A Luring Murder (4 page)

Finally, Watkins took a deep breath as if he were about to dive into deep water, and then he jumped.

“He was probably killed by someone’s husband,” Watkins said. “Warren had a thing for married ladies. He didn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it was a woman he was meeting last night.”

This town was more interesting than I originally thought. First, there’s a murder, and now the victim was an amateur Casanova.

What else would we find if we dug past the rind and into the flesh of this town? Hell maybe there was a meth-lab in the local hotel. Screw Payton Place, someone should have written a book about this place.

“Then we start at the Long Neck Lounge.” Louise pushed herself up onto her crutches. “Maybe someone there can tell us who he was with.”

“My bet is he was probably meeting Samantha Bailey.” Sheriff Anderson stood and picked up his baseball cap. He raked his silvery gray hair back with his fingers, and then mashed his hat on. “Warren and Samantha have had a thing going for awhile, since high school off and on.”

“That’s why if it was Samantha,” Watkins said, “Then we have to look at Patrick, Samantha’s husband.”

“Okay great. We’ve got Samantha and Samantha’s husband.” I held up a finger for each suspect and wiggled the fingers back and forth. “Anyone else?”

Deputy Watkins scratched the back of his head, then looked up at the sheriff through half lowered lashes.

“Okay Louise,” I said. “Let’s go enjoy our vacation. Gentlemen, Digs is at your disposal. Have a nice life if we don’t meet again.”

“No, wait.” The Sheriff held his hands up in a stop motion. “Thomas, tell these ladies everything. They’re here to help us.”

The serious expression on his face grew deeper. “To tell you the truth Detective, there are quite a few people in this town who won’t shed a tear over Warren Pease’s death. I’d say he screwed over just about everyone around here.”

The sheriff grimaced, then acquiesced and nodded his agreement.

“What you’re telling us,” Louise said, “is that we have a whole town full of suspects?”

Deputy Watkins did the boyish grin thing again. He was still cute, but with each grin, he was annoying me just a little more than the time before. Thank God Gavin wasn’t a grinner.

“How many people are in this town, Sheriff?” I asked.

“Sixty.”

“That’s not too bad,” Louise said.

“Unless you’re talking about a weekend like now. In which case, with all the endies, there are about eight hundred.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

Louise put her hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think we need to questions eight hundred people. Many of the people are here for only the weekend, and probably didn’t know the victim. We need to concentrate our efforts on those closest to him. Primarily on those who saw him last night.”

“It’s good to have you here detective,” Watkins said. “You’re very sensible. With you here, I have no doubt we’ll find Warren’s killer in no time.”

My ego screamed at me to slap him. What am I? I’d worked as many cases as Louise, and I’d been shot more times than she had. Just because her hair didn’t frizz in the heat, didn’t mean she was a better cop than I am.

I took a deep breath.

“Then we’d better start asking questions.” I slung my purse over my shoulder. “By the way Deputy, where were you between the hours of four a.m. and ten a.m.?”

Louise raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me.

“I was at home until about seven-thirty, after that I was out on the lake.”

“Fishing?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “Shouldn’t you have been at work this morning?”

He grinned. This time not boyish. This grin was calculated to look boyish, as if Watkins had practiced the grin. That’s why he was annoying me. He was a phony. Unfortunately, Louise seemed to be buying into his act. She was gazing at him as if he were the last glass of water on a desert island.

He tilted his head toward me. “This isn’t Saint Paul, Detective O’Brien. Being out on the lake
is
my job. If this town is going to make enough money to support two law enforcement officers, it’s not going to be with petty traffic violations.”

I must have looked as confused as I felt, because Deputy Watkins threw back his head and laughed.

I hate when people laugh at me. It’s rude.

“You see Detective, we’ve got a whole different kind of traffic problem here. On the lakes. We check for boat licenses, fishing licenses, boating violations, etcetera. On any given weekend, like this weekend, we’ve got six hundred people who come up from the city to get the frustrations of their weekly grind out of their systems, and they take it out on our lakes. If you think road rage is bad, you should see boating rage.”

Louise nodded as if she completely understood. I wasn’t even going to pretend to know what he was talking about. “You’re joking, right?” I asked.

“No, I’m not. Last weekend I had a guy take out a gun and threaten to kill someone, because he said they anchored in his trolling run.”

I decided against showing my ignorance as to what a trolling run was and nodded, concerned.

“Merchants might like the weekenders well enough, but the people who live here year round don’t care for them much.”

“True enough,” the Sheriff said.

He might as well have yelled, “testify!” Deputy Watkins’s lecture was beginning to feel like a sermon to me. Louise looked ready to throw her hand in the air and yell, “repent!”

Watkins had some sort of hoodoo working for him, and Louise had taken the bait. I, on the other hand, wasn’t ready to leap into his boat, or his arms.

“It’s a public lake, but some property owners believe that the water off their beach is their own personal water. Any fish that happen to wander through that water are their personal fish. Sometimes the encounter between endies and townies can get violent. My patrol area isn’t covered in a Crown Vic it’s covered in a Lund.”

“Do you think Warren Pease might have been killed in one of these endie, townie disputes?” Louise asked.

“Maybe.” Watkins gave an awe shucks shrug. “Anything’s possible.”

The sheriff nodded and picked up his keys, “Ready to go?”

At least he wasn’t as long winded as his Deputy. My kind of guy. A man of action instead of endless talk.

“After you,” I said.

We headed out to the Long Neck Lounge. Louise and I strode over and stood next to the passenger side of the car.

Sheriff Anderson and Deputy Watkins walked down the street. We exchanged confused glances. I shrugged.

“Where are you going?” I called after them.

“It’s only a block or two down the road,” Sheriff Anderson said. “We can walk.”

