The Killing Game

by Nancy Bush

  “All I know is that Brian Carrera threatened me, us, and I believe we need to protect ourselves,” Andi said. “What kind of security do we have at the lodge? What about ourselves? My cabin was broken into and somebody put a note on one of the beds that’s still there. It said, Little birds need to fly. And I think the Carreras put it there.”

  “What?” Carter asked.

  “What!” Emma practically shrieked at the same moment.

  “Must be a play on our last name. Whatever. I’ve decided to be proactive. Yesterday I hired Luke Denton to help investigate the Carreras, pick up where his partner left off, at least legally, and bring them down. He also offered me personal protection.”

  “Who?” Emma asked, looking dazed.

  “That detective?” Carter asked. “The guy who falsified evidence . . . uh, Boucher’s . . . partner?”

  “Bolchoy. And yes, Luke worked homicide with him at the Portland PD.”

  “Luke?” Carter repeated.

  “Yes, Luke,” Andi said evenly.

  “What kind of personal protection?” he questioned, and Andi resented the insinuation in his tone.

  “Any kind I need,” she answered.

  “God, I need a drink,” Emma expelled.

  “You’re already drunk. And it’s barely ten,” he railed at her. “Where’s Ben? Call him and have him pick you up.”

  “Fuck you!” Emma shot to her feet, dropping her purse, which spilled its contents all over the floor. She bent down to pick up the items and half fell out of her chair. In a fury she slammed items back into her purse, spitting mad. “You . . . can go to hell, you fucking, smirking bastard! Hell! Along with the fucking Carrera brothers!”

  She flounced out of the room, her exit slightly ruined when she caught the strap of her purse on the door handle. She practically ripped it in two as she yanked it free.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, Carter growled, “You should have told me about all this before.”

  “I’ve told you now.”

  He slammed a fist on the table. “No wonder he was smirking, the shit.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Carter was coldly angry. “The county planner wasn’t the only meeting I had yesterday. I met Blake Carrera at Lacey’s and we had what I thought was a meeting of the minds. I’m having papers drawn up to sell them the Allencore cabins as soon as title clears.”

  “You can’t!” Andi flared.

  “We need money.”

  “You didn’t even check with me and Emma? You can’t do that!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. I still need both of your signatures. You think I wanted to have this meeting and have to beg and coerce you guys into signing? Jesus H. Christ. I’ll tell ya, Emma’s not the only one who needs a drink!”

  He slammed out after Emma and Andi got up from her chair and stalked to the window, breathing hard. She was infuriated.

  Get this out of your head. This isn’t helping. Maybe Carter’s right and they needed money, but selling to the Carreras? Over her dead body!

  She flicked a look out the window and saw a man walking across the front parking lot four stories below. Her heart clutched. It sure as hell looked like one of the Carreras.

  Fear wormed through her insides. No . . . no . . . it wasn’t . . . was it? No. She watched as the man got into a black sedan and turned out of the lot.

  Then she grabbed up her cell phone and punched in Luke’s cell number.

  * * *

  “. . . barely a slap on the wrist,” Iris moaned. “Now there’s no record of those forged confessions? Jesus, Luke. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you did it for him. How can Bolchoy get off scot-free?”

  “He lost his job,” Luke reminded her. He was holding the cell phone away from his ear because when she was upset Iris’s voice could damn near shatter glass. He heard the beep of an incoming call and said, “I’ve got another call.”

  “He said he forged those documents and now they’re missing. Who do you think did it? Amberson?”

  “Opal would never compromise a case. Doesn’t matter if it was Bolchoy or someone else.”

  “Would she for you?”

  “No. I gotta go.”

  “Well, that confession just didn’t walk out of the department.”

  “There was no confession. Bolchoy lied about there being one. Corkland knows that and so do you.” Luke hoped that was true.

  “There was a forged paper!”

