“Nope,” she said with a grumble as she continued to stare at the stones in Jake’s possession.
I hoped he’d put them away, and he finally did so, much to the woman’s chagrin.
“Have you had any telephone calls about emeralds, by any chance?” I asked her.
She looked at me for a moment, and then she dismissed me as being unimportant once she realized that I wasn’t a cop. “Nobody’s called about loose precious stones in months. Look around. It’s not exactly our usual trade. Now if you were looking for an old chainsaw or a weed eater that barely works, I’d be your gal. But emeralds? Hardly.”
“You wouldn’t lie to us, now would you?” Jake asked her in a deadly soft voice.
“No way. There’s no money in it for me. Now if we’re done here, I’ve got work to do.”
Once we were outside, Jake said, “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think six dozen donuts would have done us any good in there.”
“Do you believe her?” I asked him.
“I’m not even sure she knows when she’s lying or telling the truth these days,” he replied. “The truth of the matter is that it was the reaction I’d been expecting all along. She protested a little too much about her inventory, if you ask me. In the past, it’s been my experience that pawnshop dealers are notorious for skirting the law, and they aren’t all that fond of cops in general.”
“How do they all seem to know you were a cop once?” I asked him. I’d speculated on it earlier, but I suddenly realized that I’d never come right out and asked him about it.
“I suppose you get a way of looking at suspicious people a certain way,” Jake explained, “and it happens nearly as soon as you graduate from the academy. Sure, it could be the way I handle myself, but they know I’m sizing them up, and there’s nothing I can do to disguise it. Half the time I’m not even aware that I’m doing it. It couldn’t be any clearer if we were all wearing name tags, though.”
“Interesting. Hey, I’m getting hungry. How about you?”
“I could eat,” he admitted. “Should we go back to Burt’s, or do you want to head back to April Springs now that our pawnshop visits are over?”
“I’d like to stay in town a little longer, if it’s all the same to you,” I admitted. “I spoke with two of our suspects today, but I’d like a crack at the other two, since we’re already here.”
“Burt’s it is, then,” Jake said.
As we drove to the diner, I asked my husband, “Do you think those emeralds are ever going to show up, or is the killer going to just hold onto them now that they know selling them won’t be as easy as they must have first suspected?”
“No, they’ll be sold before too long, unless I miss my guess,” Jake said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Think about it, Suzanne. It’s the only way it makes sense, at least as far as I’m concerned. I can’t imagine the killer is going to want to keep evidence around that they killed Snappy any longer than they have to, and besides, my gut is telling me that the emeralds were the motive for the murder itself. Somebody needs money, and badly. That’s where we should be looking.”
“How did you manage to come up with that?”
“I wasn’t a cop for so many years without picking up a thing or two along the way,” he said with a wry laugh.
“I wasn’t questioning your ability,” I said quickly. “I’m just surprised by how your mind works sometimes.”
“I’ve tasted some of your creations at the donut shop,” Jake said. “Was there always a logical reason behind some of the combinations you’ve created over the years?”
“No, some of it was just instinct,” I admitted.
“Or, put another way, you internally extrapolated based on past experience until you subconsciously came up with a flavor combination that met the requirements of providing a possible new and improved taste palette for your customer base.”
“Wow, when you put it that way, I sound like a culinary genius,” I said with a grin.
“In a way, it’s what we both do. We feed our subconscious with seemingly unrelated facts until we can form conclusions based on previous observations. It sounds scientific because it is, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
I frowned a little. “It takes a little of the fun out of spontaneous creation when you look at it that way,” I said.
“Not at all. There are always jumps of reasoning and flashes of insight that overrule all of that. What you do is art, but there can also be underlying rationales for the things you create.”
“You seem to have given this a lot of thought,” I said.
“Hey, I’m off the clock these days, remember? Time is one thing I’ve got plenty of.”
I was about to suggest we figure something out he could do next with his life when our conversation was cut short by our arrival at the diner.
It would be a discussion for another day, but sooner rather than later.
Right now we had a murder to solve, and things weren’t getting any easier with each passing moment.
Chapter 13
“Hey, Tammy. Is something wrong?” I asked the waitress at Burt’s after she came over to our table to take our order. Her usual lively personality was subdued, and she barely made eye contact when I spoke.
“I’m fine,” she said brusquely. “What can I get for you today?”
“Two specials, assuming they’re different from our last meal,” Jake said, trying to ease her out of her mood.
She didn’t take the bait as she jotted our order down and started for the kitchen.
“Was it something I said?” Jake asked as he looked at me.
I kept watching her, and then I pointed to a man sitting alone in a booth in one corner. He wasn’t eating the food in front of him; he was simply staring holes through our waitress. Tammy had picked up a few dirty plates on her way back to the kitchen, and when she glanced his way, she nearly dropped them. “Something’s going on there,” I said softly.
