Weapons of Mass Distraction (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

by Chafer, Camilla

Two uniforms stepped forwards, catching Junior by the arms. He struggled, lashing out and yelling for his lawyer, but he was no match for the cops. They had him in handcuffs and tightly gripped his upper arms as he wailed and shouted.

  ”One more thing,” said Maddox. “Lift your shirt.”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Junior screamed. “You make up this bull and now you want the shirt off my back?”

  “I want to see the gunshot wound you sustained when you attacked Lexi Graves in her home,” said Maddox and my heart stopped. “We will match the blood at the scene to you.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “My lawyer will have my son out before you can pick up your unemployment check,” growled the senior Carter. Behind him stood Joseph O’Keefe, still utterly bewildered.

  “Your lawyer will be the only one picking up checks for now,” said Maddox, turning to the older man. “Carter Simons Senior, you’re under arrest for the murder of Avril Sosa.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Simons Senior yelled as all eyes turned on him, and more than a few mouths dropped open. O’Keefe seemed totally lost for words.

  “Deadly serious,” hissed Maddox. “We have witnesses. We have evidence.”

  “There’s no evidence. There’s no damn DNA on the body you dug up to tie Avril Sosa to me!”

  “Funny you should mention DNA, since no one said whose body we dug up,” I said, and the two Simons looked just about ready to pop at hearing that.

  Maddox grinned, knowing his case was solid the moment we read the inscription on the ring Avril had taken with her to the grave. “That’s where you’re wrong. You buried Avril with your wedding ring. Lovely inscription from your wife. Her parents thought she'd met a nice man, but in reality she met you. At first I thought maybe she was having an affair with your son but once I put the evidence together... Avril crying in the bathroom after your speech at the office party in which you expressed your love for your wife... then there's the video of her murder. It was you Jim, Karen, and Lorena saw. Not your son. Take him away.” Maddox nodded to the uniforms, who marched father and son toward separate squad cars. We watched them being loaded into the back seats.

  Solomon nudged me. "Case closed. Do you want to explain all this to Michael?"

  I nodded eagerly at the thought of how relieved Fairmount Gym's manager would be now that the gym was in the clear. "You bet!"

  "Maddox is waiting for you and I want to talk to the VP. We'll head to the gym after. Good work, Lexi." Solomon moved over to O’Keefe, to talk to him. I held up five fingers as I turned to follow Maddox back to his car, away from the dispersing crowd. Five minutes, that was all I needed to process this.

  “Good work, Lexi,” he said as we paused by his old sedan. “That was a good catch.”

  “Do you really think it was Junior who attacked me?”

  “Without a doubt. His car got a ticket not five minutes from your house right before you were attacked. He took his car to the garage later that day, where we think he’ll try to pretend it was. We’ll play with him a bit, work him up a little, then we’ll run the traffic cam footage of him driving it.”

  “Wow.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Lucas. He found the camera evidence. I don’t know how he hacked in, but since I just signed the agency on as consultants to this case, I can get around that. I only found the ticket.”

  “I think I’m still in shock. It’s not just the attack, I thought Junior killed Avril Sosa until I saw that ring. How could Lorena have gotten it so wrong? She identified the son, not the father.”

  “They never really saw who killed Avril Sosa,” Maddox reminded me. “They assumed it was Junior when they saw him driving away in the woman’s car. Senior himself just admitted he knew it was Sosa buried back there. When we analyze the video recording Lorena made on her cell phone that night, we’ll know more. I suspect when the video is cleaned up, we’ll see Carter Simons Senior, because they were the ones having an affair. He’s so old!”

  "You bluffed!"

  Maddox grinned. "It happens."

  “Some women like older men, you know. So, she snatched his inscribed wedding ring during the fight and he didn’t realize it was gone until later, when she was buried, and by then, it was too late,” I added, my theory for the ring found on Avril Sosa’s body. “I overheard Junior and his wife talking about getting a new ring made, and that she didn’t realize there was an inscription until her mother-in-law saw the new ring. Senior must have asked his son to commission it. Neither of them could risk disturbing the body to look for the ring.”

