by K. J. Emrick
He took her hand and led them around the Mustang to where the patrol cars were approaching. They were almost here. Cookie had just enough time to study the man and woman with their hands in the air. They were both young. The man was dark haired with russet brown eyebrows and tattoos crawling up and down his arms. The woman had her hair shaved down like a marine and multiple earrings going up the rim of her right ear. They both looked scared, now that the cops were bearing down on them.
Good, Cookie thought. They should be scared. They had to pay for what they had done, and they were going to be arrested and brought to justice.
The two cop cars raced up to them, and stopped side by side, and the officers stepped out with guns drawn and pointed.
Not just pointed at the two from their purple hatchback, but also at Cookie and Jerry.
“All of you put your hands up!” one of them shouted. “You’re all under arrest. Do not move!”
Cookie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. By the look on Jerry’s face, neither could he. “Guys,” he said. “I’m a police chief. I’m arresting these two for stealing a dead dog and I need your assistance—”
“Stop talking, and put your hands up,” the officer cut him off. “You’re under arrest. We’ll sort this out at our station.”
With a resigned sigh, Cookie raised her hands up. Going to the station was what she had wanted, after all.
Just not like this.
THE OFFICERS HAD BEEN nice enough to let them return the Mustang first, and pick up their motorhome, once she explained that her dog was still in there and he needed someone to take care of him.
One of the cars followed them back, and then followed them to the station, not letting them out of their sight once. But, at least they weren’t in handcuffs.
They were shown to a private room at the station and made to understand that there was going to be an officer at the door. Trying to leave was strongly discouraged.
“Are we under arrest?” Jerry asked.
“Let’s not take it to that step,” was the answer he got in return. Cookie wasn’t sure it actually answered the question.
Cream had wanted to come in with them, but cookie had convinced him to stay in the motorhome by bribing him with a handful of dog biscuits. Later she was going to have to spend lots of time with him to make up for them being apart so much. Maybe it was because she knew Boxer was dead, but she didn’t want to miss out on any more time with Cream. Not if she could help it.
With no choice but to wait, they sat down at two of the four chairs around a long metal table. This room must be used for interviews, Cookie decided. There was a video camera in the corner of the ceiling and a fern in one corner and nothing else. It was the kind of room that they always showed in those police dramas on television.
They didn’t have very long to wait before the door opened again. There was no clock in this room, but Cookie had been checking her watch every minute until something happened. Now they saw a uniformed officer coming in, brown shirt pressed and creased, his silver badge shining in the light. He was carrying an open manila folder in his hands, also like on those police dramas on television.
Only this wasn’t a patrol officer, or even a detective. The pins on the tabs of his collar were lieutenant’s bars. The big brass was here to talk to them. Obviously, they were taking this seriously.
“Sorry about the accommodations,” he said to them. “We’ve only got two interview rooms. Believe it or not, you’re in the better of the two.”
He sat down with them on the other side of the table, closing the folder and putting it on the table in front of him. He was a strange looking man, with gray at his temples but no hair on the top of his head and teeth that were crooked. His eyes were too wide. His nose, too. There was an honesty in the lines of his face, though. Cookie instantly liked the man.
“Well, well,” he said to them, leaning back in his chair. “I can’t remember the last time we had a police officer in this interview room. You’re Jerry Stansted, chief of police from a little town called Widow’s Rest. Good to meet you. I’m Lieutenant Duke Fairfield, and this is the Appannee County Sheriff’s Department. Good to know you.”
“Likewise,” Jerry said to him. “So this means we’re not under arrest?”
“Well,” Duke said, hesitating, “that remains to be seen.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
“Just that I want to get to know you before I make any decisions.” He nodded, as if that explained everything. “So. This lovely woman with you is… hold on, I have it here in the folder...”
“Karen Stansted,” she answered for him as he started flipping pages of notes and reports. “My friends call me Cookie.”
“Ah, I get it. You’re a baker in Widow’s Rest, is what it says here, and your nickname is Cookie. I get it.” He folded his hands on the table, over the papers. “Well. We’ve got ourselves a pickle here, folks. I can’t tell you how many reports we had from people around my jurisdiction telling me there were two cars speeding up Highway Seven. We have unlawful speed racers come through here every once in a while, so we didn’t think much about it. Figured it was just another day at the office, so to speak, until we found your car sideways in the road, and a dead dog in that other car. Want to tell me what that’s all about?”
“We’re trying to figure that out ourselves,” Jerry answered. “The two other people that you arrested are somehow connected to the murder of Ernesto Ferris.”
“Oh? How so?”
“That’s Ernesto’s dog you found in their car.”
The lieutenant tapped his finger against the table. “Maybe you should explain that one.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Jerry offered. “I don’t have all the pieces myself. See, we were at the Heaven’s Haven RV Park when Ernesto was murdered.”
“I know. My guys told me about that. Thank you for your help, by the way.”
“Uh, you’re welcome, but I need to point out that your guys only wanted so much help. Cookie and I both had information about this whole mystery, and we wanted to give statements, but your people didn’t want to hear about it.”
