A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes) (4 page)

She took another couple of steps. Once she got away from the bushes she had a clear, unobstructed view. She walked up to it slowly. She expected it to take off at any second. Instead it stood and regarded her with unblinking eyes. When she was about ten feet away, Bernie stopped. She suddenly realized why it wasn’t running.

“Libby,” she called out. “Come over here and have a look at this.”

“Did you find the tins?” Libby called back.

“No. But I think I might have found the reason why Millie went off the road. I think we’d better call Matt.”

Libby joined her sister a moment later and listened while her sister explained her idea. “That’s a big jump you’re making,” she told Bernie when she was done.

Bernie regarded the figure for a moment before replying. “Well, the cookie tins aren’t here, but this is. To me that’s not a good mix.”

M
att shook his head as he stared at the spot where the life-sized plastic buck, complete with antlers, was standing. “You got me back here for this?” he demanded of Bernie.

Bernie put her hands on her hips. “Yes, I did,” she declared.

“It’s a hunting target,” he observed. He was coming off a twelve-hour shift in another half hour and desperately wanted nothing more than to go home, take a shower, and fall into bed. Why Bernie had called him here was something he couldn’t begin to fathom.

“It could also be a murder weapon,” Bernie said.

Matt readjusted his hat and half turned to keep the sleet off his face. Was he missing something here? “Excuse me. Whose murder are we talking about?”

“Millie’s,” Libby promptly answered.

“Has she died?” Matt asked her.

“No. Not yet,” Bernie admitted. “Okay. Attempted murder. But she hasn’t come out of her coma yet, either, so she could be a murder victim.”

Matt folded his arms across his chest and looked from one sister to another while he struggled to maintain his professional facade. And failed. “No possible way.”

“Why?” Bernie demanded.

“What do you mean ‘why’? You have no evidence.” He pointed at the deer target. “This could be here for any number of reasons.” He took a deep breath. “You are really stretching this whole thing pretty thin. You want my advice? Go back to the shop.”

Bernie stuck her chin out. “I’m talking about possible scenarios,” Bernie replied, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. “You should listen.”

“Bernie, let me repeat.” Matt pointed at the deer. “This is a hunting target, a bow-hunting target to be specific.” Then he indicated the heart painted on it. “See the target? Someone dragged it out here to practice on. It’s as simple as that.”

“I don’t think so, Matt,” Bernie said, determined to get her point across. “I think that someone put it in the road so that Millie would see it and crash into that tree, someone who knows how Millie drives and how easily she panics.”

Matt scowled. He didn’t want to talk about this anymore, and he certainly did not want to talk about it standing outside in icy drizzle. All he wanted to do was get in his squad car, go back to the station, and clock out.

“Talk about wild conjectures,” Matt shot back. “You have no evidence. No evidence whatsoever. If your dad was here, he’d say the same thing.”

Bernie ignored the last comment and pointed at the target instead. “Then why is the deer . . .”

“Buck,” Matt corrected.

Bernie waved her hand in the air. “Whatever.”

“You should at least use the correct terminology.”

Bernie took a deep breath and let it out. “Fine. Then why is that buck there?”

Matt realigned the brim of his hat again and hunched over slightly to protect himself from the icy rain. “I already told you. Someone was practicing his bow skills on it. This is a perfect spot. No one’s around. Or maybe someone’s wife decided to throw it out.”

Bernie pointed. “And leave it there instead of putting it in the trash?”

“Sure,” Matt answered. “Makes sense to me. This way the husband wouldn’t see it and dig it out of the trash. Or going back to the hunting scenario, maybe someone brought the target out here to practice on and hurt his hand doing something stupid or twisted his ankle falling over a tree root, and he had to go back home. So he left the target here. They’re not that expensive. You can get them at any sporting goods store. Maybe he’s planning on coming back for it later.”

“You should impound it,” Libby said.

