by Gen Griffin
“What do you mean?”
“I handcuffed to the roll bars because I was tired and annoyed that he wouldn't just tell me the truth about what the person chasing him was after. I didn't think he was dangerous or that he would run. I was just pissed and wanted to make his life uncomfortable for a few hours.”
“Legally, you did the right thing by keeping him in restraints.”
“He got hurt because my personal vehicle was rolled off the road and he couldn't get loose of it,” Sully said. “I was thrown clear of the Jeep. I wound up in the water about ten feet away. Kerry got pinned underneath the damn thing.” He was scowling at the road ahead of them.
“Sully, you're being too hard on yourself. A lot of people die from being thrown from vehicles. Would you still be beating yourself up if he'd been thrown out of the Jeep, broken his neck and died?”
Sully paused as if the thought hadn't occurred to him before. “I don't know.”
Addison figured the answer spoke for itself. They rode in silence for several minutes.
“I never did get an ID on the guy who ran me off the road,” Sully said. “And I don't think we're going to find any remains by the time you get around to trying to hunt down that gator.”
Addison made a face at Sully. “Let's just figure he probably left his prints in the car. I'm missing my sister's wedding reception right now. I'd like to try to change clothes and get back to the party before the night is over. Just be happy that you solved the case.”
“I didn't solve the case,” Sully pointed out.
“You don't think the man who died in the swamp today was responsible for murdering that woman whose head was in Kerry's trunk?” Addison asked.
“I do,” Sully admitted. “But I still don't know why he did it, or what jewelry he was looking for. Kerry wouldn't tell me and now, well, it could be too late for him to open up to me.”
“Take a little advice from me,” Addison said. “Sometimes it doesn't matter why the person did what they did. It just matters that you stopped the bad guy before anyone else got hurt. In this case, he got eaten by a gator. Think of it as nature cleaning up its own mess.”
Sully shook his head at Addison. “Tate warned me about this town. He said that nothing every plays out the way you think it should. Nothing. I didn't believe him until I stood on the side of the swamp and straight up watched an alligator eat my fleeing suspect. That doesn't happen in other towns.”
Addy couldn't help laughing. “It's alright. Just think of how much money that gator saved the tax payers in court costs and attorneys fees.”
Sully did a double take and then started laughing. “Man, you are fucked up. Is that how you cope with working in law enforcement in this county?”
“Maybe,” Addison admitted. “That and I've got good friends.”
“I could use a few more friends around here,” Sully said unexpectedly. “Tate's a great brother, but he's kind of a stick in the mud when it comes to going out and doing things.”
“We'll have to hang out sometime,” Addison told him. “You like seafood and tequila?”
“Yes on both counts.”
“I know a good bar. Cheap liquor. Lots of pretty women with loose morals.”
“Sounds like just the kind of night I need after this last week,” Sully said.
Chapter 61
“I was pretty mad at my brother for skipping out on our reception, but I think I'm okay with it now that I know why he left and where he went.” Gracie was sitting cross-legged on the bed in their hotel room, wearing a silky red corset and matching thong panties.
Cal grinned at her as he finished saying goodbye to Addison and hung up his cell phone. “Overall, I think today was a success.”
“Because we're married?” She flicked her long blonde hair over her shoulder and gave him her best come-hither look.
“Exactly.” Cal leaned down to kiss her and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “It was crazy crowded and we kind of ran out of food, but overall I think everyone had a good time.”
“Me too. Did you ever find out what was going on between Ian and Katie?” Gracie asked. “She looked upset but when I had two seconds to try to talk to her, she promised me that everything was just fine.”
“David said they got into a bit of an argument but that he handled it.” Cal made a face as he sat down beside her on the bed.
“In other words, David threatened Ian into behaving himself?”
“Probably.”
“Oh well. They've been fighting for a while. I'm sure whatever stupid thing he did will blow over before we even get back from our honeymoon.”
“I'm looking forward to our honeymoon,” Cal said. “Just you, me and a cruise ship for the next two weeks. I'm turning off my phone and I don't plan on turning it back on until we get back from the Bahamas.” He held the device up and pressed the power button so that she could watch it power off.
“What about the store?” Gracie asked.
“The store was in business for 32 years before I was born. Surely it can make it another two weeks without me.”
Gracie grinned at him. “What about Kerry? Addy said he might not make it.”
Cal considered for a minute and then shrugged. “Kerry's not my problem. I don't wish death on the man, but I won't be crying over him either. Possum Creek was a much more peaceful place to live before Kerry Longwood moved back to town. I could use some peace and quiet.”
“Is that what we get now?” Gracie asked. “Peace and quiet?”
Cal snorted. “Have we ever had peace and quiet?”
“No, but that's okay. I think I'd get bored.” She pulled him down onto the bed and lost herself in the taste of his kisses.
Epilogue
“Nice umbrella.”
Addison glanced up from the file he was reading to see David sitting down on the opposite side of the bar table from him on the first Thursday night after the wedding. He flicked the small, jaunty blue paper umbrella that was adorning the top of Addison's pina colada.
“Thanks,” Addison wasn't rising to the bait.
