by Kathi Daley
Chapter 9
The bar was packed even though it was only just past two o’clock when we arrived. The bartender we were here to interview didn’t appear to be behind the bar, but a quick interrogation by Parker netted us the information that Terry was probably at his day job working the counter at Gordie’s Crab Shack.
“Hungry?” Parker asked.
“Starving,” I replied.
Luckily, when we arrived, the place was empty, and, as promised, Terry was working the counter. Parker and I both ordered a shrimp and chips basket, and then Parker started right in with the questions we’d come here to get answers to.
“Yeah, I saw the kid you’re talking about,” Terry said. “A lot of people come through the bar on any given night, and I rarely remember anyone I don’t already know by name. I remember that the kid you’re asking about was an obvious nerd, and the woman he approached was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. When the kid wandered over, I was sure she’d shoot him down, but the next thing I know, the kid is buying her a drink. When they left together, I was so surprised that I would have fallen out of my chair had I been sitting on one.”
“Had you ever seen the woman before?” Parker asked.
“Nope. I asked one of the cocktail waitresses about her, and she told me the woman was here to compete in the fitness competition.”
“Did this cocktail waitress mention the woman’s name?”
“I asked, but she said she didn’t know it. She said she’d attended a few of the fitness events, so she knew the woman was a competitor but hadn’t gone to all the trouble to find out more about her.”
“Did you ever see her again after she left with the kid who’d picked her up?”
He shook his head. “No. The kid came back later that night looking for his wallet, but he was alone.”
I raised a brow and looked at Parker.
“The kid came back?” Parker asked.
Terry nodded. “Yeah. I guess it was about an hour after he left with the woman. The kid said he realized that he didn’t have his wallet and thought he might have left it at the bar when he took it out to pay for the drinks. I told him I hadn’t seen it, but he was welcome to check back the following day. He never came back by, so I guess he found it.”
“And the kid was alone when he came in looking for his wallet,” Parker verified.
Terry nodded. “That’s what I just said.”
“Were the other young men who’d been with the kid still there?”
“No, they left before the kid came back looking for his wallet. Is there a reason you’re asking all these questions?”
“The kid who left with the dark-haired woman that night was murdered a few hours later,” Parker said.
“You don’t say.” Terry appeared to be surprised, which logically meant he hadn’t known anything about the murder, so I supposed he’d had no reason to lie to us to this point. “Do you think the dark-haired beauty killed him?”
“We don’t know,” I answered.
“She was just an itty bitty little thing,” Terry said. “The kid was skinny, but he still outweighed her by a lot. I doubt she killed him unless she shot him. Was the kid shot?”
“Stabbed,” Parker informed him.
“Then I’m going to go out on a limb and say she isn’t the killer.”
“Any idea who might be?” I asked.
Terry slowly shook his head. “Like I said, the kid was alone when he came back in, his buddies were gone, and he left alone. I have no idea what happened after the kid left, but if you ask me, the friend with the curly brown hair was a real piece of work who’d been riding him all week. If I was going to look at potential killers, I’d talk to that guy.”
I pulled out my cell phone. Kevin had forwarded a photo of the whole gang to me. “Do you see the man you’re talking about in this photo?”
He pointed to Lance. “This one. The guy was a mean drunk, and unfortunately, he liked to drink. I’ve actually had to kick him out twice.”
“Okay, thank you,” Parker said. She handed him one of her business cards. “If you think of anything else, will you call me?”
“I’ll call you even if I don’t think of anything.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just call me if you have a clue to share. Otherwise, don’t bother.”
She headed toward the door even though we’d yet to get the food we’d already paid for. I decided to follow along. I could understand why Parker might not want to spend any more time with Terry than she had to. I wasn’t sure what had gotten into the men in this town, but it seemed like there was a severe case of crude and corny going around.
“So what do you think?” I asked Parker once we’d made it back to her car.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure. If Kyle went back to the bar alone looking for his wallet, then I’m sort of back to the opinion that the dark-haired woman he left with was only out to rob him.” She paused and then continued. “Maybe Kyle had a lot of cash on him. The woman sees the cash when he takes out his wallet to pay for the drinks. She figures he’s an easy target, so she suggests they get out of there. Once she has him alone, she lifts his wallet and dumps him. He realizes at some point that his wallet is missing, but rather than thinking that he’s been duped, Kyle figures he lost it, so he goes back to the bar and asks about it. The bartender doesn’t have it since the woman with the dark hair does, so he leaves. The question is, what did he do next? How did Kyle end up lying on the floor, stabbed in the back, in the living room of a house that was supposed to be vacant?”
“I guess we can track down the dark-haired woman. If this woman was involved with the fitness competition, her name would be on the roster. The roster has photos. We’ll ask Kevin to identify her, and then once we know who she is, we’ll try to find out if she’s still in town.”
“The contest is over, so she’s probably gone, but I do like your plan. Once we figure out who she is, we’ll figure out how to track her down.”