“And do what with it?” Matt asked, thinking of the ribbing he’d take if he brought that thing back to the station house. He could hear it now: “Nice goin’, Matt. Good collar.” Besides, he didn’t think it would fit in his squad car. No, scratch that. He
knew
it wouldn’t fit in his squad car.

“I don’t know,” Libby told him. “Dust it for fingerprints.”

Matt snorted. “Okay. Aside from the whole fingerprint deal, which is definitely not as easy as they make it look on TV, I can’t impound anything. This is not a crime scene.” Matt indicated the tree that Millie had crashed into with a nod of his head. “That is an accident scene.” Then he indicated where the three of them were standing. “This is nothing, because nothing has happened here.”

“You don’t know that,” Bernie told him.

“I most certainly do,” Matt replied through gritted teeth. He loved Libby and Bernie, but not when they got like this.

“This could become part of a crime scene if it turns out that Millie’s accident was engineered,” Bernie said. “Wouldn’t you then feel foolish letting this opportunity go to waste?”

“I can live with that,” Matt said. He was about to explain to Bernie and Libby about the amount of paperwork their suggestion would entail when he heard his radio crackle into life. Thank God, he thought. Finally. A graceful way to get out of here. “Gotta go, ladies,” he said to Bernie and Libby. With that he turned and started back to his patrol car. On the way, he snagged his pants leg on a fallen tree branch. Great, he thought. The perfect end to the perfect day.

Libby and Bernie watched him trudge toward the road.

“I must say he wasn’t very open-minded,” Libby said to Bernie.

“He certainly wasn’t,” Bernie replied as she watched Matt’s patrol car take off down the road. “The question is: what are we going to do with this thing?” she asked, referring to the buck.

“We could take it with us,” Libby said. “On the other hand, if Matt is right, that means we’ll be stealing someone’s property.”

“Not to mention messing up a crime scene.” Bernie reached for her phone. “I’m going to take a couple of pictures to show Dad.”

“Good idea,” Libby said. “As Dad always says, ‘When in doubt, document.’ ”

Then she took a chocolate kiss out of her jacket pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth. Was Matt right, after all? The more she thought about it, the more she felt he might be. She had a hunch her dad would think so too.

Not that she’d say anything about her qualms to Bernie, she decided, as she watched her sister snap a couple of pictures of the target. If she did that, given the mood they were both in, Bernie would just call her a flip-flopper and she’d call Bernie pig-headed, and they’d be off and running, and she didn’t want that to happen. Things were stressful enough as they were. A couple of minutes later, Libby watched Bernie tuck her phone back in her bag, bend over, and start studying the ground.

“What are you doing?” Libby called out. She checked her watch. Time was a-wasting. “We have to get back to the shop.”

“I’m looking for drag marks,” Bernie told her. “Someone had to have dragged this thing out here.”

Libby laughed. “So now you’re a Boy Scout? Weren’t you the one who got thrown out of the Brownies?”

“That was for bad behavior,” Bernie said.

“Anyway,” Libby went on. “What difference does it make? Of course this thing was dragged out here. How else did it get here, fly? The question is: was it in the road?”

Bernie straightened up. She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment and reached for her cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” Libby asked.

“Brandon.”

“Why? He probably just fell asleep.”

“I know, but he used to hunt and I want him to see this.”

“Bernie, we need to go.”

“He’ll be here in five minutes,” Bernie told her. “Five minutes! What’s the rush?”

Libby just shook her head and walked back to the van. There was no point in arguing with her sister when she got this way. But at least it was warm in the van. She had a chocolate bar stashed in the glove compartment for emergencies, and if this didn’t constitute an emergency, she didn’t know what did. As she climbed inside Mathilda, she decided to call Googie and get him to get George to start prepping things in the kitchen. At least that way the morning wouldn’t be a total loss.

Fifteen minutes later an extremely grumpy, pajama-clad Brandon arrived at the scene. Bernie ran over and kissed him as soon as he got out of his Jeep.

“Thank you,” she cried.

“This better be good,” Brandon said as he zipped up his parka. He’d gotten to bed just three hours ago. “I closed last night.”

