Weeding Out Trouble

  I couldn't help but wonder who else might know.

  "They're probably in Gatlinburg at one of those cute little chapels," Tam said brightly. Her diction had slipped and a drawl had crept in. Nerves, full force.

  "Ach. Probably getting their marriage license right now. Just waiting for the right time to call."

  "Oh, oh," Tam added excitedly, obviously buying into the fantasy, "BeBe's probably going to wear the rings they picked out around her neck on a ribbon."

  Brickhouse clucked. "Lord help the place that lets BeBe through the doors."

  Tam laughed.

  Kit's enormous English mastiff, easily over a hundred pounds, was an adorable, clumsy, drooling, slurping machine. The image of her in a small chapel would have been quite humorous—if I were in the laughing mood.

  I wasn't.

  The noise started up again, and I made a quick decision. "Go ahead and call the police, Tam," I said nervously.

  "Why? Did you find something?"

  No, but I was seriously creeped out. "Nothing, really. I think I'm going to wait outside."

  Bravery had never been one of my strong traits, and I wasn't stupid. I was getting the heck out.

  Then I heard something that ripped open my heart.

  Whining.

  Doggy whining.

  "I'll call you two back, okay?"

  "Why? Did you find something?" Tam asked.

  "I'll call," I said, and flipped my phone closed.

  "BeBe?" I shouted.

  The scratching intensified.

  Checking the closet more closely, it didn't take long to notice a crack in the wall to my right running from floor to ceiling.

  I pushed and pulled. There had to be a way in there.

  BeBe whined and cried, but never barked.

  It took a good couple of minutes before I discovered that the rug in the corner of the closet had been lifted a bit. Beneath it, I found a small button. I pushed it and a door slid open, disappearing into the framing between the closet and the darkened room beyond.

  BeBe barreled out, knocking me over. Her tail thrashed and her crying brought tears to my eyes.

  It took a second for me to find my feet, another to realize someone had taped BeBe's snout shut with masking tape. I carefully took it off. Her barks split the air, and my first thought was to get her water. I took her to the bathroom I'd seen in the hallway and turned on the faucet. She drank and drank.

  When she had her fill, I went back to Daisy's office.

  Relief flooded me as I heard sirens in the distance. At this point, breaking and entering appeared to be the least of my problems.

  Swallowing over a lump of fear, I went back into the closet, BeBe on my heels.

  I had to know. Had to find out if Kit was in there too.

  The darkness was overwhelming. My hand shook as I felt along the wall for a switch and finally found one. I blinked against the blinding light.

  Once my vision cleared, I saw it. In the middle of the room a crumpled body laid deathly still, surrounded by small white pills.

  All common sense about not touching a crime scene failed me as I knelt down. BeBe sat next to me, pawing the air, crying. I swallowed over a coconut-sized lump in my throat and checked for a pulse.

  I'd finally come face to face with Daisy Bedinghaus.

  Unfortunately, she was dead.

  Two

  Usually I was quite averse to doggy slobber, but I couldn't find the heart to push BeBe away as she continued to lick my face.

  I slowed to a stop at a red light, and BeBe took one last slurp and finally settled down into the passenger seat, her giant paws dangling over the edge of the seat.

  I turned up the volume on the radio a bit. Recently I'd been listening to country music, but in this time of crisis I reverted back to familiar habits. Spinning the dial, I stopped on the oldies station.

  "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" was playing, but it wasn't the Righteous Brothers singing it. It was Hall and Oates.

  On the oldies station.

  Oldies.

  Hall and Oates.

  Something was very wrong in this world.

  Disgusted, I flipped off the radio.

  BeBe lifted her head to check and see if she was missing anything of importance, halfheartedly licked my hand, and put her head back down on her paws.

  She'd had a rough day.

  We'd both had a rough day.

  The light turned, and I headed for home. It was one of those gray, cloudy, stay-in-bed days.

  I know I wished I'd stayed in bed.

  Sleet spit at the window. My wipers slashed it away. With more than a few accidents on the roadways, Freedom's police station had seemed like a ghost town. Except for the detectives covering Daisy's case.

  And me.

  I'd been at the station most of the day, answering the same questions repeatedly. I'd actually found myself wishing Kevin was there to run interference. I'd even found myself wishing for Ginger Barlow, aka Ginger Ho. She was also a detective. And also Kevin's live-in lover.

  Reveals how desperate I was, doesn't it?

  Unfortunately, Kevin was still laid up in the hospital, and Detective Darren Zalewski, fondly known in my family as "Lewy," informed me Ginger was on vacation leave. She was probably with Kevin at the hospital, playing doctor.

