Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  No. That wasn’t quite right. Mindy thought about her mother as she turned away from the rutted, pothole-covered road to the front walk that would take her back to the dwelling she had shared for so many years with Darren. Their mother had loved them. Mama had loved Mindy. If Mindy thought back far enough to a time before her mother had started feeling poorly, she could remember tea parties with her dolls and warm, summer evenings staying up late to drink lemonade on the porch swing. She could remember her mother tucking her in at night and whispering soft prayers with her. It wasn’t until later that Mama had realized teaching survival skills was more important than those soft unguarded moments.

  Mindy fumbled with the boxes and finally found her key. She used it on the front door while trying not to drop her armload of moving supplies. She tried to turn the key in the lock, but it went the wrong way. It was already unlocked. Weird. It seemed unusual that the police would forget to lock up after they’d done their investigating. But it wasn’t like there was anything of value in here to take. Mindy was struggling with the desire to start all over and just donate everything to charity. Unfortunately, starting over was too expensive.

  Pushing her way through the front door, Mindy left it open. The air inside the stale little place was horrid. She hated it. She thought she had always hated it there. She could stand in the doorway and remember nothing but arguing with Darren about what he was going to do or where he was going to go. It had never been home. There was too much sorrow and sadness for that. But now it could belong to someone else. Maybe they would have better luck than she’d had with this place.

  Mindy started in the kitchen. She was avoiding the bedroom. This was why Ash hadn’t wanted her to do this alone. The bedroom. That death scene. He was convinced it was too much for Mindy to deal with on her own. He was right in a way. But she was determined to be stronger than that. She wanted to be worthy of a man like him. Strong. Sure of herself. Not the type of woman to fall apart at the first sign of trouble.

  Kitchen utensils and cheap pots and pans and baking dishes went into the box. Mindy had done what she could to cook with the groceries that she could afford. Not that Darren had ever appreciated it. He had made fun of her cooking. It wasn’t as good as their mother’s, but Mindy had managed to master a few simple dishes and she looked forward to trying those in a new place without anyone to judge her efforts so harshly. In fact, the thought of trying to cook for Ash made her smother a giggle.

  Why was she smothering it? Habit maybe? Mindy sighed. She worked for nearly an hour before she realized there was a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Darren’s spirit wasn’t in this place. It didn’t work that way.

  Then Mindy heard something behind her, in the bedroom. She spun around just in time to see the door creaking open. Her heart stopped. At least that’s what it felt like. Her chest grew tight and there was a roaring sound in her ears. The door eased open and a bare foot stepped through. Mindy thought she might faint. Right there on the floor of her dingy little kitchen she was going to faint and hit her head and it would all be over.

  But it wasn’t a ghost. It was Kevin Eads. And when Mindy saw the expression on his face, she wasn’t entirely sure which would have been the better option. Probably the ghost.

  “So, you did come back to get your stuff.” Kevin’s voice was low and filled with malice. But it was surprisingly calm considering he was a very wanted man right now.

  Mindy didn’t know what to say. Maybe it was better not to say anything at all. What did you say to the psychopath hiding in your apartment? Of course, she had come back for her stuff? It was a really stupid rhetorical question to begin with.

  “What? You don’t have anything to say to the man you’re trying to frame for murder?” Kevin sneered at her.

  He emerged fully into the living room wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. It occurred to Mindy that he’d been living in her apartment since the day he’d tried to force her to commit suicide. The absolute audacity of that blew her mind. Beyond that, she could not get over the injustice of it all. Like she was somehow the one at fault because she refused to conveniently jump out of a window!

  Then his words finally sank in. Mindy could not help herself. She had to ask. “What do you mean framing you for murder?”

  “You.” He looked at her as though she was a simpleton. “You and that new boyfriend are trying to frame me for murder even though you’re the one who offed that little twit of a brother of yours so you would be free to pursue Mr. Moneybags Private Investigator.”

