“THIS CAN’T BE A COINCIDENCE, Wen.” The sick feeling I got in the pit of my stomach when Maegan called me intensified as I stared down at the bloody evidence left behind her shop.
“I don’t think so either, Markham.”
The two of us had donned rubber gloves and blue booties before entering the alley to keep from further contaminating the scene. We squatted down next to the object wrapped in bloody newspaper and did the rock, paper, scissors game. The loser had to open the newspaper to see what was hidden inside. I went with paper and Wen chose scissors.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
“I hope it’s not a severed head, pal.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I said to my temporary partner. I’d seen the absolute worst the world had to offer in my roles as soldier and cop. I reached down and slowly peeled back the sides to reveal a bloody marble bust of a man’s head. “Sort of like a severed head,” I told Wen.
“I think we’re looking at the weapon that was used to bash in Thom Renzo’s skull.” Wen held open the evidence bag, and I gingerly placed the bust and newspaper inside it. Maybe there was something significant about the newspaper that would leave a clue. “I’ll get this to the lab.”
“Thanks, I’ll be there soon,” I told him, but I had already turned my attention to the opening of the alley where I knew a certain blonde bombshell was waiting for me.
A few other officers were still looking for evidence with flashlights since the sun was rapidly setting. Once out of the alley, Wen and I placed our booties in a paper evidence bag and our rubber gloves in a bag designated for the biohazard disposal. The lab could check the booties to see if any viable evidence was found. It wasn’t likely since we were walking in an alley, but it paid to be vigilant.
I found Maegan sitting in her SUV. She was staring off in space and didn’t know that I had approached until I lightly tapped on her window. She jerked in her seat and I felt terrible that I scared her even more than she’d already been that evening. She blew out a relieved breath and unlocked her door. I went around to the passenger side and got in beside her.
“I’m sorry that I scared you.”
“You’d think that I would’ve been more alert after what happened this evening,” she said. “Can you tell me what that was?”
“It was a marble bust of a man’s head. I’m pretty sure it’s my murder weapon.”
“Someone killed Thom on the night I was supposed to meet him then placed the murder weapon in the alley behind my business the very next day. Is that what you’re telling me?” She was struggling to remain calm, but I heard the panic creeping into her voice. “But why?”
“That’s what I’m going to figure out.” I reached over and covered her hands with mine. “I need to go to the station to look at the evidence we collected in a better light. Is there someone you can call to hang out with you until I’m done? Maybe whoever drives that Cadillac I saw in your driveway.”
“That’s my mom’s car,” she told me. “I would like to say that I’m a big girl and don’t need a sitter, but I honestly don’t want to be alone tonight. I think I’ll grab Lulu and go to my parents’ house.”
“Oh.” I sounded as disappointed as I felt. It wasn’t that I expected her to throw me down and fuck me stupid after the night she had, but I just wanted to know that she was okay.
“Unless you still want to go out later. I’m not sure that I’ll be very good company.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be either,” I replied. “Why don’t you go to your parents’ house for a little bit and I’ll call you when I’m done at the station. I shouldn’t be long because most of our evidence will have to be sent to the state lab. I’ll pick us up something to eat at the diner and we’ll just stay in tonight.”
“That sounds perfect.” She was holding up remarkably well and I was so proud of her. I wanted to pull her into my arms, but it wouldn’t look very professional in front of my fellow officers.
I cupped her face with my hand and brushed my thumb over her cheekbone. “I want to kiss you, Freckles.”
Maegan wrapped her hand around my wrist and leaned her head into my touch before she turned her face and kissed the palm of my hand. “Please,” was her simple reply.
I pulled Maegan toward me slowly, keeping my gaze locked on her mesmerizing green eyes the entire time. The kiss wasn’t about sex, it was about comfort—hers and mine. I think she knocked ten years off my life when I answered her distress call, and I needed to know she was truly okay. She needed to know I was there for her and would do everything in my power to keep her safe. I pressed my lips softly against hers then went back for a second, lingering kiss.
Maegan released a shaky breath when we pulled apart and offered me a crooked smile. At least for the time being, I gave her something to think about other than a crazy killer on the loose planting bloody evidence outside her business. My brain wanted to remain focused on the case, but my body was getting other ideas.
“I’m going to go now.” While I still can. “What do you feel like eating?”
“I think Emma’s beef stew and homemade dinner rolls can fix just about anything,” Maegan told me. That was one item on the menu I still hadn’t tried, and I decided to rectify that immediately.
“I’ll call you when I’m leaving the diner.”
“Thank you, Elijah.”
“You’re welcome, Maegan.”
Getting out of her car and into my truck was harder than it should’ve been. I hardly knew the lady, but she already had a hold on me. I could’ve continued lying to myself that I didn’t want her, or I could take a chance that I might’ve found the girl for me. I knew which one I wanted to be true, but the question was: how badly did I want it?
Captain Roman-Wyatt was at the station when I arrived. He asked Wen and me to give him an update on what happened that evening.
