Of course, I'd been right alongside her during these discoveries, but I still seemed to be able to eat just fine. Sigh. Having a constitution as strong as an ox was not always a good thing.
"I wish he'd hurry it along." Greg sounded as down as he appeared. "I wish I'd just volunteered to give my statement down at the station."
"It's not like you actually found Vic, Greg." I wanted to shake him, get him out of the funk he was in. "All you saw were two rather idiotic women trading insults and punches. Speaking of which, Merry, have you heard from either one of them yet?"
She shook her head, taking another sip of her coffee. I'd brewed a cup of Southern Butter Pecan for her, her favorite, hoping that it would help with the mood issues.
"Last I saw, Sarah Lawson was being taken away in a squad car and Lisa Caldwell was being bundled onto a stretcher. Sarah's going to be lucky if she doesn't get the book thrown at her, metaphorically speaking," she added with a half smile.
That was a good sign, I thought. Her humor was starting to reappear.
"What did you hear, Greg?" I was curious to see what had started the fracas to begin with, especially after witnessing the tension between them before.
"To be honest, I didn't hear much, but the part I did hear was insane." He paused and looked over at our snoozing pet. "Glad to see she's sleeping it off."
"A cinnamon roll hangover," I said wryly. "Only Trixie would be able to do that. And quit prevaricating, Greg," I added, giving his leg a prod from my foot. "Tell us what you heard."
"Lisa seemed to think that Sarah had stolen one of her plot ideas and had rushed it through the publication hoops to beat her at the game."
"Seriously?" Merry and I sounded like a Greek chorus as we spoke in unison, both our mouths hanging open.
Stealing someone else's intellectual property was not just bad form, it could also become a serious legal battle. If Lisa had come to Seneca Meadows with a confrontation in mind, Sarah should have known what would happen when the two of them ended up at the same festival. If it was true, I reminded myself. Sometimes two writers really did work on the same wavelength.
"Well, they both write a series about the same group of people," began Merry with a little shrug. "I mean, it's only reasonable to think that eventually they'd both touch on the same type of story lines. Although as far as I'm concerned," she added decisively, "neither one of them will be selling story lines or anything else in Murder by the Book anytime soon."
"Actually, Merry," I said slowly as I watched the coffee in my mug swirl around, "this entire fiasco might boost sales of their books, as sad as that seems." I rubbed my thumb over my index finger, the universal sign for money. "Nothing like a scandal to up the filthy lucre intake, I always say."
"True." Merry sipped her coffee, eyes closed against the steam. "I just don't know if I want to make money off their ridiculous behavior. Speaking of ridiculous, where's Scotty? I want to give my statement and go soak in my tub."
"Or give your statement while soaking in your tub?" I said teasingly. Greg covered his ears and Merry smiled, the color on her face deepening. Even Trixie seemed to agree, giving a muffled yip in her sleep.
"Don't get sassy, Caro." The sound of tires crunching on our graveled driveway caused an uptick in the blush, and I reached over and squeezed her hand.
"I promise I won't tease you while he's here." I stood up and headed for the cabinet where I kept my coffee and tea mugs. "I'd better get his cup ready to go. Greg, could you check the freezer and see if we have any more of those Girl Scout cookies left?"
I'd learned the wisdom of buying extra boxes in the spring and storing them for later. The only trouble was that frozen Do-Si-Dos were as amazing as they were in their original state.
"Believe it or not," said Greg's muffled voice from inside the bottom freezer compartment, "I can see one box of Thin Mints down here under the pork ribs. They must've fallen under the other food and gotten buried." He drew his head back out, holding the package aloft. "Lucky for Scotty."
"Lucky for me," I said, swiping the cookies from his hand in one swift motion. Holding the package to my chest as if it was a newborn baby or a newfound treasure, I waltzed with it to the front hall just as the doorbell chimed.
"Come in," I said, opening the front door for Officer Scott. "We're all in the kitchen." I closed the door behind him. "Ready for some coffee?"
