A Killer Tail

by Addison Moore

  I take a breath as I smile over at Brooklynn. “I’d ask what a legal eagle like you is doing in a place like this, but I think I know the answer.”

  Brooklynn’s left brow hikes a notch. “You do?” Although it’s entirely plausible the word has spread already—hot gossip usually does—I doubt any of these women run in legal social circles.

  I nod. “I used to wait tables and the tips were phenomenal. They were sort of addicting, actually. I still miss them.” Honest to God’s truth. But I wouldn’t trade working at the inn for all the tips in the world.

  Her mouth parts before she bites down on her glossy pink lip.

  “You got me.” She laughs. “I won’t lie. Things aren’t going so well on the legal front, so having this place as a fallback has really come in handy.” Fallback? More like the only monetary show in town. She squints my way. “Hey? Did you ever lawyer up? Is the sheriff’s department giving you a hard time?” She seems like a nice kid. I’d hate to see the legal system hammering down on her for no reason. She was white as a sheet that night as soon as she realized what really happened to the poor guy. I felt sorrier for her than I did for him.

  “My brother.” I nod. “But he’s not really doing anything. I haven’t had any problems because of it.”

  Georgie gives a sly wink. “She’s sleeping with the lead detective. Bizzy has been known to use her body to get out of a tight spot now and again.”

  “Hey—whatever works.” Juni is quick to toast me with her Purple Rain, and I can smell the vodka pluming off her breath.

  I shake my head over at Brooklynn. “None of that is true. Sort of. Anyway, I’ve been cleared as a suspect. I don’t know who did that to Wyatt, but it wasn’t me.” A thought comes to mind. “Hey, before he passed, I think he mentioned that you held an interest in the store.” He didn’t, but that’s neither here nor there.

  She narrows her eyes until they form perfect half-moons. “I do. Did. But I sold my share almost a year ago.”

  “Oh?” My interest is piqued. “Who bought it?”

  She shrugs. “Some investment group. Anyway, that’s old history. And now Wyatt is gone. It’s all a bit surreal to me.”

  “Who do you think could have done something like this?”

  She takes a breath. Me, for starters. But then half the people in that room could have said that. “His girlfriend is what the Brits like to call a nutter.”

  No sooner does she say those words than Juni sputters with a choo-choo train-like laughter.

  “Nutter.” She smacks Georgie on the hand, and now the two of them are sputtering with laughter together and all the while spraying Purple Rain in their wake.

  Leave it to Georgie and Juni to turn an innocent bar into a biological hazard.

  “Molly Shay?” I ask. “I think I met her that night.”

  Brooklynn lifts a bottle of vodka my way as if acknowledging the fact before getting back to mixing a drink.

  “Yup,” she says. “Although there were others that had a beef with Wyatt, too.”

  “Like who?” I lean my ear her way.

  “Like Thomas.” She glowers at the bottle in her hand as if it had managed to morph into the man himself. “He and Wyatt had a very strained relationship.”

  Juni’s jaw glides forward. “Like how strange?” It figures. The vodka is affecting her hearing. Brooklynn said strained, not strange. “Like eating raw onions together before starting a shift strange, or secretly playing Christmas carols year-round strange?”

  “You take that back.” Georgie wags an unsteady finger at the fruit of her womb. “Bizzy loves to listen to Christmas carols year-round. That does not make her weird.”

  I’d swear on all that is holy, an entire bottle of vodka just emitted from Georgie’s mouth.

  She lifts a hand my way. “The mind reading she’s capable of makes her weird.”

  I suck in a sharp breath and hold it.

  Georgie Conner! If I weren’t already a suspect in a homicide investigation, I’d kill you.

  Of course, she has no clue what I just threatened her with because she’s not the one who can read minds.

  Brooklynn laughs as if it were funny. “Don’t worry, Bizzy. I hear that same thing from other customers not too long after they get a bit of Purple Rain down the drain.” She winks. “Hazard of the job. So where were we?”

