Between a Book and a Hard Place

by Denise Swanson

  Eyeing the back of Chief Kincaid’s heavily starched khaki uniform, I marveled that his clothes looked as if he’d just put them on a few seconds ago. Likewise, his gray buzz cut appeared to have been freshly barbered and his black shoes shone. Eldridge Kincaid demanded perfection from the folks around him, but even more so from himself.

  As I had guessed, several more Tyvek-encased people filled that area. The chief stopped at the threshold of the archive room.

  A man staring down into the professional-looking camera that hung around his neck was blocking our way, and the chief barked, “Aren’t you done yet?”

  The guy jumped as if he’d been slapped, then skittered backward. “Sorry, Chief. Some of the images are blurry. I need a couple more minutes.”

  “I thought you knew what you were doing.” The chief narrowed his steel blue eyes, and the man froze until Chief Kincaid snapped, “What in the Sam Hill are you expecting, an engraved invitation? Go.”

  As we waited for the photographer to finish, the chief took out a notebook and stared at the pages. Since he clearly didn’t want to talk, I took the time to glance around the basement. When my father had hustled me through this area previously, it had been dark. But now, with the police lights, I could see that the whitewashed walls were stained and cracked. At some point, they had sustained water damage and hadn’t been repaired.

  Although the building housing the library wasn’t very large, it seemed to me that this space and the archival room didn’t equal the upstairs. I looked to see if there was another doorway, but didn’t find any. The structure must only have a partial basement. The rest was probably a crawl space.

  Chief Kincaid maintained his silence until the photographer emerged from the archives and gave him a thumbs-up. Then the chief tilted his head toward the doorway and said, “After you. Keep your hands in your pockets and don’t touch anything, just point if you need to.”

  I nodded, took a deep breath, and forced myself to walk into the room.

  The body of my stepfather was exactly as Mom and I had left it a couple of hours ago, and I looked questioningly at the chief, who said, “The county medical examiner was in Kansas City, attending a conference. We can’t move the vic until he gets here.”

  I nodded, then waited with a patient air for further instructions. There was no rushing the chief. I’d find out what he wanted faster if I cooperated with him, a lesson his daughter, Poppy, had yet to learn—which was one of the many reasons they weren’t speaking.

  “What time did you and your mother get here?” Chief Kincaid asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” I hedged. “Sometime after one or one thirty maybe.”

  “Walk me through what you did once you arrived at the library.”

  “We came in the side door,” I said slowly, wanting to get my report right. Our story had more potholes than MoDOT had left unfilled on I-70. “Mom had a key.”

  “So when you two got here, the door was locked?” He took a notepad and a mechanical pencil from his shirt pocket and made a note.

  Shit! I wasn’t certain how Yvette had answered that. “I’m not sure. Mom put her key in the lock, then turned the knob. I guess it could have already been open. What did my mother say about it?”

  Ignoring my question, the chief asked, “Once you were inside, what did you do?”

  “Mom explained that Jett was doing research in the archives, so we came down here.”

  “Did you touch anything besides the banister?” Chief Kincaid asked.

  “Uh.” I pretended to think, then said, “I may have leaned on the doorframe of the storage room. I peeked inside there when I walked past.”

  “I see.” The chief jotted something on his pad. “How long was it between when you discovered your stepfather and when you called nine-one-one?”

  “I don’t know.” I wrinkled my brow. “Everything seemed to go in slow motion once we saw him like that.” I gestured toward Jett’s lifeless form. “Mom was hysterical, so it took a while to calm her down.”

  “How about you?” Chief Kincaid tilted his head appraisingly. “Were you upset, too?”

  “In the sense that someone was dead and it looked like murder, yes.” I shrugged. “But I’d only met him once before—at the city council meeting—so we didn’t have a personal connection.”

  “I see.” The chief folded his arms. “You said he was dead. How did you know that?”

  “It was pretty obvious from the wound, but I took his pulse.”

