by Liliana Hart
Jack sighed. “Well then, let’s go talk to them and find out. But if she tries to take a bite out of me you’d better step in. I can’t punch a woman this close to the election.”
“You reap what you sow, my friend,” I said. “But I’m happy to run interference for you. I’ve got my Taser if she gets fresh.”
“Oh, that’ll go over much better in the press.”
“I thought so,” I said, smiling.
12
Jack and I made our way toward Ginny and Benji, but the sound of an air horn had everyone coming to attention and covering their ears. I looked around to see if I could find the offender and noticed Mitch Padgett standing on the bed of a pickup truck. He had a bullhorn in his hand.
“Seriously,” I whispered to Jack. “He’s that guy. I’m surprised nobody has knocked his caps off.”
“Why do you think he has the caps?” Jack murmured between closed lips.
My ears rang from the air horn, but it had done the trick. I didn’t hear one clatter of shoes or a whisper. Though that could’ve have been because of temporary deafness.
“Friends and fellow cyclists,” Mitch said.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I whispered.
“Thank you for showing your dedication to honor our friend, Brett Jorgenson. Brett was taken much too soon, but he died doing what he loved. It’s a risk we all take, and I can’t think of a better way to go.”
“I can,” I said so only Jack could hear me. “This guy is a lunatic.”
“Ssh,” Jack said, but I could feel his shoulders shaking with laughter beside me.
“So today,” Mitch continued, “we ride for Brett. We ride for all of us. Give it everything you’ve got, and be safe out there. The Cardinals are going to kick us off, and then a team will depart every ten minutes. The Old Dominions will ride last and bring it home for Brett.”
There was a cheer from the group and people scattered to get their bikes and move to the road. The Old Dominion team shifted to the side and got out of the way as the other teams prepared. Ginny and Benji hadn’t moved from where they’d stood, but they were no longer in a heated conversation.
Jack took me by the elbow and maneuvered me through the crowd until we were standing in front of them.
Ginny’s full lips tilted in a wicked smile, and I found even I was mesmerized by her appeal. A mere man wouldn’t stand a chance against that. Brett Jorgenson must have been a saint.
“Well, if it isn’t Jack Lawson in the flesh,” she purred. Her voice was Southern and sultry, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “I thought that was you over there. I didn’t realize you’d come for a…ride.”
The double entendre was so obvious Jack started laughing, which was clearly the wrong thing to do. Ginny’s eyes went hard like green lasers, and she propped a hand on a voluptuous hip.
Jack held out his hand to Benji and introduced himself. “Jack Lawson,” he said.
“Benji Lyles.” He shook Jack’s hand and said, “You used to ride with the club?”
“Several years ago before the job got in the way,” Jack said. “What about you? How long have you been riding?”
“About a year and a half,” he said. “It was actually Brett who got me to join the group.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack asked. “Y’all work together?”
Benji laughed. “I wish,” he said. “We’re both in finance, but I’m nowhere in his league. He’s big time. I own the Edward Jones in King George. I’d give you a card, but they’re in my car.”
“Geez, Benji,” Ginny said, shaking her head. “Did you learn nothing from your jailbird past? The cops don’t just show up for no reason, and here you are vomiting your business.”
Benji didn’t seem to be shaken about her comment and he just smiled a little sheepishly. “My misspent youth,” he confided. “Just stupid kid stuff. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I was at Harvard on full scholarship, and expensive drugs were part of life. Except that my parents were poor and had no strings to pull when we got busted. So I lost my scholarship, got kicked out, and ended up with a felony on my record. Almost wrecked my whole life. Maybe if I’d done things differently it’d be me sitting in a high-rise office on Wall Street instead of in a strip mall in King George.”
There didn’t seem to be any bitterness in the statement. He’d seemed to accept it as part of his life and moved on.
“You and Brett were friends?” I asked.
“Brett wasn’t really friends with anyone,” Ginny said. “He kept himself separated. Kind of high and mighty.”
“Be nice, Ginny,” Benji scolded. “Just because he didn’t give you the time of day doesn’t mean he wasn’t friendly. We went out a couple of times to grab lunch after a Saturday ride. He was just really introverted, so it seemed like he didn’t really interact with the group, but he was a really nice guy. I asked if he’d mind giving me a couple of tips for the business, and he took the time to share a few things with me. He helped me open up my client base and he really helped steer me in the right direction as far as investments are concerned.”
“He seemed okay on the Thursday ride?” Jack asked. “Nothing was bothering him?”
Benji shrugged. “Not that I could tell. Brett wasn’t really one of those guys who are real expressive. The only thing I ever saw him worry much about was his wife. She had some early labor issues a couple of months back, so he missed some rides while they were getting her stabilized, but everything was fine after that. The group sent her a get-well basket. He seemed real appreciative that we’d think about them.”
Ginny’s eyes had sharpened when Jack started asking questions. “I thought Floyd Parker was the one who hit Brett yesterday,” she said. “That news spread faster than if the paper had printed it. Convenient for you, huh? I heard things weren’t going so well in the Lawson camp.”
