Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5) (3 page)
Read Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5) Online
Authors: Jerusha Jones
“I’m in solitary,” he muttered, but it was a flimsy objection.
“You’re creative. Connected.” We both knew he could do it if he wanted to. And that he had a legal defense team to whom he was paying a great deal of money and were, no doubt, already privy to a great deal of information they could never legally divulge. I waited for a couple beats. “Do we understand each other?”
“I think we do, Nora Ingram.”
But I was okay with that. Implosions don’t have to be perfect. I only needed the pebble that would start the avalanche. And then I should probably run for my life.
After obtaining Lutsenko’s tacit agreement, I’d picked his brains in what I hoped was an ambiguous way about the possibility that my husband had hired a hit man to eliminate Numero Tres. Lutsenko had appeared to give the matter serious thought—which scared me. So deeply that my knees had almost buckled. I’d secretly been hoping that he’d laugh in utter disbelief.
Instead, he’d shrugged. “Possibly. Or Ochoa. Or Zimmermann. I would’ve done it myself if I’d thought it necessary. Joe Solano was a pain in the ass to all of us. Skip—yeah, he could’ve.” Lutsenko shrugged again. “Contract hit men are a dime a dozen. Easy.”
Looking back, I think it was that nonchalant shrug that got me most. And which legitimized Ebersole’s apparent fear. Hit men running around like free radicals. It was just a matter of time before one of them was given your address and a breakdown of your daily routine and his pocket was lined with cash. To expect that that kind of risk was normal—what a lifestyle. I wanted no part of it, and yet I was embroiled in it.
I sighed and recrossed my legs, settling the tote bag more firmly on my lap. What I wouldn’t give for a return to innocence, to a blissful ignorance of the criminal underworld operating all around us.
Des broke into my thoughts. “Did Lutsenko answer your questions?”
We were headed back toward May County. It was dark now, with no scenery visible as a distraction. Passing headlights raked over Des’s calm visage.
I sighed again. “We’ll see. But I gave him some questions of his own. Thanks for making the meeting possible.”
“Tarq know about today?” Des asked quietly.
“Not yet. I’ll go visit him tomorrow.”
Des fiddled with a defroster vent in the dash and tapped the thermostat up a bit. “He’s hanging on for you, but there’s not much gas left in his tank.”
“I know,” I whispered.
My attorney has terminal liver cancer. It was one of the reasons I’d hired him, because being my attorney was a risky job. I’d wanted someone who wouldn’t be afraid of the challenge, who wasn’t at the stage in his career where preserving a reputation was paramount. Truthfully, there hadn’t been a lot of lawyerly options for me to choose from in May County, but Tarq had been a godsend. He’d gone to the mat for me—many times. He was one of my saving graces.
“Maeve told me he’s redone his will. She witnessed it for him,” Des said.
I slumped deeper in my seat. Maeve Berends is the county clerk and a fellow member of the local Alcoholics Anonymous chapter along with Tarq and my mother-in-law, Loretta.
Tarq wasn’t hiding from his disease. We all knew he was dying. But the fact that he’d updated his last wishes meant he knew the end was near. Probably nearer than he’d admit to anyone because he wouldn’t want us fussing around him.
I’d try to wrangle a private chat with Loretta tomorrow. As his caretaker, she had an intimate view of his physical deterioration. Maybe there was something I could do to help—both her and him. Tears sprang up, and I was grateful for the darkness as I rubbed them away with the heel of my hand.
Des reached over and silently patted my knee.
oOo
Clarice was just pulling a turkey—all brown and glossy with a crackly skin and lots of rosemary sprigs—out of the oven. I just about fainted from the olfactory awesomeness.
Emmie was attempting to fold cloth napkins into some kind of origami animal shape, but they weren’t cooperating. She had an adorable concentrated scowl on her face as she fiddled with the obstinate fabric. Her new pixie haircut was starting to curl a bit at the edges, and she was quite possibly the cutest little girl I’d ever seen, if I do say so myself. But I was going to have to ask her to explain her art project to me because if I ventured a guess as to the subject matter, I was sure to be wrong.
“You should have invited Des to stay for supper.” Clarice whisked the gravy on the stove and bumped her hip against a drawer to close it, performing her usual vigorous kitchen ballet. She holds internal contests with herself, trying to rack up the total number of people she’s fed.
