by Paula Lester
As she watched them walk past Beachside Books’ big front window and away down the sidewalk, Paige had a thought that shocked her, momentarily taking her mind off money. What if the Hawkes had killed Cash Conway? The scene played out in her mind: Cash coming across the treasure on the beach moments before the Hawkes arrived at the same location. Maybe they’d killed him because he’d found the treasure first.
Maybe that’s why they were such successful geocachers—because they wouldn’t take defeat at face value and nothing, not even a little murder, would stop them from claiming their treasures.
Chapter 16
Between all the goings-on of the day and the impromptu trip out to the Camp, Monday seemed to be flying by quickly. At first. But toward the end of the workday, Paige found herself watching the clock tick along as though someone had slowed it down. She was ready to be done so she could get into her pajama pants, snuggle with Casper, and read a book or work on her novel. She also wanted time to herself to think about her finances.
But about an hour before closing time, Sarah rushed into the shop. In her right hand was a large plastic beige box with a handle, which she set down on the checkout counter while she shifted the weight of her big purse on the other shoulder. Paige crossed over to her sister-in-law from where she’d been working at a bookshelf across the shop. “What’s that thing?”
“Oh, this is my travel case. I carry everything in it that I need to do hair away from the shop. Makeup too.”
“That’s pretty cool. When do you do hair and makeup away from the shop?”
“Sometimes I do it for bridal parties when the bride wants their makeup done at the wedding venue. I’ve also done bachelorette parties and even teenybopper birthday parties.”
“Do you have a party or something now?” Paige asked her. “I thought Mondays were your day off. I mean, I know I haven’t been giving myself as much attention as I deserve lately, but I didn’t think I needed a drop-in makeover or anything.” Paige grinned and flipped her hair, making Sarah laugh.
“I’m not here for you. At least not today.” Sarah reached up and flipped Paige’s hair too. “Though I would love to get my hands on this someday. I think some highlights and lowlights would look great.” She smiled and withdrew her hand. “But, no, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.” She leaned in close to Paige and whispered, “I have to do hair and makeup on Cash Conway.”
Paige thought she must’ve heard her sister-in-law wrong. “Cash Conway? The dead guy?”
Sarah nodded. “The very one,” she said. “The police department is sending his body to LA for an autopsy, and the family wants to make sure he looks good when he gets there. Since he’s a celebrity and all, you know. Anyway, the funeral home director called me because his regular makeup artist is off on vacation or something. We know each other a bit through Scott. Actually, I kind of suspect he called Scott and my loving husband recommended me, but he’s not owning up to that.”
“How do you feel about doing it?” Paige wasn’t sure she’d be able to get over the ick factor herself. But then again, doing live people’s hair and makeup was enough to creep her out a little, so one couldn’t judge by her reaction.
“I’m a little nervous. I’m pretty sure once I get there and start on it, instinct will take over and I’ll do it automatically, but I was wondering if you would come with me. You know, for moral support?” She said the last part as a question, and the pleading look on her face made Paige sigh.
“Okay, I guess I can do that.” It was pretty much the last thing she wanted to do, but she loved Sarah, and that look was more than she could resist. She glanced at Jordan. Having already closed the shop once that day for a couple of hours, she wasn’t eager to lock up early and lose more potential sales. But she wasn’t sure she trusted Jordan a hundred percent to be able to handle things yet. She glanced at the clock. There was only a little bit under an hour left before closing time. “Hey, Jordan,” she called toward the storeroom. “I’m going to go with Sarah. Are you okay handling things for the last hour and then locking up for me?”
Jordan popped his head out of the back room, shifted his feet, and ran his hand through his hair. “Um. I guess? I mean, I can handle cash, but the whole credit card procedure is kind of confusing.”
“I know, but I believe you can do it. I’ll show you one more time before I leave.”
Jordan seemed more confident after she went through it with him once, so she grabbed her purse and left with Sarah, crossing her fingers that everything would be okay when she got back.
