Carnage in a Pear Tree

by Dakota Cassidy

Yes, man who has coffee with blonde goddesses?

  “Are you okay? What’s happening?”

  “If a dead body falling from the sky in my yard is the stick we’re measuring okay with, then I’m fine.”

  “What?” his tone rang out in disbelief, echoing through the yard.

  I pointed behind me. Hobbs’s neck twisted around. “What in all of…?”

  Stiles wandered over to us and tipped his head at Hobbs. “How goes it, Dainty?”

  “I might ask y’all the same. What the heck, Stiles?”

  Stiles shook his head. “No idea, man. Troy, one of the kids who works at the lodge and runs the cross-country ski tours, called 9-1-1, and this is what we found. We’re just beginning to investigate at this point.”

  He inhaled a breath as he looked at the tree and the body. “Hal? Are you okay? Did you see what happened? Talk to me.”

  I heard the concern in Hobbs’s voice, but I was still feeling a bit shook up, not only from seeing him with the blonde lady whose name might as well be Flawless, but because a body had just fallen from a ski lift and dropped in my pear tree. It rendered me speechless and left me numb.

  Shaking my head, I disengaged myself from his arms. “I don’t know what to say. A body fell from a ski lift into my pear tree.”

  “Did you see anything?” he asked, gripping my shoulders and forcing me to focus on him.

  I explained why Troy and I were here, and about finding the torn-up trunk of the tree and the shirt. “And then kablam. A body falls from the ski lift. That’s all there is to tell.”

  Troy suddenly spoke up after clearing his throat. He moved nervously from foot to foot, his nose and cheeks red from the bitter cold. “Excuse me but, Miss Valentine, can I go, please? This is really freaking me out.”

  Stiles patted him on the back. “Sure. You go on back to the lodge, bud. But don’t leave town, okay? We’ll need a statement from you.”

  I nodded in agreement with Stiles. “You go right ahead, Troy. Be safe.”

  Troy was all but turning to run back to the lodge van when he seemed to remember something. “Sorry again about the trees, Miss Valentine. I swear I’ll be more careful.”

  I gave him a sympathetic smile. He was only a kid. Seeing this had scared him and that made me feel awful. “It’s fine, Troy. Go back to the lodge and warm up, okay?”

  As though lost, he nodded. “Okay…um, bye.” He stomped as fast as he could through the deep snow, his arms swinging as though they held a pair of ski poles.

  “Poor kid,” I murmured.

  “You’d better go inside, Hal. The forensics team will be here any minute, swarming the place.”

  I nodded at Stiles in acknowledgement as he made his way over to the other officers. But before I left, with shaky fingers and my heart in my throat, I was going to take pictures of the body.

  Just like my sister said to do.

  “Hobbs? Would you go distract, please?”

  He grinned and winked as though he hadn’t been having a hot beverage with a hotter blonde. “At your service, little lady,” he said, his Southern accent thickening.

  I forced a smile at him, my lips chapped and sticking to my teeth, and pulled my phone back out as he went to talk to the officers, surreptitiously snapping pics as fast as I could without getting closer.

  The sound of more vehicles arriving said it was time to beat feet and let forensics do their job. I trudged through the snow, passing the forensics guys with a nod as I headed to the house.

  “Hey, Hal!” Hobbs yelled. “Lemme change and I’ll be right over, okay?”

  I fought a roll of my eyes. Sure-sure. We were going to do the Cagney-and-Lacy-rides-again thing like he hadn’t been having coffee with one of the prettiest creatures Marshmallow Hollow had ever seen?

  Heck, she was even prettier than the previous Miss Marshmallow Hollow Christmas Pageant winner Trina Sommers, and that was saying something, because Trina was now a Paris runway model.

  I also found myself fighting the urge to tell him to—as my sister’s very British fiancé Win says—bugger off, because I didn’t know if I should be telling him to bugger off or not. But I sure planned to find out.

  And he’d better hope he gave me the right answer for who the perfect blonde lady was, or I was going to hex his parts unknown.

  “So can you do magic, too?” I heard Hobbs ask Atti as he waited for me to change into some dry clothes. Having already done so, I sat on the edge of my bed, on my favorite puffy white comforter, cocking my ear to shamelessly eavesdrop.

