by Lauren Carr
“Who do you think you are that you can go looking into my cold cases?” Helen asked.
“They were Dad’s.”
“Your father is dead. I’m in charge of the homicide division and those cases are mine.” Helen headed for the exit.
“Helen—”
“Don’t you have a tux to rent?” She shot over her shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.
“Man,” Francine muttered under her breath. “Talk about sexual tension so thick you can cut it with a knife.”
Chris dropped back onto the bench. “I didn’t ask Peyton to the benefit because I was interested in her. Couldn’t you see that?”
“Do I look like I was born yesterday?”
Chris sucked in a deep breath. “I asked her out because she knows a hell of a lot more about Tommy Bukowski’s murder than she’s letting on. Did you see how fast she found that email? Have you ever found a particular email so fast? She had it all ready to show us and print up. Plus, she had an answer for everything. She knew we were coming, and she had rehearsed her responses.”
“She had it all figured out,” Francine said.
“Did you see how smoothly she directed us toward the redhead? Enough to make me wonder who paid for her services.”
“But that was the night before he checked out,” Francine said.
“Bukowski checked out online,” Chris said. “It was in the accounting that Davenport’s secretary gave us. He didn’t check out at the front desk. That means anyone who had access to his room and the online service on the television could have done it—”
“And as vice president in charge of security—Peyton and her whole staff—”
“Not to mention most of the hotel employees—”
“Could have checked out for him hours after he had already been murdered,” Francine said.
“Exactly,” he said. “That’s why he checked out two days early. He was dead.”
“He must have found the ransomware hacker,” she said. “Could he have?”
“Peyton said she gave orders to Rachel Pine, the director of cybersecurity, to give him access to their system,” he said. “Bukowski was on the ground floor of computer hacking.” He nodded his head. “He would’ve known exactly what to look for in their system. If it was there, he would have found it.”
“And told them?”
“Honor among thieves.” Chris looked around at the dozens of slot machines and the wide array of gaming tables—thousands upon thousands of dollars pouring through the casino. “Think about all the millions of dollars this casino makes—here at this brick and mortar location. Can you imagine how much they make through their online casino?”
“More than you or I will ever see.”
“Think about it,” Chris said. “This hacker that Bukowski was looking for—and maybe found here—slips through the digital door that the online gamblers open to enter the online casino.”
“Many of those viruses, once they get into your system, they can look at everything,” she said. “A lot of different types of folks do online gambling. High rollers, like Boris Krawford—”
“People who have secret accounts they don’t want spouses, business partners, or the government to know about.”
“A smart enough hacker could even gain access to secret accounts and drain them,” she said.
“We’re talking about millions of dollars available to be stolen,” Chris said. “And if this ill-gotten or hidden money is stolen, then do you really think the victims are going to report it? That’s why Boris Krawford sent Tommy Bukowski to find the hacker—so that he could get his money back and issue his own form of justice.” As the pieces came together to form the scenario in his mind, he nodded his head. “The ransomware hacker killed Bukowski. Somehow, Ethel Lipton found out about it and tried to use it as a get out of jail free card. So that hacker hired those goons to kill her.”
“Imagine that,” Francine said. “A hacker, a murderer, and a serial killer all in one casino. Knowing that, I don’t feel safe just being here. Do you think it’s something in the water?”
Reminded of the Graduate Slaughterer, Chris was jerked out of his thoughts about Tommy Bukowski’s murder. “I thought we had concluded that the Graduate Slaughterer had moved on since there hadn’t been any murders matching his MO since 2005.”
“Well, according to Jacqui, the victim in Lancaster got banned from the Stardust for stealing another gambler’s winnings in 1995, three weeks before her murder,” Francine said. “Not only that, but security caught up with her at the buffet. So we’re not just talking about the casino, but the restaurant.”
“Then the murders stopped twelve years ago,” Chris stared at the wall across from them—deep in thought. “And they started in 1995.”
“That chef,” Francine said, “Sandy’s brother. Didn’t he start working here right out of culinary school? Maybe he’ll have some idea who our killer is. The guy had to work in the restaurant. Remember how he said that the restaurant is, like, separate from the casino—he hardly ever went into the casino.”
Chris checked the time on his cell phone. “I need to talk to my mother.”
“Your mother?”
Chris stood. “Sterling has been in the truck all this time. I need to get him home.”
“But the Graduate—”
“I have a suspect.” Chris gently took her by the arm. “But I need to talk to my mother before I put his name on our suspect list officially.”
They found Sterling sitting patiently in the front passenger seat of the truck—much to Chris’s relief. The glimpse of a dog sitting at the blackjack table had made him suspect that Sterling had decided to go for a stroll.
“What a good dog,” Francine said while climbing into the truck’s back seat. “I’m surprised that he was good enough to not budge after all the time that we had left him here alone.”
