Death of a Batty Genius (Stormy Day Mystery #3) (28 page)

Back in the privacy of the room, I called Officer Peggy Wiggles with my report. She was driving, and asked me to give her only the executive summary.

Without getting into details, I told her how Franco had been blackmailing Benji, and how she’d been right to suspect the body had been moved. I relayed my findings from my inspection of the body, then waited for her to yell at me for touching it in the first place.

“That’s interesting,” she said, to my surprise.

“We forgot to wear gloves,” I confessed. “I should have known better, but I got carried away. I wasn’t even grossed out by the body.”

“You’re a natural,” she said.

I laughed. “A natural what?”

Her voice muffled as she yelled at someone, “You bonehead! When we get it back, I’m going to hit you over the head with it!”

“Is this a bad time? I can call back.”

“I have to go. Would you mind getting a look at the body site? I need some pictures with a wider angle.”

“I’m glad you asked. I wanted to get out there anyway.”

“Stormy, be safe. You’re no good to me, or anyone, unless you’re safe.”

I agreed to be careful, but she probably didn’t hear me, because she was berating someone with her colorful language.

Christopher answered my knock with one hand over his stomach. “I think I have a touch of what Jessica had earlier.”

“Did Jeffrey sneeze in your mouth, too?”

He managed a weak smile. “Strangely, I think it was the strain of watching my former fiancée perform an autopsy right in front of me.”

“It was more of a preliminary report. With a real autopsy, I would have examined his stomach contents, and so many other cool things.”

He held his hand over his mouth as he made a retching sound.

“Do you think you’ll feel better soon?” I asked. “I need someone to show me where the body was found.”

“It’s easy to find. I’ll draw you a map, like Benji did for us.”

The dump site—assuming Franco had been dumped, already dead—wasn’t more than two miles from the Lodge, but it was still a challenging walk over rough terrain. The snow had melted, and the muddy patches were both messy and slippery.

I got to the ridge above the site and peered over the edge.

To my surprise, I was looking down at a man, who was lying on his back, looking up at me.

“Butch! Once again, you’ve nearly scared the dickens out of me.”

“What about my dickens?” he called up as he got to his feet. “Every time I find a quiet place to think, I see your face hovering over me.”

“Sorry about that.” I started making my way down to him, walking around to a stepped area that I could descend without equipment. I reached his level and asked, “What are dickens, anyway?”

He waved his hand over the neckline of his shirt. “They’re the little white half-shirts you can wear under things.”

“Those are dickeys.”

He blinked at me, then shined up his smooth head with one meaty hand. “What are you doing out here?”

I shrugged. “Getting some fresh air.” I looked around. “Is this where Benji found the body?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “How would you know?”

I almost laughed at the idea of him being suspicious of me. “Benji showed all of us the photos.”

“Right.” He nodded slowly.

I pointed to the ridge above us. “How far would you say that drop is? Ten, fifteen feet?”

“Maybe twelve. Doesn’t look like much, but I’ve seen guys step off a curb the wrong way and break an ankle.”

We stood in silence for a minute, contemplating the distance.

Butch said, “The fall didn’t kill him.”

“You think he died somewhere else, like back at the lodge, and someone tossed him here to make it look like an accident?”

Butch turned to me, his forehead ridged with frown lines. “I was making a joke. The fall didn’t kill him because the landing did.”

“Right.” I took out my phone and stepped back to take some photos. Still frowning, he circled around me to stay clear of the photos. He slipped out of his jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves up over his tattooed, muscular forearms.

In light of my suspicions, I didn’t feel comfortable with him standing behind me. “Say cheese,” I said as I held out my arm and snapped a picture of the two of us. “Christopher wanted me to check in,” I explained as I sent the photo to Christopher.

Butch didn’t react to that.

“Why are you out here?” I asked.

“I’m trying to understand what happened,” he said.

“Same here. Franco was supposed to be a genius, so why was he out here without even a jacket?”

Butch shrugged. “Damned if I know.”

“No theories?”

He shrugged again, but it was an exaggerated shrug. He was lying. Just like Benji, he had some theories, but he wasn’t sharing them with me.

He scowled up at the ridge again, then started to walk. “Might as well go back to the lodge now. Are you staying out here, or coming with me?”

“Coming with.” I skipped to catch up with him.

We’d been walking for ten minutes when Butch said, “I don’t know what happened, and I’m done puzzling over it. There’s no solution to this… enigma. It’s impossible. The only thing that could explain this would be if Della did something to Franco.”

“What makes you think it was her?”

He kept walking, his face tilted up so he could look at the blue sky between the towering treetops.

“No one else fits,” he said. “The two of them were in love, and it takes a powerful love to turn into a powerful hate.”

He had a good point. Della had been the last to see Franco alive, plus she had a bad temper, not to mention the fact she’d left the lodge without him—as though she’d known Franco was no more.

