Murder on the Hoof: A Mystery (Colleen McCabe Series) (2 page)

“That girl’s trouble,” Bill said, observing Fawn.

“You have no idea.” Colleen’s phone buzzed, alerting her to a message. “Not again.”

Bill squinted at her quizzically.

She glanced at the text:
CONFIRMING ARRIVAL OF CAST/CREW OF
REMEMBERING ALWAYS
. LOOKING FORWARD TO MEETING YOU.—W.E.

“It’s Wendy Everett, the production manager from Zeon Pictures,” Colleen said, rolling her eyes and returning her phone to her pocket. “I’m getting a dozen texts from her a day.”

“You can’t blame her for wanting to make sure everything is in order. We’re not L.A. types.”

“We’re not island bumpkins, either,” she said with indignation.

“It’s not every day we get studio folks in town. People are excited. You have to admit it’s good for business.”

She shook her head. Between the theater group and film company, Corolla was being overrun by actors, and the movie was all anyone had been talking about for weeks. “I heard the lead actress—what’s her name?”

“Hayley Thorpe,” Bill offered.

“That’s it. She’s a soap star, I think.… Heard she’s a handful.”

“Perhaps we should reserve judgment about Ms. Thorpe until she gets here,” he said with a firmness that surprised her.

“Great. All the guys at the firehouse are swooning. Now you, too?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, amused. “I’m not the swooning type.”

“We’ll see,” she said with skepticism.

Bill chuckled.

Colleen spotted Rich Bailey closing his makeup kit. “Hey, Rich,” she called out. “Good job today.”

“It’s always nice working on the living,” he said. “Let me know if I can help again.”

“Will do.”

Bill put on his sunglasses. “Unless you need me, I’ll be heading back to the office.”

Colleen surveyed the scene. Her men had packed up the last of the equipment and were lingering to chat with the actors and a handful of curious vacationers. “Looks like we’re good,” she said, and whistled for Sparky. The dog spotted her and came running. “We still on for dinner?”

“You bet,” Bill said with a nod, and moved to go.

“You Chief McCabe?” asked an approaching man with a burned beer belly wearing plaid swim trunks and flip-flops.

“Yes.”

“You all done with your training stuff?”

“We are.”

The beer-bellied man raised his brows. “Then someone oughta tell that lady over there on the dune before she cooks herself,” he said, and gestured to an area beyond where they had been practicing.

Colleen squinted in the direction of the dune. “Thank you,” she replied, puzzled.

“No problem,” the man said with a wave, and lumbered off toward Lighthouse Drive.

“Wonder who it could be,” Bill said, joining her as she trudged through the sand with Sparky at her side.

“A Method actor,” she said with a shake of the head.

They marched to the foot of the dune, rounded the corner, and discovered Doris Jenkins unconscious in the sand. Doris was a plump, curvaceous woman in her sixties and an actor with the community theater group. Sparky lowered his head, cautiously approached the woman, and sniffed her leg.

“Sparky, heel,” Colleen commanded. The dog whimpered but obediently retreated. She squatted next to the woman and nudged her shoulder. “Doris?” Nothing. She scanned Doris’s face. Despite the rising temperature and humidity, Doris’s coloring was pale. Colleen tilted her head close to Doris’s mouth. The woman wasn’t breathing.

Damn. She grabbed Doris’s wrist and confirmed her fear: no pulse. She shifted her position, wiped the saliva from Doris’s mouth with the bottom of her shirt, and started CPR. “Get Jimmy on the phone.”

“Already on it,” Bill said, hitting speed dial.

“Tell him to get the guys back out here,” she said while rhythmically pressing on Doris’s chest.

“Jimmy? Bill here,” he said into the phone as he moved away toward the beach. “Chief McCabe needs the rescue guys north of the training area ASAP.”

“And Bill?” she called over her shoulder. “Tell him this isn’t an exercise.”

He disappeared around the dune to help Colleen’s men find their location.

Colleen scrutinized the woman’s unresponsive face as she performed CPR. After multiple attempts at revival, she reluctantly stopped her rescue efforts and noted the time on her watch. It was no use. Doris was dead; she had been for some time. Colleen wiped sweat from her forehead and upper lip, stood, and kicked the sand in frustration.

