Organized for Picnic Panic (Organized Mysteries Book 6)

by Ritter Ames

  “You’re on,” she said. “And if the Trace family’s stuff is still here later, we’ll figure out a way to return everything.”

  As she glanced around and picked up any leftover trash in their space, Kate realized Gina had disappeared too. With a jerk of her chin, Kate pointed Keith in the direction where she’d last seen the woman. “Looks like Bernadette isn’t the only person who left her things behind. I was afraid we’d have to walk past Gina again, but she seems to have left her stuff behind and vamoosed.”

  The agent’s area looked forlorn with its empty chaise and dirty wineglass tossed on its side in the grass.

  “You think she left, too?” Keith wondered. “Did she act embarrassed enough to leave everything behind?”

  “She wasn’t embarrassed at all. If anything, she was defiant,” Kate said. “And drunk. If she did leave, I hope she didn’t drive. She could barely stand up when I last saw her. I offered to help her walk, but she told me to mind my own business. I figured Jim would drive her wherever she needed to go.”

  “That is strange, since we just saw him leaving alone. Is it possible he dropped her off earlier, while we were eating then came back afterward?”

  “Maybe,” Kate said.

  When they arrived at the trash cans, Kate spotted a jeweled flip-flop next to the double bins. Recognizing it, she circled the containers and found the agent slumped on the ground. “Gina, do you need help to get up?”

  Gina didn’t answer.

  “She’s probably passed out,” Keith said. “Help me get her out of there.”

  “Let’s see if we can get her on her feet,” Kate said. She squeezed between the half-wall and the bins until she was right next to the limp woman. The position was awkward, giving Kate little room to maneuver. “Gina? Hello? Wake up!”

  When the woman didn’t respond, Kate grabbed the agent’s shoulder with one hand and slipped the other behind the agent’s head. But as she pulled upwards, her fingers felt something warm and wet at the base of Gina’s scalp.

  THERE WASN’T MUCH ROOM, so Kate squatted as low as possible. Her fingers shook a little as she used her right hand to check for a pulse at Gina’s neck.

  Nothing. No flutter of life. Kate adjusted her fingertips, searching and hoping.

  Still nothing.

  “Keith, call 9-1-1!”

  After he hung up with the emergency operator, Keith called Gil to give him the scoop and ask Meg to take all the kids home.

  Minutes later, Gil and the paper’s photographer, Nathan Bowles, hurried over to the trash bin area.

  Keith helped Kate climb out from behind the big containers. She tried not to disturb the scene any more than she already had. She held her blood-stained hand away from her clothes. The discovery had been upsetting but falling apart had to wait until later.

  Nathan took a series of photographs of Gina, the surrounding area, and the trash bins. “Getting pictures now may help. It’s likely to take a while for the police to get here. There’s so much traffic today with the events going on around the picnic.”

  Within ten minutes of Keith’s call, the long and lanky figure of Constable Banks came trotting over. He had a couple of men to help him and immediately took charge.

  “Did you touch her?” Constable Banks asked Kate.

  “When I tried to lift her head, I did,” Kate said, showing him the blood on her hand. “I tried to help her, thinking she was passed out. I... the blood... it’s from the back of Gina’s head.”

  Banks nodded, and his expression softened. “Anyone have an idea when it happened?”

  “I’d just talked to her about half-an-hour ago,” Kate spoke up again. “She’d been drinking...”

  Keith wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Like Kate said, we thought she was drunk and passed out. We tried to rouse her and help her get on her feet. I couldn’t fit in the enclosure without stepping on Gina, so Kate squeezed in and stood near her head.”

  “That’s when I felt the blood and searched for a pulse,” she explained. Then had to clear her throat before continuing, “As soon as I realized she was dead, we called you.”

  “Did you disturb anything else?” Banks looked at the McKenzies.

  “I don’t think so,” Keith said. “Kate was careful.”

