Chapter 2
“Cappie, calm down. Please,” I begged, backing away from the body of the woman. I’d contaminated the last crime scene I’d been involved with. I wasn’t going to do that again.
But Cappie was already running toward the store in a blur of motion and sound. “Leeeon!”
Taking a deep breath, I rubbed my arms even though it was anything but cold out. I felt quite suddenly very alone as I stared down at this woman I didn’t recognize as a fellow Figger.
That’s not to say she’s not from Fig, though. Coco accuses me of spending too much time at home with Jessica Fletcher and Unsolved Mysteries reruns. So it could be she was from Fig and I was just unaware because I don’t go out enough to please my BFF—or it could be I just can’t see her without my glasses.
That said, I squinted at her face again and still couldn’t place her. I should have brought my glasses with me. But no way I was going to get any closer. Now that I knew there was nothing I could do for her, I kept my distance. Yet, that didn’t keep me from feeling like a million eyes were watching me from the surrounding woods.
Which was foolish. What kind of killer stuck around to see who’d find their victim? For that matter, what kind of killer had a million eyes?
I chuckled to myself before I sobered. Someone was dead in my beloved koi pond. Quite frankly, that stunk for the victim and her family. Still, I kept my guard up as I peered around the perimeter of our yard, looking for any obvious clues other than the cup.
That cup was odd indeed. It was rather Gothic and fancy, with some scrollwork on the face of it and a long, tarnished gold stem. It almost looked like something right out of a Dracula movie. I leaned forward as far as I could without falling to get a better look, but I still couldn’t make out details without my glasses.
“Lemon!” Leon called, his footsteps pounding the grass between the store and the backyard. “Lemon! Are you okay? Answer me!”
“I’m fine!” I hollered back, pulling my bathrobe tighter to my chest.
When he skidded to a halt, he had his phone to his ear, his hazel eyes wide. “Yep, that’s right,” he huffed and nodded his dark head, jamming a hand into the pocket of his jeans before stopping right in front of the body in my koi pond. “She’s behind the Smoke and Petrol. In the backyard.”
Cappie came barreling after him, almost knocking Leon’s slender frame over as he banged right into him. His agitated state said a call to his daughter Noreen might be in order, but I didn’t have time to give that more thought before he was pointing a finger at the body of the woman as his head poked out from behind Leon’s shoulder.
“Look at her neck!” he squawked. “Do ya see? Do ya see it?”
Leon put a protective hand back behind him to hold Cappie at bay, but whatever he’d seen had set him off. “Mr. Waylan, take a deep breath. It’s gonna be okay. The police will be here any second and they’ll take care of it all.” Then he looked to me. “You okay, Lemon?”
But Cappie danced away instead, his clogs kicking up dirt, his greasy ponytail bouncing. “Look at her neck! Are the two of ya blind? Don’t ya see that, boy?”
The sound of sirens cut off Cappie’s rant as doors slammed and more footsteps sounded. Justice Carver, old high school friend and current officer with the Fig Harbor Police, burst around the corner of the house.
Justice stopped just short of Leon, who was trying unsuccessfully to calm Cappie down. His sharp jaw pulsed as he drew in a deep breath, reaching out a hand to grip my arm. “You all right, Lemon?”
Nodding, I glanced up at his handsome face and patted his hand. His skin was ruddy and his cheeks were a blotchy red from running. “I’m fine. She,” I pointed to the woman who looked so peaceful in death, “is not. She’s dead. I checked her pulse and I promise you, Justice, when I realized she was dead, I cleared right out so we wouldn’t have any issues with contamination.”
One of the other officers whistled as he approached the scene. “Holy crow! That’s Abby Hoffer! What the heck happened?”
Hold up. I knew that name. Why did I know that name? I squeezed my temples as though that would help me to remember.
“You mean the lady who has that store with all the herbs and potions to heal what ails you naturally?” Justice asked on a frown.
