by Gen Griffin
“You haven't told her yet?” Addison looked questioningly at David.
“Told me what?” Trish turned to him curiously.
“No, I haven't had the chance. We didn't get home until three, remember?” David eyeballed Addison with annoyance. “She was asleep. I didn't want to wake her up.” He put one arm around Trish's shoulder and pulled her into his chest. “Last night was one of those nights.”
Trish cuddled into him. “One of those nights as in y'all went out, had a few drinks and had a great time or one of those nights as in the alligator farm had another break out and someone got eaten?”
“The second one.” Makinsley was making herself at home in the kitchen. She'd pulled eggs, sausage, milk and several fresh green peppers out onto the counter. She'd found the cutting board and was dicing a tomato and an onion into very small, tidy pieces.
“Really?” Trish frowned at David. “I thought y'all were having fun. What happened to having a few beers at Leon's, shooting pool and then coming home?”
“We were having fun. We had some drinks and then Addison-,” David scowled in Kerry's direction, “-Addison realized he had forgotten his favorite pen at the sheriff's department. He decided he needed to go get it so we went with him.”
“His favorite pen?” Trish raised one eyebrow skeptically as Makinsley began pouring the contents of the bowl into a frying pan. It was becoming obvious that she was making omelets.
“That's our story and we're sticking to it,” Addison joked. He walked over to the dining room table and sat down in one of the high backed wooden chairs. He gave Trish an appreciative and slightly lecherous smile. She looked damned good in that nightie. Not that he wanted to be with her, he thought involuntarily as yesterday's conversation with Katie came rushing back into the forefront of his mind. Shit. How had he fucked that one up so badly? Why had he even tried when he'd known there were no possible good outcomes for admitting the truth?
“Of course it is.” Trish caught Addison looking at her nightie and tugged the skimpy skirt down. The gesture didn't do much good. It was just too short and had never been meant for covering anything.
Makinsley finished the omelet and set it on a plate in front of Addy. He took a tentative bite. Much to his surprise, it was good. Not that he was going to argue about a home-cooked meal that he hadn't had to cook. He smiled his appreciation and absently wondered why he couldn't force himself to fall in love with Mak? Being in love, or even deeply in-like, with Mak would certainly have made his life a hell of a lot simpler.
“They broke into the jail because they wanted to scare me,” Kerry said. He stayed standing just inside the doorway. It was obvious he didn't want to be inside the house.
“No, we didn't,” David corrected. He quickly gave Trish a re-cap of the night's events. He ended with the explanation about how Kerry was now officially in Addison's custody until he could be cleared of the murder charges.
“Oh jeez,” Trish said as he finished. “Y'alls night sounds even worse than ours. Maybe.”
“Last night sucked.” Makinsley flipped another two omelets onto plates and set them on the table. She looked over at David and Trish. “Are y'all going to eat or not?”
“Sure. Thanks.” Trish headed to the table with David on her heels.
“No onions on mine,” Kerry said.
“Does this look like a Waffle House to you?” Mak asked as she finished a fourth omelet and put it on Addison's plate. He'd already finished the first one. “You eat what I cook or you don't eat. I'm willing to bet Trisha won't cook for you.”
“You're right.” Trish took a tentative bite of her own omelet and then smiled. “This is really good.”
“Thanks,” Makinsley said.
“I can't eat onions. I'm allergic,” Kerry said.
Mak put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You're pushing your luck, Kerry. I'm hungry and I'd like to eat my own breakfast. I really didn't cook breakfast because I wanted to feed you. I wanted to feed me and Addy. Trish and David get breakfast because they own the kitchen and its their food. It would be rude, even for me, to cook myself breakfast in their kitchen and not fix them something too. You, however, don't have any redeeming qualities.”
“You don't have to cook for him,” Addison told her. “Sit down and eat your omelet.” He stood up and passed Makinsley his now empty plate. She put her own food on it and went to the table, choosing to sit beside Trish, who looked a little startled.
