by Liliana Hart
Jack got up and brought the coffee pot over to refill my cup, and he just left it on the table between us as he sat back down. “Do you want to talk about Brody?”
“No.” My voice cracked as I spoke, and I had to stop and clear my throat. To remind myself to breathe and take it slowly. “I don’t need to talk about Brody. I just need time to settle back into the way things are around here, without everyone reminding me all the damned time that people are dead because of me.”
“Who’s told you that?”
“They don’t have to say it to my face, I see it in their eyes. It doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking my head.
“It does matter.” Jack reached out and grabbed my hand before I could get up from the table and escape back upstairs. “You won’t believe anyone until you’re ready, but I’ll say it anyway. What Jeremy Mooney did was no more your fault than it was anyone else’s. And you’re not the reason Brody is dead. Fate catches up with all of us sooner or later. He was here at this time and this place for a reason. None of that was in your control.” His grip loosened and his thumb rubbed gently across the inside of my wrist. “But you feel guilty because you lived. And you feel guilty because you didn’t love him as much as you felt you should have. And he died anyway.”
I pulled my hand away and stood up, my breath coming faster as I tried to get control of the emotions festering inside of me. There was guilt, yes. But there was a whole lot of anger. And it was best I kept it leashed for all our sakes.
“I need to grab my stuff,” I said, heading toward the stairs. “I need to go into the funeral home today. When you talk to Reverend Thomas again, let him know the body is ready for release.”
I didn’t have to turn around and look at Jack to feel his disappointment.
***
“I guess this is my welcome home gift,” I said, twenty minutes later as Jack and I stood next to my Suburban. “So much for no one blaming me.”
“Quite honestly, I don’t think this has anything to do with what happened before. This is because of what’s happening right now.”
All four tires were slashed and a few very creative slurs for the female anatomy were spray-painted in lime green along the sides and across the hood. Fortunately, they hadn’t bothered to break the windows or tried to steal the boxes that were becoming more and more burdensome with every passing second. There were five of them in all, no bigger than a foot deep and wide, and I’d sealed the contents with so much packing tape it would take a machete to hack through it all.
“I don’t suppose I could get you to help me take those boxes down to the lab?”
Jack raised his brow in curiosity because I was a fanatic about keeping it uncluttered down there. It was a sterile space with nothing but tools of the trade. It was also the safest place I knew to keep incriminating documents. No ordinary thief could break past those locks.
“You know,” Jack said. “Someday it might be nice if you told me what the hell was going on. How am I supposed to help you if you’re always keeping me in the dark?”
“The dark isn’t so bad,” I told him. “The dark can keep you safe.”
“Fine,” he nodded. “Let’s move boxes.”
Jack’s anger was always slow to build, but once it reached a certain point, an explosion was inevitable. The tension had only grown between us since our earlier conversation, and I was wishing I could start the morning with a do-over. What I was really wishing was that I could stay in bed and pull the covers over my head for the next few hours.
Jack’s movements were controlled and his mouth pressed into a tight line as we transferred the contents of the Suburban down to the basement. I stayed silent and watched him stew, knowing I was the reason for most of his frustration. I just waited him out patiently and watched as he kicked the back tire of the Suburban.
“This is my fault,” he finally said. “You don’t need to deal with something like this so soon after coming back. The killers knew we’d start looking for them as soon as we found out what the symbol branded into Reverend Oglesby was. Cocky bastards. And it doesn’t get much plainer than this that you can’t trust anyone.”
“No more than I ever did,” I said, touching my finger to the paint. “It’s still tacky.”
“I’ll call the tow truck and have them take it in. I want you to keep the doors locked today. Stay inside until I come back for you, and make people use the buzzer.”
“I—”
“Don’t argue with me, Jaye. I’m not in the mood.”
My own anger was perilously close to the surface. I wasn’t going to argue, but I wouldn’t promise either. I had responsibilities to the dead man inside the house, and at some point I needed some personal time as well. I hadn’t expected to jump back into the fray quite so soon, and my nerves were begging to frazzle.
