A Hopeless Murder, page 4
part #1 of Hope Walker Series
“Yes, I hated him, but no I didn’t kill him.”
“Then why the hell did you call us?”
“Because there’s a dead body in the middle of your bar and I thought the owners of said bar might want to know that and might have an idea what to do next.”
Granny shook her head. “That sounds a lot less exciting than hiding a dead body. Guess we don’t need the luggage carrier, Bess.”
Bess shrugged and made a bit of a sad face.
“What luggage carrier?”
“I had Bess empty out that old canvas luggage carrier. It’s in her truck in the alley out back.”
“Why?”
“Remind me not to call you when I need to move a body. Because, Hope, it’s not like we got body bags just lying around. I figured the luggage carrier was the next best thing.”
“Granny, for the last time. I did not kill Ed Kline. I do not need to move his body.”
“Well, somebody’s got to move it. I can’t serve lunch with a dead body on the floor.”
“Granny! I called you because I don’t know what to do! I assume that normally when somebody dies suspiciously, the first person you’d call is Sheriff Kline. And since he’s currently lying in a pool of his own blood…”
“I think I see where you’re going with this. You don’t know Sheriff Kline’s number. Bess?”
Bess pulled out her phone, scrolled through, hit the screen and handed it to me. The screen said Sheriff Kline and it started ringing.
And a moment later, the lifeless corpse at my feet started ringing. Granny looked at Bess. “You don’t suppose he’s going to answer that do you?”
I disconnected the call and grabbed at my hair and pulled.
“Granny, since Sheriff Kline isn’t answering his phone right now, who else do you think we should call?”
“I guess the only other person who works in the Sheriff’s office. His secretary.”
“And who’s that?”
“Katie.”
“Katie who?”
“Your Katie.”
“My Katie?”
Bess grabbed the phone from my hands and went through the contacts and handed the phone to Granny.
“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing?”
Granny shrugged. “Somebody’s got to tell her. She worked with the man. I guess she’d know what to do next.”
“But you can’t just tell her over the phone.”
“You told me over the phone.”
“But you’re two-hundred years old and have callouses over ninety percent of your body.”
“Now there’s the spunky granddaughter I’ve missed all these years.”
I grabbed the phone from Granny and handed it back to Bess. “If anybody’s going to tell Katie, it’s got to be me. And I’m not going to do it over the phone.”
After Bess gave me Katie’s address, I splashed some more water on my face, brushed my teeth, took four ibuprofens and a mighty chug of coffee, then drove the three blocks to Katie’s house. She lived in a white two-story with black shutters and a large wooden porch with a swing.
“Wow,” I thought to myself. “Katie’s all grown up.”
I walked up the steps, took a deep breath to settle my nerves, then knocked on the door. Footsteps approached and I thought very seriously about turning around and running away. It’d been a very long time.
The door banged open before I could lose my nerve and to my surprise, it wasn’t Katie. It was a man. He had a round face, and curly brown hair, and glasses. And he looked roughly the same as when I last saw him in high school.
“Chris? Chris Rodgers?”
He squinted and leaned forward. “Oh my god, Hope.” He gave me a big hug, then stepped back and took a good long look at me.
“You look good,” he said.
“I forgot that you and Katie…”
“Got married? Yeah, six years now.”
“Right. Six years. Listen, is she—”
“Chris!” I heard a voice almost as familiar as my own from somewhere inside the house. “Who is it?”
“Katie doesn’t know you’re coming?” Chris asked.
I shook my head. “No, Chris, she doesn’t. I was hoping to see her last night at—”
“Granny’s funeral,” said Chris. “Yeah, sorry we missed it, it’s just hard with kids.”
“You have kids?”
“Chris, who is it?” the voice came closer. Chris shrugged and gave me a helpless look before he stepped out of the way. Five feet behind him was Katie, my best friend in the world for the first nineteen years of my life. She was heavier than the last time I saw her. And boobier. Her eyes looked tired. But she was still pretty. Still Katie.
When she saw me her eyes immediately lit up and then, just as quickly, her face fell and she shook her head. Then she slammed the door in my face.
Ouch.
I listened to Katie and Chris talking rather loudly and then a moment later, Chris opened the door, briefcase in hand.
“I gotta go to work.” Then he tipped his head towards the open door. “Good luck.”
I took another deep breath and walked through the front door. I heard Katie and children down the hall. I followed the sound and found myself at the kitchen. Katie was there and so were her children.
Her three children.
Two of them were bellied up to a breakfast island eating cereal. They appeared to be having some sort of contest over who could slurp milk off the end of their spoon the loudest. Katie was sitting down, her back to me, and she was feeding a baby in a highchair.
Wow, I thought. Katie really is all grown up.
One of the kids at the breakfast bar noticed me and she elbowed her brother in the ribs. He saw me and his eyes got big. He dropped his spoon into his cereal and jumped off his stool. He ran straight to his mother and whispered something in her ear.
She didn’t even flinch.
“Yes, Dominic, there is a strange person in our house. Please go get Daddy’s shotgun and load it with buckshot.”
