Hoedown Showdown Read online

  Oh, my God. She thought she had caught the person who had been running around ruining other people’s tomatoes, when in fact she had probably killed the primary judge in the competition. How on earth was I going to confront her with that? And why, oh why, did it have to be me who got involved with this kind of crap?

  “Um, Mrs. Crandall? May I call you Myrt?”

  “It’s not exactly proper to call your elders by their first names, but we can probably let that rule pass, seeing as how we’re neighbors and you are helping me with this little problem.” Those dentures flashed again, leaving me sick to my stomach.

  How on earth was I going to explain this to her? I was going to try my best. I chickened out at the last moment because I needed a little more information. “Well, Myrt. Um, how did you get him in the shed, exactly?” I wasn’t brave enough to tell her who it was yet. So sue me.

  “Well, I whacked him in the back of the head with my trowel, and then I shoved him in there. I got him but good, and now he won’t be able to crush another precious tomato! Serves him right!”

  Oh, goodness gracious gravy Marie! This was not going to go well. I was still reluctant to tell her who it was, but one look at her scrawny arms and it was obvious there was no way that her hitting him in the back of the head with a trowel would have killed him. Plus, that didn’t explain the tomato stake in the chest. Unless he had jostled himself around in the shed and managed to stake himself?

  It wasn’t like I could ask him.

  “Myrt,” I said patiently, as if talking to a small child. “First of all, this wasn’t the tomato crusher. It was Judge McIntyre.”

  I didn’t even get to the next part since she started wailing. “Oh, my stars! I’m never going to win the Tasty Tomato Tournament now! It’s the fiftieth anniversary, and I wanted at least one chance before I die! And now I will never win this! I’ll be a dead woman long before I can ever show my face again in the tournament! And this was supposed to be my year!”

  Not only was that a lot of exclamation points, but she also dragged the last word out until it sounded like a cat dying. I tried to calm her down by settling my hand on her shoulder. She shook me off while dropping her cane at her feet. With a ton of creaks and cracks, she knelt down beside him and started babbling about how sorry she was.

  “I don’t think you should touch him.” I said this while definitely keeping my distance. I did not want to touch him more than I already had. To be honest, it had been some time since I was involved in anything more than feeding and playing with my kids or running my store and being a wife. Occasionally I would help Ben with a case or two in his work as a private investigator, but it was more paperwork than anything else. I did not want to even know what had happened to the judge, much less who had done it. Ben was not going to be pleased. At all.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. McIntyre,” Myrt said with her face close to his, her hand patting his chest. There was a crinkling noise, but she was still talking. “So very sorry. When Irma died last year in her sleep after winning her forty-ninth straight tournament, I thought I finally had a chance, and now I hit you, and I’m so very, very sorry, and I can’t believe I mistook you for a burglar.” She twisted her hands together like she was wringing out a dishtowel. And she was going to draw blood if she continued biting her lip in between babbling some more.

  I had few choices right now. I have to admit here that I had no desire whatsoever to call the police. I didn’t want to be involved in things. I had plans this week. This was not going to keep me from swinging from the freaking chandelier if I could.

  Of course, I could go across the street and call from the house, or have Ben call and then remove myself from the situation altogether. But that would be completely unfair to Mrs. Crandall.

  I couldn’t help myself. I let out a scream that would have brought down an opera house, something between frustration and fright because, at that moment, something furry ran against my leg before shooting into the bushes.

  In the end, the decision of what to do was taken out of my hands because the police came tearing up in the one marked car in town, screeching to a halt at the curb. A man in uniform was out of the car before I could blink again. And I’m glad I didn’t blink because I would have missed the way he jumped from the car and then did a forward roll across the front lawn as if he was in some crazy-assed shootout.

  Chapter Two

  Who the hell was that? It certainly wasn’t Detective Jameson. The portly, older detective would never have been able to move like that without breaking a thing or two.

