Mac N Cheese Murder: Book 5 in The Bandit Hills Series Read online

  “Dash, would you just tell me what it is?” Part of me already knows what he’s going to say.

  “There’s been a murder.”

  CHAPTER 3

  So, running sucks. If you’re the kind of person that runs recreationally, I don’t understand you. If you’re the kind of person that runs marathons for fun, I’m afraid we can’t be friends. We’re just too different, you and I.

  But running when someone is counting on you to run sucks far worse, because you simply have to keep going.

  I don’t know how I do it, but I run the whole way from Indian Head Road to the police station downtown. I keep waiting for adrenalin to kick in, for that fabled “runner’s high” that’s supposed to take the pain away, but it never comes. As a result, I burst into the station a sweaty, panting mess, the mother of all side-stickers stabbing my abdomen like a twisting knife. I’m also pretty sure one of my lungs has collapsed.

  In the small reception area, there’s an older woman with two young children, a boy and a girl, but I don’t pause to exchange pleasantries. I barely glance at them as I barge up to the front desk.

  Sharon, one of Bandit Hills’ two deputies, looks up at me with wide eyes, like a lunatic just entered with an automatic rifle. “Cassie, are you okay?”

  “No… need Phil... right away…”

  She doesn’t miss a beat. “Come with me.” She leads me past the front desk, and at the same time I hear an aggressive male voice shouting from the rear of the station.

  “Look! See these marks? That’s assault!”

  Sharon leads me around a corner to see Sheriff Phil, a look of unending patience on his face, talking with Anna’s ex-husband, Pete. The latter is red-faced and has one beefy arm stuck out, dark purple bruises evident around his wrist.

  “Take it down a notch, Pete,” Phil says calmly. “I promise you I’ll look into it right away.”

  “I want her arrested!” Pete shouts.

  “I’m not just going to arrest someone because you say so,” Phil explains. “But I’d be happy to go down there and talk to her—”

  “Phil,” Sharon cuts in. “We need you.”

  Over the past few years, Phil has become a good friend. Funny thing is, back in high school, he and Pete were buddies; both were on the football team, cruising around with cheerleaders on the weekends and generally being jerks. But Phil grew up, became a cop, and is now the youngest sheriff in Bandit Hills’ history.

  Pete, as far as I know, still works in the paper mill in the neighboring town of Arborton. He’s a big guy, about six-three and burly, with a sizeable paunch that he’s been cultivating over the last decade or so. Some would call Pete “traditional.” I like to describe a guy like him as a Neanderthal. He’s one of those fellows that still think the man should be the breadwinner, and a woman’s place is in the kitchen.

  So when Sharon interrupts their conversation, Pete turns to her, avarice in his eyes, and says, “We’re talking here.”

  Deputy Sharon raised a whole litter of kids on her own while working full-time as a cop. Short version is, she’s not the kind of woman to take flack. She stands nose-to-chest with Pete, smiles, and says in a pouty baby-talk voice, “I’m sorry, Pete. Did your hundred-pound wife hurt you? Are you gonna be okay?”

  I swear his lip curls into a snarl for just a second before Phil steps in. “Pete, give me just one moment, please.” He turns to me and says, “Cassie, what is it?”

  I’m still so surprised to find Pete in the station that I forgot all about my side-sticker and burning lungs. At the same time, I certainly don’t want to make any assumptions right in front of the guy—Dash didn’t clarify who it was in the car.

  “There’s been a murder,” I tell Phil. “Dash and I found it while jogging.”

  “Meet me outside,” Phil says quickly. To Pete, he says, “This is going to have to wait. Stay here with Sharon until I get back.”

  Any anger in Pete’s expression completely dissolved at the mention of a murder. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “Of course. I’ll be here.” He lowers himself into a plastic chair as Phil and I hurry outside to his cruiser.

  CHAPTER 4

  Oh sure, adrenalin. You can’t kick in while I’m running, but you come surging while I’m riding shotgun in a cop car at warp speed, the sirens whooping over our heads.

