Shady Shenanigans in Iowa

by Wendy Byrne

  "But how would they know you were going to leave your coat on the boat?" Ramona asked.

  "I've been thinking about that. The only way that could have happened was if they overheard Gabe and me talking about going to get my coat." I shrugged. "I guess one of the officers could have set me up and thrown down the money when I got tackled. But that seems a little paranoid."

  "Since he stays here pretty frequently, maybe I should I ask Barney what he—"

  Before she got the words all the way out, there was a resounding no from the group. Although we hadn't talked about it, there was something off about Barney. Sure, he talked a good game and let us use his house for the weekend, but still…the jury was out on that guy as far as I was concerned.

  "Nothing against Barney, but we need to keep this on the down low until we know for sure who's involved. Maybe we should visit the shops and cafés in town tomorrow to see if we can pick up any clues there about Jen."

  "I love that idea." While Alice made the proclamation, somehow I knew the rest of the crew would be on board with my plan. Now as far as the execution part, I needed to study and think through my options.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  "Did I hear my name mentioned back there?" Gabe said as he grabbed my hand and squeezed.

  "I'm not sure. Was that before or after you shushed me?" Yes, I needed to hold him accountable, even if he was acting as my lawyer rather than my boyfriend.

  "I did that for your own good." He had the audacity to smile when he said that. "Larry can be a real…hmm…how do I say it…"

  "I get the picture, but what gives between you two?"

  "We were at rival high schools. There was a lot of trash-talking between us. And I made the football team at Iowa as a walk-on, and he didn't. That's the bottom line. As a result, I got all the girls." He laughed and kissed my forehead.

  "I will never understand the male gender." I shook my head.

  "But that doesn't mean you're distracting me from what really happened back there. I know you didn't steal the money, but how did it end up in your pocket?"

  "I know this sounds crazy, but there are only two possibilities. Either somebody overheard us talking and replaced my mini-serving of Sangria with the stolen money. Or one of the officers planted it when they tackled me."

  "Like a throwdown?" I saw the twinkle in his eyes, and I had a feeling it had more to do with the fact that Larry might be the culprit. "But how would they know you'd be here?"

  I shook my head. "That's the weird part about this whole thing. I've never been to this town before. If it weren't for Barney offering his house for the holiday, you and I would be off on our own." The idea made me a little wistful in a coulda-shoulda-woulda kind of moment.

  "Do you think your doppelgänger was at work at the bingo table?"

  "Either that or they made that part up. But I'm betting she's involved with one of the officers somehow." Part of me wanted to say something about Daniel Opps, but I wasn't sure it was him in the crowd, so I remained silent.

  He rested his arms on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. "I'm worried about you. I feel like somebody's setting you up for something big."

  "That is so sweet, but you know I always manage to figure it out."

  "But what if one time you don't?"

  "That's never going to happen." I smiled but knew that eventually my good luck would run out.

  * * *

  The sense that I was on borrowed time seemed to take over my thoughts as we made our way to downtown Kyleen the following day. To say the town was small was an understatement. Somehow, they still managed to have a nice grouping of storefronts selling everything from antiques to homemade pies. Seriously, I was in heaven. Why wouldn't I be?

  My stomach growled as I turned into the parking spot in front of the pie place. I figured I could feed my newly acquired sugar beast and maybe get some information as well. Not too surprising, the ladies were totally on board with that idea to start out our day.

  We were ahead of the game. Since the weather was perfect, Gabe had already committed to fishing today. I didn't quite understand what weather had to do with fish since…hello…they lived in the water, but I was more than willing to accept his explanation. If it made sense to him, it made sense to me.

  That meant I didn't have to twist myself into a pretzel for him to believe me when I said I was going into town with the Qs to get some sweets and offered no more information than that. Part of him wanted to believe that was the only reason, but I could see a healthy bout of skepticism in his expression. He kept any comments he might have to himself—at least for the time being.

