“I guess you’re right.” He regarded me for a moment. “Something up with you? You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep. Stafford was waiting for me when I got to my apartment last night.”
His expression went dark. “He what? What did he want?”
“He said he wanted to apologize. Evidently he thought it would be a good idea to let himself in and make himself at home. It didn’t go well for him, as you can imagine.”
I could tell by the way Ryder’s fists were clenched on top of the counter and by the set of his jaw that he was fighting to control his hot temper. He muttered, “I knew I should have walked you to your door.”
“Don’t try to blame yourself for it. I’m a big girl who can take care of herself. I yelled a little and let him say his piece, then I made sure to get my key back from him.”
“You’re still getting the locks changed.”
I shrugged. “It’s kind of a nonissue since he’s not going to be a free man for much longer.”
The moment those words were out of my mouth, the pit of my stomach started to ache. I didn’t want Stafford to go to jail. I didn’t want to think he was capable of what he’d done. I wanted to keep the image of the good cop who never gave up on a cold case and who truly cared about each missing person he searched for. Unfortunately, that guy was too good to be true.
Ryder said quietly, “For what it’s worth, he’s been really good about cooperating with the MNPD. That’ll go a long way come trial time.”
Staring down at the counter, I asked, “Will I have to…testify against him?”
“Hey, don’t worry about that right now. You may have to testify about some things regarding the case, but not likely against him specifically. I don’t want you losing any more sleep over him.”
I nodded and looked up at his concerned face. I needed to quit wallowing in my own drama, so I changed the subject. “So do you want your usual?”
“The reuben? Yeah. But only if you’ll take a break and join me for lunch outside. I think some fresh air will do you good.”
I smiled, more convinced than ever that the two of us being friends was one of the best ideas I’d ever had.
Chapter 33
After our lunch, Ryder stood to leave, but turned back to me. “Oh, I almost forgot. You’re still batting around the idea that Josie Prescott’s death was a murder, right?”
“Yes,” replied, wondering where he was going with this.
He fidgeted with his keys. “Did you happen to run background on her during the course of your investigation?”
I frowned. “I didn’t even think about it. Rookie mistake, huh?”
I admittedly hadn’t been giving Josie’s investigation my best effort, which was probably why after well over a week we still had absolutely nothing. Between the Wonder-Gen case, everything that was going on in my personal life, and keeping Java Jive running, it was at the bottom of my to-do list.
Shrugging, he said, “Well, you didn’t hear this from me, but doing that check could make a difference as to how much more of your time you decide to spend on the case.” He held up his hands. “I’m not trying to pry into your business, but I might have snuck a look at the file to see what you were up against. Let’s just say a background check would be worth your time.”
I chuckled. “Wow. Being friends with the cops certainly has its perks. Thanks.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
He turned again to leave, but I caught his arm. “Be safe tonight, please.”
Ryder smiled down at me. “I will.”
—
“Misdemeanor drug possession and a DUI, Pete,” I griped, throwing a file folder down in front of him on the desk in the Java Jive office. “Perfect little Josie was a user. We got played, and all our work was for nothing!”
Frowning, Pete took out the sheet with the background check I’d run on Josie. “This can’t be right. Shane said—”
“Shane lied.”
He gave me a reproachful glance. “These incidents occurred years ago, Jules. Maybe…maybe she’d been a drug user when she was younger and had since got her act together. She tried to help her brother get clean, right? But then he OD’ed? Maybe she quit using back then and never touched the stuff again. Shane may not have even known about this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care. I’m out. This casts enough doubt for me to believe that it wasn’t murder. I say we cut our losses.”
Pete set his jaw. “And what do we tell Shane? ‘Sorry, buddy. Once a user, always a user. Tough crap about your fiancée.’ Are you willing to be that cold?”
“Pete, there was a reason the cops didn’t launch a murder investigation for Josie’s death.” I picked up the background check and shook it at him. “This is the reason, and it’s a solid one. Besides, I for one am tired of wasting time and making no progress whatsoever.”
“Well, lucky for you, you didn’t waste much of your precious time on it.”
I crossed my arms. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He got up from the desk. “You could have cared less about this case from the beginning.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I still didn’t enjoy being called out on it. I grumbled, “Okay, so maybe I could have tried a little harder.”
“Then when you started hanging out with—”
I stopped him there. “Whoa. This isn’t about the case anymore, is it? This is about Ryder and me.”
“He’s bad for you.”
“We’re just friends. There’s nothing more going on between him and me than there is with you and me.”
Pete’s eyes flashed. “If you want to be a quitter, then fine. But I’m not going to abandon Shane.” He stormed out of the office, leaving me worrying he would go off and do something stupid on his own.
—
Not much of a shocker, but Shane stared daggers at me all afternoon. He must have talked to Pete. By the end of the dinner rush, I’d had enough, so I went home. A little downtime would do me a world of good.
I had just sat down on my couch and cracked open a beer when I got a FaceTime request from Pete. He was mad at me, so I was surprised he’d called so soon, but I wasn’t mad at him, so I picked up immediately.
“Hey,” I said warily, hoping he wasn’t using FaceTime versus texting so he could rant better at me.
