Murder Wears a Veil

by Maddie Cochere

  Murder Wears a Veil

  Two Sisters and a Journalist #7

  by Maddie Cochere

  Copyright 2017 by Maddie Cochere

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions therof in any form whatsoever except as provided by US copyright law.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Breezy Books

  http://www.breezybooks.com/

  Cover design by Gillian Soltis of Columbus, Ohio

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter One

  My name is Jo Wheeler. I used to be Jo Ravens until six days ago when I married Glenn Wheeler, my boyfriend of two years. He’s a police officer in Buxley, Ohio.

  I’m an almost-ready-to-be-certified private investigator. I work with my mentor, Arnold “Arnie” Baranski. We’ll soon be changing the name on our door to Baranski and Wheeler Investigations. I’m happy to be married, but my new name will take some getting used to.

  Glenn and I are presently standing on the edge of a cliff. I’ll fill you in on what’s happening in a minute, but first let me tell you who’s standing in this precarious spot with us. You probably know most of these people, but in case you don’t, let me tell you who they are.

  To our right is my sister, Pepper Swenson. She’s holding hands with her husband, Buck. He’s a long haul truck driver. Their children, Kelly and Keith, are standing in front of them. I’d never let my kids stand so close to the edge of a cliff. Not that I have any kids, but if I did, they’d be standing back a lot farther than those two.

  Pepper homeschools their children. Kelly is in the seventh grade, and Keith is in the fifth. I’m sure she’s logged a ton of credits, points, scores, and awards for their schooling the past five days.

  Next to the Swenson family is Mama - mother to Pepper, Hank, and me. Her name is Estelle Frasier. She’s the one holding onto the palm tree with one hand while dabbing her eyes with toilet paper with the other. She ran out of tissues and had to stuff toilet paper into her purse for this event. A small piece of the paper is stuck to the skin under her left eye. She doesn’t seem to know it’s there. Her live-in boyfriend, Roger, is standing beside her. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned his last name. It’s Chesterfield – like the cigarettes.

  Standing beside Mama and Roger is my brother, Hank, with his fiancée, Nancy Baranski. Their wedding is next month. Hank is a professional photographer as well as a bouncer for Parker’s Tavern, which is everyone’s favorite watering hole and eatery in Buxley. Nancy is Arnie’s niece and is employed as the receptionist for our offices. She’s a giggler, and whatever Hank did to her just now caused her to giggle. I’m finding their behavior inappropriate under the circumstances.

  To the left of Glenn and me is Mama’s sister, Beatrice, with her boyfriend, Max Boland. Aunt Bee is a meter maid, or to be politically correct, a parking enforcement officer. She’s also a member of Mama’s recently formed group, the Blue Hat Society, which rivals the better-known Red Hat Society.

  Rita Johnson and her new boyfriend, Floyd, are at the end of the line. Rita owns Rita’s Bed and Breakfast, and she, too, is a member of the Blue Hat Society. She only recently met widower Floyd Thompson. I first knew they were an item when I saw her give him a peck on the lips six days ago.

  Also with us is Lucille Crabtree. She’s well known for her chronic flatulence.

  Oh, did I mention Glenn and I are on our honeymoon in Hawaii? All the people I just told you about showed up when we changed planes in Los Angeles. They’ve crashed our honeymoon.

  Shall we pick up our story now? Yes?

  Good. Strap in. Here we go.

  ~ ~ ~

  No one screamed when Buck Swenson threw Lucille Crabtree over the cliff to the sharp rocks and pounding surf below.

  Keith watched her fall and yelled, “Bon voyage!”

  Pepper was quick to whap him upside the head with the map she was holding and say, “Show some respect.”

  I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for Lucille. I kept my eyes closed and said another prayer for our entire motley crew. We had only been in Hawaii for five days of our ten-day vacation, and already we were being thrown off the island. All because Lucille had a heart attack and died while stuffing dollar bills into a male stripper’s g-string.

  I blamed Mama for Lucille’s unfortunate demise. She should have never taken the elderly woman to the strip club in the first place.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “The owner of the club said he had plenty of regulars in their eighties, and Lucille said she could handle watching Big Kulani dance. She shouldn’t have put her face so close to his junk when he was shaking his hips at warp speed. I think she had a seizure before she keeled over.”

  Keith pulled a large pair of yellow granny panties out of his pocket and waved them in the air. Before anyone could ask what he was doing, he pitched the underwear over the cliff. I peeked over the edge and saw they had caught on a sharp rock about halfway down.

  “You left these in my room,” he yelled down to Lucille.

  Pepper hit him again with the map – more than once.

  He threw his arms up to defend himself. “What? She was always barging in my room to use the bathroom. She said hers smelled funny. It’s not my fault she left these in there.”

  “Eww,” Kelly said, stepping away from her brother.

  “Settle down,” Buck said. “Someone needs to pray over Lucille. Is anybody here good at praying?”

