Stuck on Murder (7 page)

Brenna debated leaving it there. She loathed the feel of slimy weeds on her feet. But then, what if it had just fallen off someone’s truck when they were moving? It could be in excellent condition. She could picture it painted white with deep blue hydrangea blossom cutouts trailing up one side and down the other. No, she couldn’t let it sit.

Gritting her teeth, she stepped into the frigid water and waded out to the trunk. Jagged pebbles dug into the soles of her feet, while slippery weeds wrapped around her ankles. Ew. Still, she kept going.

When she reached the trunk, she was delighted to find the burgundy leather handles and brass hardware on it looked to be in good condition. She grabbed the handle and tried to pull the trunk to shore. It was heavier than she’d expected so it had to be full of someone’s belongings, making her think someone had indeed lost it by accident. Its buoyancy in the water helped her get it to the edge of the lake, but it took all of her strength to pull it clear of the water. She dragged it onto a patch of grass and collapsed beside it.

She wondered if it was full of blankets. If they’d gotten waterlogged, it would certainly explain why her back was having spasms right now. Maybe it had someone’s wedding dress in it. A tingle of anticipation wriggled down her spine. It was as if she’d found a treasure chest, and all she had to do was pop the lid to see what secrets it held.

She climbed up onto her knees and examined the front of the trunk. The latches were easy to unhook, but the flush mount circular lock wouldn’t budge. Whoever had shut it had not left the key with it.

Instead of dampening her enthusiasm for her find, the lock only made Brenna more determined to bust it open. After all, she would have to find out who owned the trunk if she had any hope of returning it to them. And how else could she figure that out than to open it and look for clues?

She hurried up to her cabin. The smell of her cheese soufflé distracted her and she stopped to pull it out of the oven before grabbing her toolbox from the bottom of the pantry cupboard and racing back to the trunk.

She chose a flat-headed screwdriver first. It fit into the lock and she jiggled and wiggled it, but nothing happened. Next she chose the smallest of her metal files. It fit into the lock and she pushed it up and to the right until she heard a faint click. The round face of the lock flopped forward and Brenna dropped the file into her toolbox.

The sky was a smoky shade of purple now and she fished in her toolbox for her small flashlight. She turned it on and held the unlit end with her teeth while she grasped each corner of the trunk’s lid and slowly lifted it open.

At first, it did look like a bundle of old blankets. No treasure then, she thought. Darn it. But then she noticed the blankets seemed to be wearing an expensive leather belt. She gasped and the flashlight fell out of her mouth and rolled across the grass to plop into the lake. In seconds its little beam was extinguished, and Brenna was left in the encroaching dark with a trunk that she suspected had a body in it.

She felt a scream claw its way up her throat, but she swallowed it. Maybe it was just her imagination, she thought. Maybe it was just a bundle of old clothes. She swallowed hard and forced herself to lean closer to the trunk. Her fingers were shaking as she reached forward and touched the sodden clothes. There was no mistaking the feel of a hard, cold body encased in the wet dress shirt beneath her fingers.

She leapt back from the trunk. Her heart was racing triple time and she flapped her hands uselessly at her sides as she tried to think of what to do. She should run for help, she thought, but what if the person was alive?

In a panic, she dashed forward and began to tug the person out of the trunk. He could be alive. Maybe it was just a practical joke gone wrong. She tugged and pulled but the person was wedged pretty tight. Finally, she reached down and hefted the body up by the armpits and hauled it to a sitting position. Staring back at her with wide vacant eyes was Mayor Ripley. Water gurgled out of his open mouth and Brenna screamed.

Chapter 7

Porch lights from the cabins around her snapped on. Brenna was unaware. She felt her stomach churn and she sank into the dirt, putting her head between her knees to keep from throwing up.

Hank, the golden retriever, came bounding down from Nate’s cabin, barking all the way. He nudged her face with his cold nose and licked her cheek. The slobber actually felt good in the brisk night air. She felt dizzy, but as she sucked in great gulps of oxygen, she thought she might not hurl.

“Brenna!” Nate came skidding across the grass to where she sat hunched. She was wet, cold, and shaking. “What happened? Did you fall in? Are you okay?”

He slid to a stop, and she noticed he was barefoot. He was wearing jeans, and his shirt was unbuttoned as if he’d been in the middle of changing when he was interrupted. Landing on his knees beside her, he grabbed her arms and forced her to look at him. His gray eyes were searching, as if he were trying to see inside her to make sure she was all right.

Twyla, Paul, and Portia followed in his wake, shouting questions as they hurried across the lawn.

“What happened?”

“Is that Brenna?”

“Is she okay?”

The questions came fast and furious from all sides, but no one seemed to notice the trunk or, more accurately, what was in the trunk.

Brenna felt winded and shaky as if suffering the after-shocks of an earthquake, but she forced herself to speak. “Someone call Chief Barker. The mayor is dead.”

She pointed, and all four of them turned to follow the direction her trembling finger indicated. A gasp rippled through them and there were several muted curses. Nate and Portia stepped closer while Twyla and Paul stepped back.

“I’ll call the police,” Twyla volunteered, and she ran back to her cabin.

Hank crouched next to Brenna, leaning against her. A low growl came from his throat as he kept his gaze on the trunk. Brenna got the feeling he had placed himself beside her to comfort her. She buried her hand in his soft thick hair and held on.

A former nurse, Portia reached in and pressed her fingers on the pulse point beneath the mayor’s left ear. She was still for a moment and then she pulled her hand away and shook her head. She leaned in and placed her ear against his chest. Again, she pulled back with a shake of her head.

