Pall in the Family

by Dawn Eastman

  “It’s good to be home for a while,” I said. “Mac called and wanted me to come right over.”

  “Oh, I know. He’s been pacing around like a caged animal ever since they got back from Sara’s place. What a horrible shame.” She shook her head.

  I cleared my throat and she glanced at me again.

  “I’ll tell Mac you’re here.”

  When she hung up the phone, she told me to go back to the visitor’s office. The small Crystal Haven Police Department didn’t have the expertise or manpower to run a homicide investigation. Whenever something big came up, they sent a detective from the sherriff’s office, which is about twenty-five minutes away. Fortunately, that hadn’t been necessary for many years. Several doors sat closed on the left side of the hallway. The right side opened up into a large workroom where four officers had desks. I glanced in but it was empty. Lisa had said Mac was in the last office on the left.

  The door was slightly ajar. I peeked around the corner to get a glimpse of Mac before he spotted me. I saw a gray metal desk with matching file cabinet, and a dead ficus tree, which must have belonged to the office’s previous owner. It had been years since I’d seen Mac. He was four years older than me, so we were never in school together. He’d had Tom Andrews’s current job for most of the time I was in high school. We both left town eight years ago, and I hadn’t seen him since. He looked almost the same: short blond hair, with maybe a few more wrinkles around the eyes. He’d always been muscular, but now he’d become solid, mature, and more imposing. I wondered if he had forgiven me yet.

  “Clyde, don’t lurk. Come and sit.” He hadn’t looked up, and I jumped at the sound of his voice.

  “Hi, Mac.” I sat in the chair in front of his desk and rubbed my palms on my jeans. I felt like I was visiting the principal.

  “Clyde. How have you been?” He tapped a stack of papers into alignment on his desk.

  “Um, good. Thanks. You?” I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands, so I held them tightly in my lap.

  “Just great.” He sat back and smiled, but it wasn’t his nice smile. His gray-blue eyes were just as intense as I remembered. “Until someone gets murdered and one of my witnesses, who happens to be a trained police officer, strolls off the premises with trace evidence, leaving nothing more than a slip of paper with some dog names on it.”

  “I didn’t touch that scene.” Five seconds in the same room and we were already fighting. “And I’m not a witness to anything. We got there after she was dead.”

  “The dog, Clyde,” he said, rubbing between his eyes.

  “You think the dog is a witness?” I thought maybe Vi had been working on him without telling me. His steely gaze told me I was wrong.

  “The dog was all over the house,” he said slowly, as if instructing a new recruit. “Who knows what trace evidence it may have been carrying before you allowed it to become contaminated?”

  “Oh.” I glanced down to see what my hands were doing. “I don’t think he would have been very helpful. We found him shivering under the table. He’s not very brave. I doubt he went near the body or the murderer.”

  “Just have a feeling about that, do you? Or did it come to you in a dream?” Mac leaned forward.

  He might as well have hit me. I sat back and took a deep breath. So. He hadn’t forgiven, or forgotten.

  “I don’t have to take this, Mac. I came here to help.” I started to stand but then thought better of it. “You know as well as I do that anything you pull off a dog is going to be contaminated anyway.”

  Mac pressed his lips into a thin line.

  “I would have thought you’d have gotten over it by now,” I said, and held his gaze.

  He stared hard at me and then seemed to pull himself together. He took a deep breath, and I could see the tension release from his face.

  “You’re right, Clyde. Let’s start over.”

  “Fine.” I crossed my arms and held his gaze until he looked away.

  “I need an official statement from you about this morning.” He shuffled through the files on his desk. “Everything you did leading up to and including finding the body.”

  “Officer Andrews already has a statement.”

  “I need another one. I thought you wanted to help.” He glanced up from his papers. “I also need to interview the boy. Is he old enough to give me anything useful?”

  “He’s thirteen.”

  “Grace’s kid is thirteen?” He sat back, eyebrows up.

