Single Elimination: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 4) Read online

  “It was the meat thermometer,” Will said. “The one the cooks were using for the salmon bake.”

  “Finger prints?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then there had to be some premeditation involved,” I concluded.

  “Yes,” Blythe said. “He might not have planned on killing her that day, but sometime before the murder, he made a decision. He picked up the meat thermometer. He held it with a cloth—or an oven mitt!”

  “Or something,” I said. “I doubt anyone had gloves there on a summer day.”

  “He confronted her one final time, and he killed her.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Will said. “Now, if only we could figure out who would do that.”

  6

  It was a beautiful day for a Sunday jog. I could stare at the water, sparkling in the distance, at the stretch of beach and the strip of green that formed Brightside Beach Park, and almost forget that yesterday it had been filled with shocked and horrified townspeople.

  I’d already gone for a run earlier, but Will had asked me to meet up with him after work and take Chloe for a run with him.

  “Okay, I know you can’t tell me anything, but I can tell you things, right?” I said as we ran.

  Will gave me a skeptical look.

  “And I can ask you questions, even if you can’t answer them.”

  “Seriously, Brenna? You’re going to ask me questions and try to read me?”

  “You’re like an open book, but only because I have the key, officer. It’s the perfect solution. I can honestly say you didn’t tell me a thing.”

  Will groaned.

  “If there was any struggle, and the murder took place while we were in the bathroom, I know I would’ve heard it. I think she was killed before Katie ran to the bathroom, and neither of us noticed the body because she was so upset and I was so worried about her.”

  Will grunted. I gave him a smug look. He agreed with me, I could tell.

  “What about that woman? The one with the cute purse who thought I stinkified the bathroom?”

  “We haven’t found her yet. No one on our list of people in the park or on the beach that day fits the description.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t expected anything from Will, let alone such a revelation. They couldn’t find her? How strange! “What if it was her? What if I was staring right into the face of a murderer, just minutes after she did the deed? I didn’t notice any blood on her hands, but I wasn’t really paying attention to that. I was worried about Katie.”

  “And the smell.”

  I elbowed him playfully. “And the smell. Seriously, Will. Don’t you think that’s suspicious? You have to find her.”

  “I suppose it would shock you to hear that I spent most of the day trying to do just that?”

  “Sorry, Will. No pressure.”

  “Yeah, no pressure. There’s only yet another murderer on the loose, and the mayoral election on the line. This town is this close to unravelling.” Will held his thumb and index finger a pinch apart.

  I slowed to a stop and pulled him close. “You’re going to figure it out. And Bonney Bay will get through this. This town has managed to survive since 1882.”

  Chloe barked and ran in a circle, tying us up in her leash.

  Will said, “Sit, Chloe,” and she obeyed.

  Her tail thumped the sidewalk at turbo speed. I think she was proud of the fact that she’d tied us in a bunch. Her tongue lolled out and her big, brown eyes said, I’ve got you both now!

  Will looked into my eyes. There was a hesitation I’d seen in them before. I knew he was about to say something important. Something he wasn’t sure he should say at all.

  “I would tell you not to go trying to figure this one out on your own, but…”

  “Off the record?” I cupped his chin in my hand.

  “Off the record, just between you and me. Well, I guess between you and Blythe and me. Hey, I know how you are with your sister. I might as well say it upfront. We’re overwhelmed with leads. Accusations, baseless reports. Mysterious women with pink purses who appeared right at the time of the murder and are now nowhere to be found. You’re pretty good at getting to the bottom of things, and we need all the help we can get.”

  “Will Riggins, are you giving me permission to snoop?”

  “Absolutely not! An officer of the law would never do that. Just…stay safe, Brenna. Please.”

  “Would I do anything dangerous?”

  “Blythe told me you were suspended from first grade for taking a dare to jump off the school roof.”

  Some little sisters sure had big mouths. “No one ever figured out how I got up there.” I smiled at the memory.

