Murder Page 9

  “I talked to Buck last night. He knows what’s going on. He’s heading for home tomorrow.”

  Mama stared at me. Something flickered in her eyes. “Do you have any idea who took her or where she is?”

  If ever I needed a poker face, I needed one now. “I don’t have a clue.”

  Mama looked pensive and nodded her head. “Let me get you some breakfast. You need to eat. You’re wasting away to skin and bones. Roger just stocked up on microwave breakfast burritos. I’ll nuke you one.”

  “No burrito for me. I want coffee. And pie. Do you have any of Jackie’s pies?”

  She didn’t answer and turned away from me. I walked to the end of the counter and sat next to Arnie again.

  I pulled a folder from my bag and handed it to him. “Kay’s problem was rats. They’re getting in somehow and getting into one of her cases through a hole on the bottom shelf. I’ll have to tell Roger to set some traps.”

  Arnie looked at the photos and nodded his head. “Probably coming up from the basement.” He set the folder aside, leaned toward me, and asked, “Where is she?”

  My eyes flew open wide, and I felt like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. I knew guilt registered all over my face.

  “Somewhere safe. How did you know?”

  “She’s either wanted for murder or she’s been kidnapped. You’re awfully calm for someone whose sister is on the lam or could be dead. I think I even heard you ask your mother for pie.”

  “She didn’t kill Tony,” I said. “Someone shot him through the open window in his office – right in front of her. Then they put the gun on the cabinet behind him and booked out of there. She was set up. I have to find out why.”

  He nodded and looked thoughtful. “Unless you can work yourself up into a lather, I suggest you stay away from people. If Rorski talks to you, he’ll know something’s up. So will that boyfriend of yours.”

  “Speaking of which, what did you find out about the murder up in Youngstown?” I asked.

  “Guy’s name is Wade Locke. He and his wife had quite a few fights over his riding with Barbie. After a big fight one night, he slept on the couch and didn’t bother looking in on her when he left early for work. He came home that night, and she was still in bed – dead. Shot in the chest. Time of death was during the night when the husband was sleeping on the couch. Says he had headphones on all night and didn’t hear a thing. He swears Barbie came in during the night and killed her to set him up, but there’s nothing to support that, and with the neighbors hearing the wife screaming at him earlier, he’s going to have a hard time beating the rap.”

  “Do they have the murder weapon?”

  “No, but the case they’re building is solid. Barbie and Wade were seen plenty of times having drinks after work, and some are saying they looked pretty chummy. No pun intended.”

  “Did the neighbors hear the gunshot?” I asked.

  “No one heard a thing.”

  I felt sorry for the guy. It would be nearly impossible for him to beat the murder charge. The husband was always the number one suspect.

  Mama slid a breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee in front of me. I groaned.

  “I can’t eat the burrito,” I said and pushed it away. “Put a lid on my coffee. I have to run. I want to keep looking for Pepper.” I looked at Arnie and pointed to the folder on the counter. “Will you discuss this with Kay? And tell Roger about the rats?”

  “Rats?” Mama asked. “What rats? You better not be telling people we have rats, or I’ll sue your dick business.”

  A slight smile crossed Arnie’s face. “I got this,” he said. “Get on out of here.”

  I grabbed my bag and coffee, rushed out of the building, and jumped into my truck. Pepper had folded a thick blanket and put it over the driver’s seat. My wet clothes and green slime from last night had defiled the seat in a big way. I scrunched up my face. The smell wasn’t going to get any better in here, and I was either going to have to have the seat replaced or find someone who could get it clean.

  I went home without making any stops. Arnie was right. I needed to stay away from people. I wasn’t much of a crier, and there was no way I could fake the amount of emotion someone should have in a situation like this.

  The coffee Mama had given to me was horrible. It had a cinnamon aftertaste. I made a fresh pot, wrapped my injured arm in plastic, and ran upstairs to take a shower. When I had scrubbed hard enough to remove all traces of swamp water from my body, and had dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed back upstairs to Clay’s television room – now my makeshift murder room.

  I couldn’t help laughing when I looked at the wall. What was I thinking? It was as if a first grader had been in here drawing stick figure pictures.

  I set the coffee down and grabbed a marker. To the left of Barbie’s house, I drew another house and labeled it Youngstown. I drew Wade Locke sleeping on the sofa, while Barbie stood beside an upstairs bed and shot his wife. Since no one heard the gunshot, I drew a silencer on the end of the gun.

  I then shifted my focus to Tony Lucas’ murder. I added my encounter on the highway, the shot to my arm, and my tumble down the hill into the swamp.

  I didn’t have an opportunity to observe the employees at Chummy’s after the shooting, but someone had to know something. If Tony was hitting on Pepper, he could have been hitting on another employee, too. Pepper said he wasn’t, but maybe she simply didn’t know. The other employee could have shot Tony and left the gun in the room, so it would look like Pepper did it. It had to be someone who hated both Tony and Pepper.

  A light bulb went on over my head. That was it! The killer was someone who was in love with him. I knew from running the background checks for Chummy that Tony was divorced. Maybe his ex-wife killed him. Or the killer could be someone Tony jilted. But I was going to put money on it being one of Pepper’s co-workers who was jealous of his attention toward her.

