Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “That’s not true. I haven’t sold the information,” she retorted. She glared up at him. “I know what I can and can’t do, Titus. I don’t know why you’re acting like this. So, I forgot to clock in. Who cares? That isn’t a crime! It’s to your benefit more than mine. It’s not like I’m cheating you.”

  “Uh huh. And how often are you here early, Caroline?” Titus could not help but feel this conversation was pointless. He’d been hoping she would be so startled at being caught that she would more or less tell him everything he needed to know. But that wasn’t happening. Instead, they were going in pointless circles while he tried to trip her up and she just spun him back around.

  “I’m here every day whenever I need to be in order to do my job!” It seemed she had decided it was time to change tactics. She turned on the waterworks. Caroline set the personnel files back on her desk and reached for a tissue. “You’re such a bastard! Here I am, early in the morning whenever I need to be, working like a dog and you’re going to sit there like some arrogant ass and accuse me of what? Timeclock fraud? It’s in your favor!”

  She burst into tears, her entire face going red and blotchy in an instant. Titus felt a moment of revulsion. He hated women who cried. But these tears were the worst because they were fake and they were big and they were such an intentional distraction. The woman was trying to manipulate the hell out of him and he was having a hard time trying to work around it without telling her more than he wanted to at this point.

  “Caroline!” Titus said sharply. But he could have shouted her name and it wouldn’t have worked. “Caroline, stop it right now. This is getting us nowhere.”

  But she kept crying. Titus got out of his chair and onto his feet. He watched her gather up her stuff, muttering and sniffing and snorting. She even made a move to grab hold of the files that she had just dropped on the floor and then picked up.

  Titus decided to try a different angle. “Caroline, you do realize this is the second time in three days you’ve left this office in a huff pretending you aren’t going to come back, right?”

  “Shut up!” Caroline snarled at him through her tears. “That’s just because you and your stupid employees are all so abusive, but I can’t quit because I need this job! How else am I going to pay my bills? I have credit cards and student loans you know.”

  No, as a matter of fact he didn’t know. “You don’t have student loans, Caroline. You never went to school. And your parents paid for your half-finished cosmetology and nail tech certificate.”

  There was actually a little pause in her tantrum as though she had forgotten he knew that information. “So what? I still have to pay them back!”

  “No, you don’t.” Titus wasn’t buying that for a second. “You are the only daughter and your parents treat you like a princess. Try again, sweetheart.”

  “Ugh!” The tears were suddenly gone and she was rip roaring mad at him. Spinning around, Caroline glared at Titus and gave him enough of the evil eye that he was pretty sure he should be worried about getting scorched. “You are so impossible! Do you know that? And yes! I wanted to quit the other day because you all treat me like shit. But I can’t. And that’s that. And I don’t have to tell you why. I get to have privacy, Titus. I mean, you do. Right? Isn’t that what this is all about?”

  “The privacy of the people whose files you’re trying to take home for some reason I cannot guess,” Titus fired back. “Sure. Then it’s about privacy. You’re so eager to violate everyone else’s. Let’s poke around in yours!”

  “No!” she snapped. Her face was still red, but this time it was anger and not tears. The blotchiness was receding as her nostrils flared at him with all of her pent up aggression. “I want to know what’s going on around here. That’s what. That’s why I do what I’m doing. I want to know what you’re hiding, Titus. You seem so squeaky clean on the outside. You don’t even cheat on your taxes! Who doesn’t cheat on their taxes?” she roared the words as though she was absolutely out of her mind.

  “I don’t,” Titus said quietly. He deliberately deescalated the entire moment in the room just to see what she would do with the changing tone. “I don’t cheat on my taxes and I try to get along with everyone. That’s what a man who runs a security firm in a city like Branson should do, Caroline. If I want to help other people navigate the law, then I shouldn’t have a bunch of legal baggage to drag along through the process. Right?”