  It takes Phil about a minute and a half to get to the scene, where Dash waits patiently about ten feet from the car. “Wait here,” Phil tells me as he gets out.

  Fat chance, buddy.

  I give them a good five minutes to talk and call in whoever needs calling in before I get out of the car. Dash trots over and puts his arms around me.

  “Is it Anna?” I ask him.

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “Looks like gunshot wounds.”

  “Jeez.” It sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it’s all that comes to mind. I mean, I wasn’t really close with her, but I did just see her yesterday. You’d think that with all the paranormal stuff I’ve been through, I’d be used to death, but when it’s fresh, it’s a tragedy… especially when it’s a young mother of two trying to get her life back on track.

  Suddenly it occurs to me that the two children that I saw in the reception area of the police station must have been Pete’s kids… and Anna’s. Those poor kids are soon going to be told their mother is dead.

  Over Dash’s shoulder, I can see Phil on the radio with someone, so I tell Dash, “Pete was down at the police station when I got there.”

  He lets me go and looks at me, confused. “What for?”

  “Not entirely sure. The gist I got was that Anna hurt him in some way, and he was trying to have Phil arrest her for assault.”

  “Huh,” is all Dash says before Phil approaches, clipping the radio back into its spot on his belt.

  “Dash, give me a hand with the crime scene tape? Deputy Tom’s coming up with sawhorses. We’re going to close the road until the coroner gets here.”

  “Sure. Cassie, maybe you should head back to the shop. I’ll call you when I’m able.”

  I grunt. Dash knows my affinity for getting all up in untoward business—which is why they used to call me Curious Cassie back when I was on the high school newspaper. It has served me well, though, as I’ve had a part in solving the last four murders that took place in Bandit Hills.

  “Alright,” I tell him, and then I whisper, “but you better update me later.”

  As I start walking back down Indian Head Road, I hear Phil behind me say, “It’s a real shame.” He pauses and then asks, “Dash… are those your high school gym clothes?”

  * * *

  By the time I get back to the shop (walking this time, of course) it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning, and I decide the day has already been far too crazy for me to deal with. Though I’d prefer to crawl back into bed and sleep, I (unfortunately) have responsibilities. I take a quick shower, dress, blow-dry my hair and head down to open Miss Miscellanea.

  The whole time, I can’t stop thinking about Anna. I think about her children, who at that very moment might be learning that their mother has been killed. And then I think about that little tidbit: that she was murdered, no doubt about it.

  Lucky for me, once I open the store at nine I have plenty to keep me busy and keep my mind off of Anna. Tourists flood in from the time I unlock the door and flip the sign from Closed to Open. Despite what happened this morning, I put on my best smile and welcome each customer with, “Welcome to Miss Miscellanea! Please have a look around, and let me know if I can help you with anything.”

  My store is by no means as much of a Bandit Hills landmark as, say, Tank’s Diner or Penny Harrigan’s fifties-style motel, but I do good business, and a lot of it is thanks to some recent changes my mom helped me implement. Mom is my only employee, since retirement had her going stir-crazy. She pretty much comes and goes as she pleases and watches the shop when I need to run off somewhere. A couple of months ago I introduced Mom to eBay
, and since then she’s been a bidding warrior, gaining several esoteric items for the shop at cutthroat prices in an effort to be more of the kind of shop tourists are looking for.

  So sure, we carry secondhand clothes, old knick-knacks, some used musical instruments, and the like, but now we also sell taxidermied animals in strange poses, Ouija boards carved from driftwood, cultist masks, dreamcatchers, and a number of random items that supposedly ward off ghosts.

  Hey, I live in Bandit Hills. This is just paranormal commercialism. Tourists just eat that stuff up, and I keep my prices fair.

  Anyhow, my morning flies by with the influx of customers, and I only trip on Xerxes twice. Xerxes is a giant Persian cat that just of showed up at the shop one day and never left. I tend to trip on him when he’s not even there; he’s usually found perched on top of one of the curio cabinets or the long glass counter near the cash register, and whenever I trip, I shoot him a scowl and he flicks his tail once in response.

