Troubled Treats

by Jessica Beck

  “Sure thing, boys. I’d be happy to do it. My shift just ended,” the waitress said as she scooped up the money. Was she sweet on one of the two men? I had to believe that it was plausible, given the way that she’d kept looking at them.

  “Guys, if we don’t talk now, it’s just going to happen later,” Jake said in his most officious voice. “It’s your call, but it’s going to happen, one way or the other.”

  “Then later it will be,” Jim said, and the two men left the bar together, following the waitress outside into the dusky evening.

  “Let’s go,” Jake told me quickly the moment the three of them started walking toward the parking lot.

  “Are we going to follow them?” I asked.

  “We really don’t have much choice, do we? I don’t think we’ll get much out of them this evening, but who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky,” Jake said as we headed for his truck. “How do you do it, Suzanne?”

  “How do I do what?” I asked as we got in and took off in their general direction. “Jake, are you sure that it’s a good idea to follow them?”

  “If nothing else, it might help us to know where they are going next,” he said.

  “Hang on a second and go back. How do I do what?”

  “Get folks to talk to you like that,” he said as he caught up with them, and then trailed back a little. His truck wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, so he had to keep his distance in order not to be spotted. “I’ve always depended on being able to compel suspects to talk to me, but you’ve never had that tool at your disposal.”

  “Mostly I try my best to be sympathetic to their problems,” I said. “It’s important to remember that just about everyone I speak to about a murder is innocent, and usually they are in mourning, too.”

  “I can see that, but I doubt that I’ll ever be able to master that particular technique,” he said.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something? Do you miss having a badge and a gun?” I asked him.

  “Well, we both know that I’m still armed and carrying a weapon,” he said as he patted his jacket.

  “You know what I meant,” I said.

  He thought about that for a few seconds before he answered. “If I’m being honest, sometimes I do, but then I remember all of the nightmares of my old job, and I get over it pretty quickly.”

  “You could always do something else in the law enforcement line, you know.”

  Jake glanced over at me and grinned. “Are you getting tired of having me underfoot so soon, Suzanne?”

  “Of course not,” I said as I reached over and squeezed his arm. “I just don’t want you to be bored.”

  “With you around, I don’t see how that’s ever going to happen,” he said with an easy smile.

  I was about to comment again when I saw brake lights going on ahead of us. “It appears that one of our suspects is being dropped off.”

  “The question is which one, though.”

  We pulled into an open space on the street a hundred feet away and saw Bob Greene get out, stop and wave to the occupants of the car, and then make his way into a small duplex. Stella and Jim drove off, and after noting where we were, Jake followed them discreetly.

  “The next question is, are they going to Jim’s or Stella’s?” Jake asked.

  “Do you think they’re actually a couple?” I asked.

  “No, but from the way Stella was looking at him back at the bar, I think she’d like them to be,” Jake said. “When I glanced over at her, I saw her looking at him like a wolf checking out a steak.”

  “Wow, that’s a vivid way of putting it.”

  “What can I say? I have a way with words,” Jake replied with a slight smile, keeping his focus intently on the road ahead of us.

  After a few minutes, I saw brake lights again. “It appears that we’re here, wherever that might be,” I said.

  “I’m guessing one of them lives there,” Jake said as he pointed to a modest house in a quiet neighborhood.

  He was wrong, though, something we found out soon enough.

  Chapter 7

  “Come out and face me, you murderer!” Jim Burr screamed as he tumbled out of Stella’s car and faced the house. He was making no effort at all to mask the fact that he was drunk. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  “Jim, be quiet! You don’t even live here, do you?” Stella asked as she grabbed his arm. “Get back in the car. You’re not in any shape to do this! I need to take you home right now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve said what I have to say,” he said as he pulled his arm free from her grasp. Jim faced the house again and shouted, “I’m not leaving. Do you hear me?”

  In the growing darkness, I saw the front door open and a slim woman in her mid-fifties come out. Wearing a familiar patterned robe of red and black checks, she was holding a heavy wrench in her hand, one big enough to defend herself or attack any aggressors. “What do you want, Jim?”

  “Why’d you kill him, Shirley?” he asked, his voice softening as he spoke. “He was a good guy, and he deserved better than what he got.”

  “You’re drunk,” she said, stating the obvious to anyone within earshot of his earlier shouts. “Go home.”

  “Not until I get an answer,” Jim insisted. “Was it because he didn’t love you? Is that any reason to do what you did?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shirley answered, but it was clear that his accusation had hit home by the sudden redness in her cheeks. “I’m not going to tell you again. Get off my property, or you’re going to be sorry.”

  “What are you going to do, kill me, too?” Jim challenged her, his voice becoming aggressive again.

  Shirley must have realized that it was useless talking to Jim in his condition. Instead, she turned to Stella and ordered, “If you don’t do something about this right now, I’m going to have to handle it, and believe me, he’s not going to be happy if I have to defend myself.”

