by Renee George
“It’s not observable until at least two hours after death.”
“When did she get here?”
“I didn’t get to the crime scene until nearly nine o’clock. By the time the coroner Mark Smart and I were able to remove Evelyn from the wall without damaging the evidence and get her back to the clinic, it was nearly ten-thirty.”
So, if livor mortis was present, it proved she was on her backside for more than a few minutes before she was moved, so she had to have been killed closer to six-thirty than eight-thirty. “Was there any bruising on her heels?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t appear as if she were dragged. She would have been lifted to the spot behind the curtains.”
Therianthropes had more strength than the average person, but we weren’t superhuman strong, not in our hominid forms. It would have taken someone extremely strong and coordinated to have pinned Evelyn against the wall without help and without leaving any obvious trace behind. “Was blood found anywhere else? I smelled it when I got close to the victim, but not before.”
“Not that I know of, but Sheriff Taylor could better answer that question.”
“Any petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes?”
“Yes, but no marks on her neck to indicate strangulation and her hyoid bone was intact.”
Her throat would’ve been crushed if a shifter had strangled her. But petechial hemorrhaging meant she was denied oxygen for long enough that the capillary veins in her eyes burst. “So, was she smothered?”
“I can’t rule it out yet.”
“Damn, so no concrete COD, huh?”
“Not yet.” He leaned back in his chair. “I sent a tox screen to a lab in Kansas City, but the results won’t be in for several days.” He looked at me. “I might have one theory, though. Do you want to see the body?”
I tried not to sound too eager when I answered. “Hell, yes.”
*****
Evelyn’s body was in the surgery room on a metal table. A white sheet covered her from her chest to her knees. I put on gloves I grabbed from a dispenser. Gently, I turned over her hands. I wasn’t squeamish, but touching dead flesh was not a Saturday night at the disco. There were scabby scrapes on her palms.
“I witnessed Evelyn fall yesterday on the sidewalk. The scrapes could have happened then. They seem to be healing.”
“Can I see the livor mortis?” Maybe the distribution of mottling might tell me something.
“Sure.” He moved to the opposite side of the table and rolled the corpse onto its side.
Purples patterns painted Evelyn’s buttocks and back. She had a puncture wound where her flesh had been pushed out by the sword below the left ribs.
“Okay, Doc. You have a lot field experience. I’ve seen your records.” He’d been a military medic before becoming a doctor, and he’d worked in forensics for a while before relocating to Peculiar. “Give me your best guess.”
“See how bright pink her skin is, even a day after death?”
“Yes.”
He walked over to the refrigerator and took out a small vile of blood. “Her skin color and blood vibrancy makes me think it might be cyanide or carbon monoxide poisoning, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”
“How would someone even get access to cyanide?”
Billy Bob shrugged. “It wouldn’t be easy. It’s used in gold mining processes, but there’s nothing like that around Peculiar or even in Missouri as far as I know.”
“I guess it’s a wait and see thing then.” At least I could mostly rule Jo Jo out. Where in the world would that kid get cyanide?
“I’m afraid so.”
“It wouldn’t take much cyanide to kill her in a couple hours. A large dose would have done it in minutes. But how would they have dosed her without her suspecting? You don’t take drinks from people you don’t know.”
“Unless you’re at a public establishment, like a restaurant.”
“She was at Sunny’s Outlook for lunch. You think your soon to be sister-in-law is a poisoner?”
“I hope your teasing.”
“I am,” I admitted. Sunny wasn’t on my suspect list at all. “Whoever offed her was pissed enough or calculated enough to pin her to the wall with the sword after. Probably hoping to throw us off the scent of the actual cause of death.”
Billy Bob shrugged. “I can’t commit to COD yet, but that’s as good as any hypothesis.”
“Hello,” I heard Chavvah holler from out in the hall. “Doc, you back there?”
I watched the way the Billy Bob’s posture perked up at the sound of his mate’s voice.
“In here,” he said.
