BM03 - Crazy Little Thing Called Dead

Crazy Little Thing Called Dead

Book 3 in the Bree MacGowan series

Kate George

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.

Find more from Kate George at

http://kategeorge.com/

Content and Cover Copyright © 2012 Kate George

Cover Design by Lani Diane Rich

First Edition: September 2012

Meet Author Kate George

Ms. George has enjoyed a life-long love affair with mysteries, and by age 25 had written her first book, a truly awful novella. She then wisely took a break from writing. When Ms. George realized that she could use her own off-beat sense of humor in her work, she began writing seriously again. Ms. George loves animals, and they find their way into her writing. The incident with the crazy skunk in
California Schemin’
(March 2011) is a true account. For the record, the dogs would rather stink than be washed with peroxide, baking soda or dishwashing soap ever again.

Dedication

For the BBs,

Toni, Carol-Ann, Kim, Karen, Jude, Susan, Sara, Lora, Doreen, Emily and Tanya.

You ladies are the best!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Denise Perkins of Planet Hair, who let me borrow her salon and use her as a template for Claire. Denise, the reality of you makes any fictional character pale in comparison. So as great as Claire is, you are a hundred times better.

Thanks also to the Timians, for food, friendship, NASCAR and the use of their back room. (Which I'm telling you people is the coolest writing space I've ever been in.)

Chapter One

I haven’t had a lot of experience with diapers, but I do know that you don’t usually find them taped to dead men’s chests. I’m Bella Bree MacGowan, and while I’m happy to report strange happenings like this in the
Royalton
Star
Weekly
, I would have passed on the early morning haircut if I knew I was going to be present at the discovery of the diapered dead dude. But there he was on the floor of my favorite hair salon, Planet Hair.

“What in the world?” Claire, Planet Hair’s owner and stylist extraordinaire, froze midstride in the doorway. I gently pushed past her and realized I should have stayed outside. A middle-aged man in a mismatched suit was face up on the floor. I don’t suppose there are many places dead men look at home, but surrounded by marigold walls and purple trim, it was like finding a corpse on a merry-go-round.

I knelt down and put my fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse. I’d felt skin like this before, cold and kind of… well,
dead
… and this guy’s heart hadn’t been pumping for a while. His dress shirt wasn’t buttoned all the way up and as much as I didn’t want to look at this guy I couldn’t help but see there was something unusual on his chest. There was a line of grey silver duct tape and under that, a row of line-art duckies. I’d seen ducks like that before—on my cousin’s infant. It was a diaper. I got an instant case of the creeps running up my spine.

I looked up at Claire and shook my head.

“There’s a dead guy in my salon? Shit.” Claire is a tough chick, but finding a body can shake a person up.

“We need to get out of here.” I shooed her out the door and dragged my cell phone from my pocket.

I didn’t dial 911. My best friend’s husband, Tom Maverick, was the Commander of the Vermont State Police Barracks in Bethel, Vermont. I called him directly and let him sort it out. After Tom I called Randy, the photographer we used for the
Royalton Star
.

“Dead body at Planet Hair. Get over here now.”

God help me, a little shiver of excitement ran through me. If I had anything to do with it, the paper would come out tomorrow morning with a shot of the dead guy on the front page. A scoop for the paper would be excellent. On the other hand, my stomach was starting to clench. Dead bodies had a way of wrecking my life.

Claire and I waited out on the covered sidewalk in the humidity. My leg was jiggling with nervous energy as I willed Randy to get here before the police. I was sweating even though it was only eight-thirty and we were standing in the shade. Claire looked at her watch, glanced back into the salon and then gazed at me with her eyebrows raised.

“You’d better call your clients, this is going to take all day,” I said.

“My appointment book is in there with the dead guy.” Claire frowned.

“Sorry.”

It was fifteen minutes before two state police cruisers pulled up alongside the building. There were no lights or sirens. This was what I liked about Tom; he kept the fanfare at a minimum. Tom tended to be a low-key kind of guy, for a cop. He extracted himself from the first car and came over to me, while Officer Steve Leftsky and his partner hopped up onto the boardwalk and disappeared into the salon. Tom sat on the top step next to me.

“I should have known you’d be here. We’ve had two bodies in the past five years and you’ve found both of them.”

“Three. You forgot Lily Wallace in California.” Not that I wanted to remember the blood mingling with her hair in the river, but seeing a body fall from one of the tallest bridges in the United States isn’t something you forget in a hurry.

“That’s right. Body number three. You holding together?”

“I’m fine. At least there wasn’t any blood this time. Could have been a natural death for all I know.”

“Yeah. Not likely.”

At the bottom of the stairs Claire waylaid a blond woman in her mid-fifties and led her to the other side of the road, next to the railroad tracks. I guessed it must be her next hair appointment—a dye job, if the dark streak in her part was any indication. The blonde left and Claire walked over to us.

“Any chance I can have my appointment book, Tom? I need to call people.” Her voice was strong but her hands were shaking as she brushed a strand of dark-honey hair from her face. She attempted to slide it into her clip. It came loose immediately, surprising me. Claire’s fingers were usually magic with hair.

“Hang on for a minute. I’ll have Steve bring it out to you.”

The medical examiner pulled up in his pickup, followed by an ambulance. The EMTs waited in the ambulance while the ME headed our way. He nodded to Tom as he passed us and entered the salon.

“Going in?” I asked, still watching for Randy to show up.

