The Pit Stop: This Stop Could be Life or Death

by Carmen DeSousa

  CHAPTER NINE

  Gino stood behind a one-way glass, watching as Detective Mark Waters interviewed Alan Jones, aka Smitty.

  They didn’t have anything on Smitty other than the fact that the pictures of the same football team that had Smitty’s image in them that Gino had found among his pap’s pictures had apparently been missing from the album at the Thurbers’ house. Smitty had gone to school with the Thurbers and the Canales. Unfortunately, other than the fact that both couples went to high school together and were found in the same way, there was no proof of homicide in either case. But when Gino called Waters this morning, sharing the information he found, the detective had asked Smitty to come in and talk. He wasn’t under arrest; this was just a gathering of information, hoping they could break him into divulging evidence.

  Sheila was still searching through the attic for his grandmother’s diary. It’d been so long since she read it that she couldn’t remember why his grandmother had mentioned Smitty. But it wasn’t because Martha was having an affair, she remembered. Sheila had told Gino that reading her godmother’s diary was like reading a romance novel full of scandalous friends and true love that was meant to be.

  Detective Waters leaned back in his chair, chewing on his pen as a nervous-looking Smitty picked at a nick on the table.

  “Please state your full name for the record,” Waters asked as he pressed Start on an antiquated recording device. Gino snickered, wondering if the officers who had interrogated Lee Harvey Oswald had used the same type of device. Gino’s department wasn’t high-tech, but at least they had an updated video and audio recording system.

  Smitty squirmed in his seat before answering, “Alan Smith Jones, but everyone’s always called me Smitty.”

  “And you’re the owner of The Pit Stop?”

  “Y’sir. Inherited it from my granddad a few years back.”

  “What did you do before then?” Waters continued with questions meant to set a baseline for Smitty’s responses. By asking simple questions first, the accused would let down his guard just enough that when the detective asked a pertinent question, either he’d answer honestly or stumble all over himself trying to come up with a quick lie, which would allow the detective to spot the difference.

  “I’ve worked at The Pit Stop my entire life,” Smitty answered.

  “So, how long have you known Sue and Nelson Thurber, Mr. Jones?”

  “Darn near my entire life also. We’d all gone to high school together.”

  “And when’s the last time you saw them?”

  Smitty scratched his head. “Hmm … ’bout a week or so, I guess. They liked to come in for Sunday brunch at my diner every once and a while.”

  “Do you know why anyone would want to kill them?”

  Smitty sighed. “They were good people; it’s a darn shame.”

  Gino watched the interview in frustration, realizing Smitty hadn’t answered the question and was nervous about something. But every word he spoke dripped with truth. Matter of fact, Gino didn’t think Smitty’d be able to tell a lie. If they knew the correct question to ask, Gino was certain they could get to the bottom of his involvement with the two couples’ deaths.

  “Did you like Sue, Smitty?” Waters continued.

  “Sure …” Smitty answered, moving around in his seat like a little boy, almost looking embarrassed. “We all did.”

  Gino leaned forward, closer to the glass as though he’d be able to get a better view than he already had. He wanted to be in there asking the questions. This was it. Would Waters catch that subtle change in Smitty’s posture?

  Detective Waters leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, causing Gino to smile. He had noticed, and now it was time for the you-can-tell-me-we’re-friends approach. Gino watched as Smitty leaned back in his chair too, the mirror neurons in full swing.

  Mark Waters lifted his cup of coffee, but he didn’t take a sip. Instead, he stopped midway to his mouth. “So, did you and Sue date in high school?”

  Smitty’s mouth turned up just slightly at the edges, and now there was a pronounced reddening in his cheeks, but he only nodded as an answer.

  Mark took a sip of his coffee, allowing a slight pause, nodding in understanding. “She was a nice-looking woman, wasn’t she?”

  The old man nodded again, but this time stole a peek around the room as though he were searching for an escape. He was shutting down, realizing he’d said too much, and was preparing to flee. And they had nothing to keep him.

