Chapter 5
As Detective Moore was being scooped off the floor and half-carried, half-walked out the door by Officer Nelson, who’d shoved a tissue in his hand to thwart his bloody nose, Trixie approached Coop with a calmness I don’t know I would have possessed, were I in her shoes.
Sandwich had arrived, and he was busy getting his cuffs out to secure Coop, who had to be pulled off Detective Moore by no less than three officers.
She’d howled up a storm as they’d attempted to pull her from his face until Trixie ordered her to stop. Everything went silent with Coop from that moment on.
“Coop? What the hay happened? Do you have any idea how bad this is?” Trixie asked on a ragged breath, her soft, comforting voice rising just a hair in her anguish.
She looked harried, making my heart clench tighter. She’d pulled her knit cap off to reveal a streak of blue in her hair I hadn’t seen earlier, the shiny strands tousled from her running her fingers through them, and her eyes were positively haunted.
Coop’s face crumpled, as if disappointing Trixie would bring about her very own emotional apocalypse. “He was going to hurt Stevie. I know it. I felt it. He was very, very angry with Stevie Cartwright. I like her. I couldn’t let him do that, Trixie! It’s not nice or polite at all. When a lady asks you to back up, you back up,” Coop vehemently insisted, her stance on how a man should treat a lady clear and firm. “You said so yourself. You must always treat everyone with respect.”
Was Trixie Coop’s life coach? It appeared as though she was always coaching Coop on how to react to situations. I just wasn’t getting the connection between them—the thread that tethered them together. What had brought these two very different women together and made them open, of all things, a tattoo shop?
And what did she mean by she felt Detective Moore was going to hurt me? The hackles on the back of my neck rose. Was she an intuit? Empath? I’d known a couple in my time.
No. That was crazy. Wasn’t it? What were the chances someone with abilities like that would land in Eb Falls?
Trixie was beside herself as Sandwich cuffed Coop and directed her to sit in the chair I’d just vacated. “I’m going to ask you nicely to sit and remain calm, Miss…?”
“Coop. It’s just Coop,” Trixie provided as she put a protective hand on Coop’s shoulder.
Sandwich nodded, his broad, normally cheerful face and typically happy demeanor suddenly quite serious. He looked down at Coop, who’d done as he’d asked. “Okay, Coop it is. Can I count on you to stay seated for me?”
She nodded solemnly, but she didn’t speak, making my heart ache. Her confusion was killing me, mostly due to the fact that I didn’t understand it, but she’d attacked Detective Moore in my defense.
In my book, that meant something, as misguided and strange as it appeared. She’d been looking out for me. I believed that much, even if I was still on the fence about whether she’d hurt Hank Morrison. Clearly, she was capable of serious bodily harm, and that didn’t work in her favor.
“Will you come with me, Miss Lavender?” Sandwich asked, motioning she should head away from Coop.
Trixie looked to me, her eyes filled with tangible fear, but I quickly reassured her. “You go with Sandwich. Um, I mean Officer Paddington. He’s a good guy. Swear it. I’ll look after Coop. Promise, she’s in good hands.” I gave her an encouraging smile, even though I was feeling anything but encouraging.
But it was enough to set her into motion. Twisting her hands together, Trixie squared her shoulders and nodded. “Thanks, Stevie.”
I knelt down in front of Coop, putting a hand on her knee and looking up into her ethereal face curtained by her glorious hair. “Coop, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Am I in trouble?” she asked, and the first hint she was afraid showed up in the way of her lower lip trembling. “I didn’t mean to make trouble, Stevie Cartwright. I’m supposed to lay low, but hitting the angry detective isn’t laying low, is it?”
Oh, she was in so much trouble, and as I tried to understand her, and to understand how she’d managed to throw a grown man twice her size down on the ground as though he were a limp fish, I tempered my words.
Squeezing her knee, I patted it and said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Coop. But I can assure you, I’ll tell Detective Moore’s superiors he was becoming quite cross with us and using unnecessary force to get answers from you. But forget that for a second. Will you promise me something?”
“I don’t know. Promises are tricky things,” she answered honestly, her green eyes unsure.
This just kept getting odder by the minute, but I pushed forward anyway. “Well, this is an easy promise. Don’t say anything more to the police until we can get you someone to make sure your rights are protected, okay? That’s what a lawyer does. Promise me right now, Coop.”
Looking directly at me, her eyes honed in on my face with such depth in them, such honesty, I almost lost my breath. “I promise.”
“Repeat it,” I demanded. “I promise not to answer any more questions from anyone unless it’s Stevie or Trixie until I have a lawyer present.”
