Death and Relaxation (17 page)

“Two weeks ago.”

I looked over at her. She was staring at Ryder’s truck, which was coming up behind us.

“Who?” I asked.

“None of your business.”

I wanted to ask her why she didn’t want me to know things about her personal life. A small part of me wondered if she and I were drifting apart. How long had it been since we’d watched crappy monster movies together?

Since Dad died? Before that?

Becoming the eldest Reed had taken over my life. This town, these people and creatures and deities, consumed my free time. I didn’t want to lose what I had with Jean because I was working all the time.

“What?” she asked as Ryder got out of his truck and stood next to it, waiting for us. “Seriously. What?”

“Have I been a terrible sister over the last year?”

“Just the last year?”

I made a face at her. “We need to go see a movie.”

“Right now?”

“No. Soon. Yes?”

“Sure.”

We both spoke at the same time: “I pick the movie.”

“Eldest picks,” I said.

She opened her door and I followed. “You picked last time. That sob-fest teen romance.” She stuck her finger in her mouth and flicked her thumb down like firing a gun.

“Movie?” Ryder asked as we walked to the front of the community center together, Ryder falling into step behind Jean and me.

“It was pretty terrible.” I pushed open the door and stepped in. We walked down the empty main hallway, our feet and voices echoing off the painted ceiling and wooden walls. “You’ll make me watch a space movie, won’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “With one hundred percent more explosions than the last thing you made me watch.”

The door to the main office was ajar. Dan Perkin was behind that door, his voice raised in mid-tirade.

Speaking of explosions. I took a deep breath, then strolled into the room. “Afternoon, everyone.”

Dan Perkin had his back to us, one hand raised, finger pointing at the sky, his other hand on the bill of his baseball hat. He was right in the middle of his patented God-is-my-witness move.

Bertie sat behind a desk with two vases of flowers on the corners and a laptop to one side. She had placed a tea towel in front of her and was slicing an apple in her palm over it. The knife in her deceptively frail hands slid through the meat of the apple with a razor’s ease.

Bertie was a sparrow of a woman who appeared to be in her eighties: petite, short shock-white hair with a jag of bangs over her sharp green eyes. Her skin was pale as the moon, the golden polish on her nails sparking with each stab of the knife.

Great. Dan Perkin had pissed off the valkyrie.

I didn’t know how this man wasn’t dead yet.

“Good afternoon, Delaney, Jean, Mr. Bailey.” Bertie gave the kind of look that said she was glad we’d stopped in because she was just about to stab Dan in the jugular with that little apple knife.

Dan Perkin turned so he could glare at us. His eyes narrowed at Ryder then ticked back to me.

“Maybe you can make something decent come out of this mess,” he said. “I’ve been trying to make her listen to me for an hour.”

“Is there a problem?” I asked. Those four words were like Perkin’s own catnip. He loved hearing them.

Next lecture in three…two…one: “There has been a death in this town, Officer Reed. I demand to know who is going to replace Heim on the judging panel immediately.”

Dan Perkin. A lover of his fellow man.

“That decision falls to Bertie,” I said. “I assume she needs time to choose who would be most suited for the job. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” She placed her apple on the towel. She hesitated, then placed the knife next to it, staring at it with longing in her eyes. “As I told Mr. Perkin, the list of candidates is narrow and vetted. Whomever I choose will be unbiased.”

“It better be someone who won’t favor big business in this town.” He stabbed a finger into the top of her desk, hard enough to make the flowers tremble. “It better be someone who judges entries on their merits, not on marketing razzle-dazzle. Someone who won’t cave in when some rich guy slips them a few dollars.”

Bertie was not amused. “Are you accusing me of taking bribes, Mr. Perkin? If so, I will see to it that the rhubarb contest is cancelled. Today.”

“No,” he said. “Wait! No. Don’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t want to tarnish the good name of our town,” she went on. “If you and other contestants doubt that our contest judges are anything but impartial, it throws the entire event into question, doesn’t it, Officer Reed?”

It took everything I had to keep the smile off my face. When Bertie wanted to draw blood, she didn’t need a knife.

“Yes,” I said grimly. “I believe it does.”

“But—but no!” Dan was on full defense now. “I don’t want the rally cancelled. I never said I wanted the rally cancelled. I just want a fair judge. An honest judge. I know you can find one.”

