by Jill Orr
Energized by the sudden turn of events, I suddenly felt restless. I had been stuck in my house for less than twenty-four hours because of the weather and I was already getting cabin fever. This is why I could never live in upstate New York. Well, that and the fact that I doubted you could get a decent sweet tea anywhere north of DC. I stared out my bedroom window searching for signs of life. None of the three driveways I could see had any tire tracks on them, and it looked like the only cars that had been down my street were Holman’s and Ash’s.
There were two sets of footprints leading away from Oliver Pruitt’s front door, one human and one canine. From the looks of it, Pruitt had braved the weather for his beloved dog, Chortle. Chortle, in all her ginger-furred glory, was the Juliette to Coltrane’s Romeo. They absolutely adored each other. Oliver and I…not so much. He’d lived in this neighborhood for eons and used to complain that Granddad didn’t cut his grass short/often/well enough back when Granddad was alive. I’ll never forget when he came to my door on the day I moved in. I assumed he was there to welcome me to the neighborhood or possibly to say he was sorry to hear about Albert’s death, but instead, when I opened the door, he simply handed me a wooden ruler and said, “Two and a half inches is the optimal height for Kentucky bluegrass.” Ever since then, our relationship had been chilly. But our dogs loved each other and, on the not-so-rare occasions when Coltrane would get out without his leash, he would run straight over to Mr. Pruitt’s front door and start barking. It was sweet—the lovesick-canine version of throwing pebbles. Mr. Pruitt did not find it nearly as cute as I did. The last time it happened, his exact words were, “Keep your mongrel away from my little princess.” I wanted to snap back something about who names their “little princess” Chortle, but I kept my mouth shut. Silence is the better part of valor, after all, and it wasn’t the dog’s fault she’d been given a name that sounded like someone choking on a chicken bone.
Desperate for some fresh air, I geared up with two coats, a hat, mittens, and my warmest boots to take Coltrane for a walk. I knew my look was slightly more insane bag lady than I was used to, but I was prioritizing warmth over fashion. Once I was sufficiently outfitted, instead of our usual route around the neighborhood, I took us toward town to see what was going on around the square. I figured the paths in Memorial Park had the best chance of being shoveled or salted, since it was the heart of Tuttle Corner.
I was wrong; they hadn’t been touched. I guess the town had used most of its resources in other areas. Since there was no one around to mind, I let Coltrane off his leash so he could run through the park. The exercise would do him good. Most of the shops and businesses looked closed, except for Mysa. I was too far away to see much, but I could tell their lights were on and it looked like there were some people sitting at the tables by the windows. I should have known that Ridley wouldn’t let a little thing like Mother Nature turning into Queen Elsa come between her and her customers.
Coltrane and I made our way in that direction, partially because I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet and partially because a cup of Swedish hot cocoa sounded like heaven. As we got closer, I could see that although it wasn’t as busy as it would normally be on a Friday during the breakfast shift, there were several people inside. Mayor Lancett and her weaselly nephew/personal assistant Toby sat at one of the tables by the window—she was reading the Times and he was looking down at his phone. I couldn’t see his shirt, but he was wearing a black beanie that read “Gym Beast.” At the table next to them, Jonathan Gradin and Mel Druing were deep into a game of Scrabble, and Skipper Hazelrigg sat at a corner table by himself with a yellow notepad and his laptop, probably working on his campaign.
Ryan was chatting with a man at the counter, and Ridley stood beside him laughing at something the man must have said. I knew I couldn’t bring Coltrane through the front entrance without Mayor Lancett having a complete breakdown (her stance on no animals inside businesses was well known: “Are we in Paris, France? I don’t think so!”), so I knocked on the front window hoping to get Ryan’s or Ridley’s attention and they could let us in the back, or maybe even just bring me a hot cocoa to go. As soon as I knocked, every head in the place turned, including the man Ryan had been talking to at the counter. I was surprised to see it was Jay. Jay again. Jay still here in Tuttle. He said he was leaving. Curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the door and marched inside.
Mayor Lancett jumped up out of her seat. “Oh no, Riley Ellison, you cannot bring that anim—”
“Just a minute, Shaylene,” I said as I walked past her and right up to Jay. “Hey.”
“Hi, Riley,” he said with a warm smile, as if his hanging around Tuttle Corner every day was a normal occurrence.
Coltrane whined with excitement, and Ryan rushed out from behind the counter. He shot me a look and murmured, “Geez, Riley. Right in front of the mayor? I’ll take him to the back.”
I started to apologize, but Ridley cut me off. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll send over a banana Nutella crepe and she will forget all about it.” She winked at me as she, Ryan, and Coltrane went through the swinging door to the back.
“I’m surprised you’re still here.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest, suddenly remembering I had sixty-four layers on. I must have looked deranged.
“The roads were too slick to drive home last night, so I got a room at the Ottoman Inn. Heather and Mike were thrilled to see me. I think I’m the only guest there right now.”
