Foal Play: A Mystery (2 page)

“Why, I…” Myrtle said in an indignant huff.

Colleen, Nellie, and Bobby quickly averted their eyes, not wanting to meet Myrtle’s gaze. All knew the tumultuous history between Myrtle Crepe and Edna Daisey and none wanted to be caught taking sides, not if they knew what was good for them.

Edna was a sturdy redhead and Myrtle’s contemporary. She had been the librarian at Colleen’s elementary school when Myrtle was Colleen’s teacher and had ruled the library with an iron fist. Signs posted around the library read
NO FOOD! NO GUM! NO TALKING
! Colleen was amazed Edna had actually allowed reading. Edna had prided herself on her meticulous maintenance of the library and its collection. Myrtle’s lax attitude about book due dates and mistreatment of periodicals had driven the obsessive Edna to fits, many of them in front of Colleen and her class.

It was a surprise to everyone when Myrtle and Edna agreed to work together at the Lighthouse Wild Horse Preservation Society after retirement and a surprise to none when, a few weeks later, they were at each other’s throats again. One day, in an effort to “save” the Society’s documents from Myrtle, Edna had secreted them in her tote bag and was leaving the office when Myrtle caught her in the act. Myrtle promptly had Edna removed from the building and the Society. Myrtle and Edna hadn’t exchanged a civil word since.

“Little Bobby, stop loitering and come here!” Myrtle said, turning her displeasure on her son.

Colleen watched Bobby walk toward her. Bobby was forty, unmarried, and still living with his mother. He was as wide as he was tall, with pudgy cheeks, sparkling blue eyes, and graying hair that was cut short and parted on the side. His blue preservation society uniform was snug around his belly; his shorts rode up on his plump inner thighs; and his matching socks were stretched to just below his sunburned, dimpled knees. Colleen wondered why he let his mother dress him like that.

“Morning,” Bobby said, spotting Colleen standing in the station entrance.

“Things busy today?” Colleen asked as he approached.

Bobby sighed and rolled his eyes in Myrtle’s direction.

“Little Bobby!” Myrtle said, advancing toward Colleen and Bobby.

“Little Bobby,” Bobby said, mimicking his mother under his breath.

“Good morning, Mrs. Crepe,” Colleen said in as sweet a tone as she could muster. Since nothing else had worked, Colleen thought she’d try killing Myrtle with kindness.

“Isn’t it enough you’ve cast a spell on the men at the station? Now you’re after my son?” Myrtle protectively grabbed Bobby’s hand. “Well, your charms won’t work on my Little Bobby. He’s a fine boy.”

“Mother!” Bobby said with a hiss and yanked his hand away.

“Yes, he is, Mrs. Crepe,” Colleen said, winking at the mortified Bobby.

Myrtle gave Colleen a quick head-to-toe appraisal. “A woman in her thirties not married. Humph. Believe me, your looks aren’t going to last, Leenie Beanie.”

Colleen’s cheeks reddened. Leenie Beanie. Myrtle had a way of finding a soft spot and stomping all over it. So what if she had been the tallest and skinniest kid in her school? So what if she had been the only girl to stand in the back row for class pictures every year? She wasn’t so tall or skinny now. Besides, how would Myrtle like to know what the kids had called her?

“Colleen doesn’t have time for marriage,” Nellie said, joining them outside the station. “She has a career.”

“Careers like hers are for men,” Myrtle said and snorted for emphasis.

“
I
run a business,” Nellie said.

“Exactly my point.”

Nellie opened her mouth to reply, then clamped it shut. The pupils of Colleen’s steel blue eyes narrowed. She wanted to give Myrtle a swift kick in her elderly derriere but decided to spare Bobby the embarrassment of seeing his mother spanked in public. He had suffered enough.

“Now that the horses are safe, why don’t we go help Dr. Wales,” Nellie said, changing the subject. “I heard he has a new foal on the way.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Nellie, if you’re keeping things from me…”

“Like anyone could keep something from you,” Nellie said a little too sweetly.

Myrtle studied Nellie a moment. “Okay then. We’re off to Doc’s.”

Myrtle marched down the road. Nellie and Bobby followed, unhappy ducklings. Myrtle jumped into her pickup and honked loudly. Nellie jogged and Bobby waddled to catch up. Colleen cringed as Bobby wedged himself into the middle of the front seat. Before Nellie could get the passenger door closed, the pickup was moving. Nellie managed to close the door and wave to Colleen before the vehicle disappeared in a cloud of sandy dust down the road.

