Stuck on Murder (22 page)

“Brenna!” She heard Tenley call her name and she turned toward the gate.

“Over here!” she yelled. “I found him. He’s badly hurt but still breathing.”

The gate swung wide and Tenley, Bart, and Twyla rushed to her side. Tenley pressed the miniflashlight on her keychain. She swept the light up Ed’s body until it shone on his face. Pale with blood oozing out of a nasty gash over his eye, Ed looked pretty bad.

“Holy crap!” Bart exclaimed. “Is he dead?”

“Oh, no, not again,” Twyla whimpered.

“He’s not dead. Call an ambulance,” Brenna said and Tenley dug her phone out of her purse.

“I’ll go tell the manager,” Twyla said, and she bolted in a flurry of purple back inside.

Tenley told the dispatcher where they were and stayed on the line. She leaned close to Brenna and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I think so. Better than Ed, at any rate,” she said. “Thank God he’s alive. I don’t think I could handle two bodies in as many weeks.”

Ed groaned and Brenna leaned close. “Ed, can you hear me?”

“The plate doesn’t match,” he mumbled. “No match.”

“What plate?” she asked. “Ed, who hit you? Ed?”

His eyes opened just a crack and then they rolled back into his head as a shudder rippled through his body. Brenna checked his pulse; it was thready but still there.

“The ambulance is on its way,” Tenley said.

The manager of the Willow House bustled out into the alley with Twyla. He brought several clean towels and Brenna used one to wipe her hands. She would have liked to clean up Ed’s head wound, but she was afraid to move him, so she held a towel to it to staunch the blood flow until the paramedics arrived.

In just minutes the ambulance arrived with its siren blaring, effectively shutting down the screaming band. The medics took over monitoring Ed’s vitals and loaded him onto a stretcher. Sadly, Brenna and the others could offer no information as to what had happened to Ed and the paramedics whisked him away to the hospital for further tests.

“Well, if you ladies will excuse me,” Bart said, “I need to be going. Sirens make me twitchy.”

“Me, too,” Twyla agreed.

Brenna and Tenley watched as they disappeared back into the coffeehouse.

As the crowd dispersed, Brenna and Tenley headed to Tenley’s car, which was parked around the corner from the coffee shop.

They were halfway there when a police car pulled up beside them and Chief Barker jumped out, looking half-crazy. Brenna wasn’t positive, but his mustache looked thinner, as if he’d been pulling it out in frustrated tufts.

“Not for nothing, but can either of you tell me just what the Sam Hell you were doing in the alley?” he barked.

Uh-oh. Did he know they’d been looking for Ed?

Brenna exchanged a look with Tenley. Tenley gave her a small nod and Brenna fished the e-mail out of her pocket and handed it to Chief Barker.

His hand went reflexively to his mustache, which he tugged while he read. When he glanced up, he said, “I believe it is time for us to sit and have a talk.”

“Do you want to sit out here?” Brenna asked, gesturing to the now empty outside tables.

“No,” he said. “I was thinking more along the lines of the police station.”

Chapter 20

Brenna caught a glimpse of Tenley’s face, which went paler than a sheet of starwhite paper as Officer DeFalco joined them. Tenley went with him, while Chief Barker motioned for Brenna to come with him.

His squad car was parked at the corner, and he held the back door open for her. Brenna had never been in a police car in her life. She knew she had done nothing wrong—well, she hadn’t murdered anyone at any rate—but still she felt guilt cramp her conscience.

She wondered what kind of trouble she would be in for snooping in Ed’s office at the paper. Wouldn’t it actually be a help to the police? First, it proved that Ed wasn’t the murderer, which was a good thing, and second, it could help the police track down Ed’s attacker.

Brenna was sure it had to be the murderer. Whoever had sent the e-mail had to be the same person who murdered Mayor Ripley. But why did they go after Ed? He’d been using his paper to smear Nate and make him look like the killer, unless Nate was . . . no, absolutely not. She refused to believe it.

“Anything you care to share?” Chief Barker asked.

Brenna glanced up and realized he’d been watching her in the rearview mirror.

“Nope,” she said. “Just humming a song in my head.”

“Uh-huh.” He shook his head, and she knew he didn’t believe her. This promised to be a long night.

 

 

Three hours passed with Chief Barker asking the same questions again and again until finally Brenna was free to go. She’d said she did not recall so many times, she was sure she must be running for public office. That Chief Barker was unhappy with her, she had no doubt. She liked the chief and felt badly about that, but she gave him only the pertinent facts. The rest he would have to figure out on his own.

It wasn’t that she meant to be unhelpful. She just didn’t want to pull Tenley into a bad situation because of her decisions, and until she talked to her, she didn’t feel right giving anything more than the facts.

Tenley was waiting for her out in the hallway when she was finally dismissed. The two friends hugged.

“Your parents are going to be so unhappy when they hear about this,” Brenna said.

Tenley said something that was muffled against her shoulder, and Brenna was worried it might be a sob. She released her friend and pulled back to study her face. To her surprise, Tenley was grinning.

“I wish I could see their faces,” she chortled. “This is going to make my dating Matt in high school seem like small potatoes.”

Then she laughed again and Brenna couldn’t help but chuckle in return. Aware that they were getting odd looks from the officer on desk duty, they ducked their heads and exited the police station, not letting loose their laughter until they were outside the building and around the corner. There they laughed until tears formed in their eyes and their bellies hurt.

That it was a nervous reaction from the night’s events, Brenna had no doubt. Still, every time she glanced at Tenley, she dissolved into a fit of the giggles.

