by Shannon West
“I guess so.”
“We’ll be treating this like a crime scene for a couple of days, so you’ll have to close for a while.”
“You think she was killed here?”
“I don’t know yet. Forensics and the coroner should tell us more.”
I nodded as he got to his feet and gave me one of those looks I was coming to expect from him. “Are you okay to drive home?”
“I’m fine.” I may have been a little snappy. He hadn’t asked anybody else if they were okay to drive. Did I look that delicate to him?
“Okay, Noah. Leave your key, and we can lock up for you after we leave.”
I turned to leave and had almost made it to the door when he called out after me. “I’ll be in touch.”
Chapter Five
I got home a little after three that afternoon and found my grandmother and Rose in the kitchen, the old recipe book that Rose said she bought at a yard sale was opened up on the table in front of them, and my gran was holding a magnifying glass over it and peering down at it. They both jumped when I came in.
“Oh, it’s you,” Gran said. “What are you doing home so early?”
“We had to close the shop. Brace yourself, ladies, something awful has happened. You remember Julie Covington, the lady who runs the antique shop in town?”
“Yes, of course,” Rose said. “She goes to our church, though she’s not in our Sunday School class. She and her husband are in the Faith Seekers and we’re in Serving Hands.”
“Oh. Well, whatever that means. She was, uh. She was found—I found her—in the dumpster out in back of the shop.”
“In the dumpster?” Gran said, her eyebrows going up. “Well, what in the world was she doing in there? Did somebody throw some old furniture in there or something? You should tell her those dumpster things aren’t very sanitary.”
“No, Gran! She wasn’t in the dumpster. I mean, she was, but…her body was in the dumpster. She’s dead!”
They just stared at me, so I still felt the need to clarify. “I found Julie Covington’s body in the dumpster.”
There was a shocked little silence from Gran, and Rose gasped out loud. “You found her?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. It was awful! “
“Did you call the sheriff?”
“No, I just threw some trash bags on top of her and went back inside till the garbage man could haul her away. Well, of course, I did, Gran.”
“No need for sass. What did the sheriff say?”
“Just asked a bunch of questions. He’s made me close for a couple of days, because the shop might be a crime scene, but I think someone just threw her body in there.”
“Why your dumpster?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did the sheriff have any ideas? Any suspects?”
“I’m not exactly in his confidence. They took her to the coroner’s. Called in a Forensics team.”
“Hmm, wonder if that husband of hers did it? He has shifty eyes.”
“Pearl,” Rose remonstrated with her, but Gran was defiant.
“I never liked Andrew. He was in one of the classes I taught in high school. A real little smartass.”
“What about Julie? Did you have her in a class too?”
“No, Julie’s family didn’t move here until a few years ago. I never had her in any of my classes.” Gran pulled her attention back to me. “What happened to her? Could you tell?”
“Not really. Her neck was at an odd angle though, like it was broken. And she had a big bruise on one cheek. That’s all I noticed.”
I shuddered again and Gran reached for my hand to squeeze it tight. “Why don’t you take a little rest?”
“No, I don’t need to do that. I need to keep busy. To keep my mind off all of it. I think I might just cut the grass in the backyard.”
“It is getting warmer outside. Might get your mind off things.”
To tell the truth, I really did feel the need to stay busy and do something useful. Something to get my mind off poor Julie Covington and worrying over when they’d let me open my shop back up. I got up and went to my room to change clothes. If I had to sweat, I might as well work on my tan at the same time. It was still a little early for that, but what the hell.
I put on the same old cutoffs I used to wash the car, only instead of flip flops, I wore tennis shoes to forestall my grandmother yelling at me that I’d cut off a toe if I didn’t. I grabbed my phone and my headphones and turned on some music. It was late afternoon by that time, the warmest part of the day, so I had worked up a little sweat by the time I finished the front yard. I went over to grab the water hose to turn the cold water on myself and spray my face and chest.
