Lethal Lifestyles (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 6)

by LynDee Walker

  “I haven’t the first damned clue,” I said.

  “Please call me if you hear from him.”

  “Have a nice evening, Aaron.” I clicked off the call and opened the door, my stomach flipping a slow somersault. With Richard Burke demanding a hanging and my detectives desperate to save their own asses, I was on my own here.

  Wherever Parker was, he was in trouble. Maybe more than one kind. And if the cops were hunting a fugitive, they’d be looking for him in all the wrong places.

  Which left finding him to me and Kyle.

  Melanie had been locked up in meetings at City Hall all day and hadn’t even talked to Parker since before work.

  “He texted me that he wanted to let me sleep.” She pulled her phone out and flipped it around. “He said he was going to get some coffee and go for a run because he got to ditch his sling today. His car was gone when I got up. That’s all I know.”

  “Does Parker own a pocket knife, Mel?”

  “There’s one in his glovebox,” she said.

  Damn. I kept my face blank as I nodded.

  “What the hell is going on here, Nicey? The police can’t possibly really think he killed someone.”

  Sure they could. But that was way down my list of priorities at the moment.

  “I don’t think that. And I know you don’t either.”

  Melanie shook her head. “I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Where would he have gone for a run?” I asked, waving the phone. “Is there a place he goes regularly?”

  She shrugged. “Several. It depends on his mood. He didn’t say specifically this morning, but he likes the river trails this time of year.”

  I opened my mouth to say something else and heard Kyle come in the front door before I got the words out.

  “Hello, ladies.” He kept an artificially light tone as he crossed the room to the chaise where I was perched, his eyes on Melanie.

  She sniffled. “Hello. I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name.”

  “This is my friend Kyle Miller,” I said. “He’s our resident SuperCop.”

  “Between the two of us, Nichelle and I do all right with the whole catching-the-bad-guys thing.”

  Melanie tried to smile, but more tears filled her eyes. “It’s not like him to not answer my calls, Nicey. I’m scared.”

  “He’s fine.” I put a little too much weight in the words, but I needed to believe it as much as I needed her to. I tipped my head back to look up at Kyle. “What can we do?”

  “Can I have a glass of water?” He widened his eyes slightly and flinched his head in the direction of the kitchen.

  Subtle. Mel was upset, not stupid.

  “Of course.” I jumped to my feet and followed him.

  “What?” I hissed as I grabbed a glass and filled it from the pitcher in my fridge.

  “I still don’t believe Parker did this, but Chris Landers called me right after you did. The evidence they have will probably convince a jury.”

  “He’s not ignoring Mel because he’s running, Kyle.” I gave him the nutshell of my theory on the emails, the Facebook post, and Sammons. “Parker knows everyone who worked with Sammons and Burke. Could he have found something Sammons didn’t want the cops to know?”

  “Maybe. Have you talked to Parker today?”

  “Nope.” Dammit, why hadn’t I remembered to call him last night?

  Kyle sighed. “There will be cops all over his house, and I won’t get in the door because I have no jurisdiction.” He steepled his fingers together. “Where is his car?”

  I shook my head. “Gone, Mel says.”

  “You happen to know the plate number?”

  Of course I did. Was my brain-cluttering ability to remember useless information going to come in handy for the second time this week? I reeled it off.

  Kyle nodded. “I need your laptop and a little luck.”

  I tipped my head to one side. “Because you have his plate number?”

  “I can search the feed from every traffic camera in Virginia, DC, and Maryland. The recognition software isn’t perfect, but we might very well get lucky, and with the timestamps and a couple of people who know him well, we can maybe figure out where he went.”

  Deep breath. “Gotta love technology. At least that’ll give us a place to start.” I sprinted to the car to get my laptop and set him up at the table. “I’ll see if Mel remembers anything else.”

  If Melanie knew anything helpful, she couldn’t make herself call it up. Jenna and I spent an hour trying to pull information out of her, and got a lot of tears and “I don’t know”s punctuated by cursing herself for being busy.

