“Duh. Handcuffs.”
“Haven’t gotten them yet.” My heat level grew, despite the fact that I’d heard the same or similar comments from numerous people—men and women alike. I hadn’t expected it from Tripp. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that the garbage bin arrived. You can start whenever, but police pup and I will be patrolling the village this morning. You have the key?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the camper. “In there.”
“I’ll set a schedule with the sheriff. Then I’ll have a better idea of when I can help around the house.”
“Okay.” Tripp grinned and leaned in to give me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Have a good day at work, honey.”
I laughed, realizing how domestic the whole conversation sounded, and turned to leave. When I did, I noticed that along with the new tents in the area, the one at the far end was missing.
“Where’s Yasmine’s tent?” I asked.
Tripp squinted down to the far end of the campground. “Dunno.”
I headed that direction and stopped outside the cluster of tents where Keko and her posse had made camp.
“Anyone awake?” I called and clapped my hands like an annoying summer camp counselor. “Hello?”
“Yeah,” a man’s voice grumbled from inside one of the tents. “Gimme a sec.”
The army-green tent shook a bit as the zipper went up and Duane Crawford stuck his head out. The second he saw me standing there, his head dropped forward.
“What’s going on?” He didn’t seem at all surprised to see a uniformed officer standing outside his tent. “Who’s in trouble?”
“No one’s in trouble, Duane.”
He narrowed his eyes, trying to place me. “You were here yesterday. Asking all sorts of questions about Yasmine.”
“I was. I’ve got one more.” I gestured toward the spot where her tent used to be. “Any idea what happened to her tent?”
“That deputy came and took it.”
I spun to find Keko strolling our way, her mass of braids dripping and a towel draped over her shoulders. Since she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit, I guessed she just left the showers and not the lake. Was she an early riser or just getting ready for bed?
“Deputy Reed?” I asked.
“Don’t know his name,” Keko said. “Looked kinda sickly. How come you’re wearing a uniform today?”
“Just got it. I told you I was working with the sheriff.”
“Right.” Keko hesitated before responding, in a way that said she didn’t remember that at all.
“So, this deputy. He just took everything?” I confirmed.
“Yeah. At first, I figured he was a thief,” Keko said, “the way he shoved all her stuff in the back of his van.”
“He put everything in bags first, right?”
Keko burst out with a laugh. “Nope. He didn’t even empty the tent. He pulled the tent poles out of the ground, rolled it all up, and threw the whole thing in his van. Don’t think he was here even five minutes.”
That didn’t even come close to proper collection procedure. Either Keko couldn’t see what Deputy Reed was doing, or she was too stoned to be a reliable witness. An investigation took a long time—documenting information about each piece, properly bagging each piece, photographing everything. Of course, I had taken thirty or forty pictures. Maybe they were planning to use mine?
Regardless of procedure, the thing that made the least sense was, why Deputy Reed? Sheriff Brighton had come right past here to deliver my uniforms. Why wouldn’t he stop and do the collection himself? He’d told me that Reed wasn’t an investigator. Why let him collect everything? What was going on around here? I don’t think they bothered to check the woods around the house where Yasmine’s body was found. Didn’t sound like the sheriff had ordered a tox panel. They didn’t come out to investigate her tent for four days. When they did, it was a grab-and-go. My captain in Madison would have the balls of any of his detectives who pulled something like this.
“Did you talk to the deputy at all?” I asked.
“The only thing I said,” Keko began, “was who was he and why was he takin’ Yasmine’s stuff.”
“And no one had been poking around that tent since I was here?”
Keko stared blankly. “Couldn’t say. Didn’t realize I was supposed to be babysitting it.”
I sighed. “You weren’t. Thanks for your help.”
“What’s going on?” Tripp asked when I returned to his camper.
“No clue.” I paced, getting more frustrated with things by the moment. “It’s like they aren’t at all concerned about what happened to this girl. Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Could it just be Whispering Pines versus Madison?”
Maybe. I assumed that an officer of the law would follow proper procedures, no matter where the officer worked or where the crime happened. Maybe I was just naïve.
“Hadn’t considered that,” I said.
“It’s not your job, you know.”
“That doesn’t mean I can just turn my back on this,” I said too loudly, too defensively. I closed my eyes and counted to five. “If you were in my shoes, could you?”
“No, probably not.”
“I’ve got to go to the station and pick up my belt and weapon. I’ll ask about Yasmine’s things. Maybe Keko got it wrong or there’s a simple explanation.”
Tripp grabbed my arm, stopping me before I got to my vehicle. “If something is off here, I think you should be careful.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “What do you mean?”
He locked eyes with mine. “I spent time in a lot of small towns since leaving California. They run according to their own rules and tend to be protective of their own. And, when they’re tucked into the middle of nowhere, like Whispering Pines is, they tend to get left to their own ways.”
“Pine time,” I confirmed, but with darker meaning.
Maybe Deputy Reed wasn’t capable of proper evidence collection, but it didn’t take a lot of skill to dispose of it. More and more, I felt like Reed was involved in Yasmine’s death, and now it looked like he might be trying to cover it up, too.
