by Libby Kirsch
Janet crossed her arms but didn’t answer.
“I’m uh . . . I’m late for work, but watch out, Janet. You’re not a cop, so don’t act like one.” He gave her a final stern look before heading for the checkout stand.
She waited until he was out of the store before she moved. As she stared at the shelf of bandages, she honed in on a recurring theme for Ike. How did he get home from his most recent accident? Why had Ike been able to continually skirt the law when he was alive? Was his friend still on the force?
Chapter Sixteen
“Late for work?” Janet stared at O’Dell twenty minutes later. They stood toe-to-toe in her kitchen and she was furious.
“Yeah,” he answered, not taking his eyes off his notebook. “My guys got here fifteen minutes ago.”
“What exactly is going on?” She watched a trio of men, wearing navy blue KPD polo shirts, carrying things up to the kitchen from the basement, through the TV room, and out the front door.
He plucked a piece of paper from the plywood island and cursed. “Splinter!” He handed her the paper and then put his finger to his mouth, still wincing in pain.
This was where being helpful got her: with her house being legally ransacked by cops. Unbelievable.
“Look, Janet, I’m investigating a murder, and if that means I have to collect your boyfriend’s computer equipment to make sure he’s being truthful when he says the crime wasn’t recorded on his surveillance cameras, then unfortunately, that’s what we’re going to do.”
“‘Collect’? I wouldn’t exactly use that term,” Jason said as he came up from the basement, his cell phone pressed against one ear. “More like illegally confiscate.” Another cop walked past with a large hard drive and Jason said, “Be careful with that!” He turned back to O’Dell. “I have over fifty thousand dollars of hardware down there, and if any of it comes back dented, scratched, or otherwise damaged, you’ll be paying—” He broke off midsentence and moved his phone in front of his mouth. “Yes, I’m still on hold for Phil Walderman. It’s urgent.” He looked over at Janet. “This is going to cost us a fortune.” He then stormed back down the steps that led to his office.
“A lawyer?” O’Dell said, recognizing the name of the local attorney. “Save yourself the money. We got a subpoena signed by a judge to take everything. A lawyer won’t be able to do anything about it.”
“Are you sure? Did the judge know Jason has information on other clients in his system? You can’t look through someone’s entire office to find information on one case.”
“Actually,” O’Dell said with an attempt at a conciliatory tone, “we can.”
Janet tried to read the piece of paper he’d handed her, but in her anger, she couldn’t focus. “Why would we lie? What could we possibly gain by not handing over evidence that would solve a murder? Do you think it’s good for business—”
“You said it was yourself! You said business would be crazy the night after Ike’s body turned up, and Finch said you were right. Standing room only! I’d say it’s been great for business.”
“That’s—that’s just . . . I mean, that’s totally off base! Yes, the initial thrust was, but it’s not a long-term strategy for growth. How can you—” She was so angry she was spluttering, unable to finish a single thought. Instead, she picked up her cell phone.
“Oh, are you gonna call your daddy now and see if he can get you out of this mess?” O’Dell asked.
She looked up from her phone in time to see his smirk.
“No!” she said, even though that was exactly what she’d been intending to do. “I’m going to text Jason and tell him we’ll take out a second mortgage and sell the bar if that’s what it costs to get a lawyer down here to make sure you don’t trample all over our rights. You can’t come in here and destroy a man’s business—especially when you have no proof that he’s done anything wrong!”
“Good luck.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean good luck finding a lawyer on a—” He stopped, took a deep breath, and then released it slowly. “What is it about you that drives me so nuts?” He shook his head like he was shaking off a swarm of gnats. “This is a murder investigation, Ms. Black, that’s it. It’s not a personal vendetta against you or your boyfriend.”
She stared at him, thinking about what he’d been about to say. A spark of knowledge hit, and she stepped closer, her finger jammed against his chest. “You did this on purpose. It’s Sunday, and you must have gotten this subpoena filed when?” She looked down at the paper still grasped in her other hand. “Yes, on Friday, but you didn’t act on it until today, Sunday. You knew we wouldn’t be able to find a judge to counteract this filing on a weekend!” She looked up from the paper in shock. “You’re just as bad as a criminal!”
O’Dell scoffed. “I’m the exact opposite of a criminal. The fact that you can’t see that just confirms what we’re doing today is the right thing.”
Janet stalked past him and yelled down the stairs, “Any luck on Walderman?”
“Still on hold. They’ll probably bill me four hundred dollars for this call alone!”
A woman with dark hair slicked back into a bun stepped around Janet, carrying another hard drive. A man behind her gripped two monitors by the stands. Janet watched both walk out the back door and deposit Jason’s items into a waiting van.
“Now you’re just being punitive,” she said, turning to O’Dell. “What are you going to do with the monitors? That’s just—that’s just plain mean.” While keeping an eye on him, she shouted, “Jason, do whatever we need to do here, okay? This isn’t right. Let’s make it right.”
“Careful,” O’Dell said, tucking his notebook under his arm and fixing her with his most irritatingly superior stare.
“Is that a threat?”
