by BJ Bourg
Brandy grunted. “I should’ve known he would run right back to her. I mean, that’s the only reason he would keep her around anyway—he wanted some insurance in case something happened between us.” She glanced at Susan. “You know how men are; they can’t stand to be alone. It’s as though they’re not a real man if they don’t have a girl hanging on their arm.”
“That’s not been my experience,” Susan said, trying to sound polite, “but I understand the type.”
“Yeah, he only stayed with her long enough to make sure she’d broken it off with her new man, and then he came running back home to me. That’s when I laid down the law.”
I sat there studying Brandy Lewis as she complained about men in general and Mitch specifically. When she was done talking, she reached into the front of her shirt and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bra. After lighting one, she took a long drag and then blew out the smoke, groaning as she did so.
“What became of Connie?” I asked. “When Mitch ran back to you, what did she do?”
“I heard she’s back with that guy we saw her with at the restaurant, but I’m not sure.” She shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe he’s the one who killed Mitch because he was worried about Connie getting back with him.”
That was definitely a thought.
“Brandy, when Mitch didn’t come home at his regular time,” I began slowly, “did you suspect he went back to Connie?”
Brandy had been lifting the cigarette to her lips again, but she paused ever so slightly—her hand frozen in midair—before taking another drag from it. “I mean, when I woke up at four-thirty and he wasn’t here, sure, the thought did cross my mind. I called his cell and then the bar, but he didn’t answer. ”
“Did you go out to the bar to see if he was there?”
She shook her head. “He closes at two, so why would I go to the bar at that time to look for him? Besides, it was raining heavy and I wasn’t about to get on the road in that weather.”
“So, you deny going out looking for him?” I pressed.
She fixed me with her blue eyes. “Yes, I deny going out looking for him.”
“Well, what did you think might’ve happened to him?”
She shrugged. “I just figured he got in a wreck or something because of the weather, and that got me worried.”
“Is that when you called the police department?”
She nodded and explained she called the police department first so we could send someone to make sure he wasn’t at work. “If your officers didn’t find him at the bar, I was going to call the sheriff’s office next to check all the roads between here and there for any signs of a wreck.” She frowned. “Before I could call them, a deputy was knocking on my door to tell me Mitch had been found dead.”
I glanced at Susan and raised an eyebrow to see if she had any questions. She nodded eagerly and took over.
“So, Brandy, you told us how all of this impacted Connie, but what about you?”
“What do you mean?” Brandy tried to sound casual, but I could tell by the tightening around her eyes that Susan had hit a nerve.
“You know what I mean. Connie’s his wife and you’re just the other woman.”
“I’m not just the other woman,” Brandy retorted. “He loved me.”
“Right…that’s why he kept running back to Connie.” Susan leaned closer to Brandy. “You’re a smart woman. You knew he was taking advantage of you. You knew he was using you. You’re too smart not to have known.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brandy was fuming now. “He was going to divorce her eventually; he just needed time. And that’s why she killed him—because she knew he was leaving her for good.”
“How do we know you didn’t kill him because you were tired of him running back to Connie?”
“Like I said earlier, I laid down the law. I told Mitch if he ever went back to Connie again I would burn his clothes and kick him out for good. I told him I’d change all the locks on my doors and call the law if he ever tried to come back. It was right then that I realized he did love me, because he started sobbing like a newborn. I’d never seen him cry, but on that night, I didn’t think he would stop. He held me all night and told me he’d die if I left him. Hell, he was still crying when I woke up the next morning.”
Brandy paused and stared at the tip of her cigarette for a long moment. She finally crushed it against the arm of the swing and turned to Susan. “You know how you can know I didn’t kill him?”
“How?” Susan asked.
“Because I won. In the end, I got the man and she got nothing, so she took him away from me the only way she knew how—by killing him.”
“Where can we find Connie?” I asked when Susan was done.
“In Mitch’s house on Coconut Lane.”
I knew Coconut Lane well. It was four blocks south of Washington Avenue, and it was where Dexter Boudreaux and his wife used to live before they were killed.
After questioning Brandy a bit more, I asked if I could swab her hands for gunshot residue.
“What will that do?” she asked.
“It’ll let me know if you fired a gun recently, was around someone who fired a gun recently, or handled a firearm that has been fired recently.”
She chuckled despite being upset over Mitch’s murder. “You can swab whatever you want—I didn’t shoot my boyfriend. I know I shouldn’t be saying this to the law, but if Connie would’ve been found dead, then even I would’ve suspected me.”
I nodded in Susan’s direction and she began making small talk with Brandy while I retrieved my crime scene box. When I returned, I set about swabbing her hands and packaging the kit for submittal to the crime lab. “If you didn’t fire a gun recently,” I explained, wondering if she might’ve cleaned off her hands, “then you should have nothing to worry about. However, if the results show you’ve got gunshot residue on your hands, you’ll have some explaining to do.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is y’all finding Connie before she kills again.” While Brandy might have been thinking about Connie being the killer for a while, saying it out loud made her shudder. “What’ll happen if she comes after me? I mean, if she killed the man she supposedly loves, what’s to stop her from trying to kill the person who took him away from her?”
