by Becki Willis
Madison’s heart rate kicked up a notch. This might be the break Brash was hoping for. “Really? Where?”
“That’s the sketchy part. I couldn’t get a firm location, but I heard Doug and Bernie were hosting it.”
Happy stared at her mother-in-law, a look of confusion and awe upon her face. “How do you even know that?” she cried.
Madison laughed, squeezing her mother’s shoulders as she headed for the door. “I gave up asking a long time ago. Can you two take it from here? I have to call Brash!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three hours later, Madison and Brash strolled through the mall, arm in arm.
“Are you sure you didn’t mind coming tonight?” she asked again. “I would have understood if you took a raincheck.”
“There’s no time for rainchecks,” Brash told her with a rueful smile. “Christmas is four days away. It was now or never.”
“Still, I would have understood. Catching criminals is more important than catching fish.”
“Not to a sixteen-year-old. I was happy to help you choose a rod and reel for Blake. He’s going to love it.”
“Help? You picked it out all by yourself. I don’t know the first thing about spin-casts and open-face reels and all that other Greek stuff you were spewing. It’s all a foreign language, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’ll learn,” he chuckled. “Just like I’ve had to learn the difference between flat gloss and glossy gloss, and mouse vs. styling gel, and all that teenage-girl jargon.”
“Plain English,” Madison assured him. When her phone binged, she pulled it from her pocket and studied it with a frown. “Speaking of teenage girls, the one I own was sweet enough to install a bunch of new apps on my phone. I now get an alert every five minutes, telling me about the latest sale. Hard as it is to imagine, all those sale items just happen to be on my daughter’s very extensive Christmas list.”
“Go figure.” Brash laughed at her exasperated expression before suggesting, “Can’t you just delete the apps?”
“If I were smart enough to operate my smartphone, I would!” she retorted.
“We can look at it over dinner.”
“Are you sure you have time to eat? We can grab something to go and eat in the car. I know you’d rather be working on the gambling case right now.”
“That is where you are wrong.” He squeezed the hand tucked into the crook of his elbow. “There is nowhere I’d rather be than here with you. My officers have eyes on the Havlicek brothers, and Cutter volunteered to help keep an eye on a few of the other known players. If they’re setting up a game, we’ll see it.”
They reached the entrance to the restaurant, where Brash paused in the doorway. “How often do you and I get to eat out, just the two of us? I know this isn’t a fancy candlelight dinner, but at least it’s just you and me.”
“My favorite dinner combination,” Madison smiled, lightly brushing against him as she slipped past his outstretched arm.
The hostess showed them to a booth, where they settled upon the same bench seat. Like teenagers on a date, they held hands as they waited for their meal to arrive. Brash declared all talk about work off limits. Tonight was for talking about the holidays and the kids and things that didn’t revolve around police work.
When her phone binged again, Madison took action. “Okay, I am deleting these silly apps. Like this one for TossUp. That silly thing bings when I get within so many feet of the store. I have no idea how it knows where I am, but it’s a little bit spooky.” She scrolled through the options. “Why on Earth do they need access to my microphone and location, anyway?”
Brash’s mischievous grin was boyishly handsome. “To bing you when you get near a store and lure you inside.”
“No, thanks. Bye-bye, TossUp.” She jabbed the delete button. “You, too, Shop Goddess.”
“What about that one for Tasty’s?”
“I actually like that place. I guess I’ll leave it,” Madison decided. “They have some sort of loyalty program. Show your phone at checkout and it counts toward a free drink.”
“Speaking of drinks, here are ours.”
“Perfect.” With a bright smile, Madison tucked her phone away and leaned into his arm. “No kids, no pesky bings from my phone, no shop talk. Just you and me.”
“Sounds like a definite winner.”
After a relaxed meal, they shopped at one last store before calling it a night. Piling their purchases into his truck, Madison smiled triumphantly. “I am officially through with my Christmas shopping, and it’s still four days before Christmas! Yay, me.”
“Now to wrap it all,” he reminded her, helping her inside and shutting the door behind her.
“Kill joy.” She shot daggers at him with her laughing eyes.
“I’ll make it up to you by buying you a caramel latte.”
Madison did her best queen imitation. “For a Caramel Crazy Latte, you are forgiven, my humble and lowly servant.” She granted the playful reprieve, using the tip of her nail as her royal specter.
His dark eyes danced with amusement. “Thank you, your highness.”
Several minutes later, he noticed how quiet she had become. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
She bit her lower lip. “You said the topic was off limits.”
He made a sound that was half grumble, half snort. “You might as well say what’s on your mind. We’re obviously both still thinking about it.”
He didn’t have to make the offer twice. She turned to him and blurted out her thoughts. “What you said earlier, calling me your highness. It reminded me of that time in the cave, when Derron and I were tied up. That’s what the big boss called me. That’s always bothered me.”
“That bothers you? Because a drug lord thinks you’re a snob?” he asked, surprised.
“No! I couldn’t care less what a drug dealer thinks of me. What bothers me is that there’s someone else who calls me that. Someone who would be more than happy to see harm come my way.”
“You’re talking about Barry Redmond.” It wasn’t a question, but a flat, harsh statement.
