Murder on the Hoof: A Mystery (Colleen McCabe Series) (13 page)

“How’s it going?” she asked, slowing her pace to match his.

“Okay,” he said between breaths.

They jogged in silence past Marlin and Sailfish streets.

“Chief? Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“You really think I have what it takes to get certified?”

“Are you having doubts?” she asked with concern. It was one thing for him to struggle with his weight. It was another thing if he was struggling with his decision to be a firefighter. She couldn’t have partially committed men on her team.

“Oh, no,” he said with a passion that surprised her. “I really want this.”

“So what is it, then?”

“Mother. She says I’m too chicken to be a real firefighter.”

She signaled him to stop jogging. “Let me tell you something,” she said. “In firefighting, there’s a fine line between being courageous and being stupid. The latter has no fear. You understand?”

He paused a moment and nodded.

“You’re doing fine. But Chip’s right,” she said. “You do have to lay off those doughnuts.” He grinned sheepishly. “Come on.” They resumed their run. “So tell me. How’s your mother doing with the play?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said with a roll of the eyes.

“I sensed there was some friction between her and Lane,” she said, hoping that would be enough to tempt him to gossip.

“Friction? More like hostility. Yesterday, Mother told me she could kill Lane for casting Nellie without her permission. What a thing to say after what happened to Doris and Rich.”

“If I know one thing about Myrtle, it’s that she doesn’t take well to not being in charge. And,” she said, trying to be delicate but truthful, “she can sometimes have an abrasive way about her.”

“It might be hard for you to believe, but she does have a soft side.”

She glanced at him with raised brows. “Really?”

“How everyone sees her is how she wants everyone to see her.”

“Cranky and ornery?” she blurted out. “Sorry,” she added.

“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug. “I know Mother can be difficult.”

As they plodded down Whalehead Drive and made the turnaround at the halfway point, she considered Bobby’s idea that Myrtle was choosing to play a role—that of the cantankerous schoolteacher turned horse preservationist—and that there could be a softer side to her. She recalled having observed that side for the first time several weeks ago when Myrtle had thought Bobby didn’t love her after her presumed death in the explosion. But it was a side people rarely witnessed and, apparently, one Myrtle chose not to let people see. She wondered if Myrtle found acting in the play a relief from being, well, Myrtle. Maybe all actors found playing someone other than themselves liberating. It also made Colleen wonder who else in the theater company could be playing a role and if the role was that of murderer.

The men cheered Bobby as he and Colleen approached the firehouse. Because she had been preoccupied with thinking about Myrtle and the actors, she hadn’t realized that this was the first time Bobby had completed a run without walking most of the way. He picked up his pace for the last one hundred yards. She pretended to race him and allowed him to cross into the parking lot ahead of her. There were more cheers, high fives, and several compliments and shouts of “Way to go, probie!” from the guys. Bobby might drop those pounds after all, she thought,
if
he can stay away from the sweets. The men disappeared inside the station and she went out back to check on Sparky.

“Hey, fella,” she said, finding him where she had left him in his sand pit.

The Border collie rose and wagged his tail. She absently rubbed his furry lopsided ears and felt a bump along one ridge. It was a bump he had had since he was a puppy. Her mind drifted to the wall of ear photographs she had seen at Rich’s house. What was it about those photos? She wondered if someone in the theater company might know about his apparent obsession with ears. But who could she ask without arousing suspicion that she was investigating possible suspects? It would have to be the least likely suspect—someone who could keep her confidence … someone she could trust. She ran through the list of troupe members in her mind and then heaved a sigh of resignation. Of course. Who else?

“How’d you like to see Myrtle?” she asked her canine friend. Sparky wagged his tail and circled around her, ready to go. Myrtle it is, she thought, and went inside to clean up before heading out.

She pulled into the lot of the Lighthouse Wild Horse Preservation Society’s office and gift shop. The building was located in old Corolla Village and not only served as headquarters for the nonprofit organization but was where people could arrange for a tour of the wild horse refuge with a patrol specialist or the herd manager. She knew that the theater troupe members would be working their day jobs, so it had seemed likely Myrtle would be occupied with her work at the Preservation Society. Since Myrtle didn’t believe in leaving her cell phone on and Colleen had only been able to get through to an answering machine, the society’s office was the first place she had thought to look for her. She was relieved to see Myrtle’s pickup parked out front.