  I sat in the recliner, satisfied with my reasoning skills, and leaned back to put the footrest up. I knew if I closed my eyes, I would fall asleep, but I didn’t care. Three hours of sleep at the cabin wasn’t enough. A short nap wouldn’t hurt anything.

  ~ ~ ~

  The sun was low in the sky when I was awakened by the sound of loud banging on my front door.

  Chapter Ten

  Clay sure knew how to pick furniture. His recliner in my murder room was probably the most comfortable piece of furniture I’d ever slept on, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t snored at all.

  I felt a rush of panic when I realized how much of the day I had slept away, and when the second round of banging came on my door, the panic escalated. The thought of the police finding Pepper and arresting both of us was always on my mind.

  I tiptoed down the stairs and crept toward the front door. I peeked out the peephole and saw two local news trucks in the cul-de-sac. Several people stood either on my small porch or in my driveway. There was no way I was talking with television reporters.

  I dashed upstairs, freshened up in the bathroom as best I could in the dim lighting, grabbed my bag, and thanked my lucky stars I had parked my truck in the garage.

  Before opening the door and driving out, I reached into the back seat, grabbed the tinted window cover Glenn had made for me to use when I ran surveillance, and suctioned it inside the front window. I hopped out and grabbed two clean work rags from a box Alan always kept on the workbench. I stuck one in the window on the driver’s side and one in the window on the passenger’s side. Finally, I slipped on a pair of sunglasses. It was nearly dark out, but I could see well enough to drive, and none of the reporters would be able to see in or film me.

  I reached up to the visor and pushed the button for the garage door. As soon as it began to go up, a cameraman ducked under the door, rushed to the front of the truck, and began filming. I backed out slowly. Someone banged on my driver’s side window. Questions about Pepper and her guilt or innocence, as well as her abduction, came
in rapid-fire succession.

  When I was fully in the driveway, the cameraman in the garage refused to come out. I honked my horn and lowered the garage door two feet. He held his position and began filming my possessions.

  I grabbed my phone from my bag and hit speed dial number one. It wasn’t Glenn’s number.

  “Buxley Police. Rorski.”

  I nearly hung up. If Sergeant Rorski was answering the telephone, things couldn’t be going well at the station.

  “This is Jo Ravens.”

  He sighed loud enough for me to hear. I had a feeling he was making an effort to be patient. “I know. What do you need?” He muttered something under his breath, but I only caught the word body.

  “There are two news crews at my house. They’re on my property and one of them is in my garage filming my junk. Would you please send someone over to move them?”

  Maybe he was relieved I wasn’t reporting a body. His tone changed to one of pleasantness. “Will do, but I only have Glenn and Barbie available. If you don’t care, I’ll have them there in two minutes.”

  “Tell Glenn to close the garage door when he leaves.”

  I hung up and left. I didn’t care if the cameraman broke in and stole everything Clay owned. I wasn’t sticking around to give Barbie an opportunity to show me what a great couple she and Glenn were.

  My first stop was to run by the local gun shop. Glenn and I had been in the store together several times, and I knew it was open until nine o’clock. A check of the time on the truck’s dash showed it was only a few minutes past eight.

  I purchased a box of ammunition and asked the clerk for help. He grabbed a derringer from stock and gave me a quick tutorial on using the safety, loading the gun, and shooting it properly. He warned me there would be considerable kickback in my hand, so I should hold on tight.

  “If anyone asks, don’t tell them I was here,” I said.

  “This isn’t Vegas, lady,” he said. “If the police ask what happens in here, I tell them.”

  “Then do me a favor and don’t volunteer any information,” I said. He begrudgingly agreed, and I thanked him for his time. I left and headed for Chummy’s.

  I couldn’t believe the restaurant was open for business as usual. Either Chummy called from England and told the new general supervisor to keep the place open, or she was too afraid to close it down without his permission.

  I drove around back and parked in the alley. I grabbed my flashlight from the glove box and began walking up the alley past several of the businesses and then turned around and did the same going in the opposite direction.

  Two doors down from Chummy’s a small deli was currently closed for remodeling. Two extra dumpsters were on the other side of the alley. Several torn-out fixtures and drip-stained paint cans lined the wall of the building. An old wooden ladder had been tipped on its side and placed between the paint cans and the wall. I grabbed it with one hand to see how hard it would be to move it. I could carry it with ease.

  I took the ladder to Chummy’s and placed it against the back of the building. It easily reached the second floor window of the manager’s office.

  Before I could take the ladder down, Dee opened the back door and walked out with a large bag of garbage. Her eyes bugged when she saw me with the ladder.

  “What are you doing out here?” she demanded. “Are you hoping there’s someone else in the office you or your sister can kill?”

  “No, of course not, and you can’t honestly think Pepper shot Tony. You’ve worked with her long enough to know her.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose, but you tried to run me down last night.”

  “It was an accident. I’m sorry. Really I am. I was in a hurry to go back to the flea market to get some evidence I left there. You do know I’m a private investigator, don’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I guess Pepper mentioned it.”

