Sympathy For The Devil (3 page)

She sidled up to the ambulance, skipping around the back and out of view of the other officers talking. She peered around the side. “Keish!”

Keisha met her eyes and shook her head, stealing a glance around her before slipping around to the back of the ambulance. “What the hell?”

“I promise I will leave the crime scene, just tell me what’s going on.”

Her cousin sighed, like she knew there was no point in arguing. She kept her voice low. “A body.”

“I guessed that with the coroner—whose?”

Keisha shrugged. “Don’t know yet. No one recognizes her, but the body’s pretty badly damaged.”

Tash shuddered at the thought. “Damaged?”

“Maybe a combination of being beaten and then tossed around by the water. We’re not sure. Definitely murder.” She hesitated as if she was about to say more and thought the better of it.

Natasha, of course, both noticed and pounced. “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

The officer groaned. She leaned close, her voice hovering at a whisper. “They said this looks...familiar.”

Tash’s eyes widened. Familiar crime scene? Here, in Stirling Falls? “What else?”

Keisha visibly backed off, lifting her chin and straightening her spine. “That’s it. Nothing more I’d tell
you
anyway.”

She had her own cases and clients to worry about, but Tash was
itching
to find out what was going on.

“If you don’t mind,” her cousin continued, “I have work to—”

A man stepped around the ambulance and Tash was ready to launch into an explanation for Perry but it was only Officer McKay.

Leo grinned, a big rugged sort of guy who had half the girls in town giggling over him. Blond hair contrasting with dark eyes, there were worse partners her cousin could’ve had. Not that there was anything going on between Keish and Leo—Natasha pegged them both too shy for it—but he was at least easy on the eyes for her cousin.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Leo warned in a mock-stern voice.

“My morning jog—I
innocently
stumbled across the scene. I promise.”

“Oh please.” Keish rolled her eyes. “You probably had the police scanner on.”

Though she owned one, it was rarely on—nothing was so disappointing in a small town than that police scanner. Right when she thought something was about to go down, it turned out to be someone’s cow got out or Old Mrs. Miller’s keys fell down a well.

Keisha patted Leo’s shoulder as she started back around the ambulance. “She’s not allowed to know
anything
. Perry’ll have your ass, you know.”

Officer McKay waved her off. He had a notepad in his other hand, which Natasha angled herself so she might see.

“C’mon,” Tash whispered. “Tell me something. Some little tidbit. And I’ll be on my way.”

He gave her a look that all but shouted
Liar, liar, pants on fire
.

“You don’t want me to hear it on the streets, do you?
Plus
, think about how often misinformation is spread around. It’s a giant game of telephone in a town like this and
everyone
talks to me. If I know the truth, well, I can correct some things before they get out of hand.”

He relented with a sigh and a shake of his head, fingers drumming on the notepad that she
still
couldn’t see. “Okay.” He leaned in and she mirrored him, coming close to follow his lowered voice. “We don’t recognize her, no one local, at least, but because Hastings Creek runs through a few counties, she could’ve come from about three places—we don’t know how long she’s been in the water. Harrison Jameson found her this morning when he was out fishing.”

“Keish said murder.”

Leo nodded. “She was mostly naked and rolled up in some kind of plastic—the thick kind, you know, that covers mattresses.”

“Sexual assault?”

“We don’t know. A lot of evidence of physical trauma, though. Bruising like she’d been tied and hit.”

A horrid chill crept up Tash’s back, her stomach turning. She was nosy, yes, but this was a bit too unsettling even for her. She crossed her arms, hugging herself, and suppressed a shiver. “Shit.”

He waved his finger at her in warning. “You hear nothing.”

She swallowed dryly and nodded. “Of course.”

“Get out of here before Perry finds out.”

Again, she nodded, and watched while he ducked back around the ambulance in the direction Keisha had taken. Tash peered around the corner for a moment, watching the scene continue to unfold. There was more to learn about it, of course, but she didn’t need to stick around and see the body.

