Clean Getaway (Squeaky Clean Mysteries Book 13)

by Christy Barritt

  My heart rate kicked up a notch. “Did this person say where he might have buried it on the property?”

  “There’s a huge oak tree on the edge of the bluff. That’s where someone told me he saw him.”

  “Thanks, Miguel.”

  “Wait!”

  I paused.

  “What about that money you promised?”

  I took the one hundred dollar bill and handed it to him. If he was right, that information was worth far more than a hundred bucks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  As we were going down the road, we ran into Dewey Witherspoon. He pulled his truck in front of the sedan to block my exit from the area, and then he climbed out and stomped toward us.

  Oh, no.

  This wasn’t good.

  I’d seen that walk before, usually when I made people mad. When I made people really mad.

  “Who do you think you are coming on my property like this?” he demanded, shouting at my window.

  I sighed and decided to step out. I was going to face this conversation like a woman. Dewey was about to hear me roar.

  “This isn’t your property. It’s Frank’s.”

  He stamped his foot into the gravel. “It’s close to my property.”

  “Well, close doesn’t count.” There I went, sounding like a third grader when I was supposed to be a roaring woman. Sheesh.

  He leered at me. “You’ve been asking about me.”

  “I’ve had reason to ask about you,” I shot back.

  “Like what?”

  “Did you slash my tires? Or cut the gas line in my house?”

  Some of the workers in the fields gravitated closer to us, almost as if they were expecting a prison-yard fight or something.

  Dewey’s face looked blank. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that you’re on my property. Or at least close enough to it than I can complain about it.”

  “We’re just leaving.”

  He crossed his arms. “That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

  “We’re just trying to find some answers. Would you like to give any to us?”

  “I don’t have no answers.”

  “I heard you like to ride around, showing off that money you stole right before you killed Ron and Margie.” So maybe I shouldn’t have worded it that way. But I had, and now I couldn’t take it back.

  Maybe Evie and I had more in common than I thought.

  “So what if I like to show off my money?” Dewey sniped. “I didn’t steal it from no one.”

  “And I suppose it’s just a coincidence that it’s the exact same amount?”

  “That’s right. A coincidence.”

  “Where’d you get the money?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Are you running a drug operation out of your farm?”

  “You think I’m dumb enough to answer that question?”

  “I think you just did. If you were innocent, you would have said no. Besides, I know your alibi fell through. You probably got to know these workers. Got to know Emilio Perez. I don’t know exactly what your motive is, but it’s there, and I’m going to figure it out.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he stomped back to his car. “I want you off my property. Come here again, and I’ll practice my right to defend my property and person.”

  “I never threatened you,” I reminded.

  “You might as well have. It’ll be my word against yours.”

  “And you really think anyone would believe you over me?” I needed to stop retorting and leave, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  “I’m a local, born and bred. They have to be loyal to me.”

  “Even after they find out that you’re the one who sold those drugs to the poor orphan girl whose parents were murdered?” I was taking a stab at it, but if he was into drugs and Jarrod was taking drugs, there was a good chance they were connected.

  My words seemed to affect him, and I braced myself for how he would react.

  He stormed back over toward me. “You want a clue? Here’s one. One of my guys was driving down Lankford Highway that night. He said he saw a white pickup pulled over behind the Simmons truck.”

  I swallowed hard at the new information. “And you never told the police that?”

  “Of course not. Because my brother was driving a white pickup at the time.”

  We found the property Miguel had mentioned to us. Sure enough, there on a bluff by the bay was an old oak tree. I could see why someone would want to come here to relax and reflect. Apparently, migrant workers liked to frequent this abandoned area.

  Evie met us. On one hand, she acted as if she didn’t want to miss out. On the other hand, she seemed like this was beneath her. She appeared even crankier than usual, and I had no idea why.

  I knew this whole thing was a long shot, but at least it was a shot. I’d take it.

  We’d stopped by a little lawn and garden center to purchase a shovel. And now it was time to get down to business.

  “So, we’re just going to dig here?” Evie said, her eyebrows raised.

  “I’ll dig,” I volunteered, knowing it was beneath her to do this kind of work.

  “You really think this guy was telling the truth?” she repeated as I dug the shovel into the ground again.

  “I have no idea,” I muttered. “But it’s worth exploring.”

  “Or we could be talking to the detective.” She crossed her arms. “Maybe he knows something. He has a white truck, and he fits my profile.”

  “You think Detective Hanson is going to admit anything? He could be trying to sabotage us this whole time.”

  Evie stared at her neat, clean nails—nails that had never seen manual labor. Especially not right now. “Well, I did hear that Margie and the chief dated in high school.”

  I froze mid-dig. “What? You’re just now sharing this?”

  “I just found out today.” She scowled. “I was about to share, but you’ve been talking nonstop about this tree thing.”

  “How did you discover that?”

