Crime Rib (Food Lovers' Village) (4 page)

I
punched 911 on my cell and forced myself to keep a steady voice as I told the dispatcher who, what, and where.

But why?
Why?

I’d gone thirty-two years without finding a dead body. Then, two in two months. In mysteries, the person who finds the body is always the obvious suspect.

Criminy
.

Kyle had stopped his car twenty feet from where I stood next to Stacia, waving my flashlight. Turned out when he saw the lights, he thought someone had hit a deer and needed help. After checking the body—a phrase that made me shiver—he’d backed his car up and angled it across the road to block all traffic coming from the Lodge. Now, as I huddled on the edge of the road, he asked for my keys so he could move my Subaru to block access from the highway and town.

“How do you know to do that?”

He shrugged, his narrow face placid. He still wore chef’s duds, the black not showing the day’s work like the usual whites. “From over there,” he said.
Iraq.
In the Army, a cook wasn’t just a cook. He was a soldier first and last. What had Kyle experienced over there?

In three minutes that might have been thirty, flashing lights pierced the night as the sheriff’s deputies and ambulance crew arrived. I heard Detective Kim Caldwell, Jewel Bay’s resident deputy, barking orders. Heard her footsteps approach and stop. Almost heard her thinking,
What is it about the Murphys and hit-and-runs?
Squeezed my eyes and opened them to meet her gaze.

She’d crouched in front of me, and now she touched my bare arm. “Erin? It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

Like heck it would. I’d only come down here to give Stacia a book. And now—I closed my eyes again, hoping that would stop the tears.

Heavy steps approached. “Check her for shock.” Kim’s voice seemed a long way off.

“No. No, I’m okay.” I tried to stand. It didn’t work. “I’m just stiff. It’s cold out here.” That sounded stupid. It had to be seventy-five degrees. The EMT knelt and shone one of those medical light-thingies in my eyes. I blinked and tried to pull away, but he was a burly man and he kept a firm grip on my upper arm.

Kim and another EMT crouched by Stacia’s body. The EMT shook her head. Kim bowed hers. As they rose, Kim waved to a uniformed deputy carrying a big camera with a flash.

My EMT insisted on helping me stand. Kyle was explaining to Kim what he’d done, what I’d said. She eyed her cousin warily. The benefits to a cop of living in a small town can also be a detriment. Especially for a cop living in the town she grew up in.

“Good thinking,” she finally told him. “We’ll let the ME say for certain, but a hit-and-run is a good probability. Sure wish one of you had seen the vehicle.” I noticed then that several cars had stopped behind Kyle’s makeshift blockade. It would be hours before the scene was cleared. I suddenly had an overpowering urge to be
home.
On my couch, with my cat and a blankie. And a bottle of something strong.

The EMTs popped a gurney open and loaded Stacia’s body, in the tucked position in which she’d fallen. They barely had to lift a finger—small in life, she’d gotten even smaller in death.

Kim turned to Kyle, who’d perched next to me on the back of the second ambulance. The one without a dead woman inside. “Tell me again what you were doing here this time of night,” she demanded.

“I told you, Kim. I worked late and was headed home. This is a busy week. The Lodge is full, plus the Grill-off.” Impatience edged his words.

My vision was coming back into focus. I’d rarely seen Kim in anything other than detective garb—dark jackets and pants, usually matching—or jeans and riding boots. She must have been hanging out at home, a cottage by the bay about half a mile north of here. Her short blond hair was tousled. Black leggings left several inches of skin showing above sockless feet stuffed into silver and purple running shoes. The effect emphasized her long legs and slender build—and demolished the image of professional cool she worked so hard at.

At least she’d grabbed her gun belt before she ran out the door. It peeked out beneath the hem of her purple fleece hoodie.

“If you say so,” she said curtly. “We need to get you home, Erin. A deputy will drive you. We’ll get your car to you later.”

After they checked it over for any damage and ruled me out. I’d learned a few things about hit-and-run accidents, all those years ago when my father was killed. The deputies had already hauled out portable floodlights. They’d be searching for skid marks, gouges in the road, broken glass, chips of paint.

Before I could respond, Kim pivoted, instantly ready, at the sound of a scuffle. A harsh voice broke the reverent air.

“I’m a Lodge guest. You have to let me through.” Gib Knox stood by the side of his dark car, engine idling. He’d stopped inches behind a sheriff’s vehicle. He’d come from the direction of town, and if his tone were any indication, from its bars.

“Sir.” The deputy made a single polite word into a command.

“Nice rig,” Kyle whispered to me. He’d always had an eye for cars, unlike me. What was that slick speedy thing he’d been so proud of in high school?

“You’ll have to drive around,” Kim said. “The deputies will redirect you. That is, if you’re able.”

