A Zest for Murder (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 5) (15 page)

CHAPTER
39

Half Moon Road coiled through the
countryside like a rootless nomad, twisting and turning and following the
terrain as it sloped toward the base of Wildrose Mountain. When we were kids,
my father would often use it as a shortcut between Crescent Creek and Coldwater
Junction, the nearby town where his brother lived for a few years. As I sat in
Trent’s SUV, watching inky silhouettes of trees flash by the window, I was
thinking about those childhood memories when Dina called my name from the
backseat.

“Have you seen Dermot Flanagan
since you got back?” she asked.

I turned on the seat to face her.
“No, I haven’t even thought of him for years. He and my sister were sort of
friends when we were younger, but I didn’t really know him that well.”

Trent snickered. “The guy was a
jerk back then; an arrogant know-it-all who—”

The walkie-talkie on the seat
between Trent and I squawked with a burst of static before a voice came through
clearly. “Santiago to Walsh, over.”

“Go for Walsh,” Trent said after
scooping up the radio.

“We’ve got the place covered,”
Denny said. “Nothing visible from the front, but there are tire tracks and what
appears to be a lantern in the back office. Do you want us to go and have a
look?”

“Negative,” Trent said. “Hold your
positions until we get there.”

“Copy that,” said the voice on the
walkie-talkie.

After Trent finished with the
radio, we rode in silence. The road meandered beneath the pitch-black sky,
rushing from one solitary streetlight to the next. Each time we passed through
one of the bright ovals, I glanced at Trent. His hands gripped the steering
wheel with a fierce determination and his eyes were narrow and tight,
concentrating on the slender band of asphalt as we raced toward the abandoned
cinderblock building. As we approached the final bend in the road, the silence
was pierced again by the walkie-talkie.

“Santiago to Walsh,” Denny said
through the static. “Over.”

Trent grabbed the radio again. “Go
for Walsh.”

“We’ve got movement,” the veteran
officer whispered urgently. “The front door opened and…” He paused and none of
us dared breathe. “…and two people are coming out, one with a gun to the other
one’s head.” My heart dropped into my stomach. “What’s our move? Over.”

Trent sighed unhappily. “They
might’ve spotted you,” he said. “Hold tight until we—”

The unmistakable sound of a gunshot
came over the walkie-talkie.

“Santiago?” Trent barked, pressing
the radio to his mouth. “What just happened?”

There was no reply.

“Denny?” Trent’s voice was steady
as he pressed down on the accelerator. “Can you hear me? Over!”

Dina said something in the
backseat, but I was so focused on the walkie-talkie that I didn’t catch it.

“Denny?” Trent’s foot flew from the
gas to the brake as we reached a sharp turn. “Are you there? Over!”

The SUV slowed, Trent navigated the
curve and the old gas station came into view. Two Crescent Creek patrol cars
were parked at the side of the road behind a thick stand of trees. Two
flashlights sliced the shadows in the gravel parking lot in front of the
abandoned building.

“This is such a…” Trent left the
pronouncement incomplete as he angled into the entrance and aimed the
headlights at the two officers walking toward a dark mound in the snow. “What
the blasted…” He turned quickly toward me. “Are you seeing this, Katie? Dina?”

Before either of us could answer,
his door was open and he was running toward the building.

“Is that a woman?” Dina asked as
she followed Trent out of the Jeep.

I pushed against the passenger
door, dropping to the ground and filling my lungs with a deep pull from the icy
air. My legs felt weightless as I scrambled through the darkness and into the two
beams jutting from the front of the SUV.

“He shot me!” a voice shrieked. “He
shot me!”

One of the officers knelt in the
gravel. As I approached, I discovered that it was Denny, leaning forward and
pressing a wadded rag against the victim’s bleeding thigh.

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt,”
a second voice whimpered. “It was just to get some money. Claire got shot by
accident in Tipper’s kitchen and—”

“That’s your story?” Trent hissed.

