Death at the Summit (6 page)

He opened the door and flipped on the light. I could hear him gasp and race into the room.

Mary took step to follow him, and I grabbed her arm and shook my head. From where we stood, I couldn’t see the interior of the room and thought it should stay that way.

Brian came back. “Did you touch anything?”

I shook my head. “I opened the door just an inch and could smell the blood. I didn’t turn on the light. Is he…?”

He nodded his head, looking more serious than I had seen him since the last murder. “I should have known this wouldn’t be an easy assignment. You installed video surveillance right? I need to see it right now. I already requested more officers, but the department is pretty spread thin with this weather.”

“What’s wrong with Mac?” Mary asked. I had forgotten about her. Her eyes were wide, and she shifted her weight between her feet uneasily.

“He was murdered,” Brian said bluntly but gently. He watched her face and stood by until she nodded, then he talked into the unit on his shoulder.

I pulled Mary aside. “Are you okay? I know it can be a shock.”

She shook her head.

Orion came down the hallway. “Is everything okay? Can I help?”

“Yes, you can.” Brian stepped forward. “No one can leave yet. Can you do that?”

Orion nodded. “Sure thing.” He jogged off and passed Liam in the hallway.

Liam came up, placed a hand on my shoulder, and leaned over to whisper, “What’s wrong?”

I turned to him with a frown. “Mac was killed. Orion is making sure no one leaves.”

Everything I said today seemed to annoy Liam. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he removed his hand from my shoulder.

Brian interrupted us before I could ask what was wrong. “Di, can you lock up this area and show me the surveillance footage? No officer can come out here yet because there’s a huge accident on the interstate. I need to start the investigation.”

Brian sent Liam out somewhere while Mary and I followed him to the office, locking the doors as we left. In my office, I pulled up the footage of the hallway. Mary and Brian hovered behind me as we watched the sped up footage of me coming down the hallway and opening the bathroom, then we checked that everyone who went down the hallway returned. When we got to the footage of Moo and me escorting Mac down the hallway, I played the footage at normal speed.

“Brian, are we looking for anything in particular?”

“Let’s see it once, and then I will tell you.”

It turned out that while the door to the room wasn’t visible, Moo was. I could see Moo’s tail wagging through the thirty seconds it took me to open the door for Mac and return into view.

We raced through the rest of the footage. Brian carefully noted the timecode when someone disappeared from view into the short hallway and returned. When Moo and I appeared on camera to check on Mac, I was surprised to see that I only spent a few seconds out of sight at the doorway before reappearing on camera. I thought I had stood at the doorway forever, trying to work up the guts to turn on the light and see why I smelled so much blood. A pang of guilt ran through me——Mac had suffered some tragedy, and I was too chicken to even look. Maybe one dead body in a lifetime was all I could handle.

“Should I have gone into the room? Is there something I could have done to help him?” I wanted Brian to tell me that I had done the right thing.

“No, you should not have gone in there. You made the right choice.”

“What happened to him?” Mary asked.

“You don’t need to know that. I know that last time you two did an impression of Miss Marple and Columbo but this time—”

I cut him off. “Wait, which one am I? The old lady or the one with a bad eye?”

Brian didn’t laugh. “I’m serious. You cannot look at video surveillance again, and you cannot go back the crime scene. Tell me that you understand.”

Mary and I exchanged a glance.

“If you find anything, you need to give it to me right away. And lastly, I cannot
see
you investigating. Got it? If I
see
you investigating, I will stop you. I don’t want to
see
you talking to suspects. I don’t want to
see
you gathering evidence. I don’t want to
see
any of that. I’m not just saying this as a cop but as your friend. Please.”

“Of course, we’ve got it. We’re not suspects, are we?”

“Not really. Neither of you were in there long enough, but in the meantime, don’t go anywhere.”

I turned to my left to look at Moo. I had gotten used to his constant presence. “Good to know we aren’t suspects.”

“I need to go grab everyone on the list, release the rest, and start this investigation.” Brian left the room.

Mary flopped into a chair after snatching a pen and pad of paper off my desk.

Moo walked up behind Mary and looked over her shoulder at the notepad. When the pen slipped out of her grasp, he ducked down to pick it up, chewing on the end. He rested his head on her shoulder, pulling her off to the right. She straightened up, snatched the pen out of his mouth, and started writing a list of names while Moo watched.

“Here’s our suspects. Are you ready to investigate?”

Startled, I looked at her. “What? Weren’t you listening? Brian doesn’t want us to investigate.”

Mary rolled her eyes at me. “How can someone so smart be so dense? He didn’t said say not to investigate. He said he didn’t want to
see
us investigating.”

“Is that why he kept saying
see
,
see
,
see
? I guess finding another body has really thrown me for a loop.”

Mary put her feet on my desk. “It’s a good thing you have me around to keep you in line.”

I leaned over and waggled one of her feet. “You know what? You’re right.” I was lucky to have her in my life. She was determined and organized but still fun. She kept me in line and had been the roommate I never knew I’d needed in my life. “Did you write down everyone from the video? Is the dynamic duo ready to ride again?” Last time we investigated, we’d had a running joke about being Batman and Robin.

Minx knocked on the open doorway, with Tiger at her side, a plate of cookies in her hand.

“This time, we get to help investigate,” Minx said.

They came in and pulled up chairs. Moo trotted over to accept ear scratches from each.

Minx knocked Mary’s feet off the desk and placed the cookies on the corner of my desk. Mary reached out and grabbed a tree-shaped cookie before replying, “Tiger can investigate; he’s the only one of us that never showed up in the footage at all.”

