Add in a matching white picket fence under the quaint window by the cash register, where tulips and daffodils would bloom in the spring and mums with heads the size of a newborn baby’s fists would sprout in the fall, and you had my mother’s version of what essentially is a gas station with some sundries and such and awesome brisket and smoked catfish.
But Mom, a gardener at heart, insisted that small bit of flowers below the window gave the place a charming accent, making it look less like a convenience store and more like a place someone truly cared about.
I took a deep breath as more of the local PD poked about the pumps in the middle of the parking lot, sitting between the station and the road. Some had even ventured as far back as our completely renovated Victorian house, located four or five hundred feet behind the store.
The smoke from the smokers under the portico at the back of the store wafted upward in thin tendrils into the darkening skies, making me long to be inside mixing spices together, just doing something menial and normal.
I hoped the police didn’t disturb the koi pond—the pond I’d give my eyeteeth to be sitting by, mulling over this morning’s tragic events.
Coco shivered, tucking her scarf under her chin. “Do they know what happened to him yet? Why the heck was Myron in the gas station in the first place? Oh! You don’t think he was,” she wiggled her eyebrows, “visiting your mom behind Fabritzia’s back, do you? You know, maybe he found out his svelte, super-young Latvian bride wasn’t all she claimed to be? The grass wasn’t really greener and so on?”
Fabritzia was Myron’s new wife, Latvian born and bred, and almost forty-five years younger than Myron.
“Are you kidding me? Do you remember what she did when she found out Myron was cheating on her with Fabritzia? She launched his DVDs out the window of the house like flying saucers and shot them with my dad’s shotgun like shooting skeet. She threatened to—” I stopped short when Chief Burrows looked up and stopped writing on his pad of paper.
His tiny eyes set deeply in his head and almost swallowed whole by his plump red cheeks, devoured me. Or they sure felt like they were devouring me, but then he went back to his pad of paper and the local coroner, Vern Scheffler who was also Coco’s boss.
Dang. You’d better remember to shut up, Lemon. You know how easy it would be for anyone who didn’t know her to misconstrue Mom’s words.
My mother really had threatened to kill Myron four months ago when she’d found out he’d been two-timing her.
“He’s been all over the interweb highway like some stray dog in need of a bone, Lemon. I’m going to kill him, and then I’m going to hire a voodoo priestess to raise him from the dead and kill him again!”
Those had been her exact words. But she didn’t mean them. She threatens to kill me on a regular basis when I forget to make the barbecue sauce for the smoked meats we offer, and I still have my brains.
I instantly clamped my mouth shut and shook my head when I looked at Coco. “No. I’m pretty sure Mom wouldn’t even consider taking him back. I don’t know why Myron was in our bathroom. But I know I locked that bathroom door last night on my final round at about nine thirty. I’m as sure of it as I’m sure I’m standing right in front of you.”
Fig Harbor, its shops with thatched roofs and colorful boats lining the docks peeked out at me from the clearing in the woods across the street from the station. Justice handed something gold and shiny in an evidence bag to the chief. Then he strolled over to me, JF still happily perched on his shoulders, still running her fingers through his thick hair.
“So a couple of questions, if you don’t mind?”
I don’t know why JF on Justice’s shoulder irritated me so. Likely because she didn’t give him any guff, but more likely it was due to the fact that he’d brought up my mother and Myron’s ugly breakup and I felt a little petty.
He’d known my mother all his life. She’d fed him grilled cheese sandwiches after we all played football in my backyard. She’d picked us up from school and more basketball games than the two of us had fingers and toes, and even one night when Justice got too drunk to drive.
May Layne was as likely a suspected killer as a deaf, blind mute.
So, I crossed my arms over my chest and gave Jess a pointed glance to the place on my shoulder where she knew she should be sitting. Then I shot her the ultimate death glare. The one that said, “ignore me and lose your pineapple sauté for dinner.”
Of course, she happily ignored me, twirling her tail around Justice’s head and covering his eyes with the bushy end, chirping her love noises at him.