“Death is never convenient,” Jack told her evenly.
“You’re such a bitch, Ginny,” Benji said. “Brett’s dead. What’s even your purpose in life other than trying to make people miserable who don’t succumb to your will? How many good men have you run off from this group and how many marriages have you tried to ruin because you’re a miserable dried-up shell of a woman? Your beauty is only going to last so long. Bitterness and anger has aged you. I regret sleeping with you every day.”
Ginny squared off with Benji and said snottily, “Your therapy is showing.”
“I’m okay with that,” he said. “You should try it.”
I pressed my lips together and Jack and I slowly backed away. They weren’t paying attention to us anyway, but now I understood why the tension had been so high between Ginny and Benji.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“I think he’s right,” Jack said. “Therapy would do her a lot of good. I haven’t seen her in years. She didn’t used to be like that.”
“Brett rejects her and she decides if she can’t have him, no one will?” I asked.
“Or maybe Benji was lying about Brett helping him,” Jack said. “The stock market is a brutal business. Maybe Brett gave him bad advice and he killed him for revenge.”
“I like my theory better,” I said. I took out my phone and looked at our list. “You’ve still a possible connection between Brett and Morgan. He retired earlier this year from banking. Shara Woosley is a CPA, and Kendra Beatty is an actuary for a large insurance company. They all are or were in finance, but it seems like a smaller scale than what Brett was used to dealing with. But there’s Mario Ricci.” I nodded toward the swarthy-looking man talking to Vaughn. “He’s a hedge fund manager. He might be more in Brett’s circle of things.”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Have you noticed that woman keeps looking at us?”
“What woman?” I asked, turning my head, but Jack put his hands on each side of my face and leaned down to kiss me.
“Settle down, Captain Obvious,” he said. “Caucasian female. About five ten. Dark blond hair. Looks like t
he Queen of the Amazons.”
I snorted a laugh at the description. “Yeah, that’s Leslie Carron,” I said. “I don’t think she’s a fan of yours. She wasn’t too happy when Mitch was singing your praises.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” he said. “Leslie Carron. I know that name from somewhere, but I’m not sure where I’ve heard it. It’ll come to me eventually.”
“Maybe in the meantime stay out of her way,” I said. “Who knew the bike club had such dangerous women?”
“It’s a group of thrill seekers,” Jack said. “What did you expect? We’re about to head out.” He handed me the keys to the truck. “I’m going to unload my bike and get ready. Be careful leaving the parking lot. I’ll have Vaughn swing me back to the station when we’re done.”
“I’m going to find Cole and get those samples from the water bottles and see if they can pull any prints.”
We knuckle bumped and headed off to our respective corners, and I passed by Vaughn on the way to the truck. He was straddling a familiar-looking bike and pressing buttons on his Garmin. I knew that bike. I’d been staring at pictures of it for the last two days.
“Hey,” I said. “You and Brett Jorgenson have the same bike?”
“Yeah,” Vaughn said, his smiling face going sober. “I really like Brett’s. We’re a similar size so he let me try it out. I finally put one on order a couple of months back, and it came in this week.”
I didn’t know why that bit of information bothered me, but for some reason, it did. I wished Vaughn a safe ride and then got in the truck. The sky was just starting to turn gray, so I waited until the last cyclist had left the parking lot before I finally pulled out.
I had more questions than answers at this point, but there was one thing I felt very positive about—I’d already met Brett Jorgenson’s killer.
13
I called Cole on the way into the station so he’d know I was on the way in, and I watched the town wake up as the sun rose. I rolled the window down and breathed in the cold morning air, and I felt peace wash over me. I’d learned that peace wasn’t the absence of chaos. There was chaos all around us, but Jack was my center, and as long as my center was in alignment, everything else fell into place.
Business around the square was back to normal. There were displays set out on the sidewalks and chalk signs with clever sayings. Someone had fixed the scarecrow display and uprighted the pumpkins and hay bales. I smiled when I passed a giant sign in front of the courthouse that said Re-Elect Jack Lawson for Sheriff.
There was plenty of parking in front of the sheriff’s office since there was about to be a shift change. Cole was waiting for me by the front entrance.
“Don’t usually see you this early in the morning,” Cole said teasingly.
“Jack decided it was a good time to dust off his cycling shoes,” I said. “Apparently, there are a lot of people who like to ride bicycles in the dark in freezing temperatures.”
“Savages,” Cole said, shuddering. “Anything new on the Jorgenson case from your end? Jack sent me all the backgrounds of the guys you ran last night.”
This was the tricky part of working with Carver. Technically, any information he dug out for us was a favor. An undetected favor. We knew we were blessed with Carver’s friendship and his resources. It made our jobs much easier. But we couldn’t use any of the information he came up with in an official capacity. We could only take that information and put pressure on suspects to reveal more evidence or confess.
“We talked to a few interesting characters this morning,” I told him. “And there are a couple of standouts. Poison is typically a woman’s murder weapon of choice. It’s not so messy. And there’s a woman in the bike club who pursued the victim pretty hot and heavy, but he rejected her for his wife.”