“Of course I’m able,” he snapped. He’d ditched the dude getup in favor of dark slacks, loafers, and a chocolate brown leather bomber jacket that looked more natural on him.

The deputy stepped closer to Gib, sniffed, then gave Kim a quick nod. He circled the car, shining his flashlight. “Looks clean.”

“Get his statement. All the usual whens and wheres,” Kim said. “Then show him the back entrance and start making the rounds, checking every car in the lots. Tell the desk clerk we’ll need a complete guest list. It’ll be a late night, kids—we’re knocking on every door.”

Made sense. The driver might have come from the Lodge or been going to it. They needed to know if any cars had been stolen or damaged, and whether anyone had seen anything remotely relevant.

“Not so fast,” Gib said. The EMTs had closed the doors to the other ambulance and climbed back inside, ready to clear the scene. No sirens, no flashing lights. “I want to know what happened.”

“There’s been an accident.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” He may have passed the smell test, but he wouldn’t get good marks for behavior. He spotted Kyle and me. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

“It’s Stacia,” I said. “She went out for a walk. Someone hit her. She—didn’t make it.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his face pale in the harsh floodlights, then sank against the car. Head down, he breathed heavily, then raised his eyes to mine.

“I told you. This town is cursed.”

*   *   *

B
y the time I handed Kim my car keys and she handed me off to a deputy, dark had fully fallen.

As my chauffeur wound the patrol car south above the lakeshore, I pictured all the roads our unknown driver could have taken. Highways, arterials, residential roads. Driveways and cul-de-sacs leading to houses and more houses, some dark, some lit up in welcome. Or in warning. Rutted back roads that split, twisted, split again, then petered out into abandoned logging roads.

All the places a guilty driver could have vanished.

Assuming he knew what he’d done. It might have been a glancing blow that didn’t even register. Or he might have thought he’d hit a small animal and not bothered to stop. Heartless, yes, but it happened all the time.

In high school, weeks after I got my driver’s license, I hit a cat on the highway. I’d parked my old beater—handed down from my father to my brother, my sister, then me—and carried the limp gray tabby to the nearest house. The owner opened the door and gently took the tiny load. Her expression said she didn’t blame me, but that hadn’t kept me from sobbing for days.

I thought again of Stacia. Her plans for the future and the friendship we’d just begun. The pictures she’d proudly shared of her young son.

She’d had spark, ambition, and urban smarts. They’d taken her far, in a cutthroat field. She’d been wearing black, walking on a narrow, country road at night with no flashlight.

Living in the country took a different kind of smarts.

That didn’t mean she should have died.

He—she, whoever—should have stopped.

*   *   *

T
he deputy raised one eyebrow when I told him where to take me. My first impulse had been to go to my cabin. Restored by Bob, decorated by Liz, it’s as sweet as any place on earth.

But I needed to go where I always go in times of trouble. The orchard. Where Murphys have lived for a hundred years, on the downslope of Trumpeter Mountain, high above the lake. Where the gentle winds make life—and the cherries—sweeter.

Where my mother still holds court.

Gravel crunched under the deputy’s tires as he followed my directions and pulled into the carport next to the house. I did not want her to see an official sheriff’s rig before she saw me, safe.

But there’s no fooling Francesca Conti Murphy. Or her faithful companion, Pepé, the only Italian Scottie dog. (Biscotti, my brother Nick calls her.) Alerted by the unexpected sound—not many drop-in visitors after 10 p.m. in these parts—my mother dashed out the front door, barefoot, her long silk kimono flapping as she ran.

I flew to her. No matter how old you are, there is nothing so comforting as your mother’s arms. Pepé circled us, barking, her stubby black tail upright.

Outside, in the warm breeze and underneath the stars, I gave my mother the news. “Oh, darling.” She cupped my face in her hands, her long fingers cradling my damp cheeks. I held her trembling shoulders, the familiar scent of her washing over me.

Inside, I slipped out of my dress, now speckled with dirt and bits of pine needles, and found an old pair of my brother Nick’s gray-and-black-checked flannel pajama bottoms and a faded gray-and-maroon UM sweatshirt. No doubt I’d shed them both during the night, but right now, Comfort R Us.

“What about her family?” my mother said when I’d curled up on the couch, Pepé beside me. She handed me a steaming mug.

“Kim will call the police where the husband lives. They’ll send a team to make a visit.” I inhaled the velvety scent of cocoa spiked with a dash of Bailey’s, and took a sip.

Fresca gestured with her Chianti. “Petty question at a time like this, but what about the filming?”

“They’ll have to cancel. They need someone to manage all the details. Especially since they’ve already lost their regular cameraman.”

Stacia’s death wouldn’t have any effect on Summer Fair itself. In thirty-five years, the Fair had seen plenty of major and minor disruptions. Rain. Forest fires. One early year, a fugitive in a stolen red Mustang convertible led sheriff’s deputies on a chase and got caught when he detoured into the village. The Fair goers thought he was part of the entertainment.