“Little girly for you, isn't it?” David pushed, looking amused. “Aren't you worried your man card might be revoked?”
“I don't need to drink cocktails that taste like rubbing alcohol to prove I'm a man.” Addison pushed the file to the side and picked up a tortilla chip from the basket in the center of the table. He dunked it in salsa before biting into it. “I'm just trying to enjoy my meal. It's been a long week.”
David grimaced as he reached for the chips. “Sorry. Yeah. Forgot about that. How's your Mom?”
Addison played with the chip in his hand for a minute. “She failed her mental evaluation. The doctors in Silver City feel that she could be a danger to both herself and the baby. They're keeping her hospitalized so that she can be supervised at all times. Dad won't go see her.”
“Jeez. I'm sorry,” David bit the inside of his cheek unhappily. “Does Gracie know yet?”
“If she does, she didn't hear it from me. I want her to enjoy her honeymoon without having to worry about Mom or our soon-to-arrive new sibling. She'll be getting the bad news soon enough. All these years we've just thought Jane May was a terrible parent. Now it turns out she might have a legitimate medical condition. Who knew?”
David ignored that last part. “Have y'all figured out what's going to happen to the baby?”
“Nope. Tommy, that's Mom's boyfriend, or I guess I should say ex-boyfriend now, called me yesterday and told me that he's been talking to his attorney.”
“Is that good news or bad news?”
“Neither. The attorney told him that he won't be able to be listed on the baby's birth certificate as her legal father because Mom is still married to Dad. He said that his attorney told him that he would likely have to take my parents to court to even get a DNA test done.”
“What if your Dad agrees to let him be the father?” David asked.
“Doesn't matter. He'd still have to go to court and get a DNA tes
t. Besides, Dad's never going to cooperate. He says he won't have the entire county knowing Mom cheated on him. He wants to put the baby up for adoption and sweep this whole embarrassing mess under the proverbial rug.”
“He wants to put the baby up for adoption but he won't let her biological father have her?” David scratched his head. “That makes zero sense.”
“I agree. If you want to know the truth, I don't think Tommy really wants the baby. He's been having a very hard time since he learned that every single thing Mom had ever told him about herself was a lie. I get the impression that he's washing his hands of her.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don't know.” Addison took a sip of his fruity cocktail. “I didn't ask you to come here to talk to me about my Mom.”
“I'd kind of assumed you just wanted to hang out,” David said. “Am I wrong?”
Addison finally cracked a smile. He pushed the folder he had been reading across the table. “I wanted to hang out, but we also needed to talk about what happened with Kerry.”
“He's still in the hospital, isn't he?”
Addison nodded. “He's in a coma. The doctors don't know if he's going to wake up or not. If he does, they think he'll be paralyzed. He broke his neck when Sully's Jeep rolled.”
“I'm not surprised. It took me six hours to get that Jeep back out of the creek. Gnarly wreck. I can't believe Sully managed to roll it back onto its wheels all by himself.”
“He's a beast. He works out all the time.”
“True.” David opened the file and began flipping through the pages. “What is all this?”
“A photocopy of Sully's file on the murder of Beverly Jones, his investigation into Kerry and everything he's been able to find out about the guy who got gator gobbled Saturday afternoon in Black Lung Bayou.”
“Okay, why do I care?” David flagged down the waitress and ordered himself a jack and coke and a cheeseburger.
“I know you told me not to look in to the story behind the jewelry you found in Trish's box spring, but-.”
“But you did it anyway?” David finished for him.
Addy nodded. He didn't bother telling David that he was bored and he'd had a lot of spare time on his hands since Katie had basically cut him out of her life. He still had no idea why she was mad at him or what he had done wrong. “Want to know what I found out?”
“Not really, but I bet you're going to tell me anyways.” David took another chip.
“The first record I was able to find where the descriptions of the items stolen matched the items we found was from a bank robbery in 1973.” Addison reached for a second file. This one was the one he'd created for his own investigation into the stolen gems. He opened the file to a laminated newspaper clipping and laid it out for David to see. The ring in the picture was the same one Curtis had stolen from Trish and that had later turned up in Beverly Jones's mouth.
“Seventy three?” David scanned through the clipping. “That's a long time ago.”
Addison ignored him. “The jewelry you found was part of a much larger collection that had belonged to some Hollywood actress. It was supposed to be on loan to a museum, but the museum didn't have a very good security systems and so their insurance company insisted that the jewelry be stored somewhere more secure.”
“The bank,” David guessed.
“Right. Only someone broke into the bank and stole everything out of pretty much every safe deposit box they had and then emptied the main vault.”
“Nice. Sounds a little high class for Grover and Ricky. They were more of a snatch and grab act.”
“I actually don't know how Grover and Ricky were involved with the the original theft. The files I pulled from the original cold case said that the detectives who investigated at the time thought it was an inside job. They suspected the bank's assistant manager of committing the robbery, but they could never find any real evidence against him. His prints were on the safe deposit boxes and the vault, but that was to be expected since he worked there.”
David shrugged. “Are you working your way around to making a point or is this just one big dead end?”