  Mindy’s cell phone was in her pocket. She wondered if there was a way to slip it out and turn it on. She needed to call Ash. She needed to get him back here with a whole army’s worth of police officers to put handcuffs on Kevin. But before she could even consider that course of action, she had to figure out a way to somehow work around Kevin’s appalling lack of understanding of the situation he was in.

  “Kevin, nobody is saying you had anything to do with Darren’s death.” Mindy watched the strangest string of emotions flicker across his face as she said the words. “I’m not even sure the police have settled on anything more than a list of persons of interest.” There. That sounded convincingly vague. “It’s still early yet, Kevin.” Mindy swallowed. Her throat was dry and her mouth felt as though it were filled with cotton.

  “That’s not true,” Kevin said sharply. “I was told that you’re trying to pin it on me.”

  Mindy thought of Sergeant Caprico. What had he done when he left the mirror maze parking lot on his way to the Dino Golf maintenance shed? Had he called Kevin? “By whom? Caprico? The guy just got arrested on a list of charges so long I can’t remember them. I believe he is a person of interest in my brother’s case. But I don’t know what that has to do with you.”

  Okay. So that wasn’t entirely true. There was a definite connection between Caprico and Kevin. Kevin had been a buyer, and Mindy wasn’t going to open the topic of Kevin’s horrible cat and mouse games in the mirror maze with a list of poor young women who hadn’t even been identified yet.

  Mindy’s skin was crawling. Kevin was looking at her with such a strange expression on his face. He narrowed his gaze on her and advanced a few steps. “You’re lying.”

  “You think I’m going to lie right now?”

  “This would be the perfect time for it!” Kevin snarled. “You’re protecting yourself. By saying you don’t think I killed Darren.”

  “Why would you have any reason to kill Darren?” Even as she said it, Mindy’s mind whispered she wasn’t looking in the right place.

  She needed to get out of there. Her fingers tingled and she tried to shift the box on the table in front of her just a few inches to the left. Perhaps it would block his view of her hand going to the phone sitting unobtrusively on the tabletop.

  “It’s good you’re packing up,” Kevin said suddenly. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Where are you going?” Did he not know that there was a price on his head right now? He wasn’t going to get out of the state. Not even as far as Arkansas and that wasn’t far.

  “South,” Kevin said abruptly. He turned and walked back into the bedroom. She heard him fumbling around. “And don’t argue with me or I will beat you black and blue until you shut up.”

  A fearful chill ran through her veins. He wasn’t kidding. There was no time. Mindy quickly punched in the code and unlocked her phone. She dialed Ash’s number and it began to ring. Then she texted him a 911. She could only pray that Kevin was so busy with his own issues that he wasn’t going to notice that her phone was active. She heard the line click. Ash answered. She heard his voice on the other end of the line. He said her name. He shouted it. But she had to cover the receiver to keep Kevin from hearing him. It made her want to cry. She wanted to run out the front door and just sprint her way up the hill. She wanted to run to him and never leave again.

  Right now, when Kevin was throwing things around in the other room an
d probably looking for money or things of value that he could sell, the only thing Mindy cared about was seeing Ash again.

  “Mindy!” Kevin roared her name. “Get your scrawny ass in here. Where are the keys? That little bastard lied! There are no keys in here! I need the money. Get me the fricking money!”

  Wait. What?

  Mindy swallowed the lump that had appeared in her throat and left the phone on the tabletop as she crept toward the bedroom door. “What are you talking about? Darren spent all his money on drugs.”

  “He told me he was saving for a car.” Kevin was pulling Darren’s clothing from the closet. “He said he was saving up. So, where’s the money? You’ve got to at least give me that.”

  “He spent it on drugs,” Mindy said quickly. “When did he tell you any of that? When did you even talk to him?”

  Mindy was sorry as soon as the words were out. Kevin spun around and lunged for Mindy. She squeaked in terror as he grabbed hold of her and flung her onto the bed where Darren had died. Kevin put his hands on Mindy’s neck and began to squeeze. She thought her face might explode. She struggled to get his hands off her neck, but he was stronger than she was. Stronger. She couldn’t overpower him. There was just no way.

