“Has Hunter talked to him yet?” Kasi asked as they walked to the Jeep and Kari unlocked the door. “You did tell him about the rap battle, right?”
“Yeah, I told him about Razor and about Maddy,” Kari confirmed, jumping in the driver’s seat and starting the engine. “I don’t know if he’s talked to them yet, but he seemed to take it seriously.”
“Let me guess, you didn’t tell him we planned to drop in on Maddy again.” Kasi buckled her seatbelt and gave her sister a sidelong look.
“No, we just decided on that, didn’t we?” Kari asked innocently, though she knew it wasn’t true. From the moment she’d seen the letter Maddy had written, she’d known she wanted to go back and dig into the reason behind it.
“Uh oh, Razor alert!” Kasi hissed.
When Kari saw the rapper hurrying back toward them, she quickly hit the automatic locks on the Jeep.
You can never be too safe, she told herself. Especially not in this town.
Kasi clearly had the same idea as she popped the glove compartment and grabbed the pepper spray they had begun carrying there since Kasi’s stalking scare.
“Keep calm,” Kari said in a low voice. “Maybe he just remembered something he wants to tell us. Or, he feels bad about being so abrupt and wants to apologize.”
Razor approached the passenger door and stopped. “Can you roll down the window, please?” he called.
Kasi looked at her sister, who nodded. She put her finger on the trigger of the pepper spray and slowly rolled her window halfway down.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I didn’t kill him!” Razor cried, his face a mask of anguish. “I didn’t! I didn’t kill him!”
When he started to reach a hand in the window, Kasi let out a yelp.
“Go!” she instructed her sister. “Let’s get out of here!”
Kari didn’t wait to see what the man would do next, and just hit the gas, jumping out of the parking spot and hurtling the Jeep into the street.
“What was that all about?” Kasi asked as they drove. Her eyes were wide, and she was out of breath. “Did you see him reach in the window? I thought he was going to grab me!”
“I’m surprised you didn’t give him a shot of pepper spray to the face!” Kari told her.
“If you would have waited two more seconds to drive off, I probably would have!” Kasi loosened her grip on the spray and slowly put it back in the glove compartment.
“He said he didn’t kill Jake,” Kari said thoughtfully. “But why would he say that to us? We didn’t accuse him of anything. You just asked him about the rap battle.”
“Guilty conscience?” Kasi tried. “Who knows, but that was pretty darn suspicious. I think you should call Hunter and tell him about it right away.”
Kari nodded. “I do, too. But let’s go see Maddy first, okay? Then if we find out anything else, I can tell him everything at once.”
Kasi agreed, and they drove the rest of the way to the Whitmore Inn in silence. Kari didn’t know what would be waiting for them at the Inn, but she did know one thing: the case of who killed Jake had just gotten a little more intriguing.
Chapter 19
Hunter
Hunter and Pete had located Razor Sharpe at his apartment in a slightly rundown complex at the edge of town.
“Says here that a Bobby Dreyfuss lives in apartment 6A,” Pete said as they looked at the list of buzzers by the front entrance.
“You really think his landlord is going to put ‘Razor Sharpe’ on there?” Hunter had asked with a raised eyebrow. “Let’s go see if we can persuade ol’ Bobby to come down to the station with us.”
Half an hour later, after a brief conversation with Hunter and Pete where they convinced him it would be in his best interest to come in for questioning, Bobby Dreyfuss was sitting in the interrogation room.
Hunter and Pete had decided to leave him in there by himself for over 20 minutes, knowing that the more nervous he was, the more likely he’d blurt out something incriminating.
“He looks like he’s sweating bullets,” Pete remarked. The two of them were watching their suspect through a two-way mirror, a helpful addition to the station that had been installed during the last remodel a few years back.
“I’m surprised his eye makeup isn’t running,” Hunter said with a snort. “He looks more like he’s ready to participate in a poetry slam than a rap battle.”
