by Rae Davies
Or maybe he’d never left town.
An image of Rhonda with her “Peace not Pâté” sign waving flashed through my mind.
Muttering, I got in my rig and drove into town.
My first stop, or more accurately, drive by, was Rhonda’s. I could have called, but said what? Do you have my brother? Tied to your bed perhaps?
That would have been awkward. So I drove by instead. First by the front, casual, like I was on my way to coffee myself and just happened to turn down Rhonda’s street.
No Lemon.
Next I tried the alley that ran behind her house. This was a bit touchier. If Rhonda happened to be out in her backyard and saw me, I’d have to stop and make up some story as to why I was wandering by.
As luck, good this time, would have it, there was no sign of the Lemon behind Rhonda’s house either. Not even in her garage. I got out and peered in through the windows.
Rhonda’s Trooper wasn’t inside either. Which meant almost certainly Ben wasn’t at her house. She was probably at work, and he was probably...
Stranded.
Guilt wrapped around me like Frankenstein’s hug.
I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. The Lemon was a lemon after all.
My poor brother and his poor goose had probably spent the night parked wherever Ben had left the van the night before.
Kiska had moved into my seat while I was out of the vehicle. I shoved him back into his place and rode off to find and save my poor brother.
o0o
The Lemon was harder to find than I’d expected. It was parked in the lot across the street from Tiffany’s, but back in the corner, mostly hidden by a beat-up RV and a boat, both of which looked like they’d been taking up city parking space free of charge for the last twenty years.
I left my rig parked in a yellow zone for five seconds, and I had a ticket, this guy...?
He was probably related to the mayor or something.
After that uncharitable thought, I found a place a few spaces away and climbed out, leaving Kiska behind to take my seat.
The work day had begun, but this area of downtown – home to Tiffany’s, a newer movie theater, and the parking lot – was quiet.
I walked up to the Lemon completely prepared to poke fun at my brother who had spent most of my junior high years tormenting me with his early-birditis.
Well, who was up and awake early now? Not him.
Smiling to myself, I raised my fist and prepared to knock on the driver’s side window.
My foot hit something.
I looked down, and my mind froze.
I stood, stunned and in denial, staring at two Mary-Jane encased feet sticking out from under the Lemon.
For a moment my mind stayed blank, then it screamed.
I stood stunned for what may have been minutes or seconds before other bits of reality dropped into place.
The Lemon.
My brother’s car.
Feet wearing the cutest Mary Janes I’d ever seen and my brother’s car.
For a moment the tiny gears in my head whirred without anything processing. Then everything clicked.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my messenger bag, and my eyes closed briefly. Ben had run Tiffany over and then run himself. That was why he hadn’t returned to the Egg.
Then, just as quickly as the thought formed, I tossed it aside. Perfect, Zen-cool Ben run?
It wasn’t possible.
My gaze dropped to the feet again and stayed there. Still cute... still Mary Janes.
Tiffany, the pâté-pushing chef. Tiffany, the would-be goose-slayer. If Ben was going to kill anyone...
No. Ben wouldn’t.
In fact, I didn’t even know for sure the body attached to the feet was dead. Tiffany, after her big night, could have indulged in an equally big binge of whatever snooty drink people like Tiffany drank.
Clinging to the hope, I knelt on the damp asphalt and lowered my body to peer under the Lemon.
Tiffany Williams lay face-up on the ground, her white chef’s coat stained, and her once smooth dark hair tousled and clumped.
I whispered her name, hoping stupidly for some response. “Are you... can you... do you need help?”
Silence answered me.
“Tiffany...” I murmured again, desperate.
It was no use. This chef’s goose was truly cooked.
I was, unfortunately, confident of my diagnosis. Thanks to having discovered a body a time or two before, I’d become a bit of an expert on such things.
The knowing when someone was dead part anyway.
This was the first time, however, that my closest living relative’s car was parked on top of the body.
Struggling with my next move, I twisted my lips and looked around for witnesses. I appeared to still be alone.
I could move the body – not far, mind you, but tucked under the Lemon it was difficult to see for sure that Tiffany was dead.
I glanced over my shoulder at Kiska who was sitting in my seat, ears erect and interest pinned on me as if he expected me at any moment to pull a roast out of my pocket.
My palms sweated. I rubbed them on my jeans. I looked around again. Then I knelt and wrapped my fingers around Tiffany’s ankles, right above those cute practical shoes.
Kiska barked.
Kiska never barks.
I sat back on my butt and dropped my hold.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t change what I’d found even for my brother.
Feeling tired and a bit worthless, I walked to my rig and climbed inside.
Sitting behind the wheel with my dog pressed against my side, I called the police station.
Then I stared out the window, gnawed on a nail, and tried not to think about what the repercussions of me being a responsible citizen might mean for Ben.
The police were prompt. They usually were in such situations, or at least had been the last two times that I’d found a corpse, but this time I wouldn’t have minded if they’d taken a bit longer.
