Twice Dipped Murder: A Cozy Mystery (The Rita Reincarnated Cozies Book 3) Read online

  “Alright,” I answered. “But what about the mayor?”

  “Please,” Darrin scoffed. “That woman couldn’t calm a drowsy sloth. Besides, what can I say? I’m a man of many talents.” He grinned like a hound dog bringing back a duck.

  “Don’t get too excited,” I said. “We’ve still got the problem of keeping everyone calm to consider. Lucky for you, I’ve got a few talents myself.”

  Climbing up on a nearby table, I did one of those two finger whistles that Mrs. Duncan unleashed back in school to let all of us know that recess was over. It worked like a charm for her back then, and it did much the same for me tonight.

  “Listen up!” I said as the citizens of Second Springs turned toward me. “Sheriff Dash is going to get to the bottom of this. If a man is dead, then that’s certainly a tragedy, but all of us going crazy isn’t going to help anything. So the sheriff is asking everyone to stay put and keep calm while he figures everything out.” I smiled. “And, as a special thank you, there’s a boatload of cupcakes right there near the front to munch on. And, if you can keep your shorts from knotting up long enough for the Sheriff to do his job, free pie and coffee for everyone tomorrow morning.”

  That seemed to do the trick as I got a smattering of applause.

  Climbing down from the table, I shot Darrin a victorious look.

  “Good enough?” I asked.

  “That depends,” he answered.

  “On?” I asked.

  “On whether or not Peggy fires you when she finds out you’ve promised to give away her entire week’s profit margin.”

  “Oh right,” I winced. “I keep forgetting I don’t own that place anymore.”

  Darrin side eyed me as he opened the door. Pushing out onto Main Street, I could feel a bit of tension build between us.

  He still wasn’t completely comfortable with the whole ‘I was reincarnated’ thing.

  Still, he was the only person in town- the only person at all actually- who knew my secret. So I couldn’t just let it go that easily.

  “Would you have preferred me not to have said anything?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light and playful.

  “Usually,” he answered, but didn’t meet my eyes.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said, as Darrin closed the door behind us.

  “Look, I’m the kind of man of believes in what he can see.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen pictures of Rita Clarke, and I’m looking at you right now. You’re not the same person.”

  “Well no,” I answered. “Not on the outside.”

  “See, how am I supposed to react to that?” he asked.

  “With blanket faith ideally,” I said.

  “Let’s just say I’m working on it and turn our attention to that,” he said, pointing to the crowd that had formed in front of the hotel.

  “Fair enough,” I answered.

  If the scene inside of the town hall building was intense, then this was practically insane.

  While I knew all of the people back inside, most of the men, women, children, and even dogs that milled around Main Street right now were all strangers to me. It was odd, watching tourists pour into Second Springs, seeing unfamiliar faces set against such a familiar backdrop. But maybe that was how people saw me, the new me at least.

  Darrin and I moved closer to the crowd, listening to a car alarm as it blared. As I neared it, the reason for the noise became horrifically clear to me.

  This man, the one who we had all just been told jumped from the top of the hotel, had landed on a car.

  I shuddered but didn’t stop. My father had never really had to deal with this sort of stuff. Back in his day, the worst that happened in Second Springs was a couple of kids getting foolish and drag racing on one of the back roads.

  Or so I thought. Maybe I had been wrong about that. Maybe Dad had this sort of stuff hanging over his head all the time, and he just hid it from me. Either way, I knew he could handle it if he needed to. That meant that I was going to as well.

  I wasn’t Sheriff Clarke’s daughter for nothing.

  “I need you to stay here,” Darrin said as we neared a freshly hung line of caution tape.

  “Didn’t we just do this song and dance?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest.

  “Yes, but this is different. This is a crime scene and, though I trust you not to mess anything up, I can’t risk it. Someone is dead, Rita. And, regardless of how useful you may or may not be, having someone across that tape who isn’t expressly qualified could come back to bite us later.” He pursed his lips together. “I hope you understand that.”

