Down Home and Deadly (4 page)

“Thanks,” Alex mumbled, his attention still fixed on me. He released me
as he sat down,
but held on
to my hand.

A female
EMT
came bustling in, her black bag in her hand. She checked my vision and examined the lump on my head. When she finished, she looked at Alex and smiled. “Everything looks okay to me. But you
probably
want to get her over to the ER to get this checked out.
A hit hard enough to knock someone out usually causes a
concussion.”

Hello? I started to wave my hand to remind her who was the patient here. But I was too tired. I was used to this phenomenon when I was out with the town’s most eligible bachelor. Even my new engagement ring hadn’t seemed to slow the attention down much. I glanced over at Debbie. Tonight the waitress was more interested in her cell phone, but usually she spoke to Alex instead of me. In Alex’s defense, though, he always kept his own gaze fixed on me
—w
hich was one of the many things I loved about him.

As soon as the
EMT
left, Alex turned me to face him. “What happened, honey?”

“Might as well just tell it once, ‘honey,
’
 
” someone said gruffly.

I looked up to see our chief of police standing in the suddenly popular doorway. “Hi, John.” We’d been friends since the sandbox, but my penchant for sniffing out the truth drove him up the wall sometimes.

“You know, Jenna, it’d be funny if it weren’t so horrible.” He walked in
with
Ricky right be
h
ind him.

Fresh tears sprang to my eyes. “I know.” It hadn’t been long since I found the queen of country music dead in her Branson dressing room, and less than a year before that
,
I’d gotten embroiled in the murder of our local newspaper editor. So I knew what he meant.

“You all right?”

“I guess. Physically
,
anyway.”

“What is it with you and dead bodies?”

I shrugged
,
and an involuntary shiver ran up my spine. Alex put his arm around me and pulled me against him.

“I—”

John held up his hand. “Forget I asked. Let’s just concentrate on this one. Tell me about finding the body.”

“I was taking out the trash,” I stammered. “It was almost closing time.” I glanced at Carly.

She nodded. “It was right at
eight o’clock
. We only had a few stragglers when you went out.” Her face flushed
,
and she spoke to John. “We were busy cleaning
, s
o we didn’t notice when she didn’t come back right away.” She flashed me an apologetic look.

He waved away her implied apology and turned his shrewd gaze back to me. “So what happened when you got out there?”

I told him as coherently as I could. Ricky scribbled in his little notebook while I talked.

“You felt for a pulse?” John said, looking at my apron.

I glanced down and froze at the sight of the rusty fingerprints. Apparently I’d instinctively wiped the blood off before I was clobbered. I clutched Alex’s hand tightly and nodded. “Then something hit me in the head from behind.”

“Did you lose consciousness immediately?”

“I must have. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up staring at a tire.”

“What time did you come back in here?”

I glanced at Debbie, who shook her head. Then
Marco
, Harvey,
Alice
, and Carly. They all looked stricken. “It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes after eight,” Carly said.

Marco
pointed at
Alice
. “She called emergency. They
will
know what time, yes?”

“Yes,” John agreed. “So right after you came in, they called 911?”

“Well, once someone noticed me,” I said, irritated at the whine in my voice. Still
,
it had been disconcerting not to be missed. “Debbie got me some frozen peas.”

I looked over at Debbie who was leaning against the wall typing on her cell phone. She didn’t even look up at me.

John’s brows drew together. “Frozen peas?”

“For my head. But within two minutes, I’d say,
Alice
called.”

John looked at Ricky. “Get me the time of that 911 call.”

Ricky nodded and disappeared.

John turned back to us. “Had anyone else been out back before that?”

Everyone shook their head
s,
then
Alice
glanced up at
Harvey
. “Wait. Harv, you took the trash out about twenty minutes before Jenna did, remember?”

John fixed his gaze on Harvey, who nodded.

“Did you see a car behind the Dumpster?”

“I didn’t look behind the Dumpster. I knew if I didn’t hurry back in”
—h
e glanced at
Marco
—“t
he salad bar would be in shambles. I just tossed the trash.”

I spoke up.
“I wouldn’t have noticed the car if one of my bags hadn’t gone over and landed on its roof
.”

Alice took
Harvey
’s arm and put it around her. “Just think, honey. There may have been a murderer right next to you.” She frowned. “It’s scary to think he was out there with you, Jenna.”

“Yeah, scary.” I gently touched the goose egg on the back of my head and looked down at my skinned knees. “And painful.”

“Do you know the guy’s name?” Debbie asked softly, slipping her phone into her apron pocket. From the drawn look on her face, the text conversation hadn’t gone well.

John nodded. “J.D. Finley.”

Debbie gasped. A couple of other people made noises, but I couldn’t be sure who. All of us looked at Debbie. Her face matched her white apron
,
and tears threatened to ruin her freshly applied makeup.

“I take it you know him?” John said.