  Will dug a treat out of his pocket and waved it in a circle, just out of Chloe’s reach. She followed the treat until we were unwound, and Will popped it in her mouth.

  “Good times, huh? Still proud of your naughty six-year-old self?”

  “It was one of my greatest accomplishments. And I survived, didn’t I? I didn’t break a single bone, in spite of Mary Tate insisting I’d break every one in my body.”

  “Not a word about the meat thermometer, Brenna. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s the kind of thing we need to keep under wraps if we can. It will help us weed out false accusations and false confessions, false witnesses.”

  “Okay. Not a word. But Will, how are you going to tell people she died?”

  “Stabbed.”

  I nodded. “Keep it simple.” It was a smart move. I’d tell Blythe right away to keep that detail under wraps.

  “Oh, no. Is it too late to turn around and run in the other direction?” Will muttered.

  I looked up. Jessie Pakowski was headed straight for us, pushing her youngest in a stroller with a determined air. Seven-year-old Holden and nine-year-old Allen ran circles around the stroller, making her stop abruptly to avoid hitting them. I wanted to grab that stroller from her and run them over.

  Those boys had driven me crazy for the brief time I had them in camp, but what really toasted my buns was watching their mother practically teach them how to be dysfunctional maniacs, while thinking she was a kind and thoughtful parent.

  “Good idea, Will.” I actually started to turn around, but he caught me.

  “Come on. I wasn’t serious.”

  “Don’t toy with me like that, Riggins,” I whispered as the Pakowskis closed the gap.

  “Brenna! Officer Riggins! I’m out today talking to our citizens about Bonney Bay’s future.”

  “Hello, boys,” I said to the kids.

  Chloe erupted into happy barks and frenzied pulling at her leash, While Will reined her in. A couple of little boys running in circles were almost too much for a dog to resist.

  The boys ignored me.

  “Bonney Bay’s future?” Will said.

  “Yes! Bonney Bay has a bright future. I promise I’ll stay positive about Bonney Bay. Positive things are coming to this town.”

  “What kind of things?” Will asked. “Do you have ideas for how to bring more business to town? Increase civic involvement?”

  “Absolutely!”

  I cocked my head at Jessie. “Really? What are they?”

  “Well, I’ll make Bonney Bay a place we all can be proud of again, and the rest will fall into place.”

  Will took Chloe’s face in his hands and calmed her down. She whimpered and wriggled and thumped her tail triple-time.

  “How?” I asked. “Exactly what do you propose to do?”

  Jessie laughed nervously. “I just told you.” She winced as her youngest son’s foot made contact with her shin. Her four-year-old sat in his expensive European stroller and kicked it mercilessly with his pricey European shoes.

  Holden gave Allen a shove, and he fell on his rear.

  “Hey! Mom!” Allen cried.

  Jessie said, “Holden, Allen doesn’t want you to push him.”

  Holden looked at his mother and said, with total frankness, “But I want to push hi
m.”

  “Well, your wants are certainly valid, but so are Allen’s.” Jessie gave me a look out of the corner of her eye. She held her chin high. If I wasn’t mistaken, she was trying to show me her stuff. Of course, she knew much better than I did how to deal with children. I could learn a lot from her.

  Yeah. Right. I wasn’t a parent, and I wouldn’t presume to know what that was like, but I knew that not all wants were equally valid, and that was one of those things we grown-ups had to teach kids, unless we wanted them to be selfish little stinkers like Jessie’s kids.

  “Well,” I said, “we really need to get on with our run.”

  “Oh. Good-bye!” Jessie sounded genuinely startled. I took off at full speed. Hey, it was every man for himself when it came to escaping Jessie Pakowski’s campaigning.

  7

  It was our morning snack break, but I’d barely nibbled my crackers and cheese. I couldn’t get it off my mind—another murder. Another murderer on the loose in Bonney Bay. A few feet from the corner where Blythe and I had our desks, side by side, the kids sat at a folding table squirting Capri Suns at each other and making futile attempts to trade baby carrots for goldfish crackers.

