Fairmont Finds a Body by Cate Lawley

Author:Cate Lawley [Lawley, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-08T22:00:00+00:00

26

Helen had disappeared.

And not by car, since her bright red hatchback was parked in the drive.

Luke knocked on her door, while I held my breath and hoped everything would come up sunshine and smiles.

But no such luck. Helen didn’t come to the door, and neither Luke nor I could hear anything from inside.

Luke tried the door and found it locked. He stopped me right as I was about to trample through her beds to check for unlocked windows.

He pointed at a huge flower pot. “Hide-a-key. And as small as White Sage is, Helen has always been diligent about keeping the house locked up, whether she’s home or out.”

The pot he’d indicated was a monstrous ceramic thing and filled with dirt; it had to weigh a ton. I worked out, and I’d have difficulty lifting it. Helen was fit, but there was no way she could manage it.

“Are you sure? I don’t know that I could lift that.” I looked closer, hunting for a hidden trick to shifting it. There were large, colorful ants painted all along the outside, each the size of a half-dollar. It was surprisingly whimsical.

“It’s not under the pot. It’s in it.” Luke walked around the pot, his index finger tracing the path of ants until he came to a purple one. He tapped it. “Five legs.”

“What?”

He was already poking around in the dirt just above the purple ant. “If you need to break in, for future reference, find the five-legged ant.”

He dug around in the pot until he finally pulled out the buried key. It had been nestled under a thick patch of lavender that shared space in the pot with a scraggly bit of rosemary and a much healthier sage plant.

The scent of the disturbed herbs tickled my nose. “Wow. I would have just used a hide-a-key.”

“Anything you can buy commercially that’s made to stash a key is probably something determined burglars are familiar with. That’s what Helen will tell you.” He dusted the soil from the key. “When this turns out to be a misunderstanding, she’s going to have my hide for disturbing her plants.”

I had no words.

The oddly (and thoroughly) hidden key. The brightly colored, whimsical ant pot. Sage County’s handsome sheriff now reeking of lavender. Again, no words.

Not to mention the fact that a law enforcement officer knew how to break into my new friend’s home. Why exactly was that?

None of this could be normal, not even in the land of White Sage. It would be comical, minus the fact my new friend was missing. And not just missing: missing and last known to be gathering data for a petnapping case that might be tied to a murder.

My pulse pounded as Luke turned the key.

My anxiety probably had something to do with the fact that I was also terrified that something other than the petnapping investigation had befallen Helen, like a heart attack or stroke or… Best not to dwell. Helen wasn’t young. It was a simple fact.

“Oh, God, please let her be okay.

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