Braking for Bodies (10 page)

I took another peek just to make sure. Yep, Sutter's
backside was definitely not something to be ignored at this angle, or any other for that matter.

“So what's your opinion?”

I jumped up. “Opinion?”

“You got an opinion on everything, so let's hear it.”

“Well . . . there's a certain appeal, sort of, least some think so, not everyone, of course. And then there's Cal Sandman, he was in the running too. He's young and . . .”

Sutter peered at me over his shot. “What does Cal have to do with this?”

“He works out and he's cute and we all agreed he has first-class abs and pecs so you had some competition, but you did win by a landslide, and do we really have to talk about this, it was just girls having fun.”

Sutter slowly put down the cue stick and straightened. He gave me a curious look with a smile tripping across his face. “First-class abs? Thought we were talking about Idle Summers?”

Holy freaking mother of pearl! “Right! Sure! Of course! Idle Summers!” I could feel a red-hot blush inching up my neck.
Oh dear earth, part now and swallow me up whole.
The only good thing out of all this was that Sutter was so enjoying the conversation he didn't see the blasted note.

“Idle and Fiona knew each other back in L.A.,” I rushed on. “And Fiona thinks Peep had something on Idle to blackmail her, and Fiona thinks Idle would never do in Peep and frame her for it 'cause they're friends, but I'm not so sure, and I think Idle has a past
and not of the goody-two-shoes variety, and that's all I know, I swear.” I made a cross over my heart and held up two fingers Girl Scout Promise style.

“How did you vote?”

“Vote?”

“At the Stang.” He knew! How did he know about the vote? This was an eight-mile island; of course he knew and I'd just confirmed the whole thing.

“I . . . I abstained.”

The grin broadened. “Abstinence is no way to go through life, Chicago.” Sutter reclaimed his cue, made the shot and put the cue back in the rack. “You owe me a beer.”

Sutter headed for the door and I sank down on the stool by the workbench again, my twenty-four-hour deodorant all used up in less than five minutes. After discussing Sutter's butt right there in front of him, I'd never be able to face the guy again. And now I owed him a beer. He'd never let me forget the beer. If the gods of humiliation and embarrassment took pity, maybe he'd forget the vote at the Stang? Yeah, right.

Cleveland let out an irritated
pay attention to me now
meow, snapping me back to the thing that had started all this, the blasted note I was trying to keep from Sutter. Bambino waited a beat for a treat, yawned, then headed for the side pocket for a nap. Her tail was the only thing fitting in there these days, but cats were creatures of habit. I scooped up Cleveland in one arm, ignored the hissing and snarling and untied Hello Kitty.

Courthouse at midnight. 911 Nutty Buddy alert.
It was from Fiona, all right. My guess was she'd helped herself to the last Nutty Buddy and while scarfing it down overheard me talking to Angelo about getting into Sutter's office. As much as the note nearly gave me a heart attack, it was good to have Fiona along. She knew more what to look for in the way of important clues connected to Peep, and I needed someone to hold the flashlight when I picked the deadbolt on Sutter's office door.

I rented out two more bikes for the weekend and took an order for a brand-new bike to be painted with a conductor motif for a dear husband's birthday. Good thing wifey added the music conductor part to the order or she'd be getting a bike painted with railroad tracks, steam engines, and a big red caboose.

“Blessed be Saint Patrick that you still be alive and kickin' like you are,” Irish Donna said to me as she came inside the shop during a sudden lull in the bike rental action. She dropped a pink Blarney Scone bag on the workbench. “I figure you be in need of some nourishment considering the circumstance.” Donna claimed the other stool, her curly red hair framing her soft face and sparkling green eyes. She opened the bag, plucked out two scones and handed me one.

I was never one to question a free scone, until now. “Need as in I look hungry?”

“Need as in the orange pekoe has spoken to me loud and clear, it did, and more trouble's a-brewing. I had a cup of me favorite tea this morning, and there it was
plain as day swilling around in the bottom. Seems that black cloud of yours is bigger than ever. Gave me the shivers, it did.”

