Whispering Pines Mysteries Box Set 3

by Shawn McGuire

  I burst out laughing and wiggled my fingers in front of her mouth. “What’s that? Are you hexing me?” A small voice inside me urged me to run home and get the protection charms Morgan had given me shortly after that coven gathering. Why aren’t you wearing the amulet or carrying the charm bag? That’s why she gave them to you. I silenced the voice. “Cute as you and your little group of warriors are, I know there are more people on my side than yours.”

  Meeka leaned against my leg as the little voice said, Meeting aggression with aggression rarely works.

  Little voice was right this time. “Flavia, please don’t cause problems. We all want harmony around here. If people aren’t happy with the job I’m doing—”

  “There’s no ‘if’ about it. There are plenty who aren’t happy with you. Enough that you should pay attention. We never had problems like this when Karl wore the badge.”

  Little voice tried to stop me again, but this time I mentally shoved a gag in her mouth.

  “Maybe there didn’t appear to be any problems, but that was on the surface.” I stared straight into Flavia’s intense blue eyes. “Something was going on that the villagers didn’t see. Something bad enough to make him eat a cyanide capsule in front of me. Problems like we’re having now don’t just happen. They start bubbling far beneath the ground and slowly ooze their way to the surface. I didn’t cause any of these problems, and you know it. Those buried things started happening forty years ago.”

  Her only reaction was a slight twitching of her pursed lips.

  “Look, I’d be happy to sit down with your group and discuss it like adults.” I flung a hand toward the dining room. “Gathering in corners and getting each other worked up about things will only lead to more problems.”

  She pushed her shoulders back. “We were simply sharing thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “And I’m open to hearing those thoughts.” Cheryl’s phone vibrated in my hand. Someone was texting her. “Right now, I need to take care of this other problem we’ve got going on.”

  I didn’t give her the opportunity to respond further. It’s not that I wasn’t taking villager concerns seriously. Of course I wanted to believe I was doing my job perfectly, or at least better than my predecessor had. If I was being true to my word, though, that I loved this village and its villagers and wanted only the best for them, I needed to listen and learn from those who felt I could do better.

  I knocked on Darryl’s door and when he opened it, I asked him to come with me to Cheryl’s room. However, Cheryl’s room was still trashed.

  “Is she like this at home?” I asked him.

  “Actually, no. Our apartment is spotless. It’s like this other side of her comes out when we stay in hotels. She tends to trash them. She doesn’t break anything, but she tosses stuff everywhere. If I don’t clean up before we leave, we end up getting an extra charge for cleaning services.”

  The three of us crossed back to Darryl’s room to look at the pictures.

  Cheryl unlocked the phone and brought the pictures up, flipping through three or four dozen to get to the start of their weekend. “Okay, here’s the first one.”

  I took the cell phone from her. The crack in the screen obscured the images a little but not enough that I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. I started scrolling slowly, then flipped a little faster because the first twenty were of their road trip from Oshkosh to Whispering Pines. Another couple dozen taken at the campsite showed Lindsey, the distinctive handle of the knife in question sticking out of the sheath on his right hip. Finally, after a collection of Cheryl, Kendra, and Didi in a hotel room doing each other’s hair and makeup and drinking what looked to be cosmos, I came to pictures at the pub.

  The first few were of the group, minus Marcel and Chaz, gathered at their table with plates full of Thanksgiving dinner in front of them. Then there came some of the guys talking with Silence, Melinda, and Gloria. It was immediately obvious there was a lot of flirting going on between the six of them. A few were closeups of Darryl talking to Silence. Cheryl was right about the effect a pretty girl had on him. He looked like a lovesick schoolboy with an aw-shucks grin on his face.

  I paused on this one for Cheryl’s sake.

  “See what I mean?” Cheryl asked him. She reached over my shoulder and pointed at his face on the screen. “See that? That’s the look you get whenever you talk to a beautiful woman.”

  Darryl took her hand and kissed it. “Then I must have that look all the time when I’m at home.”

  Smooth talker. Cheryl blushed a rosy-pink and swatted his arm.

  A few screen swipes later, I finally got to the pictures I’d been waiting for. Cheryl had taken dozens of shots of the group gathered at the center of the pub’s main room. Just as she and Darryl had said, the images showed Lindsey, Kendra, Sundstrom, and Didi front and center facing Silence, Melinda, and Gloria. There were two villagers on the vigilante side. I had spoken with them that night, and they claimed that they hadn’t done anything other than stand there and, sickeningly, encourage Lindsey. That had been all the motivation I needed to issue disturbing the peace fines.

  As a few of the detainees had also mentioned, Silence, Melinda, and Gloria kept shifting positions. In one, Silence was upfront with the other two behind her. Then Gloria was upfront with Silence and Melinda in back. In still another, Melinda was upfront with Silence in between her and Gloria.

  I counted the images, so I knew how many to expect, and handed the phone back to Cheryl. Not only did I need the pictures for evidence, I wanted to study them on a bigger, uncracked screen.

