Goody Goody Gunshots (3 page)

Wyatt followed me and peered down at the ground where the man’s body should have been. “You’re sure he was shot?”

Fear was rapidly giving way to anger. I rounded on my brother and shouted, “How many times are you going to ask me that?
Of course
I’m sure. I wouldn’t have come to get you if I weren’t. The gunman fired three shots, and the guy went down like a bag of rocks
right there
.”

Wyatt kept his eyes locked on the ground in front of him. “Then where’s the blood?”

“What?”

“If he was shot, there should be blood. There isn’t.”

I looked again, but I didn’t need to. I knew he was right. There was no body, no blood. In fact, there was no sign that anything had gone wrong here at all.

Chapter 3

Wyatt and I didn’t say much to each other while we
waited for the police to arrive. We’d climbed back into the truck where at least we had a couple of locked doors between us and whoever else might be out there. He sat slouched down on his tailbone, his head tilted back against the seat, eyes closed—or nearly so. He might look lazy and unconcerned, but I know my brother, and I knew he was aware of everything around him.

I couldn’t tell whether he believed me about the shooting or not. Not that it mattered. I knew what I’d seen. Wind buffeted the truck, and cold air seeped inside from a crack somewhere. I could feel it brushing my neck every few minutes, but I refused to ask Wyatt to turn on the truck’s heater. No way I was going to let him think I was a sissy, and besides, he has strict rules against idling any motor vehicle for more than a minute or two. Something about fuel residue condensing inside the engine.

Anyway, I had my rising fury to keep me warm. If this was some kind of joke, it wasn’t funny. What if the boys had been with me? What if I hadn’t been the one driving? What if one of Wyatt’s twin daughters had been behind the wheel? Danielle and Dara both had new driver’s licenses and drove every chance they got.

After what seemed like forever, sirens sounded in the distance and grew steadily closer. A few minutes later, Wyatt and I were bathed in the surreal flashing of red and blue bubble lights.

Wyatt sat up and cut a glance at me. “Well, come on. Let’s get this over with.”

I opened the truck’s door, battled with the wind for a few seconds, and jumped to the pavement as Jawarski’s truck pulled up behind the patrol car. He glanced around quickly, spotted us standing there, and strode along the edge of the highway toward me.

Jawarski and I might not have been able to figure out what’s going on between the two of us, but when the chips are down, there’s nobody I’d rather see. Knowing that I’ve started to rely on him to some degree bothers me a little, but I’m learning to cope.

We made eye contact while the first cop on the scene got my story, but Jawarski made no effort to interfere with the process. He listened while I talked, made an occasional note in the notebook he keeps in his shirt pocket, and glanced at Wyatt several times, apparently trying to figure out what my brother thought about what I was saying.

That annoyed me, but it didn’t surprise me. Wyatt and Jawarski knew each other only slightly, but they’d immediately formed a mutual admiration society—something that both pleased and annoyed me at the same time. Wyatt hadn’t ever liked my ex-husband, Roger, and it turned out he’d been right. I appreciated the fact that he approved of Jawarski. I just didn’t like it when they teamed up against me.

It wasn’t until the uniformed officers had drifted away to search for evidence that Jawarski said anything to me at all. Keeping his voice low, he looked me square in the eye and asked, “You okay?”

I nodded. “I’m fine. I was pretty shaken up when it first happened, but I’m calmer now. More angry than anything else.”

“So tell me again,” he said, slipping easily from friend to cop in the bat of an eye, “you were driving home from Wyatt’s, and what happened?”

I told my story again, while Jawarski made a few more notes. It’s irritating to answer the same questions over and over again, but I was an attorney in my previous life, so I know about interrogation techniques, and I understood why the police do what they do.

When I finished, he nodded slowly. In his best cop voice, he asked, “You’re
sure
that’s what you saw?”

“Of course I’m sure.” He looked at Wyatt over the top of my head, and I felt the slim hold I’d been managing to keep on my patience slipping. “Would you stop looking at Wyatt? He wasn’t here.
I
was. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m not making things up, and I’m not overreacting.”

