by Sharon Sala
Big Boy was in shock.
She wasn't dead? Son-of-a-bitch!
"Well, thank goodness she’s all right," Sugar said. Curiosity satisfied, she moved on to her creature comforts. "I'll have a stack of buttermilk pancakes with a side of bacon."
Junie glanced at Big Boy.
"How about yourself? What tickles your fancy this morning?"
"Sausage gravy and biscuits with a side of bacon."
"Comin' up," Junie said, and went to turn in the orders.
Big Boy glanced up at the clock, then down at his wife. As always, she was talking, talking, talking.
He took a sip of coffee, then stirred in a packet of sugar to take the edge off the slightly bitter taste and tried it again.
He frowned.
Maybe it wasn't the coffee. Maybe it was his failure this morning that left such a bitter taste in his mouth.
Cognizance came slowly.
At first there was just pain, then the bed Logan was on began to spin. Before she could panic, someone grabbed her hand. It was the anchor she needed. Then she heard a voice—deep and husky with emotion.
"Hang on, girl. Ride it out. Meds are coming."
"Who..."
"Shh... It's Wade. I'm here."
There was a moment of silence, and then her voice was so low he almost didn't hear her.
"My Wade?"
He squeezed her fingers.
"Yes, your Wade."
"Safe..." she sighed.
It was humbling to know he meant safety to her. Before he could say anything else, she was out again.
Josh had just come back from the Bayou Motel and was in his office making notations in the case file that he'd started.
He wanted Logan Talman's motel room undisturbed and had put crime scene tape across the door to 4A to make sure no one went inside. Then he went up to the motel office to express his unhappiness regarding the lack of security footage to the owner, Bea Doolittle, who lived in the apartment behind the front desk.
Bea hemmed and hawed around the truth, which was that most of her income was derived by her hourly customers and their preferences for anonymity.
"I'm not breaking any laws," Bea muttered.
"Yes, ma'am, I know that. But what if it had been you? What if someone had come in and robbed you, then didn't want to leave a witness and shot you? How would you feel about no security cameras then? With all the technology available these days, it's very careless of you to assume you'll never need it. Hell, Miss Bea... Bluejacket isn't all that big. We know on a nightly basis who's screwing who on these premises because we all know what everyone drives. There aren't any surprises happening here. Or at least, there weren't until someone tried to kill one of your guests. Now we have ourselves an unknown resident of Bluejacket running around shooting people in the back."
"I didn't hear no gunshot," Bea said.
"Yeah, neither did anyone else, which means he used a silencer, but that changes nothing for Mrs. Talman. She's still fighting for her life."
Bea had glared at him, and now that's where they stood.
Chapter Eight
Josh was finishing up his report when he remembered he needed to put a guard on Mrs. Talman's hospital room.
He called Jack Fontaine, one of his off-duty officers, and sent him to the hospital. Then he opened the file Wade Garrett had given him again. What bothered him most was how well he knew all five men on the list, and he'd gone to a couple of the dead wives funerals. The fact that one of those women had likely been murdered, and that her killer sat through her service posing as a grieving husband, made him sick.
He pulled the case file on Julia Stephens' wreck. It was before he'd been hired as the chief of police. Supposedly, she'd died in that wreck, but he needed to go over the autopsy and satisfy himself there was nothing he'd overlooked.
She'd run off the highway and hit a tree head-on. The autopsy stated she had died of massive head injuries. From the pictures in the file, there was no mistaking the injuries to her head and face.
He then turned to the results of all the toxicology tests and immediately caught a notation regarding the high levels Diphenhydramine and Doxylamine found in her body, all antihistamines found in sleeping aids. Typically, toxicology reports always took weeks, sometimes even months to get back, but he had no memory of ever seeing them. Not even when he first arrived. The original assumption as to why the wreck occurred was that she'd just run off the road.
Then he glanced up at the date and frowned. This was after the previous police chief had died and before Josh had taken over the position.
He buzzed his clerk, Arnold Dubois, who'd been the clerk here almost twenty years.
"Hey, Arnie, come to my office for a second, please."
"Be right there, Chief," Arnie said, and true to his word, was knocking at the door in less than a minute.
Evans waved him in.
"What's up, Chief?" Arnie asked.
"You file autopsy reports in the case files, right?"
"Yep, yep, I do...after you review them."
"So, who was reviewing the reports in the interim after Chief Arthur's death?"
Arnie stood a minute, thinking back.
"You know, Chief? I don't remember anyone doing it."
Josh nodded. "When reports came in, you just filed them without review?"
Arnie frowned.
"No sir...I wouldn't have done that. I'm trying to think..." His eyes suddenly widened. "Oh hey! Remember that guy the City Council hired to stand in as chief until you started?"
"Yes! I do. Was he responsible for all of Chief Arthur's duties?"
"Yes, sir. Is there a problem?"
Evans sighed.
"Don't worry about," Evans said. "And thanks for the help."
Arnie smiled.
"No problem, Chief."