  “He must have known the body would be found eventually.”

  “Not while he was in charge at Simonstech. Her gravesite would always remain a wildlife have and with the aconite planted around, no employee would go near it. He’d see to that. Plus, Junior got rid of the only witnesses that could tie his father to Avril Sosa’s murder.”

  “Why would Junior help his father? He murdered a woman. The right thing to do was turn him in. The things that motivate people never cease to amaze me.”

  “Why do people do anything?” I asked, glad Maddox didn’t lose his sense of injustice. “Familial love? Greed? Maybe his father promised him the company one day? Maybe he didn’t want Simonstech stock to nosedive, thereby leaving him with nothing.”

  “Maybe we’ll never know. This will go to court and trial could be a long time away. Three murders committed just to hide one comes down to collateral damage. I expect Junior, when and if he confesses, will say he couldn’t let them go to the cops. I expect he saw them together one day, or maybe they contacted him, and he freaked out. MPD will keep digging. His alibis aren’t as rock solid as they first appeared. With Lorena, we only have both men’s words on where they were, so that’s BS and Junior didn’t have to be present to kill his other victims. We know he had access to the crime scene. Both the Simons are going away for a long time.”

  That made me glad. I hoped it would help the victims’ families, and I wondered what it would do to the Simons’ families too. “Let me know? Especially if it was him in my house.”

  Maddox dug one toe into the curb and kicked it lightly a couple of times. “I might not be around,” he said. "I'll make sure someone contacts you, but I'm positive Junior attacked you. You must have really scared him when you showed up at his house."

  “Good. So... vacation?” I quipped. “Long one?”

  “More like a job offer.”

  “You got promoted?” I grinned. “Maddox, that’s great!”

  “Not exactly. I was offered a job with the FBI. You remember my contact, Special Agent Matthew Miller from way back?”

  “Our very first case,” I said, with a nod. “How could I forget?”

  “He called me about a month back, said something came up and was I interested…”

  “And you were,” I finished. I took a deep breath, thinking of the right thing to say. I would miss him. I would miss working with him, but maybe this would give him a fresh start. A fresh start we both needed, actually. “Congratulations,” I said, hugging him. ”I’m really, really happy for you. You’ll make a great agent.”

  “We’ll always be friends; remember that,” said Maddox, pulling his door open. “And I’ll still be around. You won’t have time to miss me.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Alexandra Graves, release that newspaper and walk down the aisle!” said my mother, yanking the Montgomery Gazette from my hands and replacing it with a bouquet of white roses.

  “Hey! I was reading that!” The front page story on the Simonstech murder had the whole town talking. It was the stuff that sold newspapers: an illicit affair between a young woman and a much older company president, that ended with her brutal murder. His son had aided in a cover-up, and the only witnesses were terrified into silence and murdered to prevent them coming forward. The undeniable evidence tied the perpetrators to the murders once the polic
e knew exactly where to look. I heard the story was syndicated nationwide. My cell phone was ringing off the hook with reporters wanting to know how a small town PI managed to crack the case, thanks to Maddox giving me credit as a police consultant. Even though it had a nice ring to it, I declined to speak to any reporters. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to blow my own trumpet, I did, but the important people already knew. Besides that, I knew how difficult my job could become if my face were plastered all over the newspapers and television stations. I guess I’d have to kiss my TV show goodbye. Anyway, ultimately, it was a team effort.

  Most of all, like Solomon said, we brought some peace to the victims’ families.

  Junior confessed the moment he was faced with damning evidence. His fingerprints were found on the envelope with the cash for Kate, he had access to the Warfarin and aconite, and he knew about Karen Doyle’s peanut allergy. The bloodstained items found in his home just sealed the case in the eyes of the law. Garrett told me later that Junior helped bury Avril Sosa’s body when his father came to him for help, knowing he’d been seen. Junior bullied the victims into silence, believing they would stay mum, until he saw them all together about a month ago. When they contacted him, telling him they would grant him the opportunity to turn himself, he panicked. He didn’t want to lose everything because his father had an affair and killed the young woman when she broke it off. His father once told him that he never had any intention of leaving his mother. After expressing his love and gratitude for his wife in his speech at the party, it was enough for Avril to tell him it was over.

