“Dio mio!” Tessa said, as we scrambled up the slippery embankment, sliding back a step for every two that we took. When we reached the Ladybug, we were covered in mud and wet to the bone. Tessa grabbed her cell phone and started dialing. “Yes, hello. I’m calling to report a dead body at the river’s edge about a half-mile west of Carthage.”
“Is the sheriff coming?” I asked, after she hung up.
“The dispatcher said he would call him on the radio.”
“Let’s go to the studio. We can get help there. Abby will know where the sheriff’s office is or know how to get in touch with him, or someone, who can help us,” I said.
“I’m going to stay here and wait for the sheriff. I don’t want Marco to disappear again.”
“Ah-roo! Ah-roo!” Stanley howled from the bottom of the slope.
“Ah, geez, Stanley. I’ll rescue you, don’t worry.” I slogged down to the river’s edge and grabbed at the basset hound. He was slick with mud and it wasn’t easy to get a firm hold on him. I caught hold of his collar and pulled as hard as I could. I wasn’t strong enough to move him. I wished I’d made it to the gym more often, but that would have required me to have a gym membership, and gym clothes, and time in my busy day to get there.
“What’s happening? Everything okay?” Vance yelled as he slogged toward us, a tarp wrapped around him like a cape.
“We found Marco.”
Vance spotted the body in the reeds.
“Oh. I see. Bad news. Really bad news. Did you call the sheriff?” Vance asked.
“We did. I’m sure someone will be here soon,” I said.
“Ah-roo! Ah-roo!” Stanley added.
“You need some help?” Vance asked.
“I do. Can you help me get Stanley back up the hill?”
Vance approached the dog. “Shhh, now hold still. Everything’s going to be okay,” he whispered in Stanley’s floppy ear once he reached us. Vance Dalton: Hound whisperer. He pulled off his makeshift cape, tied two corners together, and placed the dog in the sling he’d created. Grabbing the opposite side, he dragged the dog, chariot style, up the hill.
All of us were covered in mud from head to toe. In Stanley’s case, that was from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. I grabbed an extra sweatshirt from the trunk, laid it on the backseat, and helped Stanley into the car. I pulled myself into the Ladybug.
“My car’s going to need a thorough cleaning once this mess is over,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Jax, but your dirty car is the least of our worries right now.” Tessa stood next to the car, still determined to stay with Marco’s body.
I started the car and put her in gear, but she wouldn’t budge. Her wheels spun in place.
“Come on, you can do it!” I said, coaxing the car along with a little pat on the steering wheel. The car shuddered, and for a moment it looked like she was going to break free from the mud. I pressed the accelerator. The engine revved faster and faster, but the tires just spun in place.
“You’re not helping! You’re digging yourself in deeper!” Tessa yelled. Vance pushed the car from behind, but it was no use. The Ladybug was stuck.
I turned off the motor and tipped my head back onto the headrest.
“Ah, crap. What are we going to do?”
“You could call Zachary,” Tessa said.
“Oh, no. He would not be pleased. He specifically told you I should not be out here looking for bodies.”
I called Old Firehouse Studio, but got no answer.
I dialed Val’s number next. “Can you get me out of a mess?”
“Oh, honey, that’s my part-time job.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, a black and gold sheriff’s vehicle skidded to a stop next to us at the edge of the berm.
“I got a message forwarded from 911 dispatch. Did you find something?” Sheriff Poole asked, getting out of his car. Wordlessly, we all pointed down the slope toward the water’s edge.
The sheriff looked down the slope at the corpse.
“Ah, hell, looks like a dead guy. Guess you girls were right,” Sheriff Poole said. I sighed internally. Okay, maybe it was out loud.
He headed back to his cruiser and picked up his radio. An emergency vehicle arrived a little while later, and we watched while the sheriff consulted with the EMT and the ambulance driver about the best way to retrieve the body.
It seemed like it took forever for Val to arrive, but finally, Val’s beat up Honda Civic came around the bend and zoomed toward us. At least I knew I’d soon be able to get out of these sopping wet clothes, and perhaps she could give the Ladybug a push with her car.
“Park here,” I said, pointing to a wide spot of asphalt at the side of the road. We didn’t want her car to end up like the Ladybug, axle-deep in mud.
“As requested, I brought you some clothes.” She passed us a large pink tote through her car window. “T-shirts, pants, and some shoes. I grabbed some things from the guest room for you, Tessa.” Val had a key to my side of the duplex. I often wondered how much time she spent over there when I wasn’t home. So far, she hadn’t tried to re-decorate while I was away, and for that, I was grateful.
“You are a life-saver,” Tessa said, clutching the bag of clothes to her chest.
“Let’s see what happened to the Ladybug. Maybe I can give her a push,” Val said, getting out of her car. I glanced at Val’s feet.
“What the heck are those?” I said gawking at her hard white plastic boots.
“Um. They’re—” Val said.
“Wait a minute, I know what those are,” Tessa said. “Joey loves Star Wars, but I won’t let him watch most of it. It’s too scary for a five-year-old.”
“Are those stormtrooper boots?” I asked.
“Um, maybe?” Val said.