Pete’s face appeared on the screen, his expression troubled. “Look, I know I was kind of an ass earlier…but could you find it in your heart to help your pal out, here?”
I sat up straight. “What’s wrong?”
He trained his phone’s camera on a man sprawled out on the floor at his feet, moaning something I couldn’t clearly hear. It was Xander Leonidas. “Everyone’s favorite playboy decided to hit some oxy and wash it down with scotch.” He moved the phone to show me a small bottle of pills and a glass of brown liquor sitting on a desk in a fancy office. “He’s begging me to take him to rehab. I need help dragging his dumb ass out of the building and to my car. He can walk, but not without a lot of help.”
I grabbed my keys and headed out the door. “I’m on my way.”
“Thanks, Jules. We’re at the Leonidas office downtown. Fourteenth floor.” So Pete had decided to go through with searching the office without me after all.
A thought came to me as I started my car. “Hey, while he’s uninhibited, see if he knows who drugged us and gave us a free ride to Memphis.” I set my phone aside and listened in on Pete’s conversation with Xander as I drove downtown.
“Hey, Xander. Wakey-wakey,” Pete said.
Xander groaned. “What?”
“I’ve got someone coming to help me get you to rehab, but you need to answer a couple of questions for me first. Do you know of anyone who’d have wanted to drug me and my redheaded model friend and put us in a truck headed for Memphis the night of the expo? We think we were purposely served some champagne that had been tampered with.”
Xander asked faintly, “Is this for real or is my hig
h getting bad?”
“It actually happened to us.”
“No clue.”
Pete said, “Okay, then. Why are you here getting high when you should be at your mom’s birthday party?”
“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been cut off from my money, and my best friend is dead.”
“Wait. You mean Josie? I thought you were trying to get her in the sack or something.”
Xander said, “No, it wasn’t like that, even though some people insisted on thinking so. Josie helped me get clean, and I’ve been clean for six months. She was my guardian angel and my biggest cheerleader. I can’t do it without her…especially considering what she did to herself. There’s no hope for me.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pete said, incredulity dripping from his voice. “You say you were friends with Josie, but you retaliated against her a while back because she wouldn’t sleep with you. Her fiancé said you took away her assistant and double-booked her for parties. That’s not something you’d do for someone who was your so-called savior.”
“That was nearly a year ago. I was a total asshole to her, but she was never anything but kind to me. When I asked her why she didn’t fight back or get angry, she said it wasn’t her job to judge people. That maybe I was going through something rough and was lashing out.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “After that, we struck up a wonderful friendship. She told me about how her brother had died of an overdose, and how she used to use but had been clean for years. She also mentioned that she noticed some similarities between him and me and even offered to help me stop using. Josie was my closest and only real friend. Without her, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He began to sob quietly.
Pete gave Xander a few minutes to calm down, then asked, “Do you know of anyone who’d have wanted to kill Josie? If it makes you feel any better, there are a lot of people who don’t think her death was a self-inflicted overdose.”
Xander breathed, “You think someone murdered sweet Josie?”
Pete wouldn’t let this go. I kept my opinion to myself and kept listening while I searched for a parking spot.
Pete said, “I do. What about Kacey Albright? She doesn’t seem to have liked Josie very much.”
“No, not at all. She was always making Josie’s life a living hell anytime she got the chance. I tried to block as much of it as I could, but there was only so much I could do. She’s a horrible human being, but I don’t know if she’s a murderer.”
My phone buzzed, and it was Ryder sending me a text. I cut in. “Pete, I’m here. I’m going to sign off now. Be up in a sec.”
“Thanks again, Jules,” Pete said, his apologetic face taking up the whole screen.
“Anytime.”
I signed off and read Ryder’s text as I headed across the parking lot. The more I thought about it, the more worried I got about your abduction. I managed to get security at the Omni to show me the tapes from that night. Recognize this guy? A photo popped up on my screen. It was grainy, like he’d taken a photo of a computer screen, but there was no mistaking the man pulling two laundry carts into an elevator. Rex.
I nearly dropped my phone. Rex was the one who drugged us and threw us in a truck? But why? We didn’t do anything to him. In fact, he’d seemed to be more on our side than any of the Leonidas staff besides Alexa. I copied the text and sent it to Pete along with the picture, adding Why in the hell would Rex of all people have wanted to kidnap us?
Shaking my head to clear it, I called Ryder. When he answered, I said, “Hey, that’s Rex Hudson, a Leonidas employee who was a friend of Josie’s. He seems to be a pretty cool guy. I don’t get why he would have been the one to drug us.” I entered the building, which was emptying fast of tired-looking workers ready for a weekend, and managed to grab an empty elevator going up.
Ryder said, “If I had to make a guess, I’d say he thought you were getting too close to something. Maybe there’s more going on here. Maybe the murder angle isn’t so out of the question after all.”
“Wait. Because you told me to look at Josie’s background earlier today, I decided to drop the case based on her past drug use. Now are you trying to say I shouldn’t drop it?” I asked incredulously.
