Sharpe Wit Read online

  “Out!” Guttman yelled again.

  Deena pulled out her notepad. “Care to make a statement?”

  “You know that was off the record, right?” His tone had softened. “At least let me verify it with the coroner before you write anything.”

  “As long as you keep me in the loop.” She loved having Guttman owe her a favor.

  The detective nodded. “Now I need you to leave so I can get to the bottom of this.”

  “Just one question. Where did the body come from in the first place?”

  “Off the record?” Guttman stood up and leaned on his fists across the desk.

  “For now,” Deena said.

  “He was found dead of a heart attack at the Highway Café. Had Cooper’s ID and a bank slip on him. Seemed like an open-and-shut case. Widower living alone dies waiting on his breakfast.”

  The thought made Deena shudder. “That’s awful.” She was glad it hadn’t been her neighbor Edwin, even though they’d had their differences in the past. “What now?”

  “Now, you need to leave so we can identify this John Doe and figure out what to charge your neighbor with.”

  Deena started to ask another question, but she recognized the “last nerve” look on Guttman’s face. “Okay, but call me if you get more information. The good people of Maycroft have a right to know.”

  Guttman walked over and opened the door and then shut it quickly behind her.

  As she walked past Linda at the front desk, Deena flashed a thumbs-up sign and the officer smiled back. She was lucky to have gotten as much information as she had out of the tight-lipped detective. When she turned around, she almost ran into Ian Davis.

  “Hey, Ian. Are you representing Edwin Cooper?”

  “Um, yes. How did you know?”

  Bingo! Her day was getting better and better.

  * * *

  IAN DAVIS WAS THE HUSBAND of Deena’s best friend, Sandra. Not only were she and Gary godparents to their daughter, but Deena had worked for a time as an investigator at his law firm. He was a public defender and handled a lot of the criminal cases in town since most of his colleagues didn’t like getting their hands dirty. When some of his funding fell through, he had to let Deena go and that’s when she was hired back at the newspaper.

  “You weren’t assigned his case as a public defender, were you? Edwin Cooper isn’t an indigent.”

  “No, he hired me a while back to take care of his will. I remember he said if I was a good enough attorney for Mrs. Sharpe, I was good enough for him.”

  That surprised Deena. Her mother-in-law, Sylvia, had gotten to know him a bit, but she didn’t know Edwin knew her family’s private business. “Are you going in to see him now?”

  “Yes, and I need to get going. We might have a statement later.”

  Deena missed the days when she would go back to interview clients alongside Ian. She knew he wouldn’t reveal any confidential information, even to her. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask. As Ian walked up to the desk to check in, she asked, “Is it true Edwin tried to steal a body at gunpoint?”

  As expected, Ian shook his head at her. “No comment.”

  She was not to be deterred. She had until three o’clock to get her story in to make tomorrow’s edition. Walking out to her car, she called Dan to tell him what she had. He told her he would save her six inches in section B, fully expecting the story to develop further as they learned more about John Doe and why he was identified as Edwin Cooper.

  Deena checked her watch. It was almost lunchtime. She thought about calling Gary but decided just to drive over to Las Abuelas to see if he was still there.

  Sitting in their favorite booth on the far side of the restaurant was one of the most handsome men Deena had ever seen. Wearing a blue suit and crisp white shirt, he looked like a menswear model. His graying hair made him look intelligent and thoughtful and younger than his sixty years. She walked up to the man and he flashed a bright smile.

  Gary had waited for her.

  Chapter 3

  “How did you know I’d come?” Deena asked as she stared into her husband’s contented face.

  “Because I know you. It’s not like we haven’t been married since the Ice Age.” He pushed the basket of chips and bowl of salsa closer to her. “Hungry?”

  “Starving.” Deena munched a few chips and took a drink of water. “What did I miss?”

  Gary leaned back. “Scott and I discussed how we would arrange the office space, while Vera and Scott’s wife planned the decorating.”

  Deena lifted an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. You might need to check on that. I heard Vera mention something about a ‘theme.’”

  “Oh my.” Deena wiped her mouth and took another drink of water to put out the fire ignited by the spicy salsa. “Sounds like it was a working lunch, then.”

  Gary’s lips curled into a weak smile. “Until Vera finished her margarita and started singing karaoke.”

  “But they don’t have karaoke here.”

  “Exactly.”

  Deena laughed. “You knew when you hired her away from the vineyard that she was a character.”

  “I know. She’ll be fine.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “There was one funny thing that happened after you left the bank. You know that woman, Marcie something, who works in new accounts?”

  Deena tried to picture her. “The one who always has Chinese takeout on her desk and holds the bun on top of her head with chopsticks?”

  Laughing, Gary nodded. “Well, she came bursting into Jake’s office, slammed down her letter of resignation, and yelled, ‘I’m outta here!’ Jake turned three shades of red and couldn’t stop apologizing.”

  “That’s weird. I wonder what that was about.”

  “Apparently, everything’s not roses and clover down at the bank.” He reached out and covered her hand with his. “Now what about you? What’s this new case?”

  She filled him in on Edwin Cooper and the funeral home incident.