I shot a thumb toward her driveway. “I’ll make a request with the sheriff’s office to have a car stationed outside your house. In the meantime, lock your doors and—”
Susan lifted a hand to stop me. “Or, she could stay at the shelter.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but it would be a good way to keep her safe if she was in danger, and also a way to keep her close in case she was the killer. Of course, if she was the one who killed Mitch, she wouldn’t be in fear and she wouldn’t want to spend much time around us. “That’s actually a good idea,” I said. “After all, the shelter’s empty at the moment.”
“What shelter?”
I studied Brandy’s expression as Susan explained. When Susan was finished, Brandy shoved her pack of cigarettes back in her bra and jumped to her feet. “Can I come now? At least until I know it’s safe to stay here?”
I scowled. Either she was a good actress, or she had nothing to do with Mitch’s murder.
CHAPTER 10
It was past three and I still hadn’t eaten. Brandy had followed Susan and me to town, where Susan retrieved her Tahoe and led Brandy to the shelter, and then I headed straight for Connie’s house. I had just turned down the street when my cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen. It was a number I didn’t recognize, so I ignored the call and parked my Tahoe on the shoulder of the road two houses away from Connie’s place.
After receiving radio confirmation that Takecia was in position behind the Taylor home, I slipped out of my SUV and walked along the town sidewalk until it ended at the edge of the Taylor property. While it was still cool out, the sun was shining bright and it had dried up the roads and made for a more pleasant day. I strode acro
ss the neatly cropped lawn while carefully eyeing the structures on the property, which took up the entire corner of the block.
A white pickup truck was parked under a detached carport that was pressed up against the western end of the property line. A workshop shared a roof with the carport and it appeared empty. I continued across the wide driveway that separated the carport from the house and passed two windows and a narrow door before making it to a winding sidewalk. The sidewalk curved around the yard and then ducked between two giant palm trees before reaching a bricked patio that served as the entrance to the house. Two white rocking chairs were positioned on opposite sides of the heavy brown door. I shoved one out of the way so I didn’t have to stand directly in front of the door as I knocked.
My fist echoed loudly under the patio and I waited. The house was built on a slab, so there was no chance of hearing footsteps approaching, but I listened for the slightest movements from inside. There were none.
I got on the radio and asked Takecia if there was movement out back.
“Negative,” she said. “It’s quiet as a church service back here.”
I wanted to ask her to clarify what type of church she meant, because my mom grew up in a church that believed in raising the roof when they worshipped. I frowned at the memories of being forced to attend church services. As a boy, I’d preferred spending my time tromping around the swamps hunting and fishing, but my mom didn’t appreciate my aspirations. When my dad was home from work, he would spend a lot of his time exploring the swamps with me and he even allowed me to skip church a few times, which drew a bit of ire from my mom. When I was about fifteen, I finally quit church altogether and that really caused some tension between my mom and me.
My relationship with Mom had improved when I’d moved out of the house at seventeen, but I joined the La Mort Police Department a few months north of my eighteenth birthday and suddenly found myself too busy to visit. After losing Michele and Abigail, I’d gone a long time without calling or visiting and it broke her heart. Dad was always working, so she had suffered through the empty-nest syndrome all alone. I had reconnected with my parents a little over two years ago and had intended to stay in touch, but life and my new job as police chief had ruined those plans—
“Anything?” Takecia asked after a few minutes.
“No.” I had noticed two garage doors on the western side of the house, so I walked over and banged on one of them. There were four windows high on each door, but they had been covered from the inside with aluminum foil and I couldn’t see inside. After five minutes of waiting, I called Takecia and asked her to meet me down the street near my Tahoe.
When she pulled up in her fully marked Dodge Charger, I leaned on the door frame. She reached up to push her dark sunglasses up to her forehead and the muscles in her slender arms rippled as she did so. I’d seen her spar with Susan and I knew she could take care of herself.
“It is the week before the Thanksgiving holiday,” Takecia said in her Jamaican accent, “so the lady might be out spending poor Mitch’s life insurance money.”
She was probably right. Although it would be a while before Connie could collect the money, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone had gone out and run up credit card debt in anticipation of a settlement or winning the lottery or some other kind of payout.
“Well, I guess I’ll head to the office and get Jack Billiot ready for transport,” I said. “He’s been holed up long enough.”
“I fed him lunch around noon,” Takecia said. “When I offered him a cola, he turned it down and requested a beer instead.”
“Did you give him one?” I asked jokingly.
“Of course.” She smiled, exposing a row of perfect teeth. “I wouldn’t want to violate his civil rights.”