Evans waited until Arnie was gone, then pinched the bridge of his nose, and stifled a curse. Lord only knows what went by the wayside while the appointee was in charge. But this autopsy does not support her cause of death. Julia Stephens didn't just run off the road. With all those drugs in her body, she had to have fallen asleep. What bothered him was why she would have been driving if she'd taken such an inordinate amount of sleeping pills?
He went back through the accident report and then began sorting through the photos taken at the scene, looking for any of the interior of the car. There were two showing different aspects of the front seat, and the first thing he noticed was an insulated coffee cup with the letter “C” on the side. The lid had come off in the wreck and was lying in the seat on top of the coffee stain. So, what if she hadn't knowingly taken the sleeping pills? What if someone had slipped them into the coffee? Someone like her husband?
He went back through the file Wade gave him, looking for the info regarding payouts on life insurance. How much had Camren Stephens gotten for his wife's accidental death?
"Well now, double indemnity for accidental death to the tune of half a million dollars," Josh mumbled, and wrote down Camren Stephen's name.
He'd just become the chief's top suspect.
Barton DeChante liked being mayor of Bluejacket, even though it was hardly more than a village. It gave him a sense of authority and control without any problems.
He felt a bit presidential sitting in his office, and he liked signing the minor decrees and paperwork that came across his desk, using the gold-plated pen set that came with the job.
His official portrait hung on a wall next to photos of previous mayors, and he always judged himself as better looking than all of them, except possibly for Justin LeCroux, who had been mayor from 1952 to 1964. Barton had to admit the man was movie-star worthy, but their photos were never going to be hanging so close together that people might think to compare them. And Justin was long since dead, so there was that.
On most days, Barton enjoyed coming in to the office for a few hours, and then going about his day, but his phone had been ringing off the hook ever since that woman from
Texas had rolled into town in that big fancy Hummer.
It began with her taking down a local who was trying to break into her car. Barton frowned. What woman does that? The behavior was too masculine for his taste. And then to top all that off, he learns from the spate of calls today, that she had been ambushed coming out of her motel room and was now in the hospital, clinging to life.
He made the sign of the cross, muttering as he picked up his cell phone and dropped it into his pocket as he left his office muttering, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this shit needs to stop."
He paused beside his secretary's desk, frowning at the sight of her touching up the color on one of her fingernails. "Priscilla, I'll be across the street talking to Chief Evans if you need me."
"Yes sir," Priscilla said, as she screwed the lid back on her polish and began to blow on the nail to dry it.
Barton frowned, but said nothing. Truth was, he was a little bit scared of old Prissy. She was nearing sixty if she was a day, and yet kept her hair dyed as black as a witch's heart and wore it straight and long, like she must have when she was younger. Between the hair and those pale, watery, green eyes of hers, he was partially convinced she was a witch.
Josh Evans finished with the old accident file and got up to refill his coffee before sitting back down with a grunt. His right knee was hurting like it did when the weather was going to change. As long as it wasn't some dang tornado, he wouldn't mind a little rain.
The next name on the list of suspects was Roger Franklin. Everyone in Bluejacket knew his wife, Trena. She'd grown up here, and at the time of her death, had been the high school guidance counselor. When she’d died unexpectedly during surgery from an aneurism, her death had shocked the community.
If her death had been suspicious, then that meant a surgeon would have been in on the murder, too, which the chief considered very unlikely. And a quick check of the list revealed that there was no life insurance policy on her.
He moved to on to Peyton Adams, whose wife, Mona, had drowned in their pool. Caitlin, Mona's teenage daughter, had been the one to find the body. According to the report, Peyton had been out of town on business.
The Chief pulled the old file on the incident and began reading through reports. To his surprise, there had been a lengthy investigation before the death was ruled an accident and not a suicide. He checked the name against the life insurance list and saw that the policy had been a two-hundred and fifty-thousand-dollar policy that would have doubled if the death was accidental. So, half a million dollars paid out here.
When he pulled autopsy files, the first thing that stood out was the blood alcohol level in her body. It had been three times the legal limit. And then he read that she'd also suffered a head wound. There had been blood on the deck as well as in the pool, so they'd assumed she'd fallen in drunk, hitting her head when she fell.
What was it that took so long to clear the case? Maybe she didn't normally drink. He needed to talk to the daughter who’d found the body, and Peyton Adams too, then added his name to the list.
Of the two divorced men, he eliminated Danny Bales almost immediately, both because the wife was alive and living elsewhere, and because Bales would never have had ten thousand dollars to give to anyone.
Tony Warren was the other divorcee, and the last name on the list. But his wife had supposedly gone off the grid in Alaska, so there was likely no way to verify if she was still alive. There was no mention of a life insurance policy on her, either, but he was still going to investigate. There were more reasons than money to get rid of a disagreeable spouse.
He had just started a search for reports of domestic violence on both Peyton Adams and Camren Stephens when the mayor, Barton DeChante, strode into his office without knocking.
"Chief! What the hell is going on in Bluejacket? We go along all calm and friendly for years, and then all of a sudden, we have guns being fired in the streets, and a woman being ambushed like this, as if it was some back alley in New Orleans. What are you doing about that?"