His eyes got really big. “Seriously?”
“No,” said Katie without turning around. “But get your auto blaster Nerf gun and those darts that hurt really bad. And be ready.”
Dominic grinned and sprinted out of the kitchen. Katie wiped the baby’s face of the excess goo and leaned down to give her a kiss. She stood up, turned around and looked at me.
“Hi, Katie.”
“Whatcha doing here, Hope?”
“I came to see you.”
“No, you came for Granny’s funeral. I’m just a convenient detour on your way out of town.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Dominic!” she yelled. “You got your dart gun ready yet?”
“Still looking, Mama!”
“Look faster!”
She grabbed the empty cereal bowls and carried them to the sink. “I think we both know it’s exactly like that.”
“Katie, I have to tell you something.”
“Then spit it out, and don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
“It’s not something I can talk to you about around your kids.”
She slammed the dishes into the sink and turned on me like a wild animal. Both hands were on her hips, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were trained on me like weapons. She was mad. I knew why she was mad. Seeing her brought back so many memories.
“Anything you’ve got to say to me, you can say around my kids.”
“No, Katie, I can’t.”
“Why don’t you just wait another twelve years?”
“Because this can’t wait. It’s important.”
She shook her head and returned to her dirty dishes.
“Katie, seriously, can we go someplace away from your kids?”
She spun and pushed me in the chest with both hands. I fell back and smacked into the refrigerator.
“Ouch, that hurt!”
“I’m glad. Hope, you can’t do this. You can’t just show up after twelve years like nothing happened and say you have to talk to me. If you’ve got something to say, say it right here, right now, and then get out of my house.”
The girl at the island was watching with great interest. The little baby was still in her high chair playing with cheerios. I had no idea what her name was. I didn’t know anything about Katie anymore.
“Katie, it’s about Ed Kline.”
Katie’s expression went from outrage to confusion. “Sheriff Kline?” Understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, I get it. You want me to fix it so you don’t have to pay those old speeding tickets. God, I should have guessed.”
I grabbed Katie by the shoulders. “Katie, it’s not about those stupid tickets. It’s about Sheriff Kline. He’s dead.”
Katie’s eyes went wide, her mouth fell open, and a rubber dart hit me in the side of my head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Katie dragged me into her laundry room. Her daughter was running towards us. Dominic was behind her, dart gun at the ready. Katie reached into one of the laundry room cabinets, grabbed a handful of Dum Dum suckers and threw them into the kitchen.
“Go crazy, kids. Consider it an all you can eat sucker buffet. Just don’t bother mom for five minutes and, Dominic! Don’t fire that dart gun at another human being until I give you permission.”
Dominic saluted then dove for the suckers. Katie wheeled around on me. “You can’t say something like that in front of my kids!”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you!”
“I thought you were here to finally apologize for being a terrible friend. You were going to say, ‘Katie, I’ve been a terrible friend.’ I was going to say, ‘Yes, you have.’ You were going to say, ‘Seriously the worst.’ And I was going to say, ‘Worser than worst.’ And then I was going to let my kids pummel you with dart guns for an hour. Then we’d ease into polite conversation. You’d say, ‘Hey, Katie, you look great,’ and I’d say, ‘No I don’t. I look fat.’ And you’d say, ‘Not fat, just curvy.’ And I’d say, ‘Curvy’s just something best friends say to you instead of calling you fat.’ And you’d say, ‘Does that mean I’m your best friend?’ And I’d say, ‘You were my best friend until you decided to be the worst friend in the history of the world, and plus... seriously, I’m not curvy, I’m fat, and my boobs are saggy.’”
“They are a little saggy.”
Katie punched my shoulder.
“But they’re bigger too. Bigger’s good right?”
“Yeah, not helping. You try being the food dispenser for three kids in five years. Pregnant, Breastfeeding, Pregnant, Breastfeeding—it never ends. I feel like I’m a one-woman factory farm.”
“A very cute factory farm.”
“Sheriff Kline’s really dead?”
“Murdered.”
“You’re sure?”
“He’s lying in a pool of his own blood, so yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“You need a place to hide out? A bus ticket? Duct tape and bailing wire?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said Ed is dead. I assume you’re going to have to get out of town, live in hiding, that kind of thing. Do you need help hiding the body first? I know a spot off of highway 15—”
I threw my hands up. “Why does everyone think I killed Sheriff Kline?”
“Because you’ve hated the man your entire life and I’m pretty sure he just handed you twelve-year-old speeding tickets.”
“You knew about that?”
“It was my idea. I thought it would be a nice touch. I had no idea you’d kill him over it.”
“I did not kill Sheriff Kline.”
Katie eyed me suspiciously. “Then who did?”
“I have no earthly idea. But right now, he’s lying in the middle of the Library floor and I have no idea what to do.”
“Okay, so you’re a hundred percent not messing with me. For real, Ed is dead?”
“Yes, Katie, for real. Expired. Dead. Murdered.”
