Cut to the Corpse (15 page)

The hot water from the shower beat a staccato rhythm on her back while Brenna rolled a bar of soap between her fingers, building up a thick lather that smelled of lavender.

She needed to go and see Julie Harper. The girl had stalked Clue when he was alive and, according to Ruby, had sunk into a depression since his death.

The only problem was she didn’t really have a reason to go and see Julie, other than to be nosey and intrusive. She had looked up the girl’s address in the phone book and knew that she lived in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. There was no way Brenna could pretend to just be walking by. It was too inaccessible and remote.

Too bad she wasn’t still watching Hank, or she could take him for a walk in the woods and just happen to turn up in Julie’s yard. That was it!

The best ideas always came in the shower. She did a quickie rinse and shut off the water. She didn’t need to be dog sitting Hank. She could just borrow him! Nate would say yes, she was sure of it.

She patted herself dry with a fluffy towel and yanked on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She ran a comb through her hair, deciding to let it air dry, which would make it curly, but that couldn’t be helped. She was on a mission.

She raced down the path that led to Nate’s cabin. She knocked three times on the door, and sure enough Hank went into a barking frenzy. Good, they were home.

Nate opened the door and grabbed Hank’s collar before he could launch himself at her.

“Hi, Brenna,” he said. “You’re up early.”

She shrugged, trying to appear casual. “It’s such a nice day I thought I’d borrow Hank and go to the state park for a w. . .”

“Don’t say it!” Nate warned.

“. . . walk,” she finished. Hank went berserk, jumping in circles, forcing Nate to let go of his collar just as Brenna knew he would.

“You realize you have to take him now,” he said. He reached inside the door and handed her Hank’s leash.

“I know,” she said. “Sit, Hank.”

Hank stood on his hind legs and hopped.

“Hank, sit,” Nate said in a stern voice.

The golden dog danced around in a circle. He was so excited he was wagging from head to toe. Brenna laughed at Nate’s chagrinned expression.

“Sit, Hank, sit.” Brenna bent over to reach for his collar and Hank licked her chin and cheek. She snapped the leash to his collar. She wiped her face on her shoulder. “Thanks, buddy.”

She led Hank to her Jeep and opened the door for him to leap up into the passenger’s seat. She felt her shoulders ease as she was almost home free. She turned to walk around to the driver’s side and found Nate leaning against her front fender.

“So, how about that game last night?” he asked.

“I didn’t see . . .” Brenna trailed off. He knew she hadn’t seen the baseball game because of her date, so why was he asking her about it?

“I’m not sure I liked the look of the visiting team,” he said. His arms were crossed over his chest in a look of disapproval.

A small smile lifted the corners of Brenna’s lips. So it was baseball euphemisms for dating? All righty then.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought they suited up pretty nicely and played a fair game.”

“No personal fouls, then?” he asked.

“None.” She grinned.

He shoved off of the side of the Jeep and looked down at her. His gray eyes were intense. “Just so you know I would have no problem ejecting a player from the game if need be.”

“I appreciate that,” she said. “But we’re still in tryouts, so no worries.”

He grinned, and Brenna got light-headed. No man should have that sort of impact when he smiled, but she figured Nate did it so rarely it was like catching a glimpse of the aurora borealis. Stunning.

He opened the door for her and she climbed in beside Hank and got a big slurp up the side of her face.

“Have a nice walk,” he said. “And since we never got to have our conversation about your nosing into the Parker murder last night, we can do that when you get back.”

Hank barked and wagged and Brenna could have sworn he understood and was agreeing.

She said nothing, deciding to remain noncommittal. With a wave, she put the Jeep in gear and headed down the drive toward the main road. She wondered if Nate was feeling protective of her dating Dom. And if so, was he protective because he liked her himself or just because they were friends?

Hank had his head out the window, the breeze fluffing his blond tresses while his tail thumped a steady rhythm against her shoulder.

There had been moments when she was so sure that Nate liked her as more than a neighbor, but then again, he never said or did anything that confirmed the feeling. She wasn’t willing to make an idiot of herself to find out.

“Best to let it lie. Right, Hank?”

He barked, and again she got the feeling he understood.

She drove through the center of town and on past rolling hills and farm fields. Julie Harper lived on a lonely stretch of road, the kind where passersby wondered what people did for a living that they lived so far away from town. Her old farmhouse was nestled on three sides by the state park, making Brenna’s fib to Nate not an outright lie.

She parked the Jeep along the side of the road, hung a water bottle on a carrier around her neck, and pocketed her keys. She took Hank’s leash and led him toward a path in the woods. Hank pulled her along the pine-needle-encrusted ground with his nose to the earth.

They went up the hill to a break in the trees, which overlooked the farm below. Brenna stopped to rest on a rock and gaze at Julie’s house. There was a car in the driveway, and according to Ruby, Julie hadn’t left her house in days. There was no movement around the house and Brenna wondered if Julie was still asleep.

She briefly debated whether she should forge ahead with her plan. Was it really any of her business if Julie had been the one who killed Clue? But then, she thought about Tara and how desperately sad she had looked the night before. And she remembered how she felt when she had been wrongly accused of theft at the gallery in Boston. She would have really liked to have had someone asking questions for her.

With her mind made up, Brenna unclipped Hank’s collar and led him down the slope toward the farmhouse. She had brought one of his tennis balls, and when she was within reach, she threw it overhand as far as she could.

Hank did an exuberant leap and bounded down the slope after it. The ball landed up on the back porch, and true to his fetching nature, Hank went right up onto the porch after it.