  “I slipped in between the bins and crouched down,” she said. “I did my best to back out carefully and retrace my steps. You should see my footprints, though.”

  “Very good,” Banks said.

  Kate raised her blood-stained hand. “Can I go wash up? I didn’t know procedure and waited until—”

  “Let me take a picture.” Constable Banks snapped a shot of her hand with his cellphone, and Nathan took a flash shot with his bigger camera. Banks turned to him and said, “We need a copy of all your photos from today, especially the ones you’ve taken in the last hour.”

  “I need to clear it with my editor first,” Nathan said.

  “Thanks,” said Banks as he turned back to Kate. “Okay, go and clean up. I don’t want you exposed to her blood any longer than necessary. Come back when you’re finished.”

  Thankfully, the women’s restroom was empty. An officer waited outside to keep anyone else from entering after Kate went in. She moved to one of the sinks and twisted the hot water tap full on, letting the water wash over her palm. Even as the warm temperature changed to boiling, she didn’t turn on the cold. As a result, she almost scalded her hand. When it was too much to bear, she jerked her fingers out of the stream and added cold to the mix.

  Kate pumped the liquid soap dispenser and focused on scrubbing every microscopic germ from her already fiery red skin. Finished, she turned off the faucet and looked in the mirror. Tears made muddy tracks down her cheeks. She’d been so absorbed in her mission to eliminate every microbe of Gina’s death that she hadn’t realized the overload of sadness on her shoulders. She grabbed a paper towel, wet it, and wiped her face, folding it into a rectangle and holding it for a minute across her closed eyes.

  The agent hadn’t been likeable, and she had done deplorable things to climb the ladder of success. Regardless, Kate still had some pity for her.

  I wonder if she has family nearby, Kate thought, adding the task of sending flowers to her mental to-do list for the next week. Since Gina worked for the agency that had once represented Keith, it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “You okay in there?” the officer called through the door.

  “Yes, almost done.” Brought out of her reverie, Kate pulled a couple more paper towels from the silver container hanging on the wall. She dried her hands and wiped away any last evidence of her tears with the damp towels. Her eyes were still puffy, so she again ran cold water over the towels afterward, wrung out the excess, and pressed the folded paper to her eyelids for another thirty seconds to reduce the redness.

  “Good enough,” she said, catching her reflection in the mirror. Those who knew her would recognize evidence she’d been crying, but she doubted anyone would find her tears surprising.

  A few minutes later, she was standing beside Keith. He’d already filled in Constable Banks what Kate told him while they’d ate, about the scene that she and Meg had witnessed earlier between the Trace couple and Gina. She added information she hadn’t told Keith, about her short conversation with the dead agent. When she mentioned the wine bottle, Constable Banks waved over the other officer. Inside an evidence bag was the wine bottle she’d seen during the altercation and when she had talked to Gina later.

  “That’s the one,” Kate confirmed. “Or at least, it looks like it. Gina finished the bottle and said she was heading to these bins to throw it away. When she stood up, I realized how drunk she was. That’s why I’d thought she’d passed out between the bins.”

  Banks shook his head. “It looks like she was hit over the head with the bottle. We’ve found hair and blood evidence along the bottom on one side. We’re assuming it’s hers, but we’ll have it tested for confirmation. You say she and the Traces touched
the bottle?”

  Kate nodded. “From what I understood, Bernadette Trace brought it to the picnic. And when I spoke to Gina later, she implied that Jim Trace helped her drink it. But she didn’t directly say so.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind as we process it for fingerprints,” Banks said. “We’re getting the procedures done out of order, but I’d appreciate if the two of you would go by the station and wait for me there. And talk no more about this until I get there.”

  Keith looked at Kate. The last time her presence was requested at the police station, she had been the chief suspect in a murder. She smiled and shook her head a tiny bit, to let her husband know she was fine with the request.

