Dead on Ice (A Lovers in Crime Mystery) Page 10

  Nodding, Cameron took up the story. “Cherry Pickens was fooling around with him behind Phoenix’s back. So he had Blake Norton killed and put out a contract on Cherry Pickens. That’s why she disappeared.”

  Big Will grinned. “Phoenix didn’t want Pickens killed. He only wanted to send her a message by killing Norton.”

  “Then why did she run?”

  “The hit was carried out by a couple of mob assassins. While Phoenix didn’t work with the mob, he did have powerful friends and connections. Those powerful friends contracted the hit as a favor, but things went wrong.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Cherry Pickens was hiding in the bathroom.”

  “That made her a witness,” Cameron said.

  “No matter how much money Phoenix had invested in Cherry Pickens, the mob couldn’t let her live to tell. Somehow, she managed to escape, which says a lot considering that these were pros. That was when the contract was adjusted to include her . . . for damage control.”

  “But she escaped.”

  Big Will smiled. “Like I said, she was a resourceful girl. You got to be good to be able to escape not just the scene, but the town when you have the mob after you—especially in Vegas.” Looking down at her, he folded his arms across his chest. “Now tell me about your interest in Cherry Pickens.”

  “We found her body.”

  “Where?”

  “In a freezer in the basement of a hoarder house in Hookstown,” she said. “The house happened to belong to the lawyer who had done some work for her several years before.”

  Big Will’s eyes widened. His mouth dropped open slightly. “I don’t suppose COD was natural causes.”

  “Broken neck. She had a high amount of heroin in her system. She probably would have OD’d if her neck wasn’t snapped.” She went on to ask the question she had contacted the FBI to ask. “Is there any possibility that this was a mob hit?”

  “Did the hoarder have any mob ties?”

  “None.”

  “When was she killed?”

  “We pinpointed the date to the summer of 1985,” she said.

  “She disappeared in early May 1985, when Blake Norton was killed.” Big Will scratched his head. “So she was killed a few weeks later.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Cameron said. “Do your people know if anyone ever took credit for hitting her? Did anyone collect on it?”

  “No way that was a mob hit,” Big Will said with certainty. “In 1989, an informant, who is now in the witness protection program, reported that the mob still had a contract out on Cherry Pickens.”

  “Which means the motive for her murder was something else,” Cameron said.

  “That’s what it looks like to me.” Big Will sniffed and looked around.

  When a foul odor reached her nose, Cameron covered her face. She could hear Irving screeching behind her.

  Big Will covered his face with one hand while pointing over her shoulder with the other. “I thought you said that was a cat.”

  Whirling around, Cameron saw Irving racing across the parking lot toward her. His fur was flared so that he looked twice his size. As he grew closer, the stench became worse. “Irving? Is that you?”

  “Skunk!” Big Will turned to run. In his hysteria, he banged into the edge of the picnic table and fell over. He rolled before scrambling to his feet and running up the hill to where his car was parked along the road.

  Cameron wanted to back away also, but she couldn’t leave Irving, who was equally hysterical. When he got to her, he stopped, dropped, rolled, and pawed at his face with first one paw and then the other.

  “What did you do?”

  Irving howled. When he tried to rub up against her, she backed up. He followed her in her retreat until she had her back up against the picnic table. Crying out, the big cat reached up to claw at her thighs.

  Cameron looked from where the cat was pitifully writhing in misery at her feet to the state police cruiser. There was no choice. The only way to get Irving home and cleaned up was to take him in the police car.

  “You do realize that we’re never going to live this down.” She picked up the howling cat. Clinging to her with his front claws, he rubbed his face back and forth across her shoulder. “What happened? Did she get mad when she found out you were a cat in a skunk suit?”

  “What’s that hideous smell?” Covering his nose with both hands, Donny stood in the bathroom doorway.

  “Skunk,” Cameron answered with a sigh of disgust.

