The Case of the Itinerant Ibizan Page 6

  Then the dog lurched to a sudden stop and Josie stumbled forward. She almost tripped over the dog who was staring down at the bed of pine straw and a pile of dirt directly in front of him. Josie knelt down and petted the dog’s head. The bloodhound was panting heavily and seemed agitated.

  “Good boy, Bailey. Easy does it.”

  Josie glanced back at us and nodded. Sammy and I slowly approached and peered over her shoulder. A shallow hole, half uncovered was a few feet away, and it was impossible to miss the lifeless hand that was sticking out of the dirt.

  “Is that a watch?” Sammy said.

  “Yes, it is,” Josie said.

  “It’s not a Mickey Mouse watch by any chance, is it?” he whispered. Then he said by way of explanation. “He loved that watch. He said it made him feel like a kid again.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid it is. I’m so sorry, Sammy,” Josie said, climbing to her feet to hug him.

  I did the same, but it didn’t stop the torrent of tears that began to stream down Sammy’s face. He knelt down and examined the watch without touching it.

  “Ah, Uncle Johnny. What the heck did you do?”

  “Sammy, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? You and Jill should do something fun. Maybe take the boat out.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to be here.”

  “Okay, that’s your call,” I said, reaching for my phone. I dialed and waited. “Hi, Chief. It’s me. Look, I need you to head over to the Inn. We’re in the woods off the back of the play area…Yeah. And you better bring Freddie with you…Thanks.”

  I put my phone back in my pocket and glanced around the peaceful setting that was quiet except for the sounds of chirping birds. They were starting to make quite a racket, and I wondered if they were cranky about us intruding into their space or whether the news of the dead guy was starting to work its way through the forest. I draped an arm around Sammy’s shoulder who continued to stare down at the ground. Bailey sat down at Josie’s feet, then barked once when he caught a glimpse of the Ibizan standing about twenty feet away.

  The Beezer took a tentative step toward us, then another. Soon, it was standing a few feet away, and Sammy extended his hand. The dog sniffed it, then inched even closer. The dog pawed at the dirt and let loose with a high-pitched wail of loss and despair that broke my heart. Sammy knelt down and stroked the Ibizan’s head. The dog licked his hand, then eagerly devoured the treats Sammy was offering in rapid succession.

  “I don’t think he’s eaten in a while,” Sammy said.

  “When you’re ready, why don’t you get him on a lead and take him down to the Inn?” Josie said. “Give him a bath, get some food and water into him, and then get him settled into one of the condos. I’ll check him out as soon as we finish up with the police.”

  “Maybe I should do that now,” Sammy said, slipping the lead over the Beezer’s head. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “No, I need to be here.”

  We watched him slowly lead the dog out of the woods.

  “Poor kid,” I said.

  “Yeah. I guess there’s nothing like finding a family member buried in a shallow grave,” she said, exhaling loudly.

  “This is going to be a hard one,” I said.

  “They’re all hard,” she said, petting the bloodhound. “You just usually make it look easy.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shaking my head at the crime scene. “The Beezer led us here, right?”

  “I think he did,” Josie said. “Did you see how he calmed down as soon as we found the body? It was almost like he realized his work was done.”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring down at the shallow grave. “But ours is just getting started.”

  Chapter 10

  Chief Abrams and Freddie, Clay Bay’s medical examiner, arrived together about fifteen minutes later. We said quiet hellos, and then they went to work examining what they could see of the body without disturbing the crime scene. Josie and I sat on the ground with our backs against pine trees, and Bailey stretched out between us. He kept a close eye on both two men who chatted quietly for several minutes as they went about their business.

  “Okay,” Chief Abrams said as he approached. “We’re going to need to get a crew out here to dig the body up. You guys don’t need to be here for that.”

  I glanced at Josie who nodded, and we climbed to our feet.

  “And Sammy is convinced it’s his uncle?”

  “Yeah, between the hat and the watch, he’s pretty sure,” I said, handing over the baseball cap to the Chief. “And he said he wants to be here.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Chief Abrams said. “But see if you can keep him down at the Inn. Tell him I’ll stop by and update everyone before I leave. Sammy doesn’t need to watch his uncle’s body being dug up.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” I said.

  “Okay, that’s all I can do for now,” Freddie said, walking over and coming to a stop next to the Chief.

  “What’s your take?” I said.

  “It’s hard to pin it down until I can get a closer look,” he said. “But judging from the rigor in his hand and arm, I’m going to guess he died a couple of days ago. Three at the most.”

  “Was it one of your dogs that dug him up?” Chief Abrams said.

  “No, it was the Ibizan. We’re pretty sure it was the victim’s dog,” I said.

  “The dog led you here?” Chief Abrams said.

  “We think so,” I said, nodding.

  “Smart dog,” he said.

  “He’s a grieving dog at the moment. You should have heard the howl he let out earlier,” Josie said.

  “I wonder if Wally would howl like that if anything ever happened to me?” Chief Abrams said.

  Wally was the Chief’s basset hound who we’d been taking care of since he was a puppy. And he was a notorious howler, a trait the Chief’s neighbors never let him forget.

