Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

I shrugged. It wasn’t exactly an answer, but then, I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. “I didn’t want to take away your free time. I didn’t want to involve you in something you might think is stupid. I didn’t want you to think I was some sort of nut job, going around trying to prove something when the police weren’t even able to prove it back when it happened. I didn’t want-”

“Us to be in any danger?” A comment that insightful coming from Sammi was the verbal equivalent of her walking into work wearing a plaid jumper and loafers. Just like an outfit like that would have done, it got my attention.

“You have better things to do than hang around with me when we’re not working,” I said, “looking for clues to a murder that happened so long ago, none of us even remember it.”

Absalom pursed his lips. “Think so?” He glanced at his fellow teammates. “Maybe we’ve let our team captain have her way long enough. Maybe it’s time our team became a democracy. What do you say? Let’s take a vote. All those in favor of letting Pepper investigate on her own in places like this, which don’t look too savory to me, raise your hand.”

Not a single hand went up.

“And all those in favor of helping her out?”

Every hand shot up, even Jake’s.

I am not by nature an emotional person, but my eyes misted and my throat closed over a lump.

“Don’t sweat it, Pepper.” Sammi slapped me on the back. “You don’t have to thank us. This is our way of thanking you.” I knew when she realized she’d said more than she meant because her cheeks got dusky. Her voice dropped. “I mean, you could’a had me tossed from the team. You know, that first time Virgil showed up and I whooped his butt.”

I laughed, because it wasn’t funny, but it was a way to make Sammi feel less embarrassed. “What? And miss all the other fights?”

Absalom was a man of business. He knew a girly bonding moment when he saw one, and he wasn’t about to let it get out of control. If it did, he knew Sammi and I would be sitting down, having a heart-to-heart, and comparing fashion pointers and love lives before another five minutes were up.

“Good, then that’s settled.” He grinned. “We got us a murder to solve. Let’s get started.”

“Jake, you’re the dresser. You stand over there.” I J pointed, and since Jake was crazy but not uncooperative, he moved to stand in the spot where the crime scene photos showed the dresser. “Delmar, you’re the mirror. The dresser looks like it was bumped away from its usual place, probably while Vera was trying to defend herself. So you want to stand a couple feet away from Jake. Reggie…” I consulted the photo again, “you’re over there, you’re the bed.”

Reggie grinned.

I rolled my eyes.

“Sammi, you can either be the smashed lamp or-”

“Oh, come on. Let me be the murdered chick. Please!” Sammi scampered over to where I was standing and stood on her tiptoes so she could see over my shoulder and look at the photograph. There’s no way on earth I would have asked her-or anybody else-to make full-body contact with the floor, but hey, Sammi was nothing if not spunky. She was really getting into this crime scene reenactment, and she laid down in the spot where the photo showed Vera’s body.

“You want me to be the murderer?” Absalom asked.

“I dunno.” I looked at it all and at the way my teammates looked to me for answers-except for Sammi, who was staring up at the ceiling just the way Vera was in the photo-and my shoulders slumped. “I’m not sure this is getting us anywhere.”

“Sure it is. It must be.” Absalom stripped the photo out of my hands. “It gives us a better idea of where things were, how the room was set up.”

“But not who killed Vera.” I shook my head in an effort to clear it. It didn’t work. I was still as baffled as ever. “She was here to meet somebody,” I told them all because, of course, they didn’t know that I had figured out this part of the story. “She arrived wearing her office clothes, but she brought a trampy sort of outfit with her, and-”

“Oh, was it really cool?” Sammi shot up. “Are there pictures? I’ll make a copy of it. Then we can come back and I can dress just like her, and-”

“It’s not going to make a difference what you wear,” I pointed out. “These pictures don’t really matter. None of them. All that matters is what happened before the pictures were taken. And we can’t know that.”

“Hey, maybe we need to get a psychic in here.” The idea came from Reggie, who was pretty proud of himself for thinking of it. “You know, like those ones on TV. We could communicate with the dead girl. She’d tell us what happened.”

I was in no mood to point out that I’d already tried this. And that it hadn’t worked.

Frustrated by the whole experience and wondering what I thought I’d accomplish by coming to the Lake View in the first place, I paced the room, from the window to the door and back again. In the great scheme of things, I guess that was my big mistake.

It meant I was standing right in front of the window when the first shots were fired.

Remember what I said about the disgusting floor? Right about then, I didn’t care.

I hit the cement face-first, and though I screamed to my teammates to do the same, I really didn’t have to. When I got up the nerve to lift my head just long enough to glance around, I saw that they were all on the floor, too.

We stayed that way for I don’t know how long, waiting for another volley of shots that didn’t come. The only sound in the room was our rough breathing. That, and the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.

I swallowed hard. “Everybody OK?”

Fortunately, everybody was.

Still on his stomach, Absalom shimmied over. “You never said nothin’ about people tryin’ to kill you.”

“Like I knew somebody was going to start taking pot-shots at me?” I half-crawled, half-rolled in the other direction, and when I was out of range of the window, I sat up and dug around in my purse for my cell phone so I could call the cops. “It’s not like it happens every day,” I said, even though it does happen more often than I like. “I told you I didn’t want to involve any of you. I told you it might be dangerous. I’m sorry.”

“Not lookin’ for a freakin’ apology.” Absalom sat up, too. “Lookin’ to know what you got yourself into.”

I didn’t have the answer, but as it turns out, it didn’t matter. Another round of gunfire erupted, and before I had a chance to dial 911, I fell flat again. My phone slipped out of my hand and skittered across the floor.

A bullet slammed into the cement not ten inches from it, and a spray of tiny cement pieces spewed into the air. Another bullet whizzed past my ear. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but hey, self-preservation instincts aren’t always logical; I rolled into a ball and covered my head.

And that’s how we all waited. One minute. Two. Three. With each second that passed, I was convinced the shooter was going to spring through the window and finish us off. When nobody did, I took the chance of unfurling and taking a careful look around. “Maybe he’s gone,” I whispered.

“Maybe.” Absalom rocked to his knees and crawled to the window. He was a big target and he knew it, so he stayed close to the floor and peeked around the side of all that was left of the board that used to cover the opening. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Me, either.” Reggie crawled up beside him. He had one of the sticks from the fire, and he tossed it out the window. It clattered to the ground.

There was no response, no gunfire. In fact, it was dead quiet for another whole minute. Then we heard a car door slam.