I stood for a moment enjoying the feel of the cold water cascading over my hair and down my body before I turned around—and almost jumped out of my skin.
“Hey! Watch it!” Nick Moody yelled as he jumped back away from the spray that I was aiming right at him. Even though he moved fast, I still managed to splash him.
“Dammit, Noah!”
“I didn’t mean to! You startled me sneaking up on me like that.”
“Sneaking up on you? I yelled your name like three times.”
“Oh,” I said, pulling out my headphones, grinned at him and shrugged. “Sorry.”
He shook his head, muttering under his breath and brushing water off his shirt. His gaze roamed over me and he shook his head. “Don’t you ever wear clothes?”
I opened my mouth to respond and thought better of it. I wasn’t wearing much actually, and I’d just sprayed him down with a water hose. Probably not the optimum time for smart ass comebacks.
“I’m really sorry about the hose. Can I get you a towel?”
He glanced up at me and I think we both remembered the last time we messed around with a towel and what happened after that. For a moment I stood there, lost as a ball in high weeds, hidden and swallowed up in a memory.
It was February, one of the wettest, coldest months we have in the South, and I’d gone by Nick’s house to get a game he’d borrowed. He was living by then in an apartment above his family’s garage. The weather was stormy, with icy winds and angry skies. Nick was watching TV when I came by late in the afternoon on my way home from class, and I stopped in the middle of the tiny living room and stared at him. The room was toasty warm, and he wasn’t wearing anything but some black knit boxers.
I was soaking wet and shivering violentluy, my dripping hair plastered to my skull. “Damn Noah,” Nick said, looking me up and down from where he was snuggled down on the couch. “No umbrella?”
“I couldn’t find it this morning, and I thought I left it in the car. It wasn’t there though, so then I thought maybe if I just ran all the way back to the car I wouldn’t get as wet…”
“Great plan. Not exactly a Science guy, are you? Damn, you’re soaked to the skin. Put those wet clothes in the dryer.” I went in the bathroom and took off everything but my underwear, wrapping a towel around my waist. He had one of those stackable units in the bathroom, so I threw my stuff in to dry. I came out, feeling shy and self-conscious, and he laughed and pulled at the towel I was wearing. We started wrestling over it, and I was shivering so hard my teeth were chattering, even though we were both laughing by that time. That’s when I noticed my boxers were just as wet as my jeans had been and the white fabric was practically see though at this point, but that wasn’t what alarmed me so much. It was the big erection I had after fooling around half-naked with Nick. My face got hot and Nick looked down at me. My dick was tenting out the thin, wet fabric, sticking straight out and begging for a touch.
“I’m sorry! Please don’t kill me.” I said, pulling a pillow from the couch to hide behind.
His eyes wide, Nick kept staring down at me. “You have something you want to tell me, Noah?”
“I-I…” I could feel my face flaming and I turned to run to the bathroom. He caught my arm, pushed the pillow aside and just stared at me. Then without warning, he yanke
d down my underwear and watched as my hard cock sprang free, brushing my hands away when I tried to cover myself. He took hold of my wrists and held them.
As an athlete, he must have been in plenty of locker rooms and seen plenty of naked guys, but this was different. Those guys probably didn’t have erections as hard as mine or cocks that were tipped with a pearly bead of cum at their slit.
“No, stop. Let me see.”
“Oh my God, Nick, please let me go.”
Still laughing, he said, “No, it’s-it’s just surprising.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought you’d look different.”
“Different? Different how?” I frowned at him and he grinned at me.
“There’s something about you, Noah, that always makes me think of you as—I don’t know—younger, smaller, more…delicate.”
I tried to hit him again, and he laughed and pulled me back down to the sofa beside him.
“It’s not true, though, okay? You’re not ‘delicate’ at all.”
