“If you’ll just let me explain and tell you about what I found, maybe you won’t be so mad…”
“I don’t care what you found. Whatever it is, you came by it illegally.”
“You will. I found a very expensive makeup bag that had ten grand stuffed inside it.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. Cash. I counted out one hundred and eight, hundred-dollar bills. That’s ten thousand and eight hundred dollars. I found the bag on the back of the commode on the toilet tank.”
“Wait. The thing is I just went through the crime scene photos. I’m certain…”
Without letting him finish, Gemma went into apology mode. “Look, I should’ve listened to you last night and stayed put. I’m sorry I didn’t. I never should have gone in there. I know it now and I promise I’ll never do anything like that again.”
Lando began to pace in the small confines of the office. There was something not right about this whole thing. But Gemma kept talking.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. “Say something. Yell at me. Anything. I know I was in the wrong here and I’m sorry. I’m apologizing.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at her. Another emotion moved through him, something akin to pure awe of what she’d managed to do. “I can’t believe you got past one of my guys without him seeing a thing.”
“Don’t be too hard on Dale. He almost caught me. Maybe he would have if he hadn’t been talking on his phone.”
“You’re saying he was distracted? He’s not getting paid to talk on his cell phone. And you should never have set foot in that house.”
“Even though I found in excess of ten thousand dollars?”
“About that. It’s weird Payce’s crime scene photos don’t show that makeup bag there the day Mallory died. Monday morning Payce and I got there around eight o’clock. It wasn’t there.”
“What are you saying? It had to be right there in plain sight. Payce must’ve missed it.”
“Pictures don’t lie, Gemma. I had Payce shoot the entire house eight or so hours after the murder, taking each room one by one. It’s what crime scene techs do to capture the evidence and preserve whatever comes up down the road. I’d say this is a biggie. The window wasn’t broken. That’s how I knew you’d been the one to go in there. Only you would think you could get away with something like that and not get caught. And then I looked at the other photos from inside the bathroom. The back of the toilet is clear in the pictures Payce took, completely clear of clutter, completely clear of anything. Nothing there on the toilet tank at all. Get it now?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. That’s impossible.”
“Neither does you going into that house. Does it even matter that you’ve put me in an awkward position? How do I explain this to Dale? Or more importantly, to the county attorney? How do I explain obtaining ten grand from Mallory’s house that could be useful at trial but was obtained by my ex-wife in a compromising, breaking & entering sort of way?”
“Of course it matters to me. What can I do to prove it to you? And at this point I’m a lot more than your ex.”
He ignored her comment. “Let’s see this cash.”
Gemma reached under the desk and pulled out her purse. She unzipped the makeup bag and handed it off.
He stared at the money inside.
“I just found out from Lianne that Holly Dowell has this same type of bag. You might notice the white stuff clinging to the money? If I’m not mistaken that white powder is cocaine residue. Maybe Mallory died as the result of a drug deal and Holly was somehow involved.”
Lando’s forehead crinkled in thought. “Or it was planted to make us think Mallory was involved in drugs. If this bag does belong to Holly, she must’ve known we’d eventually stumble on it and see the white powder, and then assume drugs were involved.”
“Why would Holly want to make us believe that?”
“I don’t know, Gemma. But now that you’ve handled this bag over and over again, I doubt Holly’s prints are even on it. Or anyone else’s. Yours certainly will be. Add that to a list of things I’ll have to explain to the D.A.”
Gemma winced. “Sorry. We could just ask Holly if it’s her bag.”
“We? You’re kidding, right?”
“Ah. So no more Bonner and Bonner crime-fighting team, huh? That was certainly short-lived.”
Lando rubbed the back of his neck. “In what perfect world would we be considered a team? Team players trust each other. They don’t go out and do stuff behind the other person’s back. You went to all this trouble to get a vision, so after all this, what image did you get exactly?”
An embarrassed look crossed Gemma’s face. “Not a thing. I was too distracted by the ten grand to pay attention to any vision that might’ve popped up on my radar.”
“Serves you right.”
“I did it to help the case,” she pointed out. “The least you could do is show a little gratitude.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You aren’t dragging me into guilt when it’s you who’s in the wrong. Way in the wrong. Does Lianne know about the ten grand?”
“No, but she recognized that I had a bag exactly like Holly’s.”
“What a mess. I have to figure out how this money got inside that bathroom after Monday. Whoever put it there had to have access and maybe a housekey. I can tell you this. There were no signs of forced entry when we there hours after the murder.”
“Couldn’t you look at it this way? You might never have found the bag of money if not for me, not for weeks or months.”
“That’s some screwed up logic there,” Lando admitted. “But there is truth in it.”
“Why was Dale guarding the house anyway? What was he doing there? It surprised the heck out of me.”
“Jimmy was working dispatch Sunday when a tip came in that hinted someone would be trying to get into Mallory’s house. He put Dale on it, just in case. It’s not what I would’ve done initially but…it’s too late for that now. It seems we’ve all been had.”
