2 On the Nickel (3 page)

I stilled. “You going home like Britt ordered?”

“Hell no.” Jonette snorted. “Detective
Dumb-as-Dirt can’t tell me what to do. I’m headed to the church. Aren’t you?”

I managed a breath and climbed in
the cart. “You bet. But you drive. I can’t think straight.”

Chapter 2

Jonette zoomed out of the golf course parking lot, turning
right in front of a speeding pickup truck. My life flashed before my eyes.
Images roared through my head in horrifying succession.

A scream ripped from my throat. I
braced for impact. The blue truck honked loudly and swerved onto the grassy
shoulder to avoid hitting us.

She glanced at me over the top of her leopard-print sunglasses, her expression the picture of innocence. Her
right hand fluttered through the air. “What?”

My fingers were embedded in the
arm rest. “Get us there in one piece.”

Jonette grinned. “He missed me by a mile.”

I glared at her. “He missed us by
inches. Pay attention.”

“Don’t be such a wet blanket,
Clee.” Jonette’s hands came off the wheel to emphasize her point. The car
veered toward the fog line. “I’m a good driver.”

My stomach lurched. “You’re an
accident waiting to happen. If that truck hit us, we’d be goners. Not even the Jaws
of Life could save us.”

“Hey. This is a fine car.”
Jonette patted the dusty dashboard. “Don’t you go knocking my two-thousand-dollar
car. It gets me where I need to go.”

I glanced at the stalled traffic
before us, and my heart stuttered. “Slow down. That van up ahead is turning.”

She slammed on brakes at the last
minute and stopped short. Behind us, tires squealed on the pavement. If we got hit from behind, we’d need firemen to put out the flames.

“I thought you’d be less bitchy
once you got laid on a regular basis,” Jonette said. “You ought to ask your
doctor about a prescription mood enhancer.”

My blood pressure spiked. Jonette
had no right to criticize my moods. Sure, I was wound tight, but I had good
reason. Living with two teenaged daughters, a pregnant dog, and an independent
woman would wind anyone tight.

“You’re driving like a maniac.
Cool it,” I said. “Charla will be driving on this road in a few months. Do I
have to ground you every time she gets behind the wheel?”

Jonette’s lower lip jutted, but
her hands stayed put on the steering wheel. “I’d never do anything to hurt
Charla. You know that.”

A mail truck pulled off to insert
letters in a roadside mailbox. Jonette accelerated around the mail truck,
scooting over the double yellow lines into the lane of oncoming traffic. My
feet jammed into the floorboard. I closed my eyes and prayed aloud. “Dear God.”

She veered back into our lane. My
eyes popped open. “I’d like to live long enough to see my children graduate
from college.”

“We’re almost there, ’fraidy cat.”

Jonette parked on Main Street a
block away from the church. I pried my fingers off the vinyl armrest and
stumbled from her death trap of a car. My heart raced faster than an Olympic
athlete’s.

I rolled my eyes at my friend. “You
ever put me through that again and I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

She tossed her sunglasses on the
dash and flashed me a megawatt smile. “Promises, promises.”

I turned my attention to the imposing
stone church. What had happened in the shadow of the tallest steeple in town?
Please, dear Lord, don’t let Mama be in the middle of this. My uneasy feeling
grew at the sight of the two uniformed officers guarding the driveway entrance
to Trinity Episcopal.

Jonette wormed her way through
the crowd as I held on to her car and tried to steady my racing heart. Britt
was nowhere in sight. I spotted my elderly next-door neighbor, Mrs. Waltz,
headed my way. She was eighty going on a hundred and ten, with her gray bun
coiled tightly on top of her head. Her pale green polyester slacks outfit
reminded me of pistachio ice cream. “What’s going on?” I asked, sounding calmer than I felt.

“Car wreck in the church lot.”
Mrs. Waltz leaned heavily on her wheeled walker. Her breath came in short huffs. “What happened to your hair?”

“Golf hat.” I ruffled my limp
hair self-consciously. I should have left my hat on. “Was anyone hurt in the
crash?”

From attending this church all my
life, I knew the layout of the rear parking lot intimately. If there was a car
wreck back there, it couldn’t be too serious. There was only one place, the
circular loop connecting the back paved rectangle to Main Street, where there
was any room to go faster than a crawl. While I was thinking this, a part of me was also thinking, Please don’t let Mama be back there.

