Murder at The Blues Stop

by Wendy Byrne

  “You’ll have to show me some of those top-secret Special Forces moves. The way my life’s been headed lately, that might come in handy.”

  He stopped and looked at me. “We need to go to the airport and book you on the next flight out of here.”

  “They have my name and a picture that I’m sure has been broadcast to the airport security. Even if by some miracle I make it out of town, they’ll track me down. Like it or not, I’m in this until it’s finished.”

  Guilt played on his features as he rubbed his hand along his chin. “One way or another, we’ve got to figure this out before it’s too late.”

  ***

  Instead of taking I-94 back through Milwaukee, I headed directly south, finally stopping in Beloit and checking into a small motel and changing license plates once again. Shane looked feverish, even though he’d taken aspirin only about an hour ago.

  “I need to look at that cut on your back. Do you know how you got it?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe from the bottle they hit me with, or maybe I scraped it on the side of the dumpster when I tried to get inside.”

  “There might be glass or metal in there. That could be why it looks so red.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Your mom was a nurse so you know better. Don’t be such a chicken. Let me have a good look.” He’d stopped eating, had developed a flush to his face, and combined with the elevated temperature of his skin, it all confirmed what I already sensed. He needed penicillin. But bringing him to the hospital would be dangerous. I had to think of another way.

  He yanked the t-shirt over his head and turned so I could see his back. “Come into the bathroom. There’s better light.”

  Poking at the skin around the cut, I hoped to uncover the glass or metal causing the problem but found nothing foreign lodged inside. Instead, I wet a washcloth, added some soap, and pressed it against his skin. Maybe if I could loosen the crusting blood and pus clinging to the top layer, I could clean out the infection.

  He wiggled his shoulder up and down as if to prove he was fine. “This is ridiculous. It’s a cut. My guts were hanging outside of my body, and I survived. A little nick isn’t going to kill me.”

  To keep my mind from focusing on the nastiness of the task, I decided to keep him talking to distract us both. “You glossed over what caused that scar on your chest. Was it a knife?” I continued to work at loosening the gunk around the oozing sore, but more seemed to be hiding inside. Worse yet, a nasty smell permeated the wound.

  “A woman went after Garrett. I stepped in the way.” His shoulders flexed as he shrugged. “No big deal.”

  “Who went after Garrett?” I figured the longer I kept him talking, the longer he’d be distracted enough to let me poke.

  “One of the women we were working with turned on us. That kind of stuff happens all the time when you’re working covert operations so we were prepared. But she took it one step further than usual and went after Garrett. I intervened and got the bad end of a knife.”

  “It must have been some knife.”

  He nodded. “And she was good.” He winced when I pressed at the skin to get out as much of the pus as possible.

  “Why did you do it? Step in front of Garrett, I mean.”

  “He had a family who loved him. I had nobody. I’d be damned if I’d let him die.”

  His words tore through me in a hard, swift torrent. A tortured soul, he couldn’t stop blaming himself for being without a family. Why hadn’t I seen that before? All his macho bravado was one big act to cover up the scared little boy inside him. For a few seconds, I felt terrible about all the grief I’d given him initially. But then I remembered all the crap he’d given me, and I harnessed the remorse.

  “What happened then?”

  “I don’t remember much. Garrett wrapped me up in some kind of cloth so my insides stayed where we were supposed to be. We were in the middle of nowhere so it took about two hours to get to the hospital. I kept passing out from the pain, which was probably a good thing.”

  I couldn’t envision that kind of—excuse the expression—intestinal fortitude. Since Shane obviously had such a high pain threshold, God only knew how much he’d been suffering over the last day or two. He’d lucked out that I wasn’t the one injured. I would have been screaming and crying until he’d probably want to knock me out to put me out of my misery.

  “This cut isn’t big, but it’s infected. You need antibiotics.” While I tried to minimize, I also tried to get my point across.

  “We’ll get nabbed right away if I go into a clinic or hospital. I still look like I got the hell beat out of me.”

  I chewed on the corner of my lip, trying to think of a way out. “Maybe it’s worth the risk. If it seems fishy, we could leave and be on our way.”

  “Too risky.”

  “Point taken.” I finished with the cut as best I could, then slathered half a tube of the antibiotic cream over the wound. Next, I scrounged around in the bag and found a bandage big enough to cover it.

  We went into the other room and sat on the bed. Shane positioned the gun on the nightstand within his reach while I unstuffed papers from the backpack, spreading them out on the bed between us.

  Instead of worrying, I focused on the seriousness of the situation. “You said Tony might know something, and then he got attacked in prison. Do you know if he’s still alive?”

  “Not sure. But if he came around, maybe he passed the information on to Vince and Vince sent it to me which is why we need to get to that email.”

  “Would he risk putting it in an email? And what about the video we were looking for?” I alternated between scrutinizing the information and being scared that these questions kept popping into my head like tiny thought bubbles. This wasn’t normal for me. As a general rule, I let Enrique do the heavy lifting when it came to figuring things out. “Why are you so sure Tony’s innocent?”