“Hank, come back,” Brenna yelled. Of course, he didn’t.

Instead, he dropped the ball and barked as if to say, “Come and get it!”

“Hank!” She tried to make her voice sound exasperated, when in fact she was so happy she wanted to kiss him.

She was halfway across the lawn when the back door opened.
Yes!
She was going to get a chance to talk to Julie.

The door opened wider, but instead of Julie coming out, Hank went inside and the door shut behind him.

Brenna broke into a run. She stomped up onto the back porch, calling, “Hank!”

No one came to the door. She tried the knob, but it was locked.

“Hey, that’s my dog,” she called as she pounded on the door. No one answered, and Hank, who usually went mental at the sound of knocking, was terrifyingly silent.

Oh, my God, she thought as she went into a full-blown panic. I borrowed Nate’s dog for a covert operation and now I’ve gotten him locked in a house with a killer. How could I have been so stupid?

She pounded on the door again. She kicked over the doormat, looking for a hidden key. There was nothing but some dirt.

She began to pace the porch, hoping to find something to use to smash the window. A flowerpot with a sickly looking geranium sat on the top step of the stairs.

She snatched it up and was about to heave it at the window, when the door opened.

“Can I help you?” asked a young woman. She had a severe case of bedhead and was wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe with matching bunny slippers.

“I . . . uh . . . I think your flower needs some water,” Brenna said as she lowered the pot back to the step. “And I think you have my dog.”

Hank trotted back through the gap in the open door. He had a big rawhide chew in his mouth, and Brenna could swear he was grinning at her.

Her heart rate slowed and she took a deep breath.

“I gave him a rawhide bone,” the woman said. “I hope that’s okay. My Buster died a few months ago, and I had a bunch for him . . .” She broke off with a sob.

Brenna hadn’t thought she could feel much worse, but now she felt like something that should be scraped off the bottom of a shoe.

“Oh, don’t cry, it’s all right,” she said.

“No, it’s not all right.” Julie sat down on the top step.

Hank lay down beside her and worked his rawhide, and Julie absently patted his head.

Brenna studied the woman before her. Her pink bathrobe had finger trails of Cheetos residue on it. One of her bunny slippers was missing an ear. Beneath the robe, she wore a Hello Kitty nightdress, which appeared to have spots of melted chocolate on it. Her long brown hair was limp and lank and Brenna wondered when she had last run a comb through it.

“Having a rough day?” she asked as she sat on the other side of Hank.

“Rough day, rough week, rough life,” Julie said.

“Can I help?” Brenna asked, not knowing how she possibly could but feeling as if she should offer anyway.

“You can’t help me,” Julie said, shoving her hair out of her eyes. “Unless you can bring someone back from the dead.”

Her laugh was bitter and a little chilling. Brenna wondered if she should invent a sudden appointment and scram. But she had come so far, even Hank had risked so much to get her here, she hated to be a big chicken now.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Julie’s pale brown eyes snapped to hers. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, you’re the only one then,” Julie said. “Oh, no, not again.”

Julie lurched to her feet and made a dash for the door. She didn’t make it. Instead, she dropped to her knees and vomited into the flowerpot.

Both Brenna and Hank looked away. No wonder the flower was all wilted and smelled bad. Brenna wiped her fingers on her pants.

“I’ll just go get you a cool cloth,” she offered while Julie continued to retch.

In the kitchen, which was surprisingly tidy, she found a sunshine yellow dishcloth, which she held under the tap and then wrung out. She hurried back outside and handed it to Julie, who was leaning limply against the porch rail.

“Thanks,” she said and held it to her face and neck.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were ill,” Brenna said.

“I’m not,” Julie said. “I don’t have anything that thirty more weeks of getting fat won’t cure.”

Brenna looked at her curiously, and then it clicked. “You’re pregnant.”

Julie put one finger on her nose and pointed at Brenna with the other. Then she dry heaved again.

Brenna waited until she was finished and helped her to sit on the top step. Then she sat down hard beside her.

“And no, the father isn’t going to make an honest woman of me,” Julie said. “He can’t, because he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Brenna said. Her sympathy felt horribly inadequate given the complexities of this woman’s life.

“You heard about the murder in town?” she asked. Brenna nodded. “That was the father.”

“How awful.”

“Eh,” Julie said. “In the big picture, he got what was coming to him. He was a textbook mother-is-a-whore-therefore-I-hate-all-women sort of man. I’m sure he twisted up that little blonde he was found in bed with into a million knots and she just unraveled. Lord knows, I thought about killing him often enough.”

“But you didn’t,” Brenna said.

“No,” Julie said. “I’ve been too ill with morning sickness to be upright for more than five minutes, never mind take someone’s head off with a hacksaw.”

“His head wasn’t sawed off.”

“Really?” Julie asked. “Huh, that’s what I heard.”

“He was stabbed in the chest,” Brenna said.

“How do you know?” Julie asked. Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

Brenna decided to come clean. “No one told me. I saw him. I’m the one who found him.”

“Oh.” Julie sucked in a breath. “Now I recognize you. You’re Brenna from Vintage Papers. I’ve seen you around town.”

Brenna nodded.

“Kind of a magnet for dead bodies, aren’t you?”

Brenna frowned. “I don’t know that I’d say that.”

“All the same, it might be best if you go,” Julie said. She cupped her belly with her hands. “This is all I have left of him, the product of a midnight booty call I never should have answered, but now, I’m glad I did. It’s pitiful, but I think I will love that SOB until the day I die.”