Toni Donovan Mysteries- Books 1-3

by Helen Gray

  She was on her way back to her van when Quint and the other officer came through the breezeway, each of them escorting a young man in handcuffs. They marched them to separate cruisers and plunked them into the back seats.

  Toni went to Quint, intending to tell him about seeing the woman leave, but he forestalled her. “We have to get to the station,” he said, getting into his vehicle.

  The window swished down, and he spoke through the opening. “I want you to go back to the apartment. I’ll talk to you later, after we’ve dealt with these guys.”

  Toni didn’t agree or disagree. She just backed away and watched them leave. Then she marched back into the courtyard and headed for that apartment. She found Edna Rankin just locking the door of it. At Toni’s approach the woman whirled around and frowned in recognition. “Are you the one who called the cops?”

  Toni winced. “Yes. I’m sorry I deceived you. But I knew that the guy who lived here left a grieving widow. So when you said a fiancé was cleaning out the apartment, I knew something was wrong.”

  The woman’s expression underwent a strobe-like series of changes, from anger to puzzlement, and then to curiosity. “You weren’t looking for a place to rent. You were looking for this apartment. What’s going on?”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed your tenant,” Toni said, deciding the time for honesty had arrived. “My son is the boy who found the man’s body, and I’ve been working with the police.”

  Edna shook her head, her oversize body shaking along with it. “You say there’s no fiancé?”

  “No fiancé,” Toni repeated. “That means someone is up to no good. Those young men were moving stuff out of an apartment that doesn’t belong to them, or to that woman. Did she give you her name?”

  “No. Like I told them two cops, she just introduced herself as Mr. Campbell’s fiancé and showed me a ring on her left hand and the man’s picture. No one else has showed up to claim anything, and I needed to get the place emptied. I shoulda been more careful.”

  “I understand,” Toni assured her. “Can you describe the woman for me?”

  Edna straightened her shoulders and gave Toni a skeptical look. “Them cops said the detectives will want me to come down to the police station tomorrow and talk to them. I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

  Toni took a deep breath. “One of those cops is my brother. I’m staying with him and working with him on the case. I have a theory about who the woman is, but I need confirmation. If you can do that for me, I’ll be able to help the police find her.”

  Edna blinked, her pale eyes showing confusion. Finally she spoke, as if talking to herself. “What can it hurt if I describe the lady to you now, if the cops are just gonna ask me the same stuff?”

  “Nothing that I can see,” Toni said, wishing she really did have a theory about who had been in that apartment.

  “She was tall and slim and had long dark hair, just like thousands of gals in this city.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  Edna closed her eyes a moment, mused a bit, and then reopened them. “A sexy yellow tank top and jeans.”

  “What…”

  “She had real thick eyelashes and wore a lot of makeup,” Edna continued. “Oh, and she had on some kind of long dangly earrings.”

  A picture began to form in Toni’s mind. It took her a bit to put a name to it. Then she considered the women she had seen fleeing the parking lot. The body fit, but the hair had been covered and the face obscured. “Thank you, Mrs. Rankin. You’ve been a big help.”

  Quint called as she was steering the van onto Ingram Mill Road. “You didn’t go straight home,” were the first words out of his mouth.

  “I’m almost there,” she said. “I’m a big girl. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Well, how about you come by the station and talk to the detectives?”

  Toni pulled into a parking lot and stopped. “Will I be grilled if I do?”

  “Yeah, thumbscrews and the whole hard case treatment,” he said gruffly. “But you can handle it.”

  She laughed, her apprehensions easing. “Will you stand guard over me?”

  “Maybe. Will you get your butt in here?” He was starting to sound a little exasperated.

  “Okay, I’m on my way.”

  *

  When Toni walked into the police station, the officer behind the glass fronted desk was on the phone, but his eyes scanned her thoroughly. He was a young man, probably in his early thirties, sandy hair worn in a crew cut. She took a seat and waited.

  “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll have someone check on it right away. Yeah. Okay, ma’am. Thank you for calling.”

  He put the phone down and jotted something on a notepad before looking back at Toni. “May I help you?”

  She nodded. “My brother is expecting me. His na…”

  “Nash?” His eyes raked over her in sharper interest.

  “Yes.”

  “He said you were coming. I’ll get him.” He picked the phone back up and punched a button. “Your sister is here.”

  He hardly had time to replace the phone before Quint appeared in the doorway to her left. He beckoned for Toni to follow him.

  She trailed him to a small office about halfway down a wide hallway. She felt nervous as she entered the room and took in the sight of the man behind the cluttered desk. He was an older guy, a large black man with a thick shock of salt and pepper hair, a round face, and a mouth that turned down at the corners. He wore a rumpled white shirt, charcoal pants, and a green striped tie. There was a gold band on his left hand. He gave her a sharp assessing look and came to his feet. “Hello, ma’am.”

  “The name’s Toni,” she said, placing her hand in the one he extended across the desk.

  He released her hand and pointed at a chair. “I’m Lieutenant Green. I understand you’ve been doing some independent investigating and feeding your brother here the info you find. I’ve talked to officers Durbin and Chilton, and they seem to think you have a good head on your shoulders.” His deep voice was relaxed and easy.

