by Jen Talty
“Wonder what it could be.” Stacey had been racking her brain, not only about what was in the box, but about what would make Mary worry about her own well-being enough to send such a cryptic note to her sister. Stacey didn’t know what the note said, or what evidence had been taken from it. Jared did, and all he had to say was, ‘Let the system work.’ That was even more frustrating because Jared had that serious look on his face. The one that told her she’d better figure this out before something bad happened.
“Looks like we’re about to—”
“Is that a ream of copy paper in that evidence bag?” She stood, trying to get a better look as Gregory stomped toward her.
“Good golly, Sutten, I think you’re right,” Reese said.
“Either a dead end...” Gregory began. He stood about three paces from Stacey, his face still red, but his eyes showing a new sense of concern. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. “…or the box was tampered with.”
She thought about that for a moment, wondering how the killer would know to look there. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I know what I’m doing.” Gregory leaned in. “Watch and learn, Rookie.”
“I’m certainly learning what not to do,” she muttered.
“We will need to subpoena the surveillance camera in the bank and on the sidewalk,” Gregory said.
Stacey’s mind was going a mile a minute. She hated that Gregory knew more than she did. “Tell me something. Was the letter from Mary to her sister authenticated? Prints? What, exactly, did it say?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.” Gregory looked around as a few people passed by. “But something tells me you know. I bet when we get the video footage we see you, or maybe that boyfriend of yours, enter this—”
“Or maybe you’ll see Bill enter the bank,” Stacey said, tired of Gregory’s insinuations. “He is still missing, and don’t you think that’s something of a coincidence? I mean, a woman murdered, her boyfriend missing. Pretty classic.”
“We are aware of that, and looking into it. However, none of his credit cards have been used. No action on his bank accounts since he went missing.”
That was new information, but it wouldn’t help Doug, and Gregory knew that, which, she suspected, was why he so freely tossed it out there. But something else was troubling Gregory, and she couldn’t put a finger on it.
“Anything else besides that paper?” Reese asked.
“No,” Gregory said quickly. “We’re getting the time stamp of when the box was accessed in the last month.” He looked at Stacey. His eyes narrowed. “I look forward to sending incriminating evidence to your boss. I am going to get your bad—”
“Don’t you—”
Reese interrupted her. “If someone did remove evidence from the box, replacing it with a ream of copy paper, they’d have to have the key first. Second, they’d have to match the signature cards, and most banks have photo ID requirements.”
“There are ways around that, and you know it,” Gregory said. “Especially for a crooked cop.” Gregory turned on his heels then disappeared down the hallway toward the bank manager’s office.
“I’m going to kick his fucking ass,” Stacey muttered.
“I hope I’m around to watch that,” Reese said. “I can’t believe the Sheriff is letting this detective go around half-cocked. He’s a loose cannon.”
“It’s not an election year, I guess.” Stacey sat back down, knowing they were going to hang tight in the bank until Gregory left, or it was time for her lunch. “Has Jared told you anything he hasn’t told me?”
“No. He’s being very close-lipped, for Jared, which tells me he’s worried, but I don’t know what he’s worried about more. That Doug could be guilty…”
“He’s not guilty.” She snapped her head around to glare at Reese, who had the audacity to smile back. She knew he didn’t mean it literally, but she still didn’t like the words tumbling out of his mouth so easily.
“…or that Gregory is going to twist your involvement and bring Internal down on you faster than you can say ‘What the frack?’”
“That makes me feel so much better,” she said. “Okay. So, Mary’s afraid of something happening to her. She sends her sister the key, which is weird, but… she has two keys, so she can still access the box whenever she wants.”
“What do we know about her sister?”
“Nothing other than that they were strangers. Olivia had already been out of the house when Mary was born. They had no relationship to speak of. No family drama. No sisterly fights or anything like that.”
“Are we sure of that?”
“Well, no. We only have what Doug has said, which he got from Mary. But she lives on the other side of the country…” Stacey knew that didn’t matter. She just needed to say things out loud sometimes. “I think that’s your next job. Find out more about Olivia and her family.”
“Done,” Reese said. “Tell me your thoughts on Bill.”
“Sadly, I think he’s most likely dead. If he’d taken money—”
“He could have a secret stash somewhere.”
“So, let’s say Bill has the second key, and they have a ton of money in that box. He kills Mary, then takes the money and runs. But where did the money come from, and why would he kill her and take off…?” She thought about that for a minute. “Maybe he took it before the murder, whatever it is, and the killer wants it back, whatever it is, and when the murderer couldn’t beat it out of Mary and Bill, he killed them, and is now going bat-shit crazy looking for it, and that could explain why Bill’s house was trashed.”
“There is one other angle here,” Reese said. “Someone wanted Mary dead, Bill out of the way, and your family destroyed.”
“Yeah, I’ve had thought that, too, though it’s a bit of a stretch.” Stacey leaned back in the chair, tucking one foot under her butt.
“This entire case seems to be a stretch.”
