Cassie McGraw Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Archer

  “Dex,” I said, “forget about this one. Let’s just go buy a brand-new one. That way you get the warranty and everything.”

  Dex looked at me, a huge smile spreading across his face. “Really?”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Lester said. “Nine grand. But that’s only if you take it today.”

  I smiled at Dex. “Write the man a check,” I said.

  EIGHTEEN

  It took a few minutes to finish up the paperwork and get insurance on it, and then we took the truck and my car to the house. I decided the office could wait another day or so, so I parked the car in the driveway and locked it up. I climbed up in the truck with Dex, and we went off in search of antique cars.

  Dex had called the ads he had seen on Craigslist, so the first one we bought was the Cadillac convertible. To me, the car looked like it was almost perfect already, but Dex pointed out little flaws that most people, he said, would never notice. There were tiny little cracks in the paint, for instance, and a couple of little bubbly spots that he said meant there was rust underneath it. In order to make it worth the kind of money he planned to get out of it, he would have to take the car completely apart and strip off all the paint. Most likely, he said, he would have to replace a number of the body panels.

  I waited until he wasn’t looking and googled “automobile body panels.” I never knew you could buy whole sections of a car body to replace parts that were rusted or dented, but you can.

  The guy selling the car wasn’t thrilled about taking a check, but I got him to call my bank and speak to David. David assured him that any check written on any account connected to me would be honored, and could not possibly bounce. By the time he got off the phone, he was smiling from ear to ear.

  We got back in the truck and drove away, but we didn’t head back into Tulsa as I had expected. Instead, Dex went further south and followed GPS directions from his phone to get another car. It was the Plymouth Cuda I had liked, and we got out and walked around it.

  This car was actually in better shape than the Cadillac, but it was what Dex called a “hemi clone.” It was designed to look like something called a Hemi Cuda, which was worth an awful lot of money, but it didn’t have a Hemi engine in it. It was just painted and marked like one, but the engine under the hood, Dex said, was just a standard 383.

  He bought the car anyway, and that’s when I found out that the truck could handle two cars at once. There was something under the bed at the back called a “stinger,” and it extended out and picked up the front end of the second car by the wheels. Dex made sure the four speed manual transmission was in neutral, and then we were back in the truck and gone again.

  “I didn’t think to ask,” Dex said, “but can you drive a stick shift?”

  “How many times have I told you,” I asked, “I’m a farm girl? Of course I can drive a stick shift, I had to drive tractors and trucks and all kinds of things back home.”

  He smiled. “Good,” he said. “I’m thinking about building that Cuda for you.”

  I looked at the car in the rearview mirror on my side, and then turned back to Dex. “But I just bought a new Mustang,” I said. “Why do I need another car?”

  “Because I want to do something for you,” he said. “Cassie, you’ve made my dream come true with this shop. I want to do something nice for you, and I know you like that car. Let me build it for you, turn into a show quality car that you’ll be proud of.”

  Dammit. There was that overwhelming feeling again. I kept my mouth shut and just smiled.

  We took the cars to the shop and put them inside the building, then spent the rest of the day working there. I went to the building supplies store and bought things Dex wanted, including thick, shatterproof Plexiglas for the broken windows, a new steel door for the main entrance, twelve gallons of paint, assorted lumber and plywood, and twenty gallons of something called rubberized roof cement. I took the truck, which was actually a lot of fun.

  Of course, I also bought paint rollers and lots of other things, and by the time we were ready to quit for the day, the building was solid and secure. All of the broken windows had been replaced with the Plexiglas, the steel door was in place and had new locks on it, and the first coat of paint was on the interior walls. It was going to take a second coat to cover up all the graffiti, but I was looking forward to coming back the next day to help paint again.

  “So,” I asked as we were cleaning up and getting ready to leave, “have you decided what to call this place?”

  Dex grinned, and turned a little red in the face. “I had an idea,” he said. “I’m not sure what you’re going to think of it, though.”

  “Oh, come on, spit it out. What is it?”

  “Well, we’re partners, right? I thought about calling it Tate and McGraw Custom Automotive.”

  I couldn’t help it, I kissed him.

  We went home and took it easy the rest of the night. Dex found us a movie on Netflix, and Critter was happy to lie on his lap and purr while we watched it. It was a nice way to spend an evening, though I did have a tendency to pick my phone up and check it from time to time.

  “Alfie never called,” Dex said, about eight o’clock. “Think we ought to check in with him?”

  I dialed the number and put it on speaker.

  “Have I ever mentioned that you drive me absolutely nuts?” Alfie said as he answered.

  “I think you might’ve said that once or twice,” I said. “Why this time?”

  “Because I can’t find a real match to that face anywhere around us. I can try running it through the FBI database, but that would probably take a couple of days.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t worry, you know I’m good for the bill.”

  “I’m not worried about that, I’ve got one of your credit card numbers, remember? I’ll tell you something weird, though. I got a match off that picture that really surprised me, but it isn’t him.”

  The back of my neck suddenly started to crawl. “How can you be sure it isn’t him?”