“Don’t know, and I’m not waiting
to find out.” Mrs. Waltz maneuvered her walker around the island I made on the
sidewalk. She muscled it over a bit of grass and back onto the concrete. “Got
to keep moving or my joints will seize up.”

“Nice seeing you,” I called to
her back.

Jonette returned, looking
puzzled.

“Well?” I asked.

“I didn’t get much. No one is
allowed on the church property.” Jonette did an empty-handed gesture. “I spoke
to two of your mother’s friends. Muriel and Francine were working in the church
office when the police evacuated the building. Muriel is miffed because they
won’t release her car from the rear parking lot.”

That shaky feeling in my knees
returned. The hair on the back of my neck stirred. “Muriel is always miffed
about something. She’ll get over it. Did you see Mama?”

Jonette shook her head. “She’s
not here. Muriel and Francine said Delilah stood them up today.”

Relief flashed through me, closely followed by annoyance. “Where is she?” I hoped she wasn’t over at Erica Hodges’
house beheading Erica’s chrysanthemums again. Or over at the newspaper
spreading rumors about Erica to the gossip columnist.

“I asked her friends. They don’t
know where she is.”

Another thought broadsided me. What if Mama hadn’t made it because she’d been in the parking lot accident? I shivered. “Is
her car parked back there?”

Jonette patted my shoulder. “Chill,
Cleo. Delilah’s not here. That’s good news. Let’s not invite trouble.”

“You’re right.” No need to invite
trouble; it came whether you wanted it or not. But I couldn’t shut down my
worry machine. Dread crept from my bones into my blood.

I shook my head to clear it. “Why
is our entire police force here?”

Jonette shrugged. “Don’t have a
clue.”

“Mrs. Waltz said it was a car
wreck. Did you hear anything about a collision?”

“Not a peep.”

The stone front of the church
looked cold and forbidding, no easy feat in the heat of August. It’s normally
welcoming red double doors reminded me of spilled blood. My knees wobbled, and
I willed them to hold me. Don’t borrow trouble, I reminded myself.

Except for the driveway to the
rear parking lot, the structure of Trinity Episcopal filled the block on the
Main Street side. It was maddening to be so close and still be clueless. “Let’s
sneak around back.”

Jonette’s eyes widened knowingly.
“Sounds like a plan.”

We skirted the edge of the crowd,
past the dense tree line that blocked the church parking lot from full view of
Linden Avenue. We continued around the block on Schoolhouse Road until we came to the thicket.

Every Trinity Episcopal kid knew
their way through the thicket. Navigating the dense foliage was a rite of
passage like baptism and communion. The reward for such courage was an
unobserved, secret hiding place with a clear view of the church back yard. The
thicket was the ultimate place to spy on the church ladies who hid Easter eggs.

I led the way through the narrow
kid-sized passageway, swatting drooping branches and taut spider webs away from
my face. A large black spider dangled in front of my face, and I choked back a
scream.

“Are we there yet?” Jonette
whispered in my ear.

“Shh,” I cautioned. “Britt will
skin us alive if he finds out we’re spying on him.”

My nerves wouldn’t settle. If
anything, they were worse back here. My numb fingers and toes barely worked. If
Jonette told anyone how crazy I was, I’d deny it with every breath in me.

When there was only one row of
bushes between me and the Trinity grounds proper, I raised a hand to halt our
forward progress.

Jonette squatted beside me, her amber-flecked eyes sparkling with excitement. I rationalized our position. We weren’t
being nosy. We were gathering information. Perfectly logical.

I parted the branches, and the
church lot came into view. A knot of police officers stood twenty feet away.
Their grim faces and hushed voices added to my unease. The entire parking lot
was decked out with yellow police tape.

Oh no.

Crime-scene tape.

They didn’t put that up for
fender benders. My investigative nausea had been right on target. A crime had been committed back here. But what crime?

This area was off limits. It
would look bad if we got caught. So we wouldn’t get caught.

I studied the length of the
parking lot. No wrecked cars in sight. There was, however, a heavily draped
mound just off the pavement near the paved back loop. With this many cops
called to the premises, that had to be a body under the tarp.

Not another one.

“Oh God,” I said under my breath.
My heart stilled as memories of finding Dudley Davis dead on the golf course
flashed through my head. Sightless eyes, rigid limbs, dark bloodstains, and an
odor that stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t need to see another dead body. I
still had nightmares from the last one.

