by Blair Merrin
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts,” Dash cuts in. “Look, we’ve been lucky so far with a lot of the stuff we’ve uncovered. I know you’re smart, and I know that we make a great team, or whatever else you’re going to say to try to sway me, but this is an ordinary, cold-blooded murder. There’s no ghost trying to give you a message, or weird item that found its way into your shop. So, this one time, let’s just leave it to the police. Okay?”
Jeez. I feel like I’m ten years old and my mom just scolded me. He pretty much blocked all the counterarguments I’d had at the ready.
“Okay,” I mutter. “We’ll just leave it to the police.”
CHAPTER 7
The next morning is Sunday, and with it comes a chance to sleep in and open the store a little later than usual. I wake around eight (which is sleeping in, for me), dress and head down to Tank’s Diner.
I’m not much of a breakfast person, but I love a good cup of coffee and my daily helping of gossip, and there’s no better place in town to get that than Tank’s. The diner has been a Bandit Hills institution for several decades, changing hands a bunch of times until it came to Tank’s uncle, who left it to Tank, a bear of a man with a deep voice and a thunderous belly laugh who spends as much time manning the grill as he does regaling tourists with local ghost stories.
I enter the diner and take a seat at the counter, right next to Deputy Sharon, who’s enjoying her morning coffee in uniform, likely heading down to start her shift at the station right after.
Behind the counter, Tank’s wife April smiles thinly at me from beside the soda fountain. She looks like she could be a pinup model; blonde hair, plump lips, and shapely hips that make even her white apron look flattering. We grew up together, so we’re pretty good friends—good enough friends that I can tell her thin smile is poorly masked disdain.
“Morning, April,” I say cheerfully. “Something on your mind?”
“Why, is that Cassie?” April squints at me, pretending she barely recognizes me. “I almost forgot what you look like, it’s been so long since you’ve been in here.”
I roll my eyes. I knew there would be some fallout to Bonnie’s place opening up and attracting such a following. “Just switching up my routine a little,” I tell her. “No reason to get your panties in a twist.”
“Someday I’ll get up there myself and see what all the fuss is about.” April sets a steaming cup of coffee in front of me and winks.
I dump in some sugar and a splash of cream and glance around. The morning rush is mostly tourists and a handful of residents peppered in. Regardless, I can hear the mentions in low conversations about “that woman they found up on the hill,” and I realize the cat’s out of the bag. There’s only so long the cops can keep something like a murder quiet.
I turn to Sharon, who’s nose-deep in a newspaper, and ask her, “How’s it going this morning?”
She lowers the paper and sighs. “It’s a morning.”
“Rough one?”
“You could say that.”
Okay, I’ll be honest. Coffee was not my target at Tank’s. I know, as most people do, that Sharon always stops in at Tank’s for a cup before she starts work. And I can tell she wants to talk about Anna’s case. So a little fishing never hurt anybody, right?
“I just can’t believe it,” I tell her, lowering my voice so that no one else can hear me. “Those poor kids. And poor Pete!”
Sharon grunts. “Pete? Sure, poor Pete. That lousy…”
“Neanderthal?” I offer.
“I was going to use a more colorful word, but that works.”
“Weird he was at the station when the body was found, isn’t it?”
She twists her stool to face me, and in that moment I know this egg is cracked. “Yeah, that is the weird thing. Seems he was there yesterday morning to report an assault. He claims Anna twisted his arm in the parking lot of the Gas N’ Guzzle. He was so adamant about Phil arresting her that he was still there when we got back to the station.”
“How’d he take the news?” I ask her.
“Hard to say. We brought him into a back room, sat him down, and told him flat-out: Anna’s been found dead. He just kind of sat there for a while, quiet. Then he asked how. We told him she was shot. He stared at the wall for a long time. Barely said anything.”
“So would you say he seemed unfazed?”
“I’d say he seemed… aloof.” Sharon shakes her head. “I mean, I know there was no love left between those two, but that’s the mother of your kids.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Those poor kids.”