As I came closer and moved around
to the right side, I saw bright red crimson splotches on the white snow. In the
distance, a siren split the night, howling and growing louder as the ambulance
sped down Half Moon Road.

“Who called that in?” asked Trent.

“I did,” said the officer standing
above the two sprawled bodies. I recognized the voice; it was Hank Russell,
another veteran member of the Crescent Creek PD. “The second he fired and hit
the vic, I got dispatch on the line.”

I took a few more steps, shifted my
gaze lower and felt a massive bolt of adrenaline burn through my body as I
realized Tipper was on the ground. She’d been shot in the leg; blood pumped
freely from the wound, despite Denny Santiago’s attempts to apply pressure.

I stood silently, eyes wide and
mouth slightly open, as I pulled my gaze from Tipper’s anguished face to the
second shape stretched a few feet away. It was Kyle Gallagher; clenching his
teeth against the pain of a gunshot I couldn’t even see.

“She…” He winced and groaned. “I
didn’t mean to shoot…anyone. But my brother was going to…”

Trent stood above the scene, both
hands planted on his hips and a look of disgust on his face. “Can somebody
explain what happened here?”

Denny Santiago looked over his
shoulder. “It was like I was telling you,” he said. “They came out the front,
walking right toward us. He had a gun pressed against her head. I called for
them to—”

“Hold up,” Trent snapped.
“Gallagher had a gun on Tipper?”

“Jammed against her head,” Santiago
said again. “And after I told them both to stop, he started to lower the gun,
but then he just…shot her. From where we were down there…” He jerked his head
toward the patrol cars beyond the trees. “…we could hear them arguing, but we
couldn’t tell what they were saying to one another.”

Kyle Gallagher moaned again. “Is
somebody going to call 911?” he said slowly. “I need…”

“Just zip it,” Trent said. “They’re
on the way. I’m more interested in hearing what the blazes was going on.”

“She got hit first,” Denny said.
“In the leg.”

“I’d guessed as much,” Trent
muttered. “Who shot the other one?”

“He was aiming right at us,” Hank
Russell said. “We’d given him three chances to drop his weapon before he
suddenly fired a round and she fell.”

Tipper’s eyes were two white
marbles, glaring up defiantly at the faces that surrounded her. “And why?” she
screamed. “I’m a victim here, a kidnap victim. I never did anything to—”

“She’s lying,” Kyle said through
gritted teeth. “We were all in it together. Until my brother decided he was
going to pull a fast one and—”

A voice suddenly called from the
open door of the old building. “We’ve got the other two. They were hiding in a
crawl space above the hot water heater.”

I spun around just in time to see
Amanda Crane escorting Dermot Flanagan across the gravel parking lot. He was
barefoot and his shirt was torn, probably ripped in the attempt to escape
before things went south. A few seconds later, Steve Pembrook, a rookie officer
with the department, came through the door with a second man. I’d never seen
him before, but I guessed it was Kyle Flanagan’s brother.

“And who do we have here?” Trent
said.

Dina Kincaid came up behind him.
“The short one with Officer Pembrook is Clark Gallagher. And this guy…” She
tightened her grip on the man’s arm. “…this is Dermot Flanagan. His father used
to rent this building.”

Trent scowled. “The rafting
company?”

“That’s right,” answered Dina.

“It wasn’t my idea!” Tipper
shrieked. “I was kidnapped! They shot somebody in my house! And then they took
me to a cabin out on—”

“Miss Hedge?” Dina said in a firm
voice.

“
What
?” Tipper hissed.

“Best to keep quiet for now,” she
said. “I heard them reading you your rights as we walked up the drive there. So
don’t dig the hole any deeper with a story that might not be exactly truthful.”

I wasn’t surprised when Tipper
unleashed a torrent of obscenities. I heard Dina gasp softly at one
particularly colorful suggestion and then waited for the inevitable reply from
Trent.

