by Scott, D. D.
To Be Continued in The Stuck with a Series Book #1
STUCK WITH A STIFF…
STUCK WITH A STIFF
(The Stuck with a Series Book #1)
By D. D. Scott & David Slegg
CHAPTER ONE
Mint tea sloshed over the lip of the antique china cup Molly had just picked up off of the kitchen counter. Good thing she’d always been positively obsessive about using saucers when she served tea.
Making tea was her way of calming her nerves. And boy could we all use a sense of calm. Samantha and I were definitely on edge too.
As Molly carried her cup to the table, it rattled and clanked against her saucer.
“Goodness,” she exclaimed. “This whole thing has me so riled up, I can’t even hold onto my blasted tea cup.”
And that’s about as close to profanity as Molly Masterson ever came, which is something I couldn’t say about my dear sweet editor Samantha Aldredge, who was having quite the cuss and discuss on her cell phone.
It’s not every day, though, that you find a body in farm country where most of us don’t even bother to lock our doors. So perhaps four-letter words were warranted.
Discovering a body was the sort of thing I expected to happen back in Boston, where I’d lived for years, or Chicago, where I have a lakefront penthouse.
Although, I will say, because of the recent rise in the number of meth labs springing up out here in the boonies, we’ve started having a few more problems. But not problems that lead to a body by my chicken coop.
A loud knock at the front door nearly made us jump out of our skins.
I glanced at Molly and said in what I hoped was a soothing tone, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.”
I wish I actually believed that, but I said it anyway in hopes I’d at least convince her that I did.
It also appeared that Sam could use some soothing. She was still on her cell phone speaking with her assistant back in New York. From what I’d been able to catch, the intense conversation had something to do with Jack Collins’ slimeball publicist.
Unfortunately, I also worked with that publicist. I’d asked for a new one, but so far, I was stuck with the same one Jack was. Well, the one he used to be stuck with.
I opened the door to find a Sheriff’s Deputy standing in an unzipped parka.
Not too smart in this kind of weather, but I’m sure he had more on his mind than the windchill. The dead body in my chicken coop was probably of much greater importance to him than the weather.
Underneath his bulky coat was a crisply ironed two-tone brown uniform with a matching tie. He wore the standard gold, star-shaped badge on his upper left breast and on his right, just above the western cut pocket, was a nameplate that read, “S. Williamson.”
I’m a writer by trade, so I always notice what people are wearing. I suppose that makes me observant or neurotic or both. It all depends on your point of view.
I remembered the Deputy’s face and name. He’d been a forward for the local high school basketball team a few years back. Basketball is a big deal here in Indiana. Once you’d made your mark on the court, people knew who you were.
Deputy Williamson was tall and looked like he still kept himself in decent shape. He definitely didn’t fit the donut-eating stereotype.
“Hello, Mr. Blane,” he began. “We received a call indicating that a body has been found on your property. My car was closest to the scene, so I’ll be securing the area until my sergeant arrives. We’ll need to interview the person or persons who discovered the body, as well as take statements from everyone who was here at the time. No one has left the premises, correct?”
“We’re all here. Well…I’d imagine the killer didn’t stick around, but the rest of us are still here. Come on in, Deputy Williamson.”
This was probably not the time for humor, but when I was rattled, I tended to pop off with this kind of stuff. So, Deputy Williamson would just have to deal with my ill-timed jokes.
“Thank you,” Williamson said as he stepped into the kitchen.
Luckily, before he made it off the mat, he stomped the snow off of his boots. Good thing, or Molly might have kicked his ass.
“Deputy Weedley is handling the case. He should be here shortly with his team.”
Todd Weedley had been with the Sheriff’s Department for a long time and had joined The Bureau, short for Detective Bureau, a couple of years ago.
He also happened to be dating my sister. That should make things interesting.
“Okay then,” I said. “Would you like some tea? Molly was just about to pour some more. There’s a bunch of revved up nerves here in this kitchen, so you may want to drink up.”
Williamson started to demure, but Molly had already placed a steaming cup on the end of the island within his reach. She bustled over to the table to fetch the milk and sugar.
“Thank you, ma’am, but I’ll take mine without.”
As tea time commenced, an unmarked black cruiser I recognized as Todd’s pulled up the long driveway.
Up on this hill, we could generally hear vehicles coming before we saw them, but the newly fallen snow must have been acting as a sound muffler. Probably why we hadn’t heard Deputy Williamson until he’d knocked.
I looked over at Sam. She was still on her phone, but not listening quite so intently to whoever was now on the other end of the line.
“Looks like we’ve got more company,” I said.
I shouted out to Todd, who was just stepping out of his car, that the body was by the chicken coop.
Following the dispatch, I’m sure he knew very well where it was. But, what can I say? I was a nervous wreck.
Todd glanced at another officer in a Department van who had pulled up behind him and motioned for him to follow as he got back into his car.
I wonder if that’s the new mobile crime scene lab the Department made a huge splash about in the newspaper last month? I sure as hell didn’t think they’d be trying it out on my farm.
