Ryder chuckled and wandered over to the far corner of the room. Shining his phone’s flashlight into the semi-darkness, he said, “Looks like taxidermy isn’t Uncle Randy’s only hobby.”
I walked over beside him to stare at a well-used still. “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about the moonshine. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
“I doubt that making ’shine is legal in Indiana.”
“It’s not. Why do you think he does it here and not at home? Duh.”
A loud bang made both of us jump. The room got considerably darker around us. When we spun around, we found out why. The storm doors had been slammed shut.
Striding toward the only exit, Ryder muttered, “That better have been the wind.”
He hurried up the stairs and pushed against the wooden doors, but they wouldn’t budge. Grimacing, he repositioned himself on the steps and pushed with all his might. Getting nowhere, he started pounding on the door. “Hey! Let us out of here!”
After a couple of minutes of pounding and yelling and cursing, he turned to me, his face stuck in a scowl. “Nice. Now we’re trapped in this hellhole. And I’m thinking someone did it on purpose. Why are you smiling?”
I had to admit I was rather excited about our situation. Not necessarily about being trapped in this torture chamber full of nightmare fuel, but because it was evident that someone thought we were close enough to figuring something out that they’d bothered to try to stop us.
“Two reasons. One, someone’s sending us a message, so we’re on the right track with our investigation, which I was beginning to doubt only minutes ago. Two, we both have our phones. It’s not like we can’t call for help.”
“Who are you going to call? We’re not calling the cops, because we’re trespassing. I’ll bet my retirement fund you won’t call your parents. Maya and Pete are hours away.”
I was already scrolling through my contacts. “I’m calling the one person in this town who won’t ask a bunch of prying questions about this.”
My cousin Melinda Fairholz answered, “Hey, cuz.”
“Hey. I’m in Liberty. Um…are you free at the moment?”
“I’m heading to lunch, but I can talk. What’s up?”
“I’m kind of…trapped.”
She paused for a moment. “Literally?”
“Yes, literally. I’m in town again looking into Scott’s death and Mandi’s disappearance, and somehow I managed to get myself and Ryder locked in a cellar. We’re fine, but we need you to come let us out.”
She chuckled. “Oh, this is so worth skipping lunch for. Where are you?”
I gave her the address and hung up. Ryder was still frowning.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What if the person who locked us up is still here? I’m worried about the safety of whoever comes to let us out. Who did you call, by the way?”
“My cousin Melinda.”
His frown turned into a smirk. “Oh, perfect choice. Maybe she can turn our captor into a toad.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know she can’t do that.” Melinda had been a practicing Wiccan since high school, not a popular life choice in small-town Indiana, or most places for that matter. “I’ll text her and let her know to be on the lookout, but she’s tough. She’ll be fine.”
“That tough chick thing she tries to pull is an act.”
“Tell that to Pete. She scares him.”
Ryder regarded me for a moment. “So about Pete. When I brought it up this morning—twice—about the two of you being a little more friendly than usual, you deflected both times. Now that we have nowhere to go and nothing but time, I want to know the truth.”
My closeness with Pete had always been a bone of contention between Ryder and me. When Ryder and I were dating, he thought my friendship with Pete often bordered on too close, even going so far during one argument as to call us codependent. And now that Ryder and I were nothing more than friends, it seemed to still irk him that I was more likely to go to Pete with a problem than to him. And then of course there was some reluctance on my part to talk to Ryder about my love life since I still had some residual feelings for him. The feelings were waning, but I still felt a little electricity when I was near him.
“It’s really nothing.”
He shook his head. “I know what I saw. Don’t try to snow me, because you know you can’t.”
When would I learn not to try to lie to a detective? “Okay, fine. If you must know my personal business—”
“Whoa, whoa. We always share our personal business. But this is the second relationship you’ve tried to hide from me this week.”
“To be fair, I hid the Cooper thing from everyone.”
“You’re still deflecting.”
“I believe you were the one who interrupted me, Detective.”