“Congrats on the upcoming wedding,” I offered. “Did you get the wedding venue?”
“Yes, we did,” said Chav as she breezed into the room. She flung her arms around Billy Bob’s neck, and they shared an intimate kiss. Then she noticed the body. Her face paled. “Are you both about done in here?”
“Yep,” Billy Bob said. “Unless Willy has any more questions.”
Chav looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s after five o’clock, Willy. Don’t you have a date tonight?”
“Shit, yes.” I turned to exit. “Thanks for your help, Billy Bob. Let me know if the tests come back conclusive.”
“You got it,” I heard him say as I bolted from the clinic.
Chapter Ten
“Oh my God, I smell like ass, and my hair looks like I stuck a wet finger in a light socket.” I hadn’t brought down any good date clothes, so Dakota had lent me a bright blue strappy summer dress. The hem hit me just above the knee. Michele and I wore the same size shoe, so the girl had given me a pair of cute sandals with red, blue, pink, and yellow flowers across the strap over the toes.
“You don’t smell like a butt,” Ruth assured me. “And your hair is charming.” Though the way she was fussing over it with hairspray and pressing it down told me she thought it anything but charming. “Besides, Brady doesn’t care about your hair.”
“Doesn’t he?” I asked panicked, my voice raising an octave in the process. “Doesn’t he? I don’t have a lot going for me, woman. My hair, when right, is an asset, but when wrong, is a frizzy liability. I mean, I’m short, I have a gazillion freckles on my face. Brady is going to race away from the curb if I go out there looking like Medusa’s ugly sister.”
“You don’t look like anyone’s ugly sister.”
“Great! I’m an ugly-only-child then.” I slumped down in the chair in front of Dakota’s vanity. “I am losing my mind. I’ve had dates before. Lots of them. I am usually confident. What is happening to me?”
Ruth, still trying to tame my curls, giggled. “It’s different when you care.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I blotted at my mascara where I’d blinked it onto my cheek.
“Who was the last man you went on a date with?”
Since Halloween, I hadn’t accepted a single date offer. “Jesse Jessop, a fox from Platte City. He had some council business. One thing led to another.”
“Really?”
“Not that,” I said quickly. “I just mean, he flirted, I flirted, he asked me out, I said yes. It was a simple dinner and movie then home. There wasn’t much spark there.” Which pretty much summed up every guy I’d met since the first time I saw Brady. Gah!
“Were you worried how the date would turn out?”
“No.”
“Did you care if your hair was a little frizzy or your freckles too prominent?”
“No.”
“Did you worry whether he would even like you?”
“Of course not.”
“Why?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Fine. I see your point. What am I supposed to do? I can’t care less.”
“Of course not. You’re just going to have to live through it like the rest of us mortals who have gone before you. You’ll survive your date with Brady, and if he doesn’t like you because your hair’s a little wild, then he isn’t the right ma
n for you anyway.”
“Tell me about you and Ed. When did you start dating?”
Ruth put down the spray and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Ed was a year ahead of me. We both grew up in Peculiar. My folks live over on the north side of town, and Ed’s parents have a place out in the country. We were both deer therians, but as you know, that doesn’t always mean two people are going to match up, just because their animals are the same. Brady and Ed were friends. The best of, actually. And stupid me, I kind of had a crush on Brady. I mean, even at fourteen years of age, he had a fire in him the drew everyone to his warmth. I went to the junior high spring fling with every intent on asking Brady to dance with me, but when I walked in, Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze blared from the speakers, and Ed came right up to me and said, “Ruth Smalley, would you like to dance with me? I could see his boldness cost him. There was a strain behind his smoky brown eyes as he waited for my answer.” Ruth paused, caught up in the memory.
“And?” I prompted.
“I said yes, of course. He was so light on his feet, and I hadn’t realized how muscled he was until I had my hands on his arms. Halfway through the song, I thought, damn, I really like this boy. Then my palms began to sweat, and my heart raced. Did my hair look okay? Was my deodorant holding up? Was my dress pretty enough? Was I pretty enough?”
