A Berry Horrible Holiday

by A. R. Winters

  The guy was strong. Really, really strong.

  Tim climbed to his feet, and this time he did use the chair as a weapon. He spun hard left, then hard right, knocking people back as they regrouped and tried to topple him again.

  “Hold it! Hold it,” I called out.

  Tim froze, as did all the members of the geek squad. I guessed that the sound of a woman’s voice had managed to cut through all the layers of testosterone.

  “You guys,” I said to the now beat-up and worse-for-wear geek squad, “get out.”

  “Hey, this is our tent,” one of them instantly complained.

  “Out!” I yelled, jabbing my finger at the end of a straight arm toward the door.

  Murmured complaints filled the air as Zoey’s band of misguided tech miscreants got themselves put together well enough to leave the tent. Thankfully, Tim’s voice wasn’t among them. He stood statue still save for the steady and measured rise and fall of his chest.

  The guy had been through all that and he wasn’t even winded. I was suddenly unsure about sending the geek squad away. I had no delusions about whether or not they could take him in a fight. Tim would win. No doubt. But the bumbling efforts of the squad could provide enough of a distraction for Zoey and me to run for help if Tim decided we were the next human poles to go in the ground.

  “Tim,” I said, “we’re going to get you loose from that chair.” I spoke slow and soft, hoping my voice would be soothing. This guy’s fight or flight mode leaned heavily toward fight. I didn’t want him lashing out as soon as we’d given him back his full mobility.

  I stepped close before him. “I’m going to take your blindfold off now.” I moved slow, even though he couldn’t see me yet, and put on my warmest smile. I made sure that the first thing he saw was a friendly face, rather than one that needed smashing. When I got it off and he looked down at me, I sucked in a breath of air at the sight of his chocolate eyes. Despite everything, they held humor in them.

  Behind him, Zoey stood at the ready. She would have appeared relaxed and even lazy to someone who didn’t know her. She was leaning with her shoulder against one of the tent’s wood pillars, but one hand rested gently on the end of a tripod. She had her weapon at the ready if she needed to clobber Tim in the head from behind.

  I was thankful she had my back—by having Tim’s back.

  “You the good cop to their bad cop?” he asked.

  I chuckled. “They were pretty bad. Can you turn around? I’ll untie your hands.”

  He turned, and I worked the collection of naked wire, thin electrical cords, and duct tape that bound his wrists. If the geeks had had a chain and a radiator on hand, I suspected they would have used those too.

  “I can’t get through this,” I lamented. “What they did to you, it’s a mess.”

  “There’s a knife in my front pocket.” He tilted his hip to indicate which one. I was glad he wasn’t at an angle to see my blushing cheeks as I dug my fingers inside the pocket’s snug form to pull the knife out. But with its aid, the work of getting the bindings off went much faster.

  I sucked in another breath when I saw the flesh beneath the now stripped tape and wire. His wrists would be black and blue within a day. They were already swollen and red with mottled and striped signs of the damage that was done.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when he’d turned back around to face me. “They really hurt you.”

  “I hurt me. They just restrained me.”

  “Oh…” That was a refreshing way to look at it. “So you’re not going to go after them?”

  His warm eyes took me in assessingly as he rubbed his wrists. “Haven’t decided.”

  The geek squad guys were idiots, but I didn’t want them to get hurt.

  “Their hearts were in the right place,” I said. “They were trying to help me out.”

  “So, it’s you I should hurt,” he said without missing a beat.

  Behind him, I saw Zoey shift and the legs of the tripod lift from the ground just a little.

  “I suppose you could take that path,” I said. If this guy was trying to intimidate, then it was a test. If he wanted to hurt me, he could just hurt me. That’s why I figured he didn’t actually want to.

  “And how exactly were they helping you out by tying me up?”

  My brow scrunched as a thought occurred to me. “How’d they tie you up in the first place? You’re stronger than all of them put together.”

