Misalignment and Murder

by Cathy Tully

  Thanks to her days in law enforcement, Susannah knew that silence was a tactic used to pressure someone to speak. It usually worked well. Her palms began to sweat, but she said nothing. There was nothing she could say. She could think of no logical reason why Angie would have a key to Gus’s house. But there had to be one. Glancing away from the detective, she racked her brain for something to say. Detective Withers leaned further forward, and a discomfort grew in Susannah’s belly—that old familiar alien boring into her gut. Finally, she gave in to the desire to speak. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

  Detective Withers slowly returned to her slouched position, and Randy’s shoulders relaxed. Susannah stood. She eyed Randy, someone she had known for years and had grown to dislike more and more over the last few months. “If Angie wasn’t arrested, what is she doing here?”

  Detective Withers stood and pushed her hands deep into her front pockets, about to say something, but Randy interrupted. “Your sister was found at the scene of an investigation and could have been charged with interfering with that investigation.” Randy gazed at her, his blue-gray eyes resolute.

  “Officer Chaffin saw her enter the premises.” Detective Withers made eye contact with Susannah as if daring her to contradict, maintaining that serpentine expression. “He took her into custody before she had a chance to touch anything.”

  Randy moved around the desk. “Legally, it’s not trespassing because she had a key.”

  “She claims Gus gave her the key so she could let herself in,” Detective Withers continued. “And we can’t dispute that. But she needs to stay away while this case is still ongoing.”

  “You both do,” Randy said, rapping his knuckles on the desk.

  Susannah raised her brows at Randy but didn’t take the bait. “Then you have no reason to hold either of us.”

  Randy gritted his teeth and motioned toward the detective. Susannah turned away from him, stood up, and headed for the door. The detective opened the door and nearly ran into Owen Chaffin, who was passing by. He glanced in and gave Susannah a small nod of greeting. He wore a sympathetic expression, and Susannah was glad that someone was on her side. Detective Withers led Susannah to the same room she had been questioned in a few months before. Angie sat at a table, her hands around a bottle of water. “Suzie!”

  “Let’s go.”

  Angie leaped out of her chair, eyes wide. “I—”

  Susannah held her hand up. “Don’t say anything, I’m not in the mood.” She hurried down the hall and out to the waiting area with Angie trailing behind her. On the bench, Bitsy was involved in a game on her phone. Susannah tapped her on the shoulder. “We’re outta here.”

  Bitsy grabbed her purse and followed them out to Susannah’s car. “Didn’t have to pay bail, I see. That’s good.”

  Susannah mumbled a response to Bitsy, who had taken up her usual position in the front passenger seat. Angie sat in the back, and Susannah twisted her rearview mirror so that she could see her sister. “Where’s your car?”

  “At Gus’s.”

  “I have to take Bitsy to get her truck at America’s Finest. Then we’ll go get your car.” When they arrived at America’s Finest, Susannah pulled into the parking space next to Bitsy’s SUV and turned to her. “One of us will come and get Caden once we have Angie’s car.”

  Bitsy tucked her phone into her purse and touched Susannah’s arm. “I already spoke to Andrea. She’s cooking up a gluten-free roast chicken, just the way you like it. We call it the ‘Get Out of Jail Special.’” Andrea had cooked the same meal the evening Bitsy had picked Susannah up from being questioned about a murder. Bitsy shot her a grin, and Susannah managed a smile. Bitsy could make her smile no matter what was happening. “Go easy on her.”

  “Get out of my car,” Susannah playfully told her. “Angie, come and sit up here.”

  Bitsy waggled her eyebrows and opened the door. Hugging Angie, she pulled her key chain with the peach fob from her purse. “See y’all in a few.”

  Angie pulled the door closed and sat for a moment looking at her hands. “Don’t be mad.”

  “I don’t know if I am mad.” Backing out of the space, Susannah looked over her shoulder, avoiding her sister’s gaze. “But I sure as heck wasn’t going to get into it in front of that detective.”

