I glanced around at the dozens of onlookers, all gleefully rubbernecking.
“Not if all of Hampton Cove is watching your every move,” I said, “including the mayor.”
Mayor Butterwick, who’d looked as shocked as her loyal subjects, now seemed to come out of her temporary paralysis and started barking orders. “Odelia, call an ambulance. Alec, cordon off the crime scene. Chase, take Tex into custody.” Then she glanced around and yelled, “No one move! You’re all staying put!”
This was all people needed to start dispersing. It’s a thing called group dynamics. But they hadn’t counted on Charlene Butterwick, who yelled, “Anyone move, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice. And don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve seen your faces!”
And she did. Any politician worth their salt is familiar with the names and faces of their constituents, and Charlene definitely was worth her salt, and her pepper, too.
“I don’t like this, Max,” said Dooley now. “I don’t want Tex to go to prison.”
“I don’t like it either, Dooley,” I intimated. “But if Tex really did kill Jaqlyn, he probably should go to prison.”
“But Jaqlyn wasn’t a nice person.”
“You mean he deserved to be killed?”
“Well…” Dooley wavered. “I guess not,” he finally conceded. “Or maybe just a little.”
“You can’t kill a person just a little, Dooley. Either you kill them or you don’t.”
“I guess so,” he said, sounding sad.
We watched on as Chase led a stupefied Tex away, Uncle Alec removed himself from the scene, speaking orders into his phone, and Odelia gave instructions to the ambulance people, presumably to revive Francine and take care of Monica. There probably wasn’t a whole lot they could do for Jaqlyn.
Brutus and Harriet came hurrying up, Brutus with a piece of chicken filet dangling from his lips and Harriet with lips smeared with red currant sauce for some reason. They’d clearly taken up position near the food table and had done themselves well.
“What’s going on?” asked Harriet.
I was ready to repeat my earlier report but Dooley beat me to it. “Tex wanted to kill Jaqlyn just a little bit but overdid it and now Jaqlyn is dead and Tex will go to prison.”
“What?!!!” Brutus cried, and to indicate how shook up he was by this bulletin from the front lines, dropped the piece of chicken and didn’t even bother to pick it up again.
“Tex? Killed Jaqlyn?” asked Harriet, also looking extremely distraught.
“Sadly, yes,” I confirmed. “Chase just arrested him, though not wholeheartedly,” I quickly added, to make it clear the cop wasn’t one of your devil-may-care arresters.
Odelia crouched down and absentmindedly stroked my fur, something she tends to do when times are tough and she’s not feeling on top of the world. It seems to relax her.
“Bad business,” I said commiseratively.
“The worst,” she agreed, then got up to comfort her mother, who was looking shell-shocked, and probably in need of medical assistance herself.
“I say Jaqlyn had it coming,” said Brutus now, another one whose moral compass was a little out of whack.
“You can’t say that, Brutus,” I said. “No one deserves to die. Not even doctors who steal unto half your patients and say nasty things behind your back.”
“Did Jaqlyn say nasty things behind Tex’s back?” asked Brutus.
“That’s what I heard.”
Kingman had come waddling up. He looked appropriately grave. “Tough day,” he announced. “The day when the law starts arresting good people like Tex is the day…” He thought for a moment, then finished with, “… well, not a good day, that’s for sure.”
“Did you know that Jaqlyn had been talking smack behind Tex’s back?” asked Brutus.
“Oh, sure. Misty told me two nights ago how she overheard Jaqlyn tell her human that Tex was past his prime and making so many mistakes it was a miracle he hadn’t killed a patient yet. And Buster said his human had stopped going to Tex after meeting Jaqlyn on the street and being told that Tex never even finished medical school. Can you imagine? Jaqlyn said Tex was entirely self-taught and had learned the trade by dissecting rats.”
“But… why didn’t you tell us?!” Harriet cried. “You should have told us, Kingman!”
The cat looked at us dumbly. “But… I thought you knew. I thought everybody knew.”
Oh, boy. If this was true, and Tex knew, he had a big fat motive for murder.
Chapter 27
Vesta, who’d decided to stay home from the Jones garden party, heard the news the way most people in Hampton Cove heard it: through the grapevine. In her case she’d been removing greenfly from her precious roses when suddenly she became aware of the sound of heavy breathing. When she looked up, she saw that the breather was none other than Marcie Trapper, and judging from the woman’s sparkling eyes, flushed face and flaring nostrils, she was about to spill some particularly startling piece of news.
Without awaiting permission, Marcie burst out, “Tex has been arrested for murder!”
Vesta narrowed her eyes at her neighbor, then sniffed the air, trying to determine if Marcie had been hitting the bottle a little too hard. She knew Marcie and Ted had planned to go to the Jones bash, and knowing her neighbors also knew that their capacity for imbibing alcoholic beverages was above the norm.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked therefore.
“Yes, but who cares? Didn’t you hear what I just said? Tex has been arrested for the murder of Jaqlyn Jones! Odelia herself found him in the trunk of her dad’s car. Dead! Apparently he’d been hit over the head and the body was still warm when she found him!”
“Huh,” said Vesta. This was news. “They arrested Tex?”
“Chase did. Carted him off to the station house tout de suite, as the French say. Can you imagine what Marge must be feeling right now? She looked devastated. I tried to talk to her but she only spoke in monosyllables. Poor Marge. I’ve never seen her like that.”
“Right,” said Vesta, removing her gardening gloves, her gardening apron and her gardening scarf. Then, without another word, she made for the great indoors.
“Where are you going?” Marcie yelled, clearly disappointed with her neighbor’s tepid response.
“To clear my son-in-law’s name!” Vesta yelled back. “He didn’t do it, Marcie.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am that you’re blotto!”
Odelia, under normal circumstances so rational and sane, was shaken up. She was used to investigating all manner of crime, but suddenly felt unequal to the task of investigating this particular crime. Her dad? A murderer? It was hard to fathom.
“I should have seen it coming,” said her mother. “He told me just the other night that something had to be done. But how could I have known he planned to kill Jaqlyn!”
“He’s been under a lot of pressure lately,” Odelia agreed. “But did he think he could get away with this? I mean, he asked me to get his bag from the car. Did he think I wouldn’t see the body?”
“He hasn’t been thinking straight. He must have killed Jaqlyn in a moment of insanity, stuck him in his car and forgotten all about it.” Marge directed an anxious look at her daughter. “I hope the judge will be lenient when he sets your dad’s sentence. I hope he’ll understand that under normal circumstances Tex would never do something like this.”
“We have to get him a good lawyer.”
“The best.”
“I’ll chip in if you can’t afford one, Mom,” said Odelia. “We’ll all chip in.”
“Financially it’s been a tough couple of months,” Mom agreed, “but I can always sell the house, or take a second mortgage.”
“We’ll get through this,” Odelia promised her mother.
The ambulance had arrived twenty minutes earlier and taken care of Francine and Monica. More police officers had been dispatched, and had undertaken the task of taking witness statements from all of those present, which was an undertaking that was still ongoing, as half of Hampton Cove had shown up for Jaqlyn’s and Francine’s party.