Real Murder (Lovers in Crime Mystery Book 2)

by Lauren Carr

  “Douglas O’Reilly’s car,” she said. “Since the investigators closed the case as a suicide, the car was destroyed decades ago. All we’ve got left are the reports and police photos. I’m hoping to find something in these pictures to help find out who killed him.”

  “You’re convinced someone killed him.” He wiped the sleep out of his eyes.

  “There was no water in his lungs,” Cameron said. “Tad says the injuries are consistent with him being hit by a car. I think someone dumped him and his car in the lake to cover up an accident.”

  He took the picture on top of the pile in the folder. “Let’s see what you have.”

  The corners of her lips curled to form a devilish grin. “You know Douglas O’Reilly was Hunter’s grandfather, which will make him Tracy’s—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “You probably also don’t want me to point out the irony that Douglas O’Reilly drove a red Mustang, and so does his grandson.”

  “Coincidence.”

  “Spooky.”

  Joshua examined the picture of the car, which showed a deep dent on the top of the front fender. “That big dent is kind of high up, like above the wheel well.”

  “There was a spanking new tire on the front driver’s side,” she said. “I think he was changing a flat tire when he was killed.”

  “Can you find a close up of that dent?” Joshua took the pile of pictures.

  Without searching, she handed the folder to him and reached for the mug of coffee she had on her side of the bed. “Help yourself.”

  “I don’t think he was hit by a car,” Joshua said. “I think he was hit by a truck. If it was a car, the dent would be lower.” Finding the picture, he examined it through the magnifying glass. “Look at what we have.”

  “What have you got?” She took the picture and magnifying glass.

  “Paint transfer,” he said. “Green. You’re looking for a green truck. When did this happen?”

  “September second, nineteen sixty-six,” she said.

  “What do you think are the odds of that truck still being around?”

  “I’m not looking for the truck,” she said, “I’m looking for the driver who killed O’Reilly and then dumped his body in the lake to make everyone think he had killed himself.”

  She searched through the stack of pictures in his lap until she found one of the front driver’s side tire. Holding the magnifying glass over the picture, she told him, “Look at this. Don’t these dark marks on the hubcap look like tire impressions to you—like someone ran over the hubcap—like maybe when it was lying along the side of the road while Douglas was changing the tire? Then, his killer put the hubcap back on the wheel while cleaning up his mess.”

  “Very good theory.” Joshua agreed with a frown. “But without any tires to compare them to, it’s going to be impossible to make a case against O’Reilly’s killer.”

  “Douglas’ family needs closure, Josh.”

  “And I have no doubt but that you’ll find some way of giving it to them. Even if you can’t get a conviction in court, at least you’ll get answers for them. That’s the important thing.” Joshua grasped her by the back of the neck and kissed her. “Thank you for the coffee, my love.”

  “Thank you for finding the paint transfer, my darling.” Tossing the folder onto the floor, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again. Before she could slip under the covers, there was a knock at the bedroom door. With a groan, she dropped back onto the bed.

  “Who is it?” Joshua called out.

  “Dad,” Tracy replied, “there’s a delivery man downstairs with a package for you and he needs your signature.”

  “I’ll be right down.” He shrugged his shoulders when Cameron slipped away from him to the other side of the bed.

  “What’s that about?” As if she feared Tracy listening outside the door, Cameron asked him in a whisper while he put on his bathrobe and slipped his feet into his slippers.

  “Probably something from the courthouse,” he muttered. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.” He reached across the bed to grab one last kiss from her.

  “You’ve got five minutes and then I’m starting without you.” Giggling, she pulled the covers up under her chin.

  Downstairs, Joshua opened the front door to find the deliveryman on the porch. Clutching an oversized tan envelope and tablet to his chest, he stood motionless while staring wide-eyed in the direction of the steps leading down to his truck in the driveway.

  “I’m Joshua Thornton. I understand you have a package that needs my signature.”

  The deliveryman nodded his head very slightly while saying in a hoarse whisper, “Quiet.”

  “Why?” Joshua asked.

  With a jerk of his head, he motioned toward the porch steps. With a deep sigh, Joshua stepped out to see what had the man so terror-stricken. Squatting down with his front paws tucked up under him, Irving was enjoying the morning sun in a spot directly between the deliveryman and his truck.

  “It’s a skunk,” the deliveryman whispered. “And he’s a big one. Biggest one I’ve ever seen. Be very quiet. Whatever you do, don’t move. Don’t move a muscle.”

  With a shake of his head, Joshua snatched the package out of his arms and waved it in Irving’s direction. “Irving, stop scaring people and go catch a mouse or something.”

  In contrast to the volume of Joshua’s firm order, Irving took his time standing up and arching his back in a long leisurely stretch. He then sauntered in the direction of the open door. The deliveryman leapt back to the other end of the porch while the cat casually strolled inside. As if to taunt the deliveryman, he jerked up his tail once his rear was facing him, an action that prompted a scream. The deliveryman covered his face with his arm. With a dreamy expression on his face, Irving took his time rubbing the length of his body along the doorway until he was inside.

  “He actually lives here?” he asked while Joshua signed the tablet.

  “His name is Irving, but if he likes you, he lets you call him Irv.” Joshua closed the door. Spotting Irving sitting up tall in the foyer, he shook his finger at him. “You are a bad cat. I think you enjoy looking like a skunk and scaring people.”

  Irving stood up, turned around, and hitched his tail in Joshua’s direction before sauntering down the hallway to the kitchen. It was his feline version of an obscene gesture.

  “Same to you.”

  While climbing the stairs, Joshua read the return address: Dolly Houseman, Rock Springs Boulevard, Chester, West Virginia. The postmark was from the day before—the day after her murder.

  He was so enthralled by the envelope and so anxious to open it up that he had to remind himself to watch the steps going back upstairs to the bedroom.

  “What is it?” Cameron asked when he came inside and kicked the door behind him while studying the delivery.

  “A package from Dolly.”

  “Dolly?”

  “Mailed yesterday,” he said.

  “She was dead yesterday.”

  “I know that,” he said. “I found her body. Remember?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Obviously, someone mailed this for her,” he said. “I’ll bet it was her lawyer. She must have left this with instructions to mail to me upon her death.”

  Cameron threw back the covers and crawled to the foot of the bed where Joshua sat down. “Open it.” Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she rested her head against the side of his to peer at the package.

  He slipped his finger under the seal and tore open the oversized envelope, which contained four thick brown envelopes. A handwritten letter was taped to the top one.

  Joshua only had to glance at the handwriting before saying, “This is from Dolly all right.”

  “What does it say?” Cameron attempted to reach for the letter
.

  “She sent it to me.” Joshua playfully jerked it out of her reach.

  Unable to get the letter, she took one of the envelopes. In a shaky hand, the name of Commissioner Russell Null was written across the front of it. Beneath it, she had written, “Newell, West Virginia.”

  Joshua grasped her hand to prevent her from slipping her finger under the seal and ripping open the envelope. “Wait. Let me read the letter to see what this says,” he said. “We may need to open this in front of Sheriff Sawyer so that we have witnesses to confirm that we aren’t tampering with or planting evidence.”

  “Spoken like a lawyer,” she sighed.

  “Do you want Dolly’s killer to get away when we find him?”

  “No.” Mocking a snit, she slipped out of the bed and put on her bathrobe. “Just for that, I’m going to drink your coffee.”

  “It has no cream or sugar in it,” he said with a grin. She only drank coffee with two sugars and two creams.

  She picked up the mug that he had left on the end table. “I’ll suffer to make you suffer.” Instead, she handed the mug to him.

  While taking a sip, he finished reading the letter. “Okay, do you want to know what Dolly tells me in this letter?”

  “She tells us who killed her … from the grave?”

  “Something like that.” Getting up, he placed the mug on the end table. “Dolly says that there were many secret meetings in the parlor at the club over the decades and that the albums that she has—had—”

  “Gave to me,” Cameron said.

  Joshua nodded his head. “If you look through them they have a lot of history of very important betrayals and even conspiracies that were organized at Dolly’s.”

  “Dolly said something to me about a murder conspiracy or two.”

  “Very possibly,” Joshua said. “She says that her father had set up a hidden compartment in the parlor where these meetings would take place and that he had a recorder set up to tape the meetings—that was something that he learned from her Uncle Al.”

  “Al Capone,” she said.

  “She says these meetings were recorded for their own protection—just in case someone decided to shut Dolly’s down or maybe cause some sort of trouble. But after Ava’s and Virgil’s murders, and after the club was shut down, Dolly decided to take advantage of the last couple of recordings for some retirement income. One of these people, Dolly says, killed Ava and Virgil. She has her suspicions but she never had any evidence to prove it, which was why she never turned this over to the police.”

  “So these are recordings,” Cameron felt the padded envelope and could make out the shape of a cassette tape. “The people on these recordings were the blackmail victims. That’s where the ten-thousand dollars that she deposited every month came from.”

  “Along with transcripts that Dolly had written out to document who said what during these dirty dealings.”

  Cameron read the names on the envelopes. Commissioner Russell Null, Dr. Philip Lipton, Mr. Henry MacRae, and Congresswoman Rachel Hilliard. “Four divided by ten-thousand. I’ll bet she got twenty-five hundred dollars from each one of them.”

  “When you calculate how much that comes to annually,” Joshua said, “it adds up to a pretty expensive motive for murder.”

  “Three of these four were meeting with Sawyer at Cricksters when we came in with Dolly...on the same day that she was murdered.” With a gasp, she recalled, “and she said something very weird—right about the time that Philip Lipton dumped his drink in Sawyer’s lap.”

  “What did she say?”

  Cameron paused to think. “Have you forgotten that I have a concussion?”

  “How convenient.”

  “She said that even though she was old and she had trouble remembering what she ate for breakfast, she could recall what happened years ago, and who did it, and—and then Lipton dumped his drink in Sawyer’s lap.”

  “And Lipton checked out those case files for Ava’s and Virgil’s murders right after Mike disappeared,” Joshua said.

  “We need to talk to Lipton,” she said.

  “But first,” Joshua said, “we call Sawyer and have him come over to witness us opening these envelopes and have him listen to these tapes with us.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  After showering and dressing, Cameron went downstairs in hopes of finding one of Tracy’s delectable breakfasts waiting. Instead, she found Donny eating a plate of toaster waffles slathered in maple syrup. While refilling her coffee mug, she noticed an over-packed document box set at one end of the kitchen table. With notepads and folders overflowing beyond the rim, the lid rested sloppily on top.

  “That’s some heavy-duty homework, isn’t it?” she asked in a good-natured tone.

  “I’m on summer break now,” Donny said before explaining the box. “Hunter brought it over. His mom gave it to him last night. It was his dad’s stuff that she had packed up from his desk. Hunter wants Dad to go through it with him to see if they can find something to help him find his killer.”

  “Is Hunter here?”

  “He took Tracy out for breakfast and then they’re going to look at engagement rings,” he said between bites of waffles. “They’re moving kind of fast, aren’t they? Kind of reminds me of you and Dad.”

  “Actually, they’re not.” Her hopes for a gourmet breakfast dashed, she opened the refrigerator door and peered inside to see if any meal ideas struck her. “They’ve been quote-unquote-dating for years.”

  “Why’d they keep it a secret?”

  “Maybe they didn’t.” She wondered if she wanted scrambled eggs badly enough to clean up the mess it would create cooking them. “Maybe y’all just weren’t paying enough attention to notice.” The answer was no, she did not want scrambled eggs that much.

  Donny was silent while she continued to stare into the refrigerator and pray for inspiration. Eventually, with a thought-filled drawl, he said, “She did go out with him every time they were both in town, but I thought they were going out as friends. I mean, they’ve never been kissy face like you and Dad.”

  “Your dad and I are not kissy face.”

  “I never caught the two of them naked down in the family room.”

  “There’s more to a committed relationship than sex,” she said.

  “I know,” Donny said with a sad sigh. “So far, I haven’t experienced either.”

  “That’s good.”

  She was still staring into the refrigerator when Joshua came in. Grasping her shoulders with both hands from behind, he kissed her on the cheek. When she didn’t respond, he looked at her and then into the open refrigerator to see what she was staring at before reaching inside and taking a grapefruit from the fruit drawer. “Grapefruit is easy,” he said.

  “But I really want some carbs.”

  “Then eat some.”

  “Then I’d have to clean up the kitchen.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem to me,” he said with a cock of his head and an arched eyebrow. He took a dish out of the cupboard. “I’ll give you half.”

  With a resigned sigh and shrug of her shoulders, she took juice out of the fridge and poured two glasses.

  A knock at the front door prompted Admiral to jump up from where he was lying under the table and bump his head. With a screech, Irving leapt from where he was sunning himself on a windowsill and followed Admiral in the direction of the foyer.

  Joshua checked the clock on the wall. “That can’t be Curt. I only spoke to him ten minutes ago.”

  “There’s only one way to find out who it is. Answer the door.” Donny pushed back his chair and rose from the table.

  As if to urge his master to hurry up, Admiral raced back into the doorway to escort Donny to the foyer. The huge mongrel uttered his loud, deep barks along the way. Irving accompanied his barking with high-pitched shrieks. />
  “No one will ever be able to sneak into this house,” Cameron said.

  “That’s the way I like it.” Joshua cut through the grapefruit with a knife and separated the halves into two bowls, which Cameron had set out on plates. After he cut the fruit into sections with a paring knife, she sprinkled it with sugar, carried the plates to the kitchen table, and turned back to hand Donny’s dirty plate and juice glass to him.

  Joshua was placing the dishes in the sink when Donny returned to the kitchen with Hunter Gardner’s stepfather directly behind him. “Dad, Mr. Fontaine wanted to talk to you,” Donny explained. “I’m heading out to meet some friends. We’re going four wheeling in the park. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Surprised by the visit from Royce Fontaine, a man who had never had reason to come to his home before, Joshua turned around, leaned back against the counter, and took his time drying his hands on the dishtowel.

  “What are you going to do about lunch?” Cameron asked Donny before he had a chance to gallop up the back stairs to his room to gather his stuff for the outing.

  “Pizza or buffalo wings or both at Roma’s,” he replied. “Most likely both. I’ll put it on Dad’s tab.” With the energy that comes with youth, Donny rushed up the stairs.

  Joshua wondered if his son was rushing to go meet his friends or to escape what he suspected was coming. While taking his time drying his hands on the dishtowel, he studied Royce Fontaine’s temper simmering beneath the surface. Possibly calculating on how best to proceed, his guest was waiting to launch into the purpose of his visit. “Would you like some coffee, Royce?”

  “No, thanks.” The visitor stood up as tall as his stooped-over frame would allow him and jutted out his chin.

  Sensing that it would be best to get straight to business, Joshua asked, “What can I do for you, Royce?”

  “I’m sure you heard the news … about Hunter and your daughter, Tracy.”