Corpse in a Crate

by Winnie Reed

  “Hmm.”

  We came to a stop while Lola nosed around in a grassy patch near the curb. I knew better than to disturb her when she was that interested. “What was that about?” I asked Joe instead.

  “What was what about?”

  “You made a thoughtful sound.”

  “I did?” When I pulled my arm back like I was going to take a swing at him—playfully, of course—he held up his hands in self-defense, chuckling. “It’s just that the way you describe him reminds me a lot of you. You have a bad habit of taking the world’s problems on your shoulders, and you don’t deserve that. That’s all I meant to say.”

  The kindness of his voice was disarming, and it left me a loss. What was I supposed to say that? Was I supposed to thank him? No, it didn’t seem like that sort of situation.

  Joe solved the issue of what to say next—or, rather, Lola did. He cleared his throat, glancing down at her.

  “I think she’s finished,” he murmured, looking away with a barely suppressed grin.

  Had my life truly fallen so far that I was grateful to my dog for doing her business at the right time?

  “Good girl, good girl.” I patted her on the head before embarking on the decidedly undignified task of cleaning up after her. At least she was a very small dog, and thus her messes were equally small. Before I straightened up, I asked him again, “Why did you come? Did you learn anything about Nate’s case? If you did, I wish you just tell me so. The suspense is killing me.”

  We continued walking, turning the corner and walking up Main Street again.

  “Come on,” I prompted. “There isn’t much time before we get back to the café, and there’s absolutely no chance of speaking privately there. You’ve been there. You saw it yourself.”

  “You do have a lot of colorful people around here,” he mused with a grin.

  He was enough to drive me insane. “Stop stalling,” I implored. “Please. Don’t make me beg.”

  “All right. I’ve kept you hanging long enough, I guess.” He slowed his stride, and I slowed mine accordingly. Lola didn’t mind, as it gave her plenty of time to sniff around and be adored by everybody who passed by. “You have to know, it gives me no pleasure telling you something like this. That’s why I’ve been stalling all along—yes, I admit it.”

  “I feel kind of sick all of a sudden,” I groaned, holding my stomach.

  “Suffice it to say, your fears about the police not taking this case seriously aren’t unfounded. I hung around yesterday, asking questions, seeing what I could see. There’s a fine line between professional courtesy and annoying everyone, so I took my time and played it as cool as I could. A problem with a member of the Patterson family, unless it’s something truly dire, is hardly given top priority by investigators. Not that they actively wish harm upon the family or want to see them put in their place. At least, the people I spoke with had the decency not to crow too much over this turn in Nate’s fortune.”

  “But they’re hardly in a hurry to help him get his life back,” I concluded, feeling sour and disappointed.

  “I think a lot of it has to do with Detective Wallace. Nate was right, the guy most definitely holds a grudge over what happened. The car accident. I’m sure it sticks in his craw, knowing a wealthy kid got away with manslaughter.”

  “And if he’s lead detective on the case, it’s up to him to set an example and keep things moving,” I concluded.

  “That’s right. It’s unfair, truly and terribly unfair. Detectives are only human. Even though nobody in their right mind thinks Nate had anything to do with that body ending up where it did, it doesn’t matter. They’ll let him sit and stew before clearing the scene and allowing renovations to continue.”

  I muttered the filthiest word I knew, fists clenched tight around Lola’s leash. “It’s a good thing you told me that out here,” I concluded.

  “Why? Because you would get a bunch of questions from anybody listening in?”

  I shook my head. “Because my mom would wash my mouth out so if she ever heard me use language like that.”

  Joe snorted. “She seems like a nice lady.”

  “She is,” I agreed. “I’m sorry she tackled you earlier. I guess that came as a surprise.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. If anything, I found it touching.” He stopped, turning to face me while we were still two doors down from the café. “And for what it’s worth, Emma, no matter what you think. No matter how often we spar. I’m glad I was there that night. I’m glad I got there when I did. I just thought you should know that.”

  And there I went, not knowing what to say again. I doubted Lola had it in her to do her business again in such a short span of time, so it was all up to me.

  The buzzing of my phone caught my attention, and just in the nick of time. Joe played with Lola the while I answered. “It’s Raina,” I whispered just before picking up the call.

  “Emma. You’re never going to guess.” She was breathless, like she had just come in from a run.

  I eyed Joe silently, thinking to myself that I had surprising stories of my own to share with her.

  “What happened?” I asked instead.

  “Nate just called me. They ran dental records on the body from the attic.”

  My whole body tingled, right down to the tips of my fingers. Joe looked up at me, questions in his eyes. “And?” I prompted, holding my breath.

  “And, the records match Matthew Patterson’s. A perfect match, Nate told me. He’s completely freaked out.”

  “Matthew Patterson?” By now, Joe was standing, looking at me. “Which one was he? I forget.”

  Joe remembered, and he answered before Raina had the chance. “Matthew Patterson was Kevin Patterson’s father. The father who was supposed to have drowned at sea.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Can you believe this?” Nate looked around, crestfallen. “Why would anybody do this?”