When they arrived at the Comfort Cove Funeral Home, the director greeted them at the door. He had narrow-set eyes, a long, hawkish nose, and unnaturally black hair pulled over the top of his head in a comb-over. He was big—over six feet tall—and Paige couldn’t help but think of Lurch as she looked at him. He offered each woman his hand to shake and introduced himself as Chandler Hearse. Paige had to bite her lip to keep from giggling when she heard it. What were the odds? Made her wonder if he’d changed his last name to match his profession or maybe headed into his career because of it.
Mr. Hearse wrung his hands together. “I’m glad you’re here. I want you to have plenty of time to work on Mr. Conway. It has to be done exactly right. Exactly. Not a hair can be off on this man’s head, and the makeup has to look perfect. I have a picture you can use—some woman dropped it off to my receptionist, and it looks like a professionally done shot from Mr. Conway’s glory days.”
Sarah was holding her kit in one hand and purse in the other, so Mr. Hearse handed the photo to Paige. It was the same type of eight-by-ten glossy Old Pops had of Bucky Grant. She couldn’t resist turning it over, and sure enough, it was stamped in red letters near the bottom: Top-Notch Talent Agency.
“All right, come on in. We don’t have any time to waste.” Hearse spun on his heel and led the way through the front of the funeral home, down a short hallway that led to a staircase, down two flights of stairs to the basement, and then into a cold, sterile-looking room that held several stainless steel gurneys. Upon one of the stretchers was a covered body. “He has some blood on his head, but you can wash it off.”
Paige shivered, not sure she wanted to see Cash again. When she’d seen him on the beach, it was dark, and she hadn’t gotten a real good look at him. But as Hearse pulled the sheet away, there was nowhere else to look. Her eyes immediately floated to the gash near the top of the man’s head, and Paige felt her eyes narrow. She’d expected the axe cut to be much bigger and a fair amount deeper. The cut on Cash Conway’s head looked more like a small laceration than a deadly axe wound. “Wow, I thought the wound on his head would be bigger if that’s what killed him.”
Hearse looked sharply at Paige, a quizzical expression on his face. “Axe? I thought for sure he drowned. There was lots of water coming out of him when he got here.”
Sarah and Paige exchanged glances while the funeral director left them to it and headed back up the stairs.
As Sarah worked on Cash’s hair and makeup, she said, “That’s pretty big news that he might’ve drowned, isn’t it?”
Paige shrugged. “Scott must know about this. Maybe they’re just keeping it under wraps so when they bring someone in to interrogate, they’ll know whether to believe him if he confesses. After all, if he drowned, but the public believes he was killed by an axe, then only the killer would be able to tell investigators he drowned.”
Sarah nodded. “That makes sense. Scott’s definitely been nervous about this case, and he’s not sharing very much about it with me at all. And I haven’t been able to get any dreams.”
Paige frowned. Somehow, the explanation about the drowning seemed off to her. “If he did drown, why was there an axe next to his head when he was found? I saw that with my own eyes.”
“I don’t know. Maybe the killer wanted him to be found?”
Paige pulled the phone out of her purse and called Scott. She told him that she was with Sarah watching her minister
to Cash Conway’s body. “Did you know that the axe cut on his head doesn’t look nearly deep enough to have killed him? In fact, it doesn’t look much like an axe wound at all. And Chandler Hearse seems to think he drowned because there was water coming out of his lungs when he got to the funeral home.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line before Scott finally said, “Stay put. I’m going to bring the coroner there.”
ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES later, the door opened, and Mr. Hearse entered, leading Scott and an old man who walked with frailty, leaning heavily on a metal cane. He had extra thick, round glasses and very little wispy white hair on top.
Mr. Hearse left again, closing the door behind him with a thud.
“This is Thaddeus Whitmyre, Comfort Cove’s coroner,” Scott said. Turning to the old man, he spoke louder, “Thaddeus, this is my wife, Sarah, and my sister, Paige.”