  Waters tilted his head again, displaying an I’m-your-friend demeanor. “Have you and Sue been seeing each other, Smitty?”

  “No, sir.” Smitty whipped his head back and forth. “Just when she comes into the restaurant is all.”

  “And how often does she come to your restaurant?”

  Smitty jerked his head up to meet the detective’s eyes, then flashed a glance at the two-way mirror. “Am I under arrest, Detective?”

  “No, no …” Waters waved his hands. “I’m just trying to figure out how the Thurbers died, maybe even the Canales. You were their friend, right? So, I figured you’d wanna help.”

  For the first time since Gino had met Smitty, he didn’t look like a fragile old man. He held Mark Waters’ gaze. “I’d start with Nurse Becky, then.” The old man stood up. “Is it okay if I go now? My wife is all by herself and the lunch crowd will be in soon.”

  Waters stood up beside him. “Becky? As in Rebecca Thurber, their daughter?”

  Smitty walked out the door without answering.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Gino stepped through the door of the adjacent room and watched as Smitty scampered off down the corridor. He cocked his head at Waters. “The Thurbers’ daughter?”

  Waters shrugged, evidently as confused as he was. “We spoke with her right after their bodies were discovered. She came to the house and said everything appeared normal and she couldn’t imagine who would have snuck into her parents’ house and killed them. And of course, other than the neighbor stating he saw someone leaving the Thurbers’ home around three a.m., there’s nothing indicating a homicide.” Detective Waters reached for the phone at his side and pulled it out of its holder. He glanced at the screen, then nodded. “M.E. wants me. Maybe he found something. Wanna come?”

  “Sure,” Gino agreed.

  Mark tossed his half-full coffee cup in the trash and headed down the hall, and Gino trailed behind him.

  He didn’t really want to go to the M.E.’s office. Unlike some cops, the smell of death still got to him. Maybe he had a better sniffer than some officers, since he didn’t smoke. But he’d gotten so familiar with the stench of death that he could smell it on someone who hadn’t died yet. Sheila had introduced him to one of the older teachers at her school, and he’d known immediately that the man was dying. When he’d asked later, Sheila confirmed that the man had cancer. He died a week later. It wasn’t a skill he was proud of, that was for sure. He’d rather not be able to smell some of the criminals he’d handcuffed and thrown in the back of his cruiser. But it did come in handy a few times when he was serving a warrant and the spouse of the wanted individual claimed they hadn’t seen the person in months. All he had to do was step a few feet into the apartment, and he could sniff him out. Most criminals had the smell of fear, which smelled like excrement and sweat. The other officers had teased him about it after the first arrest, saying he had a future as a police dog if he couldn’t pass the sergeant’s exam. Luckily, he’d passed.

  The M.E., Rick Cooper, according to the nameplate on the door, opened the cooler and pulled out one of the Thurbers as soon as Mark and Gino arrived. He unzipped the bag, revealing the feet of the victim, and Gino was almost positive he was looking at Nelson Thurber’s feet. Even bloated and discolored, no woman would have that big of feet, at least he hoped not.

  “You see this?” Cooper pointed to a small hole between the man’s toes. “That’s what some junkies do. Those who are still trying to balance a normal life with their add
iction, that is. Only, I don’t think this seventy-something-year-old couple was addicted to heroin. Nope. I think you gentlemen have a couple homicides on your hands. I’ve ordered a tox-screen, so I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Waters nodded and turned to Gino. “I guess we need to talk with R.N. Rebecca Thurber again,” he said, as if thinking aloud. He certainly wasn’t asking for Gino’s advice. Mark Waters seemed to be on the ball. Obviously, his father had taught him a thing or two.

  On the way back to the station, Gino shifted in his seat to face Mark. “Jackson said your father worked as a detective with him on my grandparents’ case, Joe and Martha Canale. Did he ever mention their case?”

  Mark pulled his eyes off the road for a second and looked him in the eyes, nodding. “He didn’t like it, always said there was something that didn’t add up, but then the chief had told him to drop it. My dad had gone to school with your grandfather.”

