Colton 911: Deadly Texas Reunion (Book 4)

by Beth Cornelison

  “We tried to help him. He had a home health nurse attending him, but she wasn’t able to save him. Later, when the cops arrived with the coroner, wanting to question us all, she was nowhere around. She was just...gone.”

  Nolan scowled. “Gone?” He fisted his hands. “As in escaped after sabotaging her patient?”

  “Nolan? Why would his nurse—” Summer started.

  “We suspect so, but we don’t have proof. Like I said, the stress of seeing Horace suffocate was pretty distressing. We were all distracted, focusing on the clue Horace gave us, and didn’t see the nurse leave.”

  “Clue?” Summer asked.

  “Horace died before an ambulance could get there, but he gasped one word, Melody, before he succumbed. He was desperate to get it out, so we believe it has to be important,” Dallas said.

  “But important how?” Summer stood and placed baby Ariana Josephine in her bassinet. Shoving her sleeves up her arms, she faced Dallas. “Did you get the impression this Melody was another murder victim? A relative or old flame of Corgan’s?”

  “No clue. We had no context other than him gasping it out when he knew he was dying,” Dallas said.

  “So Melody might not be a person.” Nolan rubbed the back of his neck, puzzling over the odd clue. “He could have been talking about a musical melody. Or a pet. Or a code for a safe or—”

  “A computer password, street name, business...” Summer picked up. “It could mean anything.”

  “Exactly,” Dallas said, discouragement heavy in his tone. “I hate to let this go hanging, but I’m not in a good position to dig further into what it means. I’d sure be grateful if you two would pick up the ball.”

  “Absolutely,” Nolan said, but Summer’s expression was skeptical. “What’s wrong, Tadpole?”

  “I...” She began pacing. “Do you think Melody is related to Patrice’s murder? If Horace didn’t kill her, are we muddying the water looking into what Melody means? I have a client—Patrice’s father—paying me to find out who killed Patrice. That’s where I need to concentrate my efforts.”

  “We really don’t know more than what Dallas said.” Avery passed Zeke to Dallas and scooped her daughter out of the bassinet. “I’m sure there was more to what Horace wanted to tell us, but Melody was all he got out.”

  Nolan rubbed his hands on the legs of his jeans. “Let’s put a pin in Melody for now and come back to it later. Back up to the nurse. She would have been the only one in the room with Horace after you left the room, right?”

  “As far as we know.” Dallas held his son’s pacifier in place until he began sucking it.

  “It’s possible someone was hiding while we talked to Horace or that she let someone in a back way unbeknownst to us. But we really weren’t out of the room that long,” Avery said.

  “So his nurse killed him?” Incredulity filled Summer’s tone. She pulled out her notebook and began taking notes. “Wow.” She glanced up from her scribbling. “Any idea where this woman is now? I’d like to talk to her.” She huffed. “And I’m guessing the police would like to talk to her.” Tipping her head, Summer eyed Dallas. “Or have they already? What have the police done about Horace’s murder?”

  “Forrest would be in a better position to answer that,” Dallas said. “I’m sure they would like to talk to the nurse, but I don’t think they have. Last I heard no one has seen her since Horace died. If she did kill her patient, my guess is she didn’t act on her own. Where’s the motive?”

  “Unless she’s a pill pusher like some other nurses in town and thought Horace would rat her out,” Avery said with a frown to Dallas. “You know the rumors that you know who—” her tone dripped venom “—is pushing illegal prescription pills through local nurses.”

  Dallas took a deep breath and gave Avery a sympathetic look. “And you know that those rumors haven’t ever been proven, despite multiple raids on his shop. We gotta deal in facts, honey.”

  “You deal in facts. I know in my gut he’s responsible for supplying the heroin that killed my brother.”

  Nolan divided a glance between his cousin and Avery. “Who are we discussing and why?”

  Dallas scrubbed a hand down his face. “Avery’s brother Zeke died of a drug overdose. She believes the gossip that Tom Kain, who owns an auto shop in town, is the local supplier. The rumors also pin him for bribing or blackmailing local nurses to sell opiates for him.”