“I’m sorry that you got called in, Captain.”
“It’s part of the job description, Detective. Luckily, it doesn’t happen very often. Nothing says ‘Welcome to Blissville’ like a homicide. I worked here a few years before I had to investigate one, so you must be special,” he teased.
“Adrian will be pissed he missed all the excitement,” Wen told our captain.
“Oh, no he won’t,” Adrian said, entering the captain’s office. “I go out of town for a few days and all hell breaks loose. Can’t y’all protect and serve the people without me?”
“Oh good, Adrian’s back,” Wen said. “The rest of us can go on home. He’ll take it from here.”
“Was there really a severed head dumped in the alley behind the coffee shop?”
“It was a bloody marble bust,” I told my new partner. Even though I hadn’t worked in the field with him yet, we had clicked right away when I met him the day I interviewed with the captain.
“Bust? Like a breast?” Adrian asked
“Bust, as in a marble statue of someone’s head and shoulders,” our captain answered. “Of course, your mind went there.”
“Who was the bust of and what the hell was it doing in Maegan’s alley?”
“I have a pretty good idea of who the bust was created to honor, but I need to confirm it. I’m hoping the newspaper will provide a clue, but if not, the guy from the historical society should be able to help us.”
“Who do you think it is?” the captain asked me.
“I think it’s Blissville’s founder, Anthony Bliss.”
“Who’s he?” the captain asked.
I told him everything that Maegan had shared with me that morning. I had called Homer Stillwater to make an appointment with him, but he was out of town for the day. “I’d much rather help you solve a homicide than go antiquing with my wife, but I’m already in the doghouse,” he had told me. “Can this wait until tomorrow? I can meet you at the historical society after church.”
I had agreed to meet him, but I would have to revise our meeting location since I couldn’t take a key piece of evidence out of the station. In the meantime, I planned to use everyone’s favorite research tool: Google.
“Let’s suit up and see what we have before we send it off to the state lab,” the captain said. “I hope they can get the results back to us fairly quickly so we can for sure say the bust was used to kill Renzo.”
“I have a contact in the state lab. I don’t mind making a phone call or two,” I offered.
“Is she pretty?” Adrian teased, implying that I knew her outside the job. I did, but not in the way he thought.
“Kelsey is very pretty, but better yet, she’s a brilliant scientist. Her wife wouldn’t approve of me trying to charm her to get my evidence moved up the priority list though. I’ve seen Valeria swing a bat for our co-ed softball team, so I won’t be crossing any lines.”
“Fair enough,” Adrian replied.
In our small lab, Officer Jayna Murkowsky was a step ahead of us. She was scanning the bust with a handheld device that looked like something they used at a store for items too big to put on the conveyor belt. Instead of reading a barcode, it recorded the angles of the face and compiled the data into her computer to form a photo. On another computer, she had a split screen showing Anthony Bliss’s image from two different angles.
“Left was definitely his strongest side,” Adrian said.
“That’s the side most people choose for selfies,” Wen added.
“It’s true that most people photograph best from the left side,” Murkowsky agreed.
“How do you know that about selfies, Wen?” Adrian asked incredulously.“Do you take a lot?”
“Teen sister.”
“Ahhh,” we all said.
“Does that same logic apply to dick pics?” Adrian pondered out loud.
“Only if your dick smiles, Detective,” Murkowsky replied good-naturedly.
“Can we get back to the evidence please?” the captain asked. “I don’t even want to know why Adrian wants to know the best side to photograph his dick.”
“Sorry, sir,” Adrian said. “I apologize, Officer Murkowsky.”
“I’m not offended, Adrian.”
“Let’s take a look at the newspaper,” I told Adrian. “It was getting dark in the alleyway so I couldn’t be sure, but the parts of the newspaper not covered in blood looked brownish from age.”
I carefully straightened out the wrinkled paper with gloved hands while Adrian had the camera ready to photograph any clues. The paper was stiff to work with since it had been saturated with blood. There was also a lot of hair and flesh stuck to the paper from where it transferred off the bust. I finally spread the paper on the sterile surface and saw that it was even older than I thought. It was an article dated May 1, 1850.
“Anthony Bliss, railroad magnate and Blissville founder disappeared on the morning of April 30, 1850,” I read out loud. “Was it premeditated or was Mr. Bliss a victim of foul play or his family curse?”
“Can you imagine the headings today?” Adrian asked. “Alien abduction would certainly be included.”
“I can’t help but wonder what the hell happened to him,” I replied. “I wonder if the man kept journals or anything. As creepy as that cellar is, I’m pretty sure I have to go back and do some digging. Now that you’re back…”
“I’m suddenly not feeling that good. Must’ve been something I ate. Wen, will help you out.”
“Thanks a lot,” Wen replied dryly.
“Adrian loves dark, dank cellars,” the captain teased. “That last murder we had in Blissville required us to dig around through one.”
“The captain’s house,” Adrian said.