“Not tonight,” I said quietly.
She shot me a stern glance over the tops of her burgundy-framed cat’s-eye glasses. “Had a long talk, did you?”
“Rather short, but sufficient.”
Clarice grunted. “Thought I saw that coming.”
“Do you have any more insight you want to share with me?” I asked.
“In due time.” Clarice slapped potholders down the center of the table in preparation for our feast. She tipped her head toward Emmie and gave me a meaningful glare.
“I don’t blab,” Emmie announced without lifting her head. She had all eight of her fingers tucked into creases in the napkin and was trying to maneuver another fold with her thumbs.
I couldn’t help grinning. “I know, sweetheart. But wouldn’t you like a carefree childhood?” I scooped my arms around her and added my fingers to the mix. “Show me what to do.” Honestly, it was already too late for her to have a completely carefree childhood, but it was my mission to make the rest of her young years as pleasant as possible even though they were bound to be highly unusual.
Emmie heaved a mighty sigh and applied one of my forefingers to a particularly vexing crease in the fabric. “I’ll be grown up soon. Sheriff Des likes you, doesn’t he?”
“He has been the very best kind of friend to me. And to you,” I replied.
“You know what origami design I like best?” Clarice bellowed. She snatched up a napkin and tucked it into the top of her ruffled red apron so that it spread across her ample chest. “It’s called a bib and is perfectly positioned for its function.” She lifted the edge and daintily dabbed it against her lips. “All your hard work will go for naught in about two seconds, squirt.” She winked down at Emmie.
Emmie shoved her handiwork away with a disgusted exhale that sounded startlingly similar to a noise I’ve often heard from Clarice. It was terrifying how much Emmie absorbed from us. But I nodded a thanks to Clarice for her diversionary maneuver.
“What did you learn in school today?” I cracked an ice cube tray and dropped ice into our glasses.
A little smile crept across Emmie’s face. “Swear words.”
“What?” I’m afraid I almost shouted.
“Odell knows a lot of them.”
Clarice snorted and suddenly had to find something deep in a cupboard. And I mean really deep—she dropped to her knees and shoved her upper half into the cavernous space next to the oven where she keeps the soup pots.
“We made a rhyme with them. Like a poem. Want to hear it?” Emmie said.
“No,” I barked.
“Yes.” Clarice emerged with a cast iron pan that had fish-shaped indentations in it. Big clumps of dust stuck to its greasy edges. “But later. We’re eating now.” She brushed past me on the way to drop the pan in the sink and muttered, “Somebody has to head this off at the pass. Baths are good for getting all kinds of things cleaned up.”
We managed to stick to more sedate topics for the entire meal. I offered to wash the towering stacks of pots and pans Clarice had produced with her remarkable culinary efforts. I’d been negligent in my household duties lately and figured I could make up for it all in one fell swoop.
Clarice scooted Emmie off to her bath, so I also had my thoughts to myself while swishing and scrubbing in the sudsy water. Which, of course, was an excellent time to recall that I’d forgotten to check my phones for messages.
I’d stashed my tote bag with all of its suspect accoutrements under the seat in Des’s Jeep during my conference with Lutsenko. And I’d been too preoccupied since then to remember my hook-up negotiations with an outlaw biker president dude.
I dried my hands and pawed through my bag. Yep, one phone with a blinking message icon.
“Tank here,” the growly voice announced. “— ——— ——, woman. We gotta —— meet soon. Your —— old man’s —— —— screwin’ with me. Have your ——— liaison call Butch. We’ll set somethin’ —— up.”
You can fill in the blanks. My ears were burning. No matter how creative Odell’s cursing was, no six-year-old could match this guy.
I wished there was a way to forward voice messages. There probably is, but I didn’t know how. I would have preferred for Josh to be able to get the measure of Tank Ebersole by hearing his voice—and his language. Then again, Josh was likely already well informed. I knew he’d research thoroughly before setting up a meeting.
So instead, I dialed Josh’s number and left a voice message of my own, including the all-important detail of Butch’s phone number, which Tank had supplied. One little bit of information at a time. I didn’t know why Butch couldn’t have given me his own phone number when we’d met at Gus’s service station.