“Maybe not. They probably wanted you to go in there and look around so you’d discover the money, manipulating the course for the investigation. I’m the one who got had, not you. While you were spending Sunday recouping from Buddy’s pills, I kept thinking how I could get hold of anything that belonged to Mallory. If that bag is really Holly’s, then maybe that’s why the vision thing didn’t pan out.”
“Interesting. I didn’t even know about the tip until late Sunday night when Jimmy sent me a text message about it. By that time Dale had already been there for hours. I decided to leave him there. What could it hurt? But stationing Dale outside where he says he didn’t see anything was a waste of time.”
“Not necessarily. I might not have been there all night, but I can confirm there was no one around when I was there. Although…”
“Although what?”
“I did hear muttered voices over Dale’s conversation. At the time I thought it was coming from the house next door. That might be why Dale didn’t hear anything either. So did you find out anything weird about Mallory’s finances?”
“Other than she was flush with plenty of cash? Not really. Other than a few large transfers back and forth in the past few months, she paid bills and bought groceries as usual, nothing much out of the ordinary.”
“Define plenty.”
“About four hundred grand.”
“Holy cow. That’s…plenty all right. So are we good?”
Grabbing her around the waist, he nibbled the side of her jaw. “If I get to keep my job, we’re fine.”
“And if you get fired?”
“Get ready to make it up to me. Big time. Me with no job, you’ll have to become my sugar mama. My ego’s gonna need a lot of stroking.”
She laughed until her belly hurt. “We’re both screwed then. My chocolate shop isn’t making the kind of bucks to be anyone’s sugar mama. But I’ll sure give it a whirl. How are you at grinding cacao beans?”
<
br /> 13
Louise Rawlins stormed up the steps of the police station working up a good head of steam. Payce body-blocked her, preventing the dispatcher from marching down the hall straight to the Chief’s office. “Get out of my way, Payce Davis. Your scrawny ass won’t be able to stop me. I’ll slam your sorry butt to the floor if you don’t get out of my way.”
“What’s the problem, Louise?” Payce said, trying to keep her from going any further.
“I want to see that no good rat you call a chief of police. Get him out here, I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits as Lando came into view. “Someone broke into my daughter’s house from the bathroom window. I want the city to pay for fixing it. Do I need to point out that you should be keeping a better eye out for things like that?”
“I’m glad to see you, Louise. Come into my office and we’ll talk in a more private setting.”
Louise glared at Payce before making her way down the hall to Lando’s office. “I’ll take a check now, if you don’t mind…for the damage to that window.”
“Take a seat, Louise. Get comfortable,” Lando prompted as he plopped down in his own chair. “As it turns out, I do mind. You should know that this morning Judge Hartwell signed a few warrants. And by a few, I mean all kinds of documents that allow me to dig into Mallory’s financial records, her computer, her phone archives, social media posts, even a blank search and seizure if the situation should present itself. You demanding money from the city is a situation, Louise, a curious situation. Since Mallory’s cell phone was missing from the crime scene, I’m in the process of going through her phone activity---both landline and mobile. And something strange popped up. Her cell phone carrier was kind enough to give me a snapshot of the most updated calls made from her phone. I find it interesting that someone used Mallory’s cell phone as late as Sunday to call and talk to Jimmy, claiming to have a tip. That so-called tip was to warn us that someone would try and break into Mallory’s place.”
“So? The killer probably did that. There must be something in there he wants. Or she wants. Something valuable.”
“Are you stating for the record that you aren’t in possession of Mallory’s phone?”
“Of course not.”
“Is Holly?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Since you stormed in here, maybe you can answer a few questions that I’ve been curious about, stuff that will eventually get checked anyway. What exactly did your daughter do for a living?”
“Since losing her pharmaceutical job she’s been unemployed. But she had a few prospects in the works, a few headhunters had recently contacted her about some very good openings in sales.”
“Would you say your daughter had an active social life?”
“Mallory was beautiful. She attracted men. Sometimes the wrong sorts of men. Did you check out that Billy Gafford?”
“I don’t think it was Billy. Until this is over, and I find the killer, promise me that you and Holly won’t go near Mallory’s house again like you did just now.”
“But the window...”
“I’ll get the window fixed. This afternoon if possible. I’ll find who did this, Louise. I promise. Just please stop making it more difficult for me with all the false accusations. I realize you’re hurting and one way to handle grief is to lash out. But try to keep the innuendo and opinion to a minimum. It might work to embolden the killer. And we don’t want that.”
Louise licked her lips. “All right. But if you can’t get the job done, you should know that I’m prepared to bring in the best private detective out there I can find to do what you can’t.”
“I understand. So noted.”
After Louise left his office, Lando leaned back in his chair and wondered how his dispatcher could afford a high-priced attorney and a big-ticket detective without sweating the cost. Where was she getting that kind of dough? Not once in his tenure as chief had he ever wondered about an employee’s integrity enough to dig into their background. Until now. He’d inherited Payce and Louise from Reiner Caulfield’s time in office. He’d hired Jimmy and Dale himself after sending the two men to a rigorous, extensive training program in Los Angeles before handing over the keys to a patrol car. But now, he decided he needed answers to Louise’s mystery money. It might be a simple enough explanation if she inherited wealth from a relative. He’d have to dig a lot deeper into her past. And to do that, he’d need an extensive look into her background, one that went back further than the obligatory seven years.
