The Morelville Mysteries Collection

by Anne Hagan

  I looked across the street at the building we’d had that conversation in. Turning to Janet, who still had one hand on Barb, I plucked the shotgun from her other hand and told her, “Take her truck and get her home.”

  Janet nodded.

  “I’m not leaving!” Barb cried out.

  “We’ve got this,” I hissed back at her, “but it’s not safe for you to be here right now. I can’t do what I need to do if I’m worried about you.” I stared into the eyes of my former enemy turned friend and waited for her response.

  Finally, she relented. She shook herself loose of the grip Treadway still had on one arm and turned toward her truck.

  Stopping Mason, I cautioned her, “Stay with her and, whatever you do tread softly.”

  I watched as Janet took Barb’s keys and they left the scene.

  Chapter 15 – Tailed

  Dana

  Thursday afternoon, February 12th

  Morelville, Ohio

  Erin Voll hadn’t been hard to find. The address her grandfather had given me had been confirmed by my background check. As I watched, the Brietland heiress finally left her house in south Zanesville around 10:00 AM and headed north into Zanesville proper.

  I watched from a half a block or so away each time as she made a few stops at private residences. She pulled right into the driveway and took her purse to the door each time. At every stop, she was invited in only to emerge a minute or two later.

  “She’s not delivering Avon.” I muttered to myself.

  I followed her right into the bustle of downtown. She turned off the road into a McDonalds and got out. I parked and followed her inside.

  Standing at the counter, waiting to order, I watched as she joined a man seated in a two-person booth under the windows on one side of the busy place. He had his back to me. I got my food and took a seat in the empty two-seater behind her, facing him.

  The man I was looking at had gangbanger written all over him. I’d seen his type before. The sallow skin tone of a user coupled with the tear drop tattoo below the eye that signified he’d had a gang kill at some point in his criminal career. It was guys like him that had led me to the area in the first place, following the threads of a case that had led to me meeting Mel.

  I shook myself and tried to listen in. He was eating. Erin was talking but, since she had her back to me and she was speaking in low tones, I couldn’t make out what she was saying to him.

  As I quietly chewed my own sandwich and kept my head down, Erin got a little louder. “Conal, are you listening?” she griped at him.

  “Shush your mouth!” he told her back. “I told you, don’t ever use my name!”

  I waited, but in the next few minutes, I didn’t pick up anything else from the couple. I raised my eyes just a bit at the sound of paper crumpling and caught sight of the man as he rose from his seat.

  “Let’s go,” he told her.

  Erin got up and followed him out the same side where she’d come in. I deposited my trash and left too, trying to appear uninterested in them as I walked out not far behind them.

  I was torn about what to do and who to follow as she got into her car and he got into one a couple of cars down from it. But, as Erin followed the man she’d called Conal out of the lot and up the road, I realized wherever he was going, she seemed to be going too. I fell in a little way behind her.

  Voll wasn’t a careful sort. She never seemed to check her mirrors. I got closer and closer until, at one traffic light, as Conal got into the left turning lane just ahead of her, I had enough time to get a good look at his plate number before she switched lanes too and blocked my view.

  I repeated the number into my cell quickly and then, asked it to ring up Young. Once the switchboard put me through to my handler there, I asked a favor.

  “I’m following my target who’s with an unknown. Can I get you to run an Ohio plate for me?”

  “Sure. Shoot.”

  I flipped the screen and read the plate number to him.

  “Give me about 2 minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  We were headed west out of downtown on I-70. I let a couple of cars get between me and them. She might be an idiot but I was well aware he wasn’t nearly so naïve.

  My cell line opened back up. “The car is registered to a ‘Conal Hoyt’. Do you want the address?” my hander asked.

  “Yes please.”

  I committed what he told me to memory, thanked him and hung up.

  We were half way to Columbus when Hoyt abruptly changed from the left lane to the right lane and took the Gratiot freeway exit.

  At the top of the ramp, instead of turning right toward the little town, he turned left and she followed. The two lane county highway we were on had me swallowing hard. We were entering open farm country in the middle of nowhere. It would be easy for Hoyt to pick up my tail now.

  I put as much distance between us as I dared but I breathed a sigh of relief when, less than a mile later, he pulled off the road into the lot of a ‘No Tell Motel’ and Erin Voll followed him. I sped on by and didn’t look back at them.

  Letting several miles pass first, I finally turned around. No one was behind me the entire distance but I feared Hoyt had caught on to my presence and that’s why he’d stopped. I was sure the two were now long gone.

  There wasn’t any reason to be worried. As I approached the motel and slowed, I could see Hoyt backing his car away from the office at one end of the low brick building. Erin Voll was on foot, coming around from behind the structure at the other end.

  I went by again, but this time I went just past the freeway ramps to the edge of Gratiot, turned around the first chance I got, and headed south again, back to the motel.

  By the time I got there, Hoyt’s car was parked in front of a unit about 2/3rds of the way down from the office. Neither he nor Erin were visible. They were presumably inside.