Chapter 12
ONCE AGAIN, STACEY found herself in her father’s office with Reese, Luke, and an easel. The difference now was that Jillian, Doug, and Jim had joined the party. Jillian sat behind her father’s desk in his big leather chair. Doug and her dad had just finished putting a new lock on the slider, as well as protecting the cracked glass. Her father’s office wasn’t small, but it was a bit cramped with this number of people. They’d decided to meet in here because the easel was already set up.
Doug leaned against the doorjamb. He ran his hand through his shoulder-length hair, but it fell right back to where it had been before. It sometimes got in the way when he was on-site, doing manual labor, but then he’d just put a hat on. She preferred him without the baseball cap. While Sutten & Tanner Construction had an entire crew of employees and contract workers, her father, and now Doug, always made sure they visited every site daily, getting their hands dirty along with everyone else.
Her father sat on the edge of his desk while Jillian sat in his chair. Reese stood at the ready in front of the easel. Luke leaned against the other side of the desk, and as usual, Stacey grabbed a chair, turned it, and then straddled it.
“Who wants to go first?” Jillian asked.
“I will,” Luke said. “I spoke with some of Bill’s family. They seem relatively close, and they all seemed to like Mary. Thought he’d finally found the right girl.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Stacey muttered. She felt her father give her an evil glare for opening her mouth.
“Turns out,” Luke continued, “he’s had pretty bad taste in women. A few turned out to be obsessive and borderline stalkers. According to Bill’s sister, Mary was the first woman he brought around that wasn’t clingy and dependent on him for everything.”
“She definitely wasn’t clingy,” Doug said.
“Interesting, because at lunch today,” Stacey said. “Taylor told me it was rumored, before she started working there, that Bill was having another office romance that didn’t end well. It was a one-night stand. I guess it was so ba
d she ended up leaving or being fired. Taylor wasn’t sure.”
“Do we have the name of this woman?” Jillian asked.
“No.” Stacey checked her phone. “But Taylor was going to ask around and text me as soon as she found out. I was hoping for tonight, but she said she was having breakfast tomorrow with a few of the other paralegals.”
“How long ago was this one-night stand that ended badly?” Luke asked.
“Taylor has only been there for about a year and a half, so sometime before that.” Stacey pulled the hair tie off her wrist then piled her hair in a messy bun on the top of her head.
“What about the client Bill couldn’t prevent from going to prison?” Jillian asked.
“He’s an angry fella,” Luke said. “Basically said he wished he could take credit for Bill’s disappearance. He actually looked happy about the situation.”
“You think he could have done it?” Reese asked. He stood at the easel, marker in hand, flipping the pages, writing things down. Back when he’d been a Trooper, he’d always fight with Jared about who got the pen. He always lost, so he was in his glory now.
Luke shrugged. “I suppose. I’m checking out his alibi. Also, I put a bug in someone’s ear about checking Bill and Mary’s phone record to see if he called. I should hear more on that tomorrow.”
Stacey eyed Doug. He smiled weakly at her. Never fun to be the topic of a conversation like this.
“What else?” Jillian twisted the chair left and right, legs crossed, arms on the armrests.
“The only other thing I have,” Stacey said, “is that Taylor did elaborate on the heated discussions between Mary and Bill.”
“How heated?” Luke asked.
“Taylor said they’d stand by the car with hushed voices, but obviously upset over something. If anyone walked by, they’d stop talking. When they were talking, they’d constantly be looking over their shoulders.”
“So, not necessarily a lover’s quarrel, then.” Reese stepped back from the easel. “We’re missing something.”
“We’re missing a lot of things,” Luke said. “I’ll keep digging and see what I can find out about the surveillance videos and other evidence the Sheriff’s office has collected.”
“They are being very tight-lipped about all of that,” Reese said. “Makes me nervous that they have a stronger case than they are letting on.”
“Or Gregory is just a moron,” Stacey added, eyeing Doug. His brown eyes heavy with worry.
“Stacey,” Jillian said, “did you hear anything back about the interviews with the SCUBA team?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll check into that tomorrow,” Luke said.
“I’m going to be checking into Mary’s sister,” Reese said, putting the pen down on the easel.
“Why?” Doug asked.
“Because she’s an unknown, other than what you told us, which isn’t very much,” Reese said. “Covering all the bases.”
“Olivia texted me today,” Doug said. “The funeral is Tuesday. No calling hours. No memorial service. Just a gravesite funeral.”
“That’s kind of cold,” Luke said. “They were sisters.”
“Who never spoke,” Doug added. “Olivia wants to try to keep as much of the press away as possible.”
“I get that.” Luke shifted positions. “And it makes Olivia look like a bitch, which could be good since the whole point is to take the heat off of you. Is there a chance Olivia could have harmed her sister. Had a grudge that everyone thought was water under the bridge, at least for Mary.”
“Nothing that I know.” Doug picked at his fingernails. “I didn’t even know she had a sister until we invited her to the quickie wedding. Olivia responded with a simple no, and then we heard nothing after that until Mary lost the baby. She sent a card.”
“That is cold,” Luke said.
“Should have met her sist—” Stacey zipped her mouth. Not the time or the place.