Pointing to my shoulder, I reiterated, “Now, Jess.”
She must have sensed my distress because she actually listened this time. She slipped off Justice’s shoulder and scurried her way up over the length of my body until she was perched on my shoulder.
“So some questions, Lemon,” Justice prompted again, sucking in his cheeks.
Coco, always ready to defend me, clucked her tongue as she positioned her purse in front of her and folded her hands over it. “Shouldn’t she have an attorney present?”
Justice widened his stance as the rain began to fall harder. “I’m not interrogating her, Coco. I’m just asking her what she found and when.”
My heart began to pound in that harsh throbbing way again. I didn’t want to relive out loud what I’d just seen, but I put a hand on pit bull Coco’s arm and squeezed. “It’s okay, Coco. This is just procedure.”
Her plucked eyebrows knitted together as she magically made an umbrella appear, popped it open, and held it over our heads. “You know what procedure is how, Lemon? Just because you watch a bunch of crime shows doesn’t mean it’s all real—”
“No. She’s right, Coco. It is procedure,” Justice assured her. Then he turned to me and hitched his jaw. “You okay?”
I nodded back, stroking Jessica’s tail for comfort. Justice, Coco, and I had all gone to school together. We’d known each other almost since birth. We’d hung out, we all had our first taste of his father’s whiskey under the bleachers of our high school together, we boated, swam and caught fish from the docks as far back as I can remember.
Justice and his questions didn’t intimidate me, but I’ll admit, I was a little put off by Policeman Justice—so stoic and in charge, as opposed to Good Time Charlie Justice, who used to chugalug an entire gallon of milk without taking a breath while we pounded the dining room table with our fists and cheered him on.
To be fair to him, I’d never been on this end of anything more serious than reporting the occasional shoplifter or poking at him about police procedure.
Justice pulled out a pad and a pen, poised to write my statement. “Start from the beginning, Lemon, and tell me what happened when you came outside this morning to do rounds.”
As I relayed everything exactly as I remembered it, our very small local police force continued to gather and bag evidence, trudging through the rain in their plastic-covered hats and shoes.
“What are the latex gloves about?” He used his pen to point to my hands.
“I clean up after stinky boys, that’s what they’re about. I always have them on me because I serve food and clean the bathrooms. But you know that, Justice.”
He ignored my reminder that we hadn’t just met. “So you said you didn’t hear anything last night or this morning? Nothing suspicious. Nothing out of the ordinary? No strange noises?” he probed.
Okay, now I could identify what was bothering me. It was his tone I wasn’t skipping through fields of buttercups about. He sounded very skeptical, almost cynical, and it was rubbing me the wrong way.
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was asking these questions in that manner of authority just to impress his boss. He knew me well enough to know I would have told him if I’d heard or seen anything the first time he’d asked, while we waited for Chief Burrows to show up.
Obviously, his tone was rubbing Coco wrong, too. “She was on the phone with me when she found Myr
on, RoboCop. So if you’re going where I think you’re going, I’m here to tell you, Lemon’s not that good an actress. Or don’t you remember our eighth-grade play? So just take that notion right out of your head and get your questions over with.”
I’d prefer not to relive the horror of my thespian debut as a grapefruit in the eighth grade, so I tugged Coco’s arm as a signal to relax. “Not a lot goes on out here at night, Justice. I would have called you if I’d seen or heard anything. You know that, too.”
We’re just on the outskirts of a busy but small beach town, with plenty to do during the tourist season.
In season, the Smoke and Petrol closes at eight p.m. sharp Monday through Saturday and at six on Sundays. Most of the locals know to give the tourists who’ve come to try our made-semi-famous-by-a-YouTuber barbecue a head’s up about our sort-of banker’s hours—hours that are the exact opposite of your average 7-Eleven.
But it was early January now, meaning we’re closed earlier during the week and on Sundays. So, there wasn’t much to report.
