BM03 - Crazy Little Thing Called Dead (2 page)

“Sure. Why not? It’s not locked, but yell when you go in or Jeremy might come down in his underwear and embarrass himself.”

“Thanks Meg.” Claire leaned over and gave Meg a hug. “Thank God I’ve got my emergency make-over bag in the car.”

Claire waved as she went out the door, and I stood up, tossing a couple of dollars on the table.

“Coming?”

“Go ahead up,” Meg said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

***

I climbed up to our second floor office. I was balancing my take-out coffee and raspberry chocolate chip muffin—I never could eat just one muffin. It was obvious Meg had already been up, the door was unlocked and the radio was on. I opened the window, sat down and powered up my computer. I set aside the notes for the story I had been planning to run and started typing, a thrill of glee running through me.

Deirdre, our paste-up tech, came in and shut the door softly. “Hey Bree. I won’t chat; I know you’re trying to finish that article.”

“Actually, we’ve got a new front page. Large photo front and center as soon as Randy sends it over. I’m working on the article now.”

Good to her word, Deirdre powered up her computer and worked in silence. Deirdre looked meek, mild and slightly intimidated by life. She kept her strawberry hair clipped back and wore knee length skirts and twin sets. She also didn’t say much, but she had the publishing software beaten into submission and when she did talk you never knew what would come out of her mouth. She knew highly technical computer terminology. And she could, and did, cuss worse than any road crew guy I knew.

I’d gotten down everything I could remember when Meg came flying in the door.

“There’s a car in the lake! I heard it on the scanner.” She was gesturing at me with her hands. “Quick! Go now and you’ll be there when they pull it out.”

“A car in the lake?” I was confused. I had a murder to investigate and Meg was waving her hands in the air over a submerged car.

“Call Randy and go. No. I’ll call Randy, you go. Now!” She was practically jumping up and down.

“You call the shots,” I said, and got out of my chair, wondering if she’d had a blow to the head.

“Bree! It’s out-of-state plates! It could be the murderer’s car. Go, go, go!” Meg was practically vibrating with energy.

“You think the car is connected to the murder? That’s kind of a stretch don’t you think?” I would have plopped myself back in the chair, but it would have given her a coronary.

“There’s stuff floating above it. Diapers, ammunition!” Meg opened the door. “For the love of Pete, go!

I went, picking up my smallest dog, Annie the Beagle cross, on the way, even though I couldn’t see how ammunition and diapers could be floating above the car. At least those objects made sense to me in relation to the murder.

Twenty minutes later, I was in Barnard, standing with my dog in a small crowd of people gazing into the lake. Sure enough, there was a car, and floating along the bank were a couple of empty boxes of shells and an empty bag of Ducky Diapers. Hot damn. I walked along the spillway and looked at the other bits of detritus floating there. Fast food wrappers, and napkins mostly. Nothing that looked relevant.

Randy showed up and went to work taking pictures. I left him to it, and sat on a bench with Beagle Annie at my knee waiting for the tow truck to show up. State Troopers were keeping an eye on the onlookers and I was scratching Beagle Annie’s head, telling her that they should send the children home before the tow truck got there, because God knew what might be in the car. Sure enough, when the wrecker finally showed up the Troopers moved everyone across the street. They let Randy and I stay—it was the advantage of being with the press.

There was some argument about who was going into the water to hook up the car. The truck driver felt that there should be a dive crew there to take care of it, and the Troopers hadn’t called and didn’t want to wait for them to show up. In the end, one of the Troopers pulled off everything but his pants and walked the cable out as far as he could. He swam over the vehicle and dove down. I was antsy. The thought of having to hold your breath while trying to hook a cable to a submerged car gave me palpitations. I let out my breath when he surfaced and gave the winch operator the thumbs up. The winch pulled in the slack and the line went taut. The noise was deafening and I held my hands over Beagle Annie’s ears as a white Ford Taurus with New York plates was pulled up and sucked out of the water. When all four tires were on the bank and the car was unhooked those of us who could gathered close, while the civilians were kept on the other side of the road.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the worst as a Trooper opened the door and the lake rushed out. No bodies, thank God. Randy was moving around taking pictures through the windows, but there wasn’t much to see. There were some wrappers that hadn’t floated out, and a river rock on the gas pedal. Someone popped the trunk and we looked in at a couple of suitcases, correction, a suitcase and a rifle case - the Trooper had popped it open and it wasn’t even damp. I immediately thought of fingerprints. The rifle case was snapped shut and tagged, along with the suitcase. The car was pulled up onto the tow truck and the show was over.

