Carbs & Cadavers (6 page)

“What are you suggesting?” Gillian asked, eyes wide.

“You know,” Lindy whispered. “Something
bad
. Maybe even a
murder
. I wonder if our local boys could handle that. Maybe they’d have to get help from some cute forensic guys from Harrisonburg or Charlottesville. Maybe
Unsolved Mysteries
or
CSI
would want to do a story based on our little town . . .”
She trailed off, absorbed in her own fantasy.

“That’s ridiculous. We don’t have that kind of violence in Quincy’s Gap, Lindy. It’s simply impossible.” Gillian tried to sound doubtful, but her voice caught a little on the word “impossible.” She pulled out a crystal pendant from the depths of her shirt and began to rub it fiercely.

Bennett calmly folded his napkin into a tiny square. “Well, homicide rates in the South have increased more than in any other part of the United States, especially when guns have been involved. We may be a small town, but we’re a small Southern town. Statistically, I guess we’re due.” He turned to James. “Statistics are my hobby.”

“You might be useful to a TV producer, Bennett,” Lindy said, fixated with her idea. “I think you’d be a great character for a detective show.”

“You really think so?” Bennett asked, his dark eyes glowing.

James noticed that the group’s initial concern had gradually turned to excitement as the speculations grew. He was ashamed to think that he was feeling a kind of thrill over the mystery, but he had to admit to himself that he was extremely interested in what Lucy might discover down at the station.

“I wonder where those patrol cars were headed,” he mused aloud.

“I can answer that.” Bennett pointed toward the mail truck parked outside. “I’ve got a police scanner in there. If anything’s going on, we’ll hear it.”

The foursome practically ran to the mail truck. Though it was only parked at the end of Lindy’s front walkway, they were all short of breath after hustling their normally sedentary bodies at such speed out to the street.

Bennett hopped into the driver’s seat and began to turn dials on the scanner. There seemed to be a lot of static and the voices were not coming through clearly. Eventually, the garbling ceased long enough for them to understand the words “Sweet Tooth” and “901H.”

“A 901H,” Bennett muttered morosely.

“What the devil is that?” Gillian demanded.

“It’s a code. Most law enforcement agencies share a common set of codes which—”

“But what does it mean?” Gillian shook her fists with agitation. “Is it . . . what does it stand for?”

“It’s a call for an ambulance,” Bennett replied, glancing nervously at Gillian’s fists, “to pick up a dead body.” He sighed lugubriously. “Looks like the sheriff and his crew are too late to help anyone.”

“A body in the bakery? I hope it’s not Megan Flowers or her daughter.” Gillian grabbed Bennett by the sleeve. “Let’s go find out what’s happened!”

Bennett’s eyes lit up. He had never actually witnessed any of the codes he could so skillfully translate on his police scanner. “Hop in, folks. It’s against regulations to have you in here, but . . .”

As they sped off downtown, Gillian frowned and said, “I hope Lucy stayed at the station. It’s obvious that she’s dying to wear a uniform, but the Sweet Tooth wouldn’t be the best setting to start offering her investigative services.”

Bennett seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Who knows what kind of situation the sheriff is dealing with right now? All we know is there is a body involved.”

“It’s not
what
he’s investigating that Gillian’s worried about, Bennett, it’s
where
he’s investigating. I hope Lucy is staying put at the station, too, answering phones or whatever it is she usually does,” Lindy added as they raced well over the speed limit toward Main Street.

“What would be the problem with her meeting us at the bakery?” James asked in Lucy’s defense. “She must be as curious as the rest of us. You could see she was hoping to be able to offer some kind of assistance.”

Lindy looked at him as if he were a mental patient. “James, we just started a diet. We’ve got to keep Lucy away from the Sweet Tooth. The place is
filled
with frosting!”

Bennett was accustomed to
driving a mail truck bearing the weight of thousands of letters, hundreds of magazines, and dozens of packages, but the painful squealing of tires as his official vehicle of the United States Postal Service turned the corner of Elm and Main streets made him cringe. Apparently, four overweight human bodies shifting around the interior were harder on the truck’s axles than all the mail delivered during the Christmas season.

“Hurry!” Lindy yelled excitedly. Her long hair whipped about her face like a licorice-colored tornado and her round cheeks were tinged pink with expectation. Bennett had his window cranked down in order to escape the overpowering scent of Gillian’s patchouli perfume, but Gillian constantly leaned over his headrest in order to convey a list of impatient questions about the conversations taking place on the police scanner.

“They’re saying that there are two women inside the Sweet Tooth,” Bennett shouted over the wind. “Megan and Amelia Flowers. The police are going to question them.”

