by Gen Griffin
“Someone knew her skull was in your car,” Sully told him. “And they also knew you would be driving through town yesterday. That strikes me as being a bit suspicious.”
“Addison-.”
“In a world where there is no Addison, who would have done this to you?”
“I don't know,” Kerry admitted reluctantly. “If Addison didn't do this then I don't know who did.”
Sully decided it was time to play his last card. He reached into the breast pocket of his uniform bag and pulled out the Ziploc baggie that held the diamond ring Lora had found in Beverly Jones's mouth. Her husband hadn't recognized and said it hadn't been a personal belonging of Beverly's. That meant it was likely tied to the crime itself. Sully dropped the baggie in front of Kerry. “Have you ever seen this ring before?”
Kerry blanched and then turned a sickly shade of green. He stared at the baggie without picking it up. The ring was clearly visible through the plastic.
“Have you ever seen that ring before?”
Kerry looked at Sully with an expression of total horror on his face. “Where did you get that?”
“It was found in Beverly Jones's mouth. Want to tell me about it?” Sully did his best to keep his face completely expressionless. It was obvious Kerry recognized the giant diamond ring.
“I can't... I don't...”
“Kerry, talk to me.”
“Addison and David did this.”
“No, I don't think-.”
“You don't understand.”
“Why don't you explain the situation to me,” Sully suggested.
“I can't.” Kerry looked like he was about to throw up.
“Kerry, we're talking about a murder. An innocent woman is dead. I need to know anything you can tell me.”
Kerry took a deep breath. “Addison and David are responsible for putting the head in my trunk and the break-in at the jail last night.”
“Help me prove it,” Sully said. “Give me some evidence.”
“I can't.”
“You've seen this ring before?”
Kerry opened his mouth and then appeared to choke on his tongue. “I...I...I just... I can't. No.”
“No?”
“I've never seen that ring before.” Kerry's cheeks were flushed and he was fidgeting nervously with the hem of his sleeve. He started to stand up. “Are we done now?”
“Not yet.” Sully was nowhere near ready to release Kerry. He'd finally gotten a real reaction out of the other man. Kerry knew something about that diamond. The small man had started to sweat even though the temperature in the office was a very comfortable seventy two degrees. “You're a bad liar, Kerry.”
“I'm not...I'm not lying.”
Sully shot him a skeptical look, but decided to let Kerry get away with thinking he'd gotten him to drop the issue. “Fine. I believe you. Tell me about the break-in last night.”
Kerry didn't look as relieved as Sully had expected him to. “Addison was trying to scare me.”
“Frank says Addison has an alibi.”
“Addison's alibi is worthless. He could get half a dozen people to swear he was at Leon's last night just by asking them to do him a favor. People lie.”
Sully considered Kerry for a long moment. “Frank said you were babbling about jewelry last night when you gave your original statement.”
Kerry met Sully's eyes for only the second time during the entire conversation. “I want my lawyer.”
“You don't have a lawyer,” Sully reminded him.
“Doesn't matter. I'm not talking to you.”
Sully shrugged his shoulders at Kerry. “I'd say it's your funeral if this goes bad, but didn't you already have one this year?”
Kerry involuntarily let out a short hiss. “I was kidnapped and buried alive.”
“At a funeral,” Sully pointed out.
“At a funeral,” Kerry admitted.
“Talk to me, Kerry. Please. I can't help you, or Beverly Jones, if you won't talk to me.”
“I don't have anything to tell you,” Kerry lied.
Chapter 35
Addison sat on the floor of his apartment and stared down at the files that he'd spread out across his living room. It had taken him weeks to track down the bits and pieces of paper in front of him and he still couldn't really make heads or tails out of what he'd found.
David didn't know where his father and Grover had stolen a million dollars worth of jewelry from. He hadn't gone looking for answers, even after the necklace that had come spilling out of Trish's box spring matched the bracelet that had been found with his mother's corpse. David had called it a blessing in disguise when Curtis broke into the house and stolen the jewelry.