  “Thomas.” I nod, choosing not to acknowledge the fact both Georgie and Juni are starting to sway. I figure I have about a ten second window to button this up. “How well did you know him?”

  Wait a minute. Brooklynn leans back and stares at me through slotted lids. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this were an interrogation. She exhales a moment. What am I saying? Paranoid much? Of course, this isn’t an investigation. I’ve given them nothing to investigate.

  “I know Thomas,” she says. And now I’m going to make sure these three ladies know a little about him, too. “He and Wyatt were in some creepy fraternity together. Wyatt mentioned it once during a meeting.”

  Now we’re getting to the good part.

  “Creepy fraternity?”

  She nods. “Order of the Skeletons, or Skulls, I think it was. Anyway, they were both at Somerset together, and all of their disagreements always seem to point to the past.”

  “Brooklynn”—I tap my fingernails over the granite counter as if trying to hold her attention—“what do you think happened?”

  She gives a quick sweep of the vicinity before leaning in. “I think either Molly or Thomas did it. I mean, think about it. Molly was obsessed with the guy to no end, but recently, rumor has it, Wyatt was caught with his hand in the cookie jar—the cookie jar of one of his co-workers.”

  Juni gives a haphazard nod that looks as if it has the power to knock her right off her chair.

  “That’s right.” Juni holds up her drink. “It was the Stormy Westin cookie jar. Good news travels fast.” She gives a wink and ends up keeping one eye closed as if she were too lazy, or perhaps too drunk to reopen it.

  “Let’s see…” Brooklynn glances to the side as she picks apart suspects in her mind. “Molly was more than just the jealous type. People are possessions to her. And then Thomas”—a dry laugh rattles through her—“he was simply irate. I don’t know specifically what they were arguing about, but whatever it was, it always managed to draw the entire bookstore into their tension.”

  “Brooklyn, do you know anything else about the fraternity they were in?”

  She wags a finger. “It wasn’t a fraternity. God no. There’s not a university on this planet who would sanction their behavior. This was more or less like a bad boy society. Or at least for those who wish they could be bad boys. Supposedly, they did things—permanent things to people.” She cocks her head. “People who wouldn’t be able to say anything about the things that happened to them.”

  The pieces to the puzzle she’s giving me are beginning to click.

  “Are you saying those people are dead?”

  She gives a single nod. “But hey, they were only rumors. I mean, what are the odds of this secret skull society actually removing people from the planet?”

  “They were scholars, though,” I say. “I mean, they were also just starting off their lives. It’s hard to believe they’d want to ruin their bright futures by committing a homicide.”

  “You’re right.” She pours another drink and slides it to Juni.

  “What about that book Wyatt had upstairs? The Agatha Christie first print run?”

  “What about it?” Her eyes grow large and stay that way for a little too long.

  “It’s missing.”

  “No!” she gasps as if the thought truly frightened her. “That’s interesting.” She shakes her head. Knew it.

  She averts her eyes, and now I want to know exactly what she knows.

  “Who do you think took it?” I ask. “Do you think the killer has it?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know who the killer is. But the book? I’m pretty sure Thomas has i
t. The way he doted over it you’d think it was his copy. And now it very well may be.” She inverts her lips a moment. I do my best to pick up on her thoughts, but she’s gone blank. “I’m still not convinced Thomas was capable of something like that. There was the young girl he was having an affair with. Let’s just say Molly wasn’t the only one that was a little miffed about that one. Stormy, that’s the girl he was caught with”—she nods to Juni because she was right—“her boyfriend is a notorious hothead. They used to come by this place on occasion, but some poor fool tried to dance with Stormy and her boyfriend, Dax, pulled a knife. The bouncers here kicked him out and made sure they never came back.”

  “A knife?” I startle. That’s exactly what sent Wyatt over the rainbow bridge. “Do you think Dax could have killed Wyatt Sanders?”

  The tips of her lips curl. “I think we’re both wondering. I’m just not sure if the sheriff’s department is savvy enough to wonder about it, too.”