  “Okay, we’ll do that,” Keith said. “Our neighbor is taking care of our kids while the magic show runs, but if you think it will be awhile—”

  “No, I’ll be there soon. I just need to get things started here,” Banks replied. “Give me a second, and I’ll call ahead to the dispatcher and tell them you’re both coming in.”

  As they drove to the station in Keith’s Jeep, Kate ignored the constable’s warning about not talking and asked her husband, “Where did they find the wine bottle?”

  “On the other side of the half-wall,” Keith said.

  “I wonder if Gina ran into her killer at the trash bin. She seemed so wasted by then that taking the bottle away from her would have been easy for anyone.” Kate thought for a moment before continuing. “If the killer reached for it, she might have thought he or she was helping her toss the bottle into the bin. Instead, the murderer hit her with it.”

  “Does it matter?” Keith asked, turning on Main Street. “But I get what you’re saying. From the way you described her earlier state, she might have handed it over to someone without a fuss.”

  “Then the killer needed just to wait long enough for her to turn around.”

  “It had to take some nerve, though. I mean, the whole town turned out today. Killing someone in broad daylight would take guts.”

  “Not as much risk as you might assume,” Kate said, thinking it over. She’d begun making mental lists of logical assumptions and this was one she’d already processed. “Anyone who wasn’t preparing for the afternoon softball game was watching the magic show. You and I were pretty much alone, and we were too focused on our food and conversation to notice what was going on where we found her. I only looked that way and noticed Gina was gone from her picnic spot when we were ready to head for the trash cans. I wish I’d followed my first instincts and walked to the bin area earlier with the junk I’d gathered. If I had, I might have been able to call for help sooner—and Gina would still be alive.”

  “Or you might just as likely have stumbled into the killer hitting Gina or hiding her body,” Keith said, reaching for her hand. “Do not start feeling guilty about this, Katie. If you had gotten there earlier, you could have been hurt or worse.”

  AT THE POLICE STATION, they were taken to separate interview rooms. It surprised Kate when Lieutenant Johnson of the Vermont State Police entered her interrogation room a short time later with a manila file in his huge hand. It felt like déjà vu all over again.

  “Mrs. McKenzie, I didn’t expect to see you today,” the lieutenant said, sighing as he took a seat at the table. “Seems like we’ve done this before.”

  Kate wanted to pop off with a smart remark of the type Meg would use. Something like We have to stop meeting like this, Lieutenant. But snark wasn’t her style. Instead she said, “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

  “That it is.” Johnson opened the file.

  Kate saw the pages inside were Xeroxed. “Are those Constable Banks’s notes?”

  “Yes, and some from that reporter neighbor of yours,” he said, never taking his eyes off the pages. “Handy that he and the newspaper photographer were right there on the scene. Did you call him over?”

  Here we go again. The man always seemed to have the worst opinion of her. “We had every reason to assume we’d be delayed by this investigation, so Keith called Gil to ask his wife Meg to take our children home with her.”

  He smirked, before resuming his perusal of the file. He said in his trademark drawl, “Y’all are getting relatively informed on police procedure, aren’t you?”

  “We simply wanted to make sure we were available to answer any questions for law enforcement as soon as you needed us.”

  Johnson nodded but stayed silent while he reviewed each copied sheet. He finished reading the final one, straightened the copies, and closed the file. He pulled a digital recorder from his pocket, turned it on, spoke into the microphone stating his name and that he was interviewing Kate, and set the device on the table so the microphone picked up their conversation. Lacing his fingers together, he covered the file with his hands.

  Another image to bring back bad memories, she thought.

  “Now, Mrs. McKenzie, tell me everything you can remember about the picnic today, whether you think it has any bearing on the murder or not.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Begging your pardon, Mrs. McKenzie,” he said, holding up a hand to stop her. “I didn’t ask you to think about anything. I just want you to tell me everything you’ve already told Constable Banks, and everything you haven’t. I want to know what you saw, what you heard, and what your gut response was. We’ve encountered each other enough in these nasty little bits of foul play that I know you start putting together lists of facts and impressions almost immediately. If I want to solve this murder quickly, I need to know what you already know. Even if you don’t think it’s important.”

