Firework Fiasco Read online

  “Find kittens,” I said to Charlie after I’d prepared the crate for the kittens when he brought them out.

  Charlie understood what I was asking and headed into the pipe. Less than a minute later, he came out with a white kitten that looked to be about three weeks old in his mouth. I transferred the kitten into the crate, then sent Charlie back in. Next, he brought out an orange kitten, then a black one, then another orange. I had him do one last sweep to make sure we had them all, then I set a trap for the mama just in case she came back. I’d swing by in the morning to check the trap. Hopefully, if she was still alive and nearby, I’d be able to capture her and reunite her with her babies.

  When I was satisfied we had all the babies I loaded the crate into the car and Charlie and I headed home. I could take the kittens to the Zoo, but they were young enough to require bottle feeding for a couple of weeks at least, so I planned to take them home to Alex, who had fostered kittens in the past and knew exactly what to do.

  “Ma,” Catherine screeched when I walked in through the kitchen door.

  “Kittens,” Alex, who was sitting with Catherine, chimed in when she saw what I was carrying.

  “They appear to be abandoned, although I set a trap for the mama just in case she comes back. I hoped you’d be willing to foster them.”

  “I’d love to.” Alex grinned. “I’ll set them up in my bedroom once I finish giving Catherine her snack.”

  I set down the crate with the four kittens near Alex’s feet. “I can take over with Catherine,” I said.

  “Actually, you might want to go check in with Zak. The deputy who’s taking over for Salinger came by earlier and spoke to both him and Nona. I wasn’t included in the conversation, but I overheard enough to know the body of the man Nona swears to have seen this morning was found by some hikers this afternoon.”

  I let my smile slip. “So Nona was right. There was a murder.”

  “It sounds like it. Zak will know more about it. I’ll finish up with Catherine, then put her down for a nap. Once she’s settled I’ll see to the kittens.”

  I gave Alex a hug. “Thanks, sweetie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  ******

  As it turned out, the man whose body was found in the woods wasn’t Elvis #3. He was a transient who lived in the woods not far from where he was found. A deputy with any experience would have known right away that the man who was found wearing Elvis #3’s blue sequined jacket wasn’t the man to whom the jacket had belonged.

  “So how does a transient end up wearing the bloodstained jacket Elvis #3 was wearing the last time I saw him?” Nona asked as she sipped on her before-dinner whiskey while she sat with Zak and me by the pool, enjoying the beautiful summer evening.

  “I suppose someone, probably whoever removed Elvis #3’s body from the motel room, could have disposed of the jacket, and the transient might have found it in a dumpster,” I answered.

  “Why would anyone want a jacket that was covered with blood?” Nona frowned.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Nothing about this makes sense.”

  “Do you think maybe the transient was in some way involved in Elvis #3’s death?”

  I glanced at Nona. “Maybe. It does seem the odds would be pretty astronomical that some random guy would find, take, and wear a bloodstained jacket he found in a dumpster, only to end up dead himself later that same day. Did the deputy say how the man died?”

  “Buckner didn’t have the medical examiner’s report yet, but it appears the man died from natural causes, most likely a heart attack,” Zak answered. “Like you suggested, he also suspects the jacket Elvis #3 was wearing when he was stabbed was discarded by whoever took the body and the transient found it in a dumpster.”

  “So he believes Nona’s story?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure he believes things went down exactly as Nona recalled them, but he’s starting to come around to the idea that someone wearing the blue sequined jacket met with violence.”

  Nona picked up her empty glass and stood up. “I think I’m going to go in and lay down for a bit. I’m afraid all the excitement is beginning to take its toll.”

  “We’re going to BBQ steaks in about an hour. Do you want me to call you when dinner’s ready?”

  “Just save me a plate. I think I might take a little nap.”

  “I hope she’s going to be okay,” I said to Zak after Nona went into the house.

  “Me too. She likes us to believe she’s a spring chicken capable of doing anything a woman half her age would be, but she really is getting on in years. I worry that her lifestyle is going to hurt her.”

  “Has she always drunk so much?”

  Zak shook his head. “Before the stroke she was a teetotaler. I think the drinking, the motorcycle, and the devil-may-care attitude are all part of a persona I suspect was lurking beneath the surface all along. She seems a lot happier than she used to be, and I want her to be happy, but I’m just not sure how long her seventysomething body can keep up with her twentysomething lifestyle.”

  Zak wasn’t wrong to be concerned. Nona did like to burn the candle at both ends. The problem with that was that eventually, the candle burned down completely.

  “Did you ever talk to Levi about the weekend?” I asked him.

  “I did. He said the entire Denton family would love to go sailing as long as the weather cooperates. I wasn’t sure how sailing would mix with the morning sickness Ellie has been having, but he said she seems to be past the worst of it.”

  “I spoke to her yesterday and she said she was feeling a lot better,” I confirmed. “She even seemed really enthusiastic about the baby for the first time since she found out she was pregnant again. We should check to make sure we have a life vest that will fit Eli. My mom and dad are going to watch Catherine for us, and we’ll bring my little sister with us. We’ll all meet back at the house for a BBQ after.”

