Murder Hits the Road

by K. J. Emrick

  “You shouldn’t swear,” Cookie told him pleasantly. “It isn’t very polite.”

  Jerry took her hand in his. “She’s right, Lieutenant. Besides, that motorhome isn’t ours. It’s a rental. I think after this trip we’ll be just as happy to return it and stay home in Widow’s Rest for a long, long time.”

  “Good. Then maybe next time,” Duke told them, “I’ll come visit you and see what kind of trouble I can create for you to clean up.”

  Cookie pursed her lips. She didn’t think that was quite fair of him to say.

  They were standing in the middle of Leighman’s Restaway, watching police cars come and go. Stacia had gone off to the nearest hospital more than an hour ago. Shortly after that, Franky and Penny had been led away in handcuffs in the back of separate patrol cars. If Stacia recovered, she’d be able to tell them what had happened to her. For now, all they had was guesswork.

  That, and a lot of questions.

  It was well after sunrise now. Cookie’s stomach was reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything substantial since the sandwich she’d shared with Jerry before bed last night. Well. At least Cream was eating regular meals. She made sure of that.

  They stood with each other, watching the officers go about their jobs, until Jerry cleared his throat. “I’m guessing you’ll want us to come down and give statements again?”

  “I’ll need a statement, yes,” Duke said, “but I was kind of hoping for more than that.”

  “Oh? Are you finally going to ask for our help?”

  Duke looked like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of cactus spikes. The words obviously weren’t easy for him to say. “Do you know how many people I have under arrest now? In case you haven’t been keeping count, I’ve got five. First, there’s Humphrey. Then, there’s Tabitha and Brock, the two from the purple hatchback. Now I’ve got this Franky and Penny LaRock couple under arrest. That’s five. Know how many cells I have to put people in? Three. I’m full up and getting fuller. This simple murder case that I was looking at yesterday is now a monster of a mess. Excuse my French, Ma’am.”

  Cookie nodded with a polite smile. That wasn’t French, and she wasn’t so sensitive that she couldn’t take a little bit of harsh language if Duke chose to come out with it. She rather liked it when men chose to act like gentlemen around her, though. She wasn’t going to correct Duke from his newfound courtesy.

  “So,” he continued after another moment to collect his thoughts. “Chief Stansted, Mrs. Stansted, if the two of you wouldn’t mind I’d like you to come down to my station and assist me in the interrogation of Franky and Penny. I’m starting to take a lot of heat over what I’m doing or not doing in this case. Every time I take a step forward in this investigation you two have already been there, and you keep finding new clues that blow everything up. How about helping me to put this all together instead?”

  That was something of an insult wrapped in a compliment, but Cookie decided it was as good as they were going to get from the likes of Lieutenant Duke Fairfield. “We accept,” she told him. “Is there a faster way to get back to your station than the way we got here?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. My agency covers most of this side of the state. I suppose I could turn it all over to the State Police but once I start doing that I might as well put my resignation letter on the County Administrator’s desk. The Sheriff’s Department takes care of its own cases. If I can’t do the job myself, they aren’t going to want me around for very long.”

  “Glad to help,” Jerry told him, and he honestly meant it. They weren’t trying to steal anyone’s thunder or prove they had been right all along. They were just trying to catch a killer.

  A killer who had now made two attempts on the life of Stacia Ferris. A killer who had turned out to be one of their friends.

  Sometimes, life had a very funny way of not being funny. Not one little bit.

  CHAPTER 9

  T he interview room where Franky and Penny sat waiting to tell their side of this story actually was far less cheerful than the one where Duke had talked to Jerry and Cookie. Standing on this side of the one-way mirror, looking in at them, Cookie reminded herself to thank Duke for that small kindness.

  “No one’s spoken to them yet,” Duke explained. He was watching the two in the interview room through the glass, right along with Jerry and Cookie. “The thing is, they haven’t asked for an attorney either. They’re just sitting there, very smug with themselves. Almost like they’re daring us to ask them questions.”

  Jerry rubbed his hands together. “Well. Let’s not disappoint them, then.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Duke said, looking at both of them in obvious confusion. “You don’t want to come up with a plan? A list of questions to ask when we go in? A strategy in case they don’t start giving us what we want?”

  Cookie chuckled at the note of alarm in his voice. “That’s the way my man operates, Lieutenant Fairfield. He prefers to do things by the seat of his pants.”

  “There you go again,” Jerry teased. “Talking about my bum again.”

  Cookie felt her cheeks heating. It wasn’t the way she meant that, but now that he mentioned it, she did rather like the way his backside filled out his pants.

  Duke snapped his fingers several times, getting their attention back to him. “You guys do remember that there’s a murder and a couple of assaults to solve here, right?”

  “Two murders,” Cookie reminded him, again. “I don’t know why you keep forgetting that.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Right. Sure. The dog. I forgot about the dog.” He threw his hands up and then dropped them against his thighs. “Can we look at the big picture, please?”

  “We are,” Jerry promised him. “Our picture’s just a little bigger than yours. Tell you something else, too. If this is going to work, then it’s just me and Cookie going in there to talk to them. You need to stay out here and observe.”