“He’s a highly intelligent police canine.” It was with a sigh of relief that Chris patted the dog on the head and fastened his seatbelt. Though, he couldn’t help but notice that Sterling’s breath smelled like champagne and there was a hundred-dollar chip resting on the seat under his paw.
Helen wanted to kick herself. You’re in your mid-forties, you idiot. If you caught Sierra behaving like this, you’d give her a stern talking to about behaving more her age. Still, Helen couldn’t help herself. When Chris poured on the charm and asked Peyton Davenport to the Valentine’s Day dinner dance, she felt the green-eyed monster brewing inside her.
In her head, she knew that Chris was using Peyton’s attraction to get close to her so he could find out the truth. It was obvious that Peyton had prepared for a visit from the police asking about Tommy Bukowski.
Helen hoped that she succeeded in giving Peyton and Rachel a false sense of security by playing down their interest and seeming to go through the motions of the investigation to appease a worried girlfriend. Helen was pleased with how she had purposely flubbed up Tommy Bukowski’s name. That false sense of security could make Peyton drop her defenses enough for Chris to pick up something useful during their date.
Turning her cruiser into a parking space in front of the sheriff’s department, Helen groaned at the thought of Chris taking Peyton Davenport out on a date. Imagining Peyton’s privileged family, upbringing, and luxurious life made Helen’s stomach ache.
She felt like damaged goods.
Seriously? At your age? After all these years? You went to college on an academic scholarship. Raised an outstanding family. Graduated from law school, the police academy, worked your way up in the state police. You’ve raised a good kid who’s always on honor roll. She sighed. Guess that feeling never goes away.
Memories of her time with Chris flooded her thoughts—long talks while holding hands, passionate afternoons in the hayloft, and tender declarations of first love. She felt flush when she recalle
d how the touch of his hands on her flesh made her heart race with excitement. Never did any man make her feel that way before or since—not even Sierra’s father.
If only — Helen pushed the thought from her mind. No, I had to end it. I’d made a promise and there was no way I could have kept it if I hadn’t ended it with Chris.
She shoved the cruiser door open and marched into the sheriff’s department. Accustomed to the state police lieutenant’s visits, the deputy allowed her beyond the security check point to go to Deputy Sheriff Rodney Bell’s office.
The door open, Helen went inside to find the office empty. Concluding that he had stepped down the hall, she set her briefcase in a chair and took off her coat. After draping it across the back of her chair, she turned to sit when a name on a case file in the center of Rodney’s desk caught her eye.
It was not an unusual name. Normally, she wouldn’t have noticed it—if she had not heard the name uttered less than thirty minutes earlier.
Tabler, Mona.
Chris’s journalist friend Francine had just mentioned it. Chris said the murder had been one of his father’s cold cases.
If this is a state police case, then what is Rodney Bell, the county’s deputy sheriff, doing with a copy of the case file?
Curious, Helen leaned over to peer at the old brown folder. Chris and Francine suspected Mona’s murder was connected to a second case—that both women had been murdered by a serial killer.
“Where’s your friend?” Rodney snapped at her as he stepped through the door.
Startled, Helen spun around to face him. Rodney’s hand was bandaged where Sterling had bitten him.
“Chris had some interviews to conduct,” she said. “How’s your hand and arm?”
“Sore. But I’m a man. I can take it.” He frowned. “What interviews are you talking about? Chris is retired.”
“The FBI hired him on contract to investigate what appears to be a mob hit,” Helen said. “The victim was connected to an organized crime boss in New Jersey. I’m the liaison between the FBI and local law enforcement.”
“How cozy for you two.” Rodney moved around behind his desk. As he plopped down in his chair, he picked up a newspaper that had been resting on the corner and draped it across the case file. “Why’d they pick Chris?”
“Because he’s already got the local connections. Everyone trusts him—”
“Not everyone.” He held up the newspaper for her to read the headline. “You did hear about his dad covering up for him after he knocked up that girl back—”
“Chris would never do that, and you know it, Rodney. I could believe it of you—especially after seeing Felicia’s arm.”
Rodney was out of his seat. “I am not a wife beater. Yes, I grabbed Felicia’s arm. She pushed me over the edge. You remember how she used to be. She was the one who seduced me to steal me away from you—”
“Ancient history, Rodney! There’s nothing any of us can do to change the past.” She took her tablet from her case. “According to our information, the murder victim was staying at the Stardust. Witnesses put him in the lounge at the same time, Sunday night, as Ethel Lipton, who told you that she had information about a murder at the Stardust. I want to know exactly what she told you.”
“She told me nothing.” When Helen scoffed, he said, “She wanted to make a deal to get out of a DUI. She refused to give me any details until Victor Sinclair, the county prosecutor, signed, sealed, and delivered a free pass. She was dead before I had time to even talk to Sinclair.”
“Well, she must have talked to someone in order to have gotten herself killed,” Helen said.
