by Lauren Carr
“But he would have had to have access to the house’s secure wireless network,” Helen said.
“He could have hacked into that,” Chris said. “But he would have had to have gotten access inside the house to have killed Felicia and so far your forensics team says there was no forced entry. He could have been someone she trusted enough to give her network’s password and let inside the house.”
“That limits our pool of suspects considerably,” Helen said as shouting out in the street drifted up to them.
“Halt! Police!” They looked out of the window to see one of the uniformed officers chasing a man across the front yard. Abruptly, the passenger side door of Helen’s cruiser flew open and Sterling scrambled out to give chase—bringing the man down in the middle of the street.
“How did that dog open my car door?” Helen ran from the bedroom and down the stairs.
“He’s goofy. That’s how.”
By the time they reached the street, the uniformed officer was handcuffing the man wearing a worn army fatigue jacket and gray overalls underneath.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he shouted over and over again while being hauled to his feet.
Sterling galloped across the yard to jump up and plant his front paws on Chris’s chest as if to ask, “Did you see what I did? Did you see what I did? Did I do good?”
“You did good. Now get back in the cruiser.”
Instead of obeying, Sterling opted to trot next to him.
“We caught him trying to sneak into the garage,” one of the uniformed officers told Helen.
“I was only trying to get my tools before you cops stole them from me. They’re my tools. I need them.”
“What’s your name and what are your tools doing in Felicia Bell’s garage?” Helen asked.
“Opie Fletcher. I worked for Ms. Bell. She hired me to do odd jobs after her husband left. Mowing the lawn. Trimming trees. Cleaning the gutters.”
“The lawn doesn’t need mowed right now.” One officer took Opie’s wallet out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Helen, who removed his driver’s license to read the name.
“I came today to trim that big oak tree next to the house. Its branches are hanging over the roof. I was supposed to do it yesterday, but I couldn’t make it on account that I got called into my regular job at the racetrack—”
“Racetrack?” Chris asked. “Do you work at the Stardust?”
“Stable hand for over thirty years,” he said. “I told Ms. Bell ‘bout my gettin’ called into work and she said I could come out today. But then when I saw all the police cars, I was ‘fraid that you’d all jump to the same nasty conclusion that you did before.”
“You’re talking about Mrs. Tabler,” Chris said.
Opie stomped both of his feet. “I didn’t do nothing to that lady, I swear.”
Chris led Helen aside. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“I just saw your dog open the door to my car from the inside by himself. I’ll believe anything.”
“Opie Fletcher was a person of interest in Mona Tabler’s murder.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “What was his motive?”
“Folks heard him say that he did it,” Chris said. “He was a suspect for years before Dad cleared him. It’s in the case file.”
“We need to get back to the office and take a good long look at those case files.”
In response to the car horn blowing, they turned around to find Sterling sitting in the driver’s seat of her car—pressing his paws to the horn.
“Chris, what—”
“Don’t worry. He’s not driving.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Is that him? Is that the dirty bastard who killed my wife?”
Rodney Bell rushed out of the sheriff’s office to intercept the two uniformed officers escorting Opie Fletcher, in handcuffs, to an interrogation room. One of the officers pulled Opie away while his partner blocked Rodney’s access to the suspect.
“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch!”
Chris attempted to settle Rodney down with reason. “We don’t know that he did it. They just caught him trying to break into the garage. He claims he worked for Felicia. Helen is going to question him.”
“Worked for her? What do you mean worked for Felicia? Doing what?”
Chris glanced over his shoulder and saw that the officers had escorted Opie into the room and closed the door. “Yard work. Odd jobs.”
“Where the hell did she find him? What the—” Grasping Chris’s arms, Rodney collapsed against his chest. “This is all my fault. I never should’ve left her. If I’d stayed, then she would’ve never met that animal.”
Chris ushered Rodney, covering his face with his hands, back into the sheriff’s office and closed the door.
“Have you told your sons yet?” Chris took a seat in the chair across from him.
With a heavy sigh, Rodney lifted his face from his hands. “They’re coming out as soon as they can. I want to be able to tell them that we got the guy by the time they get here.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the interrogation room. “What do you know about him?”
“His name is Opie Fletcher.”
“Where’d Felicia find him?”
“We don’t know yet,” Chris said. “It’s still early. When was the last time you talked to Felicia?”
“Of course.” He rose to his feet. “The spouse is always the first one you suspect.”
“Rodney, we have to ask these questions. You were fighting with Felicia yesterday. She showed us bruises on her arm that she claimed you gave her.”
“No, I completely understand. You have to clear me first.” Rodney fished a toothpick from his shirt pocket. “If the situation was reverse—”
“It has been reversed. Just the other day you accused me of arranging Ethel Lipton’s murder.”
“And just like you, I was only trying to get to the truth.” Rodney stuck the end of the toothpick between his teeth.
