Ax to Grind Read online

  “She’s known to have a bit of a temper.” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. It also wasn’t the first time I’d heard that she and her dad didn’t get along.

  “Temper? She came off that couch swinging.” Finn’s head slowly moved side to side, disbelief written on his face. “I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed her and the dad scolded me. He said that Manuel was the problem and he needed to be charged with trespassing because he was now eighteen years old and of age to be arrested.”

  My jaw dropped. I’d take Daryl and Gilly’s feud over this call any day.

  “Did you arrest him?” I asked.

  “No. After I got the mom calmed down and everyone back on the couch, I told Mr. Graves that in order for me to arrest Manuel, he should’ve been given the common courtesy to have the opportunity to leave on his own recognizance, and if he didn’t, then they should’ve called dispatch.” Finn picked up his water and took a few drinks, and I ate a couple spoonfuls of beans. “I escorted Manuel off the property.”

  “Did he say anything about why Mr. Graves would call on him?” I asked.

  “Apparently, he and Leighann have been dating, but she’s sneaking out with him at night, which drives the Graves crazy, since her eighteenth birthday is just around the corner. She came home the other night around three a.m. hammered, and it was Manuel who had dropped her off. Mr. Graves had forbidden her to see him, but young love.” Finn smiled. “You know the strange thing is that neither Mr. Graves nor Leighann wanted to tell me why he was trespassing. Mr. Graves told me that he wasn’t welcome on his property.”

  “I thought Manuel worked for the Graves’ company.” Graves Towing was the only tow company in Cottonwood, and the only one the department used. There was one in the neighboring town of Clay’s Ferry if Sean couldn’t do a pick up. Rarely did we use that one, but it was there just in case.

  “He does. Did,” he said.

  “Now Manuel knows to stay away, and he can get a job over at the towing company in Clay’s Ferry.”

  It was so unfortunate. I really liked both families, even though I’d heard Mr. Graves was a pickle like his daughter. “How did Manuel seem to you?” I asked.

  “Calm and cool. Even had a smirk on his face, which I’m sure sent Mr. Graves into a tailspin,” Finn said, folding his napkin up into his empty bowl. He leaned back in his chair and took a toothpick from the cup next to the salt and pepper shakers. He looked at the wooden stick and smiled. “You know, I never thought I’d ever be using a toothpick.”

  “Around here, they are like gold.” I loved how he was embracing his new home. “In our homes we keep them on top of the stove.”

  “Everything good?” Ben asked and picked up our bowls.

  “Everything was great,” I said. “Where’s Mama?”

  “She took a couple of bowls home to your daddy, and she even took care of y’all’s bill.” He nodded and headed off to the kitchen. “She said she had to scatter because she had her church group tonight.”

  “She didn’t need to take care of the bill. That was so nice of her. I’ll have to stop by and thank her.” Finn got up from the table and Duke stood up with him. I followed them out of the door, which he held for me again.

  “You know, Cecily said something about fearing that Beryle was murdered.” It was a bit of information that I’d been chewing on since Cecily had mentioned it. “I didn’t get into great detail with her because Betty called about the gun slinging.”

  We laughed.

  “But I’ll head back over to see Cecily in the morning and take her a coffee. We can discuss why she thinks Beryle was murdered.” Duke and I walked up to the Jeep.

  “I bet it’s because of the supposed tell-all.” Finn walked around me and curled his hand around the handle of my driver’s door. “It’s a cold night.” Finn opened the door and snapped his fingers for Duke to jump in. Duke didn’t listen, just sat down next to my feet. “But it’s beautiful.”

  “It is beautiful.” I looked down Main Street at the carriage lights that dotted the sidewalk on both sides of the street and illuminated the dark that seemed to fall way too early this time of the year. The pops of colors on the hanging baskets filled with burnt orange, yellow, red, and white mums added to the fall feeling. Small banners hung down from the carriage lights’ dowel rods. The words on the banners read “Fall Into Cottonwood” with a few embroidered blowing leaves sprinkled around it.

