Murder Most Deserving

by Hank Edwards

  “Is there something else I can help you with, Sheriff?”

  “It’s Amanda Rae,” he said in a rush. He sat down on the edge of the chair, and it creaked when he leaned forward, his face urgent. “She got her hair cut off like a bull—” He stopped himself short and sat back, chewing his lip.

  “Were you going to say bull dyke?” Michael asked, not sure if he was offended or amused.

  The sheriff ran a big paw over his face and scratched at his curly buzz-cut hair. “I was, and I shouldn’t have. I know that. It’s just that… I don’t know what to do.”

  “About?” Michael prompted.

  “She said she’s a lesbian now. And she wants me to call her Rae.” He glanced at the fat black-and-white kitty watching them, then leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Like a man’s name.”

  Michael sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

  So the sheriff’s daughter was gay or bi. Was he seeking advice on how to handle it from Michael? Well, Michael was probably one of the only two gay men in town that Musgrave knew. Obviously Musgrave wasn’t comfortable with Jazz if he was paying Michael for the haircut, and Michael had gone all through school with Hilton.

  “All right,” Michael began hesitantly. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  He felt somewhat disingenuous to the rainbow by employing the calm tone he used on the bereaved, but the sheriff seemed genuinely distressed. While that should have annoyed Michael—it was long past high school for them, for God’s sake—Michael found a well of patience to draw from. The sheriff’s very presence here signified that, while he was having trouble accepting his daughter’s orientation, he came to the source, so to speak, asking for advice. He was making an effort, and so Michael needed to do the same.

  “How can she even know?” Musgrave said, sounding like the punk he’d been in ninth grade math class, telling the teacher that he’d never use algebra. “She’s nineteen. She’s a kid. She can’t know. I never should’ve let her go to college in Chicago. Girls always do this lesbian thing in college to get attention.”

  While Michael knew that to be somewhat true, he didn’t say as much. After all, hadn’t Steve Childress—Michael’s supposedly straight employee—implied he’d had some bi-curious adventures in his youth? Experimentation and orientation, however, weren’t mutually exclusive or defining either. Human sexuality was a complicated topic, not that he intended to go in-depth with Musgrave.

  “Be that as it may, it might not be that,” Michael said.

  “Amanda Rae’s never even had a boyfriend. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

  “Did you know what you wanted when you had the entire football team pick up Heather Reynolds on their shoulders and march her through the hallway so you could ask her to prom?”

  Musgrave chuckled at the memory and then frowned. “That’s different.”

  “Is it?” Michael countered. “Were you confused about your attraction to Heather? Was it a phase? Did you need to date a few men to figure out that you liked women?”

  “Of course not, but….” He squirmed, some of his confidence deflating.

  “Then why are you so quick to assume it’s a phase for Amanda Rae?” He chose to use her full name to ensure Musgrave was listening.

  “I guess,” he said, face screwed up in thought. “But you took Christy James to prom. So obviously you had doubts.”

  Michael chuckled and shook his head. “Of course I did. I wanted to like girls.”

  “You did?” He looked surprised.

  Michael sighed.

  He’d never vocalized that before, not with Jazz or any other gay man. But the way the sheriff was hanging on Michael’s every word, if it could help Hilton understand his daughter, maybe it was time to share something he had never told another soul.

  “I didn’t want to be gay,” Michael admitted. Mr. Pickles let out a plaintive meow, and Michael half imagined his beloved pet saying, Daddy, don’t be sad. His kitty always seemed very intuitive. Michael studied Musgrave before he continued. “Why would I want my life to be harder? Why would I want people to think I’m different or even more weird than being the mortician’s son? Why wouldn’t I rather be like ninety percent of the people on this planet? Why would I want my father to yell at me in a crowded beauty salon?”

  The sheriff flinched at that.

  Michael leaned forward. “That’s why I dated Christy in high school and took her to prom. Not because I couldn’t make up my mind or being straight was a phase. I was trying to see if I could change what I already knew and felt because I was afraid of the truth. But dating her didn’t change who I really was on the inside.”