Besides, Mrs. Martin was on her way to the office early and Tash still had to get ready for work.

Creepy dread following her, Natasha turned away from the scene of the crime and started jogging again, but the whole way home she couldn’t shake the chill echoing her steps.

A murder possibly in Stirling Falls. This was going to be big.

Chapter Three

The office of Malone and Associates opened officially at 9:00 a.m., though Natasha had already been working for an hour by that time. Her former boss had old case files from when he first started, over thirty years ago; half were in storage, the other half were still waiting for her to finish sorting them.

She sat on a braided rug in the middle of the floor of his office—now hers—with half a dozen stacks of paper all around her. It being Saturday, she hadn’t dressed business formal, figuring anyone arriving today would take what they got. Though she’d showered after her jog, she didn’t look it. Her hair was once again bound up with corkscrew curls bouncing. She did put on cropped cotton pants but paired them with just a tank top. Despite the updates to the small office—a storefront at the far end of town between an ice cream shop and a used bookstore—they had yet to obtain central air. The air conditioner in the front window, facing the tiny waiting room, had quit at the start of the month. A ceiling fan whirled noisily above her while another fan twisted back and forth on the desk, but none of it was cooling her off. Sweat soaked stray curls to her forehead and the back of her neck.

Her eyes were starting to glaze over, staring at the same papers over and over again. Whoever Malone’s secretary was back in the late eighties, she needed to be smacked. At first she thought these ones were organized alphabetically but then she saw Mr. Conway’s possible insurance fraud stuck under Hoyt’s Burgers & Stuff investigating an employee, one in 1989 and the other from 1985.

Completely indecipherable.

She swiped at her brow, blew curls from her eyes, and glanced at the clock.

It’s gonna be a loooong day in this heat
.

She’d listened to the police scanner while getting ready that morning, but nothing particularly exciting was said. They were keeping the whole murder thing under-wraps but when Liliah Jean from The Coffee Hut brought over her morning iced java and jelly donut, she was buzzing about it and said all of Stirling Falls knew.

Technically the PI office closed early afternoon on Saturdays and for once she might head out on time, if only to catch some local gossip. The town’s one and only full time reporter, Harry Ingram, owed her a favor or two. He might talk.

The bell over the front door chimed. No one was working the front desk on the weekend—in fact, Malone’s regular secretary was on holidays for another two weeks—so Tash leapt up, nearly knocked a stack of file folders as she did, and hopped over the towering papers to slip out the door. She thumped barefoot down the narrow hall, only realizing once she reached the waiting room that she would probably make a better impression on people if she was in shoes.

A slender, impeccably dressed woman waited just inside the closed front door, a small purse hanging on her arm. Her gray-threaded hair was coiled up and if the heat bothered her under her dark blue suit, she gave no indication of her. Her chin was lifted so she literally looked down at Tash.

“Hi Mrs. Martin.” Natasha immediately went for the secretary’s desk, reaching for the single manila folder waiting on the top. “I’ve got everything right here—”

“My
husband
filed for divorce this morning,” Mrs. Martin said sharply.

Tash paused, the envelope in her hands. “Um...that was what you wanted, right?”

“
I
wanted to surprise him and have him on the defensive. He’s already started shifting money around, met with his attorney at the crack of dawn—I no longer have the element of surprise.”

“But,” Tash extended the envelope and tried to smile, “you have photographic proof of infidelity—”

“Which he already knows about—there is no way to throw it in as a surprise during court proceedings.” She shook her head, eyes narrowing. “Malone never would’ve gotten caught. You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.” Mrs. Martin nodded at the envelope, still hanging between them from Tash’s outstretched hand. “And you’ve not only lost me as a client but I will be sure to tell
everyone
precisely how incompetent you are.”

Before she could respond, Mrs. Martin abruptly turned and stormed back outside, the door slamming in her wake and bell overtop jangling.

Natasha stared after her for a moment, blinking, then dropped the envelope back on the desk. She muttered a string of expletives and sank onto the edge of the desk herself.

