by Gen Griffin
Katie shut the front door. “Yes. I was flipping him the bird when he saw you coming and ran away. Thanks for scaring him off. I wasn't in the mood for dealing with Kerry today.”
“No one is ever in the mood for dealing with Kerry.” Sully walked into the living room and caught sight of Addison snoring away in the recliner. “Ah hell, he's asleep. I was going to ask him if he wanted to come with me to search Frank's house. I got my warrant.”
“He'll want to go,” Katie said. She walked over to Addison and shook his arm. “Addy. Addy, wake up. Addison.”
He continued snoring.
“He sleeps like the dead,” Katie informed Sully. “Addy, wake up. Adddddddyyy.” Still nothing.
“Nice.” Sully frowned at the cast on Addison's leg. “Also annoying. How would David wake him up if he were here?”
“He'd flip the recliner,” Katie said. “Or pour a glass of ice water on him.”
“Harsh.”
“Usually necessary.” Katie shook Addison's shoulder. “Wakey wakey.”
Addison groaned and put his arm over his head. Katie shook him again.
“Hey, Addison. Wake up!” Sully kicked the side of the recliner hard enough to slide it several inches towards the wall.
Addy cracked one eye open and glared at him. “It can't be Monday already.”
“It's not. It's still Sunday night.” Sully held up a piece of paper. “I've got a warrant for Frank's house. I think it's a bad idea for me to serve it alone and Mooney won't touch it with a ten-foot pole. He says he doesn't need the drama.”
“Ah hell.” Addison sat up. “Motherfucker.”
“I take it you don't want to go either.” Sully looked resigned.
“No. I'll go. I just...damn. Today's been a long day. Too long.” Addison pushed the footrest of the recliner down with his good leg and then stood up. He hopped over to the wall where his crutches were leaning and grabbed them. “I just want to sleep.”
“Then go back to sleep,” Sully told him.
“I can't. Frank will find any excuse he can to discredit whatever evidence you find in his house. If you're alone then you might as well not bother going. You need a second person there just to witness whatever you find.”
Sully nodded.
Addison picked up his keys off the coffee table and tossed them to Sully. “We'll take my truck. You drive.”
Sully caught the keys. “I'm good with that.”
Addison looked at Katie. “You coming?”
“No, I don't think it's a good idea to bring Hannah Mae to a possible murder scene.” Katie smiled at him gently. “You guys go. I'll be here. Trish left me her keys. If you're nice enough to leave me your credit card, I might call in an order down at the diner.”
“My wallet is on the dresser in our bedroom. You can take whatever you want out of it. Hell, buy enough for everyone. David and Trish aren't going to want to cook tonight and, knowing David, he won't eat for a week.”
“I'll pick something that's easy on the stomach and even easier to reheat,” Katie said. She bit down on her lip. “I still can't believe Jerry's dead.”
“Me neither.”
“Do you think I should take dinner over to Cal's parent's house?”
“If you want to,” Addison said.
“Might not be a bad idea if you did. I'd feel better if you weren't here alone tonight,” Sully told her. He glanced around the living room, going as far as to walk over to one of the windows and lift up the curtain. “This is an old house. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to replace the original windows with better quality ones that will be harder to break into and that front door is a beast, but a determined criminal could still get in.”
“You mean Ian,” Katie said.
“I mean Ian,” Sully confirmed. “This house has a history of being broken into from what I've heard.”
“Curtis broke in a few times,” Addison acknowledged. “He's dead now.”
“Ian could get into this house if he really wanted to.”
“I'm not afraid of Ian,” Katie said flatly. “I won't run from him.”
“No one is suggesting you run. Sully's just trying to say that maybe it's not a good idea for you to be alone anywhere tonight when there's a very real possibility Ian might be lurking around somewhere nearby. He might try to go to you for help.”
“I wouldn't help him.”