I’d leaned forward with anticipation. “Then what?”
“Ed leaned down to my ear and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m dancing with the most beautiful girl in town.’”
My eyes widened, my own heart racing for the young girl at the birth of romance. “What did you say?”
“Nothing!” Ruth laughed. “He’d made me shy. He’d made me care. So, I let my body language do the talking. I stepped in closer to him, our bodies touching for the first time since the dance started. Mr. Piers, my seventh grade English teacher, came up and stuck a hand between us and told us not to make him break out a ruler.”
“To beat you?”
“Yes, to beat us,” Ruth agreed sarcastically. “Crickets on toast, where the heck were you raised? The ruler was to measure the distance between us. There was a three-inch rule in place for school dances. Dirty Dancing, even a decade later, had all the adults nervous.”
“Well, Swayze was a sexy beast.”
“No lie.” Ruth picked at a loose thread on her dark green blouse. “Anyways, I never had eyes for anyone but Ed after that, and it was the same for him. We got married shortly after Ed’s high school graduation.” She laughed. “I started my senior year a married woman. My parents had a fit, as you can imagine.”
I dabbed on some cream blush. “Wow, I’ve never been with a guy longer than three months, I can’t imagine being with someone for more than two decades.”
Ruth got up and stood behind me. She placed her hands on my shoulders and met my gaze through the mirror. “I think you can. I think you’re imagining it already. And that’s what scares you the most.”
“Maybe Sunny’s not the only psychic in town.”
Ruth’s mouth formed a small “o.” “She told you?”
I patted her hand. “Yes. And don’t worry, I’m not mad at you. It wasn’t your secret to share.”
“Mr. Corman’s here!” Emma Ray, one of Ruth’s younger daughters, shouted. “He just pulled up!”
My pulse quickened. I grabbed Ruth’s hand. “He hasn’t been with anyone except Rose Ann. How am I supposed to compete with that?”
“Rose Ann is dead, honey. There is no competition.”
“I’m awful to men. I’ve been told I’m a maneater. I don’t want to hurt Brady. God, what if I hurt him? You go downstairs and tell him I’m sick or something.”
“First, you’re not one of my children, and even if you were, I wouldn’t make an excuse for you. Second, the fact that you’re worried you’re going to hurt Brady, probably means you won’t. So, get your cute little heinie up and go see a man about a dinner.”
“You are one tough chick, Ruth.”
She urged me up from the chair. “It takes one to know one.”
In the kitchen, Brady and Ed leaned against the counter, drinking coffee and discussing the weather. In Ruth’s story, they’d been best friends. Now, they seemed amiable enough, but I felt a distance between them.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off Brady. Christ, that man knew how to fill out a pair of jeans. The cut showed off his popping bootie and his muscular thighs. He wore a blue button down western shirt that stretched across his wide chest, and the short sleeves gave me a free ticket to the gun show. I could do chin-ups on those steel biceps. His look was finished off with a pair of mahogany cowboy boots.
When he saw me, his amber eyes lit with pleasure. His Adam’s apple worked up and down as he closed the distance to me. “You look real pretty,” he said.
My I.Q. dropped a hundred points. “You clean up good, too.” Doh.
“You both look handsome,” Ruth said. “If it’s not too late, you should come back for some pie and coffee after dinner, Brady. We’d love to have you.”
Brady glanced at Ed. He nodded. “You should,” Ed said. “If it’s not too late.” He gave Brady a wink, and I swear my hunky coyote shifter blushed.
“Sure,” he said. He glanced down at me. “You ready to go?”
There was a knock at the front door. Emma Ray ran to the window. “Michele! It’s Roger!”
“Be right there,” Michele shouted. I guess I wasn’t the only one in the house with a date. I didn’t know much about the kid, but the way Brady scowled when he heard Roger’s name, I was instantly ready to not like the boy.