  I stood beside Raina in what would be the reception area, just as crestfallen as Nate was at the sight of the destruction. Somebody had thrown a rock through the beautiful stained glass window at some point.

  “It had to be either late last night or early this morning,” he mused, looking down at the beautiful shards of glass all around his feet. “I drove by last night, careful to keep my distance. The window was intact.”

  “At least you can go on with the renovations now.” Raina practically hopped up and down, clapping her hands. She was trying so hard to pick his spirits up. “Isn’t that good?”

  “Yeah, it’s good.” Still, Nate looked and sounded very vague, running his hands through his hair, looking and sounding like a man in a dream.

  “What’s bothering you?” I had to ask. “Is there anything we can do?”

  He started to shake his head—then paused. “Yes, now that you mention it. There is something you can do. You can tell me how my uncle who supposedly died at sea ended up in a trunk in my attic. You could help me figure that part out.” Then, he looked behind him, to the gaping hole that had once been a beautiful window. “And after that, you can find whoever did this and tell them I don’t take things like this lightly. That window was priceless. It was a pretty childish thing to do.”

  “I would love to know just as much as you would—okay, maybe not quite as much, since it wasn’t a member of my family—how your uncle ended up there rather than virtually anyplace else in the world,” I allowed. “It must be a real shock for you.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, coming down the stairs. “I never knew the man. Yes, it’s sad that the body belonged to someone in my family, but to me, he’s always been missing and presumed dead. Well, certainly dead by now, since he would’ve been well over ninety at this point in his life.”

  “Was there anything else with the body? Did the police tell you anything that might be helpful?”

  He looked at me like I had just sprouted a second head. “Like they would tell me anything. As it is, you should’ve seen the look o
n Detective Wallace’s face when he gave me the go-ahead to continue the renovations. He reminded me of a man on his way to a root canal.”

  Joe’s opinion about the man’s handling of the case danced in the back of my mind, but I kept it to myself.

  Instead of spilling my guts, I turned to Raina. “Maybe we could go and ask a few questions,” I suggested.

  “I doubt they’ll be more forthcoming with you then they were with me,” Nate said.

  “We can at least try,” I insisted. “I have so many questions. I can always say I’m a friend of Joe’s.”

  I had to turn away from my best friend, since the light flickering in her eyes didn’t exactly thrill me. Ever since I told her about Joe’s visit on the ride down to see Nate, she hadn’t been able to stop teasing me about him.

  Nate shrugged, then looked over my shoulder through the open door. There was noise outside now, the sound of workmen arriving to do their job. For the first time since we arrived, I saw hope in Nate’s face. “It’s going to be pretty hectic around here now, so it’s probably for the best that the two of you move on.”

  “We’ll be back soon,” Raina promised.

  Yes, something told me it would take an act of God to keep her away from the orchard and the farmhouse. Rather than hang around while the two of them exchanged farewells, I stepped outside into the surprisingly cool day and pulled a thin sweater tight around my frame.

  It was good to see the machinery getting put to use again, good to hear the chatter of the men as they settled in to work. One of them played music on an old radio cranked up probably as loud as it would go, and there was a feeling of hope and excitement in the air.

  The feeling that everything was going to be okay washed over me.

  So why did I feel so rotten? The whole point of our concern was getting Nate back on track, and he was on track. He had told us on Saturday that he had three or four days before he absolutely had to get back to work, and three days had passed since then. This was the best possible outcome.

  Though it wasn’t so good for Kevin, was it? Maybe that was what was bothering me. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

  And that was when everything finally crystallized in my mind. I hadn’t been thinking clearly, was all.

  When Raina joined me, it took all the self-control I possessed to wait until we got in the car before I almost jumped on her. “He was supposed to have died at sea.”

  “Matthew Patterson? Yeah, I know. It’s bizarre, isn’t it?”

  “More than bizarre. It’s fishy. If Kevin and Matthew went out on the boat together, and only Kevin was found drifting, what really did happen to Matthew? Did he go over, float for a while, get found and end up buried on his brother’s property? Does that make any sense to you at all?”

  Now she was getting it. Her eyes lit up and her mouth fell open. “Oh, my God. You’re so right. It doesn’t add up at all.”

  “Whoever killed Matthew Patterson thought he was going to get away with it forever,” I concluded. “I mean, fifty years. It’s been fifty years since he died. Well, maybe not quite that long. Maybe he didn’t die that day at all. Maybe he went into hiding or something. Maybe he was on the run.”

  “And all this time, Kevin must’ve known something wasn’t right. What do you think? Maybe his father forced him into pretending.”

  “No matter what he did, it was rotten. Leaving his child alone on a boat like that, drifting along all by himself. Even if they had worked it out in advance and he’d told his ten-year-old son to pretend he went overboard, it’s still awful. It was still taking a chance. What if nobody ever found him?”

  “No wonder he’s as strange as he is,” Raina mused, shaking her head mournfully. “The poor kid never had a chance.”