I walked over to the Trooper who had toweled off and redressed, he was tying his regulation black shoes and hadn’t left with the other cruisers. Beagle Annie stuck out her ears like flags, making her look like she knew something we didn’t, and focused her black rimmed eyes on the Trooper.

“Did you get a look at that rifle?” I asked him.

He looked up at me. “Yeah. Why?” He finished with his laces and stood, he was a good ten inches taller than me.

“There was something different about it, I wondered if you knew what it was?” I crossed my fingers that he’d talk to me; otherwise I’d be searching Google images all afternoon.

“It had a silencer on it.” He reached down to pat Beagle Annie and then straightened to put his hat on his head. She looked a little put out and I could tell she’d been just about to roll onto her back for a tummy rub.

“Isn’t that kind of unusual?” I had no idea if it was unusual or not, but I was hoping he’d tell me.

“Not much use for a silencer when you’re hunting in the woods. Take care.” He touched the brim of his hat and headed for his cruiser.

Where do you hunt if you aren’t hunting in the woods? The city? There’s only one kind of prey in the city. If you don’t count the rats.

***

I was at my desk with Beagle Annie under my feet, trying to figure out the connection between the murder and the car when Lucy Howe blew in the door. Beagle Annie growled low in her throat and my bitch-o-meter kicked on, but she wrote for the paper on occasion so I did my best to play nice.

“Lucy.” I smiled but my face felt like plastic.

“Bree.” Lucy didn’t look any more sincere than I felt. “I hear there was a murder in town. Care to share?”

“News travels fast.” Way faster than I anticipated. Beagle Annie growled again, I hushed her.

“It pays to have connections. Randy told me.” She smiled her superior
I know how to get information out of people and you don’t
smile.

“I didn’t know you and Randy were close.”
And poor Randy if you are.

“I extended him a few favors, so he extends me some.” She shrugged.

Ew
.

“We already have a front page spread on the dead guy, sorry,” I said.

“It’s not for Meg. I’ve been engaged by the Valley News. They liked the idea of a local reporting on the story. And since The Star is a weekly and the News is a daily I’m going to be able to report more, sooner.” She left off the
nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah
, but it was implied.

“You’d better talk to Tom then. I’m sure you don’t want second hand news from me.” I turned back to my keyboard. Beagle Annie’s low growls were vibrating on my foot, but Lucy couldn’t hear her.

“You found the body. Nothing second hand about that. But if you won’t talk I can always go see Claire. I need a haircut.” She turned and left, the stink of her narcissistic superiority following after her.

I picked up the phone.

“Claire. Lucy Howe is headed your way. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t say much.” I was tapping my fingers on my desk top, wondering how to beat Lucy at her own game.

“She was here an hour ago. I didn’t tell her anything she wouldn’t have heard on the street.”

I should have known
. I would have preferred that she not say anything at all, but I guess that was asking a little too much.

Next I called Randy to warn him that Lucy might show up, but I was too late there too, he’d given her a flash drive and I was willing to bet she wasn’t bringing that flash drive to me. I’d be surprised if they didn’t show up in tomorrow’s big daily paper.

“Then get it back! Those are my pictures.”

“But Lucy said…”

“Lucy didn’t hire you, I did!”

I slammed down the phone. “Fuck!” I put all the suppressed rage I could muster into the word.

Deirdre walked into the office while I was swearing.

“Sorry, Deirdre.”

“I take it things aren’t going well.”

“I’ve got it handled.”
I hope
.

I got back on the phone to the Barracks and started nagging Steve Leftsky for information on the Murder.