  I started back for the kitchen to see if Kyle was having better luck, and Mel’s sniffling stopped me at the door. “It seems so stupid, how much anyone cares about this damned ballpark thing. Why did I stay down there listening to their bullshit all day? God, Nichelle, what if something happened to Grant and I was…”

  I turned slowly, a puzzle piece floating neatly into place in my head. “The ballpark.”

  Jenna bounced to her feet. “What? Jesus, this is making me nervous. I only thought I had problems when I came over here.”

  I smiled at her. “Thank you for staying, doll.”

  “I’m happy to at least feel like I’m helping.”

  “You are.”

  Jenna’s phone binged. She furrowed her brow and swiped the screen. “It’s Chad. ‘Tell Nicey the Virginia History League,’ it says. What’s that?”

  “Oh my God.” I lost the ability to focus on anything for a few seconds, then lasered on Mel.

  “Who was in the meetings you were at today?”

  “Dale Sammons, the planning and zoning director, the city manager, the mayor, the head of the Slip’s historical committee, and a guy from the developer’s office.”

  Bingo.

  “BurCo, right?”

  “No.” Mel shook her head. “I was just telling Grant yesterday that it’s weird to see Richard Burke all over the news this week, because I haven’t seen him on an agenda or pushing a new project in forever. It’s probably been nearly a year. This was a new company. I couldn’t find much about them, except that they meet the state’s small business contract requirement. Maribou, they’re called. Who names a company after feathers?”

  Parker’s voice floated back to me. “Why not use someone with more of a reputation?” he’d asked Sammons. He wasn’t talking about wine. Or baseball.

  Not Maribou. MariBu.

  The Virginia History League.

  The perfect reason to jump into the stadium project.

  That son of a…We’d been looking in all the wrong places.

  I spun on one heel and sprinted to the kitchen, hollering for Kyle.

  36.

  River Road

  Kyle looked up from piecing together a map of where Parker’s convertible had been when I fell into the chair opposite him.

  “Richard Burke, Kyle. Does he own any other companies?”

  “That kind of money? Probably. Why?” Kyle kept clicking. “The last time I can find Parker’s car, he crossed the nickel bridge at six forty this morning.”

  “He likes to run by the river. But listen. Melanie says—” I paused. “Oh, shit.”

  He closed the computer and stared. “What?”

  “Don’t Richard and Annabeth Burke live down there somewhere?”

  He nodded. “So?”

  “I’ve been looking at this whole thing all wrong,” I said. “I thought someone—Jinkerson, Rutledge, a jealous woman, Sammons, a gambling contact—killed Mitch for personal reasons. I thought the circumstantial crap was pointing to Parker in an unfortunate coincidence.” I stood, pacing my tiny kitchen floor.

  “You don’t believe in coincidences.” Kyle’s eyes followed me for a minute. “You’re making me dizzy.”

  “I think better when I move,” I said. “And it looks like I’m right to not believe in them, because a string of them has made us walk through the exact d
oors this bastard wanted us to.”

  “What bastard?”

  “Richard Burke. Mel says there’s a new PC small-business developer on this ballpark thing. Company called MariBu. As in, Marilyn Burke. And Richard was out there playing polo with Sammons’s BFFs last weekend. I think they’re so chummy because Richard Burke is behind this ballpark push. There’s a lot—a lot lot—of money riding on that.”

  “But he’s a big history guy.”

  “That’s exactly why he couldn’t be publicly associated with it. Melanie just said she hasn’t seen him pushing a new project at City Hall in a year. Why is that, I wonder? Saving up political capital for when he could find a way to come out on the side of the ballpark thing?” I paused. Andrews. Someone was offering him a pretty penny for our front page, and his notes said Sammons and Burke. I’d just assumed he meant Mitch. But what if he didn’t?

  “They have too much riding on this to lose it,” I muttered. “Who owns the property Sammons wants to use down in the slip?”