Jimmy and Bobby soon arrived with the stretcher. Thirty yards down the beach, children played happily in the waves as Colleen’s men gently placed Doris’s body into the body bag for transportation to the morgue. She heard the zip of the body bag behind her. Jimmy and Bobby lifted the stretcher.

“You did great today, Bobby,” she said, noticing his pensive expression as he passed. “Don’t let this get you down.”

“Thanks, Chief,” he said, dejected.

Jimmy nodded to her and they vanished around the dune.

Sparky moaned, wanting to follow. “Okay,” she said, patting the dog’s rump. “Go to the station.” And with that, the dog took off to accompany her men the short distance to the firehouse.

She gazed up the beach with sadness. She couldn’t help feeling partially responsible for Doris’s death. She shouldn’t have allowed someone of her years to spend so much time in the heat. Older adults had a more difficult time regulating body temperature. Doris had died right under her nose, with an entire team of EMTs nearby. She rubbed her temples, trying to push away the mounting headache and feelings of guilt.

“You okay?” Bill asked.

Colleen shrugged. No, she wasn’t okay. She was angry. Angry that somehow she might have contributed to Doris’s death.

“You can’t beat yourself up about this.”

“After everything that happened last month with Max Cascio, I thought we had had enough death for one summer.”

The two watched in silence as the ocean pushed toward land, then withdrew again. Life had returned to normal in the weeks since the arrest of Max Cascio, nephew of Antonio “Pinky” Salvatore, one of Corolla’s most successful developers. The federal agents were gone, the horses had been returned to the sanctuary, Myrtle’s house restoration was under way, Bobby had begun firefighter training, and Myrtle and Nellie were busy with the Lighthouse Wild Horse Preservation Society and the upcoming theater production. Colleen and Pinky were even forging a new friendship—what type of friendship it was, she still wasn’t entirely sure of yet—but things had changed between them after Pinky had donated a house intended for demolition to the station for a Burn-to-Learn drill.

She and Bill had also grown closer since Max’s arrest—but not as close as she had hoped. They had shared movie nights and dinners and had even arranged to take off work for a day trip down to Ocracoke, at the southern end of the Outer Banks, to hear Ocracoke’s native musicians at the Deepwater Creek Theater and Music Hall, but Colleen couldn’t help feeling that there was something preventing their relationship from deepening. Still, she was happy they seemed to be moving away from a purely platonic one. She stole a look at him. As if sensing her gaze, he turned and smiled.

“I’d better head back,” she said. She couldn’t spend all day staring at the ocean. “I’ve got a lot to talk about with my team.”

They marched through the sand to the short boardwalk at Dolphin Street that intersected with and linked the beach to Lighthouse Drive, where Bill’s SUV was parked on the shoulder of the road.

“I’ll check on Marvin,” he said, and opened his door. “It’s not going to be easy for him without Doris.”

“I don’t envy you,” she said with sincerity. She had always found it difficult to be around the grieving. “Mind if we take a rain check on dinner? I could be a while at the station.”

“Not at all. Call me if you need anything.”

Colleen gave Bill a short wave as he pulled onto Lighthouse Drive. She took a deep breath and then headed along Dolphin Street to the firehouse to check on her team.

Chapter 2

“You couldn’t put out
a match on a windy day!” came an angry voice from inside the Whalehead fire station.

“Please, I have more time parking the engine than you have on the job” was the sarcastic retort.

Colleen’s brow furrowed as she left the road and jogged across the parking lot toward the voices.

“Hose puller!” Chip yelled, jerking on Kenny’s shirt as she entered the empty bay.

“Nozzle jockey,” Kenny grunted, expertly breaking free of Chip’s grasp and putting him in a headlock.

Sparky circled and barked at the two wrestling men.

“Enough!” Colleen said.

All in the room, including Sparky, jumped. Kenny released Chip and shuffled back a few feet with his head down.

“Did you see that?” Chip said, rubbing his neck and pointing at Kenny.

“I did indeed, Mr. Reed,” she said, trying to keep her cool. “I also saw that you started it. Care to explain why?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“And please don’t tell me it’s about your girlfriend. I believe I’ve already made myself perfectly clear about not bringing your personal life to work.”

The rest of the men stole glances at one another and smirked. She deduced from their reaction that the fight had indeed been about Fawn. Colleen hadn’t had any trouble with Chip until he had started dating the girl several weeks ago. Now trouble was all she got from him—and Fawn was always the reason. He gaped at her, mouth open but silent.