  Angie said nothing.

  “Where does Gus live?” Susannah drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she listened to the directions. They rode in silence for a few minutes.

  “You’re lucky you have such a good friend,” Angie said. “She’s always there for you.”

  “That’s because she’s connected to half the people in the county. Which means she’s usually one step ahead of everyone else.” Susannah tightened her grasp on the steering wheel. “Why didn’t you wake me up when you got home from work last night?”

  “Wake you up?”

  “Where were you?”

  Angie leaned her head against the passenger window. “After work I went to Gus’s.”

  Susannah drew in a sharp breath. The sister she had always looked up to, the mother of her adorable nephew, was sneaking around like a thief in the night. “You were at Gus’s? Why?”

  Angie sighed, looking out the window into the dark night. “It’s a long story.”

  Susannah blew out a breath. “I’ve got time.”

  “I went to get my gun.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Drive-through Details

  “What?” Her fingers trembling, Susannah stopped her drumming. She bit her lip. “Wait.” Angie had a nine-millimeter Glock. Hadn’t Travis said that Gus was killed by a nine-millimeter weapon? A tingling sensation slid down her back. She looked at her fingers and exhaled slowly. It was impossible to believe that her sister had shot Gus. It simply couldn’t be. “Start from the beginning.” Her sister had only been in Georgia for two months. This was going to be interesting.

  Angie didn’t say anything for a minute, and Susannah didn’t push her. She glanced in her mirror to check traffic and decided to pull into a McDonald’s that shared its parking lot with a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. The conversation would be easier if she didn’t have to drive during it. “Talk.”

  “When you called me—”

  “Stop!” Susannah cut her off, startled at how loud her voice was. She inhaled and turned on her car radio, searching for some calming tunes, then thought the better of it and mashed the button to silence it. “I mean the very beginning. How did you meet Gus?”

  “Suzie, I don’t think you needta know all the details.”

  “You’re dead wrong. I don’t know what kind of relationship you had with Gus, and I don’t care, but that detective has you in her sights. If you were in his house or in his car”—Susannah shuddered as she realized the implications of her words—“they will find out. Just one fingerprint and she will build a case around it.”

  Angie squinted at her, and Susannah knew an argument was coming. “So, you gonna save me from myself?”

  “No, I’m going to help you and my nephew. I thought you’d be more worried about Caden than yourself.”

  Angie went pale. “I am. I’m trying to protect him.”

  “So am I,” Susannah insisted. “I’ve lived in this town for fifteen years. I know people who can help you—”

  “I’m not one of your patients.” Angie threw herself into her seat, like a child digging in her heels. “I don’t haveta listen to your lectures.”

  “I’m not lecturing.” Susannah lowered her voice and gripped the wheel instead of strangling her sister. “You know, people around here see me as an authority on certain things.”

  “Oh yeah, except for the person that tried to kill you.”

  Susannah gasped. “I, uh—”

  “Don’t look so shocked. You think we don’t know how to use the internet in New York?” She pronounced New York like Noo Yawk. “You forget that Pop keeps tabs on Tone and Irma too.”

  Tone was Anthony Mancuso, Susannah’s former p
artner in the NYPD; Irma was his wife. Susannah’s time in law enforcement was a part of her life that she had packed away until Detective Varina Withers had forced her to return to policing mode by naming her a chief suspect in the death of a local business owner over the summer. In order to clear her name, Susannah had incurred the wrath of the actual killer. She had confided in Tone but not her family. Her father and brother were in law enforcement, but it was her mother Susannah was most concerned with. She said the rosary constantly anyway. Would she ever leave the church if she knew Susannah had been in danger?

  “Ma?” Susannah asked, alarmed.

  “Ma’s tougher than you think.” Angie relaxed her shoulders, and her lips twitched slightly. “She just waves that rosary around to make you feel guilty.”

  “Who told Pop? Tone?”

  “Irma,” Angie said, her voice suddenly low and gravelly. She sounded like she wasn’t enjoying Susannah’s surprise as much as she thought she would. “She was worried about you.”