“We’ll start a memorial fund for her son,” Fresca said. “It’s the least we can do.”

I spent that night in the rocket-shaped twin bed my mother had built for Landon. The room had come a long way from the Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin decor it had endured in my childhood. Lego spaceships and Hank the Cowdog books had bumped my Little House collection off the shelves, and a Star Wars mural covered the wall where posters of The New Kids on the Block had once hung.

But sleep eluded me. A mental slide show—PowerPoint brain—looped over and over: pictures of Landon; of Stacia’s son, Luke; and of his namesake, Luke Skywalker. Images of Stacia crumpled by the side of the road, the gray tabby I’d run over, my own father. Losing a parent at seventeen was one thing, at three another.

I clutched Landon’s left-behind teddy bear—or was it an Ewok?—and pretended everything would be all right.

M
y Subaru waited next to the cabin, as if I’d parked it there myself. I waved thanks to my brother-in-law Jason for dropping me off, and headed inside to salvage my relationship with the main guy.

Mr. Sandburg couldn’t decide whether he was happy to see me or PO’d that I’d been out all night. He sniffed my PJs.
Eau de dog
. His nose twitched and he took a half step back. I’d inherited the sable Burmese cat from an elderly friend in Seattle, and he’d adjusted to our move well, except for the occasional testy encounter when Pepé visited. I mollified him with the rattle of the treat tin, and he nibbled a few pieces out of my hand. I scratched behind his ears and he meowed.

Stacia’s death was awful. But it had nothing to do with me. So why was I reciting John Donne as I brushed my teeth? “No man is an island, entire of itself. . . . Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.”

Or womankind.

Don’t get involved, Erin
.

But I knew I would. I already was.

Standing at the closet, I searched for something to celebrate a brief friendship ended in tragedy. Though I’d reclaimed many of my village ways in the three months I’d been home, I still savored my city wardrobe. I slipped on a stretchy skirt, the deep pink of raspberry cream, and a black-and-white tank with a diamond pattern and a draped front. Black leather sandals. A short stack of bracelets: brass bangles with onyx and mother of pearl, from an import shop in the Market in Seattle, punctuated by an acrylic square bracelet in fuchsia.

Stacia would approve.

I rubbed the magic spot on Sandburg’s forehead. “Don’t chase the squirrels. They just want to be friends.”

On the passenger seat of my car lay the book. Julia Child had lived a long, full life. Stacia Duval had not had that chance. I touched the cover and made them both a promise.

*   *   *

“W
hat would you do without Wendy’s croissants?” Tracy asked when I walked into the Merc, half-eaten pastry in hand.

“Lie in the gutter and weep.” A stricken look crossed her sweet, round face. “Sorry. You heard?”

Jaw quivering, she nodded. I stuffed my croissant back in its bag and gave her a long hug.

Most early mornings, I have the shop to myself and relish the quiet time. Today, I welcomed the soft sounds of another human being shuffling around the place, making ready for more human beings.

In the kitchen, I started a pot of Cowboy Roast and opened a new package of the tiny paper cups we offer customers. Spotted the Wheat Coffee we’d gotten from Montana Gold, a family-run farm-to-fork business in the central part of the state. The stuff would probably give Gib Knox the vapors. That alone was reason enough to start a pot. I no longer cared if Mr. TV Host approved of our little town or not.

He wanted to try local foods. That’s what we’d give him.

Thinking of Montana Gold gave me a smile. I’d suggested Rick Bergstrom share a booth this weekend with the Creamery folks. Fair goers who tasted local cheese on crackers and bagels made of Montana-grown grains were more likely to buy than if they tried the two products separately.

Plus, I wanted the broad-shouldered, blond farm boy–turned–sales rep to think of Jewel Bay fondly.

I’d texted word of Stacia’s death to Mimi and Tara last night and suggested we meet midmorning. Pleas for information had already been broadcast on the radio and TV. Ned didn’t text, so I dashed next door to Red’s, hoping the grapevine hadn’t beat me to it.

“Oh, girlie.” At the news, fatherly concern filled his ashen face.

“Kim will find the culprit. For all we know, someone’s heard the reports, realized what they did, and called in to confess. I mean, it’s a crime to hit someone, and to leave the scene, but . . .” My voice trailed off as I realized I’d put mouth in gear before engaging brain.

“It’s all right, girlie. No need to pussyfoot around me. I’ll tell you now, don’t cancel a thing. That don’t honor the poor lass.”

I squeezed his arm and headed back to the Merc, wishing for a way to avoid the inevitable cancellation of the broadcast. Two women stood in front of our display window, peering and pointing. “Those Breakfast Baskets are new,” I said. “Come on in and take a closer look.”

They followed me inside, where I offered coffee and showed them basket options.

