The Witching Hour

by Anina Collins

  “Good. Please know that you’re welcome to stay here as often as you like.”

  Pressing a kiss to the top of my head, he said, “That makes me happy because a lot of nights it’s just easier to fall asleep here after you and I have dinner and hang out. In the winter, it was like torture dragging myself out of a warm house to drive to my house, freezing all the way since the heat in my car would never get really hot before I reached home.”

  I looked up at him and had to smile at how utterly practical he could be. “That’s true. It’s also nice that we get to wake up next to one another each morning. That’s a good thing too, right?”

  “Definitely. And what happens before we fall asleep is absolutely a good thing.”

  “Exactly. So stay over whenever you like and as often as you like,” I said as I straightened his collar.

  “And you know what else it helps with? I’m not nearly as far away from the station if I get a call as I am out at my house. Ready to start this case?”

  With that he walked up the stairs, leaving me standing in my kitchen with the Alex practicality that I knew was just him being logical, but it made me want to smack him sometimes. Sleeping at my house was good because it meant he was closer to his job? Not exactly what a girl wanted to hear as a reason why a man stayed with her each night.

  I’d learned with Alex through trial and error, though, that making something like this into a much bigger discussion was a waste of both our time. If I said anything more after that, he’d grow quiet and that would make me feel pressured to fill in the silence with more words.

  That never worked out in my favor, unfortunately, and more often than not, I had to apologize for something I said in the heat of the moment when I cooled down. It also meant that a fight was injected into what should have been a calm discussion.

  No, I didn’t want that to happen this time. Taking our relationship to the next level, whether it be moving in together or the much bigger step of becoming engaged, shouldn’t have an argument attached to it.

  So for the time being, I could choose to drop more subtle and not-so-subtle hints into our conversations about where he spent his nights or I could drop the entire subject and wait for him to bring it up. I’d never been very good at waiting for much of anything, so hints was how I’d go.

  Now I just needed to think of a way to drop those hints so he’d understand just what I was talking about.

  Alex returned to the kitchen as all of this played out in my mind, so I quickly washed my coffee mug and hurried into the downstairs bathroom to brush my teeth before leaving to begin our investigation on Amy Perkins’ murder.

  “I haven’t gotten any text about Donny having his preliminary report yet, so I hope it’s just a matter of him forgetting to message me,” he said loudly as I rinsed out the toothpaste from my toothbrush.

  Ready for the day, I headed back out into the kitchen and found Alex waiting for me at the door. “You’re pretty eager today. Maybe Donny doesn’t have it because he didn’t get the body until late last night. He’s good, but maybe he’s not that good.”

  Alex rolled his eyes. “He’s a legend in his own mind. I want to get started on this case and see if Stephen, Craig, you, and I can set some parameters. I don’t want us stepping all over one another, and that’s likely going to happen with four people on a single case if we’re not careful.”

  “What kind of parameters?” I asked, suddenly worried about what he meant.

  Opening the door, he ushered me out into the oppressive heat. “I just don’t want the four of us chasing the same leads. We’re going to have to come to some agreement as to who is looking into what.”

  We walked toward his car parked behind mine in the driveway, and I noticed he was frowning again. Hoping to make him feel better about what I suspected might be a difficult case, I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll follow your lead.”

  He opened the driver’s side door and looked over the roof at me, arching one brow. “It’s not you I’m worried about. I’ve never been a big fan of working with other people on cases. I’m sort of a lone wolf.”

  His claim made me laugh, and I shook my head at how silly it sounded on its face as I stood there ready to go to work with him on this case. “You work fine with me, so I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That’s not the same thing. You’re not a cop. Police officers can get very territorial about their cases, and this one is technically Stephen’s. I just want to make sure this doesn’t turn into an issue.”

  I leaned on the doorframe and smiled over at him. “You won’t let it, so I’m not worried. Maybe if he and Craig take her personal life we can investigate her professional life. Or vice versa.”

  He thought about it for a moment and nodded, smiling again. “That’s a good idea, Poppy. For that, you get air conditioning all the way to the station.”

  “Oooooh, five whole minutes of cool air. Time to pay up, Officer Montero, before your partner melts into the driveway.”

  I got into the car and felt the cool air blowing out of the vents, happy for the prospect of this case being nothing but a normal case for us. I just hoped Stephen didn’t let his dislike for me ruin that possibility.

  Chapter Three

  In the few precious minutes it took to reach the police station, I enjoyed the refreshing air the car offered, but it ended all too soon and Alex parked the Mustang on the street in front of the building. I didn’t know if it was because I hated going back out into the heat or if the idea of dealing with Stephen bothered me, but a feeling of dread suddenly overcame me as Alex turned the car off.

  “Ready?” he asked in a chipper voice as he moved to open his door.

  I grabbed his arm to stop him before he could reach the handle, and he turned his head to look at me with a concerned expression. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I’m just not looking forward to going back out into the stifling heat. That’s all.”

