murder

Visiting Detective Kylee Kane “HOA Murder”

Sunset in Beaufort, South Carolina

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The Jazz Corner is one of our favorite venues for dinner and live jazz when we’re visiting Hilton Head Island in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Tonight was the last night for a popular NYC jazz combo. As usual, the tables are scrunched together in the intimate setting, making it next to impossible not to eavesdrop on folks seated at adjacent tables.

Sheila’s just placed her standard order for She-Crab soup and crab cakes, when I hear the woman at the next table say, “Mom’s right. Whoever killed Finley put that trophy deer head in his lap to sidetrack authorities. And it’s working. Deputy Ibsen’s convinced one of the Bambi-loving crowd is responsible.”

Bambi lovers? A corpse holding a trophy deer head? I can’t pretend I didn’t hear. My curiosity won’t let me. The couple’s conversation sounds matter of fact. Neither the man nor the woman—I’m guessing they’re either late forties or early fifties—seems shaken or hysterical. I decide it’s okay to intrude.

“Hi, I’m Charlie Kerrian, and this is my wife, Sheila,” I begin. “We just arrived on the island a couple of hours ago for a mini-vacation. I apologize for listening in, but our tables are so close. Was someone murdered here recently?”

“Not here,” the woman replies. “The murder took place on Hullis Island Friday night. I apologize. We shouldn’t have been jabbering about it in a restaurant. You needn’t be concerned. There’s no Lowcountry crime wave. Please don’t let my big mouth ruin your vacation.”

Sheila chuckles. “My husband failed to mention he’s a detective. You haven’t worried him, just piqued his curiosity.”

“That’s a relief.” The woman smiles. While her short, curly hair is snow-white, her smooth skin says the white hair is premature. “I’m Kylee Kane,” she adds, “a retired Coast Guard investigator.”

“And I’m Ted Welch,” the man says. “I’m hoping Kylee will soon change her standard introduction and say she’s a security specialist for Welch HOA Management. That’s my company. We manage more than a dozen homeowner associations in Beaufort County, including Hullis Island where the man was murdered.”

Kylee shakes her head and grins. “Ted, I’m not going to start introducing myself as your security specialist. My consulting gig won’t last that long—just until this killer’s caught, we find out who’s sending hate mail to Mom, and your HOA clients quit worrying about crazed killers sneaking into their neighborhoods.”

“Can you back up?” I ask. “What did you mean about the killer trying to pin the rap on Bambi lovers, and why is your mother getting hate mail? Are the two related?”

“Afraid so,” Kylee says. “Hullis Island has a deer overpopulation problem. The board of directors of the HOA decided to solve the problem by opening the island’s nature sanctuary to hunters as soon as the peak tourist season ends. Finley, the man who was murdered, was a loud proponent of slaughtering all the island deer. His landscape company’s sales had nosedived after people decided buying edible plants amounted to a free lunch program for deer.”

“And how was your mother involved?” Sheila asks.

“Mom doesn’t think the board has the right to open our nature sanctuary to hunters without allowing the HOA membership to vote on the matter,” Kylee adds. “She sent an email to all her neighbors expressing her opinion. Mom knows the overpopulation has to be addressed, but she thinks there are less drastic solutions. A postcard that said it was time for hunters to target old-lady busybodies as well as deer was hand-delivered to Mom’s mailbox a few hours later.”

Ted adds, “I just wish the authorities weren’t so fixated. They seem convinced the neighborhood feud about the island deer explains why Finley was killed. But the deceased wasn’t a likeable guy. He’d accumulated lots of disgruntled customers. Kylee and I plan to talk to some of those folks. My new security specialist excels at interviewing people.”

“Yes.” Kylee laughs. “In your sales pitch for me to join your firm as a security consultant, I believe you described me as having the ‘tenacity of a demented squirrel looking for a buried nut stash.’”

“True,” Ted agrees. “An apt description. Hasn’t changed since you worked so hard to ignore your little brother and me in grade school.”

The lights flicker and a man takes the small stage to introduce the jazz combo. “Please respect our talented musicians,” he says. “No talking during the performance.”

While Sheila and I came to hear the music, I’m sorry I’ll have to wait to hear more of the story.

 

Linda Lovely

Warm thanks to Linda Lovely for stopping by to chat with the Kerrians and give us a straight-up-fun peek into Kylee Kane’s (and Ted Welch) encounters with murder at the HOA. To find out how the story ends, you’ll have to read:

Multi-layered plots are always central to Linda Lovely’s novels. With her fully fleshed out central characters perfectly set up to navigate the twists and turns of the story lines, this entertaining mystery writer always delivers a thoroughly engrossing read. “With Neighbors Like These,” is a stellar, page-turning beginning to her brand new HOA Mystery Series. Launch date was set for July 13, 2021. Click on the link to order.

Please visit https://www.lindalovely.com to learn more about Lovely and her upcoming events.

 

*Photos supplied by Linda Lovely.  🙂

 

 

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KN, p. 212 “Sheila Sees a Body in the Brush Pile”

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Sheila here. This morning, I finished trimming one of the backyard crepe myrtles and hauled the branches out to the curb. I had to use a reciprocating saw to cut through part of the tree, but was able to use a handheld clipper for some of the smaller sections. I felt that clipper fall out of my pocket while I stacked the debris at the curb. It wasn’t going anywhere, so I finished dragging and piling the branches before I looked for the wayward tool.

Guess what? It took me a few minutes to find it, even though I basically knew where it had fallen and had a limited area in which to search.