He sighed. “Go on.”
“This thing with Pete…It’s really new. And…it’s totally nothing, yet. We haven’t even been out on a date.”
“What about last night when you two ditched the rest of us to have dinner alone? How was that not a date?”
I scrunched up my nose, thinking about it. I supposed it was kind of datelike, if you wanted to get technical about it.
“And Maya said he took you to some fancy place when the two of you came up here this past weekend. Was that also not a date?”
“Well…”
Was Pete dating me and I didn’t even know it? Pretty dense of me not to realize, but since we’d always been so close, that line was incredibly blurry. Then again, Pete had been pretty pissed at Daniel Stevenson for horning in on our dinner, even though I’d been the one to invite him. And Pete hadn’t seemed to want Ryan to tag along on the ride to Liberty, either. Maybe he’d wanted me all to himself. To top it all off, he did send me flowers yesterday, which wasn’t something he normally did.
Ryder walked over and took one of my hands. “What I want to know more than anything is…are you sure this is what you want? I don’t want to see you get hurt if he decides to pull his ‘let’s just be friends’ routine after you’ve invested your heart in a relationship.”
If I wasn’t already conflicted, I sure was now. Why did he have to be so caring and protective of me? Granted, he’d broken my heart once, and even though I’d forgiven him for it, I didn’t think he’d quite got around to forgiving himself.
I pulled my hand away. “I appreciate your concern, but…I know what I’m doing. And it’s not exactly easy to have this conversation with a bunch of dead eyes staring me down.”
“Okay,” he replied, conceding. Not quite the hotheaded reaction I had expected out of Ryder Hamilton, but he’d mellowed a lot lately, which wasn’t a bad thing.
We descended into an awkward silence after that, waiting impatiently for Melinda to arrive and rescue us. I could tell from the set of Ryder’s jaw that being surprised like we’d been was killing him. He was the large-and-in-charge badass who could fight his way out of anything. Not so much this time, but then again, we probably would have tried harder to free ourselves if we hadn’t easily been able to find help who’d be here in a matter of minutes.
I got a text from Daniel, which I let Ryder read over my shoulder: Took the boss out to an early lunch. Found out why he wouldn’t tell you any specifics. Scott said he had proof of certain Silver Spruce reps giving incentives to doctors in exchange for agreeing to prescribe Silver Spruce drugs exclusively. He threatened to use it to ruin everyone involved.
“What’s the big deal with giving doctors a nudge to push your product? Is it frowned upon?” I asked Ryder.
“Yeah, it’s frowned upon. And illegal. I’ve had several cases in white collar dealing with kickbacks.”
I texted Daniel back: Did he say if Scott mentioned who the reps are?
Daniel: No, but I bet I can guess who’d be dumb enough to do it.
Me: Rhymes with candy?
Daniel: Bingo.
I said to Ryder, “I still don’t get why this kickback thing is such an issue. Lo
ts of companies use incentives to sell their stuff.”
He explained, “The kickback itself isn’t the problem. The issue is that it’s a form of fraud to take or give anything—gifts, money, or even sex—in exchange for prescribing a particular medication that ends up being paid for by a federal health care program. By prescribing to a patient on Medicare, for example, you’ve involved the government in your scheme to make a profit on the side, and that’s what makes it fraudulent. The rep and the doctor could both be fined and go to jail for it, and the company generally gets in a fair amount of legal trouble, as well.”
My heart twisted. “So everyone involved could get in enough trouble to make it worth their while to try to silence Scott?”
“Unfortunately, yes, which means our suspect pool just got a lot bigger.”
My phone rang, and it was Melinda. She said, “We’re here. You said you’re in the cellar?”
“Yes. The entrance is through the storm doors on the west side of the cabin. And who’s we?”
She hung up before hearing my question, and a moment later, we heard a scraping noise at the door. The doors opened, and sunlight flooded into the basement. When I looked up and my eyes adjusted to the brightness, my face twisted into a frown. She’d brought along my least favorite reporter, Blake Morgan, and his wife, Lizzie, who was a friend of hers.