  “Marcos isn’t an honor roll kid. He’s been in and out of juvie so many times, I gave up trying to count. But he shouldn’t go down for something he didn’t do. He was in Cleveland at the time the robbery went down. His alibi was solid.”

  “So why pin it on him?”

  “Cops don’t care who they frame.”

  “Stop with that bull. You know that’s not true. I’ll admit there are some dirty cops out there just like there are dirty lawyers and dirty private detectives. Stop letting your own prejudice interfere with reason.” My frazzled nerves had reached the breaking point. I needed him to shake free from this cloud of paranoia and think straight so we could move forward and think rationally.

  He started to run his fingers through his hair before he remembered he had none, then grimaced. “What if Tony got mixed up in this because of something else. I don’t know, maybe he overheard something he shouldn’t have, or saw something that could be used as leverage. Maybe it worked for a while. Maybe he was even making some money on the side through blackmail.” He shrugged. “I told you he’s not a saint. Maybe the blackmailing thing backfired on him, and the victim decided to screw him over and send him away big time.”

  “But why wouldn’t he report whatever he knew, especially once he got arrested?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he could be implicated,” he huffed. “This whole situation is getting too convoluted even for me.”

  “We’ve got to find a connection between that case, the cops, and The Blues Stop. What if Annie’s death wasn’t as simple as getting on the bad side of one of her drugged-out friends? What if she saw or heard something that got her killed? What if she told Vanessa, and that’s why she got attacked too? And who is this elusive boyfriend of Annie’s? Is he somehow connected to this mess?” My brain started to rapid-fire. “Did Annie know Tony?”

  Shane punched at the pillow beneath his head. “She asked me about a lawyer for a friend of hers a day or two before she went missing.”

  “What if her friend was Tony? Or what if she was really asking about herself instead of
a friend and went to Vince about what she saw?”

  “Vince would have mentioned it.”

  “Not if he didn’t know the connection between you and Annie. There’d be no reason for him to know that.”

  “More than likely she’d mention The Blues Stop, and he’d know then.”

  “But what if she didn’t?”

  “Why do you think she saw something?”

  “Remember when I told you I was in the alley when Mack met up with a guy in back? Let’s face it. If you and Garrett were as uninvolved as you were initially, anything could have happened, and you wouldn’t have known. When you started to hang around more, then things became dicey.” I tried to conjure up memories from that night without much success. “And what if Mack thought I’d witnessed the same thing Annie had?”

  “That’s a big assumption. Besides, you didn’t see anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter if the bad guys think I did. I’ve got to think the note and blood I spotted are connected as well.”

  “Close your eyes and go through that night minute by minute. Why did you go out back?”

  There’d been so many scary and strange encounters in the meantime, I struggled to conjure up the memory. “I needed fresh air so I slipped out the back door. Mack was behind the dumpster, so I didn’t see him but heard some people talking.”

  “Any words?”

  Frustrated, I could only shrug. “Not that I can recall. It was shortly after that when I found the note in Spanish and saw the blood. Again, it all might be unrelated. Besides, I can’t remember anything specific, just that Mack acted guilty once he spotted me back there.”

  “We need to get to The Blues Stop.” He stretched back in the bed. “That’s where this all started. It’s gotta be connected somehow.”

  “And the city ought to be the last place they’d look for us.” While the bad guys were chasing all over Wisconsin, why not hide in plain sight?

  “We’ll have to be really careful.” He gave the notes a cursory inspection. “They wouldn’t look for us at the Ryans’ house. At least I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t. And if we avoid populated areas with street cams, we might pull this off.”

  “You’re on board with my idea of heading back into trouble?”

  “It couldn’t get much worse than it already is, could it?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  All our plans to return to the city went to hell when Shane woke up with a raging fever. I knew all too well he had a fever because he had affixed his body to mine during the night, and it felt as if his skin were burning my backside. All that cleaning I’d done the day before must have driven the infection deeper inside his body.

  I turned to face him. “Shane, we’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

  He mumbled a ‘no’ and pulled the covers over his shoulder. His body trembled, and his teeth chattered.

  At this point, I figured I didn’t need his permission. That thought lasted about sixty seconds, which was about how long it took me to recognize I couldn’t move him, no matter how much I wanted to.

  Instead, I forced some aspirin down him with a glass of water. I got a washcloth from the bathroom and wet it down with temperate water, wringing it out before folding it and placing it on his forehead.

  Then I did a lot of pacing. Once again, I was thrown into life or death decision-making mode without my permission. Even in a small town like Beloit, I figured doctors didn’t make house calls. For a wild second or two, I contemplated bringing a doctor here at gunpoint. But that was too crazy, even for me, even during my current level of panic.

  I pulled the phone book from the nightstand and looked for a Walgreen’s Drug Store with a healthcare clinic, thinking it best to avoid a hospital. I found a few, then looked on a map to see the locations.

  Next, I set about the business of giving myself a sore throat by coughing. Which is what I did all the way out the door and to the car and until I landed at the nearest clinic. Then I tried to look sick, even without benefit of a fever, which I couldn’t fake. I’d thought about drinking some hot tea but figured they’d be on to me if I tried that one.

