Thrown Off: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 3) (2 page)

So, as soon as our evening students were gone, I suggested another trip to the store.

“What for?” Blythe said as she scooped up her sweaty judo gi.

“Cupcake stuff! I think we should make some Fourth of July treats for the kids.”

“I’m not baking in this weather.”

“Of course not. But it’s supposed to cool off before the Fourth, remember? We can bake then. Let’s get everything we need before all the holiday themed stuff is gone. Then we’ll have everything ready to go. Plus, we can enjoy the air conditioning at the Cherry Bowl while it’s really miserable.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Let me change my shirt and grab my purse.”

It was eight o’clock, but still light out when we got to the Cherry Bowl. It didn’t really get dark-dark around here until about 10:30 this time of year. It had cooled off a bit, but not enough to keep me from looking forward to the air conditioning.

“Look!” Blythe pointed to the side of the building. “I think Millie’s painting.”

Millie, one of our favorite Cherry Bowl employees, not only had a heart for her customers, but a real talent for painting. She’d begun a mural of Old Bonney Bay a few days ago. Everyone was talking about it.

“Let’s say hi,” I said.

Tarps, folded in narrow strips, lined the base of the wall. Millie balanced on top of a twelve-foot ladder, a painter’s palette in one hand, a brush in the other. Her usual lime green Cherry Bowl clerk’s apron had been replaced with a blue one, streaked and spattered with many colors. More brushes filled her apron’s numerous pockets. Paint and a jar of water filled the ladder’s shelf. Millie dabbed white onto the rich blue sky she’d painted, building up feathery clouds stroke by stroke. She’d already painted the base coats of the water and the cliffs and sketched in the outlines of Bonney Bay’s historic buildings. The mural would eventually cover the entire side of the building.

Blythe opened her mouth to greet Millie, but I put my finger to my lips. She was deep in concentration. Plus, she was at the top of a ladder. I didn’t want to startle her and mess her up—or worse. After a moment, she paused and bent down to rinse her brush.

“Oh, Millie, it’s going to be beautiful!” Blythe exclaimed.

Millie started and caught her balance.

“Sorry!” gasped Blythe.

Millie wiped her hand across her sweaty forehead. Her hair was dyed ash blond and cut in a bob. Usually it was pleasantly fluffy. Today the heat had taken its toll. It stuck where she’d tucked it behind her ears, dampened and limp with sweat. “It’s okay. I was just focused. Thanks. I know it doesn’t look like much yet.”

“I can see it.” I took a step back and nodded.

It must be hard to paint in public like that. To have other people looking at and commenting on those rough, early steps. The things that were necessary, but that would be covered up later with more presentable layers. kind of like letting everyone see your underwear. Not that I would know anything about that.

“Now that it’s cooled off a little, it’s a lot easier. I had to quit for most of the day. I couldn’t get anything done in that heat. And not just because I was hot. The paint was unworkable; it dried so fast.”

“I can’t wait for this weather to get back to normal,” I said.

Millie shrugged. “That’s the Northwest for you. There’s no real ‘normal’ in June. Last week we had all that rain! I couldn’t work in that either. I’m way behind.”

“Well, we’ll let you get back to it, Millie,” Blythe said.

“Bye!” Millie waved and picked up another brush.

We headed for the front of the store.

“I’m so excited about the Fourth. You don’t mind me tagging along with you and Will, do you?”

“It’s Independence Day, not Valentine’s Day. Besides,”—I looked my sister in the eye—, “you’re not a tag-along. You’re my best friend.”

Blythe took my arm and hugged up to me. “I love you, too.”

I grinned. “Even though I dragged you out here?”

“I like it here. I like working with you. And can you believe it? An old-fashioned parade?”

We’d never lived in a small town and neither of us had ever even seen a real, old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration.

The automatic doors opened, and blessed cool air enveloped us. We took deep breaths and sighed in appreciation. I grabbed a cart and steered Blythe toward my favorite aisle—
Baking Needs
.
Needs
, exactly. I could just kiss whoever came up with the wording on that sign.
Why yes, I do have a need for baking.
Actually, a need for Blythe to do some baking. Okay, a need to eat some baked goods. I couldn’t really bake, but no one did frosting like me.
 

“Look! A red, white, and blue confetti cake mix!”