  “That’s a cop out,” Caroline muttered. She was chewing her fingernails. “You’re holding something back Titus and we all know it. Someday soon, you’re going to make a mistake and we are all going to know exactly what’s going on. Then maybe you will wish you’d just come clean sooner rather than later.”

  She was wrong. He had already made a mistake. Plenty of them. But she was out of her mind if she thought he was ever going to let her take a peek at the skeletons hidden in his closet.

  Chapter Two

  Mindy Hall pursed her lips and looked at the clock. She had never wanted to be a parent. At least not right now. Not when she was just twenty-six years old herself and trying to get her own life on track. Besides, she probably wouldn’t have started with a seventeen-year-old either. She would have started at the beginning, with a cute little baby that you could pop into a bouncer seat or a playpen. There weren’t a lot of options for keeping a teenaged boy in one place for more than five seconds at a time unless he decided he wanted to stick around.

  Pacing back and forth in her shabby little rented apartment, Mindy wondered how long she had to wait before phoning the police. Well, she couldn’t start with the police though. She had to start with his job up at Dino Golf on Route 76 in Branson, just a short walk away from the apartment. It was the biggest family fun center on the Branson strip and Darren was supposed to be there at work until midnight. Then he was supposed to come home. Straight home. And that was the part that Darren kept having trouble with.

  Mindy turned back around and marched to the other side of the apartment. It wasn’t difficult to do. They lived in a one bedroom unit not all that far from the strip. Of course, it involved a horrible walk up a hill. On days when the humidity started to become stifling, a walk up that hill made you feel like you were going to die for real.

  The apartments were ancient. They were falling down and probably weren’t safe to begin with. The landlord had sort of given up on the idea of maintenance and seemed to be trying just to keep the building upright. There were six units in the rambling structure. At one time it had been a house. Then it had been parted out for vacation rentals. Then when nobody wanted to rent them because they were just so awful, the landlord had decided to rent them to locals struggling to make ends meet in a town where the tourism market had sent real estate prices skyrocketing to the moon.

  The sound of feet on gravel caused Mindy to stop pacing. She spun toward the front door and sprinted toward it just in time to nearly get her face smashed in when the warped door opened and Darren stumbled into the room.

  “Yo, Mindy!” Darren slurred his words and tried to wave his hand. “We were so busy that they kept me late. I’m going to bed.”

  He attempted to lurch past her toward the bedroom. When their mother had died and Mindy had moved them into this ancient apartment, Darren had been ranting and raving about the loss of privacy. So, Mindy had let him have the only bedroom as his private space. But right now, she didn’t care how much he wanted privacy. She wanted answers.

  “Hey!” Mindy said sharply. “Stop right there, mister. You can come back in here and tell me why you’re late and why you didn’t think it was necessary to call or text or anything. I pay for that mobile phone for one reason, and that is so you can contact me and let me know you’re all right!”

  The words had been pent up behind her lips for so long that they sort of tumbled out at top volume. Darren immediately put his hands over his ears and swayed precariously to his right side. He was a skinny kid wearing too baggy jeans and an oversized bright orange Dino Golf T-sh
irt. With his scraggly black hair and brown eyes, he barely looked as though he was related to Mindy with her ash blonde hair and blue eyes. They did have different fathers, but they had shared the same mother and that’s why Mindy was responsible for him now.

  Darren’s abrupt movement away from Mindy turned him toward the kitchen and the meager overhead light. He blinked and Mindy noticed his pupils looked really strange. They were enormous and the way he blinked made it look like he was having difficulty focusing.

  “Darren, you’re high again!” Mindy moaned. She put her hands over her face and made a low frustrated noise. “What is wrong with you? Honestly! You got high at work? Are you trying to get yourself fired? I’m not helping you get another job, Darren. I can’t keep vouching for you if you’re going to show up to work high and screw everything up!”

  “Me?” Darren started giggling. He sounded like a total maniac. “You think it’s me? I’m not high.”

  “What are you on?” Mindy reached out and smacked his arm. “Stop laughing and tell me what you’re on? Did you find someone to sell you more weed? Oh my God, this is not Colorado! The stuff is not legal here, Darren. And don’t start giving me that crap again about how marijuana is a natural herb either.”