  I paused, realizing this had to be Lily Grace’s vision. A “jagged scar across a smooth plane.” Her record continued.

  “Send all of these to me at the station, all right?” I gave Cheryl my email address. Once she had completed the task, I said, “I told you that if these pictures proved you weren’t involved, I’d let you go. It’s safe for me to assume that Cheryl was at the back of the group taking pictures since this is her phone.”

  A panicked look came over Darryl. “I was standing right next to her.”

  “I didn’t actually see you in any of the pictures,” I told him. “Can you prove that you were next to her?”

  As he stood there running his hand over his close-cropped hair, Cheryl blurted, “There is!” She scrolled rapid-fire through the images until she came to one that she wanted me to see. “Look. Here’s his tattoo.”

  I took the phone back and enlarged the image on the screen. It showed the arm of someone on her right with a distinctive tattoo. I looked from it to the one Darryl was holding in front of my face. It looked at first like a weirdly shaped letter M. Or, “Is that the top half of a heart?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Cheryl hummed through pursed lips. “His ex-girlfriend has the bottom half with his name next to it.” She placed her own forearms side by side. “Put them together and they form a whole heart. Isn’t that cute?”

  I squinted at the image and then at the word on his arm. “What does that say?”

  “It says Charity,” Darryl explained. “I keep telling Cheryl we could complete the heart and tell people I believed in donations to the Heart Association.”

  “There’s no way you’re keeping her name on your arm.”

  With the right font and some creativity, a good tattoo artist could probably turn “Charity” into “Cheryl.” I kept that thought to myself, though.

  “All right, you’re both free to go.”

  “How are we going to get home?” Cheryl asked. “We don’t have a car.”

  “We’re making Marcel come back and get us,” Darryl said. “The little twerp owes us for leaving us here.”

  They gathered their things and walked down the hall, making plans to go shopping and for a hike until Marcel returned.

  “Two down, two left,” Jagger said.

  “Two?” I asked.

  “Didi and Kendra.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot about Kendra.”


  “They’ve been really quiet. You could leave them here for a while. I’ll stay.”

  I considered that option, but Laurel wanted to rent the rooms to guests. Then again, Pine Time had a couple rooms available.

  “That’s a tough one,” I replied. “I hate to disturb Didi when she’s so calm, but I think I’ll bring them over to the station and let them be with their men.”

  As though it weighed nothing, Jagger picked up his lounge chair to return it to the room he’d borrowed it from. “Thanks for letting me help. I forgot how much I like this work.”

  “Really? All you’ve done is sit here.”

  “That’s how it looks.” He tapped his temple. “I’m mentally composing poetry at the same time.”

  How many layers could one guy have? “You write poetry?”

  “It’s more like narrative poetry. I make up stories in verse form about the people I guard.”

  “I have no idea what you just said, but I trust that it’s awesome. Thanks for your help. Can I call you if I need assistance again?”

  “Around here? I’ll expect to hear from you next week.”

  He was joking, but only a little.

  I knocked on Didi’s door and poked my head inside. “How are you doing in here?”

  “Okay, but I’ve already seen this movie three times.”

  “Why didn’t you change the channel?”

  “I can’t find the remote.”

  “There are buttons on the television.” I pushed one to demonstrate an alternate way to change the channels.

  She shook her head, impressed. “I think I could learn a lot from you.”

  She was really very sweet when she was calm. “Would you like to go see Lars now?”

  Instantly, she climbed out of her little pillow nest and put on her shoes. “Yes, please.”

  We stopped and retrieved Kendra, who claimed she’d rather stay in the hotel room. As though she was on vacation.

  “Except you’re still a suspect,” I reminded her. “I just eliminated Darryl and Cheryl. If you can tell me who stabbed Silence, I’ll let the innocent parties go.”

  “Wish I could.” Kendra retrieved her coat from the room’s closet. “I have no idea what happened. It was chaos in the pub.”

  It was. Good thing I had pictures to clear it all up.

  Chapter 19

  Using her newfound instincts as a support dog, Meeka walked closer to Didi than Kendra and me on our way to the station. When we passed by Treat Me Sweetly, Sugar rushed outside to talk to me.

  “I’m escorting these women to the station, Sugar. I don’t have time to talk.” I was also mad at her and didn’t care what she had to say.

  “Two minutes,” Sugar begged.

  I sighed and pointed to the bench on the sweet shop’s deck. “Ladies, would you have a seat up there, please?”

  Once they were out of earshot, I turned to Sugar. “Yes, I saw you with Flavia. Are you going to say it wasn’t what it seemed?”

  Sugar shook her head. “No, it’s pretty much exactly what it looked like. Flavia is rounding up villagers who want to take back the village. Just thought you might want to know what they were talking about.”

  “You mean what we were talking about. You’re one of them.”

  “In a way. I’m not looking to kick you out of Whispering Pines—”

  “Good,” I interrupted. “Seems like a few people around here have forgotten that I own the village.”

  “Well, technically your father does.”

