Deadly Summer (Darling Investigations Book 1)

by Denise Grover Swank

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Everyone was a little shaken up after the incident, but Dixie took it upon herself to play mother hen.

  “I’m fine, Dixie,” I insisted. “Things like that used to happen fairly often when I was on Gotcha!” What I didn’t say was that I’d always been surrounded by security back then. They’d been left to deal with fans like Sebastian while I was swept away to another event or party or filming.

  We shot a few more scenes, trying to find more cooperative neighbors with dogs so it wouldn’t look like we’d found Fifi’s boy toy so quickly, but most of the neighbors who were home had seen the incident and kept wanting to talk about it on camera. Finally, Lauren threw up her hands and declared it was lunchtime.

  “Already?” someone said. “It’s only eleven.”

  “This isn’t about food or eating!” Lauren shouted. “This is about everyone getting their shit together before we pick up the next case. Be over at 351 Oak Street at twelve.”

  “The haunted house?” Tony asked.

  “That’s the one. Summer’s got a psychic showing up at one, so I’ll need you all to be ready.”

  Dixie gasped. “A psychic?”

  I lifted my hands. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.” What a circus.

  But we didn’t waste any time heading to the truck. Bill told Lauren that he was taking his camera with him so he’d be ready to get B-roll of the haunted house.

  I still hadn’t called Gretchen, so I placed a call to her after we got into the truck. “Gretchen, I’m so sorry I haven’t called you sooner, but Chief Montgomery told me that he talked to you and let you know that I . . . found Otto.”

  “And he told me you were injured. I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “I wish I’d found him alive.”

  “I know you do, girl.”

  “There’s still a lot of questions about what happened to Otto, and I want to keep looking into it. Someone moved his body, and I’d like to find out who and why.”

  “I thought the sheriff was looking into it,” she said, sounding confused.

  I wondered how much I should tell her, but then decided she deserved the truth. “I think you should know that the sheriff’s department thinks I moved his body.”

  “Why on earth would they think that?”

  “For the show.”

  She was quiet for a moment, and I was starting to worry she would hang up when she said, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. All anyone has to do is look into your eyes to know you’re incapable of such a thing.”

  Her statement caught me by surprise. I kept hearing it was a ridiculous proposition due to my size, but she was the first person to have based her opinion solely on my character.

  “I want to keep digging,” I said, “but I want to keep this quiet, even from my producer. She doesn’t want me to do this, so we’re doin’ it on our time off.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I’ll be honest; we’re still filming while we search. We want to show the truth on camera. But even if we weren’t filming, I’d still be lookin’ into his death. And not just to clear my name. I promised you I’d find out what happened to him, and I take that seriously.”

  Gretchen’s voice broke. “You have no idea what that means to me.”

  “I’d like your permission to go inside Otto’s apartment. You gave us a key, but that was when we thought Otto was alive. I just wanted to make sure it was still okay. I promise we’ll be respectful of Otto’s things.”

  Gretchen was silent again, and her voice sounded strained and teary when she finally spoke. “Thank you. I can’t bring myself to go over there yet, so feel free to go in.”

  I glanced over at Dixie after hanging up. “We’re good.” It was then that I realized Dixie had turned on the video camera.

  “Do you think Luke caught that creeper?” Dixie asked.

  “Knowing Luke, yeah.” I called Luke’s cell next, then dialed the police station when there was no answer.

  “Hey, Amber,” I said in response to the receptionist’s greeting, “it’s Summer. Is Luke handy?”

  “He’s in the interrogation room, but let me check in on him. He told me to let him know if you called.”

  “Do you know if he caught my . . . fan?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “He caught him, and you’ll never believe what the guy had with him.”

  “What?”

  “Nope. Luke made me swear not to tell you. Let me go get him.”

  “Okay.” I shot Dixie a confused glance. “Luke got him, but Amber says he had something with him.”

  “Probably a rag soaked in chloroform.”

  “Dixie!”

  “Just sayin’. He wasn’t driving a pedophile van for nothin’.”

  “Dixie!” Only there was a chance she might be right.

  Luke came on the line. “Summer? Can you take your lunch break later this afternoon so you can come by the station?”

  I shot another glance at Dixie. “We’re on our lunch break now.”

  “Are you planning on investigatin’ Otto’s case?”

  After last night, I almost told him that it was none of his business, but he had just come to my rescue, so I said, “Maybe.”

  “Well, you may not need to do that.”

  “Why?”

  “We found Otto’s bike in Sebastian Jenkins’s van.”

  I sat stock-still.

  “Summer?”

  “Yeah. I’m here. I’m just shocked. That’s the last thing I expected you to say.” But a memory of that afternoon tickled my brain. What was it?

  “And it was the last thing I expected to find. The sheriff’s department headed over to look at his van, and I’m trying to wrap things up here so I can join them.”

  “Where is the van now?”

  “It’s impounded.”

  “So how did he get it?”

  “Surprisingly, he’s spilling his guts. He says he followed you out to the lake and took the bike after you ran off in the woods.”