He ruffled the side of Moo’s neck with his knuckles. “I was busy. Orion’s speech about women in the industry motivated me to talk to some people about an idea that I’ve had for a long time. If I get chosen to train here, I want to start a program where local women can come and learn all about firearms and archery in a female-only environment. I was talking to some companies to see if I could get their backing for the idea.”

Minx snorted. “Whatever, you just wanted to flirt with women.”

Tiger snapped back, “Treating women like intelligent peers and wanting to date them are not mutually exclusive ideas. I was raised by a single mother and have three younger sisters. Women are every bit as capable of doing things that I do, but when I was a kid and we went places, we were treated differently. We all shot guns and bows growing up. When I asked people how things worked, they would explain in detail, but when my sisters asked, they would be told not to worry about that stuff. I don’t know why people think it is such a radical idea that women are people, too.”

We all sat in silence for a moment. He had given his little speech with more than a bit of frustration. I admitted to thinking of him as only a flirt, but I realized that he had actually never been demeaning or dismissive of me.

Mary was looking at him with a huge smile. “That’s a great idea. You want to teach?”

“Nah, that would kinda defeat the purpose. I want to have women teach the course, but I could do all the boring administrative stuff behind the scenes. Maybe if I’m lucky, though, they’ll let me join the ladies for a meal or two. Show them what a gentleman I am.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

I laughed. “You’re a complicated man, Tiger.”

“All the best are.” He reached over and broke a corner off a cookie. Flinging it into the air, he caught it in his mouth then ate it with a smug smile.

“Now that Tiger has enlightened us on his social ideology, can we gather up the gang and focus on clearing my name?” Notes of anxiety and weariness edged Minx’s comment.

Mary grabbed two more cookies from the plate with a smile. “The Scooby gang to the rescue.”

Minx fluffed her head. “That’s perfect. We already have a Great Dane and one pretty redhead.”

“You’re not a real redhead,” I said.

“You think Daphne was? And we both have a good-looking but kinda dumb guy.”

Tiger laughed. “My specialty.”

“We have an annoying know-it-all,” Minx continued.

Minx and Tiger looked at me.

“Hey,” I said, “Velma’s not a know-it-all; she’s the smart one. Does that mean that Mary is supposed to be Shaggy, the pot-head?”

We turned to look at Mary, whose mouth was full of cookies, and Moo who was snuffling the crumbs off the ground around her. She raised her hand to stop the allegation. “He’s not a pot-head,” Mary said. “It’s a children’s show for goodness’s sakes. He is just a lovable guy that likes to eat. I think y’all are underestimating his brilliance. Come here, Moo. I’ll grab you a Scooby snack.”

She got up and reached into the desk drawer where I kept treats for Moo. She gave him one and shoved the rest of the handful into her pocket.

I had to tease Minx a little. “I don’t remember Daphne as being such a scrapper. Did I miss the episode where she threw down?”

“Oh geez, do we have to discuss that? I’m having a bad month, okay?”

Mary broke up some of her third cookie and offered it to Minx. “What’s going on?”

I had been meaning to her ask about the comment she’d made at the coaches’ course many weeks ago. “I was surprised that you’re here at all. I thought you said that you weren’t going to apply to be an OSA because you didn’t want to be in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming?” I added.

“Things change. Can we focus on who killed Mac right now and save my therapy session for another time?” Minx sulked.

Indy and Mouse were at the door to my office. She was clinging to his side, and he had an arm protectively around one shoulder.

“Hey, guys, can you believe there was a murder, so whack.” Indy put a backpack on the ground and leaned up against the doorway.

Mouse scooted in closer to him. “I can’t believe this is happening. I wanted to leave right away, but it’s snowing so hard out there. But Indy’ll protect me, won’t you?” She batted her eyelashes up at him and giggled. She didn’t look particularly scared, but what did I know?

“Yeah, it’s a real shock. What are you guys going to do? You should probably stay out of Brian’s way while he investigates.”

“Ya, ya, ya, I know.” Indy flipped his hair out of his face. “I told Mouse that I could teach her how to play this awesome video game; she would be a great healer. I was hoping you would let her use your computer. I got my laptop from my room.”

I wasn’t crazy about the idea of them hanging out in my office.

Mouse looked around. “What are you guys going to do?”

Dragging Indy around might be a bit conspicuous when I throttled him for annoying me. “You can use my office. Let me just get everything set for you to use. Tiger, Minx, we’ll meet you at the Christmas tree.”

I set to logging off my computer with admin privileges and logging back in as a guest so Indy could use the Internet. To break the awkward silence, I explained what I was doing, to which he would reply, “Ya, ya, ya, I know.” Each time he said it, my jaw clenched a bit tighter.

I created a throw-away password for him to use and started writing it down. “In order to log use this pass—”

Indy cut me off. “Ya, ya, ya, I know.”

I stopped writing midway through the word and took a slow, deep breath. I needed to address this issue, but I needed to do it correctly. I tried to call up my most patient tone. “Indy, please stop saying you know everything. I’m doing you a favor. You can just say okay or thank you.”

“Ya, ya, ya, totally, thank you.”

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t complain when he was willing to listen. “You’re welcome.” I finished writing out the password. Grabbing Moo, I took off his harness and leash then tucked them into the desk. Moo shook his head then all the way down to his tail. His tail snapped back and forth, catching Indy twice on the thigh then once right in his crotch. Indy doubled over with a yip.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Indy had his eyes squeezed shut, and in a high voice, he said, “Ya, ya, ya, I’m fine.”

I tried my best not to chuckle as I headed for the door. “Please try to be respectful of my office, and if you need anything, please come get me.”