“Yes!” Casey said after a minute. She started to cry and furiously swiped at her cheeks. “I did. But it wasn’t last night. It was… I don’t know. Weeks ago. I was assigned to pick up the junk from the stage and take it back to the dressing room.” Casey glanced at her friends. They didn’t look like they were ready to string her up. That was probably a good thing. “We all hate that job!”
“How did the letter come into your possession?” Ellie’s voice was smooth as silk.
Casey swallowed. You could practically see her throat bobbing with the effort it took to keep calm and not lose it. “It was given to me by Margo! I didn’t know what it was. She just said that it was delivered by someone to the front desk and they’d asked to have it given to Kari Jo. Margo suggested this would be a really great way to deliver the letter since it would just go with the rest of what we call her fan mail.”
Damn. Adam could almost see Ellie’s disappointment. Sort of. But Ellie didn’t say a negative word to Casey. She smiled instead. “Thank you, Casey, that’s a big help to me. I’ll just go and have a chat with Margo then. Maybe she’ll know who dropped off the letter in the first place.”
There were several looks exchanged around the room. Someone cleared their throat and raised their hand. “I delivered a letter, too.”
“And me!” someone else chimed in.
Soon they had five different hands up for five different letters. Great. This was getting less and less productive as each second passed by! Adam was beyond frustrated. The trail seemed to go around in circles. Every single time they got closer, something happened and they wound up being farther back than they had been only a few minutes before.
“I want to thank all of you for your honesty!” Ellie called out over the din of voices. “But I’ll let you get back to your meeting. I know you probably have lots to do now that the show is changing acts.”
There were plenty of voices muttering thank you and goodbye and who knew what else. Maybe they were telling her to go to hell, but Ellie didn’t make it seem like she was in the least bit worried about any of it. She was already sailing back down the hallway toward the door that separated the front and the back of the house.
“Where are you going?” Adam wondered as he hurried to keep up with her energetic strides. “We need to regroup. Right?”
“Wrong,” Ellie said sharply. “We know exactly what we have to do and how we have to do it.”
“We do?” He reached out and grabbed her arm to spin her around to face him. “Can you please let me know what the plan is then?”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that Casey was so adamant about how much she hated Kari Jo and yet she didn’t say a word about that beyond admitting it was true. The next thing you know, Casey is talking about how she delivered fan mail for Kari Jo. It’s totally suspicious.”
“What?” Adam frowned and shook his head. “I don’t see that at all! Are you sure you know what you’re talking about here?”
She rounded on him suddenly, glaring up with such heat that Adam actually took a step backwards. “Excuse me? Do I know what I’m talking about? I’m the professional that you hired to sort this out. Remember?”
“Well, yes.” Adam held up his hands. Wait. Why did he feel like he needed to surrender? “Just because you’re totally convinced that the culprit is Margo and that Kari Jo and Margo had a failed relationship doesn’t mean that it’s true. It sounds more like you’re trying to make the evidence fit the suspect you want to hang for the crime.”
“Hang?” Ellie’s expression sank lower and lower until he could actually see the fire flashing in her dark eyes. “Are you trying to suggest that I’m making this personal? I don’t have a personal beef with Margo. I don’t care about her one way or the other personally. Why? Do you have some kind of a soft spot for Margo? You think she’s being set up because you feel bad for her that her romance with Hilary failed?”
“That’s just the thing!” Adam argued. “How could Margo and Kari Jo be involved in the time frame in which the letters were sent? Margo was involved with Hilary. I think you’ve got some kind of tunnel vision when it comes to Margo. That’s all I’m saying. I just think you need to slow down and maybe make sure you’re not going in hot with an agenda to find her guilty.”
There was silence after Adam’s speech. Total silence. It was like the entire world was holding its breath. Adam knew he was. He was a bit sorry it had all come out like that. To tell the truth, he felt bad. He wasn’t trying to say she was doing something wrong and yet it had totally come out that way.