“How do you know the leaves are talking about my cloud?” I tore paper towels from the roll on the workbench, kept one and handed the other to Donna. I took a bite of scone, totally amazed at what butter, sugar and a handful of blueberries can do to flour. “I bet those leaves didn't spell out
Evie Bloomfield beware, the world's coming to an end for you
. The cloud could be anyone's and I refuse to take ownership, and in fact”—I tipped my chin in defiance—“I'm thinking your soothsaying gift is broken or just plain gone. Look what happened to Fiona. You told her holy oil and garlic kept evil away, and Peep not only got off the boat but things went right to hell for Fiona in less than a day.”

“Ah, but the man up and died, he did, and that's about as away as it gets in my book.” Donna bit into the scone. “The way I see it, I'm sharp as a tack and there's no arguing with the tea leaves. Whatever you got planned, me dear girl, you best be forgetting it. You need to be hiding out and barricading the door. Bad times they are a-coming.”

“If I don't help Fiona, that's exactly what will happen. What kind of friend would I be if I left her to fend for herself?”

“An alive friend. The whole town is a-watching out for Fiona, so you can take a break and hide under your bed for a few days, is what I'm saying. Even Walt and
Mamma Geraldine are filling in up there at the
Crier
to keep it going. I'm thinking the two of them are feeling a mite responsible for Fiona staying in California, with Walt's bragging and Geraldine all snooty over their high-flying daughter. Fiona had to be feeling poorly about that and not want to be proving them wrong by hightailing it home. She stayed there in California all miserable for who knows how long until . . . Now that's the tricky part, it is. I can't quite figure why she came back here when she did.”

I stopped midchew and stared at Donna. “I thought her parents gave her the newspaper?”

“That they did, love. They tried for months and then all of a sudden and out of the blue Fiona shows up on the ferry dock with one measly bag and fire in her eyes. None of us could even mention California without getting our heads chewed off. We all figured something pushed her over the edge out there, and now that we got a glimpse of this Peep person, that something must have been a whopper.”

“And maybe Walt and Mamma Geraldine decided to make Peep pay for the way he treated their daughter?” I said, thinking out loud. “Neither one of them wanted my help in finding who did in Peep and told me to back off.” I swallowed my last bite of scone; the delish morsel now tasted like wallpaper paste. “It could be that they were worried I'd find them out as the killers?”

“Or you'd be finding out that whopper thing Peep did.” Donna leaned closer and whispered, “And they
be worried you would be a-finding Fiona as the killer? Something happened in California to get the girl riled, and then Peep shows up here on her doorstep upsetting her something fierce.”

Donna tossed her paper towel into the trash can by the workbench and started for the door. “I need to be getting back to the shop before Shamus scares off the paying customers with his endless flirting. Shameful he is, the old coot. One of these days someone's going to bop him one right in the snoot. Lord knows the man's got it coming.”

“Someone like you?” I added with a laugh, glad for the distraction.

“Worse things have been known to happen around these parts, but it's not gonna be his snoot I'd be aiming for but six inches below his belt. Bless the saints above, men got themselves a one-track mind no matter how old they be.”

“Yeah, well, I'll take your word for that.”

Donna gave me a pathetic look. “Been a dry spell, has it? 'Tis all 'bout the cloud, me dear, and you need to be doing something about it before you go and shrivel up like a giant prune.”

Donna tramped across the back deck and I stared off into the blue abyss of sea and sky feeling very wrinkly. Under normal circumstances I would refuse to believe that sludge swirling around in the bottom of a cup heralded bad news. But nothing was normal these days, and I had Walt and Geraldine to add to the Peepster who-done-it list of suspects. On the surface,
adding to the list should be good news, but Walt and Geraldine were Fiona's parents. If I found evidence against them, Fiona would be off the hook but her parents would be on the hook, and I'd lose her friendship forever.

Walt and Geraldine were up to their eyeballs in motive, and the fact that they delivered the
Crier
to the Grand gave them opportunity. If Fiona left her yellow bag in the Grand Hotel lobby and either of them had found it and the olive oil bottle and got seriously pissed at Peep, hitting him over the head was a natural reaction. Heck, I wanted to hit him and I'd only known him ten minutes.

