by Jessica Beck
“Wow, I didn’t think it was possible, but I like her even less than I did before,” I said as we walked back to my Jeep.
“Why wouldn’t you? She was looking at Jake like a starving man looks at a free meal.”
“What are you two talking about?” Jake asked.
“Seriously? You didn’t notice the way she was acting toward you?”
“Of course I did,” Jake answered. “I’m not blind, but I don’t think she was really all that interested in me.”
“Were you looking at the same woman we were?” Grace asked him. “Because from where I was standing, she was practically drooling when she spoke to you.”
“That’s just because she thought she might be able to manipulate me,” Jake answered. “This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and I’m pretty sure that it won’t be the last.”
“This conversation suddenly got more interesting,” I said. “Care to share any other stories with us?”
Jake stopped and wrapped me up in his arms, and then my new husband kissed me soundly. “Suzanne, there’s only one woman alive that I’m interested in, and I just kissed her.”
“Okay. I’ve got it,” I said with a grin.
“She was lying about something, though,” Jake said after a moment.
“How do you know that?” I asked him.
“She hesitated in all of the wrong places,” he replied.
“And that’s it? That’s all it took to know that she was lying?” I asked him.
“There were a few other signals, but that was the main one.”
I touched his arm lightly. “Could it be possible that your former job made you more paranoid than the average man?”
“It’s within the realm of reason,” Jake said reluctantly, “but I still think she was trying to hide something from us.”
“Then we’ll keep digging into her alibi,” I said, and then I kissed him again to show him that I had his back.
“If you two are finished acting like teenagers, we have a bit of a deadline now if we’re going to speak with Maisie before we have to be back at the station to meet up with Officer Durant.”
“Then let’s go,” I said, happy that Jake had taken a moment to reaffirm the way he felt about me. I wasn’t generally that insecure, but Shannon’s direct assault had shaken me a little, even though I knew better than to worry about my new husband’s loyalties.
Hopefully Maisie wouldn’t try anything so obvious.
But after meeting with her once and then hearing the stories about her, I wouldn’t put it past her.
The only problem was that she wasn’t there when we got to her apartment.
At least she wasn’t answering the door.
“I don’t think she’s home,” Jake said after Grace knocked loudly when the doorbell hadn’t worked to bring her out.
“She could be in there hiding from us,” Grace said. “It’s not like she didn’t try to do it before.”
“Why would she do that?” Jake asked.
“She’s an odd bird,” Grace replied. “Wouldn’t you agree, Suzanne?” she asked me.
“Let’s just say that she’s a unique individual and leave it at that. One thing is certain: we can’t just camp here and wait for her to come out if we’re going to catch Officer Durant.”
“We can always come back later,” Jake said, “but Durant is the real reason I came with you two this afternoon. Let’s go back to the police station, just in case he comes back early.”
“That sounds like a solid plan to me,” I said as we made our way back to my Jeep. I glanced back before we left, but there wasn’t the slightest flutter in Maisie’s curtains.
Either she truly was gone, or she didn’t want to take the chance of being seen peeking out her window.
“Should we go inside and wait for him?” I asked Jake as I drove into the police station’s parking lot. The cars had thinned out some, but then again, it was getting to be later in the day. I was getting hungry, but we didn’t exactly have much time to stop and get a bite.
“I think we should stay right where we are,” Jake replied. “It would be better if we caught Durant out here instead of in the station. I’m not sure how the chief will react if he knows that we’re not just going to take his word for things. Park over near those squad cars,” he directed.
“We don’t even know what he looks like,” Grace said.
“There were some photos on the chief’s wall of different groupings with captions, and I saw one man next to Alex in a couple of shots. Unless I miss my guess, it was Durant.”
“My, that’s some mighty fine police work there,” I said with a smile.
“It’s an old habit of mine to take in everything around me when I’m on a case. You never know where the next clue might come from.”
“Good to know,” I said.
Grace was about to say something when a patrol car pulled into the lot. “Is that him?” I asked before he even got out.
“Looks like it,” Jake said as he sprang out of the Jeep.
Grace and I followed quickly, and I wondered what the police officer would think when he noticed the three of us hurrying toward him.
Apparently he lacked Jake’s training, because he didn’t notice us at all until Jake was practically right upon him. “You’re Craig Durant, aren’t you?” Jake asked as he extended his hand.
“That depends. Who wants to know?” Durant asked without taking it. He was a big man, dark and swarthy, and he looked as though he’d never backed down from a fight in his life.
“Jake Bishop,” Jake said. “I’m investigating Alex Tyler’s murder.”
“Who are you with?” Officer Durant asked, clearly warming up after hearing the new information.
“I was with the state police investigative unit until recently, but now I’m working with the April Springs PD.”
Durant looked genuinely happy to hear the news. “That’s great! I’ve been waiting for someone to start digging into my partner’s murder. I begged to head up the investigation myself, but the chief wouldn’t let me anywhere near it. He said that I was too close to everything, and if I got involved anyway, he’d suspend me, so what choice did I have? If there’s anything I can do, all you have to do is ask.”
