Clean Getaway (Squeaky Clean Mysteries Book 13)

by Christy Barritt

  She thought the police around here were inept. I could sense it in her tone. I hoped Carol and Talmadge didn’t.

  It was exhausting trying to keep someone else in line. I could hardly keep myself in line.

  “Well, the police did check him out. But Dewey is also Detective Hanson’s brother, so you can see where things would get muddy.”

  Why, yes, I could. Yes, I could.

  “Their last names are different,” I pointed out.

  “Half brothers.”

  It looked like we had another suspect. It was better than nothing, which was what I thought we had. And usually when things were muddy, they were also dirty.

  No one was above being put on my suspect list. No one.

  As Heartland sang, “Let’s Get Dirty.”

  As soon as Evie and I climbed back into my sedan, I was ready to discuss our plan of action and rehash what we’d just learned. I figured Evie would be ready also. So, I was surprised when the investigation wasn’t the first thing she brought up as I cranked the engine—and the heat.

  “I don’t understand why people think that children are the greatest gift,” she said, her eyes wrinkling on the sides. “The greatest gift I can think of is contributing in a positive way to society.”

  “Children are a positive contribution,” I reminded her, not bothering to put the car into drive yet—not until I knew where she was going with this conversation.

  “Only if you take time to raise them right. But then you do that in hopes that they’ll become somebody great. Maybe I should just focus on becoming that great person instead of focusing my energies into helping someone else be the person I should have been.”

  I nodded slowly as I formulated what I hoped was an inoffensive response. “I suppose it goes back to leaving a legacy.”

  Her head snapped toward me. “You don’t think our work will leave a legacy?”

  I could tell this was a sensitive topic and tried to proceed carefully. “I do. I think this is good work. It helps victims get closure. It helps the bad guys get justice. But one day, if I’m lucky enough to get old, my job won’t take care of me. I don’t want to end up in a nursing home by myself.”

  She shrugged. “I think that sounds like a nice way to go out. In peace. I don’t want someone else bending over backwards to make me more comfortable. I don’t want to be a burden.”

  Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” began to play in the soundtrack of my mind. It was about going through life with people and not alone. People—friends—made all the hard stuff in life bearable.

  “I guess we were each created differently. I don’t want to die alone. I want to be surrounded by people I love.” I wanted to invest in people. That’s what this was all about—not just solving a crime, but helping victims find justice. It was about making life better for people who’d been affected by preventable tragedies—by corruption and criminal misconduct and other heartbreaks.

  “To each her own.”

  I needed to change the subject, and pronto.

  “How’s Sherman?” I finally asked.

  Sherman was a mutual friend of ours and a forensic computer specialist. He was delightfully awkward and nerdy, but I thought he was great. I wouldn’t tell Evie this, but I thought the two of them would be great together.

  It was too bad she saw marriage as archaic. Did she see dating that way also?

  “It’s been a while since I talked to him, but he seems to be doing fine,” Evie said.

  “That’s good news,” I said after she offered no other conversational tidbits. “Did you go back to the forensic conference this year?”

  That’s where I’d seen the two of them last. It had been in Oklahoma the year I’d gone, which was now more than a year ago.

  “No, I didn’t make it this year. Let’s face it—no year will ever compare to the last time we were there.”

  Was that an olive branch she was offering?

  The one last year had been interesting, to say the least. Who would have thought we’d end up tracking down a killer while at the conference?

  And now that those memories were flooding back, I realized yet again that having Evie as the first person on my call list was unconventional, surprising, and maybe not my best choice.

  Because I was starting to remember with clarity that I didn’t even like Evie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You think we were put on this earth with a purpose, don’t you?” A hint of deprecation entered Evie’s voice.

  She crossed her arms, turning the subject back to one fringed with tension. My foray into a more lighthearted conversation had obviously failed.

  Yay.

  Or not.

  I wasn’t afraid of talking about deeper subjects, but I didn’t want to spin my wheels either. That’s exactly what it felt like I was doing: talking for the sake of debating when I knew good and well I wouldn’t change her mind.

  Still, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

  “And you believe we were put here by accident. I like my theory better. Except, it’s more than a theory. It’s a matter of faith.” I was so not great at this whole sharing my beliefs thing, but I refused to back away from the truth either. If at all possible, I tried to use the utmost tact. But I was a work in progress.

  She turned toward me, an unreadable expression on her eyes. “You’ve always been a mystery to me, Gabby St. Claire.”

  “It’s Gabby Thomas now,” I reminded her.

  “Oh, that’s right. You’ve subscribed to the traditional viewpoint that marriage is a societal norm to which we should adhere.” Condescension tinged her voice.

  I suppressed a sigh. I couldn’t win here . . . or successfully change the subject to something noncontroversial.

  I wasn’t sure I really wanted to get into this now, especially when I knew Evie and I wouldn’t see eye to eye on things. But I found myself responding anyway. “I love Riley. I want to be with him . . . forever.”

  “What if you change? What if one day you don’t love him like this anymore?”