  Toni wasn’t sure how to respond, so she didn’t.

  “She knows the chief of police personally back home and has helped him with a couple of cases,” Quint volunteered.

  The lieutenant nodded. “I’ve heard. Let’s talk about this latest incident,” he said to Toni, getting down to business.

  Her stomach knotted, but she didn’t hesitate. “I found an apartment Jesse Campbell was renting.”

  “How did you find it?”

  Toni glanced at Quint. He nodded that she should tell him.

  “Quint showed me a torn receipt and asked if I could guess the significance of it.” She explained her thought processes and how she had tracked the location of the apartment complex.

  Lieutenant Green leaned forward on his elbows. “How did you know those young men were inside the apartment?”

  Toni gave Quint a guilty frown. “I went to the landlady and told her I was looking for an apartment to rent, and that I preferred something inside the courtyard.”

  The corners of Green’s mouth twitched ever so slightly, but he waited for her to continue. In her peripheral vision she could see Quint make an I-should-have-known shake of his head.

  “She said she didn’t have any empty units in there, but she had one that would be available after the end of the month. She confided that the tenant had been killed and that his fiancé was in there cleaning it out right then.”

  Both men came to attention. “Fiancé?” Green snapped. “There was no fiancé in there.”

  “We arrested two men. There was no woman,” Quint added.

  Toni raised her brows. “You took off before I could tell you what I saw. While I was following orders and staying in the parking lot, a woman came around the end of the building, threw an armload of books and papers in a car, and split.”

  The lieutenant observed the byplay, but ignored it and grabbed a pen. “Can you describe her?”

  “I onl
y saw that she looked fairly young. She was tall and slim and wore a red baseball hat. I went back and talked to the landlady after the officers left with their prisoners.”

  “That’s why it took you so long to get here,” she heard Quint mutter.

  “Edna Rankin, the landlady, said the woman she let into the apartment was tall and slim, which matches the woman I saw. She said she has long dark hair and wears lots of makeup and long dangly earrings. That’s all the description I got.” For some perverse reason she didn’t share her suspicion as to the woman’s identity.

  “What kind of car did she drive?” Quint asked.

  “It was a dark green Cougar. I’m not good at models and such, so I can’t tell you the year, but it looked no more than four or five years old.”

  The lieutenant made another note.

  “What about the guys you arrested?” she asked, figuring it was time for some reciprocation. “I recognized Dean Patrick, but I didn’t know the other one.”

  “His name is Mitch Sandoval,” Quint said, his voice grim. Toni’s gut tightened.

  The lieutenant glanced from one to the other of them. “What?”

  Toni explained about her student’s warning. “Nicole said he’s an enforcer and that he’s dangerous.”

  “Both of them have clammed up,” Green said. “We can hold them for twenty-four hours while we go after a warrant and get bail set. I’m sure they expect the woman, whoever she is, to come up with bail money.”

  “Dean’s a juvenile,” Quint pointed out.

  “Yeah, I know,” the lieutenant said wearily. “He’s going to juvie and will probably be released to his parents.”

  *

  Sandoval held the phone to his ear, tapping his fingers impatiently against the counter before him. “Get me out of here if you want your name kept out of it,” he snapped angrily.

  “Okay, calm down. Just sit tight. How much should I send?”

  He told her.

  “It’ll be there. Just keep your mouth shut, and tell the kid to do the same.”

  “I can’t. They took him to juvie.”

  “I’ll take care of it. When you get out, I want you to keep watching that nosy teacher. She worries me. I saw her in the parking lot, and I’m sure she’s tipping the police.”

  Chapter 19

  When Toni exited the police station, she called John. “Want to take another ride with me?”

  “Pick me up,” he said, not asking where she was going. He was hooked on the case.

  It was a little after six o’clock when they drove into the Goldenrod parking lot. “We’re looking for a dark green Cougar,” Toni said, scanning their surroundings.

  “Are you looking for the one you saw at that apartment complex?” John asked. “You think it might be here?”

  Toni nodded. “I didn’t see the face of the woman in it, but I went back and talked to the landlady again and got a description of the phony fiancé. The woman was the right size and build to have been Sonya Finch. If it’s her car, we might find it where employees park.”

  John grinned. “It’s worth checking.”

  There was no green Cougar at the back section of the lot next to the highway. But there was one sitting between a red Mustang and a brown pickup at the south end of the lot.

  “That looks like it,” Toni said in satisfaction. “Let’s go talk to Miss Finch again.”

  The restaurant wasn’t very busy yet, but it sounded like business over in the bar was picking up. They bypassed the hostess and headed that way. The interior they stepped into was darker than in the restaurant. Toni was glad she hadn’t come alone. The din was noisy, and the air permeated with smoke so thick she could hardly breathe. License plates from what must have been every state in the nation decorated nearly every inch of the walls.

  People stood elbow to elbow along the long bar that extended across two walls in an L. Looking around, Toni spotted Sonya working the back section. “Could you eat a burger?” she asked John. “I didn’t have lunch, and that looks as close to a meal as we can get in here.”