  The sheriff’s eyes widened, and he sat back, Michael’s quiet words like a slap in the face.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.” Then he stood up so fast Michael flinched back.

  Mr. Pickles hissed from his perch on top of the kitty condo, then scurried inside one of the cubbies. Michael could see his fluffy tail swishing in agitation below his new vantage point.

  The sheriff began pacing the office like a giant bear in a small cage Michael had seen in a nature documentary once. “Shit, shit.”

  He stopped and glanced at Michael. “Shit.” Then he began pacing again.

  Michael assumed his point had gotten through the sheriff’s thick skull, so it wasn’t really a surprise when Musgrave turned and looked at Michael again.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” he asked, his big hands all but crushing the hat he held. “She thinks I hate her.”

  “Tell her you don’t. Tell her the haircut just surprised you and that, given time, you’ll learn to like her hair. Don’t say ‘I still love you.’ Those words will make things worse, trust me on that. Tell her you love her no matter what.”

  “I love you no matter what, Michael,” Dad had said when Michael came out to him, and Michael loved him dearly for such genuine words. The unexpected memory of his father’s kind eyes and his soft voice stung Michael with a startling pang of loss. Oh, he missed Dad. Dad really would have liked Jazz, so very much.

  The sheriff put his fists on his hips and shook his head at himself. “She never got over Jenny leaving. And now she’s gonna think I’ve abandoned her too. Shit, shit, shit.” With each subsequent curse, he jerked his head.

  Michael stood and walked around the desk. He thought about patting the sheriff on the arm, but decided against it. Instead, he positioned himself in front of the man, clasping his hands in front of him. “Why don’t you stop saying shit and go find your daughter and talk to her?”

  Musgrave pursed his lips and nodded, that gruff sheriff expression back. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said, sounding like a man on a mission. “Fleishman, thanks.”

  He returned his hat to his buzz-cut curls and nodded at Michael with determination.

  Before he turned to go, the office door burst open.

  Steve Childress, the all-around fix-it man for the funeral home, stood there with wide eyes.

  “Captain, come quick!” Steve cried, using the nickname he’d given Michael years ago. He gripped the doorknob so tightly his knuckles whitened.

  “What the hell, Childress?” Musgrave snapped.

  “There’s a body.” Steve’s chest rose and fell rapidly as if he’d run there.

  “It’s a funeral home,” Musgrave said with a sigh. “Of course there’s a body.”

  “In the hearse.” Steve looked at Michael. “Captain, someone’s left a dead body in the hearse!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “WHAT?” MICHAEL said.

  “There’s a dead body in the hearse,” Steve repeated, blue eyes wild. “I-I opened the door…. Looks like he’s been strangled or something.”

  Musgrave’s expression tightened. “Show me.”

  They rushed through the funeral home and out the back entrance, which opened onto the parking lot. Steve strode across the asphalt with Musgrave right behind him and Michael hurrying to keep u
p. Having helped Michael pick up bodies for years, Steve knew enough to stay out of a crime scene and stopped just outside the door to the garage, but he looked particularly disturbed by the finding.

  Michael put a hand on Steve’s shoulder as Musgrave slowly entered the three-car garage. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s a shock, Captain,” Steve said and licked his lips. “Really got to me for some reason.”

  Stomach sinking, Michael gave a determined nod. “Okay. Thanks for the warning. Sometimes no amount of training can prepare you for a shock like that.”

  The lights were on in the garage when Michael stepped inside. There were three vehicles parked in a row, his personal Camry, a Cadillac hearse, and the county coroner van—all kept polished and shiny, courtesy of Steve. Musgrave stood on the driver’s side of the hearse, the door open as he frowned down into the seat. With great trepidation Michael made his way over.

  He sucked in a breath at the sight of a man with his head slightly askew, sitting in the driver’s seat, his hands positioned on the steering wheel in a macabre fashion. Overcome with a morbid curiosity, Michael leaned in very close, careful not to touch anything.

