The Morelville Mysteries Collection

by Anne Hagan

  An hour later, just as I was coming out of la, la land, the phone on the single nightstand rang. I panicked. No one should know I’m here... I stared at the phone as it rang and rang. After about a dozen rings, the caller seemed to give up.

  I scooted to the edge of the bed and sat up. I heard noise from outside the window. Collecting my crutches, I rose and worked my way around the tiny eating table and chair under the window to peek out the slatted blinds from the very edge. There were two men in the lot looking at the few cars that were there and going room to room, trying to peek in the windows.

  Terrified, I checked the bolt on the door then retrieved my pistol from the nightstand where I’d set it before I laid down. Un-holstering it, I placed it on the table and then took the chair beside it leaving the gun in easy reach.

  There was a chip in a brittle plastic slat of the blind right about my eye level. Through it, I could see a little of the lot outside. The two men were both now standing at a door two doors down from mine. They appeared to be talking to someone inside but they were all that I could see from my limited vantage point.

  The phone started ringing again, making me about jump through my skin. I turned and looked toward it taking my eyes off of the lot and the men at the other door for a second or two. By the time I looked back, only one of the men was visible from my vantage point. He was standing outside the now closed door of the same room smoking a cigarette.

  Ignoring the ringing phone, I focused my mind on what could be going on outside. They call these places no-tell motels for a reason Dana! The way I figured it, there was either a prostitute a couple of doors away plying her trade in the oldest profession or there was a drug deal going down. Carrying my train of thought out even further, I figured the ringing phone had something to do with prior occupants of what was now my room that did in here whatever was currently going on a couple of doors away.

  I remained vigilant in my chair beside the window. Looking out on the motel’s parking lot, I continued to scan the vicinity through the tiny chip in the blind. My backup pistol rested heavy in my lap.

  After a time, I lifted my left leg and shifted my weight on the cheap pleather seat. The leg injury aches. Like a dull thud, it pounds away. I raised two fingers to rub my temples. The long day was taking its toll and my head was beginning to pound again.

  The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly shivered making me confident that someone was outside again waiting and watching; maybe for me, maybe for whoever occupies the room two doors down. Those tiny hairs have never led me astray before. I believe in the things that they tell me and so I sighed heavily and glanced outside again.

  A pickup truck, all too familiar to me, rounded the narrow lane from the entrance of the motel lot and pulled into an empty spot close to my room. I cursed low in my throat. This wasn’t what I wanted.

  I put my pistol on the table under the window and I stood up on shaky legs but I didn’t bother with my crutches. I stared at the knob willing myself to open the door.

  Mel’s approach was heavy, her service boots loud on the concrete sidewalk. I could hear the jingle of her truck keys.

  She stopped in front of my door. I held my breath. She waited. I waited. I’m normally the patient one but it was too much for me. I reached my hand forward and gripped the knob but, at first, I didn’t twist it. I closed my eyes and just saw Mel in my mind’s eye.

  Her sudden knock, although quiet and hesitant, sounded like a bomb going off within the silence of the room.

  “Dana, open up. We need to talk.” Her voice was commanding and yet, at the same time, I found it soothing. It was her Sheriff’s voice; the one that makes anyone listening feel safe like she’ll protect you. I felt the same.

  I twisted the knob and pulled the door open. She stepped inside, took the door from me and shut it behind her. Pulling the catch, she flicked the lock and then turned and looked me over.

  She could see the pain in my face, “It hurts, doesn’t it?” She nodded her head at my leg.

  I chose not to answer her. There wasn’t any need, she already knew the truth. “How did you find me?”

  ”This is the only place to stay anywhere close to the phone you called from. I tried to call your room a couple of times.”

  “Mel...”

  “You went to Chicago, didn’t you?”