“I didn’t know anyone else to call,” Bernie said. “And you do know about this stuff.”

“That was ten years ago.”

Bernie gave him her most charming smile. “But you still know more than I do.”

Brandon looked at her for a moment and said, “Sometimes being your boyfriend really is a pain in the butt.”

“That’s so mean, Brandon.”

“But so true, Bernie. Show me what your problem is so that I can take care of it and go back to bed.”

“You heard about Millie, right?”

“I heard that she was in a car accident.”

“We think that accident might have been caused,” Bernie said. And then she went into her explanation.

Libby decided, judging from Brandon’s facial expression as Bernie talked, that he seemed as impressed by Bernie’s theory as Matt had been. Libby watched from the warmth of the van as he and Bernie tramped into the woods to look at the deer target. Then he came out and carefully began walking along the road. Bernie walked with him.

“What are we looking for?” she asked.

“Something to tie the target in place or give it some stability. Maybe a rope or a wooden platform with wheels. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t need something like that because these things come with a base, but it was really windy last night and there’s a good chance the target would have tipped over,” Brandon said. He kept his eyes down on the road as he spoke.

Bernie did likewise. The two of them walked in silence down the stretch of road that encompassed the area between where Millie had hit the tree and the telephone pole several yards away.

“Even if we don’t find anything, that doesn’t prove I’m wrong,” Bernie said to Brandon. “A negative doesn’t prove a positive.”

“But it doesn’t disprove it either,” Brandon said. “Can we please just concentrate on the road?”

“We are concentrating on the road,” Bernie said.

“Not if we’re talking we’re not,” Brandon told her.

“So you’re saying you want me to shut up?” Bernie asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes I do.”

“Fine,” Bernie huffed. “All you had to do was ask.”

“I am asking,” Brandon said.

Bernie pressed her lips together, made an imaginary locking motion with her thumb and forefinger, and threw the key away.

“You don’t have to be that dramatic,” Brandon said.

“Shush,” Bernie said, pressing her forefinger to her lips again and making a big show of staring at the ground.

Five minutes later, Bernie and Brandon saw what they were searching for.

“Look,” Bernie said, pointing at a large rock outcropping that had a length of twine tied around its base.

“I see it,” Brandon said as he moved toward it.

Once he was in front of it, he squatted down for a better look. Bernie joined him.

“Millie would have seen the target, not the rope that was securing it,” she mused.

Brandon grunted, picked up the rope, and pointed to the end. “Somebody cut this with a knife.”

“Meaning?” Bernie asked.

“Meaning,” he said, “that whoever set the target up didn’t want to take the time to undo his knots.”

Bernie grinned. “So that means that I’m right,” she said triumphantly.

“No,” Brandon said. “But it doesn’t mean you’re wrong either.” Then Brandon got up and walked over to the other side of the road.

“What are you doing?” Bernie asked.

“Looking for another rope anchored to another rock on this side. Now, that would lend more weight to what you’re suggesting.”

Bernie got up and joined Brandon, but neither she nor he saw anything, and after five minutes they abandoned the attempt.

“Whoever did this could have just used one rope,” Bernie said as she took out her phone and snapped a picture of the rope they’d found.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Brandon said as he squatted down and took another look at the rope. “I’m guessing from the rope’s color and condition that it hasn’t been here that long. In fact, the rope looks pretty new.” He got up and brushed a few pieces of gravel off the knees of his pants. “But I think you’re still skating on pretty thin ice. This whole scenario you’ve conjured up . . .”

“Conjured?” Bernie squawked.

“As in dreamed up.”

“I know what ‘conjured’ means, thank you very much, and I haven’t dreamed up anything,” Bernie replied indignantly.

“I’ll be interested to hear what your dad has to say when he hears about this,” Brandon said to Bernie.

“He’ll agree with me.” Bernie was about to explain why when Libby beeped the van’s horn.

Bernie and Brandon both jumped at the sound.