by LENA DIAZ,
“You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you?” Colton asked, keeping his voice low.
“I guess that all depends on your definition of foolish.”
“Anything that could make you a target if word gets around to the big fish we’re after.”
“Big fish, huh? I guess that fits. Whoever’s behind Eddie’s death is definitely slimy. But to catch a fish, you need bait. And I’m about to bait the hook.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere and talk this out first.”
“Too late.”
The door swung open. Silver reached into her front jeans’ pocket.
Cato stopped right in front of her, balancing a tray of breakfast dishes. He looked from her to Colton and back again.
Silver slapped her DEA badge on top of the bar. “Good morning, Mr. Green. When you’re finished with those dishes, I’d like a moment of your time.”
Cato stared at the badge, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “I ain’t done nothin’.”
“I’m sure your parole officer will be happy to hear that. I’ll just wait right here while you deliver that yummy-looking breakfast to Freddie’s customers.”
Cato eyed Colton as though he was sizing him up, then gave Silver a crisp nod and rounded the end of the bar, carrying the tray to one of the tables.
“Mr. Green?” Colton whispered harshly. “Parole officer? The other day you said you thought his name was Cato. But you knew his name, his full name, all along. Are there any other secrets you haven’t told me?”
“Probably.”
A muscle developed a tic in the side of his jaw. “I wonder what the penalty for impersonating a federal officer is these days. I should have searched your room and taken that badge when I brought you to the inn last night. You do remember that Garcia fired you, right?”
She shrugged. “I remember you telling me he fired me. But since he didn’t tell me himself, how am I to know if you can be trusted?”
He swore.
“You can be mad at me later,” she said. “Right now I need your help. Get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To duck.” She gestured toward the mirror above the bar.
Colton followed the direction of her hand. “Ah, hell.”
“Duck!”
They both dove to the floor as Cato slammed a chair across the top of the bar, obliterating the chair and sending sawdust and chunks of wood flying around the room. He let out a war cry and whirled around just as Colton leaped to his feet and slammed his fist against the side of Cato’s jaw, spinning the larger man around.
Silver scrambled out of the way and grabbed her gun from her ankle holster. “Hands up, Cato,” she yelled, aiming her gun off to the side so she wouldn’t hit Colton if she had to shoot. Behind her she heard scrambling feet and shouts as the customers hurriedly moved out of the way of the two circling men.
“Cato Green, hands up,” she repeated.
Cato let out another yell and charged Colton. Colton slammed his fist into the other man’s jaw again. Cato grunted with pain but didn’t stop. He barreled forward, wrapping his huge arms around Colton and slammed into a table and chairs.
They fell in a tangle of arms and legs, fists flying, biceps bulging as they each grappled for control.
Silver winced as one of Cato’s fists drove into Colton’s belly. She glanced around for someone to help, their wide-eyed audience consisting of mostly senior citizens, including Freddie, who was glaring at her from her spot by the far wall.
“You started this, Silver. You’re going to pay for everything they break!”
“Sorry,” she called out as she shoved her gun into her waistband. She frantically looked around for something to use to help Colton. There, one of the legs of the chair that Cato had busted. She ran across the room and swiped it off the floor.
A loud whack and the sound of shattering glass pinging onto the wooden floor had her whirling around with her makeshift weapon raised. Cato lay unconscious, the remnants of a broken beer mug scattered all around him, except for the handle, which was in Colton’s hand as he glared up at her from his crouch on the floor. He tossed the handle into the puddle of soda from whoever’s drink he’d grabbed and wiped his hands on his jeans as he stood.
Silver dropped the chair leg and ran to him. “Are you okay? Did he break anything?” She didn’t see any blood on him anywhere, but his left cheek was beginning to swell. “We need to put some ice on your face.” She reached up, but he glared at her and shoved her hand away.
Without a word, he headed toward the swinging doors.
“Colton, wait.” She hurried after him. “Where are you going?”
