Gotcha Detective Agency Mystery Box Set

by Jamie Lee Scott

  I grinned. Oh yeah, Nick and I’d be going out for drinks on this one.

  I arrived at the brood of cackling hens in time to step between Emmet and Rayna before Rayna returned the favor. “Look, ladies, nothing is ever solved with punches, except a boxing match.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Emmet asked.

  “I was here first, my little pixie, so let me ask you that question.”

  “Who are you calling a pixie?”

  She had short, cropped, platinum blonde hair, with perfectly applied makeup that left a sparkle on her cheeks and on her brow. Even the skin on her bare shoulders sparkled, so Pixie she was.

  “Cortnie here says your name is Emmet, so Emmet, your skin sparkles, and you’re wearing a skimpy top with no bra, and your shorts are barely covering your ass cheeks. Not to mention you’ve arrived at a horse farm wearing flip-flops, and your toes have been freshly pedicured and painted in a hot pink French manicure, so Pixie it is.”

  “Whatever. And who is Cortnie?”

  Cortnie cockily raised her hand. She was no more afraid of this fist-wielding pixie than I was. “We rode together in college. It’s been a while.”

  “As in Cortnie Criss?” Her face got all screwy, but less bitchy.

  Cortnie put on her best smile. “The one and only.”

  “Wow, you’ve, um, changed.” She looked her up and down. “Are you like a lesbian now or something?”

  I watched as the color rose from Cortnie’s neck, through her cheeks, and up through her scalp, but her smile never faded. “Oh, honey, no, I could never get used to the smell of old fish after traveling with you for two years. I like men and meat. Speaking of men…”

  We all looked in the direction Cortnie had turned, to see who was coming toward us. It was Lieutenant Gabe Garcia, homicide detective, and Nick’s new partner. Since joining the homicide unit, Gabe had shaved his face clean, which didn’t do much for me, but then he wasn’t my guy.

  Previous to homicide, Garcia had worked vice for the Salinas Police Department. There had been quite a shake up in the department a few months back. It happened to coincide with the demise of my dearly beloved Spyder. At the time, I wasn’t so sure I liked Garcia, but Cortnie was smitten with him. She had been working a prostitution sting at the time, so they had spent a lot of time sitting in a car together, getting to know each other. Now, they were getting to know each other in different ways. Well, they were back then too, but I don’t want to think about that.

  He waved and winked at Cortnie, and she pointed toward the chutes where Nick was examining the body.

  “Wow, he showed up in a hurry,” I said. “Guess he doesn’t want his partner to make him look bad in his first weeks on the job.”

  “I called him,” Cortnie admitted. “I couldn’t let Nick have fun all by himself.”

  A bit put off, I said, “He wasn’t all by himself, thank you very much.”

  Mimi interrupted, “Okay, girls, one fist fight a morning is my limit.”

  I was about ready to punch someone myself. But since I’m a man of extreme self-control, I moved on. “Emmit, is there a reason you punched Rayna’s lights out?”

  Rayna, who I had yet to decide if I liked or not, but was leaning toward disliking, shoved me hard, but of course I didn’t move an inch. “Lights out? She just caught me off guard.”

  Yeah, sure. Emmet was smaller than Rayna by at least ten pounds, and she had that woman on the ground like she was a flea. There was no doubt who’d have won that match without a referee.

  “Emmet?” I asked.

  “I was here with my daughter this morning,” Emmet looked back to the pickup. There was a girl in the passenger seat, who looked to be a pre-teenager. “I wanted to take a look at Mojo. He’s being auctioned tomorrow. My daughter and I decided to bid, but when I went to the courthouse, I was told I was on the list of family members.” She turned on Rayna. “What the hell is that all about?”

  Rayna’s crooked smile gave away nothing, yet spoke volumes.

  Emmet got in Rayna’s face, nose to bloody nose. Between clenched teeth, she hissed, “Go get that no good husband of yours. We’ll air this dirty laundry once and for all. Then we’ll see how his little campaign goes from here.”

  Rayna blinked and backed away. She didn’t respond, just blinked.

