Happy Hour

by Anina Collins

  Pam made our coffees and rang them up, along with the two cherry danishes, and after wishing her a great day, I made my way back across the street to the police station just as the sun peeked above the horizon. By the looks of the sunrise, it would be a beautiful day.

  I just hoped we’d get to enjoy some of it as we worked to figure out who had killed Marcus Tyne.

  Derek stood just inside the doorway to Alex’s office blocking my entrance, so I cleared my throat and he turned to face me with a look of surprise in his eyes. “Did I end up hiring you, Poppy? It’s barely six am. What are you doing here?”

  Sliding past him, I handed Alex his coffee and danish before sitting down to enjoy mine. “I’m delivering for The Grounds now. What do you think I’m doing here? Someone died right outside my father’s bar, Derek. I’m here to help Alex find out who did it.”

  A sly smile made the corners of his mouth inch up. “And you didn’t bring any danish for me?”

  I took a sip of coffee and laughed. “I didn’t even think you’d be out of bed this early, to be honest. You’re not exactly an early bird anymore since you became chief, you know.”

  “As I was telling Alex here, I wasn’t even asleep when he called. That shows you how much you know, Poppy.”

  Derek was in rare form this morning, so I figured I should focus on my breakfast and let Alex do all the talking. It never helped to aggravate the chief, even if he had been my friend for nearly my entire life and had been crushing on me for nearly as long.

  Alex swallowed a bite of his breakfast and asked, “So do you remember anything about Marcus Tyne from that arrest eight months ago?”

  “I remember he swore up and down he never hit that Touring woman. Other than that, he seemed like a decent guy. You know, the type you’d sit next to at the bar while you watched the game. I don’t know of any reason anyone would have to kill him.”

  “What about Angela Touring?” Alex asked. “Do you know if they stayed together after that incident?”

  Derek shook his head. “I think she left town after that. I just know she never called again after that one time.”

  Reading off the police record, Alex said, “She lived at 210 Crimson Drive, so I think Poppy and I will take a ride over there after we finish here and see if she knows anything about Tyne’s death or who might have wanted to kill him.”

  “Sounds good,” Derek said, nodding his approval of Alex’s plan. “Let me know what you find out. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if Donny sends any details on the preliminary autopsy my way.”

  He turned to leave, but I said, “You know, you’re pretty alert this early in the morning, Derek. Who knew you were an early bird?”

  Looking back at me, he smiled and threw me a look I would have sworn was intended to be flirty if I wasn’t with Alex. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Poppy. Lots of things.”

  Before I could ask what since I couldn’t think of one thing I wouldn’t know about him, he walked away, leaving me wondering what he meant and what that look meant. I turned to ask Alex if he’d seen it, but he’d already begun filling out one of the many forms the department required him to complete at the end of each shift.

  “Are we doing this now?” I asked, sure he meant we’d go see Angela Touring later in the day after he grabbed at least a short nap since he’d worked the overnight shift.

  Alex looked up at me and nodded. “Now’s as good a time as any. Might as well take care of this while the caffeine is doing its job because I figure I’m going to be crashing in a few hours.

  I tipped the paper cup up toward my mouth to take a sip of my coffee and stood up ready to go. “Okay, partner. Let’s go!”

  Chapter Three

  “Did Derek seem odd to you?”

  Alex stopped at the red light a block away from the police station and turned to look at me. “Odd?”

  “Yeah. Strange, like he wasn’t acting like himself.”

  He thought about my question for a moment and shook his head. “No. He seemed like he always does. Like Derek.”

  Alex turned back to face the road and when the light turned green, he began driving again toward Crimson Drive. I wasn’t as sure as he was about Derek, though. Something about him felt different this morning.

  As we rolled past a smattering of people out on the streets of Sunset Ridge so early in the morning, I said, “I think there was something up with him. I can’t put my finger on it, but he was…odd.”

  “Odd? I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there, Poppy. He seemed like he always does, except earlier than you usually see him. Maybe that’s what felt so odd. You don’t often see Derek before nine am, do you?”

  Something in Alex’s voice sounded strange now too. I turned to look at him and saw a tiny smile tugging the corners of his mouth up. Had he just slipped in some kind of sexual innuendo about Derek and me?

  “If you’re asking me if I’ve ever seen him first thing in the morning, like right after he’s rolled out of bed, then the answer is no, although there was this one time in high school that I saw him in the woods without his pants on.”

  I made that sound far more interesting than it had been in reality, but the effect was just as I expected. Alex looked over at me with an expression I could only describe as curiosity mixed with irritation I suspected was borne out of jealousy.

  That’s what he got for dismissing my suspicions about Derek so quickly.

  “Do I want to know why you saw Derek without his pants on in the woods?” Alex asked, each word dripping with the very irritation I’d sensed in his face.

  “No,” I said with a chuckle. “But all of this is getting us off the track. You didn’t sense something different about him today?”

  “Nope.”