  “And then he was raised by somebody who didn’t even see fit to leave him much in his will, outside of land that was useless to him without the house it sits on,” I concluded. The more I thought about it, the more Kevin Patterson seemed like a victim in this situation. “What a completely messed up family.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “I feel like I need to call every member of my immediate and extended family and thank them for being who they are. I mean, sure, it was a mess when Mom and Dad split up, but neither of them left me floating on a sailboat by myself at the age of ten to pretend they were dead. What if he was involved in some shady business deal and had to disappear?”

  “We could sit here all day and come up with one theory after another, but it wouldn’t do any good.” Raina stared out at the house, where Nate stood in front talking to a group of men. “They only way we’re going to find answers is if we start asking the right questions of the right people.”

  “Don’t you have a flight tomorrow morning?” I asked. It was a three-hour drive back to Cape Hope, then another two hours to Manhattan. And she’d already made the drive down earlier that day.

  “Yeah, but that’s tomorrow morning. I have the whole day, babe, and plenty of coffee shops to keep me awake if I get tired.”

  This was a reversal of sorts. Usually, I was the Lucy to her Ethel. She was normally the one talking me out of what she considered a crazy, harebrained scheme. Now, she was barely taking time to buckle her seatbelt before putting the car in gear and kicking up dirt as we sped down the driveway in the direction of town.

  She was behind the wheel. Who was I to argue with her?

  The fact was, I didn’t want to argue. The more we learned about Nate’s family, the more I wanted to—no, needed to—find out.

  “So. What did your Mom have to say about Joe?” Raina giggled. “I can just imagine.”

  “Then why do you need to ask?” I chuckled with a roll of my eyes. “She hugged him half to death, for starters, and thanked him for saving my life.”

  “Ohh, right. I never thought about that. I figured she’d ask whether he had any intentions toward you.”

  “No, that came later, when she and Aunt Nell practically bounced him back and forth between them like a basketball. The poor guy didn’t know which way was up by the time he left.”

  “Now the detective knows what it feels like to be interrogated,” she laughed. “Good. Let him sweat it out a little.”

  “He handled it well,” I allowed. “You know as well as I do that Mom is difficult enough on her own, without bringing her best friend into the mix.”

  “Is that how you and I will be someday?”

  I snorted. “Someday? I thought we already were.”

  The fact was, I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I didn’t know how that made me feel. It didn’t help that Lola liked him so much, and that he liked her just the same. How was I supposed to resist a man who liked my dog?

  Not to mention one who looked so good while he was doing it, all smiley and sexy and such?

  There was next to no traffic on the roads in the middle of the workday, making what would already have been a quick trip into town even quicker. I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d get any answers at all, or if we would simply be shown the door. But it was worth a shot.

  “I almost wish we were still staying here,” I admitted as Raina pulled up in front of the police station. “It would be so much easier to look around and ask questions if I didn’t know we had to leave so soon.”

  “If we don’t have any success today, we can always come back. I’ll be home by Saturday; it’s a short little trip this time around. If our curiosity is still burning by then—”

  “Which, of course, it will be,” I interjected.

  “And so will mine. So, we’ll come back. It’s not technically tourist season yet, so we might be able to get a room if not in the same hotel, someplace else in town.”

  Knowing that we could come back if need be gave me added confidence as I climbed out of the car and joined Raina on her way up to the front door of the police station. As usual, I marveled at her ability to move with such poise and grace, like she expected things to go her way and would speak to the man
ager if they didn’t.

  Me, on the other hand? I was practically shaking in my boots, or would’ve been if I were wearing boots. That Detective Wallace gave me a bad feeling. I didn’t think he would take too kindly to anybody wandering in and questioning his detective work.

  I would just have to be nice, that was all. I knew how to talk to detectives and get on their good side. After all, I’d been dealing with my father my entire life, and he was hardly what anybody would call pushover even when facing his daughters.

  Raina muttered out of the side of her mouth. “What do you think we should do? Ask to speak to somebody about the case? Is that how this works?”

  I looked at her, puzzled. “How the heck would I know?”

  “Well, you were all up in Robbie’s case last month. I just thought if anybody knew, you would.”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I have no idea how to navigate this.” Just as I finished whispering, a uniformed officer approached the desk closest to the entrance. She had a kind smile, which I thought boded well for us.

  “Can I hope you ladies?” she asked, looking from Raina to me.

  “I hope so,” Raina smiled. “I understand from my good friend, Mr. Patterson, that the body found in his attic has been identified as his uncle. I just had a couple of questions relating to the case.”

  A shadow passed over the cop’s face. It was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, but I hadn’t imagined it. She was unsettled by us, or annoyed. It didn’t matter which. Neither option was a particularly good one.

  I took that as my cue to jump in. “We’re just curious. We were there when the body was found, you see, and the family is close with my friend Raina’s family. Is there any indication of where the body was stored before being moved to the attic? Maybe, I don’t know, traces of soil from the surrounding land?”

  Before the officer could reply, a voice boomed out from further into the room. “Just what business is it of yours?”

  I knew with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach who I would see when I turned to find who had hollered at us. Sure enough, there was Detective Wallace, practically storming out of an office at the other end of the large, busy room. It was pretty clear by the way the officer at the desk practically scurried to make herself look busy that his presence was not a welcome one.