by Tegan Maher
At least he'd dropped the phony facade. "Yeah, yeah. When did he get here?"
"After Shelby came. I don't know when that was."
"And he's the only one who was here?"
"No," he said, laying his ears back and donkey-scowling. "I just said Shelby was here. Cody was with her. And some man in a mostly green truck arrived several minutes after this man"—he motioned toward Marcus's truck with his nose—"got here. I heard somebody leave shortly thereafter but was on the other side of the house. I assumed they both left, but apparently I was mistaken."
"Apparently," I said. "What do you mean, mostly green?" I asked.
"I mean most of the truck was green. The back part above the tire was blue."
I shook my head. "Why does everything have to be so hard?"
"To use one of your idioms, not my circus, not my monkey," he said, shrugging a fuzzy shoulder as he ambled toward the barn.
"Hey! Stay outta there. Dead guy, remember?" With a put-upon sigh and a glare, he changed course back toward the porch. I had no idea what I'd done in a previous life to deserve him, but it must have been a doozy.
We followed Max to the porch and sat down to play the waiting game. Gabi didn't have much to say, so I went in and poured us a couple glasses of tea. By now, the horses had accepted that supper wasn't imminent and had settled down some.
I sighed with relief and drained the last of my tea when the sound of vehicles coming up the drive caught my attention. Hunter was barreling around the curve, practically tipping onto two wheels, followed by an ambulance. They weren't running their lights or sirens and I was grateful. The last thing I needed was half the town forming a conga line of vehicles coming to see what the hubbub was all about, and that's exactly what would have happened.
After all, it was Sunday evening and there hadn't been any other good gossip to grind through the local mill lately. The masses were no doubt starving for new material. They were about to get that in spades and, once again, I was smack-dab in the center of it.
CHAPTER THREE
WHILE WE WAITED, I asked Gabi as many questions as I could think of, but she didn't seem to have any more ideas about how the son of her former boss ended up toes-up in our barn than I did. Considering his truck was hooked to my trailer, the only thing we could assume was that he was going to steal Mayhem, but that made no sense. It's not like he could have sold him for anything. Without his papers, he was just another pretty horse that did cool tricks.
She did know a couple of people from Sylvia's farm who drove green trucks, but had no idea where they'd gone when the place was sold. For that matter, she didn't even know if the farm had been left intact or divided into parcels.
Hunter—the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome—climbed out of his truck and I motioned for him to follow me. He held up his hand.
"It would probably be best if you just told me where it is. I called Jim; he's in town and should be here in the next few minutes." Jim Sanders was our local CSI and coroner. He wasn't actually assigned to Keyhole Lake but he lived here and we were in his jurisdiction, so if he wasn't away on a case somewhere else, he filled in here here.
Until recently, his jobs here had been mundane—grannies dying in their sleep, or the occasional hunting accident.
"You're sure he's dead?"
I pursed my lips and shrugged one shoulder. "I mean, I didn't actually check, but he's face-down in a pile of manure and a pair of spurs are crossed behind his neck so tight the straps are cutting into him. He looked pretty dead."
"Was Matt or Shelby here? Did anybody see anything?"
I bit my lip. "Max was. He saw Marcus's truck pull up, then a green one with a blue quarter-panel shortly afterwards."
He rolled his eyes and sighed. "So you're telling me Max is my only witness?"
That was a little offensive. Max was a pain but he wasn't a liar. If anything, he was a little too brutal about speaking the truth sometimes. Nobody wants to know they look like a deranged clown when they first wake up, but he'd point it out anyway. He's no more of a morning person than the rest of us.
I crossed my arms. "Yes, Max is the only one who was here. Why'd you say it like that? We're lucky he saw anything."
Hunter raised his brows and gave me the think about what you just said look. "Of course I have just cause to request the warrant for the truck, Your Honor. My girlfriend's talking donkey said he saw one just like it at the scene of the murder."
Oh. Yeah, when he put it like that ...