“It’s none of our business, Suzanne,” Jake said evenly. “We already have enough troubles without getting involved in her life, too.”
“Something’s not right; that’s all I’m saying,” I said.
Tammy came back with our sweet teas, which we hadn’t ordered, and set them down in front of us.
“Is he bothering you?” I asked her gently.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going on break. Kathy will take care of you.” Tammy practically sprinted toward the kitchen, and I half expected the strange man to get up and follow her, but he just sat there.
I lost track of him after our food came, and at one point I looked up from my country-style fried steak and saw that he was gone. “Did you happen to notice that man leave?”
“Who are you talking about? That guy from before?” Jake asked as he bit into another morsel. The meat was done to perfection, and I had a hunch we’d found the cook’s specialty, purely by accident. The entrée was crisp on the outside and yet still tender and juicy inside. I found it delicious, but I still couldn’t get Tammy’s reaction out of my mind.
“Never mind,” I said. After we finished eating and we paid our bill, Jake started for the truck. I looked up at the gray clouds above us and realized that it was beginning to snow, something that surprised me.
“Did you know we were supposed to get snow today?” I asked him.
He held out a hand and watched a few flakes fall into it. “No, but I don’t mind it. It’s a lot better than ice.”
“Sure, but Young’s work crew is supposed to be fixing the outside of the donut shop tomorrow,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. It probably won’t amount to much.”
My husband kept walking toward the truck
when a nagging sense of dread came over me. “Hang on a second, Jake.”
As I started off in the other direction, heading for the alley behind the diner, he said, “We’re parked out front; you know that, right?”
“Indulge me,” I said. I walked down the alley, and soon I heard voices coming from the back of the diner before we even saw who exactly was in the middle of an argument.
“Keep your mouth shut,” the man was yelling at Tammy, and worse yet, he had a hand clamped down on her arm that was clearly hurting her.
I didn’t have to say a word to Jake. He took off like a shot, and before I knew what was happening, my husband had broken the man’s grip on Tammy’s arm, and he had him pinned up against the back of the diner.
Tammy started crying, and I moved in to comfort her as I heard my husband tell the man, “You need to walk away, and I mean right now. If you bother her again, you’ll have to answer to me. Do you understand everything I’m telling you, and is there any doubt in your mind that I’m telling you the truth?”
“You think you’re so tough,” the stranger said, spitting out his words. He was clearly humiliated by the ease with which Jake had handled him, and he was trying to cover up his fear as well.
“As a matter of fact, I do. I don’t have to go around grabbing women to prove I’m a real man, so I suppose that makes me tougher than you.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You got lucky. You caught me off guard,” the man protested as he brushed some of the falling snow out of his hair.
Jake grinned at him, but there wasn’t an ounce of joy in it. He released the man and took two steps backward, never wavering from staring him down. “You’re welcome to try me again if you honestly feel that way. Are you ready to take a run at me now, or do you need a little more time to work up your nerve?”
“Lester, just go home,” Tammy pled with the man.
“I’ll go when I’m good and ready,” Lester said.
“Yeah, Lester and I aren’t finished with our conversation,” Jake said. Was my husband actually egging the man into trying something? I knew he hated bullies with a passion, and Lester was clearly one with every ounce of his being. However, I knew that the thing with most bullies, not all but most, was that when they were pushed, they usually backed down. Only those who wouldn’t fight back became their victims. “What do you say, Lester? Want to continue our little chat?”
“Forget you,” Lester said as he brushed past Jake, trying to knock him off balance with his shoulder.
Jake must have seen it coming from a mile away. He stood his ground firmly, and it was Lester who lost his balance and nearly fell onto the suddenly slippery pavement when he collided with my husband. He would have done a face plant into the asphalt, too, if Jake hadn’t reached out and grabbed him nearly at the same spot where Lester had manhandled Tammy a moment ago. “Careful there, Lester, you’d hate to fall and hurt yourself.”
I expected Jake to give the man’s arm an extra little squeeze before he released it, but he touched him as delicately as he would have handled a rose. Lester looked surprised by the action as well.
He was gone in a moment, and then and only then did Jake turn to the waitress. “Are you okay, Tammy?”
“I’m fine,” she said, rubbing her arm self-consciously.
“Was that your boyfriend?” I asked her lightly.
“No, that’s my big brother,” she said, shocking me with her response. “He wanted money so he could get drunk, but I refused, and he got nasty.”
“I could always have the chief of police here in town speak with him,” Jake said. “Or, if you’d prefer, if he bothers you again, you can call me and I’ll be here in under twenty minutes to take care of the situation.”
“Thanks for the offer, but he’s not hanging around. Lester is going to visit a friend in California, and he spent the last of his money on a bus ticket. That’s why he wanted some cash for booze. In an hour, he’ll be someone else’s problem.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” I said. “I never had a brother, or a sister, either, for that matter.”
