Dying for Dominoes

by Jane Elzey

  Zelda rolled her eyes.

  Amy lay against her pillow and watched the circus in front of her. It was a familiar three-ring performance. Something special happened when they got together, no matter where. It was a fabulous feeling of belonging, even when it got heated. She drifted in and out of their conversation, her attention holding just enough to know they were still talking about Zack. It didn’t seem right, somehow, with Zelda present. She was, after all, a new widow.

  “Zack wasn’t exactly the person we all knew him to be,” Rian was saying.

  Zelda raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m just saying that there was more to Zack than any of us knew—obviously—because, because he’s . . . gone. And we’re not.”

  “Criminy,” Genna said. “Just lay it out there, Rian.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t mention that you’re both now two hundred fifty thousand dollars richer,” Zelda spat.

  “And you’re five hundred thousand dollars richer,” Genna barked back. “This was all your idea anyway. We thought you were kidding when you asked us to help you get rid of Zack. We didn’t know you were going to hire a hitman and set us up for the fall!”

  “A hitman! Is that what you think I did? Is that who you think I am?”

  “If the shoe fits . . .”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Rian interrupted. “We’re just short on facts and tempers. It’s been an exhausting week. ‘What we’ve got here is . . . failure to communicate,’” she said in her best Cool Hand Luke imitation.

  Amy giggled. The humor broke the tension.

  “She’s out to lunch,” Genna said with a nod at Amy. “I’m jealous.”

  “We all know that no one here killed Zack, firsthand or second,” Rian continued. “But Ben said the police still don’t believe that. Amy’s accident may have thrown a wrench in their thinking, but they’ll be back asking questions before too long. We may not be guilty, but we look guilty. We’ve passed off quite a few lies for the truth, and they know it.”

  They had lots of white lies in their mouths. Amy giggled again as if they tickled her tongue.

  “Really out of it,” Genna repeated, nodding toward her.

  Rian poured another foamy cup of beer for herself, emptying the last warm can. “The person who was behind that wheel is still out there. I think the person who ran Amy off the road is the same person who tried to kill Zack. Ben thinks so, too. When they saw the Hummer again, they thought it was Zack behind the wheel. A Zack who didn’t stay dead the first time.”

  “Zombie Zack.”

  Zelda cast a dirty look at Genna.

  “Dudley Do-Right said that?” Amy giggled.

  “Right,” Rian agreed. “Amy ran into Zack’s killer somewhere on her path that day—somebody she called, spoke to, or saw. It could have been someone she had a beer with at the bar and got a little too chatty. You know how you are, Amy.”

  She nodded, but she wasn’t sure what she was agreeing to or with.

  “What if we try to lure him out into the open, just like Amy tried to do?” Genna asked. “What if we set a trap to catch him hot-handed? Or her.”

  “How would we do that?” Zelda asked. “The Hummer is toast.”

  Rian pointed her cup at Zelda. “With you. With the lovely Zelda.”

  “Yes!” Genna said, her enthusiasm showing. “We’re going to bait the killer’s hook with Zelda. Dangle her out there like a fat ole worm.”

  “I am not fat,” Zelda shot back. “I’m not.”

  “You are not,” Rian agreed. “But we have to figure this out or we’re going to land in jail just like Amy thought we might. We have to find out why. Were they after money? Pot? Power? Property? What? What was he after?”

  “Or her. It could have been an evil vixen,” Genna added. “Or a jilted lover.”

  Zelda poked her in the arm. “Jilted lover? Thanks a lot! You’re no comfort. You’re a pain in the rear.”

  “Look in the mirror, sweetie. This is your rear end that’s showing,” Genna shot back, but she was smiling, affection filling her eyes. “We wouldn’t be in this fix if you would stop getting married.”

  “Oh, so this is all my fault?” Zelda complained.

  Genna nodded. Zelda stomped her foot.

