Vice and Verdict

by Nic Saint

  “You seemed to like it just fine when you kissed me the other day.”

  “The other day? I kissed you weeks ago!”

  “And whose fault is that?!” I cried, giving him my best glowering look.

  He seemed taken aback by my intensity and backed off, holding up his hands. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, Saffron, but—”

  “What’s going on here is that you kissed me and then totally ignored me!”

  “I didn’t ignore you. I just—”

  I flapped my arms like a chicken about to lay an egg. “I don’t know how they handle things where you come from, Logan, but around these parts when a boy kisses a girl it means something!”

  He gave me a sheepish look. “I messed up, didn’t I?”

  “You sure did. Look, I understand that you’re not the least bit interested in me—but why the sudden cold shoulder treatment? I didn’t deserve that.”

  “No, you did not,” he admitted. “And I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused.”

  “Inconvenience! I’m not a commuter stuck in traffic, Logan!”

  “I know, I know,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. He looked positively flustered now, and more handsome than ever. Lucien must have felt the same way, for he was still filming, only this time he was licking his lips, clearly in the throes of some kind of Logan mania. If he wasn’t my brother, I’m pretty sure he would have been Team Logan and not Team Saffron.

  “Look, I don’t care that you don’t like me,” I continued.

  “But that’s just it—I do like you,” he insisted.

  I looked up at this. “You do?”

  “Sure. I mean, what’s not to like? You’re feisty, exasperating, whip-smart, pretty as hell… I like you just fine. It’s just that…”

  “It’s just that what?”

  “It’s just that the Chief told me to stay away from you and your family.”

  “Chief Whitehouse told you to stay away?”

  “Yeah, basically he told me that the Diffleys are bad news.”

  I stared at the man. Now this was news. Grandma would be most interested to hear it, seeing as she and Chief Whitehouse were old friends.

  Or at least that’s what they were supposed to be.

  “So you see, I was kind of torn right there,” said Logan. “On the one hand I like you, Saffron. I really do. On the other…” He held up his hands and then dropped them to his sides again. I saw what he meant. As the new cop in town he wasn’t going to ignore a direct order from his superior officer.

  “Well, let me just have a little chat with the Chief,” I said, “and clear this whole thing right up.”

  He looked alarmed at this. “Um… I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why not? He’s the one who said we’re bad news. I’d like to know why.”

  “Yeah. Only—I probably shouldn’t have told you. And what’s more—I probably shouldn’t have listened to him in the first place. I mean—I’m my own man and perfectly capable of making my own decisions. So…”

  I wondered where he was going with this. “So?”

  He took a deep breath. “So you wanna try some more of this kissing thing?”

  I emitted a disgusted groan. And stalked off. ‘Try some more of this kissing thing?’ After blowing me off because his boss told him to? What a jerk!

  “Was it something I said?” he yelled after me.

  Chapter 6

  I looked up when a new person arrived on the scene, looking extremely distraught. I had a hunch this might be the husband Logan had mentioned.

  When he cried, “My wife! Where is my wife?!” I knew I was right.

  I moved over to have a chat with him but Logan beat me to the punch. He held up his hand to ward me off—not unlike a traffic cop—then grabbed the guy by the arm and led him away.

  Fuming, I returned to Lucien, who was still filming, Logan his sole focus.

  “Hey,” I repeated, when he didn’t react, then pinched him on the arm.

  “Ouch! What did you have to go and do that for?”

  “This is a murder investigation, Lucien, not a vanity project.”

  “Touchy, are we? I guess your little tête-à-tête with Detective Munroe didn’t go as planned?”

  “You know what he told me?”

  “Of course I do. I filmed the whole thing. Très dramatic.”

  I ignored him. “He had the gall to tell me his boss told him to stay away from me! And so he did!”

  “That’s a horrible admission,” Lucien admitted, feigning sympathy.

  I walked circles around Lucien, kicking at leaves and stomping on tree roots. “Can you believe that?”

  “Yes, I can. Like I said, I filmed the whole thing.”

  “I mean, what’s so terrible about the Diffleys that the Chief of Police, of all people, has to go and warn his officers to stay away from us?”

  This gave Lucien pause. “Do you think he’s done this with others? I mean—do you think he’s told other people to back off?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. What I want to know is why he would do such a thing.”

  “He must think we’re bad news,” said Lucien. “Bad eggs.”

  “Well, I don’t care what he thinks. He’s got no right to interfere in my—”

  “Love life?”

  “I’m going to have a word with Gran about this.”

  “So she can have a word with the Chief. I like your thinking,” said my brother, then held up his smartphone again, filming Logan in action while he interviewed the new arrival. “So who do you think that guy is?”

  “Kandace Slaker’s husband. They called him the minute they found his wife’s remains.”

  Lucien shivered. “A rather gruesome crime, don’t you think?”

  “Extremely gruesome,” I admitted. “Looks like they chopped the woman up into tiny little pieces and then distributed her across the hillside.”

  “Not just the hillside. Across several geocaching sites,” said Lucien.

  “Geocaching?” I’d been so busy venting my grief about Logan I’d failed to consider we were at a crime scene, and should probably be busy solving the crime.

