Guns and Roses (40 page)

Thirty minutes later, Cash pulled up in front of the only yellow and white house on Gilman Common. The Commons, as it was known, was where the upper echelon of the tenured professors, including the dean and Gilman board of directors lived. Made sense a Prebe would have a house on the prestigious street.

As he locked the car, Cash noticed a golf cart parked on the side lawn and raised voices coming from the house. He picked up his step and sure enough, there was a fight going on inside. He hustled up the brick steps to the wide white door. The shouts escalated. He recognized one.

“Rebel!” He banged on the door, shouting, “Open up, Police!” He gave the occupants three seconds to answer before he tried the door to find it unlocked. He rushed in.

“Damn it, Rebel! I’m running this investigation,” he shouted, coming at her. She had the nerve to look angry at him for disrupting her interrogation. She had a man, easily twice her size, up against the foyer wall and an amazon of a woman behind her looking like she was going to rip that little firecracker to shreds.

Three pair of eyes stared at him.

“Drew won’t tell me what him and Jami were fighting about!” Rebel yelled before she turned back at the man she had pinned against the wall and shoved her fist beneath his chin.

Cash strode up to Rebel, grabbed her and tucked her under his arm like she was a newspaper.

“I can’t help you if I can’t get my hands on him!” Rebel shouted, trying to squirm her way out of his grasp.

“Detective Cantrell I presume?” the Amazon drawled. “Unless you have a search warrant, kindly see yourself out of my house.”

“I heard shouts and feared someone might be in immediate danger.” His eyes narrowed at Rebel when he looked over at the man she had accosted, whom he presumed was Drew Prebe, then the Amazon whom he presumed was Drew’s sister, Colette, then down at the crazy girl hanging in his arms. “Looks like I was right.”

“Now that you have my brother’s attacker in custody, please leave.”

Cash lowered Rebel to the floor, but kept a firm hand on her arm. Inclining his head toward the door, he levelly commanded her, “You get going.”

Her eyes spit fire. “I will not! I’m not leaving here until Drew confesses.”

“I didn’t kill her, Rebel,” Drew defended himself as he came toward them.

“Out of my house, Detective, before I call the state police and have you thrown out,” the sister threatened.

With one hand on Rebel’s arm to keep her from pouncing on Drew, who apparently didn’t have the good sense to keep his distance from the little hellion, Cash casually looked the sister up and down. His gaze settled on her raw knuckled hands. When he looked up and caught her furious gaze, he asked, “What happened to your hands?”

She shoved them into her pants pockets and glared at him. “Get out.”

“If I leave, I’m taking you with me.”

“
You’re
arresting
me
?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, ma’am, under suspicion of murder.” By the looks of her hands, even though it was a long shot, it might get her to open up.

“You can’t do that!”

“Go on and try me.”

“My daddy will have your badge for that.”

“No, he won’t. Now, you going to talk to me or are we going in?”

She set her jaw and shook her head.

“OK, I’ll play it your way but—” Cash drawled looking over at Drew. “But I wonder how fast your daddy will be able to squelch the rape rumors pertaining to a certain ledge party your little brother participated in last night.”

“Who told you that?” Drew hissed.

“
What
ledge party, Drew?” Rebel demanded, twisting out of Cash’s grip. “Is that why you broke up with Jami? Coz you wanted to go to an orgy? And she had a problem with that?”

She punched him in the chest. “Why you low down good-for-nothing cur, I don’t blame her. How could you?”

Drew flinched and grabbed Rebel’s arms.

Cash growled low stepping toward him.

“I’m not gonna hurt her, Detective Cantrell. Damn it all to hell, that’s not why we broke up.”

“So you admit to participating in a ledge party at Delta house?” Cash asked.

“I did.”

“I want to know who those poor girls were!” Rebel shouted.

“First of all, those ‘poor girls’ were more than willing.”

“Willing? What girl in their right mind would
willingly
allow herself to be—sexually used by a bunch of dumb-ass frat boys while another bunch of dumb ass frat boys watched?”

“I can’t speak for what a girl thinks, Rebel,” Drew defended. “But nobody was forced to do anything they didn’t want to do. And I’m not going to tell you who they were, and you can’t make me tell you.”

“Detective Cash can,” Rebel said, turning to Cash for confirmation. “Can’t you, Detective?”

As much as Cash would like to beat the information out of Drew Prebe, he couldn’t. “I can’t do anything unless one of those young ladies comes forward with a complaint.”

“What about someone who witnessed it?” Rebel pushed.

“I can investigate, but until there’s a victim, my hands are tied.” Cash looked hard at Drew who seemed to be getting whiter but the minute. “Why did you break up with Jami?”

Drew shook his head. “It’s a private matter.”

“Where were you between the hours of 2:45 and 5 a.m. this morning?”

Drew looked at his sister.

“You don’t have to say a word, Drew,” she counseled.

He looked down at Rebel then over at Cash. “I was at Delta house until just about an hour ago when we heard about the murder.”

“Why didn’t you go and try to see her, Drew?” Rebel demanded. “Why’d you come here instead?”

“Because we broke up and I felt guilty as hell, ok?”

“I’m sure there’re plenty of folks who can attest to the fact you spent most of the early morning hours at Delta house?” Cash asked.

“Yes, sir, there were plenty.”

Cash ripped a sheet of paper out of his notepad and handed it to Drew. “I want a list.”

“If he gives you those names he’s going to become the pariah of the campus,” Collette said, stepping forward.

“Well, then,” Rebel said, setting her hands on her hips and getting right into the Amazon’s face, “I guess your judge daddy will just have to wave his magic wand and fix it for your little brother now, won’t he?”