Josh sighed. DeChante was a prick, but he was harmless.
"Nice to see you, too, Barton. Have a seat."
DeChante frowned. "I don't have time to sit down. Just answer my question."
Rude, authoritarian people never got far with Josh Evans, and DeChante's mayoral title didn't impress him one bit. Josh stood up on purpose, well aware he was a good foot taller than DeChante, and walked out from behind his desk to where the mayor was standing, then waited for DeChante to look up.
After he did, Josh nodded.
"We are working the case, none of which is available for public knowledge, which includes you. This is my office. Yours is across the street. I am not rude in your world. You don't get to be rude in mine."
Barton flushed. It wasn't often anyone called him down like this, but he acknowledged he'd been a shit to act this way.
"You're right. I'm sorry. It's just damn unnerving, and I have people calling the office wanting answers I don't have."
Josh patted Barton on the shoulder as he gently pushed him toward the door.
"Then you tell those people that the law is in charge of the investigation, and when there's something to be told, it will come from the police, not the mayor. That should get them off your back, okay?"
Barton relaxed, happy to have been relieved of the burden.
"Yes, I will do that, and many thanks. My apologies for prior rudeness. Have a good day."
He was gone as quickly as he'd arrived.
Josh shut the door to his office, and was settling back into the case, when he began hearing radio traffic between his officers and dispatch about a two-car wreck in front of the bank. He put everything into his desk and headed out to the scene.
Wade had taken up residence in Logan's room. His bag was in the corner, and he'd claimed the recliner. So when she started waking up, he jumped up and reached for her hand.
"Hey lady, I'm here."
She blinked.
"Wade? What happened?"
"Someone shot you in the back. You just had surgery and you're doing great. Are you in any pain?"
"Shot me?"
"Yes," he said.
"Shit."
Wade grinned. That was the Logan he knew.
"Who?" she asked.
"They don't know. No one heard a thing, so it's assumed he used a silencer. I'd say you are officially a threat to the dude who shot your brother. And just so you know, I gave the police chief copies of everything you sent me so he could do his job."
Logan groaned.
"I wasn't ready to—"
"To what? Die?" he asked.
He watched her nostrils flare. Then she sighed.
"Yeah...that."
"You're welcome."
He watched her eyelids close and her breathing level out. Just when he thought she'd gone to sleep, he heard her whisper.
"Thank..."
He plopped down into the recliner again and leaned back.
God. She is my Achilles heel.
There was a soft knock at the door. Wade opened it to find an armed, uniformed officer.
"Yes?" Wade said.
"Are you Wade Garrett?"
"Yes," Wade said.
"I'm Officer Jack Fontaine of the Bluejacket P.D., and Chief Evans sent me here to guard Mrs. Talman's door. I have been given to understand medical personnel, Mrs. Caitlin Baptiste, and you, are the only people allowed in the room."
"Yes, that's true," Wade said.
"Let me know if you have any concerns," Fontaine said, and took a seat in the chair provided for him out in the hall.
It had taken Josh and his officers a good portion of the morning before they'd cleared the scene of the accident. He had one driver in jail who was high on meth, and the other had gone to the ER with what looked like a broken arm. Both cars had been towed. By the time they had opened the street to traffic again, it was nearing noon, so he stopped by Barney's to get some food to take back to the office.
He was sitt
ing at a table near the door while he waited for his order, and while there, three of the men on Logan's list walked into Barney's within minutes of each other.
Before, he wouldn't have given them a second thought, and now he couldn't quit staring, trying to imagine them as cold-blooded killers, but he couldn't see it. No wonder the killer had gotten away with it. The shroud of propriety within society had way too much to do with money and appearance.
Despite his belief that he could eliminate one name from the three with deceased wives, he had full intentions of interrogating all three, plus the man with the missing wife. There could always be something he’d missed, or information one of them might give up that wasn't on the report.
He was trying to think of a way to open the investigation without alerting anyone he was looking for a killer when he thought of the interim police chief. That would be the perfect excuse. Josh could claim there was paperwork left undone on each case, and he was just following up.
He glanced up, wondering how Logan Talman was doing as Junie brought his order to the table.
"Thanks, Junie."
"My pleasure," she said, and then added. "Hey Chief, do you have any kind of update on Logan's condition?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. I was there when the surgeon came to the waiting room. He said she came through surgery just fine, and barring any unexpected problems, he expects a full recovery."
Junie beamed.
"That's wonderful news. Thanks a lot."
"Sure thing. Have a good day."
"You, too," Junie said, and went back to work as the chief paid for his food and took it back to his office.
Big Boy was still on edge as he drove down Main Street, but he had a business meeting he couldn't ignore and had convinced himself that business as usual was a good move—until he walked into Barney's.
Seeing the chief sitting at the door was so startling that he almost turned and ran.
In his mind, he saw Chief Evans standing up and reaching for his handcuffs.
Heard Evans reading him his rights in front of everyone in the room.
