Stone Cold Dead

by Catherine Dilts

  The door to Faerie Tales opened, and Piers stepped out on the boardwalk. The wind tousled his blond hair. The sleeves of his brown tunic flapped against his arms.

  “Hello, Morgan. Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Morgan wondered if Piers had seen her dropped off by the police. While she was confident Bernie would not pump her for details, she was afraid she might spill everything to Piers. “I’m waiting for Del.”

  Piers studied Morgan for a moment. She was certain he was reading her aura, or doing something to her chakras. Morgan tugged her quilted coat tighter around her.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Piers opened the door to Faerie Tales, bracing it against the wind with his body. He motioned inside. “While you’re waiting?”

  “I wouldn’t want to bother you,” Morgan said.

  “The wind is cold. Come in.”

  He pushed the door open wide. Morgan stepped across the threshold and into the warm, incense-scented shop. Soothing music played on hidden speakers. Tunics and drawstring yoga slacks like Piers wore hung on round racks. Bookshelves lined one wall. Birdbath-sized fountains clustered in front of the checkout counter, the water trickling musically over glass globes and sculpted objects.

  Piers led Morgan to a cozy sitting area. A half dozen upholstered chairs grouped around two low, round tables. In the center of one sat a jade-green ceramic teapot painted with golden bamboo stalks. Piers poured tea into a small round cup with no handle and presented it to Morgan.

  She cradled the cup in her hands and held it under her chin, letting the steam warm her face.

  “This smells nice,” she said. “What kind of tea is it?”

  “Chamomile flowers, a touch of peppermint, and a dash of cinnamon. It’s my own recipe.” He turned a box toward Morgan so she could see the silver-and-green-foil label, embossed with faeries.

  Morgan sipped the tea. The chamomile gave it a distinct apple favor.

  “Delicious,” Morgan said.

  “It will help you calm down.”

  Morgan had the uncomfortable feeling that Piers could see more about her than she cared to reveal. She decided she’d better head the conversation in the direction she chose.

  “Walking around town today,” Morgan said, “I’ve noticed there are several shops on the side streets that have signs on Main Street pointing out their locations.”

  Piers poured himself a cup of tea. “You are persistent.” A smile tugged at his lips.

  “I know I’ve been a pain about this,” Morgan said. “Maybe you can explain to me. What would it hurt to let us put up a sign on one of your corners? Something that fits in with the rest of the downtown style.”

  “Have you changed your mind about selling your property?” Piers asked.

  Morgan set her tea on the table. “I can’t change my mind. I haven’t made a decision yet.”

  “I would welcome either outcome.” Piers flashed a genuine smile at Morgan. “I feel that you and I could be good neighbors. Even, perhaps, friends.” He met Morgan’s eyes with his icy-blue gaze.

  A melodious doorbell sounded as the front door opened.

  “Piers?” a raspy voice called.

  “Back here,” Piers said. “Sharing a pot of tea.”

  Morgan had seen the woman around town. She wore a long skirt, but not like Cindy’s pioneer-style garb. Hers was vintage Woodstock, although the woman had obviously been born a few decades after the famed 1969 outdoor concert. The tattered hem of the denim skirt stopped below her knees, where it met the tops of rainbow-hued wool knee socks crammed into size twelve Birkenstocks. An overstuffed satchel hung on the woman’s rounded shoulder from handwoven straps.

  Piers stood and bowed slightly at the waist.

  “Sparrow,” Piers said, “I would like you to meet my new friend, Morgan. Sparrow owns the hemp store.”

  There was nothing birdlike about Sparrow. She was tall and large framed. Unlike Bernie, she carried her weight poorly, as though she had been formed from half-filled sandbags. She yanked a wool stocking cap off her head, revealing severely short green hair.

  Morgan stood to shake hands. Sparrow held hers in a viselike grip for a moment too long. She eyed Morgan critically, as though assessing a rival, then flopped down onto one of the upholstered chairs.

  “What brings you to Golden Springs?” Sparrow asked in a coarse smoker’s voice. She fixed a smile on Morgan that had a sharpness to it.