“Mystery, huh? Is that what you call a murder case in your jurisdiction.”
“Until it’s solved, yes. We do.”
Duke didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “Well. Go on.”
“I was saying,” Jerry repeated, “that your guys didn’t seem to want our help or hear what we had to say.”
“Yeah, I noticed this folder was pretty slim on details.” Duke scowled, and it made his face look even wider than it had before. “I’m sorry about the way you were treated. Do you want to give me those statements now? That way you can explain what a dead dog has to do with the murder of a man, when those two events took place several hundred miles away from each other.”
“Sure. I’d like to say it’s simple, but you might want to get comfortable. This could take a while.”
Jerry explained the events that had led them back to Whispering Maples to find Boxer’s body. His missing wallet, the phone call to Abraham Selk, all of it. While he did, Cookie added little details when he missed them, while her mind worked the puzzle through from every angle she could think of. The Appannee Sheriff’s Department already had the killer in custody. Humphrey Middlestead was a horrible man. It didn’t surprise her to think that he did these horrible things.
But she still had questions. How did the two from the purple hatchback fit into things? Why had they tried to steal Boxer’s body from them? And, most of all, she wanted to know why Humphrey had done the things he did.
Eventually, Jerry ran out of things to say and Lieutenant Fairfield ran out of things to ask. They sat in silence for a few minutes, while Fairfield wrote out notes on what he’d been told.
Jerry glanced at Cookie. She shrugged. As far as she knew, he hadn’t left anything out. She’d been expecting more of a reaction from Duke Fairfield, however, just like Jerry.
“Uh, Lieutenant?
” Jerry said to him. “You don’t seem surprised by any of this.”
“Well, that’s actually because I’m not,” Fairfield said. “Sort of. I mean, I am surprised that a visiting police chief and his wife put this all together before my guys did. No offense.”
“None taken,” Jerry assured him. “I have that kind of pride in my people, too.”
“Exactly. I’m also surprised that any man would want to kill another man. Even after being a police officer for the past twenty-two years, things like that still surprise me. What I’m not surprised at, however, is that Boxer the dog is dead.”
“Really?” Cookie said. “Because we were more than a little surprised to hear about it. We haven’t spoken to Stacia yet, but I’m guessing the death of her dog is going to be a shock for her to hear. I know Penny and Franky were surprised when they heard about it.”
“Penny and Franky,” Fairfield repeated, flipping through notes in his folder. “Those are the other friends travelling in your group, right? My guys talked to them at Heaven’s Haven.”
“Right. Stacia is actually staying with them now. She didn’t want to be in the motorhome she’d been sharing with her husband. Not after he was killed there.”
“Can’t blame her for that. All right. So, Penny and Franky knew Boxer was dead. When did they find out about it?”
“When we called them,” Jerry explained again. “We told them what Selk had said about Boxer, and then we told them we were going back to pick up the dog. So everybody knows about it by now, except Stacia. The real question here, is how come you aren’t surprised by it?”
Duke opened the manila folder again and flipped over a couple of pages before he got to the one he needed. “This is why.”
He turned the page around, and then slid it across to them. Jerry centered it between him and Cookie, and they read it together. It was the preliminary report from the police lab on the blood streaked across Humphrey Middlestead’s cane.
There was a lot of scientific jargon but after reading it through twice, Cookie started to make sense of it. The blood had no RH factor. Instead it had something called a DEA factor and at first Cookie thought the report was mentioning the Drug Enforcement Agency until she remembered where else she had seen that term before. It referred to antigens found in canine blood.
The blood on the cane was dog’s blood.
“I can see you understand what this says,” Duke said when he saw Cookie’s expression change. “I figured, you guys both being good pet owners like you are, that you would know about canine blood types. I actually had to have it explained to me. It turns out humans only have the two RH factors, positive and negative, and four blood types, but dogs have something like a dozen blood types.”
“That’s right,” Cookie said. “Each with their own subgroups.”
“Who knew, right? Well, anyway. The blood on Humphrey Middlestead’s cane is dog’s blood, and I’ll bet once the lab has the chance to compare a sample of Boxer’s blood to the samples from the cane, it will be a match.”
“Oh?” Cookie said. “I was hoping you’d let us take Boxer with us, to give him a proper burial. We didn’t want Stacia to have to worry about it.”
“No, sorry. I can’t. The lab needs to do a necropsy on him. You know, an animal autopsy.”
“I know what a necropsy is,” Cookie said patiently.
“Okay. Good. Tell you what. I’ve got your number, and I’ll call as soon as I can release the dog. You can pick him up then.”
“That would be very nice of you. Thank you.”
“Of course. So, anyway, I wasn’t surprised there was a dead dog in this case. When we found it with Tabitha and Brock it was almost inevitable. Oh. Tabitha and Brock were the two in the purple hatchback, in case you were wondering. Not nice people. That wasn’t the surprising part. I’m just surprised that, again, my people were a step behind the visiting police chief from way, way out of town.”