“There's cereal in the cupboard,” David said as he sat down in front of his own plate on Trish's other side. “Try not to spill the milk.”
Addison reached into the cupboard and pulled out a box of stale cheerios that he knew had been in the house for quite awhile. He set the box in front the seat he'd just left at the table. “Here you go.”
“Do I get a bowl?” Kerry asked as he headed for the chair. He had a difficult time pulling it out far enough so that he could sit down.
Addison pulled one out of the cupboard and plunked it down on the table next to the cereal box. “Help yourself.”
Kerry held out his handcuffed wrists. “Addy, set me loose. I can't eat like this.”
“I don't know about setting you loose. You could be a dangerous murderer.” Addison was looking at David as he spoke, not Kerry.
David grinned. “Oh, I'm definitely scared of him. He has to be in restraints if he's going to be in my house.”
“Sorry Kerry. It's David's house. I have to abide by his wishes.” Addison shrugged as he pretended to be apologetic.
“Y'all are such assholes,” Kerry grumbled. He had managed to pick up the cereal box and was shaking it over the bowl. Nothing came out because the bag was held shut with a plastic clip. Everyone watched as Kerry struggled to undo the clip. He finally got the clip loose and turned the box upside down again. Cereal covered the table and scattered onto the floor.
“You are so not getting any milk,” David said as his cell phone started ringing.
Chapter 29
Sullivan Briggs had a distinctive five carat diamond ring sitting on his desk. The jeweler he had taken it to first thing that morning had appraised it, conservatively, as being worth somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars. It was a very expensive rock.
A very expensive rock that no one was missing. Sully had entered the ring's description into a dozen different lost and stolen items databases in the last two hours. He'd gotten no hits on it.
“Hey Sully. You've got a fax.” Katie McIntyre walked into the main room of the sheriff's station with several pieces of paper in her hand. “Gosh, look at this mess.” She stared at the back of the room. A blue tarp had been draped across the doorway between the office area and the jail. The crime scene techs had left sometime in the night and they'd left a massive mess behind. “I can't believe someone broke into the jail.”
“Me neither.” Sully reached out to take the paper from Katie. “Has this place ever been vandalized before?” He watched her reaction carefully. Katie had grown up in Callahan County. She knew more about the residents and the area than Sully did and she was normally pretty willing to share that knowledge.
“Not that I know of,” Katie said with a shudder. “I keep thinking about what happened to Meg. It could have been me. I'm here alone all the time.”
“You carry a gun?” Sully asked her.
“No,” she said.
“You know how to shoot?”
“Yes. I just don't like carrying concealed. Maybe this sounds silly, but I don't want to live with that kind of fear in my life. I feel like carrying a gun with me everywhere also means that I should be afraid everywhere. I don't want to spend my days feeling like a victim waiting to happen.” Katie blushed slightly. “You probably think that's stupid.”
“You're not stupid,” Sully said quickly. The truth was that she was one of the smartest girls he'd met in a long time. He had yet to figure out how she had managed to wind up married to the bumbling screw up of a deputy he'd
been temporarily hired to replace. The sheriff and Addison were both personally attached to Ian because he was family. They'd made it clear that Sully would only be a member of the Callahan County Sheriff's Department until the state officially cleared Ian for duty. Sully had serious doubts that the state investigator was going to be as lenient on Ian as Frank Chasson and the Callahan County district attorney had been. Murder, even accidental murder, was a pretty serious offense for a sworn officer of the law.
“Why would anyone break into the jail?” Katie asked him after a slight pause. “Don't people normally do the opposite?”
“Is Possum Creek ever normal?” Sully pursed his lips at the damaged wall. The door had been broken down and someone had set a bomb against the back wall. Blood was everywhere, but oddly enough, no one could figure out whose blood it was. Or whose arm had been left in the cell with Kerry. Sully was hoping against all logic that the perp had accidentally blown his own arm off while setting off the bomb. A severe injury would have made him much easier to track down, especially if he needed hospital care.