He sighed. “I don’t know. But what I do know is that Rex Hudson was sending a message, Juliet, loud and clear. Anyone else besides you would have been scared out of her mind and run away screaming. Whatever you decide to do, just be careful.”
“Yeah, yeah. So does your video show him throwing Pete and me in the laundry carts?”
“Unfortunately, no. There’s video of him moving the two carts from the second floor to the loading dock and into a box truck. But there’s no footage of you and Pete being put in those carts, so technically there’s no evidence those were the carts you were in. But I think we all know what happened.”
I blew out a breath as the elevator surged up toward the fourteenth floor. “Okay, now what?”
“Where are you?”
“At the Leonidas office. Pete was here poking around and found Xander wasted, begging to go to rehab. He needed help, so he called me.”
Ryder said, “Is this Rex guy there?”
“Shouldn’t be. All the employees are supposed to be at Mama Leonidas’s birthday party tonight.”
“Good. But if you happen to run into him, don’t engage him. He’s dangerous, and he knows you’ve been gunning for him.”
“He doesn’t know I was gunning for him specifically.”
“Juliet.” Ryder’s voice seemed a bit perturbed. I imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose like he always used to when I was being difficult, which made me smile.
“I know. I’m kidding.”
As I got out of the elevator and turned down a deserted hallway, I heard voices faintly. One of them was Pete’s, although I couldn’t make out what he was saying with Ryder’s voice in my ear. The voices sounded like they were coming from inside a closed a door that said XANDER LEONIDAS on it.
Ryder said, “Okay. So I don’t need to worry about you tonight, right? You’re taking that Leonidas loser to rehab and then going home?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy listening to Xander whine, “Rex, don’t kill us, please!” and Pete say, “Put the gun down, and we’ll talk this out.”
“Juliet?” Ryder asked. “Did I lose you?”
My heart thudding in my chest, I silently slipped back down the hallway so no one inside Xander’s office could hear me speaking. Tears flowing down my cheeks, I choked out, “Come quick. Rex has Pete. And Xander. He has a gun, and I think he’s going to hurt them.”
“You get the hell out of there. Now. Text me the address. I’m on my way with backup. Juliet, do not try to be a hero. Can I trust you not to do anything stupid?”
“I…I won’t, unless—”
He cut me off. “No. Promise me.” I could hear him breathing heavily, as if he was running.
I let out a sob. “Okay.”
Ending the call, I quickly texted him the address and silenced my phone. After taking a moment to get myself under control, I crept back down the hall toward Xander’s office. I knew I’d promised not to do anything stupid, but I hadn’t promised not to monitor what was going on. I could easily surveil this situation without being seen. It would only take minutes for the police to get here, but a lot could happen in that time.
Chapter 34
I got down on my hands and knees and positioned my phone’s camera in the crack between the bottom of the door and the hardwood floor so I could sneak a peek into the room. Upon shifting the position of the camera, I found Pete and Xander down on the floor, their hands bound behind them with what looked like some kind of furry handcuffs. Rex stood over them, pointing a gun at them.
My whole body turned to ice at the sight of it, but I willed myself to keep calm. There was nothing I could do to save them if Rex started firing. However, I could make a distraction if necessary and maybe buy them some time if it came to that. Although that act would probab
ly fall into the “being a hero/stupid” category, which was something I promised I wouldn’t do. I began recording their exchange, my hands shaking so much that the video would undoubtedly be blurry.
Rex said, “You still haven’t told me how much you know. What is it you think you have on me?”
Xander said, “Well, for one thing, Rex, we know you’re not gay.”
Pete said, “Yeah. What’s up with that? Are you one of those guys who pretends to be gay to get women into bed? That’s not cool.”
Angered, Rex kicked Xander, who was closer to him, in the ribs, making Xander cry out. I bit down hard on my tongue to keep from making any noise. “So what? That means nothing. Try being a hetero male at the bottom of the food chain in the party industry. You don’t get the good jobs because women assume you’re a Neanderthal and therefore have horrible taste. And I won’t say it doesn’t help me get laid.”
Pete said, “See? I called it.”
“Okay, funny guy. If you know so much, prove it. What do you think you have on me?”
“You were secretly in love with Josie, so you killed her. Probably because you couldn’t have her.”
Rex’s face got dark. “Do you have proof of that?”
Pete said, “Well, since you’re holding us at gunpoint and demanding we spill our suspicions about you, I’m pretty sure you’re guilty of something.”
“Touché, but it’s your word against mine about our little conversation here.”
Wincing, Xander said, “My bruised ribs will definitely speak volumes.”
“Details. So you have no proof other than the fact that I’m not gay and you assume I had feelings for Josie.”
Pete ignored him and kept going. “Maybe this was about moving up in the company instead. I talked to Alexa earlier. She went back over the records from the Brock Flint release party. Josie ordered plenty of food and drinks for that night. Then it seems that you called the caterer and changed the order. I’m betting Josie didn’t instruct you to do that. Alexa also talked to Candace, who said you were the one who encouraged Josie to make it a ‘classy party’ and not hire the party babes and put up the gaudy decorations like Flint wanted.”
Brew or Die Page 29