  Zak stretched out his long legs. “Scooter mentioned he wanted to ask Tucker to come along. I told him it was okay.”

  “Just be sure to remind the boys that there’ll be a toddler on board, so no horsing around,” I reminded Zak.

  “The kids know the rules.”

  Zak went in to grab the steaks for the grill, so I checked on the kids. Scooter, one of the two teenagers Zak and I were raising, was playing video games, and I reminded him that he’d need to wash up for dinner in thirty minutes. Alex was feeding the baby kittens, who seemed to have settled right in. After informing her that Zak had the steaks on the grill I headed to the nursery to check on Catherine. She was still asleep, so I began to speak to her softly. She hadn’t slept all that long, but she needed to wake up now or she’d never sleep that night. Still, I’d learned long ago that waking her abruptly by picking her up usually left both of us in tears.

  “Time to wake up, princess,” I said softly as I walked around the room, straightening things. “Daddy’s making dinner and we’re going to eat out on the patio.”

  Catherine slowly opened her eyes. She looked around until she saw me, then smiled. “Ma.”

  I reached out my arms and she reached out for me. “That’s my girl, all smiles for Mama.”

  I lay Catherine down on the changing table and took care of her wet diaper before grabbing a sweater against the chill I knew would follow the setting sun. I picked her up and carried her downstairs. I could hear the kids talking to Zak on the patio.

  “Da.”

  “That’s right. Da is grilling our dinner. Well, not your dinner,” I amended as I walked out onto the patio, where Zak had already set up Catherine’s high chair.

  I sat her in her chair and gave her a small toy dolphin to play with, which made her giggle as if I’d just told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. I took out my phone to capture the moment with my camera. Not that I didn’t already have a couple million photos of Catherine. She was, after all, the cutest baby in the entire world. After I snapped the photo I pulled it up to look at it. Displayed on the
screen was the Moments view, which showed all the photos I’d taken that day, including the ones I’d taken from inside the motel room where Nona was sure Elvis had been killed.

  “Zak,” I said as my eye focused on one photo in particular.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Take a look at this.” I pulled up the photo and handed my phone to Zak.

  He looked at it and frowned. “When did you take this?”

  “This morning. After we returned to the room I wanted to be sure I had photos of the place as we found it for future reference. But I didn’t notice this until now.”

  “I guess we’d better call Deputy Buckner.”

  Chapter 5

  Friday, July 6

  “So, I’m taking photos of Catherine and I go to look at the result of what I’d taken and the photos I’d taken in Elvis’s room earlier in the day are displayed on the same page,” I said to Ellie the next morning as we shared coffee in my kitchen before I left for the Zoo and Ellie went to her mommy-and-me class. Both Eli and Catherine were sitting in high chairs next to us, cooing and chatting and having a grand old time. “Right there, plain as day, in one of the photos is an image of a man reflected in the bathroom mirror.”

  Ellie gasped. “Get out! You mean there was someone in the room while you and Nona were looking around?”

  “Apparently. I glanced into the bathroom when we first arrived, but the shower curtain was drawn and I didn’t think to pull it open. I guess the guy must have pulled it aside and stepped out while I was snapping photos in the other room. I would never have seen him, but his image was reflected in the bathroom mirror, which was reflected in the mirror on the closet door.”

  Ellie tore off a corner of the blueberry muffin she’d been picking at for the past ten minutes. “I can’t believe you were in the room for several minutes at least and had no idea there was someone watching you.”

  I nodded as I took a sip of my coffee. “Yeah, I was surprised by the photo as well, although I was taking the photos pretty quickly, and I was talking to Nona the entire time, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to each shot. I was just trying to cover all the different angles. When I looked at the photos I could see I focused most of my attention on the bed and the floor near and under it. I must have thought if there was going to be a usable clue it would be near the murder site. I wasn’t even trying to take a photo of the mirror on the closet door. I just caught it in the corner of the photo I took of the dresser.”

  “What did the deputy say when you showed him the photo?” Ellie asked as she handed Eli one of his toddler cookies.

  “Zak was the one who spoke to him. I know Buckner had Zak send him copies of all the photos I took, and he sent a crime scene unit in to take a closer look at the room. I think he’s finally beginning to get the idea that something very odd is going on.”

  “How’s Nona doing with all this?” Ellie asked with a look of sympathy on her face.

  I paused to consider. “She seems kind of overwhelmed, which I suppose is understandable. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to wake up next to a guy who had obviously been murdered only to have there be no trace of him or the blood on the bed when she returned to the scene of the crime just ninety minutes later. There was one point when I saw a hint of doubt in her eye. It was while we were discussing the situation with Deputy Buckner. He made some good points about how things really couldn’t have happened the way she described, and I think she might have been toying with the idea that she was losing her mind. The fact that Elvis’s jacket was covered in blood when it was found seemed to add credence to her recollections, even though it’s completely absurd that it was found on a different dead man.”

  “Have you heard anything more about that?” Ellie wondered.

  I shook my head. “No, though Zak said the man has been identified. His name was Walton Welsh. It seems he’d been homeless for a number of years, but based on what Buckner was able to find out, he used to be a stockbroker. I guess he went over the deep end during the last big crash. He quit his job and left his family.”

