Murder Wins the Game Read online

  Murder Wins the Game

  by Maddie Cochere

  Copyright 2015 by Maddie Cochere

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions therof in any form whatsoever except as provided by US copyright Law.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Breezy Books

  http://www.breezybooks.com/

  Cover design by Gillian Soltis of Columbus, Ohio

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  In exactly one minute, I was going to become a millionaire and quit my job as a private investigator. Someone else could follow Kristy Munson from one store to another while she spent obscene amounts of money on clothes and shoes.

  “Scratch faster, Jo,” Mama ordered in her deep, raspy smoker’s voice. “I have to be at the beauty shop in five minutes. Ten more dollars and I can afford a perm.”

  “You said I could have this ticket.”

  “I changed my mind. I need the money for a perm.”

  And just that fast, my dreams of becoming a millionaire were dashed.

  I grabbed Mama’s lucky four-leaf clover keychain and scratched with gusto. If she wouldn’t have spent sixty dollars on lottery tickets, she could have easily afforded the perm in the first place.

  “Another dud,” I said. “You’re never going to win anything big. You should quit now.”

  I looked at the assortment of lucky scratchers strewn across my desk and the lottery tickets now sorted into two groups - winners and losers. There were only three winning tickets. They totaled a whopping eight dollars.

  “I’m not giving up,” she said as she raked a fifty-cent piece across the last ticket. “People win the lottery all the time. If that old coot Dave Jackson can win two million dollars, so can I.”

  I had only been at my desk in our offices of Barnaski and Ravens Investigations for a few minutes this morning when Mama came barreling in with her lucky scratching paraphernalia and a fistful of lottery tickets.

  Playing the lottery was a new hobby for her. Ohio had been running a lottery for over forty years now, and Mama had never played before. When news spread of Dave Jackson winning five hundred dollars, then a thousand, and a thousand again, followed by his most recent win of two million dollars, Mama decided she could be a winner, too. So far, she hadn’t won anything worth mentioning, and she was easily hundreds of dollars in the red.

  “Rat balls,” she muttered as she finished scratching the last ticket. “Maybe tomorrow will be my lucky day. No, wait. Today’s the fifth, so tomorrow’s the sixth. That’s not a lucky number for me. Maybe I’ll buy extra tickets on Thursday. Seven is my lucky number.”

  “Everybody’s lucky number is seven,” I said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  She snatched her scratchers and the three winning tickets and rushed out of my office to talk with our receptionist, Nancy.

  “I’ll be back at noon,” she told her. “Where do you want to go for lunch?”

  I heard Nancy giggle. She had been dating my brother, Hank, for four months now, and she and Mama were thick as thieves. It was a silly question for Mama to have asked, because they ate at Parker’s Tavern every day. Parker’s easily had the best food in town, and having a door in our offices that opened directly into the tavern made the dining decision an easy one.

  I stopped listening and threw the losing tickets into the wastebasket. The mess left behind from the gray silicone covering the numbers was annoying. Mama insisted on scratching every last bit of it off her tickets and then brushing it every which way. There were gray bits all over my desk and on the carpet around her chair. I had no choice but to run the vacuum.

  I walked to the combination kitchenette-supply-copier room and yanked the machine out of the cluttered closet. Mama had already dashed out the door, and Nancy was on the telephone. She put the call on hold.

  “It’s Richard Munson. He wants an update on his granddaughter.”

  I dragged the vacuum into my office and sat down at my desk. I hadn’t expected to talk with him until next week.

  “Good morning, Mr. Munson,” I said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”

  “Jo,” he said curtly. “I’ll be at the house tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock. I want you to stop by and give me an update on Kristy’s performance.”

  I hesitated for a moment. The man made me nervous, and I didn’t particularly want to go to his home. I was under the impression our meetings would be held in my office.

  “We could go over my findings now if you’d like.”

  His upper-crust, highbrow tone was clear. “I want to talk with you in person. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He hung up without giving me a chance to respond.

  I plugged in the vacuum and utilized the sweeping of the gray bits to vent my frustration. After banging the bottom of my desk with the machine several times, Nancy peeked around the corner.

  “I swept in there this morning,” she called out over the loud noise.

  I switched the vacuum off. She grabbed it from my hands.

  “Arnie took this case,” I said. “It’s no wonder he dumped it off on me. Richard Munson is unreasonable and difficult. Expecting a twenty-four-year-old girl to live her life by his rules is ridiculous.”

  “If she wants five million dollars next month, she’ll live by his rules,” she said. “Heck, I’d live by his rules for five million dollars.”

  “But they’re so restrictive. He has the same no drinking, no smoking, and no drugs rules that Arnie’s had in other cases, but he also wants her to get a job that meets with his approval. She’s not allowed to get married until she’s thirty, and, of course, the husband has to be acceptable to him. To top it all off, she has to be home every night by eleven o’clock. It’s absurd.”

