Chapter 4
CHARLES
We had barely gotten back on Highway 1 when the call came in.
Nick said, “It’s my day off. Did you call 911?”
I could actually hear Mimi’s voice through the phone and it wasn’t on speaker. “I don’t give a shit if it’s your day off or not, I need you to get here now. Have Charles put the address in his GPS.”
That was enough for me. I grabbed the phone from Nick. He tried to grab it back, but thank goodness we were in his Boxster and not the Crown Vic, so he was more worried about the car, and driving, than about me having his phone. “It’s me, chica, give me the address and the 411, and I’ll give Nick the directions.”
She did, and I did, then I hung up, gave the phone back to Nick and said, “Let’s roll.”
Nick rolled his eyes, which I find extremely condescending, and also adorable, and kept driving at the same rate of speed.
“Well, aren’t you going to save your damsel in distress?” There was no way he wasn’t going to Bucky’s place.
“It’s a dead body. What’s the hurry?”
“It’s Mimi. It’s a dead body. There isn’t anyone there to keep her from doing anything stupid. Usually I’m there to keep her from investigating on her own. I’m not there.” Why did I always have to explain the obvious?
Nick reached down under his seat and pulled out his flashing light. Putting it on the top of the car, he turned it on, and picked up speed. Next thing I knew, we were traveling down the 101 at 120 mph. Yeah, having cops for friends was good for the adrenaline.
We slowed to seventy once we turned onto Pesante Road, and then slowed to a crawl once we were near Bucky’s place. Driving onto the property was a move Nick and I debated on the ride over. I called Mimi to confer with her, and she said there had been at least a dozen, maybe more, cars and trucks in and out of the ranch that morning, so one more set of tire tracks wouldn’t likely make a difference. Regardless, Nick parked just inside the bridge that spanned the ditch running alongside the road.
We looked ridiculous in our suits, so we both took off our jackets, and I even left my vest in his car.
We’d arrived before the police. Oh, wait, we were the police. Fine, Nick was the police. And he’d been in touch with Dispatch on the trip over. They were sending a patrol unit, and the crime scene van, but Nick would be in charge. How the hell did we end up in this situation again? Oh, yeah, Mimi took on a case. Wasn’t that how it always happened? She was a dead body magnet.
Nick and I hoofed it (pun intended) toward Mimi, Cortnie and some other woman who must have been the wife. I deduced this because she was with Mimi and Cortnie, but what did I know?
Nick said, “Where is the…” I think he was looking for a polite term for “the body” when Mimi saved him.
“Bucky Cox is behind the bucking chutes.” She pointed to a bright pink flash of fabric.
“How the hell?” I started, but remember who was standing with us. “Oh, goodness.”
How the hell did they know that was Bucky Cox? It was a flash of pink fabric. Then I saw the lawn banner next to the arena. Bucky was wearing the exact same shirt. Way to milk the ad campaign while showing your horse for auction.
“Ma’am, I’m Charles Parks. I’m with Detective Christianson. You are?” I didn’t offer to shake her hand. For all I knew, she still had horse shit on it.
“Rayna Cox. That’s my husband.” She pointed to the pink fabric, then sniffled.
Cortnie said, “The horse in the arena is Mojo. He’s the one being auctioned tomorrow. It’s a big deal. I can fill you in on the details later.”
I couldn’t wait. Not.
Nick wasn’t as friendly as he normally was. “Rayna,” he said.
She said, “Nick.”
And maybe that’s why. They already knew each other. Duh, Bucky worked for the city. I’d just bet that Rayna was a handful. She looked like a handful.
“I’m going down to take a look.”
She flipped her hand at him. “Go.”
Nope, that wasn’t awkward.
Nick said, “Charles, let’s go.”
What the…? Didn’t have to ask me twice. I stepped right up. Not like he’d ask me to accompany him to a murder scene too many more times in the future. Even though I’d gotten to be a part of the last one we’d work together. The corpse behind the motel happened to be someone I knew. This corpse was someone I knew of.
Mimi said, “Um, excuse me?”
Nick and I ignored her and kept walking.