  That’s Bandit Hills for ya.

  By noon I still haven’t heard from Dash. Mom comes in, announcing her arrival with her herald, Kodiak. The tiny but fierce Pomeranian dashes across the shop’s hardwood floor with a shrill barrage of barks, weaving in and out of my legs by way of greeting as he does. “Yap! Yap-yap-yap!”

  “Hey, sweetie,” Mom says as she sets her purse behind the counter. “Looks like it’s been a busy morning! Anything interesting happen?”

  See, this is an example of how bad I am sometimes at interacting with the living. My first instinct is to tell her, Why yes, Mother, Dash and I went for a morning jog and found a body, but I think twice and decide that’s not a great way to start off, so instead I just say, “Nope, business as usual.” The correct answer is probably somewhere between those two, but at the moment I don’t really feel like talking about murders. Besides, my mom gets all antsy when she finds out that I was somehow linked to someone being killed. Moms, right?

  “You want to go grab a bite to eat? I’ll keep an eye on the place,” she offers.

  Before she came I wasn’t even thinking about food, but now that she mentions it, my stomach growls. “Sounds good. I’ll be quick.”

  CHAPTER 5

  When I’m sad or depressed, I typically try to avoid food, because I know that can be a slippery slope. But I totally get it. There’s a certain euphoria that comes with good food, a rush of endorphins that makes folks just plain happy.

  Bonnie’s Bodacious Barbecue is hoppin’ by the time I arrive. The Saturday lunch hour has the place packed—not a seat untaken, which makes for a very sad Cassie. As I’m standing there like an outcast in the high school cafeteria, I hear a smooth voice call out.

  “Cassie. Over here.”

  A tanned, smooth face with dark hair smiles back at me. It’s Xander Cruz, our resident horse whisperer and friend of all creatures big and small. Seriously, the guy has a real knack with animals. He’s like the Snow White of Bandit Hills.

  But most importantly, he has a free spot at the end of his picnic table. I take a seat across from him and gush my appreciation. Once upon a time, not that long ago actually, Xander was a prime suspect in the murder of one of Bonnie’s ranch hands, but not only was he innocent (which I totally knew the whole time) but the real murderer had attempted to frame him.

  “Thanks, Xander. I would have had to murder a tourist for a seat.” I bite my lip and look down the table quickly. I probably shouldn’t joke about murder when one just actually occurred, but no one reacts to my joke, so I assume that Anna’s death isn’t common knowledge yet. But Bandit Hills is a small town, so it’s just a matter of time.

  I say hello to Bonnie as she brings me a plate and start heaping on food from the serving dishes laid out on the table. Today’s menu includes a smoked brisket wrapped in a bacon weave, blackened on the outside but pink and tender on the inside. I tear some off with my fingers and the beef falls apart in my mouth, juicy and savory. I grab up some deep-fried corn fritters, a few golden brown hushpuppies, and a healthy scoop of grilled zucchini, sprinkled with salt and brushed with what I’m guessing is balsamic vinegar.

  Only when I dig in do I notice that Xander is not eating, but rather has Bonnie’s old cookbook open in front of him. His brow is furrowed as he reads from a page that looks less like English than it does a cryptogram from the Zodiac Killer.

  Shortly after she got the cookbook, Bonnie discovered that the last several pages of it were written in another language. Xander took a look and confirmed it—in fact, each additional page was written in a different language, from Korean to Greek to Portuguese. Xander offered to translate them for her—all of the pages—and none of us questioned how he could possibly know that many languages, because around here we don’t typically ask the inexplicable to explain itself.

  “You’re still at it, huh?” I ask him casually. “How’s that going?”

  “Terribly,” he answers. “I thought I’d be done long before now, but not only is each page in a unique language, but it uses some very strange translations… some of it is very old and archaic, and in other places they use metaphors.” He points to a few of the odd symbols and explains, “See this here? This translates literally as ‘aged juice of horned beast.’ The best thing I can guess is that they mean goat cheese.”