Ryder murmured to me, “I assumed she’d be coming alone.”
“Me, too,” I replied.
Melinda smirked down at us. “Didn’t think I’d be coming to your rescue today like some kind of superhero.” She glanced past us into the cellar. “Wow. What a creeptastic place to be stuck in. I’m jealous.”
As I climbed the stairs, I muttered, “Thanks for coming out to help us, Wonder Woman, but I didn’t realize you’d be bringing…sidekicks.”
When Ryder and I got up to ground level, Lizzie said, “Hey, Juliet. I don’t know if you’ve met my husband, Blake Morgan.”
Blake flashed me a megawatt smile and stuck his hand out to me, but I didn’t take it. His pretty-boy charm did nothing for me. “I know who he is.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes at her husband and slapped him on the arm. “Don’t tell me this is yet another woman you dated and dumped when you first came to town.”
Blake studied me with a puzzled expression. “I don’t think so…”
I said, “No, he just wrote a scathing review of my café that ended up being the final nail in its coffin.”
I could tell by the gleam in her overly kohl-rimmed eyes that Melinda was enjoying the excruciating awkwardness in the air way too much. Twisting a strand of her black and blue striped hair around her finger, she said, “So…while we’re making polite introductions, this is Ryder Hamilton, one of Juliet’s friends. Ryder, Lizzie and Blake Morgan.”
After they shook hands somewhat stiltedly, Ryder said, “I appreciate you guys coming out here, but I’m going to have to ask you not to report anything you’ve seen or that Melinda has told you. We’re in the middle of an ongoing investigation, and we don’t want to tip off our suspects to what we’re working on. That’s why you’re here, right? For the story?”
Blake at least had the grace to laugh. “Guilty, sort of. Melinda was at the Chronicle office picking up Lizzie to go to lunch when she got your call. I insisted on tagging along, but partly for safety in numbers. Never can be too careful around here.”
Melinda pulled me aside, out of earshot, while Ryder continued to impress upon Blake how important it was to keep information about our investigation off the front page.
She frowned. “Sorry about bringing them with me. I said you probably didn’t want an audience, but Blake never listens. So seriously, who in the hell would want to lock you in someone’s freaky basement?”
“If I knew that, I might also know who killed Scott and why Mandi’s missing. What had been done to the door to lock it, anyway? Scott’s uncle always leaves the latch open.”
“A piece of rusty rebar was shoved through the loop of the latch.”
“And you didn’t see anyone around when you arrived?”
We looked up when we heard Ryder start shouting expletives, then watched as he stalked toward his vehicle and began inspecting it.
Melinda replied, “No. It was deserted except for that car. Which I assume belongs to him, given the fact that he’s the one having an aneurysm over the four flat tires.”
I glanced down at the tires, and darned if they weren’t all flat as a pancake. I shook my head tiredly. “This day is getting worse by the minute.”
“Well, look at the bright side. You must be close to figuring this out if someone locked you up and ruined your only means of transportation.”
I sighed. “True.”
Blake had begun speaking with Ryder, and after a few moments Lizzie wandered over to us. A pretty blonde who was known for speaking her mind, Lizzie had been the talk of the town when she’d managed to rein in Blake Morgan, Liberty’s most eligible bachelor. She and I were never more than acquaintances, with her being a few classes behind me in high school.
She said, “Hey, sorry Blake and I kind of made your business our business, but we wanted to get the chance to speak to you today, since you were in town again. My best friend’s husband is a drug rep for a rival of Silver Spruce’s. She got some dirt from him on Silver Spruce for an article she’s been working on for the Chronicle. With everything that’s gone on with Scott and now Mandi, we think it could actually be pertinent to your case. If you’d like to come back to the office with us, she’d be happy to share it with you.”