  Mimi put her arm around Rayna, who looked like she was going to pass out for real this time.

  Cortnie stepped in front of Emmet. “Bucky won’t be talking to anyone, Emmet,” she said.

  “Coward.” Emmet spat the word.

  “More like a corpse,” I said, and cocked my head as I scowled at her.

  Emmet looked at me like I was crazy. “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you talking about?”

  Mimi had to get her two cents in. “Emmet, is it? Bucky Cox died today.”

  Emmet raised her brows and looked at Rayna accusingly, but said nothing.

  Rayna said, “What?”

  Emmet said, “What straw broke the camel’s back, Rayna?”

  Rayna pulled her phone from her pocket and threw it at Emmet’s face.

  Damn, she was good. She hit Emmet right on the mouth.

  Emmet covered her face and bent over.

  The girl who’d been in the pickup until now opened the passenger door and stood on the running board. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Emmet recovered quickly. She didn’t look back, but said, “I’m okay. Get back in the truck.”

  Mimi and I looked at the girl, then looked at each other, then back at the girl standing on the running board.

  She looked to be average height for a tween, thin, with long curly brown hair, braces, and freckles. Mostly, she looked a lot like Bucky.

  110

  Mimi

  Good lord, people think testosterone is bad.

  After Emmet called Bucky a coward, and Rayna hit her with the cell phone, Rayna flew out of my arms and ran at Emmet, stopped within a fraction of an inch of her, took a deep breath, and screamed in her face, “Get off my property. Get off now before I have the police escort you off.”

  Emmet didn’t even flinch. “You can’t make me leave.”

  “The hell I can’t. I have a trespass order against you, Emmet. Now get the hell off my property, or you’ll be in a squad car, and that bastard of yours will be carted off by social services.” Rayna pointed a long finger toward the passenger seat of Emmet’s pickup.

  Emmet’s face went gray, and she said nothing. She turned around and went back to her pickup. Before she climbed back in, she said, “You haven’t heard the last of me, Rayna. This isn’t over.”

  Emmet climbed up in the pickup, slammed the door, and spit dirt as she spun the truck around and left the property. I saw her look toward where the detectives were working as she drove away.

  We stood quietly. I wasn’t sure if I should ask what happened, or just stick to the business at hand. I’m way too nosy to stick to the business at hand. Charles nudged me.

  “What?” I asked.

  Charles glared, mad that I couldn’t read his mind. I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking, but I didn’t know how to ask.

  “Rayna, that girl in the pickup, is she somehow related to you?” Charles blurted out.

  I had been trying to think of a more polite, subtle way to ask. I didn’t want to put Rayna on the spot, in case there was something she didn’t want to share with strangers. Charles wasn’t one to beat around the bush.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Rayna wasn’t a very good liar.

  “She looks a lot like Bucky. I wondered if maybe she was related.” Charles didn’t back off. He saw the lie for what it was.

  “You’re nuts.” She looked toward her dead husband’s body. “So, my husband is really dead?”

  “I’m sorry, Rayna, he is.” Cortnie stepped in close to her.

  Rayna started to shake. I mean really shake.

  Charles did a very un-Charles like thing. He put his arm around R
ayna and walked her over to the barn, which was the nearest place to sit. We all followed along with him. He sat her down on the carved wooden bench outside by the mechanical walker, and sat beside her.

  “What was Bucky doing today?”

  Rayna took a couple of deep breaths before answering. “Getting our horse, Mojo, ready for the auction tomorrow.”

  Cortnie and I listened. We knew the details, but let Charles ask the questions, because it was going to be interesting to hear Rayna’s side of the story.

  “I don’t know much about horses, but why auction him? Why not just sell him?” Charles had his best concerned friend persona going.

  “We’re dissolving a business deal. An LLC. My husband and I decided we no longer wanted to be in business with the woman we owned Mojo with. Because Mojo was owned by the LLC, we had to purchase her portion of the horse from her.”

  Cortnie and I looked at each other. Rayna took a few seconds to breathe and regain control.

