Death in Smoke Read online

“Where’s Steve?” Philomena repeated.

  “Where is Steve?” Crystal demanded in a tone that suggested someone was concealing his whereabouts from her.

  “That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Steve said, always one to make an entrance, loping into the dining room in his faded ‘Keep on Truckin’ Grateful Dead t-shirt, his graying, thinning salt-and-pepper hair tied back with a scrunchee in a ponytail. “Who wants to know?”

  All faces turned to Leila. Then back at Steve. Steve, being Steve, stayed on his mission, unconcerned, reaching unceremoniously over the heads of the three tie-dyed women to score a scone. He wasn’t good at picking up signals. In fact, he was entirely oblivious. “Jeez, I’m starving.”

  “Why don’t vee all sit down and enjoy?” Beverly asked, a hint of Swedish creeping into her voice.

  “Sounds good to me,” Steve said, plopping down on the long side of the table.

  Steve plopped his scraggly self among Crystal’s acolytes, smiling a wide, beatific smile, the sunshine illuminating them from behind. And for a moment, Leila imagined that Steve and the three women were like some sort of crazy-ass Last Supper tableau. But Steve wasn’t Christ, and she sure wasn’t Michelangelo, and a dead body was lying out in a snowy field. Susie.

  Leila hesitated. Words wouldn’t come. How would Steve react when he heard about Susie? Would he break down? It had to be nothing more than a cruel twist-of-fate that he happened to be on Cuttyhunk Island—and so was Susie’s dead body.

  Silverware clattered. Coffee was consumed. Everyone went back to the mission of the morning: breakfast. Leila was losing out to bacon, eggs, and biscuits.

  “Aren’t they scrumptulitous?” one of the ladies enthused.

  Steve happily chomped on a scone. Susie, who was supposed to be ‘the one’, who had dumped him less than six months before, was lying in a snow bank.

  “So, what’s cooking, good-looking?” Steve asked, spraying bits of biscuit in the air.

  “If Leila has something to say, she should tell all of us.” Imperious Liz, God love her, loved nothing better than a good confrontation. She enjoyed drama, especially making drama. “Don’t you?”

  “You don’t have to tell if you don’t want to.” Phil squeezed her hand.

  “I want to hear,” Gretchen said, tipping her small oval face quizzically. There was something vaguely feral about her and her art. “Can we guess?”

  “No,” Leila blurted out. “This isn’t a game. It’s, it’s...”

  “Breakfast is getting cold,” Beverly interrupted. “I’m sure it can wait, unless somebody died or something.”

  Jesus. Leila almost laughed out loud.

  “Someone’s dead…” Philomena guessed. Somehow she guessed right. “Who died?”

  “Who died this time?” Liz deadpanned.

  “What do you mean, ‘Who died this time?’” Crystal demanded. She was one tough cookie, this woman.

  The tension rose, and all eyes were focused on Leila. Yet, she couldn’t find the words. It was too awful. Again.

  “Ladies and gentleman, we have many creative things in our workshop to accomplish this morning.” Crystal’s voice could have etched glass. “I think it’s time to get on with this.”

  “I think this may be slightly more important...” Leila said. The Drill Sargent routine rubbed her the wrong way.

  “C’mon, get on with it, girl,” Crystal said. “What’s more important?”

  There was no getting around it now. “A dead body, a woman’s dead body.”

  Gasps. Exclamations. Confusion swept through the room like a Nor’easter.

  Beverly gripped her heart.

  “Whose body?” A chorus ricocheted off the walls.

  “I, I can’t say,” Leila stuttered.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, can we get on with this?” Crystal demanded. “Who is dead?”

  They’d find out soon enough. So would everyone. Leila focused on Steve. “Susie.”

  With deliberation, Steve put his biscuit down on his plate. His opalescent eyes ringed in red didn’t blink. He coughed a few times, as if to make some space. Steve was one of the world’s greatest non-reactors, sort of like lead. Eyes shifted to Steve. Waiting.

  “Lei, that’s not a very funny joke,” Steve finally said, straightening up, but somehow seeming smaller. “It couldn’t be Susie.”

