Jack Ryder Mystery Series: Vol 1-3

by Willow Rose

  “I’m not sure she does,” I said.

  “Is it true?” Emily asked, as we took the elevator up to Shannon’s floor.

  “Is what true?”

  “Did she kill some guy and steal his songs to make a career?”

  I sighed. The elevator stopped. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like her. I haven’t been able to ask her yet. But I can hardly imagine she could do anything like this.”

  “Probably that Joe guy was behind it,” Emily said. “Figures. Even though he’s dead, she still has to deal with him and all his shit.”

  “Watch the language, young lady,” I said, thinking she was so right. Joe was still hurting her, even if it was from beyond the grave.

  “Just shows you that you gotta be picky when you chose your man,” Emily said. “Can’t let yourself be blinded by love or great looks.”

  I chuckled and kissed her as I left the elevator. “See you at dinner at the motel?” I asked as the doors were about to close.

  “Sure,” she answered.

  I stared at the door as it shut and my smart daughter left for our floor. I had done many things wrong while bringing her up, but it couldn’t all have been bad. She was one clever girl.

  I walked to Shannon’s condo and let myself in. She was still asleep on the couch. I walked inside and kneeled next to her. I kissed her forehead and stroked her thick hair. She was such a beautiful woman. Her features so delicate, her hair long and thick. Why had life decided to be so hard on her?

  “How long have you been drinking? Is that why you’ve been so busy getting me to leave lately when I stopped by? You were afraid I’d find you out, weren’t you? You know you can’t handle it, dammit Shannon. You know.”

  I decided I wasn’t just going to sit and wait for her to wake up. I walked into the kitchen and started searching. I wanted to remove the bottles of alcohol so she wouldn’t fall in again. I went through all the cabinets in the kitchen, in her bedroom, the living room, and finally the bathroom. I found a bottle of vodka wrapped in a towel underneath the sink. My heart dropped. It was almost empty. A tear escaped my eye and I was filled with such an anger I could hardly contain it. I took the bottle into the kitchen and threw it in the garbage can so hard it broke. Then I took the garbage out. When I returned, Shannon was awake. She was sitting up on the couch, her hair all messy on one side of her head. Her eyes were small. She looked terribly pale.

  “Jack?”

  I closed the door.

  “Jack…” she moaned. She forced a smile. “What are you doing here? Where is Angela?”

  “I took her to my parents,” I said.

  I sat next to her on the couch and grabbed her hand in mine. I forced her to look into my eyes.

  “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  March 2015

  “I never killed anyone. I swear to God, Jack. I never killed anyone. You have to believe me.”

  I looked at Shannon. Her eyes had grown wild when I told her what had happened, how the media was all over the story of her apparently killing this Robert Hill and stealing his songs. I told her I needed to know the truth, no matter how hard it was to bear.

  “I want to, Shannon. I really, really want to. You need to tell me what happened first. I need to know. I deserve to know.”

  Shannon tried to avoid looking at me. I could tell she was miserable. All I wanted was the truth from her. Then, we could take it from there.

  “It was so long ago,” Shannon said. She pulled her legs up on the couch and put her chin on her knees. She suddenly seemed so small, so frail. She was talking slowly and I could tell she was still under the influence of the alcohol. I wondered how far out she had gotten the last couple of days. Was it just a relapse, a setback that she could recover from? Or had she gotten in too deep, so deep she would need professional help?

  “Robert Hill was a good friend of mine,” she said. “We wrote songs together. We performed together frequently at bars and clubs around Nashville. He didn’t enjoy the stage as much as I did, so he mainly hid behind his guitar, while I got to sing the songs. He loved when I sang his songs.”

  “Did he write the songs for your first album?” I asked.

  Shannon looked at me quickly, then at the ground.

  “He did, didn’t he?” I asked.

