Flourless to Stop Him (13 page)

I
put the van in reverse and rolled out of my parking spot, leaving a car-shaped bit of pavement showing. The way the snow was coming down, the bare spot would be filled in soon. I turned on the radio.

Lou Bradley was deejaying tonight. He currently spoke of the winter weather advisory and told truck drivers to be careful on the roads with the high wind warning.

The wind was shockingly strong as I left the protected area of the parking lot and turned onto Main Street. The van was built for space to deliver a cargo of baked goods, not to withstand hurricane-force winds. I put my hazard lights on and slowed way down. The roads were wet and slushy but passable. I only ever worried when we were hit by an ice storm. The van was pretty good in bad weather. This time the wind kept knocking it to the right and it was a fight to keep it on the road.

The police station loomed before me, like a beacon in
the storm. I pulled into the unpaved parking area and came to a crunching stop just outside the front door. Outside, the wind and snow tugged at my hair, froze my breath on my nose and cheeks. I struggled to open the station door. Finally I stepped inside, the storm slamming the door behind me.

“Auntie Em, Auntie Em,” I muttered as a whirlwind of snow and ice blew me into the lobby.

“Can I help you?” There was a young guy at the registration desk. He looked like he was twelve years old. His blond hair was cut short to his scalp. It made his ears seem larger as they stuck out on the sides of his head. He had light blue eyes and a clean-shaven jaw that had that round babyish softness to it.

“Um, hi, I’m Toni Holmes. I was told my brother Tim Keene was arrested tonight. Is that true?”

The kid looked through a logbook in front of him. I noticed that his name badge said
BLAYLOCK
.

“I’m sorry. I just noticed your name tag. Are you Chief Blaylock’s son?”

The officer blushed like a schoolboy. “He’s my uncle.” He pushed forward, ignoring his red cheeks. “According to the log, a Tim Keene was brought in on charges of second-degree murder and felony drug dealing.”

“Holy cow! Murder and drug dealing? There’s no way!” I exclaimed. “What kind of evidence do they have?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, miss.” He closed the logbook and carefully folded his hands on top of it. He remained calm, his actions purposeful.

I realized that I might have been a little loud when Officer Bright came around from the back. “Calvin, why are they arresting Tim? Is it true he’s being charged with murder and drug dealing?” I waved toward the officer at the front desk as if accusing him of lying.

“Toni, calm down.”

“Those are fightin’ words.” I narrowed my eyes, my
temper flaring. “You have no right to patronize me. I want to see my brother, and I want to see him now.”

“I’m not patronizing you.” He remained calm and reached his hand out. “May I touch you?”

“Why?” I narrowed my eyes.

“Sometimes a touch can be soothing in an emotional time.” He slowly put his hand on my bent elbow. Then he gently led me away from the front desk to the two benches where either family members or arrestees waited.

Right now it was only me and Officer Bright. We sat down together on the carved pine benches. “Do you want some tea or coffee?”

I shook my head. “I can’t think of that until I know Tim is all right.” I studied Calvin’s sober expression, looking for a glint of hope. He gave away nothing.

“I can tell you Brad is with him. Tim lawyered up the moment he was taken into custody.”

My eyes teared up. How could this have happened? “I trusted you to do your job.” I went from sad to mad in a flash and balled up my hands. “I don’t know what evidence you think you have, but Tim didn’t do this horrible thing. He lived with me for six months. If he were dealing drugs and getting into the wrong crowd I would have known. Don’t you see? I would have known.”

He patted my forearm. “I did do my job, Toni.” He didn’t say anything else.

“Well, you didn’t do it right.” I pulled away from him and stood. “When can I see Tim?”

“He’s spending the night here until the bail hearing in the morning. After that it will be up to the judge to determine how much a risk to society he is.”

“He’s not a risk to anyone. In fact, right now you are in more danger from me than Tim.” My fists were still balled.

He stood and held his hands out palms vertical. “Violence solves nothing, Toni.”