  “Of course, he would. Wally howls when you leave him to go to the kitchen for a fresh beer,” Josie said, laughing.

  “Yeah, he is kind of a baby, isn’t he?” the Chief said, grinning as he reached for his phone. “Hey, Carl. Yeah, it’s me. Look, I’m going to need you to grab a couple of guys and headed over to the Doggy Inn…It’s a digging job… No, there’s no need for a backhoe. You’ll just need shovels…Yeah. We’re in the woods behind the dogs’ play area…Just call me when you hit the edge of the woods, and I’ll give you directions from there…Thanks. Oh, and Carl, keep this one to yourself, okay? Great. I’ll see you then.”

  The Chief put his phone away and glanced around.

  “I’ve never been back here. It’s nice and peaceful. Is this part of your property?”

  “No, it belongs to somebody else,” I said.

  “Who owns it?” Chief Abrams said, glancing back and forth at us.

  I looked at Josie, and she shrugged.

  “You know, I have no idea,” I said, surprised. “How about that? All these years and we never bothered to find out.”

  “It’s always just been The Woods,” Josie said. “Apart from the high school kids who come out here to hook up, there’s never anybody here.”

  “We should probably find out,” I said, nodding as I looked at Chief Abrams. “That might be a good place to start, huh?”

  “Nothing gets past you,” he said, grinning.

  Josie snorted.

  “Shut it.”

  “Why are you yelling at me?”

  “I was talking to him.”

  Chapter 11

  I stared straight ahead and silently cursed my own stupidity. A can-do attitude is all well and good, but when it’s combined with a complete lack of foresight, the combination can be deadly and leave you cramped and sweaty in a tin can that had no business being airborne, much less traveling close to three hundred miles an hour, four miles above the ground I couldn’t wait to kiss.

  After Chief Abrams and I had come up empty in o
ur search for clues about who might have killed Sammy’s uncle, we’d been chatting about our possible next steps, and he wondered aloud if it might be a good idea for someone to check out the victim’s hometown. And with my Snoopmeter redlining, in my haste to do whatever I could to solve the crime, I’d not only praised Chief Abrams for having such a great idea but had volunteered to handle it.

  Unfortunately, I’d forgotten one very important and basic fact. Normal, Illinois was over 700 miles from Clay Bay and would take around fourteen hours of non-stop driving to get there. Including the return trip and the time required to do whatever snooping was required, I would need at least three days away from the Inn, free time I didn’t have given the fact that we were entering our busy season.

  And when I decided that driving was out of the question, my lack of foresight raised its ugly head when I realized that we’d have to fly. After researching every available flight to Normal departing out of a half-dozen airports, our required travel time, including layovers and connecting flights, had been cut to six hours in each direction, not counting the time required to drive back and forth to the airports. As such, the option of flying was only marginally better. And when the fact that I’d actually have to get on an airplane was added to the mix, fourteen hours in a car was starting to sound like the least objectionable option.

  Desperate, I was about to propose using Skype sessions to speak with an as yet unidentified group of people when Josie casually suggested that I charter a plane. We’d be able to fly non-stop on a direct route and be in Normal in less than three hours. Then she reminded me of the private jet we’d taken home from the Caymans, and I was immediately intrigued by the idea. If I was destined to die in a fiery plane crash, I figured I might as well do it while sitting in luxurious comfort.

  When she offered to handle all the arrangements, I should have known she was up to something. But I agreed to let her make the reservation, and when we showed up at a small private airstrip this morning, instead of the sleek Gulfstream I’d envisioned, I saw a six-seater Cessna waiting for us. Before I could recover from my shock and berate her for pulling such a cruel stunt, she grinned and gave me a finger wave and drove off before I could get my hands on her.

  And that was how I came to be sitting upright in my seat with a frozen stare on my face as the engine droned and the tiny craft worked its way westward through a stiff headwind that rattled the wings and pulled my stomach into my throat. I snuck a quick peek out the window, decided that was a bad idea, and resumed my intricate study of the floral pattern on the seat back directly in front of me.

  “I take it you don’t like to fly very much.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  “My right hand has gone numb.”

  “Sorry.”

  I let go, unceremoniously brushed his hand off the armrest, then regripped. I squeezed both hands as hard as I could to test the strength of my death grip, then nodded. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to save me if we crashed, but at least they’d have my fingerprints to help identify the body.

  “And for the record, it’s not the flying that bothers me. It’s the thought of crashing into a mountain.”

  “No chance of that,” Sammy said, laughing. “It’s pretty flat throughout the Midwest.”

  “Then I’m gonna go with crashing into a cornfield,” I snapped. “Don’t nitpick, Sammy.”

  I didn’t kiss the tarmac when we landed a half-hour later, but I did give it a flirtatious wave as I headed for the terminal. We rented a car, and I tossed the keys to Sammy. Since he was familiar with the area, I stretched out in the passenger seat and looked out the window trying to get a feel for the place. He was right about not having to worry about crashing into a mountain, the place was flat, and corn was sprouting in early summer abundance. We passed a sign for Normal that told us around 50,000 people lived here, and, based on what I saw on the drive from the airport, I was pretty sure the town was aptly named.

