A Genuine Fix

by J. C. Kenney

  Chapter Fourteen

  I left Hoosiers with mixed emotions. For all intents and purposes, I got Willie to admit Georgie was at the bar the night of the murder. I also got him to confirm Lori’s claim that Georgie had run up serious gambling debts. That was good.

  On the other side of the coin, I didn’t know any of the big-time gamblers’ names. More importantly, I’d failed to get names of people who saw Georgie that final night. That wasn’t so good.

  As I jotted down notes on a bench in front of the store that sold custom leather goods, I wanted to kick myself.

  Willie and his staff had given Matt a list of customers at Hoosiers that night, of that I had no doubt. My dilemma was how to get my hands on the list. I could ask Jeanette, or maybe even Matt, but whether they’d give me a copy was another matter. Man, this election-season drama was annoying.

  Another missed opportunity was my failure to ask Willie directly if he’d killed Georgie. Sure, it was a long shot, but, with his admitted ties to gambling, I couldn’t rule it out.

  I made a mental note to ask Al, in a tactful way, if his brother could be the killer. After all, Willie looked strong enough to cut through the lock. And I recalled Al talking one time about the truck with the manual transmission that he and Willie drove when their parents owned the restaurant.

  As I was writing down another observation about Willie, a wave of shame passed through me. I lowered my head until my chin touched my breastbone. Asking a lifelong family friend if his brother was capable of taking another’s life. Yeah, that would go over really well.

  With a sinking feeling in my belly, I headed home. My visit with Willie had provided a couple of pieces to the puzzle, but I had no idea where they went.

  Patience, Allie. You’ll figure this out.

  Trudging up the steps to the apartment, I hoped I was right.

  After an afternoon of agent work and an evening watching my guilty pleasure, Rugrats, with Ursi on my lap and a glass of wine, I woke up the next morning calm and relaxed. In the past, when I was struggling with an editing job or having a hard time negotiating a contract, I stepped away from the project for a while.

  The break typically might not last long, but the time away gave my brain a chance to subconsciously process the troublesome task. Inevitably, when I returned to it, with fresh eyes and a clear mind, it was easier, and often more enjoyable, to finish the work.

  While I waited for my coffee to brew, I hummed the Rugrats theme song. My friends Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, and the rest always had played an admirable part in giving me a much-needed break.

  Of course, I was also happy because Brent was coming into town for the weekend. I’d warned him I needed to talk about the case, and he’d agreed to be my sounding board.

  The thought of him listening to me, letting me think out loud, and offering objective input made me smile, despite the chilly, drizzly weather. We planned on going for a walk and taking Ursi and Sammy with us. While our furry companions weren’t the best of friends, they got along well enough that the four of us could hang out without worrying about Sammy chasing Ursi under a bed or up a tree.

  It was the damage an unsupervised Sammy could do to the rest of the apartment that worried me. One time, Brent and I had come home from a dinner date to find Sammy had knocked over a plant and pulled all of the toilet paper off its roll. From that date forward, the energetic canine was allowed to be in my apartment only when Brent or I were around to supervise.

  Unless it was raining buckets when Brent and Sammy arrived, we’d go outside. Damp sidewalks didn’t bother Ursi. In fact, she enjoyed drinking from downspouts whenever I let her. Sure, we were an odd foursome, a six-five man with a shaggy golden retriever and a five-one woman with a smallish tortoiseshell cat, but our differences made life interesting.

  Our differences also made us happy.

  Well, it made Brent, Sammy, and me happy. It was always tough to tell when it came to Ursi.

  To prepare for our walk, I popped over to the deli down the street and picked up fresh bread and cold cuts. There was a park across the street from the library that Brent was fond of, so I figured we’d take a stadium blanket and have a picnic in the park. While we ate, Sammy could romp around in the grass and Ursi could nap.