  Spying the open door, Irving clawed to get out of the bathtub where he was getting his second bath since Cameron had taken him to Joshua’s house.

  “Close the door before Irving gets out,” she told Donny.

  “I thought he was a cat that only looked like a skunk.” He laughed after stepping inside and closing the door.

  “Obviously, the skunk he had a run-in with at the park saw him for what he was and sprayed him.”

  Donny sniffed again. “Are you sure all that smell is Irving?” He moved in to catch a whiff of her hair. “I think that’s you, too.”

  She dismissed his comment as a joke. “Cut it out.”

  The bathroom door opened, and Joshua stepped in with a cardboard box filled with tomato juice. “Lucky for you, the supermarket got a delivery today . . . and Chester is not known for its Bloody Marys.” He handed a quart bottle to his son. “Open and start pouring.”

  “Into the tub?” Donny asked.

  “Into the tub.”

  Standing over Cameron, who held Irving to prevent his escape, Donny poured the tomato juice into the tub. “Are you going to take a bath after Irving?”

  Cameron laughed. “Why would I want to take a bath in tomato juice?”

  Donny looked from her to Joshua, who was pouring a bottle of juice on her other side.

  Following his gaze, she looked up at Joshua. “Stop it.”

  He bent over to sniff her hair and frowned.

  “What?” she snapped.

  Joshua reached into his pocket, took out his car keys, and handed them to Donny. “Go to the store to get another case of tomato juice.”

  Looking into the cat’s eyes, which were filled with misery, she slumped. “Oh, Irving.”

  Chapter Ten

  Cameron wasn’t a fan of heavy perfume. She preferred a light, soft scent of cologne. But the next morning, she felt as if her usual scent still held a skunk base, even though Joshua claimed it wasn’t “that bad”.

  She suspected he was lying.

  Anything was better than the smell of skunk. Even after a long soak in the tub of tomato juice, she couldn’t get rid of the smell. It was impossible for her to get the shampoo to lather up enough to get the smell out of her hair.

  All this from just carrying Irving and riding in the car home with him?

  The next morning, she doused herself with a double dose of citrus-scented perfume that Sarah had left in her room before going off to the Naval Academy.

  After two washings, her clothes, still smelling of skunk, got tossed into the garbage. Luckily, Joshua’s younger daughter and Cameron were the same size. The clothes Sarah had left in her closet fit Cameron like they had been made for her.

  Now that the detective could safely eliminate the mob as a suspect in killing Cheryl Smith, it was time to focus on her other suspects: friends and relatives of Angelina Sullivan, which meant diving deeper into Angelina’s murder.

  This being the case, Joshua had reason to ride along. Angelina Sullivan’s body had been found on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River. Until proven otherwise, they could assume she had been killed at the yacht club when her car was dumped into the river from their boat launch. That gave Joshua jurisdiction in the case.

  It wasn’t until Cameron and Joshua opened the doors to her police cruiser that they realized the skunk smell had permeated the interior.

  Joshua jumped back and slammed the door shut. With his hand over his nose to block out the scent that felt like it had gone up his nose to
attack his sinuses, he announced they were taking his car.

  “What am I going to do?” Cameron’s voice was high pitched.

  “Take it to your motor pool and have them fumigate it.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  She could envision the endless teasing that she was going to receive from the guys on the force. I thought Irving was a cat. He is. Yeah. Right.

  Joshua was climbing into the driver’s seat of his SUV. “Come on. I don’t have all day. You can call your motor pool on your cell along the way and have them come pick it up.”

  She noticed that she had left her valise with all her case files in the back of the cruiser. She had been in such a rush to get Irving inside and bathed that she had forgotten to take her briefcase inside. “Maybe if I just leave the windows open for a few days.”

  “I don’t think a few days will do it,” Joshua said. “Put on your big girl pants, and get it fumigated.” He rubbed the sides of his nose as if to eject the smell. His eyes were watering.

  Holding her nose with one hand, Cameron threw open the door, grabbed the valise, slammed it shut, and then ran while taking in a deep breath of fresh, cold air.