  “I’m managing the Rock of Ages.”

  Sparrow’s smile vanished. She glanced from Morgan to Piers.

  “I think you will find that Morgan has a refreshingly open attitude.” Piers poured Sparrow a cup of tea.

  Sparrow accepted the tea with a nod. “You’re Kendall’s sister?” She slurped from the cup, then set it on the table. “I never thought I’d see one of his family set foot inside Faerie Tales.”

  “That brother of mine.” Morgan laughed nervously. “The whole family’s not like that.”

  Piers practically beamed at Morgan.

  Sparrow clasped her hands to her knees and leaned forward on her chair. “You should come to one of our meetings, then.”

  “What’s the meeting about?” Morgan thought perhaps they belonged to a small business association of some sort.

  “Our monthly interfaith potluck.” Sparrow dug in her satchel and pulled out an orange flyer. “Golden Springs residents meet to discuss issues like tolerance.”

  Morgan accepted the sheet of paper. It contained a simple announcement of date, time, and location. The speaker was presenting photos from a recent tour of temples in Thailand.

  “Interfaith?” Morgan asked.

  “The group accepts people of all backgrounds and beliefs,” Piers said.

  “Or none at all,” Sparrow said. “I’m atheist.”

  She watched Morgan, apparently waiting for a reaction.

  “And you?” Sparrow asked in a challenging tone. “What do you believe?”

  Morgan sat up straight. She had always wondered how she would define her faith, if push came to shove.

  “I’m attending Golden Springs Community Church,” she blurted out.

  Sparrow looked positively astonished. Morgan decided her declaration was worth the reaction.

  “Certainly,” Piers said. “The church is familiar. We often find comfort in tradition. As you meet new people, perhaps you will be encouraged to explore other faith communities.”

  “You’re welcome to check out the potluck,” Sparrow said, almost painfully holding back the “in spite of your beliefs” Morgan was certain she wanted to add. “The next one is Wednesday.”

  “It sounds very interesting.” Morgan tried to hand the flier back to Sparrow. “But I’m overwhelmed with running the shop. I’m sure I won’t have time.”

  “Keep it.” Sparrow jabbed a finger at the paper. “That’s my phone number.” Sparrow struggled to get up out of the chair. “Piers, can I talk to you?”

  Sparrow wrapped her arm through Piers’s in a decidedly possessive gesture. She led him through the shop, talking in whispers. Morgan folded the flier and stuck it in her jeans pocket.

  Between the strong incense and the strained conversation, Morgan felt a headache coming on. She wondered what was taking Del so long. Morgan checked her cell phone. She had signal.

  The door chimed as Sparrow left the shop. She clambered into a beat-up VW bus parked in front. Morgan leaned back in her chair as Piers returned to the sitting area.

  He perched on the edge of his chair. “Now, where were we?”

  “Talking about a sign.” Morgan sipped her tea.

  Piers shook his head gently. “I suspect you are a woman accustomed to getting her way.”

  “If anything, I’m not used to getting what I want. I’ve had my share of disappointments.”

  “Ah,” Piers said. “Then I begin to understand why this sign is so important to you.”

  “Oh, no,” Morgan said. “I don’t think you understand at all. I apologiz
e for being so persistent, maybe even pushy, when I hardly know you.”

  Piers dazzled Morgan with a white-toothed smile. “Perhaps the solution is that we should get to know each other better, when we’re not discussing a topic fraught with stress and conflict, as business inevitably is.”

  If Morgan was not mistaken, it seemed as though Piers had just expressed a desire to see her socially. Surely he wasn’t hitting on her. She recalled Lucy’s warning. An uncomfortable silence stretched across the table.

  “I have to meet Del.” Morgan jumped to her feet. “I’ll just, uh . . .” She glanced at the table. “I’ll buy some tea.”

  She hurried to the cash register. While Piers rang up the sale, Morgan glanced in the display case.

  “Oh!” She leaned closer.

  The creature she had seen perched on the girl’s body, and tattooed on her neck, had been rendered in pewter and strung on a chain.

  “Do you like my gargoyle?” Piers didn’t wait for a reaction. “It came to me in a vision.” He opened the back of the display case and lifted the necklace out of its nest of red silk. “Gargoyles were originally decorations for drain spouts.”

  He set the pewter creature on the display case. Two red, glittering gemstones glared out of a hideous face. Morgan tried to remember whether the monster she had seen perched on the dead girl had red eyes. But that monster had really been a magpie.

  “I thought gargoyles were used to scare away evil spirits,” Morgan said. “Or to scare reluctant parishioners into church pews.”

  Piers chuckled. “Actually, the poor gargoyle is, like most so-called monsters, a misunderstood creature. Its true nature is that of protector.”

  Morgan almost blurted out that she had seen the same creature on a corpse, but that would entail an explanation she wasn’t prepared to give. Instead, she clutched the box of tea and backed away from the display case.

  “I need to go,” she said, forcing a smile.

  She hurried out of Faerie Tales, and its cloyingly thick scent of incense. Morgan gulped deep breaths of fresh air as she rushed the two blocks down the wooden walkway to Bibi’s.

  She stepped inside the bakery, pulling the door closed against the wind. Bernie looked up from the table she was clearing.

  “Morgan, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Are you okay?” Bernie asked.

  Two customers looked up from their conversation. Morgan suspected she was already known as the crazy lady who imagined bodies on trails. She couldn’t blurt out that she also hallucinated monsters, and that Piers had made hers into a necklace.

  “My feet hurt,” Morgan said. “I have a blister.”

  “Sit down,” Bernie said. “My feet hurt, too. Thankfully I didn’t get blisters.”

  Bernie hobbled behind the counter and filled a teapot with hot water.

  “I haven’t walked a mile in years.” Bernie carried the teapot and mugs on a tray, setting it on the table. “Oh, who am I kidding? I haven’t ever walked a mile.”

  Bernie sat across from Morgan and poured steaming water into the mugs. She wore a traditional white chef’s coat today, but had livened it up with a pink silk neck scarf.

  “I haven’t hiked since the last time I visited Golden Springs.” Morgan paused as the two customers gathered their coats and left. When the door closed, she turned to Bernie. “I came by earlier, but you were out.”

  “I had to take my kitty, Mr. Whiskers, to the vet for his annual checkup. What’s up?”

  Morgan glanced around the empty bakery, then leaned across the small round table. “Do you remember the girl I saw on the trail? Who disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “The police found her. She’s dead.”

  Bernie’s green eyes opened wide. “Oh, my. How could they have missed her before?”

  “She wasn’t where I found her.”

  “Does that mean she was alive when you saw her?” Bernie lowered her voice to a whisper. “Was she murdered?”

  “I’m not supposed to say anything about the scene.” Morgan twisted a paper napkin with her hands. “It could have been an accident. They can’t tell yet.”

  The bell over the door tinkled. A customer stepped purposefully to the counter.

  “I’ll be right back,” Bernie told Morgan.

  She sold the customer a dozen croissants, then returned to the bistro table.

  “This is not the sort of conversation that should be interrupted. Let’s go upstairs.”

  Bernie turned around the be-back-in sign and led Morgan behind the counter and through the kitchen. A plain door opened to narrow, steep stairs. At the top was a bright apartment lined with tall windows, lacey curtains, and deeply cushioned furniture in a bright floral pattern.

  Mr. Whiskers mewed a greeting. Bernie settled onto the loveseat and pulled the enormous gray cat onto her lap.

  “Now tell me all about it,” Bernie said. “At least the parts you can share.”

  Morgan related the story, leaving out the specifics of the scene where the young woman had been found.

  “You don’t suppose they think you had something to do with this girl’s demise, do you?” Bernie asked.

  “Why would they think that?”

  Bernie shrugged. “You’re new to town. Maybe they thought if they took you to the scene of the crime, you’d crack and confess.”

  “It might not be a crime,” Morgan said. “They don’t know how she died yet. They just wanted me to see if it was the same person. And it was. She was worse. But I could tell it was the same girl.”

