Mac N Cheese Murder: Book 5 in The Bandit Hills Series

by Blair Merrin

  “Right,” Dash agrees, coming around to the world of the living. “He exited the bathroom again at 6:38. Anna was driving up Indian Head Road at 6:37. Which means he couldn’t have been the murderer.”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “Unless he wasn’t actually in the bathroom.”

  “Huh?”

  “If Pete wanted it to be known that Anna assaulted him, so he’d later have an excuse to go to the cops, that would be the ultimate alibi, right? Why would a murderer complain about someone they know is dead, other than to throw the scent off the trail?”

  “I guess…”

  I pull into the parking lot of the Gas N’ Guzzle. The building is dark, with only the gas pumps illuminated. The place doesn’t open until six.

  I park and get out. Dash follows me, almost tripping as he does. “Where are you going?”

  I head around the rear of the building. “Look. What’s that?”

  “That’s Cory’s truck.”

  “Precisely. Cory keeps his truck parked out back. Fairly common knowledge around here, right?” The ramshackle red truck looks like it’s from the early nineties. Far as I’m aware, Cory only uses it to haul parts around town every now and then. I pull open the driver’s side door and start rooting around.

  “Cassie! What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the… aha! Here they are.” Cory, the loveable doof, keeps the keys to his truck in the center console.

  Dash squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Where is all this going?”

  “You don’t see yet? Jeez, do I need to spell it out for you? Pete comes inside the gas station at 6:32. Anna leaves and calls Chad at 6:34. At 6:37, their call is cut off and presumably, that’s when she’s killed. At 6:38, Pete comes out of the back. But here’s the thing: What if Pete didn’t use the bathroom? The hall in the back of the gas station leads to two doors. One way is to the bathroom. The other is this door right here.” I point to the steel rear exit of the gas station. Beside it is a large wooden block, no doubt used as a doorjamb.

  Dash blinks for a full minute. “So you think that Pete snuck out the back, hopped in Cory’s truck, drove it up Indian Head Road, shot Anna, came back, slipped back into the gas station, and rejoined his family outside?”

  “Yes. And then he went right to the police station to report the assault.”

  “Cassie. That’s insane.”

  “What? Why?” I’m a bit dismayed at his reaction. I thought it was pretty brilliant when I thought it up.

  “I’ll admit that he could have made it from here to there in three minutes, but there is absolutely no way he could make it from Indian Head Road back to here in one minute.”

  “There’s gotta be a way.”

  “There’s not.”

  “Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s find out.”

  Dash groans again as I hurry back to my car. “There are what, three different ways someone could get to Indian Head Road from here, right?”

  “Four, if you count cutting down the alley behind the motel. But that wouldn’t save any time.”

  “Only one way to find out, I guess.” I start the car and punch the accelerator. The SUV leaps forward, Dash holding on for dear life.

  CHAPTER 16

  An hour later, we end up at the top of Indian Head Road for the seventh time that morning, less than fifty yards from where Anna’s car was found. Dash yawns. I punch the steering wheel in frustration.

  “I don’t get it,” I mutter. “I thought I had it.”

  “It was a good theory, Cass. Really. But there’s just no way. Our best time from here to the gas station is two minutes. It’s not fast enough to prove anything.”

  “What if the clock on the security footage is a minute fast?”

  “Now you’re just reaching. And it’s not. Give Phil some credit.”

  I grunt. He’s right. There’s just no way Pete could have gotten from here to there in under a minute. The road is just too windy. The speed at which some of those turns have to be taken would have sent him flying off into the woods.

  But maybe not.

  “I want to try one more time,” I tell Dash.

  “Fine, but after that, we’re going home and I’m taking a nap.”

  I start the car and we roll forward. The place where Anna’s car was found was pretty much the top of the hill, so if the murderer was going the opposite way, it would have been all downhill from there. No pun intended.

  I hit the first turn and barely press the brake, daring myself to go faster. My tires screech and the SUV eases into the oncoming lane as we round the curve.