  “It is.” He seemed to pull himself together briefly. But then he was floating again, she could tell. He looked relaxed and amused and for just a second, Mindy envied him. Then he shook his head and nearly toppled over. “I didn’t smoke weed, Minds. These are legal. They’re for pain. I hurt myself at work.”

  “What?” Now Mindy’s mind started leaping toward the thought of medical bills and how they were supposed to pay for that. They had insurance. Anyone who didn’t carry at least something got fined during tax season. But their coverage was horrible and Mindy couldn’t imagine what a hospital visit would cost. “What are you talking about, you hurt yourself. Did you tell your boss? Did you fill out a report and go to a doctor? You need to follow the protocol, Darren. I can’t pay for some big injury!”

  “Jeez, Minds! Calm down.” He shushed her with both hands. “I’m fine. Of course, I told my boss. That’s where I got the medication from.”

  Mindy froze. Painkillers. That’s what was going on here. Her brother had taken painkillers and now he was acting like an idiot. “How many did you take, Darren? And what was it? You shouldn’t take stuff that wasn’t prescribed for you. That’s dangerous.”

  “You are such a worry wart,” Darren told her. He walked to his bedroom door and sort of half fell inside the tiny room. “I’m going to sleep. It will all be better in the morning. You’ll see.”

  “Darren, no.” Mindy was feeling nervous now. What if he passed out? Could he die? It wasn’t like she could look on her phone and check. She didn’t have Internet or Wi-Fi or anything. She got that stuff at work. She’d have to do it tomorrow and do some research during her lunch break. “Darren, you need to stay awake. Go take a shower or something. You can’t go to sleep.”

  “What? Don’t be stupid. I’m not taking a shower.” Darren waved at her as though he could not be bothered to listen to her. “You’re a real pain in the ass, Mindy. Even my boss says so. He told me I should be selling more after hours and going to clubs and stuff because that’s where the real money is. I need money. You need money.” He flopped onto his bed while still talking. “If you would stop being such a freak about curfew, I would be able to make a lot more money.”

  “Wait. What?” Mindy struggled to make sense of what he was saying. “Did you just tell me you should sell more?”

  “Yeah. It’s okay to sell stuff at Dino Golf. There are plenty of people. But most of them are too young. You need the teenagers and the twenty-something people. People your age.” Darren rolled over on his bed and seemed to be looking at her. It was hard to tell with only the reflected glow of the kitchen light. “You’re the right age, Mindy. My boss says that all the time. But I told him you’re actually an old lady. You just look like a twenty-six year old. Really, you’re like eighty. Did you know that, Minds?”

  Darren’s laughter cut deep. Mindy felt eighty. But how was she supposed to explain to Darren that he was the one who made her old? He was the one who had taken away her childhood and her early adulthood and sent her right to eighty years old. If she was eighty, then it was because she had spent the last three years of her life trying desperately to raise her brother without help. There was no help. It wasn’t like they had family or friends to turn to. There were no more Halls. Mindy and Darren were it.

  Mindy closed Darren’s door. She tried to tell herself she had misunderstood what Darren had said about selling and his boss and clubs and how Mindy could sell stuff if she wasn’t an old lady. Surely, she wasn’t understanding him correctly. He could not mean what it felt like he meant, and yet it did. Deep down she knew it. If that was the truth, then it would explain so many things that really needed explaining.

  Leaving the apartment through her front door, Mindy crunched her way over the gravel toward the road. It was deserted down there that time of night. Actually, it was deserted all the time. The traffic stayed higher. They were in a low spot down the hill from the strip and even from the businesses that sat on the relief route. Now Mindy walked up the hill. She didn’t care about the tingly feeling in her calves as the grade grew steeper and steeper. The sticky night air caused her cheap T-shirt to cling to her skin and her terry cloth shorts to feel leaden with moisture.