  As we sat in the diner and discussed strategy, I had a slice of cherry pie—my personal favorite—but managed to snag a sampling from the tray of five different pies laid out on the table. "It seems like my doppelgänger is upping her game with the theft from the bingo tent."

  "I guess the police or somebody else could be in cahoots with her," Dolly said.

  "True. We don't know if anyone else saw this person, so there's a credibility issue," Viola added.

  "This might sound weird, but I saw a guy who resembled Daniel Opps in the crowd."

  "That's kind of weird for a bounty hunter, don't you think?" Ramona said.

  I nodded. "But I might have been mistaken too. The only reason he'd be following me is if he thought I knew that woman he was looking for."

  "True," Viola said. "That does have me stumped."

  "Let's get back to your twin. I've got a wild thought," Alice said. "Let's eliminate her from the picture. If you ask me, she's just a distraction to get everyone off point."

  "Oooh, that's so true. She's doing nonsense things, certainly nothing of consequence except the bingo money theft," Ramona said. "The proverbial red herring."

  I took a sip of coffee to counteract the sugar overload from the pie. It didn't work. I felt like my whole insides were buzzing. I pointed my fork at Alice while I spoke. "You might be right about that. The issue does seem like a red herring. But why would she leave me that note about Jen being alive? What could be the motivation for that?" I hated to think that it had been another one of those attempts to distract me, but it was looking more and more like a possibility.

  "That is a bit of a conundrum. If on one hand she's setting you up and on the other she's leaving you bread crumbs, nothing makes any sense," Viola said.

  "Maybe it's a ploy to throw us off the track of our investigation," Dolly offered.

  "Or to make us all think we're losing our minds," Alice said.

  Ramona nodded, too engrossed in her pie to respond right away. "Or a combination of all three."

  "They had to know I wouldn't be arrested." I took a forkful of the Boston cream pie they'd set out on the table. OMG, pure heaven. Maybe I'd challenge Gabe to a game of volleyball later to quell the caloric overload. "What would be the point except maybe to delay me for some reason?"

  "Hmm…so they were busy doing something while you were occupied with the police," Viola said.

  "It seems plausible," Dolly added.

  "Let's eliminate my twin from the equation right now and go on from there. We need to focus on Jen and find out if she really is dead. If she is, then we need to find out who killed her. If she isn't, we need to find out who she's working with to discredit Nate. We already know she's in deep with a drug dealer from New York. Is there anyone else she's irritated who lives in the area?" I considered informing them about Nate's foray into looking into some drug dealers operating in the area but didn't want to get them off on any dangerous tangents right now.

  The waitress came to refill our coffees.

  "Do you know the Lannon family by any chance?" I asked.

  The woman rested the coffee pot on her hip. "Name doesn't sound familiar."

  "How about Jennifer…well I'm not sure what her maiden name was, but her married name is Crowder."

  "You mean the police officer's estranged wife who's gone missing and is presumed dead?" When we nodded,
she continued. "That would be Jennifer Gill. Kind of a sad story. She lived on a farm with her parents, but her mother ran off with some man and her dad was never the same. He died in a farming accident."

  I felt my eyes go wide. Maybe it was because I was shocked that Jen's background hadn't been fabricated—except for the part about her mother running off. But if that were true, how did her alleged stepbrother, Drew, figure into that? "Do you know if she had any contact with her mother at all?"

  The waitress shook her head. "Not that I remember hearing about. Don't know where Mrs. Gill lives now or even if she's still alive." Without another word, the woman scooted away.

  "Wasn't that interesting?" Alice put her coffee cup back on the saucer and snagged the piece of pecan pie I'd been eyeing. Just as well.

  "It seems like it could go either way to me," Dolly said.

  "That's the rub of it all. How do we sniff around when we have no leads?" Ramona asked.

  I held up my finger and signaled for the waitress. "Do you have the address of the farm where Jen was raised?"