Addy picked up the pawn ticket they'd found in Kerry's house. It was the only document, other than his own chicken-scratch notes, that wasn't at least 30 years old. Addison still didn't know why Kerry, stickler for the law that he was, would have knowingly pawned stolen items. Cal seemed to think that Kerry had been Curtis's willing accomplice, but Addison had his own doubts. Kerry had never been much for taking the easy route, even when it would have saved him a significant amount of personal distress.
Addison figured that Kerry had been blackmailed, or outright threatened, into cooperating with Curtis's plans to kill Trish. What he couldn't figure out was how the stolen jewelry tied into the head that Sully had found in Kerry's trunk or the break-in at the jail. He had, however, figured out how the victim had been tied to the jewelry.
Taking a deep breath, Addison smoothed out the folded photocopy of the papers he'd borrowed off of Sully's desk earlier. The Silver City Lab had gotten a positive DNA match between the head Sully had found in Kerry's trunk and a missing person's case out of Rockdale. The head that was currently being reunited with it's arm in the Silver City morgue belonged to a woman named Beverly Jones.
Beverly Jones was the name of the pawn broker who had purchased the twice-stolen jewelry from Kerry.
Addison was pretty fucking sure it wasn't a coincidence.
Beverly Jones had been the first legal owner of the jewelry in more than a quarter of a century. Addy had a generalized idea of how the pawn process worked. Beverly Jones had purchased the jewelry in good faith, and for quite a bit of nice, hard-to-trace cash, from Kerry. She'd then cataloged every individual piece for her store and logged them into her official inventory.
Addison didn't know precisely how whoever was looking for the jewelry had learned that Beverly had purchased it. His best guess was that she'd probably registered the purchases in an official database that had been created to help cut down on the number of stolen items that got pawned. Lot of good that good deed had done her.
He didn't need to be a genius, or even a particularly good cop, to figure out that someone had gone to Silver City Highway Pawn looking for the jewelry. What he couldn't figure out was why this nightmare hadn't stopped right then and there. Beverly Jones had the jewelry and, even if she had fought her attacker, the discovery of her decapitated head in Kerry's trunk made it pretty clear she had lost. Why the hell was her attacker still looking for the jewelry?
Why had he gone to the trouble of tracking the jewelry all the way back to Possum Creek if he already had the jewelry Kerry had sold to Beverly?
Unless maybe Kerry hadn't sold all the jewelry. The very dim light bulb in Addison's mind suddenly clicked on. He frowned down at the old newspaper clippings and police reports that he'd been gathering up for the last two months. He'd spent entirely too much of his medical leave time going through decades of paperwork. Even knowing that it might be a total waste of time, collecting every story or report that featured jewelry that roughly matched the items Grover and Ricky had stolen had kept Addison from going completely insane while he'd been recovering from getting shot.
Now, as he sat and took in everything he'd gathered, even knowing that some of it was utterly useless, he realized that Kerry had never had all the jewelry. David had never found all the jewelry. He'd only found Grov
er's half of the jewelry plus one horrible bracelet that had been on Maureen Breedlove's wrist when she'd died.
Addy wasn't exactly known for making brilliant deductions, but it seemed fairly obvious that the killer had found the pawn ticket and made the assumption that Kerry still had whatever horrible little trinket that he thought was worth killing for. Now he was coming after the whiny deputy.
Addison massaged his own temples tiredly as his cell phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered it, more out of habit than intention.
“Hello?”
“Where the heck are you?” His sister's voice crackled through the line and she sounded slightly panicked.
“My apartment. Why?”
“You're at your house?” Gracie asked in obvious disbelief. “It's almost six o'clock. I'm at the church. You're supposed to be here to practice walking me down the aisle.”
“Oh shit. I'm sorry. I lost track of time.” Addy was already standing up and heading for the bedroom to change outfits. The ragged jeans and t-shirt he'd been wearing all day wouldn't work for Gracie's high class rehearsal dinner.
“Did you forget about me?” Gracie sounded like she was near tears.
