Chapter One
“Do you think he’s dead or just dead
drunk?” I asked Fiona as the two of us stood alone on the freight dock with
thick night fog swirling around us. We were staring at a guy prone on the pier
with a champagne bottle clutched in his arms.
I grabbed Fiona’s hand as we shuffled
a little closer. “Uh oh, he’s staring back at us and not in a Hey come have a drink with me kind of way.”
“And there’s blood, a lot of blood.”
Both of us shivered, from the wind gusts off Lake Huron
as much as from our present situation.
“This is terrible.” Fiona made the
sign of the cross and I did the same. I wasn’t Catholic, but I needed to do
something...anything...and right now there weren’t a lot of options. “How does
this keep happening to you?”
I did a double-blink and stared at
Fiona. “Excuse me?”
“Mackinac’s a little island and
you’re here tonight picking up kites to sell at your bike shop but instead - oh
gee guess what - you come across yet another body!”
“Hold on a minute, stop right there.”
I dropped Fiona’s hand and jabbed her on the forehead partially covered by the
purple sequin paperboy cap befitting her occupation of Town Crier editor. “Forget the you
part about the bodies. Okay, the first one was mine - I’ll give you that, but
the last one was definitely a we
body. We both found it and you’re the
one who was accused of making it dead and this is not my fault.”
“All I know is when you landed here
two years ago, Irish Donna said there was a black cloud hanging over you. If
this corpse is any indication, the cloud hasn’t changed one bit. I think it’s
getting darker.”
“Maybe a little.” I took a closer
look at the body as the waves lapped at the shoreline and wood pilings under
our feet. “Do you recognize him?”
“No, but he’s cute.” Fiona’s words
mixed with the foghorn bellowing in the harbor, her breath making little puffy
moisture clouds that faded into the night. “Well, he was cute when he didn’t
have that big gash on the side of his head and don’t give me that how can you say such a thing look, Evie Bloomfield. I lived in
LA for three and two-thirds years and covered some pretty grizzly stuff. Maybe
he’s from one of the work ferries or barges. This is the island’s freight dock
and he’s dressed in jeans and a work jacket.”
“The most grizzly thing you ever did
out in LA was chow down on bad TexMex. You were a rag reporter covering celeb
affairs, scandals, and the occasional I
had Elvis’s baby.”
“Why couldn’t you just pay for
delivery like everyone else does on this island?” Fiona huffed. “Then Captain
wouldn’t have to hide the boxes of kites for you to pick up tonight and I
wouldn’t be mixed up in something I can’t even put in the Crier. One whiff of a body around here and tourists will run for
the ferries, taking their American Express cards with them and turning this
island into a ghost town. Dead guy on dock is not a great tourist attraction.”
I was a come-here to Mackinac Island and Fiona was a
born-here. In the last two years we’d
bonded over OPI nail polish, Nutty Buddy ice cream cones, and a knack for
snooping that included picking locks and telling whopper lies with a straight
face. In my other life back in Chicago
I’d been a grunt-level graphic designer. I wound up on the island when I tried
to suck up to my boss to land a promotion. My great plan was to help her father
who owned a bicycle shop and had broken his leg. That he got nailed for a
murder on my watch did not help my promotion chances. I now owned part of
Rudy’s Rides and painted old, rusted bikes shiny new again with such themes as
golf, Batman, Babe Ruth - the baseball player and candy bar - or any other
love-of-your-life you’d like to sport around town.
Fiona, who had felt the need to
spread her wings, took a second-rate rag reporter job in LA and got accused of
killing her boss when he followed her back to Mackinac. Not all homecomings
were Welcome Home banners, brass bands,
and family cookouts.
“What we should do,” Fiona offered,
“is not touch anything and call the police, except Molly’s on desk duty tonight
and you know how she is with bodies. Nate’s usually hanging around, but he’s up
at the Grand Hotel at a hundred-bucks-a-plate dinner getting an award for
spearheading the campaign to repair the limestone walls around Fort
Mackinac. After
two-hundred-and-fifty years they’re starting to look like Swiss cheese.
Sutter’s eHehaving dessert about
now and raspberry crème brûlée is his fave. You know he won’t be happy if we
drag him away.”
“Happy? Well I’m sure as heck not happy
keeping company with a dead guy and you don’t look too happy and Mr. Champagne
is staring up at the sky and doesn’t have a smile on his face either, so that
makes it Nate’s turn. He’s the chief of police around here and gets paid for
not being happy. I’m ringing him up.”
“You’re just pissed that you didn’t
get crème brûlée.”
I dug Sheldon, my beloved iPhone with
Penny, knock, knock, knock as a ring
tone, out of my jacket pocket and held it to the sky. This was more a valiant
effort of looking for service bars then actually expecting to find any.
Mackinac Island was known for many things like big horses; lots of bikes; the
Grand Hotel that was truly grand; festivals for jazz, lilacs, ponies and
anything else that came along; and selling ten tons of fudge a year to the
tourists we lovingly called fudgies. Mackinac Island was
not known for great cell phone service. Heck, it was known for no cell phone service.
