Mystery of the 19th Hole (Taylor Kelsey, Mystery 1) (9 page)

             
The security guard responded, “Really?  What happened?”

             
“They stole him and loaded him onto a truck.”

             
“What?  Who?”

             
“I don’t know his name.”

             
Taylor interjected, “It was an elephant.”

             
The man chuckled, eyeing the three of them.  “Yeah, I know about that.  We have no leads.”

             
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” said Susan.

             
Pointing, Taylor asked, “What’s that in your pocket?”

             
The man glanced down, pretended not to notice anything unusual, and said, “My keys.”

             
Taylor was looking at the outside of his pants.  There was a large lump near the pocket area.  “If I guessed, I would think it was a golf ball,” she said aloud.

             
At this, the man got angry.  “What are you hoodlums doing here talking to me anyway?  I can have you kicked out of this place.”

             
“Is that a threat?” asked Susan.

             
Chad followed up.  “What’s your name?”

             
“Billy,” the disgruntled man said.

             
There was an awkward pause.  “Hey, Susan,” said Taylor, “do you think my make-up is messed up?  I just feel like something’s wrong with it.”  Taylor wanted an excuse to use her video-camera mirror on the suspicious Billy.

             
Before Susan could even look, Chad looked at Taylor and said, “It looks perfect.  In fact, I can’t even tell you’re wearing make-up.”

             
Susan elbowed Chad in the side.  “It looks terrible, Taylor. 
Ewww
.  You should really do something about that before we do anything else.  I can’t even stand the sight.”

             
“What are you talking about?” said Chad angrily.  “She looks fine.”

             
Susan grabbed Chad by the collar and bit off the words as she spoke, “She looks terrible!  She needs to use her make-up
mirror
.”

             
Chad’s eyes widened at this.  He immediately turned toward Taylor and told her she reminded him of sewage.  Then he looked at the shocked and confused expression on Billy’s face and had to fight back a laugh.

             
Taylor pulled out her video-camera mirror and started recording Billy while pretending to dust her face with make-up.  The only problem was she didn’t have a brush.  To remedy this, she held the mirror high in front of her face and pretended to make the duster motions around her cheeks.

             
While Taylor was recording, Susan started in on Billy, first by repeating Taylor’s question about the lump in his pocket.  “That’s it,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, “I’m throwing you guys out for disruptive behavior.”

             
As he stepped forward to grab them, a man in a long black overcoat brutally bumped into Taylor, muttered, “Check your pocket,” and continued past in a fast walk, disappearing behind a vendor.  Taylor nearly fumbled her mirror before regaining composure.

             
“Did he say something to you?” Billy asked Taylor.

             
“He said to check my pocket.”

             
Taylor put her mirror in her purse and checked her two front pockets, retrieving a small piece of paper from one of them.  Everyone was watching as she slowly unfolded it.  “It’s a death threat!”

             
Billy was off and running in the direction the man had gone as soon as he heard “death threat.”  Susan stepped behind Taylor to read the note.  “What does it say?” asked Chad.

             
Taylor and Susan both read.  “Stop snooping or
die
.  It’s your choice.  You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

             
Chad visibly shivered.  “So this means we stop.”

             
“No!” retorted Taylor.

Taylor wasn’t dumb.  She wasn’t going to stop investigating, either.  If someone went to all the effort to slip her a death threat, she must be hot on the trail of something.  Whether it was the murder or the robberies or both, she didn’t know.  All she knew is she had a lot of places left to investigate and many people left to talk to.

             
Such was the case here.  Taylor, Susan, and Chad were in a small room at the police station, looking through a thick slab of glass at the nervous form of Aaron Cadell, the one accused of murdering Brad Ringer in the café.

             
If Taylor couldn’t glean information from him, she knew the case would be dead.  This is where it all mattered.  They only had a few minutes, at least that’s what the captain said, though she suspected those weren’t the official rules.

             
Pulling a phone from its cradle before Susan could, Taylor motioned Aaron to do the same on the other side of the window.  He picked his up.  “Hello.”

             
“Hello,” Taylor said, “I just have a few questions.  This shouldn’t take long.”

             
“And I have a few answers, but I might not be at liberty to give them.  Who are you, anyway?”

             
“My name is Taylor Kelsey.”  Susan grunted in the background, but Taylor ignored her.  “I’m investigating your case and the recent robberies around town.  I think there might be a connection.  That’s beside the point, though.  The point is that I believe you’re innocent, and I want to help you prove it.”

             
He studied her through the glass.  “Why?”

             
“Let’s just say I’m conscientious and in need of money.”  She didn’t waste time.  “How do you think the bloody knife got into your jacket pocket?”

             
“I have no idea.  I swear my jacket was zipped up the whole time.  I grabbed it off my coat rack in my apartment, put it on, zipped it, and didn’t unzip it until that stupid lieutenant asked me to.”

             
“And you went in the bathroom.  Tell me about that.”

             
“Yeah, I used the bathroom some time before they found the body.  I guess the police say it was twenty minutes before.  Is it a crime that I drank a lot of iced tea that night?”

             
“No.  So, why were you drinking tea?”

             
“I drink tea every night.  I work the graveyard shift at a gas station.  My shift ends at seven in the morning.  I drink a lot of liquids during my job because I get free access to the soda fountain.”

