Deep-Fried Homicide (The Laurel Falls Mysteries Book 1) (9 page)

“Hey, Rachel.” Diane appeared with a menu, which she unfolded right into his hand. “Thank you…I’m afraid I don’t know your name. I know everyone else in town, but I do not know you.”

“Diane. I’m new here.” She smiled her best little-girl smile. “Can I get you something to drink, Sheriff?”

“A sweet tea would be wonderful. Thank you, Diane.” He watched her walk away, though in a more chaste way than one might have expected.

“How’s things, Sheriff?” Rachel said with a full mouth.

“Things are good.” He began feeling around in his breast pocket, pulling a face as he obviously searched for something. “I wonder if you might recognize this man.” He finally succeeded in producing a picture, slid it across the counter to her.

Rachel picked up the picture, expecting the worst. It was dark and grainy but the man’s face was fairly clear. He had a scruffy beard and dark eyes. His unruly blonde hair couldn’t be contained in his ample hoodie. The worst of her fears were allayed, however, when she realized that it wasn’t Mike in the picture.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. Certainly not in here. Who is he?”

Dooley leaned over to retrieve the picture and shoved it back in his pocket. “He might be a person of interest in the cemetery murder. John Tarver’s delivery truck broke down late last night and while he was waiting for the tow truck, he spotted that fella there lurking around the back fence of the cemetery, on the inside. He managed to sneak this picture on his cell phone and when he saw it again this morning, he realized that he’d seen this same man walking out of the cemetery on the night that Horace was killed.”

“And Tarver didn’t recognize him either?”

“Nopes. Say, any chance I can get a grilled cheese and tomato soup out here?” Dooley changed the subject without shame. His direct stare was telling.

“I’ve got it, Rach.” Diane disappeared into the kitchen, her feet shuffling as she moved.

“So nobody knows who this guy is?” Rachel tried again.

“Somebody knows who he is. I just haven’t found that somebody yet.” Dooley smiled and rattled the ice in his empty glass.

Rachel took the glass into the kitchen to refill it, then brought it back, serving it up with a flourish. “You never did say how Horace was killed.”

“No, I did not.” Dooley turned his attention to the crease in his pants and said nothing more.

“You know, if you’d share some of the details of the case with me, I might be able to help you.”

Dooley laughed. The sound of it was unsettling in the quiet diner and the spirit of it was just something short of mocking. “You? Help me solve a case?” He laughed again and this time, the sound was awkward even for him. “Rachel, I can’t have an amateur tromping through my evidence and getting in the way of my boys.”

There was a burning in her gut and her head began to throb with a slow-boiling anger. “Oh, really? Well, what if I told you that this amateur has already solved the bank robbery. I know exactly who did it.”

Diane appeared at that exact moment. She set the bowl and plate down in front of Dooley with a bit more noise than she had intended, then leaned in to whisper to Rachel. “Rick says get in the kitchen now.”

Rachel’s eyes were still locked in mortal combat with Dooley’s steely gaze. She hadn’t blinked, hadn’t cocked so much as a grin at him. She took a deep breath, ignoring Diane with every fiber of her being. Then she spotted Rick out of her peripheral vision, standing in the kitchen window and looking like he was about to storm Normandy. She slid off the stool and made tracks for the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” he growled, grabbing her arm and yanking her back toward the freezer.

“That pompous jerk thinks I’m just a dumb waitress or something…”

“That’s not what he said.” Rick was made to lean down to speak to her quietly, their height difference exaggerated by Rick’s urgency and need for privacy. “He doesn’t want you in the way. Plain and simple. And if you tell him what you know, Mike will get arrested. He might be guilty and he might be innocent. But think what it will do to Diane.”

The wind left Rachel’s sails then, the heat in her cheeks burning itself out. She looked up at Rick like a petulant child and sighed hard. “Fine.”

She spun on her heel and returned to her lunch, lips tightly pressed and eyes cast downward.

“So, you know who robbed the bank, eh?” Dooley swallowed the bite of his sandwich which he had been chewing and leaned back on his stool.

