Page 35 of A Rose of Steel
“No.”
“Okay. Then my guess is Coach Buddy and Shane Bouchard.”
“Blanchard. His name is Shane Blanchard.”
“Oh yeah, Blanchard.” I nodded. “That’s who I think.” I looked at her. “Did I guess right?”
“You did,” she said. “But there’s another one to add.”
“Who?”
“Shhh! Did you hear that?” Auntie stood up and walked over to the entryway to the adjoining room.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “And why do you think someone would be listening in anyway? You’ve been jumpy ever since we got here.”
“What we’re talking about is high op kind of stuff.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” she said, giving me a cautious look. “The ones that killed Bumper could kill us the same way.”
“And how did they kill him?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes darting around in the dimly lit space. “I was waiting until I did my inquest to find out. I just knew until then I had to be careful of what I ate and drank. That’s why I’ve got that closet locked.”
“Don’t tell me you think that they poisoned their sports drink. That would be a media nightmare for them.”
“I’m still working out the kinks in all of this. That’s what I do as justice of the peace, you know?”
“And you know, even with you being ‘duly elected’, you still couldn’t have performed an autopsy.”
“I was meaning to read up on the rules about that.”
I laughed. “All the reading in the world won’t get you qualified to do that.”
Chapter Seventeen
I was finally on my way to perform the autopsy. It was going to be the first one in the new facility. I’d invited Auntie to go with me, she was happy to leave Angel’s Grace and whoever’s prying eyes and ears she felt were there. She was elated to be a part of the first leg of the investigation with me. You’d have thought she’d won the Publishing House Sweepstakes.
Before we left Angel’s Grace for the ME’s office, I called the hospital and spoke to a person in the morgue at Sabine County Hospital to arrange to have Michael “Bumper” Hackett’s body brought over.
On this leg of the trip, Auntie was Chatty Cathy. She was just as excited as I was.
“Remember,” she said. “We have to talk to him.”
“You remember,” I said. “I don’t talk to dead people. That’s what you do.”
“But it’ll help us figure out what he died from.”
“That’s the purpose of the autopsy, Auntie. Science giving us the answers because the decedent can’t tell us.”
“Oh hogwash. There are spirits everywhere. And the dead person’s spirit keeps close to his body.”
“That’s the difference in me and you,” I said.
“What?” she said. “You don’t believe that spirits can give us answers.”
“I believe we’ll solve this from the clues we’ll glean along the way. Scientific evidence will not only lead us to the killer, but will convict him. Or her.”