Jerry smiled at the lefthanded compliment. “Don’t be too hard on your guys, Lieutenant. Cookie and I are from Widow’s Rest. We’ve got more experience than most with cozy little mysteries.”
“Well, that’s fantastic, Chief. Look, I appreciate your help, but my guys are more than capable of investigating one murder in our jurisdiction.”
“Two murders,” Cookie corrected him.
He stared at her blankly, not taking her meaning. “Excuse me? Ernesto Ferris is dead, but his wife survived. Stacia’s alive. So, one murder.”
“Two,” Cookie insisted. “Ernesto was your second victim. Boxer was your first.”
A look passed over his face that he wasn’t quite able to control. “The law doesn’t define the killing of a dog as murder, Mrs. Stansted. That’s animal cruelty, or in some cases destruction of personal property.”
Cookie’s blood pressure spiked, and she needed Jerry’s hand on her arm to keep from jumping up out of her seat and giving the lieutenant a piece of her mind. Just when she was starting to like the man, too. Destruction of property! How dare he label dogs as property!
“I think,” Jerry said, trying to play peacemaker, “what my wife is trying to say is—”
“I can tell him what I’m trying to say!” Cookie cut him off. “That dog was beaten to death, Lieutenant Fairfield. Someone purposefully decided to take Boxer’s life. Now. Your laws may not call that murder, but I certainly do. Anyone who has a dog friend living under the same roof certainly would. Are you honestly going to tell me that your department won’t investigate Boxer’s death with the same resources and dedication that they are going to put into finding Ernesto’s killer?”
“Well, of course we will,” Duke answered her. “Mrs. Stansted, we’re giving just as much effort to Boxer’s death as we are to Ernesto’s.”
“Good,” she said, still angry and upset. “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”
“Of course,” Duke repeated. “Finding who murdered Ernesto takes care of finding the dog’s killer, too. Saves us from going to all that trouble just for somebody’s pet.”
Cookie took a breath to say something she was probably going to regret, about how convenient it was for them that Boxer’s killer took a human life too so that a man like Lieutenant Duke Fairfield would give up some of his precious time to investigate it.
Jerry squeezed her arm tighter, and she clamped her lips shut. For his sake.
CHAPTER 7
T hey were between RV parks when night caught up to them. Cookie made a quick call to Penny and Franky and found out that they had already found another motorhome park for the night. Some place called Leighman’s Restaway. Cookie wrote the name down, even though it was a sure bet they wouldn’t be able to rejoin their friends until lunch tomorrow at the earliest, and maybe not until tomorrow night.
Stacia was with them now, and she was sleeping. They didn’t want to disturb her with the sad news about her dog. Cookie agreed. Let her sleep and try to find some peace.
She rolled over in bed now and wrapped herself around Jerry. They had parked their motorhome for the night at the very back of the parking lot at a twenty-four-hour grocery store. All the shades were drawn. No one would even notice a vehicle parked here for just one night. Still, she’d made sure to lock the door before climbing in beside her husband. She had always been security conscious but after what had happened to Ernesto, she might never leave her door unlocked again.
With a heavy sigh, she shifted positions again, tucking her legs around Cream where he was settled on the end of the bed. The mattress was barely big enough for the three of them but for an RV it was roomy. Except on nights like this, where she could only toss and turn and chase after dreams that just wouldn’t come. She was comfortable enough, and it didn’t have anything to do with the cramped nature of motorhomes. Cream liked having her body warmth. She liked having Jerry’s.
No. There were other reasons why she was still awake.
“Can’t sleep?”
Jerry yawned, and stretched, and turned his head toward her. Ap
parently, she’d been moving around more than she realized. His sleepy voice found her in the darkness. The soft pale glow of nightlight strips gave her just enough illumination to see the shape of him lying there next to her. She stroked his cheek, snuggling into him under the comforter.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’all right,” he said behind another yawn. “I was awake anyway.”
“You’re a liar, Jerry Stansted,” she told him, “but you’re incredibly cute when you’re doing it to save my feelings.”
He kissed her softly. “I’m always cute. So what’s got you so restless?”
“What else? The murder of our friend. The murder of their dog. Why would anyone be so cruel?”
“Don’t ask me to explain the depths of human stupidity. Especially not at…” He leaned up on one elbow to check the time on the clock. “Not at one-thirty in the morning. Tell you what. We can debate the reasons why an old man with a cane might want to commit murder tomorrow. And yes, I’m including Boxer’s death in that statement.”
“Good. At least you understand that dogs are family.”
“Of course I do. So. If you go to sleep now, I’ll buy you one of those double chocolate lattés that you love and that I hate, and we’ll talk about anything you want. Tomorrow. You aren’t doing anybody any favors by keeping yourself up like this.”
“Hmm. That sounds like a deal to me.” She laid her head down on his chest and closed her eyes. She really wanted that latté. She really wanted to talk about what Humphrey had done, too. Jerry was right, however. It could wait until tomorrow. The evil deeds had been done. She wasn’t doing anyone any good by stewing about it. Maybe if she and Jerry talked about it tomorrow, with clear heads, they could make some sense out of an old man with a cane beating another man to death…