  “I’m trying,” Stella whined as she continued to plead with the man. He continued to ignore her, and then he started unsteadily toward Shirley.

  “This has gone far enough,” Jake said tersely as he got out of the truck.

  “You’re not a cop anymore, remember?” I reminded him as I got out, too.

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” he said as he took a few purposeful strides toward the conflict. “Get in the car, Jim,” he ordered the drunk when he got close enough to him.

  The man looked startled by his presence. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m trying to keep you from getting yourself killed,” Jake said firmly. He took Jim’s arm, and though the electrician tried to pull away, Jake’s grip was quite a bit stronger than Stella’s had been. As much as the drunken man struggled, Jake didn’t even appear to notice. Jake pulled the man toward Stella’s car clearly against his will, and when Jim resisted, Jake leaned forward and whispered something into his ear.

  It sobered him in an instant, and he immediately stopped struggling.

  After Jake had him in the car, Stella said, “Thank you so much.”

  “Just get him home,” Jake said.

  She nodded as she got into the driver’s seat. “I promise.”

  After they were gone, I approached Jake. “What did you say to him?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said as Shirley neared us.

  “Who exactly are you, anyway?” she asked him.

  “I’m Jake Bishop, and this is my wife, Suzanne,” he said.

  “I’ve known Suzanne for years. It’s you I don’t recognize.” A look of comprehension suddenly appeared on her face. “You must be the ex-state cop I heard about. Well, I’m not sure why you interceded, but thanks for doing it.”

  She turned back to face the house and was heading for the door when Jake said, “Shirley, we weren’t here by accident.”

  The electrician whipped around and stared at him. “Let me get this straight. You’re not a cop anymore, are you?”

&n
bsp; “I’m retired,” Jake admitted.

  “If you’re retired, then why were you following him around town?” she asked as she gestured toward where Stella’s car had been.

  “Let’s just say that I’ve taken a personal interest in Sully Jackson’s murder,” Jake said. “Jim seemed to think that you might have had something to do with what happened to him.”

  I could see her grip clench a little on the wrench. “And you actually believed him? It would have been clear to a blind man tonight that he was drunk.”

  “Maybe so, but we’ve heard that he might not have been all that far off the mark with what he said. Were you and Sully really in talks to merge?”

  “Sure, our business, not our love lives,” she said, the frustration clear in her voice. “Why does everyone keep saying that he turned me down?”

  “Are you saying that you weren’t interested in him romantically?” I asked.

  Shirley started to deny it, but after a moment, it was clear that she’d decided to come clean with us. “The truth is that I asked him out on a date again. We went out a few months ago, but it kind of all just fizzled out. I decided to try to light the fire again, you know? He said no, and that’s the end of the story. Haven’t you ever been rejected? It’s not the end of the world when it happens.”

  “No, but sometimes it can feel as though it might be,” I said sympathetically.

  “Maybe so, but not this time. I liked Sully, even after he turned me down. The truth is that I never would have killed him, and if I ever find out who did, they’d better hope that I’m not the first person to get to them.”

  “So then you wouldn’t mind helping us find the murderer, would you?” I asked her.

  The question caught her a little off-guard. “What can I do? I’m just an electrician.”

  “You could start by telling us where you were at the time of the murder,” Jake replied.

  “I don’t even know when he was killed.”

  “Five minutes after three this afternoon,” I supplied.

  “That’s pretty exact,” Shirley said. “How could you possibly know when it happened that precisely?”

  “We were fifty feet away when it happened,” Jake answered.

  She was shocked by the news. “If you were so close, why didn’t you stop it from happening?”

  “I tried,” Jake replied heavily, “but there was nothing I could do. The killer got away before I could catch them.”

  “You must not have been a very good cop, were you?” she asked.

  “He was the best of the best,” I responded in anger. Nobody was going to criticize my husband in front of me and get away with it.

  “Have you been in the old wagon factory lately? It’s not exactly open space over there,” Jake said.

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “So, you’re admitting that you’ve been there before,” I said.

  “Of course I have. I bid on the job, too, but your mother gave it to Sully instead.”

  “How did that make you feel?” I asked her, looking for some sign that I was getting to her.

  She just shrugged. “The truth is that I get more jobs than I lose. After all, it’s just business.”

  “Tell me about your alibi,” Jake gently reminded her. “Where were you when he died?”

  “Let’s see. At around three? I must have been in my office working a bid up for a job in Union Square; that’s what I was doing for most of the afternoon today.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you?” I asked.

  “No, I was by myself.”

  “Are you saying that you didn’t make any calls or have any visitors at all?” Jake asked her.

  “Sorry I don’t have anyone to confirm it, but I thought only guilty people had alibis.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Jake said cryptically. “When exactly was the last time that you saw Sully alive?”

  She thought about it for a moment, frowned, and then she said, “You’re going to find out sooner or later, so I might as well tell you myself. We had breakfast together this morning.”

  “Where was this?” I asked.

  “At the Boxcar,” she said. “Only I should tell you that it didn’t go all that well.”