“I know. He sent them home with his mama while we talked with him, so I can’t say how they took it.”
I push just a tad further. “So is he a suspect?”
She snorts. “Top of my list, that’s for sure. Everybody knows Pete’s a real good shot, and he’s got quite a gun collection. Problem is…”
I press her. “What?”
“I shouldn’t say. But what the heck, you’ve helped us out before. I know you’ll keep it quiet.” She lowers her voice even further. “There were no prints on those shell casings. This wasn’t any ordinary drive-by; this was planned, and planned well. No tire tracks, so whoever it was didn’t even slow down or check on the body afterward. I don’t think their foot ever came off the gas.”
“Does he have an alibi?”
She sighs. “Yeah, he was with his kids and his ma the whole morning, since the convenience store thing went down. Still, we told him not to leave town, and to come back today for another chat. They go way back, Phil and Pete… Phil doesn’t believe he could have done it.”
“What about the boyfriend?” I ask. “He seemed like the jealous type.”
Sharon raises an eyebrow. “What boyfriend?”
Whoops. I guess the police didn’t know about Anna’s new beau. “Anna had a new boyfriend. Chad, I think his name was? Tall guy with a beard. I met him the other day at Bonnie’s ranch. He got kind of mean after Dash said hi to her.”
“Well, that’s news to me.” Sharon takes out a pad and writes on a paper napkin. “Chad, you said?”
“Pretty sure.”
“We’ll look into it. Thanks, Cass.” She drops a few bills on the counter and stands. “I gotta get going, but if you, uh, ‘happen to find’ anything else, you’ll let me know, right?” She winks at me before she leaves.
“Sure will.”
I know Dash would probably be angry with me if he finds out that I was chatting with Sharon about the case, but what’s a little banter over coffee, right?
CHAPTER 8
After I leave Tank’s, I decide I need to get some gas, so it’s only logical that I would head down to the Gas N’ Guzzle.
The gas station is near Penny’s motel on the way into town. It’s a tiny mini-mart with an attached two-bay garage and four gas pumps. When I pull into the small lot, one of the garage bay doors is open and I can see Cory bent over an engine. I wave to him, but he doesn’t see me. Cory’s family owns the station, and he works as their mechanic. He’s a bit of a goofball, but I have reason to believe he’s smarter than he looks.
I head inside the mini-mart. There are no other customers at the moment, and the clerk is a kid in his early twenties with a shirt that says “Legalize It” and dirty blond dreadlocks. I don’t mean the color dirty-blond; I mean his hair is blond and obviously dirty. He smells like hemp and regards me with half-closed eyes. I vaguely recognize him as one of Cory’s cousins. His name tag says “Brock” in scrawling Sharpie.
“Welcome to the Gas N’ Guzzle,” he drones.
“Hi, Brock,” I say cheerfully.
“Do I know you?” His eyes widen a bit.
“Um… no. You’re wearing a name tag.”
He looks down at his shirt. “Right. Yeah.”
Oh, this’ll be fun, I tell myself. “Listen, Brock, were you working yesterday morning?”
“Yeah. Shift started at six in the morning. Why?”
�
�Do you recall a man getting hurt here yesterday morning? He claims a woman twisted his arm?”
Brock stands there for a long moment, swaying slightly, as he thinks, his brain chugging along like the little engine that could. “Yes,” he says finally, drawing the word out. “I do remember. Some dude came in and said a woman twisted his arm in the parking lot. Man, he was mad. Swearing and shouting and stuff. I told him to go into the back and get some ice.”
Aha! Looks like I’m getting somewhere. I glance around and see a single security camera high in a corner, pointed at the cash register and counter. “Are there any cameras around here other than that one?”
“There’s one at the gas pumps.”
“Can I see the footage from the time the man came in?” I ask casually.
Brock might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he eyes me suspiciously. “Why? You a cop?”
