I found it odd that Butch didn’t check in with his wife in the kitchen, but it was just the latest in a series of odd things, and I was finding it difficult to keep being shocked.
We had a carafe of coffee, plus ice water and grapefruit juice at the table, so all was well in my world.
Jessica broke the morning’s news to Christopher. “Your cousin Butch decided to earn his Boy Scout badge for sleeping in the freezing rain without a tent.”
Christopher frowned. “They give badges for that? It seems a bit irresponsible.”
Butch guffawed, then told Christopher about his cold night sleeping in the woods. He was showing off the big bump on the back of his head when Benji Biggs came running into the dining room, gasping for breath.
Jessica and I exchanged a glance. The rooster was back.
Benji didn’t crow, though.
Still panting, he exclaimed, “He’s dead!” He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Franco is dead.”
Chapter 26
There are three things you need to know about the Darwin Awards. First, they are only awarded posthumously. Second, nobody wants to get one. Third, originality and style count, so simple stupidity isn’t enough to make one a winner.
Personally, I never liked the idea of mocking those whose terrible ideas got them killed and thus removed from the human gene pool. No matter how rash, they were still people. However, if a new Darwin Awards list happens to come across my inbox, I’ll give it a scan.
Unusual deaths make us curious, thanks to self-preservation. We make thousands of choices every day, and we hope they’re the right choices. Only through our shared stories—even the silly ones we send around by email—do we learn about other people’s choices and consequences.
I may enjoy a superior smirk at the idea of some fool using a lighter to check for a gas leak, but I will read the whole list in earnest, filing away facts, just in case. You never know when you might need to steal the metal cables from an elevator, and it’s a good tip to not attempt this while inside the elevator box that’s held up by those same cables.
When Benji showed us pictures he’d taken of Franco Jerico’s body on the ledge, wearing that silly tuxedo-print T-shirt, I feared Franco had done something worthy of a nomination for the Darwin Awards. He certainly was dressed for it.
I stood back from the group while Butch, Christopher, and Jessica comforted Benji and pressed him for more details.
His story came out in spurts. He’d been on his walk, enjoying nature, when he heard some crows making a racket. He peered over the edge of a steep crag and spotted Franco on a ledge, on his back, facing up.
He thought Franco was joking around, but then he saw what the crows had been squawking over. In tears, Benji described how he’d thrown rocks at the birds to drive them away. He ran straight back to the lodge to get help bringing Franco inside.
“But you can’t move the body,” I said.
Everyone turned and stared at me as though I was a monster. They all assumed it was an accident. Apparently, I was the only paranoid person thinking the mountain ledge could be a crime scene.
“He’ll get picked to the bones,” Butch said. “We can’t leave a man out there.”
The others murmured in agreement.
Christopher had Benji’s phone, and was examining the photographs. “He must have fallen, maybe hit his head. Is that dark spot around his head blood, or just a shadow?” He tried to show Jessica for a second opinion, but she covered her mouth and stepped back.
“Might have been a cougar,” Butch said. “They sneak up behind you and then it’s one quick bite to the spine.” He gave Benji’s shoulder a soft pat. “It would have been quick and painless.”
Benji took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Franco loved animals. He always talked about owning exotic pets, like snakes or tigers. I can see him now, trying to make friends with a cougar.” He choked back a sob. “You idiot. Franco, why’d you have to get yourself killed? You had so much to live for.”
Jessica sat next to Benji and put her arm around him.
Christopher came over to me. “We need to call the police, and someone has to break the news to Dion and Marie.”
“You call it in, and I’ll talk to those two.”
He nodded appreciatively. “You always were better than me at breaking bad news.”
“You’re the good news guy.”
“We made a great team.” He glanced at the door to the kitchen. “Good luck in there.”
I thanked him and slipped quietly into the kitchen.
Dion was smiling as he laid slabs of streaky bacon on the grill. He said to Marie, “Rule number one? I know that already. Never fry bacon naked.”
Marie laughed. “Rule number one of being a chef is you have to get all your ingredients set out before you start cooking. It’s called mise en place. That’s French for everything in its place.”
“More like French for boring. You’ve gotta loosen up, girl. Chillax. That’s chill plus relax.”
Marie stopped stirring her pancake batter when she saw me standing there. We hadn’t spoken since we’d tried to talk to her through the door of the honeymoon suite, and she didn’t look pleased to see my face.
“Everything’s under control in here,” she said tersely. “If you’re starving, go ahead and take that fruit platter out.”
Dion looked up from the grill and asked, “Have you ever had pancakes with bacon cooked right into them? You’ll die when you taste these.”
He took the bowl from Marie and poured strips of oblong pancakes over the crisp bacon, then wiped the edge of the bowl with his finger and licked it.
“Interesting,” he said to Marie. “These are gluten-free?”
“Mostly rice flour,” she said. “It’s my own recipe.”
My throat tightened. I had to tell her that the friend she’d made pancakes for was dead. There was no way to make it easy, but I could make it fast.
“Dion, Marie, I’m sorry, but I have some terrible news.”