  Amy turned her attention to the hypnotic drip of the IV and her eyes grew heavy. Her head was full of chatter. Too full. “I love you all. So just be quiet and be nice,” she said dreamily as she drifted off in spite of the noise they made.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Amy heard a rustle near her hospital bed, she opened her eyes. Ben was standing at her feet, a broad smile on his handsome face and a file folder clutched in his hands. Her friends were gone. She shifted her arm and noticed a note on her cast. Be back soon. XXOO.

  “Amy,” he said quietly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Dudley Do-Right,” she answered, her voice still thick.

  Ben chuckled. “If you feel up to it, I have some photos I want to show you.” He reached inside the folder and pulled out a stack of pictures.

  Her eyes widened with terror.

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “These aren’t gory. Just pictures of cars.”

  She nodded, and he handed her the photos.

  “These are stills from the video surveillance camera at the hotel garage,” he said. “These are cars that entered the garage just before Zack Carlisle’s Hummer entered between eight and eight thirty. I was hoping you might recognize something from the vehicle that ran you off the road. Maybe you’ll recognize the manufacturer’s logo on the grill or a hood ornament. Anything.”

  Setting the photos on the bedsheet, she said quietly, “I can’t. I don’t want to know.”

  “I can understand how you feel. I can understand why you thought your friends were involved. But you know they weren’t. I don’t believe that either. But the police are not out looking for new suspects. They are looking for proof of how an angry wife premeditates her husband’s death and gets a little help from her friends.

  “The police know the Carlisles were having marital difficulties. Divorce would probably have been financially devastating. Death was much more lucrative for everyone. At least, that’s how it looks. And you—you’re the one who wasn’t near the scene of the crime that night. That’s convenient in and of itself. You’re the one who didn’t need an alibi—the only one who gets run off the road to divert attention.

  “The way the detectives might see it, a group of friends plan to murder the husband, and they make sure the one person who is guilty looks the most innocent, staging an accident and throwing suspicion somewhere else. Did you know the police suspect you were closely involved?”

  “I . . . I . . .” Amy stammered. “I didn’t . . .” Her lips trembled, and she gripped the bedsheets at her side. Why was he saying this? Wasn’t he on their side? Wasn’t he going to help them?

  “I don’t mean to upset you,” he said quietly. “Personally, I don’t think any of you were involved, but I do know you’ve done an excellent job of scrambling evidence. Even if you are not guilty of murder, you’ve all made a mess of an investigation that was pretty messy from the start. And then you went off on a wild goose chase to find someone to blame. Tell me again what happened. Tell me everything from the time you left Bluff Springs until we found you here.”

  Amy looked at Ben with relief. He believed her. He was trying to help!

  Getting started felt awkward, a bit too private, but before long she had told Ben about faking the return calls to the voice messages on Zack’s cell phone, about the apple trees, the board meeting with the church lady that Zack never made it to, about the man who had money to offer Zack to get the job done, whatever that meant. She had never figured that out. She told him about the GPS in the Hummer, about L91, about the man and his shotgun. She shared what she had learned at Cooley’s Bar, and how
the Hummer seemed to be recognized by so many. The bartender, the woman with the bee tattoo and a mean smile, the bubbas who were looking for Zack and his trailers. She recounted the chase on the curves of Highway 7, the lights that had blinded her, the horrible crunch of metal, and then waking up in the stench of the old trailer. She told him about Beck and his trailer trash motel, which they all knew now was about the FEMA trailers Zack had bought at auction. About how Beck had set the Hummer on fire as revenge. She replayed her conversations with Clayton, who worked at a Murphy Oil garage and gas station.

  “Yes,” Ben said finally. “It’s beginning to make sense.”

  “Not to me,” Amy said.

  “I have a theory. Want to hear it?”

  Amy nodded.