  “Dispatch,” Musgrave said into his radio, making Michael start and flinch back. “This is the sheriff. I need all hands at the funeral parlor, stat.”

  As Musgrave communicated with his team of deputies, Michael resumed his visual examination of the body.

  “Skin’s bruised and slightly broken around his throat,” he said calmly. “Some blood, but it doesn’t look like the carotid has been cut. Most likely strangulation with a thin ligature of some kind. If he was killed in the hearse, he would’ve had to have been strangled from behind, and the murderer would’ve had to be on their knees and short. There’s not a lot of height in the back.” Michael glanced around his garage. With all three vehicles, there wasn’t much space for a struggle, and everything seemed perfectly in order. “Or perhaps the victim was murdered elsewhere and transported here?”

  But why here? Why my business?

  “How the hell did he get inside your locked garage, Fleishman?” Musgrave asked.

  Michael shook his head. “My question exactly, but I have no idea. I would’ve heard the garage door opening last night, if that’s when he was murdered.” The driver side of his Camry was mere feet away from the body. Steve always backed the vehicles into the garage, but Michael didn’t. “He wasn’t here when I got home at seven thirty. I would’ve seen him.”

  Musgrave nodded at the positions of the vehicles, both drivers’ sides facing each other. “You got an alarm system?”

  “On the house and the parlor. I have security cameras, but the motion sensors are only aimed at the house and parlor entrances. If anyone moved through those areas after the alarm was set, I would’ve gotten an alert on my phone.”

  After the attempted break-in by some bumbling drug dealers who cat-napped Mr. Pickles, Michael and Steve had upgraded the security to a high-end alarm system with cameras, motion sensors, and phone-synching capabilities.

  “But you didn’t,” Musgrave surmised. “Must mean there’s a blind spot in your security.”

  “I never thought anyone would bother with lawn equipment, and the vehicles are insured,” Michael said, his mind whirling. “Why arm a garage?”

  Never in his wildest dreams would Michael have imagined a scenario such as this!

  His gaze drifted to the window on the north side of the garage, above the workbench where Steve stored all the gardening tools, fertilizers, and such.

  “Someone could’ve broken in through the door or that window,” Michael said aloud. “They either brought the body, or two people broke in and only one of them left.”

  He hoped there were fingerprints.

  “What’s all the fuss about out here?” Kitty asked as she joined Steve outside.

  “Don’t come in,” Michael instructed her. “This is a crime scene. We can’t contaminate it.”

  “A crime scene?” Kitty exclaimed. “What’s happened?”

  “Someone left a body in the hearse,” Steve said.

  “Isn’t that where bodies usually go?” Kitty asked. Michael could all but imagine the buxom blonde quirking her brows in tandem with her sarcasm.

  “Not the driver’s seat,” Steve said.

  “Oh,” Kitty said, her tone grasping the severity. “Who is it?”

  A few clacks of her heels on the concrete floor of the garage made both Michael and Musgrave look up sharply.

  “Keep back!” Musgrave’s stern demand echoed through the garage before Michael could say anything. “I don’t want this scene contaminated any further!”

  “I was just trying to see if I recognized the victim,” Kitty said, pouting as she backed out of the garage. She fixed Musgrave’s broad back with a glare, and Michael wondered how either of them managed to get through a holiday dinner since Kitty had married Hilton’s younger brother, Marty, which was short for Marriott.

  Musgrave’s parents had named all their kids after the hotels in which they’d been conceived: Hilton, Marriott, and their younger sister, Holiday. Jazz had once called the Musgraves the poor man’s Howard family, since Ron Howard’s kids had middle names based on the location they were conceived too.

  “You don’t want to see him,” Steve said quietly to Kitty.

  “So it’s a man?” Kitty leaned left and right, craning her neck in an effort to see the body more clearly.

  Michael studied the victim. The man looked familiar, but he couldn’t place how he knew him.

  Then it clicked.

  This was the man who Norbert had been arguing with last night at Gruff’s Grub.

