Pit and Miss Murder

by Renee George

  She shrugged and licked her vanilla custard before it could drip down the cone. “I think I am.” She was sitting near the edge of the tailgate. I nudged her hard enough to tip her right off the edge. She landed on her feet, then began to laugh until tears leaked from her eyes. “You really are just you.”

  I grinned. “I really am. You just know a little bit more about me, is all. Just like I know you lost your virginity in a treehouse.”

  “Pinky swear to keep each other’s secrets.”

  I nodded, and we locked pinkies and shook them.

  “I’m glad I’m not mad at you anymore.” She sat down and licked around the edge of her cone.

  “Me too.” Frozen custard dripped down my hand. I wiped it away with the puny napkin they’d supplied. “What about you and Buzz?”

  “I love him, but I’m hurt. I’m just going to have to decide if I want him in my life more than I wanted him to be truthful with me from the beginning.”

  “How can you forgive me and not him?”

  “I’m not doing the nasty flamingo with you.”

  I winced. “True story.” Friends were easier to forgive than lovers. The expectations were different. “I think having you two over tonight will be a good place to start. Parker can fill you in on what it’s been like for him.”

  “How long has he known?”

  “Let’s just say that Nick Newton was not mauled by a bobcat.”

  “Holy crap. You took him out?”

  “He had a gun on Parker. He was going to kill him. He wanted to kill both of us. I will always do everything in my power to defend and protect the people I love.”

  “Like dragging me out of a five-alarm fire,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  She took one big bite off the top of the melting custard. “Ow,” she said, pressing her fingertips to her temple. “Brain freeze.”

  While she was rubbing her head, Smooshie came up behind her and licked the custard above the cone line clean off. “Smoosh!”

  Smooshie licked her forearm as an apology, or Nadine had dripped custard down her arm. I was going to choose the latter.

  I saw a guy, the one with the tie from yesterday, enter the side door.”

  “There,” I said to Nadine, pointing with my cone. “That’s where the gambling happens. The man that just walked in was playing on one of the machines.

  Nadine got up as if to investigate, but Bobby Morris pulled into the drive-in in a blue sedan and parked in an empty spot three vehicles down from us. He got out of the car with two small boys, his sons I assumed, in tow. He wore a pair of jeans, roughed up farm boots, and a pale-yellow t-shirt that complimented his dark skin tone. It was weird seeing him out of uniform.

  He walked over to us. “I’m on dad-duty today. I’m going to get these guys something to eat, and then we can talk.”

  As Bobby’s sons ate at one of the picnic tables, Nadine relayed all the information we’d managed to get from Electa Laverty. When she’d finished, she said, “It looks like Sheriff Avery is in this up to his bald patch.” She tapped the top of her head for emphasis.

  “And what do you want to do about it?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? I want to take him down. He is trying to convict Buzz of a murder he didn’t commit.”

  “What motive would Hanley or the sheriff have to kill Jock?”

  “Maybe Jock was greedy. Wanted more of the pie for himself. Maybe he threatened to expose them.”

  “Maybe,” Bobby said.

  “Whose side are you on here?” Nadine asked. “You gave me the phone reports. You wouldn’t have done that if you thought what the sheriff was doing was right.”

  “I’m on the side of justice and the law. I will go wherever the evidence takes me. But that means I can’t bring my own biases into a case. If you get your mindset that a crime is committed by someone, you spend your whole time trying to find evidence that proves your theory. It can make you dismiss evidence that might lead you in another direction.”

  “Do you think the sheriff is involved?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. It remains to be seen.” Bobby was not only a smart man, but he was also fair. That made him a damn good deputy and an even better investigator. And everything he’d said so far had rung true.

  Nadine crossed her arms over her chest. “Does this mean you aren’t going to help us?”

  “We can’t do anything about the sheriff right now,” he said calmly as if talking down a bear. “But I promise, if the evidence goes there, Sheriff Avery will be held accountable for his actions.”