  He stared at me for a long moment like he was studying my face to see if that was really why I was dragging my feet on going into the police station, but then he just smiled. “It’s not that far a walk to my office. I’m betting you won’t even break into a sweat in that time. Come on. Let’s go. We have work to do.”

  I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I had a sense that if I mentioned that one of the reasons why I might not be eager to go inside was because of Stephen, Alex might be annoyed. He always supported me, and I knew he’d tell his fellow officer off in a second if he stepped over the line with me in any disrespectful way. Of that, I had no doubt.

  But I had a niggling fear that all of this drama between Stephen and me had begun to get on my partner’s nerves. I hated that. It was like everything bad about the town we lived in boiled down to a tit for tat juvenile behavior issue, and that’s what he saw this thing between the two of us as.

  A typical Sunset Ridge spat.

  I couldn’t even disagree with that since I truly had no idea why Stephen had taken a disliking to me. Until that night in front of Bethany’s apartment when he was working her murder case, I had never even noticed him much. He was just another police officer on the force but nothing more. That he seemed particularly disgusted by me baffled me then and still baffled me to that moment.

  Alex flashed me a smile and turned to get out of the car, so I did the same and followed him into the station. As we passed the new receptionist, the fifth this year, I wished her a good morning and wondered how long she’d be in that job. From what I heard listening to the other cops talk, they had a bet that she’d be gone before Halloween. Why so many receptionists seemed to hate the job I had no idea. It didn’t seem like a difficult job to do, but on the other hand, since the town had combined that job with the dispatcher job a little over a year ago, it ceased to be just a nine-to-five business and often included overnight shifts.

  As Alex and I headed down the hall toward his office, I whispered to him, “What’s your bet for the new receptionist leaving? Do you think she’l
l make it through the fall?”

  He turned around and looked over my head back at her as she sat at the desk filing her nails and pursed his lips before answering. “I’m going with late September.”

  I thought about his assessment and wondered if he’d be right, but then he added, “Of course, if Derek and his girlfriend break up, all bets are off since from what I understand, there’s never been a receptionist before these last few that he didn’t date.”

  We walked into his office, and he sat down behind his desk while I took my usual position in the chair in front of his desk. “I thought he and Solange were chugging along just fine. Did I miss some gossip?”

  Alex shrugged and shook his head. “No, but Derek is Derek, so I’m not putting any bets on that relationship.”

  His words bothered me because I wanted to believe Derek had finally found someone that he could have a happily ever after with. After dating through nearly the entire single female population of Sunset Ridge, it seemed that the past few months had seen a real change in him. Alex’s dismissal of his actually being a different person because of his feelings for Solange made me hope that he wasn’t right. I wanted to believe in true love and its ability to turn a man around.

  “I guess, but I’m putting my money on those two. They’ve been stuck together like glue since they made their romance public. I saw them at the Food King a few weeks ago, and they looked like newlyweds.”

  Before I could bring up that I thought they’d be moving in together soon, Alex stood from his desk and pointed toward the hallway. “I’m going to go find Stephen so we can get this investigation going. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He left me sitting there wondering if Derek and Solange would begin living together before Alex and I did, which only made me wonder if there was something wrong in our relationship. We’d been together much longer than they had, so why were they moving toward something more permanent while we seemed to be stuck in a holding pattern?

  As my mind whirled with possible reasons why, his office phone rang, startling me. Jumping up, I quickly picked up the receiver, forgetting in my confusion that I probably shouldn’t be answering it.

  “Hello, Alex Montero’s office,” I said, sounding like the receptionist down the hallway.

  “Alex? You wearing your pants too tight or something?” Donny, the coroner, asked with a throaty chuckle.

  Amused by his joke, I relaxed from my momentary scare and sat down behind Alex’s desk. “Donny, it’s me, Poppy. Alex is off talking with Stephen. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I just wanted to let him know I have the preliminary report for you guys to take a look at. Will he be back soon? I want to drop it off with him and I have time now.”

  “Oh yeah. He just went to confer with Stephen and then he’ll be right back.”

  “Good. I’m heading there now. Oh, and Poppy, make sure to tell him about the joke I made about him wearing his pants too tight and sounding like a member of the Vienna Boys Choir. He’ll like that,” Donny said with a full laugh before hanging up.

  I put the receiver back down on the phone and wondered if the coroner and I knew the same man because I was pretty sure Alex wouldn’t find his joke amusing in the slightest. I could imagine Alex’s usually stoic face cracking with a forced smile after hearing it and then immediately returning to its regular seriousness with possibly an eye roll to top the whole response off.

  “You look pretty comfortable there in my chair,” he said as he walked back into his office.

  Quickly, I stood up and offered it to him before I returned to my usual seat. “Just keeping it warm for you, boss.”

  Alex rolled his eyes, just as I knew he would for Donny’s sad attempt at humor. “Enough boss talk. We need to get working on this case. Any chance that call for me had anything to do with it?”

  “Donny said he’s on his way. He should be here in a minute or two. He’s got the preliminary report.”

  Taking his seat, Alex nodded. “Good. Hopefully, that gives us a solid place to begin. I’m not in the mood for another case full of false starts.”