She looked ridiculous in her giant white plastic boots with her skin-tight leopard print leggings and an oversized puffy white parka.
“I’m giving them a test drive. I’m going to a science fiction convention with Rudy next week and I’m not sure if I can make them work, you know—”
“Can we talk about this later?” I asked Val. “We found a dead man.” I pointed toward the river’s edge.
“Oh my goodness! How horrible!” she said, fluttering a hand at her chest.
Sheriff Poole sauntered over to Val.
“Get a load of you. What’s your name, honey?”
“Val,” she replied. Under normal circumstances, Val would have flirted with this man. Instead, she reached out and put her hands on his shoulders. “You know, Sheriff, I’m happy to have met you.” He gave her a lecherous grin. With a single movement, she flipped him around so he was pointed toward the river and gave him a shove.
“I think what you’re looking for is down there,” she said, as she pantomimed wiping her hands. I was certain this was a move Val had practiced, and used, on more than one occasion.
The sheriff sidestepped down the embankment, joining the EMT who had made his way down to the river’s edge. The men unceremoniously dragged Marco up the embankment on a rescue board and onto a gurney at the back of the ambulance.
“Is this the EYE-talian who went missing?” the sheriff asked.
“It is. Where’s he going?” I asked Sheriff Poole.
“King County Medical Examiner in Seattle,” he said, looking down at the corpse. “Sure enough, here’s a hole right in his chest. That’s gotta be a stab wound.” The sheriff looked like he was going to poke a stubby finger right into the hole. I interrupted him.
“Sheriff? I’m no expert, but you better not touch the body,” I warned. Sheriff Poole pulled his finger away from Marco’s chest.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to touch him. Wouldn’t want my DNA getting on the victim, right?”
“What’s going to happen now?” I asked.
“I think it would be a good idea if you talked with a detective I know, but maybe you don’t need to mention I was the one who found the body,” I said.
“Now, see here. I’ve got this under control. You girls go back to playing with your little beads and glass geegaws. I’ve got to figure out what his family wants done with him. Do they want him back in Italy? You know, that sort of thing. I bet it’ll cost a lot of money to ship a dead guy overseas.”
“Probably can’t use UPS,” I said.
“You’re right. Probably can’t use FedEx either,” the sheriff said.
ELEVEN
“If you wouldn’t mind, can you give my car a push?” I asked the sheriff.
“I’ll call a tow truck. I don’t want to get my cruiser stuck in the mud along with you. Should only be a couple of hours before someone comes by for the car.”
A couple of hours?
The sheriff’s car peeled out, followed by the ambulance.
I wrote my phone number on a scrap of paper and left it on Ladybug’s windshield along with a message that said I was at the glassblowing studio, so the tow truck driver could contact me when he arrived. There was simply no way I was going to sit around in the mud for hours waiting for someone to tow my car.
“I’ve got to get back to the salon,” Val said. “I’ll drop you off at the glass studio. Maybe you can get changed there and talk with the owner.”
“What about Stanley?” I asked my neighbor. The dog was still sitting in the back seat of my car covered in mud and drooling.
“I’ll take him with me and get him all cleaned up. He’s probably too big to put into the shampoo bowl at the salon, but maybe I can get him into the shower at home,” Val said, examining her long red nails and scraping out the mud from underneath them.
We transferred Stanley into Val’s car, and Tessa climbed in back next to him. There wasn’t room for anyone else back there, especially since half of one of the seats was piled with Val’s shoes, which she often flung in the backseat when she wasn’t wearing them. Stanley had picked up a red patent leather pump in his teeth and was chewing on it. Tessa grabbed it from him and gave him a stern look while wiping the slobber off the shoe’s slightly gnawed-on heel.
“Looks like there’s no room for me,” Vance said. “That’s okay, I’ll walk back. It’s not too far.” Vance was possibly the kindest man I’d ever met. I hoped someday he’d meet the perfect woman. He’d recently divorced his wife, who had a penchant for bondage. While they had tried to patch things up, Vance had finally left after being spanked one too many times.
“Do you want me to come back and get you?” Val asked.
“No, I’m cool. I can take a shower in the studio once Tessa and Jax are done.”
Val dropped us at Old Firehouse Studio and took off up Main Street. She rolled down the window in the back seat so Stanley could stick his head out. His enormous ears flopped gently in the wind as he held one of Val’s shoes in his mouth.
“Let’s find Abby and tell her the news, then we can find out what we’re going to do now that class is over for good. Abby will have to face the fact that Marco is dead and not on some drunken road trip with Dez,” Tessa said.
We found Abby in her office working on her computer. She seemed surprised to see us.
“What are you two doing here? You know class is postponed, right?”
“I’m sorry, Abby. We have some horrible news. We found Marco’s body in the river. The sheriff is taking care of getting him to the morgue,” I said.
“Marco’s really dead?” Abby said, in barely a whisper. “I thought he’d be with Dez. If Marco is dead, what about Dez? Where is he? Maybe he’s not on a bender after all.” Abby drew a deep shuddering breath.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure he’s okay,” Tessa said, grabbing hold of Abby and trying to hug her. Abby resisted, not wanting to be comforted.