“I understand that,” he said in an almost whisper-yell, glancing over his shoulder at Chief Burrows. “But I have to ask these questions so it’s official and on the record. So help a dude out, would you, Lemon?”
Coco rolled her eyes and sighed, but I actually got it. No special treatment because we’d seen each other naked as babies and had the pictures to prove it.
I looked up at Justice and shook my head, spitting a curl from my mouth and putting my glasses back on. “I didn’t hear a single thing. Like I said, last night I was on the phone with Coco until about ten-thirty. I did my last rounds at nine thirty like I always do and hit the sack about ten forty-five. This morning, I already explained.”
Justice cocked his head as though I’d dropped some sort of crime spree hint. “So you went for coffee this morning. Can that be verified?”
“Yep. I got coffee from Gabby herself at Gabby’s Grind, and crazy Cappie was out and about. He saw me, but we didn’t talk.”
“So before you left for coffee, you didn’t notice the bathroom door was open or Myron’s car?”
Suddenly, I felt defensive again. The hairs on the back of my neck were actually standing up. I wanted him to get these facts down with some amount of accuracy.
I did, indeed, watch a lot of crime shows. Not just of the fictional variety, but of the real, reenacted variety, and I’ve witnessed a statement go askew because of some small glitch—like an overzealous cop gauging my reactions on paper with the wrong adjective.
So I set him straight as I wiped my face free of the rain. “I didn’t say it was open, Justice. I said it was ajar. Lou-Lou’s parked around the other side of the station, as you can see.” I pointed over my shoulder to our dirt parking lot just to the left of the store, where my yellow Volkswagen was parked by the Rose of Sharon tree. “There was no reason why I’d see it ajar if I went straight to my car from the house out back. I didn’t walk around the curb that lines the pathway to the bathrooms.”
He cleared his throat. “Right. And that didn’t seem suspicious to you? I mean, when you did see it?”
“What are you getting at here, Columbo?” Coco asked, fishing her phone out of her pink-and-gray purse. “Because I’m this close to forgetting you were once my date to the eighth-grade dance and calling an attorney.”
Justice straightened, his mouth pinched. “I’m just doing my job, Coco. And it wasn’t the eighth-grade dance, it was the sixth.”
Waving my hand between the two of them like a white flag, I answered Justice’s question. “Not suspicious. No. You know how Jessica Fletcher is, always stealing stuff and hiding it. Though now I know that wasn’t possible, at first I figured she’d nabbed the keys and opened it. She does make the best of her crazy long fingers, and she’s been opening doors since she was with Sissy. You also know that.”
JF once belonged to our closest neighbor, an aging circus performer named Sissy Feldman. She housed and rehabilitated primate circus performers who were no longer up to the grueling schedule of the circuit.
Sissy also took in many a monkey from families who’d mistakenly thought they made good pets, and that’s the circumstance under which Jessica came to her sanctuary. She’d taken JF, who, by the way, is a product of improper breeding and happens to be a runt in the spider monkey community, weighing in at just under thirteen pounds, because her mother had abandoned her and Sissy couldn’t bear that.
When she arrived, I fell in love—hard. Sissy was so convinced Jess and I had a special bond; she’d even let me rename her. When Sissy moved to Seattle two years ago to be with her children due to her diabetes worsening, Jess was the last of her rescues she was unsuccessful in rehoming, so she asked me to take her.
Jess was pretty well trained by the time I inherited her, thanks to Sissy, but she was still a monkey who really belonged in the jungle somewhere with those of her ilk. It was only by poor choices on her ex-owner’s part that she’d never survive in her natural habitat now. She’d bonded with humans, considered me her mother, and loved a good toothbrush massage.
There was an awkward silence as Justice scribbled on his pad, and Coco glared daggers at him.
Justice then went about examining my forehead with a critical eye before handing me a couple more wadded-up paper towels. “So you didn’t get into a fight with anyone? Because that sure is some cut.”