  I drove around to the back of the building. Erin’s silver Ford was parked just around the corner far enough to be out of view of the road. I took a couple of quick pics of it for my report back to her grandfather and then, reversing, I went back around to the front and parked several doors down from the two apparent lovers. Only two other cars were in the lot. They were both in front of the office.

  A cleaning cart was outside the door of the room next to Hoyt’s. The door was closed but, as I watched, it swung open. A maid stepped out and put a ball of towels into the laundry bag hanging from one end and then went back inside.

  “No sheets though...” I shivered involuntarily.

  An idea popped into my head. I checked my wallet. I had three twenties on me. I jumped out of the car and went to the room being cleaned.

  Stepping in, I startled the maid, a woman easily in her fifties, who was now vacuuming her way out of the room, her back to the door.

  I held my empty hands up to show her I meant no harm. She switched off the machine and eyed me warily.

  Holding one hand out, palm facing her, I took my wallet out again. “I’ll give you 20 bucks if you let me hang in here for a little bit and don’t ask any questions,” I told her, holding my voice low.

  “Fifty,” came the swift reply.

  I looked in the wallet and took out two bills. “I can give you forty,” I said.

  She held out her hand and I placed two twenties in it. With that, she wound up the vacuum cleaner cord and wheeled it out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

  Luck was on my side. The walls were not only thin but there was even a connecting door between the two rooms. I moved toward it and put my ear directly against the sliver of opening between the door and the frame.

  Hoyt and Voll were making no pretense of being quiet now. I listened as the late twenties gangbanger ordered her to give him head and then in revulsion as he grunted and groaned and she gagged on him.

  “Get those pants off and get up here on your fucking knees,” he commanded her after several minutes of her taking him in her mouth.

  I h
eard a heavy thud and then, seconds later, Erin let out a little yelp and bed in the adjoining room began to creak rhythmically.

  “Beg for it!” Hoyt ordered.

  “Give it to me Preacher, give it to me,” Voll panted out, barely audibly to me. The bed bounced into the wall then several times and then stopped. Hoyt released a loud groan and then, judging by the sound, he collapsed onto the bed.

  “Get up and unlace my boots and get them off,” I heard him say.

  There were two soft thuds 30 seconds apart and then it was quiet for a couple of minutes.

  As quietly and as slowly as I could, I shifted my position and switched my weight from leg to leg. I pulled my cell out of my front pocket. Less than ten minutes had passed since I’d bribed the maid.

  A toilet flushed next door. Erin’s voice sounded distant and then got closer as she asked Conal Hoyt if he was awake.

  His response was muted but Voll’s next questions to him had my ears burning.

  “When are you taking Victor down? We’re running out of time, babe. When are you going after him?”

  “Listen, I’m pissed that I lost one of my best dealers. That bastard is going to pay for that.”

  “Victor didn’t kill your man, ‘Rat Tail’ did.”

  “I don’t fucking care who did it. He’s gone and someone has to pay for that. Besides, all of those dumbasses are so busy running around like fuckin’ morons trying to be Chief that there’s no one looking after Victor.”

  “Come Saturday, he may skip town.”

  “Don’t you worry; my men have a plan to take his fat ass out and his lieutenants’ real soon, while they’re all still focused on one upping each other and proving who’s the biggest asshole.”

  It got quiet for a minute. I was about to step away from the door when Hoyt spoke again. “Happy?” he asked.

  “I will be when you’ve got the whole city wrapped up.”

  “That reminds me,” he said to her, “where’s my money?”

  “I got it Preacher.”

  It was quiet for several seconds but then she told him, “It’s all there. I collected the last of it this morning. I uh...I was wondering...”

  “What?” His tone was rough.

  “Could I have $200 of it back?”

  “$200? What for? If you need a couple of hits, take them.”

  “No. It’s not that. I wanted some shoes, is all.”

  “Fucking shoes?”

  It was quiet for several seconds.

  “Here. Take it but don’t think this is happening every time.”

  I’d heard enough. I tiptoed away from the connecting door and turned to see the room door swing open. I forgot to lock it...

  I started to panic but then remembered my gun was firmly placed in the small of my back, under my jacket. As I reached quickly to draw it, the maid stepped into the room.

  “I’m going to need some more money if you want to stay in here,” she told me.

  “I was just leaving,” I whispered back to her as a dropped my hand away from my gun and brushed past her.

  I stepped out onto the walkway. Thinking fast, I snapped a couple of quick phone pictures this time of Conal Hoyt’s car, making sure to get the plate number in one of them.

  As I headed east on 70, I tried to call Mel’s personal cell. There was no answer. I decided not to try her duty cell but, as I passed through Zanesville and got on Route 146, I hit traffic so heavy, I knew there must be a problem up ahead so I did try it. There was no answer on her duty cell either.

  We crept along for a few miles. Very little traffic at all came from the other direction. Cars ahead of me kept slipping left of center as their drivers tried to get a view of what was going on ahead of us on the two lane road.

