“Absolutely. I’m in.”
Before I could respond, a loud thud came from Ryder’s speaker connected to the listening device he’d planted outside. A voice barked, “Hey, pig, run over and pay Dmitri a visit. Wonderlich thinks he walked off with part of the shipment again. He wants you back in an hour with Dmitri and the shit he took out of one of those boxes. And while you’re out, get us some coffee. We may be here awhile.”
Ryder and I scrambled up to watch what was going on outside. He grabbed a pair of binoculars, and I got my camera.
Stafford fired back, “I’m not the errand boy. Do it yourself.”
The man, Jensen, the other guy from last night with the big gun, approached Stafford. When he got close, he sucker punched Stafford in the gut.
I gasped and let out a sob. Ryder patted my shoulder awkwardly.
While Stafford was still doubled over, Jensen said, “Don’t forget we own you,” and stalked away, back inside the building.
I put the camera down and looked at the floor, letting my hair hide the tears escaping my eyes.
“I’m afraid you’re going to see a lot of things you don’t want to see, Juliet. If you’d rather, I can take care of the surveillance and fill you in on what you need to know.”
Quickly wiping my face, I said, “I’m not some fragile little girl, Ryder. I’ve been through worse. I can get through this. Seeing him get hurt was a shock, that’s all.”
“I know that, and I didn’t mean to insinuate that you’re weak.” In a quieter tone, he added, “You’re the strongest woman I know.”
I glared up at him. “I think you’re feeding me a line, although I can’t imagine why. I’m not the strongest woman you know. Maya is. Nobody’s tougher than her.”
“Sure, Maya’s tough. But she never has a vested interest in the outcome of any of her cases, and it’s because she has no personal ties in this area. It’s easy for her not to get emotionally involved. You, on the other hand, are always tangled up in your investigations, shoulder-deep in them most of the time. You have to deal with your feelings and think about how your actions are going to affect everyone around you. And somehow you always manage to come out on top. That’s real strength.”
That warm feeling started creeping in again, but I could only deal with one emotion at a time, and anger was the one that was going to keep me sane.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what? Tell you the truth?”
Thankfully, my phone buzzed, so I had an out from this conversation. “I’m going to take this outside.”
He asked worriedly, “Is it Stafford?”
“No. Pete.”
“Take your time. I don’t think there’s any reason for us to follow Stafford on his errand. We need to be set up and ready here for when he brings this Dmitri guy back.”
I nodded and hurried out of Betty’s house, heading for my van as I answered the call. “Hey, Pete,” I said, my voice still shaky from crying as I got in and locked myself inside.
“Are you okay? I was worried about you after you ran off, but I only just left Alexa,” he said, his unease evident in his tone.
“How did it go?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer. It had been over an hour since I’d ditched him, so obviously neither one of them had been in too much of a hurry to call it a night.
“You didn’t answer my question. Are you okay?”
I let out a breath. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. This case is getting to me. Tough stuff.”
“I hate it that you can’t talk to me about it. Have you called Maya yet?”
“Not yet. I think it’s the middle of the night over there right now.”
He said, “Please call her as soon as you can. I don’t like it when you’re stressed.”
I smiled to myself. “Yes, Dad. Now tell me about your date. You and Alexa seemed to hit it off pretty well. Does Brooke have any reason to worry?”
“No, no. No reason to worry.”
Hmm. His voice went up again. I didn’t think my best friend was being completely honest with me. Or with himself.
“Well, did she give you any good info?”
“Yeah. We may need to put Candace Monroe back on our list.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She’s a senior planner, which means aside from planning the bigger, higher-profile parties, she also oversees the junior planners, which was what Josie was. Because of that, Candace’s neck was on the line for Brock Flint’s party as well. According to Alexa, Candace and Josie had disagreed during the week before the party over some of the details, so Josie was already on notice before the doomed shindig even started.”
I nodded slowly, not that he could see me. “So the crappy party reflected badly on Candace, and she’d possibly tried to do something to correct it beforehand. In doing so, she got into it with Josie, who might not have taken kindly to Candace trying to swoop in and step on her toes. Am I on the right track?”
Pete replied, “I’d say that scenario is a strong possibility. And get this—at the party, Candace started unloading on Josie. Guess who came to Josie’s rescue and fought for her?”
Scrunching up my face, I thought back through all the facts I could remember from the long list of people we’d talked to. “Wait, I got this…” Something Meegan the publicist had said…I exclaimed, “Aha! Xander. Meegan said he got into an argument with one of his employees during the few minutes he was at that party. It was Candace.”
“Ding, ding. You got it.”
“Another instance of Xander taking a particular interest in Josie.”
“That, too.”
The whole Candace thing still wasn’t sitting well with me. “If Candace did indeed kill Josie, where did she get the heroin?”
“Um…Jules…she’s a drug dealer.”
I shook my head. “I know, but she seemed pretty adamant about not touching the stuff.”
Pete seemed to be trying really hard to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Maybe she lied to you.”
“My gut is not convinced.”