  That thought didn't so much as twitch a nerve, which meant either I was getting used to their relationship or I had gone numb thanks to the events of the day.

  I leaned toward numb. I didn't think I could ever get used to seeing Kevin and Ginger together, all lovey-dovey.

  Some things just weren't possible.

  But I did wish one or the other had been with me today as the detectives interrogated me for six hours without so much as a potty break for BeBe, whom I refused to leave outside.

  Right now I wasn't too fond of Lewy, though I'd always liked him up until today, despite the fact that he'd been Ginger's partner before she paired with Kevin. Joe Nickerson was a good fifteen years older than Lewy, and had a reputation for being touchy-feely. Never with me, but I'd heard stories.

  Freedom was a small suburb. Its police department was like a family. Lewy and Joe had been to my house many times, and Kevin, Riley, and I to theirs. However, they hadn't taken too kindly to finding me at the scene of a homicide.

  What did I expect? I'd divorced Kevin—my branch had fallen off Freedom PD's family tree. They weren't cutting me any slack.

  Too bad Ana had left town. I wanted to be catty, but it was no fun being catty alone.

  Right now I wished I hadn't turned down her offer to go with her to Aunt Rosa's for Thanksgiving. I would have been basking in the California sun this morning instead of finding Daisy dead, presumably from that gunshot wound to her chest.

  Where was Kit?

  It was the question Lewy and Joe had kept asking, over and over. The one I'd kept asking myself.

  I didn't know the answer. And even if I did, I wasn't sure I'd tell them.

  Reaching over, I rubbed BeBe's dark ears. Exhausted, she didn't even flinch.

  My mind kept going back to the secret room where I'd found Daisy. It had been lined with grow lights—obviously she was cultivating her own marijuana. There hadn't been any plants, though. Also, two industrial shelving units had been cleared out, which made me wonder what had been stored on them.

  Before the police arrived, I'd managed a good look at the white pills on the floor. I even picked one up—I could always plead ignorance if the police were able to retrieve any prints from it.

  One side was unmarked. The other side had an elaborate imprinted design, but it wasn't anything I could identify. It was the image of a narrow oblong shape with what looked like tunnels trailing off it.

  Unusual to say the least.

  I'd placed it exactly where I found it, next to Daisy's body, and hoped Lewy and Joe wouldn't find out I'd touched it. I had no doubt I'd be locked up for tampering. They weren't in the best of moods today.

&nbs
p; I thought about what I knew so far. Daisy was dead. Kit had been at the crime scene, and knowing him, he didn't leave BeBe there willingly.

  If Kit didn't kill Daisy—and I refused to believe otherwise—then someone else knew about that room. And what had been stored in there.

  Who?

  In my rearview mirror I caught sight of a dark sedan following me. I could just make out that the pair of men in the front seat wore tan trench coats, collars raised to their ears.

  No doubt it was Lewy and Joe. And also no doubt they wanted me to know they were watching.

  Well, let them.

  That's me, Nina Colette Cooperating Witness Ceceri Quinn.

  In the console cup holder my silenced cell phone vibrated. I'd been ignoring calls left and right all day. My coping mechanisms had been maxed out, and I couldn't deal with the prying questions from friends and family on top of everything else.

  I checked the screen, and flipped the phone open. "Hi, there."

  I heard a deep inhale, a lengthy exhale. "I was worried."

  "I'm all right."

  "You're lying."

  Turning left, I said, "Maybe."

  I could hear the smile in Bobby's voice. "There's no maybe about it, Nina. Where are you?"

  "On my way home. You?"

  "Headed that way."

  The sleet had picked up. I bumped up the speed on my wipers, turned up the heat in the truck. "How'd the interview go?" He'd been looking for a job since resigning as an elementary school principal nearly a month ago.

  Static crackled. "It went."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. I'll find something."

  Bobby MacKenna and I had been dating off and on for almost six months. We'd gotten serious fast, slowed things down, split up, and since he returned to Ohio from Florida a month ago, had been putting the pieces back together.

  It took some doing, though. Especially after I found him holding another woman in his arms.

  I was quite proud of myself for not overreacting to the scene, because after Kevin cheated on me, I had serious trust issues.

  No one was happier than I when Bobby explained that the woman had simply been giving him a thank-you hug for returning a bracelet he retrieved from his charming geriatric klepto grandfather Mac.

  Considering Mac had snitched my watch, the story rang true.

  Personally, I thought the woman would have liked more of a relationship with Bobby. But he was only interested in me.

  It did my heart good.

  He'd moved in across the street, and we were now closer than ever.

  It felt good.

  And scary.

  And hopeful.

  I liked the hopeful part.

