Foal Play: A Mystery (9 page)

“Please, call me Pinky.”

“Okay, Pinky, what exactly is your association with the fireworks company that came to Corolla last week?”

“It’s public knowledge I’m friends with the owner of the company,” Pinky said matter-of-factly.

“It seems an interesting coincidence that we have a company experienced in explosives in town the same night Myrtle’s house went up in flames,” she said, trying to maintain a casual tone.

“And what, might I ask, does one have to do with the other?”

“It’s no secret you and Myrtle didn’t get along.”

“With all due respect to the departed, Mrs. Crepe failed to get along with a lot of people,” Pinky said, surveying the activity at the front of the church.

He has a point, Colleen thought. “Yes, but you’re the only one with friends that make things go boom.”

“Certainly you don’t think I had anything to do with her demise,” Pinky said, amused.

“Did you?” she asked.

Pinky slid his arm along the back of the pew behind her. Colleen forced herself not to move. His cologne filled her nostrils and she was surprised to discover that it smelled nice. She had to hand it to Pinky, he had good taste. She could see how some women might find him interesting, but she wasn’t one of them.

“Chief McCabe, let me assure you. I’m a legitimate real estate developer. I have no interest in acquiring property through illegal means. It only complicates the process.”

“I’m not asking how you acquire property; I’m asking about your friends from New Jersey. Perhaps there’s someone with the company who might do you a favor?”

Pinky withdrew his arm. “And we were getting on so nicely.”

“Well?” Colleen said, panicking that her opportunity to question Pinky was slipping away.

“If you wish to continue this discussion, come by my trailer. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Pinky said abruptly, slid from the pew, and disappeared out the back of the chapel.

Damn. She had pushed too hard. Why couldn’t she have been more subtle, more charming? What was it her mother always said … you can catch more bees with honey? Now she’d have to see Pinky on his turf, not a situation she relished.

As Colleen scanned the crowd for new suspects, a man sitting across the aisle at the far end of a pew several rows ahead of her caught her eye. Her pulse quickened. It was the man she had seen at the fireworks, the attractive one in the orange vest. What was he still doing in Corolla? The company had left town with its crew a week ago. He must have sensed she was staring at him because he peered over his shoulder in her direction. Colleen ducked behind the person in front of her and was relieved when he didn’t seem to notice her. Why do I care if he sees me? she wondered, and chastised herself for acting like a thirteen-year-old with a crush. Still, she kept her head down as he slipped from the pew and sauntered past her out the back of the chapel.

It took Colleen a second to collect herself. She left the pew and rushed toward the door. She needed to find out what this man was still doing on the island. She continued toward the vestibule and made eye contact with Bill. He instantly knew something was up and followed her.

Colleen rushed from the building and into the parking lot as the back door to a black limousine was closing. She jogged toward the vehicle as it pulled away and onto Corolla Village Road. She stopped, shielded her eyes from the sun, and watched the car disappear.

“What’s up?” Bill asked, joining her.

She studied Bill’s face and could see he was concerned, and not just on a professional level. She wanted to tell him what was going on. She hated keeping things from him. But she didn’t have enough information yet to keep him from being furious at her when he found out she had been playing detective. “It’s nothing,” she said and looked away. It was at times like this she wished she could twitch her nose like Samantha in the television show
Bewitched
and disappear.

“Please, look at me,” Bill said.

Colleen squinted up at Bill.
Uh-oh, here it comes
. The moment she had been avoiding all week. The moment she had been dreading. The moment Bill confronted her about “the other man.” “You don’t have to say anything,” she said, trying to stop him before he started.

“I’m sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have come to your house without calling. I didn’t know you had—”

“I don’t have—”

“But I heard—”

“It’s not what you think.”

“It’s okay. I get it. It’s just that…”

Bill ran his hands through his hair. His jaw clenched. She felt her face flush and the tips of her ears burn and knew it wasn’t from the soaring heat index. Was Bill going to say what she hoped he was? The wait was killing her but for once in her life she kept her mouth shut. “Colleen,” he said after a long pause, “I know we’ve never talked about it … but I thought at some point you and—”

A primal scream suddenly erupted from the chapel and drowned out Bill’s final words. Bill and Colleen stared at each other in stunned silence as if jolted from a deep sleep. When a second scream came they took off running toward the church. Colleen’s heart raced as they sprinted across the lot. What if the killer had struck again? A bansheelike cry echoed in the chapel as Bill whipped open the front door. They rushed into the vestibule.