"I could kill for a cup," he said fervently. "I'm about to fall asleep on my feet."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that. To killing, that is," I added. "It seems we've had enough of that around here to last for a while."
"You can say that again."
He stepped into the kitchen with me right on his heels. I wanted to see Merry's expression when he walked in, and I wasn't disappointed. To be honest, I wasn't sure who had blushed more, Merry or Scotty. I smiled to myself. We could be getting a wedding out of this situation yet.
"Scotty. Glad you could make it." My husband stood up and offered his hand to the officer, whose smile for Merry was still in evidence. "If I can get Caro to turn loose of them, we've got some cookies to go with that coffee." He nodded to where I stood at the counter in front of my beloved Keurig, brewing a mug of Jamaican Blue for Scotty.
I just shrugged and grinned.
"Let's just call it protecting the assets, officer. You'll thank me when I let you have one or two of them."
Greg snorted and held out a hand for the mint-flavored cookies. "We share our assets in this house, Mrs. Browning."
"Ew," Merry said, making a gagging sound as she clutched at her chest. "No one wants to know what you two share in this house."
I dropped a kiss on the top of his head, winking at Merry as I walked over to hand the freshly brewed coffee to Scotty.
"Did I just miss something?" Scotty, his expression bemused, looked from me to Greg and back. "It feels like something just went over my head."
"Not a thing," I assured him. "And please, do have a cookie." I fluttered my eyelashes at my husband. "I keep them frozen so the riffraff can't get to them."
My husband gave a snort that was just this side of uncouth. I blew him a kiss that was just this side of sultry. Merry and Scotty just shook their heads. All was right in my world. Except for the two dead bodies.
For a while the four of us sat and talked about everything instead of the fall festival's abrupt ending. There'd be time enough for that, I'd decided, and besides, I was enjoying watching our two visitors as they chatted and flirted, eyes bright above the rims of their coffee mugs.
Finally, Scotty leaned back in his chair, patting his stomach, and gave a satisfied groan. "I don't know about the riffraff, Caro, but you should've kept those cookies under lock and key."
The detritus of our impromptu coffee klatch lay scattered across my kitchen table, only crumbs and crumpled cellophane to prove that the Thin Mints had ever existed. I patted my mouth with a paper napkin, wishing I'd been able to keep the entire box to myself. I'd have to suggest to Candy that she begin making something similar so I wouldn't have to go cold turkey until next Girl Scout cookie season.
"So," began Merry. "I know you didn't just come by for the coffee and the company"—here she blushed again—"and I do need to get home before I turn into a pumpkin."
"You are quite right." Scotty sat up and retrieved his smartphone from his back pants pocket. "If you don't mind, I'm going to take a leap into the twenty-first century and record our conversations."
I looked at Greg, amused, and nodded. "No worries here, Scotty. Greg?"
"I can't see any reason why not." My lawyer husband was my go-to reference in all things legal. "Do you want us all in here at once, Scotty, or one at a time?"
The Seneca Meadows officer shrugged. "You were all present at the same time, so I don't see any need to do the television show thing."
"Television show thing?" I asked, one eyebrow lifted.
"You know: the cop puts each person in a different room and then tries to trick t
hem into giving different versions of the same event." He gave a wry smile. "I guess script writers think that's the way 'real' officers do things." I could hear the quotation marks around the word as he performed an eye roll worthy of the average high school drama queen.
Merry giggled and I smiled. Scotty channeled "disgruntled teen" quite well.
"All right, then," began Scotty, tapping the recorder's icon and putting the phone in the middle of the table. "Let's begin with you, Greg, and the fisticuffs you witnessed."
I listened with interest to the expanded version of events. According to my husband, Sarah Lawson had been blissfully signing autographs and chatting with her fans when Lisa Caldwell had arrived and stormed her way into the booth.
"If I had been putting money on it, Scotty," said Greg, "I would have bet on Lisa for sheer physical size and emotion. She was absolutely blazing."
Merry nodded but didn't say anything. I could see that she thought Greg's assessment was spot-on.