  “Weird,” I offer succinctly, partly because my mouth is full, and partly because I’m thinking about how I wouldn’t want to eat anything that included “aged juice of horned beast” in it. Then again, they say you usually don’t want to know how your food is prepared, right?

  He closes the book and rubs his eyes. “It’s like a first-grader trying to decipher King Lear’s rant. And it certainly doesn’t help that Bonnie won’t let me take the book home.”

  “She won’t let that thing out of her sight.” A couple of weeks ago I tried to get Bonnie to give me the recipe for her orange barbecue pulled pork and she went all Gollum on me (you know, “It’s my precious!” sort of thing. But maybe that’s an exaggeration. A little.)

  “Enough about that, though,” Xander smiles cheerfully. “How have you been, Cassie?”

  Honesty isn’t always the best policy, but there’s something about Xander that makes me want to tell him the truth. And I’m just about to open my mouth and tell him, quietly, about Anna, but my cell phone rings at the same time.

  “One sec.” I dig it out of my purse and see that it’s Dash. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” he says back. “You wanted an update. Want to meet up?”

  “I’m up at Bonnie’s now, but I can get somewhere quieter. Your office?”

  “Sure.” There’s a moment of pause, and then he adds, “You went to Bonnie’s without me?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Dash’s office is in a small professional building near the entrance to Bandit Hills proper, close to Penny’s motel. The offices are otherwise occupied by an ENT specialist, a dentist, and a podiatrist, so needless to say, Dash usually chooses to have lunch with me instead of the other guys in his building. Not because they shun him for not being a medical professional; more because he doesn’t feel like eating while hearing stories about earaches, teeth and foot fungus.

  I head up the short flight of stairs and find his office unlocked. It’s a small place, but it’s fitting for him and easy to keep tidy. There’s a very small reception room with three chairs, and beyond that a wider room with wood-paneled walls and an L-shaped desk that takes up almost half the space. Last month I suggested that he ought to “spice it up” a bit, so he put up a Star Wars poster. Not what I meant, but hey, whatever works.

  Dash is a private investigator, and up until recently his work was pretty mundane. Stuff like following up on insurance claims and finding lost pets. Every once in a while he’d get to tail a cheating spouse or something. Lately, though, his star has been on the rise, and he’s been asked to travel to Nashville and beyond to help out on other cases. He always makes sure to have time to help out Phil and the local PD if the need arises, though.
r />   I drop myself into his guest chair and put my feet up on the desk. “Alright, Columbo, lay it on me.”

  He rolls his eyes and pushes my feet off the desk. “Listen, Cass, this conversation is off the record. It didn’t happen; know what I mean?”

  “What conversation?” I ask innocently.

  “Exactly. Phil isn’t planning on bringing me onboard this time.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Looks like it’s going to be fairly open and shut. Anna was killed by a bullet that broke through her driver’s side window, which means the shooter was outside her car. We found a second shell casing in the road and another bullet lodged in a tree, which means the shooter fired twice and hit her once. Best guess I can make is that she was shot from a moving car going the opposite way on Indian Head Road.”

  “Okay…” I say slowly, not quite following. “So why will it be open and shut?”

  “Because in order to load a gun, you need to press the shell into the clip, which leaves a decent thumb print. The shells were nine millimeter, which is a fairly common size, but it shouldn’t be that hard to find out who associated with Anna has a gun registered to them.”

  “Unless the murder weapon wasn’t registered,” I offer.

  “True. But until they find out for sure, they’re going to handle the investigation.” Dash leans back in his chair and shrugs. “That’s all we got so far. I stuck around to help them find the missing bullet, the one stuck in the tree and collect evidence. Then I headed home, showered, changed and called you.”

  “Okay. So we’ve got one dead woman, a jilted ex-husband, a jealous boyfriend…” I start ticking items off on my fingers. “Hey, any idea why Anna and Pete got divorced? Come to think of it, I have no idea…” I trail off as Dash leans forward, shaking his head. “What?”

  “Not this time, Cassie. We have no business in this. We’re not involved personally or professionally.”