“Good, that means that they’re alive, but who’s the victim?” Gillian demanded.

James couldn’t make out a word coming from the scanner. All of its garbled noises sounded like voices shouting underwater. He looked out his window at the quiet town. Church services had ended and most folks ate a large midday meal at home and then piddled around their houses crossing jobs off of their honey-do lists, tending to the fall gardens, or taking leisurely strolls. Very few businesses were open on Sunday, but James knew that some people would wander into town for an afternoon treat from the bakery or to pick up fresh bread for supper sandwiches. Whatever happened at the Sweet Tooth would soon be discovered. Perhaps that was why he and his new friends hoped to get there first. It would give each of them something exciting to talk about at work Monday morning.

Barreling down Main Street, the mail truck made record time before it finally slowed to a crawl before the bakery. Three sheriff’s cars with blue lights flashing had parked helter-skelter along the curb, indicating how quickly they had arrived at the scene.

“Nice work, Bennett. We made it in three minutes. It looks like we even beat the ambulance here.” Lindy clapped Bennett on the back. “We’d better park next door, in that back lot behind the stationary store.”

“Good idea,” Bennett agreed, maneuvering the truck into the gravel lot. “Look! There’s Lucy’s Jeep!”

The mail truck groaned to a halt and its four passengers clambered out. Sticking as close as possible to the cement wall on the alley side of the bakery, they crept as stealthily as they could in the direction of the back door. Lindy, who was leading the inquisitive foursome, turned the corner into the bakery’s parking lot and then leapt backward right onto Bennett’s big toe.

“Ow!” he yowled. Lindy clamped a hand hastily across his mouth.

“Sorry,” she whispered, making frantic hand gestures commanding everyone to retreat. “Lucy is standing right outside. She’s talking to one of the deputies. Listen.”

Sure enough, voices floated to their corner of the building. The town’s Sunday afternoon tranquility, defined by a noticeable lack of traffic noise, allowed their eager ears to clearly hear the strained conversation taking place just outside of the bakery’s back door.

“Look, Keith,” Lucy was saying in a pleading tone. “I just want to observe, see if I can learn something. I’ve mentioned that I want to take the deputy’s exam in the future and I—”

“I thought you were
joking
!” the man laughed maliciously. “Come on, Lucy. You’d never pass the physical. Besides, being a deputy is a
man’s
job.”

“I don’t think so,” Lucy replied timidly. “There are plenty of women in law enforcement and even in the Armed Forces. If they—”

Keith interrupted her once again, “I’d
love
to get into a philosophical debate with you, Lucy, but right now I’ve got a dead body to examine and some witnesses to interview.” He paused. “You ever seen a corpse, Lucy?”

“No.”

“What makes you think you can handle seeing one? I mean, most dead bodies are not pretty things. There’s blood and nasty smells and all
kinds
of bodily fluids involved, if you get my drift. It takes a tough person to look at one. You think you’re tough enough?”

Listening to the deputy’s patronizing tone, James suppressed an urge to come to Lucy’s defense. Why didn’t the jackass just give Lucy a chance? But instead of running to her side, James bit his lip and took a quick peek around the corner of the building in order to get a look at Lucy’s crass coworker.

Keith stood with his hands on his hips and his legs drawn apart in a cowboy-like stance. His red hair glinted in the October sunlight, and even from a distance, James could see that his face was covered so completely with freckles that it was difficult to see the pallid skin underneath. Keith wore mirrored sunglasses that reminded James of the cool cop shows on TV during the 70s, but seemed startlingly out of place in a small Virginia town in the twenty-first century.

“Let me see if I
can
handle seeing a dead body, Keith. If it upsets me, then I won’t bother thinking about taking the exam.” Lucy’s pleading was pathetic. Her new friends looked at one another, their eyes replete with sympathy.

“Donovan!” another male voice called out from within the building. “Get your tail in here!”

James saw Keith do a little jump and then hustle inside, leaving the door ajar. Lucy hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then pulled a small notebook from her purse, turned to a fresh sheet of paper, and resolutely followed in her redheaded tormentor’s wake.

“Come on!” Lindy moved forward, tiptoeing up to the back door.

The heavy metal door had been propped open and the sounds of a woman’s hysterical voice could be heard from within. Aside from the view of cooking equipment and the tantalizing smell of freshly baked cookies that curled around the foursome like an alluring, invisible boa, there was nothing to be seen through the back door.

“They must be up front,” Gillian suggested. “We can’t go in, so let’s sneak around to the street side and see if we can peak in the front windows.”

At that moment, the honk of a nearby horn sliced through the stillness.