“She’s going to be so pissed off.” I had to warn him, if not for his sake, for mine.
He looked back. “Mimi, can you come here for a second?”
She trotted over. Ha! Get it, trotted.
“Yes?” Way too eager.
“Charles is going with me, as a witness for me. Rayna is not going to be able to say I messed this up in any way. There is no love lost between us, so I’m not taking chances. Nothing else, got it? I need you to stay with her and make nice.”
Mimi’s face scrunched up like a pitted prune. “It should be me as your witness.”
“She knows you aren’t a cop. She has no idea Charles isn’t.”
I nodded. “Good point.”
Mimi said, “Shut up.”
Nick grabbed my arm. “Let’s get this over with.” He reached in his pocket and handed me his phone. “Here, take video.”
“You got it.” I manipulated his phone to figure out how his video worked, which wasn’t all that difficult, since all I had to do was slide the screen and find his picture icon.
“Start recording. We aren’t going to take any chances with a well-known politician.” Nick stepped down into the back side of the bucking chutes.
“Cortnie knows a bit about horses and this rodeo stuff. Do you think maybe she should accompany us, so she can identify things that we can’t?” It was just a thought. I didn’t know what we’d find down there.
Nick smiled. “You’re always thinking, but I don’t know.” He looked toward Mimi.
I yelled. “Cortnie, can you please join us?” Then I looked at her shoes. “Never mind.”
Cortnie beamed. She was out of those shoes in seconds flat and jogged, barefooted, toward us in a hurry. “What’s up?”
“Backup for product identification. I’m not much of a horse expert,” Nick said.
I looked back to Mimi, whose head was about to explode.
The three of us stood on the landing above Bucky’s body. “Someone was mighty pissed at him.”
He lay face down in the dirt behind the bucking chutes. I know they were bucking chutes because I’d seen a rodeo or two. I can appreciate the nice bodies of those rough stock riders. but Bucky was definitely not a rough stock rider, and his body was definitely not nice. I often wondered how he even found his dick to pee, much less have sex. And now I wondered at the angle of his body in death. It’s not that he was so big, but all of his weight seemed to be on his belly. He had skinny legs, and skinny arms, but a little chub in the tub. Bucky’s body had twisted at an angle as he took his last breath, or as he ran out of energy. When I say face down, I’m guessing, because the thing on his neck was so bloody and bashed in, I couldn’t really make out the face from this distance.
“What’s so weird about this image?” Nick poked at Bucky’s skin with his pen.
Cortnie answered, “His pants are down around his ankles?”
“There’s that,” I said. “So was he in the middle of something, and got caught? Was he yanking it behind the chutes?”
“Or was he being yanked?” Cortnie’s voice had a lilt of conspiracy, sexual conspiracy.
“Or was it postmortem?” Nick pondered.
This was why he was the homicide detective and I was just his sidekick. I’d have never considered it. Bucky, as a politician, had exploited many folks, and if this was a homicide, the killer would love to see it hit the papers that Bucky was found dead “with his pants around his ankles.” I
know I’d love to know someone had been humiliated that way, if they’d screwed me over in the past. In my case, I’d more than likely be the one… oh, we just won’t go there.
“You are still recording, right?”
“Yes, Nick,” I replied, like the good wife. Jeez.
“Nice hit,” Cortnie said as she leaned in close to Bucky’s head, not even a bit queasy. “Or hits. Looks like the first hit was a blow to the side of the head. Then over the top a few times?”
“Hard to tell for sure, but I’d say the initial blow was the one to the side of the head. Makes sense. A good baseball type of swing. And it looks like whoever it was caught him from behind.” Nick pointed to the angle of the dent in Bucky’s skull. “But I can’t say for sure. That’s the M.E.’s job.”
Pesante Road isn’t a through road, and as such, there isn’t much traffic. So when I heard a vehicle screeching into the drive, I figured it was the patrol car, and possibly the CSU van. But when I looked up, I saw a red Dodge pickup. Not a little girlie pickup, either. This was a full-sized, manly man pickup, the kind I’d drive if I didn’t love sports cars, and might still consider purchasing for the Gotcha Detective Agency. Lola would look so good riding in the passenger seat of a truck like that, instead of Mimi’s piece of crap.
