A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) Page 9

  Joshua was impressed with how Tori was able to shift her demeanor when it came to business. Everything changed about her. Even the way she held her body took on a professional attitude.

  “So, Billy,” the prosecutor greeted the suspect when he came into the room. “I heard that you went to pick up a bank deposit tonight that didn’t belong to you.”

  “My client was riding along with some friends, who decided to commit this robbery,” Tori countered. “He had no idea what was going down.” When the detective scoffed, she asked, “Did you see him actually participate in this robbery?”

  “He had a gun aimed at the driver of the armored car,” Seth responded.

  “His friends coerced him into it.”

  “Why don’t we talk about Grace Henderson?” Joshua suggested.

  “Never met her,” Billy said.

  “Then why did you buy her a tattoo?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “The tattoo artist picked your picture out of a photo lineup. Another witness says you went ballistic when she told you that she was pregnant with your baby. Why would you go ballistic over a stranger getting pregnant?”

  Billy looked at Tori, who defended him, “That doesn’t mean he killed her.”

  “She was killed with a thirty-eight, which was what he had on him when he was picked up tonight.” Joshua added, “A witness says the killer was wearing a black trench coat, black bandanna, and wrap-around sunglasses. The same outfit he had on tonight.”

  “So did the rest of my friends,” Billy retorted.

  “But they didn’t get her pregnant.”

  “Are you sure? Grace slept with a lot of guys.”

  “Give us some of your DNA and prove that you didn’t get her pregnant.”

  There was a knock on the door. Seth stepped outside and left the prosecutor to continue the interview.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Billy sneered.

  “What were you doing at the time Grace was killed?” Joshua asked him.

  “When was that?” Tori wanted to know.

  “Approximately five o’clock on Monday, the twenty-seventh.”

  Seth opened the door and gestured for Joshua to join him in the hall. He could see that the detective’s bubble had been burst.

  “It’s not the gun,” Seth told him once they were alone in the corridor.

  “What?” Joshua hoped that he had misunderstood.

  “The thirty-eight Unger had on him was not the murder weapon.”

  “So unless Murphy can identify him, we can’t place him at the scene when Grace was killed.”

  Neither of the men was optimistic about Murphy’s ability to pick Billy out of a lineup. “Every one of those guys looked alike in those trench coats, sunglasses, and bandannas,” Seth told him.

  “What else have you got?”

  “We have a witness who says they were seeing each other. The tattooist says Unger brought her in and paid for the tattoo on her butt. We might be able to get something on that tear in the trench coat, but that will take some time.”

  “If his DNA proves that he’s the father of her baby, then we can prove motive. In the meantime, let’s get him in a lineup and see what Murphy says when he sees him.”

  “We still have him on armed robbery,” Seth said.

  The prosecutor agreed with a nod of his head. “That’s enough to hold him until we can make a case for murder.”

  Joshua put on his poker face and stepped back into the interrogation room. “How are we doing?” he asked Tori.

  She grinned up at him from where she sat next to her client. “My client has an alibi.”

  “What is it?”

  “He was with his other girlfriend. Heather Connor.”

  It was the middle of the night that felt more like winter than fall and Joshua was absorbed with the theory of how one act, one touch, one word could change the path of fate for those around you. He had parked his Corvette in the garage in the corner of the backyard and was making his way up the cobblestone path to his house when he heard movement in the shadows.

  Braced to defend himself, he stopped and listened.

  “Josh,” he heard his name whispered.

  “Jan?” He squinted at the form by the hedges.

  “Were you expecting Jan?” Gail stepped out into the light from the yard lamp. She was dressed in a black trench coat and wore a black fedora on her head: the stereotypical image of a woman of intrigue.

  Joshua stepped backwards. “What are you doing here? It’s after one.”

  “Yes, it is. What were you doing out so late?”

  He started to tell her that he was at the sheriff’s office, when the question flashed through his mind, “Why are you asking?”

  “Because I care about you, Josh. It’s a dangerous world out there.” She was gazing up at the full moon over their heads. “Middle of the night, anything can happen. In the dark, you can’t even tell who your friends are.”

  He cocked his head at her. He couldn’t see her face, but he could tell that she was in a solemn state. “Gail, are you all right?”

  “I am now that I’m here with you.” She reached out and brushed her hand across his cheek. “You’re a father, Josh.”

  He smelled the wine on her breath. “You’re drunk.” He brushed her hand away.

  “Still the Puritan.” She smiled. “That’s one of those things that I both hate and love about you.” She staggered. “You have such high morals.”

