Peppermint Soul (Liza McNairy Mysteries Book 1)

by Dan Glover

  Was that what kept Sally? Did she somehow find out about the stabbing and go to see about Paula? The two women had been hanging out together an inordinate amount of time lately... renewed friendship is what she said when he questioned her about it. Hank had gotten some bad vibes over it but said nothing thinking it would go ahead and burn itself out. But in hindsight, had Sally known about his affair with Paula? And if so, why would she cultivate a friendship with the woman? Revenge?

  At least Reilly Cooper was going to make it. The paramedics arrived just in time, got him intubated, and brought him to the hospital. He'd been poisoned. After searching the house they found hemlock mixed into the brownies he'd eaten... apparently ones that Paula had baked. But why would she poison Cooper? And where had Allen Picany gotten to? No one had seen or heard from the man in days now.

  He had to admit that Danners Forthright was the real deal. The man had not only located the Picany twins, but he knew something was up with Reilly Cooper. He'd saved the man's life. And he would've saved Paula Picany's life too, if only Doyle had taken things seriously.

  Everything seemed normal when he got home, everything except that most of Sally's treasures were missing out of the cabinet where she kept them. He'd walked past it three times before noticing. Had they been burglarized? And if so, what else was missing? A cold chill ran down his spine as a trickle of sweat followed it.

  The cash was gone. Even before he looked, he knew he'd find the hiding spots vacant. Someone had broken into the house and robbed them. But who on earth would bother with Sally's trinkets when there were millions of dollars to be hauled off? It dawned on him that they hadn’t been robbed at all... he'd been duped by his own wife. The woman had set him up... called him to meet all the while planning on cleaning him out.

  "Liza... I need to call in one of those favors you owe me."

  It had been the first call he made... the only thing he could think to do. If anyone could help him, it'd be Liza and Danners. He'd heard how the man worked... Danners got impressions off objects that once belonged to the people he was looking for. That's why all Sally's belongings had vanished along with the money. But she couldn’t have taken everything. Maybe Danners could still find something, anything, that might lead him to her.

  "Of course, Hank... what can I do?"

  "Come by the house... Sally's vanished. I need your help in finding her... yours and Danners'."

  "Jesus, Hank... we're half way between Wichita and Oklahoma City... we decided to go back to see if we couldn’t convince the twins to come home to California. Can it wait?"

  "I'm in trouble, Liza. I need you now."

  "We'll be there, Hank... but it's going to take a couple days for us to drive back."

  Christ... why couldn’t they fly like everyone else? Who drove a thousand miles these days? No one. It had to be that cocksucker again... probably afraid of flying. Why on earth had Liza taken up with a man like that? Especially after spurning every attempt Hank had made to bed the bitch over the years.

  All he could do was get a drink, sit tight and wait... hope that Sally didn’t get too far in the interim... and that she'd overlooked an item that maybe would help Danners locate the woman. He should have seen it coming... the sidling up to him, making him think she wanted to rekindle the romance, to save the marriage. God, women could be so cold and calculating. There wasn’t a one of them that could be trusted. He'd be better off to be like Danners... to go in for men. At least he knew them.

  Well... nothing to be done now but to visit lockup and talk to Elsa Gruber... see what the old whore had to say.

  Chapter 84—Stings

  (And the Poisoned Apple)

  1

  "Where are we, Liza?"

  "Well, if it isn’t sleeping beauty! We're heading back home, Danners. Hank Lupo called. He needs our help."

  "But what about Benji? What about the twins? I thought we were stopping in Oklahoma after we saw Marcy."

  "Don't worry about your teddy bear, Danners. He's in good hands. And besides, we know where the twins are at. Downloading that locator app of Reilly's was a stroke of genius, sweetie."

  She supposed it must be the blonde in her... she never thought of things like Danners. Without him, she'd be lost and drowning in a world too deep to fathom and too large to grasp. Danners made everything easier, and what's more, he did it not out of a sense of duty or because she was paying him... he did it because he loved her.