  Mama volunteered. “I’ll do it. … Oh, Lord, please forgive us for tossing Lucille over this cliff, but none of us could afford a proper burial for her, and the Cut-Rate Pet Crematorium gave us a good deal on turning her into ashes. And please tell Lucille we weren’t allowed to spread her over the Hawaiian flora and fauna, so she had to take a swan dive in her dog-shaped urn into the ocean. May she rest in peace.”

  Murmurs of amen followed Mama’s words.

  “Let’s go eat,” Roger said.

  Glenn slipped his arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “Do you want to have breakfast with everyone, or do you want to go back to our room for a last hurrah?”

  I smiled. We’d had many hurrahs over the past five days. “I’d love to go back to our room, but I kind of want to stay with everyone. I don’t know if Mama is taking Lucille’s death as well as she wants everyone to think she is.”

  Glenn turned to follow Pepper. I let go of his hand and said, “You go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  He smiled and nodded. I knew he was thinking I wanted to pay my final respects to Lucille, but I really only wanted a few minutes alone. Our vacation-honeymoon had been a whirlwind from the moment we stepped off the plane, and since we were leaving tonight, I wanted an opportunity to stand still in this amazing and just breathe.

  I moved over to lean against the palm t
ree where Mama had stood. The ordeal with Lucille’s body had been a complete fiasco ever since she died two days ago. Mama managed to obtain a cremation permit in record time yesterday by wearing down the clerk in the coroner’s office. The poor woman was overwhelmed with all of us talking at the same time, and I think she would have signed anything to get us out of there. After Keith disappeared into the morgue, the woman stamped the coroner’s signature on the paper before running after him.

  When Mama found out how much money the funeral home wanted to cremate the small and lightweight Lucille, she and Roger went off by themselves for a few hours. When they came back to the hotel, Mama held the dog-shaped urn in her hands. I knew better than to ask for details and chose to follow the ignorance is bliss theory. The news of a pet crematorium a few minutes ago made me glad we were leaving the state before Mama could be arrested for breaking the law regarding human cremation.

  I took another deep breath. The sound of the waves below and the smell of the ocean mixed with the aroma of abundant yellow flowers shaped liked violets made this spot indescribably beautiful, even sensual.

  The decision to trespass on private property had proven to be a risk worth taking. We had driven nearly thirty minutes along the coast looking for a place to pull over and launch Lucille. Not only were we riding in a van that was more like a minibus, making it difficult to pull off along the road, but the trees and plant life were thick and didn’t afford enough room for all of us to stand together. When we came upon the large house and expansive yard, Roger parked the van half-on and half-off the road directly across from the house. We then nominated Glenn to knock on the door to ask permission to cross the yard to the ocean.

  After ringing the bell and knocking several times, he determined no one was home.

  “Good,” Mama said, opening the door of the van and stepping out with Lucille’s dog urn tucked under her arm. “Let’s go.”

  No one questioned her, and we all followed like lemmings along the edge of the property to the cliff.

  A short honk of the van’s horn snapped me out of my thoughts and back to the present. I knew everyone was in a hurry to get to the restaurant while breakfast was still being served. I took one last look over the edge and saw Lucille bob a few times before going under. She didn’t resurface. The strong undertow claimed her. As if to say a final goodbye, the yellow granny panties flapped in the wind three times before hanging semi-limp once again.

  I turned to run to the van but quickly stepped back to the palm tree when I saw the glass double doors at the back of the house open. I was a good distance away and looking into the sun, but I couldn’t miss that it was a bride in a gorgeous wedding gown with a full train who came out the door and onto the patio. After adjusting the train, she bent down to grab something in the doorway.

  I couldn’t believe what I saw next. The bride held an apparently unresponsive groom by the heels. His tuxedo jacket rode up as she dragged him across the patio and onto the lawn until it was bunched under his arms. His head bounced up and down on the uneven ground as she pulled him down the yard.

  She tripped on her gown several times and fell down twice. It was difficult to hear with the crashing waves of the ocean below me, but I was positive obscenities took to the air every few seconds. The veil covering her face became more twisted with every stumble, but it remained in place, preventing me from getting a look at her face.

  The bride dragged her groom into a cluster of vegetation at the opposite end of the property from where I stood.

  I don’t know why I tiptoed, but I tiptoed in that direction until I spotted her again. She had managed to drag the groom to the edge of the cliff. She dropped to her knees and used both hands to shove him over the side.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from calling out. Tossing Lucille over the cliff was one thing. We had a permit. I highly doubted this bride had a permit to shove her new husband over the edge.

  The van horn sounded again. This time it wasn’t a short toot. It was a long, demanding, hungry-for-breakfast sound.

  The bride’s head shot up. I couldn’t see her eyes, but she faced my direction, and I knew she saw me. I took off at a run up the long, sloping yard and felt as if I were running in molasses. I had recently, unintentionally, starved myself and lost almost twenty pounds, but I’d put some of the weight back on since arriving in Hawaii, and I didn’t feel very speedy this morning.