  “When? When Buzz is locked up behind bars for the next twenty years? You know as well as I do that a murder conviction is almost impossible to overturn.”

  “Can you hold off for just a little longer?”

  “Why?” I asked. I put feeling into the word.

  Bobby looked around for a moment then said, “The Missouri Federal Bureau of Investigations approached me six months ago. They are investigating large regular monthly payments going into a bank account under the sheriff’s name. They tasked me with finding out why.”

  “So, you do think he’s corrupt,” Nadine snapped. “Then, help me.”

  “If what your saying about the zoning citations is true, this goes deeper than the sheriff, and I need to know how many players we’re are talking about if we want to take down everyone involved. If we bring in the sheriff, we will alert his partners, and they will scatter. What if it was one of them that killed Jock? The sheriff, no matter his failings, doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would try to poison someone with antifreeze then stab them. And, he darn sure doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy with enough tech savvy to know how to use a spoof app on his phone or disguise his voice. Does he seem like that kind of guy to you?”

  Nadine cast her eyes to her lap. “No. I guess not.”

  “Good. Now stop jumping to the fire with another match. We need to be smart, or whoever is involved is going to walk away unscathed, and neither of us will have a career or a pot to piss in. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Do you know about the gambling in town?” I nodded to the drive-in.

  He nodded. “That’s how the case was brought to the FBI's attention. They got a call about the gaming in town, and the person told them they filed a report, and it was ignored, and that the person had talked to the sheriff directly, and he encouraged this witness to ‘let it go.’”

  “Do you know who?” I asked.

  Bobby shook his head. “I’ve looked for that report for months. If it existed, it’s gone now. The FBI says that the tipster could give credible testimony, but they need physical evidence of the corruption and the organization behind it.”

  My phone rang. It was the shelter’s number. I raised a finger. “Hold on,” I answered. “This is Lily.”

  “Hey, Lily. My mom called,” he said. “She says she has that information you wanted. She said if you swing by this afternoon, she’ll give it to you.”

  “Great! Thanks, Keith.” I’d asked Keith’s mom to keep the information private when I’d called her this morning, even from Keith, and it looked like she had. After I ended the call, I asked Nadine and Bobby, “Who wants to find out who owns Trinity Commercial Real Estate?”

  A slow smile spread across their lips as they both raised their hands.

  “Let’s pack up the kids and head to the courthouse. We’re going on a field trip.”

  Chapter 20

  Nadine and I dropped Smooshie with Buzz, then headed to the courthouse to meet with Bobby. It turned out that business licenses fell under public information. We were excited to find out who owned Trinity Commercial Realty, and if we could also find out what business properties they leased, we might be able to figure out where all the gaming action was taking place.

  “Here you go, sweetheart.” Keith’s mom, Charlotte “Just call me Charlie” Porter, handed me a stapled stack of filled-out forms. Where Keith was tall and lanky, sh
e was short and robust. She had short brown hair, tasteful makeup applied, and she wore small diamond earrings and a pendant necklace. Her eyes, though, were the same startlingly beautiful shade of aquamarine as Keith’s.

  Nadine and Bobby peered over my shoulders as I flipped through the pages twice, frustrated when I couldn’t find a single name or signature. Trinity Commercial Real Estate was owned by a shell corporation called Honeysuckle Unlimited, LLC. “Why would they register a business with another business?” Nadine asked.

  “For lots of reasons, sweetheart,” Charlie said. “The legitimate reasons usually involve avoiding litigation or tax shelters. Also, people can use them to maintain anonymity between themselves and a business.”

  “And what would be the illegitimate reasons,” Bobby asked.

  “Tax evasion, money laundering, a way to hide money.”

  “Well, poop on a cracker,” Nadine said. “How are we going to find out who owns the dang company?”

  Charlie cackled. “You can get a warrant for whatever bank they are with. Banks are required to have real names of shell company owners just in case the records are subpoenaed for cases of financial crime.”

  Charlie was an intelligent and capable force of nature. “Wow, you really know your stuff.”

