In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 5) (19 page)

Chapter Ten

I WOKE UP six hours later with a pounding on my door and in my head. I was prepared to ignore both. Pick wasn’t. He started barking and he wasn’t going to stop until I got up.
 

Tiny charged in the room and jogged in place. “Let’s go for a run.”
 

I stared at him bleary-eyed and hunched over. “Are you serious? It’s barely seven.”
 

“It’s like 7:15 and I slept like a drunk on Bourbon.”
 

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?”
 

“Hell yeah,” he said. “Get dressed and we can run before breakfast.”
 

“What about your knees?” I asked.
 

Tiny’s knees weren’t built to take that level of pounding. Nobody’s were.

“Feels good.” He jogged out and Pick pranced in front of the door.
 

“I suppose you want to go.”
 

Bark.

“I’ll bark you right in the snout.” I popped a couple of Tylenol, put on a yoga ensemble and a hoodie as slowly as possible and dragged my feet into the hall. Tiny was still jogging in place. The crazy bastard.
 

“Coffee first,” I said.
 

“Coffee after. Don’t wanna lose the go.”
 

“I never had the go. I’ve got the stay and sit.”
 

“Come on, girl. You gotta get me fit to fight.”
 

“How about fit to sit?”
 

Tiny jogged down the stone steps and Pick yanked me along behind him. I tried to be slow, but neither of them would entertain the idea. Tiny led me through the castle and down to the copper pot kitchen where Aaron was up with a kitchen staff of three making long loaves of French bread and heavenly croissants. There was coffee. I could smell it.
 

Pick and Tiny went for the door and I dug my heels in. “I need coffee.”
 

“No way, man,” said Tiny, opening the door. “Hear them birds. Smell that morning dew.”
 

“I’ll beat you to death.”
 

Tiny laughed, but I was never so serious. I grabbed Aaron’s sleeve. “I’ll eat a croissant if you make him let me have coffee.”
 

Aaron squinted at me from behind his smudged lenses. “Huh?”
 

“I’ll eat. Anything. A stick of butter. Anything. I need coffee.”
 

Pick yanked me so hard he nearly pulled me off my feet and began sniffing at the open door. Then the barking began. Serious barking. Barking like he’d never barked before. No. That wasn’t true. Pick once chased down a bigamist with me and that barking was similar.
 

“What’s wrong with him?” asked one of the cooks, his hands covered in flour.
 

“I don’t know. He hates me and coffee.”
 

A harder yank and furious barking.
 

“He wants to run,” said Tiny.
 

“You take him,” I said.
 

Tiny was about to agree when Pick lunged, dragging me out the door and into the foggy kitchen garden. The dog was going bat shit crazy and he didn’t stop there. He lunged with me pulling back with everything I had. His barks had turned into strangled gurgles, but he wasn’t about to stop. “Tiny! Help!”
 

Tiny ran out the door, but he was too slow. Pick had me through the kitchen garden into the formal garden, heading for the tragic love section with its daggers and swords design.
 

“I’m coming!” yelled Tiny just as Pick took a flying leap over the closest three-foot-high hedge, dragging me face first into it.
 

“Son of a bitch!” I screamed and that wasn’t the worst of it. I sounded like Uncle Morty when his rogue character got bested in Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn’t pretty.
 

Tiny hauled me out of the hedge by the seat of my pants, took the leash, and yanked Pick back with ease. “What’s wrong with this damn poodle?”
 

“I’ll kill him, starting with the tail and working my way up!”
 

“There’s no need for killing the dog,” said Tiny.
 

I held up my deeply scratched arms. “You don’t think?”

A head popped up on the other side of tragic love, Leslie with a tinge of pink on his cheeks. “I might’ve of known you’d be the first on the scene.”
 

“Scene of what?” I asked.
 

He raised an eyebrow. “Homicide, of course.”

Pick continued barking his brains out. Tiny and I stood there dumb with shock.
 

“Did you say homicide?” asked Tiny after a minute.
 

“Yes. Your dog isn’t as stupid as he looks.”
 

Pick did look pretty stupid at the moment, hurling himself at the hedge and slinging his head around as he strangled himself. Plus, he was a poodle. Nobody takes a giant poodle seriously.
 

I did an involuntary shake, reached over, and grabbed him by the snout. I clamped his jaws together and yelled in his berserk face, “No!”

Pick whined, dropped to the ground, and put his paws over his eyes.
 

“Very adorable,” I said. “You are not forgiven.”
 

Tiny poked me. “Mercy, he said homicide.”
 

“I heard him.”
 

“What’re you gonna do?” he asked.
 

“Yes, Mercy,” said Leslie. “What
are
you going to do?”
 

“Me? Nothing. Call the police,” I said.
 

“I’d rather not.”
 

I frowned and put pressure on a particularly deep cut on my forearm. Blood oozed between my fingers. That was going to leave a mark.
 

“Why not?” I asked.

“Let’s just say I’d like to handle this in-house,” said Leslie and he was completely serious. There was no such thing as handling a murder in-house unless you’re the mafia. Ah crap. Leslie could be mafia. Maybe that was how Dad knew him. It wouldn’t explain why he considered Leslie a friend though.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
 

“Only what you normally do.”
 

“Stitches and pressure checks?”
 

“Solve the murder.”
 