“You’re late,” Gemma said as she sashayed her way to the door to crush Lando in a hug. She had to make things up to him and decided that would take an extra dose of sweetness. She made a grand gesture toward the dining room table where a buffet waited. “I thought we’d celebrate. It isn’t every day we become horse owners.”
“We’re entertaining? Tonight? Because we bought a horse?”
“Two horses.”
Lando spied the food. “Who else is coming? There’s enough shrimp cocktail here to feed twenty people. You couldn’t have given me a heads up?”
She patted his chest as she took him by the arm. “I know you’ve had a long, tough day, but I couldn’t talk Willow out of doing this or her parents. For the Longhorns selling a horse is a big deal. Selling two is a reason to party.”
“Apparently.”
Her lips curved. “Be grateful I talked them into having this soiree here tonight instead of out at the compound. Otherwise, you’d be getting into bed a lot later. This way, when it’s all over, you can walk into the bedroom and collapse.”
He nibbled on a crab puff and began to realize there was an upside to hosting an impromptu get-together. And the way Gemma looked in a shimmering summer dress was beyond a windfall. “How’d you put all this together after working all day?”
“Lydia and Leia. Who else works this kind of magic in the kitchen on the spur of the moment? Your mom’s outside with Rufus playing fetch. Your sister will stop by after she closes up. It seems running that restaurant is an endless cycle of hard work. I don’t know how your mom ever did it by herself.”
“She had three kids she used as child labor,” Lando deadpanned. He remembered those days of what seemed like nonstop orders and a sink full of never-ending dirty dishes and smelly pots to scrub. He thanked whatever lucky stars had given him the courage to pursue law enforcement. That pluckiness meant he didn’t have to spend twelve hours standing at a grill, every single day, seven days a week, smelling like a grease pit. “My mother always said she loved not having to work for anyone else. But there were times I thought she’d drop where she stood from exhaustion. She did everything from bussing tables to figuring out the menu and then following through with all of it.”
“It wasn’t all that bad,” Lydia proclaimed as she let herself in the side door with a worn-out Rufus in tow. “Owning a restaurant just wasn’t for you. You never really got the hang of food service, even though I did teach you how to cook a steak on a grill like a pro.”
Lando went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “Didn’t say I couldn’t put together a decent meal when it counted, but all the other stuff that goes with running a restaurant had absolutely zero appeal.”
When the doorbell rang, Gemma let in Zeb, followed by the entire Longhorn family. Willow trailed after her parents, Theo and Rima, who’d brought a fistful of freesia.
“These are lovely,” Gemma began, sticking her nose into the bouquet. “Thank you. I’ll use them as a centerpiece for the table. Come on in and make yourselves at home.”
Theo looked around the living room and nodded his head in approval. “It’s a good day to rejoice when people get themselves a horse. Horses are the key to connecting with our ancestors, with nature, with life in general.” He walked around to the fireplace and stopped. “I see you kept Marissa’s things mostly intact. It’s good for her spirit.”
Rima swatted her husband on the arm. “Theo is old school. I’m sure
Marissa won’t mind when you get ready to make some changes. Her spirit will be just as happy as long as you’re happy. That’s what she wants more than anything, to see her granddaughter make it in this world content and doing what you love.”
“My Gram had a definite bohemian side to her that I’ve come to embrace. Let me show you the solarium where she grew all her fantastic herbs. I’m even trying my hand at growing lavender in pots. Who knew I’d love taking up gardening so much?”
“I’ll show her around,” Lydia offered, looping an arm through Rima’s. “Unless you’d rather start on the buffet first?”
“Not yet. I’d rather see how the orange mint I gave Marissa turned out. I gave her fresh cuttings a week before she was murdered. She’d planned to debut a new ganache and she hoped the orange mint would provide just the right flavor.”
“Orange mint? I don’t remember seeing any pots with that in it,” Gemma supplied.
“I’ll show you what it looks like,” Rima offered. “Maybe you’ll be able to create that ganache after all.”
As the women headed off to the sunroom, Luke and Lianne arrived carrying a stack of books, all copies of Morning Splendor they’d either checked out at the library or purchased at the bookstore.
“These are for the new members of the book club,” Lianne explained as she slipped her pile onto the hall table.
Luke did the same, dropping his stack next to hers. “If this isn’t enough to go around for everyone, don’t bother trying to find any more because we gathered up everything available in town. Neely at the bookstore said she could order more, but since it’s out of print, it’ll take a special order to get anymore from a supplier out of Denver.”
“Passing several books around will also work,” Gemma said, “depending on how many new members we get. You didn’t have to do this, Lianne.”
Shadow Canyon (A Coyote Wells Mystery Book 2) Page 14