“I’ll have a patrolman do a drive-by every half hour. This group lives by their own rules, and we don’t know how many are involved or who. I’ve got an appointment to talk to the sheriff over in Westmoreland this morning, but I should be back by noon unless I run into complications.”
“I don’t mean to discredit your deductive reasoning,” I said between clenched teeth, “But this incident very well might have been done by someone who just doesn’t want me to come back home. I’m not the only one who blames me for what happened in December. It’s easier to point the finger in my direction than anyone else. It’s in the blood, you know.”
“If anyone wants you out of this town, they’re going to have to go through me first,” Jack said. “And we all have bad blood somewhere in the line. It all comes down to choices—right and wrong—and you’ll never convince me otherwise.”
Jack squeezed my shoulder once and then took out his cell phone to call George Murphy for a tow truck while I let myself in the side door. Jack had already checked the inside to make sure nothing had been tampered with, but I kept my gun close by just in case.
I put on another pot of coffee and jumped as Jack came in.
“George will be here in twenty. I’ve got to take off.”
“Okay then,” I said to the door after it closed behind him. “Still pissed.”
I bolted the door and then went to check my messages. There was one from Floyd Parker at the Gazette, wanting an interview about Reverend Oglesby’s death. Fat chance of that happening, asshole. And there were three other similar messages from reporters in King George Proper, Nottingham and Newcastle. They were all vultures, and I’d as soon as shoot any reporter rather than give them the time of day. Reporters had not been kind to me in the past. Especially Floyd.
And then blessings upon all blessings, there was a lone message from Deborah Perry, the daughter of Mrs. Perry. The same Mrs. Perry who’d been on Reverend Oglesby’s list of patients on his hospital rounds and had passed away the day before. I almost wept with gratitude when I heard she wanted Graves Funeral Home to take care of the body. She’d heard I was back in town just in time to make the decision. The only problem was I didn’t have a vehicle to retrieve the body from the hospital.
I called Deborah back and told her we’d retrieve the body sometime that afternoon, and that she could come in at the same time and handle all the paperwork. Mrs. Perry’s death was going to save me for a few weeks, as morbid as that sounded. She was also going to pay for the damage done to my Suburban.
I heard the tow truck in the driveway, the scrape of the bed being lowered and the rattle of chains. George Murphy stood at the switch, his white t-shirt and jeans already stained with fresh grease. His dark hair was pulled back into a tail at the nape of his neck and his icy blue eyes were covered with Ray-Bans. He worked with a graceful competence despite his size. And his temperament. George was a bastard by most people’s standards, but he was a damned good mechanic. Not to mention he owned the only shop in Bloody Mary, so public relations weren’t really a worry for him.
I gnawed at my lip in indecision. Jack would be back by noon, and I’d be perfectly safe in a public business in the
middle of the day. I grabbed my purse and keys and locked up the delivery door, ignoring his order. Part of it was just stubbornness because he’d used his Lord of the Manor voice to issue the order. The second part was because if I didn’t go with George and wait on one of his men to do the work, I’d be lucky to see the Suburban sometime in the next week.
“Morning, George,” I said, slipping on my sunglasses. “Can I catch a ride with you?”
In all honesty, George Murphy scared the hell out of me. He was a big man with a quick temper and fast fists. He’d been a murder suspect when his wife had turned up dead, but it didn’t look like his attitude had improved any with the declaration of his innocence.
“No room,” he said tersely and hit the lever so the Suburban was lifted to the back of the truck.
I looked at the empty passenger seat and decided I’d have to play hardball. George could sense weakness a mile away, and I had a body to pick up that afternoon. I needed my vehicle.
“I’ll just ride along up front then,” I said, opening the truck door before he could say anything else. “And don’t worry. I’m sure I can find plenty of things to keep me occupied while someone is working on the Suburban. Jack said he’d be by before noon, so it’d be best if it was finished by then.”