  “Did you notice this?” Chief Kincaid used his pencil to point to Jett’s left hand. When I squinted, he said, “Take a closer look.”

  Reluctantly, I moved nearer and bent over to inspect my stepfather’s fist. Immediately, I saw a shred of paper clutched between his fingers.

  “I checked his other wrist.” I glanced at the chief. “What’s Jett holding?”

  “Don’t you know what it is?” Chief Kincaid’s tone was frustrated. “We can’t examine it until the ME gets here and takes it from the vic.”

  “Is that what you wanted me to see?” I asked, wondering why I couldn’t have answered the chief’s questions without returning to the crime scene.

  “Do you know where your stepfather’s cell phone is?” Chief Kincaid asked.

  “No.” I shook my head. Shit! I should have gotten rid of both Yvette’s and Jett’s phones. If the police saw all his texts to her, they’d know our story about discovering the body was a lie. “Isn’t it on him?” I crossed my fingers and asked the universe for it to be missing.

  “No.” Chief Kincaid indicated the empty phone holster on Jett’s belt. “The murderer must have taken it.” The chief frowned, then gestured to the floor and asked, “Was this here when you arrived?”

  “What?”

  Chief Kincaid tapped the toe of his shoe near a trace of what looked like sparkling gray sand.

  “I didn’t notice it.” Although I kept my expression blank, I prayed that my father hadn’t stepped in whatever material Chief Kincaid had discovered. Just in case, I’d have to make sure he got rid of the shoes he’d been wearing.

  “Is there anything in this room that looks out of place to you?”

  “How would I know?” I retorted. “I’ve never been in here before.”

  “Right.” Chief Kincaid nodded. “So what was special about today?”

  “What do you mean?” I felt my heart speed up. This smelled like a trap.

  “Yvette said you were picking up your stepfather for lunch. He’s been in town for quite a while now. Why were you getting together in the middle of a workweek?”

  “Tuesday afternoon isn’t exactly a busy time for me,” I stalled.

  “Perhaps.” The chief’s eyes drilled into me. “But previously, the only reason I’ve known you to lock up your store during business hours is in the case of an emergency.” He stepped closer to me. “How is having lunch with your mother and her new husband an emergency?”

  “It isn’t.” I wiped my suddenly sweating palms on my jeans, then wished I hadn’t when I saw the chief notice my actions. “The thing is, Mom has wanted me to get to know Jett, but he’s been extremely busy. So when he told her he was free for a late lunch today and she asked me to join them, I decided to close for a couple of hours. Business is usually slow between noon and three.”

  “What a good daughter.” Chief Kincaid’s voice held a hint of sarcasm.

  “I try.”

  “I was under the impression from your father that you weren’t really on very good terms with Yvette,” the chief murmured.

  “True.” I met his gaze without wavering. “That’s precisely why I made the extra effort to accommodate my mother’s wishes.” Thankfully, Yvette wasn’t the only adept liar in our family. It was a skill I had picked up during my days as an investment consultant. “I was trying very hard to begin to rebuild our damaged rel
ationship.”

  “I see.” Doubt lingered on each clipped word he spoke to me.

  “Was anyone else aware that you planned to have lunch with your mother and stepfather?” he asked. “Maybe you discussed it with a friend?”

  “No.” I bit my lip, remembering my phone call with Noah. Hell! I needed to warn him not to repeat our conversation should the police question him. Although I couldn’t see why the cops would think to talk to him, better safe than sorry.

  “Why is that?” Chief Kincaid wrote something down before looking up at me and asking, “It seems like a matter you’d discuss with Boone and my daughter before deciding what to do.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” I paused to gather my thoughts, then added, “Mom just stopped by the store and asked if I could join them.”

  Chief Kincaid was silent, and I stared over his shoulder at a Tyvek-suited figure collecting dust and dirt samples in the other room.