  Once they were inside Joshua’s car, Cameron smiled softly when she saw Joshua wipe the tears from his eyes before starting the engine. “Imagine, as bad as we think this smell is, a cat’s sense of smell is hundreds of times stronger than a human’s. Think about it. Irving got a direct hit by that skunk. He’s suffering a lot more than we are.”

  “I don’t think so.” He pointed over her shoulder to the living room bay window where they could see Irving tucked inside the curtains while sunning himself. They could make out his expression as being one of complete contentment.

  “He wasn’t that happy while he was getting his tomato juice bath,” she said.

  Joshua was holding the sides of his nose. “And I’m not happy now.”

  The alibi witness at the top of Cameron’s list was Randy Vincent. He claimed that on the night that Angie Sullivan disappeared, he and Cheryl hooked up in his van at the First Street overlook in Chester after the Melody Lane Skating rink had closed.

  Cameron studied her notes on Randy Vincent while Joshua drove along Locust Hill Road toward the countryside outside of Chester. “In the 1990’s, Randy Vincent did five years in a prison in Pennsylvania for vehicular homicide—driving while under the influence.”

  “Sounds like my type of guy,” he said with sarcasm. “Who’d he kill?”

  “A thirty-two year old woman.” She stopped to swallow. “Her four-month-old baby was in the car. Vincent came out without a scratch.”

  “I hate the guy already.”

  The report reminding her of another vehicular homicide case, Cameron closed the file. She couldn’t read it anymore. “Maybe prison rehabilitated him.”

  As he turned the steering wheel to maneuver the SUV up a dirt country road leading back to the Vincent compound, Joshua glanced at her. He had seen that distant look in her eyes before.

  When an awkward silence filled the car, Joshua wondered if she knew that he had learned through a background check about her short marriage, which she had yet to reveal to him.

  Only four months after her wedding day, her husband, a Pennsylvania State trooper, was rundown by a drunk driver while he had another car pulled off to the side of the road for a routine traffic stop.

  Cameron’s silence about her husband made Joshua aware that he had no problem bringing up his late wife to her. He assumed it was because Valerie had been such a large part of his life. She had been the mother of his children.

  Cameron’s marriage had been brief, and they had no children. For her, it was less painful to pretend it had never happened, which could explain why she never mentioned it to him.

  The dirt lane ended at a small farm hidden behind deep woods. Two horses, their coats caked with mud, grazed in a small field. The barn looked like it was only big enough for the two of them. The farmhouse was not much bigger.

  After parking the SUV near the barn, Joshua and Cameron got out of the car. Before they could cross the driveway to the house, the front door opened and three big dogs bounded out toward them.

  The woman at the door yelled over their barking. “They don’t bite.” She wasn’t lying. Rather, they were more interested in taking the guests down by way of body slamming them down to the ground.

  Once they got a whiff of Cameron, the three dogs turned their attention to Joshua, who was able to remain on his feet while easing them to the ground.

  “I guess they like you,” she told him when they got to the door.

  Joshua shot her a dirty look. “I don’t think it’s so much that they like me as they don’t like skunk.”

  “Are you serious?” She glared at him until he gestured for her to follow the young woman, who had introduced herself as Mona, Randall Vincent’s daughter, inside the modest home.

  They found Randall Vincent in the living room watching a talk show on a big screen television. The guests on the show, a man and woman, were screaming at each other while the audience and host egged them on.

  According to the background check, Randall Vincent was a middle-aged man. However, he appeared to be living proof that it’s not the years; it’s the mileage. Stretched out on the well-worn sofa, he cradled the oxygen tank that rested in a sling under his arm. His stringy, greasy hair hung down to his neck. His goatee and mustache resembled a wire brush. He was wrapped up in a faded bathrobe that was as dirty as the filthy t-shirt and boxers, which he wore in lieu of pants. His face was yellow with jaundice.