  “Excuse me? This is my station, not yours. I invited you here as my guests.”

  “And you asked for our help. If you want our help, this is how we do it.”

  Duke puffed out his bottom lip, looking like some sort of odd fish as he came to his decision. “I know I’m going to regret this, but okay. Go ahead. My interview room is yours, Chief.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. By the way, what does your chief think about all this?”

  “He’s on vacation, thank God. I don’t want to explain any of this to him until I can tell him it’s done and settled.”

  “That might be best,” Jerry decided. “Before we go in, have you heard anything from the hospital about Stacia?”

  “She needed stitches and they’re keeping her there at least until tonight for observation.” He pursed those fishy lips of his again. “Hard to believe that so much tragedy can hit just one person. I want to find out what happened here, and I don’t really care how we do it. So go ahead, Jerry. You too, Cookie. If you think you’ve got a better shot at getting those two to talk if it’s just you two in there, then so be it.”

  “Then let’s get to it.” Jerry held his hand out to Cookie. “Ready?”

  “Yes, I am,” she told him.

  It was amazing how the simple touch of his hand in hers could make her feel so strong. He’d done this with her a million times before, but it only occurred to her now how important this simple act had become in her life.

  Inside, the room seemed to be quieter than outside. Soundproofing, Cookie guessed, to keep the suspects inside from hearing anything said by the officers out in the hallway. The effect was like walking into another world entirely. The walls were painted a dull gray and the floor was cement and the ceiling tiles were probably asbestos that should have been removed a decade ago. The table in the middle was the same as the one in the other room, with four chairs around it as well. Franky and Penny sat on the other side. They were sitting just as far from each other as they could.

  Cookie squeezed Jerry’s hand. Those two were nothing like them. The love that
she had for Jerry was something they would never feel for each other.

  Franky’s scowl nearly took his dimples away this time. “Oh good, it’s you two. This is a great way to treat your new friends, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Penny added, folding her arms across her chest. “I thought we were a group, you know? I thought we could trust each other and be something more than just a bunch of people going in the same direction with each other. I thought I’d found some real friends this time.”

  Cookie almost felt sorry for Penny. Maybe not so much for Franky, because she had already started to dislike him for the way he treated his wife, but she honestly had liked Penny. It was hard to investigate a murder mystery where the main suspects turned out to be people you knew. People who had been friends just a day ago. It wasn’t the first time this had happened in Cookie’s life, because sometimes the bad guy actually did turn out to be someone you knew. It was hard to see behind the mask people wore.

  Was that happening again, right here in this room?

  Jerry, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in saving their feelings. “Friends don’t lie to friends, Franky. So. Why don’t you tell us a few things?”

  “Like what?” Franky asked. “You want the quickest route from here to Santa Fe? Maybe here to Timbuktu? Because I really feel like telling you where to go.”

  “Yes, yes, we get it. You two are world travelers and you’ve seen all there is to see, and you’ve been everywhere there is to go. Somehow in your head you think that makes you better than us.” Jerry shrugged. “Seems to me that you don’t know much about much, considering you spend all this time together, but you can’t even stand to be in the same room with each other.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Franky muttered, but even as he said it he turned his face away from Penny and edged further over in his seat.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, right there. I can’t imagine being married to someone I didn’t want to spend any time with.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Franky told him, his dimples fading in and out on those cheeks.

  “We can see it plain as day. It’s obvious to anyone who’s looking. There’s something separating you two, almost like a physical wall. Your relationship is on the rocks, but I can’t help but wonder. Maybe there’s something else going on that’s driving these hard feelings.”

  “Oh? Like what, cop?”

  “Like, one of you is responsible for the death of one man, and the death of a dog, and the attempted murder of Stacia Ferris.”

  “Twice,” Cookie added.

  “Yes. Twice.”

  “What!” Penny’s voice cracked on that single word. “I knew it! I knew that was what you thought. Cookie, how could you even think that? How could you say such a thing?”

  “Oh, Penny,” Cookie said, her emotions tangled in her chest. “You’ve been a good friend to me but let’s face it. With the way Franky feels about dogs, is it such a stretch to believe that he killed Boxer?”

  She opened her mouth, and snapped it shut, and then rather than answer she just turned her head and glared at Franky. Obviously, she believed it was possible, too. Whatever blame and guilt she felt about this situation, she was laying it firmly on his shoulders.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Franky said to her. “You knew how I felt about dogs when you married me.”

  “No, I did not,” Penny insisted. “You’re a whole different person than the man I married. You’ve gotten far worse. You wouldn’t even go near Stacia’s dog whenever we travelled together. You hated Boxer, and Boxer hated you. He was always growling at you. She was always having to leave Boxer in the RV whenever she… and you… and us…! Did you do this? Did you kill that dog?”

  “Oh, right, sure. You think I killed the dog and then, what? I killed Ernesto to cover it up? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  They were shouting at each other, but Jerry didn’t try to stop them. Everything they said was exactly what he and Cookie had come up with for a current theory of the crime. Everything fit just as good as could be expected. All they needed was a confession from one of the people sitting across the table from them. Just one of them confessing would end this mystery.