  “Cassie… too fast…” Dash warns, gripping the armrest of the bucket seat beside me.

  I ignore him and ease into the next curve, my foot twitching over the brake pedal but not touching it. The passenger side tires scrape gravel on the shoulder of the road, spraying it outward into the trees.

  “Cassie!” Dash shouts. “Slow down!”

  “I got this…”

  I don’t got this. The next curve comes up way too fast. I turn the steering wheel, but not quick enough. I slam the brakes as my car jumps off the road and into the trees.

  I scream a little. Dash sucks in a breath and throws one arm across my shoulders. We both brace for the impact.

  It doesn’t come.

  When the car finally stops moving, I open my eyes. I didn’t realize I even closed them. “What happened?” I gasp. “Are we in Narnia?”

  Dash unclips his seat belt and gets out of the car. I catch my breath before I do too.

  “No way,” I mutter.

  My car jumped off the road and into some brush. We expected to find trees behind it, but the brush is actually hiding a single-lane dirt road, straight as an arrow all the way down the hill.

  “Someone put this brush here to cover this road.” Dash shakes his head. “Do you know what this means?”

  “That I was right?” I grin fiercely.

  “Maybe. Let’s time it.” We both jump back into the car (the front of which is all scratched up now, thanks a lot, brush) and start down the dirt road. Dash times it on a stopwatch on his phone. It’s a pretty bumpy ride, but I’m able to maintain about thirty miles an hour the whole way down.

  The dirt road empties on the far edge of the grassy field behind Penny Harrigan’s motel. The mouth of the road is obscured with low-hanging branches that scrape the roof of my car, but deep tire treads in the grass indicate that someone came through here recently—more than once.

  We pull back into the lot of the Gas N’ Guzzle and Dash clicks the stopwatch. “Forty-five seconds.” He shakes his head. “That’s… incredible.”

  “That’s our killer’s escape route.” I weave my fingers behind my head, satisfied. “Pretty sure you owe me dinner for that one.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Naturally, we call Phil and Sharon and get them down there to see the hidden dirt road. They’re just as flabbergasted as Dash. Phil still has a bit of trepidation about Pete being a suspect; that is, until Sharon throws her hands up and shouts at him.

  “Look, I know he’s your old football buddy and all, but come on, man! How much more do you need?”

  After that, Phil agrees to bring him in.

  Dash heads home for a really long nap, and I head over to Miss Miscellanea. I had called Mom earlier, after the hidden road discovery, and she opened the store for me.

  Of course, when I get there, she’s got some choice words for me.

  “Cassandra Cleary! You told me you weren’t going to get involved in any more murder cases!”

  Whoops. Sometimes I forget how fast word travels around these parts.

  “I’m sorry, Ma. It’s not like I got involved on purpose. It just sort of… happened.” Actually, I did get involved on purpose, but if you can’t fib to your parents, who can you fib to?

  She purses her lips and stares at me for a while, and then gives me a hug. “At least you’re safe. No more running around like that! You promise?”

  �
��I promise.” I cross my fingers behind my back.

  “I’m starting to think that Dash Hamilton is a bad influence on you.”

  I snort a little. It’s so obviously the other way around.

  I’m finally able to relax a little, not only with it being a Monday and a slower day for the shop, but also knowing that the police will be able to put a tidy little bow on Anna’s case. That evening, Dash and I head down to Tank’s for a celebratory bite. I want to make more of an effort to show my face around there so that April doesn’t think I’m snubbing them.

  Dash orders a barbecue bacon cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake, and I do the same, ‘cause why not? Let me tell you: A burger has never tasted so juicy, bacon never so crispy, and a chocolate shake never so creamy as when you’re fresh off helping to catch a killer.

  Deputy Sharon comes in, still in uniform, and we wave her over to our table. She joins us, looking somewhat morose.

  Around a mouthful of burger, I ask, “Why so glum, chum? We’re celebrating.”

