“He is not as he appears. There are many layers to Chief Rawlings,” she explained defensively to Haviland, but the poodle didn’t share her interest in the lawman. Haviland growled and jerked his snout toward the road. He was hungry and had grown tired of breathing in the rank smell adrift on the air.
Olivia gave him a sympathetic pat on the head. “It is awful, Captain. We can go.”
The closest police cruiser was parked with its windows open and a sun protector stretched across the windshield. A young officer leaned against the driver’s side door and read a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. He looked up as Olivia approached.
“Chief said you should stop by the station to give your official statement.” He tapped on the clipboard and then cast a sideways glance at Olivia. “You sure you’ve never seen that guy before? He’s not someone from your workplace or maybe a neighbor?”
“I don’t recognize him,” she answered. “I’ve only met my closest neighbors, the Eflands, twice. They’re an older couple and don’t spend much time outside and certainly not when it’s this hot. From what I could see, the victim’s at least twenty years younger than Mr. Efland.”
A predatory glint appeared in the officer’s eyes. “Why are you calling him a victim?”
Olivia frowned. Was this cop some recent hire looking to impress the chief? He was as fresh of face and as awkward of body as a preadolescent boy, but his speech was clipped and laced with arrogance. “I chose that term because unless that man buried himself up to the neck and then somehow found a way to cover his head with a bucket, someone else performed those actions for him.”
Reddening, the eager policeman tried to regain his composure. He studied the sheet on the clipboard again. “You stated that you were out on a walk with your dog and a metal detector,” he said as though she had been doing something indecent. “Find anything of interest near the crime scene?”
Olivia narrowed her eyes. She was quickly losing patience. “I didn’t waste time combing the surrounding area for jewelry or rare coins once I’d lifted up that bucket. However, your department is more than welcome to borrow my Bounty Hunter if you think it would be of use to the investigation.”
Like a child being offered a sweet, the young cop brightened. “Really? That would be great!” He immediately suppressed his exuberance. “We’ll return it to you as soon as we’re done here.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Olivia assured him tersely. “I’ll collect it when I come to the station to sign my statement.” Without waiting to be dismissed, she opened the passenger door of her Range Rover to let Haviland hop inside. As she walked around the rear of her vehicle, the medical examiner’s female assistant came scampering over the dunes.
“You won’t believe this, Bobby!” She pulled on the officer’s sleeve in a familiar gesture. The two uniformed twenty-somethings looked alike and were probably cousins to some degree. Most of the older Oyster Bay families were related in one way or another. The ME’s assistant used her free hand to brush a lock of dark hair from her heart-shaped face while giving Bobby’s shirt another excited tug. “The vic was buried holding a little plastic sand shovel. A green one, just like the bucket that covered his head. He’s got nothing else on him and I mean nothing!”
“No wallet? No ID?”
“Don’t you get what I’m saying? There’d be no place to hide personal effects!” she exclaimed and waved for him to follow her. “The guy was buried buck-ass naked!”
Olivia was met at the front door of Grumpy’s Diner by a roller-skating dwarf. Dixie Weaver was the manager, bookkeeper, hostess, and head waitress of the eatery bearing the same name as her husband. Grumpy, the gifted fry cook, was actually quite pleasant, but he was a man of so few words that people assumed he was unfriendly. He’d earned the moniker early in life, and when it came time to choose a name for the diner, Dixie assured him that “Grumpy’s” would soon become a household word in Oyster Bay. As usual, she was right.
“You’re late this mornin’!” The diminutive proprietor put her hands on her hips and glared at Olivia. “I can’t hold your table on a Labor Day weekend,”
“Believe me, I hadn’t expected to be delayed by the police . . .” Olivia trailed off. Rawlings wouldn’t be pleased if the news that a body was found on the Point traveled around town before he even made it back to the station.
Unfortunately, Olivia could see that she had said too much. Dixie’s eyes lit up and she practically forced the customer seated at the end of counter to topple from his stool. Scooping up his check and his money without a thought to providing change, she pushed him toward the front door and called out, “Have a nice day now, ya hear!”
Flying back to the counter to wipe the area clean, Dixie stood as tall as she could on her white roller skates and patted the stool. “I’m gonna get you some fresh coffee, but if you expect to taste a single drop, you’d best be prepared to finish that sentence.”
She returned with a bowl of water for Haviland and a clean coffee cup for Olivia. Dangling a steaming carafe from her free hand, Dixie batted her false eyelashes. “Come on, lady. I don’t have all day. Those folks in the Evita booth want a refill.”
“Blackmailing me with java.” Olivia scowled in disapproval. “That is low, even for you.”
Dixie dumped the coffeepot on the counter and tugged at a pair of Hello Kitty arm warmers. “Is that a height joke?”
“Of course not.” Olivia wiggled her index finger so that Dixie would skate closer. “You have to swear on all twelve of your children not to breathe a word of this until it’s become a matter of public record.”
Dixie smirked. “My kids ain’t eggs. I don’t have a dozen. Last count it was five. Six at the most.” She poured the coffee. “But you have my word.”
“I found a body on the beach this morning. About a mile and a half north of the lighthouse keeper’s cottage,” Olivia whispered. She watched Dixie absorb the startling information.
Oddly, Dixie’s expression was not of curiosity, but of concern. “Are you okay?”
“I am, thank you. I didn’t know the man, but I pity him. His death was no accident.” Olivia clammed up. “Have you heard of any locals that have gone missing? A wife complaining about a wayward husband for example?”
Ignoring the waving hands coming from the Evita booth, Dixie thought about the question. “I haven’t, but I’ll keep my ears open and my mouth shut. Can I at least tell Grumpy? I’ll explode like an overstuffed turkey if I can’t share this with somebody!”
Olivia nodded. She knew Grumpy was no gossip. “Ask him the same question. He might hear talk among his friends about someone not turning up at home or at work. Maybe we can help the police identify the dead man.”
“We aren’t gonna be able to help unless he’s in the damned restaurant business.” Dixie plastered on her best waitress smile and signaled to the man holding his coffee cup in the air. “Most folks have three whole days off,’Livia. The dead guy probably didn’t have to be anywhere’til Tuesday, the lucky bastard.”
Recalling the grotesque visage and foul odor of the corpse, Olivia frowned. “Trust me, he was not lucky.” She reached into her purse for the chapter she needed to critique by that evening. “And if ever he was, then every ounce of that ran out.” She uncapped her pen to signal that the subject was now closed.