  “Come on, Iris. We’ve been playing this game for months. It’s over. Bolchoy’s out of the department. No one there wants him back in, and I don’t think the union’s looking out for him either. Being outside of it all is hell for him.”

  “Playing what game,” she said in a deadly voice.

  “None of us have ever believed the Carreras confessed to coercion or whatever else Bolchoy put in that document.”

  “You admit Bolchoy did it.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it would be just like him to draw up a fake document, wave it in front of their faces, and tell them he was going to use their forged signatures to convict them.”

  “That’s coercion.”

  “Whatever it is, it lost him his job. His identity. I’m just glad your boss was smart enough not to take this any further.”

  “You still think Bolchoy’s a badass, yet he’s no better than the Carreras,” she fumed.

  “He’s a whole lot better than the Carreras,” Luke stated flatly, his temper spiking. He switched over to his other call, but by then they were gone. Realizing it was Andi’s number, he felt a jolt of awareness that made him think, Huh. He hadn’t plugged her into his contacts list yet, but the digits were fresh in his mind. She hadn’t left a message, so he called her back, and this time he got her voice mail. “Hey, I’m here,” he said. “Sorry I missed your call. I’m going to try to see Bolchoy today. I’ve got a call in to Peg Bellows, but I haven’t heard from her yet. Take care not to move boxes yourself.” He paused, then added, “Call me back.”

  * * *

  The movers arrived at one and started loading up their truck with Andi’s furniture. She thought she’d be happy to begin emptying the house, but she was tired and uneasy after seeing, maybe, one of the Carreras in the Wren Development parking lot. And even if it wasn’t either Blake or Brian, Andi recognized how threatened she’d felt.

  Though she hadn’t lifted anything heavier than her purse, her back and her head ached a bit. She carried a bottle of water around with her as she helped direct which pieces to haul out. The van was going to her storage unit first with most everything but her bed, one small dresser and a nightstand, a love seat and two occasional chairs that shared an ottoman. She was going to have to purchase a smaller table; the dining table she and Greg owned was too large for the cabin.

  It took two hours for them to load and head to the storage unit. Andi hadn’t called Luke back because she’d felt embarrassed about jumping to conclusions and phoning him with her fears. She didn’t want him to think she was half-hysterical, crying wolf at every opportunity. The more she thought about it, the more she was sure she’d let her fears take over.

  Don’t let your pride make you stupid, though.

  “No,” she said aloud, picking up her cell and listening to Luke’s voice-mail message before returning his call. He answered on the second ring, though he sounded distracted. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Okay. I guess. But . . . oh, damn. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. Do I seem kind of panicked? Sorry. It’s just that . . . I thought I saw one of the Carreras in the Wren parking lot, but I could be slightly paranoid. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “You aren’t panicked. You have a right to worry.”

  “So, you haven’t heard back from Ted Bellows’s widow?”

  “Not yet. One of the reasons I want to check with Bolchoy is that he was working with her. I don’t know how much help she was. I think there may have been some medical problem. Ray got frustrated,
and well, we know the rest of that.”

  She wanted to ask him if he would come by the house afterward. The desire to have him with her was almost overwhelming. She kept that thought to herself and instead said, “I’ll be at the cabin tomorrow, when the movers take over the pieces that belong there. I hope the lock’s fixed.”

  “It is. I went to take a look at it, and it was taken care of.”

  “You went to the cabin?”

  “I said I would. Sorry it took till today.”

  “I’m just happy it’s fixed. What did you think of the place?” she asked tentatively.

  “It’s great. Nice location on the lake. It’s not that far from the Bellows place. They’re both on that southwest side.”

  “Mrs. Bellows still owns the cabin? I thought they were coerced out of it.”

  “After Ted’s death, the Carreras backed off.”

  “For good?”

  “There is no ‘for good’ with them.”

  “I suppose that would be too much to hope for.”

  “I’d say the Carreras are just biding their time. My guess is they’ve been distracted by your family’s recent acquisitions.” There was a pause in their conversation, then he asked, “What time’re you going to be at the cabin tomorrow? I’ll come on by.”