“A woman scorned…” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “But I don’t know. I don’t like her, but I’m not sure she’d be our killer. There are several people in that group who could have potential motive, but from everything we’ve seen, Brett Jorgenson was truly a stand-up guy. He helped people in his field when that business is typically cutthroat. He was loyal to his wife and his family. It’s like when he made the switch from his former life of drug use and high living, he really made the switch. This whole thing is just weird. I can’t see a motive behind killing Brett Jorgenson.” Unless something major comes up in the financials Carver was digging into, I added silently.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky with a fingerprint,” Cole said. “Sergeant Morgenstern is going to meet us at evidence lockup. He’s the best at pulling prints. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“We could use a little of that right now,” I said.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm about the election,” Cole said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about how it’s going to go at the polls. I know Jack has been under a lot of pressure to give the green light on those prisons, but Jack does a good job of listening to the community. And most of the community is against it.”
“Most,” I said. “But not all. I don’t really keep up with a lot of the politics happening in the county. Maybe I should. But I think it would mostly give me a headache and make me want to move.”
Cole snorted. “Politics has a tendency to make people feel that way. It’s never as simple as it should be. But King George is prime real estate that’s mostly undeveloped, and it’s within proximity of major cities. The pressure was amped up earlier this year when AvantGuard moved their headquarters to King George Proper.”
“AvantGuard,” I said. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“They’re a private security contractor for the government,” he said. “We’re talking big money. And they’re very much in favor of the prisons being built here, and they’re happy to throw money behind candidates and make promises to anyone they can to see it happen.”
“I had no idea they’d moved here,” I said. “There was nothing in the media. And Jack never mentioned it.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Cole said. “But it’s a new headache to worry about. They’d started buying up land to build their new headquarters on the down low. They were very patient, picking it up here and there until they had what they needed, and then all of a sudden building started taking place for their facility.”
There were so many moving parts to Jack’s job. It was never just law and order. It was taxes and politics and zoning and all the daily minutiae that would make me crazy but that made Jack thrive.
Evidence lockup was in the far corner of the building, and I’d only been there one other time. Mostly because it was creepy. The lights flickered and the hallway was dark and narrow. I felt bad for whoever was assigned to duty. It wasn’t the most ideal working condition.
Evidence lockup was floor-to-ceiling chain-link with an area cut out for a counter and login sheet. There was an older man sitting behind the chest-high counter reading the newspaper, his glasses perched on the end of his nose as he read. His hair was like a white cloud on his head and there were tufts of wiry gray hair coming from his ears.
“Hey, Bradley,” Cole said as we approached the counter.
Bradley squinted above his glasses and then his wide face stretched into a grin. “Detective Cole,” he said. “Long time, no see. Who’s the pretty lady?”
I’d never met Deputy Bradley before, but I’d certainly heard stories about him. He was in his seventies, and he was one of those men who couldn’t let go of the job. He was way past his prime but refused to retire. He didn’t seem to mind sitting behind a desk and locked away in the bowels of the department as long as he got to put on the uniform every day.
“This is Dr. Graves,” Cole said. “The sheriff’s wife.”
I wasn’t sure why he’d added the last part. Most people knew who I was, and if they didn’t we never bothered to explain. So it made me wonder why Cole felt it was necessary.
Bradley turned his pale blue gaze to me and his bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “Oh, is she now,” he said.
>
But Cole didn’t bother to let him think on it too long. “I’m here to pick up the evidence bag from the Jorgenson case.”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Bradley said. “I got it right here. Barely had time to process it.”
Bradley hefted his bulk out of a black cushy chair and made his way to a table that had a large evidence bag. He grabbed the bag and then waddled back to us.
“You just gotta sign it out,” Bradley said. He pushed a clipboard across the counter to Cole, and Cole scrawled his signature.
“It’s all yours,” Bradley said. Then he looked at me shrewdly. “Sure hope the sheriff can pull it out for this election. Lots of people seem to think we need some new blood in here.”
I arched a brow, not 100 percent sure what I thought about Bradley. Jack didn’t seem to care for him, though he’d never really said what kind of cop he’d been when he was out on the street. But I understood Bradley served a purpose. Not every cop that was hired was going to rise through the ranks or even try to be anything more than adequate at the job. There were always those content to show up and get a paycheck and do nothing more. Those people tended to get shuffled around until they were put in a position where they were generally forgotten. Like Bradley.
“I’m not too worried about it,” I said. “The people in this county are smart enough to know that sometimes new blood brings nothing but diseases.”
Bradley harrumphed and Cole and I headed back down the long hallway. I could feel Bradley’s eyes on us until we were out of sight.
“That guy is creepy,” I said.
“Bradley?” Cole asked. “He’s harmless. Just stubborn. He wasn’t happy when Jack was elected and the old sheriff got booted out. He should’ve taken retirement, but he’s not the kind of guy anyone listens to so Jack wasn’t worried about him trying to be divisive. It was easier just to send him back here and forget about him. Bradley vowed to die behind the badge. A guy like that wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he became a civilian. He’d probably end up eating a bullet.”