Officer Able bounced his chestnut-brown head, tucking his hands inside the pockets of his trousers. “Yep, that’s the one. She’s got all sorts of stuff to help whatever you’ve got wrong. She’s into homeopathy. Belinda just got some crazy herb from her the other day to help her sleep.”
Belinda was Officer Able’s wife, and a really nice lady who’d been two years ahead of us in high school. She was a teacher at Fig Harbor elementary nowadays.
“She wouldn’t need something to help her sleep if you weren’t sawing a whole forest of logs every night,” Justice teased before he straightened and pulled out his pad and pen. “Okay, so we have an ID on the victim. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even recognize her all dressed up like that.”
Tucking my hair behind my ears, I nodded my agreement. “Me either. She’s always wearing those flowy caftans and her hair’s usually tied up on top of her head. But then, I’m getting blinder by the day without my glasses.”
Darn. I liked Abby. She’d helped with a poultice made of some herbal concoction for my mother, when she’d had an allergic reaction to a weed she’d run into while gardening that just wouldn’t go away.
“So, tell me what you know, Lemon,” Justice prodded, peering down at me, the sun behind his back making his head glow as though the heavens were shining down on him.
Which is probably exactly how my mother would describe him, if she still wasn’t angry with him over his last murder investigation.
“All I know is, Cappie rang my doorbell at seven this morning. I know because I looked at the clock just before I came downstairs to answer the door. He said someone had fallen asleep in the koi pond. I came to see what he was talking about, and this is what I found.”
Justice pressed his lips into a thin line. “What was Cappie doing out here? It’s a little farther than he usually goes, isn’t it?”
Was that suspicion I heard in his tone? About Cappie? Cappie’s a little out there, but he’d never hurt anyone.
“Hunting down cans for recycling is what he said. You know Cappie, he’s always complaining about the mess the tourists leave. Plus, Ed from the county office sometimes gives him twenty bucks to do cleanup along the road and in the woods. It keeps him busy and out of trouble. You’re not thinking… I mean, you don’t think Cappie would hurt someone, do you?”
The idea made me pause for only a moment. They had thought my seventy-year-old mother might be involved with Myron’s death. It wasn’t a stretch to think they’d consider Cappie a suspect. And then I nixed the idea. That was too implausible even for Justice.
Justice looked me square in the eye, almost making me squirm with his intense gaze. “Not necessarily, but I have to check all angles or I’d be a crummy cop, wouldn’t I?”
“Lemon!” I heard Mom yell from somewhere off in the distance behind me. “Lemon! What in creation’s goin’ on?” She came to a halt right beside me, her tracksuit in a neon orange as bright as the day, and gasped as she peered down at Abby Hoffer’s body before she clucked her tongue. “Please say this isn’t happening again. Not again, Lemon. Not again!”
I winced. I hated to see her afraid, and I knew she was. There wasn’t much May Layne was afraid of, but she’d had the wind knocked out of her sails after Myron’s death.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Mom asked, sorrow in her voice. “Such a dang shame. How awful for her family.” She shook her electric-blue dyed head and clucked her tongue again in remorse.
I tucked Mom’s hand under my arm and nodded, lacing my fingers with hers. “She is, and it is definitely awful.”
“But how?” She twisted the hem of her tracksuit jacket as she shook her head.
“I don’t know just yet. Cappie rang the doorbell and long story short, I came out here to find her in the koi pond.”
“What in all of blazes is happening in Fig these days?”
I wondered that, too. This was the second murder in a matter of months. Our usually crime-free town had seen a lot of death lately. “Maybe Leon should take you back to the house, Mom. Where were you anyway? Isn’t it a little early for hot yoga?”
She grabbed my arm, her blue eyes bright with fear. “I was power walking, Lemon. I’ve been doing it every other morning since the weather broke. Aren’t you always nagging me about keeping my blood pressure down? That’s what I was doin’.”
Astounded, my eyes widened. “You were actually doing something the doctor told you to do? Should I duck? Should I clear a path for the Four Horsemen?” I teased, hoping to move her away from the view of Abby’s body.