Finally, when they were too weak to laugh anymore, they slumped against the exterior brick wall and let the cool night air wash over them. There was a faint scent of exhaust on the breeze, and Brenna realized they were standing near the police parking lot. She could only imagine what Chief Barker would make of this if he saw the two of them.

“I think we’ve hit delirious,” she said. “Let’s walk back to Vintage Papers and get my car. I’ll drive you home. We can pick up your car tomorrow.”

Twenty minutes later, she left Tenley at her apartment, the second story of an old house on the edge of the town square, and was heading back to her cabin. She wondered if Twyla had made it home okay, or if the police had found her and Bart at the Willow House and brought them in for questioning as well.

When Brenna pulled into the communal lot, Bart’s yellow pickup truck was parked in her spot. Twyla’s old station wagon was there as well, so she figured they’d avoided being questioned. She remembered Bart’s face when they found Ed. She didn’t think he was a good enough actor to pull off his look of shock. She didn’t think Bart had planned to meet Ed, nor did she think he had murdered the mayor.

She thought back to the coffeehouse. She hadn’t seen Roger Chisholm there, although he could easily have been amid the crowd. It had certainly been mobbed enough that he could have gone undetected. If Bart hadn’t been wearing such a loud shirt, she might never have seen him.

She knew Chief Barker would investigate who had attacked Ed, but she was afraid the panic caused by another attack would force the chief to reconsider Nate. He hadn’t been at the coffeehouse; she would have known. Given the suspicions that surrounded him already, everyone would have known if Nate had been there.

She was glad she had told the chief about the e-mail, but like a loose thread, it niggled at her. Who had wanted to meet Ed? Was it the killer, drawing him out because he was getting too close? What did Ed know that had made him a target? Someone wanted to silence him, but why? If she could just figure out who had sent Ed that e-mail, she knew she would discover the mayor’s killer.

She keyed into her cabin and glanced at the clock on her kitchen wall. It was after one in the morning. The only people up now were insomniacs or the night editors of newspapers.

She grabbed yesterday’s copy of the
Morse Point Courier
and strode over to the cordless phone on the counter. On the inside of page one, she scanned the list of editors until she found John Sheady’s name. She dialed the phone number listed by his name.

“Sheady,” he answered abruptly on one ring.

“Hi, John, it’s Brenna Miller,” she said.

“Oh.” He processed that for a second. “I thought you might be the doc at the hospital.”

“Is there any word on Ed yet?” she asked.

“He’s stable,” he said. “I heard from Officer DeFalco that you were the one who found him.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice came out shakier than she’d expected.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“I found an e-mail in his office,” she said. Brenna figured lying wasn’t an option. Not if she wanted any cooperation.

“You might have mentioned that when you were here,” he said. His voice was chastising and Brenna cringed.

“I might have,” she said. “But I sort of figured he’d be getting coffee, not a concussion.”

“Fair enough,” Sheady said. “So why are you calling me now?”

“I’m sure the police have already asked you this,” Brenna said, “but do you have any idea who Ed might have been meeting?”

“Why do you want to know?” he asked.

“Because I was in the coffeehouse,” she said. “I saw a lot of people. If there is someone that has been making contact with Ed, maybe I saw them, maybe I can help catch whoever did this to him.”

“Hunh,” John grunted. Brenna could tell he was thinking over what she said. “I can only tell you what I already told the police. As far as I know, Ed believed that Nate Williams killed the mayor and he was doing everything in his power to prove it.”

Brenna felt her heart thunk like a stone in her chest. This did not look good for Nate.

“So, there was no one else calling him or trying to see him?” she asked.

“Only Eleanor Sokolov,” John said. “She came by three times to see him yesterday, but he gave her the bum’s rush.”

“The mayor’s secretary came by?” Brenna asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t here. I only heard about it later.”

“Thanks, John,” Brenna said. “You’ve been a big help.”

“Sure,” he said and hung up with a click.

Brenna stared at the phone in her hand. What could Eleanor possibly want with Ed, unless she knew something? Brenna was going to find out what, first thing tomorrow morning, even if she had to threaten her with another fire extinguisher to do it.

She got ready for bed, thinking she’d never sleep. Instead it was a short race between her and the lamp on her nightstand to see who was out first. Brenna won.

 

 

The town hall officially opened at eight. Brenna was there at seven thirty. She was hoping she could sweet-talk Abner, the guard, into letting her in.

She pressed her nose against the window in the back door, hoping to catch the guard if he went by. There was no sign of him. Only a handful of cars were parked in the lot at the back of the building. She wondered if one of them belonged to Ms. Sokolov.

As she was pondering this, the back door swung open. She turned back with her most charming smile on her face, hoping to soften Abner. Instead, her smile faltered as she took in Ms. Sokolov.

“Do you have my picture?” she snapped. She was wearing another polyester ruffle blouse in a bold shade of fuchsia with a pleated black skirt. Her lipstick matched the blouse, and the overall picture was overwhelming.

Caught off guard, Brenna stammered, “Uh, n—no.”

“Then why are you here?” Ms. Sokolov asked. “The town hall doesn’t open for another half hour.”

Brenna decided finesse would be wasted on a person of such bluntness, so she went right to the point. “Why were you calling Ed Johnson repeatedly?”

Ms. Sokolov reared back as if she’d taken a swing at her. Obviously, this was not what she had expected.

“Why do you ask?”

“Someone tried to kill him last night.”

“Oh, my,” Ms. Sokolov said, fiddling with one of the ruffles on her cuff. She looked rattled, but she pulled herself up straight and glared at Brenna. “I don’t see how my calling Ed Johnson is any of your business.”