“Thank God you two are here,” Rich Bailey said. “I don’t know what got into him.”

Colleen and Bill hurried into the chapel and discovered Crazy Charlie screaming and doing a jig at the pulpit. “Burn burn burn!” he shrieked and skipped around the stage while waving his arms wildly in the air.

“Come on down from there, Charlie,” Pastor Fred said in a soothing voice, attempting to coax Charlie from the pulpit.

“Burn burn burn!” Charlie screeched again, threw his head back, and let out another primal scream.

“How dare you!” Little Bobby yelled from the front pew and charged.

Colleen and Bill ran down the center aisle, past the churchgoers gawking in horrified curiosity, to the altar area.

“Please, gentlemen,” Fred said as Little Bobby pursued a delighted Charlie around the altar.

“I’ll take Bobby; you take Charlie,” Bill said when he and Colleen reached the end of the aisle. Colleen nodded and they split up. Thanks to the presence of the reporter and cameraman, what followed next would go down in Corolla history.

Crazy Charlie, Little Bobby, and Pastor Fred chased one another in a circle at the front of the church, hopping first up then down the steps of the pulpit in cartoonlike fashion. In front was Charlie, laughing maniacally and screaming with glee every time he jumped off the platform. Hot on his heels was Bobby, slipping and sliding in his new boots and tight leather chaps. A short distance behind them came Fred, panting and snatching altar pieces before they tumbled to the ground.

Colleen positioned herself on the left side of the altar, Bill on the right. “You ready?” Bill asked her as the threesome made another loop.

Colleen gave a thumbs-up and braced herself. Charlie rounded the corner near Bill. Bill let him jump from the steps and pass by, waiting instead to grab Bobby. Colleen readied herself as Charlie made his way toward her. As he leapt up the steps, she grasped him in a hug from behind and tugged with all her might. Charlie stumbled back, peeked over his shoulder, saw Colleen, and giggled. Uh-oh, Colleen thought. The next thing she knew, her feet were off the ground and she was bouncing on Charlie’s back.

“Charlie, let me down,” she said with as much authority as she could muster while bobbing around.

“Giddyup, horsy! Giddyup!” he said with delight.

Colleen stole a look at Bill to see if he was making out any better. Bill was struggling to get a red-faced Bobby down on the ground in a tight hold.

“Burn burn burn! Giddyup!” Charlie yelled and galloped.

“Get out of here!” Bobby screamed and broke free of Bill.

Bobby lunged for Charlie and it struck Colleen that if she didn’t think fast she’d be at the bottom of a Bobby–Charlie flesh heap. “Giddyup, horsy! Giddyup!” she shouted, slapped Charlie’s backside, and held on tight.

For a second Charlie reared up and stopped. Colleen watched in dismay as Bobby reached out to attack. Just as Bobby was about to grab Charlie’s shirt, Charlie let out a banshee cry and took off. Like a stallion out of the starting gate, he raced at full speed down the center aisle, Colleen holding on tight in relieved humiliation. The sunburned vacationers grinned and took pictures with cell phones; Myrtle’s teaching colleagues pointed bony fingers in disapproval; and the reporter and cameraman twitched with excitement at the fact that they finally had juicy news to cover in Corolla.

As Charlie reached the back of the church, Colleen looked back in time to see, first, Bill wrestle Bobby to the ground and handcuff him, Bobby’s new jeans splitting in the process; and second, Fred, arms overflowing with altar pieces, fall and rip Myrtle’s portrait. There was an audible gasp from the audience, and then Colleen was carried from the building into the bright July sun.

“Okay now, Charlie, you can put me down,” Colleen said as Charlie lurched around the parking lot, not knowing where “horsy” should go next.

Charlie stumbled to a halt, panting, and carefully lowered Colleen to the ground. She tugged at her uniform in an attempt to straighten her appearance and salvage any dignity she had left. Charlie, coming down from the high he had gotten from his exertions in the church, half skipped, half walked around the lot. She took a deep breath, approached Charlie, and grasped his arm to stop him.