After saying goodbye to Takecia, I drove to the police department and finished the paperwork on Jack’s arrest. I then called the sheriff’s office requesting a prison transport. While waiting for them to arrive, I set about packaging all of the evidence I’d recovered and then secured them in lockers. Once that was done and Jack had been picked up, I traveled to the coroner’s office—grabbing a burger from a drive-thru on the way—and attended the autopsy of my victim.
Doctor Louise Wong was in a hurry, so she didn’t waste any time cutting Mitch Taylor open. Her assistant had x-rayed the body earlier in the day and marked the general area where the projectile was supposed to be located, so it was easy for Doctor Wong to fish out the bullet that killed the bar owner.
Once she’d pulled it out of a narrow wound channel with a pair of thin forceps, she dropped it into a white envelope and handed it to me. “What size caliber do you think it is?” she asked.
“Nine millimeter,” I said without looking at it.
Doctor Wong raised an eyebrow. “You sound sure of yourself.”
“I found a nine shell casing at the scene,” I explained. “If it’s not a nine, then I’m in trouble.”
She sealed the envelope and handed it to me. “Well, I hope you’re right then.”
Once she had made her recorded notes, she pointed to a paper bag on the floor in the corner. “Those are his personal effects: clothes, wallet, belt, wristwatch, and some cash money—lots of it, so it couldn’t have been a robbery.”
I nodded my head. “You’re right about that.”
I drove to the police department and secured the bullet in an evidence locker. First thing Monday morning, I was heading to La Mort to turn in all of my evidence, but right now I had two more interviews to conduct.
CHAPTER 11
One hour later…
After going to her house and speaking with her husband, I found Joyce Reynolds standing outside of the Corner Pub reading the official notice that I’d posted declaring the place closed until further notice. I stood in the shadows of the building behind her and shoved my hands in my pockets. The sun was going down and, while the news called for fifty-three degrees, it felt much cooler where we were. People were walking up and down the sidewalk all around us and she didn’t seem to notice them—or me.
“Mrs. Reynolds, are you okay?” I asked softly.
She jerked, turned to face me, looking me up and down. Her gaze began at my black boots and moved upward until she was looking me in the eyes. “What…I don’t understand. What happened here?”
I shot a thumb down the street. “Why don’t you come to the station with me so we can talk?”
She tugged at the ends of her short jean skirt, trying to make it longer. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was flat-iron straight and I could smell her perfume from where I stood. She was too dressed up to know what had happened.
“Hadn’t you heard?” I asked.
Her mouth opened and then clamped shut. After two more attempts, she said she’d heard something on the news about a robbery in town. “But they didn’t mention a name or what business and I would’ve never thought it was Mitch or that it was here.”
When Joyce’s husband told me she was heading to work the nightshift, I figured she didn’t know. “Why don’t you follow me to the police station?” I said. “We can talk in private and I’ll be able to answer some of your questions.”
Joyce wrapped her arms in front of her chest and nodded, walking briskly to her car, which was parked on the shoulder of the street a few spots behind mine. I watched in my side-view mirror until she started it and pulled on her seatbelt, and then started down the street. Within seconds, I turned into the parking lot in front of the police department and parked in the visitor lot so she could follow me. I then led her upstairs and into my office.
After getting the preliminaries out of the way, I asked if she knew of anyone who wanted Mitch dead.
“No, he was a good guy. Everyone loved him.” Her face was ashen. “If someone could murder Mitch, then not a one of us is safe.”
“What about customers? Did he have to kick anyone out, cut them off, or break up any fights?”
“Every now and then he has to cut someone o
ff, but they never get mad.” She shook her head to emphasize her point. “They always show up the next night and thank him for looking out. All of our regulars are like family and the tourists who come by love the place. We’ve got a solid five-star rating online—seventy-eight perfect reviews. No one has ever said a bad thing about the place.”
I wondered how much she knew about his personal life, and knew there was only one way to find out. “What do you know about the situation with his wife?”
“Well, I know he keeps going back and forth between Connie and Brandy. If you ask me, the biggest mistake he ever made was leaving Connie. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. She was with him when he was nothing, you know? She helped make him who he is today.” She stopped and frowned. “But Brandy, she came into it thinking he had money. If you ask me, that’s the only reason she’s with him. He does okay, but he’s not rich, and she’s got him blowing through his money. She’s bad news. I don’t think she wanted to hurt him while they were together, but if he ever left her, I could see her as the vengeful type who might try to do something to him or Connie.”
Great, I thought, it’s possible both women wanted him dead.
“Please understand,” I began, “I have to ask these next questions as a matter of formality, but I don’t think you did anything wrong.” When she nodded her understanding, I continued. “So, where were you last night?”
She fidgeted in her chair. “Is…um, is this confidential?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I leaned in a little, wondering what had made her so nervous. Did she know something about the murder? I didn’t peg her as the killing type, but what if she knew who did it? It would take about a week for the evidence to be processed, so to get a break now would be golden. “Everything you say here will stay here unless it’s needed in court, and you’ll know about it long before we have to reveal it.”