  Now, I was fully aware this was most certainly not the time to snicker, but it was almost more than I could do to hold it back. The guy, someone I had never seen before (how had that happened?), came out of his roll on one knee with his gun drawn and held out in front of him with both arms straight as a plumb line.

  Who in the heck was this? And where on earth did they find him? Had he come from some movie set of a cop thriller?

  I should have been paying more attention, though, because he started screaming for us to get “Down, down, down!”

  Apparently, I did not move fast enough, because he screamed louder and told me to put my face in the turf.

  Okay, that was not happening. I stood with my hands on my hips, though I guess I should have been more scared. He had his gun aimed at me. However, Detective Bartley came running up behind him and smacked him in the back of the head, which finally made him stand down. Or at least drop his weapon to his side, even if he did it with a growl and a sneer.

  Nice new addition to the force.

  “Ivy, what are you doing here, and what is going on? Or should I even ask?” She took in the scene before her, Myrtle face down in the grass and me with my hands on my hips, a dead body at my feet, and shook her head. “Why, oh, why am I not surprised?”

  “Hey now!”

  “Don’t you sass the law, young lady,” the other officer said, apparently finally getting over his head-smack enough to give me lip. He couldn’t have been more than twenty to my nearly thirty-one. (Yeah, I hit the big three-oh last year, and it rocked!) Who was he calling young lady?

  Uh, yeah. First off, not a young lady, though I did appreciate him noticing that I was not old. But second, who in the hell was this again?

  “No sassing. I was about to speak in defense of myself, which I am more than allowed to do, not that I need your permission.” Not a speck of weak backbone left in sight, I’ll have you know. “I am an innocent bystander to this whole thing. I opened the door and this man fell out. It scared me. I screamed. End of story. That’s all I know.”

  “Why do I have a feeling that’s not all this will turn out to be?” Bartley said under her breath just as the other officer barked at me to be quiet. The temptation to give him a roundhouse kick to the head nearly overwhelmed me. Of course, I wasn’t sure I could actually manage it unless he decided to bend over. Probably not going to happen.

  “Leave it,” Bartley barked back. Or at least I thought she was talking to the man and not me. Sure enough, she was glaring daggers at him like she used to do to me when I’d get involved in something that was completely not my business. Fortunately, I was over that. They could take this whole thing into hand instead of me. Whoever was lying there was not my business. Except that the loud silk tie flashed across my brain, and I groaned. I wished like hell it wasn’t Mac. Not that I wanted it to be anyone else, but Mac was a disaster of epic proportions.

  I covertly turned to look at Mrs. Crandall with her face still in the grass and used my left hand to text Ben a quick message to get the hell over here. Shower or not, I was not going to be here alone.

  The other officer wasn’t as slick as he thought, since he didn’t even notice me texting. Bartley did, though, and she raised an eyebrow. I shrugged, and she went over to help pick up Mrs. Crandall from off the ground. More cracking and creaking filled the air.

  Once Bartley had Myrt off the ground and had once again dressed down the other officer for
training his gun on Myrt the entire time, the detective turned to me.

  “Now, what in blazes is going on? That scream was enough to wake the dead.”

  The dead was what I was worried about. I snuck a glance down and, sure enough, Mac McIntrye’s blank eyes under bushy eyebrows stared back at me. Ben was going to be beside himself.

  “I’m not sure what happened.” Something made me hold back from saying Mrs. Crandall had come over looking for Ben to take care of something in her shed and that something ended up being a dead body. Perhaps she hadn’t realized he was in there. Maybe she had seen a spider and had come trucking over, not aware that Mac was kneeling in her shed as dead as a doornail. No, that wasn’t right because she’d said that she hit him with the trowel and shoved him in there. Gah!

  “Did you see anyone suspicious?” Bartley asked. She leaned over to check for a pulse. Just like me, she didn’t find one. She’d turned the body to its side, then back, obviously not finding anything there either. The stake came free, though, and rested in the grass.