  I scrolled through the photos on my phone. I’d taken a lot of them at the picnic the day before yesterday. I’d gotten some really cute ones of my Battlers playing soccer, and some of them had been taken right before Katie arrived. Not long before the murder. Maybe there would be a clue in one of the pictures. I scrolled and zoomed in and out, searching for signs of a likely culprit. Maybe even Cute Purse Girl.

  Blythe popped a grape into her mouth and rolled her wheeled desk chair over to mine. “What are you doing?”

  I glanced up from my phone. “Looking through my pics from the salmon bake.”

  “Looking for a picture of a sinister villain sneering at Mrs. Hermiston from behind a tree?” she whispered.

  “Right.” I kept my voice low. “With a meat thermometer in his hand, ready to attack.”

  “No luck so far?”

  I shook my head, then stopped. “Look at this one. I took it right before Katie got there. It had to be around the time of the murder. This kid under the tree with a clear view of the bathroom, just sitting there reading a book.”

  “Wow, I didn’t even notice him.”

  I used my fingers to zoom in on my phone screen. “He blends right into the shadows, doesn’t he? The killer probably wouldn’t have even known he was there.”

  “If he was still there when the murder happened.”

  “Right. But he probably was there long enough to see something. I mean, he’s pretty absorbed in that book.”

  Blythe took another grape out of the baggie in her lap, inspected it, then threw it in the trash. “Okay, so let’s say he was there. He would’ve left before anyone was actually killed.”

  “Otherwise he would’ve gone for help, reported it, something.”

  “But say there was an argument. He’s got this great book. He’s trying to read, and these annoying adults start fighting.”

  I took one of Blythe’s grapes and ate it. “So, he quietly gets up and goes somewhere else. But he’s still a witness. He still saw something.”

  “Do you think you should take it to Will?”

  “I don’t know. From what he told me this morning, they’re up to their ears in much more likely leads. I know they’re not going to be interested in this one right now. I’m sure they’d get to it eventually, but…”

  “And what if it’s nothing, and they divert their resources to it? I’d feel terrible.”

  “Well, there’s an easy solution to that.”

  “Brenna!”

  “What?” You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “I know exactly what you were going to say. You think we should dig into it ourselves.”

  “Well, is that really the worst idea ever?”

  “Even if you figure out who it is, you can’t exactly go and interrogate a kid, can you?”

  “No, I guess not. But it’s too good a lead to just drop it.”

  “What about me?”

  I just about jumped out of my chair at the sound of that whisper. Sammi leaned over my desk. “What?” I said. “What about you?” How much had she heard? That sneaky little—

  “You don’t want to go questioning some kid about a murder, but what about me?”

  Man, if she’d heard me mention the murder weapon, Will was going to kill me.

  “I can ask a kid some questions. That wouldn’t be so weird.”

  I gave her a look.

  “Okay, so it might be a little weird. But I’m just a kid. I can get away with weird. Who’s this kid you’re talking about?”

  “No kid. There is no kid.”

  “Really, Sensei Brenna? You’re just going to try to lie to me like that? Lame, lame, lame.”

  I rolled my eyes. It doesn’t count as lying when the nosy little punk you’re talking to knows full well what’s going on. “It was a figure of speech.”

  Sammi scoffed. Earlier that summer, she’d chopped her dyed-black hair short. Now she was growing it out, and her bangs were pulled back into a ridiculous, waggling whale spout so they wouldn’t fall into her eyes during judo. She looked just a little bit like a scowling toddler.

  “We don’t even know who it is, Sammi. There’s really nothing you can help with,” Blythe attempted.

  But Sammi wasn’t so easily put off, and, well, I have to admit her offer was a little tempting. When she reached for my phone, I didn’t stop her.

  “I know who that is! I mean, I don’t know him, but I saw him on the playground all the time at Cherry Wood. Remember that awful kid with the sweater vest when you visited the elementary school on Fitness Day for that talk?”