  She frowns. “You might be a bit premature. We cut Chad Holland loose, for now. Pete’s not saying a word, so Phil’s holding him on suspicion. His mom’s sticking to her same story, and we have no solid evidence to the contrary. She’d better hope, for Pete’s sake, we don’t find any—”

  I laugh a little and almost spit out some chocolate milkshake. “For Pete’s sake. Ha!”

  Sharon rolls her eyes. “Seriously, they’ll be out of there pretty quick if we don’t have anything else on them. Forensics should get the striation tests back to us by tomorrow, and if it doesn’t match the guns we have in evidence…” She shakes her head. “We’ll be back to square one.”

  Well, way to kill the mood, Sharon. “What about the kids?” I ask. “Where’d they go?”

  “Anna’s sister took them in, for now,” she tells us. “Those poor kids. Part of me hopes it wasn’t Pete, just so they don’t have to grow up knowing it went down like that.”

  I suck down the rest of my shake and hear someone mumbling behind me. I don’t need to turn to see it’s Dexter Maximoff; I can smell the liquor on him from ten feet away.

  “Sweeping floors,” he grumbles. “Haven’t done manual labor in twenty-five years, and they got me sweeping floors…”

  He shuffles past our booth on his way to the counter, smelling like a three-day bender, and stumbles. Dash jumps up in time to catch him by one arm.

  “Whoa, Mr. Maximoff. You okay?”

  He jerks his arm out of Dash’s grip roughly. “Fine! I’m fine.”

  “Dexter, are we going to have another problem?” Sharon asks, her tone cautioning.

  “Problem?” The old man sways slightly. “I’ll tell you who has a problem—”

  I get to my feet quickly. “Say, Mr. Maximoff, how about I give you a ride home?”

  “You sure, Cassie?” Sharon asks.

  “Not a problem. Come on, Mr. Maximoff.” I lead him by the arm toward the door and he lets me, muttering incoherently as we go. I feel pretty bad for the guy. Once upon a time he had everything—a family, a fiancée, flourishing businesses—and then years of loss and neglect took their toll on him. He still has money, and his big house, but he’s all alone in the world. Truth is, he could probably try a little harder to make some friends, be active in the community, but he was a recluse for so long I’m not sure he remembers how to do those things.

  I help him into the passenger seat and start the drive back toward his big Victorian house. A minute into the ride, he blinks at me, seeming to have a moment of clarity. “Thanks,” he mutters. “I probably would’ve gotten myself in trouble again. I’d be sweeping floors forever with those two loonies…”

  “Come on, now. Phil and Sharon aren’t that bad.”

  “No, those other loonies. The ones in the jail.”

  “Pete and his mom?”

  “Sure. Whatever their names are. Grown man, calling her ‘mommy.’ That’s weird, right?”

  “Yeah. I hear they’re… kind of close.”

  He snorts derisively. “Close? Not sure that’s how I’d put it. They’re weirdoes.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He leans toward me a little as if he’s going to tell me a secret. I wrinkle my nose instinctively at the pungent odor of scotch on him.

  “They asked me to pass messages for them. Between the cells, so no one else can hear ‘em.” Maximoff hiccups.

  “What sort of messages?”

  “Oh, it’s utter nonsense. I don’t even remember the half of it. What was it they said? ‘They took the road not taken,’ or some garbage. ‘The wolf is in the henhouse.’ Weird stuff like that. Like they’re World War II spies or something.” He hiccups again.

  I pull up to the front of Maximoff’s house. “Did you tell Phil about any of that?”

  “What’s to tell? It’s gibberish.” He belches loudly.

  “Okay, time to get out of my car.” I help him out and lead him by an arm up the long walkway to his house. Once inside, I settle him into an armchair and help him pull off his shoes. He’s passed out before the second one hits the floor.

  I head back out, pulling the door closed behind me, when a deep voice comes from behind me on the wide front porch.

  “Hi there,” Chad says, stepping forward into my path.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Uh, hey,” I say. “What… what are you doing here?”

  “Came to check on Mr. Maximoff. He didn’t press charges against me, so I wanted to make sure he was okay. Figured I owed him at least that.” Chad scratches the thick beard on his chin. “Seems you brought him home safe.”