  “They got me in here by asking for help moving stuff around. I picked up a big case of equipment and stepped right into a leg snare. I should have been paying closer attention.”

  “Wow,” I said, amazed. “You don’t shirk any responsibility off onto anybody, do you?”

  He shook his head. “I can be a victim,” he tapped his temple, “or I can be me. At the end of the day, that’s all you have—what you think, how you think.”

  “Did you kill Doug?” I asked. I asked the question without blinking, and I watched his reaction as much as waited for his words.

  A smile that seemed to have been waiting just below the surface stretched his lips and softened the angles of his face. “Did you?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “So.”

  Dang it. That was hard logic to argue with. It was the logic of I-don’t-care.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out. “I didn’t know Doug to want to kill him. Yesterday was the first day I’d met him, and that’s not enough time to want to kill someone.”

  Tim snorted. “You’ve lived a sheltered life.”

  I scowled and narrowed my eyes at him. He still hadn’t answered my question. The periphery of my vision told me that Zoey hadn’t given up her spot of defense. I pushed. “Your turn. Did you kill Doug?”

  His eyes took their time traveling up and down my frame. “You here with that tall guy?” He lifted a hand to slide his fingertips through the ends of my flaming red hair. “You could do better.”

  He was trying to control the conversation by derailing the conversation, throwing in a little unnerving touching to ensure success. I’ve had clients do the same thing when I negotiated multi-million dollar deals for my ex-husband’s heating and air company. Those days now felt like they’d been lived in another life, but the lessons had stayed. I didn’t let the clients distract me to get the upper hand, and I wouldn’t let him.

  I took a step back. I’d asked him twice already if he’d killed Doug. If he’d wanted to answer, he would have. I wouldn’t let him put me in the beggar’s spot by asking again.

  “How thorough of a background check you think the geek squad could do on this guy?” I asked Zoey.

  “Depends, but doesn’t really matter,” Zoey answered. “If we can’t find anything incriminating, I can always plant something.”

  The humor evaporated from Tim’s expression as he shot a glare at Zoey. “You wanna come at me? Come.”

  “All we want,” I said, “is to know who killed Doug. That’s it. Nothing else.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me. Okay? Satisfied?”

  “Why wasn’t it you?” Zoey challenged.

  “Because it wasn’t!” He flexed huge shoulders with pent-up anger for the first time since we’d walked into the tent to tend to his predicament. “Why wasn’t it one of you?”

  We were at a stalemate.

  “Okay, it was none of us!” I declared, waving my hands in the air. There was a thirty-three percent chance I was right. I knew I hadn’t killed Doug—unless I had some dissociative disorder unbeknownst to me.

  I was also pretty sure that Zoey hadn’t done it. I say pretty sure because, hey, it’s Zoey. For all I knew, she was a time traveler and Doug had to go in order to save the future of the planet. But that explanation was complicated. The simpler explanation was that she simply didn’t do it.

  If that was true, then there was a sixty-six percent chance I’d been right that none of us had killed him.

  Looking at Tim, I was willing to give him a thirty-three and a third
percent benefit of the doubt that he hadn’t killed Doug either.

  He ran a hand over his very short Marine cut hair. “I didn’t kill Doug, and I don’t know who did.”

  Tension drained from my shoulders. Breakthrough. Tim was finally talking to us. Sharing.

  “Mind if we sit?” I asked. I wanted us casual and comfortable with each other.

  Tim and I sat. Zoey remained where she was, the tripod at her hip within reach of the tips of her fingers.

  “How long have you known him?” I asked.

  “Just since I started working here. Started here about three months after I got back from tour. That was about nine months ago.”

  “Tour?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t see a lot of action, but…” He shrugged. “I saw a lot of hardship. A lot of tragedy. Decided working with trees would be nicer than working with people.”

  I was pretty sure Doug had been working here for at least a couple of years. “Who here has been working here longer than you?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody.”

  “Nobody?”