  Carter Simons Senior would go to prison for murder, along with multiple counts of perjury, and other felonious crimes. His son would serve time for three murders, attempted murder, and as an accessory to a crime.

  Just as Maddox suspected, Junior was my attacker. The gunshot wound ensured he couldn’t argue that fact away and the blood evidence simply confirmed it. Despite everything else he was charged with, he was damn lucky he escaped the station alive after his panicked attempt at shutting me up. There were a lot of angry Graves that claimed his head after my attack. Me? I was just relieved to have him off the streets.

  The respective Carter Simons households were reportedly horrified and refused to give any statements to the press. I understood. It was horrible to be a victim, and downright awful to be related or married to murderers. The Carter Simons probably wanted to fade into obscurity, eventually distancing themselves from the tainted corruption of their menfolk.

  It was uncertain what would happen to Simonstech. The employees were all being counseled for grief as the enormity of the situation engulfed them. Four of their colleagues were murdered, and it was only by luck they hadn’t seen anything that could have made them victims too. I wondered how heavily their guilt sat with them. I couldn’t imagine many being happy while working every day, with an unmarked grave close by, especially after numerous reporters swooped on them for stories of the unimaginable evil that once existed there. I heard through the grapevine (okay, my mother) that Joseph O’Keefe was appointed president and I wondered how long he would last.

  Needless to say, Michael and the Fairmount Gym were relieved that they hadn't been at fault, even if both Kate and AnnaBeth lost their jobs. Anton returned but I had yet to take another spinning class. Rumor had it, a new boot camp class was hugely popular with the members.

  Somehow though, despite all of that intrigue, a blurry photo of Lily and me in our rescued dresses managed to make page seven of the newspaper a week earlier with the title “Crime-solving Brides.” No one else picked up the story and that was all the fame I needed.

  The “Meringue Gang,” as the burglars were dubbed by the press, were tried and later incarcerated for their part in a string of robberies that spanned three states. Most of the dresses eventually were repatriated to their owners, but many of them, those which the insurance had already paid out and/or the bridal stores had closed, were donated to a community program for low-cost resale. The brides who eventually received the dresses couldn’t have been more delighted. It was the best outcome from a crime that struck directly at the hearts of so many couples.

  “You don’t need to read that,” snipped Mom. “This is a much more flattering photo of you than the time you were dressed as a pony,” she added. She took a closer look at the newspaper before filing it in the trashcan, and gave me a tacit warning to get on with the wedding program. “You solved the case. Those awful Simons men are going to prison forever, and the weddings of Montgomery are safe from the Meringue Gang! Meanwhile, we have less than an hour for the service. Talk about rent-a-room.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m going!” I took one last look at myself in the mirror, smiling at my reflection. The gown was lovely, the shoes perfect, but a few yards behind me, I caught Lily’s reflection and she made my heart melt. Her new gown was the most gorgeous dress I’d ever seen and she looked stunning with her hair teased into loose waves, topped by a sparkling tiara. “I still can’t believe you’re marrying my brother,” I told her, giving her hand a last squeeze while my mother fussed around us.

  “I promise to never consummate the wedding,” said Lily, the corners of her mouth barely holding back the laugh she stifled. “I want to put your mind at rest about that.”

  “I can see in the mirror that your fingers are crossed.”

  “That would be because I’m lying.”

  “I’m not listening,” sang my mother, her face a lighter shade of purple than her modest, two-piece suit. Lily plucked a rose from her bouquet and pinned it to my mother’s lapel as my mother stuck her fist in her mouth and tried to hold back a sob.

  “Oh please, Mom. You know what goes on. You’ve had five kids!”

  “I still don’t know how,” said my mother. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. And don’t ask your father for advice. He’s blissfully unaware too.”

