Snuffed Out - Tim Myers [1]
“Morton here,” he answered after the desk sergeant rang me through.
“I’ve got a problem,” I said after identifying myself.
“Write a letter to Ask Ernestine,” he said, “I’ve got my hands full right now.”
I wasn’t in the mood for his brusque manner. “Sheriff, one of my tenants is dead. I’m standing here in the dark with his body, and my flashlight’s starting to flicker out.”
That got his attention. “Sorry, Harrison, I’ve got three deputies out sick at the same time. There’s a really nasty bug ripping through my department. Are you sure he’s dead?”
I reluctantly trained the dimming beam over the body again. While dusk was just approaching outside, the shop was in near total darkness. There was still light enough from my flashlight to see the pallor of his face, though. Aaron was surrounded by a pool of darkness that I initially mistook for blood, but after a closer look, I could see that it was nothing more than spilled water. My imagination was definitely running on overtime.
“There’s not much doubt about that,” I said.
“Don’t touch anything,” Morton said, then added with a hint of chagrin in his voice, “You’re using his phone, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I grabbed his telephone. I had to call you, didn’t I?”
After a sigh, Morton said, “Let me amend that, then. Don’t touch anything else. And Harrison?”
“Yes?”
“I know it’s not all that pleasant, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t leave the body until I got there.”
After hanging up the phone, I stayed with Aaron about two seconds before I decided that staying with the body could mean a lot of different things. If I waited for Morton outside by the shop’s front door, blocking the way of anyone else trying to get in, that should satisfy him.
It was going to have to, since my light was just about gone, and there was no way I was going to stand around in the dark with a dead body.
I used the master key Pearly had given me when we’d started checking on our tenants and locked the door behind me. I hadn’t wanted to keep up with all those keys in the first place; there were over a dozen places of business at River’s Edge, so I’d let Pearly watch after them for me. It was all I could do to keep up with the keys to my apartment upstairs, both trucks, and of course, the ones for At Wick’s End. Sometimes, particularly moments like the one I was experiencing, I’d wished my Great-Aunt Belle had left me a minor league baseball team, a yogurt stand, even a bowling alley; anything but a candleshop and the building it was housed in. She’d died in At Wick’s End, and some folks thought it creepy that I’d taken over given the circumstances, but they hadn’t read the letter my Great-Aunt had left me. At Wick’s End was her baby, and she’d wanted more than anything else in the world for me to watch over it for her. No one had been more surprised than I had been when I took to candlemaking from the very start, not even Eve Pleasants, the woman who had helped Belle and now worked for me.
“Harrison? Is that you?”
From the shadows of one of the storefronts, Heather Bane appeared. In her mid-twenties, Heather ran The New Age, a shop full of crystals and tomes on spiritual healing, situated next door to At Wick’s End. Heather’s long blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was wearing a tie-dyed smock over her blue jeans and T-shirt. Esmeralda, her store cat and my one-time roommate, flicked her tail at me as they approached.
“Guilty as charged,” I said. “You’re working late tonight.”
She grumbled, “My register totals don’t match again. I must be losing it, Harrison, this is the third time it’s happened this week. I was trying to figure out how I’d goofed up this time when the lights went off. What’s going on with the power?”
I knew the grapevine at River’s Edge would spread the news of Aaron’s demise soon enough, but I didn’t want to be the one to start the story. Still, Heather had a right to know what was happening in one of the shops around us.
“It’s Aaron,” I said.
Heather’s