Studying Scarlett the Grey

by Kelle Z Riley

  “Don’t worry,” James said, grabbing the bag from Matthew and heading to the kitchen. “We paid him double for everything in his delivery van. A few orders will get to their customers late, but they’ll still get food.” He glanced back at the coffee table. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

  Bree followed his gaze to where Sherlock contentedly chowed down on her fried rice. “Ohh, cat! Some days you are such a pain.” She ruffled his fur and rescued her other containers, following the men into the kitchen.

  Matthew was already rummaging around in her fridge.

  “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?”

  The sarcasm was lost on him. “Watson, you need to practice your drinking skills. There isn’t even a beer in this fridge.”

  “From the smell of you, neither of you need beer.” Bree moved to the coffeemaker and began measuring the grounds. “Coffee is what you need.”

  “Hey, the Boy Scout would never drink and drive. No self-respecting LEO would. Right, James?”

  “Better me than you” came the answer. “You’re too far gone to pass a field sobriety test.”

  Matthew joined them at the table and popped the top on a can of Diet Coke. He took a swig and grimaced. “This stuff is awful. How can you drink it?” He pushed the can toward Bree.

  “With ease.” She considered pushing it back but didn’t want to get squeamish on them. She took a drink instead.

  “I’m not drunk,” Matthew said, opening a container of what looked like sweet and sour sauce. His words sounded less slurred, his humor less prominent. “But I wanted you to think I was.” He stared at James.

  James stared back, his chopsticks poised between a cardboard container and his mouth. His jaw went slack and his fingers relaxed. A fat shrimp dropped from his chopsticks, hit the table edge, and slid onto the floor. Sherlock pounced on it.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “This, Watson,” said Matthew, “is why you need to hold your liquor, and misdirect your opponent so he thinks you’re drinking more than you are.”

  “All so you can commandeer food from unsuspecting delivery men? You’re acting like an idiot.”

  “So you can control your situation. And you’re acting like a prig. Lighten up. It was all in fun.”

  “You don’t have fun. You focus on the mission. All of the time. You told me so yourself.”

  “I have fun,” he countered. “Tonight was fun. Getting him to loosen up. Riling you. Fun.”

  “That wasn’t—”

  “Some days I hate both of you.” James drew their attention with his comment as he moved his gaze between them. “Not personally,” he added hastily in response to the look Bree gave him. “Just what you do. It’s so…cold. Calloused. The way you mess with people to get information. Pretend things that aren’t true. All of it.”

  Silence descended on the room, broken only by Sherlock mewing pitifully and pawing at James’s leg hoping for another shrimp.

  “I’m sorry,” Matthew said, his voice quiet. “For what it’s worth, I don’t make friends easily. I don’t stay in one place long. I don’t have,” he gestured between the three of them “anything like this in my life. Or at least I didn’t.”

  He looked between Bree and James, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to that revelation. If it was a revelation and not another gambit to manipulate them.

  “I was trying to fool you,” he continued, his eyes on James. “And to give you a little glimpse into my world. Not for information. But because I…I…”

  “What?” James narrowed his eyes as if trying to discern whether Matthew’s words were truth or lie.

  “I wanted to have some fun. And I trust you.” The last words came out garbled as if they embarrassed him.

  James continued to stare while seconds ticked past, silence once again reigning. Until he let out a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “Fooled you too,” he said. Unlike Matthew’s words, his were still slurred.

  “Great. Now that we’re all friends again,” Bree said leaving the table, “it’s time to get you two sobered up and get to the real reason why you’re here.” She returned with mugs of coffee for both of them.

  “Food first,” James demanded digging into the container again. “I’m starving.”

  Too starving to deal with niceties such as plates and individual portions, Bree concluded, and the men dipped their chopsticks into container after container. She sighed and plunged her own chopsticks into the nearest box. When in Rome…

  Hours later, after Bree cleaned the kitchen and brewed a second pot of coffee, the three of them adjourned to the living room. James claimed a spot on the couch next to Bree, only to have Sherlock wedge himself between them. Matthew looked on from an adjacent chair.

  “It started because I wanted to check out the garages where you told me Jack’s got their rental car stock,” Matthew began. “I thought James should be involved so we went on a reconnaissance mission together.”

  “I talked to the owners, using my official credentials, while he slipped around the back to gather intel.”

  Matthew shrugged. “I snapped some photos and ran some plates. And started up conversations about everything from monster truck rallies to NASCAR.”

  “Bottom line, none of the places we visited had any record of criminal activity.”

  “But they did have the means to modify cars to hold contraband,” Matthew added. “A couple of the guys I chatted up were into being prepared for total collapse of society. That included having safe places to keep—” he glanced at James, “things you don’t want to know about.”

  James ran his fingers through his hair. “I hate this,” he repeated as he so often had since he’d joined them in their investigation.

  “I notified Homeland,” Matthew added. “And others. The facilities and people will be monitored in case there are connections to the web of terror cells. Most likely it will be a financial crimes division that handles this. I doubt the preppers and mechanics in the shops would knowingly support foreign actors.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” Bree sipped her coffee, hoping its warmth would chase away the chill that had overtaken the room. “So, no leads on who killed Billy from that angle?”

