by Lauren Carr
Saying nothing, Joshua rubbed his face into the carpet.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” She wanted confirmation that she was right, and Detective Shannon was guilty of mishandling his investigation.
Instead, he asked, “What do you want me to say?”
“You always have something to say. It’s who you are.”
He sighed. “You’re both right.”
“You are such a politician.”
“I am not a politician.”
“Yes, you are.” With a laugh in her voice, she halted the massage with her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t tell me you don’t have an opinion about this. Harry should have reported what Cheryl and Angie were fighting about that night. It could have led to the motive for her murder. How could he not have known that? And I don’t understand how you can’t see that.”
After a long heavy sigh, Joshua said, “It’s a double-edge sword.”
“What are you talking about?”
““You’re not in Philadelphia anymore, Cam.” With a pain-filled groan, he twisted to tell her over his shoulder, “Doris Sullivan is a farmer in Hookstown. In these parts, a word of gossip flies as swiftly as the winter wind off the river, and it cuts even deeper. Maybe it’s the downside of everyone knowing and caring about their neighbor. Some people don’t know where to draw the line between needing to know out of genuine concern and wanting to know in order to cast judgment.”
Cameron said, “I’m not casting judgment. I’m trying to find out who killed Cheryl Smith . . . . and Angie Sullivan’s murder is your case.”
“I’m very aware of that,” he said. “But Angie was the only family Doris had left, and she lost her. Why hurt her any further by publicizing a family secret that may or may not be true, and which may or may not be relevant to Angie’s murder?”
“There’s a big, thick line between publicizing gossip and investigating a lead,” she said. “Besides, Gail Hildebrand told me flat-out that it’s not a rumor. It’s true. She overheard her father and Doris talking about it.”
“Ralph?”
“Yes, Ralph. Ralph Hildebrand was Angie’s father.”
“I’ll be—” He stopped. “Ralph knew?”
She nodded her head. “According to his daughter Gail.”
“How about Mildred?”
“Gail says she’s in denial.”
“La-la Land.” He felt her shift her weight to concentrate on his middle back. In doing so, she pressed the air out of his lungs. “Mildred confirmed that she had bought Doris’s freezer . . . and hauled it out to the landfill. That means it was out of Doris’s possession when Cheryl came back to town.” He turned his head. She was so close that he could see the green specks in her hazel eyes. “Ralph took it to the landfill.”
“Ralph was Angie’s birth father.” She rose to allow him to sit up. “Doris Sullivan was also the only one who went down into that basement that morning.”
Joshua shook his head. “Other people had been in the basement.”
“Moments before I noticed the bomb?” she asked. “Doris Sullivan lives next door. She’s known Albert their whole lives.”
“Albert also played a big role in Cheryl leaving town after Angie’s disappearance,” Joshua pointed out. “Doris says she forgave him but, being a parent, I find it hard to believe she would have been able to completely let it go. I know I’d have a hard time forgiving someone for that.”
“At some point over the years, Albert had to have given her a key to his place for in case of an emergency . . .” she said, “or hiding a dead body.”
He took her hand, placed it on his bare shoulder, and turned around to stretch out on the floor. The unspoken message was for her to return to work at massaging his back while thinking about that. “Even if that was Doris’s freezer, it was out of her possession at the time of Cheryl’s murder. Cheryl knew that she was a person of interest in Angie’s murder. Doris Sullivan would have been the last person she would have gone to for help when she came back to town.”
“Unless Doris killed Angie.” She reminded him, “According to Randy’s daughter, Cheryl saw the murder, and the killer paid her way to Hollywood. Otherwise, where did she get the money to leave town back in 1978?”
“I don’t think Doris killed Angie,” he said. “I can see her killing Cheryl, but not Angie.”