“Three men in ski masks, jeans, all three white, two wearing Converse sneakers and one with a limp. No jewelry on any of them. The one not wearing sneakers was left-handed. Two had brown eyes, one had green. All three were broad-shouldered, about two hundred pounds or a little less, definitely muscular. I take them to be somewhere between five-ten and six-two.”

Dooley licked his lips and mulled over her little dissertation. “You were in the bank when it happened?”

“No. But they ran past our diner during their getaway. Rick chased them.”

“And you saw all that in the time it took them to run past your door?”

She hesitated a minute. If she told him about the video, she would have to turn it over and then Mike would be done for. “I did.”

“You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, ain’t ya?” Dooley laughed once more, only this time it was a warm sound full of good humor rather than derision. He produced the picture from his pocket again and passed it to her. “Why don’t you take another look at this guy and see what you can tell me.”

Rachel stared at the picture, wishing she hadn’t acted like such a know-it-all. “Well, he’s leaning on what appears to be a shovel and smoking a cigarette, which he holds in his left hand. Traditionally, people who smoke with their left hand are leaving their right free for other things, like using a mouse or steering a car or drawing a gun. Meaning that he’s either right-handed or ambidextrous. The odds of him being ambidextrous are very slim. He’s also wearing what appears to be a band shirt. For a contemporary band. That means he’s under the age of thirty. The skinny jeans back that up. I don’t see any sign of jewelry or scars. The picture is too dark to make out hair or eye color. But he seems to have quite a few freckles, so that indicates a fair-skinned, lighter-haired man.”

She handed the picture back to Dooley as Rick peered at her through the window, his face a study in pride.

“You got more out of that picture than anybody else, including the eyewitness. Thank you.” Dooley drained his glass and pushed the plate and bowl away from him. “I’ll pass all that on to the officer who’s investigating Horace’s murder. You think of anything else, you give me a ring, ya hear?”

Dooley slapped a twenty on the counter and stood up. “As always, you keep the change, little lady.” Then he tipped his hat and walked out.

Rachel watched him go, only slightly aware of Rick’s approach. She felt his hands on her shoulders then and straightened. Rick kissed the top of her head, his lips lingering and his breath hot against her scalp.

“I’m proud of you, darling. I know how hard it was to make yourself look stupid in front of Dooley.”

“He’ll see how not stupid I am when I solve the whole thing.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I will.”

Rick began to shake.

D
espite the awkward silence between Rachel and Rick, they managed to survive the night and make it to work the next morning without any arguments or acrimony. Against all the odds, Macy had beaten them all there, even Diane. She sat at the counter with a cup of coffee and a stack of papers.

“Good morning,” she said idly as the bell began to ring.

“Morning,” Rick responded bitterly, making his way directly to the kitchen and ignoring both women.

Macy pulled a face at Rachel and cocked her head to one side. “Rough night?”

“Sort of.” Rachel reached for a coffee mug and let her right hand find the pot by rote. “Where’s Diane?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet.”

The air pressure in the diner changed as the back door opened and Diane slid in through an impossibly small opening. “Good morning, everybody. Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not late, honey. We’re just extra early.” Rachel grabbed another mug and filled it with hot coffee. It was ready and waiting by the time Diane slid onto the stool.

The front door bell sounded again and the three women looked up in time to see Logan step inside.

Macy took off her reading glasses and set them on top of the papers. “Good. We’re all here. Now I can tell you the bad news.”

They all turned, bringing a halt to all movement in the diner, silencing them.

“Bad news?” Rick asked. “As in…?”

“It’s inventory time. As none of you will recall, I’m sure, it’s near the end of the fiscal year and I have to inventory everything here in order to prepare our tax papers.”

Rachel groaned audibly.

“Oh yea!” Rick and Logan hollered in unison, high-fiving each other and leaping into the air for a chest bump. “Fishing time!”

Rachel groaned again.

Macy made a great show of stacking the papers, tapping them into submission on the counter and clipping them together. “So, we’ll operate today as usual, then shut down tonight and not re-open until Thursday morning. That should give me plenty of time to do the inventory and get the reports compiled.”

