Read Barnyard Murder: A Cozy Mystery (Strawberry Shores Mystery Book 2) Online
Authors: Mak K. Han
I called George after my shift, and he said Kevin had already left the Pelican, so I went straight home to meet with Emily and Alex. That was fine; it was raining in torrents and I hadn't really wanted to go downtown.
The girls had let themselves into the house and made sandwiches. They'd made one for me, so we all sat at the dining room table to eat and wait for George to arrive.
“Tim isn't a suspect,” I announced. “According to George, he and Mrs. Hayfield went straight home after the town meeting.”
“What about Dana?” Emily asked.
I shook my head. “Innocent as far as I can tell. She suspects Kevin, though. George met him at the Pelican to talk to him.”
Alex pulled a pickle out of her sandwich, leaned her head back, and lowered it into her mouth. “Did you get a chance to talk to Kevin at all?” She asked with a mouthful.
“A little. He was acting strangely. George should be here soon. He was in love with Jeannie though, so I'm going to have to talk to Kevin on my own. I'm afraid he might be basing his decisions on emotion instead of logic.”
“Good idea,” Alex said. “Men are stupid when they're in love.”
“Mm-hmm,” Emily agreed.
There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” I shouted. The door opened and George came in. “How did it go?”
George took a seat at the table. “He's definitely suspicious,” he said.
“You want something to eat?” Emily asked. “Laura's food is really good.”
George shook his head. “No, I'm all set. I ate at the bar. Anyway, any time I asked Kevin about the night of the murder, he dodged the question. At one point he said he was at home. At another point he said his car broke down.”
“Sounds suspicious,” Emily said. She looked at me. “I definitely think you should talk to him.”
I knew what Emily was saying—she was saying I should talk to him with a radio in the background. The girls knew I was keeping George in the dark about my power, at least for the time being. If this lead with Kevin proved fruitful, though, I might consider letting him in on the secret. Four sets of eyes were better than three when it came to situations like this one.
“You have a chance,” George said. “There's another CBSS meeting on the edge of town. A secret one. Kevin told me where it is.”
“Can you take us there?” Alex asked.
George nodded.
“How many people are going to be there?” Emily asked.
George cocked his head. “I don't know. A couple dozen?”
Emily wiped her mouth and stood. “Okay, Laura—you talk to Kevin. I'll be there for moral support. And also to sell cupcakes.”
“Wait, Emily, this really isn't a good time—” I interjected.
“If Emily gets to sell cupcakes, I get to sell clothes,” Alex said flatly. She abandoned her sandwich and stood.
“Alex, Emily, we really don't have time to sell—”
“No fair!” Emily cried. “It was my idea. You're going to take business from me!”
“It's called 'capitalism',” Alex shot back. “It's that thing where people can choose where they buy stuff. And they're going to be much more interested in looking good in my clothes than getting fat on your cupcakes.”
“My cupcakes don't make people fat—”
“Okay!” I said, rubbing my temples. “You can sell stuff. Just try to stay out of the way and keep the bickering to a minimum, please?”
So once Emily had grabbed her cupcakes and Alex had collected the clothes she wanted to sell, we left the house and got in my car.
Time to talk to Kevin Drake.
“It makes sense,” Emily said as we drove. She talked louder than usual because the windshield wipers were on the highest setting and making a racket. “Kevin wanted to impress Dana, so he killed Jeannie.”
In the back seat, Alex shook her head. “I don't know if he wanted to impress Dana. I think Dana would have reported him if Kevin had told her he'd killed Jeannie. I think he was just fed up with Jeannie's nonsense. She was making Dana upset, so he decided to get rid of her.”
“You don't know that,” Emily said, scowling over the seat.
“We don't have any evidence of anything,” I said. I turned the radio on so the girls would pay more attention to it than to each other. “So tell me exactly what happened at the bar,” I said to George, who was sitting directly behind me.
“Well, I showed up at four. We got to playing pool, and I was asking him how he'd been. I told him he seemed stressed. He told me not to worry about it. We were shooting pool and making small talk, and I made an off-hand comment about the murder. That was the first time he dodged the topic. He said he was at home. I changed the subject and he mentioned that his car had broken down a couple of nights before. I asked when, and he said Thursday night. That was the night Jeannie was murdered. So where was he? At home, or out with a broken-down car?” George shook his head. “Something didn't add up.”
George was right. Something didn't add up. Everything he'd just said had caused the static to go off.
Everything.
I thought back to what I'd said to him: 'tell me exactly what happened at the bar'. Could there be a miscommunication there? We both knew I was referring to the Pelican, and that I was asking about what had happened around four when he was there.
The static, therefore, seemed to mean that either George was lying about what happened, or he was lying about being there at all.
“You really loved Jeannie, didn't you?” I asked him.
George nodded. “I did.”
The static went off. I realized that the previous day as we were collecting the radio at the CBSS meeting—when the static had gone off—it hadn't just been triggered by George saying 'I'll make sure the right person goes to jail'; it had also been triggered by him saying 'I loved her'.
I looked at him in the rear view. “So tell me more about this secret CBSS meeting,” I said.
“It's a ways ahead. I'll tell you when we're near. Keeping going straight.”
He was taking us along Route 28, and Route 28 lead out of Strawberry Shores.
I took a deep breath. “There is no secret CBSS meeting, is there George?” I asked.
“Sure there is.”
Static.
“You didn't love Jeannie, did you?”
“Yes I did.”
Static.
“You killed Jeannie, didn't you?”
George hesitated.
“You were telling the truth the other day. Your parents did go home after the town meeting. But you went home separately. You stopped by the construction site and gave Jeannie the poisoned water.”
George rubbed his head. “No, that's not true...”