“Someone was murdered in your cellar?” I asked the captain. “Internal Affairs must love you.”
His lips tipped up into a quirky, half-smile. “It wasn’t my house at the time.”
“You bought a house where a homicide was committed though?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Married the prime suspect too,” Adrian added.
“Josh?” I asked in shock.
“It’s a long story,” the captain said to me before turning to his former partner. “No one believed Josh killed Georgia Beaumont.”
“I’ll tell you all about it over dinner, partner,” Adrian said cheerfully.
As much as I wanted to hear the story, I had someplace I wanted to be more that night. “I have plans tonight, but perhaps you can tell me all about it while we dig through boxes looking for journals or some other type of evidence.”
“Fine,” Adrian reluctantly agreed.
Officer Murkowsky’s computer program beeped, interrupting me before I could answer. “Aha! It’s a one hundred percent match to Anthony Bliss.” We looked over her shoulder at the side-by-side comparisons. “See these circles on the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows, and his chin?”
“Yeah,” we all answered.
“It’s a tool that points out the different angles in the profiles. Green circles mean that the angles match and red means they’re different.” In every instance, the bust was a positive match to the documented photos of Anthony Bliss.
“That’s great work, Murkowsky,” the captain said.
“Thank you, sir. There’s not much else we can do with the evidence, so I’ll bag it and send it to Columbus. I didn’t see any obvious fingerprints in the blood on the bust, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Hopefully we can get a DNA match for Thom from either the blood, hair, or tissue transferred to the statue or paper. I don’t know how long it was exposed to the elements though.”
“Approximately thirty minutes,” I told her. “That’s the time lapse between the employees leaving Books and Brew and Maegan leaving Curious Things.”
“Are there any clues, confessions, or anything that will help us solve this case in the newspaper? Any circled letters that spell our next clue out?” Adrian asked hopefully.
“Nothing that I can tell, but the blood has smeared most of the ink. I can’t read much beyond the headline. I have a feeling the bust was deliberately placed that way.”
“You think the choice of murder weapon and newspaper used to wrap it are clues?” Wen asked.
“It seems so, but why? What the hell does Thom Renzo have to do with a man that disappeared one hundred and sixty-seven years ago?” I asked.
“Thom was about to let strangers comb through Anthony’s things and sell the home he loved,” Adrian tossed out there.
“You think the ghost of Anthony Bliss killed Thom Renzo using a statue of himself, wrapped it up in a newspaper article about his disappearance, and left it behind Maegan’s business?” the captain disbelievingly asked. “That’s a stretch.”
“No, but it sounds like you do, Cap.” Adrian raised a brow so high it nearly disappeared. “I meant who would be angry that Thom was about to do that? Do we know what happened to the Bliss kids once they moved away? Is it possible that a great-great-grandkid is pissed about Thom capitalizing on their family’s misfortune?”
“That sounds slightly more plausible than the captain’s theory,” I told Adrian.
“I didn’t say that I believed that,” Captain Roman-Wyatt interjected. “Is there anyone in town with a vested interest in that property who took exception to Thom making a buck on Bliss’s belongings?”
“I guess we’ll find out when we talk to Homer Stillwater from the historical society. I’m meeting him after church tomorrow. I’m thinking we can dig through the cellar in the morning before we meet with him in case we find anything else of importance.”
“Okay, fine,” Adrian grumbled. “Can I at least sleep in until eight on my last vacation day?”
“How can you sleep until eight with a newborn in the house?” the captain asked, sounding a little jealous. “Dylan and Destiny still aren’t sleeping that late.”
“Lucky, I guess,” Adrian said with a shrug. “How does nine tomorrow morning work? I’ll meet you at that haunted mansion.”
“Sounds good to me. See you tomorrow, partner.”
Adrian discarded his protective gear and patted me on the shoulder before he left the small lab. “I’m going to stop by the diner and pick up dinner for Maegan,” I said, discarding my gloves, goggles, face mask, surgical cap, and sterile gown in the biohazard bin.
“How’s she holding up?” Officer Murkowsky asked.
“She was pretty shook up when she called me, but she seemed calm by the time I arrived.”
“She’s a tough lady,” Murkowsky replied.
I knew that was true, but my protective instincts were tripped big time. “I hate that it appears our killer is trying to involve Maegan. It feels like a threat to me, and I don’t fucking like it.”
“Maegan beat cancer, so she’ll survive this bastard too.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to the news. Did it surprise me that Maegan kicked cancer’s ass? No, but I still hated that she went through it. A million questions went through my mind, but Murkowsky wasn’t the one I should ask, and I sure as hell wouldn’t pose them to Maegan after the night she had. The right time would come when I could ask Freckles.
“Thanks for your help tonight, Wen,” I said, steering the conversation back to a less personal one for me. “If you’re not busy tomorrow…”
“I’ll be there.”
“Goodnight, everyone,” I said with a small wave. My mind had already moved on from the evidence we found to the fierce woman who was waiting for me.