  “Love is more than a feeling. It’s a choice. And, to me, marriage ensures that we’re both committed to sticking it out through good times and bad.”

  “If that’s what marriage means, why do so many people get divorced?”

  I hadn’t been expecting this talk. Not at all. But this was a great chance to share my viewpoints, and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. “Because maybe they don’t subscribe to the same definition of marriage that I have. Some people think if something is broken you throw it away. I say if something is broken, you fix it.”

  She didn’t say anything, only let out a soft grunt. “Okay, enough on the talk of morals, virtues, and worldviews. What do you want to do now to help find this killer? Remember, I’m usually more of an office girl.”

  I’d noticed. And I was also ready to get back to this mystery and away from debating ethics.

  “I say we go pay this Dewey guy a visit,” I said. “Let’s collect all the facts, see if we can discover any new evidence, and then we’ll head back and review what we’ve learned.”

  “That’s the problem with cold cases. There’s so little evidence to discover.”

  “There are great advances in technology, so maybe we won’t need as much evidence,” I reminded her, putting the car into drive.

  “I suppose that remains to be seen.”

  I didn’t care what she said. Her poor attitude was really starting to be a burden. If I wasn’t careful, she would drag me down with her, and I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Why don’t you see if you can find this Dewey guy’s address?” I said, trying to remain focused. “Our time is ticking away.”

  Just as Talmadge had told us, Dewey lived on a farm that nestled up to the ocean. We’d driven past miles of fields before we reached his house.

  This place wasn’t as large as I’d expected. In fact, it was rather small and covered with white clapboard siding. Grass grew up around the edges. Paint pe
eled from the walls. The ratty, old Cadillac sitting out front only added to the neglected picture the entire property formed.

  Evie and I glanced at each other before stepping out.

  Questioning people who were suspects wasn’t always welcomed. Sometimes it could turn ugly even. But we had to do this, and Dewey seemed like the best person to start with.

  I knocked at the door. Inside, I could hear a TV blaring. A dog barked. The scent of something fried drifted outward.

  A moment later, Dewey answered. Or, I should say, the man I assumed to be Dewey answered.

  He was painfully thin and gawky. He had a mullet and a weird beard-mustache combo going. The mustache was darker and thicker than his beard, most likely on purpose. His white T-shirt was stained, his jeans old and baggy, and he had the distinct scent of body odor and beer. Overall, he had a definite redneck vibe—not the friendly Hee Haw kind, either. No, he was more like a character from Deliverance.

  His eyes lit with some kind of male “I think I’m a stud” cockiness when he saw us. “Well, hello, ladies.”

  He leaned against the doorframe, one arm raised to brace himself there. As he raised his arm, a new round of body odor wafted toward us. I knew I had to jump in before Evie said something inappropriate and blunt.

  Being the adult in the relationship wasn’t my normal role, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it.

  “We’re looking for Dewey,” I said. This was no time to be sickly sweet. No, this guy would take it the wrong way, and I wouldn’t give him that pleasure.

  His smile—absent one front tooth—broadened as his illusions of grandeur remained strong. “I’m Dewey.”

  “Could we have a word with you?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t know, pretty ladies. You selling Girl Scout cookies or something a little more exciting?”

  “Not quite,” Evie said, a perturbed expression on her face. She didn’t have patience for this kind of stuff. She hardly had patience at all, for that matter. “We want to talk to you about a murder.”

  His grin—and a little of that grandeur—slipped. “A murder?”

  “Ron and Margie Simmons,” Evie said.

  He let out a chuckle, almost as if he was relieved or maybe even like he was expecting us to talk about a different murder. “Everyone around here knows about it. Why do you want to talk to me? That was a long time ago. A decade, at least.”

  “We’re reopening the case,” I announced.

  He smirked. “Now why would you want to do that?”

  “They need justice,” I said.

  “And you think I can help how?” He said the last word as if he’d bit into a caper only to discover it wasn’t a caper but a peppercorn instead. I knew because it had happened to me at this Italian restaurant last week. Just thinking about it made me shiver.

  “We heard you came into some money shortly after they died, the exact amount that went missing from Ron and Margie’s account, for that matter,” I said, careful to sound non-accusatory.

  Like you could say something like that without sounding accusatory. But I would try.

  His gaze darkened. “I did, but that doesn’t mean I had anything to do with their deaths.”

  “We’re not accusing you,” I inserted. “We just want to ask questions.”

  “And I’m not entertaining you,” he echoed. “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  He slammed the door.

  And I had a feeling he actually had a lot more to say. But I wasn’t going to hear any of it right now. Maybe not ever.

  Evie and I grabbed a late lunch at a little seafood shack on the side of the road. That’s literally what the restaurant was—a small wooden building that served fried local goods from a little window propped open with a dowel rod. There were picnic tables outside, but it was entirely too cold to eat there.

  Instead, Evie and I had retreated to the interior of my sedan to chow down. I’d gotten some clam strips and fries; Evie had gotten some fries, coleslaw, and hushpuppies. She’d muttered something about her diet, but I’d tuned her out and enjoyed my fried treats instead.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked, cranking my heat another notch and leaving a greasy fingerprint on my dash in the process.