  Angry words and accusations settled down to stony silence, still without an answer.

  “All right,” Jerry suggested, “let’s take a look at another part of the mystery. Maybe one of you will be more inclined to talk about this. Instead of who killed Boxer, let’s think about who hurt Stacia. She was with you two last night. Just you two. And yet, she got left for dead out in the grass, beaten in the head with a rock, when you both were telling me she was asleep on the sofa. Now how did that happen?”

  “How should we know?” Franky demanded. “I was asleep myself.”

  “So was I,” Penny said quickly.

  Jerry nodded, and then he asked, “You just weren’t sleeping together, were you?”

  They both went silent. It was one of the truths that they had needed to get out in the open. One of the things Jerry meant when he said it was obvious there was a wall between Penny and Franky. They were still married, but they weren’t together. Not really.

  If they had been sleeping together in the same bed they could have provided an alibi for each other. Sleeping apart, while one of their friends was outside getting beaten over the head with a rock… well, that meant neither of them had an alibi for it.

  “How did you know?” Penny finally asked, her voice small. “We tried so hard to keep that a secret from everyone. How did you know?”

  “It was your clothes,” Jerry told her. “I don’t care how much you hate each other, if you’re still sleeping in the same bed then you both get dressed for it. One of you doesn’t sleep in her jeans while the other is in his pajamas. And I have to say, Penny, that you wearing jeans when we saw you makes me think that you were outside, not in bed.”

  “Ha!” Franky snapped. “See? There you go. It wasn’t me who did all this. It must have been Penny! It was her!”

  “Really?” Jerry asked him as his wife gasped, too shocked at him throwing her under the bus to say anything to defend herself. “Because, Franky, I still think there’s a good chance it was you who killed Boxer.”

  “Ha!” Now it was Penny’s turn to be snappish. “See? Oh, I should have left you a long time ago. Maybe then Ernesto would still be alive! If I was with someone who didn’t despise dogs, then maybe Boxer would be okay.”

  “Nice try, wife of mine, but I didn’t do this. Guess that leaves you.”

  “Don’t try to put this off on me!”

  Jerry and Cookie held their breath, because they felt they were very close to a confession, right there, somewhere between the vitriol that these two were spouting. But, was Penny turning on herself, or on Franky?

  They needed a little push. Cookie sat back and let Jerry take the lead. He was very good at his job. No doubt he would know which buttons to push.

  “Both of you,” Jerry said to them, “had reasons to do this. Franky’s hate for dogs, for instance. As for Penny, well… the lack of love in your marriage had you both turning to other people, I’m betting. Let’s think about that for a minute. Stacia was with a man almost twice her age. A marriage like that is almost always for convenience, and not love. Sometimes a woman in a marriage like that will find a younger, more energetic man who can give her the physical comfort her own husband can’t.”

  He turned from Penny and settled his gaze on Franky again. “Did Stacia ever come to you for comfort, Franky? I don’t remember her putting up too much of a fuss when you asked her to ride the rest of the trip in your motorhome with you.”

  Franky’s face darkened. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

  “Really? Stacia’s a beautiful woman. You’re a decent looking guy. Kind of baby-faced for my liking but then I’m not her. Some girls go for that. So, if you aren’t sleeping with your own wife, like we’ve already establishe
d, then what’s to say you aren’t sleeping with Stacia?”

  Cookie caught the expression on Penny’s face when she heard that. Her jaw dropped. Her eyes went wide. Both of them had tried so hard to hide this fact from the world. Now it was out in the open. Now, there could be no doubt that it was true.

  Franky saw that look, too. “Oh, come off it, Penny. Are you honestly going to try to act surprised now? They know. You knew this whole time what was going on! You think I like going on these motorized camping trips every summer? I’m only here because it gives me a chance to be with Stacia and find out what it’s like to be with a real woman!”

  Thunderclouds rose in Penny’s hard glare. “I hate you,” she said, her voice flat. “I will never forgive you for this. I’ve tried to hold this relationship together with grit and sheer willpower and all this time you’ve been… Dear God, what an idiot I’ve been!”

  She turned to Jerry, her hands clasped on top of the table to keep them from shaking. “Franky and I were sleeping in separate places last night. I was in the bed. I had my clothes on still because Stacia was there and I didn’t feel right changing in front of her.”

  “Penny, shut up,” Franky warned.

  She kept going. “Franky, my husband, was supposed to be sleeping on the pullout in the breakfast nook but in the middle of the night I got up for a drink of water and he wasn’t there.”

  “Now, just hold on,” Franky tried to interrupt. “Don’t say something we’re both going to regret.”

  Penny wasn’t having any of that. “Know where he was? He was sitting on the sofa talking to Stacia. That’s where he was. At least, I thought they were just talking. They told me they were just talking. Can you believe that?”

  “Penny, you need to stop now…”

  “Oh, I’m just getting started, Franky. I didn’t think anything at all about your arm being around her, or you sitting right side by side, or… or… I trusted you! I loved you!”