She repeated my words verbatim, satisfying me just before Melba came to take her to the station for further questioning. As I followed them toward the door, Melba holding her arm with care, I had already begun reaching for my phone seconds before Win suggested I call our lawyer, Luis Lipton.
“We can’t allow this, Stephania!” Win whisper-yelled in my ear. “Get Luis on the phone posthaste.”
“On it,” I muttered under my breath, my eyes swerving to Coop being led away.
The way Coop’s head hung between her shoulders, her chin almost touching her chest, the way her spine nearly collapsed as she walked with Melba as her guide, made my heart writhe painfully.
And I had no explanation for why. I only knew she suddenly looked like a vulnerable child, lost and alone, and I couldn’t bear that.
I made my way out of the store and onto the snowy sidewalk, stopping to see if there was anything I could do for Trixie, who wasn’t letting Coop very far out of her sight as she was placed in the police car. All while everyone stood around and gawked.
I loved my Eb Fall folks, but sometimes they were too dang nosy for their own good.
First, I glared at my neighbors and fellow shop owners under the gloomy glare of the sky. “Give the girl a break, lookieloos, would you? Nothing to see here. Go on about your business.” I shooed them with my icy hands as they began to scatter.
Forrest put a hand under my elbow and looked down at me, his eyes full of concern, his handsome face sharp and angular. “You okay, Stevie?”
I patted his arm. “I’m fine, Forrest. Say hello to Chester for me, would you? Tell him I can’t wait to see our hydrangeas this year.” Then I reached for Trixie’s arm, pulling my jacket off as I did. “Take this. You’ll freeze to death if you don’t.”
Her eyes began to water as the snow pelted her porcelain skin and she took the jacket from me. “You’ve been very kind, Stevie,” she said on a hoarse, tear-filled whisper. “Thank you.”
“Tell me what I can do, Trixie. How can I help right now? Do you want me to come to the station and stay with you while they question Coop?”
“No!” she fairly hissed. But then she straightened and visibly regained her attempt at composure. “No, thank you. I don’t want you to get any further involved, Stevie. Please. I’m sorry you’re involved in this mess to begin with.”
Without thinking, I ignored her plea. “Well, I’m coming anyway. So how do you like them apples?” I zipped the jacket, tucking it around her neck, and dug in my purse for my keys, beeping my car open. “But first, do you even have a way to get to the police station?”
She swallowed hard, her throat working up and down before she spoke. “I don’t know…” Her eyes wandered to Coop in the back of the police cruiser, totally distracting her as she placed a hand on the frosty back window to let her friend know she was there.
“Trixie!” I yelped on a shiver. “Stay here with me and answer the question. Do you have a car to get to the police station? If not, I’ll drive you.”
She pointed to the parking lot by the food trucks, as yet unplowed, and nodded. “Yes. I have a car. It’s…” she gulped in more air. “It’s the rust bucket of a Caddy.”
My eyes veered to the parking lot, where I saw an old, beat-up white Caddy, maybe a late-seventies model, with more rust than I’d ever seen on a car still capable of running. “Does it work?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly in motion as she pulled a pair of keys from her jeans, her brow furrowed. “Thank you again, Stevie. But I really have to go now.” And then she was off and running across the road to get to her beat-up car.
I ran to mine, desperate to get inside and turn up the heat. As I pulled the driver’s side door open, I jumped inside and set my purse on the passenger seat, my teeth chattering violently.
Putting my hands on the steering wheel, I leaned forward, resting my head on my icy digits, tears springing to my eyes. “What a mess,” I groaned on a sniffle.
“Indeed, Dove. Now let’s talk this out, yes?”
“Dah, malutka. Let us put our brains together. I have many questions.”
“Heads, good man. It’s put our heads together, and we must do exactly that. Surely, amongst the three of us, we can figure this out.”
I sure hoped so because seeing Coop and Trixie like that had torn me up.
Bel climbed up the interior of my purse and poked his precious head out with a shiver. “Something ain’t right about that Coop, Boss.”
“Explain, Bel,” I prompted, scooping him up in the palm of my hand to tuck him into my neck, rubbing my cheek against his fur to ward off the swirl of emotions I was trying to parse.
He burrowed into my hair and shivered. “Well, besides the fact that she’s unnaturally gorgeous, I just have a feeling. And I don’t mean she’s off as in her rocker, she’s just not like everybody else, and I can’t explain why I think that aside from the fact that she’s as strong as Hercules. But I know I’m right.”