This negotiating stuff was ticky-tacky and slow, and I wondered why Tank insisted upon it when he obviously was in a hurry to actually talk. Unless it was his vetting process—to make sure I was legitimate and not setting him up. Come to think of it, maybe I would be taking the same precautions if I were in his steel-toed boots.
I had an architectural marvel of perfectly balanced pots and dishes on the drain board by the time Clarice returned.
She was chortling to herself. “There are several reasons I never reproduced,” she proclaimed, “but stuff like this is one of them. We have enough tomfoolery in the world without my adding to it.” She bent and smacked her thighs as guffaws burst out. “I could barely hold it in up there.” She readjusted her glasses which had gotten jostled in the mirth, then pointed toward the ceiling and the next floor up where our living quarters were.
“Oh boy.” I grimaced. “Does she know what the words mean?”
Clarice pursed her lips dismissively. “I tiptoed through some surreptitious questioning, and she’s pretty ambiguous on the technical definitions. Doesn’t sound like Odell’s any more clued in, either. They know the words are
bad
—” Clarice scratched quotation marks in the air, “but don’t know why. They’re clever, though. Have I got a treat for you.”
I should have known something spectacular was in the offing by the way Clarice drew herself up to her full, sturdy height and poised her right hand on her heart. She focused on a spot on the ceiling and cleared her throat. And then she regaled me with the off-color poem the kids had come up with—which she set as a chorus in an impromptu rendition of the theme song to
Gilligan’s Island.
For the record, Clarice can really belt it out. I don’t think I’d laughed so hard or so long—until I was a lump of quivering, red-faced flesh—since that one slumber party I’d had when I was in the fifth grade. I was never going to hear a
f——you
or
shit
with the gravity those terms ought to convey ever again.
“I suppose I should tell Walt,” I choked out, “that his pupils were engaged in a little extracurricular creative composition while his back was turned.” My eyes were still streaming, and I was having trouble catching my breath.
With one moment of levity, Clarice had completely altered my perspective on Tank Ebersole. While the few short sentences in his voice message had proved his vocabulary was comprised of the crudest subsection of words in his native language, I could now imagine him in a floppy fishing hat and a red polo shirt with a dopey expression of bewilderment on his face. It would certainly help to take the edge off when I had to meet him in person.
Although peace of mind was more of a phantom wish rather than having anything to do with reality. I hadn’t had peace of mind for a long time.
The whole thing was tangled, complicated, and difficult to wrap my head around. I wanted Felix Ochoa—my Numero Uno—to get whiffs of rumors from an assortment of sources without suspecting that any of them originated with me. Tantalizing, alluring, behind the scenes—an immensely profitable offer which would be against his very character to refuse.
Except he was hyper-paranoid. And rightfully so. Which meant others had to do the dirty work for me if I was going to have a shot at success. In the dog-eat-dog world of organized crime, I was asking for teamwork. I was probably out of my mind.
But I had one more possible weapon in my arsenal, and it was time to pull out all the stops. I dialed a number that I’d saved to my original phone a few months ago—from the person who’d set off the cascade of worries I’d been surfing since then.
I didn’t expect him to answer, so I was rehearsing the message I planned to leave when his muffled,” What’s up?” stuttered my thoughts to a stop.
“Uh, Robbie?” I said. “It’s Nora Ingram.”
“You’re still alive?” Robbie’s voice still had that prepubescent pitch, as though he was twelve instead of in his twenties. “Look, I’m really sorry, Nora. I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”
I considered pointing out the obvious fact that dead people don’t make phone calls, but relented at the last moment. Robbie’s so boyish, so generally naive and geeky that I couldn’t bring myself to attempt sarcasm.
“Barely,” I said. “So are you.”
“Look, I’m not happy about it. I thought Skip ran a background check on me. I thought he knew.”
Detour. Good grief. What other surprises were coming at me? I ground my teeth. “Knew what?”
“My old man’s in the clink. Forgery. Identity theft, pyramid schemes, confidence stunts, the works. I apprenticed under him. That’s why math and accounting are so easy for me. And that’s how I paid for college at Stanford. I was going to go clean just as soon as I got my degree. But then the FBI came nosing around.”
I sucked in a deep breath. I wasn’t going to tell Robbie, but it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if Skip
had
known about his family connections and criminal proclivities. Bygones, I reminded myself. Bygones. Down to business.