  “Well, is there anything you can tell me about the shooting? Can you think of anyone who wanted to hurt Tony?”

  She actually scowled. Pepper never mentioned that Dee wasn’t a particularly friendly woman. “I take orders and run burgers. I don’t know anything that goes on around here.”

  The door opened again and General Supervisor Sarah Powers stuck her head out the door. “What’s going on out here? Dee, get back to work.”

  Dee scurried to the dumpster, threw the bag of trash in, and rushed back into the building. Sarah saw the ladder against the wall and walked over to me.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing?”

  “I’m Jo Ravens with Baranski and Ravens Investigations. I’m investigating the murder of Tony Lucas, and I think I found out how the killer managed to get to the second floor.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said. “One of our employees was with him at the time, and she shot him in cold blood.”

  She obviously didn’t know I was Pepper’s sister, and I was shocked to hear her accuse Pepper point blank like that. I kept my composure. “I heard the killer abducted her.”

  “Hogwash. I sent her up there myself. Tony was going to fire her, and she must have freaked and shot him.”

  I wanted to say, “You’re a liar. Tony wasn’t going to fire her. He didn’t even know why she came to his office. Why did you send her up there? You killed Tony, didn’t you? You’re the jilted lover.”

  Instead, I asked, “Did Tony have a girlfriend?”

  “Not that I know of. He didn’t seem to be interested in anyone. He had an ugly divorce, and I think he was always thinking of ways to get his wife back. He never wanted to get together for drinks to discuss work or anything.”

  Her voice trailed off and may have even caught in her throat. I was sure she was the person who was jealous of his advances toward Pepper. If she had feelings for Tony, and he wasn’t interested, she might actually be the person who killed him.

  “You cared about him, didn’t you?” I asked softly.

  It was too dark to see her eyes clearly, but her voice was shaky when she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She turned abruptly and walked back into the building. I was going to draw her on the wall when I got back to my house. She had just become my number one suspect.

  I left the ladder against Chummy’s and booked out of Buxley to Patterson.

  Treehorn Lake was the first of three Patterson exits. I passed the exit and drove to the Walmart on the other side of the city. I bought a few changes of clothes for Pepper, some personal items, and more groceries. Potato soup sounded good, and she could make a pot for us tomorrow. By the time I doubled back and took the exit for the lake, it was almost midnight.

  A feeling of dread came over me when I saw an old-style black Cadillac parked in front of the cabin. This could be the car that followed me last night. The person who shot me could be terrorizing Pepper right now. She could even be dead.

  My heart raced as I hopped out of the truck. I closed the door as gently as I could, but it only partially latched. I bumped it with my hip to shut it fully.

  I crept up to the door and tried my best to peek in around the edges of the curtain, but I couldn’t see a thing. I listened at the door but only heard a murmur of voices. I couldn’t tell if one was Pepper’s or not.

  The box of bullets was in the pocket of my jacket, but they weren’t any good to me without the gun. I dug through my bag until I located my stun gun. I held it by my side and turned the doorknob slowly. I stopped mid-turn when loud laughter from Pepper rang out.

  Ok, now I was mad. She had to be entertaining Floyd again, and the car must belong to him. I threw the door open and rushed into the room.

  The jolt to my heart took a year off my life. Yes, Floyd was here, but I nearly choked and couldn’t speak when Mama stood from the sofa and said, “It’s about time you showed up. Come on in. I made a kettle of chili. I’ll get you a bowl.” She headed for the stove.

  I was gobsmacked, thunderstruck, flabbergasted, and every other word that describes how utterly bowl
ed over and even horrified I was that Mama and Lucille, who just apologized for the loud fart that erupted when she, too, stood from the sofa, were visiting Pepper.

  Lucille gave me a big smile and headed for the bathroom. “It’s your mother’s chili. That’s some mighty powerful stuff.”

  Pepper looked scared. She knew I was going to blow up.

  “I haven’t told them anything,” she yelled preemptively. “I was waiting for you.”

  I found my voice and yelled back, “What are they doing here? Are you deliberately trying to get us sent to prison?”

  Mama set a bowl of chili and a spoon on the table. “Oh hush. She didn’t even know we were coming. We dropped in unannounced.”

  I was beside myself. “Mama, you can’t be here. What if someone followed you? Do you have any idea how serious this is?”

  “No one followed us. That’s why we brought Lucille’s dead husband’s car. He doesn’t use it anymore, and no one would recognize it.”

  Floyd tried to diffuse the situation by asking, “How’s your arm? I brought my bag over. Let me take a look at it and change the dressing.”

  Mama frowned. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

  Floyd gave me an oops look. There was no way I was getting out of here tonight without Mama and Lucille finding out what happened to my arm.

  “Nothing. It’s fine,” I mumbled, but I took a seat at the kitchen table, removed my jacket, and pulled my arm out of my sweater sleeve. Floyd inspected the wound, proclaimed it looked fine, and changed the dressing.

  Mama was still frowning with lips clenched. I didn’t give her a chance to ask about my arm again, “How did you know where Pepper was? She called you, didn’t she?”

  “I did not,” Pepper protested. “I did just like you said, and I haven’t turned my phone on at all.”