“I’ll meet you out there,” I shouted as their doors slammed shut in unison.
When I stepped back inside the house, I saw that Sam was finally off of her cell phone.
“What was all that about?” I asked.
“What do you think?” came her snarky and obviously troubled reply.
Whatever she’d been talking about regarding Bitchy Betty, Publicist Nightmare, had royally pissed her off.
“Well, I’m heading back out there to talk with Todd. You coming, Sam?”
“For the love of Buddha, would you quit calling me Sam?”
“Only when you quit calling me Nicky.”
She stood and flipped me the bird, which got her a big ‘ole atta girl grin from Molly. Sam and her Buddhism. Molly and Sam were gonna be trouble together, I thought. And trouble was one thing that I certainly didn’t need any more of.
While Deputy Williamson talked on his Nextel, we headed for the mudroom where our boots still sat dripping slush from this morning’s morbid trip to the chicken coop.
Detective Williamson cleared his throat, as if any of us could forget he was still in the kitchen.
“While y’all are outside, I’ll keep Ms. Masterson company.”
Evidently, that’s what his commanding officers had told him to do. Made sense, I thought. Just in case, while we were all out back, my elderly housekeeper was the killer and decided to make a run for it.
Yes, I’m being a total smart ass. Molly doesn’t even kill houseflies. She traps them in tissues and takes them outside to live another day.
Actually, I do that too. Killing them would upset Molly, and I couldn’t bear that, but don’t tell anybody. My fans know me as Nicky Blane, bestselling purveyor of psycho killers and stiffs. They’d never believe I wasn’t really a blood and guts kind of guy.
By the time Sam and I were suited up and ready to join Todd near the coop, Molly already had Williamson sitting at the table and was fussing over him like only she could. I believe I counted five separate plates of c
ookies and pastries laid out in front of him.
Despite the gravity of the situation, I chuckled.
The expression on Williamson’s face indicated that if it was all the same to everyone else, he’d be perfectly happy to sit right there and guard Ms. Molly all morning long.
CHAPTER TWO
When Sam and I reached the chicken coop, Todd and his CSI Team were already doing their thing.
Talk about awkward. I certainly never expected to get to know this side of my future brother-in-law. Before I said anything to get myself into more trouble, I thought it best to just let them work a bit.
Todd and I had a good relationship now, but that hadn’t always been the case. And who knew what this homicide investigation would do to our family dynamics.
At a family gathering a year or so after he and my sister began dating, Todd’s middle name had come to my attention. David. Todd David Weedley.
We’d all had a few drinks that night. And me being in the word business, well, as a lark, I began to toy around with his name. I started out calling him T.D., which led inevitably to T.D. Weedley, and eventually to Teedly Weedley.
To put it mildly, Teedly Weedley did not go over well. Not with Todd and not with my sis either. Apparently, I was not the first to discover this name. It had followed him through grade school and into high school. Needless to say, it was evidently not a pleasant experience to have it resurrected so many years later by yours truly.
To this day, my sister threatens me to within an inch of my life if I ever utter those four syllables in his or her presence again.
Despite the Teedly Weedley issue, over time, we’d grown closer, and I learned that underneath the gruff and formal law enforcement officer exterior was a genuinely good guy.
If there was some issue on the farm that I needed help with, Todd was always happy to lend a hand. Whether it be escape artist cows or a truck stuck in the mud, he was there.
Things like that tend to happen on a fairly regular basis, and my hired man wasn’t always the best of help. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he usually wasn’t much help at all, so I’d come to rely on Todd.
“Hey, T, how’s my sis?” I asked, no longer able to stand by with my mouth shut.
Todd was crouching over the body with a penlight.
He stood up and turned his gaze on me.
“Margo’s okay.”
As he stood, no longer blocking the corpse from full view, I glanced at what was left of Jack Collins. The side of his head was partially caved in. Perhaps blunt force induced?
By that point, my thriller writer muses were in high gear. But I must say, it was certainly different visualizing a crime scene for one of my books than bending over the top of one in my own backyard.
When I’d first discovered Jack’s body laying near the coop, the light had been different. I’d only been able to make out his face.
In brighter light of late morning, the scene seemed much more disturbing and over-the-top surreal.
For such a powerful knock on the head, though, there wasn’t much blood. From my research, I knew that sort of injury should be a lot messier.
I tried to shake off the image of Jack’s body. His lethal injuries had turned the white snow into a few crimson red slush puddles.
“I’m not sure what you need first here. But Todd, this is my editor, Samantha Aldredge. Sam, this is my sister’s boyfriend, Todd. Sergeant Weedley, to be formal.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Todd said.
Before she could respond with more than a handshake, he turned back to me.
“Any idea what happened here?”
“No. I was just about to ask you the same thing. Molly came out this morning to feed the cats and Napoleon, and this is what she found. She’s in the house with Deputy Williamson now. She’s still pretty shaken up.”
Todd was taking notes in a small black notebook.
