Thirty-Six and a Half Motives: Rose Gardner Mystery #9 (Rose Gardner Mystery Series)

by Denise Grover Swank

  “How’d you think to look there? Those things were bolted down.”

  I grimaced. “I had some help.”

  He turned somber. “I see.”

  “Dora wrote about Neely Kate’s momma. I guess Dora knew her from church. Jenny Lynn was pregnant.”

  “She told Dora who her father is?”

  “Kind of.” I looked into his face. “He was a powerful businessman from El Dorado who came to town every few weeks to handle his business at Atchison Manufacturing.”

  His eyes widened. “Oh, God. J.R.?”

  I nodded.

  He took a moment to recover from the shock.“How’s she dealing with the news?”

  “She’s kind dazed and stunned, but she’s ignoring it to focus on other things.”

  “Yeah. I can see her doing that.”

  “We also talked to Kate.”

  He looked worried, but he forced a grin. “Hence the cowgirl comment.” When I nodded, he said, “Did she admit to having the files?”

  “I didn’t even try that tactic,” I said. “I took a different route.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Kate’s out for revenge, but maybe not entirely as we suspected. I thought she was working with J.R., but now I’m pretty sure she’s trying to get even with her father. She had a boyfriend, and J.R. offered him several hundred thousand dollars to leave her, but her boyfriend refused. Kate says her father had him eliminated. I was only allowed a few questions, so I don’t know many details. His name is Nick Thorn, and my gut says he’s the reason Kate left Little Rock two years ago.”

  “Why’s she here now?”

  “Me.”

  “She admitted she wants to hurt you?” he asked in alarm.

  “No. She wanted me to get back together with Joe because she thought I was the one who’d stand up to her father. But she realizes that won’t happen, so now I think she’s goin’ after Hilary.”

  “What do you think she has planned?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t trust her. Maybe I should tell Joe.” That idea sparked another. “He might know more about Kate’s boyfriend, too.”

  Mason gave me a hesitant grin. “Maybe you should have Neely Kate talk to him. You’re not his favorite person right now.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea either. I was worried she was going to lose it talkin’ to Kate. For all I know, she’d break the news that she’s Joe’s half-sister over the phone.”

  Mason cringed. “She’s that much of a loose cannon?”

  “I don’t know. I love her, but I’m not sure I trust her to let this sit.”

  “Okay, so maybe you call him. In the meantime, I’ll focus my attention on finding out everything I can about Nick Thorn.”

  “Really?” I asked in surprise.

  “How much time do you have left on your ticking clock?” he asked.

  I blinked in surprise. “What ticking clock?”

  He tucked a stray hair behind my ear, a soft smile lifting his mouth. “I can read you, Rose. You’re tense, which tells me you’re working with a deadline.”

  “Maybe I’m just worried about Bruce Wayne.”

  His smile turned sad. “I suspect the deadline has something to do with him.”

  He’d always been pretty perceptive. With everything other than the Lady in Black. “You’ve told me before that the courthouse is like Fort Knox. Do you still believe that’s true?”

  “Yes. I’d say this is a good place to hole up.” He looked down at me. “You want to stay here? You and Neely Kate are both welcome to hang out with me in my office tonight.”

  “No, but I need you to stay here tonight.”

  “Why?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Because. It’s safe.”

  “What time is your deadline?”

  “Ten.”

  “I take it you expect me to hide in here until after everything goes down. Has J.R. threatened me?”

  I gave him a hopeful look. “He hasn’t threatened you today. But it doesn’t hurt to be too careful.”

  He lifted his hand to my cheek and lightly stroked my jaw with his thumb. A soft smile lit up his eyes, but I also saw his sadness. “I love you, Rose. When this is over, please remember that.”

  I turned serious. “I love you, too.” When it was all said and done, I still wasn’t sure we would work, but there was no denying that I loved him.

  He stood and tugged me up, pulling me flush against his body. He pressed a hand to the small of my back while his other hand cupped my cheek. He leaned forward and kissed me gently, but then it turned hungry and demanding. “Let me come with you.”

  “You can’t,” I murmured against his lips, then gave him one last kiss before stepping back and pushing him away. “You have your job to do, and I have mine. I need you to find out what you can about Nick Thorn. You’re more important to me here.”

  I could see he wanted to protest, but then he nodded, solemn and serious. He studied me with a deep sorrow. “I’ll let you know when I find something.” Before I could respond, he bounded up the stairs, leaving me on the stairwell landing.

  I found Neely Kate in the records room, digging through a filing cabinet. She looked up at me and rolled her eyes. “I really wish Fenton County would digitalize their records.”

  “No luck?” I asked.

  “Actually, Lori had already found a few things, but I’ve added more. Thaddeus Brooke had several prior arrests—breaking and entering, larceny, assault.”

  “Sounds like a nice guy,” I said. Skeeter had said the photo on his license made him look rough, and apparently he wasn’t far off.

  “Exactly. He was reported missing right after Thanksgiving twenty-five years ago. Around the time of the factory fire.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I looked up anyone with the name Steyer from that time period.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Allen Steyer owned the fertilizer plant and several other businesses.”

