Greed flickered, battling with the grief and self-pity. With Maribeth gone, Eleanor was going to have to find a way to support herself. Those earrings would be a start. Shakily, she dug a smashed pack of cigarettes from her pocket. After lighting one, she studied Anne-Marie through the haze of smoke. “Maybe I know something,” she repeated. “But those aren’t gonna buy what I know.” With a sly smile, she eyed the diamond ring Anne-Marie wore on her right hand.
“Not on your life,” Anne whispered, closing her right hand into a tight fist. Her mind whirling, she did a mental tally of the accounts she had at the bank. “These earrings, and a check for five hundred dollars.”
“I like the ring,” Eleanor said. But that five hundred sounded tempting, she had to admit. Of course, the ring was probably worth much more, but she wanted it just because Anne-Marie didn’t want to give it up.
“This ring was my mother’s,” Anne said, shrugging her shoulders. Reaching up, she started to slip the earrings back on. “I’d sooner see a poodle wearing it around a choke chain than to see it on you. Have a nice night, Eleanor.”
“Wait.”
The girl was every bit as solid as the boy had been, Eleanor mused. Desmond bred his kids with iron in their backbones. With jerky motions, she dragged deep on the cigarette one last time before stubbing it out. “A thousand and the earrings,” she decided.
“If what you tell me isn’t worth it, I’ll stop the check before the sun sets,” Anne-Marie said with a shrug, reaching into her bag for her checkbook.
With a catty smile, Eleanor sighed with satisfaction. “Oh, it’s worth it, little girl.”
Could she have lied to me? Anne-Marie thought, moments later speeding down the highway. Her hands were shaking and her heart pounded like a runaway freight train as she pulled into the parking lot of the small building that housed the county jail and sheriff’s office.
“What brings you here so late?” Darla asked as Anne-Marie strode through the door. She already had her purse slung over her shoulder and was reaching for the desk lamp when Anne-Marie approached her desk.
“I need to look at a few things in the archives.”
Eyebrows arched, Darla asked, “What things?”
“My brother’s accident report and the investigating officer’s report, for starters,” Anne-Marie said in a clipped voice.
Slowly, Darla replaced her purse into the drawer of her desk. “You mean the ones I copied for your father right before he was shot?” Darla asked, settling back down in her chair and beckoning for Anne-Marie to join her.
“What?” Anne asked faintly, clutching her purse so tightly her knuckles went white.
Leaning forward, keeping her voice low, Darla explained Desmond’s request via the phone a few days before someone shot him in his own library. “Tate already knows about it,” Darla concluded with a quick glance around the quiet station.
“Coincidence…” Anne-Marie murmured. Then she shook her head. “No. It was not a coincidence. Who all could have known about Daddy wanting those records?”
“Everybody in town,” Darla scoffed, shaking her head in disgust. “Muldoon overheard me taking the call and he asked about it, of course. Then he was over at the tavern talking about it to anybody who would listen. Shoot, the man probably told half the county.”
“I need to see those records,” Anne-Marie whispered.
“That may not be wise,” Darla argued. “Look what happened to your daddy.”
“If my dad asking for those records has something to do with him getting shot, then somebody has something to lose, or something to hide,” Anne-Marie argued. “And they are public records. Either get them now, when it’s just us or I’ll come back another time, and who knows who’ll overhear.”
“Give me a few minutes then,” Darla said, sighing.
She took the records home after Darla promised to lock up the originals in the file cabinet in Tate’s office. Not as good as a safe deposit box, but this late in the day, it was the best that she could do. Darla had called her back as she headed out of the office.
“Are you sure you want to go stirring up a hornet’s nest that’s been sleeping for sixteen years? A lot of people could be hurt. You could be hurt.”
Quietly, Anne-Marie had said, “I have to. Darla, I have to know.”
Consistent with bruising noted on victims with a history of blunt force trauma.
Multiple lacerations, broken sternum, cardiac tamponade.
Cardiac tamponade, when the pericardial sac was ruptured and filled with blood. The type of injury caused when striking something with such force that the coronary arteries rupture. Something like a steering wheel.
