“Really? How so?”
“To start with, Drew Dobbs told everyone you’d threatened him with a rifle. Not a gun, but a rifle. Which happens to be what he was killed with.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have one. And even if I did, they could do a ballistics match and prove my weapon didn’t fire the bullet that killed him.”
“If they found the bullet. But you’re assuming a frame. I’m not. A real, competent frame is hard. Way beyond most people’s skills. Further discrediting of an already disreputable subject, on the other hand, is easy. If someone wants to make your job here considerably harder, they only need to plant the seeds of doubt or water the seedlings already growing. And if Drew’s death makes someone angry enough, scared enough to hurt or kill you, that would serve as a bonus.”
“Wow, and I thought I was cynical.”
“I’m not cynical. I just have a very bad feeling about what’s happening around here. The sooner we solve our cases, the better.”
“Then we should get to work.”
“Let me text TJ and tell her to drop by here whenever she gets done at the mansion. I can’t imagine her father will want her to stick around, but I’d like her to do her best to listen in as long as Pike’s there and to talk to Alicia, Drew’s wife, too. What the hell was Drew Dobbs, state senator and congressional hopeful, doing at the Belle Pointe construction site at three a.m.?”
• • •
TJ SLID INTO the home of her childhood behind the sheriff, who’d brought her father home in his car, leaving her to follow. It shouldn’t have bothered her, being invisible here, any more than her father’s words at Lucy’s house should have bothered her. She’d always been a disappointment to her father; the insult should have stopped cutting long ago.
“Mayor Dobbs,” Billy Pike was saying as TJ shut the massive oak door behind her, “you need to sit back and let me take care of this.”
“What have you found out?”
“Yes, Billy,” called Alicia Stevens Dobbs, gliding down the curved stairway into the foyer to join them, a glass of amber liquid in hand, “what have you found out?”
“Now, Alicia, it’s a little early in the day to be drinking, don’t you think?”
“My husband is dead, Billy. A little scotch isn’t going to hurt anything. We don’t have to concern ourselves with his impeccable reputation anymore.”
“Well, then, perhaps you’d like to tell me how he managed to go out to Belle Pointe last night in the middle of the night without you knowing? Or what might have drawn him there?”
“Obviously that woman called him,” shouted Dobbs.
“Did you hear the phone?”
“She probably called his cell!” Watching his florid face flush, TJ wondered whether the mayor might be about to expire right in his own front hall from sheer frustration.
“How did she get that number?” Pike’s question was far more reasonable than TJ would have expected. She’d have thought he’d jump right on the “blame Lucy” bandwagon. “Could he have been looking to buy drugs from someone there?”
“Drugs?” Alicia gave an inelegant snort. “I wish. I can’t tell you how often I wished the man would at least take a Viagra or two. But he refused to ‘pollute the temple of his body.’ It could have used a little pollution, if you ask me.”
Viagra? TJ almost choked, amusement bubbling up despite—or perhaps because of?—the shock still swamping her. The mayor’s face reddened even further, and despite her desire to remain under the radar, TJ stepped forward.
“Maybe we should go into the library and sit down? It’s been a bad morning, and I imagine it isn’t going to get any better, so let’s everyone take it easy.” She touched her father’s arm. He shook her off, but followed Alicia into the den.
Alicia didn’t seem anxious to play hostess, so TJ—playing up her family role in the hope that everyone could forget she was a cop—asked if she could get anyone a drink. Pike requested iced tea. The mayor decided to join Alicia and got up to make himself a gin and tonic.
When TJ returned with Pike’s tea and her own diet soda, along with a tray of cookies she’d finagled out of Maria, who’d cooked for the family for more than thirty years, the atmosphere in the den had calmed considerably. She handed Pike his drink and sat on the leather couch next to Alicia, laying the cookies on the coffee table.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room, only to be broken by the strident ring of Pike’s cell. He excused himself and walked out into the foyer to take the call, but even the mostly closed door between the rooms couldn’t dull the shout that followed.