“That wasn’t very nice what you did in there,” she said, gently guiding him to a bench in the shade at the side of the church.

“Little Bobby isn’t nice,” Charlie said.

“Bobby Crepe lost his mother. How do you think that makes him feel?”

“Happy.”

“No, it doesn’t. It makes him sad, Charlie, very sad,” Colleen said, firmly.

“He’s not sad. If he was sad, he’d cry. Little Bobby wasn’t crying.”

“Not everyone cries when they’re sad.”

“Don’t you?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“I ask a question so you give an answer. That’s the way it works, Chief Colleen.”

Colleen knew from past experience that if she didn’t answer Charlie’s question he’d fixate on it for the next week. “Yes, I cry when I’m sad,” she said.

“Little Bobby isn’t crying so he’s not sad. I know he’s not but you won’t believe me,” Charlie said in a huff and folded his arms over his broad chest.

Colleen resisted the urge to scream. What was going on today? She scanned the parking lot trying to figure out what to do with Charlie. Sunlight bounced off a vehicle and into her eyes. She squinted and saw the source of the reflection—Little Bobby’s shiny new Harley. She stared at the Harley for a long hard moment. What if Charlie was right? What if Bobby Crepe wasn’t sad about his mother’s death? A new motorcycle was a strange way of showing grief. Hadn’t she thought the same thing Charlie was saying though not quite in the same words?

“Tell me something,” she said, trying to be patient. “Why don’t you think Bobby is sad, other than because he’s not crying?”

Charlie glanced at Colleen. “You believe me?”

“That depends on what you tell me. Do you know something about Little Bobby?”

Charlie nodded his head slowly up and down.

“Does it have something to do with what happened to Mrs. Crepe?”

Charlie picked at a thread on the bottom of his shirt.

“If you know something, you have to share,” she said.

“Promise you won’t tell?”

“You know I can’t promise that if it will help Sheriff Dorman.”

“Then I won’t tell,” he said and stuck out his lower lip in a pout.

Colleen sighed. Crazy Charlie was crazy all right … like a fox. He didn’t leave her much choice. She’d apologize for breaking her promise to Charlie after she solved the case. “Okay,” she said, wanting to cross her fingers behind her back to negate her lie.

“Say ‘I promise I won’t tell.’”

“I promise I won’t tell. Okay?” she said.

Charlie swung his legs and kicked at the grass. After what seemed like an eternity to Colleen, Charlie muttered into his chest and was quiet again.

“What? I didn’t hear you. You need to speak up.”

Charlie shook his head left to right in refusal.

“Come on. I know you can say it louder than that. Don’t forget, I heard you in the chapel,” Colleen said and playfully poked him in the arm.

Charlie smiled and giggled. “I was loud, wasn’t I?”

“Very. So why don’t you tell me what happened to Mrs. Crepe … in your loud voice.”

Colleen held her breath. She couldn’t believe that Crazy Charlie might hold the key to the murder. Come on, Charlie, she thought, come on.

Charlie’s grin faded. He met Colleen’s eyes and simply said, “Burn burn burn.”

“Burn burn burn?” she asked to make sure she had heard him correctly.

Charlie nodded.

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?” came a voice from the corner.

The reporter and his cameraman rounded the building. Great. The news media was the last thing she needed right now. The newsmen approached, the cameraman’s HD camcorder tethered to the reporter’s microphone. They walked in perfect synch, the cord between them maintaining the same slack.

Colleen stood to intercept them. She didn’t want them anywhere near Charlie. “What can I do for you?” she asked, adopting her official fire chief persona.

“I’m Rob Anderson from WSKY Channel 4 News. I was wondering if you’d like to comment on what occurred at the memorial service or about the status of the arson investigation,” the young man said. His cameraman hit the camcorder’s
RECORD
button.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss what happened at the Crepe home. As you know, it’s an ongoing investigation. As for what happened at the service, I believe you already recorded that.”

“Yes, we did,” the reporter said with glee. “But perhaps you could shed some light on what motivated the gentleman behind you to interrupt the service the way he did.” The reporter leaned past Colleen and extended his microphone. “Sir,” he said to Charlie, “why did you interrupt the service?”