Colleen shook her head and walked across the driveway. She called for Sparky who, seconds later, shot out from the back of the station with an old leather shoe in his mouth. “So that’s where my shoe went,” Colleen said, trying to wrestle it free. “Okay, okay,” she said after a brief struggle with the dog. “If you want it that badly, it’s yours.”

Sparky settled down to chew on the shoe. Colleen squatted next to the dog and played with his ears. The dog had been a gift from her father when her parents moved to New Orleans for work. According to her father, every decent fire chief had to have a dog. She knew the gift had more to do with her father’s worries about her safety and living alone.

Colleen didn’t particularly like living by herself but it beat the complications of having another person in the house. She had tried living with her college sweetheart after graduation and it had been disaster. After a year, he had popped the question. She had tearfully declined his proposal. She wasn’t ready for marriage and didn’t think she would be for some time. She moved out of their apartment the next day. It wasn’t fair to him to stay. She could never give him the commitment he wanted. She cried for a week, sorry for the pain she had caused him, then moved back home to the Outer Banks and became a firefighter with Whalehead Fire and Rescue.

The alarm on Colleen’s watch went off. Sparky jumped, dropped the shoe, and ran to her side. The Border collie knew what the beeping meant. Time for morning rounds. Colleen smiled, not knowing which of them enjoyed rounds more. For Sparky, it was a time to put his nose out the window and into the wind. For her, driving the slim barrier island was a time of reflection about her life and the island.

As she and Sparky toured the island, Colleen pondered how Corolla had changed from a rustic destination for sportsmen to a vacation retreat for northern suburbanites. She wasn’t sorry to see the practical, one-story, hurricane-proof cement structures go, but she wasn’t thrilled about the new estates either. She missed the miles of dune grass and wildflowers that once covered her island. And there was nothing like rounding a bend in the road and spotting a horse with her foal in the late afternoon sun.

Colleen scanned the road ahead, squinted at the sky, and sighed. “Not again.” Sparky cocked his head. He saw it, too. Smoke. The brown-and-gray, billowy kind that comes from burning trees and brush. Colleen pressed the gas pedal, flipped on her vehicle’s flashing lights, and drove toward the development of Island Sands.

Colleen’s breathing grew shallow as she neared Island Sands. She forced herself to inhale deeply. She needed to be calm, professional. Her past confrontations with Pinky Salvatore had not ended well.

Antonio “Pinky” Salvatore was a developer from Long Island, New York, who had arrived in Corolla three years ago. His Island Sands was a community of opulent estates near the southern end of Corolla. The Mafia rumors made Pinky the closest thing the area had to the criminal element. But that wasn’t what bothered Colleen. What bothered Colleen was how Pinky repeatedly ordered his men to burn debris. Nothing stopped him. Not citations. Not fines. Not even threats to shut down construction.

Pinky’s recurring violations made Colleen a frequent visitor to his construction trailer. Colleen’s visits to Pinky made Bill Dorman, her closest friend and the Currituck County sheriff, jealous. Bill was straightforward and sensible. He had told Colleen directly that he thought the New York developer was interested in her. She had told Bill he was being ridiculous but she knew what he said was true. Every time she visited Pinky’s trailer, the businessman made a romantic proposition. These inevitable, unwanted propositions were why Colleen dreaded her visits.

Colleen’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the number. Bill. He must have sensed she was on her way to see Pinky. She hit the
ANSWER
button.

“Good morning,” Colleen said, smiling in anticipation of Bill’s jealous warning.

“Not so good for some of us,” Bill said.

“Before you get started about Pinky—”

“Mr. Salvatore isn’t my concern right now. I need you to meet me on the beach at the northern end, just inside the sanctuary.”

Something was wrong. Bill only referred to Pinky as Mr. Salvatore when he was speaking in his official capacity as Currituck County sheriff. “What’s up?” she asked.

“You’ll see when you get here,” Bill said and hung up.

Colleen changed course and headed toward the northern end. She hit the button for the station on her cell phone. Pinky Salvatore would have to deal with Jimmy today. Colleen smiled picturing the disappointment on Pinky’s face when he opened the door to his trailer, two glasses of champagne in hand, and found the mustached and tattooed Captain Bartlett on his doorstep instead of her.