  I was still amazed that a town as small as Shadow Bend had such an extensive crime scene team and that we actually had a need for it. Not to mention the pimped-out white RV with SHADOW BEND POLICE CRIME SCENE UNIT painted in navy blue now parked in the alley near the library’s side entrance.

  It all came back to the infamous grant wars going on between Chief Kincaid and our esteemed mayor, Geoffrey Eggers. The chief and Hizzoner didn’t get along, and because of that the city council had been voting down police department budget increases for years.

  Frustrated, Chief Kincaid had applied for federal funds to remodel the station, then to train personnel, and finally to purchase up-to-date gear. Everyone had been surprised when the chief’s applications began to bring in money and even more shocked when he’d been able to complete all three of those projects.

  Eventually, Chief Kincaid had hit the mother lode and had been able to purchase his very own crime scene unit and mobile lab. The grant had even been large enough to pay for the training that allowed the chief’s people to operate the elaborate forensic equipment.

  The mayor had been beyond livid that the chief had managed to get what he wanted without financing from the town’s coffers. Geoffrey Eggers hated being bested at his own game, and if I were Chief Kincaid, I’d be keeping a sharp lookout for Hizzoner’s next strike.

  Tapping his notepad with his pencil, the chief brought my focus back to him and asked, “How long were you and your mother together before coming over to the library?”

  “An hour or so.” I kept it as loose as possible. Nailing down a timeline could show too many cracks in our story. “As you said, I don’t like to close up the store, so it took her a little while to convince me.”

  “Yvette would seem to be one of a very few people in these parts who might have some reason for wanting your stepfather dead.”

  “Like what?” My thoughts flew to her flirting with my dad, but I brushed that image aside and added, “If Mom wanted out of the marriage, she’s obviously not averse to the idea of divorce.”

  “True.” Chief Kincaid rolled his pencil between his fingers. “In that case, are you aware of anyone else who might have a motive?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “As I mentioned, I really didn’t know Jett. To my knowledge, he’d never been in Shadow Bend before, so why would anyone here want to kill him?”

  “Which brings us back to your mother,” Chief Kincaid mused. “The logical assumption is that Benedict’s death has something to do with her. Jealousy is a tried-and-true reason for homicide. And the only person I can think of who might be jealous of Yvette’s relationship with her new husband would be her old one.”

  It took me a millisecond to grasp what the chief had said, but when I did, I gasped, a wave of dizziness sweeping through me. I had hoped that since Dad and Chief Kincaid were pals, he might not believe my father was capable of murder. Evidently, I’d been wrong about the depth of their friendship, because it was clear that Dad was one of the chief’s top suspects in Jett Benedict’s death.

  CHAPTER 9

  After Chief Kincaid blithely announced that my father was one of his top suspects, he escorted me to the police station and took my written statement. As I waited for Yvette to finish with her official account of the afternoon, I texted Noah that due to my stepfather’s death, I wouldn’t be able to go to the theater with him.

  Assuring him that I would explain everything when I saw him, I requested that he keep quiet about our canceled plans, asked him not to call me, and suggested that we meet for lunch the next day. I told him to come to the dime store, where we could talk in private, promising him chicken salad sandwiches from Little’s Tea Room and a full pot of his favorite French-roast coffee.

  After getting Noah’s okay, I texted Poppy and Boone to tell them about my stepfather and begged them to meet me at Gossip Central at eight for a much-needed drink and debriefing. They’d probably heard about Jett’s murder, since they were both firmly tied in to Shadow Bend’s rumor mill. In a town as small as ours, there was no way Chief Kincaid could cordon off a street and expect to keep the homicide from becoming the prime topic of local speculation.

  Once both of my friends agreed to the get-together, my finger lingered over the picture of Jake on my contact list. I could certainly use his law enforcement expertise, but he rarely seemed to have time for me anymore, and I didn’t want to bother him. Or at least I didn’t want to feel like I was bothering him, which was even worse.

  Sadness crept through me. I missed him. His humor. His warmth. His sexiness. We spoke on the phone every few days, and I could hear how frustrated he was with Meg’s lack of progress, but he was too good a guy to dump her back into a psychiatric facility.