  “What happened?” Jake asked her.

  “We had a hitch in our negotiations,” Shirley admitted. “Sully said a few things, and I did, too. I’m afraid that it might have looked bad to anyone who didn’t know us.”

  So, she was admitting that she’d seen the murder victim earlier that day, and that they’d quarreled in a public place. It wasn’t a bad strategy for her to volunteer the information to us before we found out on our own. Was she offering an explanation or trying to dissipate a potential storm before it hit?

  “Listen, I’ve got to go back inside,” Shirley said. “I’ve helped you all that I can.”

  “Thanks for your cooperation,” Jake said. “We’ll probably be in touch later.”

  She looked aggravated by that, but she didn’t comment.

  After Shirley was back inside and we were headed toward Jake’s truck, I said, “That was pretty slick.”

  “What, the way I handled things?” he asked with a grin.

  “That, too, but I was talking more about the way Shirley got that damaging information about her meeting with Sully this morning out in the open so quickly.”

  “As a strategy, it’s not all that bad,” Jake agreed. “We should tell Grant what we just learned,” he added as he reached for his phone before getting back into the truck.

  I put a hand on his before he could dial, though.

  “What is it, Suzanne?”

  “Before you make that call, I want to know what you said to Jim Burr to get him to settle down so quickly.”

  Jake smiled. “I told him that if he kept fighting me, I might have to break his arm.”

  “You threatened him?” I asked, incredulous that my husband could do something like that, and so calmly to boot.

  “Suzanne, the man was getting ready to take a swing at me. I could feel him tense up, so I decided I should probably warn him that attacking me was a very bad idea.”

  “Would you have done it, though?” I asked him.

  “Of course not,” Jake answered. “The threat was enough, just like I was sure that it would be.”

  “But if he had attacked you even after you warned him, what then?”

  “I wouldn’t have had much choice, would I?” Jake asked. “I would have been forced to defend myself.”

  I thought about that for a moment, and then I said, “There’s steel in you that surprises me sometimes.”

  Jake sighed before he spoke again. “I don’t know what to tell you. I had a tough job, and it made me learn what I was willing to do and what I wasn’t.”

  “And there’s no way to turn that off now that you’re retired, is there?” I asked him.

  “Sorry, it’s a part of me that I wouldn’t change, even if I could.”

  “I get that,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re on my side.”

  “So am I,” he said with a grin. “Now, can I make that call?”

  “I’m not going to try to stop you,” I said with a smile of my own. As Jake brought the chief up to speed on what we had learned, I marveled at just how complex my husband really was. Though we’d been married for quite a while, I realized that there were parts of him that I didn’t know all that well yet, but I vowed to change that. Nothing he’d told me had made me love him any less. He was a man of honor and integrity, and that was a part of what made him so special to me, but there was a strength underlying it all that I had to acknowledge as well.

  Chapter 8

  After Jake brought the police chief up to date on the latest developments in our investigation, he hung up and turned to me. “You know something? This might just work out.”

  “The marriage?” I asked him with a smile.

  “That’s beyond question,” he answered with a smile of his own. “I’m talking about our ne
w arrangement. There’s something to be said for working the case from this side.”

  “Believe me, it’s not always this easy,” I told him. “There are lots of times I hit brick walls when no one will say anything to me about the case I’m working on, and I can’t exactly compel them to talk.”

  “I understand that,” Jake said, “but it’s nice when it happens, isn’t it?”

  Once we were back in the truck, I replied, “It’s wonderful, but tonight we were in the right place at the right time to witness what happened between Jim and Shirley, and that led to everything else that we learned here.”

  “Suzanne, don’t underestimate us. After all, we were here because we were following a lead. You should be happier than you seem to be about what we uncovered tonight.”

  “I’m pleased, but we have a long way to go before we’re ready to name the killer.”

  “And no one knows that better than I do,” Jake said as he leaned over and patted my leg gently. As he drove, I noticed that he wasn’t heading back to our cottage.

  “Are we still working on the case?” I asked as I glanced at my watch. “Because if we are, I should remind you that I can’t stay out much later. I have a donut shop to run in the morning, remember?”

  “I’m not about to forget that,” Jake replied. “There’s something that’s been bothering me about the crime scene though, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to swing by there and check it out before we quit for the night. What do you say?”

  “What makes you think that Griffin is gone?”

  “I don’t know one way or the other, but there’s only one way to find out. Is it okay?”

  I knew how I was when I was on a case, chewing on it like a dog with a bone, and it didn’t surprise me that Jake was the same way. After all, he’d been in the crime-solving business a lot longer than I’d been. “That’s fine.”

  “Thanks. I won’t keep you out too late. I promise.”

  When we got there, I wasn’t all that surprised to see that Griffin was still stationed out front. “That’s too bad,” I said. “Hey, why are you parking the truck?”

  “I want a word with him. Don’t worry; it won’t take a second,” Jake said as he started to get out of the truck.