  Ellie frowned. “How very sad.”

  “It is sad,” I agreed. “I guess you never know when a single event will act as a catalyst to a complete breakdown.”

  “Did Bucker know why Welsh had the jacket?”

  “He suspects he found it but wasn’t certain. I guess he’s going to ask around in the hope that someone might know more about what happened. Of course, now that he has the photo of the man in the room, I think he’s going to be occupied with that.”

  Ellie looked once again at the photo of the reflection of the man in the bathroom. “The way this guy’s head is turned you can’t really see his face. Did Deputy Buckner think he could identify him?”

  “No, it didn’t sound like it based on what Zak said. Not with the photo alone. The forensic guys are working on it, and Buckner plans to take the photo over to the Elvis contest to show it to a few people. He hoped someone would recognize the guy based on his clothing, build, and hair color.”

  “Ma,” Catherine screamed as loud as she could while throwing the piece of banana she’d been eating onto the floor.

  I had to laugh at the ways she chose to get my attention. “What? Are we ignoring you?”

  Catherine was looking at Eli.

  “Are you mad that he has a cookie and you don’t?” I handed her a baby spoon to play with, which she proceeded to bang on her high-chair tray.

  Ellie used a wet wipe to clean up Eli after he finished most of his cookie. “I’m still amazed that Catherine can say ma and da. Eli wasn’t talking at all until he was nine months old, and then it was hit and miss.”

  “Catherine is definitely Zak’s child, at least in terms of her intelligence. I know she’s only six months old, but I can already see how smart she is. She’s really creative when it comes to communicating her wants and needs. She might not have words for everything yet, but I have a feeling she’s going to be an early talker. Zak’s mother told me he was talking practically from birth, which I’m sure was an exaggeration. She also said he was talking in complete sentences before he was a year old, which I totally believe.”

  “Catherine may have Zak’s intelligence, but she looks exactly like you, with that dark curly hair and those huge blue eyes that already seem to mirror her emotions. If she ends up with your curiosity and spontaneity as well, I think you’re going to have your hands full when she gets a little older.”

  “Let’s just hope she ends up with Zak’s easygoing nature. I’m not sure he’d survive if he had two emotional, spontaneous women on his hands.”

  Ellie smiled. “You do tend to attract more than your share of trouble.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Now that Buckner seems to have picked up the reins of the investigation, are you going to continue to be involved?”

  My reaction was decisive. “I’m not. When I had Catherine, I promised Zak and myself I’d give up my sleuthing hobby. I wouldn’t even have done what I did yesterday, except Nona was pretty frantic, and Buckner seemed to think she was just a crazy old woman who didn’t know what she’d seen. Now that he’s actively looking into things, I’m going to go about my day, starting with the Zoo. Do you and Levi want to come over for dinner? We can talk about our plans for sailing on Sunday.”

  “I’d love to come. I’ll check with Levi and let you know what time works best for him, and I’ll talk to Zak so we can coordinate the food. I’m happy to bring at least part of it. There’s this new pasta salad recipe I’ve been wanting to try, and I’ve had a yearning to toss together a good old-fashioned potato salad.”

  I couldn’t help but lick my lips. “My mouth is already watering. I think I’ll invite my parents and Harper. She’s going to come sailing with us while my parents watch Catherine for me.”

  “I’m surprised you aren’t bringing her.”

  “Eli is all right in the water and able to swim with a life vest. If the worst happened and we had to aband
on the boat, he’d be able to stay afloat. I haven’t had a chance to spend much time in the pool with Catherine. I know the odds of anything happening are almost zero, but I’d still feel better if I knew she wouldn’t panic if she did happen to end up in the water.”

  “I guess I don’t blame you. When Levi wanted to start teaching Eli to swim before he could walk I thought he was nuts, but now he’s pretty comfortable in the pool when Mom or Dad are with him. He hasn’t spent a lot of time in the lake, but I’m sure by the end of the summer he’ll be fine in the open water as well.”

  ******

  Later that morning, I worked side by side with Aspen as we got the cub settled into his temporary home. While most of the cubs we fostered were housed in a single large cage, we liked to quarantine new arrivals for a few days so we could check them out medically and evaluate their overall temperament. The cub was about three months old and had been orphaned when his mother had been hit by a car. He was shy, which wasn’t unusual for a new arrival. If things went as planned, he would winter with us and then be released into the wild next summer.

  “He’s such a sweetie,” Aspen said as she watched him eating the fruit she had just given him. “The only part of this job I’m struggling with is not getting too attached to every animal that comes through the door.”

  “It can be tough to keep your distance emotionally, which is why the Zimmerman clan has a house full of animals.”

  “How’d it go with the kittens yesterday?”

  “I found four, but there was no sign of the mother. Alex is fostering them and I set a trap for the mother, but when I stopped by to check this morning I hadn’t had any luck. I’ll go back to recheck the trap later. If she’s around I’d like to reunite mom and babies. If she isn’t, Alex is off school for the summer and happy to take on surrogate mom duties.”