Dion pointed his spatula at me. “My sister has returned!”
“Not that I know of. This news concerns Franco.”
Marie reached for an enormous knife and used it to skewer a whole cantaloupe. “Tell Franco he’s not welcome for breakfast until he apologizes and pays for the broken patio door.”
“He should definitely pay for that,” Dion agreed.
“Flip those pancakes,” Marie said. “The batter bubbles are popped.”
Neither of them seemed terribly concerned about their friend, but I pressed forward and broke the news as gently as I could.
While I talked, Marie stared at me in disbelief. She kept asking me to repeat myself. Dion repeatedly asked where the body was.
I answered their questions, giving the same limited amount of information over and over.
Once it seemed the news had sunk in, I said, “Christopher is talking to the police. They’ll inform Della.” I looked at her brother, who stood as still as a statue while the pancakes smoked on the grill. “Dion, someone should be with her when she gets the news. Could you call a family member who’s in town?”
He reached for his phone, then put it away. “I need a minute,” he said. “Poor Della.”
“Poor Della?” Marie clutched the sides of the stone-topped prep table, her knuckles turning white. “Poor Della?”
Dion gave her a confused look. “We’ll get through this, Marie. Everything’s going to be okay.”
She gripped the table as though she was trying to pick it up. In an eery, otherworldly tone, Marie said, “She killed him. Della murdered Franco and then left the rest of us to pick up the pieces.”
“My little sister did no such thing!” Dion exclaimed. “She’s innocent. She’s just a girl. A sweet, innocent girl.”
“You’re blind,” Marie said through clenched teeth. “She killed him, and we’re going to find the evidence to put her away. Stormy Day, I’m officially hiring you as my detective. You’re go
ing to prove that sweet, innocent Della is responsible for this.”
“Easy now,” I said. “We’re all upset, but accusing people isn’t going to help.”
“Stormy’s right,” Dion said. “Knowing Franco, he probably did this to himself.”
“He wasn’t suicidal,” Marie said. “Not like Benji, with his morbid talk last night about his last will and testament.” She gave me a hopeful look. “Are they sure it’s Franco’s body out there and not Benji’s?”
“I told you, Benji’s the one who found him. He was out walking and saw the body.”
“Outside?” Marie looked so confused. I would probably have to tell her everything all over again in a few minutes.
Dion looked straight at me. “My sister didn’t hurt Franco. She loved him. They were going to get married.”
“And you weren’t happy about that,” I said. “Were you?”
His lips moved, but no words came out.
“Your pancakes are burning,” I said.
He stared down at the grill as though he had no idea where he was. Marie pried the spatula from his hand.
“Dion, I didn’t mean it,” she said. “Della cared for him, in her own way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His usual joking demeanor was gone, replaced by something colder. “My sister’s just a kid, with a bright future. You always put her down because you know she’ll be a star, and you’re a failure.”
She recoiled as though slapped. “Is that how you really feel?”
He shot me a guilty look, then apologized to Marie. “I have a big, stupid mouth,” he concluded.
“We’re still friends until the end,” she said. “Even if there’s only three of us left. Friends forever.”
The door hinges squeaked behind me as Butch and Benji came in. Butch walked toward his wife with open arms.
She stepped back, avoiding his embrace. She asked Benji, “Is it true?”
Benji’s mouth twitched into a tight frown. “Franco is dead.”
Marie let out the saddest wail I’ve ever heard. She pushed past her husband and launched herself into Benji’s arms.
Butch took over in the kitchen, starting with fresh pancakes. He said that no matter what happened next, we would need food, even if it wasn’t fancy.
We sat in small groups in the dining room, solemnly discussing what needed to be done next.
Jessica spoke to the local ranger again, about getting a mountain rescue team for the body.
“Bad news,” she said after she ended the call. “I couldn’t get a timeframe for the road, and we’re on our own as far as retrieving the you-know-what.” She was pale, and struggling to not be sick. Avoiding the word body seemed to help.
Christopher relayed the details from his conversation with Officer Peggy Wiggles. She wanted to talk to Benji and take his statement using a video call on his laptop. We were not to disturb the body, but she did want us to protect the scene from wild animals by covering it with tarps and taking turns keeping watch.
Butch didn’t like the sound of that. “If there’s an angry cougar out there, I’m not going to sit around a tarp waiting for a snap on my neck. Especially not after whatever might have snuck up on me last night.”
Christopher asked me, “What did Finnegan say?”
“My father? I haven’t talked to him.”
“You can use my phone.” He held his phone out as though making a dare.
I declined the offer. “No need to worry my father, or get him overexcited. Besides, there’s a handy version of him inside my brain, giving advice.”
“You always were Daddy’s girl,” he said. His voice had a confrontational tone. “No other guy could ever come close.”
I glanced over at Jessica and Butch. They were preoccupied, and had missed Christopher’s attempt to lure me into a fight.
His timing was perfect, as always. We were in the midst of a terrible, stressful situation, and naturally Christopher felt powerless. Strange as it was, making me angry was his coping mechanism. I’d never seen it so clearly before.