  "How about some hot soup and a long bath tonight?" he asked.

  "In that order?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "Care to join me?" I asked.

  "You know how much I love soup."

  I laughed, then instantly teared up. "Somehow it feels wrong to laugh."

  BeBe lifted her head, yawned, and put it back down. The sleet was slowly turning to snow.

  "I knew you weren't okay," he said.

  "I'm just . . . I'm just . . . "

  "Scared?"

  "Terrified. They have a manhunt out for him, Bobby. Like he's some dangerous animal."

  "We know he isn't."

  I exhaled. I'd been holding my breath without realizing it, waiting, worried. Bobby's opinion meant a lot to me, and I didn't know what I would have done if he believed Kit guilty of Daisy's murder.

  "We know," I said, "but our opinions don't count."

  Bobby's voice deepened. "The police will find evidence to clear him."

  "What if . . . " I took a deep breath.

  "What?"

  I couldn't bring myself to say it. I could barely think it.

  What if he's dead?

  What if whoever killed Daisy killed him too? I shuddered. "Nothing."

  "Listen, do you need a lawyer? I could call Josh."

  "No!" Bobby's sleazy cousin, Josh Drake, was the last person I'd ever want representing me. "I'm good. They pretty much think Kit did it. I'm just a witness."

  Bobby laughed. He knew how I felt about Josh, and I had the feeling he'd only brought up his name to get my mind off Kit for a minute. "Okay, no Josh. I've been thinking . . . "

  "Uh-oh."

  "No, no. It's just that with all this going on, maybe we should cancel next week."

  "You, Robert Patrick MacKenna, are not getting out of Thanksgiving dinner. So stop trying."

  "Have I warned you about my family?"

  "I've met your grandfather and Josh, how much worse can it get?" After a second of silence, I said, "Bobby?"

  "Worse," he mumbled.

  I didn't believe him. His grandfather was a piece of work. And Josh was pretty darn bad.

  "Thanksgiving is still on," I said. "I'll see you tonight, okay?"

  "I'll bring the bubbles."

  Hanging up, I glanced in the rearview mirror. Lewy and Joe still followed.

  My phone vibrated again. I thought about turning it off, but looked at the ID and couldn't help myself.

  "No way. Absolutely no freakin' way. No way on God's somewhat green—I hear global warming is wreaking havoc and now El Niño is back—earth. Holy hell. Not Kit. Not that big cuddly, wuddly teddy bear. Are the police idiots? They probably can't find their nightsticks with both hands, can they? Overbearing heterosexual alpha males, probably trying to assert their manliness. Am I right? Am I right?"

  Perry Owens didn't wait for my answer.

  "Kit's a target, that's what he is. A big six-foot-five target. Just paint big red round circles on his chest—though, ugh, he really shouldn't wear red, not his color at all—and have a little shooting practice."

  I broke in before he hyperventilated. "Breathe, Perry. Breathe."

  "Sorry, sugar, but I'm pissed."

  I smiled. "I can tell."

  "You won't tell Kit I called him a cuddly, wuddly teddy bear, will you?"

  I really didn't want Perry to get his ass kicked. "Your secret is safe."

  I'd met Perry Owens while Bobby and I were undercover contestants on a sleazy reality TV show. Perry and his life partner, Mario Gibbens, had been the other set of contestants. The show ended up being a nightmare, where the only realities were adultery, deceit, and murder.

  The upside was that Perry, a hairdresser, and I had bonded. He'd given me a complete head-to-toe makeover, some of which I'd kept up, most of which I let go by the wayside.

  "What are we going to do about it?" Perry asked.

  "About it?"

  "We've got to clear his name. He's probably hiding out until someone does."

  "You really think he's hiding out?"

  Perry must have heard what I was really asking. "Oh, sugar, don't be thinking such things. Kit's a tough cookie. No way is he kicking the bucket, feeding the earthworms—"

  "You have such a way with words, Perry."

  He laughed. He had a great laugh, full of sound. Infectious. "Sugar, I'd been thinking 'pushing up daisies,' but decided that might be in bad taste."

  I groaned. "You're awful."

  "That Daisy was no good for him, anyway. I'm sad she went the way she did, but I'm not sad she's out of his life for good."

  Turning right, I inched along Tylersville Road. There were several vehicles on the shoulder of the road, abandoned. In southern Ohio, this weather always turned roadways into a dangerous game of bumper cars.

  I thought about what Perry had said. About Daisy. Honestly? I agreed with him. I'd seen what she put Kit through over the last few months. But I'd also seen how much Kit cared for her. For him, I mourned her death.

  But only for him.

  BeBe snuffled.

  And maybe BeBe too.