As it turned out, Kevin recognized the dark-haired woman from the competition’s roster. Her name was Kia, and as had been suspected, she’d been born in Hawaii. As we’d already discussed, the competition was over, but now that we had a name, we figured we could use social media to track her down. We thought about contacting the event organizer but realized it was unlikely that anyone from Sunfit would willingly provide us with the means to contact the woman.
Unfortunately, as we also suspected, Kia and the others were long gone now that the competition had ended. According to Kia’s social media accounts, she lived in Long Beach, California. Parker and I weren’t able to find any sort of contact information other than an email address we figured may or may not be monitored.
Parker sent an email from her official account at the newspaper, hoping that email address would get the woman’s attention. If she was guilty of robbing Kyle, it was doubtful we’d hear from her, but it did seem important to speak to her, so in the end, Parker decided to pay a visit to Deputy Todd and share the information we’d dug up. I know it grated on her nerves to share information with him when he was generally unwilling to share with her, but in the end, we both decided that the important thing here was to find Kyle’s killer and bring him or her to justice.
Parker dropped me off at my office before heading over to talk to Deputy Todd, so I checked my messages and then decided to go home. I’d already been away longer than I’d planned, and I was sure the dogs would want to go out. Once I arrived at my cottage, I found a note from Jemma letting me know that she needed to get away from Val and had taken the dogs for a walk. I’d given a key to my place to all my friends who lived on the peninsula so they would have access if there was some sort of emergency when I was away. The last thing I wanted was for someone to attempt to rescue my dogs but be unable to get in.
I decided to change my clothes and then look for something to eat. Somehow, I hadn’t had anything to drink or eat today even though I’d been to both a bar and a restaurant today.
After I’d eaten my snack, I walked down the beach and found Jemma and the dogs sitting with Coop on his back deck. I wasn’t aware that he’d returned from his trip, but obviously, he had. After I greeted both friends, they informed me that they planned to get takeout and watch a movie. They invited me to join them, so I accepted. I’d never heard where Coop had been, but he’d been gone for quite a while. I asked him how his trip had gone, and he’d simply grunted. I could see he didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it go.
Later, after the pizza had been consumed and the movie enjoyed, Jemma, the dogs, and I walked back toward our cottages.
“It didn’t seem like Coop had fun on his trip,” I said as casually as I could muster. I really wanted to hear Coop’s story since it seemed clear to me that he had one, but he hadn’t volunteered anything, and I didn’t want to pry.
“I don’t think it was that kind of trip,” Jemma said. “Coop heads out every year about this time. He’s usually always gone for several weeks, and when he returns, he’s always in a bad mood.”
“That’s too bad. Coop is such a nice guy. I hate to think of him battling inner demons.”
“Honestly, I don’t have anywhere near the whole story, but what I do know is that something happened when Coop was overseas for which he feels regret. Apparently, someone died in the line of duty, and Coop blames himself. Coop never talks about it, and it really is best not to push. The little bits and pieces I’ve picked up along the way are things I’ve heard from Booker or Jackson, both of whom Coop seems to open up to a whole lot more than he does to any of us mere females.”
Poor Coop, I thought as we continued the trek back to our cottages. Coop was such a great guy, but he really did seem to be the sort who would take on a lot more responsibility than was fair to be assigned him. If Coop had been responsible for someone’s death, I was sure he wasn’t the sort to simply get over it and move on.
Chapter 10
Parker called me the following morning before I’d even crawled out of bed.
“Hey, are you up?” she asked.
I glanced at the bedside clock. It was seven forty-eight. I supposed it wasn’t all that early to call. “Yeah, I’m up,” I said as I sat up. “What’s up?”
“I just finished speaking to Deputy Todd about Kyle’s murder case. I have news. I thought maybe we could meet.”
“Okay. When and where?” I asked, realizing that I would need to hurry if I was going to take the dogs out, shower, and dress before meeting Parker.
“I have one stop to make, and then I’ll pick up some breakfast sandwiches and meet you at your cottage in say forty-five minutes. Does that work?”
“Sure. That works. Don’t buy any coffee. I’ve got plenty of K-cups.”
“Sounds good. It was an early morning, so I could use some coffee.”
As soon as I hung up, I slid out of bed and headed to the shower. I dressed in jeans and a sweater before bundling into my jacket and taking the dogs out for a quick walk on the beach. I’d need to take them for a long walk later, but a short walk on a cold morning should suffice for the time being.
By the time Parker arrived, the dogs had been walked, and I was sipping my coffee. I made a mug of coffee for Parker while she unbagged the breakfast sandwiches she’d brought from a popular restaurant in town.
“So what did you find out?” I asked once we were both sitting at the little dining table that I’d placed near a sunny window.
“First of all, I spoke to Kia.”
“And?” I asked, sipping my coffee.