             
“Let me get this straight,” Taylor summed.  “You worked until seven in the morning that night.  Or should I say day?  Then you came home, drank your ice tea refills, put on your jacket, and went to the café at noon.  Correct?”

             
“Correct.”

             
“Wow, you got a raw deal.”  Taylor was quiet for a moment, trying to remember her next question.  “So… what about your dad?  I understand he worked at the café.”

             
The man’s cheeks puffed as he exhaled air angrily.  Apparently his father was a bad topic for him.  “My dad was a drunk when I was a kid.  He didn’t like me.  Doesn’t like me.  Never will like me.”  He exhaled again.  “One day he told me he cleaned up his life.  Got sober, you know, all that kind of stuff.”

             
Taylor was nodding.

             
“Anyway, I didn’t believe him.  Long story short, what he said was true.  He got the job at the café, stuck with it, and even won employee of the month like a ton of months in a row or something like that.  He was a changed man.  Still, he hated me.  But everyone else liked him.”

             
“And your mom?”

             
“After my dad left me and my mom when I was just a kid, my mom left two years later.  I grew up in foster care after that.  My dad always stuck around in town, and we contacted each other here and there.  Saw each other around.  But my mom fell off the grid.  We don’t know where she went.”

             
“I’m so sorry,” said Taylor.

             
“Don’t be.  You said it yourself: I got a raw deal.”

             
At this moment, Susan unexpectedly grabbed the phone from Taylor and shoved a newspaper picture on the glass partition.  “What’s up with the beanie?”

             
Aaron Cadell studied the picture a moment.  It was a picture of him in the café being arrested.  In the picture he was wearing a black beanie that was folded up as if it were too big.  He smiled.  “That beanie is my favorite piece of apparel I own.  I said my dad never liked me, but I guess that was a lie.  He did. 
Once
.  Only one time in my entire life did he do something nice for me.”

             
Susan put a finger up saying stop, then handed the phone to Taylor.  “Did you say your dad was nice to you?” asked Taylor.  “I only heard bits.”

             
“Yeah.  He was nice to me just once.  He took me skiing.  Just me and him in the mountains.  He didn’t even get drunk.  While we were there, I was complaining how cold I was and he brought out some beanie’s he’d bought for us.  He had letters sewn on the tops of each one.  The top of my beanie had the letters
AC
for
Aaron Cadell
.  And my dad’s had—”

             
“
JC
,” Taylor finished, “for
Jack Cadell
.”

             
Susan told Taylor something, and Taylor relayed it through the phone.  “Why is it folded up around the bottom?”

             
“Because it’s also a ski mask, you know, the kind you pull down over your face, and it has cutouts for the eyes and mouth.  That way your face stays warm when you’re skiing.  I loved that ski mask so much, I always used it as a beanie afterward.  I just fold it up.”

             
“That’s a touching story,” said Taylor.  “Listen, I really, really want to prove your innocence.  Do you have any ideas for me?  Like places I should investigate, or whatnot?”

             
He thought about it a moment.  “You know what, yeah, actually, I do.  I give you my permission to investigate my apartment.  The police should be done with it by now.  There’s a key under the potted plant at the front door.  Not in the plant, but actually under the pot.”

             
“Got it.  Where’s the apartment?”  Taylor pulled out her iPhone and took down the address in the notepad.  “Thank you, Mr. Cadell.  We’ll try our best to solve this case.”

             
“Good luck.”  He was just about to hang up his phone when he quickly put it back to his ear.  “Taylor, just one thing.  Don’t touch my gold statue; it’s very valuable.  It’s pure gold.  It was an heirloom from my mom’s dad.”

             
“Okay—”

             
“It’s in my bedroom covered by a comforter so no one can see it through the window.  I don’t want to tempt anyone to steal it.  Literally, it’s pure gold.”

             
“Got it.”

             
Outside the station, Taylor, Susan, and Chad started talking about everything Aaron had said.  So far they couldn’t make any connections.  Sure, they’d learned more about the suspect, but that didn’t prove as useful as Taylor had hoped.  Now they just had more useless information and no leads.

             
“Well, we still have to investigate the café and the museum, maybe something will turn up,” Taylor said, consoling herself just as much as the others.

             
They got in Taylor’s old car and rode in silence for a while, all feeling a bit defeated.  Chad, who was sitting in the middle back seat, finally leaned forward and spoke, “That’s interesting he has a gold statue. Wouldn’t that be a good steal for the robbers?”

             
Taylor smiled.  “I was just thinking the same thing.  That does add to the hunch that the cases are connected, but still, it’s not solid evidence.”

             
Just then, a bullet burst through the car’s back window and ripped into the back seat.  Chad deftly spun in his seat to see a large, gaping bullet hole in the back window.  Cotton from the seat was floating in the air. 
Boom!
  Another shot roared through the window, and Chad threw himself to the car floor.

             
Taylor and Susan were screaming at this point.  Reacting in panic, Taylor hit the brakes and skid loud and long until her car came to a stop perpendicular to the road.  Out her window she watched the car with the shooters stop right before her.  The man in the passenger seat stuck a rifle out of his window, and she recognized him immediately.  It was Billy, the security guard from the carnival!