Page 16 of Lost Hours
“Yes, of course, and I’m glad to see you’re restoring it to its former glory.” Osborne smiled and put the gloves on.
“It’s our pleasure. Once we’ve made more progress, I’ll invite you over to see it.”
“I’d like that very much. If it’s not too much trouble, could my parents come along too? They’d be thrilled to see the restoration.”
Nolan had only just met this guy and already liked him. In his experience, MEs and coroners could lack interpersonal skills, but he seemed compassionate and kind. Maybe because he was also a GP.
Nolan gave him a sincere smile. “It would be no trouble at all, and I’m glad to have them as our guests.”
“I hate to interrupt this touching conversation, but we have a murder to solve.” Mina gestured down the hallway. “I’ll show you to the scene.”
Dr. Osborne tsked. “You’re always one to stick to the point. You never did grasp the idea of laid-back, small-town conversations. I was just enjoying a few moments of reminiscing before the ugly task at hand.”
He spun and started down the hallway.
Mina faced Nolan. “You can return to the dining room, and please don’t wander around on the way.”
“I was hoping to accompany you and the doctor.”
“No,” she said, but her attention had drifted to a tall, lanky guy pushing a squeaky-wheeled gurney in their direction.
Nolan kept his focus on her, taking in details of her features that he’d forgotten. Details like her high cheekbones he’d traced the sun-soaked days they’d sprawled out on the beach.
Concentrate, man. You have a murder to solve.“I thought we were going to spend all of our time together.”
“I never agreed to that, and if I do, it won’t start until I can verify your alibi for the mayor’s time of death. And I won’t know the time of death until the ME does his job.” She pivoted and hustled down the hallway, her booted footfalls reverberating against the plaster walls and ceiling.
He’d always liked her feistiness. She knew her own mind, knew what she wanted and how she was going to achieve it. So when he said he thought she would solve this investigation with or without him, he really believed that. But he wouldn’t give up trying to help with the investigation.
He didn’t want to spend time with her. Not with his residual pain from their breakup. Too bad. He needed to. If he didn’t, he could very well find himself or one of his team members arrested and charged with murder.
5
Mina escorted Dr. Osborne into the escape room and stood back. “As you can see, they wedged Mayor Sutton into the locker on the end.”
“How in the world did they fit him in there?” Osborne shook his head in bewilderment and set down his medical bag on the floor just inside the door.
“When you take a closer look, you’ll see there’s a cutout in the wall behind him, providing extra room.”
Osborne crossed the room and pulled the locker door open further. “Oh, I see. Just like you said, there’s space behind the locker.” He studied the body from every angle possible.
“Can you determine any cause or time of death?” she asked, eager to move forward in her investigation, though she knew he would shoot her down.
“No.” He turned, a frown on his face. “Just like with my conversation with Orr, you need to give this time. I’ll have to extricate Ernie’s body from the locker first, destroying as little evidence as possible, and then get him on the table for an autopsy.”
The rattle of an off-balanced gurney sounded in the hallway, signaling the arrival of his assistant, who Mina recognized from other body retrievals. Hands gripping the gurney, Kevin stopped at the doorway and peered at the doctor.
“Leave the gurney there,” Dr. Osborne said. “We don’t want to contaminate the scene. I’ll need your help extracting the mayor.”
Extract the mayor.Now that’s a phrase Mina never expected to hear. She knew him as more than the mayor. He was the father of a woman who was four years behind Mina in high school. Becca Sutton still lived in town and was the mayor’s next of kin. The person Mina would have to tell that her father had been murdered.
Mina’s heart clenched. She’d made death calls before from car accidents, but she’d never had to tell someone a family member had been brutally murdered. That was a whole other type of notification. Both deaths were sudden and jarring to the survivors, but learning that someone had taken your loved one’s life on purpose added a greater level of grief. One Mina couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to imagine.
“Crazy that it’s the mayor,” Kevin said as he joined Dr. Osborne at the locker. “As far as I knew, he was a pretty all right dude. Not like the guy before him.”
“You’re right,” Dr. Osborne said. “His reputation as a top-notch mayor was talked about all over the county. I almost regretted not living here in Lost Lake to see him in action.”
“Yeah, but you could never run a practice in a town this small,” Kevin said. “I know this dude will be missed.”