“C-come on, Nick,” I pleaded with him. “Let me go.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” he said, his voice surprisingly husky. I followed his glance down to his own cock and saw that it had become thick and heavy too, and I felt a throbbing in my balls. That nagging little voice in my head came back, telling me to stop this, to let it go now or I would live to regret it, but I ruthlessly ignored it, because this was Nick and he was looking at me, a funny expression on his face.
It probably helped that he’d been drinking beer all afternoon. The empty cans were all over his coffee table. He dropped my wrist and took hold of my dick instead. I gasped and lifted my head to look up wonderingly at him, and the best he could come up with was an embarrassed one-shouldered shrug.
I flung myself against him to press my body against his, and he let me push him to his back on the couch. He stared up at me, his beautiful face gone a little slack and soft. Knowing it was a very bad idea but still unable to stop myself, I lowered my mouth to his gorgeous cock and took the head in my mouth, licking around the glans. He gasped aloud and put his hands on my head, pressing down a little, not to force me, but to keep me there. I heard him groan as my hand slipped down to find his balls so I could knead and massage them.
“Yeah, like that,” Nick said and then sucked in a harsh breath at the soft heat of my mouth. He closed his eyes. I knew I should stop this—he was drunk and was no doubt going to be embarrassed about this later. But I couldn’t. My mouth was stretched tight around Nick’s shaft, and I was sucking him hard and then soft, licking the underside with my tongue and raking the head ever so softly and skimming it with my teeth.
“Where the hell did you learn how to do that?” Nick groaned. I took him deeper as I relaxed my throat and soft, murmuring gasps and groans came from him and he pushed at my forehead a little. “No, stop. I-I’m gonna come,” he warned urgently, his voice throaty and hoarse.
In response, I took him even deeper, made a little whimpering sound and then moved back up his shaft to suck around the head again. His cock jumped enthusiastically, and he came so hard I was afraid he was going to pass out. I swallowed it all and then held his cock in my mouth licking off all the cum until he finally began to soften. Only then did I pull away and I nuzzled my nose in his groin and pressed soft kisses to his balls.
I had come too, without even a touch from Nick. He saw it and dropped his head back on the pillow, completely out of breath and wiped out by the orgasm. I stayed quietly beside him, my head resting on one of his thighs, and listened to his breathing deepen. When I knew he was asleep, I went into his bathroom and cleaned up. Then I got my clothes back on, quietly let myself out and drove home.
I didn’t talk to him for a few days, and when I did, he didn’t mention what happened and neither did I. In fact, the subject never came up again. At least not until later, a few days before he left for the army, when we had that last awful fight.
Nick cleared his throat. “Forget it. I don’t need a towel. Lucky for you, it’s close to a hundred today, so I guess I’ll live. Look, I need you to come down to the station tomorrow.”
“The-the station?”
“Yes, I need an official statement. No need to look all scared. It’s just routine.”
“I’m not scared.”
He did a slight eye roll, then looked toward the front door. “I’m actually here to give my grandmother a ride. She’s not answering her cell phone, and no one answered my knock on the front door.”
“I thought you told her she couldn’t come back over here.”
He snorted. “Like she listens. She asked me to stop by to pick her up on my way home.”
“Oh. Well, they’re probably in the basement. My gran said she wanted to work on an art project.”
“An art project?” He shook his head. “I won’t even ask.”
I laughed. “Yeah, probably for the best. Come on and I’ll take you in. They can’t hear you knocking if they’re in in the basement.”
He followed me to the front door. I was self-conscious about the damn cutoffs, which I decided needed to be thrown away. I could have sworn I felt his gaze on my ass, but when I glanced back at him, he was scowling at me. “Well? I don’t have all day.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said and put on a little more speed. I opened the door and yelled “Grandmother! Hey, Gran!” but there was no answer. I turned to him apologetically, although I don’t know why I should have been apologetic—it was his own grandma he was after—and headed toward the stairs. “They’re down here, if you’d like to…”
My voice trailed off as he huffed in annoyance and followed in my wet, grassy footsteps as I led him downstairs.