  “I’m hungry, too,” John replied as they made their way to a table.

  Sonya came sashaying to the table, wearing her incredibly short skirt and spaghetti strap top. She came to an abrupt halt when she recognized Toni, her smile turning to a scowl and her eyes darkening.

  “We’ll have a couple of burgers and Cokes,” Toni said blithely. “Put lettuce, tomato and mustard on mine.” She turned a questioning look on John.

  “Load mine with everything.”

  “I’ll have someone else get it for you,” Sonya said in a cold tone, turning away.

  “You do and I’ll have a nice talk with your boss.”

  Sonya spun around, glaring at Toni. She started to speak, but then clamped her jaw shut. She walked away.

  When she returned with their drinks, Toni smiled at her. “I didn’t realize you and Jesse Campbell were getting married, since he just got married this past spring.” She put a meaningful emphasis on the last phrase.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sonya snapped, her look venomous. She plunked the glasses down.

  “She doesn’t like us much,” John said as the gal stalked away.

  “Maybe if I poke at her enough she’ll admit she was at that apartment.”

  “I think you need to be careful,” John cautioned. “She already hates you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Toni considered the warning, and then grinned. “I can’t believe how cheeky I feel. But I don’t sense any real danger from her. We’re here in front of a lot of witnesses. She can’t afford to do anything to me so openly.”

  When Sonya returned with their burgers, she slapped them down and turned to leave.

  “I know you took a pile of papers from that apartment,” Toni said before she could march more than two steps. “It had to be records and correspondence related to the operation Jesse was running.” She spoke as if she knew all about it.

  Sonya’s hostility was so near the surface she could no longer control it. “Listen, lady,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “If you came to harass me, you can take your pal and get out.”

  “I just want the truth,” Toni shot back. “I want to know…”

  “I don’t care what you want to know,” Sonya cut her off in a near shout, her face flushing beet red. “And stop making up stories.”

  “I’m not making up anything,” Toni said, leaning forward over the tabletop. “I saw you running away from that apartment, and I know you’re involved up to your pretty little neck in Jesse Campbell’s illegal gambling ring.”

  Fury flashing across her face, Sonya took three quick heavy breaths of air. “Shut up! Lady, I know how to deal with people with big mouths. Watch it, or you’ll end up like Barry.”

  “Ah, so you admit you knew him—and you’re involved with what happened to him.” Toni waggled a finger at her.

  In a lightning move, Sonya’s arm drew back and came forward in a vicious swing.

  Toni’s reflexes were quick, but not quick enough. She tried to duck, but Sonya’s fist caught her in the left cheek, the impact making her head rattle. She saw stars.

  People turned to stare as the commotion caught their attention. Sonya’s hand pulled back to swing again. This time John shot to his feet and grabbed her wrist as her arm came forward.

  “Someone call the police,” a female voice shrieked behind them.

  A moment later the bartender arrived at the table. “What do you think you’re doing?” he barked at Sonya.

  “She’s been harassing me,” Sonya snarled, struggling to free her arm from John’s grasp.

  Two police officers barged through the doorway, paused for just a second to find the disturbance, and proceeded to the table. ”What’s going on here?” Officer Durbin asked.

  “She started it,” Sonya accused furiously, pointing at Toni.

  “I just asked her a question.” Toni rubbed a hand over her burning face as she re
cognized that his partner was again Chilton.

  Both officers did a double take as they recognized her. Officer Chilton’s mouth made some strange movements, and Toni knew Quint was going to hear about this—real soon.

  Sonya spun around in a sudden move that took the officers by surprise. When she started to run, Officer Durbin grabbed her arm. “Hold on there.”

  “Take your slimy hands off me,” she yelled, jerking her arm.

  Now both arms were grabbed and yanked behind her. “Okay, let’s take this argument down to the station and get it straightened out. All of you,” Durbin said, eyeing Toni and John.

  He frog marched Sonya out of the bar, her protests loud and ongoing.

  “You two come along. You can drive your own vehicle,” Officer Chilton said. “But I’ll be right behind you.”

  Toni looked with longing back at the burgers and Cokes they were being forced to abandon. It was still sweltering outside when they exited the building. It hit them with force. The after work traffic whizzed in each direction as they caravanned to the police station. Toni pulled up next to Durbin’s cruiser, and Chilton swung in on the other side of her van.

  Chilton hopped out and met Toni on the parking lot. “Quint’s coming,” he said quietly, taking her arm. He escorted her in silence back to where she had been only an hour earlier.

  Toni could see John looking over their surroundings. Inside, it looked like the day had gotten hectic. Every chair along the hallway was occupied. She felt conspicuous—and a sliver of fear. Durbin took Sonya to a room on the right side of the hallway, while Chilton took her and John directly to Lieutenant Green’s office.

  The man looked up as they entered, and his expression was not a happy one. “You’re back,” he barked, no longer friendly. He jabbed a finger at a chair.

  She sat. John took the chair by the door. She heard footsteps, and Quint entered.

  “You’ve helped us before, but now you’re out of line,” Green said, an edge of anger in his voice. “It’s time to stop meddling and worrying your brother.”