He stared into space for a few minutes, and Deena could almost see the wheels in his brain turning before he looked back at her with a half-smile on his face.
“Go wake Maddy up.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jerome Wilkerson rolled over and hit the snooze button on his alarm clock before he remembered why he’d set it for so early in the first place. Switching it to the off position, he took a few deep breaths then forced himself to get out of bed and head to the bathroom. He’d promised that young sheriff from Texas that he’d run up to the old hunting lodge on Farm Road 266 and let his sister-in-law know that her child had broken her wrist but was okay. He knew service up there was almost nonexistent, but in the past they’d been able to communicate through satellite phones. He wondered why that wasn’t available now.
After donning his uniform, he grabbed his hat and keys from the dresser, along with his wallet and cell phone. Then he started for the door before remembering that he hadn’t said goodbye to Consuela, who was now on her side and snoring like a lumberjack.
Deciding not to wake her, he texted a message to her cell phone saying that he loved her and reiterating that he would see her in a few hours, then set out on the trek to the old hunting lodge, now turned spa or some other damn thing. He glanced at his own cell phone messages to make sure Emma hadn’t called during the night. His daughter was a week away from giving them their first grandchild, and he was so nervous about his baby having a baby that he’d nearly gone crazy checking the phone almost every hour.
Truth be told, he’d welcomed the call from the Texas cop asking him to check up on his wife and her sisters. At least for a few hours, his mind would be on something other than all the things that could go wrong in the delivery room. He’d sworn he wouldn’t look at the Internet when Emma’s blood pressure had started going up, but he couldn’t help himself.
It was four-thirty when he hit the interstate, and he figured it would take ninety minutes up, thirty minutes to deliver the message, and then ninety minutes back. That would put him back in Leisure with enough time to make the eleven a.m. service at the Baptist Church. Besides the break from worrying about Emma, it would be nice to have a Texas cop beholden to him in case he ever needed a favor.
The temperature this early in the morning was still in the sixties, and he turned off the AC and rolled down the window. The smell of the fresh country made him smile as the cool air fanned across his face. He loved Oklahoma—loved that he’d been lucky enough to live in a place like Leisure and work at a job that had given him so much pleasure for over twenty-five years.
He’d been hired right out of Oklahoma University, and he and his high school sweetheart had made a quick trip to the justice of the peace, then packed up and headed to Leisure, population six hundred at the time. Since then, it had doubled in size when the new Walmart Distribution Center went in near the interstate. Over those twenty-five years, the most exciting thing he’d had to face was when the Forelli brothers beat the hell out of a guy who’d scammed them out of a few hundred bucks. He’d had a helluva time booking them on assault and battery charges as they’d insisted he would have done the same thing. And he couldn’t argue with that. As it turned out, the brothers only had to spend one night in jail, after they’d convinced the poor schlep—who’d ended up with a broken jaw—to recant his story once they’d agreed to forget about the money the guy owed them and call it even.
No, life in Leisure was not very exciting if you were an action junkie—which he wasn’t. He liked things simple and easy with very little drama. This thing with Emma and the baby was about to kill him and was all the excitement he could handle right now.
He glanced down at the dashboard. He’d been driving over an hour and knew he was getting close. Glancing up at the sky he saw a ring of buzzards circling above the trees far back into the wooded area. He thought about the circle of life and hoped whatever poor animal that had given its life to feed another had died instantly and hadn’t suffered.
That’s all anyone could ask.
*****
Deena rushed from the dining room, nearly tripping over a chair on the way. This time when she ran through the lobby she didn’t even bother to look up at the stuffed black bear over the mantle that had spooked her earlier and reached her room in record time. Once inside, she hurried to the bed and shook Maddy until her eyes opened slightly.
“What? I was right in the middle of a sexy dream about Jake and I at a mountain cabin in Montana. We—”
“No time for that. We need you to come down to the dining room,” Deena said, impatiently. “Now.”
Maddy wiped the sleep from her eyes. “We?”
“Vince and I. We’ve discovered something that might just be the clue we’ve been missing, and it can’t wait.”
“Really? And how long have you and Vince been awake and all alone?”
Ordinarily, Deena would have been amused at her sister’s teasing, but she was too excited now to get sidetracked. “Did you hear me? We found something that could be really important.”
Maddy rolled over and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Seriously, Deena, it’s five-thirty in the morning. What could you possibly have found that can’t wait until—oh, I don’t know—say seven-ish?”
“Christina Rockford.”
Maddy opened her eyes halfway and furrowed her brow. “That’s Haley’s sister, right?”
“Yes,” Deena said, pushing her to the edge of the bed. “Get up before I have to shove you onto the floor.”
“Okay, okay, but I don't get why this is so important that you’re taking me away from my beauty sleep. We’ve known about Haley’s sister leaving this place to her since day one.” Maddy stood up and walked to the dresser to get a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “I hope wherever you’re taking me has a full pot of coffee brewing.”
“We may have known about Haley’s sister dying and leaving her this place, but what we didn’t know was that we’d met Chrissy before.”