  “And now I’m worried about you. If I have to start making phone calls to Brooklyn—”

  “All right, all right.” Angie held up her hands in defeat. “Don’t let’s go there. Mom and Pop will freak if they find out I’m involved in something like this. They’ll—”

  “Then, from the top.”

  Angie sighed and twisted in the seat to face her sister. Her neck was against the door, and she tipped her head up and looked at the roof of the Jeep, black loops of hair spraying against the window. “I met Gus at back-to-school night, and we hit it off. He was funny and smart. I gave him my number, and we started to text. We got together a couple of times to…you know, have some fun.”

  “Okay.” Susannah was caught between wanting to understand and not wanting lurid details. “How did you manage to keep this from me? Where was Caden?”

  Angie looked at Susannah. “A couple of times, Gus had some off-campus meetings, and we met up afterward. Caden was still in school.”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s it. We met up at his house. He wanted to keep it casual, and so did I.”

  “By ‘casual,’ you mean ‘hidden’?”

  Angie’s dark eyes flashed. “I mean ‘no strings.’ At first, I thought it might turn into a relationship. He was kind, and funny, and really smart. He had a brilliant smile, too. But once I realized what kind of guy he was, I wasn’t interested. Okay?”

  Susannah was puzzled. “What kind of guy was he?”

  “Well, I thought…but now I don’t know.” Her black eyes brimmed with tears and her voice cracked. “Maybe I coulda helped him.”

  Susannah instantly felt a mix of sympathy and dread. “How could you have helped him?”

  Angie looked directly into Susannah’s eyes. “I don’t know. At first he seemed like a regular guy. You know. Come home, watch TV, go to bed. He didn’t even realize that he was a Ryan Gosling look alike, but cuter.” She gave Susannah a thin smile. “Later, I thought he was hooking up with other women, or men even. His phone was always blowing up. He got texts he didn’t want me to see, and he never answered the phone when I was around. He always sent his calls to voice mail. I mean, I wasn’t interested in getting married, but I didn’t want to be one of many, especially if he wasn’t going to be honest about it.”

  “You couldn’t have helped him,” Susannah said, trying to make sense of Gus’s behavior. “You didn’t know what was going on.”

  “I know,” Angie said miserably. Her curls mopped the window. She sighed. “Anyway, it’s too late now.”

  Susannah nodded and glanced at the McDonald’s. “I need coffee. You want anything?”

  Angie dug around in her shoulder bag, found a tissue, and blew her nose. “I’m coming.” She pulled down the visor, dabbed at her eyes with a finger, and applied some new mascara. Sniffing, she threw the tube into her bag.

  Susannah got out of the Jeep to stretch her legs. Leaning on the door, she crossed her arms, watching Angie fumble through her shoulder bag in search of something. After a few minutes, Susannah got back in the car. “Let’s just drive through.” She started the Jeep and circled the parking lot to the McDonald’s menu board. The speaker crackled, and Susannah ordered for them, one eye on Angie, who was peering at the contents of her bag with a perplexed expression. Susannah took their order from the window and handed a coffee to Angie, who nodded and placed her shoulder bag on the floor.

  “Okay, Ange,” Susannah said. “Now tell me about the gun.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Changing Sites

  Susannah removed the cover to her latte, inhaled the aroma, and cautiously tried a sip. Too hot. She replaced the cover and put it into her cup holder. As they exited the parking lot, she looked at Angie. “I’m waiting.”

  Angie blew on her coffee, looking at Susannah over the cup.

  “Quit stalling.”

  “Gus was gonna change the sights on my gun, so I left it with him. That’s all.” She paused to blow on her coffee again and tentatively took a sip. “He’s certified, or whatever, by Glock. So I thought, why not? When you called me, I panicked. I thought if they found my gun there, I would be dragged into the investigation.”

  “We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?” Susannah shot a look at her sister.

