Stirring Up Murder

by P. D. Workman

  “Here. Drink this down. It will help, just take a few sips…”

  She helped Charley to hold the cup and to take a drink. After Charley managed to get a few swallows down, her coughing gradually eased. Erin sniffed at the air. Honey and lemon. But something else, too. Something medicinal underneath it.

  Charley leaned back in her seat. She closed her eyes, resting.

  “She’s sick,” Erin said. “You need to let her go. She should be at the hospital.”

  “Charley’s fine,” Nelson said, with great unconcern. “She’s tough.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve been doing to her, but she’s not that tough. You want her to die from pneumonia?”

  Nelson raised his brows at her and didn’t say anything. Erin rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms. Nelson couldn’t care less whether Charley died of pneumonia. She had, as far as he was concerned, killed Bobby. Maybe pneumonia would kill her, and maybe the Dysons would, Nelson didn’t really care which.

  “I’m fine,” Charley whispered.

  Erin looked at Vic and saw the same concern in her eyes as Erin felt. At least someone else in the room cared.

  “Charley. You need to tell them,” Erin encouraged yet again. How many times did she have to say it before Nelson decided that Erin didn’t have any sway over her sister after all and sent her on her way? Or sent her down to whatever dungeon they had been keeping Charley in?

  Charley rubbed her chest. She took another drink of the honey and lemon tea. The woman who had brought it in nodded respectfully at Nelson and left again. The door closed silently behind her.

  “It won’t make any difference,” Charley said. “They’re not going to believe me.”

  “They don’t believe you because you’re lying.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything.”

  “Remember how you told me I wasn’t a very good liar?”

  Charley nodded.

  “You aren’t either.”

  Charley opened her mouth to object. Then she closed it again, scowling.

  “Did you go back to see Bobby?” Erin asked. “You’re the one who was yelling and fighting with him?”

  Charley didn’t respond for a long time. Then she finally nodded. “But I didn’t kill him,” she reiterated.

  “Someone did.”

  Charley nodded. “Someone did,” she agreed. “Someone set me up.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone who wanted me to run.”

  Erin thought immediately of the masked man. He had told Charley to run. Erin had thought he was trying to protect Charley for some reason, but what if that weren’t true? Maybe he didn’t want to help her. Maybe he was trying to push her. To frame her.

  “The man with the mask?” she asked.

  Charley’s eyes riveted on Erin. Her mouth twitched. The moniker had an obvious effect on her.

  “Who is the man with the mask?” Nelson asked.

  Willie looked back and forth at Erin and Charley.

  “The masked man is someone who came to the apartment right before you guys picked up Charley. He talked to Charley then, and he grabbed Erin in the parking lot and threatened her and told her to stay out of things that weren’t any of her concern.”

  “Good advice.”

  “The point is… there is someone else involved here. Someone whose identity we don’t know.”

  “Or you’re bluffing.”

  “Do you know who he is?” Erin asked Charley. “He knew who I was and where I was from. Did you tell him? Did the police leak it? Or is he from…” Erin glanced aside at Nelson, “…where I’m from?”

  Charley shook her head. “How would I know? I have no idea who the guy is. I’ve only seen him twice and he was wearing that stupid mask both times.”

  “You couldn’t recognize him? His eyes? His voice? His build?”

  “No. No idea.”

  “Is he one of the Dysons? Is he with the family?”

  “I don’t know,” Charley insisted more vehemently, raising her voice above a whisper. She coughed a couple of times and had more of the tea.

  “Tell me what happened when you went back to Bobby’s,” Nelson said.

  Charley glared at Erin, like it was her fault that Charley had gone back there and gotten herself into such deep trouble. Erin hadn’t even met Charley until after that, so she didn’t know how it could be her fault.

  “I just went home,” Charley said. “Back to Bobby’s apartment to hook up. Everything was fine when I saw him earlier that day. He knew I was going out with the girls. He didn’t care. We didn’t have to spend every minute together.”

  “And maybe he had someone else he wanted to see,” Nelson suggested.

  Charley looked at him. Her mouth formed a thin, straight line. “Maybe he did,” she agreed. “She wouldn’t be the first.”

  “But she’d be the last. You saw to that.”

  “It wasn’t me. That’s not what happened. I got back and he was flipping out. Accusing me of all kinds of stuff. Saying that I was out with a man, showing him up and making a laughingstock of him. But I wasn’t. I was just out with the girls, just like I said I’d been.”

  “He came after you.”

  Charley swallowed hard. She took another drink of her tea. For a few minutes, she didn’t answer.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “He did. He was raving like a lunatic. I’ve never seen him so mad. He was all over me, grabbing me, throwing me around. He put his hands around my neck. We crashed through the coffee table. He was freaking out. He was seriously acting like he was going to kill me with his own hands.”

  Nelson nodded. His nostrils flared. He kept his thoughts and feelings hidden. Erin didn’t know whether he was upset over his brother’s death, or the fact that he had been murdered, or if he was upset about the way his brother had treated Charley. Maybe he’d sometimes been on the receiving end of his brother’s temper himself. But he maintained the mask of indifference. He would be a good poker player.