He waved toward Cato lying on the floor. “This is your mess. You clean it up.” And then his brilliant blue eyes met hers, looking darker, angrier than she’d ever seen them. “You can take care of notifying Eddie’s foster parents on your own. I’m done.”
“Wait, what do you mean you’re done? I can fix this. I can—”
Whump. The saloon doors swung in her face. Colton’s boots rang on the boardwalk outside as he strode back toward the inn.
Silver’s shoulders slumped and she shot an annoyed look at Cato, who was groaning and holding his head as he struggled to sit up.
“Somebody get him a towel,” Freddie called out. “And some ice for the lump on his head that I’m sure he’s got.” When no one moved, she clapped her hands. “Go. Move.”
Two of the men hurried over to Cato and crouched down to talk to him while another from their group rushed into the kitchen, presumably to get a towel.
Freddie stopped in front of Silver with her hands on her hips and her flaming red hair looking as if it might actually catch on fire from the red-hot flush on her angry face. “Silver Westbrook, if Jake Young wasn’t out of town right now I’d have him arrest you for startin’ a bar fight. And it’s not even noon. Most people need to get drunk first to do the kind of damage you’ve done.”
“Jake couldn’t arrest me, Freddie. He’s not a cop anymore.”
She leaned down close. “Neither are you, but I saw the flash of the badge you slammed on the bar all the way from my seat over there.”
“You knew?”
“Sugar, everyone around here knows you’re DEA and that you got fired last night.”
She blinked and looked around. Every single person there nodded to let her know they knew. “Oh, my gosh. All this time, I thought I kept it a secret. How? How did you know?”
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad. It’s just us old-timers that figured it out. We keep up with all our chicks when they leave the nest, knew you’d gone to college to be some kind of lawman. But when you came back to start an inn, well, we might have made a few calls. Your folks mentioned you was working undercover in the Keys just a few months before you showed up here. We figured you were taking a vacation, but after seeing you snooping around so much we figured you was workin’ a case.”
Silver put a hand to her head, feeling dizzy from all the revelations. Cato let out a loud curse when one of the women pressed a plastic Baggie full of ice water against his head. He glared at Silver and staggered to a chair they offered him.
“My folks left Mystic Glades years ago,” she said. “I didn’t think they even kept in touch with anyone back here.”
“You figured wrong.”
“They wouldn’t have known about last night.”
“No. But we have friends in the department. Word gets around.”
“Wow. It gets around fast.”
Freddie hooked a chair with her leg and scooted it over. “Sit down, Silver. We’re gonna talk this through and figure it out together.” She waved at her circle of friends. “Come on. Pull up a chair. Silver’s been on her own long enough worrying about whatever case she’s working on. We’re gonna help her put the pieces together.”
Silver’s mouth dropped open as the people she’d always taken for granted as being too oblivious to pay her any attention all pulle
d up chairs around her like cowboys circling the wagons, only they were circling them for her.
“I don’t... I don’t know that this is a good idea,” she said. “The case I’m working on is dangerous.”
“Aren’t they all?” Freddie waved her hand again. “This ain’t our first rodeo, dear. We helped Jake and Faye sort out their troubles. And Buddy and me helped Amber and Dex solve a murder.”
“I didn’t think you helped with that,” one of the men closest to Freddie said. “I heard Dex did that pretty much on his own.”
Freddie narrowed her eyes. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Dwight.”
He swallowed hard and balanced both his gnarled hands on the top of his cane.
“Now,” Freddie said. “Where were we? I think, Silver, that you were about to tell us about the case you’ve been working on. And then you’re going to explain what that tall, sexy Colton Graham meant when he said you could notify Eddie’s foster parents on your own.”
Silver waved toward Cato, who was slowly hobbling toward the kitchen with the help of the two men Freddie had assigned to help him.
“Don’t worry about him,” Freddie said. “He’s not part of whatever you’re looking into. He’s harmless.”