  I knew that if I were a better person, I would be more sympathetic about Jake’s situation. And intellectually I understood his position. But emotionally I felt neglected and abandoned. The same could be said for Noah’s behavior. His mother occupied nearly all of the spare moments he could steal from his medical practice, which left precious little of his attention for me.

  Disgust hit me in the chest. How could I whine about two such amazing guys? Yes, they had commitments that interfered with our relationship, but then again, so did I. And they’d both pushed aside their pride in order to allow me the space to figure out which of them I truly loved. There weren’t many men around who would be able to overcome their macho need for exclusivity.

  I was still trying to decide whether to text Jake when my mother joined me in the police station lobby. Once we got into the car, I asked, “Did Chief Kincaid confiscate your cell phone?”

  “He wanted to see it, but I told him I lost it.” Yvette shrugged. “Eldridge didn’t seem to believe me, so I told him to search my purse and pat me down.” Her smile was smug. “Luckily, Kern forgot to give it back to me after he phoned you.”

  “Good.” I gave my mother an approving nod. “I just hope the chief isn’t able to get a list of Jett’s calls from his carrier.”

  “He won’t.” Yvette studied her nails. “Both Jett and I use prepaid cells. He was a bit of a nut about privacy.”

  “Good.” I mentally raised my brows. Had my stepfather been hiding something, or had he just been paranoid? “I’ll get your phone from Dad and dispose of it.”

  After my mother assured me that she’d stuck to our agreed-upon story, I warned her to make sure she didn’t change any of the details and told her about Chief Kincaid’s theory that her husband’s death was connected to her. Yvette paled and swore to keep Dad’s presence at the scene a secret.

  Once I had dropped my mother off at the luxury condo she and Jett had rented near the country club and made sure she was settled in, I headed home.

  When I turned in to our lane, I hit the brakes and stared at the new handwritten sign attached to a fence post facing the road. It read, NO TRESPASSING. ET HAS GONE HOME. WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO BUY ANYTHING. WE’VE FOUND JESUS—HE WAS HIDING BEHIND TH
E COUCH. WE HAVEN’T VOTED IN TWENTY YEARS. REALLY, UNLESS YOU’RE GIVING AWAY CHOCOLATE, DON’T BOTHER.

  Evidently, the UFO guy had been back and Gran had had enough. I just hoped the professor got the message, because if he returned, Birdie would probably put a load of buckshot in his britches. And the last thing we needed was another family member hauled into the police station.

  As soon as I walked in the door, Gran put supper on the table, and while we ate, I brought her and Dad up to speed on what had happened since my father had left the library.

  I was starving, and even their unending questions couldn’t stop me from enjoying Birdie’s chicken and biscuits. The interrogation continued through the homemade butterscotch-pudding cake, but they both finally ran out of steam as we washed the dishes.

  My father wanted to go to Mom’s condo to make sure she was all right, but I persuaded him that his friend the chief of police would have an officer watching Yvette and would see Dad’s visit as evidence that he was still in love with Mom and had killed Jett to get her back.

  We argued back and forth, and I finally snapped, “After how Mom treated you, I just don’t understand why you’re even talking to her, let alone care about her.”

  Dad put his arm around me and said, “I’ve made peace with my past, and you should, too. Otherwise, it will screw up your present.”

  I made a noncommittal sound, and when Dad promised to stay away from his ex-wife and throw the shoes he’d been wearing and my mother’s cell phone down the old well, I headed to Gossip Central. I tore down the blacktop toward the bar with Adele’s newest hit blaring from my radio.

  As I drove, I passed farmhouses and freshly harvested wheat fields. A deer froze by the side of the road, staring at me as I zoomed by. I waved at the inquisitive animal, loving the peacefulness of the deserted countryside and relishing the lack of traffic and congestion I’d faced every day when I’d commuted to Kansas City.