  Lucien took a deep breath. “Geocaching is when people hide small objects in boxes, then hide those boxes and mark the GPS location on a map for others to find. It’s a form of modern treasure hunting. Participants look for the caches by using an app, and once they’ve found the site they’re free to remove objects from the cache and replace them with other objects of their choosing.”

  “Objects? What kind of objects?”

  “Oh, anything will do. Coins are very popular, or ornamental buttons, CDs, books. Disposable cameras, so you can take a picture when you’ve found the cache and upload it to the site, proving your claim.” He glanced at the black box where the police officers were still hovering about. “Only this time someone decided to distribute a person amongst the objects, apparently.”

  I saw that one of the medical examiners was done examining a second site, and decided to have a word with the woman. Approaching her, I saw she was raven-haired and pretty for someone who spent her time poking dead people.

  “Hi,” I said by way of introduction. “My name is Saffron Diffley.”

  “I know who you are,” she said dismissively. “And I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  This took me aback somewhat. “But Chief Whitehouse—”

  “Chief Whitehouse told me that I don’t have to talk to you or your family, no matter how strongly you may insist.”

  Lucien, who’d joined me, seemed as surprised by this as I was.

  “Diffley Insurance has always enjoyed a very close working relationship with the Happy Bays Police Department,” he said.

  The woman fixed him with an unfriendly look. “Well, that may have been the case before, but I’m afraid all your privileges have been revoked, Mr. Diffley. If you have any questions, better take it up with the Chief. I have more work to do.” A
t this, she stalked off, presumably on her way to another cache.

  Lucien and I were left staring at one another. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Um. I have no idea,” said Lucien. “This is all very strange. And very upsetting.”

  The smell of cigarette smoke drifted towards us. When I looked back, I saw that the newly arrived man was seated on a tree stump, smoking a cigarette. I stalked over, determined not to let the lack of police cooperation affect me.

  “Mr. Slaker?”

  He looked up. “This is terrible,” he said softly. “Simply terrible.”

  I crouched down next to him. “What happened here, exactly?”

  “My wife. They butchered her. Like an animal!”

  Chapter 7

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Slaker.”

  He nodded, looking distraught. “I knew this would happen. I knew that this geocaching nonsense would be my wife’s downfall and now it has.”

  “Was your wife into geocaching, sir?”

  “Are you kidding me? Kandace was the queen of geocaching.” Slaker was a smallish man with thinning brown hair, dressed in a nice charcoal three-piece suit that looked completely out of place out here in the woods.

  “The queen of geocaching?”

  He gave me a frown. “Sorry to be rude, but who are you? Are you a cop? You don’t look like a cop. I mean, not that all cops should look a certain way, but they usually do. And you don’t look like it, if you know what I mean.”

  “My name is Saffron Diffley,” I said. “And that’s my brother Lucien. We represent Diffley Insurance. Your wife took out a life insurance policy with our firm, and we’re checking into her death preparatory to processing a claim.”

  His frown deepened. “Diffley Insurance? I don’t recall signing a contract with you people.”

  “Well, your wife did, sir.”

  “No, she didn’t. Kandace never bothered with that kind of stuff. Left the paperwork for me. I’m an accountant, see. I’m used to shuffling papers. While Kandace was off doing her geocaching stuff I was in charge of all of that.”

  “Well, be that as it may, she still signed with our agency,” I said, darting an anxious look at Lucien. I couldn’t believe he’d left me here fending for myself. He was taking in the scene, filming the woods. Probably shooting background footage.

  “Lemme see the contract,” said the husband, not relenting.

  “I didn’t bring it, but I can get it to you as soon as I hit the office.”

  He shrugged. “It’s possible, of course. Kandace liked to do her own thing.”

  “So she was into geocaching?” I asked, happy to steer the conversation away from contracts or anything related to insurance.

  “Yeah. Geocaching was her life. She wrote the book on the damn phenomenon. Literally. Big bestseller. In fact she wrote five, with number six coming out next month. She had a very successful vlog, which is why she was prancing around these woods last night, I suppose.”

  “Vlog?” asked Lucien, who’d finally joined us. “Your wife had a vlog?”

  “Sure. Only one of the most successful ones. Millions of hits. Or so she told me.” He gave me an apologetic look. “I’m not into that kind of stuff myself.”

  Lucien’s eyes shone with excitement. “The queen of geocaching. Did I hear that right?”

  “That’s what they called her. She was always filming for her vlog. Her and that videographer she hired. Blas Storer. Young guy. Always following her around.”

  “Do you think that’s what she was doing here?”

  “Sure. These woods are full of geocaches. A lot of them she put here.”

  “She put those boxes here?”

  “Yeah. She was an avid geocacher—look, I told all of this stuff to the cops already. No offense, but why don’t you talk to them?”

  “Perhaps you can tell us what they told you, sir.”

  “Yeah, they won’t talk to us for some reason,” said Lucien.

  “The cops won’t talk to you but I’m supposed to? I don’t think so, buddy.”

  “Well, we do have a claim to process, Mr. Slaker,” said Lucien.