“Do you need any help?” Diane wanted to know. “I don’t have anything to do anyway.”

“No thanks, hon. It’s sort of something I have to do by myself.”

Rachel shoulder-bumped Macy and grinned. “This is like a party for Macy. She lives for tabulating and organizing and compiling.”

“You make me sound like some boring accountant or something.” Macy mock pouted and sniffled.

Rachel hugged her at once, laughing. “Oh, no, sweetie. You’re anything but boring. And you are the one thing that keeps us from complete failure. Where in the world would we be without you?”

“Yea, besides, we need Macy to be good at that stuff so we don’t have to be.” Logan laughed alone.

“Wow! Downtime. I haven’t slept in since last inventory day.” Rachel grinned to herself and got that faraway look in her eye.

Then it hit her. With the boys out of town and Macy trapped in the diner with a calculator, she could spend the late night hours poking around down at the cemetery and trying to find out just what in the world was going on down there.

“I need to restring my good rod and lay in some bait,” Rick said dreamily.

“And I’ve got to grab a new pair of waders. Maybe a new net, too,” Logan offered.

“And then we’ll leave as soon as we close. Grab some supplies at the Quickee Mart and we can be at the cabin in two hours.”

The boys high-fived and chest bumped again.

Rachel smiled to herself and began making her own plans.

The streets in Laurel Falls usually rolled up around nine o’clock and the one bar that remained open was on the other side of town. There was no sense in going to the cemetery before midnight. Obviously, whatever was going on down there was happening after everyone else in town was fast asleep. So, Rachel figured that if she left the house at midnight, she could walk the mile to the cemetery and hop the fence. Even if the guilty parties weren’t there then, they would be soon. And she would be waiting.

But Rick could never know. If he ever found out, he’d blow a gasket.

A
t midnight, Rachel stepped out of the bedroom wearing a pair of black jeans and a black sweatshirt. Black running shoes and her cell phone completed the ensemble. If asked, she would have to admit that she was a little nervous. She didn’t usually go skulking around in the night, much less at a cemetery. It wasn’t that she was afraid of ghosts and such. She just knew all too well how many things could go wrong with this “mission.”

Rick had already called to let her know that they had reached the cabin safely and by now, the boys would be casting reminiscences into the campfire. He wouldn’t call again until morning.

She tucked the front door key into her pocket and pulled the door shut. It occurred to her at that moment that nobody would know where she was or what she was doing. If things went horribly wrong and the worst happened, nobody would miss her until the next night. Still, she couldn’t exactly tell anyone what she was doing, now could she? What she could do was leave a note.

She went back into the house and jotted down a quick note on the pad next to the phone. “I went to the old cemetery to see what’s going on there. I left at midnight on Tuesday and took my cell phone. Love, R.”

Satisfied that that little tidbit would lead them to her captors, should the worst happen, she locked the door and strode merrily down the walk.

The cemetery was a mile down her own street, in the opposite direction from the diner. Rachel walked briskly, hands in her pockets, brain turning over all the possibilities which lay before her. Only once did she mourn the absence of her Taser. It might have proved useful in a pinch. Or she might simply have tased herself in the panic of the moment.

There was a slight chill in the air as she approached the front gate of the cemetery, making her glad she had worn her sweatshirt. By all reports, the activity was going on in the older section of the cemetery, near where the back fence met the woods. To keep from being seen, she would have to scale the fence near the front and sneak into the back.

The gates were locked after eight, so she couldn’t just waltz into the place. She knew that scaling the fence was akin to breaking and entering, but she meant no harm. She was there to observe, not to participate.

The cemetery was well over a hundred years old and the oldest parts of it were enclosed by a tall wrought-iron fence. As time passed and the cemetery was expanded, the fence gave way to a long section of fence separated by pillars of stone and finally to a solid brick wall. It was safer and easier to scale the wall than it was the fence. The bars of the fence didn’t have enough footholds and they weren’t high enough for her to reach the top from there.