  Matthew shook his head.

  “On the other hand,” James offered, “we did make some progress. As usual when it comes to working with you two, the toxicology reports came back faster than expected.”

  Bree made a mental note to thank Nate, who had likely managed that end of the process. “What did they reveal?” she asked.

  “More than you might like.” James rolled his eyes. “From my questioning of the staff at Jack’s, it seemed that Billy had a laundry list of enemies. Or at least people who didn’t like him. But here’s where it gets weird. He also had a laundry list of toxins in his system. Blood alcohol levels were off the charts.”

  “Booze and alcoholic gummy bears,” Bree supplied, reminding them of what she had seen while Billy was still alive. “He went through a bottle a night.”

  “We knew about the whiskey but didn’t know what to make of the candies.”

  “I had our guy analyze them,” Matthew said, before Bree could supply the information. “They were edible alcohol bombs.”

  “Noted. I’ll check to see if any were logged in through proper sample channels.” James frowned and threw Matthew a dark look then referred to his phone, citing the official report. “There is evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning. The blood saturation levels were too low to be a definitive means of death, but that could be due to time elapsed before sampling, underlying conditions, or cumulative effect of various toxins.” He looked up from the report. “That’s consistent with the hotwired car with an empty gas tank.”

  “There was no obvious rigging to get the exhaust fumes into the trunk,” Matthew observed.

  “No, but we discovered the Mustang had a hidden storage compartment in t
he trunk, just like your Crown Vic. My money is on tailpipe damage created when it was installed. Likely somewhere in the drive train behind the muffler, or it would have been detected earlier.”

  “In any case, it is definitely not suicide, if you’re locked in the trunk of the running car.” Bree shifted. “Anything else?”

  “Finally,” James looked up with a flourish, “we have indications of nicotine poisoning. Quantities too large to be obtained from smoking.”

  Bree searched her memory for interactions with Billy. “He didn’t smoke, at least as far as I knew. Margie, is the only one who smoked, and she did it to excess.” Bree dislodged Sherlock from her lap and rose to collect her crime notebook. She made a few notes in it while James quizzed Matthew on how he’d managed to rush the lab samples.

  “Anything else?” she asked the duo.

  “I was able to get ahold of the financials you asked me about,” Matthew said with a nod to James. “Turns out Mrs. Bandergas is going to be a wealthy woman now that Billy is dead. My guess is more than a little of that wealth is part of Billy’s payout for running the money transfer scheme out of the garage.”

  “Too bad her alibi holds up,” James muttered. “Multiple witnesses saw her at the day spa. I have the receipts and statements to back it up. Seems she was a regular.”

  “That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have hired someone else to do it for her,” Bree added.

  “I also checked on the kid in shipping. Michael.” A look of sympathy entered his eyes. “That kid had parents—and grandparents—with a mean sense of humor. His full name is Michael Michaelson IV. I hope he doesn’t make his kid be the fifth. Anyway, he was in a night school class, just like he told you.”

  Bree checked Michael’s name off her suspect list. She removed Mrs. Bandergas as well but kept the question of her hiring a killer in the back of her mind. “Anyone else we can cross off the list?”

  “Mrs. Telligio and Jack were both seen at a fundraiser for literacy. It’s one of their pet causes. The Fantasy Fudge chocolate guy sponsors several fundraisers each year. So they’re in the clear.”

  “I love the Fantasy Fudge products,” Bree murmured as she noted Mrs. T’s and Jack’s alibis in her notes, whittling the suspects from Jack’s down to eight. “That still leaves a lot of people at the emporium. And we aren’t taking into account people Billy knew outside of work.”

  “There weren’t many,” James said. “Have you uncovered anything else helpful at the emporium?”

  She told them about Liza and Samuel’s whispered argument and Juan’s story of how Billy treated both Samuel and Michael.

  “That’s not much to go on. I need to go back to the emporium for some follow-up questions to the suspects. I’ll go fishing for more information. Any thoughts on why Samuel transferred out of the garage?”

  “Michael and Graham saw the abuse and stepped in,” Bree said. “They gave Samuel a better place to prove his worth as a man.”

  “Do you think they were protective enough to want to get revenge for him?”

  Bree shrugged, uncomfortable at the thought that these people, who appeared so nice on the outside, may have been killers. “I can’t say.”

  “Much as I hate it,” Matthew said, speaking up for the first time since providing the financials on Mrs. Bandergas, “we may have hit a wall. At least for tonight.” He directed his gaze to Bree. “Tomorrow we should devise our plan for telling Jack what we’ve learned. I think we have the evidence to wrap up our job for him.”

  “Not until the murder is solved,” James interjected. “I need Bree onsite until we finish the investigation.”

  A knowing smile curved on Matthew’s lips. “Agreed. But in any case, Jack still deserves an update.”

  “Are we telling him that he was used by Zed’s organization?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No. We’re telling him…something. That’s why we need to confer.”

  “I hate—” began James.

