by Sharon Dunn
Across the water several boats away, she saw a circle of light. Somebody was in one of the boats. Holding Phoebe, Ginger scrambled back onto the dock and ran until she was parallel to the string of boats. In a gondola, the farthest vessel from shore, a man bent over as if staring at something.
“Yo, who’s out there? What are you doing?” Yo? Where did that come from? She sounded like a sailor or one of those hip-hop fellas.
A familiar voice floated across the water. “Is that you?”
“Earl, Earl, I am so glad I found you. I have been looking for you all night.” Ginger walked to the edge of the dock and leaned over to see better. Earl’s light bobbed up and down. “What are you doing out here?”
Water lapped against the shore. Laughter, soft and distant, rose up from the restaurant. On the other side of the hotels, cars rolled over concrete.
A shiver trickled down Ginger’s back. “Earl?” At the same moment she spoke, Phoebe squirmed free, scratching Ginger’s hand in the process. Ginger recoiled from the sting of broken skin and the warm seep of blood. “Earl, what is it?” Phoebe scampered up the pier, but Ginger remained frozen by some unnamed fear.
Earl stood up. The flashlight cast a circle of light on the boat next to the one he stood in. Ginger focused on the sound of her own exhale and inhale until it seemed to match the rhythm of the water licking the shore. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Earl’s voice floated across the water. “You might want to go inside and get security.” He turned, directing the light toward the front of the boat. “There’s a man in a bear costume, and as far as I can tell he’s not breathing.”
The Scent of roses greeted Kindra as she stepped out onto the rooftop garden of the Little Italy Hotel. She spotted the trellis with vines around it and the bench beneath, just as Xabier had described. Soft solar lights were dispersed between the rosebushes and other greenery. A few couples wandered around. She was the only person by herself.
Kindra checked her watch. Already eleven. After burying her face appreciatively in a rosebush, she wandered over to the bench and sat down. A fountain, hidden by plants, trickled and bubbled behind her.
She retied the sleeves of the jeweled cardigan she had over her shoulders, fluffed the skirt of her black dress, and sorted through the coupons in her purse before she dared herself a look at her watch. Okay, so he was five minutes late. Not a good sign. She was willing to forgive his ignoring her in the underground outlet mall, and she was open to hearing an explanation as to why he was running from men with guns. But being late for a date? A girl had to draw the line somewhere. That shifted him from the full-price-new-on-the-floor rack to the ten-percent-off section.
Kindra untied her sweater and slipped into it to stave off the night chill. She crossed her arms and stared at the sky. I am not going to be upset. I am not going to feel rejected.
She hadn’t made a huge emotional investment in this guy. It was no big deal. Her throat tightened. She counted stars. She was up to fifty before she allowed herself a glance at the entrance. A dark head emerged. Kindra stood up. Another head, a woman’s, appeared. A couple stood at the entrance holding hands, leaning into each other. Kindra slumped back down on the bench.
Down below, sirens sounded. Couples ran to the brick fence that served as a railing around the garden. Kindra rose from the bench and peered over the edge of the Little Italy rooftop. About twenty people, some of them policemen, scampered like ants who had found a crumb. The location of the morsel seemed to be out in one of the gondola boats where the cluster of people grew. All those police. What on earth could have happened?
Dragging her silk scarf on the ground, she wandered back toward the garden entrance half hoping that Xabier would emerge smiling.
Okay, so she was sad about him not showing up and upset about being ignored in the outlet mall. This guy was not worth her time. Kindra raced down the stairs to find the other members of the BHN for wisdom, consolation, and hugs.
Detective Mallory placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the crime scene. In a few short hours, they’d gone from jewelry theft, to squirrel abduction, to a dead body in a bear suit. The Wind-Up had officially become Calamity’s hot bed of illegal activity.
Crime-scene people had set up floodlights along the boardwalk and sectioned off the area with tape. They’d have to work through the night.
Her first observation was that four out of five members of the forensics team were overweight. She patted her own ever-expanding hips. No more muffins and doughnuts in the break room. Wait a minute. Was she becoming some kind of diet Nazi, pushing her beliefs about nutrition on everyone else, demanding that they eat just like her?
One of the forensics guys crawled out of the boat, hiking up his refrigerator repairman pants and nearly falling onto the pier. He wobbled to his feet, breathing heavily from his effort. Nope, she wasn’t a food tyrant. A veggie tray would be good for all of them.
She walked a few paces down the pier. Her second thought was that killing someone in a boat was a lot of work. Let alone in a bear suit. Forensics always trumped speculation, but she suspected the victim had been killed elsewhere and moved, but not too far from here. A guy in a bear suit was pretty heavy.
She assessed the area surrounding the crime scene. Beyond the Little Italy Hotel was a park with a golf course on the other side of it. On the Wind-Up side was a dock for larger boats and an unused atrium with dusty windows.
Maybe the perpetrator had intended to take the boat out in the lake and dump the bear. The part of the pier where the bear had been found was dark enough to allow the suspect to go undetected if he were quiet. All guesses at this point.