  She walked back over to our table. "Don't know the exact addresses, and the house was sold off years ago. It went into foreclosure, I believe. But the property is at the corner of Route 2 and Route 31. It got bought out by one of those agriculture businesses." She shook her head. "Hardly any family farms nowadays."

  "I think we have a side trip for this morning."

  Now that we had a potential lead to follow, it didn't take us long to pay our bill and find the farm where Jen had grown up. There wasn't much traffic—not a huge surprise—but it gave us the opportunity to pull the car over and take a look at the property.

  Giant tractors and other equipment I couldn't begin to understand were doing their thing in the dusty landscape. I wasn't sure about the boundaries of the farm, but it appeared to be pretty big, judging by the fact there wasn't another farmhouse in sight. A gate secured the driveway.

  "Do you think we should knock on the door or something?" I stared at the house as if that would somehow give me the answer. It didn't, by the way.

  "I don't think anyone actually lives at these big company-owned farms. They just have folks who monitor the process and make sure it's profitable," Viola said.

  I hated to be this close and not have additional information. "I'll knock on the door and see if they know anything about Jen. There's got to be somebody in charge."

  "No way we're letting you go there alone. That's too juicy to miss," Ramona said.

  I knew somebody would disagree, but I had a plan. "You ladies stay in the car until I get somebody to answer the door so they can move the gates and we can pull the car in the driveway. I don't see any of you climbing over that thing."

  "What are you going to say?" Dolly asked.

  "That I'm looking for my high school friend Jen Gill. I'll keep my phone on so I can signal for help if necessary, but I don't expect anything strange to happen. But just in case, if I say the word curtains, call for help."

  I didn't leave them time to follow and jumped out of the car and strolled up the driveway, stepping over the gate. The hot air swirled around me, kicking up dust as I made the long walk up the drive.

  I gave the Qs the thumbs up then knocked on the front door. To my surprise, a woman in her midsixties answered.

  "Can I help you?" She glanced outside and spotted the van. I hoped she didn't look too closely. The last thing I wanted was to be on anyone's radar or raise suspicions.

  "I happened to be in the neighborhood and was looking for my friend Jen. We went to high school together."

  "Let me ask." She still didn't open the door, so I couldn't see who she was whispering to.

  A man swore and growled something about not saying anything. His intonation caused me to straighten my spine and think about that old flight-or-fight response. Something about it sounded ominous. Or maybe an overload of bad-day grumpiness on his part.

  The woman came back a few moments later and pasted a smile on her face like she'd had a really long day and was good and tired by now. "I'm sorry. Her family sold to AGI a long while ago, and we have no idea where she's gone. I can't help you. We're more or less the caretakers here." She didn't give me a second to ask further questions as she closed the door on me.

  I filled the ladies in about what I didn't find out before I checked on a text I'd received from Gabe. My heart sank inside my chest while tears swam before my eyes.

  The DA is taking the case against Nate to the grand jury next Monday.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  With no time to waste, I made a trip to Iowa City the following evening. I had more loose ends than I wanted to think about, and now my feet were to the fire if I wanted to keep Nate from spending his life in jail. I felt a need to connect the dots, despite the fact they seemed to be scattered across the entire map of Iowa. My gut told me I was getting close.

  Since the Qs were still exhausted from the weekend, I checked in with Mason and Jefferson. Luckily, they were available and on board with this last-ditch fishing expedition to save Nate. They'd selected a bar called The Watering Hole, where DA Madman Charlie Evans was known to be a regular.

  I pulled into a parking spot, got out of the car, and walked toward the front door as a hint of nerves lit up my spine. This was do-or-die time. Everything was closing in on Nate, and I had to figure out the guilty party.

  I'd found a short jean skirt tucked into the back of my closet and paired it with a red T-shirt and flats. Being out of my normal yoga/running pant attire felt awkward, but Mason had cautioned me to dress up. Since I wanted to fit in, I complied. Luckily the two of them were waiting outside when I arrived.

  "Girl, you look fabulous." Mason drew me into a hug, followed by Jefferson.