  “Why would he be involved with Thaddeus Brooke?”

  “I don’t know, but he died around the same time. I found his obituary.”

  My eyebrows rose in surprise. “What? Why didn’t someone from the state come investigate if all these people died or went missing?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “J.R.”

  She nodded, then leaned her head closer to mine and whispered, “Rose, think about it. Steyer was rich and powerful and obviously dirty.”

  The answer hit me like a ton of bricks. “Oh, my word. Allen Steyer was one of J.R. Simmons’s Twelve. Skeeter didn’t know who he was, but he said he thinks the man who covered this area disappeared around the time of the factory fire. Instead, he died. It fits.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  “Find out anything about Nick Thorn?”

  She shook her head. “No record of him here, but I suspect he’s from Little Rock anyway.”

  “Agreed.” I had to confess that I’d just seen Mason, but I didn’t want to upset her. “I have someone looking into him. Someone with the resources to get information fast.”

  “Skeeter?”

  I shook my head. “Although I suspect he’s lookin’.”

  “Joe?”

  “No. But he’s next on my list for a chat.” I paused. “I saw Mason.”

  “What?”

  The two women working in the room looked over at us, so Neely Kate grabbed my arm and dragged me down a short, empty hall. “You told him about Nick Thorn? Are you crazy?”

  I straightened my back and gave her a defiant look. “I trust him.” When she started to protest, I held up my hand. “I know you and Skeeter don’t, but if I’ve learned one thing, it’s to go with my gut. And my gut tells me that Mason Deveraux would sooner die than put me in harm’s way.” I paused. “And if you can’t accept me sharing information with him, maybe we need to tackle this separately.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You would do that? You wou
ld let a man come between us?”

  “No. This is no different than if you’d asked me to stop trusting Jonah. Or Bruce Wayne. Mason can help us.”

  “Well, we don’t have a heap of evidence implicating either of them.”

  “Everything you have is circumstantial and hearsay.”

  She put her hand on her hip. “I thought he didn’t want to be caught in the middle.”

  I shrugged. “There’s nothing shady about looking up some information. We need all the help we can get.”

  “But can you trust him?”

  I looked her in the eye. “I would bet my life on it.”

  “You just did. Let’s hope you picked the winning side.”

  Chapter 28

  When we left the courthouse, Neely Kate called Skeeter to fill him in on what she’d discovered. She hung up grinning.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d look into Allen Steyer and get back to us.” Her grin spread.

  “What else did he say?”

  “He said if we didn’t get off the damn street, Jed was gonna hang out with us again.”

  I laughed and spotted Jed sitting in his parked car. “Let’s go to the office. It’s after five o’clock, which means we have less than five hours. We need to figure out what to do next.”

  “We keep diggin’,” Neely Kate said, stopping by Skeeter’s car. She stuffed our guns into her purse. “We keep looking until it’s time.”

  I dug out my keys and unlocked the door to the landscaping office.

  “I say our next task should be to find out who rented that shed twenty-five years ago,” Neely Kate said.

  “But do we need to do that?” I asked as I locked the door behind us. “We were only looking into it because we thought the storage unit might be the shed mentioned in the shorthand page.”

  “Maybe so, but my gut tells me to keep digging. If you’re listening to your gut, then we should listen to mine, too.” She shrugged. “Besides, we’ve got nothing else to do, but I think we should wait another hour until it’s dark.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Jed couldn’t find the Pelgers. What are you proposin’?”

  She grinned and plopped down on the sofa by the front door. “We’re going to snoop in the Pelgers’ office.”

  “In the antique store?”

  “Yeah. And the beauty of it is that we aren’t breaking and entering, because the place was already broken into when the crowd looted the store. We’re only entering, which sounds so much less illegal.”

  My eyebrows rose as I sat down next to her. “And yet it is illegal.”

  “So you want to sit this one out?” she asked.

  “Shoot, no. I’m comin’.”

  “So now we need to figure out what to do for the next hour.”

  I studied her for a moment. I suspected she wasn’t going to like what I was about to propose. “I need to talk to Joe.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  I sighed. “I want to ask him what he knows about Kate and her boyfriend. And to make sure he knows about her threat against Hilary.” And while that was all true, I had other reasons. Would Neely Kate understand? “There’s more . . . I have no idea what’s gonna happen tonight. If anything happens to me, I realized there are too many things left unsettled between us.”

  Her mouth pinched tight. “You’re not dyin’, Rose Gardner, so stop talking like that.”

  “They still need to be said, Neely Kate,” I said softly.

  She was silent for several seconds before she said, “So what are you proposin’? It doesn’t sound like you’re talking about a phone call.”

  “No. I need to talk to him in person.”

  She nodded, then a grin spread across her face, and she jabbed my arm with her elbow. “Hey! If you get back together with Joe, we’ll be related. Maybe I should support that endeavor.”

  I grinned back. “We don’t need blood or legal binds to hold us together.” I grabbed her hand, turning serious. “What we have runs deeper than either of those things. No matter who your father is.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “He’s a monster, Rose. And look at all of his children.”

