Chapter Eight
EIGHT
The second cop car pulled up while the first round of cops were poking their heads into the open door and stating that they were, in fact, police, in case anyone without eyes and ears was afoot.
“They’re here,” Shepherd told the operator before ending the call. “In the kitchen!” In fact, he hadn’t moved an inch since watching Mr. Martin die.
What a weird thing to think. He’d watched a man die less than three minutes ago. The shock had slipped into a strange sort of denial, allowing him to remember one of his plans.
Step One was: Call the Police. Done.
Step Two was: Let the Police Handle It. Easy. Peasy. Lemon squeezy.
Ginny, however, had taken off, tearing through the two-story house shouting, “Mom! Mom! Mom!”
He watched her shout into the downstairs half-bathroom before running off again.
Four cops had arrived, wearing green, because they weren’t cop cops, they were deputies.
But Shepherd had never understood the difference between police, sheriff, and fish and wildlife control, so he nodded at them all the same and said, “We found him like this,” which, as he said it, he realized, was probably the wrong thing to say.
They were, the four of them, staring down at the still-warm body with varying degrees of shock, the coppery smell of spilled blood filling the air.
“Who is he?” one of them asked.
“Mr. Martin,” Shepherd said. And then, for some dumb reason, added, “My landlord.” Perhaps his subconscious wanted to be a suspect in a murder case.
He added a Step One A to his list: Say as Little as Possible to the Police.
“Mom?” Ginny yelled into the nearby linen closet.
“Who is that?” the deputy asked.
“My gir—my, erm … Ginny. She’s … her mother.”
The deputies exchanged glances. “She’s her mother?”
“She’s looking for her mother,” Shepherd said. “She was here.”
“She was here, or her mother was here?”
“My mother!” Ginny ran up to the main deputy and grabbed his arm. “Please! My mother spent last night with Mr. Martin. I’ve found her eyelashes in the upstairs bathroom, but I can’t find her anywhere!”
Ginny was much better at talking to the deputies. She didn’t implicate herself once in the death of Mr. Martin. Movement started, and two men began searching the house while another checked over the landlord and the last one spoke to Ginny.
“Hey, what’s your name?” the deputy looking over the corpse asked.
“Shepherd. Preston Shepherd.”
“Mr. Shepherd, could you please step aside for a moment? I don’t want you contaminating the crime scene any further.”
Shepherd nodded, happy to finally check Step Two off his list, and left the kitchen as carefully as he could, walking on his tiptoes around the blood. He double-checked his soles on his way out.
His calves were cramping. Not his fault; he wasn’t used to walking on tiptoes.
The police officer had set him up near the front door, keeping him away from both the scene of the crime and his fake girlfriend.
They kept staring at him for longer and longer periods of time.
That was his fault. He’d been suspicious, one hundred percent.
Ginny, after running through the entire house like a banshee, had calmed down in a frighteningly short space of time once the detective arrived.
At least, Shepherd assumed he was a detective, because he was wearing a suit and tie like a lawyer on a billboard, and this was South Florida, and no one wore suits and ties like lawyers on billboards unless they were solving crimes or posing for ads.
After talking to Ginny for a long while—Shepherd heard Ginny say, “Yes, really, those Kents”—the man in a suit and tie approached Shepherd.
“Mr. Shepherd?” he clarified, flashing a badge. “I’m Detective Hastings. What can you tell me about the relationship between Mrs. Kent and Mr. Martin?”
Shepherd cleared his throat. “Um. It was new?”
“New how?”
“They met yesterday at my restaurant and went home together. That’s all I know.
I swear.” Why did he add that last part?
What sort of goblin had infested his brain?
What idiot was controlling him like a puppet?
There was nothing more suspicious than saying something truthful and adding “I swear” at the end.
Shepherd repeated his three-step plan to himself, directing the Idiot Goblin pulling his strings to focus on the most important part: Say as Little as Possible to the Police, for the Love of God.
“Sir?” a deputy called out, hurrying over to them across the front yard. He had a cell phone in his hands. “Sir, the neighbors have a camera on their front door. Look at this.”
He hit the play button on the screen and handed the phone over. Shepherd, calves complaining, leaned this way and that, craning his neck, to try to catch a glimpse.
There, in the early-morning light, Mrs. Kent was seen being pulled out of Mr. Martin’s house by a man in camouflage from head to toe, his face concealed behind a coordinating bandana, and a large silver gun in his hand. They took off in an unremarkable sedan.
Only a few moments later, Shepherd’s car pulled into the drive. If he’d even been a minute sooner, they might’ve been able to help Ginny’s terrifying mother. Or been shot themselves.
He’d almost forgotten about the fact that he’d kissed Ginny, but the video footage jogged his memory. Suddenly, his palms were sweaty and his face was hot. That was a private moment, conducted for the benefit of a scary woman he barely knew, not for the police to watch.
The detective blessedly hit pause when Ginny spoke. “My mother’s been kidnapped?”
He winced and handed the phone back to the deputy. “Sure looks like it, ma’am. We’d better call your family.”