  “She got pregnant right after she got married.” I became very interested in a hangnail.

  “Still, I didn’t expect him to be that old. . . .” Mac rubbed between his eyes again.

  “Mac, I’m really sorry about everything. . . .” I reached out and touched the edge of his desk.

  “Ancient history, Clyde.” He sliced across the air with his hand as if that settled it. “I need your help on this case. Let’s not complicate things by dredging up the past. It’s done.”

  “Okay.” I pulled my hands back to the safety of my lap.

  I told him everything Seth and I had done that morning, only leaving out the embarrassing part about wrestling Baxter into the car twice. I also decided not to mention Tuffy’s testimony involving bacon. Mac liked the facts and wanted nothing to do with any intuition, or messages from other places. I left out the part about the tarot as well; he already seemed tense enough.

  “So, you’re working as a dog walker?” It was the first time he had really smiled since I walked in. In this context, it was irritating.

  I just looked at him, trying for the flat eyes Seth used so effectively.

  “I heard about what happened in Ann Arbor,” he said, rearranging the files on his desk. “You’re a great officer. You can’t let one . . .”

  “Thanks for the concern, Mac.” I gave him a look that said he had gone far enough. “By the way, why are you back here?”

  “Maybe we can have coffee sometime and I’ll tell you all about it.” He grinned, but it looked more like a grimace, and as he stood up I noticed the cane leaning behind the desk. He caught me staring at it, and the set of his jaw dared me to question him.

  “Let me know if you need anything else” was all I said.

  “I’ll need to interview the boy.”

  “His name is Seth, and he’s really been shaken by this. Try to be nice.”

  A brief wounded look crossed his face, followed by his stoic stare.

  “I’ll have Andrews deal with him. He’s always nice.” Mac showed me his teeth, and he reminded me of a shark.

  I was about to respond when Tom himself came careening around the corner of the door from the front office.

  “Sir! We found him!” He stopped abruptly when he saw me, and his face turned bright red. “Oh, hi. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “What is it, Andrews?” Mac growled.

  “It’s about the case, sir.” He cut his eyes to me and back to Mac, raising his eyebrows.

  “You can tell me in front of Ms. Fortune. She’s still technically a police officer, even if she chooses to walk dogs instead.”

  “Okay.” He smiled at me. “Well, we tracked the ex-husband to Chicago; he flew out of Grand Rapids this morning. We just got confirmation that he was on the flight and it landed safely.”

  “Do you know where he is now?” Mac asked.

  “Well, no.” Tom slumped. “He’s there on business, and his office said since he made his own arrangements they don’t know where he’s staying.” He hung his head as if he was expecting to be yelled at. “We have a list of the places he usually stays, and Lisa is calling them now to see if we can track him down,” he said to his shoes.

  “Okay, good work. We’ll need to question him as soon as we find him.”

  Tom’s head snapped up and he stood straighter, looking relieved.

 
; “Have you located the daughters yet?” I asked.

  “Charla went out to talk to them. She hasn’t checked in yet,” Tom said.

  Charla Roberts was the acting Chief of Police for the Crystal Haven police force. She’d refused to officially accept the position since she stepped in when her husband, Dean, had died. She’d helped me figure out my own career path in late high school after a few minor run-ins with her in her official capacity. I adored her, but she wasn’t very warm and fuzzy. I hoped she would handle Sara’s daughters gently. For all the communicating with the dead that occurred here, Crystal Haven had minimal experience with murder.

  5

  I stepped onto the sidewalk outside the police station and into the familiar heat of July in Michigan and felt my shoulders relax. I had known coming back to Crystal Haven would be stressful, but I hadn’t counted on Mac. The last time I’d heard anything he’d been working in Saginaw, on the opposite side of the state. Aunt Vi had informed me—after my bags were unpacked—that Mac had returned to the county sheriff’s department as a detective. Because his mother still lives in Crystal Haven, I’d assumed we would run into each other eventually, but not like this. We had done an excellent job of avoiding each other when we lived a couple of hours apart in Saginaw and Ann Arbor. It would be much more difficult in a small town.