Jawarski hadn’t exactly been smiling, but his expression sobered immediately. “I never said you were making it up, Abby, but you have to admit it’s a little strange that we can’t find any sign of foul play. If the guy was shot the way you say he was, seems like we’d find
something.
”

“That’s what I think,” Wyatt said. “There’d be blood, signs of a struggle . . .” As if he was suddenly an expert in crime scene investigation.

I growled at both of them and headed once again toward the place the body should have been. “Maybe the guy with the limp was standing farther from the side of the road than I thought at first.”

Jawarski grabbed my arm and hauled me back to stand beside him like I was nothing more substantial than a rag doll. “Just stop right there, Abby. My guys’ll do the searching. They don’t need your help. Besides, if there
is
evidence in that patch of weeds, I don’t want you destroying it.”

When he’s not playing cop, I like the fact that Jawarski’s bigger and stronger than I am. Just about any woman packing more pounds than she likes would feel the same way. But he
was
working, and I resented being manhandled. I jerked my arm away and put a few more inches between us. “You’re going to have them search, even though you don’t believe me?”

“Lighten up, Sis,” Wyatt snapped. “He never said he didn’t believe you.”

“Not in so many words, but I can see it in his eyes. Are you humoring me, Jawarski?”

“I wouldn’t waste taxpayer dollars,” he said, as if that was supposed to make me feel better. “I’m just suggesting that maybe someone was pulling a joke,” Jawarski said. “Is that possible?”

“Some joke, pretending to shoot someone in the chest.” I leaned against the bed of Wyatt’s truck and thought over the chain of events again. “It’s possible, I suppose,” I admitted grudgingly, “but who’d do something like that? And you didn’t see the look on that poor man’s face. He was terrified of something.”

“Okay, then,” Jawarski conceded. “Tell me more about him.”

I sighed in frustration. “I’ve told you everything I remember. He looked short for a man. I’m guessing maybe five four. He was dirty, and his clothes looked like he’d pulled them out of a garbage can.”

“What about his hair color?”

“Dark. Eyes the same. If he had any distinguishing marks or scars, I couldn’t see them under all the dirt.”

“You’re sure the limp was real?” Wyatt asked.

“I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but yeah, I think it was.”

“And you’re sure he wasn’t limping because of the run-in with your car,” Jawarski said.

I shook my head again. “No. I’ve been over and over that since it happened. I didn’t hit him, but I came close. I’m sure the limp wasn’t caused by me.”

“And you didn’t see the shooter at all,” Jawarski said.

“I didn’t see the shooter at all.”

“If you had to guess, where would you say the shots came from?”

I closed my eyes, relived the moment for the hundredth time since it happened, and pointed toward a grove of trees on my right. “If I had to guess, I’d say the shooter was hiding in there.”

“You didn’t see or hear anything unusual?”

“I didn’t hear anything, see anything, smell, taste, or feel anything unusual. I didn’t even realize there was anyone else around until I heard the shots.”

“And when you heard the shots? What happened then?”

Even though I understood why he asked, the questions were starting to wear on me. I kneaded my forehead with my fingertips and went over the same ground for the umpteenth time. “He was running in that direction,” I said, indicating a tangle of brush across the street. “I heard the shots, and he sort of stopped and then dropped. He just crumpled to the ground like a bundle of old rags.”

Jawarski looked as if he was about to say something else, but one of the officers who’d been looking through the trees shouted, “Got some tire tracks over here, Detective,” and whatever Jawarski had been thinking was immediately forgotten.

I jumped as if I’d been poked with a cattle prod and started toward the officer. Jawarski and his long legs passed me as if I was standing still, and Wyatt was only half a step behind him.

Hoping that someone had finally found proof that I wasn’t hallucinating, I kicked myself into high gear and pushed through an opening in the trees I hadn’t noticed before. I stopped on the edge of a clearing about twenty feet square, and I could tell immediately that it had been flattened by more than one set of tires. “Anything?”

Jawarski crouched to look at the prints the officer pointed out to him but shook his head as he stood again. “There’ve been cars here recently, but it’s impossible to tell how recently. We haven’t had rain in weeks.”