“You found what?” He paused. “Where?”
TJ fidgeted in her chair, sipping her diet soda and wishing she knew what the person on the other end of the line was saying.
“Is O’Reilly still there? Well, get him to the second one as soon as possible. We need to know who she is and when she died!”
Which could mean only one thing. Another dead body. Suddenly, TJ couldn’t wait to get out of the mansion and talk to Ethan. But thunder rumbled in the distance, and the urgency in Pike’s voice increased. “Just do it, dammit! Increase the fucking perimeter and tarp the scene until he gets there!”
• • •
DESPITE THE AIR-CONDITIONING at the plant, sweat rolled down Eric Allenby’s face as he walked his last rounds for the day. His brother’s call had shaken him deeply. How could Drew be dead? He and Eric had been doing business for years, whenever the stress had gotten to Drew and he’d needed to take the edge off, or when he’d needed to psych himself up for some big political shindig. In fact, he’d stopped by Eric’s trailer a couple of weeks before, when he’d returned from Austin once the legislative session had ended. They’d been friends since high school, so no one considered it odd that Dobbs would stop by to see him, even though they no longer traveled in the same social circles.
And why Belle Pointe? Christ, he could have been out there last night himself. He often slipped away from the plant at night to do a deal in Belle Pointe. Scott hadn’t been able to tell him much, just that Dobbs had been shot at the construction site during the night. Any further details were still controlled by the sheriff’s department. Frantic, he tried to imagine if there could be anything at the site connected to him. The biggest problem, and the one that had the coffee he’d drunk churning in his gut, was the woman he’d buried there mere days earlier.
He had to call Jed, and do it soon. If the cops didn’t find that woman, there was no reason to worry, but depending on where, exactly, Drew had been shot, the sheriff’s men might practically trip over the damned hole. And it was the sheriff’s jurisdiction, too, which meant Eric couldn’t count on his brother to know all the details of the investigation. Not that they were close enough for him to ask anyway, but Scott was such a fucking sucker, all Eric had to do let on that he wanted to spend time with “big brother” and Scott would happily chat with him.
Like this morning. Scott had called to warn him so he wouldn’t have to hear the news through the gossip mill, because Scott knew how upset Eric would be that one of his friends had been killed. Right. The minute Eric was in his car, he pulled a TracFone from his pocket and dialed the only number in memory, another prepaid wireless. Jed picked up on the second ring.
“Are you at home?” Eric asked.
“Yeah. Haven’t left for work yet. I saw the news. First that girl, now Dobbs. Who the hell is hunting in our woods?”
“Worse than that, they found him at Belle Pointe. The last time we were out, that’s where I dumped the refuse.” Even on the TracFone, Eric wasn’t about to give details.
“What? Why?”
“Shit, it’s easy. I’ve even used their Dumpsters a couple times. Loaded garbage bags and dropped ’em in when I knew pickup was the next day. Once, when they left a wet foundation, I put some trash in there and smoothed it out. All the woodland
over there by the development is zoned greenbelt. No one was supposed to touch it. It should have been safe.”
“That’s just fucking perfect. Have you heard anything else?”
“No.”
“Hell. Well, there’s one obvious candidate for the killer. Maybe they’ll go after her and won’t look too hard for anyone else.”
“You’re talking about Lucy?”
“Yeah. Drew told everyone she threatened him, right? So maybe she finally went through with it.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. As long as they don’t find the . . . trash . . .we’re solid.
• • •
LUCY HAD LAID out all the papers Ethan had given her on the kitchen table and set up her computer to enter the information from the files, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept flicking back to the hint of evaluation she’d seen in Ethan’s eyes when he’d told her about Drew’s murder.
As he read off details to her, she entered them into the computer, but her eyes constantly strayed from the screen to his sharp, strong profile. She had to tell him about her past with Pike and Drew. It was only fair.