She and Sparky approached the front door. A sign next to the door read
CAT HAS HAD SHOTS BUT IS FICKLE. TOUCH AT YOUR OWN RISK
. Below the sign was a small wooden house—Inky’s home when the cat wasn’t wandering the Whalehead Club and Heritage Park grounds. She peered inside and was relieved to see Inky’s house was empty. She didn’t need Sparky terrorizing the cat again. “You leave Inky alone if he comes by, you hear?” Sparky cocked his head, the picture of innocence. She tied his leash to a shady part of the porch and went inside.

She peered into the gift shop on the left. Several people were milling about, shopping for T-shirts, mugs, and other wild horse–related souvenirs. She heard Fran, one of the patrol specialists, doing her introduction to the horse tour in a small education center room off of the gift shop. She turned right toward Myrtle’s office.

“I don’t see why Lane needs those lines,” she heard Myrtle say. “I think they can be cut or given to someone else.”

“I agree,” a male voice said.

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t want it turning into a big thing. You theater folks are more vicious than vipers.”

“Lane will have to accept that anything that isn’t accurate or doesn’t serve the horses has got to go. You’re the expert, Doc. He can’t argue with that.”

Myrtle was really working the equine veterinarian, and Colleen doubted that it was entirely out of concern about the accuracy of the wild horses’ history.

“Okay,” Doc Wales said with hesitation. “But if Lane gets mad, you’re dealing with him.”

“Gladly,” Colleen heard Myrtle say in a triumphant tone.

Chairs scraped on the wooden floors. Colleen stepped forward into the office entrance as if she had just arrived. “Well, hello,” she said, feigning surprise at seeing Doc Wales with Myrtle.

“Hello,” the veterinarian said. “See you later, Myrtle.”

Colleen studied the doctor as he hurried from the building. “Plotting the overthrow of the theater group?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Myrtle said. “We were discussing a new foal someone spotted this morning.”

Colleen smiled.

“Don’t stand there grinning at me like some psychotic clown, missy. Either come in or go out.” Myrtle sat in her chair and covered some papers on her desk. Colleen was certain the papers had to do with her recent ideas for rewriting Lane’s lines in the
Wild and Free
script.

“So how are things going with Lane?” she asked, taking a seat across from Myrtle.

“Were you eavesdropping?”

“Does that sound like me?” she asked, feigning innocence.

“As a matter of fact, it does.”

Damn. Myrtle had known her since childhood and was well aware of every bit of trouble she had been in during elementary school and that some of that trouble had been for snooping on teachers. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I want to talk to you about Rich Bailey.”

“What about him?”

“Did you know him well?”

“As well as anyone, I imagine.”

“Did he have any unusual interests or hobbies?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything you can think of.”

“For Pete’s sake,” Myrtle said with irritation. “Spit it out. I don’t have time for twenty questions. You never could get to the point. In class you’d tell a story or do a book report and every detail had the same weight. You’d go on and on: ‘She said this’ and ‘He said that’ and—”

“Myrtle!” she said, losing her patience. The woman never failed to get under her skin.

Myrtle folded her arms. “Well, you did,” she said, getting in the last word.

Maybe it was time to put Myrtle on the defensive. “Did you threaten to kill Lane for casting Nellie?”

Myrtle’s cheeks flushed red. “Did Mr. Hollywood tell you that?”

Mr. Hollywood? Wow, Doc Wales was right. They were worse than vipers. “You can’t go around threatening to kill people, especially given the fact that two members of the group are dead. It’s insensitive, and you’ll make yourself murder suspect number one.”

Myrtle’s eyes widened. “The sheriff thinks Doris was murdered, too?”

Uh-oh. She had said too much. “Well, no. I don’t have a clue what’s on his mind.”

“But you believe she was.”

“I don’t know what to think,” she said truthfully, and sat back in the chair. The visit had been a complete waste of time. She didn’t know why she had thought it would be otherwise.

