Wine and Punishment

by Sarah Fox

  As I sank down onto the tree stump, Bowie trotted over and nudged my hand with his nose. I gave him a pat, and he sat next to me, leaning against my leg. I kept an arm around him, drawing comfort from his companionship while Grayson paced along the top of the embankment, his cell phone to his ear.

  I still couldn’t believe what I’d seen, that Eric could be dead. What could have happened to him? There was so much blood . . .

  I tried to will away the image of his blood-soaked shirt and his lifeless face, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. My stomach churned, and I had to draw in several deep breaths of the chilly morning air before I could feel confident that I wasn’t about to lose my breakfast.

  Sensing my distress, Bowie whined and licked my hand. I focused on him, stroking his white fur, and that helped to calm me. I didn’t look up from the dog until I heard Grayson’s footsteps crunching through some dry leaves as he approached. Bowie bounded to his side, and Grayson reach down to scratch him on the head.

  “The police should be here soon.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. A strange numbness had crept over me, dulling the sharp edges of my shock, but also slowing my mind. Whenever I tried grasping on to the edge of a thought, it slipped away before I could grab hold of it.

  Fortunately, Grayson didn’t seem interested in making conversation. With Bowie at his heels, he walked toward the edge of the road and faced toward the center of town, keeping a lookout. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two before he raised a hand and a patrol car came into view, pulling over to the side of the road.

  I remained seated as Grayson greeted the man who climbed out of the driver’s side of the vehicle, pointing up the gentle hill that led to the top of the embankment. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I gathered that the officer asked Grayson to hang back while he went to have a look at the scene. A uniformed woman who climbed out of the passenger side of the vehicle followed after her colleague.

  The two officers paused at the crest of the hill, but soon began picking their way down the muddy bank, disappearing from sight. They weren’t gone for long, and when they reappeared, they both wore grim expressions. The man’s gaze landed on me, and he headed in my direction while the woman spoke into her radio, her words inaudible from where I sat.

  As the man approached, I got to my feet and pulled my sweater more tightly around me. My legs had stopped shaking, but the numbness remained.

  “Police Chief Walters,” the man said with a terse nod as he came to a stop in front of me.

  “Sadie Coleman,” I returned, relieved that I was able to speak without my voice wavering or cracking.

  “I understand you and Mr. Blake found the body.”

  I winced at the way he referred to Eric as “the body,” but I still managed to respond. “That’s right.”

  “Do you recognize the deceased?”

  My hands, holding my sweater closed, clenched around the soft yarn. “His name is Eric Jensen. He lives in Boston.”

  “You knew him then.”

  “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

  The police chief regarded me carefully. “Any idea what happened to him?”

  I swallowed hard as the image of Eric’s bloody body flashed in my mind yet again. “None at all,” I managed to choke out.

  Tears welled in my eyes, and I began trembling again, this time all over. It seemed the numbness was deserting me.

  “Do you live nearby?” Walters asked.

  “At the old mill,” I replied, tipping my head in that direction as I blinked back my tears.

  “You’re the new owner of the pub?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you’re all right to get there on your own, I’ll send someone over shortly to take your statement.” He consulted his watch. “You don’t open for a while yet, do you?”

  “Not until noon.”

  “Then someone will meet you there.”

  Walters walked off to talk with Grayson as an unmarked car pulled up to park behind the police vehicle. I glanced at the driver on my way back to the mill. The woman who climbed out of the car was nearly six feet tall and dressed in a dark suit, her black hair pulled back into a twist. She removed her sunglasses, and from the purposeful way she strode over to talk with the police officers, I figured she was probably there in some sort of official capacity.

  What would happen next to Eric, I wasn’t keen to know. It was bad enough to think of him lying dead at the edge of the water. Imagining him getting poked, prodded, and photographed by the police brought fresh tears to my eyes. I tried holding them back, but by the time I was crossing the footbridge to the mill, they had spilled out onto my cheeks.

  Glad that no patrons would be arriving for hours yet, I took refuge in the pub. I pulled out the nearest chair and collapsed into it, shaking with sobs. I hadn’t wanted to see Eric, I hadn’t wanted him to reappear in my life, but I would never have wished him dead. He’d irreparably fractured our relationship with his lies, but he didn’t deserve to have his life cut short.

  Briefly, I considered keeping the pub closed for the day, but I couldn’t afford to lose an entire day’s business. Maybe it was better for me to work, anyway. I didn’t want to have too much time to think about what I’d seen by the creek.

  I allowed myself to sit there and cry for several minutes, but then forced myself to get up and climb the stairs to my apartment. All I wanted to do was flop out on my bed and close my eyes, Wimsey at my side for company, but I needed to pull myself together before the police arrived to take my statement. I wouldn’t be much use if all I could do was cry.

  I stopped by the armchair where Wimsey was curled up and buried my face in his fur for a second or two before moving on to the bathroom, where I splashed my face with cold water. My cheeks were red and splotchy, but I knew that would fade before long. My red eyes, however, would likely take longer to return to normal.