  “I know Kate is loony tunes, but Joe’s coming around. He’s breaking free of his father’s hold. He’s really trying to be his own man.” I grinned. “And you’re stronger than the two of them put together.”

  “Well, of course I am,” she said with attitude, and then her voice softened. “He would have killed my mother. He would have killed us both. That’s why she moved around so much. All these years, she was trying to keep me safe.”

  From what little I knew about Jenny Lynn Rivers, she had probably put herself as number one on the list of importance. I only hoped Neely Kate had been number two. But I wasn’t about to point out all the shortcomings of Neely Kate’s mother. Hopefully we’d have years to revisit the topic.

  “It’s a lot to take in, Neely Kate. Trust me, I know. Give it some time.”

  “I want to talk to my granny. I want to ask her some questions.”

  “Now?”

  She turned to look at me. “Sure, why not? You need privacy to talk to Joe. Besides, maybe my granny knows something that will help us. I’ll call and see if she’s home.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t like the thought of her going off without me, but she was right about me needing privacy when I talked to Joe. She started to call her grandmother, so I sent Joe a text.

  Truce?

  He sent back a text within seconds. What are you up to?

  Can we talk? In person?

  The little text bubble kept popping up and disappearing on my phone before he finally sent: Why?

  Because we need to clear the air. Hence the “truce.”

  Fine. How about in a few days?

  No. Tonight. I’m in my office. Can you come now? When he didn’t answer after ten seconds, I added, You need to eat dinner. We can meet at Merilee’s if you’d like, but I’d hoped to talk in private. I can pick something up.

  He answered right away. Call something in for both of us—you know what I like. I’ll pick it up and be there in twenty minutes.

  Thanks.

  “Granny’s got two fortune-telling clients back to back,” Neely Kate said. “She can’t see us until later. What did Joe say?”

  I grimaced. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’m calling a dinner order in to Merilee’s, and he’s gonna pick it up.”

  A wicked grin lit up her eyes. “So what to do with me, right?”

  “Neely Kate—”

  Waving her hand, she laughed. “I’m teasing. I’ll have Jed take me to get something. He can’t say no to leaving you alone with the chief deputy sheriff.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Totally. You better call in that order if you want it to be ready when Joe gets there.”

  I picked up my phone and called the restaurant, ordering a bowl of potato soup for me and meatloaf and mashed potatoes for Joe.

  “That’s not what you usually get for Mr. Deveraux,” the waitress taking the order said. “He trying something different tonight?”

  “No,” I said, feeling like I was cheating on Mason even though I wasn’t. “It’s for Chief Deputy Simmons. In fact, he’ll be picking it up.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding scandalized. “I see.”

  Obviously she didn’t, but pointing that out would only draw more attention to the situation. “Thank you.”

  Neely Kate had called Jed, who’d at first balked at the idea of leaving me under Joe’s watch, but she’d successfully convinced him. When she hung up, she sat at the round table we used to make presentations to customers. I was rearranging stacks of gardening magazines and papers to make room for my dinner with Joe.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  “About tonight with J.R.?” I was terrified, but I wasn’t sure I could let myself admit it.

  “No. With Joe.”

  I shook my head. “No, I think this talk has been a
long time coming.”

  “Aren’t you worried Joe will try and put you into protective custody?”

  “No. I think he finally respects me enough to take my opinion into consideration.” Or at least I hoped so.

  She just nodded, a thoughtful look on her face.

  I went into the bathroom to clean up the mess from Merv’s incident the night before. I sure didn’t want Joe to discover my role in last night’s events.

  I’d just finished when I heard a knock on the front door and then Neely Kate’s voice. “Hey, Joe.”

  “Neely Kate,” Joe said, sounding miffed.

  “You’re not gonna have bad feelings, are you?”

  “That depends on whether or not you continue to impede official investigations.”

  I walked out of the bathroom to find Neely Kate with her hands on her hips.

  “It’s a free country, Joe Simmons. I didn’t break any laws,” she said.

  “Neely Kate,” I said as I approached them. “Let’s give Joe a break.”

  It suddenly hit me that they were constantly bickering. Just like siblings. The thought brought a lump to my throat. How would Joe react when he discovered Neely Kate was his sister?

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I said, noticing the bag in his hand. He was wearing his sheriff’s uniform and a leather coat. The dark circles under his eyes were a testament to his exhaustion. “And for picking up dinner.”

  “And that’s my cue to leave.” Neely Kate grabbed her coat and her purse and dashed out the front door.

  I walked over and locked the door behind her.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea for her to be out there alone with my father on the loose?”

  I turned around to face him. “You’re worried about her?”

  “Well . . . yeah. I am.”

  Part of me ached to tell him what I knew. With his wackadoodle sister Kate, his evil father, and his controlling mother, Joe needed family who would actually care about him and support him. But it wasn’t my place to tell.

  I motioned to the table. “I thought we could eat at the table.”

  He nodded as he walked over and sat in a chair. “I have to say I was surprised to get your text.”

  “We’ve had so many ups and downs lately—more downs than I’d like—I thought it might be nice to clear the air . . . but over dinner. And without our usual yelling.”