Myrtle motioned for Colleen to move closer and then whispered, “I think she was murdered, too, in a manner of speaking.”

She sat up. “What do you mean?”

“A feeling I have. Nellie has it, too. Doris seemed to be under a lot of stress. I think it could have caused a heart attack. So whoever it was Doris was worrying about killed her.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch. You’d have to prove someone was deliberately provoking Doris. And even then, it’s not a crime. One thing I do know is that Rich didn’t end up dead in that elevator from natural causes.”

Myrtle studied her across the desk. “You think there’s a murderer in the theater group.”

She could almost see the wheels turning in Myrtle’s head. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Myrtle said, and then got an idea. “I could help you,” she added with enthusiasm. “Investigate from the inside, go undercover.”

“Stay out of it,” Colleen said, now panicked Myrtle would start butting her nose in and interfere with the investigation.

“Aren’t you worried someone might try to kill me?”

She looked at Myrtle straight on. I could think of a few people who might want to, she thought. “No. You’re too tough to kill.”

“Damn straight,” Myrtle said with pride.

Colleen rose. The interview with Myrtle had not been as productive as she had hoped. It was time to go, before Myrtle had them playing amateur sleuth again. “I’ll leave you to your”—she glanced at the papers on Myrtle’s desk—“rewrites.”

She made her way from the offices, unleashed Sparky, and was about to pull out from the lot, when Myrtle burst from the building. She rolled down her window. Myrtle shaded her eyes and squinted into the SUV.

“You might try talking to Ruby. She said Rich had been spending a lot of time at the library lately. Maybe she can tell you why.”

“Thanks.”

Myrtle stepped away as Colleen shifted her vehicle into reverse. “Next stop, the library,” she said to Sparky, and pulled onto the unpaved road leading to Ocean Trail.

She idled at the Route 12 intersection, waiting for a break in the long line of traffic. The summer activity often made it impossible to get anywhere in a hurry, especially on the weekends when some visitors were departing from rental properties and then, later, others were arriving at them. If you were a local, you knew to try to do all your chores, such as grocery shopping, during the week to avoid getting stuck in the summer congestion. She looked at the library parking lot across the street. Since the library sat adjacent to Corolla’s branch of the Currituck County Offices and, hence, the Sheriff’s Department, there was the strong possibility she might run into Bill. But his pickup was nowhere to be seen. She was safe from any interaction with him—at least while entering the building.

Finally, there was a break in the traffic. She hit the gas, shot across the road, coasted into the parking lot, and cut the engine. “Too short a ride?” she asked Sparky, knowing he wanted another trip with the windows down. They exited the SUV and went in search of Ruby.

Ruby Mazur was the librarian at the Corolla Public Library, a branch of the Currituck County Library System. A transplant from Philadelphia, Ruby had moved to the island ten years ago to assume the role of full-time librarian. With the recently deceased librarian, Edna Daisey, Ruby had transformed the library into a thriving community center hosting meetings, book sales, voting during elections, a summer reading club, and storytime readings for preschoolers and toddlers throughout the year. The accomplishment Ruby was the proudest of, however, was the library’s partnership with the Water’s Edge Village School—a kindergarten through sixth grade charter school located across the street in Old Corolla Village—which had opened its doors to its first class in the fall of 2012. Ruby was delighted to tell anyone who came through the doors that the Corolla Public Library now also served as the library for the charter school.

Colleen climbed the stairs and found a boy and girl each lying on one of the porch benches, reading. Their feet dangled off the edges, above flip-flops and Crocs that had slipped from their feet long ago. They looked up from their books.

“Can Sparky sit with you while you read?” she asked, knowing full well the answer would be a resounding “Yes!”

She tied Sparky’s leash to the arm of one of the benches.

“Nice dog,” said the boy, who was about ten.

“Hi, Sparky,” said the girl, abandoning her book and joining the boy.

Sparky wagged his tail and licked the children’s faces, sending them into a fit of giggles. Colleen wasn’t sure who was going to enjoy the visit more. She crossed the porch and went inside to find out what Ruby knew about Rich’s interests and why he had been frequenting the library.