  Her quick interruption spoke to her worry. She didn’t want to hear any excuses, any apologies. She wanted to hear the details, the specifics, everything I was willing to share and then even what I wasn’t. I shook my head at her and limped over to the edge of the bed. I sat down hard, bouncing a bit on the overly soft mattress. She moved to take my earlier seat next to the window.

  “You can either tell me or remain silent. Either way, I’m not leaving here until I know you’re safe and right now that means I need to know what you know.”

  I groaned and dropped my head. I studied the floor. The carpet was short and ratty – ugly. My gaze shifted to my leg. Under my jeans, I could visualize the scar of the bullet’s path. I could see the puckered skin and the pale, thick tissue that marred my skin. It was an ugly image too.

  “Ugly,” I repeated out loud.

  Mel tilted her head, her brow furrowed in question, but she remained silent as a good Sheriff usually does. I watched her from under my lids. Smiling softly, a quick and subtle lift of my lips, I decided to trust in her.

  Shaking my head to clear my previous comment, I raised it and held her stare.

  “The Patrol really thinks I killed Terri, Mel. I have no alibi. I was on the scene. They have my crutch with my fingerprints on it. I had no motive to kill her but that doesn’t seem to matter to them. They didn’t even bother to pull my phone records or my medical records before getting a warrant for my arrest. I went to Chicago to try and figure out who really killed her and why,” I confessed all in a rush, hastily running through the information she needed.

  “Did you do it?”

  I hated that question but I could understand why she asked it. “No. You know I didn’t. I was framed.” I kept my answer short this time. It was all she needed to know.

  She wasn’t satisfied. “What did you find in Chicago?”

  “Not what I hoped; nothing worth killing over.” I looked her in the eye. I could see that even that answer wasn’t enough for her.

  I sighed and then continued, “I went to the casino in Joliet and learned there that the card scam amounted to a small molehill of nothing. Terri got a suspended sentence for her part in it and Aggie got a month in jail for receiving stolen property. No one else was caught or did any time.”

  “Aggie had motive then.”

  “Yes, she did but she didn’t have opportunity. When she was convicted of the theft charges, she was in violation of the terms of a previous parole order. She wasn’t released at the end of the theft sentence. She was remanded right over for return to prison.”

  Mel nodded. “So who framed you?”

  “I don’t know for sure but I’m starting to suspect someone.” That is an understatement. A big understatement.

  “Troutman?”

  My head shot up, “What did you say?”

  “I suspect Noland Troutman framed you or he is behind framing you. Isn’t that what you suspect?”

  “I think so...I don’t know. I got a piece of information from my lawyer today that involved him but I can’t make that equate to being framed.” I told her about him having my phone records pulled.

  “I’m privy to quite a bit more that seems to point to him and knowing that just adds to the pile.”

  “But why frame me? To win an election? I just don’t get it...”

  Mel shrugged. “Baby, I don’t know the answer to that yet. I have some things to tell you about what I do know so far, but I want to start off by telling you that I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one that put you in a bad position and then ran from it without telling you...”

  She i
nterrupted me again, “Dana stop, listen. I should have trusted you and I didn’t. Someone fed me a pack of lies and I believed the worst of you. Now I know different and I feel horrible about what I thought. Things that I know now should exonerate you but we have a little work ahead of us. Well, actually, I have a little work ahead of me and the DA has a whole lot of work ahead of him. You need to lay low for a bit while we work it out. For now, I just hope you can forgive me?

  “That depends; can you forgive me?”

  Mel stood and took a step toward the bed where I was still leaning. She leaned in close, covering the gap between our bodies with an extended arm. She rested her hand on my shoulder. Her other hand cupped my chin and lifted my face.

  I look up at her. I could feel wetness dot the corners of my eyes, “I didn’t want to drag you into all of this Mel.”

  “Uh, huh.” She grins that grin I’ve come to love. “It didn’t work. I’m in.” She took a finger and gently wiped at my unfallen tears.

  I reached up and wrapped my arms over her shoulders. I pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to her cheeks. “I’m glad you found me, glad you’re here.” Kissing her lips, I began gently, but I deepened the pressure as she moaned.