I hesitated. This could turn out to be nothing more than small town gossip, or this could be the break I needed to finally start making some real headway on this case. It would most likely cost me some polite reciprocation in the form of an interview, which these people had been trying to get out of me for days. On a personal note, I didn’t relish the idea of cooperating with Blake Morgan, but I needed this information more than I needed to hold on to my grudge. Time to put on my big girl panties and do what needed to be done.
Smiling, I replied, “I’d love to hear what she has to say. Thanks.”
Lizzie’s face lit up. “That’s great!” Her face fell just as quickly. “Oh, but what about your friend’s tires?”
“Getting them fixed is going to slow down our day, for sure.”
Melinda said, “At least Ryder isn’t making his aneurysm face anymore.”
Staring at Ryder, Lizzie said, “Is there a reason you’re only friends with that guy? He is super hot.”
Melinda’s eyebrows shot up. “Why don’t you say that a little louder, Lizzie? Your husband didn’t hear it.”
Lizzie scoffed. “What? I may be married and pregnant, but I’m not dead.” She turned her attention back to me. “I can’t imagine it was too much of a hardship to be stranded here alone with that hunk of man, Juliet. I could see the two of you as a couple.”
She clearly wasn’t going to be satisfied with “we’re just friends,” plus one word from her brother, Ryan, could confirm that Ryder and I had at one time been much more. I conceded and gave her the bit of gossip she was looking for. “We did date for a short time.”
“Knew it.”
I was quick to add, “But it’s definitely over.”
Chapter 16
It was decided that I would ride back to town with Melinda, Lizzie, and Blake while Ryder waited for a tow truck. I’d offered to wait with him, mainly so I could be there to pay for replacing his tires because this was so my fault, but he’d insisted I go on and keep working to avoid wasting our time. I didn’t relish the thought of heading into the lion’s den, so to speak, by myself, especially since we’d parted ways with Melinda, who had to return to work.
The moment the three of us stepped into the Chronicle office, Bethany swooped in on me with a too-tight hug. “Wow! Two times visiting me in one week, Juliet? Did you come back to see where I work?”
“Not specifically, but it’s a nice perk,” I
replied, trying to keep the sarcasm from my voice. I liked Bethany, but she was a total ding-dong.
Lizzie cut in, “She’s here so Julia can fill her in about the Silver Spruce thing.”
“Oh,” Bethany breathed, tapping the side of her nose with her finger. Whispering, she added, “So does this mean you guys are teaming up on the investigation? That would be the coolest thing ever.”
The only reply I had to that was a no, but Lizzie gave me a hopeful smile and said, “It would really be great to work with an actual private investigator.”
Blake snorted. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
Not seeming the least bit sorry, she cooed at him, “Oh, honey. Did I bruise your fragile male ego?”
Unable to keep a grin off his face, Blake put his hand on her nearly nonexistent baby bump. “Yes, to the core. But considering you’re bearing my child, I’m more than happy to forgive you.”
“So does that mean I get a free pass to say whatever I want for the next six months?”
He put his arm around her and steered her away, whispering something in her ear that made her giggle.
Bethany sighed. “Don’t they make the most adorable couple?”
As much as I hated to admit it, I agreed. “Yes, they do.”
“Speaking of adorable, did you not bring Pete back with you?”
I smiled involuntarily at the mention of his name and got the sudden urge to call him. Unfortunately, he’d be unavailable most of the day, stuck in a long recording session. “Not this time. Sorry.”
“How do you think he’d feel about a long-distance relationship?”
“I think he’s seeing someone.” After the words were out, I felt a blush heat my cheeks. To change the subject, I said, “So…can I talk to Julia now?”
Bethany had me follow her back to the office’s breakroom, snagging Julia Simmons, who I remembered vaguely from high school, along the way. As Bethany left and Julia and I finished greeting each other, Lizzie and Blake slipped in, still smiling at each other. Judging from Lizzie’s flushed cheeks and lack of lipstick, I assumed they’d found a secluded place to stop for a sixty-second make-out session.
Murder Over Mochas Page 13