“Are you sure that’s the reason?” The snow had stopped at least an hour earlier, and while I’m sure road conditions weren’t ideal, there had been plenty of time for the main highways to be cleared and treated. He wasn’t stuck here. There had to be another reason Jay hadn’t left Tuttle Corner.
He let out a little laugh and swiveled his eyes to the side. “Um, yeah. What do you mean?”
“I just get the feeling there’s something else going on. You’re working on something to do with Tackett.”
Jay put his hands into his pockets and shrugged. The very picture of innocence.
“Okay,” I said. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”
Ridley came out from the back holding a plate filled with the most delicious-looking crepes topped with powdered sugar and thinly sliced bananas. “I call this the ‘All Is Forgiven,’” she said as she floated past us to deliver the plate to Mayor Lancett.
“Well, hope you make it home before spring,” I said with more than a little sarcasm and started to walk into the back to retrieve my dog.
Jay grabbed my arm as I passed. “What’s the matter? Why’re you so mad at me?”
I looked down at his hand on my arm. He released it immediately.
“You are actively standing between me and the thing I want most in the world.”
“This isn’t personal, Riley.”
“It is to me,” I said, then spun on my heels without so much as a backward glance, momentarily reveling in my own self-righteousness.
Coltrane was happily chomping on a large bone in a small room right off the back door of the restaurant. Ryan sat in a nearby chair watching him.
“Sorry I brought him in here,” I said. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
Ryan looked up. “You okay?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “There’s just a lot going on right now with…stuff.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He paused. “Are you and Jay getting back together or something?”
I hadn’t thought about it before, but Ryan and Ridley probably thought the issue Jay and I were fighting about was a personal one. “No—he’s here for work.”
“And you’re upset about that because…”
I shrugged again. “It’s complicated.”
“Does this have to do with Sheriff Tackett?”
That got my attention. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason, I just overheard Jay on the phone, and I swear I heard him say the name Joe Tackett.”
�
�Do you remember what he said about him?”
“Not really. I wasn’t trying to listen in. I just heard him on the phone when I was refilling the pastry case.”
“Think.” I took a step closer. “It could be really important.”
Ryan was quiet as he tried to remember the details of what he’d heard. “I think he said something about going to see Tackett in prison before…”
“Before what?”
He ran a hand through his hair and rested it on top of his head. “God, I just can’t remember…I think he said, ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ and then—” Ryan broke off for a minute as he thought—“he said something like, ‘We should get in there before he talks to her.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Before he talks to her. That had to be Lindsey Davis. “Yes, it actually does.” I grabbed the bone out of Coltrane’s mouth and picked up his leash. “Thank you so much, Ryan. You have no idea how helpful you’ve been.”
“Are you the ‘her’ he was referring to?” Ryan asked as he followed me to the back door.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Good. The whole thing sounded kinda ominous.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It was like the way he said it or something. ‘We need to get the information before he talks to her.’” He sounded like he was doing an impression from Goodfellas.
“Wait.” I stopped. “He said, ‘We need to get the information’?”
Ryan nodded. “I’m almost positive.”
“Any clue who he was talking to? Did he say any names at all other than Tackett’s?”
Ryan looked like he was concentrating so hard, I thought he might sprain something. After a few seconds, he said, “I think he said, ‘Thanks, Mike’ before hanging up. I’m not a hundred percent, because like I said I wasn’t paying a ton of attention, but we just hired Mike Skelton as a busboy, so the name must have caught my ear.”
I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, because Mike was about as common a name as you could get, but I did anyway. I wasn’t three steps out the back door of Mysa before I had my phone in hand dialing the number of Sheriff Michael Clark.
CHAPTER 30
The person who answered the phone at the Brunswick County Sheriff’s office refused to share Sheriff Clark’s whereabouts with me, even after I told her I had already spoken to him and that he told me he was going to try to go to Greensville Correctional to see Joe Tackett. She said she could neither confirm nor deny. So, after I got Coltrane home, I quickly changed clothes and texted Holman to meet me at the Times office ASAP. When I got in, Kay Jackson was there and I told them both about the morning’s developments.
“And you think Jay was talking to Sheriff Clark?” Kay asked.
“That’s my guess, but obviously I can’t be sure. It’s just strange. There’s a reason Jay is still hanging out around here.”
“It could be the road conditions,” Holman said, a note of hope in his voice. I knew how much Holman idolized Jay. It was going to be hard to get him to realize that on this issue, Jay was our adversary.
“I checked with VDOT and 1-95 is showing pretty clear. Fifty-eight, on the other hand, is a mess—not to mention the other small roads that lead in and out of Brunswick County. Greensville would be hard to get to from here, given the weather, so maybe he’s waiting for those roads to be cleared?”
Kay took a sip from her ever-present mug of coffee. “So, let’s assume for a minute that it was Sheriff Clark that Jay was talking to on the phone. What would that mean?”
I bit the corner of my lip.
“What?” Holman said.
“Nothing. It’s just—”
“This is not the time to hold back, Ellison.” Kay crossed her arms.