"And how did Sarah respond when Lisa got there?"
"She managed to finish signing a book before Lisa gave her a push off the stool she had been sitting on inside the booth." He rubbed the back of his neck, adding, "That Sarah's got a mean left hook."
I thought I saw the beginning of a twinkle in his eyes, but surely I was wrong. This, after all, could have ended much worse than it did. Of course, Lisa Caldwell was in the hospital, but she'd still been breathing, at any rate, which was more than could be said for poor young Victoria.
"Well, it sounds like a straightforward case of self-defense. Thanks for your time, Greg."
My husband nodded. "Anytime. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to excuse myself. I've got a recorded race I wanted to watch." He stood to his feet, stretching his back and yawning. "If I can stay awake, that is. Those five a.m. rides are killing me." He looked at me and added, "Unless you need me to stay, Caro. I'd be a poor lawyer if I didn't offer my own wife my legal expertise."
This time the eye roll was in triplicate. I didn't feel the need for a lawyer, especially one who bragged about rising at five a.m. The only place you could find me at that ungodly hour was in my nice warm bed. To get up on purpose and then sit on a skinny bicycle seat for hours at a time was my idea of inhumane torture. Greg loved it.
"Yoga is about as close as I'll get to exercising," I said, shaking my head as I watched my better half leave the kitchen and cross the hall to the family room. "And even that's not a given." I nodded at Scotty. "And right now the only thing I want to exercise is my right to make a statement and get to bed."
"Then by all means," Scotty said as he mimed a bow in my direction. "Pray proceed, gentle hostess."
That last bit was our complete undoing. Merry and I looked at each other and burst out laughing, hysterics finally getting the better of us. Trixie woke up and joined in, barking her irritation at being disturbed. The silver-tongued officer just sat there watching the two of us, his arms crossed over his chest as he waited for the merriment to die down.
It was rather late by the time we'd both had our say. I was finally in bed, curled up with a good book and a warm blanket, grateful that this rather horrible day had come to a close.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Do you think the two are linked, Greg?" I propped myself up on one elbow, turning in bed so I could see my hubby's face. Trixie lifted her snout and gave me a sour look from the space between our two pillows. I'd obviously interrupted her sleep.
"Hmm" was his muffled answer from under one out-flung arm. Loving wife that I am, I reached over in the dark and gave his near shoulder a quick shake. After all, two minds were better than one, right?
"Greg? What do you think—connected or not?" I glanced somewhat guiltily at the glowing face of the alarm clock: two thirteen. In the ante meridian. Oh well. We could both sleep in. Right now thoughts of the two pretend corpses that became the real deal were keeping me awake, true "boogeymen under the bed" thoughts.
A deep sigh came from somewhere in the vicinity of my husband's pillow. I grinned to myself—success at last.
"Caro, does that mind of yours ever shut down?" He grunted as he turned over to face me, and I could just imagine Trixie giving us both a baleful look, as she jumped from the bed to the floor. If she couldn't get her beauty sleep in our bed, she would go sleep in her own.
"Is that a rhetorical question, my dear?" I flopped over onto my back, taking advantage of the dachshund-less space as I stretched out. "Because it really doesn't require an answer."
Another grunt and an exaggerated flop from his side of the bed made me smile. He was now half sitting, propped against his pillow and the headboard. I followed suit.
"Want me to turn the light on?" I asked, reaching out one hand toward the lamp on my side of the bed.
"Oh, why not?" I heard the acerbity in his voice and grinned, glad of the darkness. Gregory could do irony like no other, just my type of humor. "I'm awake anyway."
"Fabulous," I exclaimed, sitting up and giving my pillow a good thumping before tucking it behind my back. "I am too." I left the light off, though. I really didn't care for illumination until I'd gotten my first cup of caffeine in me. Or my makeup on.
"What is so important that it couldn't wait until a godlier hour, Caro?" He'd scooted higher on his pillow, sitting upright against the headboard. "If this is about the two deaths, I'd feel better if we waited until I was a bit more awake before we got into this, all right?"