“What are you doing now?” I asked.
“I’m a Sandwich Artist. At Subway.” Robbie’s voice faded. It was a long way to fall. He’d probably been earning close to six figures working as Turbo-Tidy’s controller. Heady stuff for such a young kid.
“Are you interested in plying your trade again? I could probably pay you—cash. Maybe via courier.” I almost giggled. Like husband, like wife. Disconcerting and yet sickeningly hilarious—the things that have been coming out of my mouth lately, as if they were normal.
“What do you mean?” Robbie said warily.
“I’d like certain information to get to certain people. You know all of them.” And I briefly outlined my nebulous plan.
“How far along is Turbo-Tidy’s bankruptcy?” Robbie asked.
I had no idea. Not my department. I flipped through my notes from the conversation when Matt had told me that the FBI had seized the company’s remaining assets. “All I know is a Judge Trane is handling it, at the FBI’s request.”
“The Old Griffon? Wow,” Robbie whispered. “Geez. That’s good news. Okay.”
“Okay?” I repeated.
“Skip was always good to me. I feel like I owe you—and him. No charge. It wasn’t my idea to snoop on the company for the FBI, all right? They just—I didn’t have an out, you know? They’re still—uh, they still keep tabs on me. So, you know, they’re gonna know.”
I rolled my eyes even though Robbie couldn’t see me. I did know. I’d already resigned myself to the inevitability. “That’s okay. Think you could get a running start on your surveillance team, though?”
Robbie snorted. “Heck, yes.”
“That’s all we need. Thanks a million.”
Let the tournament begin.
In Felix Ochoa’s world, wealth and doubt equaled betrayal. There were no good intentions or altruistic motives. Everyone knew their gains were ill-gotten and that those same gains could be lost just as fast and just as irreparably as they’d removed them from their previous owners. Everything about their lives was fleeting. Which is why they surrounded themselves with the illusion of security—mansion fortresses; bodyguards; big, solid, impressive possessions like planes and yachts and golf courses—and inflicted merciless punishment on their underlings as a way of maintaining control. But in their heart of hearts, they knew their hold on everything was a hair breadth away from disaster.
I was determined to be as disastrous and as tempting as I possibly could.
oOo
While that last bit sounded like a good idea, I’m afraid I still had a terribly blank look on my face. “I just want them to make big enough holes in the target that I know when I’ve hit it—or not.”
“That won’t be a problem.” He grinned at me and smacked a heavy little box on the counter. “These’ll do.”
“Will that be enough?” I asked.
His eyebrows pitched up and his grin spread even wider. “We got a deal—buy four boxes, get the fifth box half off.”
More seemed better at this point—I was counting on missing the target a lot—so I nodded.
He licked his lips, but the grin remained as he pulled four more boxes off the shelf behind him and lined them up on the counter. “You single? I’ve seen you around town a few times. You drive that brown Dodge pickup, right? I could totally help you with your aim and maybe grab a beer at the Heave-Ho?” He hitched his thumb toward the tavern next door which shared a gravel parking lot with the sporting goods store. “I get off work at six tonight.”
I wasn’t quite sure how aim and beer could be mentioned in the same sentence. “I think by then these boxes will all be empty,” I said. “Maybe next time.”
He swallowed, sending his Adam’s apple on a bungee leap the length of his neck. His fingers trembled slightly as he pounded on the cash register keys. I paid with cash, and he double bagged my purchase.
“See you soon,” he meekly called after me.
I gave him a wave from the door as I pushed through it.
The shooting range was tucked away off one of the county’s curvy backroads. A pockmarked sign announced the entrance, as though some of the customers had been so eager they had started target practice out on the road.
Des opened the door to his Jeep and slid out as I pulled up. He was in full uniform. I wondered if the range owners gave law enforcement officers a discount.
Des’s brows drew together as he lifted my bag of ammo out of Lentil’s bed. He held open the handles and peered inside.
“You got five hundred bullets?” Des sounded faintly amused.
I scrunched up my face. “Is that enough?”
“Oh yeah. I think that’ll last you for a long time.” He ducked his head so I could only see the top of his hat brim, and he scootched some gravel around with his foot.
“Obviously I have a lot to learn,” I sniffed.
