Dirty Laundry

by Liliana Hart

  “Nah, Cole won’t quit. You know how much his mom likes to see him in uniform. He’d never disappoint her like that.”

  “Damn,” Riley said. “I didn’t think about that. I’m going to change my bet.”

  He hit the buzzer on the door and I walked through. The walls of the bullpen were painted mint green, and the flooring transitioned to gray tile. Pairs of wooden desks sat in uniformed rows, facing each other. There were five cells used for holding back to the right in a secured area, and Jack’s office was to the left. It was a glass cube so he could see out and others could see in, but there were blinds on the windows that could be closed when privacy was needed.

  I didn’t see him in there, so I made my way to the conference room toward the back. The door was open, and I stuck my head in to make sure I was in the right place. Chen and Martinez leaned against the wall, talking quietly over their coffee. There was a large, square safe sitting at one end of the conference table and several boxes of things that had been collected at the scene.

  “Morning, Doc,” Martinez said. “Coffee is fresh.”

  “But is it good?” I asked.

  “Sheriff made it,” he said.

  “In that case, I’ll have some.”

  “He said he knows better than to not keep you caffeinated.”

  “One of the many reasons I married him,” I said, pouring the black liquid into a Styrofoam cup.

  “I’d love to hear the other reasons later,” Jack said, walking in and closing the door behind him. “There are some days I wonder if you only keep me around for my coffee making skills.”

  “You’re a good cook too,” I said, making Chen and Martinez chuckle.

  “You okay?” Jack asked, narrowing his eyes as he looked me over from head to toe.

  “Eventful morning,” I said, very aware of the other’s curiosity.

  He nodded and put a stack of files down on the table. “We’re twenty-four hours into the investigation of Rosalyn McGowen’s death. And so far, we have lots of questions and no answers. We have no murder weapon, and the only person on the street without an alibi is Harrison Taylor.”

  “Should we go ahead and start looking for other jobs?” Chen asked with a snort.

  “Not just yet,” Jack said. “I’ll let you know after we talk to him.” He filled Martinez and Chen in on what we’d discovered from the neighbors we’d talked to the day before. “Did you guys get any impressions on your end?” he asked.

  “Monica Middleton,” Chen said automatically. “She seemed nervous while we were talking to her. She works twelve hour shifts at the hospital, but she’s off Friday through Sunday. I took it there was some estrangement between her and her husband. She said they were like ships passing in the night and they each kind of did their own thing. But it didn’t seem like she wanted us to talk to him. He was asleep while we were there. He works nights and gets home about eight. He sleeps for a couple of hours and then gets up and goes to class.”

  “Katie Stein from across the street said she’s seen a man there a couple of times in the middle of the night,” Jack said. “She thinks she’s having an affair.”

  After speaking with my father, I knew this information to be true, but I couldn’t say anything until I’d had a chance to talk to Jack.

  “That would explain the nervousness,” Martinez said. “She kept looking toward the bedroom. But everyone else on the street seemed like normal families. They go to work. They have a consistent routine. Everyone adored Mrs. McGowen.”

  “What about Abby Clearwater?” Jack asked.

  Chen let out a laugh and cut her eyes to Martinez. It was impossible to miss the slight pink tinge to Martinez’s cheeks.

  “You mean the hot blonde who answered the door wearing the tiniest shorts I’ve ever seen in my life and a tank top without a bra? That Abby Clearwater?” Chen slapped Martinez on the back. “He was a puddle at her feet. She was so distraught you’d have thought she’d found the body herself, and Casanova here did everything from bringing her water to offering to make her homemade soup.”

  “It was the nice thing to do,” Martinez said. “My mama taught me to take care of women when they’re upset.”

  “Yeah, she was so upset her hand almost got stuck slipping her number in your back pocket.”

  Martinez grinned, showing the dimple in his cheek. “Sometimes you’ve gotta make house calls. Isn’t that right, Doc?”

  “Oh, I’m getting nowhere near this one,” I said. “What you do on your house calls is your own business.”

  “Maybe wait to sleep with her until after we clear her of murder,” Jack said. “It would look bad for the department.”

  “You got it, Sheriff. But seriously, I’d move next door in a heartbeat. It was like a sign from God seeing that For Sale sign.”

  “That house is way out of your price range, Martinez,” Jack said.

  “Maybe the cat lady’s house will be cheaper. I have to assume it’ll go on the market soon. No one likes to live in a house where someone was murdered.”

  “Men are so weird,” Chen said. “You’re making life plans based on the fact that you met a woman one time. One. Time.”

  “What can I say? I’m a romantic.”

  “Did Abby’s story mesh with Robert and Janet?” I asked.

  “Sure did,” Martinez said. “She said they left the house right at five-thirty and then everyone grouped off in their normal groups. She’s said she’s always very aware of where Harrison is because he cornered her one time and she didn’t think she was going to get out of that situation without someone getting hurt. But she’s training for a half-marathon, so she’s needing the extra miles. She runs six days a week. She said she ran with Robert and Janet for about a mile or so and she split off from them when she figured Harrison was far enough in the other direction. She ran another ten miles, so she didn’t get back home for another couple of hours.”