“Rebel, this is none of your business. Stay out of it,” Cash said, moving in behind her. Whether to protect her from the Amazon or the other way around, he wasn’t quite sure.

“Jami
is
my business!” she defended. “She’s dead and someone close to her killed her.”

She grabbed Collette’s hands and squeezed them until the woman flinched. “Where were you last night? And why are your hands all raw? Did you do it, Colette? Did you beat poor Jami to death because you couldn’t stand a lowly coal miner’s daughter hooking up with your precious little brother?”

Colette yanked her hands out of Rebel’s. “That girl wasn’t fit for him to wipe his feet on,” she hissed.

Rebel stood back and said, “I knew you hated her. I just didn’t know you hated her enough to kill her.”

“I didn’t kill her. But I’ll admit when I saw the way she was making eyes at Drew, I told her to stay away from him. She refused. When things got serious, I approached her again. I offered her money to leave my brother alone.”

“You had no right to do that!” Drew said.

Colette sneered at her brother. “Your sweet-as-pie girlfriend laughed at me and said to get used to seeing her around.” Colette looked at Rebel then to Cash. “She told me she came to Gilman to improve her social status and, now that she had Drew hooked and reeled in, I could kiss her coalminer’s ass.” Collette laughed at her brother’s shocked expression. “Yeah, Romeo, she used you up like yesterday’s tampon.”

“Colette, do you have any of those Mr. Lincoln bushes out back?” Rebel asked out of left field.

Before she could answer Rebel’s odd question, Drew shouted, “She loved me, Colette! She loved
me
!”

“Loved
you
?” Colette laughed. “The only thing she loved about you was your last name. I’m glad she’s dead.” Collette moved between her brother, and Cash and Rebel. “Now, either charge one of us or leave.”

Chapter Five

“Why isn’t Colette Prebe in handcuffs?” Rebel demanded, hot on Detective Cantrell’s heels as they walked away from the Prebe house. Was he thick? It was as obvious as fried chicken and lemonade at a picnic that Colette killed Jami. Colette Prebe hated the girl, was as strong as a man, and lived less than a half mile from the crime scene.

“Because I didn’t have enough evidence to charge her with a traffic violation, much less a murder.”

“Can’t you pretend to? Have the evidence so you can get her in the hot box and then sweat out a confession?”

Cash turned around and caught Rebel by the arm before she slammed into him. “You watch too much TV.”

“Colette did it. I just know she did! She said she hated Jami! And her hands were beat raw like she’d been pounding on something. She’s strong too. All American four years in a row and just missed making the ladies Olympic basketball team two years ago.”

“Hatred and raw knuckles isn’t enough to arrest her on. I wish it was, but until I have something solid, I’m going to have to keep digging.”

“
We’re
going to have to keep digging.”

Cash shook his head. “There’s no
we
in this investigation, Rebel Yell.”

Rebel smiled slyly at him. Of course there was, he just didn’t know it yet.

“I don’t like it when you smile like that,” Cash said.

“Does it scare you?”

“Yeah.”

“I like scaring you, Detective. It means you respect me.”

He returned the smile, showing off brilliant white teeth.

Rebel pushed a wisp of hair off her cheek and squinted in the sunshine. As she did, the breeze picked up and lifted some more of her hair, blowing it across her face. As she reached up to smooth it away, the detective reached out to do the same thing. When their fingers touched, Rebel would have sworn firecrackers went off in her southern region. Catching her breath, she pulled her hand away, not because she didn’t like the way his skin felt on hers or was afraid of it, but because she respected his boundaries. For now anyhow. His fingers continued their journey brushing her hair aside and tucking it behind her ear, before stepping back.

“Why did you ask Collette about a Mr. Lincoln bush?” Cash asked, breaking the spell.

“It’s a type of rose.” She shook her head at the surprised look on his face. “Like I told you, Detective Cantrell,” Rebel huskily said. “There’s more to me than my southern-belle appearance.”

“I’m beginning to see that. Now tell me why you asked her about that specific type of rose?”

“I saw a rose in one of the evidence bags by your CSI kit. It looked an awful lot like a Mr. Lincoln. My gran grows them, and she loses every year at the state fair to a Mrs. J R Prebe.”

“Damn it, Rebel, why didn’t you say something about that earlier?”

“I was upset, and I just remembered it. Can you get a search warrant to search her house? There’s plenty of roses in the back garden, I bet one of them’s a Mr. Lincoln. I can slip back there and take a peek.”

“How can you be so sure it was a Mr. Lincoln?”

“I have a photographic memory. Mostly with numbers, but sometimes things like roses and such are perfectly preserved in my head.”

“You’re just chock full of surprises aren’t you?” Cash said, looking past her to the house.

Rebel looked over her shoulder and said, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I can’t have you go back there, Rebel. Not with me standing right here. I’ll get a search warrant and do it proper.”

“Well,” she said, backing up toward the house. “Unless you’re going to arrest me right this minute—” She turned and bolted for the backyard. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

She heard him cursing behind her, but knew he wasn’t going to chase her down.

She slowed as she made the turn around the house. There was a large rose arbor welcoming visitors to the manicured back yard. Rebel walked beneath it, and though there were red roses climbing all over it, they weren’t Mr. Lincolns. As she rounded the back of the house the rose garden bloomed riotously before her. She would have stopped to smell the roses on any other day but today. Today, she needed one thing. To identify the red Mr. Lincoln bush. After her first pass she was frustrated. No Mr. Lincolns. She made another pass and came up empty again. Maybe the Mr. Lincoln’s were at Colette’s mama’s garden, because they weren’t here.