  “Uh, yeah. And now I have to be going.” I make a move to step off the porch, and Chad steps into my path.

  “Wait a second now. Where are you running off to so fast? I thought we’d chat for a moment.”

  My heart rate doubles. “I have to get back to my shop. People know I’m here.” I add that last part out of instinct, suddenly very afraid that I was wrong about Pete.

  “Did you really think I killed her?” Chad asks. There’s an intensity behind his dark eyes that makes my skin crawl. He takes another step toward me and asks, “Do you still think I killed her?”

  “I… I don’t know, Chad.” I fight to keep the stammer out of my voice. “There’s no evidence that you did.”

  “No,” he says coolly. “There’s not.”

  Then he does something strange: he drops to a seated position on the steps of the front porch and sighs. “You’re a woman. Let me ask you. How do I get over something like this? I mean, my first lady cheated on me, and now poor Anna gets murdered… I don’t know where to go from here.” He looks up at me with hope in his eyes. “Just tell me, how can I be better?”

  I breathe an audible sigh of relief. “Well, Chad, for starters, you’re a little intense.”

  * * *

  By the time I finally get back into my car and head back toward downtown, night has nearly fallen. I call Dash.

  “Hey,” he says. “I tried to call you like four times. You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I sigh. “I ran into our friend Chad Holland and ended up counseling him for like an hour on how to be a better person. Guy has some serious insecurities.”

  “Weird. All good with Maximoff, though?”

  “Yeah, good as can be. He’s passed out safely at home. He was ranting about…” Suddenly the conversation I had with Dexter comes flooding back. If not for the surprise visit from Chad, it probably would have been on the forefront of my mind. “He said that Pete and his mom were trying to pass secret messages back and forth through him. Something about a road not taken, and a wolf…” I try desperately to remember what he mentioned.

  “That sounds like crazy drunk talk to me,” Dash says.

  “Normally I’d agree, but it sounded more like coded messages. A wolf… a wolf in the henhouse. That’s what he said.” I snap my fingers with my revelation.

  “A wolf in the henhouse?” Dash repeats. “
Are you sure he didn’t mean a fox? Usually a wolf is in sheep’s clothing, and the fox is in the henhouse.”

  “Now is not the time to split hairs. What does it mean?”

  “Well, it usually means that there’s a predator loose among prey. Though I suppose it could refer to someone hidden. Someone dangerous.”

  “Someone hidden… or something?”

  “Sure, I guess. I couldn’t say. Are you headed back to the shop?”

  “I was. But I think I’m going to make a quick detour.” I tell him where to meet me.

  CHAPTER 19

  I don’t have to worry about anyone seeing me sneaking around the wide backyard, because out of the four people that used to live here, one is deceased, one’s in jail, and two are staying with their aunt. Still, I try to keep quiet as I poke around. I upset several chickens, but they’ll live.

  By the time Dash arrives, I’m digging by the light of a small flashlight I keep in my glove box.

  “Cassie, what are you doing?”

  I squirm out from beneath the stilted chicken coop. My hands are filthy, and there’s dirt all over the front of me and streaking my cheeks. But still I smile wide and hold up the muddy gun with two fingers.

  “Wolf in the henhouse,” I tell him. “Or in this case, under it.”

  * * *

  Pete broke first.

  It only took a few days for the striation test to come back, confirming that the gun buried beneath the chicken coop in Pete and Anna’s backyard was indeed the gun that killed Anna. That, coupled with the hidden road and the unaccountable time Pete spent in the rear of the Gas N’ Guzzle, was enough to make him crack.

  Turns out the gun belongs to his brother, who didn’t even realize it was missing; he thought it was still locked safely inside his cabinet. Boy was he mad, when he found out that not only did Pete steal his gun, but used it to murder his ex-wife.

  Pete confessed to everything. Not only was his divorce was costly and ugly, and not only did Anna get full custody of the kids while Pete got only every other weekend, and not only was he to pay her child support and alimony, but she was going after the house too. Apparently that was the last straw.