Louise looked down at her crutches, and I glanced down at my wonderfully impractical three-inch high-heeled boots.

“Welcome to the country,” Louise said.

“E, I, E, I, O,” I said. “I guess I could make a couple blocks without too much trouble.”

Louise slid on her diva sunglasses and hitched up her crutches. “Come on Nancy Sinatra, those boots are made for walking.”

“Ha, ha, ha.”

Sheriff Anderson took the lead Louse and Deputy Watkins paired together, and I brought up the rear.

We ambled through the streets of the little town which upon first glance appeared to be quiet. On deeper inspection, this town was anything but quiet. There was less intrigue in the large cities because no one wanted to get involved in other people’s business. You could get away with a lot more without accountability. Here, everyone knew everyone, so every minor infraction was a political sized cover-up or scandal.

Too bad too, because small towns held certain charm that cities didn’t have. The mystique of a quieter and simpler life. This town was a great example of small town charm, all the buildings from the front had the same antique facade, but from the side each building had been newly remodeled. The town had cleverly disguised modern structures with nineteenth century architecture. The facade should have been a dead giveaway that this town had something to hide.

Finally, after what my feet were sure was more than the couple of blocks the Sheriff promised, the sign for the Long Neck Lounge came into view. A carved, wood, long neck, beer bottle hung from an old cast-iron bracket and chain. Part of me was disappointed that the building didn’t simply have the word “tavern” etched above the door.

The sheriff opened the door, and stood back to let Louise and I go in first. A rush of air-conditioned air swept over me.

I stepped into a bright, airy, well-lit room with a counter that ran the length of the room. Advertisements for ice-cream sodas covered the walls. Small cafe style tables and large family sized booths completed the look of an ice-cream parlor.

I turned back, sure we were in the wrong place. The sheriff and Deputy Watkins stepped past me and into the room.

Louise stood behind me and shook her head. “Doesn’t look quite right does it?”

“No, I expected a dark, seedy bar not a family fun place.”

We paraded up to the counter. I was limped from the blister forming from my boots, and Louise limped on her crutches.

“I thought this was a bar,” I said.

“Nope,” Deputy Watkins said.

“But you said he was going for a beer,” Louise said.

“He was,” said Watkins. “They serve beer here. And ice-cream, and sandwiches, and soup, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

“It’s more of a cafe than a bar,” Sheriff Anderson said.

Louise slid onto a barstool.

“Then why do they call this place the long Neck?” I slid onto a stool next to her. “Wouldn’t that normally be the name of some sleazy bar?”

“It is.” A fresh scrubbed young woman stepped out from the door marked kitchen. She swung her blonde ponytail around her shoulder and smiled, then handed me a menu. “It’s a holdover from when my parents still owned the place. Everyone knew us as the Long Neck, and I had the sign, so I just kept it.”

“Hey, Dawn,” The sheriff said.

I looked at the lean blonde woman and decided that “Dawn” fit her.

“These are Detective Montgomery and Detective O’Brien. They’re um. . .” Anderson groped for the right words. “They’re helping us for a while.”

“With the murder of Warren Pease. I’ve heard,” She said. “Can I get you anything to drink, Detectives?”

“Coffee for me please.”

Louise waved off her offer. “Nothing for me thanks.”

Dawn went to work behind the counter. Dishes rattled then she came up with a brown mug. She efficiently poured the cup and lifted the pot just before overflowing. Then, even though Louise said she didn’t want anything, Dawn placed a glass of water on the counter in front of her.

The tension that had been creeping into my neck since early this morning, when I discovered that Gavin’s friend didn’t have any coffee, eased at the first sip. I’m the first to admit that I don’t function well as a human being without coffee. I can squeeze by as human with a Coca-Cola, but in the mornings, I’d rather have the warm, bitter brew coursing through my veins. One sip and I already felt more like me.

I sat forward and leaned my elbows on the Formica counter top. “How did you know about the murder, Dawn?"

“Please Detective. If you get a hangnail in this town, by morning you’d have one hundred home cures on your door. News as big as murder spreads like a wild fire. Everyone knows by now, thanks to the small town grapevine. It’s just something you come to expect living in a town like this.”

Louise snagged a napkin from the tin holder on the counter and mopped dew from her glass. “Tell me, Miss –“

“Liston,” she said.

“Miss Liston,” Louise said. “Did you see him last night?”

“Who?” Dawn apparently had the shortest memory in the history of God’s creation. Either that, or she was playing with us.

“The victim,” I said. “Was he here last night?”

The sweet fresh-faced girl’s eyes narrowed showing wrinkles around her eyes that were well beyond what I estimated were here years. She stormed away. I slid off my stool to follow, but Deputy Watkins’s large hand on my shoulder stopped me in my tracks.

“Thanks for the help, Detective O’Brien. You’re doing a bang up job,” he said. “Tell me Detective, do you know the phrase, ‘bull in a china shop’?”

Louise had used that phrase in reference to my interrogation methods many times before. Her new mission in life was to teach me tact and subtlety. From the look she was giving me now, I was failing the course.

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything when you’re investigating a murder?”

“I think I’ll take it from here.” Watkins winked at Louise and gave her a grin. “Give me two minutes.”

She trailed him with her eyes as he crossed to where Dawn furiously scrubbed a section of the counter, and glared at me from the corner of her eyes.

Her arms had no bye-bye babies – the infamous slap of skin by your armpit that your grandmother had when she waved goodbye. I thought everyone had those flaps. Must be the heavy trays she hauled around all day. Maybe I should try waiting tables. Then again maybe not. If my people skills were as retarded as everyone said, then a job in food service probably wouldn’t be wise; arm flaps or no arm flaps.