Detective Cindy Jacobson conversed with one of the crime-scene crew, a recent female hire named Somebody Smith. Her first name started with a Y. Jacobson leaned toward Y. Smith, heads close together, speaking in whispered tones. Jacobson broke the circle of privacy and glanced in Mallory’s direction. Y. Smith handed her an evidence bag. Jacobson strode over to Mallory.
“What do you have?”
The younger detective sighed. “They can’t ID the body until they get the bear head off. It’s latched on. We detained the guy who found the bear.” She checked her notebook. “An Earl Salinski and his wife are waiting inside if you want to question them.”
Mallory nodded. “It’s a place to start. Guess we can move forward when we get the ID. Anything else?”
“There’s a Gloria Clydell. She was out here for a meeting with her ex-husband. She says her son was hired to wear the bear costume, some sort of PR thing. She’s pretty shook up.”
Mallory rubbed her temples. What she really wanted right now was five chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk and to watch The Andy Griffith Show. “Lucky for us we were here, huh?” Oh well. If she had wanted regular hours, she should have become a bank teller.
Jacobson placed a hand on a slender hip. “The Wind-Up is having a busy night.”
“Let me know as soon as you get a name on the victim. What’s the name of Gloria Clydell’s son?”
Jacobson glanced at her notes. “Xabier Knight.”
“Why the different last name from his mom?”
Jacobson shrugged. “Remarriage, most likely.”
“I guess I’ll start with the couple that found the body. What did you say their names were?”
“Ginger and Earl Salinski from Three Horses, Montana. If you want to handle the interview yourself, I can work on getting an ID and start the list of people to question.”
Mallory turned to go, but felt the press of Jacobson’s stare on her back. “Is there something else?”
Jacobson held up the evidence bag the Smith woman had handed her. “This was found beside the body.”
Mallory leaned closer to see what was in it. A ball of fur. “A rat?”
“A squirrel. Forensics is wondering if we should tag it as evidence or as a second victim.”
In her nearly thirty years of police work, Mallory didn’t recall reading or hear
ing about a circumstance like this. The issue had never come up in any of the workshops she had attended. They were off the map on this one. “Lets get an ID on both the bodies and then I’ll figure it out from there.”
“Is it possible to tell one squirrel from another?”
Way off the map on this one. “We got a hotel full of squirrel lovers. Ask one of them that question.” She threw her arms up. “If it is The Squirrel, one of the more sensitive members of the squad will have to inform Mr. Simpson. I don’t want this turned into a joke.”
Earl hadn’t said a word to Ginger since they had been escorted to the conference room by a police officer. She wasn’t feeling terribly chatty anyway. A tingling numbness had settled into her bones. That illogical notion that what she was going through was not real kept invading her thoughts.
This conference room was the most generic room she had ever been in. Large conference table, beige office chairs, beige carpet, and beige walls. Not even a picture on the wall.
Earl squeezed her hand and then pulled away, crossing his arms over his chest. “Things sure haven’t gone like I thought they would.”
Ginger nodded. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened. The bear costume looked like the one Xabier had worn. The thought of someone that young dying made it hard for her to breathe.
How much longer did they have to wait? After staring at the floor and then at the ceiling, which was also beige, she opened her purse, looking for something to do, anything to keep her mind from returning to the same horrible thoughts.
She pulled her coupons out of their book and spread them out like they were cards. She organized them by the amount of discount they offered. Then she arranged them by category: food, clothing, entertainment. Reading the coupons, thinking about how much money she would save, calmed her down. If she didn’t have her coupons, she’d be counting ceiling tiles. She just needed to do something.
She slapped down a coupon for fifty cents off butter substitute. Maybe next she could arrange her coupons by most dominant color. “I hope the police come soon.”
Earl answered with a grunt. She brushed her fingers over his razor-stubbled cheek. He hadn’t said anything about losing the booth. He must have found out when he was on the floor. Their setbacks seemed small in the face of this terrible thing.
The door burst open. Earl jerked his head up and rubbed his eyes. A woman dressed in a gray suit nodded at them.
“Earl and Ginger Salinski? I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” The woman massaged her forehead. “I’m Detective Mallory.”
She sat down at the conference table opposite them, unbuttoning her blazer, which was tight through the arms and shoulders. She was fiftyish with auburn hair. Ginger recognized the shade as Spicy Red #114. Her own hair had been that color once. “I know it’s late and you’re probably tired. I would like to ask you a few questions if I could.”
Both Earl and Ginger nodded.
“Mr. Salinski, can you describe for me how you found the body?”
Earl straightened in his chair and folded his hands on the table. “I heard noise out on the pier. It was dark.” He pulled one of the Pepper Lights out of his jacket. “So I used my flashlight to go down there.”
“That’s awful brave of you, Mr. Salinski.”
Ginger gathered her coupons into a pile. She didn’t like the way Detective Mallory’s tone implied that Earl was guilty of something.
“The other end of the light is self-defense spray. I figured if it was anything bad, I could deal with it.” He rolled the Pepper Light across the table to Mallory. “The ends have different textures, so you won’t go to turn on the light and accidentally spray someone.”
Mallory rubbed her finger over the hard-plastic pepper-spray nozzle. “I haven’t seen one of these before.”