“You’re
on
the job; now get
into
the job,” she said sternly. “That goes for all of you,” she added, turning to address the rest. “We’ll have a meeting about the training soon. Until then, I suggest you make yourselves useful.”

The men dispersed, moving to do equipment checks, clean the engines, and in general make themselves scarce.

“Kenny, I’d like to speak with you,” she said on her way up the stairs to her second-floor office.

“Woowee!” came a response from below.

Colleen stopped mid-step.

“What a babe,” someone else remarked, followed by a low whistle.

She swung around, ready to lay into her men, and discovered them intently watching two women and a man approaching from the parking lot. She descended the stairs and observed the strangers as they strode away from a Lincoln SUV with tinted windows and headed across the asphalt. The group was led by a cute twentysomething woman with a bob haircut, tailored clothes, and a phone to her ear. Behind her followed an equally tailored young man. The third member of the party was an attractive woman, perhaps in her early forties, wearing Jackie Kennedy Onassis–style sunglasses, a flowing pale pink blouse, red capri pants, and matching sling-back pumps. The woman screamed glamour, and it suddenly dawned on Colleen who she was.

“Now that’s a kitty I could rescue,” she heard one of her team say. Colleen observed the men in her peripheral vision and caught a few checking the freshness of their breath and straightening their hair.

“Where can I find Chief McCabe?” asked the cute woman with the bob as she and her companions entered the shade of the station’s garage.

“You must be Wendy,” Colleen said, crossing the room and shaking Wendy’s hand.

“I’m Jason,” said the young man, shaking her hand. “I’m Ms. Thorpe’s assistant.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“And, as I’m sure you know already, this is Hayley Thorpe,” Jason said, stepping back and with a sweep of the arm gesturing toward Hayley in a way someone might do when introducing royalty.

Hayley Thorpe removed her sunglasses. Much to Colleen’s amazement, she heard a collective sigh from her men.

“Lovely to meet you,” Hayley said, extending a dainty, perfectly manicured hand.

Colleen took Hayley’s hand in hers and was suddenly aware of how rough her own skin must feel against the satiny soft skin of Ms. Thorpe’s palm. She released her grip and unconsciously placed her hands behind her back.

“I wasn’t expecting you, Ms. Thorpe,” Colleen said, glaring pointedly at Wendy. Wendy smiled back, unfazed.

“Please, call me Hayley,” the actress said with a purr.

“Hayley insisted we come unannounced,” Wendy explained. “She wanted to see the station and your world as it normally is.” The young woman punctuated her remark with a quick once-over of Colleen’s appearance.

“Yes, well,” Colleen stammered, suddenly feeling self-conscious about her attire. “We had a training exercise on the beach this morning. Everyone’s a little tuckered out.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hayley said, luxuriously strolling toward the men. “All I see are handsome faces.”

She watched in wonder as Hayley introduced herself to the men one by one, made little comments to each that only he could hear, and graciously allowed them to take pictures with her on their cell phones. Jason beamed and Wendy checked a text message. They had clearly witnessed Hayley in action many times before. Hayley finished introducing herself to the last firefighter, then turned, spotted Sparky, and, to top off her charm offensive, rubbed the Border collie behind the ear. When Sparky moaned with pleasure, Colleen could swear some of the men did, too. By the time Hayley was done making her rounds, her men were smitten fans. It was going to be tough, if not impossible, to get her team to focus at the debriefing today.

Wendy read a message on her phone. “The house is ready,” the production manager said to Hayley.

“It was lovely meeting all of you,” Hayley said. The men stammered feeble responses. “You have quite the crew, Chief McCabe. You’re a lucky woman.”

The guys grinned.

“Yes, well, they’re a great team to work with,” she said, not sure how to respond, since she preferred not to think of her men in the way Hayley clearly did.

“I look forward to shadowing you,” Hayley said.

Colleen furrowed her brows.

“We’d best be going if we’re going to meet your friend,” Jason said, taking Hayley’s arm and guiding her from the station’s bay.

“Bye,” the star said, and swiveled on her heels.

“Bye,” the men replied in dreamy unison.

Colleen hurried after Hayley, Wendy, and Jason. “Excuse me, Ms. Thorpe,” she called out. “What do you mean by ‘shadowing’ me?”