  “It’s so strange that she wasn’t in the same place,” Bernie said. “She either had to be alive when you saw her, or somebody moved her, trying to hide her, or maybe animals moved her. That happens sometimes. A person dies in the woods, and body parts get dragged all over the place.”

  “The coroner said there hadn’t been much decomposition because of the cool weather.” Morgan watched Mr. Whiskers sitting regally on Bernie’s lap. “I’m sure animals hadn’t dragged her. If she was alive when I saw her, maybe she came to, and tried to get help. Why would anyone move her if she was already dead?” Morgan paused. “There’s something else. Something I didn’t mention to the police. When I first saw the girl, I thought she was a—I don’t know how to explain this without sounding crazy—I thought I saw a monster. Like a gargoyle. A big black creature with wings.” Morgan stopped herself from saying “with red eyes,” because she didn’t remember seeing its eyes. Her imagination might be embellishing what she saw. “But then a magpie flew away. So it must have been a magpie all along, and I hallucinated that it was a monster.”

  “Magpies are the most disgusting scavengers,” Bernie said. “They’re like buzzards.”

  “The odd thing is,” Morgan continued, “when I was in Piers’s shop just now, he had a pewter necklace in his display case that looked just like the thing I saw.”

  Bernie sat up straight. “You should tell the police about that.”

  “What would I tell them?” Morgan asked. “That I imagined a gargoyle, and then I saw the same monster in a New Age bookstore? Officer Sanchez already thinks I’ve got a screw loose, and now there’s a detective on the case who’s not exactly sympathetic.”

  Morgan’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID.

  “It’s Del,” she told Bernie, then flipped opened her phone. “Hey, what took you so long?”

  “Where are you?” Del asked.

  “At the bakery.”

  “I figured I’d find you here, but I’m standing outside. The bakery is closed.”

  “I’ll be right down.” Morgan hung up. “Boy, Del sounded stressed.”

  “After seeing a body,” Bernie said, “I’m not surprised.”

  Del paced in front of the bakery door. He wore a grim expression, his mustache twitching.

  “What’s wrong?” Morgan asked.

  “The be-back-in sign was up,” Del said. “I thought some
thing was wrong.”

  “We were just upstairs.”

  “Until we know whether that girl died of natural causes,” Del said, “or was murdered, I’m gonna worry about you.”

  “The coroner said it looked like she fell off the cliff.”

  “No, he didn’t say ‘fell.’ He didn’t know whether she was alive or dead when you found her. There could be a killer out there. Someone who moved that body after you saw it.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too,” Morgan said.

  They walked a block in silence. Del shoved his hands in the deep pockets of his jacket.

  “So what’s the verdict on the car?” Morgan asked.

  “The Buick’s not terminal. That’s the good news. I’ll let Gerda fill you in on the rest.”

  Gerda sat behind her desk, looking authoritative in her dark-blue jumpsuit and short-cropped white hair. After a lecture in her clipped German accent about the importance of regular auto maintenance, Gerda handed Morgan an estimate. Morgan took the yellow sheet, focusing not so much on what needed repair as the total at the bottom.

  “Six hundred?” Morgan squeaked.

  “You are lucky you brought it to me when you did,” Gerda said. “The water pump is going out. That’s why your auto keeps overheating. If we replace the water pump, we should replace the timing belt, as well.”

  “Do I need to get it done right away?” Morgan asked.

  “Are you planning any long trips?” Gerda asked.

  “I’m driving back to Sioux Falls in a week,” Morgan said.

  Gerda shook her head. “Not in this car. I am amazed you made it here.”

  “I don’t have the money to get it fixed right now.”

  “You may drive it around town,” Gerda said, “but you need to check the radiator. If it goes dry, all is lost.”

  “How do I do that?” Morgan asked.

  Gerda’s round face puckered in a grimace.

  “Hold on, now,” Del said. “The girl’s a widow. She didn’t need to know about these things.”

  Gerda held up her hands. “Okay. Then the time is now.”

  She pushed herself up out of her chair. Morgan was again reminded of an eggplant as Gerda waddled around the desk and out the office door.