  Now I was getting irritated. Alex usually enjoyed my observations, or at least found them entertaining. Now he just seemed disinterested. “Well, I think something’s up with Derek. I think he’s hiding something.”

  “I think what you think is up is actually just Derek acting like himself when he’s forced to come to work before nine in the morning. Do you think we can talk about this case now?”

  I silently resolved to figure out what Derek was hiding and said, “Sure. What is there to talk about before we get to speak to Angela Touring? Did Donny find out what killed Marcus Tyne and you’ve been holding out on me?”

  Once again, Alex turned to look at me, but this time I got the furrowed brow look. “You’re in a strange mood today, Poppy. Is everything okay?”

  His question caught me off guard. I was the same as I always was. That he could think I was acting strangely but Derek was being his same old self baffled me. If anything, Alex should know me better than that by now.

  Looking out the window, I said, “Nothing strange about me. I’m my usual inquisitive self, just like always.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled in between us when Alex didn’t respond to my claim of acting like I always did, and by the time we reached 210 Crimson Drive, I had to admit things with us felt strange this morning too.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it was me. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, so maybe my perception of things was a bit off.

  “Ready?” he asked as he parked the car.

  I turned in my seat to face him and touched his arm as he turned the car off. “I didn’t mean anything when I asked if you were holding out on me. I mean, if that’s why you think there’s something strange about me this morning.”

  He smiled sweetly, like what I’d said charmed him in some way. “I know you’re worried about your father, so I just chalked it up to that. I do have to admit that I had a feeling you were upset with me last night, though.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t imagine why he’d think I was angry with him, of all people, last night.

  Frowning, he said, “Because I couldn’t show you how much I wished I didn’t have to go back to the station to work this case. I saw the look on your face when I didn’t kiss you back outs
ide McGuire’s.”

  I waved away his worry, even though I liked that he had been concerned about not giving in to public displays of affection. “No, it’s okay, Alex. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that anyway. You were working and I know how important it is to keep our professional lives and personal lives completely separate.”

  “So we’re good?” he asked, his dark eyes full of hope.

  “Of course. In public, we’re all about the job. In private, we’re all about each other. So let’s go talk to Angela Touring and see if she can help us figure out why anyone other than her would want Marcus Tyne dead.”

  We got out of the car and began walking up the sidewalk toward her ranch style house. He rang the doorbell, and stared straight ahead as he asked me, “So you’ve already decided she’s our first suspect?”

  I saw the hint of a smile as he waited for her to answer the door. Always ready to jump to conclusions, I had decided she had to be our first suspect in the death of the man who had given her a black eye a few months ago. It seemed like a rational idea, and it wasn’t like it was chiseled in stone.

  If I was wrong, then so be it. No harm, no foul.

  “Of course. She called the police on him because he hit her. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or in this case, a woman punched in the eye. Until I hear something to the contrary, she’s suspect number one.”

  Alex rang the doorbell again and looked over at me. “Eight months is a long time to wait for revenge, don’t you think?”

  “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

  “You’re full of pithy sayings today, aren’t you?” he asked with a chuckle.

  I had to laugh. I didn’t intend on sounding like a fortune cookie, but it had come out that way. “It’s the lack of coffee. I’m usually on my second cup after being up this many hours in the day. I’ll get better once the caffeine tank is filled.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment the door opened and a woman with a brown chin-length bob and big, wide eyes stared out at us through the screen door.

  “Yes?”

  Angela Touring had a severe look to her. With a long face framed by a hairstyle that hit at the pointiest part and only served to accentuate her naturally angular look, she reminded me of a runway model, only not as striking so much as jarring in her appearance. Below the neck, she looked far more feminine with a curvy figure that didn’t seem to fit her face at all. All in all, Angela Touring was physical contradiction.

  Alex looked through the screen at her and said, “Hello, Miss Touring. I’m Alex Montero with the Sunset Ridge police and this is Poppy McGuire. We’d like to speak to you about Marcus Tyne.”

  Clearly unsure why we were standing on her porch asking to talk to her about her ex-boyfriend so early in the morning, she hesitated for a moment before pushing open the door and standing back to let us in. We walked into a midcentury home with modest but completely forgettable furnishings. Nothing stood out from the beige walls to the tan carpet to the bland landscape framed pictures that hung on the walls.

  Alex and I stopped where the living room met the dining room, and Angela joined us so the three of us were standing clustered awkwardly in the space. She didn’t appear to want to offer us a seat at first, but after a few moments of staring at one another uncomfortably, she finally extended her arm toward the dining room table and said, “I guess we should sit down. Please feel free.”

  We each took a seat at the tiniest table with four chairs I’d ever seen, and as Alex and I pulled our chairs in our knees smashed into each other. I stifled the urge to cry out in pain while he winced for just a second before turning to the business at hand and taking out his notebook and pen.

  “Miss Touring, I’d like to know if you still see Marcus Tyne, romantically or otherwise,” he said, beginning the interview with a direct question. Clearly, he didn’t think he had to charm Angela Touring.

