by Sam Cheever
“Only, obviously I didn’t because I have no idea what it was.”
“And now you’re in danger because of something you don’t have any knowledge of.”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe the bullet that took Leland down was meant for you?”
I hesitated a beat.
James noticed. “You’re not sure.” It wasn’t a question.
“Eddie thinks the shot would have had to be really wide off the mark, but with everything that’s been going on…”
“He’s right. That would be a really inept shooter.” James frowned thoughtfully. “More likely it was meant as a warning to Leland to keep his mouth shut.”
“I’d like to hire you to protect May,” Eddie said out of the blue.
I was so shocked I just sat there blinking as James looked at his hands.
“I’d be happy to do that, Deitz, but my schedule books up months in advance.”
“I’d consider it a personal favor.”
The two men shared a look filled with some significance I couldn’t identify. Clearly, there was something going on I didn’t understand. “Deitz, I don’t need protection.”
He shook his head. “This has gotten way out of hand, May. It’s my fault you’re mixed up in this mess. I dragged you into it.”
Guilt prickled in my chest. “You didn’t exactly drag me. I wanted to help.”
“But you wouldn’t have started down this path without me harping at you.”
He was probably right about that. I wouldn’t have even considered it. Maybe. “I’m the daughter and sister of several cops, Deitz. I knew what I was getting into. I wanted to help. I still do.”
“No, May, he’s right.”
My gaze shot to James. I hadn’t expected him to chime in and agree with Eddie. “Look, James, I appreciate…”
He held up a hand to stop me. “I’ll stick close for a few days, until Deitz and I can get a handle on what’s going on.”
“Then you’ll do it?” Eddie asked, leaning forward.
James nodded. “You’re right. I do owe you. But this wipes the slate. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Guys…” I tried again.
“I need to talk to Alex again,” James said as if I hadn’t even spoken. “He told me he was worried about the cartel…said Sugar had been pressuring him to become their cleaner. But he’s trying to resist.”
“And it cost Josh his life,” Eddie said morosely.
“That seems to be the case, yes,” James said. “As you can imagine, Alex won’t admit that. He’ll have to take responsibility for the death if he does. But it’s kind of sitting there like a rotting fish.”
We sat in silence for a long moment. I was the first to pull out of my thoughts. “Val Mitner’s in danger.”
James nodded. “Which is why I wasn’t sure I could help you. I’ve committed to being with her whenever she moves around. I have guys on the house twenty-four seven.” He thought about it and then hit a key on his keyboard and examined his computer screen. “I might have someone who can fill in for me with the Mitners.” He glanced at me. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“I need to go home and take care of my dog.”
“Good. I’ll meet you at your place in an hour?”
I wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but it didn’t seem like I was going to be able to talk either man out of it, so I nodded.
It was going to be fun explaining James’ presence to my family.
20
Deitz walked Shakes with me before he left to “check out a few things”.
I didn’t question him because I was happy to be left alone with my dog for a little while. I used the time to catch up on a couple of phone calls, one of them to Argh in an attempt to gauge how mad the Lieutenant was about my recent foray into vegetable murder.
I hadn’t heard a peep from the old man. That was concerning.
Extremely concerning.
“On a scale of one to ten, how mad is dad right now?” I asked my brother when he answered his phone.
“You can’t count that high.”
I expelled air. “I was afraid of that. Should I go over there?”
“I wouldn’t. At least stay away until the steam stops coming out of his ears.”
“Okay. I’ll give him a couple of days. Have you heard anything about Leland?”
“He’ll be fine. It was just a graze. He was lucky.” Argh paused just long enough to make his next words have maximum effect. “But the cauliflower was announced shred on the scene.”
I chuckled, despite how bad the joke was. Argh had that effect on me. He got me and my corny sense of humor. “I heard it was a head shot.”
“All the other vegetables are stewing about it.”
“Ugh, Argh.”
He laughed. “I know. It’s not my best work.” There was a beat of silence and I knew he was setting aside the ‘Make May feel better” shtick. “Are you okay? We’re worried about you. Dash and Sasha wanted to take turns guarding you.”
“That’s not necessary. I’ve got James Security coming over here in a few minutes. James is going to stay with me for a couple of days. Just until they get this mess sorted out.”
Argh whistled. “I’m impressed. You must be making better money than I thought in that acting gig of yours.”
“Not hardly. He’s doing it as a favor to Deitz.”
“Well, I don’t trust that Deitz guy. Plus, he has terrible taste in cars.”
“Right?”
“But I can’t fault him for protecting you. Stay safe, sis.”
“I will.” The doorbell rang. “I’ve got to go. My bodyguard’s here.” I grinned when I said the word bodyguard. It seemed surreal.
James and Doug were having a face-off when I opened the door. James’ nostrils were flared. “I smell an illegal substance.”
Doug frowned. “Dude?”
I waved. “Hey, Doug.”