By the dim light of the street lamp outside our house, I could just make out his crossed arms and tilted head. Good, I thought. That was the posture he normally assumed whenever he was prepared to discuss something at length. I gave another wiggle and got a bit more upright, angling myself in his direction. I was ready for a prolonged conversation as well.
"It's just this, Greg." I cleared my throat and reached over for the glass of water I kept on my night table. Taking a drink, I resumed my commentary. "Both Victoria and Viviana had agreed to play the role of corpse in the fall festival's murder mystery game, for lack of a better term. Both are now really and truly dead. That cannot be a coincidence, in my book." I paused a moment and reconsidered my words. "Actually, Victoria didn't become the corpse du jour until we found Viv dead. And I was supposed to play the corpse for the festival to begin with." I looked over at my hubby, who was listening with his eyes still closed. "Does that make sense, Greg?"
Greg was silent a moment, the forefinger of one hand tapping the opposite arm. "No, not really, but I'll let it go for now."
I mentally stuck out my tongue at him. Could I help it if I was getting the order of things confused? Sometimes his insistence on "just the facts, ma'am" really threw my thought process off. After all, I wrote fiction, not technical manuals.
"Other than the fact that both agreed to play a role and then were found deceased, is there anything else that you can define as a commonality between the two women? Besides their names, I mean," he added. "Didn't it strike you as odd that their names were so similar?"
I'd thought about that as well, wondering if there had been other mutual issues. Both had names that began with the twenty-second letter of the alphabet. Both had wanted to play the role of a dead body. And both had lived down the street from the bed and breakfast where Sarah Lawson was staying on her visit to Seneca Meadows. I enlightened my spouse concerning these facts, adding, "I can't find a connection to Lisa Caldwell yet, but I'd bet my last dollar that there's one somewhere. Besides the fist fight with Sarah Lawson, of course." I made a mental note to call the hospital at a decent hour to check on her condition.
"Caro, these statements would fail miserably in a court of law, both this side of the Atlantic and the other as well." He shifted under the covers. "And if that's all that you have, I'm asking for a recess. I need more sleep."
With that, he slid down from his upright position and back onto the bed, pulling the comforter under his chin. If I did not intervene quickly, he'd be snoring again in just a few minutes.
I fl
ung the covers back, making sure to give an extra bounce as I did, and slid my feet into the slippers I kept near my bedside. "Coffee, Greg?"
"Caro."
"Yes, dear?"
"I'm asleep. And I want to stay that way."
"And I'm awake. I'll probably stay that way, at least for a while, so I'm going to make coffee." I paused near the door to our room. "Going once, going twice…"
"You are absolutely incorrigible."
"Yes, I am." I bounced over to his side of the bed and planted a kiss on his head. "See you in the kitchen, Greg."
By the time my recalcitrant spouse joined me in our kitchen, I'd already produced two steaming mugs of coffee—Peppermint Bark for me and Jamaican Blue for him—and plated two slices of the pound cake I'd made earlier in the day. A dose of sugar would be highly beneficial for a middle-of-the-night conversation.
Greg took the mug I handed him with one hand and slipped the other arm around my waist, pulling me against him.
"I suppose I should already be used to this sort of crazy, Caro." He sipped the coffee and gave me a pat on my, well, on the place reserved for sitting. I made sure to wiggle that particular part of my anatomy as I carried my own mug around to the other side of table.
For a few minutes we sipped in silence. I was turning over a few ideas in my mind. Greg, I was sure, was still in the process of coming fully awake. Finally I sighed, set the mug down, and clasped my hands on the table.
"I'm not sure why I'm thinking this way, Greg, but I believe that both murders are connected and that the two authors have a part in it as well." I shrugged as I watched Greg slowly raise one eyebrow. Very Stephen Colbert-ish, I decided with approval.
"Okay, let's go with that, although I have to confess I'm not seeing this in the same way you are, Caro." He held up his mug. "Any chance of a refill?"
You Can Lead a Horse to Water (Proverbial Crime Mysteries Book 3) Page 6