“I know, I know. He’s an upstanding member of society. Part of the founding family of Naomi. President of the bank. It’s a crazy notion to think he might be messed up with a drug operation… Isn’t it?” She added the last in a small voice.
To her surprise, Brash’s voice was low and a bit rough. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “To tell you the truth, I’ve considered it, more than once. I know his ex-wife took the blame for most of what happened this fall, but I’m not so sure she was the only one at fault. There have been too many things that didn’t add up. And banker or not, Barry seems to have a free flow of cash these days. He’s going through women and money at a staggering rate.”
“I saw his latest new car,” Madison agreed with a nod. “And the new girlfriend. I heard she was a swimsuit model.”
“I heard she was the sort of model who didn’t bother with the swimsuit.”
Madison wrinkled her nose in distaste, choosing to change the topic. “Hey, guess what? I just learned today that Molly Shubert was once married to Randy Redmond.”
“So I hear. I guess that’s when she and Barry became so tight.”
“Tight? Really?”
“Sure. Not only are they good friends, but from what I understand, the Shuberts own about twenty-five percent of the bank’s stock, to the Redmond family’s fifty-one.”
Brash pulled into Tasty’s parking lot and finagled his big truck into the drive-through ordering lane. Madison waited until he had ordered their coffee before she said excitedly, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“That if we show them your phone app, you’re one step closer to a free drink?”
“No, silly!” On second thought, she handed him her cell phone. “Well, okay, that too. But I’m ta
lking about tying Barry Redmond and Molly Shubert to the Christmas Crimes!”
“Who mentioned the Christmas Crimes? I’m trying to tie him to the drug and gambling ring.”
“But you suspect it’s all mixed up together, so it’s sort of the same thing. Until my enlightening conversation with Granny Bert, I would never have suspected Mrs. Shubert of something like this, but you should hear the things she did!” Her eyes glowed with excitement, knowing she was onto something. She ticked off the points, one by one. “Befriended a woman who took ill and suddenly died of a drug overdose. Drugs Molly Shubert had access to, by the way. Alienated the woman’s children and ingratiated herself, instead. Planned a trip to Tahiti, supposedly for the poor woman, which she quickly turned into her own honeymoon with the grieving widower. Gave up her baby for her sister to raise, so that she could pick up a romance with a Redmond, the Redmond she thought would inherit the bank. Dumped him and married the pharmacist, a man not only old enough to be her father but one who owned stock in that very bank.” Running out of fingers as well as breath, she paused to see Brash’s reaction and to drag in a deep breath of air.
“Wait a minute. Are you seriously accusing Molly Shubert of the first Mrs. Shubert’s death?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It certainly seems suspicious, don’t you think?”
The experienced lawman remained neutral, unswayed by her enthusiastic rant. “I don’t have enough details to form an opinion.”
“Okay, fair enough. But there is definitely a connection here, just as I suspected. Did you know that Molly Shubert is Danielle Applegate’s biological mother? She and Charmaine are sisters.”
“No, actually, I didn’t.”
“See!” she cried triumphantly.
“Not really. So, Molly lets her sister raise her child. That doesn’t prove she killed anyone, or that she orchestrated an elaborate scheme to steal people’s Christmas gifts. And it certainly doesn’t implicate Barry Redmond. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but that’s not enough to build a case.”
“There’s more. This ties Molly to Danielle, Danielle to Tom Haskell, and now Molly to Barry Redmond. You already know about Tom Haskell’s ties to the gambling ring. It’s all connected.”
“Maybe so,” Brash said, rolling up to the window, “but no DA in the world would take on this case with nothing more than that to go on.”
“Hello!” the cashier chirped, sliding the window glass open.
Recognition dawned upon them at the same time.
Brash realized it was the young woman from the stalled vehicle. Under the bright lights, he easily detected vivid streaks of pink running through her shoulder-length brown hair.
Judging by the frightened look in her eyes, she recognized him as the man her accomplice had robbed.
Neither could acknowledge their previous encounter without implicating themselves.
She stuttered out the amount due and Brash silently handed it over. The nametag on her uniform said ‘Jaclyn.’
“Hi, Jaclyn,” he said stiffly. “Worked here long?”
“Just started,” she claimed.
Madison leaned over and peered at the cashier. Despite her frustration at being interrupted in the middle of her argument, and at Brash for not seeing her point, she managed a smile for the young woman. “I know you’ve been here at least a few weeks. You were working the night my daughter and I came through. You commented on how we managed to get a—” Madison stopped in the middle of her sentence. Her eyes widened as it all began to make sense. She stumbled awkwardly through the rest of her sentence. “—a big box in my car.”
Trying to hide her nervousness, Madison took a large gulp from the cup Brash handed her and promptly scalded her tongue. She spewed out the offending liquid, making quite the mess.
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” Brash worried. When he asked for napkins, the attendant threw a handful at him before snapping her window closed.
Rolling the truck forward, Brash focused more on Madison than the girl’s rude dismissal. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Still coughing and sputtering, Madison nodded as she wiped up her mess. “I had it all wrong,” she lamented. “Go ahead. Go ahead and say I told you so.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said to always question coincidence. Find the link, no matter how small. But I took it too far. I was too focused on the jewelry store, and the links I thought I found between all the different people. I was so busy trying to make that theory work, I completely missed the most obvious link of all!”