“No, nothing like that.” I look to my left and right conspiratorially, as if checking to make sure no one else is listening to us. “The man that came in, Pete Walker? I’m his attorney. I need to see if we can make a case for assault.”
“Whoa. That’s serious.” Brock looks me up and down again. “You don’t look like a lawyer. Shouldn’t you be wearing like, a suit or something?”
I shrug. “I’m incognito.”
The blank expression on his face tells me that Brock probably doesn’t know what incognito means, but he seems to take it seriously, considering the number of syllables I threw at him. “Alright, but don’t tell my boss.” He rounds the counter and leads me to a narrow hallway, where we have to skirt around a massive ice machine. At one end of the short hall is the gas station’s back door, and at the other end is a tiny office with a computer and monitor and a door to the bathroom.
In the office, Brock queues up the footage while I wait. He rewinds to six a.m. the morning prior, and then fast-forwards up to the time Pete came in.
“Alright, here’s the time he came in,” Brock says. “There’s no audio, but trust me, he was really loud.”
Sure enough, there on the black and white security footage, Pete bursts into the camera’s frame, his mouth shouting silently and one arm cradled against his stomach. He points accusingly outside with his uninjured hand. Brock (TV Brock) puts both hands up to calm Pete, and then points toward the back room and the ice machine. Pete disappears from the camera’s frame again.
I check the timestamp in the corner of the monitor. It reads 6:32 a.m.
“After that, he used the bathroom, and then left,” Brock says. “I didn’t see him again after that.”
“So there’s nothing on camera that shows the incident itself?” I ask him.
“Nope. The outside camera points right at the gas pumps. These people were parked in the lot, but off to the side. I didn’t actually see the woman do anything.”
“But you did see her, right?”
“For like, a second, through the window. She had two kids with her. And there was an old lady, too.”
Bummer. “Okay, Brock, thanks for the help—”
“Well, what do we have here?” Deputy Sharon’s frame fills the narrow hallway outside the tiny office, her hands on her hips.
CHAPTER 9
Normally in these situations, the first thing that springs to mind—my mind, at least—is “it’s not what it looks like.” Which usually implies that something is very much what it looks like, or at the very least, that someone has been caught in the act.
But before I can say anything, Brock’s eyes get real wide and he says, “Good morning, Deputy Sharon, ma’am. How can I help you?” The kid is so polite and obviously nervous, I have no doubt that Sharon has busted him for something in the recent past.
“Hi, Brock.” She nods to me, her face a tight smile. “Cassie. I just came by to check on that security footage, to corroborate Pete’s story. Brock, why don’t you go mix me up one of those fruity iced drinks? Half cherry, half lemon-lime.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Brock scurries down the hall, edging past Sharon. Once he’s gone, she raises her eyebrow to me. “What are you doing here, Cassie?”
It’s a valid question. What am I doing here? Or more importantly (as I assumed she was asking) why am I getting involved? I didn’t know Anna all that well, personally. As Dash made very clear, I have no incentive to be in the middle of this. The police could handle it just fine. So what am I doing?
A dozen answers all come into my head at once, some excuses, others lies, but if I really think about it—and if I’m being honest with myself—it’s an itch that needs scratching. Something happened here, in my town, and if the last few months are evidence of anything, it’s that I’m pretty good at this sort of thing.
Curious Cassie was back. If there was something that needed discovering, I was on it. It didn’t matter what it was—why did the price of lunch go up? Who stole equipment from the football team’s locker room? Why was a teacher absent for four days straight? I’d find out, and I rarely failed. Curious Cassie went dormant for a while there, during which I became Cassie the shop owner, Cassie the adult, Cassie who pays bills and employs her mother and has a social life—but Curious Cassie never actually went away. And here we are.
My face must illustrate that I’m struggling with the question, because Sharon sits on the edge of the desk and asks me, “So what have you found out?”
I look up into her face, and I recognize the expression. And right there I know I have a kindred spirit in her. I don’t know her reasons—could be that Anna was a fellow single mom, or that Sharon’s spent her whole life in a man-centric career, or maybe she just plain dislikes Pete that much—but she’s got her own reasons, and like me, would probably have a tough time vocalizing them for someone else to understand.