  Kate sat for a moment with her mouth open. She’d just received a compliment—at least the closest thing to a compliment she’d ever heard from Lieutenant Johnson. A wave of relief flashed through her at the idea of passing all the information in her mind to someone else. It might assuage at least a little of the guilt she currently experienced.

  “Remember you asked for it,” she warned. She told him everything she’d seen, from the races to the picnic set up. She sketched out the fight between the radio station general manager, his wife, and the murder victim, and how that led to Bernadette stalking off without her son or her picnic gear. How the music man stopped his tune to walk Bernadette to the parking lot. Kate repeated the conversation she’d had with Gina while waiting for Keith to come to lunch. Kate also detailed how the rest of the crowd had gone to the magic show, parking lot, or the softball field. Most of all, she recounted about how she wished she’d taken trash to the bins earlier. She even shared with him her despair at finding Gina, and how that led to her tears in the bathroom and her vigorously scrubbing away of the victim’s blood. She also mentioned her conversation with Keith in the Jeep.

  “I’m certain Constable Banks asked you not to talk between yourselves,” Lieutenant Johnson said. “But if you repeating it now means you might have paid attention to what your husband said about safety, and you will remember it next time anything like this comes up, I have to say I agree with your husband and am glad he said what he did.” Then Johnson warned, “However, the next time a police officer tells you not to talk to anyone, please follow his instructions.”

  “I hope there won’t be a next time.”

  “You and me both, Mrs. McKenzie.”

  Kate cleared her throat. “I do have one question.”

  “Only one?”

  She had the idea he said things like that just to raise her hackles.

  “Yes, only one. I wondered if anyone has located the Traces’ son? I saw his mother and father leave separately without him. It concerns me that he might be wandering around on his own.”

  “Good question.” Lieutenant Johnson turned off the recorder and slipped it back into his pocket. He stood the file upright and gave it a couple of taps on the tabletop, before rising from his chair and slipping the folder under one arm. “We haven’t been able to locate any members of the Trace family yet. I expect you’ll notify me if you bump into them.”

  Kate
forced herself not to roll her eyes. “Sure. You’ll be the first person I call.”

  “That’s all I ever ask, Mrs. McKenzie.” He flipped one of his business cards her way. “Glad to hear you’re making it one of your best practices.”

  She fingered the card and smiled. “You are aware that I have several of these cards already.”

  “Always like to make sure my favorite people have one handy.” He gave her an unexpected grin and opened the door, gesturing with the file to suggest she proceed him out of the interrogation room.

  In the reception area, she watched as Nathan handed a flash drive to Lieutenant Johnson. “My editor told me to cooperate with you. Here are the photos I took.”

  “Appreciate this,” Lieutenant Johnson said, pointing to the interrogation room Kate had just left. “It’s Nathan, right?”

  The photographer nodded, and Johnson continued. “Follow me please? I have a few questions.”

  Nathan looked very young. And scared. “Uh, sure.”

  Johnson led the way toward the smaller room, and Kate whispered to Nathan as he passed, “Don’t worry.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered back. He slowed to a stop. “It’s just...”

  “I know,” Kate said, nodding toward the door. “Easiest to get it done and over with. You’ll be on your way in no time. It’s all just procedure from here.”

  The photographer nodded and continued to follow the lieutenant.

  Out the narrow front window, she saw Keith leaning on their Jeep. Gil stood next to him, apparently interviewing Constable Banks.

  She walked outside, arriving as Gil put his notebook away.

  “Is this a private party? Or am I welcome, too?” she teased as she neared the trio.

  “One that’s breaking up even as we speak,” Constable Banks said, waving. “I have a manhunt to join.” With that, he pivoted and walked away.

  Keith put an arm around Kate’s waist. She looked up at her husband. “Any idea if Gina has any family here locally?”