  “That part is true,” Shannon said. “But he wrote them for me. I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but he was madly in love with me. I was with Joe. Joe could tell and tried to warn me, but I cut him off and told him he saw ghosts everywhere. I didn’t see it, not until it was too late. He wrote the album for me, he told me. He came to the small cottage where we used to live one night and handed me the songs. He told me they were for me. He had been working on them for years, he said. Ever since he met me. He had written them for me to sing. No one else would do them justice, he said. He told me he didn’t want his name on them, told me they were mine to keep. I didn’t understand until I read the songs. They were a declaration of love to me. At first, I thought I could never sing them, but they were so good. I showed them to Joe, and he told me they were too good to not use. I had to produce an album with them. He knew someone who could help me. But he never liked the idea that it was Robert who had written the songs. He hated him because he was so into me. After Robert gave me the songs, Joe told me to not see Robert again. That it was bad for our relationship…that he was coming between us. In some way, it was true. I was feeling different about Robert since I had found out how he felt about me. But, as soon as I started to avoid Robert, things turned bad. He started following me everywhere I went.”

  “He was stalking you?” I asked.

  Shannon nodded. She bit her lip. “He was everywhere, Jack. If I performed, he was in the audience. If I went to a restaurant, he would stand outside the window and watch me or sit at a table not far away. It was like, the more I avoided him, the more obsessed he got. One day, when Joe and I came home from a performance, a little drunk, since we had celebrated that I had landed my first record deal, he was sitting in our living room. He was angry and had a gun in his hand. I asked him what was wrong and he told me he wanted what was his. I thought he meant the album, the songs, and told him I could try and get him credited for it, but he didn’t care about that. He wanted me. He was there because he wanted me. He pointed the gun at Joe. It was so scary, Jack. I was sure he was going to kill him. All his anger was directed at Joe. He was the one who had kept me away from him, he said. I screamed and cried and tried to get him to back down and leave Joe alone, but he wouldn’t. His hands were shaking in anger as he spoke. I was terrified, Jack. I was so afraid.”

  I put my hand on hers. She was in deep distress. “No wonder,” I said. “So, what happened?”

  “I…We had our instruments at the house. I…I…I had to stop him. He wanted to shoot Joe. I grabbed a microphone stand and slammed it into his back. He fell to the ground and Joe grabbed the stand out of my hand, then slammed it into his back again. He kept going, Jack. He wouldn’t stop. He kept hitting Robert, again and again, while yelling and screaming. When he hit the back of his head, it sounded like a watermelon landing on the ground. It split his head open. I told him to stop. I yelled and yelled, but he wouldn’t. Joe was so angry. I couldn’t stop him.”

  “So, Joe killed him,” I said. “You just knocked him out.”

  Shannon looked at me and shook her head. “It was a terrible thing we did. It has haunted me ever since. Afterwards, we didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t call the police; no one would believe us. I had just signed a record deal, the chance of a lifetime. What should I have done? I would lose everything.” Shannon paused. A couple of tears escaped her eye. “So, we buried him. In the backyard of the house. The next day, we told the landlord we wanted to move and started looking for a new place. We left the next day and never looked back. We never talked about it again. Not until Joe brought it up a few days ago. He told me he would reveal the secret
if I didn’t come back to him.”

  “That’s why he was so certain you were going to come back to him,” I said. “He told me while you were on stage.”

  Shannon chuckled lightly then sniffled. “That sounds like him. He told me that day that he had left a letter with his lawyer with the instruction to reveal it all to the press if something happened to him. It was his insurance.”

  “And it worked. It’s all over the media,” I said. “In the letter, he claims you were the one who killed Robert Hill. Now, we have to figure out how to avoid having you go to jail for this. It’s his word against yours.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  March 2015

  Spring break was almost over when something wonderful happened to Katie. After dragging herself through days of going to the beach with the girls, trying to hide in the room and avoid the others, especially the boys after the incident surfing, she was sitting on her bed on Friday morning, two days before they would go back to school. Katie was counting the minutes and digging her nose into her book to escape reality. She was alone in the motel room when she received a text. She picked up the phone and saw that it was from Greg. Her heart pounded when she opened it.

