a tree house. The small center cupola acted as a skylight, drawing extra sunshine into the high-ceilinged rooms.

  The cottage's location among the weeping willows and the elms along the riverbank allowed for the privacy Skye had missed since she'd left her family's farm. There were few other houses on the road, and all were obscured by thick foliage.

  Skye tried to focus on the house, but her thoughts kept returning to the murder. After a few minutes she gave up and went to phone her mom. She needed to talk things over with someone, and since she'd been gone from Scumble River for over twelve years, her choices were limited.

  May answered on the first ring.

  "Mom, it's me." Skye pictured her mother standing in her green-and-white kitchen, looking out the big picture window at the backyard. May's salt-and-pepper hair was cut very short to take advantage of its natural waves, and her emerald-green eyes matched Skye's own. She would be wearing denim shorts and a T-shirt, probably one with the insignia of her beloved Cubs baseball team printed on the front.

  "Oh, thank God. I was so worried. I've been calling over and over ever since I heard about the murder. Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine. Charlie's fine. Everyone we know is fine." Skye took a seat on a kitchen chair. This was going to be a

  long conversation. "Mrs. Gumtree, that children's TV star, was the one killed."

  May sighed. "That's a relief. So, the person who was killed was from Chicago—nothing to do with us."

  Skye thought about explaining that people who didn't live in Scumble River were still worthy of their concern, but took a deep breath and instead broached the subject she had called about. "Mom, do you know any of the teachers at the high school?"

  "No. Not offhand. Why?"

  "Well, I spent Friday there visiting classrooms and ob­serving students. I took a break around ten that morning, and Chokeberry Days was the hot topic of conversation in the teachers' lounge."

  "There has been a lot of fighting this year about the fes­tival. People really took sides," May said.

  Skye stretched the phone cord to its limit and grabbed a cookie from the jar on the counter. "Yeah, I saw that at the chokeberry jelly judging yesterday. I thought there was going to be a brawl right then and there, especially after the mayor's death was prematurely announced."

  "Wasn't that awful? But I hear Eldon's fine today—not that he didn't get what he deserved."

  "Huh? What's happened to Chokeberry Days? When I was little, the whole festival started Saturday afternoon with the judging of the jams and jellies. There was a carni­val that night and a parade Sunday. How did all these extra activities get started?" Skye took a bite of her Oreo.

  May's voice indicated her disapproval. "Things really got out of hand this year. Our beloved mayor is trying to put Scumble River on the map. Every year Chokeberry Days gets bigger and more extravagant. And ends up caus­ing more trouble. A couple of years ago, he had the bright idea of having a Harley-Davidson exhibition, so now we get
hundreds of bikers tearing up the town during the festi­val."

  "Let me guess—you really can't say anything against the whole thing because of Uncle Charlie."

  "Chokeberry Days is his baby," May admitted.

  "True, and we all know what happens to people who aren't nice to other people's children." Skye put the rest of the cookie in her mouth and crunched.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Sounds of Silence

  Monday morning, heading toward her meeting with the junior high principal, Skye felt a lump of dread settle in her stomach. Since she'd started her job a week ago, things had not been going according to plan, and she felt the whole situation slipping out of her control. The princi­pals of both the high school and the elementary school had made it clear the week before that they had no time to talk to Skye about her duties or answer her questions.

  No one seemed very interested in having her around or even sure what to do with her. Finding out where she was supposed to work and locating the supplies she would need made her feel about as popular as a Christmas fruitcake.

  She had just met with the superintendent, who after sev­eral telephone calls between his secretary and those at the various schools, promised her an office in the junior high. If she was still employed next year, the elementary would take a turn housing her, and if the unheard-of occurred and she stayed a third year, the high school would ante up a space.

  When Skye entered his office, the junior high principal, Lloyd Stark, glanced pointedly at his watch and scowled.

  "Oh, gee, sorry to be late. The superintendent kept me longer than I expected."

  He nodded, but his impatient expression was easy to read. He gestured to the pair of straight-back vinyl chairs across from his desk without speaking.

  Skye felt her temper push its way to the surface. In order to regain control, she let her gaze sweep the small room. It was painted a dull beige. The walls were decorated with en­graved plaques and citations. No posters or paintings were present to reveal the taste of the occupant. The furniture was utilitarian—nothing stuffed or upholstered that might invite the occupant to get comfortable or stay longer than was strictly necessary. Flat brown carpet suggested that it, too, had been selected for thrift rather than style. And the only light glared from the ceiling fixture's fluorescent bulb.