  “Late afternoon, probably.”

  “Unless you’d like me to stop by the house tonight?”

  Andi realized he was picking up on her nervousness and said, “Tomorrow’ll be great. Oh, and I told my brother- and sister-in-law that I’d hired you.”

  She considered adding that Carter had met with Blake Carrera about selling the Allencore block of ten cabins, but before she could, he asked, “How’d that go over?”

  She smiled. “What do you think?”

  He chuckled, and she found her smile widening at the sound of his amusement. “I’m looking forward to meeting them both,” he said.

  “Remember you said that,” she warned him, to which he said good-bye, still chuckling.

  Chapter Seven

  September shoved her cell phone in her pocket, grabbed her coat off the back of her chair, and called to Gretchen as she headed for the squad room door, “Tynan Myles is at Tiny Tim’s. Hannah just sent me a message.”

  Gretchen grabbed her coat as well, camouflaging her gun and holster. “I hope to hell they have air-conditioning,” she grumbled, making her way outside.

  Gretchen climbed behind the wheel of the department-issue Jeep and backed out of the lot expertly. Strapped into the passenger seat, September rechecked her cell and added, “He’s managed to sidestep us too many times for it to be coincidence.”

  “Eh, he could just be lucky that way. How’d you get the daughter-in-law to tip us off?”

  “She’s sick of me asking to talk to either Tynan or Caleb. She doesn’t want us talking to either of them, apparently, but she chose to give up her father-in-law before her husband.”

  “Think there’s a reason for that?” Gretchen asked, squinting against the sunlight bouncing off bumpers and windshields as she eased into the traffic

  “Other than she doesn’t want to deal with it? No. I get the sense that neither Caleb nor Tynan will be all that excited about being interviewed by the police, and that Hannah thinks they’ll get pissed at her for being the liaison.”

  “It’s a little early to hit the bars, or is this Tynan’s usual?”

  “Hannah acts like he spends a lot more time out of the house than in, but that may be because of Greer.”

  “Tynan’s grandson.”

  “Or granddaughter. Could you tell?” September asked curiously.

  Gretchen gave a thin smile. “Likely one or the other.”

  Half an hour later, they reached Tiny Tim’s, a rambling board-and-batten building stained a reddish-brown color, the windows lit from inside with Corona and Budweiser beer signs in glowing green, yellow, and blue neon. There were some scraggly laurel bushes at the front entry that could have taken over if they weren’t so starved for water, their leaves dry and sunburned. September supposed the place would look more inviting in the evening. On a hot Friday afternoon it looked dusty and neglected, and the country western music peeling out was of the sorrowful, wailing sort.

  As it turned out, there were a lot of people standing on the rough-hewn wood floor, hovering around the bar and pool tables, starting the weekend early. September had a rough idea of Tynan’s age and Hannah had said he worked construction.

  There were two fiftyish men sitting at the bar, one in a business suit and one in a pair of jeans and a gray work shirt. The group of pool players were millennials, and there were three other Tynan possibilities scattered around the tables, two with baseballs caps atop their silver-haired heads.

  September zeroed in on the man at the bar. He was alone, and the other men seemed to be hanging with buddies. She knew next to nothing about Tynan Myles, but something about the way his daughter-in-law talked about him made September feel like he might be a bit antisocial.

  “Mr. Myles?” she asked, standing to his right side.

  He was hunched over a beer and flicked her a look. “Who wants to know?”

  “Laurelton PD,” Gretchen answered in a cool voice.

  He straightened and swiveled around to give them each a hard look. “My, my. You two sure do credit to the department.”

  “We’ve been trying to connect with you,” September said.

  “Hannah tell you were I was?” He picked up his beer and took a long drink.

  “She said she’d told you we wanted to talk to you?”

  “Little rat fink. I told her to keep her nose outta my business, but here you are.” He swept a hand expansively in their direction.

  “We just want to talk to you about Phillip and Jan Singleton.”

  “Who?”

  September suspected he knew exactly who she was talking about but would have played along if Gretchen hadn’t growled, “Are we gonna play this game? That’s what you want to do? That’s your choice?”

  “Hey, missy. Don’t get your knickers in a knot.”

  September put a shoulder between them, completely aware that to Gretchen, them’s was fightin’ words. “You knew the Singletons. They lived right across the street from you.”

  “Oh, yeah. You’re talkin’ about the old people who offed themselves. Pretty crazy.”

  “You know exactly who we’re talking about,” Gretchen said through her teeth.

  September hurriedly put in, “That’s correct. And Jan Singleton’s brother, Harold Jenkins, died at the house earlier.”

  “Yeah, he lived there a while. We just didn’t see him no more.”

  This was far more than she’d expected. Encouraged, September swept on before Gretchen could say anything, “That’s what we understand. There’s an ongoing investigation, but the piece we’re concentrating on is the discovery of an approximately eighteen-year-old male’s bones. We have no identification on him, so we’re talking to anyone who might remember someone of that age around the Singleton home about ten, twelve years ago.”

  “There’s that granddaughter.”

  “It’s a male,” Gretchen said with forced restraint.

  “I heared you all right. That girl ain’t no thirty years old or so neither. Just thought she’s closer to the dead guy’s age than I am, that’s for sure.”

  “Frances didn’t live at the house until her grandparents died,” September told him.

  “Caleb didn’t live with me neither, so I guess he’s no help, huh?”

  “None at all,” Gretchen said.

  “That’s why we’re talking to you,” September reiterated.

  Now that he’d gotten over trying to stay out of their way, Tynan Myles seemed to think it all a great lark that they were talking about his “crazy” neighbors. He launched into a long-winded account of some past Fourth of July when Phillip Singleton had suffered third degree burns on his hands from holding a firecracker too long. “Stupid dumbo,” Tynan cackle
d. “Lucky he didn’t lose any fingers. His thumb was like raw meat there for a while. I remember that.”

  “Did you know Nathan Singleton, their son?”

  “Nathan . . . yeah, I knew him.” Tynan’s mood darkened. “He was in love with that stupid dumbo wife of his, what the hell was her name?”

  “Davinia,” Gretchen supplied.

  “That’s right. Davinia. She was screwy as a three-dollar bill, I’ll tell ya, but he just wanted her like a drunk wants a drink. Always rubbing her arm whenever they were around, and you just knew he wanted to be rubbing something else. She always looked kinda bored. Never understood why they got married in the first place, except Nathan just wanted her, and maybe she thought he had some money.”

  “Why was she screwy as a three-dollar bill?” September asked, and Gretchen turned to give her a what-the-hell look. She clearly thought September was going off point, which she was, but she was curious about Tynan’s thoughts.

  “Well, you know, new boobs, new nose, newfangled diet. Always wantin’ more, and Nathan didn’t have much. You know that car he drove off the cliff was about a month old. Financial troubles. With her always raggin’ on him about the next thing, you can see why he did it.”

  “You’re saying he caused the accident on purpose?” September asked.

  “He killed himself and his wife.” Gretchen’s tone was disbelieving.

  Tynan shrugged. “That’s what Mom always thought, but that was before she went . . .” He circled his finger beside his ear.

  “Your mother. Grace Myles?” September clarified.

  “Hannah tell ya she’s batty?”

  “It’s your mother’s house you all live in,” Gretchen said. “But she’s in assisted living.”

  “House is mine. Smart lawyer got her to sign it over before she went completely nuts. Had to wait a few years before she went into Memory Care so the state wouldn’t take it back. She kept wandering off and we’d have to fetch her and drag her home. Finally, we could put her in that place and let the state take care of her. You know how much it costs? Nothin’ for us now, thank the good Lord, but woo-wee.”

  “How well did your mother know the Singletons?” September asked.