“Ellie…”
“No. Don’t.” She pursed her lips. “That’s fine. You’ve got the lead. Do what you want. I’m going back to my office to report what I’ve found to my boss. I’d like his opinion on whether or not I’m compromised.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ellie didn’t go to the office though. She went home. She cleaned her apartment because that’s what she did when she was angry and confused and feeling as though she had been… No. She was not going to say that. She was not going to even suggest that she’d been used or even worse—hoodwinked.
Hauling a huge garbage bag full of trash out the back door of her condo, Ellie headed for the dumpsters. The condo complex where she had been living for the last five years was quiet. It was part of a much larger property, but these thirty-five units had been placed at the very back of the development in order to offer locals a more private setting. Once you got nearer to the clubhouse you found vacation rentals and timeshares. They were usually bursting with tourists, their kids, their dogs, their gear, and their complete disrespect for anyone who wasn’t on vacation.
Ellie tossed the trash into the dumpster and stared down the rocky, tree-lined hill toward the lake shore perhaps a hundred yards away. The condo development had a huge dock in which you could either walk or take a shuttle down to the lake. Guests were allowed to moor their own boats at the condo association dock for an additional fee. Ellie had never been a big fan of boats. Now, as she watched a gaggle of tourists jumping into the lake from the end of the enormous dock, Ellie was glad she’d never indulged in a boat for herself. The idea of having to dodge all of those tourists was horrible to contemplate.
Ellie turned back to look at her condo unit. There were four condos in her building. Hers was the smallest. A simple one-bedroom, one-bathroom affair with a galley kitchen and a garage. The garage had been the real draw for her. She hated having to do the mad dash to the car through all sorts of horrible weather. Branson was a popular vacation and retirement location, yet it really didn’t have such great weather.
Maybe she resented the tourists. Ellie considered this as she headed back up to her building. She was dressed once again in her casual clothing. For some reason, she could not get up the motivation to pull on her usual uniform. She just felt so—so—she wasn’t sure what it was. Deflated. That was a good word. Ellie felt something had shifted in her world in the last few days, but she could not have said what it was. She was suddenly feeling restless and unhappy.
Stepping back into the air-conditioned comfort of her condo, Ellie stood at the sliding glass door and looked out into the tangle of trees and brush that grew on the hillside sloping down steeply away from her building. She was starting to get a little disgusted with her current frame of mind.
“What is my problem?” Ellie muttered. She said it out loud because she felt like she needed to hear it. Let’s see. What else did she need to hear? “It was just a kiss. A few kisses. That’s it. Not a big deal. Not some reason to freak out and think that I made a lifelong commitment. He said he wanted to go out with me after this case was over.”
Right now, Ellie had her doubts the case would ever be wrapped up. Kari Jo Mounds was going to disappear into whatever job or deal her next manager could manage to scrounge for her. The letters would stop because of proximity. The murder would go unsolved. It was a horrible fact, but murders did not unfold in real life the way they did on television.
Sure, it was increasingly difficult to get away with murder, but if there wasn’t a local police force or a detective or someone who really wanted to solve the case, then it wasn’t going anywhere.
Ellie turned her back on the sliding glass door and stared at her cozy living room with its vaulted ceilings and big stone fireplace. She could not settle down to read or even to watch television. She just kept pacing back and forth behind the loveseat and between the tiny dinette set she’d found at a local thrift shop. Her mind kept returning to the notion that the local police really didn’t want to solve crimes lately. Why was that? What sort of sense did it make? And why wasn’t Hilary Allenwood reporting on that instead of trying to drag all of the sordid crime the cops were missing into the limelight as a distraction.