  She'd pulled into a rest stop while he slept and parked away from all the other cars and trucks. The need was upon her and knowing she'd be driving for the next several hours it seemed better to spike up rather than bumping. With Danners asleep in the back seat, she went into the restroom, unwrapped her bundle, scooped up a spoonful of powder, and using her lighter heated the spoon until what it held melted into the clear liquid she craved.

  She didn’t like driving. Sometimes she wondered why she even maintained her driver's license. Still, on these long trips they took so often it was helpful if she spelled Danners and too, the Interstate was so much easier to handle than the frenetic Los Angeles freeways.

  The familiar sting only lasted a moment as the heroin flooded that quivering blue vein where her thigh met her torso causing her to sit back momentarily and gasp in both awe and fear. She knew better than to stay too long. The lack of motion would wake Danners. She was surprised it hadn’t already. The man must have been exhausted. Still, those little moments were a delight and well worth savoring... her poisoned apple, as it were.

  Back on the road the sense of floating came over her along with that ever-present nausea, as if she was on a magic carpet, which indeed she was, and the gentle swaying made her dizzy. When her phone began to buzz and she saw who it was she nearly let it go to voicemail. But she owed Hank. And of course she could never turn him down. So rather than getting off at their exit she kept right on driving. They were within a mile of Oklahoma City but it didn’t matter.

  She wasn't sure why Danners had wanted to stop in Oklahoma City anyway. From the locator app it was clear that the twins—or at least Benji bear... Danners had implanted a microchip inside him—were still in the city, possibly staying at a relative of Ally Nola's. They'd be apprehensive at best if she and Danners showed up at the doorstep, probably thinking they'd come to take the girls back to California.

  "Tell me again why we're going to stop in Oklahoma City, DanMan?"

  "I want to see the twins, Liza."

  "Meaning you want to hold Benji bear again."

  "No... that's not it... well, maybe..."

  "Maybe we ought to just let them alone, sweetie. They're happy. If we take them home, who's to say what's going to happen? Their mother's dead and their father's a drunk. Is that really the best situation to put them into?"

  "I know, Liza... I know. I thought we might just tell them—tell Amy Nola—the truth... that no one is going to care too much one way or the other if those twins are found... that if she wants, we can help them financially... maybe get them a better place to stay. I hate that we disrupted their lives like we did."

  "Their lives were ruined years ago, Danners... and we had nothing to do with it. We need to find out who did. Will seeing those girls again help us do that?"

  "Maybe... I don’t know, Liza. It's like I never know what's going to work and what isn’t. It couldn’t hurt anything."

  "Have you gotten any impressions at all about who the culprit behind the twins ending up here might be?"

  "You know I have, Liza. But you don’t want to hear it."

  "Hank Lupo... I can't believe he'd do anything so heinous. But if he did have anything to do with it, we need to be sure before we confront him."

  What if Danners was right? In that case, could she do what needed doing? Talking with Marcy again had only reinforced Danners' assertions that Hank Lupo was

  2

  More deeply involved in the Picany twins' disappearance than she cared to admit. The man was a hero to her. But now she was starting
to see how the halo he wore masked his true nature.

  "Oh, Marcy! We had no idea you were hospitalized or we would have come sooner."

  The girl looked emaciated. Her skin had an awful yellow tint to it filtering even into the whites of her eyes. She was doubtlessly dying. Hell, Liza had seen corpses that looked more alive than Marcy.

  "Hello, Liza... it doesn’t matter now. I'm glad you two were able to make it. I've been here for a week. I passed out at work. They say my liver is failing again. The doctor tells me I only have a few days left."

  "I'm so sorry, Marcy... "

  "It's okay... I've been living on someone else's dime for the last few years anyway. Time to make it right. I know who kidnapped those girls... the Picany twins... and I know why. I need to tell someone about it before it's too late—lighten my conscience—so listen..."