"So what do we do, then?"
He raked his hand through his hair. "We'll have to reach around our elbows to scratch our butts," he said. "I'll track down the employees from the farm, then narrow it down to people with green trucks, and hope like mad there's only one."
"Gabi said there was a couple, but none with the mismatched paint."
"Great," he said, rubbing a hand down his face.
While we were talking, a black SUV rumbled around the curve in the drive and pulled into the yard. Nothing screamed "low-key crime-scene investigator" like a black SUV. Jim stepped out, shaking his head. "Noelle, I don't know how you manage to fall into every pile of crap dropped in this county, but you sure do have a knack."
I scrunched my nose. "You're likely gonna regret that particular turn of phrase when you see the body," I said, ignoring the intent. He wasn't wrong, but what was I supposed to do? Move the guy to somebody else's barn like a baton in a relay?
Besides, I'd only found one other body—Max Wheeler's—and that was because his ghost had come to Hunter demanding we go find his body and figure out who brained him with a toilet tank lid. That's another story, though.
Suffice it to say, I had nothing to do with the entire mess, at least before Max showed up all dead and cranky.
"In the barn, you said?" Jim asked Hunter.
"Yeah," he answered, then looked to me for confirmation. "Back left stall?"
I nodded. "I'm going inside for something to drink, so if you need me, I'll be on the porch. You'll find his truck behind the barn, but the trailer's mine."
"You knew him?" Jim asked.
"Nope," I said, popping the p. "Never met the man before in my life. No clue why he was here."
He glanced at Hunter and jerked his head toward the barn. "Ready, hoss?"
"Ready as I'll ever be." He turned to Gabi. "I have some questions, but I'm gonna take care of the scene first."
She nodded. "Holler when you're ready. I'm not going anywhere."
When we made it to the house, she collapsed on a chair in the kitchen and put her face in her hands. I poured us both a healthy glass of wine and joined her.
"There's somethin' else, Noe. I had a fallin' out with Marcus when he tried to stop me from takin' Mayhem."
I pulled my hair back from my face, not liking the sound of that at all. "You better tell Hunter about it now, then. They're gonna find out anyway, and it would be better if you got ahead of it."
"You're right." She downed about a third of her wine. "He ain't gonna like it though."
"That's for sure," I said, then sat down to wait.
CHAPTER FOUR
MY AUNT ADDY POPPED in a few minutes later, and I mean that literally. Like I said, she'd passed almost a year before, but a couple of weeks after her funeral, I'd been cleaning stalls and crying—something I'd done a lot of in those days—when she'd shown up in the doorway telling me everything was gonna be alright. I'd never been so happy to see somebody in my entire life, and she'd been right.
For the first few months, she'd hung around the house, not sure how to get from one place to another. By the time we figured out how she could get around, she'd about driven me batty. Even in life, she was bossy. Take away her ability to physically do things, and that left nothing for her to do but micromanage every single task at the farm. Now she was away from home more than she ever was when she was alive. She called it her post-life retirement.
"What's goin' on in the barn? Belle"—the former owner and current
resident ghost of Clip N Curl, the local beauty parlor—“said she heard somebody got kilt out here." She glared at me. "I told her she was surely mistaken, because you'd have let me know."
This had the potential to get ugly if I didn't handle it with kid gloves. "Belle was right, but we haven't been in the house long enough for me to call for you. It's not even been a half-hour since we found the—"
She popped out before I could finish the thought, but wasn't gone long before she appeared again. "Mercy, them are some homely boots. Not near as homely as that pile of shit he face-planted in, though. Who is it?"
Did I mention that Addy's filter is more like a climbing net?
Gabi spoke up. "Remember Sylvia Sturgess? The lady I worked for in Eagle Gap?"
Addy crinkled her brow. "Yeah. I met her a few times. She was a savvy old bird with a ton of horse sense. What's she got to do with this?"
"That's her son takin' a dirt nap in our stall," I said.