“But they could be fresh,” I prodded.

“They could be.” Jawarski tucked his notebook into his breast pocket and put a hand on my elbow. “We’ll check them out, but I don’t think they’re going to tell us anything. There are probably a thousand vehicles around here with tires like those.”

“So now what?”

Jawarski shook his head slowly. “We’ll keep checking, Abby, but I wouldn’t worry too much. If the man you saw had actually been shot, there would be signs of foul play. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t murder.”

I chewed my thumbnail and tried to figure out what I’d missed. I
knew
I’d seen the limping man get shot. There was no question in my mind. But I also knew that Jawarski was right; there wasn’t one shred of evidence to prove it.

Chapter 4

“They found nothing at all?” my cousin Karen asked
the next morning. Not surprisingly, I hadn’t slept well the night before, and she’d noticed something was wrong with me the instant I stepped into the shop. After making coffee and pouring two cups, she sat me down at one of the wrought-iron tables in the shop and pumped me for information.

“Are you
sure
you saw the guy get shot?” She asked, brushing a lock of auburn hair from her eyes.

“I’m positive. Why does everybody keep asking me that?”

Karen, ever practical, shrugged, scowled at something on the opposite wall, and stood again. “Because there’s no sign that it happened.” Quick as a whip, she darted behind the counter, grabbed a handful of handmade candy sticks, and headed back to the nook where we’d set up the display of old-fashioned candies.

I couldn’t just sit there while Karen worked, so I carried my coffee behind the counter and glanced out the kitchen door to make sure Max, my Doberman pinscher, was still curled in a sunny spot. The dog had spent his formative years as the inventory retrieval specialist for a friend’s clothing business. When Brandon died, I took Max in, but the poor dog’s life had been forever altered when he moved from a clothing store to a candy shop.

Health codes prevented me from letting him hang out in our shop, but he didn’t mind spending time outside when the weather was good. Unfortunately, he made no effort to hide his unhappiness when it wasn’t. Luckily, last night’s storm had blown itself out, and the day had dawned sunny and warm, so Max seemed content.

I had no idea what I’d do when the weather turned really cold. During the worst of the previous winter I’d sometimes let Max stay in the rooms on the second floor of our building. Recently, though, I’d wiped out most of my bank account repairing and renovating that space. We’d added a small service kitchen, replaced windows, repaired walls, and created a space large enough to host parties and meetings. I was pleased with the results, so I wasn’t willing to leave a lonely Doberman alone up there.

Through the front window, I saw the people of Paradise going about their business. Marshall Ames on his way to his restaurant. Carma Moran walking toward Once Upon a Crime, the bookstore around the corner. Kim-Ly Trang setting out signs to advertise a sale at 415, her boutique across the street from Divinity.

I sliced the Chocolate Sour Cream Coffee Cake I’d made the day before while Karen restocked empty spots left on our display shelves from yesterday’s business. If the folks at my old law firm could have seen me now, searching for recipes in magazines, books, and online to supplement the list Aunt Grace had left me—and enjoying it—they’d have fallen over in disbelief.

“The guy jumped into the road right in front of me,” I said, resisting the urge to help myself to a small piece. I’d already baked a test cake and together, Karen and I, along with a few friends, had pronounced it edible. I’d probably gained two pounds from that alone. Karen had been blessed with some mutant gene that allowed her to eat everything in sight and never gain an ounce. Standing next to her usually left me feeling like a lump, so I tried not to overindulge—most of the time.

“At first I thought I’d hit him,” I went on, “but then he ran off, and I realized I hadn’t. The shots came just as he reached the other side of the road. I was absolutely positive that he was at least hit.”

“But Jawarski said there was no blood?”

“Not a drop.” I dusted each piece of cake with confectioners sugar, then carefully inserted one into a small gold-edged Divinity gift box. “I stayed there for more than an hour. I looked everywhere, Wyatt looked and the police, too. None of us could find anything.”

With the displays stocked, Karen pulled the cash drawer from the small safe in our office and wedged it into the old-fashioned register on the glass counter. “He must not have been hit,” she said with a scowl. “Otherwise, there would have been some sign of it.”