  “Absurd, yes, but maybe she doesn’t mind. If she gets the money on her birthday, she can do whatever she wants after that, can’t she?”

  “Only to a degree. The money will be put in a trust, and she’ll receive an allowance. Once she’s over thirty and married, the money will be released. If she exhibits bad behavior before then, the remaining money in the trust is revoked. We already know how this is going to end.”

  Nancy seemed lost in thought for a few moments before saying, “I don’t think I could wait that long to get married if I found the right guy.”

  Her voice was a tad dreamy. I suspected she was thinking about Hank.

  “All I know is, I would do whatever I wanted and wait for my inheritance when the old man dies,” I said.

  She smiled. I knew she enjoyed working for her uncle and me, and she got a kick out of my frustration with some of our cases.

  “You don’t have to watch her until she’s thirty and married do you?” she asked.

  I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “I certainly hope not.”

  She held up a few folders. “The background checks for Cole, Adams, and Troy are done. Do you want to see them?”

>   “Put them on Arnie’s desk. I think he wanted to look them over first.”

  I didn’t really know if Arnie wanted to see the files or not, but his workload was less than mine, so I was dumping them off on him.

  I sat at my desk and opened Kristy Munson’s folder. Kristy was a high-maintenance, perky blonde who did little more than shop and go to parties. Following her around while she shopped had been the easy part so far. Determining if she was drinking, smoking, doing drugs, or seeing a boyfriend at parties was harder than I thought it would be. Not being able to attend the parties myself made it difficult to observe her behavior. She always left a party alone, seemed steady on her feet, and drove her car home without so much as a swerve within her own lane. It appeared she was on her best behavior.

  The sheet of paper listing her work history was blank. She had never held a job, and it didn’t appear she had ever applied for one. She graduated from Ohio State University two years ago with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater. I had no idea where that would take her in Buxley. The community theater was run by volunteers and had limited funds for hiring actors.

  The phone rang again. I heard Nancy chatting exuberantly about a craft show, and I knew she was talking with Pepper.

  Eventually, she called out to me, “Your sister’s on the phone.”

  I picked up the handset. “What’s up?”

  Her voice was shrill. “You have to do something about Mama. She’s going to blow through her entire life savings if she doesn’t stop playing the lottery.”

  “Why do I have to do something? You’re the oldest. You talk to her. Or get Hank to do it. He’s her baby. She won’t listen to me.”

  “Jo, I’m serious. She wants us to think she’s only playing a little, but she’s not. That snoopy Vicki at the bank told Milly at the beauty shop that Mama’s been in twice this week and withdrew five hundred dollars out of her savings both times.”

  “She could have wanted the money for something other than the lottery,” I said. “She likes to pay cash, so maybe she’s buying something for the house or taking Roger on vacation. Don’t jump to conclusions before we know for sure. And isn’t it illegal for Vicki to be talking about deposits and withdrawals?”

  “Probably. They need to fire her. She’s a troublemaker.”

  Pepper was highly agitated this morning. I didn’t care if Mama spent every last penny of her savings on the lottery, but I knew it mattered to Pepper. Mama had already told her that she would one day help pay college tuition for Kelly and Keith, but she certainly couldn’t do it if the money was lost playing scratch-off tickets.

  “I’ll try to find out how much money she’s spending. If it’s chump change, we’ll let her have her fun. If she’s draining her bank accounts, we’ll have an intervention – all three of us – you, me, and Hank. I’m not talking to her on my own.”

  I could hear relief in her voice. “Thank you.”

  “What else is going on?” I asked.

  “I’m still making crafts for the farmer’s market this weekend. That’s another reason I called. Kelly and Keith are both spending Saturday with friends, and I need you to come with me. I can’t do it by myself.”

  The last thing I wanted to do this weekend was sit in the sun in an open field and help Pepper sell homemade crafts.

  “I can’t. I’m following Kristy Munson on Saturday.”

  “You know full well you’ll be spending the day watching her shop. She won’t go out again until after eight o’clock, and you’ll be home in plenty of time to catch up with her.”

  She had a point, and I didn’t have a better argument for not going with her. It might even be nice to take a break from Kristy’s shopping and spend some quality time with Pepper.

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Help me with customers and keep an eye on the cash box. Make sure no one steals anything off the tables. This place is huge. There are over a thousand vendors, and there could be as many as fifty thousand people show up on Saturday.”

  I was sure she was exaggerating.

  “What time do we have to leave?” I asked.

  “Five in the morning.”

  “What? I can’t go anywhere at five in the morning. I’ll have to be up at four just to get awake and be able to walk by five.”

  She made a yelp noise and said abruptly, “I have to go. Keith spilled a glass of lemonade on the living room carpet. I’ll see you at five on Saturday.”