“No, I guess not.” Katie half-way smiled at him. “Do you need anything else from me before I go back up front?”
“You don't happen to know where Kerry is, do you?”
“You haven't heard?” She put her hands on her hips. She looked like she was trying not to laugh.
“All I know is that he was being held in the jail when it was broken into. I forgot to ask the sheriff what he had done with him and I don't want to bother him in the middle of his doctor's appointments this morning if I don't have to. I'm kind of assuming he's in solitary at the Baker County Jail, but they didn't have any record of anyone being brought up from Callahan County last night when I called.”
“The sheriff was afraid they'd put him in general population and someone would stab him to death with an overly pointy toothbrush,” Katie explained.
“That's probably a valid concern,” Sully acknowledged. “He has more than a few enemies.”
“All Kerry has is enemies. I had the seventy-three year old wife of the Baptist church's choir director come in yesterday and tell me to tell Kerry that if he trampled over her rose garden one more time, she'd string him up like a fish and gut him.” Katie titled her head to the side thoughtfully. “It took me a forty-five minutes to figure out that he's been creeping through the bushes and peering into the windows of the church spying on people.”
“Why would Kerry be spying on the folks at church?” Sully was baffled.
“He thinks the youth pastor is selling drugs to the youth,” Katie explained.
“Shit. Is it a legitimate investigation?” Sullivan didn't even want to think about the possible implications of a drug ring running out of a church.
“No. The pills he saw were aspirin. One of the teenagers had a headache. Addison cleared the confusion up weeks ago, but Kerry doesn't trust Addison. He refuses to let it drop.”
“Why won't Frank just fire that twerp already?” Sully asked the question in his thoughts out loud without meaning to.
Katie was silent for a moment and then shrugged. “Good question. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Sully scratched his head and then frowned at the damaged back wall of the jail. He was willing to bet every dime in his bank account that the break-in at the Callahan County jail was tied to the head he'd found in the trunk of Kerry's car the previous day. “So tell me, what did our esteemed sheriff do with our wayward deputy?”
Katie sighed. “He gave him to Addy to babysit.”
Sully stopped dead in his tracks. “You're not serious.”
“I couldn't make it up if I tried.” Katie held her hands up in exasperation. “Against all good sense, Frank signed Kerry into Addison's custody until he can either be cleared of the crimes or formally charged.”
“Addison and Kerry hate one another,” Sully pointed out. “Furthermore, I wouldn't trust Addy Malone to keep a house plant alive.”
“Yes. I know.” Katie licked her glossy pink lips. “Mooney's started up a betting pool for whether or not Kerry survives.”
Sully couldn't help laughing. The entire idea was too ridiculous for him not to. “Have you placed your bet?”
“Maybe,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “But I'll never tell you who I bet on.” With that she turned on her heel and hurried off towards the front office.
It was only after she'd gone back to her desk that Sully remembered to look at the faxed papers that she'd brought him. It had come from Lora. The DNA sample she'd taken from the head he'd found in Kerry's car matched a sample that was on file with the state missing person's database. Beverly Jones, a 54 year old resident of Rockdale, had been missing for a month and a half. Lora had sent the missing persons report the family had filed to him along with the DNA results. At the bottom of the report Lora had scrawled the words “Call me ASAP”.
Sully picked up his desk phone and dialed her number from memory.
Chapter 30
“Want to tell me what the heck you're doing here when you're supposed to be helping Gracie?”
Cal looked up from the bank account statements that he'd spread across his desk. David was leaning in the doorway of the office, surveying the mess of papers with his hooded green eyes.
“Depends. Why are you here?” Cal countered.
“Gracie called me. She's pissed at you, by the way.” David walked into the room and sat down in the worn out chair that had been sitting across from the desk since they had been kids. He picked up one of the papers and scanned it casually. “Feeling a burning desire to review months old bank statements the day before your wedding?”