~~~
I parked behind the sheriff’s station and found Deputy Reed the only one inside.
“Aren’t you supposed to be patrolling the village?” he said, his voice laced with venom. “While I’m on desk duty.”
Patrol had been his responsibility, and I couldn’t tell if he was more sad or angry that it had been given to me.
“Came to pick up my belt and weapon,” I said. “And keys. Sheriff Brighton told me you’d get some made for me.”
He tossed the set at me. Correction, he threw the keys at my face. Luckily, I caught them before they made contact. Who knew all those years covering first base in high school softball would have a practical purpose.
I leaned across his desk. “Look, Sheriff Brighton told me you needed help around here over the summer. I happen to be available. Patrol wasn’t my choice, it was assigned. If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with our boss. I’m not looking to get in your way. You, actually, aren’t even on my radar.”
Not in a professional sense, at least. He was number two on my suspect list, behind Keko Shen and before Morgan Barlow.
Deputy Reed’s face slackened and turned into the pout of a kid who’d just been grounded from his favorite toy. “Whatever.” Reed pushed back from his desk and strode over to the sheriff’s office where he unlocked the door. “He left your weapon in his credenza, said I could give it to you.”
“Credenza? The sheriff stores weapons in a piece of furniture?”
“It’s lined with half-inch steel.”
That worked.
An empty nylon Sam Browne belt, presumably mine, sat on top of the desk. I secured it around my waist while Reed unlocked and opened the credenza door.
“Desk work isn’t all you’re going to be doing, right?” I asked in a peace-offering sort of way. “You�
��ll get out in the field sometimes, won’t you?”
He shrugged. “Depends on what the sheriff says.”
A little angry at Uncle Sheriff as well as me? Or maybe he was just angry at the world in general. Reed struck me as that kind of guy.
“Well, you got to go out and collect evidence this morning,” I said, the picture of innocence. “Didn’t you?”
Reed froze, the gun case in his hands, and slowly looked over his shoulder at me. “What do you mean?”
I think you should be careful. Tripp’s words sounded in my ears.
I flipped a casual hand westward. “This morning over at that campground near my house. I hired one of the guys staying there to help me with some work. I stopped by to let him know he could start today and noticed that Yasmine Long’s things were gone. One of the other campers mentioned that you’d been by to collect everything.”
Reed spun on me. “Who told you that?”
His anger ratcheted up another level, and I was suddenly concerned that if I mentioned Keko’s name she could be in danger of retaliation.
“It was no big deal.” I laughed, trying to diffuse the situation. “I was there a couple of days ago and got to know some of the campers. I noticed Yasmine’s tent then. I cleared out the garbage to keep the bears away. Remember?”
Reed’s stiff shoulders relaxed a little. “Yeah.”
“I noticed her stuff was gone today.”
I took hold of the small gun case in his hands and tugged gently so Reed would let it go. Inside was a Glock 19 and two empty magazines. I squeezed my hands into fists as they started to shake. Could I do this? Could I carry again? In my mind, I chanted not your fault . . . you’re a good cop . . . Fortunately, Reed had turned back to the credenza to retrieve of box of ammo. By the time he faced me again, I’d managed to get back in control. Externally, at least.
I gave a nod at the box. “Thanks. Is there a range around here? Somewhere I can practice?”
“There’s a setup in the woods about a quarter mile past the Meditation Circle. We don’t have any official targets, so I just draw my own on paper and stick it to the hay bales set up there.”
I filled both magazines with bullets, loaded one magazine into the Glock, and secured the other on my belt. I prayed I wouldn’t need the weapon. Other than to do damage to some hay bales, I had no intention of firing it.
The tool belt got heavier as I added a set of handcuffs and keys, a flashlight, baton, and a canister of pepper spray Reed removed from the credenza. “Taser?”
“Taser?” Deputy Reed laughed. “Lady, maybe you’ll need to handcuff a drunk, but that’s about as much as you’re likely to do.” He nodded at the Glock. “Don’t know why Sheriff Brighton got that for you. You aren’t gonna need it. Neither of us have ever even needed to take ours out of the holster. All you really need to carry is the cuffs.”
I was about to give him a lecture about being prepared, about how I never knew what I’d encounter on any given day so planned for anything. Then I thought, Pine time, and let it go. Besides, I was secretly giddy that I’d likely never need to draw the weapon.
“Why even bother with uniforms, then?” I joked.
Reed looked confused. “How will the tourists know who we are?”
Couldn’t argue with that.
As Reed locked the ammo back into the credenza, I glanced at the heavy-duty shelving in the cage lining the far wall of the office. The station’s evidence locker. The only thing on the shelves behind the gate was a clipboard with a log sheet attached.
“Seriously, though, what happened with Yasmine’s things? The locker’s empty.”
“Couldn’t tell you. Sheriff Brighton took it all with him.”
“Took it all?”
“You deaf?” he mocked, raising his voice. “That’s what I said. He took it all.”
There went my theory that Deputy Reed was trying to dispose of evidence.
“I’m not the enemy, Deputy,” I said. “I’m here to do a job, same as you.”