Idle Summers was still tops on the suspect list, I reassured myself. With a little luck—which seemed to be in really short supply lately—I'd find information in Sutter's office tonight to implicate someone else. Even if Sutter did drive me nuts in more ways than one, and deep down inside I personally held him responsible for my onset of pruneness, he was a good cop and knew stuff. This was one time I hoped to heck the guy knew a lot more than I
did.

“Y
ou're late,” Fiona grumbled to me as she stuck her head out between two pink lilac bushes behind the courthouse.

“It's dark back here,” I said, rubbing my leg. “I can't see a blasted thing and I was afraid to use my flashlight just yet, and I hit my shins on the scaffold and we haven't even started to climb yet. I bet you're feeling like bushes are your second home.”

“Beats wearing a plastic wig and cleaning food off the floor. Zo and Madonna are drama on steroids; it's a miracle they haven't killed each other.”

Fiona crawled into the open, flipped on her flashlight now that we were behind the courthouse and together we gazed at the tangle of pipes crisscrossing their way upward. “You know,” Fiona said to me as I
zipped my fleece and settled into the cozy warmth. “We could be at the Stang right now catching up on gossip. Do you ever wonder how we get into these messes?”

“Tonight we
are
the gossip, and we got here 'cause you worked for a Mr. Jerkass and I have a pox upon me. We're both screwed, so start climbing, monkey girl.”

The lake breeze caught in the pines behind us, swishing branches across a crescent moon. All was quiet except for an owl hooting in the distance and horses clip-clopping on Market Street. Fiona flipped off the flashlight and stuffed it in her jacket so she could use both hands, grabbed the first railing and swung her leg over. She pulled herself up, then grabbed the next bar and then the next with me right behind her.

“The rungs are really far apart on this thing,” Fiona panted. “How tall were these workers anyway?”

Huffing, I hooked my foot onto the next pole. “My guess is there was a ladder here that they took down when they finished the paint job.”

“Not very considerate,” Fiona groaned. “I'm writing a letter.” She grabbed the next bar and flung herself across it. If she had an apple in her mouth her silhouette would be a skinny pig on a spit.

“What was that?” I stopped dead.

“My heart exploding,” Fiona wheezed. “I think I'm going to die up here and . . . and . . . Evie!” Fiona gazed down at me, her eyes huge against the dark. “This whole thing is moving. Why is it moving?”

“Because it's not bolted together anymore! They're taking it apart because the town council is fining them for every day it's up here, and I didn't think about that till now. Can you reach the window?”

Fiona stood as the scaffold swayed more and shoved at the window. “It won't budge. It's painted shut. What kind of cheap painters did the town council get?”

“The usual kind. Push!”

Fiona angled her hands against the glass and shoved hard, opening the window and propelling the scaffold away from the building. “Oh crap! This thing is going to make a lot of noise when it falls.”

“So am I! Do something!”

Fiona hooked one leg over the windowsill and grabbed one of the metal bars. “It's too heavy, I can't hold it!”

I snagged Fiona around the waist as the scaffold slid away under my feet, leaving me dangling in midair. The pipes teetered backward for a second, then toppled the rest of the way into the pines. Fiona grabbed the waistband of my jeans and yanked hard, giving me the wedgie of all wedgies. The momentum sent us through the window and we landed together with a solid
whoop
on something hard.

“We made it,” Fiona panted, as faint moonlight cast shadows across the room. “Though I don't know how we're going to get out of here. I think the judge's desk broke our fall. That pox of yours isn't as bad as you think.”

I rolled to the side into nothingness and landed on
the floor, my head banging against the wood with a solid
whumph
. I sat up, with little stars—yeah, they really were stars—dancing in front of my eyes, Fiona staring down at me, her eyes huge in the dark. “Then again, maybe the pox is that bad. Are you okay?”

“Peachy.” Stumbling, I stood, wobbled and grabbed my butt. “Fiona! It's gone!”

Fiona looked back at me. “Eat ice cream, girlfriend, it's instant fanny food. You'll grow another one in no time. We gotta get going.”

“Sheldon's gone. I was going to use the flashlight app and he's not there. He must have slid out of my jeans pocket when you wedged me, and now Sutter's going to know for sure we were here and he's going to blow his top . . . again.”