  I didn’t think he had to either. While she was stark looking and hadn’t said much yet, I had the sense she was someone who preferred to be forthright. No need for a smarmy approach with her type of woman.

  “I don’t,” she said tersely. “Not in any way, shape, or form. I haven’t seen him for about six months.”

  The words came out like I imagined a drill sergeant would say them. Tight, succinct, definitive.

  Alex wrote down a note that said “Haven’t seen him in 6 mos” and looking up from his tablet, asked, “Have you had any contact with him at all in that time?”

  Tightening her lips, she shook her head. “No, I haven’t, Officer Montero.”

  Angela Touring had taken Joe Friday’s admonition to heart. She was all facts and nothing more.

  “What did Mr. Tyne do for a living?” he asked, looking at her like a friend would who genuinely wanted to know the answer.

  Maybe he did think this situation called for some charm.

  “He owns a small antiquing business he runs out of the back of his home,” she said, parsing out the information Alex sought with an eyedropper.

  As Alex continued to ask her questions to elicit some details about our victim, I looked around the nondescript house and felt the blandness begin to press down on me. Living in a place like this would make me never want to come home. There was nothing cozy or welcoming about this house. It felt like a showroom for those who wanted someplace to live that lacked any hint of inspiration. Sparse seemed the best adjective for her style of decorating. Or maybe Spartan.

  My gaze drifted over to an end table near the large front window that held the only picture not hung on the walls. Trying to avoid being caught studying her home, I turned away from her and squinted my eyes to see what the image in the frame was.

  Interestingly enough, it was a picture of Angela Touring and a man, but what man? I couldn’t make him out from where I sat in the dining room.

  Looking around again, I saw no evidence a man lived in the home or any that a man frequently visited there. Curious, I took advantage of an awkward break in Alex’s questioning to ask her if I could use her bathroom to see if I could find any proof a man spent any time in there.

  She pointed at the wall behind me and said, “First room on the right.”

  Quickly, I hurried off to the bathroom and saw there was no way any man spent any considerable time in that house. No shaving cream, razors, after shave, or cologne in the vanity, and only one toothbrush stood in the holder next to the sink. In the linen cabinet, towels and sheets sat folded in perfect squares, even fitted sheets, which made me wonder if Angela Touring was some kind of demon since I’d never met anyone who could successfully fold a fitted sheet properly.

  I flushed the toilet to complete my lie and walked out to see Alex already standing next to the table. Angela remained seated and looking up at him like she couldn’t figure out why he was still in her house.

  “Thanks,” I said with a smile and received the tightest one in return.

  Without waiting for Alex, I began walking toward the front door to get a better look at that picture on the end table, and lo and behold, there in that gold frame were Angela and a very happy Marcus Tyne standing in front of a Ferris wheel at what looked like the Sunset Ridge fireman’s picnic and carnival held each August.

  As Alex followed me toward the door, Angela asked, “What is all this about, Officer Montero? Is Marcus in trouble again?”

  I turned to see him stop and slowly spin around to answer her, but instead he asked another question. “Did he often get into trouble, or was the problem you two had what you’re referring to?”

  For the first time since we arrived, Angela’s expression looked upset. Standing from the table, she shook her head violently. “I didn’t mean that I thought he’d hit another woman or anything like that. That’s not what I was saying at all. I just wondered if he’d gotten into trouble.”

  “You said again, Miss Touring. I just assumed you were referring to the dispute you two had that ended up in you calling the police eight months ago.”


  She shook her head again, making her bob swing around from one side of her jaw to the other. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. Marcus just had a tendency to get in trouble is all I meant. He didn’t try to, but it somehow followed him.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked as the two of us inched back toward her.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Her tone had returned to that clipped one she used before, and I sensed there would be no more information coming from her. To be honest, I wasn’t sure there was any more to get. I may have been wrong about her being suspect number one in this case. She didn’t seem to have seen the victim in a number of months, and other than her appearing to be upset about the dispute she’d had with him that resulted in Derek coming out to see her, she was practically emotionless about Marcus Tyne.

  Not exactly a woman crumbling under a guilty conscience.

  “So what is all of this about? Why are you asking about Marcus if he isn’t in trouble?” she asked, looking first at Alex and then to me for the answer.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Marcus Tyne was found dead early this morning.”

  Angela Touring recoiled and then covered her face with her hands before running out of the room. We waited a few minutes for her to return, but she never did, so we left without saying another word.

  As we drove back to the station, Alex said, “That was strange, wasn’t it?”

  Strange wasn’t the word for it.

  “Did you notice she wasn’t crying when she ran out of the room?”

  He turned to look at me and nodded. “I thought it seemed a little overdone. She was like a robot the whole time I was asking her about him, and then suddenly, she was overwhelmed with emotion. It all seemed very staged.”

  “Definitely. And did you notice the picture on the end table near the window?”