  My stomach reminded me that Baxter had stolen my lunch. I turned left out of the station and headed to Stark’s Bar and Grill. Alex Ferguson worked there and, provided he wasn’t on one of his “improve the menu” tirades, I could get a good burger. Alex and I had been friends since the first day of high school. As I walked, I concentrated on the list of clients I needed to see that afternoon. I didn’t want to think about Mac. Or about Sara. Or about my family. What I wanted was to whine to Alex about everything that had happened and have him pat me on the back and say “poor Clyde.” Of course, there was zero chance of that happening.

  I weaved my way through families pushing strollers, teens eating ice cream, and shoppers loaded down with bags of clothes and new-age trinkets. It was after one o’clock; the crowd was starting to clear outside the restaurant and the usual line out the door had disappeared. I stepped inside and squinted into the dim interior. The dark wood paneling, low lights, and dark green flooring made the restaurant feel cave-like. Alex claimed the owner, Joe Stark, kept it dark so no one would notice he hadn’t updated the décor since the place had opened in the 1970s. A disturbing amount of olive-colored leather seating and mustard accents dominated the dining area. The place had been suffering a slow slide into oblivion with only a few loyal regulars keeping it afloat until Alex was hired on as the chef two years ago. It now had become a “must-visit” for the tourists.

  I sat at my favorite table in the corner, facing the door. The server came to take my drink order. She was very thin and wore an oversize T-shirt and jeans. I asked her to put in my request for a burger and to let Alex know I was there if he had any time to spare.

  She returned about five minutes later with a Diet Coke and something on a plate that did not resemble any sort of food I had ever seen. I sighed, and said, “New menu item?”

  “No, Mr. Ferguson said he’s trying it out. He wants to see what you think.” She lowered her voice to protect the other customers. “It’s a tofu-eggplant stack.”

  My mouth went dry. I hate eggplant.

  “Is he making a burger?”

  “Um, I don’t think so.” She shrugged.

  I poked at the layers of stiff white tofu and gooey eggplant. They were battered and fried. Even for Alex, I didn’t think I could do it. I tried a small bite of tofu and didn’t die.

  I gestured to the waitress.

  “Could you go put in an order for that burger and pretend it’s for another table?”

  Her eyes lit up as she saw the deviousness of my plan. They grew dim as she glanced at the mess on my plate.

  “That should work. But he said he’d be out in a few minutes to get your opinion.” Her furrowed brow said she had no faith in my ability to pull this off.

  “It’s okay. I can handle him.” I smiled in my most winning way and even cut a slice of the stack to show her I was a good sport.

  I quickly cut the food into smaller pieces and pushed them all around my plate. I put a few in a napkin and stuffed them into my bag just as Alex came out from behind the swinging door that led to the kitchen. He was slightly taller than me, with broad shoulders from kayaking on Lake Michigan. A few dark curls had escaped the gel he used and fell onto his forehead. He had the bluest eyes I had ever seen. He wiped his hands on his apron and scanned the room.

  I gave a small wave. I pointed to my mouth and pretended to be chewing.

  “Hi, what do you think?” he said as he pulled up a chair and assessed the plate in front of me.

  I faked a swallow and took a sip of soda. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever had before.”

  “I know. I really wanted to stretch the limits.”

  “You’ve done that. But do you think you might have stretched a little too far?”

  “I know, I know. Stark thinks it’s ‘cuisine’ if we wrap the steaks in bacon, or add bacon to a salad. Once I told him we could wrap water chestnuts in bacon, but that was too ‘fancy.’” He waved his fingers to demonstrate “fancy.” “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” He pushed his hair back with both hands and then pulled it all forward again. No wonder the gel wasn’t working.

