Dyed and Gone to Heaven (Curl Up and Dye Mysteries, #3)

by Aimee Nicole Walker

  “I figured as much, but thank you for telling me. I’m sorry that you see such shitty things in your job. I know that somebody has to do it, and I sometimes wish that burden wasn’t on your shoulders, but I’m glad we have someone as dedicated as you are looking out for us.”

  “Thank you, Sunshine. There are some really hard days, but coming home to you each night helps me in ways I don’t think I can properly express,” Gabe told me.

  “You can try,” I suggested. I never considered myself to be a glory hound or attention seeker, but I won’t pretend that I didn’t love hearing how much Gabe loved me. He was the first and only man to say those words to me, other than my father and Chaz.

  “You give me a reason to smile, you make me laugh, and you remind me of good in this world. Loving you gives me a purpose to live for, something other than a job. You make me want to be a better version of myself,” Gabe said tenderly.

  “Wow.” I wasn’t sure what to say, but that didn’t last long. I pointed my fork at him and said, “That right there is why no one else will ever get my chocolate chip cookies.” I should’ve said more and reciprocated those sentiments back at him, but I was too emotional to do it just then.

  After dinner, Gabe turned on a baseball game. The Reds were on the west coast taking on some team in royal blue jerseys. I couldn’t tell you what the name of the team was, but I was fond of the way their asses looked in their white baseball pants. Because the game started three hours later than normal, it wasn’t half over by the time we went to bed.

  “Maybe you can call Emory and find out who wins,” I said, as I snuggled up to Gabe beneath the sheets.

  Gabe chuckled then said, “Smartass,” before he kissed my forehead.

  My heart still felt full from the words Gabe used earlier to express his love for me. In fact, it felt like it might explode if I didn’t tell him how I felt. Telling Gabe that he was the most important person in my life and that I couldn’t imagine a day without him seemed like the best way to open up a valve and release some of the pressure.

  “You’re an incredible man, Gabe.”

  “I am?” he asked.

  “The best. I thought men like you only existed in fairy tales, books, and movies, but here you are,” I said, placing a kiss on his chest over his heart. “You’re kind, genuine, you speak from the heart, and you love with everything you have, and somehow you want to share that love with me. I am the luckiest man on this planet. So, on the days when things look bleak, and humanity has let you down again, know that I’ll be here to show you that this life is worth living and there is always sunshine waiting to brighten your world after those dark clouds pass.”

  “Josh, that’s a beautiful thing to say,” he said tenderly.

  “I have my moments,” I said sheepishly.

  “Oh, Sunshine. Every moment with you is precious and beautiful. I want you to take that knowledge into your dreams with you tonight and know that I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I want you to have sweet dreams about a happy future with me and not turbulent ones about the man next door. Will you do that for me?” he asked.

  “I’ll try my best,” I promised.

  Sleep, when it finally came, was better than the previous night, but not filled with sunshine and fields of flowers like Gabe had wanted. I didn’t want to worry him, so I did something the next morning that I had never done with him up to that point: I lied. I told him I slept great and then distracted him with a blow job in case my smile hadn’t been convincing. I would need to face down whatever demons were possessing my dreams on my own. I had a feeling that I could only do that by going straight to the source of my fear—Emory.

  GOOD MORNING, DETECTIVES,” RYLAN Broadman said outside the glass doors of Blissville Bank and Trust.

  “Counselor,” I returned.

  “Morning,” Dorchester replied.

  Broadman opened the door, and we followed him inside the bank. I remembered how surprised I had been the first time I walked into the building after moving to Blissville to open an account. It was more opulent than any big city bank I had ever been to with the white and gold marble floors that gleamed beneath the bright overhead lights and cashier wickets made of an expensive dark wood. The office furniture throughout the building was constructed of the same high-quality wood. The sitting area furniture looked like expensive antiques that a person didn’t expect to find in a bank. I had almost been afraid to sit in them for fear that my big frame and weight would break them.