  Charley set her teacup back on the tray. She covered her sunken eyes with both hands.

  “He was my boyfriend,” she said brokenly. “I never gave him reason to be jealous of me. I don’t know if he was drunk or high, why he thought I was doing anything. I just went out with the girls.”

  “You had to protect yourself,” Erin said. “It was self-defense.”

  Charley looked at Erin, her red-rimmed eyes wide. “No! It wasn’t self-defense,” she insisted.

  “If he came after you—”

  “He was going to kill me. He had his hands around my neck.”

  “So it was—”

  “No, I didn’t kill him! It was him. The man in the mask.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  T

  he atmosphere in the room was electric.

  Charley shook her head. “I was there and saw him do it, but I can’t tell you who he was or why he did it.”

  “Wait—the masked man? He killed Bobby?” Erin’s head whirled. The masked man wasn’t protecting Charley. He was setting her up. He was the one who had killed Bobby, framing Charley for it. But he was the one who had told her to run. Both actions were so contradictory, she couldn’t make them fit. Setting her up and then trying to save her. Were there two masked men? Two opposite sides? One from the Dysons and one from the Jacksons or somewhere else?

  “Yeah.” Charley shook her head bitterly. “I told you no one was going to believe me. Sure, Charley, it was a masked man. I wouldn’t believe me.”

  “But if that’s what happened… There must be something on the security cameras. He couldn’t have gotten in and out of there without being recorded. Could he?”

  There were surveillance cameras everywhere. Inside, outside, city cameras and private cameras. No one could escape them all.

  “The police haven’t turned up anyone wearing a mask on the surveillance cameras,” Nelson said.

  “How do you know?” Erin questioned.

  He just looked at her.<
br />
  Of course they had someone on the inside. Of course they had someone who was feeding them everything Ward turned up in his investigation. They had to know all of the details of who had killed Bobby. The Dysons couldn’t have known anything about Erin unless it came from the police.

  Just the same as the masked man had known who Erin was. Was he a cop? Had the police been the ones to set Charley up, hoping to either put her in jail or for her to run? Either way, she was out of the picture so they no longer had to worry about her committing crimes on their turf.

  But why would they have set up Charley? Surely there were bigger fish to fry. They could have set up someone higher up the food chain. Not Nelson or Bobby, maybe, but someone who had more influence and was doing more damage than Charley.

  They had gotten rid of Bobby too, though. Gotten rid of him and put Charley in the hot seat for it. Maybe Bobby was the primary target, and Charley was only a secondary consideration.

  “I saw the masked man,” Erin told Nelson. “He does exist. I saw him.”

  “You saw a masked man. Maybe. If you’re telling the truth. But Charley could have set you up. She could have arranged for someone to act the part so you would corroborate her story.”

  “Charley wouldn’t do that.”

  Charley chuckled. “The hell I wouldn’t. That would be brilliant.”

  Erin looked at Charley in exasperation. How was she supposed to help her little sister if she was going to say things like that?

  Nelson cracked a smile at Charley’s retort. “Of course she would. Look, nothing about this story makes any sense. Like Charley said, we have no reason to believe her. Bobby gets blown away. Everyone heard them fighting. Charley’s fingerprints were on the gun. So she’s the one who killed him.”

  He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his head, concentrating deeply. Everyone waited on pins and needles to hear his decision. He obviously had no reason to believe Charley. Was he making up his mind whether to have Charley executed without any further regard to her protestations of innocence? What good would any further investigation do? If things had happened the way Charley said they had, then there was no way to prove it had been the unknown stranger rather than Charley.

  And if he got rid of Charley, then there was no reason to leave Erin, Willie, and Vic alive. Why leave witnesses who could go to the police?

  “Willie,” Nelson finally spoke, “that firewall you set up for me, is it any good?”

  Erin shook her head. Firewall? Why was he talking to Willie about computers? The situation was dire. His brother had been killed and, as far as he was concerned, the killer was sitting right there in front of him. Had he already decided that their lives weren’t worth anything, and was more concerned with the minutiae of his life than what happened to them?

  Willie shifted in his seat. “It’s the best money can buy. You’re looking at the level of security that the FBI or NASA has. It’s very secure.”

  “The FBI and NASA have been hacked. You develop an encryption that’s supposed to take billions of years to break, and a twelve-year-old does it with his Xbox. Anything is hackable.”

  “Then I’m not going to tell you it’s not,” Willie said. “Every system has flaws. There is no perfectly secure system.”

  “You’ve never steered me wrong in the past.”

  “But I’m not going to tell you it’s perfect when it’s not.”

  “And you,” Nelson turns to Erin, “do you believe her?”

  Erin floundered, not sure what to say. “Yes,” she said finally. “I saw the masked man myself. I never believed Charley killed Bobby.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “You never met her before.”

  Erin swallowed. “She’s still my sister.”

  “Why would you get mixed up in something like this? Why don’t you just go home and bake cookies?”

  Erin stared at him. Was he the masked man? But his build wasn’t right. His voice didn’t have the right qualities. Terry had said that it wouldn’t be hard to learn these basics about Erin. Of course Nelson had done his homework.