Bertie was hardcore genius getting him to turn around like that.

“I happen to have a judge in mind,” she said. “Someone who will absolutely follow the rules and laws of the contest.”

She had him on her hook. Dan shifted the brim of his baseball hat, nervous as a worm. “All right. I trust you, Bertie. Always have. Who is it?”

“Delaney Reed,” she said, “would you please do Ordinary the great honor of becoming a judge for the Rhubarb Rally?”

Jean snorted. She knew I hated rhubarb. Ryder coughed, and I suspected he was covering a laugh—not coming down with sudden hay fever. Dan wasn’t the only worm on her hook.

I opened my mouth to say no, but the slight twitch of Bertie’s eyebrow stopped me.

I was wrong. She didn’t resemble a sparrow, she resembled a hawk. If I refused to judge, I was pretty sure she’d stab me with her apple knife.

Maybe I could talk her into letting me judge the art or textiles. Something non-edible.

“Sure,” I said. “I’d be happy to help out.”

“Well, I don’t know…” Dan muttered.

Seriously, nothing satisfied this man.

“We could always ask Molly if she’d judge,” Ryder suggested. “She’s got a culinary school background.”

Molly was Chris’s waitress. Nice girl. I was sure Dan had hassled her when he’d been at Jump Off Jack’s, just like he hassled everyone else. She’d probably be happy to throw him under the rhubarb bus.

I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at Ryder to see if he was making up the culinary school thing. I hadn’t known she’d studied.

“Culinary school training is a very nice credential,” Bertie said.

“But she works for Chris Lagon!” Dan said.

“That’s right,” Ryder said, as if he’d forgotten. “Isn’t Grace Nordell a sommelier? She’s one of your neighbors, Dan.”

“Grace?” he said with even more disdain. “That busybody and snoop?”

“How about—” Ryder started.

“No,” Dan said. “I supposed Officer Reed is as good a choice as any.”

Jean took a breath that shook with suppressed laughter. I could see her shoulders trembling out of the corner of my eye, but her face was still and neutral.

“Excellent!” Bertie’s voice was a cheerful gavel nailing down the silence. She stood, walked around the desk, and plucked at Dan’s arm as if he were escorting her to a dance.

“I’m sure our very own police chief will be the most impartial of judges,” she said.

“I suppose,” he said. “But—”

She guided him out into the hallway and toward the door. “You don’t have any family entering into the contest, do you, Delaney dear?” she called over her shoulder. They were almost out of earshot.

“Nope.” I followed them. “Jean and Myra will be working crowd control and emergency response. Don’t have time to do anything more.”

“I’ll be sure to contact you with the judging schedule. I’m sure we can make it work with your other duties.”

“I’m sure we can,” I agreed, wishing there were a way out of this. I glanced back at Jean, who was still in the office. Her finger was pressed to the tip of her nose.

Brat.

Bertie tugged open the outer door and disengaged from Dan with the grace of a dancer. “Thank you for coming by, Mr. Perkin. See you in a few days at the rally!”

She shut the door in his face. “There.” She dusted her palms together. “That should keep him for a while. Can I help you with something?”

“No, I needed to talk to Dan.”

“Oh.” She stared at the door distastefully. “Do you want me to invite him back in?”

“No need. I can talk to him outside.” I reached over for the door, and she placed the golden tips of her fingers on the back of my hand. Her fingers were warm and soft.

“You hired Ryder?”

I wondered how she’d heard about that already. Small town, big ears, I supposed.

“Temporarily. He doesn’t know about…everything.”

“If I can be of any help with what you’ve recently picked up, do let me know.” She was talking about the god power I’d need to offload onto some poor mortal in the next six days. Something I still hadn’t even started working on.

It was on my to-do list. Right up there in the top ten.

“I will.”

“Mr. Bailey,” Bertie chirped.

Ryder had sauntered up behind us, quiet and casual as a cat.

“Want me to come along while you talk to Dan?” he asked.

Jean lingered inside the office, a big grin on her face. She wasn’t going to help with Dan. “I don’t think—” I started.

“Mr. Bailey.” Bertie swooped down on Ryder’s arm with a bit more relish than she had Dan’s. “Could I have a brief word with you?”