  “I spoke to the bank manager, Ken Divers, and he’s going to give us a private room to go through and document the contents of the safe deposit box. I would need to take this step for trust purposes even if you didn’t want to see what’s inside,” Broadman told us.

  The chairs and sofas were as elegant as I recalled from the time I opened an account. My doubt in their ability to hold me had grown, as had my waistline from eating Josh’s cooking the past few months. It seemed like I wasn’t the only one who felt that way because Broadman and Dorchester looked them over and remained standing with me while we waited for the bank manager to meet us.

  My first impression of Ken Divers was that of a man who worked endless hours and didn’t take home much to show for it. I’d always heard that the only people who made money in banking were the presidents and CEOs. Ken’s shirt looked a tad threadbare around the elbow when he extended his hand to Dorchester first, and then to me. I wondered if perhaps the bank could’ve invested more money in their employees instead of the building itself.

  “Come with me, gentlemen,” Divers said. We followed him down a hallway that led to a vault filled with various sizes of safe deposit boxes. “Box five twenty-nine,” he said out loud as he looked for the right one. “Aha,” he exclaimed when he spotted it.

  Lawrence Robertson’s box was the largest size the bank offered. Each safe deposit box required two keys to open it: the client’s specific key and the bank’s master key that fit all the boxes. The bank couldn’t open the box with just their master key. If a client lost a key, the bank hired a locksmith to drill the lock to open it. Divers slid his key into place then gestured for Broadman to do the same. Broadman had told us that the bank issued two keys for each box; Robertson kept one, and he’d given the other to his attorney. The men turned their keys at the same time, and we heard an audible click when the box unlocked.

  Divers opened the door, and both men grabbed a side of the box and began to pull. It was longer than I expected it to be. The height and width were about a foot, but I estimated the length of the box to be at least three feet long. I could tell by the grunts the two men made and the way their knees bent that it weighed quite a bit too.

  “Jesus,” Divers exclaimed. “I think we know where the missing gold from Fort Knox is hidden.”

  “It sure feels that way,” Broadman said.

  The two men carried the box inside a rather cramped room, that only had two chairs and a cheaply laminated table that was attached to the wall. The unglamorous appeal of the room was in sharp contrast to the glitz and glam of the rest of the building. It was like they ran out of money or stopped caring when they got to that part of the building.

  “I guess this won’t work, will it?” Ken asked.

  “Not unless one of these guys sits in the other’s lap,” Broadman returned quickly.

  “Rule number three twenty-nine: No lap dances inside the bank vault,” Divers said dryly, but good-naturedly. “I like the privacy of this room, but it’s too small. I tell you what,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I’ll set you up in a conference room. We don’t have any loan closings scheduled until this afternoon. Will that do?”

  Broadman looked at us to get our okay. Dorchester and I nodded that it was fine by us. “Perfect, Ken. Thank you.”

  “You lead the way, and I’ll help carry the safe deposit box,” I told the manager, who gladly let me hoist the bulky box with Broadman. The fucking thing weighed even more than I thought. “Jesus! Someone call Geraldo Rivera and
tell him we found the missing loot from Al Capone’s secret vault,” I said excitedly. I sounded more and more like Josh every damn day, which was fine by me but I wasn’t ever going to wear his skinny jeans.

  “You got this, buddy,” Dorchester said encouragingly.

  We followed behind Divers to the conference room. “Is there anything else you need?” he asked once he flipped the lights on in the spacious room. The gleaming mahogany table was large enough to seat a professional football team around it and still have room. Divers’ eyes flipped between the box and each of us. I could tell his curiosity was getting the best of him, and he wanted to know what was in that box.

  “That will be all,” I said, placing my hand on the doorknob as a subtle hint that he could leave.

  “Oh, okay,” he said, slowly backing out of the doorway. “You know where to find…” I closed the door as soon as he was clear of it, cutting off his words.

  Dorchester chuckled and said, “What an asshole.”

