Sealed with a Kill (5 page)

Brenna did. It was the same story he had already heard eight times, but he made notes on his little pad anyway.

The chief signaled Meyers to join him and DeFalco near the body. They had a hushed conversation in which Meyers nodded quite a bit. The chief then pulled out his cell phone and made a call, while DeFalco squatted next to the body and Meyers returned to the group with a purposeful stride.

“All right, we have enough information for now,” he said. “I’m going to escort you back to the parking lot to await your ride back to town.”

Brenna glanced at her wristwatch. They would be an hour early, but it couldn’t be helped. Maybe she could offer them all lunch from Preston’s basket. Although, looking at the shell-shocked group, she doubted any of them were much in the mood for food right now.

Officer Meyers took the lead and led the group out of the woods on the same trail they had come in on.

“Brenna,” the chief caught up to her as she was bringing up the rear. “I’ve got the state medical examiner coming in. Let’s try to keep this quiet as long as we can.”

“In other words, don’t blab to the Porter sisters?”

A small smile flickered across his face. “That’s a little more blunt than I was going for, but yeah, that’s the general idea.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “My lips are sealed. Any idea who he is . . . er . . . was?”

“There’s not enough left of his face to identify him,” he said. “We haven’t found any ID on him. This may take a while.”

Brenna suppressed a shudder, barely.

“Why here?” she asked. “Why these woods?”

“At a guess I’d say that whoever put him here didn’t think he’d be discovered for a while,” he said. “They didn’t count on a tour group of leaf lovers.”

“Well, then we’re even, because I sure didn’t expect to find anything more than leaves today, either,” she said.

She let out a pent-up breath, and Chief Barker patted her on the shoulder.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “I promise.”

Brenna nodded and then turned and hurried to catch up to the group. They broke through the trees and cut across the meadow to the parking lot beyond. Siobhan turned and disappeared into her cabin without a word. Brenna couldn’t really blame her. What could you say after finding a body? Social niceties seemed awkward at best.

She popped into her cabin and grabbed the wicker lunch basket. Other than Suede, who helped himself to three turkey sandwiches and two apples, no one else took anything except bottled water.

They stood awkwardly on the perimeter of the driveway. Brenna noticed that everyone’s gazes would stray toward the woods, and then when there was no sign of activity, they would glance quickly away.

Finally, after what seemed like the longest hour of her life, second only to having her head shoved under a freestanding hair dryer at Totally Polished, the only hair salon in Morse Point, the stubby white bus appeared. Preston Kelly popped out of the driver’s seat and gave Brenna a wide-eyed glance.

“Is it true?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” she said. “But the chief wants it kept quiet.”

“Sure, you won’t hear a peep from me,” he said. “Although, I doubt you’ll be able to keep these folks from talking. It had to be a horrible shock to them to find a body when they’re supposed to be looking at pretty leaves and cute little chipmunks and birdies.”

“A bit,” Brenna agreed. “See what you can do for damage control, but I don’t think the chief can expect this to stay hush-hush for long.”

The group filed onto the bus, and Brenna waved as it disappeared down the drive with another burst of blue exhaust.

 

True to her word, Brenna didn’t mention the gruesome find to anyone. In fact, she spent the next hour in her cabin working on decoupage projects for her classes at Vintage Papers.

Luckily, the leaves she’d found, prior to finding the body on their disastrous leaf-peeping hike, had been protected in her messenger bag during the ensuing hullabaloo and were still usable. She pressed them in an old flower press she’d gotten at a rummage sale years ago. When all of the moisture was squeezed out of them and they were nice and flat, they would make some lovely mementos of the pretty autumn foliage that surrounded Morse Point.

She tried not to think about what was happening in the woods now, but it was hard to ignore when the state medical examiner’s van arrived in the parking lot and crime scene personnel began to tromp around the lake to the woods beyond.

Brenna had just brewed a batch of chai tea when a knock sounded at her door. Thinking it had to be the chief or one of his officers, she didn’t check before she opened it.

When she had first moved here from Boston, that would have been unheard of for her cautious and somewhat paranoid nature. It just showed how rattled she was that she didn’t take a peek first.

As she swung the door open, a flash popped in her face, and she squinted and stepped back. Spots swam before her eyes and it was a moment before she recognized Ed Johnson, the scrawny, bald editor of the
Morse Point Courier
, standing on her front porch.

He smelled of stale cigarette smoke and breath mints. He let his camera dangle from a strap around his neck as he held a mini recorder up to her face.

“Is it true you discovered a body in the Morse Point woods?” he asked.

“No comment,” Brenna said. She started to swing the door shut, but Ed wedged his foot in it.

“Aw, come on,” Ed whined. “This is news. You’ve got to help me out.”

“I did help you out,” Brenna said. “Last spring I found you unconscious in an alley. You owe me for that. Now, I said ‘no comment,’ and I meant it.”

“Just tell me this,” Ed cajoled. “Do they know who the body is?”

Brenna rolled her eyes. Same old Ed. In his world, the word
no
meant keep rephrasing the question until you get an answer you can use.

“I can’t tell you anything,” she said. “You really need to talk to the chief.”

“I tried,” Ed said. “It’d be easier to shuck a pearl out of an oyster with a rusty paper clip. That man is so stingy with his words you’d think they charge him by the syllable. I can’t write a feature on ‘Mind your own business, Ed.’ ”

“Who needs to mind their own business?”

Ed and Brenna turned to find Nate standing on the porch.