  “We know,” Bree and Matthew said together. Further discussion was cut off as James’s phone rang. He took the call, stepping into the hallway for privacy while Matthew and Bree carried the cups to the kitchen.

  “Want to know what he’s saying?” Matthew asked, pulling out his phone.

  “No. He’ll tell us. No spying on one another unless someone’s life is in danger.”

  “Spoil sport.” Matthew pocketed his phone and pulled Bree’s trash bag from under the sink. “I’ll drop this in the chute on the way out.”

  “Thanks…” The slam of the hallway door cut off the rest of her reply.

  James entered the room, his face set in harsh lines. “That was Griffin. Looks like we’ve reached the end of the investigation. Liza Barnett just confessed to the murder of Billy Bandergas.”

  Chapter 22

  “Why is she here?” grumbled Detective Griffin when James brought Bree to the police department the next morning.

  “She is here because she has knowledge that could be important to us,” James countered. “Jack Trayder hired her to get to know his employees.”

  Griffin grimaced. “I don’t like it, O’Neil. I don’t like it at all.” He turned his focus to Bree. “I thought you were into research Dr. Mayfield-Watson. That’s what you keep harping on. Yet here you are, at the center of a murder investigation, playacting. That’s a case of the fox among the chickens in my view. You’re always smack-dab in the middle of investigations where you have no place being.”

  James stepped in and separated them. “Like it or not, Detective, her insight could be helpful.” He led Bree to the observation room and fitted an over-the-ear listening device to his head. “If you want to redirect or add to my questioning, I’ll hear you.”

  “Might as well just let her run roughshod over the entire investigation,” Griffin mumbled, throwing Bree an angry glare before leaving the room with James.

  Bree turned her attention to the interrogation room where she could see Liza huddled in the hard chair across from the observation window. A night in the holding cells seemed to have sapped her of all vitality.

  An hour in the interrogation room waiting for Griffin and James, which might have driven another to nervous fidgeting, had only caused Liza to withdraw into herself. Bree couldn’t reconcile the hollow figure in the chair with the image of a killer.

  She looked up when James and Griffin entered the room. “Ms. Barnett, Liza, how are you holding up?” James asked as he took a seat nearby, facing her. “Can I get you something? Water? Coffee?”

  Her gaze slid to Griffin who seated himself across the table from them. “No, thank you. I just want to get this over with.” Her jaw clamped shut and she wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you told detective Griffin,” James said, his voice soothing, his body language encouraging confidence as he leaned toward Liza. Reflexively, he rolled up his sleeves, a deeply ingrained habit he used to hide his own discomfort with the interrogation process.

  In the silence that followed, Bree remembered the time James had taken her into the privacy of the interrogation room. He’d adjusted the lighting to prove the viewing room was empty then proceeded to woo her with teasing and Chinese food. Bree shook off the memory and focused on the room’s current inhabitants.

  “Tell me about what happened with Billy,” James said, changing tactics. “How long have you known him?”

  Bree peered through the glass, trying to see if Liza glanced up to the left or right, knowing James was doing the same. Like a lie detector baseline question, his interrogation was designed to learn what Liza did when recalling the past, versus thinking about a creative problem. Once her individual preference was known, he’d use the information to judge her reactions when asked about the crime.

  His asked several recall questions before moving to extract new information. “You once told me you don’t like Billy. Can you think of why others at the emporium wouldn’t like him?”
<
br />   Liza leaned forward, her body transforming from limp to animated. “What does it matter, Detective? I already told you. I killed Billy. There’s no point in continuing the investigation.” She straightened her back, her crossed arms turning defiant instead of self-protective. “I couldn’t live with myself for what I’d done, so I confessed.”

  “And how, exactly, did you kill him?”

  Liza’s shoulders relaxed, her arms uncurling a tiny bit. “I…” she glanced up and to the left, her tell for inventing creative lies. Her gaze snapped back to James, her posture becoming rigid once again. “I don’t see how that matters. You already know how he died. And I already told you I did it.”

  “Why did you—” James began.

  Bree pressed a button, allowing her to speak through his earpiece to redirect his thoughts. “Ask her about Samuel. Why did she argue with him?”

  “Why did I kill him?” asked Liza, talking over James’s hesitation. “I killed him because he was a creep. Always badgering me and the others. He was abusive and I snapped.”

  “So, a crime of passion, then?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I came back that night to check on Scarlett and when I saw Billy in the garage, I just snapped. I…I can’t even remember the details. My mind just went blank with rage and then… well, you know.” She slumped back in her seat.

  James made a notation on his pad, appearing deep in thought. “There’s always a transfer of evidence from one body to another when two people interact,” he said, glancing up periodically to assess Liza. “For example, hair and skin cells. So, while you’ve likely washed since the incident and wouldn’t have any of Billy’s DNA on you, the opposite isn’t true. Are you willing to give us hair, saliva, and other samples to compare with the crime scene evidence?”

  “Of…of course,” Liza said, shrinking back into her chair, her gaze darting around the room. “What samples do you need?”

  “We’ll have a tech walk you through the process. That should about cover what we need from you.”