Ryder threw me a questioning look, and I nodded.

“It will only take a moment,” Bertie cooed, taking him back to the office.

Valkyries. Couldn’t keep their hands off a hero. Ryder taking her side and shutting Dan up scored up there with Prometheus bringing the fire, though Prometheus insisted it had all been a big mistake, since he’d been drunk at the time and took a wrong turn.

I slipped outside. I wasn’t going to ask Dan any questions Ryder couldn’t hear. But in case I needed to press the supernatural angle, I didn’t want to worry about what Ryder would think.

Dan sat in his car, windows up, looking furious and talking to himself.

Which was to say: normal.

I walked around the front of his car and knocked on the driver’s-side window.

He jerked and glared.

“Can we talk?” I asked through the glass.

His eyes darted to the right and left. He looked so nervous, I was about to stand back up and double-check that I didn’t have an axe murderer looming behind me. My eyes strayed to the handgun he had holstered under his console.

Finally, he rolled down the window. “I have a license to carry,” he said.

“I know that, Dan.”

“It’s not loaded.”

“Good, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Well then, I don’t know what you want from me. I’m doing everyone a favor coming here to demand justice. Demand we get what we deserve. A panel of fair judges. A fair contest.”

“I didn’t come to talk about the contest either, Mr. Perkin. I want to talk to you about Heim.”

He pressed his thin lips together. He was sweating a little too heavily for this cool weather. But then, he was always sweating, always worked up. So that was normal too.

“I don’t have anything to say about him.” His gaze jittered.

That would be a first.

“I’m just wondering where you were last night.”

“Why? Do you think I have something to do with… You think I killed him?”

“I’m just wondering where you were last night,” I repeated calmly.

“I won’t sit here while you prosecute me. I have rights, you know. I don’t have to tell you anything without a lawyer present.”

“Dan,” I said. “Settle down. Of course you have rights. And if you want your lawyer present, I’ll give him a call and have him meet us down at the station so we can do this all formally and on the record. But we can do this friendly too. All I’m asking—all I’m asking—is where you spent your evening. That shouldn’t be a hard thing to remember.”

“Of course I remember,” he said. “I was…I was at Jump Off Jack’s. I went in to talk to Chris, but he wasn’t there. If you ask me, he’s the one you should be talking to. He had plenty of reasons to kill Heim. There was the fish Heim kept shorting him. That’s hard on a place as busy as Chris’s, though why people think his rundown shack is any better than the other bars in town is beyond me. Tourists are half idiot, half stupid.”

“Tourists are the seasonal lifeblood of our town, Dan,” I said. “And it’s those tourists who are going to be trying out all the food and drink at the rally. It’s the tourists who are going to buy the souvenirs and whatnots, fill the hotels, buy the gas. When did you go to Jump Off’s? When did you leave?”

“I don’t have to tell you that. I already answered your question.”

“This is still friendly,” I said. “Answer a few more details and we can keep it friendly. Push me hard, and I will take you on in, lawyer and all.”

He fiddled with the bill of his hat again. I checked his knuckles for signs of a struggle. No blood. No scratches.

But he was more aggravated than usual. Could be the fact that he’d recently had his garden explode on him. Could be he wasn’t coming clean with me.

“You went to talk to Chris around what time?”

“Five,” he said shortly.

“And left?”

“I don’t know. Five thirty.”

“Did you drive?”

“Of course I drove.”

“Did you talk with anyone else when you were there?”

“That do-nothing waitress of his.”

Molly. No love lost there. Ryder had certainly played that card right.

“Where did you go after that?”

“Home.”

“Did anyone see you there?

“Probably all my neighbors. They spy on me, you know. Grace is the worst. Pearl’s always stopping in to visit. They’re jealous of my property—I have the largest lot on the block, and they never let me forget I’ve got more than them. Well, I say damn them all. And damn Chris Lagon while He’s at it. You are talking to the wrong man, officer. It’s Chris that’s behind all this.”

“How do you figure that?”

“He wanted me out of the picture, so he blows up my rhubarb. He wanted Heim out of the picture because Heim was a judge. Chris cozied up to him, treated him like a friend. And all the while, it was just to buy off Heim. To make him give that piss-poor beer of his the prize. Have you even tasted that swill?”