  “Not my fault.” I backed away with my hands in the air.

  “No, it’s not. Stop being such a pain. There’s so little blood that there’s no way that was the cause of death. We’ll make sure it goes with the coroner when they pick up the body, though.”

  Good enough for me.

  “Now, did you see anything suspicious?”

  “No, but I can think about it some more and get back to you. Whatever you want.”

  “You’re darn right you’ll do whatever she wants.” The new guy stood with his feet braced apart, his chest puffed out, and a look on his face that would have done the Terminator proud. Seriously, where did he come from?

  “Officer Rookie, for God’s sake, give it a rest.”

  I did snicker that time. What a name.

  “Who did you want me to arrest?” he asked with his cuffs already in hand. “I say we should take them all downtown and throw them in a cell. See which one will crack first. My bets are on the tubby one.” He started coming toward me, and I ducked back, hoping that nothing stood between me and my house. I was going to make a run for it after kicking him in the knee for calling me tubby.

  “Officer Rookie, is it?” I said, making sure to sneer at him. Honestly, what kind of name was that?

  “Actually it’s Rukey, sounds like Yucky.” And then he spelled it for me.

  “Ah,” I said as I exchanged a long eyebrow-raised look with Bartley. She just rolled her eyes at me and shook her head. I didn’t know if the gesture was for me or him, but I was betting on him for once. “So anyway, I am not going anywhere. My husband is in the shower. We have a dinner date. My kids are away from home for the first time in six years, and I plan on taking advantage of that. I have nothing to do with whatever is in that shed, for the record. I will make myself available to Detective Bartley when she sees fit to ask me to come down to the station. In the meantime, have a good day, and be careful of Myrt. She’s good with the trowel.”

  I turned on my heel, no longer interested in kicking him, only in getting away as quickly and quietly as possible. Unfortunately, I had forgotten Ben had bought a golf cart about six months ago. He was now using it to zoom across the street and up the slight embankment, in a foolhardy effort to ride to my rescue, I guess.

  All probably would have been fine if Rukey hadn’t decided to step in front of Ben, raise his hand, and demand that Ben halt. Ben didn’t have enough time to even swerve.

  Jeezumcrow!

  Rukey was screaming for Ben’s arrest on the charges of officer assault before he’d even picked himself up off the ground.

  “Cuff him, Detective Bartley. Cuff him! We’ll see what he thinks about spending the night down in the jail with the other degenerates.” His pointed finger was flying while Ben sat on the seat in the golf cart looking very much like he wanted to laugh. The cart didn’t boast more than three miles per hour. Ben had merely clipped Rukey’s shin, but you would have thought Ben had hit the officer with a Mack truck going one-ten an hour.

  I tried to intervene, though I knew in my gut I shouldn’t have. “Look, Officer Rookie…” I started but did not get to finish.

  “Don’t you try to get out of this one, Ivy,” he said, that finger pointing at me now. “I know all about your shenanigans around this town. It won’t happen anymore on my watch. In fact, I believe I’ll be looking a little more closely into why you would be involved in this death. Seems to me whenever something bad is going on, you’re the first on the scene. Now, why is that do you think? Seems fishy to me that Ben was scheduled to be in this contest, and then you took out the man who could have picked someone other than Ben.”

  I sputtered. “But…I…No…” I couldn’t come up with a coherent sentence in response to that no matter how I tried.

  “Ivy did not do this, young man,” Myrt finally said, joining in the conversation now that her face was no longer pressed into her perfectly manicured turf. She shook her own finger at Rukey and got into his chest (since she wasn’t exactly tall enough to get into his face). “I demand you take me to the jail at once and leave these good people alone. They were only trying to help me, and I must be the one who killed that poor man.” She shook her head and mumbled something to herself before sticking her arms out in front of her with her wrists together. “Arrest me!”

