by BJ Bourg
“I’m still working on that,” I admitted. “Of course, I do have a better reason for wanting Foster dead, and I have two possible suspects to go along with that theory.”
“I’m all ears.” Susan turned away from the laptop and stared up at me. “Lay your theory on me.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I could tell my mom and Lisa were “all ears” too, as they leaned forward and hung on our every word. I thought about asking them to leave, but I figured they wouldn’t cause any harm. “Foster left his house earlier in the day and rented a motel room in Magnolia Parish, where Joyce Reynolds meets him for their little rendezvous. Only the people familiar with the bar and its employees would know who worked what shifts, and that would certainly include Joyce’s husband and Foster’s wife. If Joyce’s husband somehow found out about the affair, he could’ve snuck out there in the rain and killed off the competition.”
“Or Foster’s wife could’ve found out about it and put him down herself.”
“Right, you are.” I nodded. “When I went over to Foster’s house to look for him, the first thing his wife asked was if he was okay. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but now I think it was a slip of the tongue.”
Susan scrunched her face. “I guess it would be a normal reaction for this woman—what’s her name?”
“Pearly Blake.”
“I guess it would be normal for her to think something bad had happened when a cop showed up at her door. Did she mention if he had to work that night?”
“Nah, she just said he’d gotten into an argument with the family and left. She said he was staying at a motel for a few days while their family was in town.” I paused, scratched my face. “Hmm, there was the issue of his face.”
“His face? What about it?”
“It looked like most of your opponents do after you finish kicking their asses—the furniture in front was all rearranged. He’d obviously been in some sort of fight and his nose looked broken. When I asked him about it, he said there’d been a disagreement out at the house. Pearly had characterized it as an argument. What if the injuries didn’t come from the house?”
“What are you getting at?”
“What if Foster got into a fight with Mitch?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed any obvious marks on Mitch’s knuckles when I bagged his hands, but it’s possible he beat the crap out of Foster without injuring his fists. If they got into a fistfight—no matter the reason—Foster would have a good reason for coming back and shooting him.”
“Ah, that makes sense! If they got into an altercation that led to blows, Mitch probably fired Foster. Once he fired Foster, he had to cover Foster’s shift, which opened the door for him to be killed.”
“And Foster could’ve very well been the only person who knew Mitch was working that night.” I drummed my fingers against my leg. “I need to establish an exact timeline of events to nail down Foster’s whereabouts and try to figure out when this fight could’ve—”
Movement from my left caught my eye and interrupted me. I looked to see my mom with her right hand high in the air. She was squirming like a kid who knew the answer to a question and was waiting for the teacher to call on her.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Susan said we need to raise our hand before we speak if we’re not law enforcement, so I’m raising my hand.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Foster Blake didn’t kill Mitch Taylor, but I know who did.”
CHAPTER 36
Susan and I traded glances and I almost started laughing at my mom’s comment, but didn’t. I put on a serious face and asked her who killed Mitch Taylor.
“It’s a young man named Matthew Bernard.”
“Matthew Bernard?” I scowled. “Who the hell is Matthew Bernard? That name hasn’t come up once during this investigation.”
“Matthew is the young man who was on the swamp tour Friday morning. Don’t you remember?” She shoved both fists against her hips. “What kind of investigator are you? He was in the military and he came down to visit his sick mother for Thanksgiving. His wife’s name is Jill and they were living in Hawaii—”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I remember now, but how do you know he’s connected to this case?”
“Well, I heard you mention the name Pearly Blake.” She adjusted the front of her collar. “When I asked Matthew who his momma was, he said it was Pearly Blake. I can’t imagine there’re two women named Pearly Blake in this small town.”
I studied my mom’s face. She was positive she was onto something, but I didn’t share her optimism. “Just because his mom is Pearly Blake doesn’t mean he’s a killer,” I said.
“No,” she acknowledged, “but you mentioned that there was a fight out at the family home. Well, Matthew’s knuckles were skinned up.” She pointed toward Susan’s fists, which were still damaged from her bare-knuckle workout Friday night. “They looked like her knuckles, and I know she’s a fighter, so I figured he’d gotten into a fight. I heard you say yourself that a fistfight would be motive enough for someone to shoot this man through the screen, but that was back when you were thinking Mitch beat up Foster. In light of this new evidence, we now know Matthew beat up Foster earlier on Friday. Foster was supposed to go to work, but he cancelled his shift and spent the night with that harlot—Joyce something-or-other—instead. Everyone at the house knew Foster was supposed to work that night, so Matthew went out in the rain and shot the man he thought was Foster through the screen door, but he ended up killing an innocent man.”
She provided more information from her conversation with Matthew and his wife, Jill, and we all just sat there listening. I didn’t want to encourage this type of behavior from my mom, so I simply nodded thoughtfully, but I was thoroughly impressed. She recognized the look of approval on my face and was beaming. It was as though she felt all had been forgiven and things were right between us; although I hadn’t been angry to start with.
I turned to Susan. “I guess I should have a conversation with Foster.”