“I invented it.” Earl beamed. “There are others on the market but none as good as mine.”
Ginger cringed. Earl was so proud of his invention. They had to find a way to get it to customers.
Mallory nodded and rolled the light back to him. “And what were you doing out on the pier at night?”
“I just pulled into town fifteen minutes earlier. The guy at the desk said I wasn’t registered, but he gave me a complimentary pass.” He touched the badge he had around his neck. “I couldn’t find my wife to find out what was going on, so I stepped out back for some air.”
Nerves in Ginger’s neck pinched. She did a double take at her husband. Mallory lifted her head from her notes. Why had Earl lied about the time he got into town? She had seen him hours earlier on the convention floor. He had a badge and everything.
“Mrs. Salinski, is something wrong?”
“No, no, I’m just fine … considering.”
Mallory laced her fingers together on the table. “Yes, considering. Can you tell me what you were doing out there, Mrs. Salinski?”
“I was out there looking for my—” Ginger shot straight up from her chair.
“Ginger, sit down,” Earl said.
Phoebe. She needed to find Phoebe. Ginger rubbed the strap on her travel purse. With all the hoopla, she’d forgotten that her cat had run off again.
“Everything all right, Mrs. Salinski?”
“Yes, I just …” She plunked down into the chair. “Is this going to take much longer?”
“I have a few more questions. Did you see or hear anything unusual before your husband found the man in the bear costume?”
Ginger shook her head. Her thoughts tumbled over one another like a toddler’s building blocks. The bear costume had looked like Xabier’s. What if … “Is there anyone else who wore a bear costume besides Xabier Knight?”
“We don’t have an ID on the body yet.” Mallory studied Earl and then Ginger.
Ginger touched her collar and then broke eye contact. Her guilty conscious was getting the better of her. The detective looked at them like they were somehow involved.
Mallory leaned back in her chair, pushing her palms against the rim of the table. “You folks look tired. Why don’t you get some sleep?” Her gaze did not waver.
Ginger pushed her chair away from the table. The detective made her feel like she was specimen under a microscope. “I have things to do.”
Mallory traced over something she had written. “You are staying around for a while, aren’t you?”
There was that look again from the detective, a slight narrowing of her eyes. She must have been able to tell that Earl was lying. She couldn’t change that, and it didn’t feel right to say anything to Mallory until she talked to Earl. All she could do was tell the truth from here on out. “We booked the room through the end of the convention on Sunday.”
Earl rolled the Pepper Light back to Mallory. “You can keep that if you like.”
How could Earl be thinking about marketing his invention at a time like this? Was he so focused on his goal that what had happened here tonight didn’t matter to him? Maybe he had lied because he thought an investigation would interfere with finding a distributor for his invention. Had it really come to that? It just didn’t seem like Earl, but …
Mallory pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. Ginger and Earl stood at the same time. Mallory offered a backward glance before leaving and closing the door behind her.
“She thinks we had something to do with the murder.”
“You were acting kind of nervous, Ginger,” Earl said.
“Me?” She touched the palm to her chest. “Here’s the key to our room. I don’t know where the girls are. You might have to fight someone for a bed.”
“Why don’t you come up with me? It’s been a long day for all of us.” He touched her hand just above the elbow.
Involuntarily, she pulled away. Why had she done that? This was her husband, her Earl. Of course he wasn’t a murderer. She knew his character. Still, he had lied about when he had gotten into town.
Ginger took another step back. “I need to find Phoebe. I don’t like the thought of her being out
there in the cold.”
Earl slipped the key in the hole and pushed the door of room 517 open. Both beds were occupied, one with Arleta and one with Suzanne. No sign of Kindra. He knew from his last camping trip with the grandkids that he was too old to sleep on the floor. Maybe the hotel had a spare room.
When he stepped into the hallway, a woman in a dress that looked like a paint store had exploded on it slipped out of room 519. She dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
“Haven’t you heard the news?” She tore the Kleenex in half and continued to dab.
“Oh, about the body?” What other news could she be referring to?
A new crop of tears sprouted in her eyes. “Yes, they think it might be Binky.” She shook her head and whispered, “I just feel so guilty.”
Binky? What kind of cruel parent would name their kid Binky?
“I can’t sleep.” The woman wiped the rims of her eyes. “I’m going to go downstairs to wait for any news.”
“I’m headed downstairs to see if they have another room available. I would be glad to walk with you.”
“That’s so nice of you to offer. What is your name?”
“Earl Salinski.”
She held out a hand. “I’m Martha Hillstrong. I am the founder and president of the Squirrel Lovers Club.”
Hmm. Maybe Binky wasn’t human.
“Thanks for the offer, but Mr. Simpson in 515 said he would go down with me.” Her voice cracked. “Binky was his squirrel.”
Martha dug in her pocket and produced a key. “I know they don’t have any more rooms. With two conventions, the hotel is full.” She placed a key in his hand. “You’ve been kind to me. Why don’t you take my room? I won’t need it for a while.”
“Thank you. I just need a couple hours’ shut eye and I’ll be back on my game,” he murmured.
A man with fuzzy hair opened the door to 515 and nodded in Martha’s direction.