all. And don’t you worry over the summer bazaar. We’ve got it covered. That’s not saying we won’t miss you. Of course we’ll miss you. You’re committee chair. Do you want me to take over for you for a few weeks? I’d be happy to.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mama said. “And Joan, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone about the police suspecting it might be murder. No one knows anything yet for certain, and, well, you know how people can be.”
“Why, of course, Diana,” the lady said. “I won’t tell a soul.”
And just like that the rumors began.
Kyle
Beautiful, lucky, sorry, gun, motive
.
It was the day before Oliver Lane’s funeral. I’d told Mack that attending our vic’s funeral was strategic, but the truth was, strategy was an excuse. Diana Lane had gotten under my skin. A small part of me thought it was possible my brain had fabricated her. Sure she might be a looker, but the rest of it, the chiseled perfection, the helpless fragility, the innocent yet seductive stare, was an overactive imagination at work. Seeing her again would cure me. I’d start sleeping again. Mack would quit asking me whether I’d heard what he just said. A fifth of Redbreast would last longer than a week.
Mack and I were at our local precinct, a three-room space with six holding cells and a bathroom in a blue-shingled, white-trimmed, awning-graced building that matches every other building in downtown Cooper’s Island. In addition to Mack and me, there are two other officers, a part-timer we call Hawkeye, because he’s a dead ringer for Alan Alda, and an easy-on-the-eyes female rookie named Quinn. Our administrative staff includes a front-desk person, Sharon, who looks like a sweet old lady but chain smokes and has a voice gruffer and deeper than most men; our hippie, weed-smoking IT guy, Jake; and two girl Fridays, Bonnie,a hell-raising, buxom brunette in her early thirties, and her younger half sister, Klide (their mother obviously had a sense of humor), a shy, introverted, extremely diligent petite blonde. Klide had recently graduated with an economics degree from Duke and decided to intern with us for a few years before pursuing her MBA. I hate the idea of losing her; whenever I want something done right I give it to Klide.
As part of Dare County, we do a lot of business at the sheriff’s office over in Manteo, but each island has its own police department. Ours is sandwiched between a Laundromat and a bowling alley. Cooper’s Alleys doubles as a dance bar during tourist season, and is generally loud and jam-packed. A small grocery store, a drugstore, a hardware store, a bookstore, some tacky touristy shops, and a greasy spoon that makes a mean fish-and-chips rounds out our block of Main Street, which includes three full cobblestone-paved blocks, one either side of us, and a couple of dwindling ones either end of those. Somewhere in either direction Main Street turns back into Route 122. It’s hard to know for certain since Cooper’s doesn’t believe in street signs.
I was on the phone when the other line rang. It had been busy like that all morning. Thank God for Bonnie and her gift of gab; she could make even the most self-important of folks forget they had somewhere else to be.
“He sounds official,” Bonnie said, after forwarding the call to me. “And rich. Think he’s single?”
“Is this Detective Kyle Kennedy?” Bonnie was right. His voice had that gracious gentlemanly lilt specific to wealthy gentleman of the northernmost states of the South, particularly Virginia and North Carolina. The farther south you got, the less lilt and more twang.
“Speaking,” I said.
“This is Captain Benjamin Mercy. I’m with the homicide unit here in Raleigh. Our office is in the process of e-mailing you areport and some photographs, but I thought you might want to hear this firsthand. It’s about that vic of yours. Oliver Lane?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Well it appears
“That won’t be necessary,” Mama said. “And Joan, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone about the police suspecting it might be murder. No one knows anything yet for certain, and, well, you know how people can be.”
“Why, of course, Diana,” the lady said. “I won’t tell a soul.”
And just like that the rumors began.
Kyle
Beautiful, lucky, sorry, gun, motive
.
It was the day before Oliver Lane’s funeral. I’d told Mack that attending our vic’s funeral was strategic, but the truth was, strategy was an excuse. Diana Lane had gotten under my skin. A small part of me thought it was possible my brain had fabricated her. Sure she might be a looker, but the rest of it, the chiseled perfection, the helpless fragility, the innocent yet seductive stare, was an overactive imagination at work. Seeing her again would cure me. I’d start sleeping again. Mack would quit asking me whether I’d heard what he just said. A fifth of Redbreast would last longer than a week.
Mack and I were at our local precinct, a three-room space with six holding cells and a bathroom in a blue-shingled, white-trimmed, awning-graced building that matches every other building in downtown Cooper’s Island. In addition to Mack and me, there are two other officers, a part-timer we call Hawkeye, because he’s a dead ringer for Alan Alda, and an easy-on-the-eyes female rookie named Quinn. Our administrative staff includes a front-desk person, Sharon, who looks like a sweet old lady but chain smokes and has a voice gruffer and deeper than most men; our hippie, weed-smoking IT guy, Jake; and two girl Fridays, Bonnie,a hell-raising, buxom brunette in her early thirties, and her younger half sister, Klide (their mother obviously had a sense of humor), a shy, introverted, extremely diligent petite blonde. Klide had recently graduated with an economics degree from Duke and decided to intern with us for a few years before pursuing her MBA. I hate the idea of losing her; whenever I want something done right I give it to Klide.
As part of Dare County, we do a lot of business at the sheriff’s office over in Manteo, but each island has its own police department. Ours is sandwiched between a Laundromat and a bowling alley. Cooper’s Alleys doubles as a dance bar during tourist season, and is generally loud and jam-packed. A small grocery store, a drugstore, a hardware store, a bookstore, some tacky touristy shops, and a greasy spoon that makes a mean fish-and-chips rounds out our block of Main Street, which includes three full cobblestone-paved blocks, one either side of us, and a couple of dwindling ones either end of those. Somewhere in either direction Main Street turns back into Route 122. It’s hard to know for certain since Cooper’s doesn’t believe in street signs.
I was on the phone when the other line rang. It had been busy like that all morning. Thank God for Bonnie and her gift of gab; she could make even the most self-important of folks forget they had somewhere else to be.
“He sounds official,” Bonnie said, after forwarding the call to me. “And rich. Think he’s single?”
“Is this Detective Kyle Kennedy?” Bonnie was right. His voice had that gracious gentlemanly lilt specific to wealthy gentleman of the northernmost states of the South, particularly Virginia and North Carolina. The farther south you got, the less lilt and more twang.
“Speaking,” I said.
“This is Captain Benjamin Mercy. I’m with the homicide unit here in Raleigh. Our office is in the process of e-mailing you areport and some photographs, but I thought you might want to hear this firsthand. It’s about that vic of yours. Oliver Lane?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Well it appears
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