  Then we could visit the library and say hi to our old friend Vicky Napier, the woman who ran it. Vicky would probably scold us for bringing pets into her library, but I was certain that, after a minute, she’d give in and let us stay for a short visit. We were friends, after all. It was going to be fabulous.

  I was slicing the loaf of multigrain bread for our sandwiches when my phone went off. My shoulders drooped when the name on the screen wasn’t Brent.

  “I hope you’ve got good news for me, Chief.” Maybe I was getting delusional, but it seemed like the only time Matt called was to deliver bad news.

  “Depends on what you consider good. It’s Friday. That’s good, right?”

  He was stalling. That wasn’t promising. I told him to stop the delay tactics.

  “The report came back on the items we found at the bottom of the mulch pile. The only fingerprints we found belonged to Georgie.”

  My mind accelerated into a full sprint. If the only prints were Georgie’s, did that mean he was the one who both cut the lock and drank the bottle of bourbon? That he was alone?

  No. That didn’t make sense. If he was alone, there was no possible way he could have suffocated himself under ten thousand pounds of mulch.

  The questions came in a torrent. Were Georgie’s prints somehow placed on the items before he died? If not, did he really cut the lock and drink the whole bottle of liquor?

  The bottle. I snapped my fingers as a ray of hope cut a path through the flood of questions.

  “What about DNA? Did the lab test for it around the mouth of the bottle? If Georgie shared the bottle with someone, maybe there are traces of it.”

  “Hmm.” Matt was silent for a few excruciating minutes as he flipped through pieces of paper. “The lab still has the bottle. I’ll ask them to check. It’ll take a few weeks to get those results.”

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  “The problem is Larry. He’s leaning on me to come up with enough evidence to make an arrest. I don’t know if I can hold him off long enough to get DNA results.”

  And there it was. Matt didn’t need to spell it out for me. I was back at the top of the official suspect list, assuming I’d ever been removed from it.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Allie. The answer is no. I still don’t think you did it.”

  “Is that because of the rumor that Lori killed him when she found out I was having an affair with him?” It was a pointless, spiteful question, but it was out of my mouth before I realized what I’d said.

  “Yeah, I heard that rumor, probably from the same person you did.” He chuckled. “I have to admit, with news of this insurance policy, Lori isn’t lacking in the motivation category.”

  We discussed the case for a few minutes, then Matt said he needed to go. I asked him for a list of the witnesses at Hoosiers the night Georgie was killed. After some hedging, he said he’d see if he could get me the information.

  “Believe me, Allie. I’ll be as relieved as anyone to get this case solved. Let me know if you learn anything. Even if it doesn’t seem important.”

  I promised to do exactly that, and we said our good-byes.

  While the situation was far from ideal, the phone call had been enlightening, and it helped that it came before Brent arrived. While the puzzle pieces were still coming together at a glacial pace, the framework of a plausible theory was beginning to form.

  A little while later, a knock at the door, followed by an emphatic woof, sent Ursi scrambling off the couch and into the bedroom to hide. I set my notebook aside and went to the door.

  “Who is it?” Even though I knew
it was Brent and Sammy, it was fun to feign ignorance and hear an inevitably unique and often-entertaining response.

  “Your knight in shining armor and his faithful companion, here to free you from the bonds of literary drudgery and boredom.” Brent’s response was followed by another woof, then a sneeze, probably from Sammy. I adored the dog, but her sneezes could flatten a house.

  Literary drudgery, huh? “I’m in the middle of editing a scorching-hot romance, so I don’t need to be freed right now. Can you come back later, after I cool down?”

  “You wound us, fair maiden. We have traveled many miles, over hill and dale, to sit at the feet of you and your feline counterpart. Will you not grant us an audience?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “I brought chocolate.”

  I had the door open a split second later. While coffee was necessary for me to make it from day to day, chocolate was often key to making each day worth living.

  Brent wrapped me in a hug as Sammy nosed her way through the door to hunt for Ursi. “The whole Don Quixote–inspired knight greeting thing didn’t work for you, huh?”