“She said that on the night Kyle was murdered, she was sitting at the bar waiting for a friend who she assumed was running late. She’d just gotten a text from the friend letting her know that she wasn’t going to make it and was about to leave when Kyle slid onto the empty stool she’d been saving for her friend. He slyly passed her two one hundred-dollar bills and asked if she would be willing to help him out with his pushy friend. She’d been sitting alone, looking out at the main body of the bar while she waited for her friend to arrive, and had noticed Lance hassling Kyle. She asked Kyle what he wanted her to do, and he responded by asking her to let him buy her a drink and then sit and chat with him while they enjoyed the beverage. She agreed. Kia said that during their time together, Kyle explained why Lance had been harassing him. Kyle told her he thought the game childish and that up to this point, he’d been unwilling to participate, but he wanted Lance off his back, so when he’d seen her sitting alone, he’d decided to approach her. Kia felt bad for the guy, so she even agreed to walk out of the bar with him. She also jotted down a thank you with a fake phone number on a napkin so it would look like he’d asked for and received a phone number from someone previously unknown to him, which was one of the objectives of the game.”
“And then?” I asked. “After they walked out?”
“Kia said that she went back to her hotel, and Kyle walked down the street. She has no idea what happened after they separated.”
“The bartender said that Kyle came back looking for his wallet about an hour after he left the bar. If Kyle and Kia separated right away, I wonder where he was for that hour.”
“I wondered that myself. On the one hand, it makes sense that Kyle wouldn’t go back to the house since he wanted the guys to think he’d hooked up with the girl he left with. But on the other hand, it makes sense that he did go back to the house at some point to pack up his stuff since we know his belongings were gone from the house when the guys checked the following day. I actually have a couple different theories. None are proven, and all will need to be checked out.”
“Okay. What are your theories?” I asked.
She took a sip of her coffee and then began. “Theory number one is that after Kia and Kyle separated, Kyle realized how juvenile the whole game thing was, so he headed back to the house the guys had rented, picked up his bags, and intended to leave. Maybe he needed to stop for gas, or perhaps he was hungry and decided to stop for food after he left the rental house, but I suspect he did stop to purchase something, and that’s when he realized his wallet was missing.”
“So he went back to the bar to ask if it had been found since that’s the last place he remembered having it,” I provided.
“Exactly. The bartender thought he came back an hour after he left with Kia, which gave him plenty of time to go back to the house, get his stuff, and then head to wherever it was that he headed to when he realized his wallet was missing, and then get back to the bar.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m following so far. Kyle returns to the bar, figuring that he dropped his wallet after paying for the drinks he’d ordered. The bartender tells him that he hasn’t seen the wallet. Then what? How does he end up dead in a vacant house?”
Parker frowned. “I’m not sure, but it did occur to me that the person who found his wallet might have found a cell phone number inside the wallet and called Kyle to arrange to return it.”
“Only instead of returning it, the person who had the wallet had him come to the vacant house and assaulted him instead. Why?”
“I don’t know, but when I spoke to Kia, she did say that the two hundred-dollar bills passed to her weren’t the only hundred-dollar bills in his wallet. In fact, she said she was sure he had a couple grand in the wallet.”
“Why on earth would this guy be carrying around a couple grand in cash?” I asked.
Parker shrugged. “I don’t know. Kia didn’t know. She just said that she noticed that he had a lot of money but didn’t ask why.”
I nibbled on my breakfast sandwich while I let Parker’s first theory percolate a bit. I supposed it made sense, even though there were some holes in the story. Kyle could very well have decided to go home to retrieve his stuff once he realized that the other guys wouldn’t be back at the house yet. Once he had his belongings, he might have headed to the gas station or a restaurant, where he realized that his wallet was missing. Once he realized his wallet was missing, he headed back to the
bar to look for it, noticing, I supposed, that the other guys had left by that point. While returning to his car after leaving the bar, the person who either stole or found the wallet could have contacted Kyle. In this scenario, the wallet was used to lure him to the vacant house where his body was found.
“Okay,” I said. “I understand your thought process to this point. You said you had a couple theories.”
Parker nodded. “Theory number two begins the same as theory number one, but there are a few small differences. Maybe the reason Kyle had so much money was because he was involved in something. Something illegal. Probably drugs. Maybe he planned to meet up with the dealer he was working for later in the evening, but at some point, he realized his wallet was missing. I still think he might have returned to the house to pick up his belongings right after leaving the bar. Kevin said that none of the guys saw him come back, yet they did eventually notice that his stuff was gone, so he must have snuck in when no one was around.”
“Okay, so Kyle has a wallet full of cash that really belongs to this supposed drug dealer. He goes out with the guys but has plans to meet up with his contact later. He realizes the wallet is missing and panics. When he can’t find his wallet, he decides to meet his connection at the vacant house as planned, but instead of showing Kyle leniency, he kills him.”
“Something like that.”
“I suppose it could have gone down that way as well. Any other ideas?” I asked.
“Someone in the bar besides Kia noticed the money in Kyle’s wallet. They follow him when he leaves and wait for the opportunity to jump him. They stab him in the back and take the cash, and then they drag him back to the house to dispose of the body. Or maybe they stole the wallet and then decided that Kyle might have more cash than what was in his wallet, so they lured him to the house in an attempt to make him give up more cash, but when he didn’t have any, they killed him. Or, my final theory is that one of the men he was staying with killed him when he went back for his stuff and then dumped the body in the vacant house.”