“No, I didn't.” Addison stripped down and tossed his clothes at the hamper. They missed and slid down onto the floor as he yanked a lime green button down shirt out of his closet and pulled it on. He really hadn't forgotten about Gracie. He'd just gotten preoccupied and lost track of time.
“Look, I know that whatever you and Mak do on your own time is your business, but I really thought my wedding was more important to you than getting laid.”
“I'm not-.”
“Don't lie to me,” Gracie said. “Just get here as soon as you can, please. Someone's taken my wedding dress and replaced it with a dress from a nightmare. Please, Addy. Drive fast.”
“Fuck,” Addy said. “Give me five minutes.”
Chapter 36
The wide satin skirt was the color of a rotting eggplant and covered in what appeared to be black sprinkles. Or rat turds. Did rat turds sparkle under harsh lighting? Probably. Maybe if the rat in question had been eating glitter.
“What the heck?” Trish leaned over Gracie's shoulder and fingered the corset-style bodice. It was black and lacy, which might have been okay except for the dress in question was supposed to be pearl white and tastefully sexy. Angsty teenage Gothic hooker was not the look Gracie was going for on her wedding day.
“This isn't my dress,” Gracie repeated for the eighth or ninth time as she took in the skintight purple lace that stretched from the top of the high choker-style neckline and down both sleeves. Each sleeve appeared to end in a pointy spiderweb design that reminded Gracie of the half-mitten, half-glove things her Granny Pearl had made her wear during childhood winters. The same rat turd sparkles that were covering the hideous skirt were also glued to the sleeves of the Gothic ballgown.
“It says it is,” said Makinsley, who had apparently been invited to the rehearsal dinner by Addison without Gracie's knowledge. Mak had shown up shortly after Gracie had called her brother. Addison had yet to show up. Gracie absently found herself wondering why the two of them hadn't ridden together.
Mak poked a piece of paper that had been pinned to the top of the garment bag. “See. It has your name on it.”
“I don't care what the tag says.” Gracie scowled at the eggplant monstrosity. “Someone has screwed up massively. This is not my wedding dress. Do I look like a wannabe corpse bride to you?”
“Is this the first time you've look at the dress since you picked it up from the bridal boutique?” Mak looked from Gracie to the eggplant dress and then back to Gracie.
“No, it's not.” Trish spoke up before Gracie could make the situation worse. “We had our final fittings on Monday. The dress was fine Monday afternoon when we put it back in the bag.”
“Well, it's not fine now,” Mak pointed out.
“I can see that,” Gracie snapped.
“Calm down,” Trish said. She looked a little pale as she reached for one of the two other garment bags that Katie and Gracie had brought to the church from Cal's parents house. She unzipped the bag and blanched. “Ah.... shit.”
“Don't tell me someone screwed up the bridesmaids dresses too?” Gracie didn't really want to look inside the bag.
Trish pursed her lips as she pulled out a flurry of gray and purple tulle ruffles. She held the dress up in front of her. The top of the strapless bodice was rimmed with huge, fake purple gemstones and rouched down the left side before billowing out into a very short tutu. “It looks a lot like the dance costume I wore in my third grade recital,” Trish mused.
“It's hideous,” Gracie said. “And wrong.”
Trish nodded and set it back in its bag. “I'm almost scared to open this third bag.”
“Do it fast,” Gracie suggested. “Like pulling off a band-aid.”
“You know it's probably just as ugly as the first two, right?”
“I think Morticia Addams wants her dresses back,” Mak chimed in, not helpfully.
“Are you kidding?” Trish unzipped the third bag to reveal a second hideous bridesmaid dress, this one significantly larger than the previous one. “Morticia Addams was sexy. These dresses are anything but.”
Gracie took a deep breath and shook her head. “We can't wear any of these. They're awful.”
“We're not going to.” Trish zipped the second dress back into it's bag.
Gracie opened her mouth to answer but stopped as a frowning Loretta Walker came into the prayer room with Katie on her heels. Katie had gone to find Miss Loretta as soon as they'd discovered that Gracie's dress had someone been stolen and replaced with a horrifically ugly impostor.