  “Was he the one who chased me into the woods?”

  “He swears he isn’t, but I’m not so sure. There’s something else, Summer.” He paused. “He knows where your farm is located and even knows which room is yours. He had a hand-drawn picture of it in his van. I think he might be the one who broke into the farmhouse.”

  I shuddered. “That’s a good thing, right?” Even if it was beyond creepy.

  “Yeah.” He paused. “You’re sure this guy isn’t the one you talked to at the church?”

  “No. He doesn’t look anything like him.”

  “I know, but I was hopin’ anyway, because if he’s not, then the mystery guy is still out there.”

  “None of this makes sense,” I said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Then the missing memory finally hit me. “Luke, there were two people out there. Two people were chasing me.”

  “What? Are you sure? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I just now remembered. My head was screwed up.”

  There was a commotion in the background. “Shit, I’ve got to go. Willy’s camped out with the van, and he says deputies from the sheriff’s department have shown up.”

  “Okay, thanks, Luke.”

  “I still need to see you later.”

  “Okay.”

  I hung up and relayed all the information I’d gotten from Luke to Dixie.

  “Do you still want to go by Otto’s?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We still don’t know why he was scared last Sunday, and I doubt he was scared of Sebastian Jenkins.”

  We were only a minute away by that point. When Dixie turned into a run-down apartment complex, I wasn’t surprised by the condition of the place, but I was sad that Otto had lived that way. The parking lot was full of older beat-up and rusted cars, and the frame of a swing set with no swings stood to the left side of the small complex.

  Bill was already waiting fo
r us with his camera out of its case.

  “Luke caught the creeper,” Dixie told him when we reached him. “And he found a surprise.”

  “Really?”

  “Otto’s bike.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. “What?”

  “He said he followed Summer out to the lake and took the bike.”

  Bill blinked and shook his head. “That’s wild. I never saw him. Do you think he’s the guy who chased you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I remembered there were two people chasing me, so Sebastian could have been one of them.”

  “He has to be,” Dixie said. “And this proves you weren’t lying.”

  “Maybe.” Still, there was a tangled mess of questions in my head. But we had a limited amount of time, and we needed to make the most of it. “Let’s get started.”

  “Okay.”

  Bill started rolling and I addressed the camera. “We’re outside of Otto’s apartment building, and so far, things aren’t adding up.” I laid out a few of the details, then said, “But Otto’s sister still wants us on the case, which makes checking out his apartment the next logical step. I’d also like to talk to a few neighbors.”

  I only realized my mistake as Bill took footage of us walking up to the building. “Oh, crap. I forgot the key in my desk drawer.”

  Dixie stared at me for a moment, possibly calculating how bad it would be for us to pick the lock in broad daylight, then flashed a smile. “No problem. Why don’t you and Bill work on talkin’ to the neighbors, and I’ll go get the key.”

  “Sorry, Dixie.”

  “No worries.”

  As Dixie drove off, Bill and I started knocking on doors. The complex was full of older residents, and most were home from church. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t know anything.

  “He kept to himself,” an older man who lived in the apartment next to Otto’s said. “He was usually quiet, but sometimes I’d hear sounds through the walls I couldn’t make out, kind of like cryin’.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was the TV.”

  That broke my heart, and I took a second to ask, “Have you seen any strangers lately? Anyone snooping around?”

  He laughed. “I’m talkin’ to y’all right now.”

  “Good point,” I conceded. “No one other than us?” When he shook his head, I said, “I know Otto had a bike. Do you know where he kept it?”

  “Yeah, down under the stairs.” He gestured toward the staircase, and Bill’s camera turned slightly to capture the movement.

  “Do you usually notice when it’s there?”

  He hesitated. “I do, but only because it’s so colorful with all that red and blue. I’m not nosy.”

  “You’re just observant,” I said reassuringly. “There’s a difference.”

  “I ain’t seen it since Sunday morning. That lady from the church came by looking for Otto, and I pointed out that if his bike was gone, he was gone.”

  “And you never saw Otto or his bike again?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did Otto have many visitors?”

  He laughed again. “Otto? Nah. He was usually leavin’, not entertainin’.”

  “Did he seem scared?”

  “Nah. Just sad.”

  “If you think of anything else, could you give me a call?” I asked, pulling one of my business cards from my purse. “We’re tryin’ to figure out what happened to him.”

  He took the card and looked it over. “Yeah. Sure.”

  Dixie was pulling into the parking lot as he shut the door. I wished we could talk to more neighbors, but our lunch break was more than halfway done, and I needed to change before we showed up at the haunted house.

  Bill lowered the camera as Dixie came hurrying up the walkway with the keys in hand. “Sorry! Lauren was at the office, so I had to be careful about gettin’ them.”

  I made a face. “Sorry.”

  “Well, it turned out to be good timing. She got a call while I was there. I think she found out that your creeper got arrested, and she wasn’t too happy about it.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, she turned a little pale and asked, ‘Are you sure they found it with him?’ Then she asked where he was now, and then she told Karen she’d be back. She took off alone.”