“You would if he threatened Hannah Mae. You would do whatever he told you to if he threatened Hannah Mae.” Addison reached for Katie. She let him pull her close because she was too tired to be offended and pick a fight with him.
“I'll go over to Jerry and Loretta's house,” Katie promised. “I'm tired and I don't want to, but I will if it makes you happy. Do me a favor and call the diner. Order two family size orders of fried chicken, a bucket of potato salad and a couple of pies. I'm going to go put on a more presentable outfit and get Hannah Mae dressed for company.”
“Thank you.” Addison picked up his cell phone. “I'll make sure they have the food waiting when you get there,” he promised.
“Of course you will,” Katie commented dryly. “All the waitresses want to sleep with you. You always get fantastic service.”
She heard Sully laughing as she picked Hannah Mae back up and walked out of the room with her head held high.
Chapter 68
“Well, somehow I expected more.”
Addison and Sully were standing in the middle of Frank Chasson's living room. Lowery was snoring away on the couch surrounded by several hundred dollars worth of empty beer bottles. The entire house smelled like someone had tried, and failed, to bleach away the aftermath of a frat party. They had already located the stolen zero-turn lawnmowers that Sully had been searching for as well as an assortment of stolen electronics that would have made David's career criminal father drool with envy. They had also spotted an unpatched bullet hole in the dining room wall and a poorly scrubbed bloodstain on the floor underneath a brand new and stunningly tacky area rug that Addison was certain Maggie McIntyre would be horrified to discover in her otherwise tastefully decorated dining room. Of course, she'd probably be pretty horrified by the bloodstain as well. Maggie was going to be pissed about her home being turned into a stash house and then a crime scene. It was going to take days to fully inventory all the stolen items in the house and sort them out from the things that actually belonged to Frank and Maggie.
What they hadn't located was the cash or the jewelry that had been stolen from Walker Hardware.
“Think we should wake him up?”
“Why not?” Addison hopped his way over to the couch. He picked up a half-empty gallon size bottle of cheap mango flavored tequila. He twisted off the lid, took a sniff and then poured the contents of the bottle directly into Lowery's gaping wide mouth when he was mid-snore.
Lowery woke up gasping and choking. “What the fuck! Dammit, Joe! How many times have I told you-.” He stopped as he caught sight of Addison and Sully. “What the hell?”
“Lowery Smith, you are under arrest.” Sully grabbed hold of Lowery's arm and jerked him onto his feet. Lowery stumbled and nearly fell back down as Sully handcuffed his hands behind his back and then released him. “Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law.”
“Blah blah blah,” Lowery muttered under his breath. “Go to hell. I know my rights. I want my lawyer.”
“You'll get your lawyer. Eventually.” Addison used one of his crutches to sweep Lowery's feet out from underneath him. Already drunk and unable to use his hands to save himself, Lowery went face first into the coffee table. “Whoops. Damn. I'm so clumsy with these things.” Addison looked at the crutch as if he'd never seen it before in his life.
Lowery let out a miserable moan. He managed to roll himself over. Blood was running down his forehead from a shiny new gash just above his left eyebrow. “Screw you.”
“We've got you alone at the scene of a murder. I strongly suggest you start squealing like the worthless
little pig you are.” Addison glared at Lowery.
“Addison!” Sully clucked his tongue at Addy. “He has rights.”
“No one has rights at nine o'clock at night when I've been stranded in the bayou, broken a bone, dug up a grave and had my boat destroyed by a freaking suspect. Not to mention my best friend's dad had a heart attack and died when he saw his niece's body.” He shot a harsh glance at Lowery. “I'm not feeling charitable towards you, Ian or anyone else. Start talking.”
“I ain't got nothing to say. I don't even know where Joe and Ian are. They left the other night to...well, they left and they didn't come back. Neither one of them came back.
“Where did they go?” Sully asked.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
Lowery shrugged.
Addison accidentally stabbed him in the mid-section with the end of a crutch. Lowery screamed.