To my amazement, while he wrote, Sam was silent, apparently guarding her tongue, which frankly made me more uneasy than Todd’s questions.
“When was the last time you or anyone else was in this building?”
“I suppose it would have been yesterday morning. Molly usually comes out here fairly early to feed.”
“Did she say she’d seen anything unusual?”
“You mean something like a dead body? No, and I think she would have mentioned that.”
Todd shot me a look indicating I should just answer his questions without the asinine commentary.
“Have you had any strange cars come up the driveway lately, any sales calls you weren’t expecting?”
“Not that I can recall. It might be better to ask Molly about that. She takes care of things around here, not me,” I said, followed by a weak attempt at a decent chuckle.
“Do you know the vic?”
Todd gestured over his shoulder, indicating Jack’s lifeless body then went back to scribbling in his notebook.
Sam and I exchanged glances.
I took a deep breath and decided to just come out with it.
“Do you know who Jack Collins is? I guess I should say was? Who Jack Collins was?”
Todd’s pen stopped moving.
His eyes met mine. “I’d have a hard time not knowing who he is. I’ve heard you talk about him often enough. Not always in a complimentary way, I might add.”
“Well, Todd, meet the late Jack Collins. In the flesh. Well…decomposing flesh.”
Todd placed his pen in the crease of his notebook and cupped his forehead in his free hand.
He let out a long sigh then drew his palm across his brow and looked at me again.
“Nick, you know I like you, but this is not a good time for one of your pranks. I’m going to ask you again. Do you know this person?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Buddy. I wish I was joking, but this really is Jack Collins. Was Jack Collins. Take a close look at what’s left of his face. The same face that’s on the back of all of his books, right?”
Todd studied me for a moment, then he glanced at Jack’s corpse and continued, “Didn’t you tell me he’s based out of L.A.?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what the hell is he doing here in Indiana…dead next to your chicken coop?”
“I have no idea. You know I would never do anything like this, right?”
I can’t believe I had to ask him, but his look of grave concern - no pun intended - was rubbing me the wrong way.
“Sure, I do. But once everyone else pieces together who the two parties involved are…yeah, we’re not lookin’ so good. And the Media? They’re gonna have a field day.”
“What are you saying?” I asked him, not because I didn’t already have a fairly decent idea where all this was going, but rather because I think I was still in shock that I was being set up for murder.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know at this point.”
“Jesus, Man, I’ll be convicted in the court of public opinion before we even get a chance to figure out what the hell really happened here!” My voice grew louder as my angst increased.
“I’m not in the PR Biz, Nick. So, I can’t help ya there. But I am tellin’ you it doesn’t look good from the law enforcement angle.”
“How bad do you think it is?”
“Let’s just say, if I were creating an inventory of best case scenarios, this would NOT make my list.”
“But we’ve certainly made it to the top of someone’s list, haven’t we?” Sam spoke up.
I knew from the look on her face and her tone that heads were about to roll. And it obviously wasn’t gonna be Jack’s.
CHAPTER THREE
The top of someone’s list indeed. Their Shit List, I thought.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how I’d gone from Samantha Aldredge, Editor Extraordinaire, to Samantha Aldredge, Crime Scene Witness.
I edit this stuff. I don’t live it.
All I’m supposed to be doing is getting the next stiff in
to one of Nicky Blane’s books by our deadline, not figuring out how he ended up with one beside his chicken coop!
We stood by like helpless victims, victims in the sense that, obviously, we were supposed to take the fall for this murder. Okay, I’m not so sure I was supposed to go down with Nicky, but he was definitely the target.
Todd and his team, which now included the County Coroner, continued to gather information and evidence from the crime scene.
From the sounds of things so far, it appeared the cause of death could very well be blunt force trauma to the side of the head.
The estimated time of death, however, was going to be a wee bit trickier to determine because the body was recovered in snow. The normal investigative technique of examining the area beneath the body in order to calculate the time of death wasn’t going to yield much, except snow and more snow. The postmortem body temp would also be way off. With this stiff in a snow drift, I would imagine the normal cooling rate of one degree per hour would be more than slightly askew.
I know CSI procedures like I know designer shoes. Perhaps my knowledge base of causes of death and time of death could be helpful in this predicament. But if I let on that I knew as much as or more than Weedley and Company? Well, that wasn’t going to do much to get me on their good side. It would only push me higher up on their suspect list.
But there’s no way in hell I’d be playing dumb. That was one method I refused to use.
“Nick, I have to ask you this,” Todd said.
Although his tone was decent, he was pawing at the ground with his boot like a bull getting ready to charge.
“Where were you…yesterday evening?” Todd asked with a hesitation probably meaning sorry-but-I-have-to-ask.
“I was in Indy picking up Sam at the airport.”
Todd turned to me.
“Can you confirm this, Ms. Allwitch? I mean, Ms. Aldredge,” he recovered, trying to maintain his professional demeanor despite his Freudian Slip.
That did it. I kicked Nicky square in the shin that was closest to me.