“Dude.”
I tugged James’ arm, pulling him into my apartment and closing the door. “He gets seizures,” I told him. “He’s got a doctor’s note.”
James shook his head. “Does he only know that one word?”
I frowned, trying to remember. “No, I think he knows other words. He just likes that one best. He imbues it with several meanings, depending on the inflection. It’s an art form, really.”
“Yeah,” James said. “I am Groot.”
I grinned. “I am Groot?”
“Sure, I’d love some water,” he responded.
I handed him a bottle of water and grabbed one for myself. Then we were standing in my kitchen, staring at each other, and I felt kind of at a loss.
“What do you want to do?”
I shrugged. It felt weird not having something planned. If I were alone, even doing my nails would be an event.
But I wasn’t alone. And I was deeply cognizant of the fact that James was a busy man and I was clogging up his time. I suddenly wished I was alone. “Did you get a chance to talk to Alex Mitner?”
“I did. His story hasn’t changed. He still believes the cartel is after him and that he and his wife are in danger.”
“If the cartel’s after him, I’m sure they are in danger.” I dropped into a chair at my small kitchen table. James drank some water and then wandered over to the window, looking outside and both directions down the street.
“Do you believe Tomlinson killed his girlfriend?” I asked.
James turned back to me. “Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Because Tomlinson is about to become our next Mayor. He’d be stupid to do something like that. Whatever else William Tomlinson might be, he isn’t stupid.”
“Do you think he’ll win?”
“He’ll win. Well, if he doesn’t go down for murder. He’s done a lot of good things for the city of Asheville and he’s got lots of connections with the Department of Education and other government agencies.”
“
You sound like you kind of admire him.”
“I do. He’s made himself wealthy and important. I respect that.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Then my mind slid back to Allie Landon. “If Tomlinson didn’t kill her, who did?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” James said, smiling.
“Okay,” I said, grinning. “Tell me what debt this bodyguard gig is paying off?”
“With Deitz?”
I nodded.
“He helped me with something for my sister once.”
“Helped? As in investigated?”
“Yeah. She was getting in deep…romantically…with a guy I knew was bad news. But she wouldn’t listen to me. So, I asked Deitz to investigate the skunk.”
My grin widened. “I take it your intuition was right?”
“Dead on. Turned out he was a small-time thief.”
“Did she listen to Deitz?”
“She did. Good thing too. A week later the skunk in question was killed during a robbery. It was a good thing there was some air between her and him or she might have been dragged into it.”
I winced. “Yikes!” Taking a big sip of my water, I grimaced as nausea rolled through me. I realized I was probably hungry. I hadn’t had much to eat…
My thoughts stopped, sharpened, and I suddenly knew where the missing weapon in the Tomlinson case was.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
I shook my head, surging to my feet. “No. Something’s very right. Do you know where Allie Landon lived?”
James narrowed his gaze. “Why?”
“Because I think I know where the killer hid the knife.”
I texted Deitz as we pulled past the short concrete driveway of Allie Landon’s home and parked up the street a ways. I glanced at James.
“No sense advertising that we’re here,” he told me.
I climbed out and looked around. The houses in Allie’s neighborhood came in all styles, shapes, and sizes. But the two things they had in common were the fact that they were very close together and the yards were all beautiful, featuring a riot of color with flowers and flowering bushes of every kind.
Allie’s home was a low-slung stucco house with a Southwestern flair.
The front entrance was wreathed in climbing flowers, which twined over the pillars and across the small roof covering the tiny front porch.
A short stucco and brick wall separated the porch from the vibrant line of bushes planted around it.
Deitz didn’t respond to my text, so I slipped my phone into my purse and climbed out. “Pretty.”
James glanced at me, looking worried. “I don’t have a key to get inside.”
I wasn’t concerned. “That’s okay.”
He followed me toward the house, his head swiveling to take in our surroundings. I could tell, watching him, that he was a good bodyguard. He didn’t take anything for granted and his gaze was always moving, looking for potential trouble.
I walked up to the porch and stopped, my gaze sliding to the front door, which was ajar. The wood of the door frame was splintered. “Uh, James.”
He took one look at the door and pulled a gun from the small of his back. He tugged me behind him. “Stay close,” he whispered. “Don’t get separated.”
I nodded and followed him into the house, taking baby steps to stay as close to him as I could without tripping over his feet.
I sucked in a gasp when I saw the condition of the house. It had been trashed.
The beautiful furniture was lacerated and overturned. The floor was littered with stuffing, along with the remains of several slashed paintings.
I could tell, beneath the destruction, that it had once been a beautiful home. “Such a shame,” I murmured.
James cleared the first room and motioned toward the stairwell wall. “Stand there. Keep your eyes open.”
I nodded, pressing my back against the wall. As I moved, bits of broken porcelain and glass crunched under my feet. The Spanish style tile was covered in the stuff. Somebody had had a field day in Allie Landon’s home.