“Surprise, surprise. No bars,” Fiona
said looking over my shoulder. I pocketed the phone I used for playing Candy
Crush and making
selfies. The foghorn moaned again, mixing with the deep rumble of a passing
freighter somewhere out there in the pea soup.
“Well, we can’t just leave the body.
What if the killer comes back for it,” I finally said, trying to come up with a
plan.
“Or he comes back and gets us.” We
eyed the string of hazy fluorescents dotting the pier and leading back to the
warehouse where we’d started. “You know it’s locked.”
“There’s a landline inside and these
are desperate times.” We hoofed our way back up the pier, gravel crunching
beneath our feet, as we crossed the lane to the warehouse. Byline whinnied and
pawed the ground, telling us he was tired of pulling a cart all day and wanted
to go home to a nice barn and fresh hay. I could relate except for the barn and
hay part. I was more of a flannel Hello Kitty nightshirt and hot cocoa kind of
girl.
“This rock should work.” I picked it
up and started for the warehouse window when Fiona grabbed my hand. “What in
the heck are you doing? Captain will have a canary if you bust a window. Just
pick the freaking lock. The zipper pull on your fleece has two purple
paperclips attached. My guess is they’re not strictly for decoration, more for
breaking and entering when the occasion arises like right now, and if you break
the window it’ll set off an alarm.”
“Nate can contact the alarm company to shut
the thing off and if I pick the lock, he’ll get suspicious about other
conveniently opened doors during our island capers. The rock is an innocent
bystander, same as me.”
“Girlfriend, when it comes to you,
Nate will never believe the innocent part.”
Twenty minutes later Nate Sutter,
local police chief and celebrated hunk, trotted toward us on Shakespeare, his
trusted steed. Through the mist I could barely make out Police stenciled in reflector yellow across his windbreaker and
baseball cap. “Where’s your tux?”
“Shakespeare’s got a phobia about
bowties.” Sutter studied Fiona then me then the busted window. “Captain’s going
blow a gasket. Why didn’t you just pick the lock?”
“Told you so,” Fiona sing-songed as
Nate slid to the ground. “How was the benefit?”
“Irish Donna ate my crème brûlée and
I got a flintlock pistol to hang on my wall. I would have rather had my crème
brûlée.”
Sutter tied Shakespeare to a post by
the bike rack, Mackinac’s version of parking spaces. He unstrapped a black
pouch from the saddle before following Fiona and me onto the dock, our
footsteps making hollow sounds against the wood planks. Another forlorn foghorn
blast reverberated through the darkness, the sound chilling me to my bones. If
that headless horseman guy had galloped past us I wouldn’t have been one bit surprised.
Actually, I would have peed my pants, but I’m just saying he would have fit
right in.
“There.” I nodded to the body. “Poor
guy. He didn’t deserve this.”
Sutter’s steps slowed before he
stopped dead. His jaw tightened, his hands in a fist. Slowly he pulled a camera
from the pouch and snapped away, the flashes blindingly bright against the
darkness. He moved side to side for different angles then hunkered down beside
the body cocooned in the damp mist.
“Why didn’t the killer just dump the
body in the water?” I added. “I mean, why leave it out here on the dock for the
entire world to see. We’ve got two deep lakes. Big ones. Disposing of a body is
a snap.”
There was no response from Sutter,
who usually recited a litany of police platitudes in these situations. Don’t touch anything, stay out of my way, and - my personal
favorite- this is police business so get lost. Like that means anything to
two self-proclaimed busybodies. Fiona and I exchanged what’s going on looks and I waved my hand in front of the camera.
“Yoo-hoo. Anybody home? Got any idea what’s going on here, Mr. Police Officer?”
“How the heck should I know?” Sutter
blurted a little too quickly. “And why don’t you pay for delivery like everyone
else does around here instead of fumbling around in the dark.”
“Amen to that,” Fiona grunted.
“Well,” I pushed on, trying to
connect the dots since Sutter was off in LaLa
Land and Fiona was no help at all
except griping at me about being cheap. “There aren’t any freighters tied up to
the docks tonight, so Captain and the workers probably knocked off at six or
so. It gets dark around 7:30 and
it’s almost nine now. My guess is this happened in the last hour and a half
when no one was around. A meeting of some kind? A celebration, since we got the
champagne thing going on? But unless he’s with Greenpeace, there are better
places to party than around crates of recycling.”
Sutter didn’t say a word and took a
few more shots before grabbing a flashlight from his jacket pocket. He pulled
on plastic gloves and unfolded bags marked Evidence.
He checked the guy’s jean pockets, pulling out a pair of well-worn work gloves,
a silver dollar money clip with a few bucks, a beat-up wallet, and a
pocketknife with a wood handle. He opened the wallet and found John Bernard’s
driver’s license, credit card, and insurance info plus a bent photo of a
ponytailed guy with sexy scruff and white blazer standing next to a limo.