  Her lungs screamed from lack of air. She tried to relax. To calm down. To think. Rationality. Logic. Where was it? And then she curled her fingers into claws and began scratching the hell out of his face. She clawed and scratched and ripped at his nostrils and his eyes. He shrieked in pain and shoved himself away from her. Mindy gasped as he let go of her neck and she could breathe again. She nearly passed out then from the sudden influx of oxygen.

  “You bitch!” Kevin’s voice was so filled with hatred that Mindy didn’t recognize it. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you what I do to women who fight me!”

  He grabbed her again, but this time he was trying to rip her clothes off. Her shirt tore. Her bra snapped. She struggled and kicked and fought like a wildcat. She was not going down like this. She was small, but she was not helpless dammit!

  “Stop it!” Mindy screamed. “Stop it! Kevin, stop it! No! No!”

  She kept on screaming and fighting until suddenly Kevin was just gone.

  Mindy actually had to pause and look around. Her limbs were limp on the bed. She felt so sore that she wasn’t entirely sure she could move. And then she heard grunting and the sound of things breaking. She turned her head and saw that the bedroom door was ripped from its hinges. It hung crazily and lopsided beside the doorway.

  Through the door, Mindy could see Kevin face down on the floor. His face was bloody. She’d done that. She felt glad about it. Ash’s knee was painfully pushing down on the center of Kevin’s back as he drew his hands behind him.

  Mindy heard the singing plastic noise of zip ties being drawn tight. Ash had Kevin’s hands and feet bound and then he carefully and elaborately wrenched Kevin’s legs up behind him and zip tied them to his hands so that he was trussed up in what was probably an intentionally painful position.

  Then suddenly, Ash was beside Mindy on the bed. He gently lifted her and set her on her feet. “Are you all right? God. Look at you! Your neck is bruised, sweetheart, can you breathe?”

  The tenderness in his words undid her. Mindy felt the tears begin and tried to fight them back. “Fine.” She managed to push that word out, but she needed more. Something convincing. “I’m okay?”

  It came out like a question and she tried hard not to cry. She didn’t want Kevin to hear her cry. That wouldn’t do. It was out of the question. So, she wrapped her arms around Ash’s waist and pressed her face close to him just so she could hide her tears. He held her and didn’t say a word. Somehow, she knew that he got it. He didn’t need her to say anything.

  What was Mindy doing? She was refusing to move in with Ash because she wanted to keep her independence. To do this on her own. Because she was afraid of being the needy one. But maybe the problem was that she wasn’t giving Ash enough credit. He wasn’t Kevin. He wasn’t that guy who was going to hold it over her head that she had come to him with next to nothing. He was the one who would stand there and applaud when she worked hard to make something of herself. Maybe this was the wrong time to make that kind of decision.

  Or maybe this was the moment she saw things most clearly.

  Chapter Thirty

  The apartment was now crawling with law enforcement and something else. Ash had been around the block enough times to smell federal agents when he saw them. As he sat on the tailgate of his truck with Mindy in his arms, he watched Detective Lowell direct the flow of men in and out of the apartment. Kevin was hustled off in the back of a police car. And soon enough, other items were coming out as well.

  “That’s not my brother’s stuff,” Mindy murmured after watching this go on for a little while. “Where did it come from?”

  She was convincingly and satisfyingly confused about the bags of packaged pills coming out of her apartment. Ash stroked her face and tucked her hair behind her ear. Her ponytail was coming down again but her hair was no longer lank and lifeless. The ash blonde color was deepening and the hair had a much silkier texture.

  Ash watched Detective Lowell zip all of the evidence into labeled clear bags and put it in the trunk of an unmarked car. “Did you ever go into your brother’s bedroom?”

  “Oh God no!” Mindy said quickly. “He was so defensive about that stuff. It was like once he hit puberty the word privacy became his constant whining complaint. There wasn’t enough privacy. There wasn’t enough space for him to have privacy. He should have his own bathroom so he’d have privacy. It was as if he wanted me to rent him his own apartment.”