“Maybe Ralph killed Angie to keep word from getting out about him being her father. Mildred is an extremely proud woman,” she said. “Appearances are most important to her. I’ve seen more than one murder where the wife flipped out after finding out that her husband had a child by another woman. Knowing that, Ralph may have felt like he had no choice but to get rid of Angie when Cheryl started spreading the word about her being Doris’s daughter and not her sister.” She tapped his shoulder with her fingertip. “Ralph Hildebrand certainly had the dough to pay Cheryl’s way to Hollywood. Not only that, but he was the last one in possession of the freezer. When Cheryl came back for more dough, he killed her to put an end to the blackmail.” In delight, she patted his back with both hands. “There you have it. We solved both murders.”
Joshua shook his head. “Killing Angie wouldn’t have achieved that motive. If anything, it started tongues wagging more about her.”
“But with Angie out of the picture, Mildred was better able to ignore the truth.”
“How is it possible that a looker like Cherry Pickens comes flying into a small town like Chester or Hookstown in a fire-engine red Ferrari and nobody notice?” He rolled over onto his back. “What happened to that car?”
Without his asking, she straddled him and began massaging his chest. Her hands felt so good that he didn’t resist. “Brianne Davenport collects sports cars.”
“Where did you hear that?” Joshua asked.
“She told Donny when she was hitting on him. She invited him to take one for a spin.”
Clasping her hands, Joshua gazed into her eyes. “She invited my sixteen-year-old son to take one of her sports cars for spin?”
“I think between the lines she was asking him to take her for a spin.”
“I wonder if she has a Ferrari,” he said.
With a gasp, Cameron recalled Brianne telling Donny that she owned a Ferrari. “Cheryl had Brianne’s direct line number in her pocket. The two of them used to be friends. She had to know that Brianne collected sports cars.” With each point she made, she stabbed him in the chest with her fingernail.
He grasped her finger and kissed it. “Cheryl was desperate to get out of the country, and probably for a fix. She had a hundred-thousand dollar sports car.”
She moved in closer. “Cheryl had that phone number for Brianne Davenport because she was trying to unload the Ferrari to make her getaway.” She scratched her head. “Why come all the way back here to Chester and Hookstown from Vegas? She could have unloaded that car a thousand places between Vegas and here. She had no family here. What drew her here?”
Deep in thought, Joshua said more to himself, “Maybe after all those years in Hollywood making movies, with the likes of people like Humphrey Phoenix, she thought the only people she could count on and trust to help her were those friends she had back home.”
“Only she ended up being wrong.”
“Which friend killed her?” he asked humorlessly. “The manipulative cougar, the cheating husband, or the bitter computer geek?”
“We need to get someone to talk to us.” Cameron pressed her forehead against his.
“Which one?”
“How about Donny’s girlfriend?”
“Kaden?” Joshua asked.
“Brianne Davenport.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Joshua whispered into her ear.
“You tell her that,” she whispered into his. “I want to set a trap.”
Her hot breath on his neck sent a shiver all the way down his spine. “What kind of trap are you talking about?” He kissed her.
“A good one.” She brushed her fingers across h
is cheek. “I want to use your son for bait.”
They were startled by the clearing of a throat. Joshua almost knocked her out of his lap when he rolled over to see Donny smirking at them in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. “So this is what you do when you’re home alone while I’m at school.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Dad, I know where to find the VIN number.” Donny did the teenaged eye-roll when Joshua asked him for the fifth time about locating the vehicle identification number on Brianne’s Ferrari.
In spite of Cameron’s assurances of protection, including an ear mike, Joshua didn’t like the idea of using Donny to find and determine if Brianne Davenport had Cheryl Smith’s Ferrari.
A search of DMV records showed that the VIN number for Brianne’s Ferrari wasn’t a match for Cheryl Smith’s car. However, for the right amount of money, and with the right connections, a VIN number can be swapped for a similar car.
Without any proof that Brianne had possession of the Ferrari belonging to the murder victim, Cameron couldn’t get a court order to examine her car.
So Donny was going in.
Joshua didn’t like it one bit.