  “Thirty years of filing business registrations and answering some of the oddest questions from our customers.” She winked at me. “I was the original search engine. Google before Google was cool.”

  Keith’s mom was fabulous. “I see where Keith gets his awesomeness from. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your help, Charlie.”

  She beamed with pleasure. “You just did.”

  As we walked out to the parking lot, the name of the shell company kept playing in my head. Honeysuckle Limited, LLC. Why did it seem familiar?

  I halted abruptly, and Nadine walked into my back. “Lils, give a girl warning.”

  “I got it,” I said. “Honeysuckle is the key.”

  “There are a million honeysuckle plants all over Missouri. I’m not sure it helps,” Bobby disagreed.

  I waved him off. “No. Theresa told me that her dad called her mom, Hummingbird. His nickname for her.”

  Nadine gave me the hurry up and get to the point hand twirl.

  I frowned at her. “She said that Sheriff Avery likes to say that if he hadn’t put out the honeysuckle, he’d have never trapped his hummingbird.”

  My BFF made a face like someone farted. “What does that even mean?”

  “It’s circumstantial,” Bobby said. “Far-fetched, even. It’s not even enough to get a warrant.”

  I clapped them both on the upper arms. “But if he is part of this, it might be enough to rattle his cage.”

  A slow grin formed on Nadine’s face as she processed my plan. Finally, she said, “I like the way you think.”

  “I’m not sure,” Bobby said. “It could work, or it could blow up our careers.”

  “Then you’re going to like this part of my plan even more. I’m going to talk to Sheriff Avery alone.”

  “Or not,” Nadine said. “If he killed Jock, he won’t hesitate to take you out.”

  “I really don’t think he murdered Jock, because, while I think the man is a royal jerk, I don’t think he’s stupid. Whoever threw Jock onto The Cat’s Meow parking lot was acting on impulse. I don’t think Sheriff Avery would do that. However, he might know who did, and he’s covering for them.”

  Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know…”

  “I’ll record the whole thing with my phone, and I’ll open a call to you all so you can listen in. Come on. I won’t spill the beans about him being investigated. And he knows I’m a nosy freak. I think the only thing that will surprise him about seeing me is that I didn’t come sooner.”

  Nadine nodded her head with a sigh. “She’s right,” she said to Bobby. “And it’s a way to escalate the sheriff without tipping our hand. Even if he doesn’t confess, it might force him to contact his partners or make some other stupid mistake that shows his hand.”

  “Hey, a gambling reference.” My excitement spiked as I considered our risky plan. “I like it.”

  “Come on,” Bobby said. As we walked toward the parking area, he added, “Why do I feel like I’m going to regret this?”

  The first time I’d visited the Sheriff’s Station, it had been to see Parker. He’d been arrested for a murder he hadn’t committed and locked up in jail. Even though I’d only known him a short while, at the time, I’d been determined to save him. I resisted the urge to call Parker before heading into the Sheriff’s Station. He would only worry, and this was going to be a quick in and out.

  I walked past the prison fence, remembering the jerk who’d cat-called me, along with Parker’s furious reaction. Luckily, it seemed as if it wasn’t yard time, so the area was empty of inmates. Nadine had given me one of her light nylon windbreakers with an interior pocket to hide my phone. Bobby had dropped his kids off with his mother, and he and Nadine were waiting in his sedan for me. I glanced at the parking lot. “Can you hear me?” I asked.

  The lights on Bobby’s car flash off and on. They had heard me loud and clear.

  “I’m going in.”

  When I reached the front door, I was dismayed at how much my hands trembled. I rubbed my palms against my jeans, clenched my fingers, released them, then gave them a hard shake.

  I was doing this, and I wouldn’t let Sheriff Avery intimidate me. I also planned to summon up all my magical juju. I wouldn’t ask him anything not related to the gambling, the zoning scheme, or the murder, because I wasn’t a fan of humiliating anyone by eliciting personal secrets, but as for the rest, this man had it coming.

