Murder Wins the Game

by Maddie Cochere

  I drove to the northwest corner of the city where new housing was expanding beyond the city limits. Kristy lived with her parents in one of the newest neighborhoods, where several homes were still under construction.

  The lack of mature trees, shrubbery, or even traffic made it difficult to be inconspicuous. I had given up watching her house and began parking on a street at the front of the subdivision. It was the only way out and made it easy to spot her when she was leaving.

  A line of vehicles belonging to construction workers had proven the perfect place to park. On the third day of parking behind the trucks, a man came out of the house and rapped on my window.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “No thank you,” I replied with a smile.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “I’m just watching.”

  “Watching what?”

  “Your guys.”

  “Why are you watching my guys?”

  “Because they look good, and there’s nothing else to look at.”

  He became testy. “You need to move on out of here, or I’m calling the police.”

  “Why? It’s a public street. I can park here if I want.”

  He stepped back toward the house and pulled out his cell phone. Fifteen minutes later, Officer Wheeler pulled in behind me.

  He walked up to my truck, crossed his arms over the open window, and leaned in slightly. There was a twinkle in his eye.

  “Hi, sailor,” I said seductively. “What brings you out here on this fine morning?”

  He chuckled softly. “What are you doing, Jo? Why didn’t you just tell the man who you were and what you’re up to? You have him thinking you’re some kind of nutjob casing houses, or planning to steal his equipment. Why can’t you play nice?”

  I smiled. “I answered his questions. He just didn’t ask the right ones.”

  Glenn opened the truck door and said, “Get out.” He motioned for the man to come over to us. “Are you the foreman? Hubert Gonzales?” The man nodded. “Jo, give him your card.”

  I reached into the truck to grab a card and handed it to the man. “I’m working a case up this way,” I told him. “I’m parking here to blend in.”

  The man read my card aloud. “Baranski and Ravens Investigations. Jo Ravens, Private Investigator. Why didn’t you say so? How was I supposed to know you weren’t some jilted lover of one of my guys? I was expecting you to eventually get out with a gun and start knocking us off one by one.”

  I saw a hint of a smile on Glenn’s face. I wasn’t as polite and laughed loudly.

  A car came up the street. It was Kristy in her white BMW.

  “I have to run,” I said.

  I threw a see you tomorrow over my shoulder to Hubert and grazed Glenn’s lips with mine as I rushed past him and jumped into my truck.

  I backed up to give myself more room to pull out onto the road and felt my back bumper tap the cruiser’s front bumper. I gave Glenn an oops look and pulled into the roadway. I had to turn the truck around and was frustrated it was taking so long to make a Y-turn. It was going to be a while yet before I had a handle on maneuvering the larger vehicle.

  I gave Glenn and the man one last smile and a wave as I took off. Glenn had a big smile on his face, his dimple on full display. He was sexy and attractive and looked better than any of the guys working on the construction crew.

  Hubert had a less pleasant look on his face. He was obviously annoyed by the entire encounter.

  The next morning, I showed up with a half dozen cups of coffee and a box of donuts for the workers. From then on, Hubert and his men had allowed me to park in their midst with nary a word or look of concern.

  That was a month ago, but it felt like I had been following Kristy for a year. It was boring work, and I was putting on weight from snacking at malls while waiting for her to finish shopping, as well as from snacking in my truck while I waited for her to leave a friend’s house or party. There had been a lot of snacking involved in surveilling her.

  I drove past her house to be sure her car was in the driveway before pulling in behind the line of trucks at Hubert’s house-in-progress.

  I grabbed the paper bag I had tossed onto the passenger seat and pulled out a blueberry muffin before removing the lid from a cup of coffee from Chummy Burgers and More. I had to run inside Chummy’s to be sure I actually got a cup of coffee and not hot chocolate, a soda, or some other drink the drive-thru worker wanted to send out as a surprise. Chummy didn’t have great coffee, but it was good enough. Walt Crump used to serve the best cup of coffee in town at the snack bar in the flea market before it burned down four months ago. Without his corroded coffee pot and the rusted water lines of the flea market for added flavor, the coffee he was brewing now was embodied with what could only be described as watered down mud.

  I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Kristy would most likely drive past in fifteen minutes. That would give me plenty of time to eat the muffin and drink the coffee. It was my third cup this morning, and I was already fully caffeinated and wide awake.

  I pulled the top off the muffin, took a big bite, and savored the blueberry flavor. Who knew Walt was such a good baker?

  After the flea market burned down, he disappointed the entire town when he said he wasn’t going to rebuild. He had truckloads of dirt hauled in to fill the gaping hole before erecting two ugly, wooden signs on the property that he then rented to local merchants for advertising. They were a sad reminder for everyone of a better day in Buxley, Ohio.

  He used the insurance money from the fire to buy a building two blocks down from where the flea market had stood. After remodeling the building to house two businesses, he opened Crump and Crumpets Bakery for himself in one half and rented the other half to Wagner’s Used Books.

  Peggy Wagner was a friend of Walt’s from the flea market, and it was a wonder the fire department hadn’t already shut her down. Not only were her old, less-than-sturdy shelves overflowing with books, but she also had boxes of books on the floor, stacked high, one upon the other. More stacks of books leaned against the bookshelves and the boxes. It was only a matter of time before someone was hurt while rummaging through her inventory.

  After eating the muffin top, I pitched the bottom half back into the bag and began sipping the coffee. There wasn’t too much activity outside the house this morning. I suspected the men were down to finishing work, and it wouldn’t be too much longer before a For Sale sign went up in the yard. The short period of time waiting for Kristy was going to feel much longer this morning. It was easier to wait for her when I had Hubert’s men to watch.

  I checked my phone for messages. There was one from Jackie with an invitation to dinner Saturday night. It wasn’t just any dinner. Jackie Ryder was the star reporter at the Buxley Beacon, and the event was an awards dinner. Jackie was receiving an award for her reporting on city government corruption in Hapsburg earlier this year. Her husband, Matt, was out of town visiting a sick family member, and she wanted me to be her guest for the evening.

  I quickly calculated if I could lose ten pounds in four days. I figured I could lose at least five and fit into something decent in my closet. I sent a text back with a yes response.

  Mama left a message that she and Roger were getting pizzas for supper with the forty dollars she just won scratching a ten-dollar lottery ticket on her way to the beauty shop and did I want to come? I was going to have to ask Glenn to have a talk with her. She didn’t text and drive, but she did scratch and drive. She would slap a ticket against the steering wheel and scratch it while she drove down the road. She said she could see the ticket and the road just fine, but I knew she was an accident waiting to happen. I sent a text to her with a no response.

  The last text was from Glenn. Just now going to bed. Be over before shift tonight with killer lasagna.

  It was no surprise all three messages were about food. Everything revolved around food with my family and friends. I felt five pounds
heavier from reading the messages.

  Glenn’s lasagna would be delicious. I couldn’t make a ham sandwich, but he was an excellent cook and was bringing food over to my house several nights a week now. After losing almost twenty pounds last year, I had already put seven back on from surveillance snacking and Glenn’s cooking. I was going to have to put a stop to both … just as soon as I finished my muffin. I grabbed the bottom half out of the bag and devoured it.

  I leaned my head back against the headrest and watched in the rearview mirror for Kristy to come along. I hoped we weren’t going to Columbus today. At least twice a week, she ventured two hours west to Polaris Fashion Place, a two-story mall with nearly two hundred stores. It was difficult keeping track of her in the busy mall. At first, I liked the exercise from walking, but that got old fast. I had finally taken to buying something to eat from the food hall on the upper level and then parking myself on a bench near her exit on the lower level. The only problem so far had been sitting on the hard bench for several hours at a time. I didn’t dare get up, or I ran the risk of losing the bench for an hour or more.

  The time on the dashboard blinked over to ten o’clock. I tuned the radio to a local talk show to catch the news, leaned my head back again, and yawned. It wasn’t that I was tired, but restlessness was setting in fast, and the sun warming the interior of the truck was making me drowsy, even with the caffeine overload. I considered lowering the window a few inches, but it seemed too much an effort.

  The newscaster opened his segment with another home burglary in town. This one took place a few streets over from where I was parked. The owners had moved into their new home less than a month ago. Welcome to the neighborhood.

  The burglaries were an embarrassment for the police force. For the past several months, there had been break-ins all over town, and the police had no clue whatsoever as to who was behind them. The robberies began at a rate of about two per month, but they gradually increased. Whoever was behind them was apparently emboldened and pulling off jobs to the tune of one or two a week now.

  The newscaster’s voice faded …

  Chapter Two

  A few sharp raps to my window woke me. As consciousness rushed in, I realized my head was still against the headrest and my mouth was wide open. I snapped my jaw shut and licked my lips. I was angry I had dropped off while on surveillance yet again. The time on the dash indicated I had been dozing for forty minutes.

  One of Hubert’s workers stared at me through the glass. I lowered the window.

  “I’m the new guy on the crew, so they made me come out,” he said.

  I didn’t respond.

  “They said you’re a private dick.”

  “A private investigator,” I said, correcting him. I hated being called a dick.

  “Are you supposed to be following a blonde in a white Beamer?”

  The correct term was Bimmer, but I thought the information would be lost on him, so I only nodded.

  “A couple of the guys said to wake you and tell you that she’s been up and down the street twice already. She went out again about three minutes ago.” He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and fiddled with it until he pulled out a business card. “My brother’s a doctor. He specializes in ear, nose, and throat disorders. Give him a call. He can help you with that snoring problem you got.”

  “I don’t snore,” I said, still trying to shake the grogginess from the short nap.

  I put the window up and drove away. I knew I snored. Why did everyone have to keep telling me? Glenn never mentioned it when he spent the night, and I had never awakened in bed with a telltale snoring vibration at the back of my throat. As far as I could tell, I only snored when I wasn’t lying down. If I put my head down on a table, or against a car window, or back against a seat, my chances of snoring were near one hundred percent. I was going to have to stay awake during the day if I didn’t want to be caught snoring and then nagged about it.

  I had no idea which way Kristy had turned onto the main road. I went with the higher odds that she would drive across town to the interstate. She hadn’t been to Columbus since last Wednesday, and I could see her starting the week with a bout of binge shopping.

  I curtsied at the stop sign and continued rolling to make the left-hand turn. I hit the gas pedal and barreled down the road. A few seconds later, I was doing fifty in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone.

  I noticed a car coming up even faster some distance behind me. Hamhocks! I lowered my speed and waited for the lights and siren to come on as the vehicle approached, but there were neither. The vehicle wasn’t a police cruiser, and for a few seconds, I thought whoever was driving was going to ram the back of my truck.

  I tapped my brakes a few times, hoping the lights would give warning to the driver to slow down, but the car raced toward me. At the last second, Kristy Munson swerved into the left-hand lane and passed me.

  What was wrong with that girl? She had to be crazy to drive like that in a residential area. Granted, this was a new road running across the northern edge of town, and it wasn’t heavily traveled yet, but still, she was crazy!

  This was the first I had seen her drive like this. Her grandfather hadn’t asked about her driving habits, but I was putting this in my report. What if a car had been coming in the other direction? What if she misjudged her swerve and hit me? The truck would provide quite a bit of protection in an accident, but the whiplash would probably be nasty. Then I’d have to wear a neck brace. That would put a crimp in my love life and my ability to run surveillance and be inconspicuous. Then there would be people who would think I was faking the neck injury to get insurance money from the accident. There would be a trial, and that would cost money for a lawyer and court costs. Oh, you bet I was putting this in my report. Kristy Munson wasn’t going to disrupt my life and cost me a ton of money.

  She was far ahead of me now, but I saw her turn right onto Fourth Street, which was the main street into the downtown area. I gunned it to catch up before I lost her in traffic.

  When I saw her again, she was four cars ahead of me at a traffic light. I had to drop back a little farther when she turned off onto side streets and meandered through town until she was at Buxley’s only state liquor store.

  This was a twist. With drinking on her list of grandfather-forbidden items, what was she doing at the liquor store?

  I waited until she parked and walked into the building before parking my truck at the other end of the lot. I was surprised to see Mama’s car parked two spots down from mine. What was she doing here? And why was the liquor store so busy at this time of day anyway?

  I hopped out and decided to go in. Kristy didn’t know who I was or that I was following her, so as long as I didn’t give undue attention to her, I could check on Mama to find out why she wasn’t at the beauty shop and see if she was buying more lottery tickets.

  It only took a few moments to assess the store. Big winner Dave Jackson was at the lottery station. A large sign had been erected above the cases of scratch-off tickets. It read, Lucky Lou’s Liquor Store. Big winners sold here! Winning tickets had been taped to the wall behind the counter and covered every inch like wallpaper.

  In an article Jackie had written about Dave’s big wins, he said Lou’s was the only place where he would buy tickets. He said he didn’t have any luck until he started scratching tickets in the liquor store. I’m sure Lou was thrilled, as Dave’s big wins won money for him, too.

  A few people hovered behind Dave. The word around town was if he won more than a hundred dollars, he would occasionally buy someone in the store a bottle of booze. Two women stood off to the side at a tall table and scratched tickets of their own. A quick glance toward Kristy showed she had taken a shopping cart and was filling it from a long shelf of flavored vodkas. Three more people were in the store and shopping in the liquor aisles.

  But the main show was Mama standing in front of Dave Jackson and giving him a piece of her mind.

  “Who do you know a
t the lottery?” she demanded. “It has to be rigged. Someone is sending winning tickets here knowing full well you’ll be the one to scratch them. When you spend hundreds of dollars a day, and scratch off full rolls of tickets, you’re bound to get the big winners.”

  Lou tried to calm her down. “Estelle, you know that’s not true. No one has any idea where the winning tickets are going to end up.”

  The short, timid man was no match for Mama. She reached out and thumped him on his bald head.

  “Mama!” I yelled and rushed up to her. “What are you doing?”

  She turned to me and complained. “Dave’s already won more than two million dollars, but he’s in here buying more tickets. Why doesn’t he leave something for other people in town to win, too? It’s not right. And Lou here doesn’t get any big winners on any of the other tickets, just the twenty dollar tickets Dave plays. Someone is funneling tickets to him. He has a relative working at the lottery or something.”

  Dave hadn’t said anything up until now. His slightly too-long white hair stuck out in all directions under a Cleveland Indians baseball cap. His face was red as he pushed heavy black glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “It’s a free country, and I can buy as many tickets as I want. If you don’t get out of my face, I’m calling the police and filing harassment charges.”

  “Come on, Mama,” I said, grabbing her arm. “We’re leaving.”

  “Not without tickets, I’m not. He’s not buying all of them today.”

  Lou was understandably angry. “I don’t have to sell to you, Estelle. You can take your business somewhere else.”

  Mama reached out and thumped his head again.

  I jerked her arm and herded her toward the door. I didn’t mean to, but I made eye contact with Kristy as we hurried past her. She smiled and said, “Big party at my house tonight. You should come and bring your mother.”

  I didn’t respond and continued to hustle Mama out the door to her car.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I demanded. “You’re going to be lucky if Lou doesn’t press assault charges against you.”