Pete looked at him with amusement. “How would you know what people who go to poetry slams look like?”
Hunter shrugged. “I watch some TV when I have a day off, okay? Sometimes I learn a lot!”
He knew there was no shame in his guilty pleasure, but he briefly wondered what Kari would make of his television-watching habits.
Pete chuckled. “Maybe you should stop watching the high school dramas and turn on Law & Order instead,” he said with a grin. “At least that might help you out with your job.”
Hunter laughed good-naturedly. He knew Pete was just messing with him. He also knew that, according to his wife, Pete was a big fan of Gilmore Girls re-runs, and he, therefore, had absolutely no room to talk.
“You think we’ve let him cool his heels long enough?” Hunter asked.
Pete nodded. “Do I get to be good cop this time? I think I’m better at it than you.”
Hunter thought about the last time they’d pulled the good cop/bad cop strategy. He’d assigned Pete the bad cop role when questioning a graffiti artist, and Pete had been so uncomfortable that he’d almost botched the whole interrogation.
“Fine,” Hunter said with a sigh. “Why don’t you get ol’ Razor a soda and a bag of potato chips, and we’ll see what we can get out of him.”
When they entered the room a couple of minutes later, Bobby gratefully accepted the snacks and tore into the chips before the officers could ask their first question.
“Hungry, huh?” Pete asked with a smile. “I guess we did grab you right around lunchtime.”
“So,” Hunter said after the man had polished off nearly half the bag in ten seconds and drank down half his soda. “We found some pretty incriminating posts on your Facebook page.”
Bobby stopped chewing and shakily wiped some chip crumbs from the front of his shirt.
“Incriminating?” he asked.
“It means suspicious,” Pete said kindly.
Bobby’s eyes darted to Pete, then back to Hunter. “I know what it means,” he said. “I just…they were nothin’, ya know? I was just mad, yo! He made me seem like a punk! No biggie! Is that why I’m here?”
Hunter glared at him. “No biggie? You posted threats on your social media page, and a few weeks later, the person you’re threatening is murdered! And you think that’s no biggie?”
Pete sat down next to him and patted him on the shoulder. “Listen, we know you were upset. It’s your dream to be a rapper, and you felt like Jake ruined that by embarrassing you at the rap battle, am I right?”
He does play an excellent good cop, Hunter had to admit. It must come from being married. He probably uses that technique all the time at home.
“Yeah, man,” Bobby said, responding to Pete’s gentle demeanor. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be, yo! A rapper! I thought maybe Dragon would be feelin’ me and know to take it easy! But no! He punked me big time!”
Pete nodded, as if he totally understood. “You know, if you just tell us the truth, it will be much easier on you. Things happen, we know that. Situations get heated, and you do things you regret. If you just tell us the truth, we can still help you make your dreams come true.” He patted him again on the shoulder. “It’s the right thing to do, Razor.”
Come on, come on, Hunter thought. Just confess. Just tell us you did this so we can move on and, maybe, help this town start healing.
Bobby blinked a couple of times. “Huh? You honestly think I killed that playa?” He shook his head and scooted away from Pete. “No, man! I’m clean! I’ve been on the down low since day one, ya feel me?”
Pete looked up at Hunter, his expression clearly saying that he had no idea what the man was talking about.
“Can you please stop with the street talk?” Hunter snapped, enjoying his role as bad cop since he truly was annoyed with Bobby’s slang. “We all know you’re from Mills Township and went to the same high school as I did. So just talk to us in plain English. Did you do anything to Jake?”
Bobby took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, his voice completely devoid of the street talk. “I was just saying that I’ve moved on from the loss. It was a loss for me, too, okay? Jake was one of my idols,” Bobby continued. “It’s probably one of the reasons why I took it so hard when he destroyed me in that battle. No one likes to be shot down by someone they look up to!”
Pete nodded sympathetically. “And that’s why you put those threats on your Facebook?”