“Harmless? He’s an ex-con. I looked into him when I first arrived. He’s done time for armed robbery. He’s my most promising suspect.”
“Sometimes innocent people go to jail. We think Cato didn’t get good enough lawyering. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s the only reason he went to jail.”
Cato grumbled his agreement as he headed through the kitchen doorway.
“He tried to kill Colton and me because I showed him my DEA badge.”
Freddie clucked her tongue and shook her head. “This young generation. You jump to all sorts of conclusions without thinking things through or knowing all the facts. No, Cato wasn’t trying to kill anyone. He probably figured he could rough you two up so he could hightail it out the back. You got him riled up on account of mentioning his parole officer. He doesn’t want to go back to jail.”
Silver slumped in the chair. “If Cato isn’t involved, then who is?”
Freddie leaned toward her. “That’s what we’re gonna help you figure out. But first, what’s this about notifying Eddie’s foster parents?”
Chapter Nine
Colton held his phone and leaned back against the side of his car on the shoulder of I-75 near mile marker fifty-two. A semi blasted past, blowing hot air in his face and swirling some of his hair in his eyes. He shoved it back impatiently.
“When I get back to Naples, the first thing I’m going to do is get a dang haircut.”
“What’s stopping you?” Drew said over the phone. “You said Miss Westbrook doesn’t want your help.”
“That might not be the most accurate slant to what happened,” he admitted. “Pretty much she’s just not a team player. Instead of letting Homicide investigate Eddie’s murder, she decided to amp up the drug investigation, figuring if she found the top guy she’d find the killer. But she went about it all wrong and I, well...” He waggled his jaw where Cato had thrown a particularly hard punch. “I guess I lost my patience with her and told her I was done.”
“Huh. That doesn’t sound like you.”
No, it didn’t. He was known for his patience, which was one of the reasons he was so often chosen for undercover work, which tended to move at a snail’s pace when he was trying to get in with a bad group of people. It took a lot of time to convince them he was just as bad as them and could be trusted, inasmuch as that type of crowd trusted anyone, even each other. So why was it that he got so frustrated and impatient around Silver?
“Regardless,” Colton said, “I just checked out the area around where they found Eddie’s body. I was hoping to see some tire tracks or something the forensics guys missed, but there’s nothing here.”
“Maybe not nothing, exactly,” Drew said. “The homicide guys sent me an update on their investigation a little while ago. Hang on a sec.” The sound of papers rustling was followed by a thumping noise. “Okay, got it. Yada, yada, yada, yeah, here, second page in. Officers interviewed some morning commuters at one of the rest stops on Alligator Alley and it looks like two different people remembered seeing a car parked on the side of the road in the general area where Eddie was killed, during the time frame we’re concerned about. While they didn’t see anyone in the car or on the side of the road, they remembered the car itself because of the bright sky blue color and because it was belching out black smoke from the exhaust pipe.”
“Sounds like an old diesel maybe?”
“You guessed it. From their descriptions, looks like a Mercedes from the early eighties. Basically an antique. The witnesses said it appeared to be in pristine condition, except for the smoke, of course.”
“So our killer likes old cars, and keeps them up. Good to know. And that kind of car would really stand out if I see it somewhere. Anything else in that report?” He idly watched the cars go by as he listened to Drew give him the details, most of which sounded useless for finding the killer, at least now. Sometimes it took one solid piece of evidence to make all the other evidence make sense. “What about Eddie’s foster parents? Silver seems to think they’re in it for the money, which seems crazy, since there’s not a ton of money in taking care of foster kids. Not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.”
“You got that right. I’ve got friends who foster kids and they spend way more than the state allots them. It’s a labor of love for sure, at least with the people I know who do it. Let’s see here. The guys are still looking into the Joneses. Found out the father works at a chemical plant here in town, but he’s in Alabama at some conference. They did confirm that he bought a car recently.”
“You sure he’s at the conference?”