  “I have to tell you something.” He still had his hand curled on the top of the open door. I stood between the door and the seat with Duke by my side. “When I said that I’d never pictured myself with a toothpick, I wasn’t lying.” He looked down at his clothes. “I never thought I’d wear this type of uniform for work, and I certainly never would’ve said that I was going to stop by someone’s home to thank them for paying for my meal.”

  “I guess Cottonwood has a way of making you feel right at home.” I gulped when I felt him coming closer.

  “I do feel at home,” he said, so close that his breath skimmed my cheek, tickling me all the way down to my toes. “You make me feel so welcome.”

  It was like magic. I leaned a little closer, anticipating what was coming next, forcing myself not to grin.

  “Thank you, Kenni,” he whispered, leaning even farther and closing his eyes.

  Duke jumped up right before our lips met and darted off down the sidewalk in a fit of barking and growling.

  Before we could kiss, we had to pull away. I cursed under my breath.

  “Duke!” I yelled, wondering what on Earth had possessed him to take off.

  Instincts kicked in. Both Finn and I took off running as fast as we could. Duke rounded the corner of Ruby’s Antiques and headed to the alley in back. I should have been used to Poppa’s ghost by now, but it surprised me when he appeared in the distance, that same look in his eyes that I’d seen when I was leaving the Stone estate.

  He lifted his arm without saying a word, pointing in the same direction Duke had run. The sound of something metal hitting pavement echoed into the dark night sky along with Duke’s deep bark.

  The sound of three pairs of footsteps rang in my ear.

  “We aren’t alone.” I drew my gun and held it straight out in front of me as we rounded the corner to the alley where Duke had stopped. His tail was stuck out stiff behind him and the hairs on his entire body stood up. I could hear footsteps running away from us.

  Finn took off the flashlight attached to his officer’s belt.

  “No, we aren’t.” Finn’s flashlight put a spotlight on someone lying face down next to the back door of Ruby’s Antiques. “And it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers out of Cecily Hoover.”

  We stared down at her lifeless body. I reached down and felt for a pulse. I looked up at Finn and slowly shook my head.

  “She’s dead.” My own words scared the daylights out of me.

  Chapter Eight

  “I think I found the murder weapon.” Finn had grabbed my police bag out of my car after he chased whoever was fleeing the scene.

  He’d taken a pair of gloves out and put them on while I looked around for more evidence.

  “Ax.” He held up an ax, long brown hair hanging off the sharp end of it.

  I looked down at Cecily Hoover. Her hair was covered in her deep red blood and rested in the puddle that formed around her head. It was still fresh.

  “And her phone.” Finn paused and pushed some of the buttons. “Looks like she was trying to dial 911. It’s punched in on the phone, but it wasn’t dialed.”

  “When I was with her today,” Poppa’s voice broke, “I had a bad feeling, so I decided to stay next to her. It wasn’t until I overheard you and Lover Boy here about to make out right on Main Street for the entire town to see that I left her side.”

  Suddenly I felt ashamed for even letting things get so clos
e with Finn. We were partners, and it wouldn’t look good during election season if we suddenly started dating, or as the rest of the town would say, “going around making fools of ourselves.” Though some citizens, including Mama, would have loved to see us together.

  “I’m going to put a call into Max Bogus.” I peeled the gloves off my hands and took my phone out, realizing the darkness had really settled around us.

  Something crunched under my feet when I stepped away. I shined my phone’s built-in flashlight down to the ground and noticed it was glass. I shined the light in front of me and up to the darkened streetlight where it was clear someone had taken something, thrown it at the light, and busted it.

  “Look here.” I pointed out the light to Finn. “Someone clearly didn’t want to be seen.”

  “Someone knew that she was here, she was going to be here, or they were meeting with her and did it to knock out the light so no one would see.” Finn came over and took a sample of the glass for evidence and took some photos. He picked up a rock. “This is probably what they used.” He stuck it in a bag for evidence.