“Chrissy?” Maddy stopped pulling her jeans midway up her legs. “You’re not talking about—”
Deena smacked her forehead in exasperation. “Yes. It took you long enough to make the connection.”
“How’d you figure that out? That was over two years ago when we met the woman. Did you have some kind of epiphany or what?”
Deena laughed. “It was in front of us all along.”
“What was?”
“Chrissy’s name.”
“I don't remember…” Her eyes lit up as a smile curled her lips. “Christina Rockford, the last entry in the book.” She high-fived her sister. “Good job, Sis, although I’m still not sure I get why that’s so important.”
“Neither do we, but you have to admit, it’s too coincidental to ignore.” She pushed her sister toward the bathroom. “Hurry up. Do your thing and brush your teeth. Vince is waiting for us.”
Ten minutes later they walked into an empty dining room. “Vince?” Deena called out, worried that something may have happened to him. She was relieved when he stuck his head out from the kitchen and waved.
“I took the liberty of making coffee. Figured we could all use it to stay awake.”
“No way I could sleep now,” Deena said. “Not when there’s a chance we can put our heads together with this new information and maybe figure out what Chrissy had to do with our investigation—if anything.”
As soon as the coffee finished brewing, Vince grabbed a tray then set the pot in the middle, along with sugar, creamer, and three empty mugs. The girls followed him to a table and waited until he poured each of them a cup.
After they’d all taken a few sips to get the caffeine rolling, he started. “Deena told me a little about your case back in Vineyard, Maddy. I need to know all you can remember about Haley’s sister so that I can get a feel for how it may affect what’s happening here.” He waited for that to sink in before he continued, “First off, Deena said you met Christina Rockford personally. Is that right?”
Maddy blew on the cup and took a small sip before responding. “Yes. Did Deena also tell you about Joey Agostinelli and the Mafia?”
“She did, and I vaguely remember when that all played out a few years ago. Didn’t Agostinelli turn state’s evidence against some big Mafia boss out of New Jersey?”
“Yes, Nicky Cavicchia. Agostinelli also absconded with a reported ten million in cash and a two million-dollar, one-of-a-kind necklace that Cavicchia had specifically designed for his trophy wife.”
“No wonder the mob was looking for him,” Vince said, refilling Deena’s cup and smiling at her before turning back to Maddy. “But Deena said the Mob didn’t kill him.”
Maddy shook her head. “It was a drug dealer from Dallas with connections to a Mexican cartel. And as it turned out, he was only looking for a little black book with all his contacts in it. Seems he had a lot of important people in that book who were either his customers or were in his back pocket for favors. He killed to protect their anonymity.”
“And Chrissy Rockford was Agostinelli’s girlfriend, right?”
“Yes. Lainey, Tessa, and I visited her right after —”
“Tessa?”
Maddy looked at Deena for help. “I mentioned that Kate sometimes calls me that,” Deena lied, figuring he had remembered that lie from earlier. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering why her sister’s ghost hadn’t been around lately.
He nodded. “I forgot. So, you were there, too, Deena?”
“Yes.” She crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping the Big Guy wasn’t keeping a count of the lies.
“Anyway, while we were at Chrissy’s, we found some photos of her giving oral sex to several different men, all of whom looked like they were drugged and unconscious. We figured she and Agostinelli had been setting up and blackmailing businessmen who came into town and hung out at the hotel bars.”
Yeah, any guy that can be on the receiving end of a blow job and not squirm all over the bed is either unconscious or dead. Tessa pulled out the empty chair and sat down next to Maddy.
Deena gave her a slight nod to acknowledge her, then focused back on Vince.
“It amazes me that you were accused of the murder when there were so many others with strong motives,” Vince commented.
“That’s true, but Eduardo Montero, the drug dealer behind Agostinelli death, planned it perfectly so that I would take the fall. He even had his girlfriend don a black wig and a police uniform to look like me when she fired the bullet into Agostinelli. Of course, that was all caught on camera and was hard to disprove that it wasn’t me.”
“So how did this Agostinelli guy get his hands on Montero’s notebook? Was the drug dealer being blackmailed, too?”
“Not him. His older brother who apparently stole the notebook to use as payment to keep Agostinelli quiet,” Deena said. “He was separated from his wife at the time, and according to his mother, would have done anything to get back with her. My guess is that he had no idea his brother would be so angry at him for stealing it that he’d also kill him in the process.”
“Killing your own brother—that’s cold. So did they ever find the necklace and the money?” Vince asked, before swallowing the last of his coffee and setting his mug back on the tray.
“They found the necklace, but not the money.” Maddy said. “Since the Mafia would never admit to how much money was stolen in the first place, we could never be sure, but Agostinelli had been living high on the hog while he was in protective custody. We figured he’d probably blown most of it. Our investigation turned up evidence that the guy was a regular at Prairie Land Downs, and from all accounts, wasn’t too good at picking horses.”
I’m not surprised, Tessa commented. He was one of those guys who had an apology from the condom factory for his birth certificate.
Deena turned away so Vince wouldn’t see her face and wondered where Tessa came up with all her wisecracks.