They were, in fact, so quick that they arrived before I could make any other calls, and I realized as the first car pulled in, I did have other calls to make.
My duty to the newspaper was moot. By this point, someone there would already have heard the call go out that a body had been discovered downtown. Whoever was monitoring the police scanner, wouldn’t know it was me... again... but they would find out soon enough. Besides, my treatment by wonder boy reporter Daniel Rowe last time had done a lot to eliminate any duty I felt to notifying the News.
But nothing could eliminate my duty to family, which in my mind included both my mother and Rhonda.
I was pushing my best friend’s number into my cell when Peter rapped on my window.
I could tell by the look in his eye that my call would have to wait.
I rolled down the window. “What?”
“Get out.”
He was mad or frustrated or... Sometimes it was hard to tell Peter’s mood, especially when he was in detective mode.
Both feet on the asphalt and the door of my rig closed behind me, I repeated my question. “What?”
He turned his head toward the Lemon. “You called.”
Well, yes, but I hadn’t called him – for obvious reasons.
“I found a body.” My lips twisted as I said it. I knew what he was thinking... Why? Not again. How does this happen?
I’d had the same thoughts myself, but seeing them on Peter’s face set me on edge.
I held up both hands. “I was just—”
He cut me off. “Is that your brother’s car?”
I glanced at the Lemon. Did he really need to ask? Looking back at him, I could see that apparently he did. Sheepish, I nodded. “Yes. At least it looks like his.”
I found it really hard to commit 100% in such circumstances. A basic issue with authority I guessed.
He cocked a brow.
“Okay. Yes, it’s my brother’s car. I think.”
He muttered something and waved two uniformed officers over. “Take her statement.”
The two officers took my story with nary a cocked brow or muttered expletive. It was refreshing, really, until I realized Peter had parked himself by his truck. Arms crossed over his chest and his hat pulled down to block the morning sun, he watched me.
He didn’t move until the officer who’d been speaking with me so politely stepped back. The other one nodded his head in thanks and walked away.
Peter shoved himself away from his truck where he’d been lounging and stalked toward me like a tiger tired of his cage.
“Did you tell them how to get in touch with your brother?” he asked.
I shifted my gaze to the nice officer in uniform. “Uh...”
“Did you tell them the van belongs to your brother?”
I hadn’t, but, to be fair, neither had asked.
He pulled the younger man to the side and spoke to him in a voice too low for me to hear.
When they turned back, I held up my hands in surrender. “I don’t know how to get a hold of him. He wasn’t at the campground this morning, and he wasn’t at Rhonda’s. So thinking he had car trouble, I came here.”
The nice police officer’s face pulled into a frown.
So I’d left out a few details as to why I was in the parking lot this morning, but again, he didn’t ask, and, really, who was I to tell him how to do his job by offering what could be completely unnecessary and thus potentially confusing information?
“Do you have a number for him?” the officer asked, all signs of our previous bonding gone.
Men are so fickle.
“I don’t.” I shook my head, embarrassed. “He... moves around a lot.”
“Cell?”
“We haven’t been close.”
Peter cleared his throat. “What about someone else in your family?”
Someone else... He wanted me to turn over my mother’s number or, worse, call her and tell her that the police were looking for Ben because he just might have rolled the Lemon over a chef – a chef who’d threatened his goose the night before?
I snapped my mouth, which had fallen open in surprise, shut. My brother had not killed Tiffany. I couldn’t even allow myself to think like that, because it was so obviously not true. Anyone who knew Ben at all would know that.
He didn’t even eat meat for God’s sake.
But, of course, the previously nice young officer didn’t know my brother.
“Detective Blake says your brother was one of the protesters who were outside of Tiffany’s last night.”
“Yes, but I don’t know—”
Peter pulled a folded newspaper out of his back pocket and handed it to the other officer.
As he unfolded it, I rose on my toes, trying to see what was so important to share at this moment in time.
The subterfuge was unnecessary. The officer held the copy up for me to see. “Is this your brother?”
A picture of Ben, Tiffany, Pauline, and me dominated the top half of the front page of the Daily News.
I hadn’t seen Gary Richards, the head photographer at the News, last night, but obviously he or someone else from the paper had stopped by long enough to capture my big moment.
The picture featured Pauline scrambling over my prone body toward Tiffany, while Ben and Peter rushed in to save the day.
Basically it was a frozen moment of complete chaos that showed none of us in our best light. Except maybe Peter. Even rushing toward a goose he looked dignified and in control.
I reached out to take the paper, to see who was credited with the picture and to see what the article beneath it said, but the young officer pulled it back. “Is this your brother?”
I twisted my lips. “Yes.”
By this time, the area around Ben’s van was crawling with police personnel, photographing, talking into radios and staring down anyone – like me – who might have made an innocent move their direction.
The News, in the form of Gary, the photographer, and Daniel, the pain-in-the-ass young gun reporter who had taken over the crime beat a few months earlier, had also arrived. Gary had positioned himself uphill from us, outside of the police’s reach, but within shot with his telephoto lens.