“The guys are contacting police in Alabama to do a wellness check. We should know in a few hours if he’s really there. You’re thinking he killed his own foster kid?”
Colton drummed his fingers against the quarter panel on his Mustang before opening the door and getting in. He started the engine and pulled out onto the highway heading west. He’d have to take the next exit to turn back east toward home. “Just fishing. I have no idea if he’s that kind of guy or not. I’m assuming he doesn’t have a criminal record, since you didn’t mention one. How new is the car he bought? How expensive?”
“Bingo on no criminal record. The wife’s clean, too. And the car is about five years old, a Ford Taurus.”
The disappointment in his boss’s voice mirrored Colton’s. Drug dealers or robbery ring runners didn’t buy five-year-old cars.
“Doesn’t sound like the Joneses are rolling in money,” Colton said.
“No. It doesn’t. That, unfortunately, is all I have.”
“There’s an ex-con working in Mystic Glades. He’s the cook and maybe bartender, too. Not sure about that. His name’s Cato Green. Can you do a quick search on him, see what comes up?”
“Cato Green. Doesn’t ring any bells.” The tapping sound of Drew’s fingers across his computer keyboard echoed through the phone. “Huh, yeah, okay. Looks like he did a few years for robbery. He was the getaway car driver. Claimed he didn’t know the guy he was with was robbing the store. Swore he was innocent.”
“Don’t they all?”
“You got that right. Did a few years. He’s on parole. Could be involved. I’ll get the guys to dig a little deeper. Any other suspects you want me to add to the list?”
Colton rattled off all the names he knew of people in Mystic Glades, which weren’t many. “I really haven’t had much of a chance to dig in.”
“You weren’t supposed to be investigating anyway. Just come on back. Use the rest of the day to get that haircut you’ve been wanting and spend the night in your own bed for a change. Miss Westbrook can handle the notification to Mrs. Jones this evening. But I’ll send a patrol unit out tomorrow to ensure that she’s been notified, just in case.
I’d hate for his name to get out to the press before everyone who knows him has been told.”
“Is the press an issue?” Colton asked.
“Not so far. There was a minor mention of a body found on the highway, but since it’s not in the heart of town, there’s no big uproar or anything. Still, better to be safe. Mrs. Jones deserves that after taking care of him for however long she did.”
“Agreed.” He exited the highway and then looped back onto I-75 west this time, toward Naples. Soon he’d pass the hidden turnoff to Mystic Glades, but on the opposite side of the road. The only way to get there from here would be to go to another exit a lot farther down the road and turn around. Or he could just take one of the turnabouts in the median reserved for law enforcement and emergency vehicles. But he wouldn’t, of course. There was no reason to return to Mystic Glades.
“Colton? You coming to Naples?”
About a quarter of a mile ahead was a turnabout. He slowed the car, then swore. No, there wasn’t any point in going back. Silver didn’t want his help. He checked his mirrors, clutched the wheel until his knuckles ached.
“Colton? Hey, man. Should I wait around for you or not?”
The turnabout was coming up fast. Colton hit the brakes, then jerked the wheel, making the turn.
“Apparently not,” he said. “Looks like I’ve got sucker written all over my forehead.”
Drew laughed. “I think it’s something else entirely, but I won’t go there. She sure is pretty, though.”
“That’s got absolutely nothing to do with it. I’m just worried...about the case.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Talk to you later.”
The call clicked off. Colton tossed the phone into the console.
It was just past noon when he made his way underneath the archway with its alligator-shaped sign. He was a fool for coming back. Silver might need him, but she’d never admit it. She wasn’t a team player. And her kind of play was more likely to get him, or herself, hurt or killed than solve a crime.
So why had he come back? He told himself it was out of respect for Eddie’s foster mom, that it was his duty to make sure she was told about Eddie’s murder. But he very much feared the real reason was a sexy little redhead who was slowly but surely giving him an ulcer.