“Yes it is,” I said. “You killed Jeannie because she was interfering with your dad's project. You're going to inherit the business when he retires, right? So you want him to make as much money as possible so you'll inherit as much as possible. Jeannie was clogging up the works so you killed her.”
I felt something at my side. Looking down, I saw it was a knife. George had leaned forward and put it against me. Alex and Emily stared at me, wide-eyed.
“I liked her,” George said. “I tried to get on her good side that night at the Pelican. But she wouldn't have it. Then she started interfering with dad's project. I just kept saying I loved her so nobody would suspect me. How did you figure it out?”
“Just a hunch,” I said quickly. “Dana was wrong when I talked to her at the CBSS meeting. Kevin didn't come back on Thursday; he came back on Friday. He said it the first morning your dad tried to tear down the tree. He and Dana were handing out petitions and he said he'd help her once he got back on Friday. Kevin Drake was out of town the night Jeannie was killed. There's no way you were telling the truth about what happened at the bar. He would have told you he was in Dallas and seeing as he could prove it; he wouldn't be a suspect. But you knew that though, didn't you?”
“I knew it was you who solved the Daniel Berkshire case,” he said. “I knew you were a threat. Then you started poking around. Well, I'm going to finish what Daniel started. Keep driving. You three are about to skip town. They're never going to find you, but everyone will assume that because you left, you were guilty.”
“Laura?” Emily asked quietly from the passenger seat.
“Yeah?”
“We're getting kidnapped again, aren't we?”
I sighed. “Yeah, we're getting kidnapped again.”
We were in trouble and I had to do something.
I was wearing my seat belt. If I tried to release it, George might panic and give me a jab. Then I'd be wounded and Alex and Emily would be left to deal with George themselves. I couldn't stand the idea of lying in the grass in some wooded area, bleeding out and watching them dig graves for the three of us.
I had to do something. But what?
I could push his hand away and attack, but that might not work. If he didn't drop the knife, he might freak out. Alex and Emily were both wearing their seat belts too, and without the ability to communicate a plan with them beforehand, taking George by surprise might result in chaos—and one of us might get stabbed in the process. Plus, it might cause a crash.
I stopped myself.
A crash.
I was wearing my seat belt. So were Alex and Emily. George had taken his off so he could lean forward. We were on Route 28 and it was raining.
My heart skipped a beat. This was a gamble, but it was better than letting George take us out to the countryside and kill us.
We made our way along Route 28 and went under the underpass where I'd almost crashed the first time, when the car hydroplaned. I spotted a sharp curve ahead and sped up.
“Take it easy,” George growled. “You don't want to attract police attention.”
“Police attention?” I asked. There was a deep puddle on the curve. “You should be more worried about the weather.”
“What about it?” George asked.
“Dangerous driving conditions.” As we hit the curve, I jerked the wheel hard to the right.
Had the car not hydroplaned, we would have pulled a ninety-degree turn into the broad face of a cliff. But the tires couldn't find any traction and the car started spinning around in circles.
Alex screamed. Emily screamed. I screamed. The centrifugal force had us pressed against the left side of the car. Had Emily and Alex not been wearing seat belts, Emily would have been in my lap and Alex would have been in George's. George had been thrown against the window, dropping the knife in the process.
The landscape was a green and gray blur whizzing past the windshield. The car spun two times. Three times. Four. I could see the guardrail approaching and a split second later I was looking in the opposite direction. George was in the back, struggling to regain his balance. Alex popped open her seat belt and tackled him.
The car thudded against the guard rail. I was dizzy, but cognizant enough to know what had to be done. I reached over and opened Emily's seat belt.
“Now!” I yelled at Emily and Alex.
Emily pulled open her box of cupcakes and threw herself over the center console, complete with a high pitched battle cry. “Take that!” She said, mashing a cupcake into his eye.
“Gah!” He cried out, his arms flailing. “I'm going to kill all of you right here!” He screamed.
Alex pounced on him with renewed vigor, swatting him in the face with both hands. She reached for one of her shirts and as George flailed, she tangled up his hands in it. All three of us descended on him now, bashing on him with clenched fists. He leaned forward and covered his head to protect it. I used it as an opportunity to pull his hands behind his back. Alex made a makeshift rope out of her t-shirt and tied them at the wrist.
I picked up the knife. “I'll hold onto this,” I said. “Let's go.”
The driver's side of the car was flush against the guard rail so the three of us had to pile out the passenger side. My heart was beating a thousand miles an hour and my hands were shaking. I panted for breath. Emily, pale faced, retreated to the side of the shoulder and got sick. Alex and I braced ourselves against the door while George attempted to kick his way out of the vehicle.
A car pulled onto the shoulder. Its driver climbed out. It was Kevin Drake.
“Kevin,” I said. “Funny, we were just talking about you.”
“Are you okay? I saw you guys hydroplane. Who's in there?”
“George. George killed Jeannie.” I looked to Emily as she wiped her mouth. “Call Sheriff Caldwell. We need help.”
“George?” Kevin asked. “How did you find out?”
“He said you'd killed her,” I explained. “I knew that was impossible. You were out of state on Thursday night.”
“Let me out of this!” George cried from inside the car. “You three are going to share a grave with Jeannie, I'll see to it!”
“Can you help us with this?” I asked as George kicked again, nearly knocking Alex and I to the pavement. Kevin, who was a bit bigger than Alex and I, leaned against the door. With our combined weight, George's efforts were useless.
“Maybe you just sit in there and relax,” Kevin said. “We'll let Sheriff Caldwell sort this all out.”
I took a deep breath and leaned against Kevin's car, trying to calm myself. George was under control. Emily was on the phone with the Sheriff.
It was over.