Bobby looked miserable. “I was just upset, you know? But I would never hurt him! Dragon was an inspiration! An institution. And I know it was nothing personal, he was just doing his job.”
He put his head in his hands, and his shoulders started shaking. “All I want to do now is work on my rhyme book,” he said in a muffled voice. “Maybe do something that honors his memory.”
Rhyme book? Hunter thought. Why does that sound so familiar?
“Were you at the festival the night Jake died?” Hunter asked him.
Bobby looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. “Nah, man. I had to work. While I’m trying to break through, I had to take a job at the gas station. I was there from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.”
Huh. Well, if we just had asked that in the beginning, we probably could have eliminated this whole interrogation. Hunter sighed. Oh, well. At least we cleared a suspect.
“You want to finish up here?” he asked Pete. “I need to go check something out.”
Pete waved him out of the room. “No problem, Houston.”
Hunter left the room and settled himself at his desk, wracking his brain to figure out why the ‘rhyme book’ was nagging at him. Then he snapped his fingers.
“That’s it!” he said out loud, causing a couple of the other officers to look at him oddly.
Jake always had a book with him where he would jot down lyrics. Hunter clearly remembered the small leather-bound book as he was always wondering what Jake was constantly jotting down in it. He’d even teased him about writing stuff about him and his fellow police officers the night of the concert.
Pulling out the case file, Hunter quickly scanned through the list of evidence, but he saw no mention of the notebook.
When Pete walked back into the squad room after releasing Bobby, Hunter pulled him aside.
“Do you remember finding a small leather notebook on or near Jake the night of his death?” he asked.
Pete scratched his head and thought for a moment. “No, can’t say as I do. It wasn’t listed on the evidence sheet?”
“Nope.” Hunter gave Pete a sly smile. “That notebook was the basis of all his success. I think if we find the notebook, we may just find our killer.”
Chapter 20
Kari
“Oh, hi!” Maddy said when she cracked opened the door to see the Sweet sisters. “I wasn’t expecting two visits from the Sweet Sleuths in two days! What a nice surprise.”
She opened the door fully and let Kari and Kasi in. “Please excuse the mess. Jake’s brother and I have been working on arrangements, and we’ve kind of trashed the place.”
Kari looked around and saw papers scattered on various surfaces, plus the remains of a few takeout meals lingering on the tables. It was far from trashed, but it was clear that Maddy had been busy.
“Is he here?” she asked. If Jake’s brother is here, it’s going to be tough to confront her about that letter.
Maddy shook her head and sunk into the couch. “No, he decided to go hang out with some buddies for a while. I think he needed a break from all…this.”
She gestured around to the stacks of papers and sighed. “They were really close. Andy considered Jake his best friend. Even though they haven’t spent that much time together since Fire Spitters started getting popular, they talked all the time. He’s devastated.”
“And how about you?” Kasi asked, plopping down on the couch next to her. “How are you holding up?”
Maddy shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Having Andy here has helped. I feel like I have to comfort him, so I don’t focus so much on being sad.”
Her face, though, told a different story.
Could she really have killed him? Kari wondered. Can anyone really fake that level of grief? She sat down on the chair next to the couch and tried to decide how to broach the subject of the letter.
“Well…that’s good.” Kasi looked over at her sister, clearly unsure how to proceed.
Kari cleared her throat and leaned closer to Maddy. Honesty is the best policy, she decided, and then said, “Maddy, we actually wanted to talk to you about something we found.”
Maddy blinked. “Found? Like a clue to who killed Jake?” She clasped her hands together, her face filling with hope.
“Ummm, kind of?” Kasi said, taking over. “When we were here yesterday and you went to the bathroom, your laptop started dying. So, I thought I would charge it and we could keep watching the rap battle between Razor and Jake again.”
“When she pulled the cord out of your bag, a letter fell out,” Kari told her. “We couldn’t help but see it was written to Jake—and that it was very angry.”