  Avery scowled as Dallas continued, “Kain’s garage has been searched multiple times, and the cops have never found anything to charge him with. If he is a drug dealer, he’s really good at avoiding detection.”

  “They’ll find something someday,” Avery grumbled. “Or there is no justice in this world.”

  Summer twisted her mouth. “Okay, so whether or not this Kain person was behind it, couldn’t the nurse in question be one of the ones dispensing illegal pills? Maybe, like you said, Horace Corgan knew that about his nurse, maybe even benefited from her supply of painkillers, and she feared that he’d give her up while his tongue was loose. That could be her motive.”

  Dallas raised a hand. “Maybe. But I tell you, after hearing Horace describe how he’d targeted and killed those women, mummified them, even I wanted to kill him. She could have been outraged by what she’d overheard and decided to speed his dying process.”

  Avery gave her fiancé a raised-eyebrow glance.

  He lifted a shoulder. “You see? Speculation is just that without proof.”

  Avery rolled her eyes and glanced away.

  “Speculation on her motive aside,” Nolan ventured warily, “I think we’re safe to work on the assumption that the nurse is the lead suspect in Corgan’s death.”

  “What’s her name, by the way?” Summer asked, looking up from scribbling on her pad.

  Avery screwed up her face. “Ugh. Baby brain and no sleep. Something with an R?”

  Dallas pulled out his phone and tapped through a few screens. “Jane Oliver.”

  “Oh. Well, that ends in an R,” Avery said, her lips twitching.

  Summer wrote the name down. “What home health agency?”

  “Whisperwood Home Health.” Dallas stood when his son started mewling, patting his back gently and bouncing him lightly.

  “So the assumption is,” Nolan continued, “that Ms. Oliver was paid off, or blackmailed, or threatened in some way. Maybe she had ties to one of the murdered women.”

  Summer screwed up her mouth. “Like Dallas, I don’t like assuming.”

  “Okay,” Nolan said, “to be sure about what happened and why, we need to find Jane Oliver.”

  Summer pursed her lips as she got lost in thought, clicking her pen. “While it bothers me that this nurse disappeared, I keep coming back to the fact there’s no link here to Patrice, and that’s where I need to focus my efforts. If Corgan didn’t kill Patrice, then her killer is likely still out there.”

  “Is there no link?” Nolan offered. “Do you really think it is a coincidence that a town the size of Whisperwood has had a crime wave of murders and disappearances without some tie? I’d like to be sure Jane Oliver isn’t the latest murder victim.”

  Summer chewed her lips and finally bobbed a nod. “All right. We can stop by the home health agency when we leave here.” She tapped her pen on the notebook.

  “Thank you for helping out,” Avery said. “It does my mind good to know someone is following up on all of this.”

  “Yeah, I was feeling a little guilty over leaving some of those issues unresolved, but we thought it best to step back from the case because of the twins,” Dallas said. “Especially since we had the answers we wanted about the Mummy Killer and the Army buttons.”

  Summer’s head shot up. “Whoa. Back up. Army buttons?”

  Dallas blinked as if surprised they hadn’t heard about the buttons he mentioned. “That’s kinda how we got involv
ed with the Mummy Killer case to start with. Forrest learned that some buttons were found where the mummified women were buried. The buttons turned out to be ASU, so he asked me to see what I could learn about Army vets in the area.”

  “I’m sorry... ASU?” Summer asked.

  “Army standard uniform. ASU buttons haven’t changed much in quite a while, so we were looking at a lot of years’ worth of veterans.”

  “And the buttons led you to Horace Corgan? Horace was an Army vet?” Summer asked.

  “Dishonorably discharged,” Avery confirmed with a nod. Her expression brightened. “Wait! That’s the connection!” She turned to Dallas for confirmation. “Wasn’t one of the Army buttons found with Patrice’s remains?”

  The surprise on Summer’s face reflected Nolan’s own intrigue. “A button was found with Patrice?”

  Summer huffed. “Woulda been nice if her father or brother had told me that. I got a copy of the police report, but that must have been part of the redacted info.”

  She bent her head over her notepad again, writing and drawing lines connecting bits of information.