  I walked up to the reception area, a gray-walled room had changed little in a year and a half. A young officer sat behind a glass exchange, reading his phone. His name tag said, Bowles. He glanced at me. “Are you here for visiting hours?”

  “No, I’d like to speak to Sheriff Avery.”

  “The sheriff is not taking visitors today,” Deputy Bowles said.

  I swallowed and steeled my nerves. “He’ll see me. Tell him it’s Lily Mason.”

  The uniformed officer studied me for a second. “He won’t see you, Ms. Mason. He put a note on my desk three days ago that says if you show up, I am to send you packing. Immediately.”

  I expelled the breath I’d been holding. “Tell him I have information about Honeysuckle Unlimited. Go on,” I said when he glared at me. “Tell him.”

  Deputy Bowles reluctantly picked up the phone and relayed my message to whoever he was talking to on the other end. He put the phone down in its cradle. “Just a minute,” he said.

  It was actually two minutes before the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up. “Yes, sir. Yes. Uh-huh. Yep. Yes. Okay.” He hung up and flicked his gaze at me. “I’ll ring you in.” He gestured to the door at the far end of the room. I had programmed the volume button to trigger the recording, so I started it before I strolled to the other end of the reception. When I made it there, a loud buzzer sound startled me, but the lock unclicked. I went inside.

  The room was filled with a dozen or more cubicles with computers and two chairs at each one. Sheriff Avery, large and in charge, stood outside his office with his arms crossed and an expression of pure annoyance on his face.

  “This is about to get really fun,” I said out loud for my compadres in the parking lot.

  The sheriff gave me a get-in-here wave then headed into his office. I followed him in.

  “Close the door behind you,” he said.

  “Hello, Sheriff Avery,” I greeted.

  His neck was red and blotchy. Nerves. “I don’t have time for niceties, Ms. Mason.” He pulled at his collar. “Get to your point.”

  “Trinity Commercial Real Estate,” I stated.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Ping. Lie. “I know you, Jock, and Clem Hanley were in a partnership. Buying then leasing commercial pr
operty, then setting them up for illegal gambling.” I was really tossing the crap around now, but I hoped I’d guessed enough to make him unsettled enough to screw up.

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  Another lie. “Honeysuckle,” I said. “You wouldn’t have caught your hummingbird without it.”

  He blustered, his face turning an alarming shade of crimson. “Now, you just hold on there, young miss!”

  I let my cougar awaken inside me. A little dangerous with the full moon only one night away, but I risked it anyway for the extra boost it gave to my senses and my magic. His heartbeat was rapid, his blood pressure elevated, his breathing erratic. In other words, he was definitely rattled.

  “Did you kill Jock Simmons?”

  “No,” he rasped.

  “Are you covering for someone who did?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know who killed Jock.”

  “But you know it isn’t Buzz. You are working extra hard to hide evidence. Like the suspicious phone call that sent Buzz to the diner in the first place.”

  “I don’t know who did it,” he said.

  Again, this was the truth. Crappola. “Then why are you refusing to look at any other suspects? Are you trying to protect Theresa?”

  His eyes flicked toward the family photo of him, Theresa, and Anna.

  “Anna?” I asked. I pushed all my magic into the question. “Do you think Anna is involved?”

  Avery roared, shoving back his chair as he stood up from the desk. His resistance was strong. Whatever the secret, he didn’t want it known. “You nosy little—” he shook a fist at me, “—I ought to throw you in jail with your freak of a cousin. Both of you are nothing but trouble.”

  I stood up to face him. “Is Anna involved in Hanley and Jock’s real estate and gambling scheme?” I pressed. Theresa had said her mother was in the business honor society at her university. She had the brains to pull it off. “Is she neck deep in all this corruption? Are you covering for her?”

  For a brief moment, the blood drained from his face. He flopped back into his chair. “It was me,” he lied, and I know because my magic was pinging like crazy. “I did it. I killed Jock, I set up the gambling, I did it.” His emotional confession rocked me to my core. He was desperate, despondent, and throwing himself on the proverbial sword for someone else.