Reed put his hands on his hips, looked down at his shoes, and sighed. “He said something about bringing it to Dr. Bundy, the ME, for a thorough search.”
Not an apology for being a jackass, but I chose to take it as one.
“That makes sense,” I conceded. But the way he wouldn’t look at me didn’t make sense at all.
Reed returned to his desk and wiggled the mouse to wake up his computer.
“I’ll need login ability, too.” Hopefully, the request wouldn’t set off another tantrum. “To write up reports on the drunks and all that.”
Really, I had no reason to dislike Reed. Except for his juvenile behavior and that fib about not knowing Yasmine. The fib still stuck in my craw. Why would he lie about that?
Fortunately, whatever had been poking at Reed had subsided. He opened the proper screen and created a sign on for me. Excellent. Now I could find out if the deputy or the good sheriff were hiding anything else.
Chapter 21
It was a beautiful late-spring day in Whispering Pines. An excited buzz circulated among the locals that even a newcomer like me could sense. Tourists would start pouring in for the long Memorial Day weekend over the next day-and-a-half and the summer season would officially be underway.
The shops were all fully staffed as they made last-minute preparations—stocking shelves inside, weeding and watering flowerbeds outside. In the last two days, the plants in the commons’ pentacle gardens seemed to double in size, almost as if by magic, and were now bursting with color. The same way Morgan Barlow’s gardens had been all along.
“Looks like we’ve got a new sheriff in town.”
I turned to find a teenage girl reading a book beneath the shade of a tree a few yards from the lake—wavy light blonde-brown hair, very light brown skin, thin but not skinny. Bare feet poked out of ripped jeans, and the pale turquoise blue shade of her tank top matched her eyes exactly.
“I’m not a sheriff.” This girl mesmerized me. “I am a deputy. Part time, just for the summer. I’m—”
“Jayne O’Shea,” the girl completed. “I’ve heard about you. I’m Lily Grace.”
She gave no indication if that was two first names or if Grace was her last name. Her jewelry, a ring that resembled a miniature crystal ball and a pendant at her neck that looked like a gray cat’s eye staring out of her chest, caught my attention.
“Let me guess,” I said, “you’re a fortune teller.”
Lily Grace lifted a thin shoulder. “That’s what they tell me.” She held her hands up to me. “Want me to do a reading?”
“You don’t sound so sure of your abilities.”
She leaned toward me and in a conspiratorial tone said, “It’s all for fun, you must know that. Wagons and scarves and” —she shook her ring at me— “crystal balls. Please.”
I put a hand to my heart as if shocked by this news then leaned close to Lily Grace and whispered, “You mean to tell me you’re taking money from tourists and not giving them what they pay for?”
She paled and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “It’s not like we’re stealing from them. We give a reading, that’s what they pay us for. Some are even accurate.”
I leveled my cop glare on the girl and then burst out laughing. “Relax. It’s not like I’m going to arrest you. Some people take this stuff really seriously, hey?”
Lily Grace nodded, her hair and oversized silver hoop earrings bobbing along with her head. “My grandmother, the great Cybil—”
“Is that what she goes by? The Great Cybil?”
Lily Grace shook her head. “Just Cybil. I tack on the rest, but never to her face.”
“Understandable.”
“Anyway, some people come every year just to get an annual reading from her. A few come twice a year. A couple come every month.”
“She must be good.”
The girl shrugged again and leaned back as though bored now. “I guess.”
“And you give readin
gs, too?”
She sighed hard. “That’s what I’ve been trained to do.”
“Trained? I thought being able to tell a fortune was a gift people were born with.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a freak among the freaks around here.” She held her hands out again and gave me a questioning look. “So?”
“What the heck.” I sat next to her on the ground and ordered Meeka to sit, too. Her butt dropped immediately and she stared at the lake.
I placed my hands on Lily Grace’s and watched as the girl closed her eyes. A look of serenity softened her face. After a few minutes, she began to sway slightly, as though she’d gone into a trance. If this was an act, Lily Grace deserved an award for her performance.
A second later, her eyes snapped open, and she jerked her hands away from mine.
“What?” I asked and then laughed. “Did you see something disturbing in my future?”
Lily Grace looked confused. “I saw something.”
“Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?”
She stood, paced three steps away and then back, shaking her hands as though she had something stuck to them. Then she sat back down, pulled her legs into crisscross, and straightened them out again.
“You don’t understand.” She blew out a slow breath, still freaked out over whatever her vision had showed her. “I saw something. I never see anything. When I tell you I’m a freak among freaks, that’s what I mean. I’m a fortune teller who can’t tell a fortune.”
“Wouldn’t that make you normal then?”
“My grandmother has been telling me since I was three that I was destined to be a fortune teller, that it was in my blood. I’ve just been going along with it. I’ll be a senior in the fall. I’ve got one more summer and I’m out of here. I want to go to college. Become a vet. And now . . .” She glared at me as though I’d done something wrong. “And now, just when I have a plan, I see something.”
“I’m sorry?”
She swatted a hand at me. “Whatever.”
“Do you want to tell me what you saw? Or do you think maybe it was a fluke. Want to give it another try?” I held out my hands.
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