I crossed my arms and kept breathing calmly, refusing to bite into his bait.
Butch got up from his chair and walked around to put his hands on Christopher’s shoulders.
“Those roads might be blocked for days,” Butch said to his cousin. “Tarp or no tarp, we’re not going to take shifts sitting next to a decaying corpse. What would a couple of Boy Scouts do?”
Christopher answered, “My mother wouldn’t let me join Boy Scouts.”
“Then what would your mother do in this situation? Let’s say she’s at a resort and there’s a dead body.”
“She would call the concierge and demand he do something.”
Butch patted Christopher’s shoulders. “As the owner of this establishment, I hereby appoint you the concierge. You’re coming with me to get the body and carry it back here.”
“But the police said—”
“No excuses. We’ll make a Boy Scout out of you yet. Meet me at the trekking hut in ten minutes.”
Butch left before Christopher could wiggle his way out of it.
Christopher gave me a pleading look. “He can’t be serious.”
I told him, “You’d better wear a bright jacket again, so nobody mistakes you for a turkey.”
While the Fairchild boys went off to get the body, Dion and Marie started emptying the lodge’s second walk-in cooler. Benji got the network password and returned to his room for the video call on his laptop.
I took Jessica back to our room. She wasn’t feeling well and preferred the bathroom, where she could sit on the cool tiles.
She called out from the bathroom, “I don’t know how you handled seeing the you-know-whats that you saw. Just the idea is making me…”
“You’ll feel better soon. And didn’t I tell you that being sick is normal? Everybody throws up. I’ve decorated the snow at crime scenes more than once.”
She groaned and ran more water.
I sat on the bed and played with Jeffrey, glad to have my stowaway cat there for company.
There’s nothing quite like an unexpected death to make you feel as if you’re falling into a pit with no end in sight.
If there were a hole through the center of the earth, falling to the other side would take around forty minutes. A person traveling through this theoretical tunnel would have to grab onto something quick when they popped out the other side, or they’d fall right back again and keep looping, keep falling.
An hour after learning of Franco’s death, I couldn’t shake the sensation I was in that tunnel, falling and falling again.
Jessica had just climbed into the tub for a bath when my phone rang.
The woman on the line got right to the point. “How well do you know this Benjamin Biggs fellow?”
“Peggy?”
“Of course it’s me. I haven’t spoken with you in two days and I missed the sound of your voice.”
“Some people say I have a not-unpleasant singing voice. I was hoping to belt out a few more tunes in the lodge’s karaoke lounge, but this whole death thing has put a damper on the festivities.” I quickly added, “Not that I’m complaining. Franco’s having a much worse vacation.”
“He didn’t look so good in the photos Mr. Biggs sent me. What do you know about him? He says he didn’t touch the body, but I’ve got some doubts. Can he be trusted?”
“Benji? I’m not sure I could make that assessment.”
“Would you let him look after your cat?”
“No.”
“Just as I suspected. First his company’s smoothie mix sends the town into a frenzy, and now he’s turning up bodies. Trouble follows this man wherever he goes.”
“I only said I wouldn’t let him look after my cat because he’s odd, in that absent-minded-professor way, and he’d probably forget.”
“What’s his state of mind been like over the last two days?”
“Up and down. He played a joke on his friends, but then h
e made some comments that suggested he was considering suicide. Maybe he’s got a mood disorder. This morning, before he found the body, he was running around pretending to be a rooster.”
There was a stunned silence, then Peggy asked, “Have you observed him clucking like a chicken?”
“Not personally. He was making rooster sounds. Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Neither did Jessica this morning. But before we arrest the guy, have you looked at the girlfriend? Della tore out of here in a hurry last night, and Marie’s suspicious of her.”
“That’s not good. You need to manage that situation before folks up there start lighting torches and grabbing pitchforks.”
“Everyone else is leaning toward it being an accident. Either he fell, or a cougar got him. Franco wasn’t a big guy. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against a wild animal attack.”
Peggy asked if I’d seen any wild animals during my stay so far. I hadn’t, but we talked over all the details I did know, for a solid hour. I had to charge my phone partway through.
The more she heard, the more frustrated she sounded. “Stormy, I’m busier than a one-eyed cat watching two mouse holes, but I’ve got half a mind to lace up my hiking boots and climb that mountain.”
“Hiking boots? That must be your subtle way of letting me know the roads won’t be cleared any time soon.”
“If I had better news on the road situation, I wouldn’t be asking you to start an investigation on my behalf.”
“An investigation?” I swallowed hard. Franco’s death wasn’t a simple research job like the ones I’d been doing for Logan. If I accepted the case, my work would be scrutinized by everyone at the Misty Falls Police Department. If I screwed up, nobody would let me forget it. And if I did a great job, that could be even worse.
I mumbled, “I suppose… but then again…”
“You sound like a woman trying to talk herself into something and out of it at the same time, like me, when my friends were all playing cops and robbers with their grandchildren, and I decided my late-in-life calling was playing cops and robbers for real.”
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