“Maybe not, but I’d feel better hitting someone. If you arrest me for it, I’ll be with my brother tonight.” It made sense in my head anyway.

“Blaylock, get Mr. Ridgeway out here right now,” Officer Bright said with authority. At the same time he took a step away from me.

“Yes, sir.” The kid at the desk fled to the back.

“The only way Brad is going to help is if he can get Tim out of jail. Seriously.” I narrowed my eyes. “I’m tired of ya’ll picking on my family. We are not murderers, thieves, or drug dealers, for goodness’ sake.” My voice rose in tone and volume. “I thought, since you were seeing Tasha, you would be on our side.”

I hated how whiny that sounded, but he
was
supposed to be on our side. He was practically family.

“Toni, you know that I follow the letter of the law. If there was enough evidence to arrest my own mother, I would do it. Do you understand?”

“No!” If I weren’t a disciplined adult I would have stomped my foot. “How could anyone arrest their own mother? What is wrong with you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” Officer Bright’s chin rose, his chest puffed out, and his hands went to his hips. “You need to calm down now.”

Two doors opened at the exact moment. Tasha came flying in from the outside door while Brad strode through the door to the back with a calm fury.

“Toni! What’s going on? I heard they arrested Tim.” Tasha was beside me in a flash, her arms around my shoulders, her eyes flashing. “Calvin, how could you?”

Officer Bright held up his hands and took another step back. Maybe it was because we were a united front or maybe he recalled how together Tasha and I can put up a heck of a fight.

“I’ve got this, Bright,” Brad said. He was four inches taller than Calvin and his suit was cut to perfection to show
off his wide shoulders. Brad had the look of a Scandinavian Adonis. The crisp white of his dress shirt against the tan of his skin made me want to bury my nose in the crook of his neck and cling to him for comfort. The black suit coat he wore was made of fine wool and well tailored. I’d seen suits like that during my years of training in Chicago. A cut that good on material that fine cost a great deal of money. Brad’s thick blond mane was cut and styled to perfection. He didn’t get it cut in Oiltop. I was pretty sure no one in this small town was that up on current men’s style. I could be wrong. I’d have to ask him sometime.

Brad stepped between Calvin and us. “Don’t you have paperwork to attend to?” His tone was pure alpha male dismissing a lesser man. My heart rate sped up. Officer Bright narrowed his eyes and took a step toward Brad when the kid popped back behind the reception counter.

“Officer Bright, the chief wants you in the back,” the younger Blaylock said.

I doubt he knew he’d just stopped a shoving match before it got started. Calvin’s gaze remained narrow.

“We’ll finish this later,” he promised and left. The door slammed behind him and a cheap framed photo that hung on the wall crashed to the floor.

The noise startled me and I suddenly felt as if my last nerve had been hit. My knees buckled and I sat on the bench, put my head in my hands, and sobbed.

Tasha was beside me in a flash. She handed me a tissue and put her arm around me to comfort me. “How bad is it?” Tasha asked.

Brad sat beside me and put his elbows on his knees so that his head was on the same level as ours. The man was a giant, after all. I mean, I was considered tall for a woman, and Brad had a whole foot of height on me. There was something nice about a guy big enough to make you feel delicate.

“We’ll know more in the morning, when Tim stands
before the judge for his bail hearing.” Brad’s deep voice soothed my nerves.

“What time is it? I want to be there. What evidence do they have? They have to have something in order to arrest him. Don’t they?” My stomach hurt at the thought of my brother in a jail cell with a killer or worse.

“The hearing is at ten
A.M
. We’ll know more then. In the meantime, he has his own private room. He’ll be fine, okay? Try not to worry too much. Tim is taking it all one day at a time.”

“Tim’s taking it well? Crap, does that mean he won’t look remorseful and they’ll sentence him to life? Oh, thank goodness we don’t live in Texas. I don’t know what I would do if he got the death penalty.”

Brad patted my hand. Tasha hugged me.