“No, just a friendly warning. If you bet on the wrong horse, here, and Jason isn’t as innocent as you think, he might just drain your accounts defending himself, and then you’ll lose him, this house, and your bar.”
Janet sucked in a gasp at his audacity, then spun away from him, not wanting to look at his smug face for a second longer. Jason came back up the stairs and she looked up at him, a question on her lips.
“W—” But before she could get Wex’s name out, he shook his head almost imperceptibly. Her eyes flicked to O’Dell. “Who else can you call?” she asked, trying to cover up her earlier question.
Jason frowned at O’Dell. “Whoever we need to, to make this right.”
She frowned, too. Why was O’Dell so certain Jason was involved in a murder? What did he know? What was she missing?
Chapter Seventeen
It was dead.
Janet was halfway through her shift Sunday afternoon and the bar was practically empty. Janet studiously avoided making eye contact with Larsa at her corner booth, and Nell, the only true customer there, sat out of sight on the other side of the Beerador, nursing a drink.
She’d left the house in utter chaos with Jason near the breaking point, prowling up and down the stairs like a caged cheetah.
Now she was the one ready to pounce. She paced behind the bar, wondering what was going to happen to his business—to their business—and their home. Sunlight streamed into the dark room when the door opened, and Janet squinted toward the light. “Jason? What are you doing here?”
He grinned. “Figured I might as well hang out here, rather than watch them tear apart our house.” He had a bounce in his step that she hadn’t expected.
“For someone who was yelling at a lawyer on the phone an hour ago, you sure seem . . . chipper.”
His grin widened. “It was a pretty good act, if I do say so myself.”
“Act? What are you talking about?”
He straddled a stool across from her and swept a hand through his dark hair. “After you passed on Finch’s message about the subpoena, I told Wex what needed to happen. Can you believe he got the problem licked in two hours? That bastard hacked me right past the malware
and then sent a line of code back that’ll disable the jerks who wrote it for months.” He nodded in satisfaction.
“What do you mean? You and Wex were working through the night and all morning. If you weren’t trying to fix the virus, what were you doing?”
“Copying everything over to new external hard drives and then wiping my machines clean. If KPD can get past my passwords and into my system, which is doubtful, they won’t find a thing.”
A shocked laugh escaped before Janet clamped her lips and smacked him on the arm. “Jason, that’s going to make you look so guilty!”
“They can’t make me guilty just because they want me to be, and lack of evidence in itself isn’t evidence. Plus,” he shifted in his seat, “I couldn’t risk them getting ahold of my files. If word got out that the security guy’s computer wasn’t secure—” He stopped abruptly with a shake of his head that said he might as well sell pizza for a living.
“Jason,” she moaned, “it’s all about perception with these guys. If you look guilty, they’re going to dig in!”
“Let them,” he said dismissively, reaching out to grab her hand. “I’m sorry that I had to worry you, but there wasn’t time to explain.”
“I get it. I know how important your job is, and I’d never get in the way of that.”
“I know. That’s one of the reasons I love you.”
She grinned at him for a moment before shaking herself. God, she hated feeling so sappy.
Jason laughed, sensing her internal struggle. “I have something for you,” he said with a sly smile.
“What?” she asked, suspicious of the change in his mood.
Before he could answer, though, Bud, the beer deliveryman, walked in the front door.
“I knocked around back, but no one answered.”
“A Sunday delivery, Bud?”
“Well, Mondays get so busy, I thought I’d get a jump start.” His hand tapped out a beat against his leg, and the loose coins in his pocket jangled like a tambourine.
Jason waved her off, slipped off his stool, and walked around the bar to pour himself a glass of water while Janet dealt with the delivery.
“I know Cindy Lou will miss seeing you,” she said as she led Bud through the office to the back door. She propped it open and watched him fill his cart with cases of beer.
She counted the bottles as Bud wheeled them into the cooler and then signed the paper on his clipboard. When the truck pulled out of the lot, she went in search of Jason.
She didn’t have to go far; he was waiting for her by the alley exit.
“So, mystery man, you ready to spill the beans?” Janet asked.
“Out here.” He pushed the door open, then pointed at the eaves of the roof. “See anything different?”
Janet scanned the roofline but didn’t see anything out of place. If she really squinted, she could make out the tape still covering the security camera hidden in the exit sign. “You didn’t fix the camera?”
“In fact, I have.” He crossed his arms over his chest and grinned.
She leaned against the door frame. “Well, then, riddle me this: why does it look exactly the same?” she asked.
“Because I am the top security expert in town and even the cops can’t contain me.” He wagged his eyebrows.
She rolled her eyes at her boyfriend. “Obviously. But what does that have to do with that?” She pointed at the tape covering the camera. She’d been on an emotional roller coaster for the last few hours and was suddenly tired of Jason’s game.
His grin wavered. “I punched a tiny hole in the tape and then replaced it over the lens. Now it looks like the camera’s still covered, but it’s not—there is a crystal-clear shot of this alleyway.” He turned and pointed vaguely to a different part of the roof. “I also installed a second hidden camera a couple of days ago that nobody knows about.” He crossed his arms and frowned. “I’m still having some trouble with the wiring for the cameras inside. I’ll need a few more days to untangle that problem.” He paused for a moment, then turned to look slyly back at Janet. “With both cameras up and running, we’ll be set for anything that happens out here in the future.”