“Which begs the question, did you see anything suspicious around this morning, Mrs. Layne? Strange cars? Strange behavior from anyone?” Justice interrupted, his pen poised at the pad.
She swatted him on the arm and gave him a narrow-eyed gaze. “Sure, I saw the bad guy as he was pulling out in his getaway car right after we had coffee and donuts, then we made a date to meet tonight for dinner and a movie. You want me to tell him you’re lookin’ for him?” she quipped with sarcasm.
Justice’s eyes went soft and pleading. “C’mon, Mrs. Layne. Don’t be like that. Let’s be friends again. Please?”
Mom planted her hands on her hips and wrinkled her nose. “There’s all sorts of strange behavior here, pal. It’s tourist season. You know that. Or are you forgetting the guy who stayed at the inn in town who rode his bike to the beach in the buff every day like Fig was some nudist colony? Gravy sakes, don’t you think if I saw something important, I’d tell you, Justice Carver? We’re not going to do this again, are we? How long do you want to stay on my ‘There’ll be no free lunch for you, buddy’ list, anyway?”
Mom, of course, meant the time when Justice thought she might have had something to do with her ex-boyfriend’s death. He hadn’t had a free brisket sandwich since he’d helped the chief arrest her.
And I guess, in all fairness, Justice never really thought she’d had anything to do with the murder, but more he thought she might know something about a detail of Myron’s life that would lead to his killer.
He’d just gone about it in a way that had rubbed Mom all wrong. In my mother’s mind, Figgers are Figgers through and through—we stick together, we stay loyal to one another, and we sure don’t accuse each other of murder. She didn’t want to hear about extenuating circumstances when she’d known most of the force since they were in diapers, Justice included.
I patted my mother’s shoulder. She’d really been giving Justice what for. It was time to let it go. “Aw, give him a break, Mom. It’s been three months now.”
Justice grinned at her, that grin that held all the world’s charm in the mere upward tilt of his lips. The one he hoped to use to finagle his way back into her good graces.
“Are you still angry at me, Mama May? I told you, I was just doing my job.”
She shook a finger at him, but if you knew Mom, really knew her, it was playful. “I’m still something with you, mister. And no. I didn’t see anything this morning. Nothing suspicious, nothing out of the ordinary. I was too busy puttin’ one foot in front of the other and tracking it on my Fitbit.” She held up her wrist for verification.
I was so proud of her for finally listening to her doctor and paying heed to his warning about heart attacks and strokes—which she’s at higher risk for because she’s got high blood pressure. There’s not much I need in this world, but my mom’s definitely one of those things I do need.
Another police car screeched to a halt and Chief Ainsley Burrows plowed out of it, his portly body stalking its way to our backyard. My mother instantly lifted her chin in haughty disdain meant for Chief Burrows’ viewing pleasure.
He was still on her mortal enemy list, too. He’d been the one to suggest Mom come into the station for questioning when Myron was found in our convenience store bathroom, and believe you me, she hadn’t forgotten.
He tipped his head to acknowledge Mom, but his smallish eyes, set above his puffy red cheeks, were serious. “May. Good to see you as always,” he acknowledged.
Mom sucked in her cheeks and turned her back to him, looking to Leon, who had Cappie still behind him. “I’m going to go get Jessica Fletcher and make some coffee for the boys here, Sugarsnap. But not you, Justice Carver. You’ll get no morning kick in the pants from these laboring hands! Leon, you stay here with Cappie. He needs you more than I do.” With that, she turned on her heel and went toward the back of the house, pulling the key from her pocket and jamming it into the lock.
I blew out a breath and gave Justice and Chief Burrows an awkward glance. “She’ll forgive what happened soon enough. Either that or she’ll lose her memory and forget. Whichever comes first.”
Justice laughed, then frowned when Chief Burrows gave him a sharp, beady-eyed glance. He straightened instantly and cleared his throat. “I’ve already questioned Lemon, sir. Cappie’s up next.”