“How could this have happened? A major glass artist comes to my studio and ends up dead...drowned in the river.” Abby dropped into a chair and started to cry. Since Marco’s official cause of death had not yet been determined, I decided to keep my mouth shut and not clarify that Marco had, in fact, died from a stab wound.
Duke sauntered into the cramped office and leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed.
“So, class is canceled?” he asked.
“I just found out a second ago. Marco de Luca is dead. So, yes, class is canceled. I’ll be making arrangements with you and the other students to make sure you are scheduled in to one of our other classes.”
“What do you mean ‘other classes’?” Duke asked, as surly as ever. “I paid for this class, and if I can’t—”
“You can’t have this class anymore, can you?” Abby snapped, coming unhinged. “Our damn teacher is dead. What do you expect me to do? Raise him from the dead, like you’re trying to do with your glass career, you old has-been!” She leapt from her chair toward him. Tessa caught Abby by the arm before she attacked Duke physically.
“Listen, I can’t help that you’ve gotten yourself in so deep with this studio that you’re going to try and rip us off for our class fees. I want my money back. And I want it back now!” Duke was shouting at this point. He looked at us. We didn’t make eye contact with him, not wanting him to pull us into his battle. I knew I wanted a refund. I’d never be a glassblower, but I also knew that right now was neither the time nor the place to make demands on an already frantic Abby.
“Don’t worry about us. We can talk about our tuition later,” Tessa said, reaching out to hug Abby again. Brittle with anger, Abby didn’t return Tessa’s hug. Duke and Abby stood there, silently seething, neither of them moving. Tessa and I slunk out of the office and went in search of the shower, which we found in the bathroom next to the kitchen.
“You go ahead and shower. I’ll take one after you’re finished. I need to call Zachary,” I told Tessa. “If he hears from someone other than me that I found Marco’s body, he’s going to be pissed off. But if he finds out from me—”
“He’ll be equally pissed off,” Tessa said, heading toward the bathroom for a much-needed shower.
I stepped into the utility yard for some privacy and dialed Zachary’s number.
“Grant,” he said, in his usual serious tone.
“It’s Jax. We found Marco.”
“Drunk and alive?”
“I’m sad to say he’s very, very dead.”
“You didn’t just stumble across him, did you? You went searching.”
“I’m sorry, but yes, I did. The sheriff wasn’t going to do anything. At least now he knows a crime’s been committed and will take the case seriously, though it doesn’t seem like he knows how to investigate, or—”
“I’ll do what I can to get the victim transferred out to our M.E.”
“The sheriff said Marco is already headed to the Seattle Medical Examiner’s Office.”
“Great. The M.E. should be able to determine the cause and time of death and from there we can see what else, if anything, needs to happen.”
“We know the cause of death. He was stabbed in the chest, right through the heart. It was hard to tell much more than that. He’d been soaking in the river for a while. Do you think you can help on this? Maybe come and see the crime scene or the body?”
“I’d love to see your body,” said Zachary. “But I’d need an invitation.”
“Detective, you might want to rephrase that.”
“Uh, yes, well, I didn’t mean your body, I meant the body,” he said, flustered. “The corpse,” he added, in case it still wasn’t clear.
Poor Zachary. For all of his seriousness, with
all the gruesome stuff he dealt with every day, he simply couldn’t get the hang of how to deal with women, or at least with me.
“The sheriff seems a little reluctant to let anyone else do anything on this case,” I said.
“Do you mean he’s reluctant to have you do anything on this case?” Tessa and I had been involved in a murder investigation at a bead shop last year. During that time, Zachary had been nothing short of cold to me, and it was only after the investigation was over that he had warmed up to me. I did help him solve the crime, so maybe it was gratitude, or maybe my natural charm had melted his cold heart. I’d never been very good at being charming, so I wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe he was just getting used to me.
“It’s possible, but in general, I think the sheriff doesn’t like people giving him any sort of advice. Like this morning, he was stomping all over the crime scene—”
“Jax?” he cut me off. “Professionals don’t like a particular kind of person giving them advice. Do you know who they can’t stand getting advice from? Amateurs.”
“Are you calling me an amateur?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t have a degree or a certificate or whatever,” I said. Now I was the flustered one.
“A badge. You don’t have a badge.”
“I think it’s a little too late for me to become a cop. I’m not even sure I could pass the physical test. Don’t you have to be able to run a mile and be able to do ten push-ups?”
“Tread lightly, please. I’ll see if I can make some headway on my end. We don’t want any maniacs out there in the boondocks murdering anyone else, including you.”
“Got it. Thanks.” I hung up the phone. Tessa found me in the yard.
“The shower’s all yours. Was that Zachary? How’d it go?”
“Exactly what I thought would happen. Whenever I try to help—”
“Interfere—”
“Whose side are you on? Whenever I feel I can help in an investigation, Zachary always turns into a jerk.”
“He is doing his job. Your job, on the other hand, is to make beads and design jewelry,” Tessa said. “But your job right now is to go take a shower. All the mud is drying out. You’re starting to look like a swamp monster.”
Off the Beadin' Path, Glass Bead Mystery Series, Book 3 Page 8