“I think that hot coffee burned off a few brain cells,” Brash muttered. “What link are you talking about?”
Madison waved a stained napkin in the air, flashing the Tasty’s logo. “The drive-through! That’s how they’re doing it! This is the common link.”
“The drive-through window,” Brash thoughtfully murmured, trying the idea on for size. “They can see inside every vehicle that pulls up.”
“Exactly! And all the victims, including myself, stopped here on our way out of town, our cars loaded down like flashing neon signs, practically begging someone to rob us!” She flounced back against the seat, everything so much clearer in hindsight. “Vanessa, Mitzi, and Marilyn all specifically mentioned stopping at Tasty’s, but I didn’t make the connection. And now, seeing the napkin, I remember seeing these exact ones at the Carrs’ house and in the photos of Tom Berlin’s vehicle. This has to be the link!”
Already out on the road again, Brash’s foot faltered on the gas pedal. He needed proof before charging in and making an arrest. Besides, he had no jurisdiction in Brazos County.
Despite her sputtered protest, he continued toward home. “Let’s talk this out, babe,” he reasoned. “So, you’re saying a drive-through attendant—like Jaclyn back there—sees the cars loaded down, somehow alerts an accomplice, and then the accomplice follows the victims back to their homes and robs them?”
“Something like that, yes. Or stops them along the roadside, whichever the case may be.”
His mind raced ahead. Jaclyn hadn’t been at the window the night the ring was stolen, but she had been wearing a uniform. The older cashier on duty had all but smirked at his love-addled brain. That could explain why he didn’t recall seeing Jaclyn. She could have been in the background, watching him gaze at the velvet box while visions of romance danced in his head. He tried now to remember if a car had gone around him that night along the road. She would have needed to be ahead of him, he realized, to conveniently stall in the middle of the highway.
“We’d need to see schedules,” he thought aloud. “See who was working on each occasion. Unless there’s more than one person involved,”—he could place the pink-haired Jaclyn there on at least two occurrences—“we would have to place our suspect on duty during every single shopping excursion.”
“Jaclyn was definitely working the night we were there. I remember Bethani spoke to her and I asked if she knew her.”
“Did she?”
“No, but she thought she looked familiar, and someone said their cousin worked there. Bethani thought that might be her.”
“Do you remember if that person was Addison Bishop?”
“Come to think of it, I believe it was.” She looked over at him, clearly impressed. “How did you know that? Do you know that girl Jaclyn?”
“I’ve seen her before.” The vague acknowledgment was all he would admit to. “I vaguely remember that Connie Bishop and Luis Gonzales had a daughter who would be about the same age as this girl, which would make her a cousin to Addison. She used to go by Jackie, but I think it’s the same girl. She had a bad habit of hanging with the wrong crowd, which included Fowler and a couple of other troublemakers.”
Warming to the theory, Brash continued, “But things are beginning to make sense. Word is that Dickey Fowler’s girlfriend has an important job somewhere around here. I assumed ‘important’ referred to her pay grade, but maybe they were talking about a completely different k
ind of payoff. If this is their gig, the nice Christmas he kept bragging about will be at their victims’ expense.”
“‘Important’ must have meant important to their theft ring!”
“Exactly. It’s a pretty sweet set-up, when you think about it. If she sees a car loaded down and recognizes someone from her hometown, all she has to do is tell Fowler. He knows where everyone lives and can case the houses before breaking in.”
“That explains why no other towns have been hit, but what about the car jackings?”
“Maybe she saw the episode where they installed your hi-tech alarm and knew breaking into the Big House wasn’t an option. Maybe your packed car was too good of a deal to pass up. It might have been worth the risk of robbing you alongside the road. Same with Ted Berlin, who wasn’t from The Sisters, but who had at least two flat-screen televisions, clearly visible, in the back of his truck.”
“That is so low, stealing people’s Christmas presents like that!”
“If you don’t mind, I need to call the station.”
“Go ahead. I’ll see what I can find out about Jaclyn.” Seeing his puzzled expression, she held up her phone. “Social media. If that doesn’t yield results, I’ll call Granny.”
By the time Brash hung up from his call, Madison wore a sly smile upon her face. “Bingo! Jaclyn Suzanne Gonzales, twenty-one years old, graduated from The Sisters High. Works at Tasty’s and is in a relationship with Dickey Fowler. Goes by the nicknames Jackie and J’Bad. Has aspirations of moving to Austin and becoming a true barista, or trying out for the cast of Big Brother.”
“You got all that from social media?”
“Would you like to know what she had for lunch? She posted a picture on InstaGram.”
“What is wrong with people these days?” Brash grumbled.
“Nothing better to do, I guess,” she shrugged. She looked down at her phone, hovering over the Tasty’s app. “You know, I still can’t believe I missed this. Most of the victims talked about Tasty’s and how they liked to stop by on their way out of town. I can’t believe I was so hung up on the jewelry store angle that I didn’t even see this one.”