“Eh. Who cares? Where’s the body?”
The others exchanged glances with each other. Cash Conway’s body was clearly visible right in the center of the room on a tall gurney, with nothing between it and Thaddeus Whitmyre but empty air.
“Um. Right over there, sir,” Paige said.
“Eh. Let me take a look.” The old man limped slowly across the floor until he stood next to Cash, peering into the corpse’s face. He stood for a moment, completely silent, and then shouted while slamming his cane on the floor for emphasis, “He’s dead!” Then he turned around and made as if to toddle out of the room.
With a baffled look on his face, Scott said, “Yes, sir. We know he’s dead. You already told us that a few days ago. But you also said he died from a blow to the head. With an axe. Remember?”
Whitmyre stopped moving and peered through his glasses at the detective. “That’s right. An axe. Just like in one of those horror movies. What’s your question, son?”
Paige thought she might have more luck talking to the old guy than Scott. She stepped between the two men. “Mr. Whitmyre, would you take a closer look at the cut on the victim’s head, please?”
The old man sighed deeply and turned back toward Conway, squinting while he gazed at the cut. After a few more minutes of silence, he turned around and looked at Paige, his eyes appearing distorted behind the super thick glasses. “Eh,” he said. “How should I know? I’m not a doctor.”
Shocked, Paige exclaimed, “You’re not?”
“No. I’m an elected official. Was a barber by trade, but now I’m retired. Anyway, cops told me there was an axe by the body, so an axe probably killed him. But I called for an inquest on this case like I always do. They’ll figure it out.”
Paige clenched her hands together to keep her impatience in check. “Mr. Hearse said there was water coming out of the victim’s lungs when he got here. Do you think he could’ve drowned?”
“Well, Mr. Hearse is a very smart man. Has helped me bury a dozen or more friends and family over the years. If he said the man drowned, he probably did. Now, where’s the coffee you promised me for showing up here?”
“I’ll take you up to the waiting room. I’m done here,” Sarah said, snapping her plastic box shut and picking it up. She carried it in one hand and took Mr. Whitmyre’s elbow with the other, leading him out of the room while talking loudly to him about the heat wave.
Scott stood gazing at Cash’s head.
“So, did you know he drowned?” Paige ventured.
Her brother shrugged. “I suspected something was off. The axe came back from forensics clean. No blood or fingerprints. In fact . . .”
Paige waited as her brother seemed to contemplate what to say next.
Finally, he added, “The axe wasn’t even real. It was a movie prop.”
“But he does have a gash on his head,” Paige said, surprised again.
“We’ve been thinking he could have been hit with a rock or something. Hard to say. We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner’s report from LA. There won’t be any more evidence to find at the scene now that the tide’s had a few days to clean everything up. But now . . .”
Paige couldn’t wait again. “Now what?”
“When we found out this afternoon that the axe was a fake, I started wondering if it was really even a homicide. The axe was what led us to believe he had been murdered in the first place—that and Mr. Whitmyre’s determination based on the head wound and blood. If that axe hadn’t been next to him, it might have looked like he passed out, hit his head on the rocks, and got soaked when the tide washed up near him.”
Paige gasped. The idea of an accidental death had never occurred to her. “But now?”
“If he indeed drowned, it was definitely by the hands of a killer. That tide isn’t strong enough to wash a full-grown man up on the beach like that. Someone had to carry him and leave him there after drowning him.”
“And the axe?”
“For now, we have to assume the killer put it there. I can’t imagine why, but it’s a good thing. Otherwise, someone may have gotten away with murder.”
“Has anything broken loose in the case like you hoped it would when you arrested Bucky Grant?”
Scott finally turned away from Cash to look at her. “Not specifically, but in light of this new information about water in Conway’s lungs, I’d say things aren’t looking good for Rake.”