“With money and credit cards, we can
rule out theft as a motive,” I said, “and look.” I snagging Sutter’s arm before
he dropped the money clip in an evidence bag. “There’s an inscription on the
back.” I pushed the flashlight closer and read, “Best Man and there’s a date. There’s writing on the knife too. Groomsman and another date.”
Still not saying a word, Sutter
removed a silver flask from the guy’s jacket pocket.
“Flip it over,” Fiona said to Sutter.
“These aren’t exactly typical dockhand acquisitions. I bet they’re gifts from
being in weddings. I see them in bridal magazines all the time.” Fiona cut her
eyes from me to Sutter, both of us staring at her. “Hey. I drool over the
cakes, okay? Fewer calories and … Look right there!” Fiona pointed to the
flask. “It says Best Man and there’s
another date.”
Fiona put her hand to her heart and
sighed deeply. “This was one of the good guys and a friend to a lot of people
who wanted him to be a part of the most important day of their lives. He’s like
one of those dreamy guys on The Hallmark Channel. Why can’t I meet guys like
this?”
“Dead ones?” Sutter groused.
“The men I meet are after one thing,
sports and beer.”
“That’s two things.”
“Seems like one.”
“And he has a watch,” I added. “It’s
a nice one. Well, it was. I bet that’s from being in a wedding too, probably a
best man.”
Sutter unbuckled the watch and
flipped it over. I leaned closer and read, “Today
my husband. Forever my best friend.”
“He’s married!” Fiona sobbed,
grabbing my hand as a light rain started to fall.
“Or he stole all this stuff,” said
Sutter.
“You are such a cynic.” I swiped away
a tear.
“I’m a cop and a realist, something
that you don’t find on The Hallmark Channel.” Sutter held the dead guy’s arm,
probably checking for stiffness. I was no forensic guru, but how stiff a stiff
is tells a lot about the time of death.
“The killer was probably hiding and
whacked John over the head with...” I looked around. “Something hard and
narrow. There’s a lot of recycling stuff to choose from and...” I snagged
Sutter’s hand that held the flashlight and aimed the light onto the wood dock.
“Look, blood drops, but we’re losing them in the rain.” I followed the dots
with the light. “They lead over there to the edge of the pier.”
“Meaning the murder weapon’s in the
drink.” Fiona pointed out into the lake. “Probably halfway to Canada
by now along with his cell phone since we haven’t seen that either.”
Sutter picked something off the dock
that was tucked under a recyling bin, the blade catching the light.
“Box cutter?” I said.
“And it’s not inscribed,” Sutter
muttered.
“Our guy was expecting trouble if he
had his box cutter out.”
“Our guy?” Sutter gave me a good grief look.
“And it was under the recycling
crate, maybe the killer thought he tossed it in the lake with the murder
weapon? It’s hard to see in all this fog.”
Not answering again, Sutter put the
box cutter in a bag and sealed it, preserving any DNA evidence. Scary how much
I knew about crime scenes these days. Sutter snapped pictures of the dock and
blood drops then held his hand out to me. “Give me your jacket.”
“The man’s dead, Sherlock. There’s no
warming him up now.”
Sutter stood. He turned slowly and
offered a half smile. His body relaxed and he had a devilish glint in his eyes.
The old Sutter was back. “Cute.”
“Just wanted to see if you were
paying attention.”
“I’m always paying attention, Chicago.
I’ll wrap the champagne in an evidence bag and then in your jacket so we don’t
break it or screw up the fingerprints. I’ll put my jacket on this guy to
protect the evidence. Doc’s due back from
St. Ignace
tomorrow and we can’t just leave the body lying here as a photo op for tourists
biking the island. The dock’s covered in footprints and shrapnel from loading
and unloading and the weather’s getting worse by the minute. Forensic anything
is impossible. We’ll need to keep this quiet. I’ll take the body in the
carriage to the medical center and put it in the cooler, you two take
Shakespeare, and as to why not dump the body off the pier...”
Sutter draped his arm over my
shoulder and brought me close. “Bodies float, Chicago.
They get washed ashore with the tides, especially with the big diesels churning
up the water. Disposing of a body has to be done right. They have to be tied
and weighed down and dumped out in the middle of the lake. Something to keep in
mind the next time you and your sidekick here think about dragging me away from
dessert. I can take care of things from here. You two take care of my horse
then get back to whatever you were doing.”
Before I could protest Sutter headed
for the carriage, leaving Fiona and me alone on the dock. She zipped her fleece
against the damp chill and pursed her lips. “Does Nate really think we’re going
to let this dead guy on the docks thing go? We found him and like it or not
your black cloud affliction might have something to do with the guy being
dead.” She poked my forehead. “You owe him.”
“We
owe him, but for right now we have other problems. First, we have to help Nate
load up a dead body. Not my favorite
past-time. Then...” I patted Shakespeare and handed Fiona the reins. “I
sure hope you know how to drive this thing ‘cause I don’t have a clue.”
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