Roger came inside and stood by the door as we passed him. He wore a ball cap that shadowed his face, but I could see his dark hair sprouting out around the rim. He was built well and had an aura of danger—a real rebel without a clue vibe. Outside, Brady walked me down to his truck parked at the curb. Right behind his truck was a black car with tinted windows. I recognized it immediately.
“That’s the car that tried to run down Evelyn.”
“You sure?”
I walked around the front to get a closer look at the license plate. ERG was the first three letters. Definitely the vehicle. “Yes, I’m sure. We should call the sheriff.”
Michele and Roger, hand-in-hand, walked out of the house. She was giggling about something until Roger shouted, “Hey, what are you doing to my car?”
I stared at the teenager. “This is yours?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“You need to come down to the police station and answer a few questions.”
“About what?”
“About why you tried to run Evelyn Meyers down yesterday in front of Dolly’s Beauty shop.”
“You’re crazy, lady.”
Michele freed her hand from Roger’s. “What’s Willy talking about Roger? You said you were working yesterday.”
“I was.”
“Working on murder,” I muttered.
“I didn’t have nothing do with that old bitch’s death,” Roger said. He had his keys out and was moving toward the car. “And I ain’t talking to the cops about nothing.”
Brady snarled, but before he could act, I’d already placed myself between Roger and the vehicle. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
“Or we can do nothing at all.” He reached out to shove me aside. I used his own forward movement as a counterbalance and slammed him face first into the lawn.
Michele let out a jerking sob as I twisted his hand and forearm behind his back and shoved my knee into his spine. “Hard way it is.” I looked up at Brady who had an unreadable expression on his face. I grimaced. “Sorry about ruining our date. Can you call nine-one-one?”
Chapter Eleven
Deputy Farraday arrived at Ruth’s to take Roger into custody. At this point, he was only a person of interest, but it didn’t mean he killed Evelyn Meyers. Which is what I told a hysterical Michele who’d insisted on riding down the police station with Brady and me.
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The unhappy girl shot daggers at me the whole way there. “I saw what I saw, Michele. I’m not going to lie about it.”
“But you didn’t have to humiliate him,” she said.
My mood soured even more. “He didn’t have to try and shove me.”
“That’s your excuse?” she snapped. “He started it? And my mom says I’m immature.”
I was so not having this lose-lose conversation. Brady had been strangely quiet. “Are you mad at me too?”
My question startled him from his reverie. “No. I’m disappointed about dinner, but I’m not mad. Roger Parks is a punk.”
“He is not,” Michele protested from the back seat.
I rolled my eyes. I was more inclined to agree with Brady. If Roger had nothing to hide, then he should’ve come with us to talk to the police. He didn’t have to try to get all macho with me.
“You’re awfully quiet,” I said to Brady.
His brow was furrowed, creating lines in his forehead. “Just thinking.”
“I wish you’d tell me what you’re thinking about.” Like, was he thinking, man, this Willy chick is a psycho? What have I gotten myself into and how soon can I find the exit?
I might have been pondering all of the above if Brady had taken someone down right before our date. I was so blowing this between Brady and me, and not in a fun way.
“I can’t right now.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Michele. “You understand, right?”
“Sure.” I tugged my lower lip between my teeth then let it go.
Brady quietly groaned in a way that made my thighs quiver.
I touched his knee. “You’ll let me make tonight up to you? Maybe dinner tomorrow night?”
He adjusted his position in the seat. “Tonight’s not over yet.”
Hubba hubba. Rawr.
Sheriff Taylor was in his office, working late hours, I assumed. There was no such thing as time off during a murder investigation. I needed to let him know about my orders from Stenson. Sid deserved to know that I would be conducting my own inquiries. I had worked with the sheriff’s department last June on the serial killer case, but this death was more personal for Sheriff Taylor, and there was little doubt the culprit was a local as well. I feared he would take my news as interference, or worse, he might see me as a usurper.