“Did you kill Felicia, Rod?”
“I have an alibi. I went to the gym after work. I got there a few minutes before seven.”
“Did you talk to anyone? Can anyone confirm you were there?”
“I doubt it. I went straight to the cardio cinema and used the treadmill. It was dark, and I stayed in the theater through the whole movie. Then I went home—alone.”
“Cardio cinema?”
“It’s a movie theater in the gym. You do your cardio—rowing machine, elliptical, cycle, or treadmill—while watching a movie. It started just as I walked in. I left after it had ended.”
“How long was that?” Chris asked.
“Around ninety minutes. Maybe a little less. From seven to around eight-thirty? What time did the fire start?”
“9-1-1 got the call at twenty-one after eight.”
“At which time, I was in a dark movie theater.” Rodney held up his hand, winked, and pointed at him. “Wait a minute. Just remembered. My membership card has a barcode. I used that when I checked in. They also have security cameras at the front entrance. That’ll prove I was there and the security footage will show you exactly what time I left.” With a chuckle, he bit down on the toothpick.
“I don’t suppose the gym had any other doors that you could’ve left and come back through during the movie?” Chris asked.
“Fire exits of course,” Rodney said. “You can go out, but you’ll set off an alarm loud enough to wake the dead. Then after you get out, the doors lock behind you—forcing you to come back through the front door where the security camera picks you up.”
“Sounds to me like you checked that out already.”
Rodney winked at him. “I make it my business to pay attention to details—just like you.”
After his interview with Rodney, Chris found Sterling in t
he break room. The dog sat in a chair at the table with a newspaper laid out before him. Someone had put a K-9 law enforcement vest on the German shepherd.
“Anything interesting in the news?” Chris asked with a laugh.
The dog put a paw on the paper and uttered a low bark. Chris gave into his curiosity and bent over to peer at the page. The paw rested on an advertisement for heated dog beds at the local pet supply store. The two-hundred-dollar electric bed was on sale for twenty percent off.
“If I get you one of those, then I’ll have to get them for everyone.”
With a whine, Sterling slumped.
“I have a meeting at noon,” Helen said as she entered the break room with her phone on her ear. “Can we meet at one thirty?” Seeing Chris, she let out a quiet sigh and rolled her eyes while listening to the person at the other end of the line. “I do understand the casino’s concern for its reputation, Ms. Davenport, but you have to understand ours. This is an active murder investigation. Mr. Bukowski being a Stardust guest does not give the casino the right to demand everything that we uncover in our investigation.”
Listening to Peyton Davenport’s response, Helen clenched her teeth so hard that her jaw muscles rippled.
“If Mr. Sinclair wants to call my supervisor, then he can do that.” Her mouth formed a snarl which she shot in Chris’s direction. Abruptly, her eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Yes, he’s right here.” She thrust the phone at Chris. “Your girlfriend wants to talk to you.”
With a whine, Sterling slithered out of the chair and hid under the table.
Chris swallowed and took the phone which he put to his ear. “Hello.”
“Hey, handsome,” Peyton said in a seductive tone, “are we still on tonight?”
“Is the dinner dance still on? Rumor has it your chef and the restaurant manager are MIA?”
“I’ve heard something about that,” she said, “but the Stardust can handle losing one chef and his cold-hearted wife. As our board of directors say, no one is indispensable at the Stardust. Everyone can be replaced.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“Reality is harsh.”
“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“How’s this for not beating around the bush?” she said. “I have plans for you and me to get busy this evening. Do you want to do it before dinner, as an appetizer, or afterwards for dessert?”
Chris felt his face flush. He saw by the expression on Helen’s face that she had concluded what Peyton was saying to him.
“I like dessert.”
“So do I,” she replied. “Since I have to work, I’ll meet you at the dinner.”
“I’d rather come to your office to meet you,” he said. “I can zip up your dress.”
Helen rolled her eyes.
“Or unzip it,” Peyton said. “See you at six.”
Before she could disconnect the call, Chris asked, “Do you know a Josie?”
There was such a long silence at the other end of the line that he thought she had hung up. Finally, she asked, “Josie? Josie who?”
“A witness told us that Tommy Bukowski was having drinks in the lounge with a redhead named Josie. Someone suggested that she worked at the Stardust?”
“What’s her last name?” Peyton asked.
“Don’t have it? Could Bukowski have met her while doing his research in cybersecurity? Maybe Rachel knows who she could be.”
“I know every employee in cybersecurity,” Peyton said. “I’ll ask Rachel and do some nosing around. I’ll try to have answers for you by this evening.” Her voice took on a husky tone. “I can slip it to you between the sheets.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Helen’s dark eyes narrowed to slits. “Can you believe this?” she asked Sterling, who was looking from one of them to the other from under the table.
Disconnecting the call, Chris said, “I’m not going to sleep with her.”
“You bet you’re not going to sleep with her.”