  A vein in his neck bulged when she mentioned the gun. “Are you saying Dan Carson sent you to a crime scene with an active shooter?”

  “He knows I have enough sense to be careful, and so should you.”

  This was old territory for Deena and Gary. He always worried she’d get herself killed or seriously injured, and she always assured him she’d be careful. Luckily, he let it go this time without too much of a fuss.

  The waitress came over to see if Deena wanted to order anything. She declined. The water and chips had blown up in her stomach.

  Gary asked for the check, then turned his attention back to Deena’s story. “Do they know who the dead man is at the funeral home? Has anyone been reported missing?”

  She started to answer when her cell phone dinged, alerting her of a text message. Before she could check it, the phone rang. “It’s Guttman.” She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

  “I just sent you a picture of our John Doe. See if you can put it in the paper so we can get an ID on this guy. I’ve got officers canvassing the streets, but we can use all the help we can get.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” The phone clicked and Guttman had hung up.

  The waitress brought over the tab, and Gary signed the receipt. “What did he want?”

  Deena looked at the photo in her phone and waited for the waitress to leave. She showed it to Gary. “This is the dead guy.”

  “Eww.” He turned away. “Thanks for showing me that.”

  “Guttman wants us to put the picture in the newspaper to try to get an identification.”

  “Just what everyone wants to see with their oatmeal at breakfast—a corpse.” Gary carefully placed the receipt in his wallet. The man was obsessive when it came to business expenses.

  “I know, right? I need to call Dan and see what he says.” They got up to leave. “And you drive. I don’t like being responsible for your baby.”

  Gary’s face dropped. “You remembered to park it—”

  “Yes
, yes. It’s on the last row in the back of the parking lot with empty spaces on either side.”

  Gary let out his breath.

  She didn’t mention how she had squeezed the Mercedes into a visitors’ spot at the police station. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Gary drove while Deena called Dan.

  “Absolutely not,” Dan said when he saw the John Doe photo she’d forwarded him. “We have a strict policy against showing photos of dead people. Do you know how many phone calls I would get and how many subscriptions would be canceled?”

  Deena held the phone off her ear a bit. “Okay, okay. I get it. I told Guttman I’d ask.”

  “There is one thing we could do,” Dan said. She could hear him tapping the pencil on his desk. “If they get an artist’s sketch of the guy, we could run that.”

  Deena said she was on her way home to write her story and would call the detective to see what he said. After hanging up, she looked at Gary. “He said no.”

  “Yeah, I got that from over here.” He pulled into Butterfly Gardens, their cozy development in what the residents liked to call the suburbs of Maycroft.

  It was that time of year when the vegetation didn’t know what to do. In Texas, early March brought on anticipation of spring break for schools but was still too early for the trees to bud. Some did, but they would discover a lot of rain would keep the weather damp and dreary.

  Deena hopped out of the car in the driveway, anxious to see if Edwin had been sprung from the pokey. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer the doorbell. Ian Davis was a good lawyer, but even he couldn’t make the sluggish wheels of Maycroft’s justice system turn that fast.

  As she headed across the yard toward her house, she noticed Edwin’s lawn more barren than she remembered. Sure, most everyone’s grass was yellowed, but his had big patches where the grass had died. She realized then that she’d not seen much of him lately. He often sat on his porch drinking coffee so he could keep an eye on the neighbors as they picked up their morning newspapers or headed off to work. Where had he been?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by an irritating voice she knew all too well.

  “Yoo-hoo.” It was her neighbor from across the street, Christy Ann.

  “Hey there,” Deena said with as much enthusiasm as Eeyore.

  “Can you believe it?” Christy Ann shook her head and waved her newspaper as she traipsed over to Deena. “Old man Cooper up and died and no one even noticed. Good thing you’re married, or the same thing might happen to you.”

  “He’s not dead.” Deena turned to make her escape.

  “What? But it says so right here in your newspaper. If it’s in the newspaper, it must be true.” Christy Ann wore her usual uniform—a pair of yoga pants and a long T-shirt that said, “It’s a mom thing—you wouldn’t understand.” Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun and her only makeup was mascara. She had once told Deena that she should always wear mascara when she left the house so people wouldn’t mistake her for one of those women who pushed a shopping cart down the street by the thrift store.

  “It was a mistake. The police misidentified the deceased. There will be a retraction in tomorrow’s edition.”

  “A retraction?” She dropped her skinny arms next to her skinny hips. “How am I supposed to retract the chicken casserole I have in the oven I’m making for his kinfolk?”

  Actually, that was quite considerate of Christy Ann. She was always quick to bring food in times of sickness and death. Deena on the other hand would rush to the store at the last minute for a cake. “I’m sure your family will love the casserole.”

  “Humph. Parker hates casserole.” She crossed her arms. “So, who is it that died? Maybe I know him, and this dish won’t go to waste.”

  Deena took a few steps toward the door, anxious to get in and work on her story. “They don’t know yet, but keep your eye on the newspaper. It will be in there as soon as the police find out.”

  As she closed the door behind her, she heard her neighbor say, “Like we can believe that.”