  “Well, there’s the kitchen girl,” he said. “She was already working here when I started, but nobody else.”

  “What about the handyman, Lucas.” Took me a moment to recall his name.

  “Yeah, I got no idea who that guy is. He showed up about five weeks ago. I was never told he’d started working here. I just started seeing him around, fixin’ stuff. I haven’t talked to him, not really. I’ve just said ‘hi’ in passing, that kind of thing.”

  That meant that Tim had known Doug for longer than almost anybody else here.

  “Any idea of who would have wanted to kill Doug?” I asked.

  “Naw. He seemed okay.”

  “Were the two of you friends?”

  “Wouldn’t say that.”

  “Enemies?”

  “That neither. He was just a guy I worked for.”

  “Did you know anything about him?”

  “A bit, I guess. He liked Sandra. He spent a lot of time in the kitchen chatting her up. Talked about maybe him and her taking over the place someday—which was stupid.”

  “Why was it stupid?”

  “‘Cause Mama Hendrix owns the place, and she’s not the kind who’ll ever retire. I’ve seen her type before. She’ll give up this place when they carry her out in a body bag.”

  That made me wonder if she might be next on the killer’s list.

  Zoey spoke up with a question of her own. “You said Doug liked Sandra. Did she like him back?”

  “Yeah, as far as I could tell. She’d bake him special snacks and lunches, stuff like that. Was real sweet, actually. Sandra’s a nice girl.” He looked down at his hands.

  A hunch pulled at my senses.

  “Do you like Sandra?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’s okay.”

  I suspected he thought she was more than okay. Doug had thought that Sandra was the type of girl who would be good to settle down with. I wondered if Tim felt the same. Maybe he’d killed Doug to get him out of the way.

  Tim wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “You got a girl who’s worried about you with all this going on?” I asked.

  His lopsided smile left his eyes flat and humorless. “Nobody’s worried ‘bout me.” He went back to studying his hands.

  I betted that he wouldn’t mind Sandra being a little worried for him. There was a loneliness about him I hadn’t spotted before.

  “We need to know more about Doug,” Zoey said. “Did he have debt? A gambling habit? Drugs? Drink? Did you ever see anyone unusual show up looking for him?”

  “I don’t know.” Tim stood. “Except for the last question, and the answer to that is no. Now, I’m done here.” He headed for the tent’s open door.

  “Wait,” I called after him.

  He kept walking at first but then stopped and turned. “What?”

  “Did Doug ever mention Rita?”

  “Rita?” he scoffed. “That girl, one of the customers?” His tone said he thought it had been the dumbest question on earth. “No, he never mentioned Rita. I did my job, then I went home. We didn’t hang out. We weren’t buddies. We didn’t braid each other’s hair. I’ve never read his diary. And even though the guy would never shut up, I don’t know anything about him or who he ticked off. Now like I said, we’re done.”

  With that, he turned and left, disappearing from view as he exited the tent.

  “Think he’s lying?” Zoey asked.

  “I think he could be,” I said. “I think he might’ve wanted Sandra for himself and needed Doug out of the way.”

  Zoey stared in the direction Tim had gone. “Wanna go talk to Sandra?”

  I imagined running into Tim at Sandra’s place. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was heading her way as soon as possible. No, that wouldn’t be the best place to start.

  “I want to, but there’s someone else we should talk to first.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone with something worth killing for.”

  Chapter 15

  “How do we find him?” Zoey asked.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d know. Michael took off right after he brought Rita into the kitchen.” If a father wasn’t willing to kill for his daughter, who would he kill for? “He said he needed to make some phone calls.”

  Zoey thought for a moment. “I should be able to find him.”

  She sat down on Tim’s now empty chair, grabbed a wireless keyboard, and started typing. The main screen in the wall of screens flickered through various windows. “He was planning on using his cell phone, right?”

  I recalled what he’d said. He’d left the B&B in search of a better cell phone signal. “Yeah, cell phone,” I confirmed.