  “Nah, he was just curious,” I said, waving off the idea.

  “I was talking about you,” Dorchester told me.

  We had a good chuckle then focused our attention on the safe deposit box. There was a bit of tension in the air since we weren’t sure what to expect. “Let’s do this,” I said, reaching for the top of the box. I waited for the guys to get ready and for Dorchester to give me the okay.

  Broadman opened his notebook and clicked his pen to prepare for taking notes. Dorchester had pulled out his phone and clicked on the video feature. “Detective John Dorchester with Carter County Sheriff’s Department, Detective Gabriel Wyatt with the Blissville Police Department, and attorney Rylan Broadman at Blissville Bank and Trust.” He rattled off the date and continued with, “We are taking inventory of the box with the permission of Rylan Broadman, who also acts as the trustee for the Lawrence Robertson Revocable Trust. Okay, Gabe, open the box,” Dorchester said.

  I opened the box slowly as if I expected the thing to be booby trapped or some shit. I watched Goonies enough as a kid that I knew better than to just rush into a situation. Nothing exploded when it was finally opened, which was great, but the sheer number of items crammed inside the box seemed overwhelming. It looked like everything was wrapped in the plastic bags you get from the grocery store.

  “We’ll go with the notion that the newest items would be on top, but we won’t take anything for granted. Dual control on each item with the camera on us at all times,” I said, making sure we were protected from false claims that we helped ourselves to whatever might be inside, especially cash. Not only that, the video could appear as part of the evidence presented at trial and we weren’t about to lose a case over the camera panning away from the box and then back or video feed that got cut and looked like it was edited. “Ready?” I asked Broadman.

  “Ready,” he responded.

  I grabbed the first plastic bag and opened it up. “There’s a stash of cash here,” I said clearly for the video. “A stack of hundred dollar bills with a ten-thousand-dollar money wrapper on it. Do we count it to verify for your notes or assume it’s full?” I asked Broadman.

  “We count it to make sure we’re accurate,” he replied. “Are either of you opposed if I ask for a money counter machine?”

  “Call the manager from your cellphone,” I said. “I don’t want to be accused of stealing anything out of the box.”

  “Good point,” Broadman said. He called the bank manager, and we waited for a few minutes for the knock on the door.

  Dorchester kept the camera firmly on the box, so it was clear that no one touched or moved the box. “I’ll take over for you if your arm gets tired,” I offered. It would be easy enough to move in behind him and take the phone, so he could move out from behind it and get a break.

  Broadman set up the money counter right beside the box so that it was in sight of the camera. We ran the first pack of money through the machine and confirmed that there were exactly ten thousand dollars inside. We both initialed and dated the strap and set it aside. We repeated this same process with nine additional bags of cash.

  “One hundred thousand dollars in cash so far,” I documented for the camera. It seemed that Mr. Robertson had some emergency money on hand just in case the banks failed. It was hard telling what else we would find.

  Beneath the row of money was several envelopes that appeared to be letters. Most of them were thanking Robertson for his generous benevolence to their charity or university. Alice Davenport wasn’t wrong when she said that he was a generous man. The charitable amounts in that stack of letters equaled a staggering one million dollars. In my head, I said it in my Mike Myers voice from Austin Powers. As impressive as his donations were, it was the last letter that sent my heart pounding.

  It was a letter from Michael Larkin sent in September to Robertson. “Larkin was the guy from McCarren Consortium that Robertson didn’t like or trust, right?” I asked the men in the conference room with me.

  “Yeah,” Dorchester agreed, “what do you have?”

  “It’s a letter dated in September from Larkin, and it’s inquiring if Robertson is interested in resuming talks about selling his land for the casino. He says he can assure him that things will turn out differently this time. He’s willing to offer the same contingencies as Mr. McCarren did with the first deal.” I turned and held the letter up for the video. I was sure I looked like a grinning fool because the timing was right. Nate Turner had called me mid-November about the threats he’d been receiving, and he was killed in January. We just had to figure out Nate’s exact involvement.