  Feeling marginally better after another few splashes of cold water, I returned to the pub and put a pot of coffee on to brew. While I waited for someone from the police department to arrive, I tried to keep busy so I wouldn’t break down again. I polished the bar, even though it was already perfectly clean, and I shifted a few pint glasses on the shelf below the bar so they stood in tidy rows. I was in the midst of dusting the shelf holding my book collection when someone knocked on the front door. It opened right after, and the tall, dark-haired woman I’d noticed at the scene of Eric’s death stepped into the pub.

  “Sadie Coleman?” The woman had stopped just inside the door, and I realized that her eyes were probably adjusting to the relatively dim light of the pub compared to the bright sunshine outdoors.

  “That’s me.” I set down the feather duster as she walked closer.

  “Detective Marquez. I’d like to talk to you about Eric Jensen.”

  “Yes, of course. Would you like some coffee? It’s fresh.”

  “That would be nice, thank you.”

  I fetched two clean mugs from behind the bar and filled them both with coffee, sliding one across the bar to Detective Marquez.

  “Cream or sugar?”

  “Black is good, thanks.”

  I added both to my own cup and gave it a stir.

  “Shall we sit down?” The detective inclined her head toward one of the tables.

  I joined her there, sitting across from her as she flipped open a notebook and removed a pen from the inner pocket of her suit jacket.

  “I understand that you were in a relationship with Mr. Jensen,” she said when she raised her eyes to meet mine.

  “That’s right.” I wrapped my hands around my mug, wanting the warmth for comfort, but I let go quickly when I found that it was uncomfortably hot. “For about four years. We lived together in Boston up until a few months ago.”

  “That’s when you moved here?”

  “Almost. I came to visit my aunt after Eric and I broke up, and I decided to stay when I found out I could buy this place.”

&nb
sp; Marquez wrote something in her notebook. I tried to read the words she was setting out on the page, but I didn’t have a good view, and I didn’t want to be obvious about it.

  “Had you seen Mr. Jensen since then?” she asked as she stopped writing.

  “No. I haven’t had any contact with him for at least three months now.”

  “So you didn’t invite him to Shady Creek?”

  “Definitely not. I didn’t even know he was coming until he showed up here at the Inkwell.”

  “Did he tell you why he was here?”

  “I didn’t actually see or talk to him. I was on my way out for the evening when one of my staff told me he was here asking for me. I figured I’d talk to him later that night or this morning.” My voice wavered on that last word. I took a quick sip of coffee to give myself a moment to recover from the fresh wave of emotion, but all I ended up doing was scalding my tongue.

  “So you believe he came to Shady Creek to see you?”

  I managed to keep my voice steady when I replied. “I assumed that was the case. He came in here and asked about me, and I don’t know of any other reason why he’d come to Shady Creek.”

  “So he’s not acquainted with anyone else in town?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” I gripped my coffee mug. “His family . . . do they know what happened?”

  “I’ll be informing them shortly. He had ID on him and a phone, but the battery is dead.”

  I patted my pocket and pulled out my own phone. “I think I’ve still got his parents’ number in here. And I definitely have his sister’s.” It only took me a few seconds of searching to find what I was looking for. I pushed the device across the table, and Marquez copied down the numbers displayed on the screen.

  “Thank you for that.”

  Maybe I should have offered to be the one to break the news to the Jensens—whether or not the detective would have taken me up on it—but I couldn’t bring myself to form the words. That might have been for the best. I always got along with Eric’s parents before, but I had no idea what they thought of me since the breakup. I was still on good terms with his sister, Natalie, but I couldn’t bear the thought of being the one to tell her that her brother was dead.

  “Do you have any idea when Mr. Jensen left the pub last night?”

  “No. You’d have to ask Damien. That’s Damien Keys. He works here. I was at my aunt’s birthday dinner at Louie Edmonds’s place. I left there around quarter past ten, watched the fire for a while, and came back here shortly before eleven. There was no one around by then.”

  “What time does the pub close on Tuesdays?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  She made note of that. “Can you tell me how you came to find the deceased this morning?”

  I began the story by telling her how I’d gone out to the parking lot to find my car with all its tires slashed.

  Marquez’s eyebrows drew together. “Any idea who might have done that?”

  “Not really. The only possible person I could think of was Grayson Blake.”

  “The man who was with you when you found the deceased.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why would you suspect him of slashing your tires?”

  “He doesn’t seem to like me much, though I don’t know why. That’s the only reason, really.”

  “But you suspected him rather than Mr. Jensen?”

  “Eric would never have done something like that. And I really don’t know if it was Grayson. He denied it when I confronted him. That’s what I was doing when his dog found Eric down by the water.”

  The detective made some more notes in her book. As she finished up, the pub’s door opened, and the uniformed officer I’d seen earlier with Chief Walters came inside.

  Marquez took a quick drink of her coffee before setting the mug down and pushing back her chair. “Officer Delaney will take your official statement now.” She handed me a business card. “I appreciate your time.”

  “Detective,” I said before she could leave, “what happened to Eric? How did he die?”

  “We won’t have an official cause of death for a while yet.”

  “But unofficially? There was so much blood. Was he hit by a car?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t comment on that at this time.” She nodded at her colleague. “I’ll leave you with Officer Delaney.”