Seriously? Was he seriously considering me a suspect? I pressed the towels to my forehead to thwart any residual bleeding. “If you’re wondering if I got into an argument with a seventy-something-year-old man and it came to blows, then the answer is no. We weren’t out here cage fighting. Promise,” I said, trying really hard to keep the sarcasm from my voice. “Check the toilet paper dispenser yourself. I’m pretty sure a patch of my skin’s still on it.”
Coco snickered before she reminded me, “Seventy. He just turned seventy. Don’t you remember? We stumbled into his birthday party a month ago at Shrimp Cocktails when we went for drinks.”
Oh, yes. I remembered. “I do.”
“Best German chocolate cake I’ve ever had. Layer after layer of caloric suicide. Remember the layers, Lemon?”
“I remember the layers, Coco.”
“Ah.” Her voice suddenly went low with regret. “But then do you remember your mom, too? She was pretty mad at us. I knew we should have burned those party favors.”
I rolled my eyes. You bet I remembered that, too. “It wasn’t our fault we stumbled into her ex-boyfriend’s surprise birthday party hosted by his brand-new Latvian mail-order bride.”
“Which is the Dollar Store version of a Russian mail-order bride, according to your mom,” Coco said with a giggle.
“So your mom was pretty angry about Myron marrying Fabritzia? Where is she, anyway?” Justice interjected the question, his eyes as sharp as beacons from the lighthouse on the peninsula.
Darn. Shut up, Lemon.
I gave Coco the girlfriend warning sign with my eyes—meaning, say as little as possible about the things my mom had spouted. We knew each other well, so I knew she’d get the message.
Yet, Justice daggone well knew my mom had been angry. The whole town knew she’d been angry. Who wouldn’t be angry if you invested six months in a relationship, only to find out you were being left for someone your lover had never actually met? Someone with a sexy accent and no foreseeable need for Botox?
And all because mom didn’t want to get married. Sometimes even I couldn’t believe how far Myron had gone to spite her after she’d turned down his proposal on at least three separate occasions.
And then it hit me.
My mother!
I’d been so shaken over finding Myron like that and chasing after Jessica, I’d forgotten she was just inside the station.
She’d been fast asleep in the recliner at the back of the store when I’d left. It’s where she always waited for the Today Show to come on and for Leon, one of our part-time employees, to come open the store. I made s
ure she was up and ready to go before I left because I had to take her to the doctor’s appointment she so despises to have her blood pressure check, but I’m guessing like always she fell back to sleep.
What if this had happened to Myron while I was out getting coffee and she’d heard something? What if she’d come outside to investigate the noise—the kind of noise that must surely occur when you break into a gas station bathroom and dump a body as big as Myron’s?
Had whoever killed Myron encountered my mother first? What would he have done with her?
In just those ten seconds, I thought of a million scenarios where Myron’s killer could have also killed my mother and disposed of her elsewhere.
I realize it doesn’t make a lot of sense from a murderer’s perspective. Why not just dump my mother on top of Myron and make it a two-fer? But all rational thought left my head where my mom is concerned. She’s all I have left since my dad died.
Fear rushed like a wave of clammy fingers along my spine, blocking all else out.
Everything stopped for me at that moment. I didn’t bat an eye when Justice attempted to keep me from running toward the station by shouting at me. I didn’t care that Coco’s mouth was saying the word “no.” Her words sounded warbled and under water.
I barked an order to Jessica to hang on and made a break for the front of the store, leaping up over the curb, dropping the key in the lock faster than I ever thought possible and bursting through the glass door, pushing it open to the tune of far more incoming customer warning bells than even a deaf cashier needed.
That was Mom for you. Her suspicious nature was legendary. She always worried we’d be robbed due to my penchant for getting lost in a daydream or a new barbecue recipe and forgetting my immediate surroundings.
If there were a way to ward off danger—be it bells or whistles, sage burning or séances—she’d found it on the Internet and made good use of it after I’d moved back from Seattle and we’d taken over running the station together as two single women.
Ain't Love a Witch? (Witchless in Seattle Mysteries Book 6) Page 20