  Nolan studied her as she worked. A crease of concentration dented her brow, the sunlight from the front window cast gold streaks in her dark blond hair and she nibbled her bottom lip as she perused her notes, making him hungry to taste that plump lip himself. He couldn’t deny his tomboy childhood friend had grown up to be a damn beautiful woman, a fact that would make his hands-off policy more difficult to adhere to. But adhere to it he would.

  His renewed resolve caused a pinprick of disappointment in his chest. The voice of intuition, one he relied on when solving cases and reading people in his undercover work with the FBI, whispered to him now. Was his stubborn, well-meaning friends-only rule going to cost him an opportunity he’d live to regret missing?

  He shifted his gaze back to his cousin and found Dallas watching him with a knowing grin. Nolan’s pulse skipped. What had his face revealed? He shot Dallas a scowl that asked, What?

  Dallas’s returned look said, You can’t fool me. I saw how you were looking at Summer.

  Nolan gave his head a subtle shake.

  His cousin’s eyebrows lifted, and his expression messaged, You can’t deny she is hot. Why wouldn’t you pursue something with her? Or that’s what Nolan interpreted, anyway. Close enough. Dallas was clearly asking about where things stood between him and Summer. Nolan shook his head more definitively, his mouth firm.

  Avery glanced up at that moment from dandling and cooing over baby Ariana, and Nolan quickly schooled his face.

  He cleared his throat and backtracked mentally to where the discussion had been. Melody. Buttons. A murderous, disappearing nurse. “Sounds like we’ve got our work cut out for us today. Anything else you know of that might steer us in the right direction concerning Patrice’s killer?”

  Summer raised her gaze. “You said Forrest asked for your help with the buttons. What’s his connection to the case?”

  “Chief Thompson of the Whisperwood PD asked Forrest to help out with the murder cases,” Dallas said.

  “Forrest used to be with the Austin PD and got a special dispensation to work this case with the Whisperwood PD,” Nolan added, expanding on his cousin’s answer. “That’s one of the reasons I want to go to the barbecue tomorrow night. He can fill us in on anything the police can share about the case.”

  Summer nodded. “Good.” Then to Avery, “Any chance y’all will be at the barbecue?”

  Avery laughed. “Listen to you y’alling. You can take the girl outta Texas, but you can’t take the Texas outta the girl!”

  Summer’s cheeks flushed, and her laugh filled Nolan with a sensation like carbonation bubbles tickling his belly. “True! I definitely got looks from classmates when I’d y’all in other states, but the Texas was well-rooted.”

  “I bet!” Avery said. “And, no, I doubt we’ll make the barbecue, much as I hate to miss it. The twins are too little, and our pediatrician says there are already cases of flu reported in the area.”

  Summer gave an exaggerated pout. “Phooey. I understand why you can’t, but you’ll be missed.”

  Zeke released a high-pitched squeal of displeasure, arching his back and thrashing his thin legs. Nolan stood, taking the baby’s unrest as their cue to leave. “We’ll let you get back to the baby shtick. Zeke sounds like he’s tired of us stealing your attention.”

  Avery sighed. “A touch of colic, but nothing we can’t handle.” She smiled tiredly at Dallas. “Right, honey?”

  Dallas’s answering smile demonstrated how completely smitten and happy Nolan’s cousin was despite the lost sleep and barf stains on his shirt.

  Summer gathered her purse and notebook and crossed the room to give Avery and Dallas each a big hug and kiss each of the babies on the forehead. “Call if I can do anything for you.”

  Dallas headed for the door with Zeke squawking in his arms, and Nolan stopped him with a raised hand. “We can see ourselves out. You get that boy a bottle before he busts a lung.”

  Once outside and tucked into Summer’s tiny car, Nolan had to swallow the impulse to direct Summer to drive straight to the home health agency where Jane Oliver was employed. Instead, he gave her a moment to process all they’d learned, as her wrinkled brow and meditative moue indicated she was. Finally she cranked the engine, and he asked, “Well, boss, where to?”

  “Where to, indeed.” She rolled down her window to allow fresh air to blow through the Beetle as she headed back toward downtown. “As much as I want to find out what happened to Nurse Jane, I’m not convinced there’s a link to our case. Finding Patrice’s murderer is my priority. I say we talk to the rest of her friends, the guys in her classes, and follow up on our new questions for her family.”