I didn’t mind using the threat of Jack when necessary. Jack was the one person George could be intimidated by. George didn’t say anything to acknowledge I’d actually spoken, but he didn’t physically remove me from his truck and toss me across the lawn either, so I figured I was in good shape.
It wasn’t a long drive to Murphy’s Auto Shop, and I thought it best not to mention that George ran two stop signs and almost sideswiped Mrs. Meador on the two-mile trip. Most of the people out and about got out of the way as soon as they saw the tow truck, and I unclenched my fingers from the door handle when I saw George’s satisfied smirk. Nope. I’d been right about my initial observation. His wife’s death hadn’t softened him one bit.
As soon as he backed the tow truck into the driveway of his shop, I had my door open and feet on solid ground before the engine turned off.
“Mornin’, Doc Graves. Heard you was back.” Wormy Mueller spat a stream of tobacco juice and wiped the grease off his hands with a dirty bandana. Wormy didn’t weigh a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, and his age was somewhere between thirty-five and sixty-five. If he had a name other than Wormy, I’d never heard it.
“Back and making an impression, it seems,” I said, pointing to the creative vocabulary on the side of the Suburban.
Wormy wheezed out a laugh and spat another stream of tobacco juice. “So it seems. We’ll get you fixed up. Got some stuff that’ll take the paint right off. Though you might consider keepin’ it how it is. Thataways everyone’ll know when you’re comin’.”
“I’ll consider it.”
A white Cadillac pulled into the far bay, and I froze as I remembered what Vaughn had told us about Reverend Oglesby being run off the road. Wormy went down to greet the middle-aged guy who got out of it, but I didn’t recognize him. A tan passenger van pulled in next to the Cadillac and I lost sight of it.
I rubbed at my arms with unease and tried to maneuver around to get a license plate number from the Cadillac, but the car was already in the bay with another car pulled in behind it, blocking most of the car from my view. It would have looked suspicious for me to go down and start checking things out. Kenny Laubach saw me staring as he made his way to the rack of tools along the wall, and I quickly turned my gaze.
I needed to find out who owned that white Cadillac. Not that there weren’t a million white Cadillac’s out there to begin with, and the chance of that being the same one was probably slim, but I needed to know. I was going to have to ask George, no way around it.
I turned my attention back to my Suburban and watched as George worked the levers and chains with expertise. His muscles strained across his shoulders and arms, and when he lifted his arms to release the lock on the pulley, I saw the tiny mark on his tricep. My hand felt for the Beretta in my pocket and I took a step back before I remembered we were in public.
It wasn’t a large tattoo, but it was a symbol I’d recently become familiar with—a shield and sword design topped by a crown. It matched the brand I’d found on Reverend Oglesby perfectly.
“It’s slow this morning,” George said, making me jump. It was the first words he’d said to me since we’d left the funeral home. “I’ll get started on the tires now. Wormy can deal with the other later. It’ll be $1200 total. Cash or credit.”
The spit had dried up in my mouth and the familiar taste of fear rose like bile in the back of my throat. I was tired of the fear. Tired of looking over my shoulder every time I went outdoors. But I couldn’t seem to help it. And obviously there was that need for fear if men like George Murphy were involved in what we thought they were.
I took my hand from the pocket that held my gun and wiped my sweaty palm on my coat. I needed to stay calm and play it cool. Jack would be here soon. At least he would once I texted him and told him about the tattoo on George’s arm and the white Cadillac.
I think more than a minute went by with us staring at each other in silence, and it wasn’t until I felt the calm start to take control again that I realized what he’d said. “Twelve-hundred dollars?” My voice chose that moment to crack and fade, and I coughed to try and hide it.
“Four new tires and the paint removal. That’s labor intensive.”
“What about four used tires?” I asked.