“Yes! Yes, mate!” Win praised Bel. “That’s exactly how I feel as well. The impression I get of the fair Coop is she doesn’t understand social cues and body language. Thus, her blatant honesty becomes abrasive to the rest of us who hide behind propriety. And she is unnaturally strong. I almost cheered when she hurled Detective Moore across the room. He deserved no less for his appalling behavior. Though, she’s paid a pretty price for doing such.”
I thought about Coop’s insane strength for a moment while the heat gushed from the vents in my car. True, she was unnaturally strong. But the kind of strength she exhibited didn’t come from doing P90-X.
Yet, that fact didn’t faze me as much as others. “Do you think what Trixie said is true? That Coop doesn’t have it in her to lie?”
“It was a strange thing to say, yes, my pickled herring?” Arkady surmised. “Who is not capable of lying? No one I say! But her behavior is so peculiar. I am still figuring out this enigma named Coop. Little ball of fluff is right. There is something more to her than just pretty face.”
My sigh was ragged as guilt ate up my guts. “Okay, so yes. Everyone is capable of lying. But it’s a curious thing to say, don’t you think? And what’s the relationship between these two women, and… Why the heck do I feel like I just helped send a lamb to slaughter?”
“You did the right thing, Dove,” Win whispered in my ear, instantly easing my stress. “You only told Melba the facts. Most of them anyway. I know you hid some of the emotional reactions you had to the very strange proclamations Trixie made, and that Coop didn’t seem at all troubled by Hank’s body at her feet. But those aren’t necessarily needed in an investigation. Don’t your lawyers here in the states throw out anything but the facts anyway?”
I bounced my head, running a finger over my suddenly aching temples. “Sometimes they do, unless they can somehow twist the information to their advantage. But Melba knows something’s up, Win. She’s right about my theories, and she’s right that I can’t help theorizing even the smallest mystery. But no one can prove I heard what I heard. I’m hoping I can leave it at that without getting in too deep because what I heard…”
“Dah,” Arkady mumbled.
Dah, indeed.
Pulling my phone from my purse, I clicked the camera icon. I’d taken pictures of the crime scene while we’d waited for the police to arrive.
I’d been so caught up with Trixie’s explanations and Coop’s strange behavior over Hank, I hadn’t had time to pay attention to the details of Hank’s body and the condition of the storage room.
Also, for a few minutes, I’d been afraid they’d had a hand in killing him, so I panicked. But I managed to get it together, and I was grateful I had, feeling the way I did now about Coop.
“I took pictures of the crime scene. We need to take them home, load them on my laptop, blow them up, and see what we can see, because you do know there’s no chance we’ll get back into that store until forensics has cleared the scene.”
“Well done, Dove, but first, I think we should head to the police station and see if we can’t lend Trixie some moral support, eh? I get the feeling she and Coop are alone in this world. I think we both know what that particular feeling is like.”
Nodding, I looked in my side-view mirror to be sure it was clear to pull out, and headed to the Eb Falls Police Station, lost in my thoughts.
None of us said a word, likely due to the fact that this was all so strange. Coop was strange. Trixie’s reactions were strange. Hank’s death was strange.
A very normal, mundane day had turned strange, but I was taking no pleasure in this. None at all. Yes, I know I’ve been a bit bored without some kind of crime to solve, but I didn’t want innocent people to get hurt in order to do it.
And I was leaning toward the idea Coop really was innocent.
As I pulled into a parking space, I watched poor Trixie run toward the entrance, her face wet with tears I could see from where I was sitting, and my heart turned over in my chest again.
Deciding it was better to wait a moment or two to compose myself before I went in waving my flag of justice, I scrolled aimlessly through the pictures I’d taken of Hank’s body.
Surprisingly, I’d managed to take decent enough shots, getting all angles of not only Hank’s body, but the room as well.
One of Hank in particular caught my eye. He was sprawled out on the floor, his legs at an awkward angle just like I remembered, but there was something near his shoulder, almost tucked under it. I used my fingers to make it larger and narrowed my eyes.
And then we all gasped.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Mini-Spy?” Win asked, his tone filled with the shock coursing through my veins.
Swallowing hard, I nodded, turning my phone sideways to be sure. “I think I am. I wish I wasn’t, but I think I am.”
“Holy Toledo!” Bel chirped, pushing his way from behind the hair at the nape of my neck. “Is that what I think it is, Winterbutt?”
“Dah. Is what you think it is, Fluffybutt,” Arkady retorted in somber tones.
Yep. There it was. Right there on the floor.
A tattoo gun.
And I’d lay bets, it was also the murder weapon.