  “I do, Mr. Dainty,” Atti drawled, his words dry as a bone.

  “So if I asked you for a bacon cheeseburger, you could just make it appear?”

  Atti’s indignant tone rang in my ears. “This is not the Denny’s, Mr. Dainty, and I am not a circus sideshow.”

  Hobbs’s barked a laugh. “Naw. I didn’t mean it like that, Atticus. I wasn’t placin’ my order or anything. I was just wondering where all the fancy food comes from. I mean, is Hal really that good of a cook?”

  I narrowed my eyes as I jumped from the bed, scooping up Barbra Streisand and stomping down the hallway. “Yes, I’m really that good of a cook, and ps., my cooking skills came the hard way, Digby Dainty!”

  “’Tis true, I frown upon Halliday using her magic for something she quite efficiently can make herself. When one lives amongst the humans, one must do as though in Rome—and human.”

  Hobbs gave me a sheepish glance as Stephen King sidled up to me, looking for love. “I’m sorry, honey. I did say I was going to ask questions and some might be dumb.”

  Now I was his honey? Last night he couldn’t blow out of here fast enough, but today it was as though nothing ever happened.

  “Yeah. You sure did.”

  I set Barbra on the floor to scurry after Phil and made my way to the Crockpot on the countertop by the sink, where some homemade chicken noodle soup awaited me. Soup I’d made myself, thank you very much.

  I took out a bowl and began to ladle some of the liquidy goodness into it when Atti buzzed in my face, his wings glowing in the Christmas lights strung along the counter.

  “Halliday, surely you’ll offer Mr. Dainty some soup?”

  Hobbs was suddenly behind me, his eyes warm. “Yeah. Surely you’ll offer me some soup, Halliday. I mean, I brought fresh-baked bread and everything. We have lunch together almost every day. You know the routine.”

  Without a word, I grabbed another bowl, filling that up, too, as Stephen King snorted at my feet.

  Hobbs inhaled. “Smells awesome,” he complimented me.

  “And can you believe I made it with no magic at all?”

  Hobbs clucked his tongue as he opened up the bread basket he’d brought and pulled out a cutting board from the drawer. “C’mon, Hal. I was just asking. What would you ask if you just found out your boyfriend was a…I dunno, vampire? Or a werewolf? Or a…a Gila monster?”

  I couldn’t help but snort a laugh at that ridiculous notion. “I don’t think Gila monsters cook, vampires don’t eat, and don’t werewolves dine on livestock?”

  Hobbs buttered me a slice of bread and handed it to me with a smile before making his way to my long wooden table. All very familiar events in our world as of late.

  “I’m just sayin’, I don’t know what to ask. That’s all. Last night you coulda knocked me over with a turkey feather, and all I’ve done since is think up one question as nutty as the next.”

  My eyebrows rose in question. “Is that why you blew out of here like a tornado? Or did it have to do with my grandmother and your early-morning chats, Texas?”

  Might as well get it out in the open now.

  Hobbs came around the table and cupped my chin, running his thumb over my bottom lip. “I wanna apologize for my hasty departure last night, Hal. Yeah, if I’m being totally honest, it did freak me out a little to learn Karen understands every word I’ve said to her and we’ve had one-way conversations I didn’t know she could participate in. I think
that’s fair, don’t you?”

  I felt myself begin to soften at his light touch. “And you couldn’t have told me that? Or texted me at least?”

  “I should have, but honestly, I was real embarrassed, recalling all my blabbering at Karen. Regardless, I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I should have told you right then what was bothering me, but I guess Karen told you herself, huh?”

  I tugged at his white cable-knit sweater with a lasciviously smiling Grinch on the chest. “She did, but your secrets are safe with her. She won’t betray your confidences.”

  He wiped a hand over his brow in dramatic fashion. “Phew. Anyway, speaking of things we need to talk about—”

  Atticus flew between us, his wings fluttering a soft breeze between our faces. “Are you going to tell her who Trish the Dish is, Mr. Dainty?”

  “Atti! Hush!”