“Then count yourself lucky,” Tammy said. She clearly felt uncomfortable with us seeing her in such a vulnerable position, because she quickly added, “I need to get back inside. My break’s over.”
“I meant what I said. Call me if you need me,” Jake told her.
“What are you, my knight in shining armor?” Tammy asked him, breaking out a bit of her old smile for just a moment.
“Actually, he’s mine, but I’ll let you borrow him any time if you need to,” I told her.
“I appreciate that,” she said. Tammy headed for the back door, but before she went inside, she added, “As my way of saying thanks, your next slice of pie is on the house.”
“You shouldn’t have told him that,” I said to her. “Now he’ll want to eat here again tonight.”
Tammy laughed, and then the waitress started to go back inside. “You wanted to know about Snappy yesterday, didn’t you?”
“That’s why we’re here,” I said.
“I don’t know anything yet, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.”
“We’d appreciate that,” I said, and then she vanished back into Burt’s.
After she was gone, I kissed Jake’s cheek and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For what? How about sticking up for someone who was in trouble? Isn’t that enough?”
“He wasn’t a threat to me, Suzanne. Lester’s just like a thousand other punks I’ve seen in my life trying to scare people with how tough he pretends to be.”
“I doubt he’ll try that again anytime soon.”
“I wouldn’t count on that if I were you,” Jake said.
He seemed sad by the need to show force now that it was over. “At least he won’t pick on Tammy again,” I said lamely.
“Not from California, so at least there’s that,” Jake said as we started walking back to the front of Burt’s so we could get into his truck and go. The snow was beginning to pick up, and I hoped that it hadn’t been a mistake letting him drive. He could haul a lot more than I could, but my vehicle could climb a tree, whereas his truck sometimes got stuck in a heavy dew.
“What now?” Jake asked. “Should we go see what our other two suspects are up to? I’d like to find out about their finances while we’re at it.”
“If greed is the true motive for Snappy’s murder, maybe we’ll find something, but let’s hold off before we track them down.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I’m not without my sources in town, remember?” I asked. “Let’s ask if Adam Jefferson or Meredith Pence have any idea about what’s really going on with their money situations. We know Deloris is close to broke, and it shouldn’t be too hard to ask those two about Sanderson, Bloch, and Madison, and their money situations.” I looked up into the sky and saw the snow was really starting to intensify. “Do you think we’ll be okay hanging around with this stuff falling so fast and so thick?”
Jake smiled. “No worries on that count. I’ve got enough weight in back to keep our rear end on the road. We’ll be fine.”
“If you say so,” I said, wondering if we’d make it back to April Springs, or if we’d have to call someone to come get us.
“Adam, do you have a minute?” I asked when we returned to the attorney’s office. For once, he made an impressive figure in his three-piece suit, as opposed to his usual handyman garb.
“Just about that,” he said after he greeted us in return. “I’m due in court in ten minutes, so if you want to walk over there with me, we can chat on the way.”
“It’s about Snappy Mack,” I said, but before I could get into any details, he interrupted me.
“Guys, I wish I could help yo
u, I really do, but my hands are tied. I was a great friend of your aunt’s, Suzanne, but I wouldn’t break a client’s confidence, even for her.”
“How about this?” Jake suggested as Adam locked his office and started off on foot toward the courthouse. “We’ll ask you questions, and if you can’t answer for whatever reason, we’ll drop that line of our questioning.”
“That sounds reasonable enough,” Adam agreed.
“Do you know anything about the finances of Sanderson Mack?” I asked. “Is he in good shape financially, or is he barely getting by?”
“It’s no secret that his business failed late last year,” the attorney told us. “I’ve heard rumors that his loans are coming due soon, but I can’t say for sure one way or the other.”
“Okay, that’s good,” I said, happy that at least Snappy’s son wasn’t the attorney’s client, or he wouldn’t have been able to comment at all.
“I don’t see who it serves that the man is facing some serious financial ramifications for his questionable business practices, but if it makes you happy, fine then.”
“That’s not what she meant,” Jake said, rushing to my defense.
“Take it easy,” Adam said with a smile. “I know what she meant. I suppose it’s true. Sanderson had a motive for killing his father, but only if he inherits his assets, which is yet to be determined at this point.”
“Still, he could have seen it as his only way out if he believed he was getting everything,” I prodded.
“It’s possible,” the attorney conceded.
“Moving on, what do you know about Madison Moore?” I asked.
“She’s trouble, plain and simple. The young lady has always had champagne taste on a beer budget. I know from firsthand experience that she’s overextended on her credit cards, and not just a little, either. I happened to be in court last month waiting for a case to be called when a local business sued her for nonpayment. Evidently her credit history is a long and complicated series of extensions and cash advances that would curl any normal person’s toes.”
Mixed Malice Page 11