“You know what, Miss Hedge?” he
drawled in a voice that was dipped in honey and sprinkled with dynamite. “If I
had a bar of soap handy, I’d give your mouth a good, long scrubbing.”

CHAPTER
40

The ancient Seth Thomas clock on
the wall in Trent’s office was clicking toward nine. I had my eyes on the
slender second hand as it marched around and around in endless and precise
circles, marking the passage of time without change or variation in its
journey. I’d been staring at it since Trent left me alone to confer with Denny
Santiago about which officers would relieve the pair that was currently at the
hospital guarding Tipper and Kyle in their respective rooms.

“You look like crap, Katie,” Trent
announced as he walked back into the room. “Why don’t you go home and get some
sleep?”

I smirked at the remark. “How
should I look? I got up at four-thirty this morning, put in a full day at Sky High
and then did a bit of research into Kyle Gallagher and Dermot Flanagan before
things went completely rogue.”

“Yeah?” He plopped down in his desk
chair with a loud thud. “Find anything juicy in your research?”

“You know the saying about being in
the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Trent rolled the chair closer to
the desk. “Story of my life,” he said. “What about Gallagher and Flanagan?”

“Okay,” I said. “According to a
news story out of Albuquerque, Kyle and Dermot were business partners with a
guy called…” I reached for my phone to check the name. “…um, hang on. I need
to—”

“It’s Phil Abruzzo,” Trent said
with the smug, satisfied grin of an egghead who knows he’s correct. “Shady guy
with ties to a bunch of even shadier creeps in Vegas.”

I put away the phone. “So you know
about the embezzled funds and the fraud charges?”

The grin widened. “We do indeed,
Katie. But I appreciate how much you care.”

“And I appreciate the
appreciation.”

He snickered. “I’m being serious
here, okay? You’re a great resource for us on occasion. I don’t want you to
think that we’re taking you for granted.”

“Or vice versa?”

His haughty smirk wobbled. “What?
How are
you
taking
me
for granted?”

I grabbed my purse and started to
stand. Trent held up one of his meaty paws and told me to wait.

“For what?” I asked. “So you can
gloat and tell me how much I mean to the Crescent Creek Police Department?”

“I’m not joking, Katie,” he sat up
and lifted his chin slightly. “We really
do
appreciate the fact that a
local citizen is willing to pitch in and help. And the fact that you know where
the boundaries are…well, that’s just icing on the cake.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded. “Cross my heart,” he
said, jabbing at his chest. “And hope to…” He frowned. “I’m not saying that
last part. Never liked to. Don’t plan to start now.”

“It’s fine, Trent. I get it; you’re
a big, brawny deputy chief with an ooey, gooey heart overflowing with
tenderness and mercy.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Yep. That’s
me; ooey, gooey, tender and merciful.”

I stood up and slipped my purse
strap over one shoulder. “I hate to cut out in the middle of your emotional
blathering, but I’m pretty bushed. I want to go home, take a hot bath and crawl
into bed.”

“Can you spare a few minutes before
all of that?”

“To do what?”

The phone rang and he reached
across the desk.

“Tipper asked to see you,” he said,
glancing at the buzzing phone. “She’s pretty freaked out, Katie. And we all
know—” The ring suddenly stopped. “Oh, man! That was my mom. She’s called about
thirty times today.”

“Then you should call her right
back.” I turned for the door. “And I’ll go see Tipper for a few minutes on my
way home. She may have crossed the line, but she’s still a friend.”

CHAPTER
41

“That’s a lovely rose,” said the
woman behind the counter. “Is it for a patient?”

I nodded, but didn’t tell her I was
on my way up to see Tipper. Luckily, the gift shop was still open when I
arrived at the hospital, so I scooped up a single red bud in a cut glass vase.

“I hope everything goes okay,” said
the cashier as I pocketed my change.

“Thank you. I’m actually hoping for
the very same thing.”

