Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) (2 page)

Hmm. That backfired. Now I was the one that felt guilty. “You sure know how to make a girl feel bad.”

“That’s not what I meant to do.” Another call must have beeped through on his line because his voice cut out briefly. “Curly—gotta take this call. Listen, I’ll stop by tonight and fix you guys my famous tacos.”

“No red meat.”

“Chicken tacos.”

Colt Baron chicken tacos. I’d take those. “Okay. Have fun making money.”

“I plan on it. Love ya.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Everyone was full of love for me today, but not enough to make them drop their plans and hit the trails.

“Hey, quick question,” he said. “Those new neighbors of yours, the Penobscotts. Did I see white rocks in their front yard? The decorative kind? Landscaping rocks.”

“Where Roz used to live? They did a little re-landscaping when they moved in, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t looked that closely. Why?”

“No reason. See you tonight.”

For the second time in just five minutes, a dial tone buzzed in my lonely ears.

“Double poo,” I shouted to no one in particular. Puddles the poodle, who had been lounging on the rug in front of the sliding-glass door, raised his head and yapped twice at my outburst.

“No backtalk from you, Mister Man,” I snapped. “It looks like you’re going to be my walking companion today, so get used to it.”

“I’ll go with you.”

I turned to see Howard limping down the hallway, a cane in his left hand, a book in his right, and three days worth of beard growing on that face that made my heart melt. He looked a little like George Clooney—same dark, gray-streaked hair, a little less chin, slightly softer features. I had to admit, he was supremely handsome as husbands go.

“You,” I replied sternly while stepping forward to help him, “are going nowhere except to the couch to rest that leg like the doctor ordered. You’re going to do what he says so I can have my happy, healthy husband back and life can get back to normal around here. No more hospitals, no more surgeries. You hear me?”

He shook off my attempt to assist him. “I’m tired of sitting on the couch and I’m not an invalid. The doctor said to rest the leg regularly, not to immobilize it. Walking around does me good.”

He was right. I was probably overreacting. “Someone is moody,” I teased. “Are you going through menopause too?”

Howard frowned, obviously neither pleased nor affected by my attempted levity. Three months earlier, during his last day on the job as an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Howard’s SUV took a five-roll tumble, narrowly missing a dive off the overpass and onto Interstate 66 below. I know, because I witnessed the entire metal-crunching, heart-stopping episode while teaching Callie to drive home from a dentist appointment. If I hadn’t been an eyewitness, I would probably have never known what really occurred. As it was, no one, not Howard, nor one person at the Bureau would tell me who they were escorting that day or why that car came out of nowhere firing endless rounds of lead at the government vehicles.

Of the five agents involved, only one lost his life. Howard was touch and go since he’d unbuckled to warn civilian vehicles on the road to stop approaching the mission gone dangerously wrong. He’d spent a week on life support in a doctor-induced coma which allowed his brain to heal from the head trauma. They didn’t let him come home until two weeks after he’d regained consciousness. Even then the damage to his left leg and collar bone were so extensive that he went back to the hospital for three additional surgeries.

To say that he’d experienced emotional ups and downs would be the biggest understatement since the crew of Apollo 13 told Houston they had a problem. And unfortunately, the downs seemed way deeper than the ups seemed high. However, I have learned the hard way that when you see the love of your life come excruciatingly close to death, patience becomes as easy and natural as breathing. This current little display of irritation was nothing a bit of TLC couldn’t fix.

“My walks are an hour long, but I’ll tell you what—you can walk Puddles and me up to the path.” I placed a warm kiss on his scruffy cheek. “Deal?”

He emitted a low grumble that I interpreted as an affirmative.

I tugged a fleece jacket from a hanger in the hall closet, slipped a pair of mittens into one pocket, three grocery bags for collecting doggy poop into the other, and snapped the leash onto Puddles’ collar. We were one week into a startlingly chilly Virginia November so I decided to grab my fluffy, warm scarf too, just in case. Those woods could get pretty nippy, even if I paced myself at a good clip.