“I’m thinking that maybe Chrissy may have used her share of the money—either the Mafia cash or what she’d earned in the sex scam operation—to buy the hunting lodge.” Vince pushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead.
Maddy looked skeptical. “That makes sense except that Chrissy was so not an outdoorsy kind of girl. Remember that Haley said her sister was an animal lover, always bringing home strays. That’s why I can’t see her running a business that encouraged the killing of animals. Besides, she was your typical blonde with a perfect figure, perfect nails, sexy clothes—a perfect ten.”
“I remember you describing the house where she lived nowhere near perfect, remember?” Deena prompted.
Maddy too another sip of the coffee. “That’s true. It was pretty crappy for a girl with all that money. And she definitely seemed more like the kind of girl who enjoyed the finer things in life and would do anything to get them, including giving head to unconscious guys. So why did she use her money to buy a hunting lodge out in the middle of nowhere and live in a dump in Vineyard?”
“That’s the question of the hour,” Vince said.
“Maybe she looked at the lodge from a different perspective,” Deena interjected.
“Like what?” Maddy asked.
“Oh, I don't know. Maybe she thought it was the perfect hide-out if the cops were ever on their trail.”
Good observation, Deena, Tessa said with a twinkle in her eye. It’s all a matter of perspective. The sinking of the Titanic could be considered a miracle to all the lobsters in the ship’s kitchen.
“Exactly!” Deena covered her mouth when she realized she’d just responded to something Tessa had said. “I mean that’s exactly why Chrissy could have invested in the lodge.”
Before either Maddy or Vince could respond, the door opened, and Sergio and Paulina strolled in. Both their faces registered surprise at seeing the three of them in the dining room.
“We’re working on the case,” Vince explained when they walked over to the table. “Hope you don’t mind that we made some beverages while we were here.”
“No problem,” Sergio said before he frowned. “It’s only six-fifteen now. How long have you been up?”
“A couple of hours,” Deena said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll stay out of your way over in the corner, so we can continue. We may be close to a breakthrough and want to keep at it for a while longer.”
“You’re fine where you are,” Paulina said. “Hopefully, you’ll be able to explain to all of us what happened here Friday night.”
“Hope so,” Maddy said.
“Good. We’re making a baked French toast casserole for breakfast. It should be ready in about an hour, and I’ll bring everyone a plate with more coffee,” Paulina said before turning and walking into the kitchen.
“That would be great. Thanks.” Deena glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Geez! Time flies when you’re having fun. At some point today, we’ll probably all need to catch a nap, or we’ll be walking around like zombies all day. For now, though, let’s keep going. After we eat, we can take a short break, then get back at it before lunch.”
“Okay, where were we?” Vince looked at Maddy.
“We’ve established that the Chrissy Rockford who was Agostinelli’s girlfriend and partner in crime and Haley’s sister, Christina Rockford who left Haley the hunting lodge after she was murdered are probably one and the same person. Now all we need to do is figure out is why—or if—that’s important.” Maddy threw her hands in the air. “What I wouldn’t give for my iPhone and Wi-Fi right now.”
“Me too,” Deena said. “The first call I’d make would be to Colt to tell him to get his butt up here as fast as he could.”
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Vince said. “And while we’re wishing for things, having a weapon would be nice, too.”
The light-hearted moment lasted for a moment before the mood got serious again, and Deena asked, “Are you two going back into the woods to look for Gary Wharton today?”
Maddy and Vince exchanged glances before Mad
dy shook her head. “There’s really no reason to do that. Even if we found him, all we could do would be to bring him back here and lock him in his room until the Oklahoma police arrive. Besides, the thought of going back into that heavy brush again in the heat of the day doesn’t excite me much, especially if Wharton has a weapon and we don’t.”
“Good point,” Deena said. “Let the cops find him and bring…” She stopped talking and tilted her head to the door. “Do I hear a car engine?”
Both Maddy and Vince turned in that direction. Then Vince jumped up from his chair and raced out of the dining room with the Garcia sisters right behind him. The closer they got to the front door, the more convinced Deena was that it was indeed a car approaching, and she couldn’t stop the bubble of hope that help was finally on the way.
Just as they filed out the front door, a police car pulled up, and she squealed with excitement.
Vince stopped suddenly and put his arm out to keep Maddy and Deena from running to the car marked Leisure Police Sheriff on the side.
“Let him get out,” he cautioned.
Anxiously, they waited until a stocky man in uniform emerged from the driver side and greeted them. “Any of you Madelyn Castillo?”
Maddy stepped forward. “I am. What do you want?”
Deena moved to stand beside her sister. Why would this forty-ish, moderately overweight cop be looking for Maddy? It had to be something about one of their family members back in Vineyard, and it couldn’t be good if he traveled all the way out here on a Sunday morning. All thoughts of Chrissy Rockford and Brent Kershaw were pushed to the back of her mind as she reached for Maddy’s hand and waited for the cop to deliver the bad news.
“I got a call from Sheriff Winslow,” the man started after walking close to them and focusing on Maddy. “He tried to get a hold of you all day yesterday and asked—”
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