A few minutes later, when I stepped
off the elevator on the third floor, I saw Dina Kincaid and a woman dressed in
scrubs sitting in the waiting area near the nurses’ station. Dina said something
to the woman, got out of the chair and walked toward me with both hands folded
at her waist.

“Oh, Dina!” I felt my heart plunge.
“Has something happened since I left the station?”

She shook her head. “No. Why would
you think that?”

“The look on your face,” I said. “I
thought maybe…” I stopped, cleared my throat and tried again. “Anyway, where is
Tipper?”

She took my elbow and steered me
toward the rows of empty chairs in the waiting area. They were upholstered in a
dark crimson fabric that was speckled with dots of white and gray. Once we were
seated, she launched into a quick recap on what I should and shouldn’t discuss
with Tipper.

“This is a courtesy,” Dina
explained. “And we know that it’s complicated. You and Tipper have been friends
for years. Trent and I decided that it would be good for her to see a friendly
face before she goes to county lockup in a couple of days.”

“She really was involved in the
scheme?”

Dina nodded silently.

“What’s your theory?” I asked. “Why
do you think she did it?”

“Because she’s wackadoodle.”

I sighed. “No, c’mon. I’m serious;
what’s her motive?”

A sad, kindhearted expression
emerged through the contemptuous sneer. “Her motive?” Dina repeated. “I’d say
it was love.”

The reply wasn’t unexpected. “Kyle
Gallagher?”

“Along with Dermot Flanagan,” Dina
said.

“Are you telling me that both Kyle
and Dermot were in a relationship with Tipper?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think
it was
that
kind of thing. From what I’ve heard so far, Tipper was head-over-heels
for Kyle. I know her neighbor reported that she was romantically involved with
both, but I don’t believe that to be true. I think she considered Dermot more
of a big brother figure somehow. And, anyway, when she found out about their
money troubles, she agreed to stage her own kidnapping. They actually believed
her mother would cough up two-hundred grand and they’d use it to pay off the
clowns in Vegas. And then, apparently, Gallagher’s brother threatened to turn
the tables on Kyle.”

“Meaning what?”

“From what Tipper told us earlier,”
Dina answered, “Clark Gallagher suddenly announced that he was taking the
lion’s share of the money and going south to Mexico. The guy’s a loose cannon,
Katie. After his girlfriend was shot in Tipper’s kitchen when they argued about
the money, his grasp on reality had really started to slip. At one point,
Tipper was pretty convinced that Clark actually planned to kill everyone else
once the ransom money was delivered.”

I let the news sink in slowly. It
felt like a slap, a betrayal. But it also seemed like something that could
happen when someone made themselves vulnerable to disreputable characters like
Dermot Flanagan and the Gallagher brothers.

“You should go say hello,” Dina
suggested.

Her voice startled me a little,
cutting into the reflection about Tipper and the foolish plot to swindle
two-hundred thousand dollars from her mother.

“The nurse just gave her some
pretty powerful pain killers,” Dina continued, “so she’ll probably fall asleep
soon.”

I left Dina and walked down the
silent corridor toward where a uniformed officer sat in a chair. I smiled after
he nodded a greeting. Then I took a deep breath and walked through the doorway.

“Tipper?” My voice sounded too loud
for the hushed space. “Okay for me to come in for a sec?”

When she turned her head at the
sound of my voice, the overhead light glinted on the handcuffs that connected
her wrist to the frame of the bed. The only sound in the room was the
electronic beeping of the monitors, a steady, metallic cadence that sounded
somehow comforting. I walked over and sat in the chair beside her bed.

“Hey, friend,” she said in a drowsy
tone. “It’s really nice of you to come.”

I put my hand on her forearm. “How
do you feel?”

“Like crap.”

I nodded. “We’ll keep this short
then. I just wanted to let you know that I got your message. Maybe I can come
back tomorrow after you’ve had a chance to rest.”

I put the rose on the tray beside
her bed.