I wanted to ask him for his alibi on the day of the murder, but I had a hunch that might be a question better saved for the end of the interview or coming from my husband instead of me.
Jake asked, “Did your former partner ever mention anyone with a grudge against him when you two were working together?”
Durant seemed to give that question some consideration before he answered. “That’s all that I’ve been thinking about lately. I don’t have to tell you that if you’ve been on the job very long, it happens. Unfortunately, Alex wasn’t that different from anyone else. There were crooks with grudges and a bitter ex-wife. It just doesn’t make any sense to me why anyone would want to kill him.”
“Was there anybody in particular you have in mind?” Jake asked him. “Besides his ex-wife, I mean. I’ve already spoken with Shannon.”
Durant nodded. “She’s got her own set of secrets, but I don’t think she’s a murderer.”
“What kind of secrets?” I asked him, forgetting for a second that Jake was handling all of the questioning at the moment.
Durant looked over at me, and then he glanced at Grace. “I’m sorry, but who exactly are the two of you?”
“I’m his wife, and she’s our friend,” I said.
Durant looked at Jake oddly. “Listen, I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, but do you usually take your wife and her friend on investigations with you? Are you taking this seriously? Because Alex deserves to get justice.”
“Their presence here doesn’t imply anything about my investigation. I am one hundred percent committed to solving this case. Ask around. You’ll find out that I don’t rest until I find a resolution.”
Durant shrugged. “I believe you, but that still doesn’t explain why they�
�re here.”
“If you’d feel more comfortable speaking with Jake alone, Suzanne and I can go wait in the car if you’d like,” Grace volunteered. It was really odd hearing that suggestion coming from her, but I knew that she realized just as much as I did that Durant might not talk at all if we were standing there.
“No, that’s fine,” Officer Durant said with a shrug. “I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.”
“Can you give me any other names of folks I should be looking at?” Jake asked again, reminding the police officer that he was still waiting for an answer.
“Trust me, it’s all that I’ve been thinking about since it happened. There’s just one person that I can come up with that makes any sense at all,” Durant said.
“Are you talking about Deke Marsh?” Jake offered.
That caught Durant by surprise. “Exactly! How did you know about him?”
“This isn’t my first investigation,” Jake said confidently. “He had a grudge against your former partner, didn’t he?”
“We’d had a few run-ins with him before, but nothing major. Deke wasn’t too pleased when Alex arrested him this last time, though. I was testifying in court about another case that day, so Alex was working alone when he collared him. The odd thing was that Deke acted outraged after it happened. It never made any sense to me, but Alex told me to just leave it alone, so I didn’t dig any deeper, but if I were you, he’s where I would start.”
“Why do you think that he would feel that way?” I asked him.
“I have no idea,” he replied.
Since he’d already said that he didn’t mind we were there, I decided that it would be okay to press him a little myself. “We heard from a reliable source that you and Alex had a huge fight when he took the job in April Springs.”
Officer Durant nodded. “I’ll regret that as long as I live. Alex and I decided to celebrate his new job, so we bought some beer and started drinking back at his place just before he left town. I mentioned something about his ex-wife, nothing he hadn’t said to me a thousand times himself, but this time he took offense. He told me that he would always love her and that she didn’t deserve to have me bad-mouthing her. It was over as quickly as it started, but one of his nosy neighbors decided to call the police. Can you believe that? The chief came by, saw that we were fine, and he went on his way. Maisie told you about it, didn’t she?”
“I’d rather not say,” I answered.
Durant just chuckled a little softly. “You don’t have to. That woman is a real piece of work. She was desperately in love with Alex, and he didn’t have a clue. I think she might be a little off, if you know what I mean. As long as I knew Alex, he never gave her one reason to believe that she was anything special to him, but you would have thought they were in love to hear her tell it. Maybe you should look at her, too,” he said as his gaze narrowed a little.
“Do you really think she might have poisoned him?” I asked him.
Officer Durant never got a chance to answer, though.
I saw movement back at the police station entrance, and when I looked to see what was going on, I saw Chief Willson striding toward us, and worse yet, he was accompanied by an officious looking man about Jake’s age, clearly scowling. The stranger was a tall, willowy man, well over six feet, but if he weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds, I’d eat a dozen donuts in one sitting.
“Let me guess. That’s Manfred Simpson,” I said softly to Jake.
My husband looked up, and I saw a grimace fleeing across his face. “None other.”
It looked as though our investigation was about to take a turn for the worse.
Chapter 17
“Bishop, what are you doing here?” the state police investigator asked when he and the police chief got within ten feet of us.
“I’m just chatting with Officer Durant,” Jake explained in his lightest manner.
“You were specifically told to limit your investigation to the city limits of April Springs,” Manfred Simpson said officiously.
“I go where my leads take me,” Jake said calmly. “You know that, Manfred.”
“It’s Inspector Simpson to you now that you’ve left the state police,” the inspector said rigidly.