  Kyle’s eyebrows went up. “Looks to me like your money’s on Richard Burke. You really think he killed his own son over a business deal?”

  “I really think he might’ve. But I’m still not sure. We have to find Parker and see what he knows.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have already told us?”

  “What if he can’t?” My voice cracked. “He texted me last night and said we needed to talk. I tried him twice today and got nothing. What if…” I couldn’t finish. “We gotta go down to the river.”

  “What about them?” Kyle jerked his head toward the living room as he stood.

  “Jenna will stay with Mel. She doesn’t need to be alone right now.”

  “I’ll drive.” Kyle grabbed his keys.

  I kept various appendages crossed and whispered prayers through three parking lots along the James.

  When Kyle’s headlights glinted off the back of Parker’s silver BMW convertible in the fourth, I dropped my head into my hands.

  “I didn’t want to be right about this,” I mumbled to the floor.

  “Hang on now. No jumping to conclusions. There are only so many spots on this trail system you can get a car into, and this is a public place. The odds that anyone hauled a guy as big and strong as Parker out of here against his will in broad daylight are fairly slim.”

  I scrubbed my hands over my face and lifted my head. “True. But then where the hell has he been for the past…” I looked at my phone, “…fifteen hours?”

  Before I dropped it back in my bag, it binged two rapid-fire text arrivals. I flipped it over, then let it fall to the floor of Kyle’s car.

  “What?”

  “Charlie Lewis has a teaser for the eleven that Parker is a murder suspect and running from the law. My publisher sent me a screenshot. Right before he fired me.”

  37.

  Tracks

  Kyle stared, mouth gaping, for a full minute before he managed words. “Fired you?”

  I shook my head, shoving aside the panicked tears that came on the heels of hearing Kyle say it aloud. I didn’t have a word for how low Andrews could stoop. “Right now, I don’t even care. All I want is to find my friend and set this tangled mess right. I can deal with Andrews,” who still didn’t know I knew about Shelby, or his deal with Sammons, “later.”

  The phone blared “Second Star to the Right.”

  Bob. Who’d no doubt been notified of my recent unemployment. What about him?

  Kyle gestured to the floor, then poked me when I didn’t lean to pick it up. “You going to get that?”

  I shook my head. “I just flat lack the capacity to worry about one more thing. Does that make me a bad friend?”

  Kyle patted my hand. “We all have our limits.”

  “Where is he, Kyle?”

  He leaned to the glovebox and grabbed a flashlight, climbing out of his car and picking his way to Parker’s, running the beam over the ground.

  I gasped and tried to catch my balance as my heel slid. “I thought these were all paved,” I said.

  “They are, but look—the storm last night washed mud down the hill and over the asphalt. That’s good for us, maybe…” He let the thought trail as he squatted next to Parker’s car, then stood and went over his footprints in the mud back to his.

  “Look, Nichelle,” he said. “There are three sets of tire tracks here. Just three.”

  “Since the storm last night?” I scrambled back to where Kyle stood, my eyes following the flashlight’s beam. Sure enough. “One is yours.”

  He nodded. “One is Parker’s, and the other one…”

  “A car came in and parked next to him,” I said, bouncing slightly and grabbing his arm when my foot skidded again.

  “So either he left with that person…” Kyle began.

  Or he’d been dumped in the river. I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to think it. “Or he left with that person.” I grabbed the light and shined it into the trees.

  Kyle nodded. “That’s the best lead we have, so let’s see where it goes.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “Richard Burke or Dale Sammons? What does your gut say?”

  I closed my eyes and let my mind go quiet. I couldn’t get this wrong. We didn’t have time for error. Deep breath. “Burke.”

  Kyle nodded. “So where would a man like Richard Burke take someone he didn’t want found?”

  “Assuming he didn’t…” I paused. “Yeah. Assumed. Like, if he wanted to know what Parker knew?”

  “Or who he told?”