“That’s so sweet of you, Katie,”
she said. “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”

I reached into my coat and pulled
out a white paper bag from Sky High. “I don’t know if these are on the approved
diet list,” I said, putting the parcel beside the flower. “But I had a few of
my grandmother’s Zesty Orange Oatmeal Cookies in the car.”

She smiled. “Those are my
favorite.”

“I know. That’s why I brought them
for you.”

She closed her eyes and pressed
back into the mound of fluffy pillows.

“Pain?” I asked.

“Not too bad. I just keep having
these waves of…” Her eyes fluttered open. “I don’t even know how to describe
them. It’s like the sensation of being on a roller coaster when you first go
over the really high part. Do you know what I mean? When the car plunges down
and it feels like your stomach is in your chest and gravity isn’t working anymore?”

“What’re you talking about?” I
smiled again. “That’s how I feel every other day.”

She giggled softly. “Ah, silly…”
Her eyes widened and she dabbed at her mouth with a tissue. “It is
so
good to see you, Katie.”

“You, too.” We held the thought for
a moment, our eyes fixed and unwavering. “And, considering what you’ve been
through in the last three days, I’d say you’re looking pretty good!”

Her mouth tilted into a lopsided
grin. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “Totally.”

“Well, considering the trouble that
I’ve caused, I don’t deserve to hear anything that kind or sweet.”

From the tempo of her voice and the
deflated look on her face, I could tell that Tipper realized she’d made some
exceptionally unfortunate choices. As we sat together, surrounded by the relentless
rhythm of the monitors, I sifted through the list of questions that had been
gathering since the scene outside of the abandoned gas station earlier. I
wanted to know everything at once, but decided to start with the most obvious.

“How did this happen?” I asked.
“How’d you get involved with these guys?”

She attempted to smile, but the
effort seemed too demanding. “I fell for him,” she said in a faint whisper.
“For Kyle, I mean. For him and the stories he told and the reasons he gave for
why it would work and how it wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“What about Claire Cain?” I said as
her eyes welled with tears. “Dermot’s girlfriend lost her life, Tipper. She
died as a result of…whatever scheme you all had planned.”

“I know. And there’s no way to
explain that or…justify any of this.” She dropped the tissue and pressed both
hands against her face. “Kyle’s not a bad man, Katie. But he made some…some
really bad decisions. If he hadn’t gotten involved with his brother. And if his
brother didn’t know Dermot from college. And if they didn’t come to me and Kyle
with the idea to settle the score with the guys in Vegas by faking my
kidnapping—”

“So all three of them were involved
in the business that they opened down in New Mexico?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It was Clark’s
idea first. He’d always wanted to be his own boss. Kyle got mixed up in it
later when he was trying to help his brother.”

“What kind of business was it?”

“Something to do with cars at
first,” she said. “And then drugs when the car business started to go under.
But they got in way over their heads right from the start. Borrowed from a
bank. Then from a credit union that was managed by a friend of Dermot’s. And
then they hit up their relatives. After that went nowhere, they met a guy who
was connected to some really shady characters from Vegas.”

“And that’s when things really fell
apart?”

She closed her eyes and her head
pressed down into the pillows. “Yeah. Clark and Dermot knew that my mother had
some money. I met them a few weeks ago when we drove down to Albuquerque. At
some point, they convinced Kyle that my mother would pay the ransom and it
would be the answer to all of their problems. I found out during that trip that
Kyle was also dealing with his own financial troubles because his wife took him
to the cleaners when they divorced.”

“I didn’t know Kyle had been
married.”

“Not many people do,” she said,
looking at me again. “And it didn’t last long. But she hired a snake for a
lawyer and got every last dime.”

“Sounds like plenty of bad luck to
go around then,” I said.

Tipper smiled. “Don’t I know it,
Katie. I’ll be paying for it from now until my dying day. I just can’t…” She
gasped and the tears came again. “How could I be
so
stupid?”