“I don’t mean to be so dramatic,” I said. “It’s just that everyone told me to help investigate and I said no. I told them that the Oiltop police were good at their job. All we had to do was trust them.”

“That’s true,” Brad said. His electric blue gaze tried to reassure me.

“But they arrested the wrong man. We all know Tim didn’t do it.”

“Do you have any idea who might have been renting rooms around town in your brother’s name?” Brad asked.

“Not a clue.” I shook my head in despair. “Why didn’t the desk clerk notice that it wasn’t Tim signing in?”

“I can answer that,” Tasha said. “There are certain times of day when everyone wants to check in at once. If the imposter rented the room over the Internet, then all he had to do was show up with an ID with Tim’s name and his own picture. We really don’t check beyond what it takes to ensure we get paid.”

“Wouldn’t you know it wasn’t Tim?”

“People have similar names all the time. I’ve signed in
a couple of Tasha Wilkeses myself. The name might sound familiar, but if the ID matches we just go with it.”

“Wait, you think whoever is behind this watches the reception area and comes in when the customers are two and three deep?”

“That’s how I’d do it.” Tasha’s eyes were wide. “That’s why I’m surprised they arrested Tim. I gave them the videotape of the day the room was rented. We should be able to match the time they checked in to the number of cars in the parking lot. If Tim’s car isn’t there, then they can’t prove the Tim checking in was your brother.”

“That’s right!” I looked at Brad. “They have video. You can’t really fake that, can you?”

“There are a million ways to fake video.” Brad’s mouth was a thin line. “For that matter, you can scramble the video with a simple device in your pocket.”

“Who knows this kind of stuff?” I asked, confused. “If people could fake the video, then why even have video?”

“Video is one more step in security,” Tasha said. “It’s not meant to solve crimes but to be a piece of the puzzle.”

“Did they show you the video?” I asked Brad. “Can you tell who was in the parking lot?”

“I didn’t see the video. I was told it was still being processed, which means it’s not part of the arrest warrant.” Brad ran his big hand over his square jaw.

“I thought you said you didn’t know what they have to hold him.” I studied his guarded expression.

“I said we’d have to wait until morning to see how compelling the information is.” Brad took my hand in his. His hand was warm and his grip was firm. His thumb swept the back of my hand, gentle and soothing. “What I do know is they had Tim in a lineup after they brought him into the station. It sounds like at least one if not two witnesses confirmed that Tim was at the different hotels the days the other rooms were reserved in his name.”

I shook my head. “How can that be? He was staying with me. He was saving money to get his own place. There’s no way he’d have spent it on an unnecessary hotel room. Not when he has full access to the house.”

“The final person to identify your brother was Maria,” Brad said.

“Maria?” I couldn’t believe it.

“You mean
my
Maria? The one who found the body?” Tasha asked in as much disbelief as I was.

“Yes, your Maria,” Brad said, his eyes took on a darker shade of blue. “She claims to have seen a man leaving the room an hour before she went to clean. She identified that man as Tim in the lineup.”

“How can that be?” I felt drained as if all the strength had gone out of my body.

“She has to be mistaken,” Tasha said. “I was working that morning. I would have seen Tim if he’d been there.”

“That’s true,” I said. “I stopped into the lobby before Maria started her shift. That room faces the clubhouse. In fact, I sat facing east most of the time I was there. I would have noticed Tim if it had been him leaving.”

“Wait, a lot of drugs come out of Colombia, don’t they? Aren’t there Colombian drug lords? What if Maria is part of this frame-up? What if someone has her children and is forcing her to testify against Tim?” I looked at Brad. “What can we do? There must be something to do to help her and Tim.”

“That’s a lot of speculation, Toni,” Brad said. “She could simply be mistaken.”

“Oh, poor Maria,” Tasha said. “I hope that none of this is true.”

“I can’t feel for Maria,” I said. “She is accusing my brother. At this point we don’t know why. So I say poor Tim,” I reminded her. “See? This is what happens when I
let the professionals do their jobs.” I stood, filled with a sudden need to jump into the investigation.