"Oh. Well, I reckon he had to belong to somebody. So what's the deal?"
Gabi spoke up. "We came home from estate salin' and when we brought the horses in, Mayhem flipped out and wouldn't enter his stall. When we went to find out what the problem was, that's what we found."
"Well what in the name of all that's holy was he doin' in our barn? And is that his truck hooked to our trailer?"
I nodded. "I don't have any idea why he hooked up to our trailer or what he was doin' here, and he's not exactly in a position to answer any questions."
Gabi looked around. "Are we sure about that? Did you see any, uh, non-breathin' folks down there, Ms. Addy?"
Addy raised her brows. "None wearin' a horse-pucky face mask."
"That's probably a good thing." Gabi shuddered. "He was obnoxious and handsy in life. I can only imagine what kind of peepin'-Tom pervert he'd be as a ghost."
"Thank heaven for small favors then," I said, getting up to bring the wine bottle to the table. "Addy, we have a bigger problem."
"Don't we always," she said. "Lemme guess—he'd found a way around the will."
"Not exactly, though that would have definitely been a bigger problem." Gabi pulled her curly hair back from her face and looped it into a ponytail. "I got in a fight with him when I took Mayhem and my stuff from the Diamond Rail."
My unflappable aunt puffed out her cheeks. "That does put a briar in things, but you have an alibi. You just said you were with Noelle today, right?"
Gabi swirled her wine and concentrated on watching it run down the glass. "Not all day. I came here by myself and picked up the trailer, then met Noelle over in Eagle Gap."
"You gotta tell Hunter so it don't bite you later," Addy said.
The front screen door opened, then slammed shut and Hunter strode in, looking a little worse for wear. "I'm almost afraid to ask what she has to tell me."
"Is everybody gone?" I asked. I hadn't heard them leave, but then again, I'd had a little more on my mind than paying attention to who was coming and going.
He shook his head. "Jim's still finishing up. It's tough because of the sawdust. His nails were chewed to the quick so there's not likely to be anything there, but we're hoping to find something either on the back of his shirt or on the spurs. Whoever did that would have had a tight grip, so if we're lucky, they left some skin behind." He turned to Gabi. "Now, what is it you have to tell me?"
She took a fortifying swig, then looked him in the eye. "We got in a knock-down, drag-out when I took Mayhem. When you talk to the barn staff, you're gonna learn about it, and it wasn't pretty. Lots of name callin' and anatomically impossible suggestions."
He groaned. "Anything else?"
"I may have told him I hoped he died."
He rolled his head back. "And that's it?"
"That's it. Other than what you know about me inheritin' Mayhem."
"And you don't have an alibi for this morning, I assume?"
"Nope." She pulled in a deep breath then blew it out again. "But I didn't do it."
Hunter went to the fridge and eyeballed the beer he kept in there, but reached for the tea instead. "Of course you didn't do it. But now I gotta prove it. And at the same time, figure out who did."
Pht. Easy peasy.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hunter went back outside, taking the tea pitcher and several solo cups with him and muttering about women and murder suspects. I chose to ignore that last part, partly because he'd taken it so well and hadn't even batted an eye when she said she was innocent. A small part of me had been afraid he'd have to arrest her, at least for appearances, so I was grateful she was still sitting at the table, sans jail-house bracelets.
I divvied the remainder of the wine between us, then made the requisite calls to keep my own tail out of the frying pan. I texted Raeann, my best friend and cousin, first. She was finally dipping her toe back into the dating pool after her last serious boyfriend had tried to blow us up, so she was at the movies with a doctor she'd been out with a few times.
Next, I called Bobbie Sue. Our relationship had several strands that bound us together. She'd been friends with my mama and had taken me under her wing when she passed. I also worked for her part time at her barbecue joint, drank with her on Mondays, and co-parented a nine-year-old boy named Justin, though recently, I'd moved into the background and played more of the role of favorite aunt. In other words, she'd skin me alive if she heard the news second-hand.