Janet threw her hands in the air. “But what about the past? That’s what I’m interested in!” Didn’t Jason understand? The police suspected him of murder and that meant they needed to find out who’d covered the camera, so the detectives could move on to their next wild guess at who killed Ike!
“I’ve got some information on that, too,” he said, giving her a strange look. Jason held open the door and motioned for her to walk in first. She dropped her head back and groaned but walked into the bar, waved to Cindy Lou as she arrived for her shift, and followed Jason back to the office.
He sat down in the chair and logged on to the computer, then double-clicked on a thumbnail image; the shot showed the empty alleyway behind the Spot, from the surveillance camera they had just seen in person.
“It’s from yesterday.” Jason tapped another button and the video zoomed forward. Soon, Cindy Lou walked into the frame, and Jason slowed the video to real-time playback. As usual, she had more skin showing than clothes, and just as Janet was trying to decide if her top would be classified as low-cut or high-rise, another person walked into the frame—slunk, really.
“Is that Bud?” Janet asked incredulously.
“The one and only,” Jason said with a sly smile.
She looked back at the screen when his grin widened. In the few seconds she’d been looking away, Cindy Lou had lost most of her clothes. With a frantic energy she had a hard time connecting with Cindy Lou, her assistant manager and beer delivery guy were getting it on big-time.
“How does her back bend like that?” Janet asked, but Jason only shrugged.
While Cindy Lou appeared to be completely engrossed in the task at hand, Bud’s eyes continued to flick to the hidden security camera often enough that it wasn’t coincidence—he obviously knew the camera was there.
“Do you think he’s the one who tampered with the camera?”
“Keep watching,” Jason said.
“I don’t think I can.” She scrunched up her face. With her eyes squeezed nearly shut, the images on-screen blurred out enough that she couldn’t see actual flopping body parts but was aware when the deed was done. She opened her eyes only after both parties were fully dressed again. “I sure hope she washed her hands before she got back to work.”
“Are you watching?” he asked.
“Yes,” Janet grumbled, squinting at the screen again. Bud tucked his shirt in and took a step toward the door after Cindy Lou. But before he walked in, he reached right up to the camera and moved his thumb over what he thought was the tape covering the lens. He then nodded in satisfaction and disappeared into the bar.
“I think we found our guy.” Jason clicked something that reversed the video. Another tap on the keyboard froze the frame on a close-up of Bud’s face.
“But how did he know the camera was there in the first place?”
Jason blew out a short breath. “He came out into the alley with some boxes the day I was installing it. I’d have never guessed he knew what I was doing, but it must have made him suspicious enough that he took a closer look.”
“Oh my God!” Janet covered her mouth with her hand. “Do you think Bud killed Ike?”
“Nah.” Jason leaned back in his seat and swiveled around to face Janet. “I saw Bud collect a spider in a cup from the walk-in cooler and then set it free outside. He’s not the violent type. I think it was just Ike’s bad luck that he was killed near Bud and Cindy Lou’s meeting place.”
The sudden sound of knocking came from both sides of the office, at the back door to the parking lot and the door to the bar. She opened the outside door first and came face-to-face with Bud.
“Is my clipboard here?” he asked sheepishly, peering around Janet into the office space.
She followed his gaze and was immediately distracted by the sight of Cindy Lou standing on the ot
her side of Jason. Her silvery bandeau top was like a sandbar of coverage in the expansive ocean of skin between her eyes and hips, where a micromini jean skirt clung hopefully.
Uniforms. We need uniforms at the Spot, Janet thought dispassionately.
“What’s that, boss?” Cindy Lou asked, staring at the computer screen. She looked at Jason and then shifted her gaze to Janet. Before either could answer, her eyes moved again and she adjusted her top with a bright smile. “Oh, hey, Bud! I wasn’t expectin’ to see you today.” She ran a hand through her hair.
Janet swallowed hard and realized this was their chance to get some answers. “We actually wanted to talk to both of you. It seems there’s been something going on, and we need to get to the bottom of it.”
Bud took a jerky step backward, while Cindy Lou laughed a little too loudly and stepped into the office. She pulled the door closed behind her.
“I guess y’all found us out. I can’t believe we kept it a secret for this long, Bud!” Her gaze shifted back to the computer screen and she said, “Seriously, Jason, what the heck is that?”
No one answered, and she looked back to the doorway. “Bud?”
Janet tore her eyes away from Cindy Lou to see her lover’s reaction, but the doorway was empty. Seconds later, the beer truck’s engine started with a roar.
Chapter Eighteen
“Wait!” Jason yelled. He ran out of the office and banged on the driver’s-side door of the truck just as Bud slid the engine into gear. The truck lurched and Bud banged on the steering wheel but made no move to get back out until Jason knocked on the door again.
Then he and Jason walked back into the office. Cindy Lou’s face, cheerful just moments earlier, had frozen when Bud left. Now tears threatened and her lower lip trembled. Janet said a quick prayer that her assistant manager could keep it together.