“What? Let me see.” Jonette
pushed past me for a better view, throwing me off balance and sending me sprawling through the bushes onto the gravel covering this overflow section of the parking
lot. Dismay choked the breath out of me as I flew through the air.

This was going to hurt.

My arms, which I instinctively
raised in protection, scraped along the sharp, spiky edges of the trimmed branches as I sailed through the vegetative cover. Gravel rocks sliced my face, arms, and
knees. My teeth crunched the gritty gravel dust. I tried to scramble back to
safety, but I wasn’t fast enough.

A uniformed officer detained me. Officer Eddie Wagner. I’d babysat for him twenty years ago. Below his mirrored sunglasses,
his lips pressed into a thin line. He hoisted me to my feet and clamped my
hands behind my back. “Detective Radcliffe,” he said. “A present for you.”

It felt like I was standing on
roller skates, my knees were trembling so badly. Looking down, I discovered my
navy shorts had split from mid hip to hem on the right seam during my fall.
Lacy black underpants were visible, along with a swath of blinding white skin
that the sun never saw.

Mortification lit my cheeks.

This couldn’t be happening to me.

I was a sensible woman.

A pillar of the community.

I did not wear black undies as a
rule, and I never flashed my privates in public. I was a good role model for my
kids.

I don’t know who groaned the
loudest, me or Britt Radcliffe.

Britt stared into the woods. “Come out of there, Jonette, or I’m coming in after you.”

Jonette squirmed through the hole I’d made. She shot me a wry smile. “Oops.”

Oops indeed.

My jaw clenched. Oops was for
dropping a penny when you counted out change at the supermarket. Oops was for
putting a run in your stockings. Oops didn’t cover falling into an area
crawling with cops.

“What the hell are you two doing
in my accident scene?” Britt asked.

Air whooshed from my lung. My gut
had been right on the money. Being right sucked.

My physical equilibrium waffled.
Officer Wagner strengthened his grip on my arms. I fought the encroaching mental fog. I needed a clear head to talk myself out of this mess. Although my mouth was so dry
I didn’t think I could even croak a word out right now.

Jonette recoiled from Britt’s
question. “I didn’t do it.” She raised both hands in surrender. “Cleo had to
see what was going on. I followed her. That’s all.”

I groaned again. “Thanks a lot,
Jonette.”

“Didn’t I tell you to go home and stay out of trouble?” Britt’s angry gaze locked on me.

I nodded my head and hoped for
the best.

“Then why are you here?” he
growled.

“I needed to know what all the
fuss was about.”

“Why didn’t you wait and read it
in tomorrow’s paper like the rest of the world? Why contaminate my crime scene?”

“Cut us some slack here,
beefcake, and call your muscle-bound friend off of Cleo.” Jonette dug her index
finger into Britt’s chest. “It was an accident that Cleo fell through the
thicket.”

Tendons strained in Britt’s neck.
Clearly, our fate hinged on his goodwill. “If you let us go, we promise to stay
out of your way,” I said. “We didn’t mean to intrude.”

Britt considered my impassioned
plea for a second. Then, he growled at the officers behind us. “Cuff ’em.”

I gasped as metal bands secured my wrists. My face itched, and a stray strand of hair tangled in my
eyelashes. Could I do anything about it?

No.

Between the unyielding cuffs
around my wrists and the beefy hand gripping my forearm, I was pretty well
stuck. I blinked away my tears. We’d pushed Britt too far, and he’d snapped. Brand-new
problems tumbled through my head.

How much jail time would I serve for contaminating his crime scene? Would I have to submit to a body cavity
search? I quaked with fear.

Britt caught Wagner’s eye. “Escort
them out the front way, Wagner. Make sure everyone sees them in handcuffs
before you turn them loose.” Britt turned to me, his granite face cold and
harsh. His sharp teeth flashed before my eyes. “If you do this again, Cleo, I
will arrest you for obstructing a police investigation. Consider this your one
and only warning.”

Wagner shoved us forward.

I stumbled into motion, doing my
best not to inhale the thick miasma of death clogging the parking lot. Like a
sponge, my senses registered each environmental cue, from the pungent smell of crushed leaves in my hair to the trickle of blood down my leg to the heat boiling up
from the asphalt pavement.