But how? She couldn’t simply blurt it out. He would go ballistic. He’d proved himself protective already, and she wouldn’t endanger him by sending him off on a fool’s errand on her behalf. But he had to know. She would simply have to muddle through. Gritting her teeth, she touched the back of his hand.
“Ethan?”
“Hmm?” He looked up from the file he’d been studying, raking one long-fingered hand through his hair, leaving it as furrowed as his brow. And suddenly the memory came, unbidden and unforeseen, of her mother sitting in the same position, her expression that same blend of distraction and determination.
I’ve had enough of this town, baby. I’m gonna get us the money, and we’re going away, where no one can hurt us, where you and Timmy can grow up clean.
“What is it?” Ethan asked.
And everything else went out of her head as she was sucked into the memory. “She had a plan. How could I have forgotten? Right before her death, she told me she was going to get the money to move us out of town.”
“Alcoholics often have ambitions they can’t fulfill.”
“I know. Which is probably why I’d just put this one out of my head.” Plus, her own problems had blinded her to her mother’s ramblings at the time. “But looking back, it doesn’t feel the same as one of her grand schemes. The way she said it . . . as if the whole thing was a matter of fact. We were going to have enough money to leave Dobbs Hollow and go somewhere to start over.”
“Blackmail?”
“Given her profession, it seems likely.”
Ethan’s phone rang, and Lucy listened while he arranged with TJ to meet them at the Joint for lunch so she could fill them in on what she’d learned at the Dobbs home.
“It would have to be someone with a lot to lose,” he said when they’d settled into his truck for the drive to the restaurant and got back to the discussion of Cecile’s blackmail. “True, twenty years ago seeing a prostitute was a good deal more embarrassing, but it takes a cold-blooded man to kill a woman rather than paying her off. Especially if she planned to use the payoff to get out of Dodge.”
“Which puts Andrew Dobbs, Senior, at the top of the list,” Lucy said. “I’ve never considered him a suspect because the legislature was in session, so he should have been in Austin when she was murdered. Of course, there’s no saying he couldn’t have driven home, killed her, and headed back. But still, Maxie indicated that Dobbs’s . . . relationship . . . with my mother was well-known, or at least much gossiped over. So her threat would be pretty pointless—she’d only be confirming the rumors.”
“Questions on top of questions,” Ethan muttered, his truck bumping along into the dirt lot beside Edgar’s Bar and Burger Joint. “A couple of answers would be nice.”
They had their pick of the picnic tables, so they chose one toward the back of the restaurant. Ethan, naturally, sat with his back to the wall, which left Lucy the options of sitting with hers to the door or taking the spot next to him. Both made her feel vulnerable in different ways, so she elected to sit across from him.
A pretty woman with long brown hair liberally streaked with gray wrapped in a coronet on top of her head came over.
“Hey, Megan,” said Ethan. “Have you met Lucy yet?”
“No, but I was hoping I might have a word with you?” She addressed the question to Lucy. “It’s, um, about your mother.”
Lucy was taken aback. “Oh. Sure. Do you want to talk in private?”
The woman looked around the mostly empty restaurant. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Then, please, sit down.” Ethan patted the bench next him, and she lowered herself slowly, as if using the time to compose her thoughts.
“I heard about your plans when you came back to town, and I saw you when you were in the other day. I was going to approach you then, but I had to talk to Josh first, ask him if it was okay. We’re engaged, you see, and we’re in a bit of a tenuous position here in town, so I can’t do anything that might disrupt the situation further without his approval.”
“Of course.” Black ex-con engaged to white woman in a small southern town. Lucy guessed “tenuous” didn’t begin to describe their situation.
“But Josh says it can’t hurt, and you should hear at least one nice thing about your mother.”
“I’d like that.”