  “I’ll make sure they’re up to speed. I know for a fact they don’t want to leave a single stone unturned.”

  “Good.” Brooklynn slides an entire bowl full of candied cherries toward Georgie and my silver clad friend quickly gobbles them up. “More than anything I want Wyatt’s killer caught and behind bars. Nobody should have to see that, let alone have their life ended in such a brutal manner.”

  I lift my glass as if I were toasting her. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  A slew of women dressed with neon cosmetics and their hair fanned out above their head a foot tall swoop in and beg for Purple Rain.

  Brooklynn excuses herself and quickly immerses herself in her work.

  I mull over our conversation. Brooklynn all but implied that Wyatt and Thomas might have killed somebody. Thomas and Wyatt had tension according to her as well. And then there’s Dax. My surprise suspect. I bet he’s not even on Jasper’s radar.

  If Dax turns out to be the killer, Jasper will practically thank me for coming here tonight and having this conversation.

  All’s well that ends well.

  And if it isn’t ending well, it isn’t the end.

  But it didn’t end so well for Wyatt Sanders, now, did it?

  And for Wyatt, it was most certainly the end.

  Chapter 14

  Georgie and Juni were out as far as heading over to Needlepoint Tattoos again and talking to Dax.

  Georgie is still nursing a bum bum. Her words exactly. And Juni wasn’t all that interested in turning her hands into orange bruises. Her words exactly as well.

  But I’m not looking to speak to Stormy this time. I want to speak to the head honcho of that place, Dax. In fact, I want to one-up it and crawl into his mind.

  Jasper finally got back to his cottage today a little after five and promptly crashed on his sofa. Poor guy never even made it to the bedroom. So I took Sherlock Bones back to my cottage, along with Gatsby and Fish, and fed them all dinner, let them out to use the restroom, and left them with a pile of toys while I went out for the evening.

  Lucky for me, I won’t have to head to Needlepoint Tattoos in Whaler’s Cove alone because I happen to have a sister who, not only is free on this, the holiest of date nights, but is itching to get a tattoo needle twitching over her flesh.

  “Now we’re talking.” Macy gives a wistful shake of the head up at the neon signage in front of the tattoo parlor.

  Her blonde hair is in a freshly shorn bob. She’s donned a hot pink velour sweat suit that reads yummy across her chest, and don’t think for a second it’s gone unnoticed. Macy scored at least three different catcalls as we made our way down the pier and one mostly coherent marriage proposal from a man clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  She sniffs my way. “I’ve always known getting a permanent etching on my body was a part of my destiny. And tonight”—she slings her arm over my shoulders—“you, my little sister, are about to witness the inevitable.”

  “And you, my big sister, are about to witness an interrogation. Try to stay out of it. Maybe take a nap while he’s etching over your flesh, fulfilling your colorful destiny.”

  We head on into the shop and the faint scent of Chinese food permeates the air once again, must be dinner. There’s no sign of Stormy, and I’m not too sad about it. Macy asks for Dax specifically and the snarky blonde working the reception counter tells her to fill out the proper release of liability paperwork, and soon enough we’re ushered to the back.

  A thought comes to me. “Macy, what are you going to get? More importantly, where?”

  She tips her head as she considers it. “I was going to finish the one on my back, but I think I’ll take a page out of Georgie’s tatted up playbook instead and go for a bug on the rump.”

  “A blue butterfly,” I say. “And are you sure you want to sit there with your pants down while some strange man pokes and prods at your bottom for who knows how long?”

  Her blue eyes slit my way. “Is there a better way to spend a Friday night?”

  “I don’t know that I have an answer to that.”

  The blonde secretary sets us up in a room and plants a bunch of books with pictures of various butterflies in front of Macy and my sister quickly points one out. The blonde asks Macy to lie on her stomach and pull down her pants to an appropriate level before she leaves the room.

  “So it begins,” I say, trying hard not to stare at my sister’s glowing full moon.

  “The interrogation?” Macy asks as she turns her face in my direction.

  “The struggle to keep your hiney from etching itself permanently into my brain. There are only so many parts of you I want to commit to memory.”