  “I don’t believe she did it. I don’t want to lose her after I just found her.”

  Nelson turned to look at Vic. “James Jackson.”

  The color drained from Vic’s face, turning her chalk white. “That’s not my name anymore.”

  “Why would you bring a Jackson into my house?” Nelson demanded. He didn’t look at Willie’s face.

  Willie reached out and took Vic by the hand. He held it protectively. “I brought Vic here to protect her.”

  They had walked into Nelson’s office thinking they knew more than he did. They walked in there figuring they had their secrets intact. But he knew all along who each of them was and what each of them was. Of course. Had they thought he was some kind of patsy? The geeky son. The second in line. He wasn’t the playboy, bold and brash and sure of his inheritance. He was a long-legged spider, sitting in the middle of his web, inviting them all in.

  Had he sent the masked man? Had he been the one to kill Bobby and set Charley up to take the fall? If he had been the masked man, then surely Charley would have recognized him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t send someone to act the part, just as he had accused Charley of doing. Had it all been a ploy for him to get in line to inherit the role of capo in his family?

  Nelson watched Erin, his eyes quick and cunning. “No,” he told her, “I have no interest in becoming the boss of this family or any other. I’d rather play with my toys. Willie knows that.”

  Erin took a quick glance at Willie, hoping for some reassurance. But Willie didn’t look reassuring. He held Vic’s hand in his, eyes darting around the room looking for an avenue of escape.

  “But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I’ve always been a much better boss than Bobby, even though he was the heir, the one groomed to take over the running of the family. I wouldn’t have survived this long if I had just been sitting around, ignorant of the jealousies and politics of this organization. You think there are people who wouldn’t take my position if they could? You think they want some nerdy upstart giving them orders and being promoted to a position he doesn’t want or deserve?”

  Nelson’s voice hung in the air. No one dared say anything to him. Erin feared that, just like on TV, this was the monologue leading up to their deaths. The explanation as to why they had to die.

  “Willie brought you here. Willie can tell you that I’m not just some kid who’s acting too big for his britches. He knows I’ve been building my own network. My own organization within the family. Loyal to me. Firewalled from the rest of the system, just like my computers. I may look dull, but I’ve been planning this for years.”

  It was him. He was the one who had arranged to have Bobby killed, setting Charley up to take the fall. He hadn’t been sitting on the sidelines in ignorance. He’d set the whole plan into motion.

  Nelson shook his head. “No. I don’t know who the masked man is. He comes bumbling into the middle of everything, winding Bobby up and then killing him when things get out of hand. I have no idea who the guy is or where he came from. With the mask on, there’s no way to get facial recognition. He avoided the cameras like a pro; he’d obviously scouted the area ahead of time. So I’ve got nothing to go on. Nothing but what the two of you can tell me about what you saw.”

  “You knew all along?” Charley demanded, her voice hoarse. “For two days, I’ve been interrogated by your father and his thugs, and you knew all along that I wasn’t the one who killed Bobby?”

  Nelson lifted an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but when you joined up with the Dysons, were you under the impression that everyone was going to play fair and have consideration for your feelings? Or did you think you were joining a criminal enterprise? When you chose Bobby over me or someone else in the organization, was it because you thought he was a kind and sensitive soul who would take care of you?” He snorted. “You knew exactly what you were get
ting into, Charley Campbell. Don’t blame me for getting burned when you chose to play with fire.”

  “You got it all on video?” Erin asked, parsing what he had just told them. “You saw what happened and you have physical evidence that it wasn’t Charley?”

  “If you really want to clear your sister,” Nelson paused to give Charley a look of distaste, “even after seeing what kind of a person she is, then you need to cooperate with me. Otherwise… no, there is no evidence. You’ll have to rely on the evidence the cops have got, and the only person it implicates is Charley.”

  “Cooperate with you?” Erin exchanged glances with Willie, Charley, and Vic, trying to gauge their reactions. “What do you expect me to do? I don’t have connections with any of these people. I don’t have any skills that would benefit you, unless you’re in need of a batch of chocolate chip cookies.”

  Nelson’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “Don’t sell yourself short. I think you’ve demonstrated considerable skills.”

  “Nelson, Erin isn’t one of your employees. She doesn’t want to be associated with the Dysons or any other family,” Willie said.

  “Unlike James,” Nelson said, looking hard at Vic.

  “Victoria,” she corrected evenly.

  “Changing your name doesn’t change who and what you were born as,” Nelson said. “If I’m right, this all goes back to the Jacksons, and here is little James Jackson sitting in my office.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. If you’ve looked into my background, you know I don’t have anything to do with my immediate family, let alone the extended Jackson clan.”

  Nelson leaned his head back against the headrest of his chair and gazed at her.

  “I think you could find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “Who the masked man is, or who sent or hired him.”

  “What makes you think it was one of the Jacksons?” Willie asked.

  “It wasn’t internal. It wasn’t the cops. The next logical suspect is the Jacksons.”

  Vic leaned forward in her chair. “So you want me to go to my family and casually find out if they happen to know who killed Bobby.”