As the small forensics team began to gather and cordon off my koi pond with the ever-familiar yellow tape I’d become so acquainted with in our bathroom after Myron’s murder, Chief Burrows cornered Cappie, who still shivered, hiding behind Leon.
Chief smiled in encouragement. “It’s okay. I just want to ask you some questions. That all right?”
Cappie nodded, gripping Leon’s slender arm, his face stricken.
“So you found the body, Cap?”
“I didn’t know it was a body,” he said, poking his head out from behind Leon, the greasy ropes of his salt-and-pepper hair falling in ropes around his shoulders. “I just thought she was sleepin’. That’s what I told Lemon, too. Thought she was passed out from tyin’ one on at Shrimpie’s or something. Looked like she was sleepin’, is all.”
“Did you see her at Shrimpie’s, Cap? Maybe last night?” I asked gently.
Shrimpie’s was our local bar—or should I say the most popular local bar where most of us in town gathered. There were other, less reputable places, but Shrimpie’s had the best jalapeño poppers and amazing fish and chips, which made it the chosen place to go.
He scrunched up his face at me. “Naw. Ladies like her don’t go there, Lemon.”
I’m not sure what category that left Coco and I in. We went to Shrimpie’s all the time.
Chief Burrows nodded his balding head as though he were listening intently before he asked, “Why were you out here, Cappie? Kinda far from home, isn’t it, buddy?”
Cappie’s suspicious eyes, surrounded by tiny lines of age, began to dart here and there. “I was collecting recyclables for Ed. I do it all the time, especially when it’s busy like it’s been lately with the tourist season startin’ up. All those dang kids, throwin’ things outta their cars like this is one big dump. Gotta get cleaned up, right? They got no respect for our dang town!”
“So that’s how you found Miss Hoffer? You were out here in the woods, looking for recyclables?” Chief Burrows asked again, as though he didn’t believe Cappie.
It should be said, our convenience store is just outside of town, surrounded by woods and with a single road between us and the shops in Fig Harbor. Like I mentioned, it’s a bit of a walk, but I could see Cappie doing it for some pocket money.
“Yep. That’s what I said.” Cappie stood by his earlier statement, his lips clamping shut, but he stayed tucked safely behind Leon.
The chief eyeballed the scene where Abby lay as the forensics team took samples and bagged things and the koi pond bubbled. “Ever seen a cup like that, Cappie?” the chief asked.
I, too, wondered about the cup, and I really wished I had my glasses so I could examine it more clearly.
Cappie was growing antsier by the second, as depicted by his feet as they began doing that staccato dance they did when he wanted away from a situation that made him feel uncomfortable. “Nope. But I tell ya what I have seen!” His voice rose, setting off alarm bells with all of us.
“Cappie, it’s okay,” I soothed, reaching for his hand, but he scooted away and pointed at Abby’s body as though he were going to explode.
“You see it, don’t you? Don’t you see?” he shrieked.
“See what, Cappie?” Justice asked.
Chief Burrows, clearly realizing the situation was getting Cappie all riled up, attempted a calm approach. “Cappie, take it easy. Something bad happened here. We need to find out what. But it doesn’t help when you’re jumping around like a cat on a hot tin roof.”
“You bet somethin’ bad happened here! Don’t you see her neck, Chief? Look at her neck!”
I squinted, hoping to see what Cappie saw, but there was no way that was going to happen without my glasses. “Cappie! What do you see?” I demanded.
“Do I gotta do your work for ya? We been standing around here, jabberjawin’ all this time, but you didn’t look at her neck! Look at her neck, Chief. Just take a look! See them marks on it? I know how she died! You betcha I do!”
“Cappie, what are you going on about? Hold still so we can talk about this!” Chief Burrows ordered, now clearly out of patience.
“Aw, heck no! I’m not stickin’ around here, Boss. I’m goin’ home to make me a cross outta some garlic before nightfall. That’s what I’m gonna do, because those bite marks on her neck—those are vampire bites! We got a bloodsucking night dweller right here in Fig!”