  “Look,” Bartley said, her hands on her hips and a definite scowl on her face. “No one is getting arrested just yet. Not until I figure out what in the hell is going on here.” She turned to Ben, still sitting in his golf cart. “Ben, I’m going to need you to come in to file a report about your runaway golf cart and the accident here. Ivy, we might as well do your statement while I’m getting Ben’s issue processed. Rukey, go start roping things off with the police tape while I simultaneously call the county coroner and try to keep myself from ripping your head off.” She started walking around to the front of the house.

  The idiot officer opened his mouth with his hand on his gun.

  Even without turning, she shook her head. “And if you say one word, I swear to all that is sacred on that utility belt of yours that I will make the one call you do not want me to make. Are we understood? You can just nod your head.” Now she did turn just enough to look over her shoulder.

  He nodded his head, but there was venom in his eye for me. Great. Where did they get this guy, and when was he leaving?

  Chapter Three

  The next thing I heard was Officer Rukey’s shriek to rival my own and then a gun going off. Bartley broke off mid-sentence in her kvetching about the new officer to run over to the tomato shed.

  I’m not ashamed to say that for a moment I thought about bolting over to my own house, but that stubborn old cow curiosity got the best of me.

  Something white and wiry-haired with a rat tail went darting past me. It was an opossum. I had no idea where it had come from. I didn’t particularly like those hairy rat-like things, but I was happy it wasn’t dead. On top of being a pain in the keister, Officer Rukey was apparently not the best shot, as evidenced by the shattered planter and the wailing Myrtle when she saw one of her prized tomato plants lying on the ground like a drunken schoolgirl.

  She popped and creaked as she bent down to gently cradle it in her arthritic hands. Ben, the last true Boy Scout when it came to produce, ran up with a new pot. I had no idea where it came from. Did he have it stashed in the golf cart? Together they replanted it, crouched in the lowering darkness lit only by the setting sun and a few lawn lamps.

  And then Mrs. Crandall came up swinging. Fortunately, Rukey was more adept at ducking than at shooting. Her cane whizzed by his head. If he hadn’t had such a high-and-tight military haircut, the wind from the swing probably would have ruffled his hair.

  “I want her arrested for officer assault too! It’s going to be a big night down at the station!”

  He made a grab for Mrs. Crandall, but she wasn’t so creaky this time and faster than I would have given her credit for. She t
ripped him with the cane, then stood back as if she hadn’t done a single thing in the world. It was a surprise she didn’t start whistling and looking around to see who actually did it.

  Bartley just rolled her eyes and dragged Rukey up off the ground by the collar of his immaculately pressed shirt. “Get up. We are not arresting anyone. And now you’re the one who’s going to have to write a report because you discharged your weapon, you boob.”

  He huffed but seemed to get the point that he was not going to get his way. Stalking off to the car, he grumbled to himself. My hearing wasn’t keen enough to make out what he was saying. Not for lack of trying, of course. I had a feeling it had to do with me, or Bartley, or the both of us, since I did distinctly hear the word “women” said as a snarl.

  “Well, this is a great start to an evening,” I said, looking around to see if anything else could go wrong.

  “No, it is not.” Bartley looked over at the police car, where Rukey was buffing the sideview mirror with some kind of cloth.

  “Uh, okay. I was totally being facetious.” (Fantastic word!)

  “I don’t doubt it, but I have a headache and no time for your facetiousness. I’m supposed to be home with Charlie right now, but instead I’ve got a dead body on top of already chasing around after that idiot.”

  We both turned to look at Officer Rukey, who continued to glare daggers at me in the near dark. The hairs on my arms rose, and I knew as clear as if he’d used a skywriter to spell it out that he had it in for me. Like I needed one more person in town who didn’t like me.

  “I hope you weren’t going to have a late night.” I said it with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. She and Charlie, her husband of several years now, were talking babies, if the rumors were true. There was noise about them trying for a pregnancy. I was thrilled! Another baby? One I didn’t have to take home with me, that I could play with and hand back when a diaper needed to be changed or the crying started? Bring it on!