  “Maybe we can pull some prints off of it.” I hoped with all my heart this was going to be solved quickly. “You know the first forty-eight hours after a crime are the most crucial.”

  It wasn’t that I needed to remind Finn of that timeline, because in the academy they drilled that in our heads. It was a reminder for me to keep my head on straight instead of thinking about kissing Finn while we were talking about the case.

  I stepped away to make my phone call to Max, our local coroner and owner of the only funeral home in town. It was a one-stop shop for Cottonwood.

  “Uh-oh,” Max answered the phone. “I know when I see your name pop up on my caller ID this time of the evening, it’s not good.”

  “You’re right. I’ve got a body in the alley behind Ruby’s Antiques.” I glanced over my shoulder and watched Finn put up the crime scene tape. “It looks like Beryle Stone’s assistant has been killed and the weapon was left at the scene. An ax, and there are strands of brown hair that look like the assistant’s on the end. Plus, she has a gash in her head.” I gave him the basics and we hung up.

  When he got to the scene, he’d get the rest. Since this was right in the middle of town, it would take Max close to one minute to get here once he got in his hearse.

  “There’s no need to call the EMT,” I said when I walked back over to Finn and helped him finish taping off the scene. “I guess she was right.”

  Now I regretted not taking her seriously.

  “What are you talking about?” Finn asked.

  “She wanted more security for the Stone estate,” I reminded him. “Remember, Cecily showed up at the ceremony and said that she needed to talk to me. Since I was busy with Duke and all, I told her I’d be by the Stone estate to talk to her. I went over and she said something about a secret tell-all manuscript that Beryle Stone had written.” I bit the inside of my lip and thought about my time at the estate.

  “What? You’re thinking something.” Finn lifted his chin, his eyes drawing down as he looked at me.

  “It’s not possible.” I sucked in a deep breath, not believing what I was about to say. It was something I’d never imagined, and the thought of it made Mama’s bean soup creep back up my throat.

  “Anything is possible.” Finn drew his shoulders back. “What is it?”

  “Ruby Smith.” I looked at the back door of the antique store that was just a few shops down from the crime scene. Finn directed his flashlight over that way.

  The window was busted out.

  “The window,” I gasped. “Did Cecily break into Ruby’s shop, or did someone else break in and Cecily found them?”

  “Cecily was here. So maybe she and the killer are, or were, after the same thing. Cecily stumbled upon them, or them upon her, and Cecily threatened to call us, which would explain the last number she was trying to dial on her phone,” Finn said.

  “And that’s when the killer murdered her.” My words hung in the air with each step I took, hurrying over to Ruby’s shop.

  Everything that Finn and I were throwing around was just a theory, and I was sure he’d put it on that big whiteboard he was so fond of that he’d hung in the office, but Cecily’s phone was a big piece of evidence. It suggested that she’d felt like her life was in danger. I had to think that I was right about the killer telling her to wait and trying to talk to her before they murdered her in cold blood.

  “It looks like our crime scene just got a little bigger.” Finn shined his flashlight on the jagged broken window. “What were you saying?”

  “I was going to say that when I stopped by the estate earlier, Ruby was there. She and Cecily were having a few unpleasant words. Ruby wanted something and Cecily said over her dead body. That’s when I made my presence known. That’s not all. Beryle had been living at the estate for some time now. She let the outside look like it was abandoned, but the inside was lived in.” My eyes drew up and down the door.

  Finn and I took a moment to look at each other when we noticed the door was cracked open. We were in sync. Both of us drew our guns, and with the tip of my toe I pushed the door open enough for us to walk in.

  “Cottonwood Sheriff!” I yelled into the storage room.

  Finn rushed around me and looked around as I adjusted my stance, pointing my gun to keep him covered. There was a light coming from the main lobby of Ruby’s shop.

  “Psst.” Finn nodded me over to where he was shining his light. He pointed out bloody footprints. We stepped over them and continued to look around.

