A Spirited Gift

“You don’t have the guts to shoot me. Might as well go back home. I’ll give it back to you when you pay me. Don’t come back without the money.”

“I’m not fooling around, Johnny.”

When Johnny ignored him, the man with the gun shot him in the back of the head. Johnny slumped over. The killer took two boxes from the desk where Johnny had been working. He didn’t wait to see if Johnny was dead—just closed the door as he left the room. The rest of the Blue Whale was empty around them. No one close enough to hear the single shot fired.

The killer threw one of the boxes into the bushes behind the Blue Whale and took the other box with him.

Chapter 43

I came back to myself lying on the burgundy brocade sofa with two worried faces staring into mine. I realized I must have lost consciousness. The gun was on the floor near the door to the shop—probably where I’d dropped it.

“Dae?” Chief Michaels whispered, chafing my hand with his. “Are you okay? Do you need some water?”

“She needs an ambulance,” Sheriff Riley snarled. “I think she hit her head when she fell. Let me get on the line and call—”

“No! I’m fine. No ambulance—no paramedics necessary. Sometimes it’s like this when the emotions inside something I touch are strong. But I’m fine now. Really.”

I could hear footsteps running heavily along the boardwalk. Fists started pounding on the door and Gramps was shouting to be let in.

“Did you call him while I was moving her over here?” Sheriff Riley demanded.

“He’s her only living relative. What else did you expect me to do?” Chief Michaels yelled at him as he went to open the door.

Gramps was in like a shot. He knelt beside the sofa and took my hand as the chief had. “Are you okay, honey? Do you need the paramedics?” He glared at Chief Michaels. “I can’t believe she passed out and you called me instead of the ambulance.”

“That’s what I said,” Sheriff Riley joined in. “She needs medical attention.”

“I don’t need anything,” I told them. “Well, maybe a cup of tea.”

It was amusing watching all three men scramble to make one cup of tea. I wasn’t sure if my teapot and cups could handle all the clattering. Sheriff Riley and Chief Michaels kept butting up against each other. Gramps looked for sugar and I finally told him that I take honey in my tea.

Within a few minutes, I had a cup of tepid tea in my hands. I smiled at all three men, who’d found places to sit down.

Sheriff Riley wiped a red rag across his forehead. “I don’t know about you all, but I need something stiffer from Wild Stallions after this. Is this what you go through all the time?”

I sipped my tea—glad that they were scared. “Sometimes. It all depends.”

“We should never have asked you,” Gramps said. “I shouldn’t have asked you. I’m sorry, Dae. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I hate to ask, but did you see anything?” Chief Michaels inquired reluctantly. Sheriff Riley and Gramps looked at him like he’d grown another head. “Well, it would be a damn shame to have put her through all that and she didn’t see anything. Wouldn’t it?”

I described Johnny’s death scene at the Blue Whale. “I’m afraid I didn’t see the killer.” I put the cup of tea on the table next to me. “But he was scared. His hand was shaking when he fired the pistol. He killed Johnny and took two wooden boxes from him. One of them was the music box Johnny had planned to give Miss Elizabeth. The other was hard to make out. I’m not sure.”

“We already knew that gun killed Simpson,” Sheriff Riley said in a defeated way. “That’s not what we needed.”

“I picked up a few other details that weren’t so clear.” I tried to focus on those other things, but they kept drifting out of my grasp. There was something important about the box the killer had taken with him. I just couldn’t quite see what it was. “Someone else has fired the gun twice since then. I’m sure it was a woman. I don’t know if she killed Sandi and Matthew.”

“Did you get her name and address?” Chief Michaels had his notebook ready for the information.

“No. I’m sorry. It’s not that precise.”

“How about her motive? Could you see into her head?” Sheriff Riley questioned.

“No. But I think it might be obvious.”

The three men looked at me expectantly—I guessed it wasn’t obvious to them.

“Matthew wanted to leave Sandi,” I explained. “He didn’t want their breakup to affect his career, so he was dragging it out, waiting for the right time. His girlfriend got sick of waiting. She killed Sandi to get on with it. I’m not sure why she killed Matthew.”

“Do you have any proof—besides the hoodoo—any proof at all?” Sheriff Riley asked.

“Maybe your experience is different than mine,” I said. “But usually a man doesn’t risk everything to get rid of the only woman in his life. Matthew was worried about his job but still willing to break up with Sandi. That says to me that he had another woman.”

“Anything else?” Chief Michaels asked.

“I think that’s it, at least for now.” Gramps took my arm and helped me up. “I think Dae needs to lie down for a while at home. You’ll have to excuse her.”

I didn’t mind him taking over. My head hurt and my eyes were blurry. I was ready to go home. But I had one last piece of information for them. “There was something else I felt about the man who killed Johnny. I could feel his fear and anger. He was desperate to get that box back. I keep feeling like there’s more to tell—I just can’t seem to pick up on it right now. I’m sorry.”

The chief and Sheriff Riley started blasting out more questions. I could feel them like arrows piercing into me. I needed to get away. Gramps and I started to go, but then I remembered my conversation with Cole and Molly Black last night. I turned back to the chief and the sheriff. “It has nothing to do with the gun, but did you know Shawn Foxx was seeing someone else too?” I told them what Cole and Molly said last night about seeing him at the restaurant.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Chief Michaels admitted. “You say the woman he was with might work at Carter Hatley’s place?”

“We might’ve been barking up the wrong tree,” Sheriff Riley said. “You rest up now, Dae. We’ll take it from here. And don’t worry your pretty head that the intel you got from the pistol was useless.”

Gramps hustled us out of the shop after that, and we got into a shiny new golf cart in the parking lot.

“Where’d you get the new transportation?” I asked.

“I borrowed it. No telling when our insurance claim will come through.”

We careened out of the parking lot. A delivery truck barely missed us and a car blared its horn. That was Gramps’s driving. I was never sure if he was still pretending he was driving the sheriff’s car on a high-speed chase or what. That’s why I preferred to drive.

“Don’t you ever listen to me asking you to do something like that again,” he said. “You scared me to death back there. Your face was as white as a sail. You should’ve told me there could be a problem.”

“You said you thought it was my duty.”

“Horsefeathers! Don’t pay attention to me. You do what you think is right. What do I know? I’m just a crazy old man.”

He stopped hard in the driveway when we got to the house. I hugged him, and we sat together in the golf cart for a few minutes. “You’re not crazy. You just want to do what you’ve always done—make Duck a better place.”