  Chapter 4

  Hurley greeted Deena at the door with his usual quick yap and circle. She leaned down to scratch his ears. “Hey, boy. I told you I wouldn’t be gone long.”

  The black terrier tried to lick her hand and then cocked his head toward the kitchen, a sure sign he was hoping for a treat.

  “Okay, but just one. You are starting to put on weight. We can’t both be chunky.”

  “Who are you calling chunky?” Gary asked, coming up behind her. He had already removed his tie and had the newspaper in his hand.

  “Me. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I eat. I can’t seem to drop these extra pounds.” She opened the French doors leading to her office.

  “You could always come to the gym with me,” Gary said. “In fact, I think I’ll head over now. Scott and I are meeting at three.”

  Without uttering a word, Deena gave him a look.

  “I take that as a no.”

  “You know I hate that place,” she said. “Too many sweaty people in spandex. Plus, I need to make some calls and write this story. A misidentified body in the funeral home is actually fairly juicy.”

  “Especially if it turns out to be murder.”

  Deena shook her head. “The coroner said it was a heart attack.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Gary said, “Yeah, and he also said it was Edwin Cooper.”

  With that, Deena fired up her laptop and called Guttman. He wasn’t too happy about Dan’s refusal to run the photo of their John Doe, but said he’d get their sketch artist to fax something to the newspaper as soon as possible.

  What she wanted to do next was go to Ian Davis’s office to see if she could get any information about the charges against Edwin Cooper. She felt bad that something printed in the newspaper had gotten him into such trouble. Still, at his age he should have known better than to head into town with a full head of steam and a gun.

  She opened a new document on her computer and saved it with the obligatory wording required by her editor. She thought she heard a car and got up to look out the front window, hoping to see Edwin Cooper pulling into his garage. It was just the mailman, so she went back to her desk. Should she start the article with Edwin Cooper or the John Doe at the funeral home? She found herself wondering which lead would be the most salacious.

  Shaking her head, she reminded herself that the reason she was in journalism was to speak the truth, not sell newspapers. That wasn’t her job. She decided to start with the Edwin Cooper incident, reiterating the newspaper’s mistake in reporting him as deceased. Yes, that was better. She included quotes by Jeffrey Mortimer and left a blank space to fill in the charges being brought against Edwin.

  Reading over what she had written, she realized there were a number of blanks to fill in. She moved on to the John Doe. How was it that he had been identified in the first place as Edwin Cooper? She doubted Detective Guttman would tell her that information on the record, so she looked up the number to the Maycroft coroner’s office.

  After identifying herself to the receptionist, Deena was put through to Donald Richardson, the long-time Maycroft coroner.

  “I suppose you’re calling about John Doe,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Deena said. “I understand he was found at the Highway Café, is that right?”

  “Yep. Brought in three days ago. Poor fella died of a heart attack right there in front of the diner.”

  “So, his time of death was sometime that morning,” Deena said.

  “It’s hard to say. Seems like he might have been sitting out there for a spell. Nobody saw him arrive and no one seems to know who he is.”

  Deena scribbled notes as quickly as possible, knowing these could be direct quotes for her story. “Speaking of his identity, how was he first identified as Edwin Cooper?” This, of course, was a critical factor in the story.

  “The man didn’t have a wallet, cell phone, or even car keys on him.”

 
; Deena interrupted. “No keys? Then how did he get there?”

  “That’s a good question. Either he walked or someone must’ve dropped him off. Anyway, the police officer found an ID and a bank slip in his shirt pocket, both belonging to Edwin Cooper of Maycroft. One of my assistants called his next of kin but couldn’t get ahold of anyone.” There was a pause. “She accidentally checked the box indicating the body had been positively IDed. We sent it off to Mortimer’s Funeral Home. And that’s about it.”

  Deena stopped writing. “How did Mr. Cooper’s ID and bank slip end up in another man’s pocket?”

  “That’s a question for the police.”

  “Where is the body now and what’s going to happen to it—I mean, him?” she asked.

  “Mortimer is going to keep him on ice for now while the police try to figure out who the heck he is.”

  The coroner’s nonchalant attitude about the mix-up didn’t sit well with Deena. She wondered if he realized the real Edwin Cooper had been arrested. “Does this kind of thing happen very often where someone checks the wrong box and another man’s life is turned upside down?”

  She could hear the coroner take a deep breath on the other end of the phone and braced herself for his rebuke.

  “Actually, Mrs. Sharpe, this is the first time since I’ve been in this position in the past twenty years that anything like this has happened. And I’ll personally make sure it never happens again. Now I’ve got to go. If you have any more questions, contact Detective Guttman. He’ll give you the answers.”

  Deena thanked him and hung up. She went back to the computer and included the information from the coroner.

  The slamming of car doors got her attention and Hurley started barking. She went to the window again and saw Edwin Cooper and Ian Davis getting out of Ian’s car. She started to grab her notebook but decided a more friendly approach would likely prove more productive. Edwin had always liked Hurley, so she picked him up to take him with her.

  She walked across the yard and when she got to the house, both men were inside and the front door was still open. “Yoo-hoo,” she called out and then chided herself for sounding just like Christy Ann.