My grandfather had hired some contractor to finish the basement years ago before he passed and had imagined it as his den, a place where he could watch his beloved Alabama football. He’d decorated it accordingly and painted the walls a deep crimson with white trim on the baseboards and door frames. He even put in the wood stove and bought himself one of those big old projection screen TVs they used to have back in the day, and I think he’d planned to put up various posters and memorabilia too, but he never got the chance. My grandmother had taken one look at it, had declared it perfect for her book club and proceeded to take it over. It never served its original purpose, and my grandad went back to watching the games on the TV in the den.
The walls were still a deep crimson color though, and my gran added even more color to it when she bought a new sofa a few years later and moved her old bright green one downstairs. She put up some old curtains with various bright colors like blue and orange and green in them, thinking, I guess, that it would bring the whole colorful look together.
It did not.
Anyway, I was used to the riot of discordant colors in the basement, but not the sound of the weird chanting we heard as we got about halfway down the stairs. I stopped in amazement and glanced back at the sheriff, whose eyebrows were riding way up high on his forehead. Not that I blamed him.
The ladies’ voices were raised in a chant that sounded like they were speaking some foreign tongue. And as we listened in amazement to that, we were suddenly treated to the soft rhythmic sound of a drum, joined by the jangling of bells. Before I could take another step to see what the hell was going on, a loud gong sounded, and I heard Nick’s sharp intake of breath. We both rushed down the last few steps and came to an abrupt and shocked halt in the doorway, just gazing in at the scene in amazement.
My grandmother, Rose and Claudia, Nick’s grandmother, were all three standing in a kind of circle facing each other and chanting. They were all wearing colorful robes. Rose, who was wearing her pink Chenille bathrobe, also held an old set of bongo drums, and Claudia, wearing one of my Gran’s old floral robes, had a tambourine. My grandmother, wrapped in her red Christmas robe, was bonging a large disk with a wooden spoon. The gong, when I took a closer look at it, was actually an old, decorative brass serving dish that normall
y hung on the dining room wall.
In the center of the circle was a strange little figure. It was a hideous human effigy, made out of what looked like mounds and mounds of canned biscuit dough. It stood about two feet high, its body mostly amorphous, like a melted snowman’s—in fact it resembled a snowman a little. It, too, had a little head and some short little arms, made of sticks. They had used little pats of butter to make it a mouth and two eyes. It was surrounded by large, fat candles on the floor and the air was filled again with the smell of sage. It all literally rendered me speechless for a moment. All I could do was stand there and blink.
So not the case with Sheriff Nick Moody, who had no problem at all finding his voice.
“What in the goddamn, freakin’ hell is going on here, Nana?” he shouted. “What are you wearing? And what is that shit on the floor? A damn snowman? In March?” he said, charging into the circle and bending over to get a closer look at the “sculpture” on the floor.
His grandmother blinked a few times and then straightened up to her full height, which brought her approximately up to his shoulder level. “Don’t you use that tone with me, young man. You remember your manners and stop all that cussing.”
Nick looked first shocked and then sheepish. He frowned, but said, “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, but I was surprised at all…” he gestured at the effigy, “all of this.”
My grandma, who had been shocked by our sudden interruption, paled alarmingly, and she took a few steps backward, trying ineffectually to hide the big gong and spoon behind her back.
“Gran,” I said, moving over to her side and taking her arm to steady her. “You want to tell me what in the world all this is?”
“I-I…you wouldn’t understand, Noah. We were just…we were…uh…”
Rose stepped up to the plate then to pull my gran’s fat out of the fire. She put down her bongos and stood in front of Nick Moody, inserting herself between him and the strange figure on the floor. “We were performing a ritual, gentlemen, if you must know. What kind of ritual is for us to know and you to find out, but nothing to get all riled up about and nothing for you to look so angry about, Nicholas Moody. Your nana’s fine. We’re in our own house; this is a free country; we weren’t hurting anybody; and this is nobody’s business but our own.”