  “The woman we partnered with was completely unreasonable. She wanted a crazy amount of money for her percentage of the ownership of the horse. She refused to come to terms.”

  Charles rubbed Rayna’s back. I wondered if Anthony’s suicide had turned a side of Charles I’d never seen. “Okay, how much was she asking?”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars,” Rayna said the words slowly.

  Charles choked, incredulous. “For a horse?”

  So much for the compassionate Charles.

  Rayna looked at him. Stunned. “This isn’t just any horse.”

  “What was the other person’s ownership? You said they owned a percentage?”

  “Twenty percent.”

  “But that would make his full price one point five million,” Charles croaked. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s the point. He’s one in a million, but I don’t think he’s worth a million dollars. He’s a gelding, for Christ’s sake.” Rayna seemed a bit agitated, but her mind was off her husband.

  I asked, “Do the circumstances change at all if Bucky is dead?”

  Rayna looked at the ground and shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I’m sure the judge will postpone the auction.” She looked up. “To tell you the truth, I really don’t know. Bucky took care of all the business stuff.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  Interesting. What then? A change in terms or an appeal? Could there even be an appeal? Who wins with Bucky dead?

  “I’m sorry to ask you so many questions, but we need to know who would do this to Bucky. Were the two of you having any problems in your marriage?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Are you married?”

  I shook my head. “I used to be, but no longer.”

  “Well, then you know as well as anyone, marriage isn’t easy. Try being married to a rodeo cowboy and a politician wrapped into one. There have been trying moments, but we’ve made it through. Twenty-five years. You don’t just give up on twenty-five years of hard work.” The corners of her mouth turned up in a weak smile.

  She didn’t say twenty-five years of marriage, or twenty-five years with the man you love; she said, “Hard work.” I found that strange. I knew that any marriage was work, and to make it last it required effort on both parts, but “hard work?” Really? If it’s that hard, is it really worth it? Not that it should all come easy, but there’s a point where being married may not be worth it. I wondered if Rayna had maybe reached that point.

  “Anything recent that’s come between you?” I asked.

  She looked toward the road, then back up to the house before answering. “Nothing I can think of.”

  “Not even this auction?” Cortnie asked.

  “Surprisingly, no.” Then she looked at me and asked, “You said you were here to talk to Bucky. What were you here to talk to him about anyway?”

  I looked at Charles before I answered. The truth was the only way forward. “Skinner Mathis hired us.”

  Rayna sat ramrod straight. “Skinner?”

  “Apparently, he and Bucky have some bad blood, and Bucky used Skinner’s credit to purchase a fancy trailer. Skinner mentioned a civil suit. He hired us to clear his credit, and to find evidence for criminal charges. Then we’re told Bucky took Skinner’s trophy saddle, saying it was his, and had Skinner arrested for theft.”

  Rayna wiped tears from her eyes, and her face got red. “Whoa, go back to the trailer. That was all worked out. That’s what Bucky told me. It was an honest mistake, and Skinner even said it had been worked out, and that he could use the trailer, so it wasn’t a big deal. He was going to pay for the trailer and keep it himself.”

  I raised my brows. “Really? That’s what Skinner told you?”

  “I didn’t talk to Skinner directly about it. Bucky said they’d come to an agreement.” Now she scraped the dirt with the toe of her boot.

  “Do you see Skinner much?”

  Again, she looked at the road. “Not much lately.” Looking back at me, she said, “What did you say about a trophy saddle?”

  “Skinner said Bucky had him arrested for stealing his team roping trophy saddle,” Cortnie said.

  Rayna laughed. “That’s ridiculous. What on earth would Skinner steal a saddle from Bucky for? Skinner and Bucky both have plenty of saddles.”

  “Can we go up to the tack room and take a look?”

  Rayna stared at the stables. “I’d think the murder of my husband is more important than a damn saddle at the moment, don’t you?”

  Snap! But maybe the two went hand in hand.

  “What if there’s a possibility the saddle is part of the reason Bucky’s dead?”