  “Can anyone confirm?” Jack asked.

  “She says she didn’t see anyone, but she showed us her route. My gut says she’s on the up and up,” Martinez said.

  “Your gut kept staring at her tits,” Chen said. “I don’t think your gut is qualified.”

  “See if you can find anyone to corroborate,” Jack said. “If either of y’all are interested, we’ve got access to Roselyn McGowen’s financials and last will and testament,” Jack said.

  “Who are her beneficiaries?” I asked.

  “She has no living family, so her beneficiaries are pretty varied. Lots of charities and foundations. It’s her bank accounts that are interesting. She made a killing of the sale of her bakery several years ago. We’re talking multi-millions. But she’s got steady income coming in from somewhere else. Money is being directly deposited into one of her accounts at random intervals. It’s never the same amounts and it’s never the same time. Sometimes she gets deposits every day.”

  “How much money?” Martinez asked.

  “I haven’t had time to go back farther than a couple of months, but it already totals more than a million dollars.”

  Martinez whistled. “She was a rich old lady. Makes you wonder who knew it?”

  “She never touched the money,” Jack continued. “Only deposits were being made into that account. No withdrawals. She lived frugally off the money she’d received from the sale of the bakery. Her house had long since been paid for, and her car was paid for. Her only expenses were small monthly bills. She tithed consistently to St. Paul’s every month, and she was a member of a weekly delivery service for pets. I guess someone came to change out cat litter and deliver bags of food. The majority of her expenses went to the grocery store. She spent enough every week to feed a family of ten.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “She was baking for the whole neighborhood and anyone else she passed by. Her having that kind of money already makes it seem less likely someone would be after something as simple as recipes from that laptop.”

  “That was my thinking too,” Jack said. �
�Maybe they thought they could get into her accounts if they got the laptop. But there’s no sign of money being moved around.”

  “Maybe they didn’t take her laptop at all. Maybe it’s been in the safe the whole time.”

  “I’m waiting for the safe company to call me back with the override code. They received the electronic warrant this morning.”

  Jack’s cell phone rang seconds later. The conversation was short and to the point, and Jack wrote down a series of numbers on his notepad. He thanked whoever was on the other line and hung up.

  “Let’s see what all the fuss is about,” he said.

  “I can understand why she’d have a safe with those security measures with the kind of cash she has,” I said.

  “There’s got to be something more to this,” Martinez insisted. “A million bucks worth of deposits over two months period of time doesn’t exactly say uninvolved old lady. She was clearly involved in something. And we didn’t get any reports of her selling her baked goods. Which means she was selling something else.”

  “Edna Bright said she thought Mrs. McGowen was a madam because of the unusual hours she kept, coming and going in the middle of the night. It’s just hard to believe the Mrs. McGowen we knew could be someone with such a dark secret.”

  “We knew the woman who gave us cookies and lemonade after school,” Jack said. “But we didn’t know her. Money is a powerful motivator for a lot of people. And it’s more than likely the reason she’s dead.”

  Jack went to the safe and typed in the override code, and I help my breath as I heard the lock click and the pressurized door open. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see inside the safe. We had a safe at home and we kept cash and our personal papers inside of it. We didn’t keep as much cash as Rosalyn McGowen kept in hers though.

  “Holy shit,” Martinez said.

  “I did a bust once in Atlanta on a drug dealer that had this much cash in his safe,” Chen said. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

  Jack put on a pair of gloves and said, “If you’ll record, Martinez.” And then he pulled out the stacks of bills, neatly bound with a paper wrapping and started counting.

  “A hundred thousand even,” Jack said.

  I wasn’t as interested in the money he’d pulled out of the safe as I was in the fact that I couldn’t see a laptop. There was a high quality digital camera and a place where it was obvious a laptop would fit.

  “I was hoping it would be easy,” Jack said.

  “What about the beneficiaries?” I asked.

  “There’s no big bulk that goes to any one individual. Don’t get me wrong, she’s left nice chunks of change to different organizations, but nothing that seems suspicious at first glance.” He opened one of the files and read down the list. “She left money to the American Heart Association, the Culinary Institute, the King George Historical Society, the King George Cemetery Association, the Bloody Mary Architects, LLC…”

  “The Bloody Mary Architects?” I asked. “What the hell organization is that?”

  “Quarter,” three people echoed back at me.

  I said a whole bunch of swear words in my head. Whose stupid idea was the quarter jar anyway? “Hell is a place, not a swear word.”

  “I’ve never heard of The Bloody Mary Architects,” Jack said. “We’ll have to do a little digging. She’s also left small amounts to various businesses in town, those that are small and owned by friends of hers.”

  “What about the house?” I asked, thinking of how bad Janet Selby wanted to get her hooks into it.

  Jack flipped through several pages, reading quickly, and then raised his brows. “She left the house to Carl Planter. She says because she knows he’ll do the best job fixing it up for another couple to enjoy as much as she and her husband enjoyed it.”