  Dino Golf wasn’t far. The huge complex sat at the top of the hill. The bright lights of the place were a blinding and rather annoying part of living at the bottom of the hill. The place was like a second sun at night. It had been built into the hillside in a terraced fashion. With bumper boats and bumper cars and go-karts and miniature golf and an arcade and so many other family fun activities to do, the place was nearly always packed when it was open.

  Now though, it was closed. The bumper boats seemed to float lazily in the enormous pool. They were tethered together on one side near the exit. The go-karts were all parked in a line. The golf shack was dark, and neat rows of putters and bowls of brightly-colored balls sat on the counter.

  Mindy stepped up to the fence and looked around. She didn’t see anyone at all. At least not at first. But that was as it should have been. The place closed down at midnight. It was nearly half past one in the morning. The employees should be gone. Yet when Mindy’s heart stopped pounding in her ears and her breathing slowed from her strenuous walk up the steep hill, she noticed there was another noise.

  Laughter. That’s what it was. She heard the sound of low voices and laughter drifting in the breeze. Following the metal barrier fence down and partially around the property, Mindy finally found herself nearing a maintenance shed. There was no light. Nothing more than the big overhead floodlights that lit up the sky and the surrounding area and were supposed to keep vandals away.

  In the shadows around the maintenance shed, Mindy heard movement. She wondered if they could see her standing there in the brush and scrub trees that grew on the hillside. Did they know that she was watching? Did they care? And what were they doing?

  “You’re trespassing.” The words came out of the darkness and startled her nearly off her feet. “You should go.”

  “I want to know what’s going on here,” Mindy forced herself to sound bold. “I’m going to call the police. You’re trespassing.”

  “No, I’m working. You’re the one who is trespassing. You should go now. Before I call the police.” There was laughter in the voice. It was male. Young maybe. Twenties? It was hard to tell. There was a hoarse quality in the tone of the voice that made it difficult to say.

  Mindy licked her lips and decided she was tired of beating around the bush. “You’re not going to call the police.”

  “Oh no?”

  “You’re out here doing drugs. You’re not going to call the police. They’d have to come and arrest you.” Mindy felt like a little kid addressing a bully by suggesting she might have to tattle to a play
ground teacher. This was preposterous.

  There was a rustle and then a shadow moved. It seemed to expand as it took shape in the glare of the brilliant overhead lights. Mindy held her breath as she realized what she was seeing. A man, wearing dark clothing. Then something flashed in the lights. A shape. A badge. On his shoulder. The dull gleam of metal as the gun above his right hip became visible.

  Mindy stumbled backwards. They were really laughing at her now. But why wouldn’t they? She had just been told off by a cop.

  Chapter Three

  Ash Forbes casually leaned against the desk sergeant’s counter-high desk and gave the officer on duty a droll stare. “Really? Are you sure Detective Lowell isn’t in today? Or are you just sure Detective Sellers told you that if anyone from Rock Wolf Investigations came in you’re to say that Lowell isn’t in the office.”

  “D-Detective Lowell isn’t in the office today, uh—sir.” The desk sergeant couldn’t even meet his eyes. Ash was fairly certain Lowell was in his office.

  Ash lazily extracted his phone from the pocket of his cargo pants. He made a big show of scrolling through his texts. “That is so odd. See this? Detective Lowell texted me about ten minutes ago and told me to come by the station for a chat. I wonder what station he meant. Did he get transferred or something?”

  “Uh, no sir.” The desk sergeant, John Jack Torrance, looked almost sick right now. “Can you just go?”

  “No. I was asked to come in here and meet with Detective Lowell.” There was no way in hell Ash was playing these games with Sellers and Caprico. He leaned over the desk and gave the sergeant a narrowed-eyed glare. “I know Caprico and Sellers have you pissing down your leg. I get it. But why don’t you go back to Lowell’s office and inform him I’m here and I require an escort back to his office. Because if you don’t?” Ash waved his phone in the air. “I’m going to text him and tell him what you just told me. Do you really want me to do that?”