  Twenty minutes later and a couple of miles before The Boar’s Head Bar and the turn off for Morelville, I came to a roadblock where I was diverted down a country road south toward Duncan Falls. I tried to remember the back roads Mel and I had taken from time to time as we had crisscrossed the back country of the county getting from place to place since the GPS on my cell was useless out here in the middle of God’s country.

  Finally rolling into Morelville just after 1:00, I found it virtually locked up tight. Everything was closed; the gas station, the store, the pizza shop; everything. I pulled into my own driveway. As I got out of my car, Mel’s twin Kris, came out of her house just next door and called to me.

  “Dana, come over here. It’s probably better if you don’t stay at your house.”

  “What? Huh? What’s going on?”

  “Come in here first and I’ll tell you.” Kris hustled me into her house.

  Inside, no one was sitting in the front living room. The blinds and drapes were pulled keeping the room very dark, even in the middle of a cold but sunny day.

  In the dining room, my brother-in-law Lance and both of my parents sat around the table, their faces all somber. The blinds and drapes were also pulled in that room but the lights at least were on.

  “We’re not exactly sure what’s happening honey,” my dad answered me. “Some Sheriff’s deputies came through town a little over an hour ago and ordered everyone inside. Everybody sort of panicked. It’s got me rethinking moving here all over again.” He shook his head.

  I swallowed a lump that rose in my throat and put a hand on his shoulder. “Whatever it is,” I told him, “I’m sure it’s not as bad as what was happening back at Halloween. All I can tell you is that whatever’s happening, it’s happening out on 146 or there-about. I got diverted off of it and had to get back into Morelville across country.”

  Dad got up and walked into the bathroom without a word. Mama shot me a look.

  “There was an automated call from the school. They’re going to hold the kids from out this way...not let them come home until they get an all clear,” Kris said.

  Mama jumped in next, “This has to have something to do with all the rioting and such that’s been going on.”

  Given what I’d overheard less than an hour before, I figured she was probably right.

  Chapter 16 – SRT

  Janet Mason

  Early Thursday Afternoon, February 12th

  Morelville, Ohio

  As we drove south, away from the bar, Barb was silent. She sat, half turned in the passenger seat, looking back until The Boar’s Head slipped from view. Finally, she spun back around but she stared straight ahead, not really seeing, just lost inside her own thoughts.

  “Mel will do everything in her power to get it back Barb; get it back today.”

  She didn’t look at me as she responded, “If they leave anything for me to have back.”

  We drove the rest of the way to Morelville in silence. When I reached the edge of the village, I asked, “Can you tell me where we’re going please?”

  Barb pointed ahead. “Turn right at the next block.”

  I did as she said.

  “It’s the colonial half a mile down on the right.”

  Just outside of the village limits, there were no more homes until we came to Barb’s colonial mini-mansion set a few acres back off the road. I tried to keep my surprise in check as I drove along the gravel track back to the house.

  “You’re thinking it’s too big for just one person, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m thinking it’s beautiful.”

  “I shouldn’t have bought it. It’s too much to keep up for just me. Mom and dad are getting up there in years. I thought maybe they’d want to come here but they like the little condo they have in Zanesville.”

  “Do you love it?”

  Barb looked the house over. “I do,” she answered. “I do.”

  “That’s all that matters then.”

  Not knowing what to expect inside, I was surprised by the comfort that was evident even though the place was decorated simply with a mix of antiques and newer pieces designed for a modern country home.

  “This is amazing Barb.”

  “You like it?
”

  “Absolutely. I guess I expected a lot of antiques and you do have some but, I don’t know how to say it...I didn’t expect the soft leather couch and chairs and all the wood. It looks so warm and comfortable.”

  “Dana’s mother did most of it. She’s quite talented.”

  “Chloe did this?” I spun around looking at everything again.

  Barb nodded. “She did Mel and Dana’s place and figured out she had a knack for it. I asked her to do mine.”

  “Where are my manners,” she asked herself more than me. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No thank you. I’m fine.”

  Barb moved toward a sofa facing the fireplace in the great room and sat down heavily. I took a seat in a soft leather armchair a few feet from her and waited for whatever was coming next.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said to her, when the silence became unsettling.

  She tilted her head to look at me and nodded her consent.

  “Were your parents what brought you back here?” I was certainly curious but, more than that, I wanted to get her mind off what was going on at her business.

  She half smiled. “I grew up in Zanesville...couldn’t wait to get out of town. A couple years after high school, I left. I went to live with an aunt out on the west coast. It was a whole different world, a whole different way of life. I loved it out there and...that’s when I figured a few things out.”

  I just nodded and let her talk.

  There were probably twenty different jobs and almost as many women along the way when I met Lisa and settled down. I’d finally finished college taking classes here and there at night. I had a business degree but no idea what to do with it.

  Lisa had a background in hospitality and restaurant management. She got a little bit of money from an inheritance when we’d been together about seven or eight months. We used it to buy our first bar; a ramshackle old gay bar in a gay ghetto that was being ‘gentrified’. We hung in there and sold it for what we thought then was a small fortune. We spent a little of it but reinvested most of the rest into another place.”