“Don’t you need to interrogate Matthew?” my mom asked. “He’s the real suspect.”
“You never go directly at the suspect if you can help it,” I explained. “Before sitting down and visiting with him, I’ll want to be armed with as much information as possible about him and the case. If anyone knows who might want Foster Blake dead, I’m thinking it would be Foster Blake.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Still beaming, she turned to walk out the bedroom door, calling over her shoulder, “Now that my work is done here, I’ll let you kids get back to doing whatever it was y’all were doing before I stepped in and saved the day.”
I smirked playfully and Susan laughed.
“I wouldn’t laugh,” Lisa said. “From what I just witnessed, she singlehandedly solved this case.”
“I love you, Mom.” Susan leaned over and planted a kiss on her mom’s forehead. “Now, can you leave us to finish planning our strategy?”
Lisa grunted, but she left and caught up to my mom downstairs. As their voices faded in the distance, Susan and I began making preparations for tomorrow. I was going to head to the motel and meet with Foster, while she would run the criminal histories of Matthew Bernard, Foster Blake, and Pearly Blake to see what she could find.
“Your mom said Matthew and his wife were visiting Pearly for Thanksgiving and that Pearly had some kind of medical issues and needed a new kidney, but where were they from? Did they say?”
“I remember hearing one of them say something about New York and Hawaii.” While I hadn’t been listening to most of what was said between my mom and the guests on the swamp tour, I’d recalled bits and pieces of the conversation. “I think it was his wife who said Matthew was originally stationed in Hawaii, but they now live in New York.”
Susan nodded and scribbled down the information. “I’ll run a criminal history check on both of them in both states. Did you already run Foster?”
I nodded. “He’s got n
o record in Louisiana, but I guess I need to find out if he’s lived elsewhere and I need to find out what’s going on with his family.”
“Good idea.” Susan was heading for the bathroom and I was almost finished packing up the case file when I received a text message from Melvin, who was working the night shift, asking that I call him. It was almost ten o’clock and I wondered what was so pressing that he would need me to call him.
“Who’s texting at this hour?” Susan asked. “If it’s work it can’t be good.”
“It’s Melvin.” I dialed the number and put the phone to my ear. “He only calls when it’s important.”
“Hey, Clint, it’s me,” he said when he answered. He was panting as though he’d been running. “I was in the office writing a report when we got a phone call from someone saying the lights are on in Mitch Taylor’s Corner Pub. I’m heading there to check it out, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“For sure.” I heard a door slam in the background and his truck engine fired to life. “I’ll meet you down there in a jiffy.”
When I told Susan what was going on, she hobbled to the dresser and snatched a pair of jeans from inside. “I’m going with you.”
CHAPTER 37
When Susan and I pulled up to the curb near the Corner Pub, Melvin was standing in the doorway speaking with Foster. His right hand was resting near his pistol and he was pointing the index finger of his opposite hand up at Foster. I waited for Susan to catch up with me and we approached the two men. I overheard Foster explaining his reason for being there.
“Mrs. Taylor—Connie—called me and told me to have the bar ready to open up tomorrow. She said she was not going to see her husband’s hard work go down the drain. She said the business was going to be bigger and better than ever and she wanted to hire two more people to work extra shifts so we could be open longer hours.”
I stepped up beside Melvin and nodded toward Foster. “How’s it going?”
He shrugged. “As well as can be expected.”
“Anyone inside with you?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Joyce is cleaning up the kitchen.”
Melvin’s radio scratched to life and he stepped away from us to answer the dispatcher, who said she needed him to respond to a prowler complaint on the other side of town. He looked over at me and I let him know I’d handle this call. I turned back to Foster as Melvin walked away.
“I’m going to need you to follow me to the office,” I said. “You can bring Joyce with you.”
“Why?” Foster glanced from me to Susan and then back at me. “What’s going on?”
“I’d rather talk about it at the station.”
He frowned, but nodded after a long moment. “Let me get Joyce and lock up the place.”
I stopped him. “Aren’t you worried your wife will come by and catch you with Joyce?”
He stole a cautious glance at Susan. “Um, what do you mean? We work together.”
“It’s okay…Chief Wilson’s cool and she won’t tell your wife,” I said. “It just seems pretty brazen of you to bring her here out in the open and all. What if her husband shows up?”
“We came in separate cars,” he explained. “And it’s not unusual for us to be working in the bar together. In fact, her husband even knows she’s—”
“Hey, what’s going on out here?” called a female’s voice from deeper inside the bar. I recognized it to be Joyce. When she drew nearer, I explained that I needed to see both of them in my office.
“I’d like y’all to follow us down to the station so we can interview y’all about this case.”
“But we already gave an interview,” Joyce said. “I don’t understand why we need to give another one.”
“There’ve been some new developments,” I explained. “Some pretty significant developments that need our immediate attention.”
Joyce searched Foster’s eyes. He only frowned and shrugged. “I guess we have no choice. If they want to talk to us, we should talk to them.”
“What about Connie?” she asked. “Won’t she be mad that we’re not finished?”