  “I was talking with Carol over some tea and asking about life in this God-forsaken area. She told me that a lot of people ended up staying in this area. She never thought she’d end up back here one day.”

  “I see. What else did she say?” That certainly hadn’t amounted to Margie and Hanson dating.

  “Apparently, Margie was boy crazy in high school. She also dated Mark Miller and who knows who else? Carol didn’t think she’d ever settle down, but, of course, she eventually did. That was as far as we got before Jessie woke up. Then she got tight-lipped.”

  “She’s trying to protect her niece,” I muttered. “No need to plant doubts in Jessie’s head, right? Or make Margie seem like a floozy.”

  Evie nodded. “I really do think Carol loves her. Jessie was fortunate to have such nice family in the area.”

  “I suppose if your family is going to get murdered, it’s nice to have kind relatives nearby.” I flung more dirt on the pile beside me.

  She scowled again. “Not all of us had that.”

  I froze again. “What do you mean?”

  Before she answered, my back muscles tensed. I looked behind me and saw that a few people had wandered onto the property.

  Migrant workers.

  Miguel was right. They did like to hang out here.

  Or had they followed us?

  Based on their surprised expressions, they hadn’t expected to find us here. The six people I spotted all stood on the edge of the property, watching and waiting. I waved to them, trying to put them at ease.

  They didn’t react. They only stood there and continued to watch us.

  I didn’t know what else to say, so I kept digging. At least the day was clear and sunny. The labor was keeping me warm. I should have bought two shovels, though.

  Maybe this was all for nothing. But, at least, I wasn’t as cold as I had been, considering the physical labor I was doing. I might ha
ve asked Sherman to help, but he was looking at Evie with those lovelorn eyes.

  I dug a decent-sized trench around the perimeter of the tree on the west side, just as Miguel had told me. The trench was probably one-foot deep.

  And I’d found nothing except some tree roots that had made it hard to go very deep.

  Maybe he’d just told me about this tree as a means of occupying my time. Of making me look foolish. And it had worked.

  I’d bought it. I’d come here and wasted time and energy looking for something that didn’t exist.

  What had made me think that Miguel would tell me something that he hadn’t told the police all those years ago? Maybe people were right. I couldn’t waltz in here and expect to find answers when none of the local authorities had been able to in a decade.

  But it had been worth trying.

  I was running out of leads. Chasing answers, but only ending up in a vicious cycle. And I was a laughingstock to the migrant workers who watched in the background, waiting to see what the gringa would find.

  “Here, let me try,” Evie blurted.

  Before I could stop her—not that I was going to—Evie took the shovel. In her black-and-white outfit and long, gray overcoat, she began shoveling dirt out of the way. She worked ferociously, like she needed to work off some steam.

  And I let her.

  I hadn’t been successful. I didn’t think she would be. But maybe she’d feel like she was doing something. I’d take that at this point.

  Just when I was about to tell her we should give up and move on to something more productive, her shovel hit something. She scraped the dirt aside.

  And something resembling a purse rested there beneath the dirt, buried right along with the past.

  “I think this is the purse! We found it!” I reached down to touch it. As I did, I saw something else.

  A hand.

  A skeletal hand.

  I bit back a scream.

  This wasn’t just a purse.

  There was also a body here.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Two hours later, the state police, as well as the Northampton County Sheriff’s Department and the Cape Charles police chief joined Detective Hanson on the scene.

  He’d then proceeded to call the state police, who’d sent their own team of crime-scene techs out. The ME had also arrived, making for quite the gathering.

  Unfortunately, when the state police arrived, Evie, Sherman and I had been relegated to the other side of the police line—to the exact place we didn’t want to be.

  We’d done the work, and someone else would get the pay-off.

  Not fair.

  It had taken every ounce of my self-control not to reach into that purse and see what was inside. I wanted the first glance at it since we’d been first to discover it. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I’d been around this kind of thing enough times to have gotten that through my thick skull.

  “All of this work for nothing.” Evie crossed her arms and scowled at the people who’d taken over at the scene, treating us like mere bystanders.

  Sherman pushed up his glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “You think these guys are going to share anything?” Evie shook her head, releasing a short, agitated breath. “If I was on the other side of this investigation, I wouldn’t share anything either, especially not with wannabe private eyes.”

  I needed to add a few rays of sunshine to this gloomy conversation—sunshine laced with unbearably hot heat destined to blister. But it was sunshine, and I dared anyone to defy that fact.

  “You never know.” Those words were the best I could do at the moment.

  Evie stared at me beneath her oversized tortoise-shell sunglasses. Her mood seemed especially bad right now, and I wondered why. Had something gone wrong while she was working this morning? Because she’d had an especially terrible attitude since she arrived here.

  “They won’t,” she insisted. “Because we’re not here in an official capacity. This would never happen with my regular job. I get respect.”

  “Then we’ll have to make sure we hear the information anyway.” With determination, I raised my chin.