  And the thing was, I actually did. “Work’s work,” I answered. “I get it.”

  “That’s surprisingly mature of you,” he answered.

  “Really?” I asked, quirking my mouth to the side. “I’d hate to think you were rubbing off on me.”

  He chuckled. “Wait here.”

  “Whatever you say, Sheriff,” I grinned.

  Darrin ducked under the caution tape and made his way through the crowd.

  I couldn’t see beyond the line of onlookers, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. I had seen a lot of things in my life-well, two lives- but a corpse lying atop a Honda Civic wasn’t one of them. And I was perfectly fine to keep it that way.

  “You’re that woman, aren’t you?” A smoky voice said from beside me.

  I turned to find a dark haired woman with red-rimmed eyes and a heart tattoo on her neck. She looked tired, the sort of tired that even sleep couldn’t completely fix. “The one who saved that reality star, the one of stopped that murderer.”

  Her voice was shaky and tormented with tears, but she was clear and audible.

  “Rita Redoux,” I said, offering my hand. She didn’t take it. “I see that my reputation is starting to precede me.”

  “Where were you today? I was looking for you,” she said, blinking back tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I answered, narrowing my brows. “I had to run to Cold Creek to make a supply run. We were running low. Did you need to make a special order? If so, my boss Peggy could have-”

  “It’s not about stupid cake!”

  “Pie,” I answered. “We make pies. I mean, we also make cupcakes, but that seems beside the point. What’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “I knew something like this would happen. I went to the police, but they wouldn’t help me.”

  “What do you mean they wouldn’t help you?” I asked, pulling a tissue from my purse and offering it to the woman. She pushed it away.

  “I told them this would happen!”

  “You-you did?” I asked. “Did you know this guy? Was he depressed?”

  “Yes I knew him, and no he wasn’t depressed,” she answered in a roar.

  “My name is Wanda Sulkin. That man is my husband.” She shook her head. “And he didn’t jump off that roof. He was pushed.” She swallowed hard and dropped her head. “My husband was murdered.”

  3

  I stared at Wanda, my mouth agape, hoping and praying I had misheard her. Of course, I knew I hadn’t. Ever since all of this started, since I drove up to Second Springs in the dusty red pickup Charlie gifted me and the brand new body that seemed (at least partially) more coordinated than mine, it had been one tragedy after another.

  First, there was the wrench killer, then the kidnapping of Chloe Covington. And now this. I stood in front of this weeping woman as she assured me her husband hadn’t just thrown himself off the roof of the hotel.

  “He was pushed,” she repeated, as though I hadn’t heard her at first.

  “I…” My head darted over to the ambulance sitting right outside of the crowd. “We don’t know that he’s dead, Wanda,” I said, trying to keep the woman’s spirits up. “He might have survived it.”

  I didn’t believe that, of course. The hotel was three stories tall, and the ambulance’s lights and sirens were dark and quiet; never a good sign. Still, I couldn’t just look at this woman and say nothing.

&nbs
p; Unfortunately, this wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “Don’t,” she said, raising her hand to quiet me. “You’re too smart to actually believe that. My husband is dead, Ms. Redoux. Nothing either of us says or does is going to change that. But I will not let the person responsible get away with it, not so long as there’s breath in my body.”

  “You’re in shock,” I said, looking from Wanda, to the crowd where her husband’s body likely lay, and back to her again. “And I don’t blame you for that. You’ve just been through an insanely stressful situation.”

  Gently, I placed my arm on her shoulder. “Look, I own the-I work at the pie shop right across the street. What do you say I take you there, get you away from all this? I’ll give some coffee and a slice of whatever you’d like. No charge at all. We can think about this a little more once you’ve calmed down a little and the police assess the situation.”