  THERE’S A FULL MOON TONIGHT AT SUNSET. THEY SAY IT’S GOING TO BE BLOOD-RED. DO YOU WANT TO MEET UP AND WATCH IT RISE TOGETHER?

  Katie stared at her screen. A smile spread across her face. Could it be? Could it really be? She had avoided Greg ever since the incident in the water, thinking he was probably repulsed by her, and he had left her alone, so Katie had kind of figured he wasn’t interested in her anymore. She still liked him and had observed him from afar every day at the beach, while sitting on her towel and reading, but he hadn’t spoken to her, so she had almost given up.

  He does like me. He wants to meet with me.

  Katie texted him back that “Sure, she would love to, what time and where?” He answered right away.

  7:30 IN THE DUNES. THERE IS A SMALL BENCH ON THE LEFT OF THE MOTEL. WE CAN BE ALONE THERE.

  Katie’s heart was racing in her chest.

  Oh, my God. He really wants to be alone with me. Oh, my God. He wants to really be with me. Like, really be with me.

  Katie took in a deep breath, remembering what Britney had told her earlier on the trip. That Greg brought girls to have sex with them, then tossed them aside afterwards. She had to be careful to not let that happen to her. She still had her period, so that was an excellent excuse for not sleeping with him. She wanted more from him. She wanted them to get to know each other first. She wondered why he hadn’t tried to make a move before now. If he was so eager to have sex with her, he could have had her for the entire trip. Had he waited so it wouldn’t be awkward afterwards? Or maybe he did really like her for who she was and had taken his time to find the courage to ask. Now that time was running out, he knew he had to act fast before they went back home.

  Yes, that was probably it. That had to be it. After all, he had invited her to play volleyball and to go surfing with him. He did want to be with her. The fact that he had left her alone all this time was probably just because she had avoided him; she was the one who hadn’t seemed like she wanted to be with him or any of the others.

  Katie put her book down, then texted him back.

  SURE. SEE YOU THERE.

  She wondered if she should add “Looking forward to being alone with you,” but decided not to. She didn’t want to come off as too eager. If he was the player they said he was, she had to play her cards right. She had to be hard to get. That was the only thing guys like him respected. They liked the chase.

  Well, so did she, and she would soon have him in her net. That would show those girls.

  Katie got up from the bed, walked to her suitcase, and found the dress she had picked out for the trip. The dress she had bought with the sole intention of wearing it if she ever got the chance to be alone with Greg.

  Now was that time. She could hardly wait.

  Katie took a shower, then got dressed and looked at herself in the mirror. The other girls had told her they were going to The Lobster Shanty to eat dinner, so they wouldn’t be back any time soon. There was an event at the port where girls drank free all night that they would hit afterwards. Katie wouldn’t see them until tomorrow.

  At least they wouldn’t somehow ruin it for Katie. She had decided to skip dinner because she wasn’t hungry and felt so nervous about meeting Greg. She put on some make up to make her look really pretty, then sat on the bed and waited. At exactly seven twenty-nine, she got up, corrected her dress, then sighed and looked at her reflection.

  “This is it, Katie,” she said to herself. “Don’t blow it.”

  She put on lip gloss one last time, then corrected her hair and pulled down the dress again. It was very short and she wasn’t too fond of her legs. But, as she pulled it down, her breasts showed too much flesh, so she pulled the dress back up.

  There. This was as good as it got.

  Katie looked at her watch again and walked out. She had planned on being a couple of minutes late, to make sure he didn’t think she was too eager; desperate women were repulsive to men.

  Katie closed the door to the room behind her, then walked towards the beach, hoping her tampon would keep her safe for long enough so she didn’t have to suddenly run back to the room. She smiled when she felt the evening breeze hit her face. It felt so nice. The ocean was in front of her now and the sun almost set over the Intracoastal on the other side. The moon would rise above the ocean. The light was gorgeous. The moon was already peeking above the horizon. It was big and very red. It looked just like a sunrise. It was spectacular. Katie couldn’t wait to enjoy it in the arms of Greg. She walked along the beach to the left, where the bench was placed in front of the big white condominium that was neighbor to the motel.