  “We’ll be taking this letter as evidence, Mr. Broadman,” Dorchester told him. “We’ll be sure to get a copy back to you.”

  “Mr. Robertson didn’t mention this to you at all? Not even in passing?” I asked the attorney. It seemed to me that Robertson had placed a lot of confidence in the younger man. It was odd that he wouldn’t have told him, even if he planned on ignoring the letter.

  “Not a word, which feels strange to me,” Broadman replied earnestly. “But, there’s the evidence that it happened. That’s clearly McCarren letterhead.”

  The rest of the box was anticlimactic compared to the cash and the smoking gun of a letter. We replaced the items back where we found them and Dorchester filmed us putting the box back and locking it away before handing over the bank’s key to Divers, who looked nervous about being on camera. He resembled a lizard by the way he kept licking his lips and stared at it with bulging eyes.

  We shook Broadman’s hand then headed to the sheriff’s department to copy and enter the letter into evidence before we headed to Cincinnati.

  The conference room buzzed with excitement when the task force learned about the letter.

  “Hot damn!” Weston said loudly.

  “It’s about time,” Harris added. “Let’s get this all wrapped up in a pretty bow for the DA.”

  “We need to find our killer first,” I told them, trying to project a little levity into the situation. Yes, we were getting somewhere, but there were a few missing pieces, and we still didn’t know who pulled the trigger. “Do any of the players at McCarren have military backgrounds or connections?” I asked. Our killer knew what the fuck he was doing, which didn’t necessarily equal ex-military, but sometimes special forces turned to mercenary work once they returned to civilian life.

  “Other than our ghost, Jonathon Silver,” Weston asked. “Let’s not forget his appearance was awfully damn convenient.”

  “We haven’t ruled him out,” I explained. “It’s better that he thinks we believe every word that comes out of his mouth. He’ll cooperate more that way,” I said with a wicked smile. “He has an alibi for the night of Nate’s homicide, by the way, so let’s look to see if any of the men employed by McCarren could be co-conspirators. Like Michael Larkin,” I told the group.

  “I’ve got backgrounds,” Detective Allyson Drake said. It was the first time in a few weeks she’d joined us, but she was finished with
her latest undercover bust and was looking to stay busy until her next assignment came in.

  “You have the floor, Detective,” I told her and took a seat.

  Drake typed a few things on her laptop, and an image popped up on the whiteboard behind her. “This is Drew McCarren,” she said. The man wasn’t what I was expecting, although I couldn’t pinpoint why. He had a sexy silver fox thing going for him, except his dark eyes resembled those of a shark. McCarren gave the appearance of being cold, ruthless, and dead on the inside. Drake rattled off his age, income, and a few of the things he was accused of doing, although no arrests had been made.

  Detective Drake hit a key, and a different image popped up. “This is Michael Larkin, the man who Robertson disliked the most,” she said. “Former Marine…”

  “No such thing,” Harris said, pushing back his sleeve to reveal his globe and anchor tattoo with the dates of his service. “A Marine until you die.”

  “Michael Larkin is a Marine,” Drake amended. “He served for twenty-two years before he resigned. He has a degree in urban planning and development as well as an architectural degree. He’s the lead man on all projects at McCarren. He’s not on anyone’s radar that I can see.”

  She went through the money guy Tommy Thompson pretty quickly because there wasn’t anything there that raised the hair on the back of our necks. When she put up a photo of Rick Spizer, I sat up a little straighter, as did everyone else in the room.

  “Former Green Beret.” You could feel the energy pulsating through the room when she made the announcement. He was involved somehow, and we knew it.

  “Let’s get on that warrant to wire Jonathon Silver and set up a meeting between the two men,” I told the room.

  I didn’t trust Jonathon Silver, but I had no choice but to use him to try and get to the truth. I’d wire him up, send him undercover, and give him enough rope to hang himself. If he were responsible for his brother’s death, I wouldn’t stop until I proved it.