Tandem Demise

by Duffy Brown

  Praise for Braking for Bodies…

  a wonderfully entertaining mystery. Colorful and eclectic characters abound. The pace and storyline are perfect. The writing is descriptive and superb. The characters are well developed and always interesting. Author Duffy Brown writes with such panache and humor. the Open Book Society

  The dialogue is great, the setting beautiful, and the characters ever-changing. I look forward to more adventures with Evie. King’s River Life magazine

  As with every Duffy Brown book she has a way of weaving humor into her mystery and this one doesn't disappoint I found myself laughing out loud more than once

  Community Bookstop

  The story grabbed my attention from the very beginning and held it all the way through to the end of the story. I can hardly wait for the next adventure on the island!

  Book Babble

  An absolutely enjoyable romp on Mackinac Island. I heartily recommend this book to anyone looking for a light-hearted, amusing, cozy mystery. Give Me A Book

  Duffy Brown just seems to get better with each book she writes. Braking for Bodies is filled with humor and the mystery is laced with first-rate misdirection. Kittling Books

  a great, fun mystery with great characters and an excellent setting. The perfect recipe for a great cozy mystery series. Books Are Life

  The characters in this book were enjoyable and the setting very quaint. The author did a good job of giving you just enough so you thought you had it figured out but then realize you do not. A Holland Reads

  Books by Duffy Brown

  Consignment Shop Mysteries

  Iced Chiffon

  Killer in Crinolines

  Pearls and Poison

  Dead Man Walker

  Demise in Denim

  Lethal in Old Lace

  Cycle Path Mysteries

  Geared for the Grave

  Braking for Bodies

  Tandem Demise

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Edition: November 2018

  Copyright © 2012 by Duffy Brown

  All rights reserved

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Hi, everyone and welcome back to Mackinac Island and life with no cars and only horses, bikes and foot-power to get around. Fall is in full swing with the leaves changing colors, a chill in the air and gardens ablaze with mums of every hue.

  I love this island that is part of Michigan and located where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. Life on Mackinac moves a bit slower with cell phone service not all that reliable and internet not all that important. Why look at a screen when you can a take bike ride to the Grand Hotel for high tea or visit Fort Mackinac for a musket drill or firing a cannon.

  The only way to get to Mackinac is by ferry. Taxis here are horse drawn affairs moving at about five miles an hour and riding bikes is a breeze with no horns honking or traffic to maneuver around. This is an island for getting away, for relaxing, for enjoying life with friends and family. It’s life the way it used to be. Once you visit Mackinac Island a piece of you will forever stay there and you will long to return.

  I visited the island with my daughter from NCY. She went from Times Square and a hectic design job to no cars or cell service within twenty-four hours. When we got off the ferry she said, “Do you think we died and went to heaven?”

  I‘ve used all the real streets, restaurants, bars, hotels, piers, and ferry lines. I’ve included names of proprietors of the bookstore, bars, inns and markets. My characters order off the actual menu in the restaurants, drink at the watering hole where the locals meet and have the same problems with tourists...called fudgies…that the islanders have. I made the Cycle Path mysteries real so when you visit the island you will feel as if you’ve already been there. That you are coming home.

  Happy reading and I hope you fall in love with Mackinac Island and that you have as much fun with Tandem Demise as I did writing it.

  Hugs,

  Duffy

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter One

  “Do you think he’s dead or just dead drunk?” I asked Fiona as the two of us stood alone on the freight dock with thick night fog swirling around us. We were staring at a guy prone on the pier with a champagne bottle clutched in his arms.

  I grabbed Fiona’s hand as we shuffled a little closer. “Uh oh, he’s staring back at us and not in a Hey come have a drink with me kind of way.”

  “And there’s blood, a lot of blood.” Both of us shivered, from the wind gusts off Lake Huron as much as from our present situation.

  “This is terrible.” Fiona made the sign of the cross and I did the same. I wasn’t Catholic, but I needed to do something and right now there weren’t a lot of options. “How does this keep happening to you?”

  I did a double-blink and stared at Fiona. “Excuse me?”

  “Mackinac’s a little island and you’re here tonight picking up kites to sell at your bike shop but instead - oh gee guess what - you come across yet another body!”

  “Hold on a minute - stop right there.” I dropped Fiona’s hand and jabbed her on the forehead partially covered by the purple sequin paperboy cap befitting her occupation of Town Crier editor. “Forget the you part about the bodies. Okay, the first one was mine - I’ll give you that - but the last one was definitely a we body. We both found it and you’re the one who was accused of making it dead and this is not my fault.”

  “All I know is when you landed here two years ago, Irish Donna said there was a black cloud hanging over you. If this corpse is any indication, the cloud hasn’t changed one bit. I think it’s getting darker.”

  “Maybe a little.” I took a closer look at the body as the waves lapped at the shoreline and wood pilings under our feet. “Do you recognize him?”