“Trust me, Sutter doesn't need your lost iPhone to tell him what's going on.” Fiona flipped on her flashlight and we maneuvered around the court benches, heading for the green exit sign glowing in the corner. “Around here a scaffold in the trees is an Evie/Fiona calling card, and tell me this contraption in front of us isn't an elevator.”

“Circa Cary Grant and Doris Day. I recognize the brass grating from watching the oldies with my grandpa Frank at Sleepy Meadows Retirement Center. Not that there's much sleeping there, but the movies are a great cover for sipping afternoon tea with good friends Jack Daniel and Jim Beam.”

“I could do with a visit from Jack and Jim right now. This thing is a coffin with bars.”

“Think vintage. Think charm. Think of it as our way down to valuable information that will set you free.” I slid the brass grating shut behind us with a clang. A dim light blinked a few times, and then, miracle of miracles, it stayed on. I turned the ancient handle to the number 1 and our coffin chugged, lurched a few times, then inched downward. Fiona grabbed my hand. “How old do you think this thing really is? And . . . and we just went past the doors marked one. That was our stop. Why isn't this thing stopping?” Fiona buried her head in her hands. “We're all going to die and I can't die tonight, I have on really crappy underwear.”

The coffin shuddered, then jerked to a halt. I pulled back the grating that could really do with a spray of WD-40 to loosen it up and gazed to the ceiling. “Okay, the first-floor doors are right there.” I pointed. “I'll pry them open, you boost me out and then I'll pull you up. How hard can it be?”

Standing on tiptoes, I wedged my fingers between the doors and forced them apart; little shafts of light from exit signs and probably the front desk area shone down into the elevator. Fiona braided her fingers together to make a boost; I stepped in and gave a hop and she propelled me up. I banged my head on the ceiling, hooked my fingers over the edge, then kicked and belly-scooted the rest of the way and resisted the urge to kiss the solid floor. “I'm in.”

“And so are we,” came a woman's voice over me. “Hey, Evie, is that really you?” I blinked into a
blinding flashlight beam. “It's me, Gabi, and the Corpse Crusaders, and what in the world are you doing in that elevator this time of night?”

Gabi gasped and lowered the flashlight, her eyes big as softballs in the dim light. “I know what this is, it's the Clue in the Old Elevator like one of those Nancy Drew books. It's to go along with the mystery weekend. Whoever thought this all up is so darn clever, but why is the elevator between floors?”

Thank the Lord for overactive imaginations. “An
old
elevator, right? Got to be authentic, and how did you get in here?”

“Front door.” Gabi pointed to the three others behind her. “Lloyd, Sylvester, Trixie and I came here to ask that girl who's usually at the front desk a few questions. We heard that she liked strawberry smoothies.” Lloyd held up a to-go cup from Millie's on Main to prove the point. “And when we got here, the front door was unlocked. We figured there must be clues in here somewhere if it was open, and here you are. So, what is it?”

“What's what?” I stood and dusted myself off.

“The clue, silly.” Gabi laughed. Lloyd, Sylvester and the other girl whose name I forgot joined in.

“Uh . . .”
Think, Evie, think.
I jammed my hands into my jeans pockets to look like I was searching for something like a clue. I pulled out a gum wrapper, a receipt for beer and fried green beans at the Stang and Penelope's business card that she had given to me when she thought Sutter and I were getting hitched.

“Here we go.” I passed Gabi the card and she focused her flashlight and read, “Penelope Woodward, associate manager, the Grand Hotel?”

“Let me tell you,” I stated in a serious voice. “Penelope knows what's going on up there at the Grand, and that's where the murder was, so she'll have something to tell you for sure.”

“You know, we suspected her all along.” Gabi's voice had a serious edge. “She gets real antsy when we bring up Peep and talk about that cell phone that's missing and everyone's interested in finding. Peep must have had the goods on her too, and now you give us her card. That means she's got something to hide and could have knocked off the Peep to keep him quiet.”

Gabi threw her arms around me and hugged tight, making it hard to breathe. “You are the best, you know that. The Corpse Crusaders are going to win.” She hooked her arm through the tall guy's arm and the other girl snuggled up to the shorter guy. “We sort of found each other in all the fun. Isn't that fantastic? Murder, mystery and a little romance to add to it all. What could be more fun than that?” Gabi hugged me again, and the little band trooped to the door and left.