Ellie couldn’t stand it anymore. She grabbed her wallet and her keys and she left her apartment through the little garage. Her SUV crossover zoomed around the tourists parked haphazardly around the front of the condo complex and out through the big double gates. It finally started to rain once she had made it to the Shepherd of the Hills Expressway. Ellie didn’t care. She pulled into the offices of the Branson Register and prayed to whoever might be listening that Hilary Allenwood was not in the office.
A bell jingled when Ellie shoved her way through the paper’s front doors. Her skin and clothes were covered in rain that would not go. It was too humid and too sticky out there to get rid of any kind of moisture. You just felt clammy.
A young man, who looked young enough to be an intern, looked up from a desk positioned just inside the doors. He smiled at her as though he was thrilled to have company. “It finally started raining, huh? I’ve been wondering. The forecast prediction we put into the paper said that it would. But then I’ve been tracking those for the last few weeks to try to determine the accuracy.”
Wow. Ellie had to stop and think about just how bored someone would have to be at their job to come up with a task like that. The kid was a bit nerdy looking, but not that nerdy. “And what has your research suggested?”
The young man shrugged. “It’s hard to determine accuracy when you don’t have a large amount of statistical data. I was going to suggest a story to the newspaper editor here that included data plotted on a graph to show percentage of error. But I haven’t finished collecting data yet.”
Ellie cleared her throat. “You don’t seem like the run of the mill Branson Register employee.”
“Oh. I’m not. I’m just an intern.” The kid shrugged and left it at that. “Can I help you? My name is Jeffrey, by the way.”
Ellie tried to focus solely on why she was here. Right here and right now. That was it. “I want to look at the paper’s back issues. Do you guys keep them here in a database or something?”
“Sure.” The kid smirked. “No more microfiche though. Not unless you’re wanting to go back at least ten years. Then we do have a microfiche machine.”
“No, just the last year or maybe two would be good.” Ellie wondered if she was going to have to pay for this privilege. She wasn’t totally sure how much it was worth to her when she wasn’t even positive what she was looking for.”
Jeffrey’s eyes suddenly grew bright with interest. Yes, he was bored. He had on blue athletic shorts and a red T-shirt. He actually looked as though he might be in high school. How odd. It was something about the knobbiness of his knees that gave Ellie that impression.
“What are you looking for?” Jeffrey was squirming now a bit like a puppy. “I could help. I’m very good at research.”
“I have no doubt of that,” Ellie murmured. “I’m just looking for stories written by Hilary Allenwood. I want to see if I can find a trend.”
“A trend?” Jeffrey actually snorted. “The trend is that she covers whatever will get the most shock value. I keep telling my dad… sorry, I keep telling the editor, that Hilary Allenwood’s journalism style is more tabloid than local newspaper. Let’s just say that it sells papers and that’s what counts. You might have noticed we’re not exactly rolling in the big bucks around here.” Jeffrey let his gaze travel around the meager furnishings in the close confines of the front office. “We actually send our copy out to be printed now. It’s hard to believe. There’s still a press in the back, but it’s not necessarily reliable. I think Dad—I mean the editor—keeps it for nostalgic purposes now.”
Wow. Jeffrey was a huge vault of information. Ellie cleared her throat and tried to decide whether or not she could just go for it. The kid was probably working here on summer job and he was likely still in high school. What did she have to lose?
A lot actually.
“What I really want to know is how many times Hilary Allenwood reports on stories that are sensationalized and then minimized without any real police involvement.”
Jeffrey frowned. “What? The woman is reporting on murders and crap. Yeah. The stuff gets reported to the police and usually involves an investigation.”
“No. It involves the appearance of an investigation,” Ellie corrected.
Jeffrey took a breath to speak and then stopped. His expression went from mildly curious to ravenous in only a moment or two. “You think there’s a connection between stories that Hilary puts in the paper and the cops sort of taking a backseat and pushing those cases under the rug!”
“It just seems lately that there are a lot of big cases the police aren’t very interested in and yet Hilary is all over. It doesn’t make sense,” Ellie insisted. “If the news is reporting on these things, then they should be on the public’s mind. People should want closure.”