“I’d have to go over to the dealership in Richmond. They have pre-owned. I could probably have them by Monday. Tuesday if they aren’t backed up. Still run you eight-fifty though.”
I could put the tires on my emergency credit card. Barely. But I’d been using it to live off of while I’d been recovering, and my limit would be maxed out if I did. But Mrs. Perry’s interment would help alleviate that some.
“Fine. New tires it is.”
I waited until George had the Suburban in the bay and then went in the tiny office that also doubled as a waiting room. There was a black and white TV in the corner and wood paneling on the walls. It smelled of grease, sweat and old cigarette smoke. There was a coffee pot plugged in with what looked like a fresh brew, but I couldn’t bring myself to try it.
I texted Jack with a bunch of capital letters and exclamation points, telling him about George and the Cadillac, but I didn’t hear back from him immediately, so I figured he’d found something helpful and couldn’t get away. I cracked my knuckles anxiously and watched George through the grimy window as he replaced my tires.
The auto shop filled up over the next hour, but no one joined me in the little office, and when I walked outside to stretch my legs, I noticed the Cadillac was no longer there. I saw Wormy Mueller looking at me this time, his gaze a little concerned, and I realized I’d been staring at the empty bay where the car had been for longer than was probably normal. I gave him a non-crazy kind of smile and headed back into the office to finish waiting.
Several of the townsmen came and went, sitting outside to talk to the mechanics who weren’t busy. The women who brought their cars by usually walked a block up to the Towne Square to do some shopping while they waited. But there were enough people around that I felt a semblance of safety when George came in an hour later. He wrote out a ticket silently and I gave him my credit card, looking around once more to see a trio of customers outside the station and five of George’s mechanics working on different vehicles.
“I didn’t know you had a tattoo,” I said, watching his face carefully. “I’ve never seen it before. What is it?” I pointed to the little symbol under his sleeve, but George ignored me and swiped the card.
He attached the receipt to a clipboard and slapped it down on the counter for me to sign. I grabbed the pen and went to scrawl my name when George grasped my wrist. The nausea hit me first as my stomach roiled at his touch, and then the blackness started to creep in towards the outer cor
ners of my eyes.
“Don’t touch—” I barely got out before sweat popped out on my skin.
He tightened his grasp and I might as well have had Jeremy Mooney’s fingers around my throat again. I couldn’t get the air in, no matter how hard I tried.
“You ask a lot of questions that don’t need to be answered, J.J. Graves.” His voice was barely a whisper, but I heard him plain enough. I started to struggle, trying to pull my arm away, but George was too strong. “Look where it’s gotten you. You can’t look anyone in the eye, and you flinch every time someone gets close to you. You think people don’t notice that sort of thing? The smell of your fear is so strong I can almost taste it.”
“Take your hand off me.” I had to think about each word as it came out of my tormented throat, but still my voice trembled and broke under the strain.
He didn’t do as I said. “You and your sheriff are going to end up dead if you keep poking your nose into things best left unbothered.”
I realized he was telling me something important, and if I kept my mind focused on the case, the blackness would recede. My lungs relaxed and I took in a big gulp of air. My skin was cold beneath George’s fingers, but I was still standing on my own two feet.
“Who? Give me a name, George,” I said, much calmer than I felt.
“You know who.” His grip tightened more and he shook me a little. I’d have bruises. “They won’t care who you are. And you’ll never see it coming. They have eyes and ears everywhere. And if you try to leave, they’ll taunt you and use you until they lose interest. They will not give up if you stir up this hornet’s nest.”
I opened my mouth to ask something else, but George released me so I stumbled back a few steps. I fought the urge to rub at my wrist.
“I’ll tell Wormy you’re ready for him,” he said. “I don’t want to see you in my shop again. You’re nothing but bad news and trouble.”
“Who was the man in the white Cadillac?” I asked.
George stared at me like I was the Devil himself, and his face shut down so there was nothing but emptiness in those pale, pale eyes.