  Before changing, I’d told Atti about what happened by the pear trees and that I’d seen Hobbs with a gorgeous blonde at the lodge, having coffee, and what she’d said to him about telling me something.

  I should have known better.

  But Hobbs frowned, his expression filled with confusion. “Trish the Dish? I don’t get it. Who’s that?”

  Atti buzzed into Hobbs’s sightline. “The woman you were having a hot beverage with this morn, of course. Halliday saw you with her. Don’t bother to deny it or I’ll peck your eyes out, two-timer!”

  “Atticus Finch!” I scolded. “Knock it off. Just this morning, wasn’t it you who said I was overreacting to his abrupt departure last night?”

  “That was before he was cavorting with a libidinous blonde bimbo!” Atti responded.

  Out of the blue, Hobbs laughed his husky chuckle. “You mean the coffee at the lodge this morning?”

  Stepping out of his arms, I crossed mine over my chest. “Yes. I saw you with that long-limbed, not-a-bottle-blonde in a silk suit, having coffee while I was there to talk to the owner about the trampling of my pear trees.”

  He pointed an accusatory finger at me with an amused smile. “So you did see me and you ignored me? Why? Because I was with Leona?”

  Of course her name was something graceful and elegant like Leona. It wasn’t something lame like my mother’s weird play on words that had left me with the nickname for a man.

  Ugh.

  Still, I fessed up. “Yes. I pretended I didn’t hear you because I didn’t want to…to interrupt.”

  “Hogwash,” Hobbs said, calling me out. “You were jealous. But there’s no reason to be jealous. Believe me. And I planned to invite you to dinner tonight, with Leona there, so we can talk.”

  Now, curiosity had me by the tail. “About?”

  “About something really important to me. But I guess we’ll back-burner it because we have a crime to solve, right, Lacey?”

  “You can’t just tell me now?”

  Hobbs ran a hand over his beard. “Leona’s an important part of what I want to talk to you about, and she’s going to be there for emotional support. She’s not my sidepiece or anything like that, and never has been. I promise you’ll understand better when we do talk, but it’s not even remotely what you were thinking. I swear on my prize-winning Holstein, Susie, I’d never cheat on you. I like you way too much.”

  His words made my heart glow. So Leona wasn’t a love interest or even an ex. Good to know.

  “You had a prize-winning Holstein?”

  He sat down in the chair and pulled his steaming bowl of soup toward him. “Yep. Won four 4-H contests with her, four years in a row.”

  I sat, too, dragging my laptop close. “Good on you. What’s a Holstein?”

  He chuckled his deep laugh and bit into his slice of bread with his white teeth. “It’s a cow.”

  “So I guess you do kinda know what it’s like to have a Karen.”

  He chuckled husky and low. “Um, no. Susie wasn’t my reincarnated grandmother and she didn’t talk.”

  I sighed wistfully. “I bet that makes owning a big animal so much easier.”

  “Because she wasn’t my reincarnated grandmother?”

  “Because Susie couldn’t talk.”

  “I wouldn’t tell Karen that,” he said with a wink. “So, you ready to figure this out, Lacey?”

  I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and slid it open. “Let’s get to it, Cagney with the good hair.”

  Hobbs tsked-tsked me. “How many times have I told you to put a passcode on that? If someone steals your phone, they’re gonna have a field day, honey.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “If someone steals my phone, they’re going to see pictures of a dead body and be so scared, they’ll hand-deliver it back to me.”

  Hobbs laughed. “Please put a passcode on it.”

  “I promise I will. Now let’s look at those pictures.”

  And just like that, for the moment, I let go of my anxieties about the beautiful Leona.

  But I wasn’t going to let them go forever. My curiosity had been piqued and it was itching my insides for answers.

  Chapter 5

  “Can you blow that up a little?” Hobbs asked, wiping his mouth.

  I made the picture of the torn, bloody shirt with the nametag on it larger. “Can you read it?”

  The nametag was situated at an odd angle. We both squinted and cocked our heads. “Looks like John or Jonah, maybe?”

  Winning awards for photography was clearly off my table. Quite frankly, I stunk at taking pics.