  He didn’t break his stare when Mona showed them in and introduced them to her father. “Dad, this is the police detective I told you about who called last night,” she yelled over the television before going back into the other room.

  Joshua saw her watching them while busying herself at the kitchen counter.

  Cameron stepped over to the sofa and held out her badge so that he could see it while introducing herself. “I’m investigating Cheryl Smith’s and Angelina Sullivan’s murders. Can I ask you a few questions?” When he didn’t respond, she asked him if he understood what she was asking.

  “I understood ya.”

  From where he was watching near the doorway, Joshua asked, “Can you turn down the volume so we can talk?”

  With a glare in Joshua’s direction, Randall held up the remote, pointed it at the television, and blasted the volume.

  Cameron and Joshua exchanged glances. She took the lead. “Mr. Vincent, if you don’t want to talk to us here, I can take you into the police station to talk.”

  “Shut up, bitch,” he replied in a loud voice.

  “What did you call her?” Joshua crossed the room toward him so quickly that the man on the sofa rose as if he were ready to take him on.

  Cameron’s arm shot out to catch Joshua in the chest to stop him. “I’ll handle this.”

  “I know my rights,” Randall eased back down onto the sofa. “I don’t have to talk to either of you.”

  “We’re trying to find out who killed Cheryl Smith,” she replied.

  With a curse, Randall gathered up his oxygen tank and pulled himself up from off the sofa.

  “Don’t you want to know who killed her?” she asked.

  Tucking the tank under his arm like a football, he shuffled down the hallway toward the back of the house while extracting a cigarette from a pack.

  “She was supposed to be your friend,” she called after him.

  When he opened the door in the hallway, the odor of stale cigarette smoke shot out. He shot her a hate-filled glare over his shoulder before going inside and slamming the door.

  Cameron looked over at Joshua. “That went well.”

  “He’s right.” Joshua led her back to the kitchen and to the door. “He doesn’t have to talk to you.”

  “I’m sorry for my father,” Mona apologized as she led them to the front door. “He’s an A-Number-One jerk. The only reason I put up with him
is because I know if I didn’t, he’d be on the streets.”

  “You’re a good daughter,” Joshua told her.

  “No, I’m not,” she replied. “I’m an enabler. Maybe if he was out on the streets he’d straighten up.”

  “Then he’d be my problem,” Joshua said.

  “Which is why I enable him, to protect society.” She followed them out onto the porch. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  Cameron and Joshua exchanged questioning expression while dodging moving dogs on their way down the steps. The canines seemed intent on tripping them.

  At the bottom of the porch step, Mona whispered, “Cheryl Smith didn’t kill Angie Sullivan.”

  Cameron stopped.

  Joshua turned around to face Mona. A hard life of caring for her father made her appear older than her actual years. Even so, Angie Sullivan’s disappearance was before her time. “And you know that how?”

  “He told me.” She tossed her head to indicate the man inside the house who was smoking a cigarette while cradling his oxygen tank. “He told me everything when it hit the news about finding Cherry Pickens in Hookstown.” She scoffed. “He’s so proud of himself having screwed sex symbol Cherry Pickens. I had no idea who she was, until I remembered that he has a box of those smut tapes in his room, and he watches them at night after a six pack of beer. I recognized her picture in the newspaper from those tapes.”

  Crooking her finger at them, she led them across the driveway to move away from the house where he could hear. “He told me about how the police thought Cherry, Cheryl, had killed Angie Sullivan, this girl she had a big fight with at the skating rink in Hookstown.”

  “But he made a statement to the police that she didn’t do it,” Cameron said. “He was Cheryl’s alibi.”

  Mona confirmed that she was right with a nod of her head. “They were having sex in the back of his van.”

  “Was he telling the truth?” Joshua asked.

  “I have no doubt that he was telling me the truth,” she said. “He told me the rest of the story—what he didn’t tell the police and didn’t want to tell you.”

  “He wasn’t with her all night?” Cameron asked.