“Hurry! That could be the paramedics!” cried Bennett as he led the group around the building. “It is! Look!”

The yellow van from Quincy’s Gap Fire & Rescue moved quietly but briskly past them into the bakery’s small parking lot. The driver honked again, but the breathless group was too far away to see why he was making such unnecessary noise.

The first window they reached took up most of the storefront. Megan Flowers always displayed examples of her decorous wedding cakes in that window, along with a sampling of items she would bake during the week. Today, her display shelves had been covered with black and orange crepe paper. Plastic pumpkins were brimming over with miniature banana nut and pumpkin spice muffins. A black plastic cat with glowing purple eyes drew attention to a platter of donuts dripping with white icing and showered with orange sprinkles. Beneath the shadow of a friendly scarecrow, another platter featured Megan’s latest creation: a variety of cookies in the shapes of various monsters. Each cookie looked like it had been slathered with an inch of homemade buttercream. James’s eye was particularly drawn to the Dracula cookies. Each pale-faced vampire had two rivulets of bright ruby icing dripping down from fangs fashioned out of white sprinkles.

“I’ve never seen such a good-looking mummy,” Gillian said, pointing at a cookie.

“Forget him,” Lindy drooled. “I’d take that Frankenstein’s monster cookie any day. Look at all the black sprinkles making up his hair.”

Bennett tried to see beyond the display. Standing on his tiptoes, his view was blocked by a shelf crammed with miniature éclairs swollen with custard.

“James,” Bennett croaked, his mouth dry with longing. “You’re the tallest. See anything?”

James finally drew his focus beyond the display of delicious goodies. Unfortunately, he could only make out the backs of three people as they stood looking down at something. There were two women and one man. From this angle, he couldn’t tell what their eyes were riveted on. He
could
see Lucy, however, standing off to the side, and it was clear that she was fighting to control her emotions. Her lovely face had turned rather gray and the hand that gripped her notebook was shaking. Someone must have addressed her, for she wordlessly nodded and began writing notes with a tremulous hand.

“I can’t see what they’re looking at. We’re going to have to move to the other window,” James informed the others. “That will mean going right past the front door. It will seem kind of odd if all four of us slink past the door and then stop to stare in the window.”

“Well, the sign still says ‘Open,’ so it won’t be so strange that we’re walking past the bakery,” argued Gillian. “And from the looks of Lucy’s face, there is
definitely
something worth seeing in there!”

Crouching as low as they could, the foursome shuffled past the entrance and to the smaller storefront window. The display in this section was mostly an array of breads. Beyond the plump mounds of rye, pumpernickel, egg, and raisin breads, along with baskets brimming over with dill and rosemary rolls, James was able to get a clear view of the three people whose backs he had gazed upon a few seconds ago.

The first was a burly, middle-aged man with an enormous mustache. He appeared to be asking questions of a tall woman wearing a red-and-white striped apron with the words
The Sweet Tooth
written across it. Her slender arms were folded across her chest in a pose of self-preservation and her eyes were filled with a combination of fear and confusion. Standing next to her, close enough to touch, was a younger, more curvaceous version of the woman wearing the apron. The younger woman had dull blonde hair that fell forward into her eyes as she stared fixedly at the floor. She held a rolled-up magazine in her right hand, tightly enough to cause her knuckles to turn white.

“That’s Sheriff Huckabee talking to Megan Flowers and her daughter, Amelia,” Lindy whispered before James had a chance to ask who he was looking at.

Though he didn’t know Megan or Amelia, James remembered Huckabee. He had been a deputy when James was in high school and had often been visible at athletic events at the school. Sometimes the crowds could get a little rowdy at football games and the presence of a few deputies helped keep things in order. James remembered Huckabee because of the unique name and also due to the fact that the man closely resembled a walrus.

Finally, James leaned forward until his nose was a millimeter from pressing against the window glass and looked down toward the floor. A paramedic, wearing a yellow jumpsuit, turned his body in order to retrieve an instrument from his case. In the moments that it took for him to search his bag, James had an unobstructed glimpse of the vision that had caused Lucy’s hands to tremble. It took his mind several long seconds to register what he saw.

It was the body of a man, one that James had just seen two days ago at Dolly’s. He recognized the worn letter jacket immediately, as well as the unkempt hair and the wide, muscular shoulders. Brinkley Myers had collapsed onto his stomach with his head turned toward the window. His open eyes were glazed over and his nose and mouth were covered with fresh, bright blood. Tiny droplets still leaked from his left nostril, slowly, like a dripping tap. All around his face and head an unbelievable pool of crimson had formed, widening into an ellipse that markedly contrasted with the black-and-white-checkered linoleum.