  Evie continued to stare, everything about her screaming icy cool arrogance and irritation and “I’m the diva of the crime-solving world” attitude. “How do we do that?”

  I nodded, indicating they should follow me as I crept closer to the police tape.

  I needed to be closer, so I could overhear what the officials were saying. If they weren’t going to offer information, we’d have to find another means of getting it—like eavesdropping.

  And I was rewarded for my efforts as soon as I took four tiny little, subtle steps.

  “You think this is Emilio Perez,” one of the officers said as the crime-scene team surrounded the body and began to carefully exhume it.

  The forty-something crime-scene tech stared down at the body. “That’s my best guess. I’m no expert on decomposition, but I’d say this guy could have been down here for a good ten years. He was of either Caucasian or Latin descent—without more tests, I can’t confirm. His approximate age matches that of Emilio. That would explain how he disappeared without a trace.”

  “How about that purse?” the officer continued. “Anything of interest inside?”

  “Don’t know yet. The detective has it.”

  The detective? Hanson? Would he share what was inside or would he conceal it? I still wasn’t sure where he stood.

  “Hello, ladies,” a deep voice said. “Sherman.”

  I snapped my head up and saw Detective Hanson standing there. His look clearly showed he was onto us and knew exactly what we were doing. If he didn’t realize it, I would have to question his detecting skills.

  “Hello, Detective.” I snapped into professional mode and nodded his way.

  “Good work finding this.” He raised a clear plastic bag with the purse inside.

  My eyes widened when I saw it. I wanted to get my hands on that purse so badly. I wanted to dig through it and see what was inside. But I knew deep down that I’d taken the proper steps for this investigation.

  The last thing I needed to do was taint evidence so that a judge would throw it out in court.

  I shrugged, trying to lighten the conversation. “Like I said, I work hard for my money.”

  “Oh, please don’t sing that Donna Summer song again,” Evie muttered with a neck rotation and a sigh.

  “It’s a good song.”

  She rolled her eyes. “In what decade?”

  Now she was going to argue with me about music? Was nothing sacred to her? I could slightly understand why she might think she was smarter than me . . . but putting down my musical references? She was taking it too far.

  I drew in a deep breath, trying to temper my response. “You just have no musical tastes.”

  “As my twelve-year-old niece would say, whatev.” She splayed her fingers into a W.

  My mouth dropped open and my haunches went up. Evie was rubbing me the wrong way. Not to mention the fact that my back itched, I still felt weak from food poisoning, and my dream house had most likely fallen through. This was no time to get on my bad side.

  “Oh, my,” I finally muttered, sarcasm lacing my words. “You do have a sense of humor. Good to see it coming out at exactly the wrong time.”

  She lowered her sunglasses just enough that I could see her eyes. “I know what I bring to the table, but what exactly do you bring, Gabby?”

  Oh, those were fighting words. And they were working.

  What exactly did I bring?

  I was out of my league. The good news was that I’d surrounded myself with people who could make me look good. The bad news was that they were all smarter than I was.

  Despite that, I raised my chin. “I’m persistent.”

  She let out an airy laugh. “So is a pile driver that keeps people up all night.”

  It took every ounce of self-control to keep my claws in. “The truth is, I’m ordinar
y. And maybe that’s what makes me special. People can relate to me.”

  She opened her mouth and then shut it again. Before either of us could continue, someone else spoke up.

  “Do you guys really want to have this argument or would you like to hear some information?” Detective Hanson said.

  “You’re willing to share?” I asked, totally stunned and surprised. It was like hearing that Mark Walberg was taking a break from his blockbuster Hollywood career to tour with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch again.

  “Since you’re investigating, you might like to know we found some possible DNA. Some hair was found in a bag.”

  “In a bag?” I repeated.

  He nodded. “That’s right. A Ziploc bag, sandwich size, was in what we believe is Margie’s purse. Her ID was found inside.”

  “Why in the world would she carry around hair in a bag?”

  “That’s a great question. One thing we know for sure is that this may be our best lead yet.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Back at the house, Evie stomped off to her room, and I stomped off to mine. I didn’t know what Sherman was doing, nor did I know where Jessie was. I did see a note, however, that said Talmadge and Carol had gone to dinner with friends, and we could help ourselves to whatever we could find to eat in the house.

  Eating was the last thing on my mind.

  I was still fuming over Evie as well as thinking about that potential DNA sample. Detective Hanson gave us the impression that he might be able to speed up the DNA test. Evie had also muttered something about making a call to one of our friends at the state lab.

  It would be awesome if we’d hear something soon—as in, before we wrapped this up. But I knew it was a long shot.

  Instead of sitting by myself and fuming, I decided to call Riley. I was going to do my best to change the subject and focus on something other than my irritation.

  “Any updates on the house?” I asked, sitting in a chair by the window. I nursed a bottle of water and tried to ward off a headache.

  “Unfortunately, no.”