  “Well, that’s something,” I said. “And he was the last person to see her alive.”

  “We’ll pay him another visit,” Jack said. “It’s enough to get a warrant to look into his finances. Maybe the construction business isn’t doing so well.”

  Jack took the camera out next and handed it over to Martinez. “Why don’t you and Chen see what you can find on here? It might be nothing but cats, but we need to look.”

  “It hooks up directly to the computer,” Chen said. “She’d more than likely download everything onto her laptop.”

  “You said you didn’t find a phone either?” I asked.

  “We found a charger in her car and one plugged in next to her bed. But no phones.”

  “Then she’s got her phone and computer linked. Whoever took them either wanted what was on them, or they didn’t want anyone else to see what was on them.”

  “Blackmail?” Jack asked, narrowing his eyes in thought. “That would be an interesting twist on things. And it could explain the deposits.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of blackmail,” Martinez said.

  “You guys start digging deeper on everyone in the neighborhood and see what you can find with the camera,” Jack said. “I’ll get started on the warrant for Carl’s financials and then we’ll go have another chat with him. And I’ll call in some extra help to see if we can figure out where those deposits are coming from.”

  There was only one person Jack called in for work like that. Jack and Ben Carver had been friends for years, but Ben owed Jack his life and he was always willing to use his skills and position in the FBI to help where help was needed. Jack trusted Ben with his life, which was why he was also the man we’d given Malachi’s flash drives to.

  The thought of Ben had me thinking about my dad and my run-in with him earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago instead of an hour.

  “You got it, Sheriff,” Chen said.

  “We’re going on the next twenty-four hours without a lot to show for it,” Jack said. “Let’s start putting some pressure on people.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jack got a call before I could get a chance to fill him in on my dad, so I made my way toward his office. It was barely ten o’clock, and my thoughts were consumed with my dad. If I’d been paying attention, I would’ve felt someone moving in behind me. As it was, I was completely caught off guard.

  “Damn, Jaye,” a man said, slipping an arm around me in what probably looked like a casual hug to anyone looking through the glass windows. But a hand squeezed my breast and I pushed out of his grasp. “Married life suits you. You’re looking good. Or maybe it’s just that you’re forbidden fruit.”

  I was struck dumb for a few seconds, my brain trying to comprehend the action, the words, and who the hell had touched me. Harrison Taylor stood beaming at me, his pose casual and a hand in his pocket, now that I’d put some distance between us.

  He was a handsome man—classically handsome—there was no disputing that. His face was angular and his features even. His dark blond hair was thick and perfectly cut and combed, and his teeth were blindingly white. The suit he wore was lightweight and charcoal in color, and his tie was red and silver striped. But despite his attractiveness, there was a knowing smirk in his eyes that told me he’d known exactly what he’d done. And more than likely, it was a common practice.

  “I don’t like to be hugged,” I said, my voice cold enough to make ice cubes.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Maybe that’s why your husband is seeking attention in the back of his cruiser instead of in his marriage bed. Sometimes a woman just needs the right teacher.”

  “And sometimes a woman is happily married and sees easily through the slime.”

  He smiled liked we were making small talk about the good old days. Anyone walking by the office would’ve thought just that.

  “You always did have teeth, Jaye. I like that about you. It makes for a feisty opponent.”

  “There’s no game here for us to be on opposing sides. And you want to watch your step. I won’t be intimidated like your law clerks and secretaries that put up with your bullshit because they need to keep their jobs.”

 
; His smile dimmed a notch, but he kept it in place. “You’re going to want to be careful. You don’t want to be on my bad side.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, “because I was just going to tell you the same thing.”

  I saw Jack walking in front of the windows and let out a breath of relief. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind that Harrison Taylor could’ve killed Mrs. McGowen.

  “Harrison,” Jack said, coming into the office. He took one look at me and knew something had happened, but he went through the pleasantries anyway. Politics was a bitch, and there was a time and place for everything when you lived in the public eye. “I was just coming to find you. We spoke to your wife yesterday.”

  “Yes, she mentioned you came by. It’s a shame about Rosie. Everyone loved her.”

  Jack stood behind his desk, but didn’t offer Harrison a seat. I doubt he would’ve taken it if it had been offered. He wouldn’t want the subordinate position.

  “You’re a member of the running club?” Jack asked.

  “I’m sure you already know that,” Harrison said. “Everyone on that street knows more than they should about everyone else and loves to talk to whoever will listen. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to run ahead of the group. If they spent more time focused on running instead of chatting, they’d all be in a lot better shape.”

  “Did you take off at the same time as the rest of the group on Monday?”

  “I did,” he said, shrugging. “Just like always.”

  “Did you notice any activity at Rosalyn McGowen’s place?”

  “Everything was just like normal. Her windows were open, and we could all smell something baking. Her lights were on. Since it was five-thirty in the morning, her house was lit up like a Christmas tree compared to the rest of the block.”