  “What did Stephen say when you told him what you knew about Amy?” I asked, curious about how their conversation went and if Stephen had been upset about Alex not telling him until today.

  Alex shook his head. “I couldn’t find him. He seems to be MIA this morning.”

  Instantly, the thought crossed my mind that Stephen was avoiding Alex because of me. Because I’d be working the case with him. Why did he dislike me so much? I honestly had no idea. I’d gone through every possible time we could have met, and I still came up with nothing. I hadn’t been introduced to him before Bethany’s case, and from that moment, he’d shown a complete disdain for me.

  Maybe we’d met sometime before he became a police officer? I knew little about Stephen, but I believed he had been born and raised in Sunset Ridge. Perhaps we’d had a run in before and I didn’t remember.

  Or maybe it was because of the town gossips and what they used to say about me. I’d become so used to their snide talk that it hadn’t bothered me much in years, but if he’d heard all that about me and then heard I was helping Alex on his cases, maybe he’d thought badly of me because of it.

  Or it could be something entirely unrelated. I had no idea. All I knew was his dislike for me made working with Alex uncomfortable, even though he didn’t seem fazed by his fellow officer’s opinion on this or anything else.

  As if he read my mind, Alex said, “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. This whole thing with Stephen is a non-issue to me, and I hope you’ll see it like that too. Not everyone has to get along, Poppy.”

  His resistance to the very realities of the small town we lived in both amused and confused me. “You clearly aren’t from here. Not getting along with people in a small town is a huge problem. People in this town talk, Alex. If you have a problem with someone, it’s an issue.”

  Alex’s gaze moved from my face to behind me, and a knock on the door stopped our conversation entirely. Twisting in my seat, I saw Donny standing in the hallway just outside the office. A quick glance at him told me he looked different, but I couldn’t place why. Had he gotten a haircut or worn a different shirt from the usual five or six blue, white, and yellow short-sleeved dress shirts he seemed to wear in rotation from April to November?

  Nope. His hair seemed the same as the last time I’d seen him the week before, and he wore a white shirt like he often did in the warmer weather. While I tried to figure it out, Alex said, “Saved by the coroner. Please come in.”

  He walked in and sat down next to me as he handed Alex a sheet of paper. “Another day, another murder, huh?” he said like it pleased him as he got comfortable in his chair.

  Anyone who knew Donny understood this was just the coroner’s way of saying hello. I couldn’t help but smile at his method of being friendly in the face of yet another death. It was very much a Sunset Ridge thing. Alex mentioned one time that this was the first place he’d heard of where the coroner brought reports to cops and not the other way around. I had explained to him that Donny might come off as a curmudgeon, but in many ways, his style was pure small town. It was also indicative of how much he liked to present his findings in his own particularly theatrical way.

  “Never a dull moment in our little town,” I said back to him as Alex perused the report Donny had given him.

  “So what I’m reading here is that Amy Perkins didn’t die from a knife being plunged into her chest?” Alex asked incredulously.

  I turned to look at him in amazement at what he’d just said. I saw the dagger buried in her heart with my own eyes. How had that not killed her?

  Next to me, Donny shook his head as his grin spread from ear to ear. “Nope. That certainly didn’t help, mind you, but she was going to die even before whoever killed her stabbed her in the heart.”

  I sat there listening to all of this, stunned by Donny’s news. “Why would anyone stab her if she was dead already?
”

  The coroner turned in his seat and wagged his finger at me. “Oh, I didn’t say she was dead when the murderer stabbed her. She wasn’t. But the stabbing wasn’t necessary. She was going to die anyway. I guess you’d call that overkill.”

  “Then what killed her?” I asked.

  “She was smothered,” he answered flatly.

  I turned to look at Alex, whose eyebrows were raised in surprise. “Any idea by what? Hand? Cloth in the mouth? Pillow? What are we talking about here?” he asked.

  Pillow? I thought back to how the murder scene looked the night before and tried to remember if I saw anything like bedding or pillows. I couldn’t recall seeing any.

  Donny shrugged. “Not sure yet. Don’t know if we’ll ever be. Smothering is hard to detect, and it’s even harder to determine what may have been used to smother a person. I didn’t see any whitening around the nose and mouth, so I’m leaning less toward a pillow as the murder weapon since that’s usually a key clue that something like that has been pressed against the face to smother someone.”

  Reading the report, Alex said quietly, “No signs of sexual assault. What’s this about the back of her head?”

  “I found a contusion on the back of the victim’s head, deep enough that it looks like she could have been pushed backward after being stabbed. Or maybe the killer pushed her down hard enough to hit her head after trying to smother her and then stuck the knife in her chest. I’ll be able to tell better after a few more test results come in.”

  Alex took a deep breath and dropped the paper onto his desk. “So she was asphyxiated and the stabbing was just for show?”

  “That I don’t know. If the murderer is someone who knows very little about how the human body works, maybe they didn’t think they did the job well enough to kill her so they grabbed a knife, thinking they needed to finish her off, and then pushed her away. I’ll leave it up to you guys to figure all that out.”