The monitors droned on as we sat
again for a few minutes without talking. Tipper held out one hand and I
squeezed it tightly.

“You’ll get through this,” I said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know,
Katie. Maybe I don’t deserve to.”

“Hush now.” I tightened my grip.
“You’ll have to pay the price for what you’ve done, but you
will
get
through it.”

“One day at a time,” she said. “I’m
just…how did I get here? I mean, Kyle and I were getting ready to come meet you
and Zack at Blanche’s one minute and the next thing I know…” Her gaze narrowed
and she pulled her hand free. “…we were about to leave my house and the
doorbell rings. Up until that instant, Kyle had been acting totally normal, but
I could tell then that something wasn’t right.”

“Who was at the door?” I asked.

“All of them,” Tipper said.
“Dermot, Clark and those two sketchy girls.”

“And that’s when it started?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t believe it,
you know? I mean, Kyle and I had sort of talked about it as a long shot, but I
didn’t realize they were serious on trying it, like, now.”

“Trying what? Staging your
kidnapping?”

“Yes. We’d talked about it a couple
of times, but only after we’d been drinking. I didn’t think…” She sighed and
wiped away a few more tears. “But they were serious,” she went on. “I tried to
tell them that Kyle and I were expected somewhere, but Dermot just grabbed my
phone and sent that text to Blanche and then…well, then the nightmare became
very
real
very
quickly.”

I waited for more, but she stared
blankly at the ceiling. There wasn’t time for all of the unanswered questions
swimming in my mind, but I wanted to ask a few more before leaving Tipper alone
for the night.

“Where did you hide while everyone
was looking for you?”

“Kyle rented a little apartment
last week,” she said. “The landlord’s a friend of Dermot’s, so the guy didn’t
do a background check. We’d originally hoped to use Dermot’s parents’ cabin,
the one they’re trying to sell over near James Peak, but they refused to give
him the key when he stopped by the other day.”

“Dermot had been to see his mother
and father?”

Tipper nodded. “I guess it didn’t
go very well though; there’s plenty of bad blood between Dermot and his
parents.”

“Then why were you at the old gas
station?” I asked. “If Kyle had leased an apartment to use as your hideout?”

She rolled her eyes. “Kyle’s brother
got jumpy earlier today. A patrol car drove by the apartment two or three
times, so we decided to go out to Full Moon Road to wait until my mother came
through with the ransom.”

She yawned and covered her mouth.

“Just one more thing,” I said. “If
Kyle was involved in the scheme, why did he ask me to help find you?”

A faint grin appeared briefly
before Tipper turned on the pillow. “Because he thought it would somehow buy
time while we waited for my mother to get the money out of the bank. As if him
asking you for help would keep the police off our trail somehow.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded. “Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“That’s one way to describe it,” I
said. “That and all the rest.”

I realized there wasn’t much more
to say. Tipper had made plenty of mistakes before in her life, but they were
all easy to remedy with apologies, bouquets of flowers or remorseful
confessions. It wouldn’t be so easy this time. She faced numerous criminal
charges and a long, winding trip through the legal system.

I was contemplating the next step
in her journey when she reached down and pushed against the mattress. “It feels
like I keep sliding down these sheets,” she said. “They’re not like the ones I
have at home.”

“Yeah, I don’t think they put a
high priority on expensive Egyptian cotton here.”

She laughed again. “Probably not.”

“Do you want me to help you sit
up?” I asked.

She stopped shifting in the bed and
glared at me. “I’m not helpless, Katie. I had a little bump on my head. And the
bullet only grazed my thigh.”

I waited while she finished moving
into a better position. Then I asked how Trent and the others from the police
department had treated her.

“Are you kidding me? They’ve
amazing! Amanda’s so nice. And Trent…what an incredibly nice guy.”

I smiled. “He can be.”

“I know they’re coming back to ask
me more questions,” she said. “But I don’t think there’s much more I can tell
them.”