Page 23 of Lion's Share
I blinked at this non sequitur. As far as I’d been able to determine, the sheriff’s department had logged the Northwest Pacific executive’s passing as death due to natural causes, namely a massive stroke he’d suffered while wandering in the forest. Over and over, I’d wondered exactly how the unicorn had managed that, had done the unicorn equivalent of a cover-up and made the horrible wound left behind by the goring simply disappear, but it sure didn’t seem as if the coroner’s department had discovered anything out of the ordinary about the man’s death.
“Um…I thought so, too,” I managed in response to Tory’s comment. “Wasn’t it supposed to be natural causes?”
“That’s what I heard,” she said as she tucked a lock of silvered blonde hair behind her ears. In her early fifties, she’d started to go gray while I was away at college, and now her shoulder-length locks were a mixture of pale gold and silver. She had the wiry frame and tanned skin of someone who spent a lot of time outside, and since she ran the local nursery, that was pretty much exactly what she did.
Technically, she should have been at work, but I knew she had a habit of closing up shop for an hour or so whenever things got quiet at the nursery, and that was probably why she was running her errands now. Mornings and late afternoons tended to be her busy times, and I guessed she’d decided things were slow enough at the moment that she might as well take care of some shopping.
“But,” she went on, “these two suits showed up at the nursery about an hour ago and asked me all sorts of questions — whether I’d had any interactions with Victor Maplehurst, if he’d made a habit of going into the forest while he was visiting here.”
Although I was doing my best to maintain the sort of casually friendly demeanor I always wore when I was at work, cold inched its way down my spine. Why were people digging into Maplehurst’s death now? The man was dead and buried, the obituaries printed, the coroner ruling that his death, while a tragedy, since he’d only been in his mid-fifties, wasn’t anything that merited further investigation.
“That’s weird,” I said. “I thought the investigation was over and done with.”
“Me, too,” Tory said cheerfully. “I asked to see their badges. They weren’t too happy with me about that, but I know if you ask and they don’t have a warrant or anything, they have to show them. Turns out they were FBI. I asked them what the FBI had to do with someone dying of natural causes, and they gave me some song-and-dance about the death needing further investigation because Victor Maplehurst was a ‘high-profile individual.’” She paused there, shoulders lifting. “It still doesn’t make any sense to me — it’s not like the guy was a rock star or a TV personality or anything close to that.”
No, he’d just been a high-up executive with Northwest Pacific. Maybe that was enough to merit further investigation; since I wasn’t familiar with the ins and outs of what the FBI considered their jurisdiction, I couldn’t begin to say whether these agents were overstepping their bounds by trying to learn more about Maplehurst’s death.
“Even weirder, though,” Tory went on, and her voice dropped even though we were alone in the pet store, “is that they started asking me if I or anyone I knew had experienced ‘unusual phenomena’ here in Silver Hollow. Now, what the hell does that have to do with Victor Maplehurst falling over dead in the forest?”
To someone who didn’t know any better, nothing at all. But I’d had a front-row seat to all the craziness in the woods over the past month, so Tory’s words only made my blood run that much colder.
Had the FBI somehow gotten a whiff of the anomalies that had been spiking in the area lately?
“Nothing, as far as I know,” I replied, still doing my best to sound utterly casual. “What did you tell them?”
She shrugged again. “Not much. I told them I hadn’t seen anything weird other than my phone glitching and the electricity around here being even more sketchy than usual. They wrote it all down anyway, and then they thanked me and headed out.”
“What did they look like?” I asked next. I sincerely hoped the pair of agents wouldn’t approach me — Silver Hollow Feathers and Fur was located right on Main Street, whereas Tory’s nursery, Birch and Branch, sat on the edge of town and might logically be expected to have experienced more weirdness associated with the woods — but I also knew that forewarned was forearmed.
It seemed she didn’t find anything odd about the question, since she promptly replied, “A man and a woman. I’d guess they were both in their late thirties or early forties. She had blonde hair and his was brown. Both tallish and looked pretty fit, but I suppose the FBI expects their agents to stay in shape.” Before I could comment on that remark, she went on with a grin, “Although I don’t think their individual looks matter so much. A couple of people walking around in suits are going to be pretty obvious in this town.”
That was for sure. Except for the two attorneys at Hepburn & Johnson, Silver Hollow’s only law firm, people didn’t wear suits around here unless they were going to a wedding or a funeral. Even the Sunday services at the local Methodist and Catholic churches were fairly informal.
“I suppose they’re just doing their due diligence,” I said. “Maybe the board of directors at Northwest Pacific reached out to the FBI to make sure everything about Victor Maplehurst’s death was on the up and up.”
Tory looked dubious, to say the least. “I don’t see why. I always thought once a coroner signed off on the cause of death, that was the end of it.”
I had that impression, too, but since no one in my family had ever died under suspicious circumstances, I didn’t have any personal experience to back it up. Disappeared into the forest, sure, although I could be a little more Zen about the situation now that I knew my mother and grandmother were still alive.
And I really, really had to hope the two agents, whatever their names were, wouldn’t run across Marjorie Tran while they were canvassing the town. Ben hadn’t been super-clear about where she was working and had only told me she was monitoring various locations around Silver Hollow, but I could only imagine the agents’ reactions if they discovered that a Ph.D. candidate was measuring electromagnetic anomalies in the area.
Well, the town was small in terms of population, but it still covered enough ground that I had to hope the grad student’s and the agents’ paths would never cross. Also, I tried to reassure myself that Marjorie Tran would be heading back to Davis sometime on Sunday, and that meant she only had to escape notice for another two days at the most.
It was my turn to shrug. “That’s what I thought, too,” I told Tory. “But maybe someone who watches a lot of procedurals would have more input on that. I’ll admit I’m pretty clueless when it comes to police or federal investigations.”
Tory’s eyes lit up at my remark. “Oh, I know Mabel Whitaker just loves those things. Or rather, her late husband did, and she’s kept on watching them as a way of honoring his memory. She might have some inside information.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “For all we know, the agents are staying at her B&B…unless the government is cheap and is having them stay at the Forest Retreat.”
A fancy name for the rundown little motel that was the only other place to stay in Silver Hollow. We’d long ago passed an ordinance banning Airbnbs and other short-term rentals, so tourists didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to staying in town.
And I really had to hope the agents hadn’t chosen the Forest Retreat as their home base. Marjorie Tran was holed up there for the duration of her time here, which meant she was bound to bump into the FBI agents if they were staying there as well.
“I’ll try to find that out, too,” Tory said as she gathered up her purchases. “And if anyone has any other helpful tidbits about the questions the agents are asking, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Tory,” I said, and she smiled.
“Not a problem.”