Cal cracked his knuckles against the palm of his hand and then picked up the entire inventory ledger and shoved it across the desk to David. “Have a look at the highlighted bits. Tell me what you see.”
David pulled the hefty book in front of him and stared down at the pages. “Something not right?”
“You tell me.” Cal took the printouts he'd made on his laptop and laid them next to the official inventory sheets. “I don't want to bias you.”
David's brow furrowed as he quickly scanned the papers. “It would help if I knew what I'm supposed to be looking for.”
“Just go over the records. You know how to keep the books. You've done it just as long as I have.”
The two of them sat in total silence as David began mechanically checking every line of the inventory against the banking statements and handwritten invoices. Slowly, paper by paper, he began making notes in the margin of Cal's printouts with a pen he'd picked out of the mason jar on the desk. After twenty minutes of comparing, David let out a low whistle and looked up at Cal.
“You've got a thief,” he said.
“You see it too?” Cal had been afraid that he was going crazy.
“Not at first,” David admitted. “But I know how you think, so I started matching the dates you had highlighted with the invoices and then comparing them to the dates you hadn't highlighted and the invoices for those days.”
“And what did you see?”
“Looks to me like someone has been stealing money.”
Cal nodded, feeling unreasonably relieved to have his worst suspicions confirmed. “I think so too.”
“Who's doing it?”
“I'm not quite sure yet,” Cal admitted with a scowl. “I have a real strong suspicion that I know who it is.”
“April Lynne,” David said without missing a beat.
Cal nodded.
“You know that Trish and Gracie think April Lynne is the one who is trying to sabotage y'alls wedding, right?” David asked.
“I know. I heard Gracie when she told me this morning. She doesn't think I listen, but I do. I just didn't want to say anything that I couldn't prove. Gracie's got a hot temper, especially when it comes to the wedding. I didn't want to tell her what I suspected until I was absolutely sure of what I'm looking at.”
“And what exactly is it that we're looking at?” Dav
id asked.
“Roughly $8,000 that has gone missing over the last three months.”
“Ouch,” David said. “You haven't told Pappy yet, have you?”
“No. Once again-.”
“Not until you have proof,” David finished the sentence for him.
“I don't like April Lynne, but she is family. She is Pappy's granddaughter just the same as I'm his grandson. I can't accuse her of stealing money, or trying to ruin my wedding, unless I have absolutely infallible proof that she's the one who did it.”
“Which is why you've blown Gracie off two days in a row to work on paperwork?” David was pretty quick on the uptake, as usual.
Cal nodded, glad that someone finally understood.
“I wanted to tell Gracie, but if she found out that I suspected April Lynne of stealing from the store, she'd get Addy to arrest her just for pleasure of seeing her hauled off to jail.”
“I'm not going lie, seeing your cousin arrested would be pretty enjoyable,” David pointed out. “April Lynne is a bitch from hell.”
“I'm not arguing,” Cal said. “But I also know that April Lynne is smart. I only realized what she'd done to the books by sheer luck. I thought I'd screwed up one of the invoices last week and so I went back to fix my own mistake and, in the process of doing that, I came across her brilliant little scam.”
“Which is what, exactly?” David asked.
“Mostly skimming money off of credit card transactions. It looks to me like she's using the company credit cards for her own purchases or to get cash back, and then issuing company checks to fix the balances before anyone notices that the invoices don't match the statements.” Cal pointed to several of the papers that David was already looking through.
“Damn. Everything balances out at the end of the day and she's a couple hundred bucks richer. That's almost slick.” David frowned as he studied the numbers that Cal had outlined for him.
“It's slick,” Cal said. “Especially since its damn hard to trace back to her. I had to go all the way back through the last three months work schedules before I could be certain that she's the one making the charges. She's also been forging Pappy's name on the checks instead of signing her own.” Cal laid out several photocopies of the checks that he'd received back from the bank. “I got Jo Beth to pull these for me yesterday. That's not Pappy's signature.”