  A joke? Steve was either dense or fiendishly clever. Leila had always assumed it was the former, but now that his ex was lying dead in a field less than a quarter mile away, she couldn’t rule out the latter. Had Steve helped fate along? Was Susie’s death news to him at all?

  “It’s not a joke, Steve,” Leila answered. “I’m sorry, it’s Susie.”

  “How do you know it’s her?” Steve asked.

  Like a point in a tennis match, all faces turned towards Leila’s side of the court. “Believe me, Steve, it’s Susie.”

  “No.” His narrow shoulders collapsed, his head fell in his hands as if in a silent prayer. He looked up. “Where?”

  “By the pond.”

  “The skating pond?” Beverly nearly yelled. “I told you not to go there.”

  “She was ice skating?” Gretchen asked.

  “She wasn’t ice skating. She was dead.”

  “Why would Susie be ice skating?” Once Gretchen got a hold of an idea, she refused to let it go.

  Leila almost said, not unless Susie had been skating naked and taken an Olympic fall, cracking her head like an eggshell. “I- I’m pretty sure Susie wasn’t skating, Gretch.”

  Leila caught herself. She’d said too much already. What did Steve know? What did any of them know? Here she was, in the middle of another murder, or was she? The questions would come. She didn’t have answers. She found the body. But if there was one thing Leila had learned about murder, it was to hold her cards close to the vest. Don’t give your hand away.

  “Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Liz demanded.

  “By ‘we’ I assume you mean ‘you’,” Leila answered. Liz had a strict hands-off policy when it came to life—let someone else do what you don’t want to. Not a bad policy, but Leila could always be counted on as the one who would do something. “I have to call the police.”

  “The police!” Beverly gasped, clasping her hands to her face. Bob backed away, the jovial host squeezed out of him like the last drop of ketchup from a bottle.

  Crystal sat in stony silence, arms crossed, at the end of the table. Her body language said she didn’t approve of a dead body mucking up at her creativity workshop.

  “I can’t believe it.” Gretchen’s eyes were popping out of her head. “Susie. Dead. That’s freaky.”

  “Who’s Susie?” the Sob Sisters whispered to each other.

  “Susie…” Gretchen was more than happy to explain, “was Steve’s girlfriend who disappeared about six months ago.”

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Steve intoned sadly.

  “She been missing for six months?” the first Sob Sister said.

  “Oh, dear, that’s just terrible,” the second one said. “Terrible.”

  “I’m sure Steve had nothing to do with it,” the third woman said.

  “How could he? Steve’s been here all morning,” the first added.

  The three women took Steve, quite literally, to their bosoms, wrapping their arms around his thin shoulders. Steve surrendered. He wore his neediness on his sleeve, and the three ladies loved it. Steve, for his part, let himself be consoled in their comforting grasp. “You know, Leila, you can sound awfully accusing.”

  Leila was quite sure she hadn’t accused Steve of anything. No one had. Not yet.

  “Oh, Steve, she doesn't mean to sound that way,” sister one said.

  “We can’t even be sure what happened, can we?” the second one added.

  “And she shouldn’t make any assumptions about anyone, especially not someone as sweet as Steve,” the third one scolded Leila.

  For some irrational reason, the testy trio had taken poor Steve under their wing. Steve loved it.

  “How long do you think she’s been dead?” Gretchen asked, stroking one of her long black braids. Leila couldn’t help but notice just now that Gretchen was dressed in flannel Hello Kitty pajamas and slippers. “Was she strangled or stabbed?”

  “I don’t know, Gretchen. I’m not the medical examiner. I just found her,” Leila snapped. Gretchen put on a pout.

  The mention of a medical examiner elicited another gasp from Beverly. “Bob,” she stage whispered, “don’t you think we should do something?”

  The mismatched couple seemed singularly unprepared for something other than serving breakfast.

  “It’s not our body,” Bob answered, as if Susie were an intruder on the island, rather than a dead body, and her presence was an inconvenience best ignored. Something about living on an island gave them a curiously disconnected quality. “Besides, George is in Florida.”