“Didn’t I just talk to you? I’ve got work to do.” I thought he was kidding around, but he could have been truly exasperated with me. I couldn’t tell over the phone.

“It’s been at least twenty-four hours. I’m working on the murder, now. Different article, different legal pad, different phone call. Even a different pen in my mouth. And I was giving you a break, so spill.” I was trying to train myself to keep my pen out of my mouth when I was on the phone, but it wasn’t working out for me.

“Bree, I just don’t know anything.”

“Was there ID?” I asked, wondering if Tom had asked the guys to keep their mouths closed.

“Look. There was nothing. We’ve got a dead John Doe dressed in mismatched clothes with a hole in his chest. That’s it. Nothing else.”

“But he wasn’t killed at the salon, was he?” That was pretty clear from the lack of blood but I wanted to hear him say it. I’d read
Investigative Reporting for Dummies
.

“You were there, what did you see?”

“No blood.” I thought of the soggy red diaper and shuddered.

“You can deduce something from that can’t you?

I hung up and wrote the piece, which didn’t take long because there wasn’t anything to say except
Hey everybody, there was a dead guy at Planet Hair
! I zapped it over to Deirdre for her to set and started thinking about next week’s article before coming to my senses. “We’d better get the paper put together.”

Chapter Two

The paper went together easily, so while I liked to help, I wasn’t really necessary. I’d been the paste-up tech from the beginning of the paper until Meg promoted me to reporter, but I’d never been as good at it as Deirdre. She was the queen. Consequently, we were done way before our midnight deadline, and I was driving home in time to feed my animals. I was still fuming over Lucy Howe. I wanted to break this story. Not the tiny piece that would appear in our paper tomorrow, but the whole shebang. An article like that, done right, could get me noticed, give me options. I’m not saying I would leave my little town to work at a big city daily, but it would be nice to have the choice.

My truck made interesting noises all the way home and blew out black smoke when I pulled into the drive and turned it off. Damn. I was going to have to take a second job again. I sighed and let Beagle Annie out. The rest of my gaggle of dogs ran around the house to meet me. Annabelle Cat was stretched out on the porch railing, pretending it wasn’t taking every ounce of her considerable concentration to keep her from falling off. I was up to five dogs, including Beans. Technically, Beans was not my dog. He belonged to my last boyfriend, Beau. The conversation we’d had when we broke up went something like this:

Me: “You can’t expect me to continue to take care of Beans when you go out of town. He’s your responsibility.”
Damn it!

Beau: “I only took that dog because you wanted him.”

Me: “I didn’t ask you to take in Beans.”

Beau: “But I knew you wanted him.”

Me: “I already have four dogs. I did not need another one. I told you that. Beans is your dog and you need to take care of him.”
When you break up with a girl you need to have some common courtesy and not keep showing up at her house.

Beau: “Everything would have been fine if you hadn’t turned into that woman that’s always finding dead bodies.”

Me: “What are you talking about?”
You think I want to find dead bodies?

Beau: “You know, that girl in the books who’s always finding dead bodies.”

Me: “You’re changing the subject.”

Beau: “Obviously.”

Me: “I am not that dead body girl.”
Oh God. I’m the dead body girl
.

And then, the first time he had to go out of town, he’d left Beans home alone at his house with food and water and called me from the plane to ask if I’d check in on the little Chihuahua. Beans had been living with me ever since. And I’d gotten him a tag with my address in case he got lost. But he was
not
my dog. However, I treated him like my dog. It only seemed fair.

The dogs followed me into the barn to feed my pony and Max’s horses. Max is a supposed-to-be-retired farmer who lives up the hill from me with his wife, Mary. Only he hates not working. He keeps his horses on my farm and we trade off chores. He keeps an eye on the farm when I’m at work, and if the animals get out he rounds them up. It’s a good partnership and I don’t ever come home to discover my animals in someone else’s vegetable garden. I can’t tell you how comforting that is.

I fed the bunnies and noticed the chickens’ grain was getting low. I really should be charging my neighbors for eggs, organic feed is not cheap. Stripes, the skunk that thought he was a dog, was hanging around outside the chicken fence.