“We're about to arrest you for murder, Lowery.” Sully managed to sound bored as he paced in a slow circle around the living room. “Especially since you seem to have misplaced your accomplices and we found you sleeping in our crime scene.”
“Okay! Okay! I'll talk. That crazy bitch shot herself. She freaking blew her own brains out with the gun we took out of the safe at her grandpa's store. She said her cousin claimed there was something wrong with the trigger but she didn't believe him. I reckon he was telling the truth because she accidentally blew her brains out with the gun. It was bad. Real bad. I ain't never seen nothing like it.”
Addison slid the end of the crutch down until it was resting squarely in the crotch of Lowery's jeans. He wasn't putting any pressure on it. “Where did Joe and Ian go?”
“They went out into the bayou.”
“Did they take a boat?” Sully asked.
Lowery nodded.
“Whose boat?”
“Do you two assholes even have a warrant?” Lowery had blood running down his cheek. He tried, and failed, to wipe it off on the side of the couch.
“Yes. We do. Keep talking.”
“It was Ian's boat. Ian's truck and Ian's boat.”
Addison just nodded.
“Why didn't you go with Ian and Joe?” Sully asked.
“You already know the answer to that.” Lowery glared at Sully. “You pulled me over that night.”
“I want to hear you say it out loud, on record.”
Lowery scowled. “I was dumping the bitch's car. Ian and Joe were dumping her body and I was ditching the car.”
“Where's the car?”
“I sold it to the junkyard down in Smith's Bayou.”
“In the middle of the night?” Sullivan eyed him skeptically.
“They don't exactly keep regular business hours. I rode over there, smoked a joint with Billy and then he gave me a hundred bucks for the car. He promised to crush it the same night.”
Sully shot Addison a questioning look. “You believe him?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Addison sunk down into the chair that was positioned directly across from the couch. His leg was killing him now that all the painkillers had worn off. “Not that I have any idea of how to dispose of stolen cars...”
“Uh huh.” Sully didn't even try to hide his skepticism. “There certainly aren't any rumors that going around that Breedlove Automotive was a chop shop before David took it over from his father.”
“No. None. Ever. I'm sure no stolen cars have ever been trafficked through there.”
“But if they had been? Hypothetically?” Sully waited for Addison to speak.
“Hypothetically, Billy would buy them. He's lazy, though. If you really need a vehicle to disappear then using Billy is a gamble. He's notorious for getting stoned, passing out and forgetting to crush the evidence.” Addison cleared his throat. “Car is probably still sitting in Billy's yard waiting for a date with a crusher.”
“Good news for us.”
“Bad news for you,” Addison directed the last bit at Lowery.
“Look, I'm telling you all I know. Ian and Lowery were supposed to come get me from Billy's but they never did. Billy ended up driving me back to town this morning. I've been sitting around here ever since. I ain't got no car. I thought Ian and Joe would come back for me but I ain't seen them.”
“Where's the money you stole from Walker Hardware?” Addison changed topics abruptly in hopes of getting Lowery to spill out the truth.
“In the dining room in that tackle box that's sitting on the table.”
“What tackle box?” Sully asked.
Addison suspected he knew what tackle box. He'd pulled a rusted tackle box out of the wall of David's shop himself just a month ago. He hadn't seen it in the dining room. He would have noticed that particular item just laying around.
“I didn't see a tackle box,” Addison said out loud.
“Me neither,” said Sully.
“It's on the table. There's a shit ton of jewelry in it and all the cash. Ian counted it out. He said it was a little over thirty grand. We was all supposed to get 9K a piece.”
Sully stood up and walked into the dining room. He reappeared a moment later. “No tackle box.”
“It's got to be there,” Lowery insisted.
“It's not there.”
“Crap!” Lowery stared at Sully. “Are you sure, man?”
“Are you sure you didn't misplace it?”