“Not if they’re just bouncing from story to story, always paying attention to headlines and never even asking for resolution,” Jeffrey pointed out. “You know, this is a big job. You would have to cross reference the police blotter with Hilary’s stories.”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed. She could not believe she was about to do this. “What I really need is a good research assistant. Unfortunately, my budget as a private investigator doesn’t really have much wiggle room for that sort of thing.”
“I could do it!” Jeffrey said excitedly. His shaggy and somewhat greasy blond hair was hanging in his face, but his eyes were bright beneath it. “I would love a job like that. I have plenty of time. I could even make a graph for you.”
Ellie had to struggle not to laugh. She tried to make herself look rather stern. “Are you sure it wouldn’t interfere with your internship job? I wouldn’t want to take away from the experience you’re having this summer.”
“Of what?” Jeffrey groused. “Going and getting coffee at the shop around the corner for the editor and Ms. Allenwood? Sometimes I think my father… well, I think that the editor and Hilary Allenwood are sort of inappropriate with each other.”
“Really?”
This was a surprise to Ellie since Hilary Allenwood had been linked to another name recently and that name was female. Perhaps Hilary’s romantic inclinations went in both directions. Or, and this was more likely, perhaps Hilary’s romantic inclinations simply followed whatever was most convenient to get her what she wanted.
But Jeffrey was nodding like a bobble head doll on a dashboard. “Oh yes. I’m pretty well convinced that woman has my—the editor—on speed dial. Like she’s got him wrapped around her finger and she can do whatever she likes because she sells papers and that’s what matters the most.”
Poor kid. Ellie sighed. Then she pulled out her business card. “All right. Here’s what I need from you. Call or text to check in with me at least once a day to tell me if you’re still working on this project, what percentage done you think you are, and whether or not you want to continue.”
Jeffrey frowned. “That’s kind of a weird request.” He looked at her card. “Ms. Pierce.”
“Just call me Ellie, kid,” she told him with a smile. “I want to make sure you’re not getting into trouble looking into this stuff for me. That’s all. Okay?”
“Okay.” Jeffrey looked thoughtful. “You know who you should talk to?
”
“Who?”
“Detective Lowell. John Lowell. He works at the Branson Police Department, but I’ve heard him in here more than once giving the editor a good dressing down about a story we’ve run in the paper. I think Lowell is getting sort of suspicious about the department and Hilary Allenwood and my dad and whether or not there’s something kind of odd going on there.”
“Thank you, Jeffrey,” Ellie said with genuine surprise. “I’ll go talk to Detective Lowell right now.”
“He was in here yesterday,” Jeffrey continued. “He was giving my dad a serious talking to—that’s what my mother calls it—about this murder thing.”
“The murder thing? You mean the murder of Aston Ryan?”
“Oh, you mean Mark Bob Smith?” Jeffrey snorted. “That kid was only five years older than I am.”
Wow. Jeffrey was a little older than Ellie had thought, knobby knees and all. “And you knew him in school.”
“Knew of him,” Jeffrey corrected. “He was a total fruit loop. The sort of kid who was so dumb that teachers passed him just so they didn’t have to spend another year beating their heads against the wall trying to actually teach him everything.” Jeffrey looked embarrassed all of a sudden. “I was kind of ahead of my own class, so I sometimes sat in with the older kids when I was in elementary school.”
“Five years?” Ellie was dumbfounded. “That’s really impressive, Jeffrey.” She realized where she had met lots of Jeffreys before. “Have you ever thought of a career in the FBI?”
Jeffrey looked as though she’d just suggested he shave his head and become a monk. “No, I haven’t. I don’t relish the thought of working for free. I think I’d much rather be the highly paid FBI consultant.”
Ellie laughed and felt her mood lift considerably. “All right. So, what’s your take on the murder of DJ Aston Ryan?”
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 44