“Great, just what we need. I wish the patrol officers would get here and tape off the property,” Nick groaned. He went back to examining Bucky’s head, where the ear had been smashed into the skull, and was now concave.
It looked like it was going to be business as usual, until the chick who was driving that gorgeous hunk of Dodge pickup got out, stormed over to where Rayna and Mimi stood, and punched Rayna in the face. Rayna, unprepared for the attack, dropped like she’d been punched by Muhammad Ali.
Cortnie jumped to attention. “Oh, shit, that’s Emmet Hollister. She’s pissed.”
I looked at Cortnie. “Well, thank you for that observation, Captain Obvious.”
Mimi bent down to help Rayna up from the ground, but it was clear that she preferred to stay down, thinking the pixie haired, blonde chick was going to hit her again.
Then the screaming started. “Who do you think you are? You can’t pick and choose who can bid on that horse, and who can’t. It’s a public auction, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you keep me from that horse.”
“I’d better go up there. I know Emmet,” Cortnie said. She started up the stairs.
I wasn’t going to miss out on the cat fight. I saw the patrol car slow at the driveway, and saw my chance. “The cops are here. I should stay out of your crime scene. You know how Pics can be.”
Nick shook his head. “Leave the phone, so I can have a record. And go play with your girlfriends. Lord knows you don’t want to miss a good cat fight.”
I nearly tossed the phone at him, then ran up the stairs. I heard him say, “I want the details later. And don’t you dare tell Mimi I asked.”
I grinned. Oh yeah, Nick and I’d be going out for drinks on this one.
I arrived at the brood of cackling hens in time to step between Emmet and Rayna before Rayna returned the favor. “Look, ladies, nothing is ever solved with punches, except a boxing match.”
“Who the hell are you?” Emmet asked.
“I was here first, my little pixie, so let me ask you that question.”
“Who are you calling a pixie?”
She had short, cropped, platinum blonde hair, with perfectly applied makeup that left a sparkle on her cheeks and on her brow. Even the skin on her bare shoulders sparkled, so Pixie she was.
“Cortnie here says your name is Emmet, so Emmet, your skin sparkles, and you’re wearing a skimpy top with no bra, and your shorts are barely covering your ass cheeks. Not to mention you’ve arrived at a horse farm wearing flip-flops, and your toes have been freshly pedicured and painted in a hot pink French manicure, so Pixie it is.”
“Whatever. And who is Cortnie?”
Cortnie cockily raised her hand. She was no more afraid of this fist-wielding pixie than I was. “We rode together in college. It’s been awhile.”
“As in Cortnie Criss?” Her face got all screwy, but less bitchy.
Cortnie put on her best smile. “The one and only.”
“Wow, you’ve, um, changed.” She looked her up and down. “Are you like a lesbian now or something?”
I watched as the color rose from Cortnie’s neck, through her cheeks, and up through her scalp, but her smile never faded. “Oh, honey, no, I could never get used to the smell of old fish after traveling with you for two years. I like men and meat. Speaking of men…”
We all looked in the direction Cortnie had turned, to see who was coming toward us. It was Lieutenant Gabe Garcia, homicide detective, and Nick’s new partner. Since joining the homicide unit, Gabe had shaved his face clean, which didn’t do much for me, but then he wasn’t my guy.
Previous to homicide, Garcia had worked vice for the Salinas Police Department. There had been quite a shake up in the department a few months back. It happened to coincide with the demise of my dearly beloved Spyder. At the time, I wasn’t so sure I liked Garcia, but Cortnie was smitten with him. She had been working a prostitution sting at the time, so they had spent a lot of time sitting in a car together, getting to know each other. Now, they were getting to know each other in different ways. Well, they were back then too, but I don’t want to think about that.
He waved and winked at Cortnie, and she pointed toward the chutes where Nick was examining the body.
“Wow, he showed up in a hurry,” I said. “Guess he doesn’t want his partner to make him look bad in his first weeks on the job.”