  No. Not the demon child who’d made my appearance before just about every elementary-school-aged kid in town an epic nightmare! It didn’t look quite like him to me, but memories can get distorted by time, panic, mind-numbing horror…

  Blythe reached out and touched my shoulder tentatively. Calm down, Brenna, her gesture said. “Let’s not talk about that, Sammi.”

  “Still not funny, Sensei Brenna?”

  I snarled, “That will never be funny.”

  Okay, so I was a role model and role models weren’t supposed to snarl. But I was so busy taming the Godzilla instincts that accompanied the unique sort of rage that comes along with absolute mortification, I neglected to get that finer point under wraps.

  “So sensitive! Well, anyway, that’s his brother, Bernard.”

  I relaxed a little. Okay. Just the brother. Maybe I could deal with that.

  “So, I can interview Bernard,” Sammi said.

  “And see if he knows anything about who stabbed Mrs. Hermiston with a knife?” I said.

  “Right. Problem solved.”

  Well, at least Sammi hadn’t heard me reveal the real murder weapon. But why did it feel more like we’d just created a problem than solved one?

  8

  Monday was spaghetti and meatballs night. Everyone needs a little comfort food on a Monday night. Besides, Monday was my night to cook, according to the schedule Blythe had made up, and Costco meatballs made it an easy meal for me to prepare. I had a deep appreciation for food. Skill in preparing it, not so much. Don’t get me wrong. I knew how to use the stove, I knew the difference between baking and broiling, boiling and frying. But my range was pretty narrow and I tended to keep it simple.

  I tried to be a good roommate, and that meant doing my best to stay within Blythe’s organizational parameters. I didn’t mind, most of the time. She’d done so much for me over the years. She’d followed me here, and she was my right-hand woman when it came to teaching judo, running the business, pretty much everything. Keeping things organized, listed, scheduled, helped her feel safe. I understood that.

  I twirled saucy spaghetti around my fork and speared a chunk of meatball on the end. “I checked the Blaster. No new posts.”

 
“Helen must have something big in the works,” Blythe said. “Mmm. This is really good.”

  “Thanks,” I replied through my mouthful. “How much time do we have?”

  Blythe looked over my shoulder to check the clock on the microwave. “Forty-five. I can’t wait until camp ends. No more rushed dinners.”

  I nodded. “But I’m really going to miss some of those campers.”

  “Did I tell you Martin’s mom called to sign him up for evening classes this fall?”

  “Good. Now we have almost everyone I want to keep.”

  I knew we were supposed to love all kids, and I really did love all my campers, in a basic, You’re-a-kid-and-a-unique-human-being-with-value sort of way, but that didn’t mean I loved being with all of them. I did my best with all of them, but there were some who were just a joy. There were others I wanted to keep because even though they were challenging, they tugged at my heartstrings. And then there were a few—

  “Is someone on the stairs?” Blythe asked.

  I listened as I took another bite. I nodded. Definitely someone running up our steps. This was a small town, but given everything that had happened since we came to Bonney Bay, we’d kept our habit of bolting the door.

  The pounding feet stopped and the banging on the door began. Blythe and I both paused mid-bite.

  I got up and ran to the door just as Sammi’s voice called from the other side, “It’s me! Let me in. I got it!”

  I unbolted and opened the door. “You got what?”

  Sammi’s cheeks were all aglow with the run up the stairs to our little apartment above the dojo—and with triumph.

  “The interview with Bernard Smith!”

  “Okay.” From the table, Blythe waved her in. “Come inside and tell us about it while we eat.”

  “While you eat! I thought you guys would be excited.”

  I locked the door behind her. “We are. But we’re also starving and we only have about a forty-five minute window to refuel before the peewee class starts.”

  “Well, while you two were in here making food, I was out there sleuthing.” Sammi shook her bangs back, along with the rest of her black hair.