“Doris Matheson swears her sources indicate Lipton got killed because she got into a cat fight in the department store with Precious Hawkins, the baby momma of Jose Martinez—”
“Who’s a major dealer running drugs from Mexico through West Virginia to Baltimore.”
“And those two thugs who killed Lipton worked for Jose,” Rodney said. “Problem is that the altercation happened only minutes before Lipton got herself gunned down—not enough time for them to have driven out from Martinsburg to teach her a lesson.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a snarl. “Chris stated the guys were waiting in the parking lot when he followed Ethel out of the store. He thought they were waiting for him on account of him having put away some heavy operators who had worked for the same drug cartel that Jose belongs to.”
“Were these guys sloppy enough to have missed Chris completely?”
“They weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they weren’t completely incompetent either. They did some freelance work on the side separate from the cartel.”
“Which brings us back to the original question,” she said. “Who did Ethel tell what she knew.” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “The killer? She may have been foolish and stupid enough to think the killer would pay her a lot of money to keep quiet.”
“She was going to go to jail for her umpteenth DUI,” Rodney said. “Having a lot of money doesn’t do you a lot of good in jail.”
Thinking about Peyton Davenport and her influential family, a slow grin came to Helen’s lips. “Unless, the killer had the connections to keep her out of jail.”
Chapter Sixteen
“That was when I told Katelyn that she was dating the wrong man.” Doris took the stack of dirty plates from Chris to load into the dishwasher. “At which point she told me that I was old and couldn’t possibly understand.”
The Mathesons had returned home to find that the power had been restored. In case the electricity was out, Chris had picked up oriental takeout. After everyone finished eating, his daughters went their separate ways. Nikki went to the barn to feed the horses and cats. Emma turned on Supergirl in the family room. Katelyn sought advice from her friends on getting enough money to pay for her Valentine’s Day date with Zack.
“I can imagine your response when Katelyn called you old,” Chris said to his mother.
“I said nothing. You would have been so proud of me.”
“Nothing?”
The corner of her lips curled. “When it comes to teenagers who think they have it all figured out, you can’t bulldoze them with common sense. Their natural instinct is to resist. You have to slip it in gradually in a non-confrontational manner so that they will not only accept your wisdom, but welcome it. And, if you do it just right, you may even dupe them into believing it was all their idea.”
“In other words, be sneaky.” Chris took the moist sponge from the sink and stepped over Sterling and Thor to clean the table.
Sterling was exhausted. As soon as he had finished eating, he curled up in a dog bed and fell asleep watching the birds and squirrels at the feeders in the back yard. Thor nestled against him with her head resting across the dog’s neck.
For once, the kitchen was quiet. Even Mocha and Sadie, strategically positioned under Doris’s feet in case something edible fell, were peaceable.
“I made a mistake mixing you up with Elliott’s book club,” Doris said.
“I thought you wanted me to make friends and get out more.”
“Normal friends,” she said. “Do you know we went to the library this afternoon and found most of that group there? They had names of suspects written across the white board and reports and crime scene pictures scattered across the table.”
Chris froze. “Really?”
“They were dissecting a new book about the Black Dahlia murder to see if the author got it right,” she said while rearranging the dishes in the dishwasher. “Your father used to do the same thing after he retired. He was a nut, and it turns out he’s not the only one. It looks like he’d collected this group of mixed nuts to analyze crime books.”
“Isn’t that what book groups do?”
“Don’t be a smartass.” Grumbling, she shook her head before pouring detergent int
o the dishwasher.
“They really aren’t that weird.” Chris cleaned the kitchen counter. “Speaking of strange, tell me what you know about Carson Lipton.”
“Excellent chef.” Doris turned on the dishwasher. “The Stardust’s five-star restaurant brings in a lot of folks just to eat there—and it’s all because of Carson. They have original recipes that he created himself. Back when that mess happened between you and Sandy, I never would have dreamed that Carson would have turned out as well as he did. That proves that if one sets their minds to it—they can beat their genes.”
“I talked to him today,” he said. “He cut off all communication with Ethel. I’m sure that helped. I remember back when I’d eat at the diner,” —he shook his head at the memory — “the things she’d say to him.”
“Ethel was evil.” Doris rinsed out the carafe to prepare coffee for the next morning. “Carson’s wife, Mabel, saw that his mother was toxic and loved Carson enough to cut that poison out of their life.”
“I met Mabel, too,” Chris said. “She’s kind of…” His voice trailed off.
“An ice queen?” She smiled.
“Definitely not warm and fuzzy—like you.”
“There’s no one like me. Your father used to say they broke the mold after making me.”
“He was right.”
“Even if she isn’t Ms. Congeniality, the Stardust can credit Mabel as much as Carson for the restaurant being the success that it is.” She held the scooper up in preparation for filling the coffee filter. “Why were you talking to Carson Lipton? Did you go to the casino? When did you start gambling?”
Chris leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “If you must know, I went to see him. I want to find out what happened to Sandy.”