  The woman told of things she didn’t want to hear... horrible accounts of people committing dreadful crimes against the weakest of humanity all in order to pad their bank accounts. And Hank's name kept coming up time and again. Now she wondered how far they should push things. As usual, Danners seemed to read her thoughts.

  "It'd be dangerous to bring anything up to Hank so far as it related to what we heard in Kansas, girlfriend. He might not take so kindly to being found out. The man knows people. Remember that."

  Now here they were going back to California to help the devil himself, if Danners was right. Hank wouldn’t say too much over the phone other than he needed them both, pronto... that Sally had vanished and he suspected foul play. Or did he? Hank was never a good liar, at least not around Liza. She could hear that hitch in his voice, the one he didn’t seem to recognize himself and so had never been able to cover.

  She just wanted the case to be over... it'd been going on for too long... the sordid details that kept popping up at every turn. How could any human being do what'd been done to those twins? And if Danners was right, that Hank might have had a hand in any of it, God help him, he was going down.

  3

  The air in the room stank of impending death. Even the sanitizers the cleaning crew used didn’t cover the stench. Liza wondered if people could catch something from the cloyingly malignant odor but then she chastised herself. Poor Marcy lay dying and all Liza could think about was herself.

  Everyone in the hospital looked sick, though, even the nurses and the attending physicians. But then again perhaps she was simply seeing them through the lens of her own disjointed life. Nurses probably didn’t wear makeup and the doctors were all overworked, or so she surmised, so of course they wouldn’t look at the top of their game. Plus, she was fighting the Jones. Pretty soon she'd have to slip off to some quiet corner and bump just a little.

  "So Allen Picany was involved in his own daughters' kidnapping, Marcy?"

  "Quite possibly, yes."

  "And what about Paula? Was she involved too?"

  "Not outright, but she knew who was, Liza. Or at least she suspected. As long as she stayed stoned on prescription drugs no one paid too much attention to what she knew or didn’t know. But when she decided to clean up, bells began going off."

  "So they had her killed..."

  "Yep... but you still don't know who they were... do you?"

  "Hank... I mean, who else would have as much to lose as him?"

  "There is someone else involved in all this, Liza... someone way up there in the stratosphere. But listen, Liza... I'm not feeling so good. You'll find the one responsible... I know you will. Do me a favor... look out for Hank. I know he's a bastard but he's a good man too."

  "Marcy?"

  "If we don't talk again... goodbye, girlfriend..."

  Looking over at Danners, Liza hated that smug look crawling across that puss of his but she supposed he earned the right. He'd told her Hank was dirty yet she defended the man. Even knowing what she knew she still couldn’t point the finger at him without acknowledging the guilt she carried too. Still, how could he?

  "Maybe Marcy's wrong about him, Danners. Is that at all possible?"

  "I don’t think so, lover... but sure. Anything's possible. Could be Marcy had some sort of ax to grind... maybe she suspected he had something to do with her condition. Or maybe she was right and he did. We need to go see Hank, Liza. Confront him with what we know. Let him explain it... we owe him that much."

  "And Picany? What do we do about him? I know he wasn’t directly involved in the twins' disappearance but what about all the others?"

  "We let it go, Liza. That's my take on it."

  "Marcy said there's more. What did she mean by that, sweetie?"

  "It's still going on, lover. Whoever is running that sick show has by now shunted Hank aside. We're talking a big-time player here. He's expanded beyond the borders into Asia and India. Lots of dirt poor people there willing to sell their organs for a pittance compared to what the donors pay. How far do you want to go with this?"

  "I'm not sure, Danners. Maybe we've gone too far already."

  "I say we give it some time, Liza. Let's get a motel room for the night and check in on Marcy in the morning. Then we'll go through Oklahoma to see the twins and head on home."

  "Did I ever tell you how much I love you, Danners?"

  "Yes, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again, Liza."

  Chapter 85—Waking

  (The Dead)

  1

  When he opened his eyes Hank Lupo was asleep sitting up in the worn brown leather chair by his bedside. Reilly wondered absently how long the man had been there and why... what could he possibly want? Did he know that his wife Sally had tried to murder him? Was he here to finish the job?