“What's happened to Gracie's dress?” Loretta asked.
“It's gone,” Gracie said. “I unzipped the garment bag because Katie wanted to see whether the crystals on the bodice were glued on or stitched and...” Gracie took a deep breath and steeled herself. She'd dealt with far worse disasters than a missing dress. She could handle this.
“And?”
“My dress is gone. Someone must have taken it,” Gracie said. “The bridesmaids dresses are gone, too.”
“Oh sweet Jesus.” Cal's mother walked over to the wedding dress that was now hanging from the dress rack in the center of the room. “That is one ugly gown.”
“Isn't it though?” Trish wrinkled her nose as she held up the bridesmaids dress. “Our bridesmaids dresses were peach with gold accents. The wedding dress was...” Trish frowned, clearly struggling to remember which dress Gracie had chosen.
“White,” Gracie commented. “For starters. It was white with lots of pearls and it was pretty. I can't get married in an ugly purple dress. I just can't.”
“You're not going to,” Miss Loretta said as she took a deep breath. Her jaw was set in a calm, firm line.
“What are we going to do?”
“You're going to have to wear something off the rack,” Miss Loretta said. She glanced down at the diamond trimmed ladies Rolex on her wrist. “It's six o'clock now. Even if you drive like hell for Beauton, I'm fairly sure everywhere that sells formal dresses would be closed by the time you go there. I can call Sue Ann down at the boutique and see if she'll open her pageant warehouse up for you girls tonight. I'm sure y'all will be able to find something to wear. Sue Ann keeps a lot of inventory on hand.”
“We're going to have to get new dresses? Now?” Katie's eyes were wide. “The wedding is tomorrow.”
“I'm very much aware of when the wedding is,” Loretta said. She pursed her lips unhappily. “I just don't see any other options. Either you girls can find new dresses, or we can try to hunt down the person who has been sabotaging Gracie and Cal's wedding, conduct an entire police investigation that will conclude with our mystery saboteur getting arrested and hope that Frank Chasson can tell a wedding dress from a bed sheet when he goes in to serve the warrant and collect the evidence.” Loretta cast a
sideways look at the girls as Addison came walking into the dressing room with his dress shirt halfway buttoned and hanging crookedly off his broad shoulders. “I think it will be...simpler... to buy new dresses. Even at this late hour.”
“She's right,” Trish said. “We've been trying to figure out the identity of the person who has been sabotaging your wedding since last night. We haven't made any progress and I don't know that we're going to. We need to focus on finding new dresses.”
“Let Addison worry about trying to figure out who took your dresses,” Miss Loretta suggested. “Those gowns were being stored in my house, which means that someone had to break in to steal them. I need to go back to the house and make sure nothing else was stolen.”
“Oh god,” Gracie said with a gulp. “I didn't even think about what else might have been taken.”
“I'm sorry, but I'm still stuck on the part where someone stole your wedding dress and replaced it?” Addison scratched his head and eyed the purple gown with annoyance.
“Yes, and you'll need to take an official report,” Miss Loretta said to him. “We're going to be pressing charges. Someone is going to jail for this.”
“Great. Let me go outside and get the paperwork,” Addison said. He cast one more look around the room. “Are we still doing the whole rehearsal thing?”
Miss Loretta looked over at Gracie. “Do you still want to rehearse or are we more worried about having dresses?”
“Dresses,” Trish said automatically.
“Trish is right,” Gracie said with a nod. “I can't not have a wedding a dress. Surely we can all figure out how to walk down an aisle, right? I mean, practice would be nice, but we're not completely stupid. Walk from the back of the church to the front of the church, say our vows and kiss. That's pretty much it, right?”
“More or less.” Miss Loretta looked skeptical but she wasn't arguing. “I can write out a cheat sheet for you.”
“Good,” Gracie said. “I guess it's settled then. We're going dress shopping.”
“What do you want to do about the catered dinner we're supposed to be having in less than two hours?” Mak asked.