As my suspicion shifted to Della, I felt more and more sorry for Butch. He’d made some mistakes, sure, but his whole world was falling apart.

I knew I couldn’t fix everything, but I wished I had a way to speed up the healing process, or at least get everyone to open up and share what they knew with me.

We hiked back to the lodge under the spring sunshine, both of us with our winter coats off and draped over our forearms. On the ground, tiny green shoots seemed to sprout up before my eyes—new life, in the wake of a terrible storm.

In the wake.

“Butch, we need to have a wake for Franco.”

He scowled up at the sky, then at me. “I don’t know if we’re set up for something like that.”

“Do we have a dead body, lots of food, and some whiskey?”

The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed. “Yes.”

“Then we’re set up. The body is optional, but we’re three for three.”

Chapter 31
 

It took some
cajoling, but with Butch’s help, we got everyone gathered in the recreation room for a lunch-time wake. He seemed hopeful that it could be an opportunity for him to talk to his wife.

Marie, who had changed into a dark gray dress that was nearly black, didn’t look chatty. Her brown hair was drawn back into a ponytail so tightly, it made her look five years younger and slightly surprised.

She bustled about, preparing enough food to satisfy ten times as many people as we had on hand. She was grieving the loss of a friend, and possibly the end of her marriage, so I could understand why the woman wanted to throw herself into her work.

Butch attempted to break the ice by teasing her. “Marie, I think we’ve got enough sandwiches. Even if the wake runs straight through dinner, we couldn’t possibly eat all of this.”

Marie turned to Benji, who’d been following her as though lost. She said, stiffly, “Benji, would you please inform Butch that, unlike certain husbands,
cooking
has never betrayed me.”

Butch blinked as though punched. His shoulders broadened as he straightened his back. One eye began to twitch. Wearing the black dress clothes he’d changed into for the wake instead of his usual light-colored shirt and khakis, Butch looked downright dangerous.

Benji’s jaw moved, but he didn’t repeat Marie’s words. He’d also changed and wore a dark suit that fit him better than his other clothes, but not by much. The shoulders of his jacket were too wide, while the waist was too narrow.

I stood near the edge of the recreation room, rubbing the goosebumps on my forearms. The stone surface of the cave that enclosed us, forming the room’s ceiling, seemed to be casting a damp chill. The ceiling also seemed lower than I remembered.

Standing beside me, Jessica leaned in and whispered, “Seems to me those two are about even. He doesn’t know about his wife’s plans with the honeymoon suite, does he?”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” I whispered back. “Look how his eye is twitching. Either he’s dehydrated and it’s just a muscle spasm, or he’s holding back something that makes him angry.”

Butch couldn’t have heard me, but he glanced our way and his eye seemed to twitch even more.

Marie sighed over the sandwich trays. “Benji, would you tell my husband to find something more useful to do than stare at me while I take care of everything?”

Butch rolled the sleeves of his dark shirt up over his tattooed forearms, as though preparing for a physical altercation.

Dion, who’d been standing quietly near the room’s karaoke stage, crossed over to stand between Butch and Marie. He wore the same too-small purple shirt he’d worn the first night at the lodge. The popped button had been sewn back on with black thread.

Dion looked back and forth between Butch and Marie. He said, his deep baritone voice commanding, “Are we okay here?”

Butch puffed up his chest. “I’m okay. It’s my darling wife who likes to get all high and mighty in front of everyone. She thinks she’s so clever, always getting one over on me, but I know all about her feelings for Franco.”

Marie said, icily, “Franco and I were never more than friends.”

Butch took slow steps closer to the pool table that he and I had covered with a tablecloth thirty minutes earlier. He plucked squares of crustless sandwiches from Marie’s trays.

With each sandwich, Marie flinched, as though resisting the urge to slap his hand away from her food.

Everyone’s attention flicked briefly to the door of the room. Christopher entered, wearing his usual wardrobe of a blazer and dark jeans. He’d swapped out his Vans sneakers for a pair of shiny black shoes borrowed from his cousin.

He nodded at the others, then walked over to join me and Jessica. Softly, he said, “And then there were seven.”

The goosebumps flared up again on my forearms. We were short two people—Franco and Della. One of them was chilling in the walk-in refrigerator.

Butch and Marie returned to their standoff. A nervous-looking Dion remained between them, wiping his sweaty brow with the cuff of his purple shirt, while Benji tossed one—or maybe more than one—pill into his mouth and washed it down with a can of cola.

Butch grabbed more sandwiches.

Marie made a disgusted sound.

“Marie, don’t act like you’re perfect,” Butch said as he piled his plate high. “You were cheating on me.”

She gasped. “I did no such thing!” She picked up a pair of tongs and used them to slap the top of his hand. “Leave some sandwiches for the rest of us.”

Butch shrugged and tossed three of his sandwiches back onto the tray.