  “I do believe it was full-on rage that ran Carlisle down, most likely with murderous intent, but then the Hummer shows back up in this part of town, and this person thinks Zack isn’t dead after all. They follow you, looking for their chance. You were not the target, Amy. They didn’t know you were driving the Hummer. No one could see you behind the glass in the dark. The killer saw the Hummer and thought Zack was driving. I think the killer was trying to finish what he or she thought was already done.”

  Amy shivered. “We thought of that, too.”

  “You were lucky.”

  Amy sighed deeply, his words hitting home with the truth. She had been lucky.

  He picked up the photos from the stack she had set down on the bedsheet and handed them to her again. She looked at them quietly, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “This is important,” he said.

  The photos were black and white, but the cars were clear enough. Looking from one picture to the next, she strained her memory for recognition. She lingered on photos of a Mercedes, a sports car, and a pickup truck. She and Clayton had identified tracks to all three of these types of cars in the parking garage. Focusing on the faces behind the windshield in each photo, she looked for recognition of the person driving, even though the photos were grainy and dark. She saw a man and a woman behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The sports car was too new to be Rian’s, and the woman behind the wheel was blonde.

  “This,” she said finally, holding up the photo of a truck with a man behind the wheel. A ball cap shadowed his face. “This is familiar. I’ve seen this truck, but I don’t remember where.”

  Ben took the photo and glanced at the old truck. “You don’t remember where you saw it? Amy, there are a thousand of trucks like this in Arkansas. Every man with a ‘honey-do’ list either has a work truck like it or wishes he did. Can you identify this as the one that ran you off the road?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said and closed her eyes again. “I can’t . . . I didn’t see it. I only saw its headlights. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “There is something familiar about him.”

  “Think, Amy,” he encouraged. “Clear your mind of everything but the faces you’ve seen in the past few days. Scan through them like a video on fast-forward. Block out everything else and focus only on that.”

  She shut her eyes and let the scenes and faces of the last few weeks flood past in her memory. Seeing her dream first, the lights flashing blue and red over Zack’s dead body, then she remembered the face of the rider on the horse in the other dream, too, but she didn’t recognize him, either. She pictured the thin man in her shop, the bartender and his sad blue eyes, the lovers at the bar, the man with stringy hair. She put herself behind the wheel of the Hummer, tentatively at first, afraid to relive the crash.

  “Wait!” she said, opening her eyes and snatching the photo from his fingers. “The hat. I remember seeing that hat.” Amy poked the photograph with her finger and then pulled the picture in for a closer look. “Isn’t that a John Deere hat?”

  She saw his disappointment before he spoke. “Unfortunately, there are as many John Deere hats in Arkansas as there are Ford trucks. We might as well hunt a needle in a haystack.”

  “I remember this angry look,” Amy said with excitement. “An old man in an old truck was right behind me for miles on Highway 7. He was right on my bumper. I pulled off on the shoulder so he could pass, and he did. But that’s it,” she said. “Nothing else happened. But I swear, this looks a lot like him.”

  “You did well. I think we’re looking for an older man in a John Deere hat, and there can’t be too many of those in Arkansas.”

  His sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  With a list of auto body shops in hand, Ben drew a circle on the map with Cooley’s Bar at the center. Any car or truck that ran down a person and then ran a Hummer off the road would have severe damage to repair. That person probably saw the Hummer at Cooley’s Bar and waited to follow. Ben was 99.9 percent certain the driver thought Zack was behind the wheel.

  Each dot he added represented one of the auto body shops. He added all the Murphy Oil stations, too. Most of the dots clustered around the outskirts of Hot Springs, but a clutch of fewer than a dozen made sense based on the geography and the timing between the bar and the hotel.

  Ben looked up from the table where he was sitting, watching as Cooley’s Bar began to fill up with the after-work crowd. It was a mix-and-match jumble of ranch hands and construction workers, women in nursing scrubs, and men in worn suits. He looked at them carefully without being too obvious, sizing up each one as a potential killer. Most of these people were regulars, he thought, judging by the way they entered the bar and moved swiftly to a specific place in the room. People were habitual beings, especially in the pursuit of alcohol and social interaction.