  “That’s pretty generic. She could have been talking about anything.”

  “True. But the timing is coincidental.”

  She had a point. Plus, I didn’t trust Lauren as far as I could move a grown man’s body. Still . . . “We know that Lauren’s all about sensationalizing anything that’s not part of her dog and pony show. I suspect she was hopin’ to draw it out over more episodes.”

  “I sure hope so,” Dixie said. “Because thinking she either brought your creeper here to stalk you for the sake of this show and/or that she might have actually moved Otto’s body is freakin’ me out.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Eager to change the subject, I filled Dixie in on what little I’d learned from the neighbors.

  Dixie said, “So, based on the whereabouts of Otto’s bike and what his friends said, we know that he disappeared on Sunday. But we still don’t know what scared him?”

  Traitor that I was, I found myself thinking about Teddy and Otto arguing in that alley a couple of days before the latter had disappeared.

  Teddy would never hurt anyone.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I sure hope we find out something inside to help us figure it out.”

  She handed me the keys, and we walked down to Otto’s apartment. The curtains were all pulled, and his doormat looked like it was original to when the apartment complex had been built fifty-some-odd years ago.

  The smell hit me as soon as I unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  Bill held the camera up to his face, but I could see him cringing behind it.

  “Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” Dixie said, waving a hand in front of her face. “What is that?”

  “It smells like something dead.” I waved my hand in front of my face. “Did Otto have any pets?”

  “I don’t know,” Dixie said, pinching her nose. “He never mentioned any. Maybe he left out some food, and it spoiled. This is rank.”

  Maybe so. But I had a very bad feeling. “Don’t touch anything until we’ve looked around. We don’t want to leave fingerprints.”

  “But Gretchen gave us permission to be here.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  Her eyes widened with fear.

  Something inside me told me to call Luke, but I knew he had his hands full with my stalker. I almost called Cale, but I knew he was working on the murder investigation. Bottom line: I hated to bother either of them if this turned out to be nothing. “Let’s just make a quick pass through the apartment and see if we can figure out what’s causing the stink.” I was hoping we’d need to call animal services instead of 911.

  The living room was furnished with older, mismatched furniture; and there were piles of plates, takeout containers, and wrappers strewn everywhere.

  “Do you think that’s the source of the smell?” I asked, already guessing the answer.

  “Nah, this smells like the time the barn cat died in the loft in July.”

  Oh, Lord.

  We peeked into the tiny kitchen. I had half hoped to find a maggot-infested hamburger on the counter, an absolutely disgusting thought but much better than where my imagination was running.

  I headed down the hall. “Did Otto live with anyone?”

  “Not that I know of. And Gretchen didn’t mention it.”

  “True.” I stopped next to a partially closed door. The smell was leaking through the cracks. The room was dark so I couldn’t see what was inside. “The stink is comin’ from in here. You think this is the bathroom?”

  “The bedroom’s down there.” She gestured to an open door with the foot of a bed showing through the opening. “And this door looks like a closet.” She pointed to a slim door closer to the bedroom before looking back up at me. “I t
hink it has to be.”

  “We can’t turn on the light and risk touching the light switch,” I said, digging my phone out and turning on the flashlight. “I’ll have to use this until we figure out what’s goin’ on in there.”

  “Or what went on in there. Past tense,” Dixie said in a small voice.

  My stomach did a flip. She had a point. But I still stood in front of the door, scared to see what was on the other side.

  Finally, I sucked in a breath . . . and instantly regretted it since I pulled in a lungful of something putrid. I started coughing and Dixie groaned.

  “Let’s just get this over with.” She pushed the door with her foot, and it halfway swung into the room before it met resistance.

  Crap.

  Pinching my nose, I held up my phone and shone the light into the space. A pair of jeans-clad legs was blocking the door.

  “Oh, God,” Dixie gasped.

  My heart took off like a race car. I knew I should get the hell out and call Luke, but I suspected I might know who it was—and I had to find out for sure.

  I took a small step into the room, trying to control my nausea, when the smell got even worse. I shined the light around the door, illuminating the man’s blue T-shirt and then the bullet hole in his forehead. From the way his face was bloated, it was obvious this hadn’t just happened.

  A wave of dizziness washed through me that had nothing to do with my concussion.

  Sometimes I really hated when I was right.

  “Well,” I said, “we just found our mystery man.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  We stumbled out to the living room while my fingers fumbled to call the police station.

  “Amber, this is Summer. Is Luke still there?”

  “He’s over at the impound lot with Deputy Dixon.”

  Dammit. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll call his cell.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her?” Dixie asked as I hung up the call.

  “Because that guy’s been dead for a while—probably since soon after I saw him, based on the fact he’s still wearing what he had on at the church and . . . his face. And Luke’s looking at the van with Deputy Dixon.”

  “We could call Cale or Willy,” Dixie said.