“I called him,” Cortnie admitted. “I couldn’t let Nick have fun all by himself.”
A bit put off, I said, “He wasn’t all by himself, thank you very much.”
Mimi interrupted, “Okay, girls, one fist fight a morning is my limit.”
I was about ready to punch someone myself. But since I’m a man of extreme self-control, I moved on. “Emmit, is there a reason you punched Rayna’slights out?”
Rayna, who I had yet to decide if I liked or not, but was leaning toward disliking, shoved me hard, but of course I didn’t move an inch. “Lights out? She just caught me off guard.”
Yeah, sure. Emmet was smaller than Rayna by at least ten pounds, and she had that woman on the ground like she was a flea. There was no doubt who’d have won that match without a referee.
“Emmet?” I asked.
“I was here with my daughter this morning,” Emmet looked back to the pickup. There was a girl in the passenger seat, who looked to be a pre-teenager. “I wanted to take a look at Mojo. He’s being auctioned tomorrow. My daughter and I decided to bid, but when I went to the courthouse, I was told I was on the list of family members.” She turned on Rayna. “What the hell is that all about?”
Rayna’s crooked smile gave away nothing, yet spoke volumes.
Emmet got in Rayna’s face, nose to bloody nose. Between clenched teeth, she hissed, “Go get that no good husband of yours. We’ll air this dirty laundry once and for all. Then we’ll see how his little campaign goes from here.”
Rayna blinked and backed away. She didn’t respond, just blinked.
Mimi put her arm around Rayna, who looked like she was going to pass out for real this time.
Cortnie stepped in front of Emmet. “Bucky won’t be talking to anyone, Emmet,” she said.
“Coward.” Emmet spat the word.
“More like a corpse,” I said, and cocked my head as I scowled at her.
Emmet looked at me like I was crazy. “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you talking about?”
Mimi had to get her two cents in. “Emmet, is it? Bucky Cox died today.”
Emmet raised her brows and looked at Rayna accusingly, but said nothing.
Rayna said, “What?”
Emmet said, “What straw broke the camel’s back, Rayna?”
Rayna pulled her phone from he
r pocket and threw it at Emmet’s face.
Damn, she was good. She hit Emmet right on the mouth.
Emmet covered her face and bent over.
The girl who’d been in the pickup until now opened the passenger door and stood on the running board. “Mom, are you okay?”
Emmet recovered quickly. She didn’t look back, but said, “I’m okay. Get back in the truck.”
Mimi and I looked at the girl, then looked at each other, then back at the girl standing on the running board.
She looked to be average height for a tween, thin, with long curly brown hair, braces, and freckles. Mostly, she looked a lot like Bucky.
Chapter 5
MIMI
Good lord, people think testosterone is bad.
After Emmet called Bucky a coward, and Rayna hit her with the cell phone, Rayna flew out of my arms and ran at Emmet, stopped within a fraction of an inch of her, took a deep breath, and screamed in her face, “Get off my property. Get off now before I have the police escort you off.”
Emmet didn’t even flinch. “You can’t make me leave.”
“The hell I can’t. I have a trespass order against you, Emmet. Now get the hell off my property, or you’ll be in a squad car, and that bastard of yours will be carted off by social services.” Rayna pointed a long finger toward the passenger seat of Emmet’s pickup.
Emmet’s face went gray, and she said nothing. She turned around and went back to her pickup. Before she climbed back in, she said, “You haven’t heard the last of me, Rayna. This isn’t over.”
Emmet climbed up in the pickup, slammed the door, and spit dirt as she spun the truck around and left the property. I saw her look toward where the detectives were working as she drove away.
We stood quietly. I wasn’t sure if I should ask what happened, or just stick to the business at hand. I’m way too nosy to stick to the business at hand. Charles nudged me.
“What?” I asked.
Charles glared, mad that I couldn’t read his mind. I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking, but I didn’t know how to ask.
“Rayna, that girl in the pickup, is she somehow related to you?” Charles blurted out.
Electile Dysfunction (Gotcha Detective Agency Mystery Book 6) Page 5