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Jo’s left brow quirked up. “Well, then looks like we might already have our first suspect.”
Their attention was diverted by Lucy’s urgent barking. She was a few yards into the woods, her body stiff and alert, tail wagging slowly. Sam and Jo hurried over to her, crunching leaves underfoot.
Lucy’s intelligent amber eyes were fixed on a splash of color among the fallen leaves—a bandana, its red-and-black design contrasting with blotches of neon-green and hot-pink paint. Jo took a few photos and then picked it up with gloved hands and slid it into an evidence bag.
Holding up the bag, Jo gave Sam a meaningful look. “And now we just might also have our first clue.”
CHAPTERTWO
Sam and Jo left the medical examiner and his assistants to examine the body and rushed back to the police station.
They found their receptionist, Reese Hordon, standing in front of the desk. Her black hair was tucked under a White Rock Police Department baseball cap, and she had a paint stick in her hand.
“Rocky Bluffs or Quail Egg?” Reese asked.
“Huh?” Sam blinked, trying to decipher her question.
Reese stepped aside to reveal two cans of paint sitting on the desk. Major, the station’s resident black cat, was perched atop one can, his luminescent green eyes narrowed as he watched Lucy trot over. Sam braced himself for some hissing and clawing, but the two animals simply sniffed and then ignored each other. Maybe they really had come to some sort of truce.
“Gray or beige?” Jo clarified, nodding toward the paint cans. She paused for a moment, scanning the worn walls. “I vote gray.”
“What’s wrong with it the way it is?” Sam liked the way the station looked. It was like stepping into the past. The scent of aged paper and stale coffee lingered in the air. Embossed brass post office boxes, still bearing the proud image of an eagle, served as a makeshift divider between the reception area and the bullpen. The old metal desks, with their history of nicks and dents, were scattered haphazardly across the worn wooden floor. Sam glanced at the scratches on the floor near the coffee machine, each one a silent testament to past arrests. He smiled, remembering how one particularly stubborn thief had left the long, jagged line next to the filing cabinet.
Reese wrinkled her nose. “We need to jazz it up. Add some local artwork maybe. The walls, they’re just… grubby.”
He looked back at Reese then at the cans of paint. With a noncommittal shrug, he said, “Okay. Whatever Jo said.”
Sam headed past the post office boxes to the bullpen. Kevin Deckard was seated behind one of the desks, diligently focused on a stack of paperwork.
Lucy bounded over to Kevin, her tail wagging high in the air. Kevin dropped what he was doing to pet her, a large smile playing on his lips. The two shared an unspoken bond, born from the night Kevin took a bullet meant for Lucy. That same bullet had thrown Kevin into a coma, and although he was back now, it was only part-time until he fully recovered.
“How you feeling, Kev?” Sam asked, casting a sidelong glance at the man.
Kevin’s smile broadened, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Pretty good. Doc says I might be able to come back full-time very soon.”
Something in Kevin’s tone had Sam pausing. Was Kevin covering up something? Was the healing not as smooth as they all hoped? He decided to let it pass, for now.
“You brought donuts!” Jo snatched the white bag from her favorite coffee shop, Brewed Awakening, from Kevin’s desk and headed to the coffee machine. “Coffees?”
Everyone wanted one. Major hopped up onto the filing cabinet to supervise as Jo worked the K-cup machine, pouring her own into a yellow smiley mug last.
“So what about the case? It was murder? Who was it?” Reese leaned against the wall and sipped from a blue mug. She’d taken the call from a distraught Beryl, so she already knew there had been a body found at the owl sanctuary.
“April Summers,” Sam started, pulling out a maple-frosted donut and taking a bite. “A conservation activist.”
Reese raised her eyebrows, accepting a sugar-dusted donut from Jo. “The one who chained herself to the tree at the logging site? I’ve heard she’s made a lot of enemies.”
“That’s her,” Sam confirmed, washing down his bite with a sip of black coffee.
Kevin looked up from his cinnamon twist, confusion etching his brows. “She was found at the owl sanctuary, right? Wyatt took the Crown Vic up there with the metal detector.”
“Right,” Jo chimed in, pouring cream into her coffee. “But the most baffling part is the dead owl lying next to her.”
Kevin’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You mean to say the owl was also… murdered?” he asked, his grip tightening on his donut.
“In a way, yes,” Sam replied. “It was shot.”
“But the woman, April, she wasn’t?” Reese asked, moving to lean against a desk, her coffee cradled in both hands.