“It’s because she’s a murder suspect that I’m going out with her. If she lets me get close to her, then she’ll let her guard down and I can find out what she’s hiding. She’s hiding something—that’s why she’s sicking her Daddy’s lawyer on your boss. She wants to find out if we’re on to her.”
With a pout, Helen had to agree with him. “I don’t trust her.”
“Neither do I,” Chris said while laying his hand onto hers. “But I know what I’m doing. I’d worked undercover for over ten years—going up against every type of psychopath. I can handle Peyton.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She squeezed his hand. “You handling her.” She turned back to business. “Does she know who this Josie is?”
“She says she doesn’t.”
“Do you believe her?”
Uncertain, he shook his head while shrugging his shoulders. “According to Elliott’s source at Loco Lucy’s—”
“Which isn’t just second hand, but third-fourth hand.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Peyton Davenport gave Tommy Bukowski permission to go through Stardust’s records to look for the ransomware.”
“Which he found.”
“If Peyton knew that the ransomware was in their system, she wouldn’t have done that,” Chris said.
“She would have had a dozen legal avenues to have kept Tommy Bukowski out,” she said. “It’s right out of White Collar 101. Peyton delays Bukowski with legal hurdles while Rachel is removing the ransomware and scrubbing the system.”
“But that’s not what Peyton did,” Chris said. “She immediately gave Bukowski access to the system.”
“And he found the coding for the ransomware,” Helen said. “Now he’s dead.”
“Either Peyton didn’t know about the ransomware because she wasn’t in on it,” Chris said, “or she did know about it and was in on it—”
“If so, why would she have given Bukowski access to the system to find it? She had every legal right to refuse him.”
Chris narrowed his eyes. “Last night, Mom told me that around ten years ago there was a sex scandal at the high school. A group of teenaged girls was seducing teachers and then blackmailing them. One of the girls ended up dead. Turned out to be an organized sex and extortion ring.” He looked at Helen. “Peyton Davenport was the ring leader.”
“Was she—”
“Never prosecuted.” Chris shook his head. “There was also another scandal when she was in college involving a dead football player.” He rubbed his chin. “It’s been my experience that psychopaths, who generally have no conscious, only become bolder—”
“More arrogant.”
“—with each success.”
“Part of the turn on is getting away with it,” Helen said.
“If Peyton was in on the ransomware, she may not have been able to resist when Tommy Bukowski asked to look at her system—just to see if she could get away with it.”
“She is the vice-president of security,” Helen said.
“Which gives her the keys to the kingdom.”
“Yes, but she was taking a huge risk by letting Bukowski examine their system. The discovery of a hacking ring operating inside the online casino would not look good for the Stardust at all.”
“Which is why he had to die,” Chris said.
“But she’d have to be smart enough to know that when Bukowski was reported missing—or his body found—that he’d be traced back to the casino.”
“She did think about that,” Chris said. “Their records show that he’d checked out. They can argue that whatever happened to him happened after he left the Stardust and they have the paper trail to prove it.”
“Even if Peyton is not a murderer,” Helen said, “I don’t want you sleeping with her.”
He picked up her hand and kissed her fingers. “There’s only one woman I want to sleep with.”
With a coy grin, she wrapped her fingers through his and pressed their hands to her heart. “And who might that be?”
His answer was a soft kiss on her lips.
With a deep sigh, she returned to business. “Where’s Rodney?”
“Lawyering up,” Chris said.
“Your conversation went that well?” She took two bottles of water from the fridge and handed one to him.
“He’s been around long enough to know how it goes,” Chris said while opening his bottle. “Homicide detectives always start with the inner circle and work their way out. Yesterday, we saw Rodney threaten Felicia. She had bruises on her arm that she attributed to him—”
“Nothing screams guilty like lawyering up.”
“I’d lawyer up if I was in his shoes.” He focused on the seam of the label wrapped around the bottle. “What is this thing with the toothpick? He’s always got a toothpick stuck in his teeth.”
“Cause he’s got to do something with his hands since he quit smoking.”
Chris let out a breath. “Of course. I forgot all about that. He used to smoke.” He nodded his head. “That’s another reason Mom hated his guts.”
“Rodney was in danger of not passing his physical because his blood pressure was so high,” Helen said. “So he quit smoking and joined the gym a couple of years ago. Felicia told me that was when things turned ugly between them—when Rodney gave up his cigarettes.” She took a drink of water. “Do you think he had anything to do with Felicia’s murder?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said with a sigh. “We all grieve differently. When Blair was killed, I had a million questions. What was she doing? Did she see that truck coming at her? Did that terrorist see her and target her? Did she die immediately or did she suffer? Did she have any last words? Did she think about our girls? Did she think of me? Was there someone there to offer her comfort, ease her pain, her fears, pray for her. I called every source I knew who could answer at least a few of my questions.” He looked at her. “Still, to this day, I have questions.”