  I went to the lodge’s website to see if Saul still did those cute little bios for the staff, then I reluctantly clicked on a picture I thought could be the dead man—or was he a teenager? I couldn’t tell from the photo, but I’d bet a lung that shirt at the base of the pear tree was his.

  “There he is,” I said, pointing to the smiling young man, likely in his early twenties, with dark, inky hair and gray-blue eyes. His smile looked uncomfortable at best, and his eyes were dull and flat.

  Hobbs bent and scooped up Barbra, tucking her under his chin to snuggle her. “He looks like a pocket fulla sunshine, huh?”

  He did look unhappy—or maybe the word was annoyed, or even angry seemed suitable. “His name is Joey Scarpetti. He hails from Madison, Wisconsin, and he loves snowboarding, basketball, and coin collecting.”

  Hobbs grimaced. “Who kills someone who likes to collect coins?”

  I shrugged and wondered that myself. It was definitely an innocuous hobby. “We don’t even know if he was dead before he fell off the lift, do we? Maybe the tree has nothing to do with Joey.”

  “You don’t really think he got on the ski lift with no shirt, do you? It’s freezing out there. He’s from Wisconsin. He knows winter.”

  “True,” I acknowledged as I looked closer at the picture of Joey’s body. “If only I took better pictures, we might be able to tell what type of stab wounds they are, but I was trying to get them on the fly. They’re a little blurry, huh?”

  “I’ll admit you’re no Annie Leibovitz, but you were in a rush, honey.”

  I stared off at the fireplace, where Stephen King had taken his usual place in a warm bed with a fuzzy blanket, and decided social media might be the ticket. “I think Facebook is our next stop.”

  Social media played a huge role in us catching our first killer. Or was it our second? I can’t remember. Either way, it was a fount of information on many occasions, but it appeared Joey didn’t have a Facebook page.

  Who, at the ripe old age of at best maybe twenty-five, didn’t have a Facebook page? Or had Facebook become too MySpace for the kids these days?

  I checked Twitter, Instagram and even TikTok, and if Mr. Scarpetti had a social media presence, it was under another name.

  “So we have a dead kid with no shirt and no social media,” Hobbs said.

  Cupping my chin in my hand, I couldn’t help but smile at Hobbs as he stroked Barbra’s soft gray fur and she purred like a sports car motor. “Well, I guess we don’t know for sure it was his shirt.”

 
“He,” Hobbs said, pointing to one of the pictures on my laptop screen, allegedly of Joey Scarpetti alive, “definitely looks like him.” He pointed to the image from my yard.

  I got up and took a peek out the windows facing the side of the yard where I’d left the forensics team to see if they were still processing, only to find them loading the body into the ambulance.

  There was yellow crime scene tape everywhere, and as the clouds began to thicken and the ocean roared, I shivered. It was almost Christmas, a time when we should all be taking part in community activities, enjoying potluck meals together, decorating and watching holiday movies. Instead, we were faced with yet another murder in our small town. I grabbed my chair and sat back down.

  The ominous feeling of death, thick in the air, took hold of my throat.

  And that was when it happened. The world slowed down, crawling to an almost tangible halt. My body felt sluggish, as though I were walking through mud, my limbs heavy, the sound of my heartbeat in my ears…

  Before me, there was that dang typewriter again, sitting all alone in a room with nothing more than four walls.

  What? What are you trying to tell me, universe?

  And then everything changed. The world tilted, the typewriter melted away as though someone had turned it into hot candle wax, slipping off the table and onto the floor to drip in a glistening black puddle.

  Then there was laughter. Tinkling female laughter, floating through the air from behind a white door, followed by a male’s chuckle.

  I knew it would do me no good to attempt to open the door to see who was behind it, but I tried lifting my arm anyway, to no avail. I was always useless during a vision, and my arm alone felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

  But I didn’t have to open the door. It swung open so violently, it slammed against the light blue wall.

  A young woman flew out of the room, her long hair, almost burgundy, clinging to her face as she sobbed.

  Lift your head! I wanted to yell. Let me see your face!

  But instead, she ran back into the room. I’m assuming it was her bedroom—there were fluffy purple pillows on the full-size bed and a small white teddy bear with a missing eye in the center of a rainbow-colored quilt. Her vibe felt like the space was very familiar to her.