  “I would have led with the chocolate.” I got up on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “In the future, always lead with chocolate.”

  While Sammy padded from room to room searching for Ursi, Brent and I got comfortable on the couch to chat. We typically talked on the phone or via Skype two or three times per week, but there was no substitute for in-person conversation.

  His current genealogy installation project was nearing completion. As opposed to his project in Rushing Creek, which included two computer stations at a single library, this one involved three library branches and six stations.

  “Everything’s in place. We go live next Tuesday. I’ll spend Monday testing all the systems and worrying, so I’m ready to forget about work for a few days.” He stretched out his long legs and propped his feet on the coffee table. “You hanging in there okay?”

  I brought Brent up to date on the events of the past couple of days. Even though I’d talked to a handful of people about the case, it was a huge help to confide in him.

  He let me talk without interruption, and I must have gone on for fifteen minutes straight. That was one of the things I really liked about Brent. He was a fabulous listener. He made eye contact and nodded while holding my hand. When I was finished, he was quiet for a minute while he stared at the clock.

  “Man, I miss a little, I miss a lot. By that look in your eye, you have a plan of action?”

  “I have a theory.” I got to my feet. “I’ll tell you about it on our walk.”

  With our pets leashed, we made our way downstairs and out into a gray, damp afternoon. Brent had a stadium blanket and other picnic supplies in a backpack slung over his shoulder. I had the sandwiches and snacks in a tote hanging from my shoulder. Ursi took a moment to step onto the sidewalk, as if she was waiting for a flock of paparazzi to descend on her, but Sammy greeted the outdoors with joy, straining his leash as he dashed this way and that to sniff at everything within reach.

  Once Sammy settled down, Ursi made a light step onto the sidewalk and glided along the concrete surface with her head held high and her tail pointed upward.

  “I guess she’s too cool to be seen having fun outside,” Brent said as we followed my cat’s lead.

  “She has her reputation as the famous Rushing Creek Walking Cat, after all. She probably doesn’t want to be seen by one of her fans doing something as lowbrow as playing in the water.” Brent and I shared a laugh as, at that very moment, Ursi stopped to take a drink from a puddle.

  Back in May, Kim Frye had asked if she could do a profile of us since she’d never seen a cat out for a walk on a leash. I agreed, figuring what the heck, every bit of publicity would be good for the agency, even if only locals read the article.

  I had no idea how popular a feature about a cat whose owner took her out for regular walks would be in southern Indiana. It appeared in the digital edition of the Brown County Beacon on a Thursday. Within a week, it had been shared hundreds of times, liked a few thousand times on Facebook, and had a link tweeted halfway across the globe.

  Ursi had become a celebrity. For pretty much the entire month of June, whenever we went for a walk, someone stopped us and asked to take a selfie with the famous feline. Fortunately for all parties involved, she was used to people and crowds from our time in New York and was patient with people. Of course, it helped that I learned giving her a treat immediately after a visit with a fan made her much more amenable to her newfound fame.

  Sammy joined Ursi at the puddle, and once both were sufficiently hydrated, we continued our walk in a comfortable silence. The rain had turned into a light mist that was cool on my skin. It also deadened nearby sounds to create the illusion that we had the world to ourselves.

  We were stopped at a crosswalk when Brent broke the silence. “Do you want to tell me your theory?”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m convinced Georgie’s murder was planned. There are way too many pieces in play for it to be a random act.”

  “Why do you say that?” Brent’s tone was encouraging. As opposed to when we were in the apartment and I wanted to unburden myself, he now knew I wanted someone to respond to my ideas, to get me to think.

  “First off, there’s the mulch pile. Whoever did this had to know the mulch was scheduled for delivery that Friday morning. Because of that, the murderer also had to be familiar with the routine at Parke Landscaping.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  As we crossed the Boulevard, I explained that when Roger Parke had morning deliveries, he loaded up his trucks the night before. That way he could get the materials dropped off immediately, which gave him time to fit in an extra delivery during the day.