  “No, but he’s cute.” Fiona’s words mixed with the foghorn bellowing in the harbor, her breath making little puffy moisture clouds that faded into the night. “Well, he was cute when he didn’t have that big gash on the side of his head and don’t give me that how can you say such a thing look, Evie Bloomfield. I lived in LA for three and two-thirds years and covered some pretty grizzly stuff. Maybe he’s from one of the work ferries or barges. This is the island’s freight dock and he’s dressed in jeans and a work jacket.”

  “The most grizzly thing you ever did out in LA was chow down on bad TexMex. You were a rag reporter covering celeb affairs, scandals, and the occasional I had Elvis’s baby.”

  “Why couldn’t you just pay for delivery like everyone else does on this island?” Fiona huffe
d. “Then Captain wouldn’t have to hide the boxes of kites for you to pick up tonight and I wouldn’t be mixed up in something I can’t even put in the Crier. One whiff of a body around here and tourists will run for the ferries, taking their American Express cards with them and turning this island into a ghost town. Dead guy on dock is not a great tourist attraction.”

  I was a come-here to Mackinac Island and Fiona was a born-here. In the last two years we’d bonded over OPI nail polish, Nutty Buddy ice cream cones, and a knack for snooping that included picking locks and telling whopper lies with a straight face. In my other life back in Chicago I’d been a grunt-level graphic designer. I wound up on the island when I tried to suck up to my boss to land a promotion. My great plan was to help her father who owned a bicycle shop and had broken his leg. That he got nailed for a murder on my watch did not help my promotion chances. I now owned part of Rudy’s Rides and painted old, rusted bikes shiny new again with such themes as golf, Batman, Babe Ruth - the baseball player and candy bar - or any other love-of-your-life you’d like to sport around town.

  Fiona, who had felt the need to spread her wings, took a second-rate rag reporter job in LA and got accused of killing her boss when he followed her back to Mackinac. Not all homecomings were Welcome Home banners, brass bands, and family cookouts.

  “What we should do,” Fiona offered, “is not touch anything and call the police, except Molly’s on desk duty tonight and you know how she is with bodies. Nate’s usually hanging around, but he’s up at the Grand Hotel at a hundred-bucks-a-plate dinner getting an award for spearheading the campaign to repair the limestone walls around Fort Mackinac. After two hundred fifty years they’re starting to look like Swiss cheese. Sutter’s eHehaving his dessert about now and raspberry crème brûlée is his fave. He won’t be happy if we drag him away.”

  “Happy? Well I’m sure as heck not happy keeping company with a dead guy and you don’t look too happy and Mr. Champagne is staring up at the sky and doesn’t have a smile on his face either, so that makes it Nate’s turn. He’s the chief of police around here and gets paid for not being happy. I’m ringing him up.”

  “You’re just pissed that you didn’t get crème brûlée.”

  I dug Sheldon, my beloved iPhone with Penny, knock, knock, knock as a ring tone, out of my jacket pocket and held it to the sky. This was more a valiant effort of looking for service bars than actually expecting to find any. Mackinac Island was known for many things like big horses; lots of bikes; the Grand Hotel that was truly grand; festivals for jazz, lilacs, ponies and selling ten tons of fudge a year to the tourists we lovingly called fudgies. Mackinac Island was not known for great cell phone service. Heck, it was known for no cell phone service.

  “Surprise, surprise. No bars,” Fiona said looking over my shoulder. I pocketed the phone I used for playing Candy Crush and taking selfies. The foghorn moaned again, mixing with the deep rumble of a passing freighter somewhere out there in the pea soup.

  “Well, we can’t just leave the body. What if the killer comes back for it,” I finally said, trying to come up with a plan.

  “Or comes back and gets us.” We eyed the string of hazy fluorescents dotting the pier and leading back to the warehouse where we started. “You know it’s locked.”

  “There’s a landline inside and these are desperate times.” We trudged our way back up the pier, gravel crunching beneath our feet, as we crossed the lane to the warehouse. Byline, Fiona’s horse, whinnied and pawed the ground, telling us he was tired of pulling a cart all day and wanted to go home to a nice barn and fresh hay. I could relate, except for the barn and hay part. I was more of a flannel Hello Kitty nightshirt and hot cocoa kind of girl.

  “This rock should work.” I picked it up and started toward the warehouse window when Fiona grabbed my hand. “What in the world are you doing? Captain will have a canary if you bust a window. Just pick the freaking lock. That zipper pull on your fleece has two purple paperclips attached. My guess is they’re not strictly for decoration and if you break the window, it’ll set off an alarm.”

  “Nate can contact the alarm company to shut it off and if I pick the lock, he’ll get suspicious about other conveniently opened doors during our island capers. The rock is an innocent bystander, same as me.”

  “Girlfriend, when it comes to you, Nate will never believe the innocent part.”

  Twenty minutes later Nate Sutter, local police chief and celebrated hunk, trotted toward us on Shakespeare, his trusted steed. Through the mist I could barely make out Police stenciled in reflector yellow across his windbreaker and baseball cap. “What, no tux?”