  "So do you two. Finally got over your jet lag I see."

  As usual, Jefferson tended to be more flamboyant in his style, sporting a royal blue Mohawk and matching sports jacket. Mason was more traditionally stylish in a button-down white shirt and dark pants.

  "Yep, the trip was worth it. You and Gabe should honeymoon there."

  I blinked my eyes more than a few times. "You're getting way ahead of yourselves. The subject hasn't come up." The idea flustered me while simultaneously making me feel warm and fuzzy inside. After a disastrous marriage first time around, I had no desire to rush into anything permanent. "What would give you an idea like that?"

  "We ran into Cleo the other day, and she said she saw you getting married soon."

  "I'd say her psychic abilities have gone a little haywire then. I like Gabe and all, but—"

  "Like?"

  "Okay, I…love…him, but we've got some things to work through."

  "You mean the secrets. Cleo told us all about it."

  "What? She didn't tell me anything about Gabe's secrets. Did she elaborate on what they might be?"

  They both shook their heads. "Maybe she got a random out-of-the-blue vibe about it," Mason said. "In fact, she specifically said something like you're going to see Izzy sooner rather than later, and a few moments after that, you called."

  "Does she talk in rhymes to you too?" I shook my head, feeling frustrated. This mystery seemed to be making me run in circles.

  "Not usually," Jefferson said.

  "You must be special," Mason joked and slid his arm around my shoulders. "Nothing to get all hot and bothered about. She likes you but is worried about whatever she sees in your future. Thinks Gabe is a great guy but says there's a bit of darkness around the picture as well."

  "I don't get why she can get me when I'm not within close proximity." When I thought about that, it seemed a little creepy and psychically stalkerish—if that were even a thing.

  "She said you have a strong aura and something about being tuned to your channel and your signal coming in loud and clear," Jefferson said.

  "And I think she also mentioned that the two of you were connected in your past lives," Mason added.

  "Okay, that's just plain weird." It wasn't until the
y both burst out laughing that I figured out he'd fibbed about the second part. But the first part was still creepy.

  "I hope you're spending the night with us," Jefferson said as both he and Mason linked arms with me.

  "You bet. Now let's see if we can find our mysterious DA and discover who he hangs with."

  We parted ways to scout out the crowded bar. Although every clue I had remained scattered, I had a feeling things were starting to come together in this investigation. I didn't know when or how or if Nate could survive it all. I couldn't think about that now. I needed to keep going no matter how bad it looked for him.

  Someone grabbed my elbow. Reflexively I brought it back.

  "Your aura is very frightened," the familiar and unwelcome voice whispered in my ear.

  I grabbed my chest as if that would stop my heart from popping out of my chest like it threatened to do. "No, Cleo, I'm scared to death. My good friend is going to die in prison for something he didn't do if I don't help him." When she looked like she might interrupt, I held up my hand. "And I do not need your rhyming pearls of wisdom. I'm not in the mood." A second after I spoke, I felt the inevitable remorse. Too many worries were pressing down on me right now, and seeing her was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

  "I knew you'd be on edge. I'm sorry I scared you, but when Mason and Jefferson told me they were meeting you here tonight, I felt moved to come." To my surprise she slipped an arm over my shoulder, and I started to tear up. What was going on with me? Frustration and worry had sent my whole world into a tailspin. Cleo's appearance rattled me more than I'd anticipated. But now she was comforting me, and I felt like a jerk of ginormous proportions. I was sure it would pass once she annoyed me again, which probably wouldn't take more than a minute or two.

  "You shouldn't be jealous of Gabe's ex," she said.

  "I'm not," I said a little too quickly, sounding defensive even to my own ears. "Okay, maybe just a bit. My ex-husband was a dog. And while I don't want to cover all men with that broad brush, it's hard to break free from that—especially when Gabe is keeping secrets from me." I blurted out the remainder of my thoughts and felt better afterward. Maybe Cleo wasn't quite as scary as I thought.