“Such a sweet little town,” the shorter woman said, her vowels thick as Mississippi mud. They had to be sisters, with the same frosted blond curls, high foreheads, and laughing blue eyes. Sixty-ish, they both wore white crops and beaded sandals, and tropical print blouses.

“I told you so.” The other woman turned to me, brushing my arm with her pearl pink fingertips. “We’ve been here before, my husband and I. We just love it. But I don’t remember noticing this place.” To my Western ears, it came out “remembuh this plice.”

“We’re new. And old.” I started to explain how my family had started the first grocery store in the area right here—

“On this very spot,” the returning visitor exclaimed, peering up at the tin ceilings and down at the wide plank floors.

“Well, that is so sweet,” her sister said, picking up a jar of cherry jam.

The front door chimed and Kim Caldwell entered. She’d changed into her usual pants suit, in navy. The silver bracelet with black onyx that I’d given her years ago wrapped her left wrist. But while she’d cleaned up, the circles under her eyes said she’d been working most of the night.

“I’m so glad you found us,” I told my customers. “You ladies browse all you want. Tracy can answer all your questions.”

I poured two mugs of Cowboy Roast—Kim clearly needed more than the sample size—and led the way to the courtyard. “Sorry about the mess. We’re remodeling. As you predicted, the accident’s all over the morning news.”

She took a sip. “Mmm. Tastes good. Strong. Publicity is critical in investigating a hit-and-run. As you know.” She colored slightly, then set her mug on the rusty iron tabletop and pulled out her notebook. “Need to go over a few things.”

For the next several minutes, I replayed everything I’d seen last night on the Lodge road, including Kyle’s actions and comments. Kim asked a few questions about Stacia and the filming, trying to piece together her last hours.

“She was staying at the Lodge, in the guest cabins, right?” I said. “There are trails all over the place. Why walk up the main road? And she wasn’t dressed for exercise.” She’d been wearing the same black linen pants and collarless jacket she’d worn for the appetizer and dessert filming, and the same pointy-toed, slick-soled slingbacks.

“Inquiring minds want to know,” Kim said.

“Did she call someone? Did someone call her? Upset her with bad news?”

Kim’s lips tightened but stayed zipped. Rekindling our friendship didn’t mean she’d reveal any details of an ongoing investigation.

“This might not be relevant—I mean, clearly it’s not, but it might have been on her mind. Even though we got it straightened out.” I told her about the recipe mess, and our attempts to entice Stacia to move to Jewel Bay.

Kim made a few notes, then drained her coffee and stood. “Erin, I know . . .” She hesitated, glancing off in the distance. “I know this is doubly hard on you because of your dad, but we will do everything we can to solve this.”

I forced down the tension that rose in my chest. Kim had dropped me like a hot potato the spring my father died. At the time, I’d been so raw, so wounded, that I thought everything was connected to his death. Only recently had I learned the real reason, one of those things that means the world to a teenager but later, with a little more experience, becomes insignificant. “If only I’d seen something. The car, or . . . I feel so helpless.”

“Just keep doing what you do best. That’s the best way to remember her.”

I sat at the table after she left, staring into my nearly empty coffee mug. The air around me felt gray and lifeless.

My mother had suggested a memorial fund for Stacia’s son, but what should we do? Make it part of the festivities? Donate a portion of Grill-off ticket sales? Any profits were earmarked for the town’s advertising fund, and a change in plans would require a vote of both the Chamber and the Merchants’ Association. On short notice. Fat chance.

The cold mug in my hands gave me another idea. Stacia loved our Cowboy Roast. Why not donate a dollar from every pound of coffee—the real thing and the roasted wheat substitute—the Merc sold this weekend to a memorial fund? If Red’s, the Inn, and half a dozen others joined us, donations would pile up.

If I hurried, I could get to the bank to set up a fund before the committee meeting.

It was the least we could do. Short of sending her home alive.

*   *   *

H
alf an hour later, I walked out of Jewel Bay Bank and Trust feeling—well, trusting. The bank manager had known exactly what we needed. I stopped at the copy shop to arrange for posters, which the owner offered free. Action—a surefire cure for helplessness.

I headed up Hill Street toward the Jewel Inn and Front Street. Drew Baker stood outside the Inn’s rear door, his back rigid. I craned my neck to see who he was talking to and caught a glimpse of long blond hair.

The Inn door may have obstructed my view, but it didn’t block Tara’s words. “If you do anything that keeps him from getting that job . . .”

Drew’s reply was too low for me to catch.

“I’m telling you, Drew. Don’t you dare interfere. Or I will find a way, and you will have to fight me for every minute with Emma.”

How old was Emma? Maybe six. She and Tara had looked so happy together, just last night.

Keep going, Erin
.
Their custody dispute is none of your business. You have places to go and people to beg.