I was hesitant to voice my theory, in part because it was based on a lot of speculation, and in part because it did not reflect well on Jay. I guess Holman wasn’t the only one having a hard time thinking of Jay as a rival.
“Well,” I started slowly, “I told Sheriff Clark this morning that Tackett said he felt threatened because there was a rumor going around the prison that he was cooperating with the feds, right?”
Kay nodded.
“Tackett’s afraid he could get hurt—or worse—if the cartel thinks he’s informing on them. But from Jay’s perspective, that would almost be a good thing, you know?”
Holman furrowed his brow. “How so?”
“Jay told me yesterday that he thinks if they can put enough pressure on Tackett—make him ‘uncomfortable’ enough—he will make a deal. How much more uncomfortable can you be than to think you could be attacked at any given moment?” I paused, hesitant to make the connection out loud. “A visit from the sheriff would certainly bolster the perception that Tackett is cooperating with the authorities…what if Jay and Sheriff Clark are working together to create that perception?”
“That’s what he could have meant by ‘We need to get the information before he talks to her,’” Kay said, leaning forward. “Her could be Lindsey Davis. They need to get the information on the Romeros before Tackett talks to Lindsey and she offers him a deal for his information about Albert…”
I nodded. “The DEA is prepared to offer him some sort of protection, but Tackett said that the cartel could get to him no matter what. That’s why he’s so anxious to make the deal with Lindsey—giving up that information won’t get him killed.”
Holman blinked. “I guess he believes that whoever killed Albert and Flick is less of a threat to his personal safety than the Romeros.”
“Or he’s making it all up,” Kay said grimly. I opened my mouth to protest, but she held up a hand to stop me. “It’s a possibility, is all I’m saying. We have to stay open to the idea that this all might be an elaborate trick. You know I’m right, Riley.”
I did. But I wasn’t happy about it. “So what’s the plan?” I said.
“We should tell Lindsey about these new developments,” Holman said. “If Tackett is working with the feds in direct opposition to her case, she deserves to know. It might change her timeline on interviewing Tackett.”
“I’ll keep trying to reach Sheriff Clark,” I said. I hadn’t told Kay much about the other direction Holman and I were pursuing with the Shannon Claremore/Miller plane crash theory, mostly because I wasn’t sure what it all meant. But I hadn’t forgotten about my strange phone conversation with Shannon and definitely planned to look more closely into her family’s connection to what my granddad was writing about.
Holman and I went back to his office and decided we would divide and conquer. He would call Lindsey and fill her in; I would go talk to Carl Haight. He may not have had jurisdiction over Flick’s murder, but Granddad had been killed in Tuttle Corner, which made that crime definitely his to investigate.
Gail was on the phone when I got to the sheriff’s office, but she gestured toward the break room, which I took as an invitation to walk in.
“Are you suggesting Sheriff Clark is up to something?” Carl asked, doubt dripping off every syllable. “I don’t know…”
“I’m not saying that,” I said as I followed him from the break room back to his office. “He probably believes he’s acting in the interest of the greater good by helping the DEA get something on the cartel.”
We walked into his office and I closed the door. “You said yourself that it was a little weird that he hadn’t looked into certain things about Flick’s death. What if he’s slow-playing that investigation in order to give Jay more time to persuade Tackett to flip?”
Carl sighed. “There is something to be said for getting information on the Romero family…”
“That’s not his job!” I didn’t quite yell, but I came close. “I’m sorry,” I said, lowering my voice. “But the job of the county sheriff is to enforce the laws of the county, to investigate crimes that happen within the county limits. His job is to figure out what happened to Flick, not worry about the Romeros.”
Carl tilted his head to
ward me. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m just sayin’ it could be that Sheriff Clark figures better to get the information we know Tackett has—the dirt on the cartel—than the stuff he says he has but has offered no proof of.”
“Yeah, I get it. I’m not even saying I completely disagree. But the fact is that two good men have been murdered and it seems like no one cares.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “I know that whoever did it might not be as bad as the Romero family, but shouldn’t they be held accountable for their actions? Are we all supposed to just forget about finding out who killed Flick and Albert because the one person who knows who’s responsible might also know some other stuff? Where is the justice in that?”
Carl’s face grew serious. If there was one thing I could count on, it was Carl Haight’s commitment to seeing justice served. He’d been that way since he was line leader of Mrs. Emerson’s fifth-grade class. No one got away with butting in line when Carl was on duty. “Okay,” he finally said.
“Okay what?”
“I’ll reach out to Tackett.”
“Will you go see him?”
“Weather’s iffy. I’ll see if I can’t get him on the phone first.”
“Thank you, Carl.” I wanted to jump up and down, but I restrained myself.
“If I can persuade him to give me something concrete, something to prove he knows what he says he does, then I can take that to Lindsey and see about getting him moved to a safer location or increase his security. Not sure he’ll cooperate, but if he’s truly scared for his life, he might just be willing to let a little more of his leverage go.”