Like what happens to a water balloon when flung with force against concrete.
Shuffling through the papers, she searched for the report filed by the insurance company. The exterior damage had been beyond repair, but some of the interior had been salvageable. The two bucket seats, the dashboard. They had found blood and pieces of human tissue on the steering wheel.
Why hadn’t somebody seen this? she wondered, setting her jaw as she reached for the post-mortem once more. Broken nose, a deep laceration across the brow, internal hemorrhaging.
Slowly, forcing herself to take a deep breath, she laid the reports down. It was all there, plain as could be. If you were searching for something unusual, you would have found it. It just happened to be that nobody had been looking for anything unusual. Nobody had even questioned it. Anne-Marie knew why. Larry Muldoon and Sheriff Blackie Schmidt. For decades, the Muldoon family had the run of the town. Blackie had been one of their buddies, and a bully all on his own. A bully who had somehow landed the sheriff’s office.
“Alex was driving,” Anne-Marie finally whispered. Tightly closing her eyes, she bit back a sob. Having suspicions was one thing, confronted with proof such as this…
Eleanor Park hadn’t been lying.
“What do you mean Alex was driving?”
“Jazz wasn’t driving that car, honey. Your brother was.”
Anne-Marie shook her head and forced her mind back to the matter at hand. She studied the papers before her and faced the bittersweet truth. Alex had been driving. If Alex had been in the passenger seat, he wouldn’t have had those types of injuries. If the impact had thrown him as the report said, his injuries would have been different, head trauma, spinal cord damage. And if both passengers were thrown, there wouldn’t have been so much blood or tissue inside.
“Oh, Alex. What were you thinking?” she murmured, pressing her hands to her mouth. Emotions that ran too deeply to be labeled swirled through her as she rocked herself back and forth.
Golden, laughing Alex, gone. Because he’d been driving drunk. For nearly two decades, there was guilt resting on the shoulders of somebody who hadn’t done a damned thing wrong.
“My God, Jazz. What have we done to you?” she whispered, burying her face in her hands. Lowering her head to the desk, hot tears poured out of her while her shoulders shook with silent sobs.
It was a long time later when she raised her head and scrubbed at the dried tear tracks on her face. After a quick shot of whiskey and splashing her face with cold water, she felt ready to look at the reports once more.
She already knew, but had to check one more time.
The investigating officer, the first on the scene. Larry Muldoon.
With steady hands, she gathered up the reports and locked them in the safe hidden behind the false back of the medicine cabinet. She locked it, replaced the false back, and closed the mirrored cabinet door. In the mirror, she stared at herself. Pale, with slashes of high color riding on each cheek, her green eyes dark with anger.
Then she turned away, stripping off her clothes as she walked to her bedroom. She needed a good night’s sleep and some time before she could think of this with a level head.
If she thought about it now, if she decided how she was going to handle it, chances were she’d be watching the sunrise from the sheriff’s offic
e. And Larry Muldoon would never see the sun rise again.
Naked, exhausted, but certain she would get no sleep, she tumbled down on the bed.
Her head had barely touched the pillow when she fell asleep.
The following morning, she sat behind Larry Muldoon’s desk, feet propped on the corner, hands folded on her flat belly. Even though inside she was churning with anger and grief, her face was calm and composed. After all, a lady never let people see she was upset.
Idly, she studied her candy-apple red nail polish. When the door swung open, she saw Muldoon come through out of the corner of her eye, but she made no move to acknowledge him.
He came to a halt in front of his desk. “Don’t you have patients to see, Doc?” he asked after she finally turned her head and met his eyes.
She smiled serenely. “I took a personal day. I had a few things that needed to be addressed.” Flicking her watch a glance, she figured she had just a minute or so to kill before Tate strolled through the door. “How has life been treating you, Larry? You look a bit peaked there.”
“You mind if I ask what you’re doing at my desk?” he demanded, his eyes darting here and there, checking the contents of the desktop.