Colleen zipped up
the wet sand of the restricted-access area of the northern beach. Sparky thrust his nose out the passenger window, wagged his tail, and barked at the water spraying from the tires onto his face. She spotted Bill’s white government-issue SUV, detailed with a black stripe and the word “Sheriff,” parked near the foot of the dunes. Bright yellow caution tape tied to metal spikes flapped in the ocean breeze. Seagulls perched atop the stakes and circled overhead.

Colleen parked next to Bill. A gull on one of the stakes screeched in protest, then settled on the hood of her vehicle to view the activity. Sparky’s nose twitched out the window, catching a whiff of something potent mixed with the salty sea air. The dog let out several sharp barks of protest as Colleen forced him to remain in the car. She left the windows open and closed the door.

Bill waved Colleen over to where he and Rodney Warren, Bill’s fresh-faced deputy, stood staring at a pool of ocean water. She trudged through the sand, ducked under the tape, and approached the two men. The wind shifted and then it hit her—the distinctly awful smell of decaying animal tissue. She hoped a stray horse hadn’t been killed. Colleen pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth to keep from gagging.

“What died?” she asked, trying to keep her breathing shallow.

“Not what—who,” Bill said.

Colleen raised her eyebrows in surprise. Bill stepped aside to reveal the body in the pool. Colleen slowly approached the water’s edge. The water lapped at her boots as she leaned forward and shielded her eyes from the sun to get a better look. The sight of dead bodies, human or otherwise, had never bothered her. In school she had actually looked forward to dissections in biology lab. The inner workings and structures of frogs, pigs, and crawfish had all fascinated her. It was only when the class began dissecting a cat that she refused to participate. She just couldn’t do it out of respect and love for Snowflake, her pet cat at the time.

Most eyes would have been drawn to the body’s badly decomposed face and frozen grin, but what attracted Colleen’s attention was the skin. Even though it was bloated and peeling, Colleen knew it had been burned. Pieces of what had been clothing were now one with the charred flesh. She inched forward to examine the body more closely, but just as the smell of formaldehyde had gotten to her in biology lab, the stench of decay got to her now. Colleen stepped back before the odor of the rotting flesh warming in the mid-morning sun overwhelmed her.

“Two kids found it this morning,” Bill said.

“You think it was burned somewhere on the beach?” she asked, joining him upwind of the body.

“Not likely. This body was dumped or washed in.”

“An accelerant, maybe gasoline,” Colleen said. “When I talk to the coroner I’ll have a better idea.”

Bill folded his arms over his chest, glanced up the beach a moment, then turned back to Colleen.

“Look, Colleen, I called you out of protocol and professional courtesy. I don’t want you interfering.”

“When do I interfere?”

“When don’t you?”

Rodney retreated and began taking photos of the body, an activity preferable to witnessing the confrontation between the sheriff and fire chief.

“I’ll stay out of the way,” Colleen said.

“I wish that were true,” Bill said and gazed out at the ocean.

Colleen sighed. Okay. So maybe she had conducted some unofficial investigations of Bill’s cases in the past. She had only been trying to help. And if it hadn’t been for her unsolicited input and discoveries she was convinced that many of his cases would have gone unsolved. Bill was good at what he did, but as far as Colleen was concerned he was too “by the book.” Sometimes it was better to go with your gut.

Colleen had developed a great respect for her instincts when, at the age of eight, she had detected her babysitter’s affair with her best friend’s husband. The affair would probably have remained a secret if all parties involved hadn’t lived in the same apartment building. Colleen’s babysitter lived on the first floor with her two children. Directly above the babysitter lived the babysitter’s lover and his wife, the babysitter’s best friend. And on the floor above the babysitter’s lover and his wife lived young Colleen and her parents. Given the close quarters, it hadn’t taken curious Colleen long to figure out that while she and the babysitter’s children were playing outside, the grown-ups were inside playing games of their own.

Young Colleen had had no idea that announcing the infidelity at a neighborhood picnic would cause such a fuss. Tears were shed. Punches were thrown. Ambulances were summoned. There had been a lot of screaming, not the least of which had been directed at her. Her mother and father had been furious at Colleen for not minding her own business. Did she know how hard it was for them to find a good babysitter? Colleen still didn’t understand why she had been grounded. She wasn’t the one who had had the affair. As far as she was concerned, if the babysitter hadn’t been up to hanky-panky with her best friend’s husband the whole ugly incident could have been avoided.