  Before Macy can shoot me a comeback, the door opens and Dax steps on in.

  “Hello, ladies.” A grin expands on his face as he heads over to look at the paperwork on a small metal table, and suddenly this all feels very medical in nature, as if Macy had a bee sting her on the rear and now we were about to have a physician look at it. Although in this case he’s technically the bee, and he’s about to pull out his electronic stinger.

  Dax is tall, muscular, and wide chested with dirty blond hair that touches down just below his neck. Pale skin, light eyes, and an overall bored expression finish off his look.

  He takes a deep breath. “What are we doing today?” he asks as he scrubs up in the stainless sink in the corner. Honest to God, he’s lathering all the way to his elbows as if he were about to perform surgery and, come to think of it, he sort of is.

  Macy looks his way. “Well hey, good-looking.” She quickly flips her face over the bed to look my way. “Why didn’t you tell me he was gorgeous?”

  Dax rumbles out a laugh. “You’re cute yourself. But don’t waste your time or energy on me. I’m taken. In fact, I was thinking about proposing to my girlfriend in the next few months. I’m just trying to think up a clever way to do it.” He pulls on a pair of purple gloves. “So if either of you has any great ideas, by all means, let me know.”

  Great. Macy moans. Exactly what I was hoping to do. Find the cutest guy I’ve seen in months and help him plot out the perfect proposal—to someone else. How is this my life?

  I give my sister a quick pat to the hand.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I say as Macy points out the picture she chose and he takes the book from her. “My fiancé proposed out on the bluff in Cider Cove. There’s a gazebo there on the grass and there are flowers all around it this time of year thanks to the local horticulture club.”

  Dax straightens as he looks my way. “Gazebo, huh? I guess chicks dig stuff like that. My girl is romantic at heart.” He shrugs. “She’s cute and funny and kind. And she’d do just about anything for me.” And she has.

  Has she now?

  Dax pulls out some metal doo-hickey that looks like a drill and lands a fresh needle over the tip before heading over to the cupboard and pulling some vials out and adding it to the apparatus.

  I watch as he lathers the area they agreed upon with Betadine as he continues to prep
his workstation.

  He nods to my hands. “Looks like my girlfriend’s work.”

  “Oh, it is.” I hold out my hands for him to admire. The henna hasn’t budged an inch. Once Fish saw it, she tried to lick it off. She was disappointed I had opted to add spots to my look. I let her know it was a pretty pattern, much like her black and white stripes, but after a few weeks, it would all wash away. I hope. I hadn’t thought about having orange hands for my upcoming wedding pictures. “She did a great job. And while she was doing this, you were working on my friend, Georgie.”

  “Georgie!” He tips his head back and a genuine smile rides on his lips. “How’s the old gal doing? I hope she healed up okay. I thought she might need stitches.”

  “Stitches?” Macy rears her head his way.

  He gives a long blink. “Don’t worry. As long as you don’t squirm, you won’t need them. Georgie wasn’t a good candidate for a tattoo on the rear. It can be a ticklish event for some people and Georgie was jumping all over the table. It was impossible for her to hold still. There was a little nick that occurred and all bloody hell broke loose. Literally.”

  “That must be when she ran out screaming.” I shrug. “Sorry about that.”

  “It happens.” Dax sits on a stool and rolls over to Macy. “You’ll feel a pinch.”

  Macy lifts her head. “For like a second?”

  Dax makes a face. “For like forty-five minutes. Squeeze the handlebars in front of you. Some people find it helps.”

  Sure enough, there’s a pair of red rubber handlebars that look as if they were plucked off a bike and installed on the cabinet in front of Macy, and my sister grabs on as if she were readying herself for the most painful ride of her life.

  “I remember you from that night,” I say just as he turns on the instrument of terror he’s about to torment my sister with. It’s not nearly as noisy as I thought it would be, and I’m relieved about it, too. Not because it might not be as traumatic for my sister, but because I was hoping to continue my conversation with him.