“I was waiting for you,” she replied. “Don’t worry. I haven’t touched your possessions. What I was looking for was in the archives, records open to the public, you know.” As she spoke, the door swung open a second time and Tate came sauntering through, sipping from a steaming Styrofoam cup. He paused when he saw her, and grinned at her when she waved.
“My, what a lovely surprise,” he drawled, approaching the desk. “How’d you get so lucky to have a pretty lady like that waiting for you, Muldoon?”
Ignoring Tate, Larry turned his beady eyes back to Anne-Marie.
“I found some interesting reading, Tate,” she said, pulling a slim file from her black briefcase. Flipping it open, she removed two sets of documents and handed one to Tate. The other, she threw in Muldoon’s direction.
“That case is closed,” Muldoon rasped, inching backward.
“No case is ever permanently closed, Muldoon,” she said, waiting and watching as Tate’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve been reading about that crash,” Tate murmured, flicking through the small stack of papers. When he came across the post-mortem, he paused. Raising his eyes to her, he said, “This couldn’t have been easy for you. Why do it?”
“I had some questions I needed answers for,” she said evenly. “Read that report, Tate.”
She knew the exact moment he figured out why she was here. Slowly, he shuffled the papers back in the original order. Then Tate raised his head, face blank, eyes shuttered as he focused on Muldoon.
“I got to get out on patrol,” Larry mumbled, starting to turn away.
“I don’t think so. Don’t move a single step, Deputy.”
“I got work to do, and you two are interfering,” he snapped, jerking a thumb in Anne-Marie’s direction. “What in hell’s it matter anyway? The boy’s been dead years now.”
“Maybe you should read the reports, Deputy,” Tate said, holding out the copy that Larry had ignored. “It is interesting reading, that’s for certain. According to this, that boy died from wounds he would have received had he been driving. But you say you pulled Jazz out from behind the wheel, worried that the car was going to catch fire, dragged him a safe distance, and found Alex laying there, already dead.”
“That’s the way it happened,” Larry mumbled, dashing a hand across his forehead.
Even though inside she quivered with rage and grief, Anne-Marie smiled serenely and said, “I wonder what an outside investigator would think of that story, Larry. One without your prejudices, one without your hate, one who isn’t afraid of you simply because your last name is Muldoon. Wonder what a jury would have to say about incriminating an innocent boy.”
“You can’t do that,” he rasped, shooting Tate a desperate look. “Look, the boy’s dead. Dead is dead, ain’t it? And hell, McNeil never said otherwise. Of course he was driving.”
“PTS, post traumatic stress syndrome. He blocked it out, Larry,” Anne-Marie replied, raising her shoulders in a negligent shrug. Slowly, she uncurled her body out of the chair, stretching like a cat after a long nap in the sun. “I hope you know a good lawyer.”
Larry opened his mouth but his words were blocked out when the door opened and Ella called out, “Why, Doc Kincaid. What on earth are you doing here?”
Even as she spoke, all hell broke loose. A stray cat came trotting in through the open door, followed by a mangy-looking mutt who spotted the cat and grinned with manic canine delight. With a petrified meow, the cat took off and the dog went in pursuit, knocking Ella off her feet and onto her backside. Behind her was Darla, juggling an obscenely tall stack of records on their way to filing cabinets.
Paper flying, dog yapping, the two older ladies tittering with amusement and embarrassment, Larry retreated quietly, his eyes on the sheriff. Anne-Marie looked up from Ella’s side just in time to see him bolt through the side exit door. He paused only long enough to level hate-filled eyes on her and Tate.
A week later, Tate called off the APB put out on Larry Muldoon. Sometime Friday night, somebody had driven his cruiser into the tiny parking lot of the station house and left it there.
They also left Larry’s body in the trunk, a bullet neatly planted in the back of his head. Two unrelated deaths a few weeks after an attempted murder had the good folks of Briarwood, Kentucky, nervous. Of course, poor Maribeth Park’s death had been a tragic accident, brought on by her wild lifestyle.