  She moved around to sit on the bed and then pulled me down beside her. Her hands fell to my shoulders and she pushed me back onto the cheap bedspread.

  “You’re really not an easy woman to find, but I wasn’t going to let you just leave me.”

  “I wasn’t leaving...I could never leave you.” It’s the truth. More than anything else I’ve said tonight, this is truest thing I have ever spoken.

  I kissed her again, pulling her bottom lip between my teeth and nibbling it a little brusquely. She groaned and shoved me harder into the mattress. Lying back, knees bent over the edge of the bed, I spread my legs. I wrapped my good leg around her back and pulled her closer to me. I’ve missed her.

  Her fingers stroked through my hair, combing the long strands. My scalp tingled with the sensation and I whimpered a little.

  “Can I stay with you tonight?” She growled into my ear, tickling the whorls of it. She licked the lobe and I swear I saw stars.

  “Yes...” I breathed more than spoke.

  Roaming across my shirt, her palm found my breast and lifted its weight hefting its curve. She massaged the plump flesh, her fingers tugging on my already peaked nipple. I nipped at the column of her throat. Finding her pulse point, I suckled at the flutter of her heartbeat, marking her skin with my desire. She writhed atop me, grinding her clothed mound against mine. I bucked and tilted my pelvis, rubbing my clit on the seam of my jeans.

  Her mouth covered my breast and she tongued me through the thin cotton. The wet cloth clung tightly and erotically to my nipple with each stretch of the fabric across my chest. She had me moaning senselessly into the walls of room. Each breath was a whimper of need. Mel sighed at each noise.

  “I need you naked.”

  “Yes,” I agreed and we pulled apart and stood rushing to undress. Our clothes got tossed about the room carelessly. Her gun belt with her service weapon and her cuffs joined my gun already on the table followed by her duty phone and her backup weapon.

  Since I had much less on, I was the first to finish and sit back down, sliding the covers back and half slithering beneath them. The air conditioning had the room a little cool in the early summer heat. I hadn’t thought to reset it when the sun started to go down.

  Mel quickly slipped into the bed beside me.

  Curling into my side, she stroked down my chest and over my stomach. I stretched like a cat beneath her touch. A purr built within me, but I stifled it.

  She shifted up the bed, and sat against the headboard. Plumping the pillows behind her back, she motioned to her lap. “Come and sit.” I cocked my head at her. This was new.

  I struggled to get into position, my left leg stiff. She reached around me and caressed my thigh. She circled the healing scar gently and suddenly the pain fled away. She was better than any painkiller.

  Using my arms, I braced my weight there and on my other leg as I crawled onto her lap. She spread her legs under me, settling my ass on the curve of her pelvis. It was a unique sensation, like being cradled almost. She wrapped her arms around my middle and rocked us side to side. I placed my palms on her thighs and begin to stroke slowly up and down her toned and muscular legs.

  She lifted my hair away over my shoulder and kisses the back of my neck, sucking and nipping and she marks me as I marked her. One hand caressed up and she once again plied my nipples with her fingers. Her own nipples were pebbled, pressing and rubbing across my back in a delicate sort of torture.

  I reached back and ran one hand through her slightly spikey hair. I yanked her head up and twisted my neck to seek her lips for a kiss. Her deep brown eyes locked with mine in that moment and her hand left my breast to find my clit. My other hand found hers.

  Reclining on her, with the slow rock of our bodies, the heat and sweat of our skin warming the room, I closed my eyes and felt my way behind me and between us to her clit. She moaned behind me, her breath tickling me. I pressed tenderly on her sensitive flesh and rolled her clit between my forefingers just as she likes it.

  Between my own legs, she lifted my hood and took my clit in her between her fingers. She pinched and I whimpered. The bite of pain was enough to have me on the verge of coming.