One of the beauties of our quaint Northern Virginia suburb, is the fifty five miles of paved walking paths that run throughout the forested community. A person can get exercise and commune with nature simultaneously. Admittedly, I hadn’t really availed myself of the benefit in the six years we’d lived there, but I was developing new respect and admiration for it now.

Technically, the walking path I traversed wound along behind my house, but a person would have to trudge through some dense woods and briar bushes then, if nimble, climb down a long and steep incline to arrive there. The neighborhoods in Rustic Woods aren’t like typical cookie cutter suburban sprawls, hence, the name. Houses sit on three-quarter more acre lots that are usually heavily wooded on the backend.

I always opted for the easier route to the walking path—a thin, mulched trail that ran from White Willow Lane along the edge of the Perkin’s property. Mr. and Mrs. Perkins lived on just the other side of our neighbors the Penobscotts who Colt had mentioned. Howard walked me from our driveway to the mulched trail. As we passed the Penobscotts’ house, I noticed something interesting.

“Well I’ll be,” I said.

Howard peeked around me. “What are you looking at?”

“White rocks in that flower bed.”

“Against policy?” He was referring to the rigid rules set forth by the illustrious and ever-enforcing Rustic Woods Home Owners Association. Rules and regulations that kept most residents quaking in their boots, wondering if a hefty fine was waiting in their near future for something as simple as painting their door the wrong color or installing an outdoor light fixture that didn’t match the style of the house.

I shook my head. “Colt just asked me if the Penobscotts used white rocks when they re-landscaped.”

“Really?”

“He’s way more observant than I give him credit for,” I said.

“He has to be, it’s how he makes his living.”

“But why would that interest him?”

“Heck if I know.”

We’d reached the mulched trail. He kissed me sweetly on the lips. His were warm and soft and made me want to run with him back to the house for some long and passionate morning delight. That would be exercise, right? Except we hadn’t been doing a whole lot of that since the accident. In fact, we’d done a whole lot of
none
of that since the accident, which, trust me, was completely out of character for my usually-horny hubby. Heck, two hours after his vasectomy, with his family jewels swollen to the size of cantaloupes, he was practically begging for some nookie time. Any attempt on my part, though, to discuss his recent lack of interest, was immediately shut down by him. Attributing the issue to post-traumatic stress, I tried to be understanding and wait things out, but despite the fact that “low sex drive” was one of my thirty-four symptoms of menopause, my desire hadn’t ceased to exist entirely.

“Do you have your cell phone?” he asked.

I nodded, thinking more about how I wanted another kiss. “And my mace.” I patted the pocket that also held the grocery bags just to be sure I could still feel it there. Check. If Puddles’ glass-shattering yips and yaps didn’t scare a would-be attacker, a handy shot of pepper spray would.

As Howard limped his way back home, I strode the twenty or so paces to the macadam-paved walking path. Once there, I had the choice of turning to my left or to my right. The previous two days, I had gone right. Today, for some strange reason—let’s call it pathetically bad luck—I decided to go left instead. The paths were long and winding, much like that road in the Beatles song, so my strategy was to walk for thirty minutes, then turn around and walk back, giving me the prescribed one hour. Two minutes into the regimen, I realized why I hadn’t brought the dog along before. It’s very hard to get any momentum and heart rate up when your companion needs to sniff everything in sight and then pee on it for good measure. Thank goodness humans don’t mark their territory the way dogs do, or we’d be living in a very, very wet and smelly world.

The air temperature seemed to be going down rather than up. I could see my breath now, and even the mittens, which I had eventually resorted to, didn’t keep the bite away. I tugged at Puddles a few more times in an attempt to pick up some speed and warm up, but I was losing interest real fast. My watch told me we’d been at it for fifteen minutes and I was about ready to call it quits when Puddles started barking wildly at a pile of leaves beside a rotting tree trunk. His nose was inches from the pile and as he managed to pull himself closer, he barked even louder.

Who knew what was under that pile. I assumed a dead animal—a squirrel maybe—but didn’t really want to find out, so I bent down to lift Puddles up with the intention of carrying him back home. As it turned out, that was the wrong thing to do, because too much slack went into his leash. With the ferocity of a lion after a kill, Puddles dove headfirst into the pile and sent leaves spraying.