  “The place is doing great, Alex. That’s all because of you. Stark will come around.”

  “Speaking of bacon, this morning he didn’t even show up for the prep work.” He took my fork and ate a piece of the eggplant without choking. “I had to do it all when I came in at ten, plus all my regular stuff, and the line starts forming at eleven thirty. I guess I’m lucky that all they want is burgers and sandwiches.”

  I stared for a moment in fascination as he ate some more of my food.

  “Listen, have you heard about Sara Landess?”

  “Did she and Tish have another shouting match? Or was it her and Gary?” He slurped some of my Diet Coke.

  “She’s dead, Alex.”

  He choked on the soda and spit most of it back into the glass. He took the drink napkin to mop his face and slid the glass toward me.

  “What? What happened? A car accident?”

  “No, she was murdered.” I wrinkled my nose and pushed the drink away. “Seth and I found her body when we went to take care of Tuffy this morning.”

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Is he okay? He’s just a kid. Did he see much of it?”

  “He saw enough.” I nodded. “Tuffy’s at my house now giving testimony to Aunt Vi,” I said. Alex snorted and continued to mop up the soda.

  “We have Baxter staying with us because Tish decided to go out of town this morning. Why did you think Tish and Sara had been fighting?”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s anything.” He waved away the question. “Tish and Sara haven’t gotten along since Tish tried to blackball her certificate last year.”

  All psychics working in Crystal Haven have to be licensed by the city council to practice within the city limits. I knew it could ruin their chances of starting a business if it didn’t go through.

  “I didn’t know about that.”

  “It all blew over, and Sara got her certificate. Sara was really good. Tish was jealous.” He shrugged. “She was just causing trouble.”

  “I wonder if Mac knows,” I said, pushing the food around on the plate, hoping Alex hadn’t noticed I wasn’t actually eating it.

  “What does Mac have to do with this?” He sat back, watching me carefully. Alex had been my biggest support when Mac had ended our relationship by moving to the other side of the state. He knew, better than anyone, how hard it would be for me to see Mac again.

  “He’s the detective in charge.” I t
ook a very small piece of tofu and ate it. This was torture on a mostly empty stomach, and Alex had ruined my drink. “He’s with the sheriff’s office as their homicide detective.”

  “Oh, right. I heard about that. Well, it’s a good thing you’re not on the Crystal Haven force, or you’d have to deal with him.”

  “Trouble is, because I’m a witness, I do have to deal with him.”

  The waitress approached with a Styrofoam container. I tried to gesture with my eyebrows to abort the mission, but she just kept coming. Alex noticed what she didn’t and turned around.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “Just a take-out burger. For Seth,” I said.

  His expression told me he wasn’t buying it.

  “I guess you better hurry before it gets cold.” He stood and walked to the kitchen without saying good-bye.

  “You know I hate eggplant.” My voice sounded whiny even to me.

  * * *

  Leaving Stark’s place in the middle of the day was disorienting. The bright sun blinded me as I stepped out of the dark restaurant. I turned in the direction of my Jeep just as Officer Andrews rushed toward me out of a crowd of afternoon tourists and almost knocked the precious Styrofoam cargo out of my hand. We fumbled for a moment before I managed to get both hands on it and save my lunch from going splat on the sidewalk.

  “Clyde, I’m sorry, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I saw your car parked up the street and I’ve been in every store.” He stopped to take a breath.

  “What’s wrong, Tom?”

  He held up one finger while gulping air. I noticed we were attracting an audience.

  “Everything’s fine. I just really wanted to catch you before you went home.” He glanced up the street toward the police station. “We can’t talk here. Will you meet me at my mom’s house in five minutes?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s this about?”

  “Not here. Five minutes, please?” At my nod he darted off up the street.

  I didn’t remember him being so skittish. Of course, the last time I’d seen him he was shooting cap guns and I was counting the minutes until I could take my money and run.