She nodded and bit her lower lip. “He’s a friend of Lisa’s. They’ve been dating for a while, I guess.” She tried to wipe the tears away with one finger, but they tumbled down her cheeks anyway. “I’ve been out with them a few times.”

John gave her a stern look that I knew meant there would be more questions for her later.

She shrugged. “Poor Lisa. This will break her heart.” The last word became a quiet sob. Carly handed her a paper towel.

Bob’s daughter was lucky to have a friend like Debbie. As far as I knew
,
few people but her parents would have cared i
f
i
t
were Lisa herself who was out in that car in the alley.

John turned to the rest of us. “What do the rest of you know about him?”

Harvey nodded toward
Alice
as he answered for both of them. “We knew him.”

“Was he in here tonight?” John asked.

“I didn’t see him,” Debbie said, but didn’t look up.

“Me
,
either,”
Harvey
said. “And I was working the cash register by the front door, so if he’d been in here, I’d have known it.”

“Anyone know what he was doing out in the alley?” John asked us all.

No one answered. Finally
,
Alice
spoke up. “Maybe he was supposed to meet Lisa? I mean, if they were dating, maybe they arranged a date here.”

I shook my head. “Why would he have parked behind the trash bin to meet Lisa here for a date? That makes no sense.”

John apparently agreed with me. He frowned. “Anyone see Lisa here tonight?”

We all shook our heads. Considering I quit my job and gave up my dream of owning the Lake View Athletic Club because of her, I was pretty sure I’d have noticed if my nemesis had been here.

Seth motioned to John from the doorway.

“Be right there.”

Seth nodded and disappeared into the dining room. John turned back to us. “If I think of anything else I need to ask, I’ll call you.”

“Wait. John.” I touched his sleeve. “Who is J.D. Finley? Is he from around here?”

“Jenna, I’m sure we’ll find out all there is to know about him before this is over, but
this is official police business. Y
ou need to let us do our job.”
The “and stay out of it” was implied as h
e turned toward the door.

“I think finding a dead body puts me right in the middle of it.”

He sighed.
“Just this once, can’t you mind your own business?”

Alex shifted in his chair to look at me. “I’ll be right back, hon. I’m g
onna ask John a couple of
questions. Will you be okay?” When I nodded, he
rose
,
and
together he and the chief
strode out of the kitchen.

I
stood
and walked to the staff bathroom to check out my head. No matter how I contorted, I couldn’t see the bump, but I could feel it. I blinked my eyes. No double vision. I didn’t feel particularly sleepy. And other than feeling a little disoriented from finding a dead body, I wasn’t dizzy. I washed my hands and opened the door.

“Surely you know I wouldn’t blame you,”
Alice
said as I stepped
back
into the kitchen.

She and Harvey looked at me and froze.

*****

*****

Chapter Three

As nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs

Harvey’s face lost most of its color
,
but he laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve accused me of turning the burner up under your soup,” he said.

Alice’s answering chuckle sounded forced. “Of course, you’re right. But I’m not accusing you this time. Just saying that I
wouldn’t
blame you if you had turned the burner up in all this excitement.”

“I didn’t,” he said firmly.

“That’s fine,” she said.

I smiled weakly and walked into the dining room
where everyone else had
gathered
.
Whatever that had been about, it wasn’t soup.

Carly looked at me as I walked
in.
“You want me to go to the ER with you?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m going to stay and help you clean up.”

“You most certainly are not,” Carly said. Alex and John moved closer as if they were her strongmen ready to enforce her decree.

“I
will
help clean,”
Marco
offered.

Carly smiled at the twentysomething
Italia
n. “Thanks. And Elliott’s supposed to stop by and help
,
too.” She turned back to me. “Go get your head checked out. We’ve got this covered.”

“I’ll just go home and rest then. The
EMT
checked me out
,
and I don’t have any signs of a concussion.”

I’d expected an argument from Alex, but before he could say anything, John put his hand on my arm. “I think you should go on down to the ER.”

I smiled. “You, of all people, should know how hard my head is.”

He frowned. “I can’t believe you’re joking. You could have been killed.”

“Aw, it’s nice to know you care.”

Alex snorted. John and I had never really outgrown our childhood “one up” type of friendship. Bless her heart, my friend Denise, who married the big lout, always ended up having to mediate.

John shot me a wry grin. “Truth is, Denise would kill
me
if anything happened to you on my watch. If you have any symptoms, you go get it checked out.” He sauntered over to where Ricky and Seth were sitting at a booth looking at Ricky’s notebook.

As we walked out of the diner, Alex kept his arm around my waist. “You know in spite of his gruff talk, he thinks of you as a
little
sister.”

“Yeah, an annoying little sister that he wishes he could box up and ship to
Siberia
.”

Alex laughed. “I’m glad to see you getting back to normal. You were pretty pale when I got here.”

“Getting
c
onked on the head tends to do that to a person.”

His smile disappeared. “You speak from entirely too much experience on that subject.”

*****

“Found another body, did you?” The old man from the feed store on
Main Street
gave me a snaggletooth
ed
grin.