  I had never done something like this before. Sure, I had been in hardcore situations. I’d had a gun pointed at me more than once at this point. But trying to talk a grieving widow down minutes after her husband took his own life, that was too much even for me. All I could hope was that I was doing it right.

  Turned out I wasn’t.

  “I don’t want pie,” she yelled, drawing attention from the outliers at the edges of the crowd. “And I don’t want to calm down. My husband was just murdered. Some monster just shoved him off the roof of that hotel! What I want is for you to help me solve this.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to formulate the next words just right. What I was about to say wasn’t going to be easy.

  “I know this is a difficult time for you, and the idea of a loved one taking his own life is never something we want to think about, let alone be faced with-”

  “He didn’t kill himself!” She yelled at me, drawing the attention of even more crowd members. “My Lionel was scared to death of heights. He’d have never gone up there unless he was forced to. Never!”

  “And maybe you’re right,” I answered, trying to use my most calming voice. “Either way, this is a tragedy. But Sheriff Dash is right over there, and I can promise you that-if anything is amiss- he’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “The police?” Wanda’s face twisted disgustedly. “You want me to trust the police? If the police had listened to me, then none of this would be happening. My Lionel would be standing beside me right now instead of lying face down on the roof of that ugly car.” She shook her head hard. “No. The police won’t help me. It has to be you.”

  She grabbed my arms and looked at me all frantically. “I can pay you,” she pleaded. “I can pay you a lot.” I shook my head. “No. I don’t want your money ma’am. Listen, I’ll go talk to Sheriff Dash. We’re friends. He trusts me, and he listens to me. I’ll make sure he knows about your concerns.”

  “Ms. Redoux,” she started, her eyes still wide and frantic.

  “And I’ll take a look at things myself,” I finished. “I promise you, I won’t overlook anything, and I won’t go in there with preconceived notions. You tell me this doesn’t add up to you; well, I’m more than a little familiar with the importance of trusting your gut.” I shook my head. “If your husband was murdered, I promise I’ll do everything in my power to get to the bottom of it.” I cleared my throat. “But if not, if there was something going on with your husband that you didn’t know about and he decided that the only way out was to take his own life, I’m going to tell you that too. And I want to make sure you’re capable of actually hearing it.”

  Wanda looked at me for a long moment after that, weighing something between her eyes. “You’ll see, Ms. Redoux. You’ll see that I’m right.”

  I nodded to her. “Wait here, okay. I need to talk to the sheriff. I’ll find you when I’m done and, either way, my offer of coffee and pie still stands.”

  She set her jaw and milled off to the side.

  I took a deep breath and started toward the crowd, my heart aching. I felt so bad for her. This woman had just been dealt the blow of a lifetime. Here she was, begging me to help her, and I would. But that didn’t mean I would give her the answer she wanted.

  If there even was an answer.

  She had just lost her husband. As she said, nothing was going to change that. Whether he was murdered or his life ended by his own hand, he wasn’t coming back.

  I mean…Well…

  No, no. He wasn’t coming back. And I knew that feeling. I never knew my own mother. She died giving birth to me. So the hole in my life where she should have been ran very deep within me. So many nights, I laid awake, wishing there was someone to blame, and someone I could hate for the hand fate dealt me.

  Maybe that was what Wanda needed, someone to blame.

  Being the crack detective I was, I pulled out my cellphone and typed ‘Lionel Sulkin’ into the search bar.

  Was this part of the ‘work’ Charlie said I needed to do before I could move on? Was I supposed to get this reputation, helping the helpless and all that?

  And where on earth (or beyond) was Charlie anyway? This was the kind of thing he should be all over it. He should have been here, giving me useless clues and calling me ‘Honeybean.'

  Instead, I was on my own, without even a word of infuriating encouragement to help me.

  The search page loaded and I nearly gasped up my necklace.

  Lionel Sulkin was something of an internet sensation. Five hundred and fifty thousand search results, including fan pages, magazine interviews, and even YouTube fan videos.