  She just couldn’t stop herself from aggravating me. “And the only reason he hasn’t put this place up for sale to the highest bidder is because I asked him not to. It’s in everyone’s best interest to work with me on this, because all of you will be looking for a new place to live if I walk away. Next time you have your little gathering of vigilante villagers, tell them that.”

  “You don’t need to get so defensive.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “No.” Sugar’s voice rose and then dropped again. “I told you before, there are some here who believe you woke up this darkness by uncovering the truth of how Yasmine Long died. Then you went deeper with Priscilla Page’s death.”

  “None of this has anything to do with me. I didn’t create your darkness. All I did was expose the truth.”

  “I also told you,” Sugar continued, ignoring my statement, “I believe you’re the one who will free us from whatever is going on.”

  I leaned back and studied her. “Your involvement with Flavia’s group is what exactly? Are you trying to tell me you’re a double agent?”

  Wouldn’t be the first time. When they were young, Sugar and her sister Honey used to spy on the bigger kids. Apparently, Honey was so little that the group of kids my dad used to hang out with, nicknamed The Pack, didn’t notice when she was hanging around. She’d gather information and bring it back to Sugar. Little kid stuff then, but they committed their acts of espionage so often, doing this kind of thing was firmly implanted in their personalities now. I didn’t trust Sugar. I didn’t trust anyone who played both sides that way.

  “Double agent,” Sugar repeated with a glint in her eye. “I guess you could say that. Believe me or not, I am trying to make the group see exactly what you just said. That this bad vibe is due to things that happened a long time ago. You know how people can be. If it’s new in their world, it must be new altogether.”

  “I agree with you on that, but honestly I’m not sure I can trust you.”

  She looked wounded. Tough, she brought it on herself. “Guess I have to prove that I love this village as much as you do.”

  “I don’t doubt that, Sugar, but you seem to think you have rights here that I don’t.”

  “I have been here longer.”

  Honestly. If she kept poking the bear, she’d end up getting bit. “Which means nothing when I’m holding the deed.”

  Startled at my response, Sugar flinched. “Is that a threat?”

  “I don’t need to threaten you. I just told you, if I go down, you all go down with me.”

  The truth was if I wanted to do away with the village council and rule Whispering Pines as the monarch, there wasn’t a thing any of them could do about it. Always a businessman, Gramps insisted that stipulation be written into the fine print. None of us wanted that to happen, though. Everyone having a say was always better. Well, usually better.

  I turned to find Didi and Kendra now enjoying ice cream cones. Honey, standing in the shop window with a big smile on her face, waved at me with both hands. How long had I been talking to Sugar?

  “Let’s go, ladies.”

  “Thought we were going to have to break up a fight,” Kendra said when we were twenty yards down the Fairy Path.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You don’t like that woman,” Didi noted.

  It was that obvious? “Not right now, I don’t.”

  Didi licked a drip making its way down her cone and said with childlike innocence, “Maybe you will the next time you see her.”

  And right there was the definition of my relationship with Sugar. “Maybe I will.”

  Didi squealed with delight when we entered the station. She ran straight over to Sundstrom’s cell. “Let me in there, Sheriff. Lock me up.”

  “Nothing at all weird about that,” Elsa noted to Schmitty as I opened the cell door and let Didi in.

  “She really missed her boyfriend,” I told them as we watched him wrap her in his arms. Kendra, however, wasn’t as thrilled to see her guy.

  She leaned in close to me. “Remember what I told you in the hotel room? I’m ending things with him.”

  “I appreciate and encourage that. I have nowhere else to put you, though. Unless you want to have it out with him right here, you’re going to have to play nice until I identify the stabber.”

  “Great.” She rolled her eyes, put on a facsimile of a lovesick smile, and turned to Lindsey. “Hey, baby.”

  “Where’s everyone else?
” Lindsey demanded.

  “Marcel and Chaz left the pub before the fight started,” I explained. “Cheryl cleared herself and Darryl with pictures she took with her phone at the pub.”

  Lindsey grumbled something about not being able to trust people as I put Kendra in the cell with him. Then I turned to my guards, “Thanks for helping. I’m going to be here for a while, so you can leave.”

  “Do you want us to come back?” Schmitty asked.

  I checked my watch; it was one thirty. Unless I wrapped this up in the next couple hours, I would need someone to stay here tonight. I used to be able to stay alert and awake for two days straight if necessary. I was out of practice. I couldn’t remember my last multi-day marathon.

  “Give me a call at four thirty. I’ll know by then if I need your help.” They agreed and left the building.

  In my office, I found my K-9 sitting on her cushion. I knelt next to her and scratched her ears. “What’s going on with you? Why are you so attached to people lately?”

  She leaned into the scratch and then blew out a breath and dropped onto the cushion as though to say she couldn’t help herself. People generally paid attention to little kids’ and animals’ responses when it came to trusting people. Meeka was usually so spot on I almost went and released Didi on her approval alone. Instead, I settled into my desk chair and pulled up the images Cheryl sent me. There were so many, I separated them into two folders, “Helpful” and “Unhelpful.” Finally, I got to the pictures of the fight.