  Gino blanched at that. “How’s that possible?”

  Waters laughed. “Not impossible, just unusual. My dad went into the military right after high school and made a career out of it. He didn’t get married until he was forty. I remember him studying the case when I was a child. I guess I was eight years old, but I wanted to know everything my dad knew about being a detective. I wanted so badly to please him. He was such a tough guy.”

  “Why do you think he took the deaths so hard? Besides being high school friends, that is.”

  “They were close. They’d been in the service together, too. But it seemed like there was more. He just couldn’t let it go. When I’d come home early from school once a few months later, I found him crying in his study.” Mark turned to look at Gino again. “My dad didn’t cry. As I said, he was a tough man. I walked up to him, afraid that something may have happened to my mother, but I saw the same file he’d always pore over, as though he’d missed something. When I touched him on the arm, he jumped up. It was so sudden that I thought he was going to hit me. Instead, he slammed the folder shut and walked out of the room, mumbling something that sounded like … all my fault.” Waters dropped his head slightly, shaking it. “I never heard him talk about the case again, and he died soon after. But when this happened, I knew something was up. I’d heard my dad say too many times how it just didn’t make sense that both of them had died peacefully in their sleep.”

  Gino huffed out a breath. “No. It doesn’t — wait … did you request the file?”

  “Which file?”

  “The file on my grandparents’ deaths; it’s missing.”

  Waters pulled to a stop outside the police station. “Oh, that was my dad’s personal file he’d compiled. He wouldn’t have taken the station’s file.”

  “It’s missing,” Gino repeated. “Could you check to see if maybe he did?”

  Mark narrowed his eyes. “Why would my father take the file?” He shook his head.

  “Maybe he found something that he didn’t want to.”

  Waters opened up the door and jumped out, slamming the door behind him.

  Gino followed his lead and stepped out of the Ford police edition. “Mark, I wasn’t accusing your father of anything, but you said yourself that he thought it was his fault.”

  “He’d meant that he couldn’t figure it out. If he had hurt them, he never would have tried so hard to solve their deaths.”

  “Exactly. But maybe he found out who did —”

  “Nope.” Detective Waters shook his head and stormed off.

  Gino followed, but didn’t say anything else. Obviously, he wasn’t going to get any further with Mark Waters right now.

  He needed to find his grandmother’s diary.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Ta-dah!” Sheila called out triumphantly as she walked into the living room, carrying a leather-bound book.

  Gino smiled. “You found my grandmother’s diary?”

  “Yes. I thought about it all day today, and the last time I read it was in college. The girls cooed as I read them the part about Joe knocking over Gran, and then rushing her to the bleachers, checking every square inch of her body, making sure he hadn’t broken any of her bones, and then blushing when he realized he was feeling up one of the cheerleaders. You can almost hear her giggling as she wrote it. You want me to read it to you?”

  Gino couldn’t help but laugh at his romantic wife. If his grandparents hadn’t been dead twenty years, he might have been upset with her. But she was a true romantic. She’d said that Gran had always known that Gino and she would marry, and that Sheila just needed to make him work for her. No wonder she’d turned him down so many times. Women could be so manipulative.

  He lifted his eyes and shook his head. “No, I don’t want you to read the ramblings of a teenage girl in love. I want to know what she wrote concerning Smitty.”

  “Oh, right. All right then, you make dinner, and I’ll read.”

  “Why do I have to make dinner? Can’t you just flip through the pages and find that part?”

  His wife shook her head and flashed him her best condescending-teacher look. “No. Your grandmother was a great writer. Since it has been more than twelve years, I don’t remember the details. I actually thought she was making most of it up so I never considered the specifics. It reads like one of my romantic-suspense novels, so I may be confusing some of the details. I’ll have to read from start to finish.”

  Gino threw up his hands. “Fine! But I’m not making dinner; I’ll order pizza.”