Cameron and Joshua had listened in on the phone when Donny called the winery owner under the pretense of asking her for a part-time job after school and on weekends.
While Joshua was surprised, Cameron wasn’t when she offered the teenager a job without asking about his skills, experience, or references. “When can you start?” Brianne asked.
Donny came back with the question, “What kind of work do you want me to do?”
Her laugh was husky. “I need a new gopher.”
“Gopher?” he replied. “What’s a gopher?”
“You go-for this and go-for that.” She elaborated, “You’ll be my personal assistant.”
Cameron wrote a note for Joshua to read. “Freddie? What happened?”
After setting up an appointment for Donny to meet her at the winery for an interview the next day after school, they hung up. With a wide grin, he turned around to ask them how he had done in setting up “the sting.”
While Cameron suppressed her laughter, Joshua explained, “This is not a sting. A sting is what con artists do to marks. We’re not con artists, and Brianne Davenport is not a mark.”
“Then what is this?” Donny asked.
“This is an investigation, and you’re going in undercover to collect evidence so that I can get a search warrant,” said Cameron.
Donny’s eyes brightened. “Undercover. I like that. That’s better than working a sting.” With a bounce in his step, he left the study and jogged up the stairs to his room.
Joshua dropped into the chair behind his desk. “I’m glad he likes it because I don’t. I have a bad feeling about this whole thing.”
“He’s got you and me and two state troopers watching his back,” she said. “What could go wrong?”
They met Cameron at her office at the state police barracks located in Raccoon Township in Pennsylvania. While Irving snoozed in her chair behind her desk, Cameron inserted the ear bud into Donny’s ear and gave him last minute instructions.
“We can hear everything you and Mrs. Davenport say,” she warned him.
“And do,” Joshua added from where he sat on the corner of Cameron’s desk.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Donny said, “I have a girlfriend. Mrs. Davenport is really sexy, but she’s old, too.”
“So was Mrs. Robinson.” Cameron referred to the older woman in The Graduate, a late 1960’s movie starring Anne Bancroft as an older married woman who seduces a young Dustin Hoffman into an affair.
“Who’s Mrs. Robinson?” Donny asked. “Is she another suspect? Will I get to go undercover again after this?”
“You explain it to him,” she directed Joshua before turning to the two troopers waiting for her direction. “We need to stay close with this one.”
One advantage of a stakeout in a rural area is that there are innumerable places to hide. While Donny was driving his father’s SUV up the winding drive to the estate home on the top of the hill of Davenport Wineries, Cameron was maneuvering her cruiser along a dirt road that led to an old spring house behind the estate. If there was any trouble, it was a hop over a fence and a jog through a vineyard behind the main house to the garage.
The cruiser was a loaner from the motor pool until they fumigated hers. It had been two days since the skunk attack and all she had received from the motor pool was a stuffed toy skunk left on her desk.
“Not that I expect there to be any trouble,” Cameron assured Joshua to ease his nerves. “All he has to do is ask if he can take her Ferrari for a spin. He looks under the hood when she shows it to him, which all young men like to do; and then snap a picture of the VIN number with his cell phone, and send it to me to compare with the VIN to Cheryl’s car.” She smiled. “How easy is that?”
“Can you stop talking?” Joshua was staring straight ahead to the back of the Davenport house. “The more you tell me how easy it is, the more nervous I get.” He shook his head. “I have a really bad feeling about this. What happened to Freddie?”
“He probably quit because he got tired of sleeping with an older woman . . . even if she is hot.” Cameron reached across the front of the cruiser to pat his leg. “Donny is going to be fine.”
He turned to her. His eyes narrowed to blue slits.
She pulled back her hand. “I’ll stop talking.”
“Thank you.”
When she greeted Donny, Brianne’s voice through the speaker sounded as breathlessly excited as a child seeing a long awaited birthday present come through the door. After some small talk while she showed Donny around the mansion, Brianne confessed, “I was surprised when you called me. I had heard you had a girlfriend.”