  I grabbed my keys and satchel and headed for the front door. Nancy looked up from her paperwork.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” I said. “I might as well see if Kristy is up and about yet. I can’t wait to see where we’re going today.”

  She giggled. I was finally getting used to her giggling. She didn’t laugh like a normal person. She had a cute giggle that everyone thought was adorable. At first, it drove me nuts, but after a while, I could see how it suited her and her petite build. Everything about her was cute - from her soft brown eyes, to her curly auburn hair, to her small, upturned nose. Hank was completely enamored with her.

  I stepped outside into warm sunshine. After an exceptionally harsh winter, followed by a dreary, wet spring, the upcoming summer held promise. Early June could easily produce cold days and unwelcome snow, but the temperature had climbed into the mid-seventies and remained there for over a week now.

  I threw my satchel onto the passenger seat and climbed into my truck. I couldn’t resist taking a deep breath. I loved the smell of a new vehicle.

  Pepper threw a fit the first time she saw me do it. “Don’t breathe the fumes in here,” she said. “You’re going to ruin your liver or have early puberty. I saw it on one of those doctor shows on television.”

  I laughed. “The puberty ship has sailed, and everyone breathes the toxic fumes in a new car. The warnings are probably for people who have other problems to begin with.”

  “Suit yourself, but don’t come crying to me when you can’t solve any of your cases because your brain has ceased to function properly.”

  Remembering the encounter brought a smile to my face. She couldn’t have been more serious. We drove to the grocery store that day with her head hanging out the window like a dog.

  I was still getting used to driving a full-sized pickup truck. It wasn’t my first choice of vehicle. After my ex-husband gave me the money owed to me from his deceased aunt’s estate, I began shopping for a new car and ended up loving every vehicle I sat in. I simply couldn’t make up my mind.

  Arnie walked into my office one morning to ask about my progress.

  “You still lookin’ for a car?” he asked.

  “Nope. I made up my mind. I’m going to the dealership this afternoon to buy it.”

  “What’d you decide on?”

  A huge smile spread across my face. “A Mustang convertible. Red with all the bells and whistles. I think I’ll look great in a red car with my long brown locks flying out behind me.”

  He took his deep frown and sat down in one of my chairs with it. “Your long brown locks won’t fly out behind you. Your hair will swirl around in your face, and you’ll wreck the car the first time you have the top down. Did you put any thought into this at all?”

  “I can pull my hair back into a ponytail. My hair isn’t a deal breaker, Arnie.”

  “The car. Did you put any thought into the car other than how you might look in it?”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t have to. I’m paying cash. The gas mileage is decent, and I love the color. What’s there to think about?”

  He sighed. “Will you be using this car to run surveillance?”

  “Yeah. So what?” I had no idea what he was getting at.

  “A car like that will stick out like a sore thumb around here. A guy looks in his rear-view mirror and sees a red Mustang behind him every time he takes a gander, and he’s going to get suspicious.”

  “Are you telling me I have to drive something ugly?”

  “Not ugly. You just need to blend
in. What type of vehicles do you see around here most often?”

  “Trucks and SUVs.”

  “There you go. You need to buy a truck or an SUV.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said with a frown of my own.

  “Listen, Jo. If you’re only going to buy one vehicle, you have to take your job into consideration. If you have your heart set on the Mustang, that’s fine, but buy a used truck for work, too.”

  I pouted for nearly a week after our conversation. Glenn, who was actually Officer Glenn Wheeler of the Buxley police force, and my boyfriend, irritated the heck out of me when he sided with Arnie. “Of course, you have to blend in,” he said. “Besides, if you buy a red Mustang, I guarantee you that Collins will pull you over every chance he gets.”

  Officer Collins and I had a history. I wasn’t on his list of friends, and I don’t think he ever forgave me for vomiting on his shoes last fall – even though it was his own fault.

  When I went car shopping again with a new mindset, I hated everything I saw. The used trucks disgusted me. The seats were typically worn and stained – some with burn holes. Faint odors of cigarette smoke assaulted my nose. People around here kept their trucks for a long time before trading them in.

  I wasn’t any happier with the SUVs I took out for a test drive. I hated their general shape. They weren’t sexy like the Mustang. When I sat in one, I felt as if I should be schlepping kids around and attending PTA meetings.

  The only thing I liked about both types of vehicles was being able to sit higher up in traffic. I could see so much more than I could in my car. Surveillance would be a breeze in a truck or an SUV.

  Relief flooded my senses when I woke one morning with the clear decision to buy a new truck. It would be the best of both worlds. I could have all the bells and whistles I wanted, a new car smell, and I could haul anything I wanted in the bed – even a hogtied criminal. The Mustang could wait for my mid-life crisis.

  I sat now in my new, navy blue Ford 150 pickup truck, happily breathing toxic fumes and mentally preparing myself for another day of watching Kristy shop ‘til she dropped – only she never dropped.