Maddy looked from one sister to the other, her face a mask of anger.
“I…why were you reading my personal letters? I invite you in, thinking you’re here to support me, and you start going through my things? What kind of friends are you anyway?”
Kasi put a tentative hand on her arm. “We weren’t going through your things, Maddy. It was a complete accident that it fell out.”
“But you didn’t have to read it!” Maddy stood up and stalked over to the window. “Those are my personal thoughts! You have no right! And now you’re here to…what? Accuse me of having something to do with his death?”
Kari jumped up and walked over to her. “I’m really sorry, you’re right, of course.” She did her best to make her voice soothing and non-confrontational. “We shouldn’t have read it, but we did. And we’re not accusing you of anything. We just want to find out what happened. Maddy, did Jake cheat on you?”
Maddy whipped around, her expression anguished. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her jaw clenched, and she looked like she was going to start yelling.
Then she dissolved into sobs.
Kari hurriedly took her into her arms. “Shhh, it’s okay, Maddy. You can tell us.”
“I thought he cheated on me!” she wailed, her whole body shaking. “One of my friends saw him at a restaurant with another woman, and she said they looked really intimate!” She took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled away from Kari.
“What was I supposed to think? Everyone I’ve ever cared about in the past has betrayed me! So, of course, I thought this was just more evidence that I’m unlovable!” Maddy wailed.
“I know how hard that must have been on you, because of what happened in your past,” Kari said gently, keeping a hand on the crying woman’s arm. “Tell me what happened.”
Maddy swiped at the tears on her cheeks and took another long breath. After a moment, she shook her head and said in a small voice, “He wasn’t having dinner with another woman because he was cheating on me with her. She was a ring designer. He was having her custom make an engagement ring for me.”
“Oh, Maddy,” Kari breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes filled with tears again. “When I confronted him, he told me the whole story even though it ruined the surprise. He was going to propose on our one-year anniversary.”
She turned back to the window and began crying again. “He loved me and was going to propose, and I wasted the last few weeks we had together treating him like a
liar and a cheat!”
Kari looked over at her sister and saw the same look of sadness on her face as she knew was on her own. They’d judged this poor girl wrong. She wasn’t a killer; she was just a heartbroken woman who had been burned and couldn’t believe that true love was finally hers.
The sisters stayed with her for another half hour, comforting her as best as they could before heading back home.
“Well, I guess we can scratch her off our suspect list,” Kasi said in the Jeep. “I feel really bad, but you saw that letter, right? We had to look into it.”
Kari nodded. “Yeah, it did seem really suspicious. But now we know. I’ll have to tell Hunter, so he doesn’t question her. She’s been through enough.”
She hurriedly dialed Hunter’s number and quickly told him about Maddy, then listened while he informed her about his interrogation of Razor.
“Great,” she told her sister after they hung up. “Looks like we’re completely out of suspects now. Razor apparently idolized Jake, and he was at work when he was killed. There’s video surveillance at the gas station that shows he never left. So, there’s no way he had anything to do with it.”
The girls thought about this in silence and remained quiet until they’d settled in their own living room.
“Maybe we should give that flash drive a listen?” Kasi finally suggested. “Not that it will provide any clues or anything, but it should be interesting.”
Kari nodded and grabbed the drive out of her purse and loaded it into her laptop. A beat started playing, and Kari felt herself nodding her head along to the music.
As Russell began rapping, she looked over at her sister, who was also bobbing her head. “You notice something?”
“That it’s catchy?” Kasi asked.
They listened to the rest of the song, and Kari turned down the volume and looked at her sister.
“He sounded just like Jake!”
Kasi thought about it for a moment. “You’re right. The other songs we’ve listened to, they each have really distinct styles. I even noticed it at the festival. But this wasn’t Russell’s style at all. Maybe he’s doing it as a tribute?”
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