“I do,” Donny replied.
During the moment of silence, Cameron cursed into her mike. “Wrong answer, Donny. Now she thinks you really are looking for a job. Let her know that you’re willing to play the field. She has to think you’re interested in her.”
“She’s not really my girlfriend,” he backtracked. “We go out and kiss and stuff, but we still see other people.”
“What kind of stuff?” Joshua asked.
Brianne’s voice moved in closer and grew deeper. “I’m glad to hear that. You had me worried there for a minute.”
There was a long moment of silence and the sound of movement, followed by a kiss.
Cameron saw Joshua shift uncomfortably in his seat. She jerked around when she saw him pull his gun out from where he had it concealed under his jacket. Over the years of encountering one deadly case after another, Joshua learned to never be without his semi-automatic Berretta handgun within easy reach. He checked the chamber.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Shoot Brianne? All she’s doing is kissing him.”
“I’ve got a very bad feeling,” he said. “It keeps getting worse.”
“Do I have the job?” Donny asked.
She laughed. “Don’t you even want to know what I’m paying you?”
“Sure. How much?”
“Five thousand dollars a month.”
“What?” Donny and Cameron gasped in unison.
Brianne continued laughing. “Let’s get started. We’ll start in the bedroom.”
When Joshua grabbed the door handle, she grabbed his wrist. “Wait!”
“Can I see your cars first?” Donny asked with the eagerness of boyish youth. “You promised that I could drive one.”
“Yes, I did.” Brianne sounded disappointed. “Okay. They’re out in the garage. I have half a dozen beauties, and there are plenty of roads that we can turn them out on at high speed. I’ll let you take your pick. Would you like a Corvette, Porsche, Jaguar—”
“Didn’t you tell me that you had a Ferrari?”
Cameron and Joshua held their breath while waiting for her answer.
There was a silence while Brianne seemed to gauge her res
ponse. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do have one.”
“I’ve always wanted to drive a Ferrari,” Donny said. “I’ve only seen pictures of them, but never have seen one up close and live.”
His excitement seemed to calm her nerves. “I guess there’s no time like the present.”
Cameron set her phone on the top of her laptop along with the VIN number they were looking for.
“All he has to do is take the picture of the VIN,” Joshua muttered. “Then he gets out of there.”
“What if she locks the garage and won’t let him out until he gives her a sample of his work?” When she saw Joshua’s deadpanned expression she said, “It’s a joke, Josh. She isn’t really going to lock him in there.”
“Are you sure about that?”
An echo in their voices indicated that they were now in the garage.
“Wow!” Donny shouted. “I’ve never seen so many fancy rides in one place, except on television.”
“Very good,” Cameron said to Donny through the mike.
“He’s not lying,” Joshua said.
“Can I check it out under the hood?” Donny asked.
“Be my guess,” Brianne replied.
They heard a pop like a hood being raised on a car. Brianne rattled off the size of the engine and other specs that would impress any car buff.
“Do you mind if I take a picture of it to show my friends?” Donny told her that his friends would never believe him otherwise.
After she had granted him permission, Cameron snatched up her phone to watch for the close-up image of the vehicle identification number on the engine of the Ferrari. “Got it.” She held up the picture to the long number she had.
“Ready to take it for—” Brianne’s invitation was cut off by a scream, followed by a shriek and grunt from Donny.
“Move in!” Cameron called out across the mike to the troopers. “It’s gone bad. Move in!”
Joshua didn’t hear her order. He was already out of the cruiser and over the fence.
By the time Cameron had cleared the fence, Joshua had turned the corner of the garage with his gun drawn. The siren from the troopers screamed while they made their way up the twisted driveway.
Joshua estimated them to be one minute out. That was one minute too long. Inside the garage, he could hear Brianne screaming and begging hysterically. He found out why when he went in through the garage door to find that Freddie had taken Donny hostage, and was holding a box cutter to his throat.