I can’t believe that’s a thing that just happened
.

Sure, Mrs. Martin might be exaggerating her reach but this slip up certainly wasn’t going to
help
. Briefly, Natasha had been a bit of a celebrity for helping to find and catch Dani’s stalker last year—it had been a boost to the office as well as Tash’s reputation. But people quickly forgot the good and tended to remember the bad.

Malone was on his way to a lake house with his wife for a week—there was no sense bothering him. Besides, she could no longer go running to him for help.

With a groan of frustration, she fished the keys from her pocket and headed for the door. A double scoop of butterscotch ice cream seemed in order.

After locking up, she headed a few feet down the street and hung a left into the ice cream shop. Blessed cool air met her and she heaved a sigh of relief.

“I think I should set up business in here,” she said to the boy at the cash register.

He just blinked at her with wide eyes. All the kids were working for the summer and she didn’t know half of them, just the troublemakers.

Not my day
. “Double scoop butterscotch, waffle cone. And sprinkles.”

“Chocolate or rainbow?” The kid looked relieved to have something to say that didn’t involve small talk.

“Both.” She slapped a five dollar bill on the counter, accepted her ice cream, and gazed out the shop window for a moment. It was hotter than hell back at the office but the ice cream place was empty at this hour and so it would be just her and the guy at the register. Which would be awkward. She didn’t like silence all that well unless she was by herself.

After dragging her tongue around the edge of the ice cream a few times, she shouldered her way out the door. Immediately the heat struck forcefully and she nearly backtracked into the shop again until she caught sight of someone waiting outside the office.

Tash squinted against the sun as she approached and recognized Adam Cooper behind dark shades.

“Hey you,” she called, quickening her steps and fumbling for the keys. “What’s up?”

“Hoping to talk to you for a moment, if you have time.”

Just me, ice cream, and file sorting with Mrs. Martin gone
. She tried to smile. “Absolutely.”

He took her keys, swiftly unlocked the door, and they both entered the office. It wasn’t much cooler in there than it had been outside. She led him down the short hall and went right into her old office, which was currently tidier than the main one. A ceiling fan stirred this one as well and she jerked the chain to turn the light on, brightening the space.

“Have a seat.” She indicated the chair opposite the desk as she took her own.

Adam stood a beat longer, glancing around briefly before folding his large frame in the chair. He pulled his dark shades off and fidgeted with them in his hands. It was then she realized precisely how uncomfortable he was.

Frowning, she grasped some tissues to wrap around her cone before it could leak on her hand and tried to seem at least
somewhat
professional with a half-eaten ice cream cone in front of her. “What’s up, Adam?”

He cleared his throat. “I want to hire you.”

She blinked at him for a moment. “Um...it’s
your
baby. Dani’s not—”

“I know she’s not, it’s not that.”

“That’s...usually why people hire me—”

“What do you know about the body found this morning?”

Of course anyone who knew her would guess that she’d already stuffed her nose in it. “Very little, so far. As of like six this morning, they didn’t know where she was killed, just that she was murdered.”

He met her eyes, his own steady and unreadable, voice pitching monotone. “Body dumped in the water. Signs she had been tied. Bruising and cuts, indicating she’d been beaten. Strangled though not to the point of death—that was multiple stab wounds to the stomach. Mostly naked—”

“How do you know all that?” Her ice cream was dripping over her fingers now but she was hardly aware of it, staring at him.

“It’s Chelsea. Or what
happened
to Chelsea, nearly five years ago.”

Chelsea, his sister. He didn’t talk about her but everyone knew how that haunted him still—they’d been close and he’d been the one to identify her body after it was found. Supposed home invasion gone wrong was the
official
story, but...there were rumors. And she’d heard all of them—she wasn’t
here
at precisely the time of the crime, but she knew the whole affair had been a damn circus. Malone still talked about it on occasion.

Before she could object, she recalled Keisha
had
said reportedly the scene seemed familiar.