“It can wait. That guy isn’t going anywhere.” Tom took off his hat and ran his hand across his head. He wore his hair old school military, so short he was practically bald. “What was our boy doing in Planet Hair? Stealing scissors? Any sign of a break in?”

“No. The door was locked, no broken windows, just the guy on the floor.”

“Captain?” One of the officers stood in the doorway behind us. “You might want to see this.”

Tom stood and I followed suit. Randy might not get here to take real photos but I could take a cell phone shot. Tom stood just inside the door and I peered around his shoulder. The medical examiner had the dead guy’s shirt open all the way, the duct tape on his chest clearly holding down a diaper. I’d been right. I pulled out my cell phone, keeping it low and out of Tom’s line of sight, but Randy arrived and pushed past me clicking pictures.

“What’s he doing in here?” Tom blocked the camera with his arm but Randy dodged and snapped a couple more.

“Out!” Tom’s face was turning purple. “Bree, you should know better.”

Randy turned to go. “I got it. Check your email in thirty.” A grin snaked across his face. “And don’t let Tom give you a hard time.”

“I said
out
!” The back of Tom’s neck was bright red.

“I’m going. Don’t get your boxers in a bunch.” Randy winked at me and went outside. I could see him through the window snapping pictures of the ambulance. He’d be ready when they wheeled the body out.

“What the hell is that?” Tom asked. “Silver duct tape on a man makes me think of explosives.”

“Not explosives, Tom, you can relax. It’s a diaper.” The ME poked the soggy red diaper. “Full of blood.”

I turned away. I knew from experience that blood has an adverse effect on my stomach. I heard someone retch and looked to see Claire behind me.

“Bree, get her out of here.” Tom barked at me.

“No. I need to see this.”

“I’m fine,” Claire said, and then gagged again.

“Bree!”

“Tom! It’s my job.”

“My God. Be a human being for five minutes, Claire needs help.”

“Shit. All right, I’m going, but only because blood makes me barf.”

I found Claire standing on the stairs and led her away from the shop.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to mess up your story.”

“I’ll hunt down Tom later.”

We walked around the corner away from the scene of the crime, even though I was dying to be there. Claire was looking a little less green away from the salon but I thought it would be a good idea to stay out of there until the body had been hauled away. I had more experience with dead bodies than she did. Hell, I had more experience with dead bodies than anyone I knew, besides Tom. A distinction I could do without, by the way.

Claire and I walked around the corner to the café situated under the
Royalton Star’s
upstairs offices halfway down the block. We sat at the table in the front window where we could watch the comings and goings of the town. I wrangled the seat facing the street; I wanted to be able to see when the ambulance went by, and I didn’t want Claire reminded of what she’d seen in her salon.

The Muffin Man, Dave, was waiting tables. Here was a man guaranteed to raise anyone’s spirits. He squatted down next to Claire and fixed her with his hazel peepers and the color returned to her face.

“Looking good today, ladies. What can I get you?” He flashed his smile. I smiled back, feeling like I was back in high school.

We ordered coffee and the café’s famous pumpkin and chocolate chip muffins and watched The Muffin Man walking back to the kitchen. I caught Claire’s eye and we both giggled.

“Love the view in here,” she said.

“Never fails to inspire. We are so high school.”

“Thank God. If that didn’t take me back to high school I’d start thinking I was getting old.”

We got another smile from Dave when he brought our food. Claire had the good grace to blush and I figured I’d done my superhero duty for the day. But the story was niggling at my brain and I wanted to ask her about the guy, which was guaranteed to ruin the mood.

The door to the café slammed and I looked over to see Meg, my best friend/boss
and
Tom’s wife, heading toward us. She squeezed behind me and banged the chair against the wall as she sat.

“Shouldn’t you be upstairs writing this up?” she asked. “Or didn’t you know there was a dead body in Planet Hair? Wait. Don’t tell me.
You
found the body in Planet Hair.”

I nodded. “Claire and I walked in and there he was.”

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have a reporter who finds things like bodies. But why aren’t you upstairs getting this ready for tomorrow’s paper?”

“I’m about to grill Claire, but I was trying to be tactful about it,” I said, widening my eyes hoping she’d get my telepathic
don’t spook my source
. “Let her get used to the idea of a dead body in her salon before starting in with the questions. Randy’s got pictures.”

“No point in grilling me anyway, I don’t know who he was or what he’s doing in my shop.” Claire shrugged.

“See?” Meg said. “Get your butt upstairs.”

“Don’t you ever release news early? You could break this on the web,” Claire said.

“We’re the last paper on earth not to have an online edition,” I said, looking pointedly at Meg.

“I’m not adding an online version until I figure out how it will benefit us,” Meg said. “It’s a whole… different level of advertising. I’d have to hire somebody to oversee the thing. It would cost us money.”

“Wouldn’t need to,” Claire said, “You should talk to the editor of the Braintree paper. I do his hair. He’s got a handle on the dual edition thing.”

“I’ll add it to my list.” What she really meant was,
when pigs fly
. Meg hated the internet. About the time e-book sales and online news had started pushing out print editions she’d decided it was a zombie plot.

I pushed my chair back. “I’ve got to go to work.” I turned to Claire. “What are you going to do about your clients?”

“Can I borrow your kitchen?” Claire asked Meg. Claire had worked out of her own kitchen for years before buying the salon, but since then she’d moved into the hills so her kitchen wasn’t really an option anymore.