I clear my throat. “Security footage shows that Pete came in at 6:32 a.m. yesterday. Brock confirms that he complained about Anna hurting him, and then he went to the back here to get some ice for his wrist. Nothing outside was caught on camera.”
“When does he leave again?”
I fast-forward the tape until we see Pete emerge from the back again. “Brock said he got the ice, used the bathroom, and… there he is. 6:38.”
Sharon frowns. “Well, that’s a bummer. It doesn’t confirm or deny his story. But, Anna’s cell phone records show that she made a call at 6:34 a.m. It only lasted about three minutes.”
“Who’d she call?”
“A gentleman named Chadwick Holland.”
I know, it’s totally the inappropriate time, but I stifle a laugh. “Chad’s name is Chadwick? No wonder he’s so grumpy.”
“You know where we can find him?”
I think about it for a long moment, but I can’t for the life of me remember what Anna said about him when we met at Bonnie’s ranch. “No, but I know who would.” I take out my cell phone and make a call.
“Hey,” Dash answers. “Good morning. Where are you?”
“I’m at the Gas N’ Guzzle. I just ran into Sharon. She wants to know where she might be able to find Anna’s boyfriend, Chad. Do you remember what Anna said he was doing?”
“Yeah, renovating the Maximoff place,” he answers quickly. After a pause, he adds, “Cassie, why do I have the feeling you’re doing the opposite of what we talked about?”
“Thanks, gotta go.” I hang up on him. “Maximoff’s place,” I tell her.
Sharon rises. “Alright, it’s worth checking out.” She starts down the narrow hallway before glancing over her shoulder and adding, “You coming or what?”
* * *
“You think he’ll be there on a Sunday?” I ask.
“Worth a shot. If not, we’ll get his address from Maximoff.” Sharon drives the police cruiser across town with me riding shotgun. I left my SUV at the gas station for the opportunity to ride in a cop car again.
“You think he’ll tell us?” Dexter Maximoff is the last member of the Maximoff family, who pretty much built Bandit Hills. He’s stinking rich and usually stinking dru
nk, and has a reputation of being a world-class recluse.
“Oh, I think he’ll help us out. In fact, he’s down at the station right now, cleaning out holding cells.” Sharon grins. “Community service for a drunk and disorderly.”
I shake my head. After last month, when Maximoff discovered that the love of his life was killed more than thirty years ago by her brother, I thought the old man had gotten some closure and was turning a new leaf. Seems I was wrong.
I call Mom to ask her to open the shop for me as Sharon pulls up to the huge Victorian-style mansion. It’s obvious that someone’s been working on it; the front yard is trimmed and landscaped, and the front porch doesn’t look like it was recently hit by a tornado. Sure enough, a pickup truck is parked just outside the wrought-iron fence.
We march up to the front door and Sharon bangs on it with a fist, very authoritatively. A few moments later Chad opens the door. He looks at me first and starts to smile, but then he notices Sharon there too, in her uniform. He turns and takes off back into the house.
CHAPTER 10
Sharon actually rolls her eyes and sighs before she runs after him. Naturally, I follow. We both sprint into Maximoff’s huge foyer, down a hall that empties into a cavernous living room. As we enter, Chad throws open a back door and is about to leap through it when a foot comes out from nowhere, trips him, and sends him sprawling onto the rear deck.
Chad rolls twice and lands on his back, wincing. Dash sticks his head through the open doorway. “Hi, ladies. What are you up to this fine Sunday?”
“Oh, you know,” I tell him casually. “Questioning suspects and whatnot.”
He frowns at me, and I know I can expect a serious conversation later about my nose and where it belongs. Sharon bends over Chad and cuffs him while she reads him his rights. Then she hauls him to his feet (making me wonder just how strong she is) and drags him back inside the house, shoving him roughly into a chair.