  Katie spotted Greg sitting on the bench as she approached the place they had agreed to meet. He was looking at the moon. Katie waved, but he didn’t see her. She walked closer, then waved again, but he still didn’t wave back. He didn’t seem to see her. She took off her shoes to better be able to walk across the sand and held them in her hand. It felt so nice between her toes. She loved the sand here. It was soft and you could walk with your bare toes in it without ever stepping on a rock or a shell. Katie looked at the moon quickly once again and sighed at the beauty of the scenery. Sandy beach as far as the eye could see, perfect temperature, the moon and the light, and…him. Katie turned her head and looked at Greg again. That was when she realized why he hadn’t waved back at her, why he hadn’t seen her.

  Katie stopped. Everything inside of her froze to ice. It wasn’t because he was busy staring at the moon. It wasn’t because he didn’t notice her. It was because his eyes were closed. He was sitting on the bench with his eyes shut, and Katie realized in that second, as she took the last step towards him, and parts of him were no longer covered by the sand dunes. Now she could see what was going on, and it made everything inside of her turn.

  On her knees in front of Greg was Britney, sitting with her back turned to Katie. She had her head bent over his crotch, his pants wide open. Greg was moaning. Britney’s head was moving faster and faster. Greg moaned louder and louder until he suddenly arched his body and led out a loud groan.

  That was when Britney turned her head and looked directly at Katie. Their eyes locked and Britney licked her lips. Katie bent over and threw up in the sand.

  Part Three

  GET YOURSELF FREE

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  March 2015

  Stanley had lost count of the days. He guessed he had been in the room for maybe a little more than a week. Maybe it was more, he didn’t know. But he hadn’t lost hope yet. Both his legs were badly hurt and one was infected and gave him a fever with hallucinations that followed. And then there was the food. He had been forced to eat more food than he had ever imagined he could contain, and his stomach hurt so badly it was almost impossible for him to move.

  He kept thinking about El
yse and wondering if she was alright. She was his one thing in life that mattered, his one true pure thing, his second chance.

  Things had been bad with Timmy when he was a child. Stanley didn’t like to be reminded of it. Stanley hadn’t known what to do, what else to do when the boy kept acting so strangely, than to try and beat it out of him. Only, it hadn’t helped. Timmy had stayed the same way. He had kept putting on Mommy’s dresses and walking in her high heels. He had also brought home a boy as his partner when he came back from college to visit at Thanksgiving. Later, he had told his parents that he was going to go through a change and that he would be a woman soon. It was all far too strange for Stanley, and he had told him to never come back again. He simply couldn’t cope with it.

  Today, he regretted it all. He regretted having beaten the boy so badly he could hardly walk, in pure frustration over the fact that the boy wasn’t like others. It was wrong. Stanley knew that. You shouldn’t beat a kid. But he hadn’t known what else to do. He hadn’t known what this was or how to respond to it.

  Now, it was too late. Timmy was now Tiana and lived somewhere in California. Stanley hadn’t heard from him since the day he told him to leave and never come back. It was Stanley’s own fault, and Melanie never hesitated in telling him so. She went to visit their son—or daughter—every now and then, and never told Stanley anything when she returned except it was a good trip. No delays.

  Stanley had tried to make amends by being a better grandfather than he was a father, but it hadn’t changed the fact that he missed his son like crazy, and so badly wanted to get back into his life. Or her life. Or whatever it was. Stanley was confused. It was all so strange and complicated, and he had no idea how to do it. So, for years, he simply hadn’t. He hadn’t done anything about it. He had pretended it never happened, pretended his son was still his son, only living far away now. At least, that’s what he told the neighbors.