Katie’s face fell. “But that’s terrible. He may have been a miserable man, but he was our miserable old man.” She remembered something. “And he was actually better than you think.”
“Better how?”
“Never mind.”
“Well, he’s the one we’d call if something like this happened. And seeing as how he’s dead…”
“And I’m the only other employee of the sheriff’s department, you figure I’ll know what to do.”
“Exactly.”
Katie pulled her phone out of her pocket and was about to dial. But before she did, she looked directly into my eyes. “You’re sure you didn’t kill him?
“Katie, I may be a really bad friend—”
“The worst.”
“But do you really think I’m a killer?”
She stayed quiet for far too long, then hit a button on her phone. A few seconds later over the speaker, “Detective Kramer with State Police, how I can help you?”
“Detective Kramer, this is Katie Rodgers with the Hopeless Sheriff’s Office. We met last year when you helped us with that burglary case.”
“I remember you, Katie, how have you been?”
“I could be better. We’ve got a bit of a situation here and we need your help.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s about the sheriff. Ed Kline. He’s dead.”
Katie and I went on to tell Detective Kramer the very little we knew.
“Has anybody touched the body?”
“I tripped on it, but otherwise no.”
“And your name again?”
“Hope. Hope Walker.”
“Well, Hope, make sure nobody touches the body. Katie, do you have a coroner in town?”
“Doctor Bridges is the head surgeon at the hospital. He also does autopsies when necessary.”
“Okay, call Doctor Bridges and have him do a preliminary examination of the body but remind him, evidence in a case like this is crucial. Tell him not to move the body until I get there.”
“And when exactly will that be?”
“Just as soon as I can get there.”
Katie called Doctor Bridges while I checked in with Granny and Bess.
“We’re just supposed to leave the poor guy on my barroom floor?” Granny was winding up.
“Detective Kramer said it’s necessary for his investigation.”
“Detective Kramer’s investigation? Ha! I’ve got no idea who this Detective Kramer is, but darling, as soon as Bess and I get over to Grub’s, we’ll have this case solved. By the end of the day.”
“Granny, one more thing. Do you think you could tell Ed’s wife, Margaret Kline?”
Granny’s voice changed. “I don’t think I’ll have to.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s just arrived.”
I helped Katie herd her three kids into the back of my car, then we drove down to the Library. Katie’s Dominic kept his dart gun trained on me the whole way.
“I’m a little freaked out he’s going to shoot me with that thing again.”
“You should be,” said Katie. “He’s a little animal. But he’s also my little protector. I kind of love that about him.” Katie pointed to her daughter who was coloring. “Lucy’s more of an observer. Dominic likes to shoot first and ask questions later. Lucy likes to take her time.”
“Meaning?”
“She’s trying to decide if she hates you or not.”
“And the baby?”
“Cecilia? She’s got fat cheeks, humongous thighs, and loves to eat. So near as I can tell she’s exactly like her mother.”
“Three kids, Katie. That’s amazing.”
“Amazing? Lots of times it’s depressing.”
“But you always wanted lots of kids, right?”
“I also wanted to pierce my nose and get a tattoo of Justin Timberlake on my butt. But wanting and the reality of having are two different things.”
“So, what, you looking to trade them in or something?”
“Actually, I’m offering favorable terms on a rent-to-own basis. I’m kidding. Half the point of having kids is so you can complain about them all the time. But no, I wouldn’t trade the filthy monsters for anything in the world. Plus, when your best friend in the world deserts you for twelve years, they can come in handy.”
“What do you mean?”
Katie smiled and I looked in the rearview to find Dominic’s dart gun just inches from my face.
I parked in front of the Library. Granny’s old orange bronco was on one side, a small white pickup on the other.
“Now, kids, this will only take a few minutes. Stay in the car, and do not come out.”
“Mama, can I shoot Lucy in the face?”
“No, you can’t shoot Lucy in the face. You can’t shoot anybody in the face.”
“But you said I can shoot Dad in the face when he doesn’t take the trash out.”
“That’s completely different.” Katie shut the door and smiled. “See? My little protector.”
We walked in to find Margaret Kline standing over the body in silence. I looked a question at Bess and Granny. Granny shrugged. Margaret stayed like that, in complete silence, staying with the body for a few more minutes. She didn’t cry. Didn’t make a sound. Just kept her eyes on his cold lifeless body.
She shook her head then she turned around and saw me. “I understand you found his body.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Kline.”
“No, dear, I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m sorry all of you had to see that. This isn’t…” she choked back a sob. “His work often keeps him out til all hours of the morning… but something didn’t feel right last night. This isn’t how Ed would have wanted to go out.”
“How did you know to look here in the Library?”
“I didn’t. I looked in his office first. I came here when I saw Granny’s Bronco parked outside.”
“You knew he was dead?”
“I knew something was wrong.”
Margaret Kline took one last look at her husband’s body, shook her head, then walked past me and out of the bar. I had two thoughts. First, I was so sad for the woman. As mean as Ed Kline was, his wife Margaret was every bit as nice. She didn’t deserve this.
My other thought was, how did she know something was wrong?