  “All right.” Nolan cast a side glance as he jerked a nod. Summer’s hair danced in the breeze from the window, the golden wisps fluttering and swirling around her cheeks and teasing him with their floral scent, stirred by the afternoon air. Being her partner on this case, keeping a proper perspective on their relationship, would be harder than he’d imagined. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he hurt Summer or betrayed their valued friendship. If he couldn’t rein in his growing attraction to Summer, his fascination with the intelligent beauty she’d become, he’d have to walk away from this case.

  Chapter 7

  “There has to be a reason Patrice was singled out. Did she know the killer? Was it a matter of opportunity? She fit the profile of some sicko’s perverted fantasy and was in the wrong place at the right time? Did she tick someone off?” Summer said, thinking aloud as she drove back to her office. “Could it have been a crime of passion? Maria and Amanda said she didn’t have a boyfriend, but maybe one of the male friends she had wasn’t happy with that status.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Nolan hummed, clearly distracted. She angled a glance at him, trying not to notice how the October sun streaming through the windshield highlighted the sexy two-day beard on his squared jaw. Focus, Summer.

  She followed his gaze out the windshield to the businesses lining the street. Specifically, his attention seemed riveted on Kain’s Auto Shop. She slowed and fixed her own attention on the nondescript cinder-block building with three garage bays and a small office that featured a large plate-glass window facing the street. A man in dirty overalls was bent over the engine of a pickup truck. Through the wide window, she thought she glimpsed someone behind the counter of the office, though she couldn’t tell if it was, in fact, a live person or a life-size cardboard cutout advertisement like the one by the stack of tires at the second garage bay door.

  She tapped her brakes, tempted to stop and satisfy her curiosity about the man, the business that Avery suspected so passionately of being connected to the drugs that killed her brother.

  Nolan cut a sharp look her way. “Change in plans, Tadpole?”

  She screwed
her mouth into a frown and hit the accelerator. “One day. Not today. Too much else to do related to our case. But when I have more free time, I think I’ll poke around at Kain’s Auto Shop and see what’s what.”

  Nolan’s jaw hardened. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. If this guy is involved in the drug trade, he won’t take kindly to snooping.”

  She swatted at his chest. “Jeez, Nolan. Give me credit for having some discretion and common sense!” She straightened her shoulders. “What I meant to say was... I think I’m due for an oil change and tire rotation.”

  He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Just...be careful. Okay?”

  “Always.” She aimed a finger at JoJo’s Java as it came into view down the block. “I’m ready for a caffeine fix. How about you?”

  He nodded blithely. “I never met a cup of coffee I didn’t like.”

  She grabbed a parking spot that a minivan vacated directly in front of the coffee shop, and as they entered, she inhaled the scent of fresh ground coffee, cinnamon and yeast deeply into her lungs and grinned. “Heaven, I tell you. This is what heaven smells like.”

  “What can I get you folks?” the woman at the register asked.

  Behind the counter, Summer watched a barista taking a pan of hot cinnamon buns out of the oven. “One of those—” she pointed to the pan of pastries “—and a large house brew to go.”

  “Same.” Nolan took out his wallet, adding, “My treat.”

  Summer nudged him. “Thanks, Bullfrog. I appreciate it. Especially since this month seems to be outlasting my bank account.”

  “You really took a gamble coming back here to hang out your shingle, didn’t you?” He handed her a coffee as soon as the barista set it on the counter, then snagged the bag of cinnamon buns.

  “Maybe. I don’t mind pinching pennies until I get on my feet.” She popped the lid on her coffee and added a generous amount of cream and sugar. “Yossi and I are living in the office, sleeping on a cot and cooking on a hot plate until I earn enough to start paying for a small house, and I haven’t bought any new clothes in longer than I can remember.” She stirred the coffee and replaced the lid. “But it’s worth it to be back in Whisperwood. To be settled. To be putting down roots close to good friends and fond old memories.” She sipped her drink and sighed. “Ah. That’s good.”