by Lauren Carr
Joshua spotted her talking to the casino manager, Ned Carter. When they saw the prosecutor watching them, they turned around and left the banquet room.
What is that about?
“Bullying,” Doris was saying. “Gail is nothing like her mother, except for her voluptuous figure. She was plump when she was a young girl. But the way Cheryl and his friends teased her, you would have thought she was an elephant. She was the best skater at the rink. And a talented baton twirler, too. Cheryl about ruined her youth with her bullying.”
Joshua noted, “But when Cheryl’s body was discovered, she had a business card with Brianne Davenport’s private line in her pocket, not Gail’s. Do you have any idea why?”
“How should I know? It was Brianne’s phone number, not mine.”
While the Mountaineer Resort catered mostly to wealthy business people, gamblers, and other transient types that hung around the race track and casino, Ned Carter was a businessman through and through.
Decorated in brass and mirrors, the sight of the VIP lounge located on the top floor of the resort took Cameron back to less than happy times. Behind the bar stretching the length of the lounge, bottles of every type of booze imaginable were begging to be tipped to fill the shiny glasses that hung from the rack above. She felt blessed that those times consisted of only a few years after her husband’s sudden death. She had spiraled to hit her bottom fast in order to rebound back to sobriety and regain everything that she had lost. She knew too many whose rock-bottom was much lower than hers and would never be able to regain their losses.
The detective tried not to make eye contact with the two men who made their home on stools at the end of the bar. Between sips of their liquid lunch served in short glasses, they lifted their heads bowed over their drinks and cigarettes to admire the slender woman detective with wavy, cinnamon-colored hair. She didn’t have to tell them that she was a detective. They could see that in the police shield she wore on her utility belt along with her gun, radio, and baton.
When Cameron asked for Ned, the bartender looked her up and down until her eyes landed on the gold shield. Then, she hurried back into the office to fetch her boss.
From behind the office door, Cameron heard a familiar woman’s voice, which she couldn’t place it before the bartender interrupted her to announce a police detective was there to see Ned.
“What about?” the man’s voice demanded to know.
“Don’t know,” the bartender responded.
“Wait here,” he ordered someone, “and keep quiet.”
The bartender closed the door on her way out before the manager slipped out of the office to face the detective.
Having seen a picture of Cherry forever frozen in her youth, Cameron half-expected to find a man in roughly the same condition; young and viral. Maybe even with a head of shaggy hair and a muscular chest.
Ned Carter wasn’t as lucky as Cheryl Smith. His slender body showed signs of effort to maintain his shape with exercise, but his hair had not cooperated. The top was thinning and the skin around his neck sagged. The formerly lean ladies’ man compensated for the loss of his youthful good looks with expensive suits and shiny buffed nails.
“Are you Ned Carter?”
Ned studied the slender, attractive woman before him, dressed in slightly faded jeans with an expensive leather jacket over a red sweater. “I guess you’re the detective that’s been asking about Cheryl Smith. Brianne told me about you. I’ll make this quick. The last time I saw Cheryl was the day before she flew off to California. Did I kill her? No. Did I want to? Yes.”
When he turned away, she called him back. “Witnesses tell us that she used to be close friends with you. Real close.”
“Used to be.” Ned turned away from her to direct his attention at the bartender who had moved down the bar to escape the conversation.
Cameron followed Ned when he tried to step away. “But she came back here, and someone killed her.”
Ned chuckled. “It wasn’t me. A lot of people wanted her dead. You want a list? It’s a long one.”
“Besides you, who’s at the top of that list?” She flashed her most charming grin at Ned’s slip.
“Kyle Bostwick,” the resort manager said.
“Cheryl didn’t have Kyle’s phone number in her pocket.”
“She didn’t need it. Kyle lives in the same house where he was born.” Ned grinned. “Did Kyle tell you that Cheryl broke him and Angie up?”
Cameron cocked her head at his wicked smile. “No. Did the original investigator in Angie’s case know that?”
“I doubt it,” Ned said. “Everyone was concentrating on Cheryl killing her. Besides, Kyle says Angie and him made up and got engaged that night.”
“When did they break up?”
“Right before prom,” Ned recalled. “But they did make up for prom, though Brianne told me that Angie had said it was only because they broke up too late for either of them to get other dates.”
“But Cheryl broke them up. How?”
“Oldest game in the book,” Ned said. “Cheryl was hot and put out. Angie was as pure as the driven snow and insisted on staying that way until her wedding night. Cheryl flashed her boobs at Kyle and he crumbled. Then Cheryl . . .” he grumbled, “recorded the whole thing and sent the tape to Angie. She was devastated and broke up with him.”
Cameron nodded her head while imagining the pain that Cheryl Smith had caused during her short lifetime. “Angie must have forgiven him since she accepted his ring that night.”
Ned said, “Only because she didn’t have the energy to deal with him at that moment after what Cheryl had put her through.”
Cameron was aware of the two men at the end of the bar watching and listening to them. They rose up on their haunches in preparation to forcibly evict her if they had to.
She leaned across the bar. “Do you still keep in contact with your old friends?”
“What friends?” Ned asked even though the tone of her voice and arch of her eyebrow told him what she was talking about.
“I understand you used to deal,” she answered. “In a place like this, having such connections can come in mighty handy with a certain type of clientele.”
“I don’t run that type of establishment,” Ned answered.
“So I guess you couldn’t get hold of say . . . heroin.”
“No.”
“Then if Cheryl had contacted you, her connection back in the old days, to ask for a fix, you wouldn’t have been able to help her?”
“Oh,” Ned said with a wicked grin, “if she had a brain in her head, she’d know that I’d fix her up real good, and not in a good way.”
“I think that’s what you did,” she said. “Cheryl had your phone number in her possession when she died. She called you. You sold or gave her a fix. Then, you even did a roll in the hay for old time’s sake—”
“No way,” he replied with a threatening edge in his voice.
“Care to give us a DNA sample to prove you didn’t?”
“You come back with a warrant, and I’ll give you everything you want.”
“I’ll do that,” she told him. “If you were with her, if you sweated on her, if you sneezed on her, then forensics will trace it back to you. So if you did see or talk to her when she came back to town, you better tell me the truth now.”
His tan face paled.
“Albert Gordon lived down the road from you,” Cameron said. “You saw enough to see that he was a hoarder, so you broke in when he was out of town on a case and hid the freezer in his basement where you knew he’d never find it.”
While Ned chuckled in a show of confidence, there was nervousness in his eyes.
“What was Cheryl doing here in Chester?” she asked. “Why’d she come back here when she was on the run? Why didn’t she run off to Mexico or Canada? What brought her back here?”
“I’m sure you saw the thing on television about her and Blake Norton, the singer who got offed in Vegas for fooling around
with her after the owner of that skin magazine had poured a bunch of money into her.” He pointed a finger at Cameron. “That’s who killed her. Humphrey Phoenix had her offed. His men followed her here.”
“I guess she should have ditched the Ferrari sooner.”
“Yeah,” Ned agreed.
Cameron cocked her head at him. “Do you know where she ditched it?”
Ned shook his head. “How would I know that if I never saw her or the car?”
“Come on, Ned,” she demurred, “You and Cheryl used to be tight. She needed your help. She needed to ditch the car, and she needed a fix. You were the man best able to help her.”
“Way back in the old days,” he replied with an angry glare. “Not anymore.”
“Assuming you’re telling the truth about not helping her, where would you have sent her if she had come to you?”
“If she had come to me, I would have sent her packing for the border and told her to not look back.”
“Unfortunately, she obviously didn’t do that fast enough because she ended up dead on ice.”
The interview over, Cameron crossed the lounge and went out the door, before slipping back to the doorway to peer inside. As she had expected, the woman hiding in Ned’s office revealed herself.
I thought that voice sounded familiar. Cameron congratulated herself when she saw that it belonged to one of the women helping to clean out Albert Gordon’s home, Gail Hildebrand.
“You’re going to get yourself into trouble,” Joshua warned Brianne.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asked.
He followed her when she left the dining room to a quiet corner in the lounge where the windows looked out onto the snow-covered courtyard. He wanted to have it out with her. He wondered at how, even though they were married, she and Ned hadn’t sat together at the meeting. Even though they were both at the same breakfast meeting, they had barely spoken a word to each other.
“I mean you groping that server while your husband is standing six feet away.”
“Ned’s and my marriage isn’t like most people’s.” She moved in closer while he backed away. “Why do you keep backing away from me, Josh? Don’t you like me?”
“Not really.”
“Why did you follow me then?”
“I want to talk to you . . . about Cheryl Smith.”
“Very well.” She sat down on the love seat and patted the cushion next to her as an invitation for him to sit with her. “I won’t bite. I promise.”
Hesitant, Joshua sat down on the love seat, but left a lot of space between them. “Tell me about whom else Cheryl hurt before going off to Hollywood.”
“Darling, I’ve pulled the car around.”
They both started when they became aware that they weren’t alone. Joshua whirled in his seat to look over his shoulder.
Freddie had come into the lounge and came to an abrupt halt when he saw that Brianne was with another man. Uncomfortably aware of an audience, Joshua shifted in his seat to put even more space between them.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes, hon. Wait for me outside.” She turned her attention to Joshua. “You’re talking about a long list.”
Joshua said, “But none of them have your phone number.”
“I’m not the only one who gives out my business cards,” she whispered. “If Cheryl showed up at the business office at the winery and claimed to be a friend of mine, the receptionist would have given her my business card, which had my direct line number. That’s how she could have gotten that card.”
“And Ned’s car phone number?”
“A lot of people have Ned’s numbers. He’s a workaholic. People are calling him day and night. That’s why I have hobbies.”
“Dangerous hobbies.”
She reached out to touch his hand. “Don’t knock it until you try it.”
He backed away.
“Do I look like a killer to you?” Her hand was on his leg.
Firmly, he put her hand back into her lap and held it there. “Killers come in all shapes and sizes.”
Her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “I don’t think you like me.”
“Judging by the type of men I’ve seen you with, I think I’m too old for you.”
“I like variety in my men.” She leaned toward him and let out a breathy sigh. “Do you really suspect me of killing Cheryl?”
“Considering that your ex-best friend, who was a prime suspect in the murder of your other best friend, was found in a freezer in the basement of a house less than a half mile from yours, with your business card in her pocket, it would be hard not to suspect you.”
“Do you suspect me, Josh?” She moved in closer.
“Yes.” He stood up and went around behind the love seat to put it between them.
“Are you afraid of your girlfriend?” she asked. “I should let you know that she threatened me. She flat out told me to stay away from you and your son, or she was going to cause me trouble.”
“I’d listen to her if I were you,” Joshua said. “Cameron never bluffs.”
Outside of the lounge, Doris Sullivan watched Brianne and Joshua whispering to each other. She was startled when Mildred Hildebrand asked her in a loud voice, “Have you heard the news, Doris?”
She whirled around and forced a smile to cross her face. “What news is that, Mildred?”
“I’m now a great-grandmother!” the elderly woman announced with pride. “The count is now three daughters, a son, twelve grandchildren, and one great-grandson. It’s a good thing that I’m as organized as I am, or I would never be able to remember all their birthdays and anniversaries.” She sighed, “I guess all those years of chairing every board and charity in town has prepared me for managing my growing family . . . and now position of elder at the church.”
“Joshua told me that they hadn’t made a decision on that yet,” Doris said.
“Maybe not, but it’s only a matter of time. After all, I’ve served every other position in the church.”
A wicked grin crossed Doris’s face. “I think it’s wonderful that you’re a great-grandmother. You look like one.”
“So do you,” Mildred responded to the insult. “Unfortunately for you, you can’t ever become one at this point. Such a pity.”
The two elderly women were eyeing each other when Cameron stepped between them. “Good morning, ladies. How are we today? Have either of you seen Joshua?”
Both women glanced in the direction of the lounge.
Cameron followed their eyes. The corners of her lips curled and a devilish glint came to her eyes. She stepped into the room.
Sensing a cat fight, Doris and Mildred rushed to the doorway to watch.
Joshua saw Brianne’s eyes widen with surprise, and a hint of fear. He turned around just in time for his lips to collide with Cameron’s. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders to take him into a tight hug. With her mouth on his, she tasted his mouth with an intensity that she had never done before in a public setting. The grip of the gun she wore on her hip dug into his hipbone, but he didn’t mind. His head was swimming when she released him. He took a deep breath. “What was that for?”
“That was for nothing.” Gazing into his blue eyes, she ran her fingers through his silver hair from the top of his head down past his ears and across his cheeks. “Now you have a license to do something.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” He kissed her again.
Disappointed, Mildred and Doris stepped away.
With a glare, Brianne left in search of Freddie.
Chapter Nine
Irving sat up on his hind legs, with his front paws on the door, to peer out the passenger window when Cameron pulled her cruiser into Raccoon State Park. The skunk cat let out a mixture of a growl and meow from deep in his throat. His emerald eyes widened. His mouth dropped open, and he let out a clicking noise that meant he had something in his sights that he dearly wanted to capture.
The predator was on point.
“Easy going, kiddo,” Cameron urged him after unclipping her seat belt before reaching over to unclip Irving’s pet seat belt. When she opened the car door, Irving shot out over her lap, scurried under the cruiser and practically flew into the woods.
“They told me you had a skunk for a partner,” a deep, male voice boomed from the picnic area.
“Irving is a cat.” Cameron sauntered across the gravel parking area to where a huge man was seated on top of the picnic table.
He was dressed in khaki pants and a button-down shirt. While watching her approach him, he took a deep sip of his soda.
“He only looks like a skunk,” she said. “You should see the reaction of murderous suspects when they see him coming. It’s more effective than a K-9.”
“Sounds like the reaction of suspects when they see me coming.” With a chuckle, he stuck out his hand for her to shake. “Special Investigator William Walton.” After shaking her hand, he flashed his FBI identification at her. “Everyone calls me Big Will.”
“Detective Cameron Gates.” She opened her coat to show him the badge she wore clipped next to her gun on her belt. “They call me a lot of things.”
“Sassy. I like that.” Big Will chuckled again. “My people say you were asking about a mob contract out on an actress—” He put up his fingers to simulate quotation marks when he used the word “actress”. “—named Cherry Pickens that was put out on her in Spring 1985.”
“Was it Humphrey Phoenix?” she asked. “I’ve been told two different things. One said it was the mob, but then I read that Humphrey kept claiming to be a legitimate business man who dealt in smut.”
“Correct on both fronts.” Standing up, Big Will stuck his thumbs into the waistband of his pants.
Now that he stood to his full height, Cameron saw that Big Will was bigger than she had thought. He towered over her, and was as solid as a tank with muscle. He wasn’t kidding. If I saw him coming at me, I’d be scared, too.
“Did your check bring up the murder of a has-been pop singer named Blake Norton?” Big Will asked. “He was in Vegas trying to make a comeback.”