  “Because the one that came up as a preliminary match was for a guy who’s dead,” Alfie said. “The weird thing is the fact that the dead guy that was almost a match? I’m talking about your dead ex-fiancé, Michael Kendall.”

  The room started spinning, and it seemed like I was somehow being transported through time. I was back in the house I shared with Mike, and it was spinning around me, as well. I saw the living room, exactly the way it had been the last time I saw it, and suddenly one thing jumped out at me.

  One day, while Mike had been at work, I had gotten tired of all the boxes of his stuff that he had never even bothered unpacking when he moved into the place. I started in the living room, pulling everything out and finding places to put it. This was actually what ended up leading to me learning about his past, but that day I was just having fun playing home decorator.

  I put out his football trophies, lots of knickknacks and such that he seemed to have collected over the years, and a lot of pictures. There were pictures of him and his buddies from the force, but there were also pictures of his family. Some of them were of Mike and his brothers, Danny and John.

  The one that jumped out at me in this mental virtual-reality was the picture of Mike, Danny, and John, all holding fishing poles. Mike was in the center, with Danny on his left and John on his right.

  The bomber was staring out of that picture at me. It was Mike’s brother Danny.

  I snapped back to reality and shook my head as I sat up. I moved so fast that Critter jumped off Dex’s lap and hissed at me, but I didn’t care.

  “Alfie, I know who it is,” I said. “I never met him, because he was gone the one time I went with Mike to meet his family, but it’s his brother Danny. Danny Kendall, and the last I knew he was somewhere in California.”

  I could hear the keyboard clacking as Alfie’s fingers flew over it. “Danny Kendall, I’m assuming that’s a Daniel?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “I’m trying to remember where he
lived, I think it was Palm Springs, somewhere around there.”

  “Found him, last known address was in Coronado. Looking at his photo, and I’m going to say we have a winner. There are some slight differences, but it’s the same guy. No doubt in my mind, it’s the same guy. How did you figure it out?”

  “I’ve been thinking all day that there was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it. I knew it wasn’t a face I had seen before, at least not up close and personal, but it was definitely familiar looking. When you said you got a partial match to Mike, I suddenly remembered a picture I saw of Mike and his brothers, and it hit me then. Danny was the tallest of the three of them, so he wasn’t as beefy as his brothers. That’s why I wasn’t connecting Mike to him just from his face, because overall, they don’t look that much alike.”

  “Okay, well, I just ran Danny Kendall’s background, and you need to be extremely careful. Five years as a Navy SEAL, a demolitions expert, a crack shot with just about any weapon you can imagine. He made a small fortune from an investment in a buddy’s startup tech company in Silicon Valley, but he’s been in and out of trouble since discharged from the Navy two years ago. He was at least picked up and questioned back in California on everything from traffic offenses to attempted murder, but only a couple of misdemeanors ever stuck. Last record of him in California was about two months ago.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “He was just discharged two years ago? But he was living in California back when I was with Mike, and nobody ever said anything about him being in the Navy SEALs.”

  “SEAL team members keep their identities very secret,” Dex said beside me. “Nobody outside their own little community really knows much about what they do. Most of the time, they even ask their families to keep it a secret. There’s always the fear that a member of a SEAL team can be compromised by threatening a family member, or someone they love.”

  I thought about what he said for a moment, and it made sense. “Alfie? Can you see anything about why he left the Navy?”

  “He actually got kicked out,” Alfie said. “Bad conduct discharge, stemming from emotional instability after—after the death of his brother.”

  I nodded. “So that’s why he blames me,” I said. “I exposed Mike’s crimes, Mike got killed, and Danny went off the deep end and got kicked out of the Navy.”

  “I’d say that’s the way it looks to me,” Alfie said, “but you’re the one with the psych degree. I’m emailing you everything I got on him, right now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got to call Detective Pennington.”

  I cut off the call with Alfie as my phone chimed to tell me I’d gotten an email. I glanced at it long enough to know it was the information about Danny, then thumbed Pennington’s number.

  “Detective Pennington,” he said. “Cassie?”

  “I know who it is,” I said. It took me only a few minutes to explain how I had figured it out, and then I forwarded the email directly to him. He went to a computer and opened it up, then told me he was going to put an alert out for Danny immediately.

  I hung up the phone and looked at Dex. “Am I ever going to be free of Mike?” I asked.

  “You already are,” Dex said. “This guy Danny is a nutcase, and he’s trying to hurt innocent people in ways that he thinks will hurt you. You can’t blame yourself, Cassie.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Like Alfie said, I’m the one with the psych degree. I know how it all works, and I’m not going to let myself fall into that trap.” I looked at him and smiled, letting Freda out. “I’m going to make the bastard pay for what he’s done.”

  Pennington called me back a few minutes later to tell me that the alert was out, and that they had already started checking every motel and hotel. We both knew it wasn’t likely Danny was operating under his own name, but they had to try.