The woman rested her forearms on the table, twisting her fingers together for a long moment before she spoke. Lucy clamped down on her own desire to reach across the table and shake loose whatever information the woman held. “I know people said your momma was always going off with different men, and maybe she was. But she went off with my brother, too, the last couple years of her life, and it wasn’t for sex.” The woman blushed. “A few times a month, Brian would pick her up at Rosalita’s. He’d buy her a few drinks, then they’d go check into a motel. Everyone knew it, which is the way he wanted it. She was his beard. He told me once she was a great poker player, and they’d spend hours in that hotel room playing cards.
“He paid her for her time, but he told me she probably would have done it for the thrill of helping him put one over on the fine residents of Dobbs Hollow. He liked Cecile, enjoyed her company. He said she understood him, that she knew what it was like to do stupid things because you let your heart rule your head.
“Anyway, I just thought you should hear another side to what you’re like to be getting from most people around here. It would be nice if Brian’s name didn’t end up in your book, but I’ll understand if you can’t make that promise. That’s why I had to talk to Josh.”
“If it turns out that I want to tell that story because it’s a facet of her life and lifestyle, I will change enough details to hide his identity. I take it Brian doesn’t live in the area anymore?”
Megan’s brown eyes darkened. “He died in 2000. AIDS. Of course, we didn’t call it that around here. We called it cancer.”
“I’m sorry. And sorrier still that he couldn’t be himself.”
“Me, too.” After a moment, she shook off the melancholy and rose. “I’d better get back to work. Can I bring y’all anything just now?” They requested iced tea but declined to order food until TJ arrived.
When Megan had dropped off their drinks, Lucy leaned across the table and asked Ethan what he knew about her family.
“You mean, do I think Brian Matheson killed Cecile because she was blackmailing him with the secret of his homosexuality?”
“Exactly.”
“No. The family is solidly middle class. Meg’s parents are still alive. They’re horrified by her choice of a husband, but doing their best to overcome the feeling.
“I expect Brian kept his sexuality a secret s
o as not to disappoint them. But even if Cecile had threatened him, I doubt he could have come up with the funds for her escape. Paying a woman to go out with you a few times a month is doable; paying to relocate a whole family is a different ballgame entirely.”
“Which brings us back to the Dobbs family.”
As if on cue, TJ ducked into the restaurant. Behind her, lightning flared, and hail began to patter on the Joint’s tin roof. “It’s going to be an ugly storm,” Ethan remarked, rubbing his knee. “Been building for days.”
“And it’s going to destroy the sheriff’s new crime scene.” TJ dropped onto the bench next to Ethan and pulled off her hat, shaking off the hail. Outside, the staccato thump of hail stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Thunder rumbled, and rain began to fall.
“Another scene? Was the construction site a dump, then?” Ethan asked Lucy’s question before she could get it out.
“Let’s order first,” TJ suggested. “It’s a long story.” After ordering, they all leaned in to hear what TJ had learned. Lucy watched her friend carefully, but TJ kept any emotions she might have well hidden.
“I’m pretty sure Billy said ‘she’ when he referred to the second body,” TJ said when she’d caught them up on the situation, “and when Billy came back into the living room, he really went after Alicia. He pushed her hard on whether Drew might have been having an affair, what kind of relationships he had with women, things like that. And, given her Viagra comment, I can only assume their sex life wasn’t much fun.”
“Jesus, TJ,” Ethan said quietly. He laid a hand over both of hers, which were locked together on the table. “You’re not saying he could be our rapist, are you?”
Her eyes shifted away, and Lucy—seeing how torn she was—interrupted.
“Have you forgotten that Drew was Tara Jean’s brother, Ethan? Give her a break.” TJ seemed poised to speak, but Lucy rushed on. “Besides, before we can speculate on anything like that, we need to know about the condition or staging of the woman’s body.” She turned back to TJ, giving her the out. “Did you hear anything about that? Did this woman have anything in common with Renee Josephs?”
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