“Yep. Well, we’re going to fix that today.” Des placed a warm hand on the small of my back and ushered me into the tiny office.
We were issued ear protection and safety goggles and assigned to a section of the range, kind of like a lane at a bowling alley. Except it was an open air range, so we only had the benefit of a little roof overhang with a bench beneath it. No pretzels or soft drinks or corny sound effects with flashing neon lights if the bullets went astray. And no heat.
“This is good,” Des said. “Practicing in the elements. Are your fingers numb from the cold?” He shook his head with a tight smile. “That’ll happen, and you need to be prepared for it.”
We worked on grip, stance, and sighting. He let me take my time and ask all the questions I wanted. Over and over again. For probably an hour, with no bullets in the gun. Des was a good teacher. Patient, insistent, repetitive.
Then I advanced to live ammunition and a paper target set up on the trolley at seven yards. My first handful of shots were a joke, and I was beginning to think there was something wrong with the target, but then—the first hole appeared. Then another.
Des gave me pointers, made adjustments, re-explained how to line up the sights. And my shot groupings came together, nice little clusters which I learned I was able to move around on the target—belly, shoulders, head (including an ear).
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Des said. He reeled in the target and replaced it. “Let’s try close quarters at three yards.”
Which was actually harder. Possibly because the target paper was now an actual photograph of a real person instead of an outline. It made me think about what I was doing. It wasn’t fun and games.
My arms and shoulders were tired and tense, and my accuracy became much wobblier. I hadn’t even gotten through the first box of ammo.
“Enough for today,” Des said. “But you’re doing fine. Just fine.”
As much as I appreciated the target practice, the thing I valued most was learning how to clear the gun to ensure that all the bullets had been discharged and that it was truly empty.
And then Des showed me how to clean the pistol, which wasn’t nearly as much fun but necessary so it would function safely in the future. Des was deadly serious about safety, and I suspected that between his military and law enforcement careers he had seen plenty of reasons for exercising an abundance of caution.
There was something extremely satisfying about becoming—maybe not comfortable—but at least more confident in using a gun. It was a stress reliever in a way, even though I knew that underused muscles in several places in my body would be sore for a couple days.
Des wouldn’t let me leave without making another appointment for the following week. “Normally, I’d tell you to get some target practice in the meantime, out on your own property, but given that you have a bunch of curious boys out there and that you don’t really know what’s in your woods, you probably shouldn’t.”
I agreed with him, absolutely. The gun was going to stay safely and secretly tucked away on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, and I’d find a separate place to hide the ammo.
I drove home to exchange the gun for Emmie. I’d wanted to wait to visit Tarq until Emmie was finished with her schoolwork for the day. He so looked forward to her visits, and she bloomed under his keen attention. There was no way I was going to disappoint either of them.
I’d had several internal debates about letting Emmie see death, see the destruction being wreaked on Tarq’s body. But I’d rather she had memories of him, even if some of them were bittersweet, than no memories at all. And she’d been taking it in stride, tenderly and calmly, and completely unafraid of the changes in his appearance. I wished we could all be like children with their special, unaffected ability to see what really matters under the surface and not be repelled by superficial ugliness.
When we arrived at the cabin, Emmie bounded straight down the short hall to Tarq’s bedroom. I heard the low rumble of his questions and her pert voice answering. And I knew she was climbing up into the bed, snuggling against his side, and showing him her latest art project.
Loretta’s head popped around the doorway from the kitchen. “Come on back.” She flashed me a weak smile.
She had bottles of pills lined up on the kitchen table, many more than I’d seen before. I picked one up and read the label. OxyContin, 80 mg. Another bottle contained generic oxycodone.
Loretta gently took the bottles from my hands and set them back on the table. “The pain’s so bad we’re doubling up,” she whispered. “OxyContin’s controlled time release, so when he needs it, we add straight oxycodone on top of it. The doctor gave me some guidelines for keeping track of how much Tarq’s using.”
I bit my lip. I wanted to say that kind of squirrelly dosing could easily be fatal. But Tarq was living on borrowed time as it was. Instead I whispered back, “What’s the next step, when this—” I waved my hand over the bottles, “isn’t enough?”
“Intravenous morphine and a hospice nurse to visit daily.” Loretta’s face was so strained, so thin, the skin almost translucent so that the blue veins under her eyes stood out in relief.