A few minutes later, James rejoined me in the entryway. He slipped his gun back into its tidy little spot inside the waistband of his slacks. “The house is empty.”
“Who would have done this?”
He shrugged. “Somebody might have tossed the place looking for that weapon.”
I nodded.
“Or it could have just been kids. There are signs that somebody might have slept here. With the murder so prominent in the news, everybody knows the house has been empty.”
I sighed. “Sometimes I hate people.”
He nodded. “Let’s look for the knife. I’ll need to call this in to the police.”
I nodded, pointing to the door. “Out here.”
He frowned. “Outside?”
“Yeah. Remember, there was some conversation about Tomlinson being inside for almost twenty minutes before coming outside and horking into the bushes?”
I went back outside and glanced toward my right. The home was angled to partially block the view of the house next door. But when I looked to my left, I could easily see the front porch of the house. And it wasn’t that far away. “I’m guessing that’s where the neighbor lived who reported seeing him out here.”
James didn’t respond.
I glanced over the short wall, down behind the thick row of glossy bushes that had grown almost up to the top of the half wall. “If he came out the door to throw up, not wanting to do it on the crime scene...” I leaned over the part of the wall almost directly in front of the door. “He probably would have done it here.” I leaned over and made retching noises.
“That makes sense,” James said. His tone was hesitant as if he thought I was crazy.
But I wasn’t crazy. I knew I was right. I straightened back up and motioned for James to join me at the wall. “Look.”
I pointed toward a spot a few feet away from where I’d pretend horked. He narrowed his gaze. “What is that?”
I grinned. “It’s a porcelain shard from the hallway. You can’t tell because you can only see a small part of the very top. The soil is soft here from being watered regularly…” I pointed to the telltale black caps in the soil next to the drive. “I took a chance on that, but a lot of the homes in this part of town have sprinkler systems.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
I couldn’t believe how dense he was. Or maybe I wasn’t making myself clear. It had been known to happen. “Tomlinson was holding the knife in his hand. When he retched over the wall, he threw it, hard. Anybody watching him would have been distracted by the retching and wouldn’t have noticed what his hand was doing. Especially with the wall and the bushes muddying up the line of sight.”
“Go on,” James said.
“Okay, he flings the knife, it embeds itself in the soft soil, or maybe inside of one of these bushes. And then he calls the police. They take samples of the contents of his stomach of course, even though the crime scene is mostly inside. They always consider the vicinity immediately around the home where a murder’s been as part of the scene because they just don’t know.”
“Right. I knew that.”
“But they’d have no reason to check the soil here for the weapon. They’d be looking for DNA and surface impressions.”
“Still, the chances of the knife being completely buried with one fling are small.”
I nodded. “He would have wanted to make sure. After he called the police he snuck back out here and, making sure he wasn’t observed, he’d have moved behind the bushes and pressed it more deeply into the soil. He wouldn’t have been able to do that if he didn’t have time. The first pitch into the soil was an emergency measure. In case the police showed up too quickly. But when he had time, he made sure it was buried.”
I climbed down the steps and shoved in behind the bushes. Starting at the spot where my shard had landed, I used my hands to carefully dig around the base of t
he bushes. My fingertips struck something within seconds. I carefully moved the dirt until I could see the first glint of stainless steel. I glanced up, grinning widely. “Here it…” My smile fell away.”
James shook his head. “I really wish you hadn’t found that.”
An entire collection of really big butterflies erupted into movement in my belly. I swallowed hard. “Um, James, why are you pointing that gun at me?”
He skimmed a glance toward the house next door, melting further back into the shadows of the overgrown bushes. “Just cover that back up and climb on out of there, May. I really don’t want to hurt you.”
I did as he said, scooting backward out of the bushes, and straightened. I made a pretense of shoving my hair out of my face as I looked toward the nosy neighbor’s home. Please let her be peeking out the window.
“Come on back into the house, May.”
I really didn’t want to. But I was pretty sure James would use the gun if he had to. Suddenly, his parking a few houses down made perfect sense. Nobody would place him at the house through his parked SUV.
He’d thought of everything.
I scooted past him at the door and moved inside, my gaze sliding quickly around the space looking for something I could use as a weapon. I really wished I’d pulled that knife out of the ground before I’d showed it to him.
But I’d been so excited about being right.
Stupid May. Stupid.
He motioned toward the living room with the gun. “Have a seat while I try to figure out what to do with you.”
I picked up an overturned chair and set it on its legs, testing it first to make sure it would hold before I sat in it.
James pulled out his cell and made a call. He turned away from me, speaking in low tones as he paced the area by the front door.
I eyed the parts of the home I could see and thought about trying to get to another room. I could lock myself in, blockade the door. Maybe Allie had a landline and it was still connected. If I could get a call out to my dad or one of my brothers...
There was no way I was going to drag my pregnant sister into my potentially explosive mess.