  A search of California motor vehicle records showed that Danny owned a white Ford pickup truck, and an all points bulletin was put out for that, as well. While it was unlikely that he was actually driving that truck around Tulsa, Pennington refused to leave any possibility unexplored.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t know Danny personally, so I didn’t have any insight to offer. When I got off the phone with Pennington, I sat back on the couch again and tried to think of anything else that might help.

  One idea struck me. About six months after I got out of the hospital, I got a phone call from Mike’s mother. She called to tell me how sorry she was for what had happened, both to me and to Mike. I didn’t really want to talk to her, but I could hear the genuine sorrow and regret in her voice, so I managed to be polite. I listened to her telling me what a good boy Mike had been growing up, and how she couldn’t understand what could have driven him to the things they now knew he had done.

  I knew that family had suffered a lot because of Mike, and I knew they were going to suffer a lot more over what Danny was doing. I hated to be the one to tell them, but if there was even the slightest possibility that she might be able to help me find a way to stop Danny, I had to try.

  I googled the number and stared at it for several seconds before I finally hit the button to dial. I put the phone to my ear, holding up a finger to tell Dex to be very quiet.

  “Hello?” I had been lucky, and it was Mike’s mother Bernice who answered the phone.

  “Bernice? Bernice, this is Cassie McGraw.”

  There was silence on the line for a couple of seconds, and then she cleared her throat. “Cassie,” she said. “How are you doing? I think about you now and then, and I hope you’re doing okay.”

  “I moved on,” I said. “I actually went back to school about a year after—after everything happened, and finished getting my degree in psychology. I work as a counselor for abused women, now, in Tulsa.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s good. Are you—I mean, how are you doing yourself? I know you were pretty traumatized.”

  “I’m doing okay, Bernice,” I said. “Like I said, I’ve moved on. I actually have a boyfriend, can you believe that?”

  “Oh, that’s—well, that’s wonderful,” she said. “Is he, you know, good to you?”

  “Yes, he is,” I said. “He’s pretty wonderful, to be honest. Bernice, I’m afraid there’s a reason I’m calling you, and to be honest, I need your help.”

  “My help? How? How can I help, I mean?”

  NINETEEN

  I took a deep breath and mentally gritted my teeth. “Bernice, have you heard any news about Tulsa the last few days?”

  “Oh! Oh, yes, now that you mention it. They had some bombings up there, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. The first one was in the counseling center where I was working, and we just had another one, yesterday, in a shelter where we put women and children when they have to get out of an abusive situation.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” she said. “Was—was anyone hurt?”

  “There were a lot of injuries, and some fatalities,” I said. “Bernice, the reason I’m calling you is because—it’s because we have reason to believe the bomber is your son Danny.”

  There was absolute silence on the line for almost a minute. I kept waiting for her to simply hang up, but the line didn’t go dead and I could hear her ragged breathing. I was just about to speak again when she said, very softly, “Cassie, are you sure?”

  “We got a picture of the bomber from a security camera,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s him.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, and I could hear her sobbing. “Danny just hasn’t been the same since everything happened. He was the youngest, you know? He just about idolized Michael, and when everything happened, and everything came out, he just refused to believe any of it. He tried to convince the police in St. Louis that they were wrong, even after it came out that there were videotapes. He kept insisting it couldn’t have been Michael, and—oh, Cassie, he kept saying you were lying. We told him over and over that it was true, and we even told him what Michael and his friend di
d to you, but he just wouldn’t listen. He started getting in trouble, and he got—he lost his job, and that just about ruined him. He came back here a few months ago, to Dallas, but he just couldn’t—he just couldn’t get along with his dad or his brother. We finally had to ask him to leave.”

  I took a deep breath. “Bernice, I’m truly sorry about all of this,” I said. “I hate being the one to tell you what’s going on, but is there anything you could tell me that might help us find him? I’m actually working with the police on this, and we need to find him before he can hurt anyone else.”

  She was quiet again for a few seconds, except for an occasional sob. “He—he called me last week. He said that he figured out how to come to grips with everything, and that he was going to be all right. I asked him where he was, but he said he was just visiting an old friend. He wouldn’t say where.”

  My ear had perked up. “Bernice, did he call you from his own phone?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “It was the same number he’s had for years.”

  “A cell phone, right? Bernice, can you give me that number?”

  She stopped talking yet again for a moment, and then I could hear her genuinely weeping. “If I do,” she said, “can you stop him without hurting him?”

  “We’re going to try,” I said. “I promise you, Bernice, we don’t want to hurt him. We just have to stop him from hurting anyone else. The bomb yesterday? A little boy was killed.”

  “Oh my God,” she wailed. “Oh, my God! Cassie, I don’t understand what happened to my boys. I just don’t understand it at all.”

  “I know, Bernice,” I said. “And you can’t blame yourself. Both of them were adults, and they made their own choices. Don’t fall for people trying to tell you that it goes back to the way they were raised, because I know you did the best you could for your family.”

  I could hear her forcing herself to get her emotions under control. It took a moment, but finally she read off the number to me. Dex had been listening, and already had a pencil and paper in his hand. As I repeated the number back to her, he wrote it down.