  My eyes popped wide. “Kyle…”

  He was already digging for his phone. I jerked the driver’s door open and dove to the other side of the car for mine, punching the speed dial for Jenna’s cell.

  “Hey,” she said. “Do I want—”

  “Get out,” I cut her off. “Get Mel and go to your car and get away from my house. Don’t go home. Drive around, go to a mall—somewhere there are a lot of people. I’ll call you in a bit.”

  “Okay,” she said simply, and I loved her for just trusting me.

  “Be safe, Jen.”

  “You too, sweetie.” I heard her telling Mel they had to leave as she clicked off the call.

  Kyle pocketed his phone as I wriggled back to my feet. “They okay?”

  “I told them to leave.”

  “There will be two agents in an unmarked car outside your house in ten minutes. Maybe we’ll get lucky and our guy will show up.”

  The more I thought about Richard, the surer I felt. “It’s him, Kyle. Richard Burke couldn’t be in on this ballpark thing publicly without good reason, and his son being dead has given him that.” I slid into the passenger seat. “Melanie said she hasn’t seen BurCo on a council agenda or advertising a new historical project in a long time. Let’s go find out why.”

  Two blocks from the river, Kyle’s phone blew up, binging and buzzing every iPhone sound at once. He pulled the car over and scooped it out of the cupholder.

  “Miller,” he said, putting it to his ear. I turned and watched, noting the tense flex of his jaw. “Put one on the runner and leave one onsite. I’ll be there in ten.” His voice had a commanding edge I wasn’t used to hearing. He clicked off the call and put the car in gear. “Slight change of plans.”

  “Sounds like it,” I said.

  “I have to go help with…a thing.” He shot me a sideways glance. “A couple of hours tops. Can I drop you at the newspaper office?”

  Andrews could bite my ass. I’d have time to deal with him when I’d figured out what happened to Parker.

  “Sure. I’ll hunt up dirt on Burke.”

  “And I’ll see why Bonnie just texted me that she found something interesting in that old file you gave me today. Just in case.”

  I nodded as he rolled to a stop in front of the Telegraph building, smiling when a shadow crossed his face as I opened the door.

  “I’ll be fine. There are still people here this time of night. Research i
sn’t a dangerous pastime. Ask your favorite librarian.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I got to my cube to find all my personal belongings packed into a cardboard box and set in the floor next to the recycle bin. “That jackass.”

  My throat closed around the words, and I turned on my heel and went looking for a familiar face.

  I found Troy at the sports desk, taking stats from high school games off email and typing them into a formatting sheet.

  “You’re here awfully late,” I said.

  “I’m in charge of getting these in by ten.” He grinned.

  I glanced at the clock. “You have one minute.”

  He punched two buttons on the laptop. “That was the last one.”

  A grin spread across my face. “Perfect timing.” For once this week. “Can I borrow that? I left mine at home and I need to look something up. Long story.”

  “Sure thing.” He pushed it toward me, and I pulled a chair up next to his.

  “Journalism in the Age of the Internet 101,” I said with a wink. “The answer to almost anything can be found on the internet, as long as you know where to look. 102: Property tax records aren’t sexy, but they come in mighty handy a lot of the time.”

  I punched up the city tax office’s site and started hunting.

  Ten minutes later I’d confirmed that the Burkes owned MariBu—but Mitch was listed as the principal on the business license.

  What I needed was a peek behind the curtain. The kind my photographic recall of Kyle two-finger-pecking his password into my laptop earlier might get me.

  I clicked to Lexis Nexis and punched in Kyle’s credentials.

  Welcome, Kyle Miller.

  Parker didn’t have time for me to worry about ethical implications. I searched BurCo. Loads of property listings, most of them sold or mortgaged to the hilt.

  I scrolled back to the top and read slower.

  For twenty years, they bought property, restored it, flipped it.

  I scanned the list for Shockoe Slip addresses.

  Twelve. Eight with older deed dates, four bought in the past five years. Way after Mitch started working for Sammons.