Free 5 Beewitched by Hannah Reed Page B

I’d ever seen him, which is saying a lot. The chief can look downright scary.
    But so can my man. K-9 star, Ben, wore his high-alert expression, his sharp Belgian Malinois eyes never leaving his partner.
    “Country Delight is over the town line,” Hunter told him, moving closer, no trace of a snarl, but the look on his face said more than any caveman growl could. My guess was that the original emergency call came in to Moraine’s police station and the chief took his sweet time notifying Waukesha County.
    Hunter went on to add, “And as Moraine’s chief of police you should already know where the town lines begin and end. You had no business taking over the crime scene before my team arrived. And you haven’t fooled anybody. We know you sat on that call.”
    “Get out of my face!”
    “Can somebody please tell me who’s dead?” I blurted, too loudly since a few customers coming out of the store and several people on the sidewalk nearby heard me and made a beeline for our trio, their original plans taking second fiddle to our lively tune.
    At this point I was getting pretty upset, because the dead person could be Al, or his son Greg, or one of the witches. I needed to know. Unfortunately, the two men were more focused on each other.
    “Waukesha is handling this, Jay, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I ought to have you brought up on charges for tampering with a crime scene.”
    “You couldn’t solve a crime if it bit you in the ass.”
    “Getting personal now, are we?”
    Nose to nose, the two law enforcement authorities weren’t setting much of an example for our community members when it comes to peaceful communication and orderly conduct.
    Thankfully, Ben had had enough and decided to give a menacing snarl that no human could duplicate in terms of serious intimidation. Johnny Jay has always been cautious around Ben, so he reacted first, backing up a few steps and shutting his big mouth. My man took that as concession.
    Next, Hunter reached into the back pocket of his jeans, produced several sheets of paper rolled up into a circular tube, and tried to hand them to our chief. Johnny balked, but when Hunter continued to extend his arm, the chief reluctantly took them, giving Hunter a questioning expression.
    “Now that lines have been established,” Hunter said to him, “I’m requesting your assistance.”
    “What?” I burst out. “You can’t be serious!”
    Johnny Jay has never, ever allowed Hunter to assist in any criminal cases within his jurisdiction. In fact, he’d been downright rude to Hunter when he’d offered in the past. Now that the creep didn’t have authority to interfere for a change, Hunter was actually inviting him to get involved? I wish he’d talked this over with me first. I’d have set him back on the straight and narrow. Instead, Hunter was setting himself up for a knife in his back, if you asked me.
    What was my guy thinking?
    Hunter and I had some information-sharing issues at first (okay, maybe we still do), sometimes forgetting that we were a partnership and that meant discussing topics and resolving any conflict issues. To tell the truth, I’d been worse at communicating than he was. Until now.
    We needed to talk in the worst way.
    I tossed the rest of my apple in a trash bin near the store door and asked again, “Who’s dead?”
    They both eyed the gathering crowd before turning to me as though they were only just now realizing they had attracted an audience. Which probably they just had.
    Johnny was the one who answered. “It’s going to come out soon anyway, and the family has been notified. We identified the body as that of Claudene Mason.”
    That certainly surprised me.
    “Al’s crazy sister?” I’d heard of Claudene but hadn’t actually known her personally. She’d moved away when I was just a kid. In the past, older locals had referred to her as Crazy Claudene, but with the passage of time, we all but forgot about her. I hadn’t heard her name