  Ash chuckled. That wasn’t exactly unusual behavior, but it certainly fit the pattern here. Titus meandered up and rested his hip against the rear panel of Ash’s truck. Ash didn’t look at him. He continued to focus on Mindy.

  She was still talking about Darren. Her voice was calm and she didn’t seem overly upset. Just thoughtful. “When Darren got his first job over at one of the low-end putt putt golf places, I thought he might finally have to grow up. But really, it all just got worse. He was fifteen. He started having a lot more trouble at school. The teachers and the principal were having meetings all the time and I couldn’t really attend because I was working. We had to work with a juvenile justice liaison from the police department. It was a mess.”

  Ash glanced at Titus and Titus nodded. Ash cleared his throat. “I believe,” Ash began slowly. “That Darren’s brush with the juvenile justice liaison was probably the real beginning of his troubles.”

  “What do you mean?” Mindy pulled back and looked up into Ash’s face. Then he watched her mind work quickly to sort out the pieces. “Holy shit. Caprico?”

  “Eventually, yes.” Titus’s low, rumbling tone was filled with disgust. “Detective Lowell was actually a plant. He’s not Branson police. He is DEA.”

  “DEA?” Mindy squeaked. “Why is the DEA in Branson?”

  Titus grimaced. “Because there has been an inordinate amount of prescription drug activity in the younger population in the last several years. They received a tip from someone in the juvenile system and Lowell began easing his way into the chain of command. It took time. Fortunately, it’s not systematic. It’s only a certain selection of officers in the investigative positions who have been dealing on the sides. The stuff has been coming in from known dealers and informants. It’s a very large mess and I’m personally glad as hell that we don’t have to unravel it.”

  “Yeah,” Ash agreed as he nodded to Lowell. “No lie there.”

  Mindy seemed to go very still for a moment. She was still thinking. The wheels were still turning in her mind. “Caprico didn’t kill Darren.”

  Ash frowned. “He was the one with the motive. Your brother became a liability when he got hooked on the stuff he was supposed to be selling.”

  “Caprico sent someone who knew my apartment,” Mindy told them firmly. “Someone who owed him. A lot. Someone
who had a key.”

  Now Ash realized where she was going with this. “Are you saying Caprico ordered Kevin to put the pills in front of your brother’s bedroom door?”

  “Yes. Kevin could have gone in and out of that apartment a million times without making a peep. He knew it. He knew the lock. He wasn’t going to wake me up.” Mindy was getting more and more animated. “And he was babbling nonstop about it while he was trying to grab stuff out of my brother’s closet. I hadn’t even gone in to clear it out yet. Oh my God, what if I had? All of that stuff!”

  “None of us thought to look there,” Ash added.

  “But if Kevin had all that stuff in his closet, why was he in withdrawal?” Mindy reminded them. She looked deflated. But it didn’t last. “Kevin was going on and on about keys.”

  Ash touched her lightly. “There were lockboxes in your brother’s bedroom. Locked boxes of packaged drugs and money. The DEA guys had to drill them open. From what I saw, they’re pretty good at that.”

  “So, my brother had lockboxes full of drugs and money in my apartment?” Mindy was obviously appalled. “We were sitting on a huge liability this whole time and Darren never said a word! What was wrong with that boy?”

  “Caprico,” Ash retorted. “Your brother was a very unfortunate casualty of all of this. I’m so sorry, Mindy.”

  Titus touched her shoulder. “As am I.”

  Lowell approached them with an expression of mingled satisfaction and regret on his face. “Mindy, I’m really sorry to have to do this to your apartment.”

  “Darren is dead,” she said flatly. “Take it. It obviously wasn’t his to begin with. I can’t believe it was all in there under my nose. But I work all the time. I’m the one who paid the bills. Obviously, when Darren wasn’t at his regular job or at school, he had other things going.”