  Sheila shrugged and walked off toward her favorite reading spot. “Works for me.” She plopped down into the overstuffed chair, tucked her legs beneath her, and then layered her favorite afghan over her midriff. She was down for the count. He’d be lucky to see her in bed before two a.m.

  When the pizza arrived, Gino pulled out two pieces of the veggie pizza she always liked, popped open a can of Coke Zero, and placed it on the coffee table in front of her.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled without peeling her eyes away from the tattered diary. She was always looking for a reason to read when he was home, and he’d just given her the go-ahead. Normally if he wanted her to stop reading and curl up with him on the couch, he’d find a romantic comedy on T.V. Otherwise, if he was watching the Discovery Channel or a military documentary, she’d just spend the entire night reading.

  “Good?” he asked.

  “Mm-hm … I can’t believe all the scandal. Evidently one of her close friends had been dating one guy, then slept with another guy, but then she’d wanted to marry the rich guy in town so she told him —”

  “Focus, Sheila. Tell me when you get to Smitty. I don’t really care about who was sleeping with whom. I’ll be right here … waiting. Just tell me when you get to Smitty’s scene.”

  “Fine,” she said on a sigh. “You know, it’s people like you who have ruined great literature, Gino. All you want is the car chases and shootouts. You don’t want the lead-up, which is most of the fun. Go watch a movie!”

  “Yep!” Gino agreed. “I don’t like to think about what I’m watching; I just wanna watch.”

  Hours later, Sheila shook him awake. “Gino, oh my God. I know who did it. I think. Well, I’m pretty sure I know who killed them — all of them. And yes, it all started with who was sleeping with whom, as it usually does.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Smitty stepped backward, his hands held up in front of him. The last customer and employee had left hours ago, but he’d been in the back room, tallying the receipts for the day after cleaning up the kitchen. He’d just opened the side door to leave when Becky motioned him back inside with a gun. “Calm down, Becky. What’s this all about?”

  “I knew you were going to be trouble, old man. The first time I saw you in my ward and you rambled on and on about how you knew my parents, I knew I was going to have to kill you. Who else knows?” she seethed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t screw around with me, Smitty. Right after the cops had their little pow-wow with you they called m
e three times, asking me to come to the station. To talk. As many people as I’ve killed, you think I’d lose a second of sleep killing you?”

  Smitty closed his eyes and shook his head. “I loved your parents, you know. And your mother was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen … maybe too beautiful. She wanted more than Wilson Waters or I could have given her. Wilson offered to marry her, but she wanted the rich life, a life that only Nell Thurber could give her.”

  Tears welled up in Smitty’s eyes. He loved his wife, and right now, he just wanted to be home with her, but he never could get Sue out of his mind. Neither could Wilson Waters, one of the reasons he’d spent most of his life in the military.

  “We all knew who your father was, Becky. Every one of us … ’Cept Nell. Poor ol’ Nell thought that he’d won Sue fair and square. When in fact, the second she found out that she was pregnant by Wilson, she seduced Nell, then led him to believe that he’d gotten her pregnant, and that he needed to marry her. Wilson would have made Sue a fine husband, and you probably wouldn’t have turned out to be the drug addict you are today if he had raised you. Look at where your half-brother is. A fine upstanding citizen —”

  “Shut up!” she screamed.

  “Can’t handle the truth, hon?”

  “You don’t know anything about me. I’ve bowed down to Nell Thurber and his family my entire life. I was supposed to get everything. Until that stupid old biddy Martha Canale had to grow a conscience after finding God or some nonsense like that. I overheard her telling my mother how it wasn’t right that Wilson couldn’t see his daughter. Then last week — twenty years after I had to deal with the Canales — my mother admitted to me that she’d gotten pregnant by Wilson and that she needed to tell Nell to clear her conscience. Even though she knew he’d probably cut me out of his will. I’d already known, of course, so I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen. So I came back in the middle of the night. I got there too late to stop her, but not too late to see they weren’t even sleeping in the same bed; I had to carry my mom upstairs before the drug killed her.” Becky exhaled a long breath. “Now, who else knows?”