  Panicked, he pressed the call button frantically hoping the nurse would appear before Hank woke. But even if she did he had no way of communicating his fears to her. He couldn’t even whisper. As he came more fully awake he realized that if indeed Hank had any malfeasance in his heart that the man could have easily offed him in his sleep and being a detective he wouldn’t be under the least bit of suspicion.

  "Well, hello, Reilly... are we feeling better?"

  The big black woman ambled into the room like she had all day. Coming over to the bed, she helped Reilly to sit up while she fluffed his pillows and then wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm, pumped it up, put a stethoscope on his chest, and studied her watch as the cuff slowly deflated. A badge with the name Nell was pinned to her blue blouse.

  Nell's voice had wakened Hank. While she continued her ministrations to Reilly, Lupo stood, stretched, and pulled out his phone. Reilly thought how typical. They were all so connected that even a short nap might well interrupt an important text.

  "Hmmm... seems like we're doing much better today, dearie... we'll have you on your feet in no time."

  Looking up the nurse fixed her eyes on Lupo like he might be a cancer waiting to spread. The smile on her face didn’t reach her eyes. Whatever impression Hank hoped to make by having his Deputy Sheriff badge affixed to the front of his shirt fell by the wayside.

  "Who are you... a friend? Cell phones aren’t allowed in the hospital."

  "I'm Hank Lupo, and yes, I'm a friend. And I'm sorry. I'll shut it off."

  "Well... you two can have a few minutes but don’t be tiring my boy out, you hear? I'll be just down the hall, sweetie. Ring if you need anything. And keep that damned phone turned off."

  Jesus, if the woman was any larger she wouldn’t fit through the door. He looked over at Hank who sat staring at him like he had an alien emerging from his forehead. What was that all about? Was he a suspect now?

  "Who did this to you, Cooper? Do you know?"

  It took all his strength to raise a hand to his throat indicating that he couldn’t speak. Hank Lupo reached into his jacket pocket. For an instant, Reilly thought he'd pull out a gun but instead he produced a notebook and a pencil.

  "Here... write if that's easier for you."

  What would Lupo do if he discovered it was his wife who poisoned Reilly? To what leng
ths would any man go to protect the ones he loved? He couldn’t take the chance. Better to fake weakness for now... at least until he could talk with Liza and Danners. They'd know what to do.

  He shook his head and closed his eyes hoping Hank would take the clue and just go away. Instead, he persisted in staying while reaching over and putting the notebook and pencil on the table easily within Reilly's reach.

  "Take your time, partner... I understand you've been through the shit. If anything comes to mind, jot it down for me. I'll be by later to see how you're doing."

  Dammit... that's all he needed was for this guy to be haunting him. Where was Sally Lupo? Was she waiting somewhere in the wings, biding her time, eager to finish the job she'd started? Did Hank know about everything? Was he simply here to gloat? Where were Liza and Danners? If he had his phone he could text them, let them know what happened. Maybe he could ask Nell to fetch it for him. But then again no cell phones were allowed in the hospital. As soon as Hank left the room he pressed the call button again.

  2

  "Do we have anyone waiting to pick us up, Reilly?"

  "No, Nell... we'll be taking a taxi home."

  His voice was still just a whisper but at least he could finally talk. Christ, he'd been here long enough. Time to get on with living instead of dying. It seemed better somehow to keep his release from the hospital a secret, at least for now. The whole incident had unnerved him to the point where he no longer knew who to trust. That sentiment would pass in time, or so he hoped, but right now he just needed to be alone.

  "Oh... that won't do, Reilly. I'm off in an hour. I'll drive you home."

  Even though she was his favorite nurse who seemed to have his best interests in mind, he'd lost his faith in all humanity. If the woman found out where he lived she might just show up unexpectedly, something he couldn’t cotton to right now. No... it was better to take a taxi.