“Puddles!” I hollered, heading back in for another attempt to scoop him up. In the process, my foot landed on something that squished, then cracked. If it had just cracked, I would have thought ‘twig’. It was the squish that caused me to step away and look closer.

After brushing a few damp leaves away, I gagged instinctively. Four dirty fingers, one thumb. Gray fingernails. Chopped at the wrist.

Meanwhile, Puddles was going to town on that pile of leaves.

Having just stepped on a human hand that did not have a body attached, my mind reeled at what the dog might have discovered. I yanked hard on the leash, not even caring about poor Puddles’ neck. He barely noticed. He just growled and shook the prize in his mouth like it was his chewy toy at home. In fact, when I focused more closely, it kind of looked like his chewy toy. The one that’s shaped like a sausage but squeaks like a lab rat on mind-altering drugs.

I was still working to hold back the strong impulse to unload my morning’s portion of organic, honey-sweetened oatmeal when I realized what Puddles had discovered.

That friends, was another body part.

A
male-only
body part, if you catch my drift.

And unfortunately, even if the male to whom it had once belonged was alive and could get it back, he’d probably say, “No thanks,” since Puddles was...how should I put this? Finding it awfully tasty.

Welcome to the world of Barbara Marr. I’m a wife, friend, daughter, mother-of-three, and apparently, I’m unusually prone to stumbling upon the messy remnants of lurid crime scenes.

Chapter Two

U
ltimately, I didn’t throw up.
I didn’t scream either. I didn’t even cry. In fact, I dialed 911 with an amazing and almost eerie sense of calm. Once I separated Puddles from his morning snack, that is.

Grisly discoveries had become far too common lately. Was it me, or was it Rustic Woods? Maybe I should have followed Roz’s example and hightailed it out of town months ago. Of course, that was all twenty-twenty hindsight sort of thinking, since I was now sitting in the back of a police cruiser wrapped in a blanket and sipping a hot cup of coffee thanks to my friend who I liked to call Officer Brad.

Officer Brad’s real name was Erik Lamon. Or Officer Lamon, to those who hadn’t had the intimate experience (like me) of jointly bringing down a ring of misfit Mafia goons who’d been dealing in pharmaceuticals. Really. It happened. In any event, Erik looks a whole lot like Brad Pitt, thus the nickname. When he became a good friend of the family, however, I resorted to addressing him by his given name—it’s easier and less embarrassing for both of us. He’s one hunk of policeman, let me tell you. And a nice guy to boot. Not every cop would run out and get a cup of coffee for a freezing woman who’d just uncovered a man’s pogo-stick in a pile of leaves.

Erik stood talking with three other uniformed, gun-toting lawmen. Several others, many of them gloved and masked, climbed in and out of the woods. The flashing blue and red lights had attracted a gaggle of neck-craning onlookers.

When his conversation ended, the handsome policeman strode my way. “How’s the coffee?”

Yes, I had broken down, dismissed Dr. Sadistic’s list of forbidden beverages, and savored that steamy cup of java like a smoker two hours late for cigarette break. “Perfect,” I said with a smile. The cool air made my warm breath visible. “Nothing like roasted blend after a brisk morning walk and close encounters of the revolting kind.”

He chuckled, but turned back to business. “We have everything we need from you now. Do you need a ride home?”

“Howard is on his way.”

“How is he doing?” When word got to Erik about Howard’s accident, he had been extraordinarily helpful to all of us, but mostly to Howard.

“Walking with a cane and generally better overall.” I sneaked a sip of my brew, then added, “A little grumpy sometimes.”

“You can expect that for a while. A buddy of mine took a bullet in the spine during a routine traffic stop. He was not a nice guy until he decided to turn over a new leaf and found a different job.”

Puddles was beside me on the seat barking, panting, and going all dog-crazy. I rubbed his head to calm him down. “What’s your friend doing now?”

“He’s a barista at Cappuccino Corner. Brewed that cup you’re drinking.”

“He’s happy?”

“Happiest I’ve ever seen him, actually.”

My phone jingled in my hip pack. I pulled it out, expecting to see Howard’s name on the ID, but saw Peggy’s instead. I took the call.