“Apparently, me,” Ed grumbled, and he stomped off the porch and headed toward his car, which was parked in the lot on the top of the hill.

“What’s got his tighty whities in a bunch?” Nate asked.

“You haven’t talked to Chief Barker?” Brenna asked.

“No, I just finished giving Hank a bath,” he said. “And I have the war wounds to prove it.”

Brenna smiled. Hank hated baths. He loved mud puddles, the swamp, and the frigid lake water, but put him in a bathtub with Mr. Bubble and he was a thrashing, flailing, howling drama queen.

“Is he all fluffy soft and sweet smelling?” she asked.

“Yeah, in fact, I’m not letting him out because I know he’ll stay out until he finds something dead to roll in.”

Brenna blanched.

Nate’s laserlike scrutiny caught the look. “What? Was that too descriptive?”

“No, it’s just. . .” Brenna’s voice trailed off. “Follow me.”

She led the way to the end of her porch, where they could see the parking lot. She pointed up at the medical examiner’s van and the two police cars.

“What the heck?” Nate’s eyes widened. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not supposed to say,” Brenna said. “But since it’s your property and all . . .”

“Spill it,” he said.

“Okay, when I took that tour group of Preston’s around the lake this morning, we found a body half-buried in a pile of leaves.”

Nate stared at her until she felt the need to shift her feet to break his gaze.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

“I’m speechless,” he said. He leaned against the porch railing. “What is this, the third body in less than a year?”

Brenna nodded. “I’m beginning to think I’m a body magnet.” She forced a laugh, which Nate did not return.

“Who is . . . was it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. She remembered the sight of the blood-encrusted hair, and a shudder rippled through her from her head to her feet.

Nate opened his arms wide, and she stepped into his comforting warmth. He held her tightly against his chest, as if he could keep her safe even from the images burned in her mind.

“Chief Barker asked me to try and keep it quiet,” she said.

“I wish him luck with that,” Nate said. He ran his hand up and down the length of her back, and it soothed. “I would be shocked if the Porter sisters don’t already know about this, and I’d bet my large-screen TV that they’re on their way here right now.”

As if his words had summoned them, a large Buick sedan lurched into the driveway. Brenna knew it was Marie behind the wheel as she sped into the lot, narrowly missing the chief’s car and then overcorrecting and just whistling by the medical examiner’s van by a breath.

The car braked with a jolt. Brenna stepped away from Nate as the two sisters piled out of the car, not even bothering to shut their doors as they scurried down the hill to get to her.

“Looks like you get to keep your TV,��� Brenna said.

“Whew, the World Series is starting soon,” he said.

Brenna could tell that the Porter twins had recently been to Totally Polished and spent some time under Ruby’s dryers. Their matching gray hair was styled in freshly tightened curls all over their heads.

It was impossible to ignore them when their tennies churned up turf as they hustled across the lawn, wearing lined Windbreakers over matching nylon pants, Ella in canary yellow and Marie in kelly green.

They stopped, panting for breath, at the base of Brenna’s stairs.

“We . . .” Ella gasped.

“Heard. . .” Marie added.

“Body. . .” Ella concluded.

Brenna looked at Nate. He shrugged. It wasn’t as if the sisters weren’t going to find out what was going on soon enough. Still, the chief had asked her to keep it on the down-low.

Abruptly, it became a nonissue as a team of crime scene personnel broke through the trees, carrying a body bag on the stretcher between them.

“Oh, my . . .” Marie said. She covered her mouth with her right hand and grasped Ella’s arm with her left.

“Who is it?” Ella sent Brenna a piercing glance. “And don’t tell me that you don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” Brenna said.

The elderly twins turned to Nate, who raised his hands in a gesture of innocence or ignorance or both.

“I wasn’t there when they found him,” he said.

They let out a humph, which seemed to convey how useless they found both Brenna and Nate.

“Oh, there’s Chief Barker,” Ella said.

“Let’s go ask him,” Marie said.

Brenna would have told them not to bother, but that would be like trying to catch lightning in a bottle: potentially explosive.

The two sisters trotted off in the direction of the chief, who seemed to be in a deep conversation with the medical examiner. He was tugging at his mustache, an indicator that he was not happy.

“Think we should take cover?” Nate asked.

Brenna hurried across the porch to her front door and opened it wide. “After you.”

They slipped inside and closed the door behind them. Brenna closed the blinds so that they could peer out without being seen.

Chief Barker looked like he was ready to growl at the Porter sisters. Brenna saw him shake his head. Marie fluttered her eyelids flirtatiously at him, but when that didn’t work, it looked like Ella went for the tough talk. Chief Barker raised one gray eyebrow and gave her a hard stare. The twins walked away, looking dejected at the lack of information.

“Well, it looks like they’ve been stopped short,” Nate said.

“Better the chief than me,” Brenna said. The autumn day had turned chilly and overcast. “I made some chai before Ed Johnson showed up; would you like some?”

“That sounds nice,” he said. “And you know what goes really well with tea?”

“Hmm, let me guess—brownies?” she asked.

They walked over to the spacious kitchenette on the far side of her cabin. Brenna poured them each a mug and put the honey out. While Nate took over spooning the honey, she got two plates and her Tupperware tub full of brownies, which she’d baked the night before.

“Are these the brownies with the chocolate chunks in them?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Excellent; those are my favorites.”

“Are you my friend just for my baked goods?” she asked as she slid a plate in front of him and handed him a fork. She was only partially kidding, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Well, that, among other things,” he said.

His gray gaze was steady on hers until Brenna forced herself to look away or risk dropping her brownie.