  The one still pining for Norbert….

  Michael straightened up, his vision spinning a little. He shook his head to clear it, like he’d just walked into a wall, and then took several stumbling steps backward, bumping into his car. He leaned his weight against it, thoughts and questions tumbling around in his brain.

  Could it be a coincidence that Norbert had shown up in town the day before a body appeared in Michael’s hearse? The man’s very presence felt like a harbinger of death. But he wouldn’t have killed this man, would he? Strangulation was a crime of passion, though, and they’d been former lovers, or so Michael and Jazz had understood from the argument. And this man had stolen Norbert’s band, or so Norbert had claimed.

  A flash of déjà vu hit Michael hard, transporting him back to Hardscrabble Beach, kneeling on the rocky sand and staring down at a drowned young man with missing hands. Once more he knew just enough of the victim’s identity that a cold slick of sweat worked down his spine, like a warning, sharp and personal.

  “I-I saw this man last night,” Michael stammered, forcing a deep breath. Norbert had said his name more than once, but Michael couldn’t recall it. Jazz might be able to remember, if Michael could get a minute to give him a quick call. And the sound of Jazz’s low and sexy voice would help him calm down. Unfortunately he’d left his phone in his office.

  “Where’d you see him?” Musgrave demanded.

  “He was talking to Norbert Farthington.”

  “Farthington? He’s back in town?” Musgrave turned in a circle, one big hand tightening into a fist. “You saw him and the vic, last night? What is it with you knowing murder vics all the time, Fleishman?”

  “Twice is hardly all the time, Hilton,” Michael bristled, the sheriff’s brusque demeanor helping him get ahold of himself. He pushed off his car and stood straighter. “And it was a coincidence that we even saw them.”

  “It’s a helluva coincidence. We’ve only had two murders in town. Now, tell me how you know the vic this time? And who was the other part of your we? Dilworth?”

  “Yes, and I don’t know this man.” Gesturing to the body, Michael shook his head. “But Jazz and I did see him and Norbert have a disagreement last night at Gruff’s Grub.” He then explained, with as much detail as he could remember, an accounting of the argument between Norbert and hi
s former lover and bandmates…. “The Lanky something or other. That was part of the name of the victim’s band,” Michael said, wishing he had Jazz’s affinity for remembering names. When he wrapped up his story, Musgrave, Kitty, and Steve were chuckling about Gruff tossing Norbert out.

  “Wish I would’ve seen that.” Musgrave shook his head in mirth, and then he sobered. “Looks like I need to track down our favorite snake of a PR rep and question him thoroughly. Unless you have any other ideas on perp or motive.”

  “My first choice for perpetrator would be Norbert,” Michael replied. “The victim was his jilted lover, and there appeared to be bad blood between them still. As for motive, it could be a crime of passion.”

  Musgrave sneered. “A crime of passion?”

  “Yes, sheriff,” Michael said with more edge than he’d intended to his tone. “No matter what you’d like to think, there can be passion between two men.”

  Outside the garage door, Steve coughed and Kitty muttered, “Uh-oh.”

  “I understand that, Fleishman,” Musgrave said slowly. “I just didn’t like imagining Norbert in any kind of passionate activity.”

  Before Michael could reply, a new voice joined Kitty’s and Steve’s.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Someone’s been murdered,” Steve replied, voice tight.

  Michael turned as his apprentice, Ezra Glum, arrived and stood alongside his other two employees, poking his head inside like an adorable puppet, an undeniable gleam of excitement in his eye. “Someone was murdered in your garage?”

  Kitty scowled at him. “Don’t you have floors to wash or something?” she said snappishly.

  Chastised, Ezra pushed his glasses up his nose, mumbling something Michael didn’t catch. Kitty crossed her arms and chewed on her long red pinky nail.

  “Yes, Ezra,” Michael said calmly. “There’s been a murder. Again.”

  “Not to bring the mood down even further, but Elaine called from the Bluffs,” Kitty said.