“Tell your gut to look at the facts.”
Chuckling, I said, “Okay, okay. Let’s table this one for now. Anything else?”
“I’d say that was a pretty impressive evening of sleuthing, wouldn’t you?” he said, pride evident in his tone.
Smiling, I replied, “Yes. You get a gold star. Good job, Pete.”
“I think someone’s patronizing me again.”
“Who would do that?”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “Good night, Jules. Get some rest. I’m sure everything will seem better in the morning. If not, you are having a chili donut for lunch, even if I have to force-feed it to you.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
I sighed as I ended the call. It did wonders for my state of mind to talk to him, even though it wasn’t about my present predicament. Taking a deep breath, I steadied my nerves and headed back into Betty’s house.
Chapter 22
“You have a chance to cool off?” Ryder asked when I walked back into Betty’s spare room.
I nodded. “Yeah. It was good to talk to a friend.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “I know I have the bad habit of telling Pete everything, but I swear I haven’t breathed a word about this case.”
“Okay,” he said. “Keep it that way.”
He was acting so weird—not confrontational at all, which wasn’t like him. I changed the subject again. “Still all quiet over there?”
“Yep. While we have time, I want to fill you in on what I know about Dmitri.”
My subject change worked. It was back to business, which was for the best. I sat down next to him on the floor, and he spread the file open in front of us.
He shined his flashlight on the page with a DMV photo on it. “Dmitri Vashchenko works at Wonder-Gen as a local delivery driver. He’s the one Wonderlich beat up. According to the conversation we just heard from over there, Wonderlich evidently thinks he’s stolen something—again.”
“Hang on a second…Dmitri does Wonder-Gen’s local deliveries. Did you bring your laptop?”
“Yes. What do you need it for?”
The wheels in my brain were turning at warp speed. “Just trust me.”
Shrugging, he handed me his laptop.
I typed in one of the names I’d seen this morning on the address labels of the Wonder-Gen boxes. XB Incorporated didn’t exist, according to Google. I mapped the address as best I could remember and came up with a residence in a not so nice part of town. Interesting. I typed in another address I could remember, and I got an ancient gas station that was for sale. The third address I’d committed to memory was of an abandoned warehouse. I was sensing a pattern here. I turned the laptop around to Ryder, who was plenty confused by my sudden interest in surfing the Web, and pointed to the screen.
“Remember those boxes I was telling you about earlier? That’s where one of them was delivered this morning.”
He squinted at the bright screen. “That place has been deserted for years.”
“Exactly. These aren’t deliveries, they’re drops.”
We both said at the same time, “It’s in the boxes.”
Grinning at me, Ryder said, “You’re brilliant, you know that?”
I felt myself blush. “Oh, stop.”
“See? This is why I need you.”
Having to move the conversation along again, I said, “Well, now that we know how they’re moving it, we must figure out what ‘it’ is that they’re moving.”
“If they’re going to this much trouble, what they’re moving is illegal and expensive, and that means they’ll stop at nothing to get their shipments in and out intact. Which is why I’m betting Wonderlich is looking to have another physical chat with Dmitri.”
An icy chill ripped through me. “We can’t let that happen.”
“We may not have much of a choice. We can’t get involved because we don’t have enough to hold any of those guys.”
“Yeah, you do, if they assault Dmitri.”
Keeping his voice even, he said, “You have to look at the bigger picture here. If I go in and try to save him, we’ll tip our hand. Then they’ll get spooked because they know we’re on to them. They’ll only get a slap on the wrist for the assault—or worse, if Stafford manages to sweep it under the rug again, they walk.”
Acid churned in my stomach at the thought of doing nothing for a man who was about to get the crap kicked out of him. “I don’t like it.”
“In my defense, I’m not the only one who’s going to look the other way. Stafford’s going to sit there and watch this happen, too. He could put a stop to it, but I can guarantee you he won’t.”
In any normal circumstance, Stafford would have been the first one to rush to a person’s aid. But tonight, he was doing the exact opposite, even going so far as to be the one to deliver a guy to his doom. I hated what this was doing to him as a person. “I guess that means I’m outvoted. But for the record, I’m not okay with this.”
Ryder smiled. “I’d be worried if you were.”
I thought back to something he’d just said. “Wait. What did you mean when you said ‘if Stafford manages to sweep it under the rug again’? What did he sweep under the rug in the first place? Did I miss something?”
Turning his face away from me, he replied, “This is one of those things that you may not want to know.”
I ran my hands through my hair and wished I’d never become a private investigator. Wished I’d never even moved back to Nashville, actually. After my fiancé ran out on me and I lost my café, why couldn’t I have been content to move in with my parents like the other losers in my hometown did when they got down on their luck? No, I had to come here and try to make something of myself. And now I had to deal with the consequences of my decisions head-on.
“Tell me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
He looked over at me. “You sure?”
“Do it before I change my mind.”
