St. Patrick's Day Murder Read Free Page A

Barney, jowls quivering. He looked a bit like a bulldog, with a pug nose and square face. Somehow the bulky blue cold-weather uniform, and his growing girth, only added to the impression.
    “C’mon, Barney,” said Lucy. “Can’t you give me something for the paper? A body in the water is big news.”
    “Now, Lucy, you know I’m not supposed to make statements to the press. That’s up to the captain.”
    “You don’t have to make a statement,” she said, pleading. “I won’t even mention your name. I’ll say a passerby discovered…what? What’s in the water?”
    Avoiding the others, Barney took her by the elbow and walked with her toward his cruiser. The three men followed at a distance, straining to hear, until he turned and snapped at them. “Can’t you mind your own business!” Then, lowering his voice so only she could hear, he said, “It’s Old Dan. At least I think it is. It’s hard to tell.”
    “The body’s decomposed?” she asked.
    “You could say that.”
    “His face is gone?” Lucy knew that was common when a body had been in the water. Crabs and fish usually started with the bare skin of the face and hands.
    “More than his face,” said Barney.
    Lucy noticed his usually ruddy face had gone white. Even Barney, a twenty-year veteran of the force, was shocked.
    “More than his face?” she repeated.
    “His whole head’s gone.”
    Lucy didn’t quite take it in. “The body’s headless?”
    Barney nodded.
    Lucy considered this for a minute, thinking of the various bodies that were occasionally recovered from the sea around Tinker’s Cove. Not one had been headless.
    “Isn’t that unusual?” she asked.
    “It happens,” he admitted. “The head’s kinda heavy, and the connection isn’t that strong, really, so if the body rolls around, it can sorta detach. Especially if it’s helped along by the critters.” He paused and scratched his chin. “But it usually takes longer. The rest of him seems pretty fresh, so I don’t think he was in there more than a few days. And the cold shoulda preserved him. You know what I mean?”
    Lucy nodded. “So all I can say is, an unidentified headless body was found and is presumed to be that of Old Dan, who has been missing for several days?”
    “That sounds about right,” he said, straightening his cap, “but you didn’t hear it from me.”
    Lucy watched as he opened the car door and awkwardly squeezed behind the steering wheel, reaching for his radio. Then she turned and passed on her report to the three men. It only seemed fair. The sooner they got confirmation that Old Dan would definitely not be opening the Bilge, the sooner they could make other plans for their morning. But she kept one fact, the fact that the corpse was headless, to herself. That was a scoop if she ever saw one.
    Eager to get back to the office and file her story, Lucy chugged up the hill and swung around the corner onto Main Street, where she collided with Father Ed O’Neil, the priest from Our Lady of Hope Church, nearly knocking him over. Father Ed was well into his sixties and had never been a large man. He was only an inch or two taller than Lucy and probably weighed less.
    “Oh, Father Ed, I am so sorry,” she apologized.
    “No matter, no matter,” said Father Ed, straightening his jacket and smoothing his red hair, which was liberally salted with white. “I should have looked where I was going.”
    “The fault was mine,” said Lucy, wondering why the mere sight of his backwards collar seemed to inspire her to confess when she wasn’t even Catholic. “Are you all right?”
    “Fine, fine. Couldn’t be finer,” he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rubbing his hands together. “And why, may I ask, are you in such a hurry?”
    “My deadline’s at noon,” said Lucy, pointing to her watch and sidling past him. He was notoriously long-winded, and she didn’t want to get trapped in a lengthy conversation.
    He turned right along with her,