“It shouldn’t take too long,” I assured her. “You can come back and finish cleaning when we’re done.”
That seemed to satisfy Joyce and she grabbed her purse from behind the bar. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and glanced down at Susan’s cast. “What happened to you?”
“I kicked a Russian in the head,” Susan said simply. “She had a hard head.”
Joyce’s eyes grew wide. “Seriously?”
Susan winked. “I’d never joke about kicking someone in the head.”
There was admiration in Joyce’s eyes as she watched Susan walk toward my Tahoe. “I like her,” she told me when Susan was out of earshot, “but I’m afraid of her.”
“If you don’t do anything wrong, there’s no need to fear her. She’s as nice as they come.” I waited while Foster locked the door and then glanced around. “Where’s your car?”
“It’s parked around back.” Foster shot a thumb over his shoulder. “Joyce’s car is back there, too.”
I told him I’d wait for them in my Tahoe and I reached it just as they disappeared into the darkness alongside the building. After helping Susan inside, I opened my door and slipped behind the steering wheel.
“Do you think they’ll try to run?” Susan asked.
I pointed to the alley that served as a driveway to the back of the bar. “There’s only one way in or out of the back of the—”
My voice was cut off by popping sounds echoing from the back of the building.
“Were those gunshots?” Susan asked, jerking her head around.
CHAPTER 38
After snatching up my flashlight and radio, I jumped out of my Tahoe and shoved the radio in my back pocket. Several more gunshots erupted from the back of bar. I glanced quickly at Susan, who was struggling to get out of her seat, and hesitated.
“Just go!” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
I pushed my door shut and sprinted down the alley, where I could hear a woman screaming. Her voice was getting closer to me and I caught a glimpse of her in the dim lights from the parking lot behind the bar. It was Joyce and she was running as though her life depended on it. I reached out and caught her in mid-run, pulling her against the building and forcing her to crouch down.
“What happened?” With my pistol in hand, I peered around the rear corner of the building. I could see two vehicles in the back parking lot, and it looked like the side window on one of the vehicles was blown out. I detected a dark figure lying flat on the ground near the back of one of the vehicles. It looked like the right shape to be Foster, and he wasn’t moving.
Joyce’s breath was coming in gasps and I could feel her body trembling beside me. “I…I don’t know what happened,” she said. “We were walking to our cars and then…um, someone just started shooting. I…I think they got Foster. I saw him go down and I started running as fast as I could. I swear, I felt a bullet pass right next to my face. I think it took some skin off my cheek.”
Keeping my eyes on the back of the parking lot, I told Joyce to stay close to the side of the building and make her way to the front. “Chief Wilson’s in the front of the bar. She’ll take you to safety.”
I didn’t look behind me, but could hear the gravel rolling under her feet as she scrambled toward Washington Avenue. I was about to step out into the open when I heard another set of feet behind me. I turned to see Melvin skid to a stop and fall against the building.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “I got a call that shots were fired out here and Chief Wilson told me to come back you up.”
I nodded toward the shadowy figure on the ground beside the vehicle. “I think that’s Foster. I can’t tell if he’s hit, but I’m about to run out there to see about him.”
“Is the shooter still on scene?”
I scanned the buildings that lined the opposite side of the narrow parking area. There were two alleys that disa
ppeared into the darkness and I couldn’t see down either one of them. While there had been no signs of life other than Joyce when I arrived, it didn’t mean the killer wasn’t still out there waiting to pop off more shots. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I need to check on Foster.”
“Okay…I’ll cover you.”
I told Melvin I was going on three. After a brief countdown, I lunged off the ground and sprinted across the open space as fast as my legs could carry me. My heart pounded in my ears as I ran, and it felt like I was moving in slow motion. When I neared the back of the car I dove forward and rolled to a rough stop beside Foster, smashing violently into his side. I heard him grunt and knew he was still alive.
Squatting with my back to the vehicle, I kept my pistol ready for action and looked back toward Melvin’s location. I could only see a shadow, but I saw his thumb shoot upward to let me know everything was okay from his point of view.
“Foster, can you hear me?” I whispered.
“Yes, sir.” His voice quivered.
“Are you hit?”
“No, sir.”
“Can you move?”
“I ain’t going nowhere until that killer is gone.”
I opened my mouth a little—as though it would help me hear better—but I didn’t hear a peep from the two alleys in front of me. I eased my police radio from my back pocket and whispered into it, calling for Melvin to keep his pistol trained on the openings between the buildings. “I’m going to shine my light in that direction,” I said. “Be ready to open fire.”
When he acknowledged he’d heard me, I grounded my radio and lifted the light over my head with my left hand. Keeping my pistol ready, I flipped the light on and held my breath. Nothing happened.
I did a quick peek over the top of the car, but there was nothing in the first alley to the left. I dropped back down and scooted toward my right. After taking a few deep breaths and letting Melvin know I was about to shine my light again, I flipped the switch and aimed it in the direction of the second alley. I heard Melvin’s voice over the radio.