“That’ll work,” Blythe agreed.

I grabbed an armful of boxes of cake mix and dumped them in the cart. Blythe gave me a disapproving look. She counted and carefully stacked the boxes in the cart, then put half of them back.

“They each make twenty-four cupcakes, Bren.”

“Twenty-four
puny
little cupcakes!” I put one of the boxes back in, and she gave up arguing about it.

“Should we color the frosting red, white, and blue, or use colored sprinkles?”

“Definitely both,” I said.

Blythe loaded up on frosting while I selected some sprinkles.

“Don’t forget the cupcake papers.”

“Okay.” They were right next to the sprinkles, and I found some with little American flags printed on them. I grabbed a pack to show Blythe. “Look at—”

A strange sound, like a scream cut short, was followed by a horrible crashing. Metal on concrete? Screams broke out near the front of the store.

“The ladder!” Blythe cried. “That sounded like a ladder!”

I dropped the cupcake wrappers and ran for the front door. I stopped short, and Blythe almost ran right into my back. Amy Winebauer, one of the Cherry Bowl’s young clerks, stood there, ashen-faced, in the middle of the automatic doors. “It’s Millie. I think—I think she’s dead!”

3

I raced through the automatic doors.

“Millie’s hurt!” someone shouted. “Help!”

“Did someone call 9-1-1?” I threw the question over my shoulder.

“Got it!” Takashi Staple, the store manager, said.

I turned the corner and there was Millie, prone on the ground, right beside the ladder. She lay face up, in a pool of paint. Except…it wasn’t paint. Well, the blue was paint and the white was paint. But not…

I felt dizzy. Beside me, Blythe let out a little sob. Then she knelt, trembling, and felt for Millie’s pulse. I took a deep breath and steadied myself. “We should try to do CPR. Just in case.” I could do this. I’d done it before.
And he didn’t make it.
I could do this. But I didn’t want to.

“Let me!” A customer dove in.

“Dr. Collins!” Takashi said. “Thank God you’re here.”

“Dr. Collins is a retired neurosurgeon,” Roberta, another Cherry Bowl employee, told me.
 

I stepped back, grateful someone else, much more qualified than me, was there.

“How did this happen?” Blythe asked Amy.

“I don’t know. She was just painting. Just a minute ago. It seemed like she had everything under control.” Amy’s voice was even higher than usual, shaking with adrenaline, strained with tension. “She was so happy. I brought her some lemonade, and then I went inside. It was just a minute ago…and then I heard the crash.”

I turned to Amy. “Is this how you found her?”

Amy shook her head. “She was face down, in the paint, with the ladder on top. I threw the ladder off right away and turned her over. I thought she might suffocate in the paint. Do you think I hurt her, turning her over? Do you think I—” Amy started to shake uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Blythe put an arm around her shoulders.

“No,” I said. “You did the right thing.”

Sirens wailed, louder, nearer, with every second. The dogs of Bonney Bay joined in, a mournful chorus of howls. I wondered if one of them was Will’s chocolate lab, Chloe. Chloe and I were good friends now. Sometimes I borrowed her to go jogging.

A woman came tearing through the parking lot, a sun visor bouncing on her short, graying curls. She held a camera against her chest and her sandals slapped the pavement. A man in khaki shorts with a braided leather belt and a baby blue polo shirt struggled to keep up with her.
 

“Wait!” he called after her.

But the woman was headed right at us, whether he came with her or not. My stomach did a little flop. Was she related to Millie? Should I try to stop her? Dr. Collins was still trying to perform CPR, and it wasn’t pretty.

But the woman got a few steps closer, and there was a glint in her eye—shock, but also excitement. “I saw him!” she cried.

“You saw who?” I said.

The woman grabbed the camera hanging around her neck and waggled it at me. “I saw him, and I got him, too!”

“Glenda!” The man’s cheeks were flushed bright red, heated with something more than the work of hauling after her. Embarrassment? “Come on now.
I
didn’t see anything.”

“Because you were were too far away!”

“I was right next to you.”

“But you weren’t looking through the camera.” Glenda tapped the camera and rolled her eyes. “I saw the guy who pushed the ladder.”

Blythe still had her arm around Amy. She looked up and regarded the couple questioningly. “Pushed the ladder?”
 