  “There’s nothing to think yet. We know nothing more now than we did earlier today. There’s a lot of conjecture but very little to actually go on, not if we’re basing this investigation on facts.”

  “Okay . . .” I said slowly. I never had to guess what Evie was thinking—she told me, whether I wanted her to or not.

  “What? Do you have a different opinion?” Evie stabbed her spork into the coleslaw with a scowl.

  “I think Dewey seems suspicious, like he’s hiding something.”

  “Obviously.” Evie rolled her eyes. “We just don’t know if it’s pertaining to this case or if he’s just dirty in general. It could go either way. But again—we know nothing factual.”

  “That’s true. And he would be pretty unintelligent if he paraded around town showing off this money when it was the exact amount that had been taken from Ron and Margie’s bank account.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t seem like a smart man. Fetal pigs used for dissection in science classes across America seem more intelligent.”

  Well . . . when she put it that way.

  “Also true,” I said, my thoughts moving on from Dewey for a moment. “I wish we could talk to the migrant worker, Emilio Perez. But I don’t even know how we’ll find him. He’s probably back in Mexico.”

  “How do you know he’s from Mexico?” she snapped.

  “Because it was in the file. No, I’m not trying to racially profile or jump to conclusions.” Note to self: never ask Evie to help again. She’s a pain.

  She stared straight ahead, giving up on her coleslaw and hushpuppies and tossing them back into the greasy white paper bag they’d come in. “I don’t have enough information yet to develop a profile of who may have killed them. I’ll need to pour over the crime-scene photos and the medical examiner’s report. Perhaps I can do that tonight.”

  “Great. It sounds like we have a plan then.”

  “It will do for now.”

  I stuck my last clam strip into my mouth, stuffed my trash into my own paper bag, and put my car into reverse. Maybe I’d be better off driving. Maybe this whole teamwork thing was a bad idea, for that matter.

  I should have stuck to my normal routine—working for Grayson Technologies, helping my friend Chad clean crime scenes on occasion, and inserting myself into mysteries whenever possible. This whole teamwork thing? It was for the birds. And not the normal type of bird either. The Daphne du Maurier type of birds. The ones that surrounded your house and gave you nightmares.

  I was feeling like I’d bitten off more than I could chew—maybe because I had, both with the case and with Evie. I’d known she was difficult, but I must have blocked out some of the details and memories in my excitement to solve this case.

  Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to the little cottage I’d rented. My fingers were greasy and salty, and I felt like I needed to change clothes, that somehow the scent of my lunch had been absorbed into my wardrobe. But it had been worth it. The food was great and an occasional treat. And, since it was only occasional, I didn’t have to feel guilty about it.

  As soon as I walked in, I had visions of turning on the gas fireplace and relaxing for a while. I’d take a shower. Bring my laptop out to the living room. Check my messages and see if I could find that listing Riley sent me.

  But just as I pulled my coat off and draped it over the couch, I froze.

  What was that strange scent? Was it garlic? No, that wasn’t it. But there was something here that didn’t hit my olfactory senses correctly.

  “Do you smell that?” I asked.

  Evie scrunched her nose. “Is the sewer line backed up? They probably have septic here. This is going to be awful.”

  I paused. “It smells like rotten eggs. This isn’t good. I need to call the rental ma
nagement company, I guess.”

  She paused in front of the fireplace. “Did you read the instructions before using this fireplace?”

  I scowled. “Of course.”

  Her concerned eyes met mine. “Gabby, I think there’s a gas leak in the house. We need to get out. Now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I wanted to run toward the front door. But before I could, Evie yelled, “Wait!”

  I froze even though every instinct told me to hurry.

  “We have to be careful with every move we make.” Evie stood dramatically frozen in place, like a statue with only her lips moving—and then only barely. “Just one spark of static electricity, and this whole place could explode.”

  My stomach sank at her words. But she was right. And it was cold outside, so those sparks weren’t hard to come by.

  I carefully raised my foot, certain not to drag it across the carpet.

  When I reached the door, I stretched my arm toward the knob. Then I remembered being shocked earlier when I’d done that.

  I needed something to rub to neutralize the shock before I touched the metal.

  “What are you doing?” Evie muttered.

  “I’m afraid I’ll spark something if I touch the doorknob.”

  She sucked in a slow breath before nodding and composing herself. “Here, rub your fingers on this first. It will act as car tires do in a lightning storm and will help to ground you.”

  She handed me her silicon phone case, and I wiped my fingers across it. Not many people ever said there was hope for me being grounded, but there was always a first time.

  I held my breath as I stared at that doorknob. This should work. There was science behind it.

  But if it didn’t work, we’d be goners.

  How had it come to this? If I was going to die, couldn’t I do it with flair? But instead the headline would read, “Woman Dies Unable to Properly Operate Gas Fireplace.”

  Story of my life. Possibly the story of my death, as well.

  My throat was suddenly dry—as dry as the cold air around us. I pulled my sleeve over my hand and reached forward only to freeze again.