  “Shakespeare’s got a phobia about bowties.” Sutter studied Fiona then me then the busted window. “Captain’s going blow a gasket. Why didn’t you just pick the lock?”

  “Told you so,” Fiona sing-songed as Nate slid to the ground. “How was the benefit?”

  “Irish Donna ate my crème brûlée and I got a flintlock pistol to hang on my wall. I would have rather had my crème brûlée.” Sutter tied Shakespeare to a post by the bike rack, Mackinac’s version of a parking lot. He unstrapped a black pouch from the saddle before following Fiona and me onto the dock, our footsteps making hollow sounds against the wood planks. Another forlorn foghorn blast reverberated through the darkness, the sound chilling me to my bones. If that headless horseman guy had galloped past us I wouldn’t have been one bit surprised. Actually, I would have peed my pants, but I’m just saying he would have fit right in.

  “There.” I nodded to the body. “Poor guy. He didn’t deserve this.”

  Sutter’s steps slowed before he stopped dead. His jaw tightened, his hands in a fist. What was that all about? He slowly pulled a camera from the pouch and snapped away, the flashes blindingly bright against the darkness. He moved side to side for different angles then hunkered down beside the body cocooned in the damp mist.

  “Why didn’t the killer just dump the body in the water?” I added. “I mean, why leave it out here on the dock for the entire world to see. We’ve got two deep lakes right here - big ones. Disposing of a body is a snap.”

  There was no response from Sutter, who usually recited a litany of police platitudes in these situations. Don’t touch anything, stay out of my way, and - my personal favorite- this is police business so get lost. Like that means anything to two self-proclaimed busybodies. Fiona and I exchanged what’s going on looks and I waved my hand in front of the camera. “Yoo-hoo. Anybody home? Got any idea what’s happened here, Mr. Police Officer?”

  “How the heck should I know?” Sutter blurted a little too quickly. “And why don’t you pay for delivery like everyone else does instead of fumbling around in the dark.”

  “Amen to that,” Fiona grunted.

  “Well,” I pushed on, trying to connect the dots since Sutter was off in LaLa Land and Fiona was no help at all, griping at me about being cheap. “There aren’t any freighters tied up to the docks tonight, so Captain and the workers probably knocked off at six or so. It gets dark around 7:30 and it’s almost nine now. My guess is this happened in the last hour and a half when no one was around. A meeting of some kind? A celebration, since we got the champagne thing going on? But unless he’s with Greenpeace, there are better places to party than around crates of recyclables.”

  Sutter didn’t say a word and took a few more pictures before grabbing a flashlight from his jacket pocket. He pulled on plastic gloves and unfolded bags marked Evidence. He checked the guy’s jean pockets, pulling out a pair of well-worn work gloves, a silver dollar money clip with a few bucks, a beat-up wallet, and a pocketknife with a wood handle. He opened the wallet and found John Bernard’s driver’s license, credit card, and insurance info plus a bent photo of a ponytailed guy in a white blazer with sexy scruff standing next to a limo.

  “With money and credit cards, we can rule out theft as a motive,” I said, “and look.” I snagging Sutter’s arm before he dropped the money clip in an evidence bag. “There’s an inscription
on the back.” I pushed the flashlight closer and read, “Best Man and there’s a date. There’s writing on the knife too. Groomsman and another date.”

  Still not saying a word, Sutter removed a silver flask from the guy’s jacket pocket.

  “Flip it over,” Fiona said to Sutter. “These aren’t exactly typical dockhand acquisitions. I bet they’re gifts from being in weddings. I see them in bridal magazines all the time.” Fiona cut her eyes from me to Sutter, both of us staring at her. “Hey. I drool over the cakes, okay? Fewer calories and … Look right there!” Fiona pointed to the flask. “It says Best Man and there’s another date.”

  Fiona put her hand to her heart and sighed deeply. “He was one of the good guys and a friend to a lot of people who wanted him to be a part of the most important day of their lives. He’s like one of those dreamy guys on The Hallmark Channel. Why can’t I meet guys like this?”

  “Dead ones?” Sutter groused.

  “The men I meet are after one thing, sports and beer.”

  “That’s two things.”

  “Seems like one.”

  “And he has a watch,” I added. “It’s a nice one. Well, it was. I bet that’s from being in a wedding too, probably a best man.”

  Sutter unbuckled the watch and flipped it over. I leaned closer and read, “Today, my husband. Forever, my best friend.”

  “He’s married!” Fiona sobbed, grabbing my hand as a light rain started to fall.

  “Or he stole all this stuff,” said Sutter.

  “You are such a cynic.” I wiped away a tear.

  “I’m a cop and a realist, something that you don’t find on The Hallmark Channel.” Sutter held the dead guy’s arm, probably checking for stiffness. I was no forensic guru, but how stiff a stiff is tells a lot about the time of death.