  Tapping on his Wikipedia page, I saw why.

  Lionel was something of an institution in the dog show world. He had been the winning ‘handler’ in over a dozen dog shows, including twice at Westminster; the Super Bowl of dog shows.

  According to the page, he was bigger in England, where he was born and where things like that garnered more acclaim, but his following was healthy on this side of the pond too.

  My heart sank, remembering Chloe Covington and one of our chief concerns when she was kidnapped. We were afraid of the attention it would garner.

  But this was different. This was worse. She had only been taken. Lionel was dead. There was no way we could keep this under wraps. And that meant-

  I rushed toward Darrin, who came walking out of the crowd, pushing the caution tape up as he crossed under it.

  “Darrin, we need to-”

  “Rita,” he said, putting a hand on my arm and stopping me. “I told you I need you to stay on this side of the tape. At least until the coroner comes to check out the scene.

  The coroner. So he was dead after all.

  “I will,” I said. “But there’s something you don’t understand.”

  “There’s a lot that I don’t understand,” he answered. “My deputy searched the room. No suicide note. What’s more, his wife’s whereabouts are unknown. We’re afraid it might have been a pact and that she’s off hurting herself right now.”

  “She’s not,” I answered. “She’s right over there. I just talked to her.”

  Darrin looked past me and started toward Wanda. I grabbed his arm now and stopped him.

  “Darrin, she’s saying he was murdered.”

  “What?” he balked. “Why?”

  “That’s not all,” I said. “He’s famous, Darrin. Well, sorta.” I swallowed hard. “The point is, we need to prepare ourselves.”

  “Prepare ourselves for what?” he asked, as if trying to make sense of what I was saying.

  “The death of a famous person, Darrin,” I said, shaking my head. “We need to hunker down because I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the media is coming.”

  4

  Darrin paced around the floor of his office, shaking his head and mouthing words to himself. I watched him intently, at the way his heels clicked across the tile and the way his eyes seemed trained on something just out of view.

  I had watched my dad do these very things when I was a kid. He wasn’t much of a mutterer. Dad liked to sort of shout a
t himself while he was trying to piece things together. Still, the spirit of it was the same.

  “How long are we just going to sit here?” I asked, my feet dangling off his desk; another throwback to the years when I’d frequent this office with my father.

  “We’re not just sitting here,” he turned, looking at me like I had just accused him of painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa or something. “I’m waiting for the phone to ring.”

  “And why is that?” I asked, hopping down from the desk. “You got your guys to clear the area. The coroner agreed to put a rush on the autopsy to see if there are any signs that there might have been foul play, and you’ve had Wanda sitting in an interrogation room for almost twenty minutes now.” I tilted my head in confusion. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you let your secretary deal with your phone calls so we can actually get some police work done?”

  “First of all, Ester’s not a secretary anymore. Her title is office manager. That was the only way I could approve her raise. Secondly, I’m waiting for the phone to ring because I left Angie a voicemail telling her to call me at this number.”

  “That sounds like a plan I guess,” I answered. “Just one question though. Who on earth is Angie?”

  “Angie’s my new deputy,” he answered flatly, going back to pacing.

  “New deputy?” I asked. “I didn’t even know you were hiring.”

  “Sorry,” he answered. “Am I to assume you’d have thrown your resume into the mix?”

  “Oh, definitely not,” I answered, shaking my head, though part of me was really intrigued by the idea. There had always been a piece of me that wondered what my life might have looked like if I’d followed in my father’s footsteps. Unfortunately, it was an ideaa my father absolutely wouldn’t hear of. So I quelled that curiosity in myself and, now that I was back, I didn’t see the need in changing that now. “I’m not the ‘in uniform’ type. It’s just, I’m not used to things going on in this town-in this office in particularly- without knowing first.”

  Darrin gave me a look- the kind of look that said he wasn’t thrilled with yet another reference to me being the late Rita Clarke.