By the time I got off the phone with her, I'd finished my wine, Rae'd texted back, and I'd missed two calls—one from Anna Mae, another of our girl-crew, and one from Coralee, the owner of the beauty parlor. Frankly, I was surprised she hadn't just shown up to see for herself.
Addy'd been talking to Gabi while I was on the phone and said she'd go talk to the girls at the Clip N Curl and give them the information first hand.
It was always better when you were about to be at the center of the gossip du jour—though this one would probably take top spot on the weekly chart—to get out ahead of it with them if you could. Captain of your own ship and all that. Because trust me—if you let them drive, it was hard to tell where the story would end up. It was either spill the truth or risk ending up with folks thinking Jimmy Hoffa'd been right there in that stall all this time.
Rae's text said the movie was over and she was on the way. I asked her to grab a couple pizzas since Hunter said he'd be a while.
Tires crunched on the driveway and before I could even get up, two pairs of shoes slapped across the porch and the screen door squealed as somebody about ripped it off its hinges. Crap. I hadn't called Shelby.
"So," my little sister said, slamming her hands on her hips, "anybody wanna share why our barn is full of cops and ambulance people and half the horses are still turned out, starin' at me like they're starvin' to death?" Her boyfriend Cody stood behind her, as eager as she was for an explanation, but not nearly as vocal.
I ran my tongue over my front teeth, kicking myself for not calling her, especially considering all I had to do was open my mind and knock on her adjoining mental door. "I'm sorry, Shel. Everything's been nuts for the last hour."
I gave her the 411 and she plopped into a chair to absorb it all. Her initial reaction was one I didn't see coming but should have because it was classic Shelby.
"I'm not cleaning that stall. Your dead guy, your pitchfork."
Gabi and I looked at her rebellious expression, and started laughing. Once we started, we couldn't stop, and Shelby and Addy joined in. Cody was left staring at us like we'd lost our minds.
"Lordy, I needed that," Gabi said, swiping her finger underneath her eye to fix her running eyeliner.
"So what now?" Shelby asked.
"So now we wait for them to finish up, then we go out and feed, and hope Gabi doesn't go to prison." I cocked a brow at her. "Still glad you moved back to Keyhole?"
"You bet your boots I am. If I still lived over there, I'd already be in jail. The sheriff isn't a fan. Last year, some hoodlums broke onto the property with thei
r four-wheelers and tore up the pasture and a few fence panels. They were throwing rocks at the horses and I called the law. Sylvia demanded restitution, and one of the kids turned out to be the sheriff's son."
"Well look at you, just makin' friends wherever you go," Shelby said.
Cody shrugged. "Lucky it was you and not me. I'da made it more personal."
That surprised me, because Cody was most definitely the calming force in that relationship. Then again, he was also following in his uncle's footsteps and becoming a vet. Being mean to an animal was the same as being mean to a little kid in his book, as it should be.
"So it's safe to assume you're not going to get a sterling recommendation from him, then," I said.
"That would be a safe assumption, yes," she said, tipping the empty wine bottle over her glass.
Shelby went to the fridge and pulled out a couple bottles of water and handed her one.
The sound of vehicle doors slamming brought me to my feet. I went to the kitchen window and breathed a sigh of relief; one of the ambulance guys gave a tug on the back door, then went around and climbed into the front seat. As they drove off, Jim and Hunter came out of the barn. Hunter took his hat off and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then shoved his hat back on his head.
The two men talked for a few minutes, then shook hands. Jim went to his SUV and Hunter headed toward the house as the FBI-looking truck pulled off. Finally, my barn was empty and—hopefully—free of dead bodies.
Hunter came inside, and rather than sit down, he chose to stand. "The only thing left to do is take your statements, and I think under the circumstances, Smitty should be present." Smitty was Hunter's second-in-command and a good guy. "However, he's out of town at a music festival tonight with his girl, so it's gonna have to wait 'til in the morning. I have to run back to the office and file the initial paperwork, then I'll be back."