  “How did the town get its name?” I said, glancing over at Sammy.

  “There are all sorts of bad jokes about that,” he said, lowering the volume on the radio. “And they get old in a hurry if you live here, so I’ll spare you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Normal used to be North Bloomington, but then they decided to split off. And there was a school back then called Illinois State Normal University. Apparently, the normal part is some sort of French reference.

  “Sure,” I said. “Ecoles Normales. They’re secondary education schools for teachers.”

  “That’s right, I forgot,” Sammy said, nodding. “You’re fluent in French.”

  “Oui, mais je n'ai pas la possibilité de l'utiliser autant que je le souhaite.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Sammy said, shrugging.

  I laughed and stretched my back.

  “So when the town split off, they took the name from the school. Then the school got renamed Illinois State University and the normal reference sort of got lost.”

  “That’s where you went to school?”

  “Yeah, that was it. One year. Go, Redbirds.”

  “It’s not the Red Booby, is it?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just a bad memory,” I said, yawning. “What time does the game start?”

  “One-thirty,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I thought we’d just eat at the ballpark.”

  “Oh, no. Hot dogs and cold beer?” I said, glancing over. “Not the briar patch. Are you sure we won’t have trouble getting tickets?”

  “No, it’s a day game, and the place holds around seven thousand. We’ll be fine. And I used to know all the people who worked at the ticket office. Hopefully, at least one of them is still there.”

  I nodded and leaned back in my seat. Sammy drove from memory, all of them good judging by the smile on his face, and soon he pulled into the parking area in front of the stadium. I put on a long-sleeved shirt, checked to make sure I had sunscreen in my bag and put my sunglasses on.

  “No hat?” Sammy said, frowning.

  “I’m going to buy one of the CornBelters hats,” I said, following him toward the ticket office.

  “Sammy!” a man behind the glass said. “What the heck are you doing here?”

  “I thought I’d check to see how my cousin is doing,” Sammy said, reaching through the opening to shake the man’s hand.

  “He’s doing good. He plays a mean third base, but he ain’t hittin’ a lick. Maybe he’ll start coming around now that the weather is improving.”

  “How have you been, Carlos?”

  “Great, just great. And you?”

  “I’m doing good. Oh, I’d like you to meet my boss, Suzy Chandler.”

  “Your boss? I was hoping you were gonna tell me she was your girlfriend,” he said, grinning. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” I said. “And if you could see his girlfriend, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

  “Still the ladies man, huh, Sammy?” he said, grinning.

  “Ladies, man?” I said, glancing over at a red-faced Sammy. “You’ve been holding out on us.”

  “Shut it.”

  “So, I guess you folks need a couple of tickets.”

  “We do,” Sammy said. “You got any good ones left?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. I just had a couple of the Big League Scout seats turned back in. Bobby can’t make it today, and he didn’t want to see them go to waste.”

  “Are you kidding?” Sammy said. “That’s great.”

  “Translation, please,” I said.

  “The Big League Scout seats are right behind home plate. And I mean right behind home. How much are they going for?”

  “They’re fifty bucks each,” Carlos the ticket seller said.

  “Fifty bucks?” I said, staring at him in disbelief. “For a minor league baseball game?”

  “They include unlimited food and drink,” Carlos said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Where do I sign?” I said, reaching for a credit
card.

  Chapter 12

  I set the size adjuster on the back of my new hat to its widest setting, slid my ponytail through the opening, and pulled the hat down over my forehead. I beamed at Sammy, proud as a peacock.

  “How do I look?”

  “Actually, quite normal,” Sammy said, nodding.

  “Good, I want to blend in,” I said, glancing around. “Where the heck is she?”

  “Relax, they said she’d be right with us,” Sammy said, staring out at the field.

  “Which one is your cousin?”

  “Number twelve,” Sammy said, pointing.

  I glanced over at the young man who was holding a bat and listening carefully to the instructions he was receiving from a gray-haired man. Then he took a few practice swings, and I frowned. Sammy noticed, and he sat back in his chair and stared at me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I think he’s overstriding,” I said as I continued to watch the coaching session.

  “I didn’t know you were into baseball,” Sammy said.

  “I guess you could say I’m kind of a fan. But my dad was a fanatic. Over the years, I couldn’t help but pick a few things up.”

  “Did you play?”

  “Me?” I said, laughing. “No, only in my head. My athletic ability is confined strictly to the mental side of the game. Oh, good. Here she comes.”

  A young woman approached and stopped next to us.

  “Welcome to the Corn Crib. I’m Judy, and I’ll be taking care of you today. Great seats, huh?”

  “They’re amazing,” I said, nodding. “Let’s see, for starters, I’m thinking a hot dog, burger, and a bratwurst with onions, an order of fries, and a couple of your coldest beers. Oh, and you might as well bring me one of the ears of corn. I can’t very well come here and not try the corn, right?”

  “You got it,” the waitress said.

  “What are you gonna have, Sammy?”

  The waitress did a double take and stared at me.

  “That’s all for you?”