  I doubted that, but I did remember a very awkward “birds and bees” discussion when I was twenty-five, when I had to abashedly inform him how many years too late he was. All the same, he pointed at the service revolver on his hip, told me he had some excellent tips from Montgomery’s lowest on how to hide bodies, and could I remind any boyfriends of that if they got too frisky?

  In the courtyard, the music started. On the other side of the doors stood Jord, waiting for his bride. Between him and us were dozens of Graves and friends of Lily’s and Jord’s. Somewhere in there was Solomon, and the idea of me as the bride in a white dress walking toward him gave me heart palpitations. I couldn’t tell if they were the good kind or bad, so I felt glad my dress was black.

  “Your turn next,” said Mom. “Maybe you should do the modern thing and ask your nice man.”

  “Mom!”

  “It’s not like you aren’t old enough, honey. And how old is Solomon? You’ve been dating a while now and if you leave it too long, you might not have enough time to have babies. Your ovaries will wither away. How many do you want anyway?”

  “Moooom!”

  “Garrett has three children, Daniel has two, Serena has one,” Mom said, counting them on her fingers. “Five kids and only six grandchildren.”

  “I’m definitely having babies,” said Lily. “Maybe a honeymoon one conceived in Hawaii. That would be awesome. We could call it Waikiki and it would be a really cool story.”

  “Waikiki Graves?” I mouthed at Lily as she stuck her tongue out.

  “You should definitely have two,” said Mom, very seriously. “Five is a handful. I’ve gotten through more crockery than two dozen Greek weddings thanks to all those boys. Thank God we’re Irish.”

  I had no idea why being of Irish extraction had anything to do with crockery, other than my mother hoped not to buy anymore. “No more baby talk, Mom. Solomon and I haven’t dated that long.”

  “You’re right. Plus, there’s always that lovely Adam Maddox as your back-up choice. He looks very fertile. That said, Serena will probably get married again before you go down the aisle. Is
n’t Antonio nice?” my mom said, turning to Lily for support. “Hispanic-Irish babies are quite the fashion now.”

  “Wonderful,” said Lily, giving me a “WTF?” face that mirrored my thoughts.

  “And so good with the baby. Do you think they’ll have babies? Lexi, Solomon will make beautiful…”

  I pulled the door open and walked down the aisle before my mother could pester me anymore or the idea of Solomon’s babies got stuck in my mind. I was right though, I decided, as I proceeded down the aisle. It was too soon. We were only just getting used to dating each other. Even if our colleagues did now know, I certainly wasn’t going to ask him to marry me.

  As for the motherhood thing, there were way too many gorgeous shoes in the world for me to contemplate walking in them with swollen ankles. Instead, I decided I would count my blessings. I had a warm, loving family, the home of my dreams, and after my family finished helping me fix it up, it would be perfect. I had a cool job and a great boyfriend. I had a best friend who was always there for me through anything and would now be my sister-in-law. I had another friend I would truly miss, but who would always be in my heart.

  I scanned the courtyard as I got closer to Jord, and sure enough, there was Solomon in the second row, seated beside my sister and Delgado. Victoria was crawling into Solomon’s lap and she cuddled up to him, the flouncy ruffles of her dress pouring over his legs. He looked down at her chubby face briefly, then up at me, and smiled.

  I revised all my plans immediately.

  Turning away, I scanned the rest of the courtyard. There was my mother, scooting down the outside of the chairs and taking her place next to my father in the front row. My brothers took up the third and fourth rows with their families, and there were a few members of Lily’s family on the bride’s side. I didn’t see her parents, but then I was almost at the altar and all eyes were turning away to look for Lily.

  My heart jolted when I saw Maddox sitting a few rows back with a couple of Jord’s friends. He looked gorgeous in his suit, the hue of his tie matching the eyes that once turned me into a babbling wreck. His hair had grown a little and stood in tufts as he ran a hand through it, smiling when his eyes connected with mine. I smiled back. I was going to miss him more than I realized, and my heart gave another little pang at the thought as I turned away, continuing my slow progression to the altar. Stopping opposite Jord and his groomsmen, I wiped away the tear before I turned around.