  With my hair pulled back and braided and wearing non-descript t-shirt and jeans, I went inside the clinic, determined to get drugs for Shane. If that didn’t work, I’d have no choice but to do something drastic. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  Luckily, it didn’t. Two hours later, I had a prescription for penicillin in my hands, an additional burner cell phone in my purse, and was making my way back to the hotel room.

  Shane didn’t even open his eyes when I came inside. I gave him the penicillin immediately and soaked all the available towels with water and placed them on his body to cool him down. He fought me at first, but then as I layered the blankets over his shaking form, he fell into a fitful sleep.

  Knowing I needed to do something and doing it were two different things. At this point, I’d run out of options. Even with Shane at one hundred percent, we couldn’t clear all this up without help.

  I tried to conjure up a Plan B. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no Plan Bs floating around the universe. My mind remained a blank.

  If I could get back to The Blues Stop, maybe I could get inside and find some evidence, although that seemed like a remote possibility. Surely the bad guys and then the crime lab had scoured the place from top to bottom. But somehow it all connected. Shane’s case, The Blues Stop, what happened to Cara, and more than likely what happened to Annie and Vanessa as well.

  But how? I contemplated the idea while the Tommy Castro Band played on my iPod, bringing me a moment of calm.

  I eyed my cell and thought about the only person I knew in Chicago I could trust. Without thinking about it one second longer, I pushed in the numbers. Luckily, I’d remembered her number.

  “Donna, this is Gabriella.”

  “I’ve been so worried. Are you all right? Wait, don’t say anything. I’ll call you back.” Without another word, I hung up. What in the hell was going on?

  A few moments later, the phone rang. “It’s Donna. I’m calling from a neighbor’s house.”

  “Do they have a tap on your phone?”

  “Not sure, but since the cops have been all over my ass since you guys left, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

  “Everything is so out of control.” I tried not to dwell on all that had changed in my life over the last several days but hearing a friendly voice brought back all the uncertainty and fear.

  “Are you with Shane? Is he all right too?”

  I glanced his way. He seemed to be thrashing about a lot less and had even managed to kick off some of the covers. I took that as a good sign.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re saying he killed Mack, and now they’re talking about some other retired cop he attacked in a Madison hotel. It’s such bullshit. The police keep coming to my house trying to get me to tell them where you guys are. It isn’t as if I’d tell their sorry asses anything even if I did know.”

  The unconditional support from Donna brought tears to my eyes. “Shane didn’t kill Mack. And the cop came there to kill Shane.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Oh God, this whole thing is spiraling out of control.” My heart sped up as a bout of anxiety resurfaced. With supreme effort, I forced myself to calm down. One worry at a time. “What are they saying about Mack?”

  “That Shane killed him over some kind of mismanagement, which is ridiculous. He’d just fire his ass. We both know that Shane doesn’t play.” She drew in a breath. “I’ve got some more bad news. Vanessa died. I feel awful because of the kid. I guess it’s good that by the time you got there, the killer had already left.”

  When I thought about how close I’d come to getting myself killed over the last few days, I wanted to break down and cry. But I didn’t have time to indulge in fear. “Did Annie ever mention any suspicious activity going down at The Blues Stop?”

  “Like what?”

  I chewed on the corner o
f my lip. “I’m not sure yet. But it’s got to be connected.”

  “Not that I can remember.” She was silent for a few seconds before continuing. “I do have some good news though. Cara is home from the hospital and fit to be tied about them trying to railroad Shane. She’s been trying to get in touch with Garrett so he can help out with this mess.”

  “That is good news. Did she say when he’ll be back?” I desperately needed help, and the elusive Garrett might be the perfect answer.

  “So far, he hasn’t answered of her emails, but I’m sure he doesn’t check them every day since he’s in the middle of nowhere. As soon as I hear from her about a response, I’ll give you a call.” She stopped and drew in a breath. “What are you thinking of doing?”

  “I’m not sure. There are a couple of cops involved up to their eyeballs in this. I can’t trust that either Shane or I would ever get a fair trial. After I watched them kill Mack, I found Shane with the hell beat out of him in the alley. When we tried to get away, they shot at us. That bartender Stu is a cop.”

  “Yeah, he’s a detective. The idiot tried to bully me into saying Shane was a murderer. Got me thinking he’s somehow involved to be that bold.”

  I didn’t want Donna to take a chance, but I had no real choice. It was more than clear we needed help from the outside. “How can we prove it?”

  “While we’re waiting for Garrett to respond, how about if we pursue Walt Cummings?”

  Her suggestion seemed to come out of nowhere. “The former owner of the bar? How the hell could we ever find him?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, but he contacted me and said he wants to help. Says he knows what’s really going on and wants to talk to Shane. He wrote me a letter saying he doesn’t trust anybody but Shane ‘because they’re all in on it.’ That’s a direct quote from the letter.”

  “Now what?”

  “Ask Shane. See what he thinks.”

  “Shane’s sick. But he’s taking antibiotics, and I’m sure he’ll be better soon. Give me Walt’s number.”