“Okay,” he said, his brow furrowed. “Stafford was the one who went out to take care of the dispute between Wonderlich and Dmitri. The assault charge on Wonderlich was all ready to go, then, poof, it was gone. Stafford’s notes in the system said the victim changed his story and refused to go ahead with the charges. His report got filed away quietly. When I found that out, I went looking for the report again to see if anything had been added. That’s when I noticed his report was suddenly missing some key parts that would make it impossible to try to go back and press charges later. Luckily, the night of the incident, I’d made a copy of the original report for my own file.” He waited a moment for his implication to sink in.
My shoulders slumped. Wonderlich somehow got to Dmitri and to Stafford, ensuring the assault charge would never stick. “That’s when you started suspecting Stafford was up to no good.”
“Yes.”
Thinking back to several conversations I’d had with Maya over the last month, I said, “And that’s when you started checking up on me—asking Maya about me and then basically stalking me.”
“Yes. Do you want to see the report for yourself?”
When I nodded, Ryder handed me two photocopies of two police reports, both written in Stafford’s chicken-scratchy handwriting. The information at the top was the same—the time, date, and location, and under that was Wonderlich’s name and personal info. Then the differences started. In the first report, the victim’s name and contact information (Dmitri’s info) was legible and fully filled in. In the second one, the victim section was blank, and there was a name scrawled next to Wonderlich’s. I could barely make it out as Dmitri’s, but there was no contact info. The details of the assault were clear and concise in the first report, including a description of Dmitri’s wounds, and in the second it only said, “Scuffle between two adult males.”
I laid the papers down on the floor and put my head in my hands. Of all the cards stacked against Stafford, for some reason this was the thing that bothered me the most. He’d thrown away his integrity, which was one of the things I liked most about him, by falsifying this report. My heart felt like it was ripping in two.
Ryder murmured, “When I found out Stafford wasn’t on the up-and-up, all I could think about was breaking the news to you. I couldn’t wait to finally show you that he’s not any better than the rest of us. Show you that who he claims to be is all an act.”
Stung even further and shocked by his words, I lifted my head and stared at him out of tear-filled eyes, unable to speak.
After taking a look at my face, he hung his head. “The problem is, I didn’t count on it feeling like this. I…um…I thought you’d be angry. At him…at me. I thought you’d yell and scream and waste no time telling me to go to hell, and him, too. I didn’t think it would hurt you or make you sad. And I never imagined it would damn near kill me to have to be the one to look you in the eye and tell you.” He raised his head and held my gaze, then reached over and cradled my face with both hands. “I’m sorry, Juliet. If I could make this all go away, I would. I’d do anything if it meant you didn’t have to get your heart broken again…by another idiot who didn’t put you first.”
I didn’t know what to think or say. I couldn’t even move. All I could do was sit there and let him hold me while I wept, letting all my frustration out—at Stafford, at the situation, at my life, and admittedly, at him as well.
After crying for an awkwardly long time, which was something that normally would have mortified me to do in front of him, I felt better. Not good, but it was cathartic to get it all out, especially after Ryder’s epic apology. He seemed like a different guy than the one I’d dated. I’d seen glimpses of this side of him before, but they never lasted long. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get back to the investigation or the slightest bit uncomfortable with me having a meltdown. He simply sat with one arm tight around me, the other hand gently stroking my hair or my back in silent sympathetic support.
Finally able to put myse
lf back together, I wiped my face and sat up straight. “Sorry I lost it on you there. Not exactly professional of me, but it helped to let it out. So thank you.”
“Don’t apologize. We all need to break down every once in a while.”
This was definitely not the old Ryder. Having lost my filter after everything that had happened tonight, I blurted out, “Are you in therapy?”
He sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
I smiled. “To me, yes. You’re different.” When his face fell, I added, “But in a good way.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he replied, his blue eyes holding mine again.
“Since we’re being honest here, do you mind if I ask you something else?”
“Anything.”
“Stafford told me a while back that you’d been acting strangely at work and that the other cops were all worried something was going on with you. Is that true, or does he know you’re on to him and he’s trying to throw suspicion on your mental health?” I didn’t know what to believe anymore where Stafford was concerned.
A comment I thought should have caused some serious jaw clenching only got a sad head shake from the new Ryder. “I’m pretty sure he suspects I’m gunning for him, but I think he’s mistakenly assumed it’s about you and that I’m oblivious to what’s actually going on. So yeah, I’m probably acting strangely around him. And I admit after my one and only homicide case went so sideways, I was a wreck. I took some time off—most of it mandatory, some not. This is actually the first case I’ve taken on since I’ve been back. The therapy has helped a lot, and the guys at work have all had bad experiences on the job they’ve had to work through, so as a rule we don’t judge one another. My captain’s happy with me, so if Stafford is making shit up about me, then that’s on him.”
Frowning, I said, “If I’m going to be an effective PI, I really have to learn how to figure out if someone’s lying to me.”
“This doesn’t count. You’re too close to see it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” I didn’t want to believe any of it, but so much was staring me in the face it was hard to believe this thing could end in any other way but disaster. “So you’re sure there’s no chance he’s working on a secret mission you’re not aware of?”
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