  Rayna’s laugh held so much mirth, it scared me. “Bucky had more enemies than friends. Politics and bad business deals will do that. But he’s your man, you know. He was everyone’s man. Only to be everyone’s man, you gotta piss a lot of people off. I could give you a list of people with a lot better reasons to kill Bucky. But if I was honest, I’d tell you that Skinner Mathis was here today.”

  “Really?” Nick’s voice behind me made me jump.

  Great, just great, our client went from being a simple credit fraud case to a possible murderer. This was too much. I wasn’t doing this again. It was time to grab my phone and have a heart to heart with Skinner, give him back his money, less my expenses and time so far, and be done with this.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Cortnie. “If Skinner is now a suspect in Bucky’s murder, this is more than we signed on for.”

  Rayna said, “What do you mean?”

  “We were here to see if Skinner’s trophy saddle was here, and then talk to Bucky. We wanted to get his side of things before we started working on clearing up Skinner’s credit, and figuring out where to start on the evidence for the criminal case.”

  Rayna stood. “Are you kidding me? Please, this is nothing new. They’ve been at each other’s throats for years.” She looked to Nick. “How did he die?”

  “He was hit in the head several times. We won’t know the actual cause of death until the M.E. does the examination.” His voice soothing, but matter of fact.

  “What do I do now? We’re supposed to auction my horse tomorrow, and I’m not sure how this affects things. I can’t be worried about the horse when I need to know who killed my husband. I can’t handle all of this at once. I don’t want to handle any of this.” She put her head in her hands and rubbed her face.

  I heard a door slam, and looked up the hill. When I did, I saw a stunning young lady in her early twenties, standing on the deck outside the house, looking down toward the barn.

  She looked like a younger, taller version of Rayna. A bean pole with legs up to there, and almost no figure to speak of. I’d guess a size zero, maybe size one if I was being generous. Her waist length wet hair could have been brown or black, but it was hard to tell.

  She wore cutoff shorts and a spaghetti strap shirt, both in a dark color I couldn’t make out, and when she spotted her mom, she came running down the hill to the ba
rn. She had weathered, blue cowboy boots on her feet.

  As she ran across the road to the barn, she said in a raspy voice, “Mom, what’s going on?”

  Rayna stood, grasped the girl around the waist, and hugged her tight. “Honey, your dad is dead.” Then Rayna began to shake and sob as she buried her face in the girl’s wet hair.

  The young woman stood quietly, holding Rayna, rubbing her back and saying, “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay. What happened? Take a deep breath, and tell me what happened.”

  She held onto Rayna for a few more minutes while we all looked on, staring stupidly. Finally, Rayna let go and stood at arm’s length. “Your daddy’s been murdered, little girl. Somebody killed Bucky.”

  Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes, but she didn’t show the emotion Rayna showed. She sniffed, then said, “Mama, I need you to tell me what happened, and who all of these people are.”

  Stoicly, Rayna explained the best she could, then I stepped in.

  “I’m Mimi Capurro. I’m working for Skinner Mathis.”

  Before I could say anything more, she looked at her mom and said, “Skinner is involved in this?”

  Rayna touched her arm. “Now, Galynn, before you go getting all worked up, it’s not like you think. These people were here to talk to your daddy. They’re working for Skinner, trying to clear some things up for him. When they went to look for daddy, they found him…” she sniffed, then choked, “dead.”

  Galynn looked at me. “So, you had nothing to do with this? Did you talk to my daddy before he died?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t believe this. I was just with him.” She looked around. “Where is he?”

  Nick stepped forward. “I’m Detective Christianson, Homicide, Salinas Police Department. I’ve examined your father. The crime scene people will take over now and process the scene. We’ll start our investigation. We found your father down at the arena. Is there anything you can tell us about today?”

  “I’m Galynn Cox, Bucky and Rayna’s daughter. I’m their only child. I was down at the barn and arena helping my dad with the horses this morning. We were getting Mojo ready for the auction, but as long as people were coming out, we made sure they could see the other horses too, and that everyone was groomed and clipped, you know, looking good for the sale, just in case people might be interested in another horse.”