“He’s dead,” she confirmed. Both she and Nate stepped back, knowing that there was nothing more they could do.

Nate turned back to Brenna. He put his arm around her shoulders and slowly helped her to her feet. “Your teeth are chattering,” he said. “Let’s get you up to the house, where it’s warm.”

Hank flanked her other side and the three of them walked slowly up to Nate’s cabin with Paul and Portia following behind them.

Chief Barker arrived in a matter of minutes with two officers as backup. Nate walked him down to the water’s edge. He soon rejoined them and they all waited on the porch while floodlights were set up for the state investigator who would be arriving shortly.

Brenna suspected the others wanted to know what had happened, but Nate sat on the padded bench beside her as if putting himself between her and the others to shield her from any questions. She was grateful. She knew the police were going to ask her what happened, and she didn’t want to relive it more than once.

After what felt like an eternity, a van arrived with a Massachusetts state seal on the side. Chief Barker greeted the personnel that climbed out of it with a handshake and stood talking to them for a long while.

Twyla leaned hard against the porch rail in an obvious effort to hear what they were saying. But even the sound-carrying powers of the lake water couldn’t bring the chief’s low voice up to them on the porch, so they waited in silence until the small group broke up and the chief made his way up to the porch, where they all sat.

Nate had gotten Brenna a hooded sweatshirt to wear, and it spoke to her jumbled state of mind that she didn’t protest wearing something with an embroidered Yankees emblem on it. Normally, she would have opted to shiver until all of her teeth fell out first.

“I have some questions for you all,” Chief Barker said. “Do you mind if I use your living room, Nate?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“Brenna, I’d like to start with you.”

She had expected as much. She stood on rubbery legs, and walked across the porch with Hank pressed tightly to her side.

“Is it okay if Hank comes, too?” she asked. Her voice cracked, making her sound almost as vulnerable as she felt, if that was even possible.

Chief Barker nodded and Nate gave her hand a reassuring squeeze when she passed by him. She glanced at him swiftly. The intensity in his gaze made her breath catch in her throat, and she realized he was worried about her.

“Thanks,” she said and patted his shoulder as she moved past him and through the screen door.

They sat awkwardly across the large coffee table from one another, Chief Barker in a leather recliner and Brenna on the matching brown sofa.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. Casually, he took a small notebook and pen out of his breast pocket.

“Rattled,” she said.

“I can imagine,” he said. “Now, I know this was a shock, but do you think you can tell me what happened?”

The chief’s voice was its usual slow-as-molasses drawl. He had the
r
-dropping accent of a man born and bred in Massachusetts, but he spoke slower than most natives. It was as if he had learned early on in his career to use his voice as a calming tool.

“I think so,” she said. He nodded encouragingly at her and she took a deep sustaining breath. She told him about sitting on her steps with a glass of wine and spotting the trunk on the lake. She described hauling the trunk out of the water and then about opening it. The chief never interrupted but scratched occasional notes in his pad. Then she described finding the mayor and screaming. She paused to catch her breath.

“So you were all alone out there until after you screamed?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Who was the first person to reach you?” he asked.

She smiled. “It wasn’t a person.”

He looked confused.

“It was Hank.” She patted the dog’s head. “Then Nate, Paul, Portia, and Twyla all arrived.”

“What were their reactions?” he asked. His gaze, which had almost never left her face during her recitation of the evening’s events, seemed to get even sharper.

“No one noticed the trunk at first,” she said. “They all thought I’d fallen into the lake or hurt myself. I had to point the trunk out to them.”

He raised his brows and made a note.

“And what were their reactions after you pointed to the trunk?”

Brenna took a deep breath. It was hard to remember. She’d been so focused on not throwing up.

“Twyla ran to call you, Portia and Nate checked to see if he was actually dead, and Paul swore a lot,” she said.

Chief Barker nodded as if he’d expected her answer, and she felt as if she’d passed some unspoken test.

“What will happen now?” she asked.

“We’ll investigate the scene to see if we can figure out how this happened, the
Courier
will have a field day with the story, and hopefully, in the end we’ll come up with some answers,” he said.

Brenna nodded. “Chief, can I ask you something?”

“I can’t promise you an answer,” he said, “but you’re welcome to ask me anything.”

“Do you think this was an accident?” she asked. She could feel her heart pound in her ears, almost drowning out his answer when he said, “I can’t say for sure just yet, but . . .”

“But what?” she prodded.

“But I can’t say for sure yet,” he said. Whatever he’d been thinking he thought better of saying. Brenna understood that he couldn’t really answer the question, but she really wanted someone to tell her it was just a crazy accident, because the alternative, that it was murder, was just unthinkable.

She went back outside to wait while, one by one, each of her neighbors was questioned as well.

 

 

It was a dull-eyed crowd of five that watched from the porch while the police worked under the floodlights that were reflected back at them by the smooth surface of the lake.

Twyla made a pot of jasmine tea and everyone had a cup, though no one seemed to be thirsty. The ritual of mixing in honey and milk kept them busy but not nearly long enough.

Brenna had no idea what time it was when the investigators finally rolled a stretcher with a zipped-up body bag to the waiting van. The trunk was put into another vehicle and slowly the floodlights were dismantled. The yellow crime scene tape, however, stayed as a temporary marker.

Chief Barker told them that he would be in touch if he had more questions, but for now they were free to go. An awkwardness fell over the group, and Brenna wondered if, like her, no one was eager to be alone.