“Penelope's going to kill us for doing that.” Fiona's voice echoed up to me from below.

“Yeah, well, she'll have to take a number, there's getting to be a list.”

I reached down, took both of Fiona's hands and helped her wiggle out of the elevator. Just for kicks I hit the elevator button and the piece of crap sprang to
life, inched its way up to the first floor and stopped where it should. I followed Fiona down the hall to the frosted-glass door with
Nathaniel Sutter, Chief of Police
stenciled in black.

“Nathaniel. Looks very official,” Fiona quipped.

“I think it's the gun and badge that are the official part.” I hunkered down, Fiona beside me.

I pulled out Angelo's wallet and Fiona held the flashlight over it. “We should get our own lock-picking tools so we don't have to keep mooching Angelo's.”

“That would be like inviting trouble, and I'm done with trouble. We're going to save you from the slammer, and then it's nothing but keys and I never want to see these pick things again.”

I slid the L-shaped tension wrench into the lock to hold the cylinder in place. “Did you hear what Gabi said about Penelope and Peep? Do you really think he had something on her, and what could it be? She's a desk clerk, not working for the CIA.” I added the hook pick to push the lock pins out of the way.

“I think Zo and Madonna are just making Penelope and the whole place jumpy. No one's acting right, and can you hurry it up a little?” Fiona squirmed and made a face.

“Do I look like 007? I'm going as fast as I can here.”

“I have to pee.”

“Seriously? Now? And you couldn't take care of this before?”

“A lot's happened since before.”

“It's down the hall and around the corner.” That I
knew where the bathroom was in a police station said a lot about my life lately. I clamped the flashlight between my teeth and Fiona scurried off; the exit sign glaring from the front offered enough light to move around. I fiddled with the lock again and it finally gave way.

I opened the door to Mr. Neatnik Does Mackinac. All papers were in folders stacked on the desk, pens in holders, desk chair facing front and center and not one Snickers wrapper or scribbled Hello Kitty Post-it in sight. I'd heard that a person's desk reflected the state of their mind, and in this case it was true. Sutter was orderly, methodical, precise, and efficient. I considered my workbench back at the bike shop. My brain was a recycle bin.

I sat in Sutter's chair and flipped open the top folder to police reports. Well, dang, there really was shoplifting at Doud's Market, and someone had stolen a whole ham from the Village Inn. How do you get away with that? Stick it under your shirt and look pregnant? There was an official-looking fax from the Detroit PD about Luka Vellardo followed by a question mark. What did that mean? And there was a picture of a guy I wouldn't want to meet up with in a dark alley. He had a diamond stud earring, dishwater-blond ponytail and bad teeth. Can we say whitening strips? There were also three attractive forty-something women in nice suits who—

“What are you doing here?” Sutter asked from the doorway.

I nearly bit the end off the flashlight and flipped the folder in the air, with paper drifting down around me like oversized confetti.
“Da ca crsadrs dud e.”

“What?”

I took the flashlight out of my mouth. “The Corpse Crusaders did it.”

When caught red-handed, blame someone else.
A little something I learned from having two siblings. Not that Mother ever bought it, because my siblings were perfect and me not so much. “They came in through the front door, and I followed them 'cause I'm a good citizen and I knew they didn't belong in here.”

Was that Fiona standing in the doorway?

“They tried to get in, though, by the scaffold,” I added to keep Sutter busy, something I was doing a lot of lately. “It collapsed, and who would be stupid enough to try to climb scaffolding in the back of a building in the first place, and if you don't believe me you can check your camera. The yellow shirts they wear are hard to miss.”

Of course if Sutter did check the camera footage, he'd see that I didn't follow them in, but in the grand scheme of whopper lies out there right now, that was a minor detail.

Sutter's eyes narrowed and he stomped his way to the desk. “You're going through my stuff?”

“Checking on what the Crusaders were up to. I wanted to see if it was important.”

When Sutter didn't offer some sarcastic comeback
to my really lame explanation, I cut my eyes his way. He was staring at the pictures of those three women and the scary guy and absently rubbing his leg. For a split second concern crossed his face. Anyone else would have missed it, but for better or worse I knew Sutter. Something was up and it wasn't just me breaking into his office.