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Whoa. Ed’s shocked expression must have reflected my own. I think that was the first time I’d ever heard Ruth cuss. Ed and I were both smart enough to keep our comments on her uncharacteristic outburst to ourselves.
I took a shot at helpful. “I think the first thing we need to do is call the sheriff and let him know he’s been barking up the wrong corpse.”
Ruth put her hands on her hips. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Uhm.” I swallowed the spit gathering in my mouth and phrased my response as a question. “No?” The body obviously wasn’t Ed’s, and the police needed to reassess their investigation.
Ruth harrumphed as she disengaged from Ed. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get my phone, damn it. I guess we better call the GD sheriff.”
I raised a brow at Ed. “Wow,” I mouthed. “She nearly went there.”
He shook his head at me and sat down at the table. I noticed then how tired he looked.
“What happened to you last night?”
“I got a call to tow a vehicle from Lake Ozark to Peculiar, a council member’s car. It took a while to get it hooked up right because of it being one of those fancy foreign cars. A sporty two-door with a really narrow carriage. I knew I should have called Ruth, but I had expected to be home in less than an hour once it got all situated on the back of my tow truck. But on the way home, I had two tires blow out. Don’t know how that happened. Anyhow, I was between here and Lake Ozarks, and it was going to be a twenty-mile walk no matter which way I played it.”
“And you left your phone in the garage.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “That too.”
“You could have shifted. It would have been a much quicker trip.”
“I supposed I could have.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and set it on the table. “But I didn’t want to leave this behind, and really, I thought someone would come along and give me a ride into town.”
“Well, you scared the shit out of all of us. Where did the killer get your driver’s license from anyways?”
He furrowed his brow and opened his wallet. “It’s not in here.”
“When did you last use it?”
“It must have fallen out when I paid for lunch yesterday.”
“Can it really just be a coincidence that your ID was under the dead guy?”
“Those are questions for the Sheriff’s department, Chavvah,” Sheriff Taylor said when he walked into the kitchen with Ruth. “This is an official investigation, and beyond a witness statement, you need to stay out of it.”
I didn’t fight the heavy sigh that went with my disappointment. I stood up. “Fine. I’m glad you’re okay, Ed.” I turned to Ruth and gave her a quick hug. In her ear, I whispered, “Call me later to compare notes.”
She whispered back, “You got it.”
I nodded to the sheriff who looked less burdened. He had known Ed his whole life and having to think his friend was dead, murdered so awfully, had taken its toll. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”
He gave me a two-finger salute. “Do that,” he said.
I shouldn’t have, but as I walked out of the Thompson house, I felt lighter, even more than before the murder. It was as if the scorecard of my life finally had a checked “win” box for once. My friend was alive. He was with his family and not a bloody skinned, eyeball-less corpse on Billy Bob’s slab. Someone was dead. That hadn’t changed, and even through my relief, I was determined to discover what poor soul had been left for me to find.