  She caressed me lower, slipping her forefinger along my slit. I was wet and ready for her. She thrust a digit past my folds as deep as she could inside my passage. She added another, then a third. She stretched me wide and moved quickly, plunging deep inside my core. Then she curved her fingers and found my G-spot to tap on as I pressed the pad of my thumb to her swollen clit and tapped it, too, in an opposite rhythm. She bounced me in her lap, spasming, in her own lust.

  My own fingers stroked her folds, not yet inside of her, but driving her mad with the need to be filled. I grabbed her wrist with my own hand and I forced her to take me harder. Her fingers filled me completely. I came, my inner walls tightening on her digits. The sensation of her fingers thrust so deeply through my core was a magic I couldn’t believe.

  Our bodies quaked in the afterglow. My damp skin cooled quickly and my aftershocks became shivers. Mel hugged me tight to her chest as she scooted us back flat on the mattress. She spooned me, resting her chin in the crook of my shoulder. I pulled the bedspread back up over us.

  As sleep overtook us both, she whispered into my ear, “It will be fine.”

  With her by my side, I knew it would.

  Chapter 27 – Troutman is a Douche

  Thursday morning, June 26th, 2014

  Less than 6 weeks until the election...

  Mel ran out and got us breakfast while I showered. I wanted out of this fleabag motel but she was having none of it. She said we had more to talk about when she returned. I could only imagine what she knew that I wasn’t yet privy to.

  “A paid witness? You’re serious?”

  Mel nodded from her perch at the corner of the bed, “At least one and possibly more. I’m pretty sure Kelly Rice set up the witness that has since recanted. His description of her is spot on but he doesn’t have any other info about her. He says he also talked to a male via phone but he has no information about him.”

  “But, it could have been Troutman?”

  “It’s possible. The DA is waiting for the guy to cough up the number he called. I’ve tried to take myself out of that.”

  “Good plan. What about Rice though? Why not put her in a line up and have this so-called witness ID her?”

  “We’d do that except that we can’t find her. She’s not hanging around much in Muskingum County these days since her indictment. Tyler Whitesell put out a statewide APB on her. OSHP will find her.

  I rolled my eyes and flopped back in the faux leather chair as I about chocked on my breakfast sandwich, “Now I know you’re not being serious, Mel! The State Patrol can’t seem to find their way out of a paper b
ag.”

  “Hold off now! Think about this; for their purposes, it’s like you said, you were at the scene and so was one of the weapons used to stop Terri. Throw in witnesses that come forward and tell Nichols stuff that all points to you – that he then tells to me – and, well you can see how they would find you as the most plausible suspect. After hearing what he heard, I believed it too.”

  “Have none of you people ever heard the saying, “trust but verify?”

  Mel had the curtesy to look sheepish and apologetic. I wasn’t appeased, “Just what exactly did he tell you about me?”

  She relayed to me what he’d told her while I just sat shaking my head. When she finished I said, “Next time, ask. Mel, I couldn’t have been sleeping my way ‘up the ranks’ in the first company I was working for all the while living with Terri. I was married to Nate at the time I held that job and still married to him when I took the second one. I didn’t come to terms with my sexuality and we didn’t divorce until I’d been with the second company nearly a year. Lt. Nichols could have easily verified my marital status and living arrangements at that time if he had bothered to check.”

  “Secondly, I left the first security job on good terms. They’re still in business and they’ll be more than happy to tell you that or tell anyone else who wants to know. I was fired from the second job because of Terri – that would be my motive to kill her, if I had one – and not because I quit after she forced me to. I had an exemplary record with them before that and they’ll also back me up on that. It was their recommendation of my skills that got me the job with Customs.”

  I was shaking with rage and frustration. “Someone learned just enough about me to make up some serious crap and then prayed that either no one would check, or, or...”

  “Or that it wouldn’t come out until after the election,” Mel finished, for me. “I’m so sorry Dana...so sorry. I should never have doubted you. I don’t know what else to say.”