  “Should be able to get a cell phone ping and triangulate his position.” Her fingers danced across the keyboard.

  “Do you have access to that kind of information?”

  “Not yet.” Her focus never left the largest, centermost screen.

  When Zoey didn’t have the information magically pulled up in twenty seconds flat, I sat down at the center table. I was eventually joined by other Civilian Justice League members as the bravest—or most foolhardy—among them migrated back inside the tent and sat at the table as well.

  “Got ‘em,” Zoey said after another ten minutes of unwavering focus.

  Her declaration was met by a standing ovation from the geek squad guys. More than one of them even had tears of admiration in his eyes.

  A short car ride later, Zoey and I were walking into the Grodven Tavern. We recognized Michael’s car from among the few parked in front. His had been among the few that had decorated the B&B’s small gravel parking lot.

  Walking into the tavern, we moved from sunshine into the dim light of a cave. That’s what it felt like anyway. But it was a very nice cave. There were three large, wall-mounted TVs, a polished, curving bar, plenty of high-backed booths along the exterior walls, and a few glossy, single-slab wood dining tables in the center.

  A waitress in a wrap-around purple-and-white-plaid mini skirt and bright yellow fitted T-shirt strolled up and smiled with pearly pink lips. She had a round cork-top serving tray lying flat against her hip. “Plenty of booths open, or would you girls rather sit at the bar?”

  I was guessing she was a local. And we hadn’t traveled far from the B&B. I wondered if she knew Doug.

  “We, uh, were just needing to put some space between us and the Red Maple Apples B&B,” I said.

  The waitresses eyes went around and she gasped in a breath. “Is that where you’re staying?”

  “Uh-huh.” I leaned in, hopeful.

  “Don’t they have the best pancakes? Oh! And I had the apple cider once. Oh my gosh, am I right?”

  My shoulders sank. Things weren’t looking good that she knew anything, but I had one more angle to try. “And that Doug, isn’t he a hoot?”

  “Who?” There wasn’t even a hint of recognition in her
eyes.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I said, waving the question off. “A booth would be great.” There was no one sitting at the bar. If Michael was here, he had to be sitting amongst the high-backed bench seats. “You mind if we pick our own spot though? Drafts really get me.”

  “Oh, sure. Pick a spot and I’ll find ya. Can I get you something to drink?”

  We placed an order. We’d have looked suspicious otherwise. Zoey ordering a piece of cheesecake went above and beyond, but I wasn’t prepared to fault her on it, especially since she requested two spoons.

  The waitress left to do her thing, and Zoey and I took a stroll around the place. We found Michael sitting at the second-to-last booth on the right-hand side. An enormous beer mug sat on the table. It was nearly empty. His cell phone was out too, but its screen was asleep.

  “Michael?” I said to get his attention.

  His head made a swooping, dipping motion as it swung to look up at us. “Oh, hey. Hi.” His eyelids did a slow blink.

  “Mind if we sit?” Zoey asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. Go for it.” He motioned to the other side of the table. Zoey and I slid into the booth. “You guys… You guys, you’re from the… the…” He pointed a finger in what I assumed was the direction of the B&B. The man was soused.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You doing okay?” Concern for his well-being managed to override my need for homicidal information, at least momentarily.

  “Couldn’t… Couldn’t be better.” He concluded this statement with a hiccup, followed by another swig of his beer.

  The waitress appeared with a coffee for me, a matcha latte for Zoey, and a dessert plate with two spoons.

  “Cheesecake!” Michael exclaimed, snatching it up. His eyes were closed as he savored his first bite. “Mmmm.”

  The waitress shook her head. “You two know him?” she asked.

  “He’s from the B&B too.”

  “Do me a favor, get his car keys from him, okay?”

  “We’ll slash his tires if we can’t,” Zoey said.

  The waitress laughed. She thought Zoey was joking. I knew she wasn’t.

  “I’ll get you girls another plate of cheesecake. On the house.”