We frequently watch TV shows and movies telling the tales of people that go missing in the night, people who might have wandered off from a campsite, people or children who might have been separated from a touring group, but who then get lost. Nothing nefarious suspected, but the person hasn’t turned up in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe they tripped and fell, hit their head, and became unconscious.

There are search and rescue groups organized for just this purpose, and most of the members are well-trained volunteers. See Fiona Quinn’s article here.

We, the public, think a body in the woods would be easy to find, unless buried in the ground, or hidden behind a rock, so why do we need all the people and the dogs walking close to each other in a well-defined, mapped out grid?

 

How hard could it be?

 

Charlie’s crime oriented brain has rubbed off on me, so this is what I did. I stuffed an old pair of jeans, stuck one of my bright pink wellies at the end of a leg, piled the branches on top of ‘the body part’ and took photos. My apologies to the new neighbors who don’t know what Charlie and I do in our spare time. 

Can’t possibly miss that bright pink wellie I showed you at the beginning?

This is what you’re searching for:

 

 

 

The ‘leg’ is fully visible from this angle, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All I did was walk to the other side of the brush pile. A glimpse of the jeans can be seen, but not the bright pink wellie.

 

I did not remove ‘the body part’ before taking this picture, I promise you. I knew right where the jeans and wellie were and could not see them. Standing right over the ‘crime scene,’ and just because I was at a different angle, and a few steps in a different direction, the area looked quite innocent. Just another gardening pile, in the middle of a nice neighborhood, waiting for pickup from the city refuse truck.

This is why we need Search and Rescue teams walking close together, looking at every blade of grass in front of their feet. In this case, if the ‘body’ had been in the woods, the dogs would probably be called out as well.

Many thanks to all the hardworking volunteers who train vigorously in tough terrain to get certified and are ready to help whenever called upon.

 

 

Disclaimer: I did not use a real body part. The jeans were stuffed with t-shirts. Seriously.  😉

 

 

 

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KN, p.185 “Is the mouse dead yet?”

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It’s been a very wet year. We have lived through a hurricane, flooding, high water levels, squishy lawns, damp/wet cellars, and fewer sunny days during the summer than I can ever remember from the past. That leads to outdoor creatures being flooded out of their nooks and crannies below the ground and in the woods. Mice and most snakes and insects don’t like wet feet any more than humans do, so they tend to go to places like houses and barns to dry out.

Not long ago, Sheila had a late evening craving for a cup of tea, went to the kitchen and turned on the overhead light.

And saw a mouse racing toward the stove along the top of the half-inch wide backsplash.

Then screamed that horrible, deep-throated scream that always makes me think that Freddy Krueger is headed our way with a meat cleaver.

After the screaming and barking stopped – I’m not admitting to more than one person screaming – we did the snap mousetrap bit, but he was smarter than we were. He knew what we were up to – or else he just didn’t like our goodies. Almond butter? Bird seed? Bits of fruit? Cheese? Nope, not a nibble. Placing poison inside the house was not an option because of Hammett, our wonderful Irish Setter.

We finally called the Killer Elite Squad – the exterminators. They came, they saw, and did things under the house. We wanted the furry creature gone or at least chased back to his old home in the woods. The plumber came and plugged up holes under the house. The electrician came and closed up gaps near a socket in the garage. Mission hopefully accomplished.

We haven’t seen the invader since and Sheila has finally returned to the kitchen after a week of carefully avoiding that scary room. Hammett has snuffled at the doorway. Big sigh of relief here. I can cook, but only to survive, and take-out dinner from a limited selection of restaurants every night is not as exciting as you might first imagine.

Part of the solution under the house involved poison and it made me think about the consequences of it getting into conniving, possibly murderous  hands. Mice and humans are both mammals, after all, and what is lethal for one might also be deadly for the other in the right quantities. Rodent poison is readily available to anyone, sitting on grocery, hardware, and big box store shelves alike. Bonus? There is a perfectly good reason to buy it. Who would suspect anything devious behind the simple purchase of a couple of boxes of the stuff, especially this time of year?

Why does it work? The main ingredient, brodifacoum, causes blood to stop coagulating. Brodifacoum causes death in mice by thinning their blood so much that they hemorrhage. Death is not immediate, so they crawl away or return to eat more of the stuff, oblivious to its harmful effect.

In theory, mouse poison could kill a person if administered in enough quantity over a period of time, also causing them to hemorrhage. But, in all honesty, the flu-like symptoms of nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, etc. would send you to the doctor long before death could occur, especially if the symptoms worsen. Who would want to deal with that any longer than necessary? Plus, the amount needed to do in a grownup is considerable. And there is an easy antidote – vitamin K – which acts as speedy coagulant.

Poisons are used in books and other media to get rid of victims all the time, but is feeding rat poison to the potential victim a method that is used outside the entertainment industry?

It turns out that about ten years ago in real-life, a disturbed teenager from the Midwest decided to make his family sick, a little at a time. He mixed the poison in with their food over several weeks until they finally realized that they were getting lots worse, with numerous bouts of painful symptoms. A doctor visit revealed the truth.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/01/can_mouse_poison_kill_you.html

At this point I usually say that no bodies were found while researching and/or writing this post. Maybe not this time, but if you hear screaming in the future, I promise you: There will be. Of the furry kind.

 

*Photo credit? PestWorld.org. Sheila was too busy screaming to take a photo.  😉

The Kerrians are fictional characters, but the mouse debacle really happened.

 

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