  He gave this some thought. “Life insurance, huh? How much?”

  “She had one of our best and most lucrative packages,” said Lucien.

  “How much?” the guy insisted.

  “One million dollars,” said Lucien, and I had the impression he simply drew that particular number out of his hat. Like a magician.

  But the trick worked. Mr. Slaker’s face betrayed a sudden excitement. “Well, what do you want to know?” he asked, taking a long drag from his cigarette and emitting a plume of smoke. He was almost smiling now.

  “Have they found… more of your wife?” asked Lucien.

  The guy’s face fell. I gave Lucien a poke and hissed, “Insensitive much?”

  “The big cop over there just told me that they’ve been finding pieces of her all morning. So far they’ve found her feet, hands, legs, head…” He swallowed. “The only part still missing is her torso, which seems to be too big to fit in one of those geocaching boxes and might have been buried someplace else.”

  “Are they quite sure it’s your wife?” asked Lucien—a totally useless question as we’d both seen her name on the piece of Karma Corps parchment.

  “Yeah. Yeah, they seem pretty sure. They found her driver’s license and some other personal items.” He looked away. “They found her wedding ring.”

  “What about the videographer?” I asked. “Any sign of him?”

  “Nope.” He gave us a significant look. “Which seems pretty damning, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You mean you think that he…”

  He nodded emphatically. “I never trusted the guy. I told Detective Munroe the same thing. Ever since he got involved with my wife, I’ve been warning her about him. A piece of no-good scum if ever I saw one.” He fixed us with an intent look. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he was behind this horrible business.”

  Chapter 8

  It was hard not to be impressed by all that had happened. I mean, I may be a Diffley but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching gruesome stuff happen to other people. Lucien, too, was uncharacteristically silent as we drove away from Bethlehem Heights and made our way back down to Happy Bays.

  “So what’s next?” I asked finally, wondering if my brother would aimlessly drive around until the horrible imagery of Kandace Slaker’s assorted and apparently randomly distributed body parts were erased from our minds.

  “Well, in a case like this I usually defer to my partner,” said Lucien, then cast a meaningful look at me.

  “You mean… I get to decide what to do next? But you’re the more experienced agent here, Lucien.”

  “I know!” he cried, burying his face in his hands, then looking up again when he realized he was driving a car. “I mean—I usually team up with Calvin, and he always seems to know what to do.”

  He was right. Calvin might be a pain in the ass but he had a knack for this kind of stuff.

  “So maybe we call Calvin and ask him what to do next?” I suggested.

  He shook his head. “No way. We’re the agents tasked with this particular assignment and we should see it through to the end. We’re Diffleys, for Christ’s sakes. We’re supposed to have sleuthing in our blood.”

  I didn’t share his confidence, but he had a point. We were the agents in charge. We had to see this through.

  “Did you really mean that stuff about paying a million dollars to Rycroft Slaker?”

  He laughed. “That’s a trick I picked up from Calvin. If people refuse to cooperate, simply promise them a payout big enough to allay their suspicions. They usually stop asking questions when they think about the money.”

  “So… you’re not going to pay him?”

  “Of course not. We might be karma agents but we’re not swimming in money. I mean, have you seen Diffley Manor? The place is a dump.”

  “So what are you going to tell him when he
demands his million bucks?”

  He waved a deprecating hand. “We won’t tell him anything. We’ll simply wipe his mind and that’s it.”

  “Oh. Of course.” I hadn’t thought of that. It was the perfect solution. First we promised the husband a big chunk of dough, and then we simply deleted the thought from his mind. How brilliant. I only wished I could eradicate the memory of Logan Munroe from my mind.

  Lucien must have picked up on my thoughts for he glanced over. “Still thinking about Logan?”

  “Is it so obvious?”

  “Pretty much. Besides, I taped your conversation, remember? I heard the whole thing.”

  “Gah,” I muttered. “I hope you’re not thinking about posting that stuff on your blog.”

  “Vlog. And no, of course not. I would never do anything to harm my own sister. I was, however, thinking of cropping you out of the frame, dropping the audio, and posting footage of Logan. He looked pretty hot in that shirt.”

  I turned to my brother. “Don’t you dare, Lucien.”

  “All right, all right. Don’t get your panties in a wad.”

  I raised my eyes heavenward. Or roof-of-car-ward. “I just don’t get it,” I said. “Why, all of a sudden, is Chief Whitehouse telling his officers not to engage with us? And why, oh, why, is a guy like Logan following orders?”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but I felt seriously hurt that Logan would kick me to the curb simply because his boss told him to. I would have thought a man like him would thwart any attempt by the higher-ups to control his love life.

  Then again, it simply showed how little he cared about me. Not that I’d expected him to. Two kisses does not a relationship make.

  “He did suggest to try some more of ‘that kissing thing,’” Lucien helpfully reminded me.

  “Ugh. Let’s not even go there.”

  “So. Where do we go now? Unless you want me to keep driving around in circles?”

  I frowned hard, trying to organize my thoughts. “Chat with Chief Whitehouse?”

  “Better leave that to Gran. If anyone can get through to the Chief it’s her.”