  I watched the detective as she left and wished she’d told me more. Maybe the police didn’t know what had happened for sure, but I couldn’t think of any explanation other than an accident for him to be lying dead down by the creek. The driver could have driven off in a panic, or maybe they didn’t even realize they’d hit someone. The impact could have thrown Eric a long way, or he could have crawled to the top of the embankment, seriously injured, not knowing which way he was going, and then rolled down to the water’s edge.

  Picturing those scenarios made my eyes fill with tears again. I wiped them away with the cuff of my sweater as Officer Delaney took Detective Marquez’s vacated seat. Then I pulled myself together as best I could and prepared to give the police officer my official statement.

  Chapter 5

  By the time Officer Delaney left the Inkwell, I was exhausted. It was only mid-morning, and I had a long day ahead of me, but giving in to the temptation to take a long nap wasn’t an option. Since I couldn’t drive to the pumpkin patch, I’d give Damien a hand with the catapult when he arrived. One way or another, we needed to be ready for the Autumn Festival, even if I wasn’t feeling particularly festive at the moment.

  Checking the time on my phone, I realized that Damien would likely show up soon. I spent a few minutes searching the Internet for a phone number for the local mechanic, and once I found it, I put a call through to the garage and arranged to have my car transported there and fitted with a new set of tires.

  In addition to providing my statement to Officer Delaney, I’d filed a report with her about my slashed tires. I didn’t expect anything to come of that, but I figured it didn’t hurt to have the incident noted by the police. Now all I had left to do in that regard was to contact my insurance company. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to pay too much out of my pocket for the new tires.

  As I was about to return my phone to the pocket of my jeans, I realized that I still needed it. I didn’t want Aunt Gilda to find out about Eric through the grapevine, so I needed to fill her in before that happened. I tried calling her cell, but she didn’t pick up. Considering the time, I knew she was likely busy with a client, but I didn’t want to call the salon phone. That would most likely mean she’d receive the news with an audience. The news of a death in the town would spread before long, but that didn’t mean I wanted to have a private conversation with my aunt in less-than-private circumstances.

  I could have sent her a text, but I settled on leaving her a voice message. That way she could hear my voice when I assured her that I was okay, and hopefully that would keep her from worrying too much. I did the same for Shontelle, knowing I’d have to provide details to both of them at some point in the near future.

  With that taken care of, I wandered out the front door and found Wimsey sitting like a sentinel atop one of the two rustic whiskey barrels located on either side of the entrance. I couldn’t allow him in the pub without violating state regulations, but he liked to keep an eye on the place when he wasn’t busy snoozing upstairs in the apartment. I’d installed cat doors at the entrance to my apartment as well as on the back door of the building, so he could come and go as he pleased during the day without ever setting a paw in any of the rooms that formed part of the pub.

  He was popular with the patrons, and he deigned to being patted by those passing in or out of the Inkwell. I did just that, earning a hint of a purr as I noticed movement over by the shed on the pub’s property. The double red doors of the small stone building stood open, and I could see someone moving within the shadowy interior.

  Leaving Wimsey to keep watch over his kingdom, I headed across the grass to the
shed.

  “Morning, Sadie!” someone called out from behind me.

  When I turned around, I saw Mel crossing the footbridge. I waited for her to catch up, and as she reached my side, Damien emerged from the shed.

  “Any idea what’s going on down the road?” Mel asked.

  “I was going to ask the same thing,” Damien said.

  “Unfortunately.” I tugged my sweater close around me. “Eric’s dead.”

  That drew startled responses from both of my employees, and a barrage of questions quickly followed. I outlined everything that had happened that morning, wrapping up with Delaney’s visit to the Inkwell to take my statement.

  “That’s terrible,” Mel said once I’d finished. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m not really sure, to be honest. I keep going back and forth between grief and numbness.”

  “If you need the day off, Mel and I can take care of the pub,” Damien offered.

  I managed a small smile. “Thanks, but I think I’d rather keep busy.”

  “Do the police know what happened to Eric?” Mel asked.

  “If they do, they’re not telling me about it. The only thing I can think of is that he was a victim of a hit-and-run.” My gaze wandered over to the shed. “Since I can’t get to the pumpkin patch, I guess I’m free to help with the catapult.”

  “I could take you to the pumpkin patch in my truck,” Mel said.

  “What about the catapult? Don’t you need help, Damien?”

  “I can get started on my own,” he assured me. “I’ll probably get it finished today, but if I don’t, maybe we can all work on it tomorrow.”

  “All right, that sounds like a good plan. Thanks, guys.”

  I locked the pub’s front door and gave Wimsey a good-bye pat on the head before following Mel over to the battered pickup truck she’d left in the parking lot. I wasn’t able to enjoy the excursion as much as I would have under different circumstances, but it did provide me with a distraction, and for that I was grateful.

  An hour and a half later, Mel and I returned to the Inkwell. As it turned out, it was probably for the best that we’d gone in her truck, considering the size of our pumpkin patch haul. I wouldn’t have been able to buy nearly as much if I’d had my own car for transport. We even managed to pick up a few bales of straw from the farm next door to the pumpkin patch.