“Is that poor woman hurt bad?” Glenda peered at the small crowd around the ladder and the paint mess. And Millie.

Blythe said, “We’re not sure yet. Do you know something about what happened?”

“I know it wasn’t an accident.”
 

Amy heard that part. She stopped crying and looked at Glenda in horror. “Are you sure?”

“No, no she’s not sure,” the man said hastily. “Come on, honey, we’re on vacation.”

Before he could persuade her to leave, I stepped up with a big, media-worthy smile and held my hand out. No one could turn down an extended hand. Okay, I’d met some jerks who could. But I was betting Glenda here had some basic manners. “I’m Brenna Battle.”

She shook my hand. “Glenda Barton. And this is my husband, Ford.”

Ford gave me a nod and a chagrined, forced smile. “So…you were taking pictures?” I prompted Glenda. “Does that take video?”

“Oh, no, not exactly. I mean, yes, it takes video, but I wasn’t in video mode. I guess I should’ve switched over. Not sure I even know how to use the video part yet. I came to Bonney Bay for the birds and the ghosts, you know?”

Ford whispered something under his breath and averted his eyes. He was clearly mortified. So, his wife was a little nutty. But if she thought someone pushed Millie off that ladder—or, I should say, that ladder out from under Millie—then I wanted to know why.

“So, you think you got a picture of someone pushing the ladder?” I said. I could see the ambulance lights approaching.

“There was an eagle in that tree.” She pointed to a hemlock behind the store. “A real, live eagle! I zoomed in and I was all set for the perfect shot. Then I heard this awful noise, and I wasn’t even thinking. I just followed it with the camera. I don’t know why.”

“Camera’s glued to your eye, that’s why. Might as well have married a cyborg,” Ford muttered.

“Anyway, I saw him clear as day. Wearing a baseball cap and an apron. Do you think it was a ghost? How old is this store? Is it haunted? Was it built on an old Indian graveyard?”

Um, did Native Americans wear baseball caps back in the day?
I wanted to say. But I bit my tongue.

Ford wasn’t quite so charitable. He grabbed Glenda’s arm. “For goodness sake, it looks like that poor woman is horribly hurt. Let’s leave these people alone so they can take care of it.”

The ambulance pulled into the Cherry Bowl parking lot. I put my hand on Ford’s arm. He met my eyes and I gave him a look, not threatening but definitely no-nonsense. I pointed at the camera. “Let’s have a quick look first.”

“Of course.” Glenda shrugged Ford off, ducked her head through the loop of the camera strap, and pushed a couple of buttons.

I tried not to look too impatient. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad the ambulance was here for Millie and the paramedics were taking care of her. But the police wouldn’t be far behind. And that might just put an end to my investigation. If these two were just passing through, I might never get another chance to find out if someone really wanted to hurt Millie.

“There! There he is!” Glenda turned the camera so I could see…

A virtually indefinable blur of color. It was human. But I couldn’t even tell if it was male, let alone any other details.
 

“What’s the matter?” Glenda said.

“Well, it’s a little blurry. Is there another one?”

Glenda took a pair of glasses, also hanging around her neck, and perched them on her nose. “Oh…I guess it
is
blurry. But I got a real clear look, and then he ran. I took a picture as soon as I saw what he was doing. I guess the shutter was a little slow.”

“I guess so. So, is there another picture?”

She clicked through several more pictures, and I looked over her shoulder. Branches, branches, pavement, blur. And that was it.

A police cruiser stopped right next to us. It was Will. I pulled the Bartons back a little and let him hurry past. He spoke to one of the paramedics briefly as they moved Millie into the back of the ambulance.

The ambulance doors shut. “Back away, everyone. This way.” Riggins moved the group of shaken co-workers and onlookers off to the side, away from the ladder and paint and out of the ambulance’s way.

We all stood there for a moment, watching the ambulance pull away. I don’t think I was the only one desperately praying that Millie would be alright.

Riggins nodded at me. “Brenna.” There was a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of hope in those eyes. Those honest eyes. They got me every time. I didn’t think I’d ever met another man who could wear how he felt so clearly, without looking like a wimp or a sap. It was like there was a special kind of strength underneath it all. He was strong enough to be who he was, to feel what he felt, and to let people know it.