  Beverly nodded.

  “Who’s George?” Leila asked.

  “George is our town harbor master and police officer. But like everyone else in the island, he’s gone down south for the winter. We don’t get much crime here, the occasional drunk or a petty theft. Guess we can put a call into the mainland, Mother.” Bob didn’t appear alarmed.

  Beverly, on the other hand, appeared horrified at the prospect of calling the police. “What are the police going to do?”

  In fact, Susie was dead, quite dead, so from that perspective there was no urgency. But the police had to be called. The house phone would be a mistake. She didn’t want eavesdroppers on the call.

  “I have to have my cell phone,” Leila said.

  Crystal had confiscated their cell phones when they arrived at the inn. Outside communication, she said, wasn’t conducive to creativity
.

  Crystal patted her nest of hair, mostly hers, piled artfully, and tortured into place with hairpins. Her violet eyes didn’t waver. “I’m sorry, dear, I can’t do that.”

  ‘Dear’ was clearly code for no.

  “I don’t think you have a choice. I have to have that phone.”

  “I think we should all be able to hear what you say,” Gretchen said.

  “Why should Leila have all the fun?” Liz asked no one.

  “I’m not liking what’s going on here,” Crystal growled.

  The three sisters whispered like the unpopular girls in the back of French class. Steve was busy dissecting the remains of a biscuit on his plate. How did guilty people act? After all, it was only a biscuit, not Susie.

  “Who is?” Leila demanded. Silence descended. “I have to have that cell.”

  Liz stood up; she was imposing without being tall. “I guess I’ll have to pull a rabbit out of my ass. Oops, I mean, my hat,” she said, fumbling in the rear end of her tight jeans. She yanked out a cell phone. “It’s actually my pants, Lie, but it should be in working order.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Leila took Liz’s contraband gingerly. Liz never wore undergarments—panty lines.

  “It won’t bite, you know,” Liz said. “The service is better outside.”

  “Hey, hey, the rules.” Crystal pushed her rather large self to her feet. “My creative workshop, my rules.”

  “Yeah, but it’s Leila’s dead body.” Liz had a way of putting facts succinctly.

  Crystal glowered, her violet eyes boring a hole in Liz.

  “Excuse me, I have to make a call,” Leila said, walking to the back door.

  “Bob…” Beverly hissed, as if she expected him to stop Leila. “Do something.”

  Bob blinked, following Leila to the door. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  Leila waited for the door to shut. Maybe Bob wasn’t such a bad guy. She dialed the cell number she knew by heart.

  “Hello?” came the familiar voice.

  “Quent?”

  There was a pause. “Who’s this?”

  “It’s me.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Core Temperature

  We must plot revenge. We must not bow our heads.

  The voice said her name. “Leila.”

  She was on Liz's cell, but he knew her voice. That meant something, but she wasn’t sure what this something meant.

  “Yes, it’s me.” Leila gave him the bare bones of discovering the body. He listened. No one was to leave the inn, he said. Except her, she should meet him at the dock in fifteen minutes.

  “The police are on the way,” she told the crowd staring at her from the dining room table. Breakfast was moving along, despite the morbid interruption. “I have to go down to the dock.”

  “Aren’t you teacher’s pet?” Liz punctuated her sentence with a bite of a biscuit.

  “But everyone else has to stay here.” Leila ignored Liz. An answer would only encourage her. “And no phone calls until the police arrive.”

  “What if there’s an emergency?” Beverly asked, flapping her hands like penguin’s wings.

  “I think there already is an emergency,” Leila answered impatiently. “Odds are, no one else will die between now and the time the police get here.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. It seemed like an invitation to more death. “I have to go.”

  “Well, folks, don’t expect a refund for today,” Crystal warned. “This wasn’t my doing.”

  “Why not?” Liz asked. Not that the money mattered. She had to assert herself, especially when someone else was so assertive.

  “It’s an act of God.” Crystal placed her coffee cup down indelicately. “No refunds.”