Muldoon’s funeral was attended by only four people. Tate, standing in for the station, Anne-Marie and Jazz and Marlie Jo Muldoon. Sunlight streamed down on the pitiful crowd as the minister spoke his final words over the hole in the ground.
When it was over, an unheard sigh of relief escaped them all.
In less than ten minutes, Marlie was alone at the gravesite, staring at the coffin with dry eyes. The scar on the back of her hand itched and she rubbed at it, remembering the part Larry had played. He’d held her still while Beau had ground his smoldering cigarette out against her tender flesh. Her brothers had laughed while a nine-year-old Marlie screamed in pain, their father smiling meanly as he watched.
How many times had those two hurt her? Stolen what little money she earned on her own? Trashed any little treasure she managed to get her hands on? She had been six years old the time they had drowned her kitten, right in front of her.
It was a wonder Marlie made it to adulthood with her sanity relatively intact. Now they were all gone. Just Marlie and her crazy mama left.
She stared into the dark hole and breathed deeply. “I’d like to wish you Godspeed, brother,” she said quietly. “I’d like to be able to express some regret over this, but I can’t. You made so many enemies, this was bound to happen.”
Raising her hand, she rubbed her index finger over the scar. “It’s a wonder I never did it, though. After all you and Beau and Daddy did to me and Mama.”
Shifting her purse, she smoothed her skirt with one hand as she held the other over the grave. Her fingers loosened and a single, white rose drifted down to rest on the coffin. “If you see Daddy or Beau down there, don’t bother giving them my regards.”
Chapter Ten
“Jazz, I had to be sure,” Anne-Marie repeated, keeping her voice calm and level, despite the surging emotions within her.
“You should have come to me the minute the thought even entered your head,” Jazz snapped, turning away, staring out the window. “Damn it, Annie. He could have hurt you. Hell, most likely that’s why he shot your daddy.”
Lowering her head, Anne-Marie peered at her nails, a nervous habit. Studying the polish, flamingo pink this week, she carefully said, “I don’t think Larry Muldoon did it. He doesn’t have the guts or the brains.”
“He had a motive.”
“Every KKK member had a motive for killing Martin Luther King, Jr
.,” Anne replied dryly. “Motive doesn’t mean jack if you don’t have the brain power. Come on, Jazz, you know as well as I do, Larry Muldoon couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag if he had a map and a blowtorch.”
She drew her knees up under her, facing Jazz’s angry eyes squarely. “This doesn’t really have anything to do with Larry, does it? You are mad at me because I didn’t come to you first, instead of looking for myself.”
“I’ve spent the last sixteen years thinking I killed my best friend, Anne-Marie.”
“Exactly. I didn’t want to give you false hope if I was wrong. Why can’t you understand that?”
“You knew why I came back here. I had to find this out for myself.”
Anne blew out a disgusted breath, rising to her feet. She walked over to the window, staring out into the night. “Jazz, if I was wrong, it would have torn you apart. I didn’t want to do that. I had to be sure.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“Oh, that’s crap,” Anne snapped, whirling around, glaring at him. Eyes flashing, she marched up to him and poked her index finger into his chest. “In my heart, I never believed you’d been driving. I wasn’t doing it to check up on you.”
“So you go to my cousin, instead of me.”
“He’s the sheriff. And for that matter, I didn’t go to Tate. I bearded the lion in his den, which just happened to be where Tate works.” Staring at him, into those simmering, brown eyes, Anne threw up her hands. “I give up. You want to be mad at me for this, you go right ahead. But I don’t have to hang around.” Snatching her purse and keys from the table, she stomped away.
With an arched brow, Jazz watched as she stormed to the door. “This is your house,” he mildly reminded her.
Whirling around, face flushed, Anne said, “Then you get out of it. I don’t want to put up with you while you are in this kind of mood.”
“I’m not ready to leave.”
“I am not ready to have you belittle me for this. What, did I hurt your pride or something? Did you want to come back to town, guns blazing, to clear your name?” she demanded, throwing her purse and keys to the yellow and white striped couch.
For the Love of Jazz Page 16