Tiny was sweating like crazy in the early morning chill and his hands were shaking, but he nudged me. “It is what you do.”
 

“Not really. Not on purpose.”
 

“Come on. I need the experience.” He sounded a little shaky on that and I didn’t blame him. I had as much experience as I wanted.
 

“Tiny,” I said.
 

“Come on, girl. We’re…professionals.”
 

Groan.
 

“Fine, but we’re calling the cops,” I said. “Who is it?”
 

“Cherie Marin.”
 

I checked my emotions and discovered I wasn’t surprised. Cherie wasn’t exactly Miss Popular, but still murder was a bit excessive. We walked around tragic love to the path between it and passionate love. The path was clean, the gravel was undisturbed, and there was no blood or signs of a struggle. I came to the center of the love garden. The fountain squirted away, lovely arcs of clear water. At the base of the fountain was Cherie, lying on her back. Her face was a hideous purplish red, her eyes were open, filled with burst capillaries and staring up at the sky. There was clear bruising in the shape of hands on her neck. The rest of her was where it got odd. She was stick straight, not a natural position at all. Her hands were folded over her stomach and her jeans were down around her knees. Her legs weren’t spread though and her boxy t-shirt was pulled down to cover her pelvis. Her body was damp from the last night’s rain. Forensics wouldn’t be happy.
 

“Amateur,” I said automatically.
 

“I’d say so,” said Leslie and he put his hand over his mouth, turning away.
 

Tiny called over the tragic love hedge, “What happened to her?”
 

“Come and see for yourself,” I said. “You’re the one who wants to do this thing.”
 

John walked out of the kitchen door, saw us, and came over. He was wearing a suit with a full Windsor knot in his tie. It was seven o’clock in the morning. Did this guy ever relax? Even Leslie wore sweats. They were tailored but still.
 

John came up to Tiny and took Pick’s leash. The poodle sniffed frantically and snapped at something next to John’s leg. He ignored the behavior and pointed to the path. Tiny took a breath and walked in. Every inch of him showed that he didn’t want to do it, despite what he said, and it surprised me. He took a job with Dad. At the very least there’d be crime scene photos.
 

“Are you okay?” I asked before he reached the fountain.
 

“Yeah,” he said as he looked down at Cherie. “Ah damn! Tommy’s gonna flip. You gotta go. Now!” Tiny grabbed my arm and I winced as his fingers dug into my cuts. “Sorry. But you gotta go.”
 

I peeled his fingers off my arm. “I’m not going anywhere. This has nothing to do with me. Call 911.”
 

“No 911,” said Leslie, turning back. His eyes dropped to Cherie and he grimaced. “Funding issues.”
 

“Well, call the local cop shop then,” I said.
 

“There hasn’t been a murder around here in years, but go ahead. Give it a shot. Maybe they’ll know what to do.”
 

A prickly feeling went up my back. I shivered and turned around. No one was behind me, but, on the parapet, a shadow darkened the spaces between the gaps in the stone teeth high above us. It could be the murderer, gazing on the horror he’d wrought or it could be nothing, the kind of nothing that locked people in the distillery or got them lost for hours on end. I had the strongest feeling it was that kind of nothing.
 

Leslie gently turned me away and I squatted beside Cherie’s body. “Tiny, call them.”
 

“Ah damn. She was raped. This is a sex crime.” Tiny pointed at Leslie. “I can’t believe this shit. What the hell is wrong with you people? This place is supposed to be secure.”
 

“It is.” Leslie relaxed as if remembering who he was and a lazy smile came over his face. This clearly wasn’t his first body.
 

“The hell it is.”
 

I leaned in to look at Cherie’s fingernails. Clean. No blood or tissue. She didn’t get a piece of him. “Leslie means that the murderer is still on the grounds.”
 

“Ah damn!” Tiny walked in a circle, throwing his hands in the air. “Ah damn!”

“Call the cops,” I said. “It’s fine.”
 

“It ain’t fine, but I’m callin’. This shit is unbelievable.”
 

Leslie gave me a sidelong look. “Perhaps not. Mercy is said to garner trouble wherever she goes.”
 

“Like this is my fault,” I said. “You’re a more likely cause.”
 

“How do you come to that conclusion?”
 

“You’re not who you say you are.”
 

“Who did we say we were?” Leslie asked.
 

He had a point. He and John hadn’t said anything about themselves. They were blanks. Witness protection program? Leslie smiled as I thought it over. He cared, but he wasn’t scared or worried about this murder. Either it had nothing to do with them or he was one hell of an actor.

“Hey,” said Tiny into the phone. “I got a murder out at Cairngorms Castle.”
 

He paused.
 

“Nah, I didn’t do it.”
 

Another pause.
 

“Would I call ya if I’d done it?”
 

“Cause she ain’t breathing,” said Tiny, rolling his eyes at me. “And she’s got hand marks around her neck.”
 

Long pause.
 

“Look man, this woman is dead and it ain’t no accident.”
 

Leslie cocked an eyebrow at me. “See what I mean.”
 

“Maybe that cop is the only incompetent one,” I said.
 

“I’m sure that will be the case since the most they handle around here is theft at the state park.”
 

Tiny held out the phone to me. “You wanna talk to this…cop?”
 

“No. You can handle it,” I said with a smile.
 

“You’re a pain in my ass,” he said.
 

“In many asses if you believe what people say.”