Daniel was circling the lot like the shark that he was. I could feel his eyes on me, waiting for Peter and the other officer to leave so he could tear into me like yesterday’s kill.
Peter saw him too. Without saying a word, or making any kind of intimidating gesture, he turned to face the reporter. After less than a minute of Peter’s unwavering attention, Daniel dropped his gaze and scurried out of sight.
I looked up at my knight in cowboy gear, all ready to lavish him with praise and appreciation.
He stared back at me, the expression in his hazel eyes not all that different from when he was looking at Daniel. “What am I going to do about you?”
I pulled back, rightfully affronted. “What?”
“You’re killing me, you know?”
“Me?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. When he looked back at me, he sighed. “Stone is on his way here. He’ll be detective in charge.”
Oh. In other words, my discovery of the body meant Peter would be sidelined from a case again.
“He’ll want to talk to your brother.”
“Okay.” My voice sounded weak, like a child caught doing something wrong, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. To the contrary I’d done everything I was supposed to do this time: called the police first, not messed with the body. What else did they want from me?
I crossed my arms over my chest, mimicking Peter’s earlier stance.
Inside my rig, my phone rang. I reached for my door. Peter’s hand covered mine, and he stepped closer. “Your brother isn’t in trouble and neither are you. We don’t even know cause of death yet. Still, find your brother.”
I waited for him to finish. Find your brother and have him call the station. Find your brother and have him call a lawyer. Find your brother and have him run for Canada...
But he just brushed his lips across mine and left it at that. Stepping back, he called to one of the other officers. “I’m letting Lucy go.” A statement, not a request, which reassured me that at least right now no one saw any reason to question me more.
It was enough for me. I climbed back in my rig, shoving my dog out of my way as I did, and drove out of the lot. As I bumped over the curb to get around a barricade the police had set up, my phone twittered.
I drove another fifty yards, far enough so that I was out of view of both the police and the paper, and pulled over.
A text. From my mother.
A sick feeling wrapped around me. Like when you have a breakfast of cotton candy and cola. Not, of course, that I had ever done such a thing.
My thumb tapped on the phone’s flat surface. The text could be coincidence. It didn’t mean my mother had somehow sensed that all was not right in her children’s lives.
Hell, things were rarely all well in my life, and my mom didn’t call constantly. Thank heavens.
But my mother never texted me. As she had explained to me numerous times, texting was sure to be the end of the English language.
Which, considering her Ozarkian accent and interesting choice of regional phrase on many occasions, I found to be a tad hypocritical. But I kept the opinion to myself.
I pressed in the code to unlock my phone and hit messages.
Why didn’t I know your brother was in Helena? And what is this picture about?
Complete sentences. That was a good sign. At least she hadn’t completely gone off the deep end.
But the mention of a picture was not. Obviously, the photograph printed in the News today had also been featured in the online edition, which my mother read religiously.
My need to find Ben had just increased 100-fold. I’d already taken one fall for his goose. He could man up and take this one with our mother.
Chapter 5
When Kiska and I arrived at Dusty Deals, the shop was already hopping. Or at least the two occupants were... hopping mad, that was.
Betty, dressed in a conservative dove gray drop-waisted silk, held one end of a rectangular coffee table while Phyllis, wearing eye-searing hot pink, tugged on the other.
“It is not trash. It’s mid-century,” Phyllis proclaimed, giving the table’s top a jerk.
“This is an antique shop, not the local thrift store.” Betty pulled back.
“It’s Danish modern!”
Phyllis’ eyes narrowed and her brows lowered. It was Betty, though, that worried me the most. I could see a glimmer in her eye that boded ill for Phyllis and any merchandise that the Texan’s body might hit when Betty slung her out of the way.
I scrambled past Kiska, who had stopped to gawk, and wrapped my arms around the middle of the object de objection. Both women, apparently oblivious to my presence, continued to tug.
“Drop it!” I yelled. For once I must have gotten the tone of command right; women and dog alike turned their heads to look at me. “We don’t have time for this right now. I found the new chef dead under my brother’s car!”
It was a lot to blurt out, but the announcement did the trick. Betty and Phyllis both released their holds on the table and stepped back. Unfortunately, that left me holding forty pounds of maple by myself.
I staggered forward, almost hitting a stack of china before Betty and Phyllis jumped back in to grab the table and help me lower it to the ground.
“Yowza, girlfriend. You found another body?” Betty shook her head. “How’s Peter handling that?”
“Not Tiffany Williams! I dropped off pictures of some of our mid-century pieces there two days ago, and her landlord just called me back yesterday. He’s supplying her apartment furnished, but now... poor girl.” Distress shone in Phyllis’ eyes. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if it was at Tiffany’s demise or the thought that her deal might be compromised.
Still, I had to appreciate that both women, in their own ways, expressed concern on how Tiffany’s death affected me and Dusty Deals before anything else.
They both, though, seemed to have missed the part about my brother.
Someone else hadn’t.