  I sensed the bullet whiz by my head a split second before I heard the gunshot. I willed my feet to move faster. The survival section of my brain told me to zigzag while running.

  My lungs burned, and I was out of breath when I jumped into the van next to Glenn. “Go!” I yelled to Roger. “Go! Someone just shot at me!”

  “What do you mean someone shot at you?” Mama asked, reaching to turn the volume down on a Kenny Chesney song blaring from the radio.

  “You were doing the serpentine!” Keith said and howled with laughter.

  Pepper tried to hit him with her map again, but he was too fast for her. “You probably heard something in the ocean,” she said. “Those waves make some loud noises when they crash against the rocks.”

  I turned to Glenn and whispered. “The bullet almost hit me. I felt it whiz by my head.”

  Roger looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “Ok. Ok. We’re leaving. I’m hungry anyway.” He put the van in gear and pulled into the driveway of the house.

  “Don’t pull in,” I said in a panic. “What if she shoots again?” No one seemed to understand I was serious.

  Roger glanced in the rearview mirror again. “We have to turn around somewhere, and we’re right here.”

  “There’s no one around,” Mama said, looking toward the house. “We’re fine.”

  Roger backed the van out of the drive. There were no more shots fired, and like Mama, I didn’t notice anyone in or near the house.

  I had no idea what happened back there, but I know what I saw.

  I saw a bride murder her groom.

  Chapter Two

  Glenn pressed me to tell him what happened at the cliff, but I decided it was best to keep everything to myself for the moment. I knew if I told everyone what I had seen, we would all end up at the police station, and it would come out that Mama and Roger had cremated Lucille at a pet crematorium. We’d never get back to the mainland if Mama landed in jail.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” I said. “It must have been a bee or a hornet.”

  He slipped his arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple. I sensed we would be revisiting the topic later.

  You could hear everyone’s hunger via grumbling stomachs and lip smacking when Roger pulled into the small restaurant three blocks down from our hotel. It was tucked behind a gas station and had become our go-to restaurant for breakfast. The first morning we were at the hotel, Buck asked a bellhop if the hotel served a good breakfast. The man recommended this place, and we’d been coming here every morning since.

  The hostess seated us at our usual table at the back of the dining room. It was large enough to accommodate all fourteen of us comfortably now that we were no longer squishing in an extra chair for Lucille.

  “Order for me,” I told Glenn. “Something light. My stomach’s a little upside down. I’ll be right back.”

  I made my way to the front of the restaurant and stood outside the women’s restroom. No one was looking my way, so I ducked outside and over to the gas station. I sat on a bench outside the door and pushed number one on my speed dial.

  The phone rang numerous times before my call was answered.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Hawaii?” Sergeant Rorski asked instead of saying hello. He sounded irritated. “I’m telling you, Ravens, it’s quiet here, and I’m having a good day. You better not mess it up.”

  “It’s Wheeler, and I just saw a woman shove a dead man over a cliff.”

  He hung up on me.

  I waited. I knew he would call back. After news like that, he wouldn’t just leave me
hanging. Would he?

  I couldn’t wait too long for him. I didn’t want Glenn to start looking for me. I hit the station’s number again. It rang far too long, and I knew the sergeant was arguing with the desk officer.

  His voice was loaded with irritation when he came back on the line. “Are you sure he was dead?”

  “No, I’m not sure. He might have been knocked out or drugged. But I know he wasn’t resisting when his bride dragged him across the yard and pitched him over the edge of the cliff.”

  “Bride? What bride?”

  “The woman who shoved him over was wearing a bridal gown. The guy was wearing a groom’s tuxedo.”

  I heard him mutter a few choice swear words under his breath. “What’d Glenn say? He knows what to do. Call the police. Why the hell are you bothering me with this?”

  “Because Buck tossed Lucille over the same cliff, and I’m afraid if I call the police, they’ll find out Mama had Lucille cremated at a pet crematorium, and then they’ll throw Mama in jail. We’ve been evicted from our hotel and have to fly home tonight. I don’t want to get involved in a murder investigation here if I don’t have to.”

  He let a string of his best swear words fly and hung up again.

  I waited. A minute later, a text came through on my phone. Officer Winnie here. Keep your mouth shut. You didn’t see anything.

  That’s what I was hoping to hear. I hated the thought of getting involved in an investigation, and how in the world would I get back to Hawaii for a trial if I had to be a witness? The man would eventually be reported missing, and the Hawaii Five-O guys would have the murder solved in no time. I’d seen them do it on television a hundred times.

  I walked back into the restaurant in time to hear Keith say, “I’m going to miss spraying her with air freshener, but I’m not going to miss her SBDs. Man, she was rank sometimes.”

  Pepper half stood from her chair and attempted to snap Keith with her napkin. She missed. “You’re supposed to say what you’re going to miss about her, not what you won’t miss.” She turned to me and said, “We’re going around the table and taking turns saying something nice about Lucille.”