  “You think the murderer knew how to find Georgie and knew there would be trucks loaded with mulch at the landscaper. And knew where to find the keys.” Brent lengthened his stride. It was a sign he was getting excited. It was gratifying that we were on the same page, but it also made it hard for Ursi and me to keep up with him and the long-legged Sammy.

  “Exactly.” I went over my lock demonstration to support my belief that someone strong would have had to cut the lock. “I’m not saying a woman couldn’t have cut that lock, but I think it was more likely a man.”

  We arrived at the park and set aside our discussion while we laid out our picnic. The minute Brent had the blanket in position, Ursi claimed a corner and began licking her front legs. Sammy, the good boy that she was, sat patiently while Brent screwed a leash stake into the ground and attached both leashes to it. Our pets weren’t the type to run off and get in trouble, but the last thing I wanted was for Ursi to dash off after a bird or Sammy to chase a squirrel and make us go look for them.

  Thanks to the damp conditions, we had the park to ourselves, which let us debate the issue without fear of being overheard. While we ate, we discussed the insurance policy. It was a fact I couldn’t reconcile with the others.

  “The insurance proceeds turn Lori into a suspect.” In my notebook, I drew a circle around her name and connected it to a dollar sign to represent the insurance cash. “But there’s no way she could have cut that lock from Parke’s gate herself.”

  “She could have convinced Georgie to do it, right?”

  “Sure.” I got up and made a few loops around the blanket. Luke said it was weird, but my habit of walking while I was thinking proved to be helpful quite often.

  After more discussion, we agreed Roger and Lori were credible, if not perfect, suspects. They had reasons to want Georgie gone for good, even if their motives were vastly different. When you combined the dump truck, the bottle, and the mulch, they both had the means to do it. They knew Georgie’s habits, so they had the opportunity to get him alone to commit the murder.

  Our conversation then turned to Tommy Abbott. As soon as
I finished my analysis, Brent jumped to his feet, eliciting a yowl in protest from Ursi, who’d been napping.

  “He’s gotta be the one. He’s a cop, so he’d be able to keep tabs on Georgie. He’s got plenty going on in the revenge column. As a city employee, I’d bet he had access to information about the mulch delivery, and he wouldn’t need any help with the lock issue, like Lori would.”

  The theory had merit, but I was reluctant to mention it to Matt. It was one thing to accuse a member of the community of a murder. It was something entirely different to accuse an officer of the law.

  “I need more than circumstantial evidence before I go to Chief Roberson about one of his own. That’s one accusation I can’t afford to be wrong about.”

  Brent dug a plastic grocery bag out of his backpack and used it to clean up a dropping Sammy left. As he headed toward a trash can in the corner of the park, I scratched Ursi behind the ears and thanked her for using a litter box.

  “What about the ID?” Brent sat down next to me and crossed his legs. “Seems to me only someone with inside info would know to plant it on you. Plus, he’d have to have access to the body. A cop would have that more than the other two, especially if he’s trying to frame you.”

  I recounted my conversation with Matt about the ID card. “The chief thinks it was an attempt to frame me. An attempt that failed epically.” I brushed a few blades of grass from my shoe. “I don’t see a cop making that kind of mistake. Someone else, though…”

  Brent crossed his arms. “Okay. If it’s not the cop, who do you think it is?”

  “If we assume it was either Roger or Lori, Lori would be the more likely one.” I shook my head and looked at the slate-gray sky, blinking back tears as a devastating scenario hit me.

  Lori Cannon, the sweet girl I was kind to in high school, murdered her boyfriend and tried to pin it on me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next day was a big one. Actually, it was huge, all nineteen buildings of Rockefeller Center huge.

  Sloane and I were heading to Indianapolis for a final fitting of her wedding dress. While we were gone, Luke and Brent were going to work on the house. Then, when we returned, we were going to grill on the back porch and spend a fun evening hanging out.