  “I don’t see why only you get to go,” Gretchen said, curled up in her Hello Kitty pajamas at the far end of the table.

  Philomena gave Leila a quick hug. “Be careful.”

  It was a warning Leila had already ignored.

  Leila hiked down from the inn, down the steep wooden steps to the dock. She had landed on Cuttyhunk Island only two days before, but it had inevitability, a preordained feeling; murder did that.

  Standing on the dock, Leila wrapped her arms around herself against the wind off the water, waiting for Grace. Buoys clattered noisily against the pylons. White caps crested and eddies swirled on the bay, despite the frigid cold. She shivered. At the thought of poor Susie buried in the snow, she shivered more.

  It was 8:33 on Liz’s phone. It had been about 6:45 on the kitchen clock when she left for a walk. It hadn’t been much of a walk after all.

  If it hadn’t been for Susie’s dead body, Leila would be in the morning’s workshop, no doubt exploring deep emotions and buried traumas to get more in touch with her creative spirit. Despite her name, Crystal was anything but light and airy. And today, when real life intruded, she made it crystal clear she wasn’t happy about it. Leila didn’t actually miss the creativity workshop.

  She squinted in the morning sun, the bright lights bouncing off the water. Two speedboats appeared as tiny dots on the horizon, skipping the morning waves in parallel. As they approached, the boats churned up wide wakes, which converged in a wide V.

  Which boat was Grace on?

  It was easy to spot his broad shoulders standing near the prow of the police boat. Three uniforms stood at a respectful distance from the boss, the first African-American detective in their ranks. The police boats grazed the wooden pier, bouncing off and butting it again while the engines roared in reverse.

  Leila nearly lost her self-imposed calm as she walked towards him. Quent, that’s what she called him now, in private, short for Quentin, his middle name. It was the Q. on his linen handkerchief. John Q. Grace. John was for public consumption. He stepped out on the dock lightly, barely rocking the boat, wearing his usual Yankees jacket and cap.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as a couple of more men disembarked from the second boat, a coast guard cutter, but all she could see was Grace. She studied the familiar broad planes of his face, the pockmarks scattered on his cheeks, the scar on his chin. She recalled these details, even though it had been weeks since their last encounter in her studio. Nothing had changed. Nothing had moved forward or back. It felt like a standoff, keeping their distance on the pier. Yet, it was as if she'd known him forever.

  After all, he wasn’t exactly good looking, and not really her type, but that had changed, somehow.

  “Ms. Goodfriend.” He addressed her in his official capacity.

  “Detective Grace,” she replied as formally. She could out formal him if she wanted to. “It was pretty bad.”

  Her words spilled out before he even could ask a question.

  His mouth twisted, but he made no move to breach the buffer of space between them. Neither did she. “I’m sorry you had to find her,” he said. He was always apologizing.

  “It’s not your fault. I’m okay,” she reassured him, though she didn’t really mean it. A gust of wind came off the water, and she shivered. “You know, Detective, it’s too cold outside for a Yankees jacket,” she teased.

  “I don’t get cold.” He smiled briefly, ever so briefly. His next question extinguished that moment. “Where’s the body?”

  “It’s that way,” she pointed at the inn, “at the pond on the other side of that line of trees.”

  “Take us on the same path you took to get there.” Grace was a good cop and a better detective. Grace would do this by the book.

  Faces stared out the windows, looking away as they passed by. The police tramped a few paces behind Grace in their heavy black cop shoes, followed by a young medic, bundled up in a down parka probably rated for the North Pole, carrying a medical bag. In the rear, a skinny photographer weighed down by big cameras wearing flimsy hi-top sneakers and a jean jacket struggled to keep up.

  Leila carefully retraced her steps, but the sun was quickly obliterating her tracks in the snow. “I came along this path,” she said, pointing to the white arrows nailed to the trees. “It’s not very far.”

  “Why this path?”

  “Why not?”

  “Were there footprints?” Grace asked.

  “No, it was virgin snow,” she said. “Beverly, the innkeeper, told me to follow the priests, those piles of rocks there. That’s what they call them, though I don’t know why.”