“A teller who worked at the bank was killed during the robbery,” Addison said. “Her husband said she'd forgotten her wallet on her desk at work. His story was that she'd gone back for it after hours because she needed to write a check to pay their rent and her checkbook was in her wallet. The original investigators theorized that she'd surprised the robbers.”
David paled. “They murdered someone?”
“Raped and murdered.” Addison pulled the coroner's report out of his file and showed it to David. “It's pretty gory. I don't suggest reading it before dinner or you'll lose your appetite.”
“Fuck.” The good mood that David had been in when he'd come into the Shrimp Bar was rapidly fading. “A decades old murder would explain why Grover and Ricky never unloaded the jewelry they stole.”
Addison nodded. “It gets better.”
“Better?” David questioned his word choice.
“Worse?” Addison revised. “The case went cold in the seventies. The jewelry never surfaced and the murder was never solved. The assistant bank manager was never convicted, but he wasn't cleared either. He waited six months or so and then took a new job with a different bank.”
“None of that surprises me at all. If Ricky and Grover killed a woman, it makes sense that they would hang on to the jewelry. So long as the jewelry was never found, no one would have any real reason to suspect them. Robbing banks wasn't their usual gig.” David looked contemplative as the waitress brought his drink.
“Right. I've looked all through various stolen property records and police seizures and none of the jewelry that was reported stolen in that robbery has ever been recovered. Not one single piece of it.”
“Until it all came spilling out of Trish's box spring?” David guessed.
“Until approximately half of it came spilling out of Trish's box spring,” Addison corrected. “As you already know, that's where things start getting pretty messy.”
David pursed his lips thoughtfully as he took a sip of his drink. “Trish and I were fairly certain that the jewelry was stolen when we found it. I didn't buy the story Grover tried to feed me about where he had gotten it. It didn't make any sense at the time. Trish put the jewelry in her bedroom closet in a shoe box for safe keeping until we decided how we wanted to handle it.” David ran his tongue across his front teeth. “Lucky for me, Curtis broke into our house and re-stole the stolen jewelry from us before I had to make any decisions.”
“Curtis and Kerry stole the jewelry,” Addison clarified. “It was Kerry's name that was on the pawn ticket we found in his house.”
“Right. I remember when y'all found that. It was proof that Kerry had been willingly working with Curtis. He wasn't a hostage like everyone had thought.”
Addison halfway smiled. He pulled the pawn ticket out of his personal file and then re-opened the file he'd swiped from Sully's desk. “Notice the name of the pawn broker who bought your stolen jewelry from Kerry?”
David nodded. Addison moved to the new file and pulled out the DNA report from Sully's investigation.
“See the name of the woman whose head was found in Kerry's Audi?”
David did a double take. “The pawn broker who bought the stolen jewelry from Kerry is the woman who got murdered?”
Addison nodded. “My guess is she entered a description of the items she'd purchased into one of the bigger databases for stolen items and it caught someone's attention.”
“And that someone came looking for the rest of the jewelry?” David guessed.
“That someone wasn't just any someone,” Addison said. He pulled another piece of paper out of Sully's file. “The man who was eaten by the alligator after ramming Sully's Jeep into the creek turns out to be a fellow by the name of Alexander Lyle Percy.”
“Okay.”
“Sully doesn't grasp the significance of who Alexander Percy
actually was because he doesn't know what I do about the jewelry or the original case,” Addy explained. “Alexander Lyle Percy is the grandson of Lyle Williams Percy.”
“Who is Lyle Williams Percy?”
“He was the assistant bank manager of the bank the jewelry was originally stolen from.” Addison couldn't help smiling as he delivered his ace in the hole.
“Oh shit,” David muttered. “The assistant bank manager must have been guilty after all.”
“But how would Grover and Ricky have wound up with the jewelry if the bank manager was the real thief?”
“Easy,” David said. His eyes were glittering with interest. “They were probably in on the original heist. They didn't mind hiring themselves out to other criminals so long as they got a cut of the profit. I'll bet you anything that they were with the assistant bank manager during the robbery and they cut and ran with the jewelry when it went bad.”
“And when the jewelry resurfaced, he sent his grandson to steal it back?” Addison asked.
“Who knows?” David said with a shrug. “Could be that he sent his grandson to steal the jewelry. Could be that he told his grandson about the original crime and, when the jewelry resurfaced at the pawn shop, the grandson decided to reclaim the jewelry himself. If it was worth a million in seventy-three then it's worth a hell of a lot more now.”
“You could be right,” Addison agreed.
“Have you told Sully about any of this?”
“No. He thinks his case ended in a baffling and mysterious dead end. He's frustrated with it. I told him that sometimes catching the bad guy is enough and we don't always have to have all the answers.” Addison tried not to look as guilty as he felt about misleading Sully.
“How did you get his files?”
“I borrowed them off of his desk while he was off duty,” Addison admitted. “And I photocopied them.”
“Stealthy.” David looked thoughtful as his burger arrived. “So now what? Kerry is lying in a hospital bed in a coma, the jewelry is still just as missing as it was before all of this and Alexander Percy is dead.”
“Aren't you kind of curious what your dear old Dad did with half a million dollars in stolen jewelry?” Addison asked.