  The man at the bar with a long black ponytail seemed to know everyone. He made a point of nodding to those who walked up to the bar as if he were giving them his permission to buy a drink.

  He found himself drawn to the social happy hour. He sipped his beer and watched. He recognized the honeybee babe, as Amy called her, when she bounced through the door. The energy she brought into the room was noticeable. She seemed delighted that so many eyes turned her way as she sauntered across the floor. Long blonde curls bounced against her breasts as she walked, and her skirt barely covered her bottom as she passed him. When she sat at a table of men, he wondered which of the four would catch her attention.

  She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked up at him and smiled.

  Ben smiled back and tilted his head.

  Bars were marvelous places to watch humanity, he thought, returning his gaze to the room. The hometown bar was a perfect dumping ground. He believed people sought the familiarity of their local hang to liberate whatever they wore on their sleeves. He imagined some of them came to cheat on their spouses, smoke cigars, or listen to music. Some of them came to eat in a crowd and not feel alone. Some might come to meet a friend or make a friend. Or borrow money. Or start a fight. Everyone came for something.

  Somebody came here to kill Zack Carlisle.

  Whoever ran Amy off the road could have been in this bar that day. Any of them could be guilty. Any one of them could have rammed into the Hummer thinking they were ramming into Carlisle.

  He made his way to the bar with the picture from the surveillance video in his hand.

  “Sure, I know that truck,” the bartender answered. Ben laid the picture on the bar in front of him. “That’s a Ford F-150 pick-’em-up truck. I had one just like it a few years ago. Hated to see her go. What’s that? Is it 1985? Eighty-six? Don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

  “Have any idea who owns that truck?”

  The bartender popped the top off a bottle of Busch and handed it to the person standing next to Ben. “That depends,” he said, “on whether it’s blue or red. Can’t tell from that photo. That’s black and white.”

  Ben swallowed his impatience. “Let’s say it’s red.”

  “I can’t say I know who owns it.”


  “Then let’s say it’s blue.”

  The bartender smiled. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “This truck was left alongside the road with ten thousand dollars in a bag beneath the seat. We’re worried about the owner.”

  “A bank robbery?”

  Ben shrugged.

  The bartender shook his head. “For real? There’s ten grand under the seat?”

  Ben nodded. He wasn’t sure why he invented the lie, though one smart-ass comment deserved another, but money made people talk. “Don’t know what we’re going to do if we can’t find the owner.”

  “Heavy.” The bartender picked up a dirty rag and wiped a mug.

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “A few days. The last bartender just up and quit. Some redneck tried to put his head through the wall.” He pointed to the busted place in the wall just beside the door to the kitchen. The indention was about the size of a grown man’s head.

  “Where is he now?” Ben asked.

  “Still licking his wounds, I guess,” the bartender answered.

  Ben showed the photo to a couple of others at the bar who claimed they didn’t know the truck or its owner, but he didn’t believe them. Then he caught the honeybee’s attention and motioned her over.

  “Hey,” she said in a sultry vibrato. “Do I know you?”

  Ben shook his head.

  She flashed her smile. “Do I want to know you?”

  The top of her head came just level with his chest, so he had to look down—look way down, right down into the top of her blouse and the cleavage made by two perfectly round, perfectly sized breasts. He smiled almost without realizing it. He was almost tongue-tied.

  “I hear you’re the Honey Bee Queen,” he said, wishing he could pull the words right back into his mouth.

  “Arkansas’s one and only,” she purred. “Honey being the sweetest thing on earth.” She batted her eyelashes and smiled. “Did you know that honey is the only food that includes everything we need to sustain life? A couple of tablespoons a day, and you could have enough energy to do whatever you want for as long as you want. Maybe that’s why honeybees never sleep.”