Paige felt a chill. The room they were in must be kept colder than the others, which totally made sense. She glanced at Cash, suddenly ready to be somewhere else. She forced her attention back to Scott. “Why’s that?”
“When we interviewed Flowers, she told us she and Rake had been rehearsing scenes for a play. She said he had a set of fake handcuffs and a fake axe in his hotel room.” He stepped toward her and gave her an intent look. “I’m only telling you this so you’ll be extra careful around Jordan. Don’t fire him,” he cautioned. “That’ll tip him off. But watch your back. And keep him away from sharp tools.”
Paige nodded, but internally, she brushed off Scott’s warning. She wasn’t worried about Jordan Rake.
Paige jumped when the door opened, but it was only Sarah returning. Scott gave her a hug. “You did a great job on Cash, honey.” They turned together to look at the body. “It almost looks like he could sit up and talk to us.”
Paige slapped her forehead. “That’s it!”
Only when Scott and Sarah turned to look at her did she realize she’d said it out loud. “What’s what?” her brother asked.
“Oh, nothing. I just figured out a plot point in my novel that’s been giving me trouble.” Paige was glad when Scott’s phone rang, drawing attention away from her.
After he listened for a minute, he hung up and turned to the women. “I have to go. Some of my guys just picked up Jordan’s stalker, Audrey Lanton.”
They all hurried upstairs and out of the funeral home. Scott hugged Sarah and left in his cruiser. Paige turned to her sister-in-law as she searched through her phone for Lucy’s number. “Can you meet with me and Lucy at the bookshop?”
“Sure. Sounds like Scott’s going to be working late, and I have nothing else to do. Why?”
As she waited for Lucy to answer, Paige grinned. “It’s time for us to talk to the dead.”
Chapter 17
When they got back to Beachside Books, Sarah dropped Paige off, saying she needed to go home and freshen up a little after handling the corpse.
“Okay. Hurry back, though. Lucy should be here in just a while.”
The front door of the bookshop was locked, and she glanced at her watch while she swept her hand through her purse, feeling for the keys. It was about an hour after closing time.
When she got into the store, she found Jordan still there, counting cash behind the checkout counter. “Hey, how’d it go?”
Jordan glanced up at her, finished counting, and said, “No problems. It was pretty busy, though. I actually just managed to get closed. I had to wrap things up because it’s almost time for rehearsal. I need to get going.” He handed her the stack of money in his
hand. “Here you go. I think it’s six hundred dollars.”
Paige accepted the stack of money. “Wow, that’s pretty good gross sales for the day.”
Jordan shook his head as he moved toward the storeroom to leave through the back door. Over his shoulder, he said, “That’s not the day’s money. It’s what I made since you left.”
Paige’s jaw dropped. She took a few steps, following him, wanting to ask more questions, but she heard the heavy back door slam. She didn’t know what she’d ask anyway. How in the world had he made that much cash in just a couple of hours?
The answer came to her on its own. He was Jordan Rake. People, especially women, loved him. And apparently, they were willing to pay for his company while they browsed the bookstore. There was no way she could fire the actor—she needed him if she was going to get out of the financial hole the shop was in. And she needed Scott to hurry up and find the real killer.
Paige went around behind the counter, counted the rest of the money, ran the credit card receipts, and locked everything up. Then she headed upstairs to make a quick sandwich before Sarah and Lucy arrived. When she went back downstairs, still working on the last half of the peanut butter and jelly, she poured some food into Casper’s bowl. “We’re going to have a séance, handsome boy. Wanna join us?”
Casper gave her a look that she couldn’t decipher before digging into his kibble.
Lucy and Sarah entered through the back door together, laughing and talking excitedly. Paige greeted them when they got to the front room of the store. Sarah had definitely freshened up. She’d pinned back one side of her hair and a gorgeous flower sat perfectly over her ear. Paige got closer to admire it. “Wow, that’s gorgeous.” She brushed the delicate bud with her fingertips. “It smells amazing.”