“Okay, I’ll play it that way if that’s what you want, Inspector,” Jake answered sweetly. There was a hint of steel within his response, though. It was clear that Jake wasn’t at all happy about his former associate’s attitude, but he knew that if he reacted openly to it, somehow Simpson would get the advantage of him.
“Go back to April Springs,” Inspector Simpson said. “If you don’t do so immediately, there will be ramifications I guarantee that you are not going to like.”
Without directly answering the order, Jake just saluted the man with two fingers, smiled, and then pivoted and started walking back to my Jeep.
“We’re seriously not going to just give up, are we?” Grace asked gently as we moved away from the three law enforcement officers.
“Of course not,” Jake replied. “There’s no way that I’m going to let this go just because of Manfred, so I’m not about to stop now.”
“How are you going to be able to come back here after what he just said?” I asked. “Can he really make things bad for you?”
“Let’s let him think so for awhile, anyway,” Jake said. “I’m still going to pursue Officer Durant and Chief Willson until I know that I can eliminate them both as suspects or confirm their guilt, whether Manfred likes it or not.”
“What about Shannon, Maisie, and Deke?” I asked him.
“Those three are all yours,” Jake said. “Besides, I have two more suspects back in April Springs that I could use your help with.”
“Are you ready to share those names with us yet?” I asked.
“Why not? Maybe you’ll be able to add some insight to my investigation. Besides, you already know who one of them is.”
“What are you two talking about?” Grace asked.
“That’s right. I forgot to tell you what happened,” I told Grace. “Apparently Alex arrested Brandon Morgan for speeding, and they got into a pretty ugly confrontation. Brandon popped in at the donut shop this morning to ask me about the state of the investigation, which was a pretty odd thing for him to do, given the fact that he was one of the protesters outside Donut Hearts when Lester Moorefield organized picketers to get me boycotted.”
“Interesting. Who else is on your list, Jake?” Grace asked.
“Some man named Dallas Blake,” Jake replied.
“Dallas? You’re kidding. Dallas wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I said, surprised by his inclusion on Jake’s list of suspects. “What possible motive could he have had to want to kill Alex?”
“I understand Tyler threatened to shut down his illegal gambling operation,” Jake said. “I haven’t had a chance to dig into it yet, but he’s next on my list.” Grace and I started laughing, something that Jake didn’t find all that amusing. “Did I just say something that was funny?”
“It’s not your fault. You haven’t lived in April Springs very long. Dallas is a deacon at the church, and he sponsors a bingo game there once a month. The prizes are all donated from local businessfolk, and the proceeds go directly to care packages for soldiers. I give a dozen donuts every month myself. Did Alex really threaten to shut his bingo game down?”
“There was a report on Tyler’s desk that says when he tried to issue a warning, Dallas tore it up and threw it back in his face,” Jake said.
“I would have paid to see that,” Grace said. “Dallas is ninety years old if he’s a day, and the sweetest old man you’ve ever met. He’s as unlikely a killer as you’re going to find.”
“I don’t know about that. I still need to speak with him,” Jake said.
“We can stop by his farm on the way back to town, if you’d like,” I suggested.
“He’s ninety years old and he still runs a farm?” Jake asked incredulously.
“Mostly he rents out his fie
lds, but he’s got a nice-sized garden he grows specifically to donate to the soup kitchen in Hickory. I heard him say once that he has family there, and he liked what they did.”
“Is this guy really some kind of saint?” Jake asked.
“He’s probably as close to one as you’re going to get around here,” I replied. “Dallas is a real character; there’s no doubt about that.”
“Still, I need to see him,” Jake answered.
“Done and done,” I said.
Thirty minutes later we were leaving the farm, shy one dozen donuts but heavy with potatoes and beets from Dallas’s garden.
“So, what’s your verdict now that you’ve met him?” I asked Jake.
“Until I get a new and pretty compelling reason to suspect him, he’s going to the bottom of my list. That was a pretty sound alibi he had, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not every day that you get a priest and a pastor to both vouch for you,” I said. “Should we call and confirm his alibi to see if they were really all together on the day of the murder?”
“I’ll take care of it when we get back to town,” Jake said. “In the meantime, I need to bring the mayor up to speed on what’s been happening.”
While he was talking to George on the phone, I said softly to Grace, “You know, I’ve been thinking about something. I really wish that we had some way to take pictures of our suspects without them knowing it. It would make things a lot easier, wouldn’t it?” I glanced over at an unusually quiet Grace. “Grace? What’s up?”
“To be honest with you, I’ve kind of been doing just that ever since I got my new company cellphone,” she admitted.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I really wasn’t sure that it would work,” she said. “Would you like to see the shots I’ve taken so far?”
“Not while I’m driving. Show me when we get back into town.”
“Does that mean that you don’t mind if he knows what I’ve been doing?” Grace asked me in an even softer voice.
“No, we’re laying all of our cards out on the table now, remember? That was good thinking on your part.”