  It looked like someone had brushed everything off of Ruby’s desk. Papers were all over the floor.

  “Maybe they didn’t find what they were looking for and got mad. Really mad, and just threw everything around.” I shined the flashlight on the file cabinet drawers that’d been jerked off the rolling hinges, the contents dumped on the floor.

  “Cottonwood Sheriff!” Finn yelled from the door between the storage room and the rest of the shop.

  No one answered our calls.

  “Kenni.” Poppa’s ghost appeared on the far right of the antique shop. “I think you might want to take a look at this.”

  “Where are you going?” Finn asked as I broke protocol on how we were supposed to sweep a room and hurried over to where Poppa was standing.

  “We have another body.” I looked down at Poppa’s feet. Yep, the beans were coming up. I gulped for air and tried to say the words. I stopped and took a deep breath.

  “And it’s Paige Lemar.” My voice cracked.

  The shoe that I’d been waiting for...it didn’t just drop, it was slammed down.

  Chapter Nine

  “She’s alive.” My eyes darted up to Finn as my fingertips caught a faint pulse from Paige Lemar’s carotid artery.

  Finn grabbed the walkie-talkie and called in an ambulance to dispatch. It was past Cottonwood dispatch hours, which meant the service we shared with Clay’s Ferry got the call.

  There was a quilt in a nearby quilt stand that Ruby had priced unreasonably anyway, so I grabbed it and put it over Paige to keep her body temperature up. She’d already started to turn a faint shade of blue. I continued to check her pulse.

  “Paige, you are going to be fine. Just stay with me,” I whispered in her ear even though she was unconscious. The gash on her head was dripping fresh blood.

  “I don’t like one bit of this,” Poppa said next to me. “Keep talking to her, Kenni-bug. I feel like she’s fading fast.”

  “Paige, you stay with me.” My tone was stern. “It’s not an option for you to leave this Earth.”

  “Remind her of the good times with Lonnie.” Poppa fed me things to say. “About the riverbank where we used to cook out and lollygag all day long.”

  “Remember how you and Lonnie used to go down to the river a
nd be lazy all day.” My words weren’t exactly what Poppa said. My fingers slipped and I put them back on her neck.

  I moved the pad of my finger around to get the pulse back. There wasn’t the slightest thump against my finger.

  “Paige. Paige!” I called frantically, feeling around both sides of her neck.

  “Kenni, CPR!” Poppa yelled. “Remind her of the heart necklace Lonnie gave her and how much she loved it.”

  Without hesitation, I started to perform CPR and continued until the EMTs got there and took over. Her pulse had come back. When they lifted her up to get on the gurney, I made sure I stayed with her.

  “Think about the heart necklace Lonnie gave you. Remember how much you love each other. He needs you. We need you,” I whispered in her ear before they put in her into the ambulance.

  I stood there outside of the double doors and kept my eyes on her face as they hooked her up to all sorts of lines and wires. Her eyes fluttered open a couple of quick times before she shut them again.

  “I swear she looked at me,” I told Poppa. He was in the ambulance with her.

  “What?” Finn asked.

  “Paige.” I nodded toward her right before the EMTs shut the doors and they peeled off. The sirens and lights echoed. The black sky enveloped the ambulance as it drove farther and farther down the alley.

  “That would be a great sign if she came to.” Finn let out a deep sigh.

  “I’ll go inside and see what I can find, if you don’t mind sticking around out here until Max gets here to pick up Cecily’s body.” My eyes slid across the pavement back over to the body.

  The shop had always been a fun place for me to come and take my time to walk around, but now that feeling was gone. I was in a rush to see who or why someone would do this to these two women.

  Hopefully Poppa would come back and let me know that Paige is going to be okay. I flipped on all the lights and noticed the clock on the wall was reading close to ten. Ruby would be asleep by now, and it was going to take Finn and me a few hours to process the scene. There was no way we would be able to clear the scene tonight—we really needed daylight to help with that.