“Yes, you do. Now are you going to let me in? My mom is in there and she needs me.”
“Your mom is a suspect, Poole, and unless you’re her lawyer you’re not setting foot anywhere near her.”
“I was wrong,” she said. “You’re not a dead cod. You’re dead, period. Or at least dead from the neck up.” She tapped his noggin. “Yup. Just what I suspected. Solid ivory.”
He had the good grace to look offended.“I’m just doing my duty. Please go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere, but if you don’t step aside you’re the one who’s going away.”
That seemed to register. Officer Jackson obviously knew that Odelia was his boss’s niece, and not just any old niece but the man’s favorite niece, who’d helped him out with quite a few investigations in the recent past. What was more, she was now dating one of Hampton Cove’s foremost police detectives.
He still continued undecided, though. That’s the trouble with making decisions: either way you go, there are going to be consequences so it’s probably better not to do anything.
Odelia decided to try a different tack.“Come on, Jackson. Have a heart. That’s my mother in there. What if it were your mom?”
“My mom would never get involved with murder,” he said a little huffily.
“Hey, that’s something we’ve got in common: my mom wouldn’t get involved with murder either!”
He rolled his eyes.“Chief Lip told me not to let anyone in so I’m not letting anyone in.” Clearly feeling this was the last thing he was prepared to say on the matter, he clasped his hands behind his back and directed his gaze in the middle distance, studiously ignoring this pesky troublemaker.
Incensed, she poked him in the stomach, burying her index finger to the knuckle.
“Hey! That’s police property,” he sputtered, touching the offended spot.
“Oh, fine,” she said, throwing up her hands and walking off. She turned back to the cop, walking backward now. “This isn’t over, Jackson. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, making a throwaway gesture.
She hurried around the side of the library, where a paved footpath was lined by mulch-covered patches of rosebushes, made her way to the back, then hung a sharp left before arriving at the service entrance which doubled as the library’s emergency exit. To her surprise, her uncle hadn’t stationed anyone at this door, and she blew right through and into the short corridor that led to a small cafeteria and a dressing room slash storeroom where authors and guests could get changed before stepping onto the stage for their readings.
Odelia took a quick peek inside the dressing room and held up her hand in greeting for Sarah Flunk, another one of her uncle’s officers.
“There’s no one guarding the backdoor,” she said.
“On it,” said Sarah with a nod.
“Have you seen my mom?”
Sarah gestured with her head.“Library. Your uncle is talking to her now.”
Moving past a stack of unpacked boxes—newly acquired books yet to be cataloged, Odelia pushed through the door and into the library. She’d arrived at the left of the stage, and the first thing she saw was Abe Cornwall, the county coroner, leaning over what was unmistakably the late Chris Ackerman—the self-proclaimed world’s bestselling writer.
She blinked, not expecting to come upon the dead man quite so suddenly.
Chris Ackerman was still seated in his chair, leaning precariously to his right, a large crimson spot on his white shirt, a pen of some kind sticking out of his neck.
Abe looked up when he sensed her presence.“Oh, hey, Odelia. I liked that piece you did on Philomena, the blind groundhog. Has the rescue shelter found her a new home yet?”
“Um…”
“Oh, well. If they haven’t, my wife wants to take the plunge. Francine is simply crazy about pets, and figures why not a groundhog this time? Why always cats and dogs, right?”
“Right,” said Odelia, staring at the dead man as if transfixed. Even though she’d reported on crime plenty of times in her career as a reporter, and solved more murders than most journos, the sight of a dead person never failed to unnerve her to a great extent.
Abe, a scruffy-looking man with a pronounced paunch and gray hair that seemed to explode from his scalp in classic Einstein-style, returned his attention to the dead writer.“Such a pity, huh? Francine loves his books. Especially his Max Frost series. Read every single one of them. I’m more of a science fiction and fantasy reader myself. Give me a good Asimov or Ursula Le Guin any day over Chris Ackerman.” He shrugged and produced a cheerful smile. “I guess my wife will have to find herself a new favorite writer.”
“How did he die?” asked Odelia.
“Fountain pen to the jugular. Or, more accurately, the carotid artery. Very apt, I suppose. For a writer, I mean. Mind you, there are better ways to go.”
“I’ll bet there are,” she murmured.
Abe tsk-tsked as he scrutinized the fountain pen.
“What is it?” asked Odelia.
“Looks like he was killed with his own pen, too. That’s not very nice.”
Odelia agreed that killing a writer with his own pen was not a nice thing to do, and left the coroner to continue his examination.
Stepping off the stage, she spotted her mother seated in the kids’ section of the library, along with Uncle Alec, while Chase was talking to Odelia’s dad while taking copious notes. Odelia’s grandmother, meanwhile, was seated in the PC nook, surfing the web.
Odelia made a beeline for the pirate ship where her mother and uncle were seated, and the moment Mom spotted her, she got up, stepped out of the ship, and they hugged.
“I’m so happy you’re here,” said Mom. “This is a nightmare.”
Chapter 5
So we were sleuthing again. And if I say sleuthing I mean looking for clues the Hallmark Movies& Mysteries Channel way. I have to confess I’d never liked the Hallmark Channel before. Over at Marge and Gran’s house they watch that stuff all the time, and it hasn’t done Dooley any favors. It’s turned him into a sappy cat. Sappy as in overly mawkish, especially when it comes to Harriet, on whom he’s had a crush since just aboutforever.
Harriet and Brutus had gone off to circle the block and talk to any animal they met—except for dogs—Harriet was sticking to her decision not to let any mutt so much as breathe on her flawless white fur—and Dooley and I watched them stalk off. Yes, detective work is a lot like being a Mormon missionary: it’s all about you and your buddy, knocking on doors and spreading theword.
“Max?” said Dooley, even before we’d put one paw in front of the other.
“Uh-huh?” I said, searching around for our first potential eyewitness.
“Can I talk to you?”
“You are talking to me, Dooley.”
“I watched the Discovery Channel last night.”
Progress. It would appear that the Hallmark Channel was losing its dominant position in the Poole household.
“And? What did you learn?” I asked.
He suddenly shivered.“Nothing good,” he intimated.
This didn’t surprise me. Oftentimes people—or as in the case of Dooley pets—respond to being weaned off the Hallmark Channel by experiencing dizzy spells and bouts of insomnia. “It’ll pass,” I assured him as I looked up at the streetlamp we were standing under, and wondered how long it would be before the first dog trotted over to use it as a urinal.
“There was this documentary on about the end of the world as we know it,” Dooley continued. His eyes had widened to their full dilation. “Max—it won’t be long now before the entire country is either swallowed up by a gigantic tsunami of ocean waves, or the earth simply opens up underneathus, or Yellowstone finally erupts and kills us all!”
Oh, boy. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to advise Dooley to stop watching the Hallmark Channel after all. “Look, Dooley—I’m sure you misunderstood. Nothing is going to drown us or crush us or—”