“I take it the three of you are going to the funeral together,” Jillian said.
“Haven’t talked about it,” Doug said, “but it would make the most sense.”
“Patty and I will tag along,” Reese said. “Patty knew her well enough that she’d want to go.”
“Do we have anything else?” Stacey asked.
“Just that something rattled Gregory at the bank,” Reese said. “Not sure what, but I sensed something else happened in that bank that we don’t know about.”
“Besides he’s a total douchebag—”
“Stacey Sutten,” Jim barked. “Do not use that word in my presence.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s an incompetent ass,” she muttered.
“Let’s keep digging,” Jillian said.
“The cops seem to be at a stand-still right now,” Luke said. “Let’s use that time to our advantage.”
“I just want this over with,” her father said as he pulled open his top right desk drawer. “Stacey, what the hell is that thing doing my desk? You know how I feel about guns. I understand you have to—”
Stacey jumped to her feet then peered into the drawer. “That’s not mine, Daddy.”
“Clear the room,” Reese said. “Don’t touch anything else in here. I’ll call Jared.”
* * *
“Why would someone break in here and plant a gun?” Doug lay on his back staring at the ceiling in his bedroom at the far end of the hallway. He remembered when Jim first moved him into the house and showed him around. Jim let him choose from the three unused bedrooms. He’d never had his own bedroom, unless you counted living in a house that was being renovated.
Doug had chosen the one farthest from everyone, with only a bed and a dresser. He’d lived like that for about six months until Jim brought him home a drafting table, desk, and another dresser. It was then that Doug felt like he belonged somewhere. And it was that moment where all of Doug’s defenses had been torn down.
“I mean, if they want to frame me,” he added, “why plant a gun when Mary was strangled to death?” He’d listened to Stacey, Reese, and the two Troopers Jared had sent over to collect the gun, discussing various scenarios. They all made sense, yet none of them made sense.
Stacey sat at his desk, her back to him, on her laptop. “We’ve been over this. Probably how Bill was murdered.”
“We don’t even know if he’s dead. You’ve said a few times, it’s possible he’s the killer and he’s still alive.”
“Possible, but not probable.” Stacey swiveled the chair around. Her long blond hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, strands falling out of the sides. Her eyes were tired and bloodshot. “With this gun, it just makes sense that we’re being set up.”
“None of this makes sense.”
“What I don’t get is how on earth Gregory got lead on this case. He’s narrowly focused, and from what we’ve gathered so far, not following up on other leads.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Doug said. “It doesn’t seem like they have any leads at all, other than me.”
“My gut says you’re being set up.”
“That seems a bit far-fetched,” he said. “Why would someone do that?”
“I don’t know, maybe one of Mary’s friends? A co-worker? You were married to her. You have to have some insight on her social life.”
“Shortly after she lost the baby, we stopped having a real relationship. She stayed out of my way. I stayed out of hers.”
“How did you live like that for over two years?”
“When she started sleeping with Bill, it actually made it easier. Before the affair, we’d fight as soon as she walked in the door, but once the affair started, she’d stay in Albany for weeks, not coming home. It was better than screaming at each other just so we could sleep in separate beds.”
“I don’t know what is more pathetic. That or the fact I didn’t see Todd for over six months or so.” Stacey checked her phone before plugging it into her laptop. She wore one of Doug’s old T-shi
rts and a pair of her cotton shorts, invisible because his shirt was so long on her petite frame. “Remember the weekend I went to surprise Todd?”
“Yep.” Doug propped himself up on his pillows. “Well, I remember you coming home from that weekend. I’ve never seen you so mad.” Pissed was a better description. So much so, that he felt the need to follow her to the Mason Jug that night. Lucky for her, he did. Not only was she going to have to call a cab to get home had he not showed up, but she would have gotten into a good old-fashioned barroom brawl with Mary. That wouldn’t have ended well for either of them.
“I was mad at myself,” she said. “I went there because I decided it was do or die. It was right after the shit-storm with Reese’s biological father.”
“Same time I moved back in here.” It was impossible not to see the parallels of their past relationships. He was also coming to accept the idea that he’d had feelings for Stacey before he even started dating Mary. Mary was just a distraction because his brain wasn’t ready for what his heart desired.
She nodded. “I was pretty shaken up. I mean, we train to use our weapons, but actually having to pull the trigger when another human is on the other end. Well, the aftermath of that takes its toll.”
“You wouldn’t talk about it much.” He scooted over, patting the bed. “I wanted to be there for you, but you brushed it off.”
“No, I didn’t. I worked it out with the department shrink. Not the kind of shit you bring home.” She went to close the bedroom door.
“Leave it open.”
“Why?” She stood there, one hand on the door.
“Jim’s still awake, and I think we should leave it open until he goes to bed.”
She laughed. “Yeah, because we’re sixteen and horny.”
“Something like that.”
She shrugged, as she climbed onto the king-sized bed with no footboard, resting her head on his shoulder, one leg over his, her arm around his middle. He stayed on his back, one had behind his head, the other around her as he ran his fingers over the soft, silky skin on her arms. “Finish your story about that weekend.”