“It's on the dining room table. I counted it before I went to sleep this morning. I checked on it just to make sure Ian and Joe hadn't come back while I was gone and taken my share of the money for themselves. I had to wonder, you know, since they never showed up to pick me up. With the bitch dead and me cut out, they'd each get like...almost twenty grand. Joe would cut his own Momma's throat for twenty grand.”
“All the money was still there this morning?”
“Every fucking dime we hadn't spent at the tittie club. All the money and all the jewelry was sitting right there on the table. We was keeping it in the tackle box. Figured if it was good enough for Cal Walker, it was good enough for us.”
“I don't know anything about any tackle box,” Sully said. “You're the first person to mention a tackle box.”
Addison sighed. “There's a long story behind the tackle box. It's not something anyone wants to be public knowledge.”
Sully turned and shot him a look. “Keeping secrets?”
“Only the same ones we've been keeping for years. Doesn't make sense to stir up trouble that's better left buried. The tackle box had a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of stolen jewelry in it. Maybe more.”
“Stolen jewelry?”
“Long story.”
“Short version.”
“Ricky Breedlove and Grover Shallowman got in over their heads thirty years ago and stole a bunch of jewelry that they couldn't get rid of. David found Grover's share when it came spilling out of Trish's box spring one night after they had first started dating.”
A look of understanding began to appear on Sully's face. “This wouldn't happen to be the same jewelry that got that pawn shop owner killed, would it?”
“Maybe.”
“The same jewelry that nearly got me and Kerry killed?”
Addison was suddenly too tired to bother lying. He liked Sully. He trusted him at his back. Ricky and Grover were both dead. There was no real reason to keep the existence of the jewelry a secret any longer.
“Yeah.”
Sully was silent for several minutes. “Nice of you to share what you knew back when I was busting my ass trying to figure out the origins of that jewelry or why it was so important that people were willing to kill over it.”
“I barely knew you. I didn't trust you.”
“You trust me now?”
“Yeah.”
Sully glared at him. “I'd love to kick your ass right now.”
“Can you wait until my leg heals?”
“Are you telling me the whole truth?”
“I'm telling you the short version. You asked for the s
hort version.” Addison gestured at his broken ankle. “I swear that I would have told you about the jewelry if it had been anything you needed to know the details of. The truth is that it's stolen jewelry that keeps getting re-stolen. We're not exactly torn up about that. Actually, I'm surprised that David hasn't just thrown the shit out in the street like beads on Mardi Gras. It's been nothing but trouble. David swears up and down it's cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Cursed.”
“Curses aren't real.”
“Everyone who tries to profit off of that jewelry winds up deader than the proverbial doornail.” Addison held his hands up in a wide shrug. “Curse or no curse, that shit is bad news and we were kind of relieved when it got stolen. Both times.”
“Both times?” Sully threw his hands up in the air.
“Curtis and Kerry stole Grover's half out of David and Trish's house during that whole mess this past summer. I found Ricky's share hidden inside one of the walls in David's shop. We stuck it inside the safe at the hardware store because none of us really knew what to do with it. It wasn't even in there a full month when Ian and his idiot friends got the code to the safe from April Lynne and stole it again.” He cast a sideways glance at Lowery. “I am assuming it was April Lynne who set y'all up with the code to the safe?”
Lowery nodded.
“Thought so.”
“You and I are going to have a chat about this later,” Sully informed Addison as he turned his attentions back to Lowery. “Don't play any games with me. I'm in a lousy mood that's getting worse by the minute. Where did the tackle box go?”
“I don't know.”
“You're looking at a murder charge.”
“Man, I'm telling the truth.” Lowery appeared to be completely exasperated. “It was there when I went to sleep!”
“Are you saying that someone came into the house and took it while you were sleeping?”
“They must have.”
“You wouldn't have woken up?” Sully pressed him for answers.
“I didn't wake up when you two bloody assholes came in, did I?” Lowery had a point. “I didn't wake up until y'all poured tequila into my nose!”
“Who do you think took the tackle box?”