  “Get off my back, will ya?” Angie tossed her head, shaking her black hair off her shoulders. “I went to get the gun, but I picked up the wrong gun case.”

  “Are you saying you got in and out of there once before, without the cops knowing?”

  “Yeah.” She sipped at her coffee. “I thought I could do it again. I almost made it, too.”

  “How did you almost make it? Randy told me that Officer Chaffin saw you going in, and you didn’t have time to do anything.”

  “He saw me goin’ in the second time.”

  Susannah clenched the steering wheel. “Clear this up for me. I called you last night and told you about Gus. Then, when you left work, you went to Gus’s. Right?”

  Angie nodded.

  “Then you came home and slept for a while.”

  “I never really slept.”

  Susannah felt her blood pressure rising. “But you came back home and went into your room and closed the door like you were sleeping. I took Caden to school, and you got up and decided to make lasagna.”

  “I never did make the lasagna. You were right about that.”

  “Then you drove back to Gus’s and decided to go back into a crime scene?”

  “Don’t yell at me, Suzie! I didn’t know it was a crime scene. You told me ya found him”—her voice got thicker as she choked back tears—“at the school. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m just trying to protect Caden.”

  “Hmmm.” Susannah didn’t want to interrupt her, but she thought that if her sister really was worried about protecting Caden, she wouldn’t have been hooking up with someone she didn’t know or trust.

  “I thought if I got my gun outta his house, there would be no way to connect us.”

  “Well, now they’ll be looking for ways to connect you.” Susannah felt a stab of stomach pain as she remembered how persistent Detective Withers could be.

  “I know, I know,” Angie said miserably. “Don’t remind me.”

  “But why did you go back in?”

  “I was in such a rush to leave that I forgot my keys. I thought I threw them in my pocketbook,” she pronounced pocketbook like pokkabook, a Brooklyn-ism Susannah hadn’t heard in years. She tried not to cringe. “I must have dropped them at some point.”

  Susannah eyed her sister. Something didn’t sound right. Angie’s leather shoulder bag was like a black hole at her side. Everything that got near her was sucked into the bottom of it. Susannah had seen her toss things in there without realizing she was doing it. She found herself wondering if that was what really happened in Gus’s house.

  They drove the rest of the way without speaking except for the occasional direction Angie provided. As they got closer, Susannah understood why Of
ficer Chaffin had spotted Angie so easily. Gus’s property was set back off a secondary road. His front yard was about half an acre of lawn with nothing to catch the eye. No flower beds or bushes to hide behind, just flat and clear. There was no curb, and a shallow ditch ran along the road, preventing cars from parking there. A large oak tree, whose roots reached down into the ditch, stood at the edge of his driveway, but nothing could have concealed Angie’s car sitting in the driveway. Susannah pulled into the driveway and parked behind Angie’s car. She looked at her sister and sighed.

  “You sure you have your keys now?”

  Angie nodded and began digging through her bag.

  “Good. Then how about telling me what really happened, and we’ll never speak of it again.”

  Angie stopped, her hands frozen in place. “What do you mean?”

  Susannah watched her sister chew her lip, a habit Angie normally covered up with copious amounts of lipstick. Tonight, her lower lip showed some damage from biting. “I mean, I don’t believe you. You’re leaving something out.”

  Before Angie could speak, blue flashing lights appeared in the rearview mirror. Susannah twisted to look behind her. A familiar voice came across the loudspeaker: “Get out of the car with your hands up.”

  Susannah shot a glance at Angie, who had raised her hands but was not moving. Slowly opening her door, Susannah stepped out and faced Randy Laughton, who stood outside his cruiser with the microphone for the public address speaker in his hand. The passenger door of the Jeep opened, and Angie stepped out.

  “Hands in the air,” Randy said through the speaker. Both women complied. Randy put the microphone back in the car as Detective Withers got out of the cruiser’s passenger side. Removing his handcuffs from his belt, Randy strode toward Angie with the detective behind him. He took her hands and pulled them down behind her back. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Gus Arnold.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN