Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

thought. It was very unkind and, hopefully, not characteristic, but I wasn’t willing to “explore” that, as one of the professors in the psych department at school would say.
    Greg was a guy who had devoted himself to this little village and who participated vigorously and without a thought for himself or his income at all of the local events. Need free coffee for the PTA event? Greg would provide. Kids want to have a bake sale? They could use Beans, Beans anytime they wanted and for however long they needed the space. Want to have an open mic night and play your guitar for the locals? Greg would provide the store, after closing, for your performance. I guess, in spite of the bad coffee, I wanted the store to stay open. I looked up at Crawford.
    He knew what I was thinking. “Nope. Count me out. I don’t want anything to do with this.”
    “How do you even know what I’m going to say before I say it?”
    He took my hand and led me down the street. “Because I know you too well. And I’ve been down this road before. You,” he said, stopping me from crossing into traffic, “are on your own.”
    “This could ruin Greg,” I said.
    “How?” he asked. “It was an accident. A fight. You think everyone’s going to stay away from the store because some guy died in there?”
    I reminded him that where he worked, it was a different story. Sure, people died in public places all the time, and if he was involved, chances were good that they had been murdered. Still, people frequented the little bodegas where someone had been shot, or the diner where someone was found dead in a bathroom stall, or worse, with their head in a plate of eggs. (It had happened. Crawford had told me.) Here, it’s not like that. The people of my sleepy village weren’t used to death being so close and might have a problem with it. I voiced my concerns aloud.
    He threw his hands up. “Do what you want. You’re going to anyway.”
    On that point, we definitely could agree.

Four
     
    “You sure you don’t want to get that looked at?” Crawford asked from his position on a lounge chair next to mine. He held a sweating bottle of beer in his hand as I balanced a vodka martini on the armrest of my chair. Despite the day that I had had, I was enjoying the fading light in my backyard, the light breeze after an unbearably hot day, and my two favorite beings beside me: Crawford and Trixie.
    I shook my head. “Most certainly not.”
    He looked at his watch and downed his beer quickly. “I’ve got to go.”
    I had advance warning that he’d be leaving but I was still disappointed. His girls were at the pool party and needed to be picked up so that they could spend the night with him in the city as they did every Saturday night. “See you tomorrow?” We had left my concern about the future of Beans, Beans back by the police station and hadn’t discussed it again.
    He nodded before leaning in and giving me a kiss. He studied the black eye. “Got any frozen peas?” He thought for a moment and reconsidered that request; I had iced the eye when I had first arrived home but had tired of the sensation on my face and the feeling of melting ice. “Of course you don’t. Want to hold a frozen bottle of vodka against your eye? Because that’s the only item in your freezer.”
    “You’ve got that right,” I said. “I’ll be fine. It’s a black eye. No big deal.”
    But it was a big deal, which I found out when I was awakened after being asleep for only about a half hour. I turned and looked at the clock and saw that it was just past midnight and my face was throbbing, pain emanating from my nose up to my forehead and reaching around to the back of my head as if my whole cranium were encased in a vise. I sat up and didn’t know which part of my face to rub first to relieve the ache, so I decided to go into the bathroom, rummage around in the cabinet for anything stronger than an Advil, and chase it with a big glass of water. I had had a prescription for Vicodin at one time but I enjoyed the opiate so much that I had decided to flush the remainder down the toilet, a decision I came to rue at that moment. I settled on three aspirin and a half dose of NyQuil to help me sleep.
    An hour later, after taking another, full dose of NyQuil, I was still wide awake, staring at the shadow pattern the tree branches outside my window were making on my ceiling. I looked around the room, Trixie sleeping peacefully on the floor beside me, and spied my