  He caught her by the arm to keep her from falling to the ground. “I’m taking you home.”

  Gail almost fell into the passenger seat of the Corvette. Her black hat fell off her head and landed in her lap. Joshua was aware of her eyes on him during the drive out toward the state line. He recalled that Tad had told him that she’d rented the Marshall house. He had to lift her out of the car and hold her on her feet to guide her inside the house through the front door that he found unlocked.

  “Where’s the bedroom?” he asked her.

  Gail giggled and pointed down the hall.

  With his arms around her, Joshua took her to the room at the end of the hallway. In the dark, he was unable to determine if the house was neatly kept or not. He pushed the door open with his hip and tossed her onto the bed. He threw her fedora into a corner of the darkened room.

  Gail grabbed him by his jacket. In her drunken state, she was unable to keep her grasp and fumbled for something with which to pull him down with her. She scraped her fingernails across his neck.

  With a yelp, Joshua pulled back. He felt a trickle of blood from the wound she had left.

  “Oh, Josh, can’t you stay with me just for a little bit?” She clutched his hand and held it against her breast.

  “I have to go home.” He pulled away.

  “But, Josh—”

  He rushed from the room.

  She was calling to him when he collided with the coffee table in the living room in the dark. He heard and felt papers swoosh to the floor. A glass clinked against a bottle.

  Cursing, he rubbed his bruised shins. When his foot kicked something cylindrically shaped, he felt it roll away from him toward the sofa. In the dark, he gathered the papers together and stacked them back on the table. A three-ring binder lay upside down on the floor. He turned it over. His fingertips brushed across the rough texture of newspaper glued to the pages. He concluded that it was her portfolio.

  The thud of footsteps in the hallway frightened Joshua with the thought that she had gotten up to come after him. He dropped the binder on top of the stack of folders and papers and rushed to the door. Pausing only long enough to turn the button on the doorknob to lock the door, he rushed from Gail’s house and home to his own bed.

  It was two o’clock in the morning before the
pretty young barmaid locked up the State Line Lounge. Rita was ready to go home. She hated closing the bar. She was always conscious of anyone who might be lurking around to rape her before shooting her brains out as she had seen numerous times in recent movies at the mall. Hugging her purse under her arm with her hand on the handgun her father had given her for protection, she slammed the back door shut and locked it.

  Rita saw the old beat-up truck sitting alone by the garbage bin at the corner of the parking lot. It looked like there was a man inside.

  She took out her gun and hurriedly got into her car. After her doors were locked, she studied the truck and its occupant.

  He made no move for her.

  Why was he sitting there at two in the morning? Maybe he was in trouble. He seemed to be passed out. It was not uncommon in the bar business for a drunken patron to fall asleep in his car.

  It was hard to tell because the windows were dirty. From where she sat, it looked like mud splattered across the windshield.

  Rita remained in the safety of her car and took a look inside the truck on her way out of the parking lot.

  She could see that the side window was shattered. That did not concern her. Her customers’ vehicles were often beaten up.

  The reddish-brown splatters across the windshield caught her curiosity. She had thought it was mud, but it was too red to be mud.

  Clutching her gun, Rita opened her door and stood, with one foot in her car, to peer through the window into the cab.

  It took her a minute to ascertain if she was seeing what she thought she was looking at. Her mouth opened in horror, but the shock constricted her throat so that the scream could not escape. When it managed to work its way past her beating heart and the lump in her throat, she could be heard at the service station on the other side of the Pennsylvania border.

  Chapter Six

  Dr. Tad MacMillan took off his motorcycle helmet, ran his fingers through his hair, and yawned. He climbed off his Harley-Davidson and took his medical examiner’s bag from the travel compartment. Suppressing a second yawn, he put on a pair of evidence gloves from the bag.

  State forensics officers and county sheriff’s deputies had already descended onto the State Line Lounge parking lot and roped it off. Lights had been erected to aid in seeing the crime scene. Police were labeling and photographing the smallest evidence. The morgue attendants were waiting for Tad to do his thing so that they could take the body to the morgue.

  He was the last one to arrive.

  Lieutenant Seth Cavanaugh stepped away from his car where he was talking to one of the deputies and crossed over to the medical examiner, who was checking to make sure he had film in his camera. “Sorry to interrupt your date.” His tone was sarcastic.

  “Where’s the body?” Tad hung the camera around his neck.

  Seth led him over to the truck and gestured for him to take a look inside.

  “Who is it?” The doctor set his medical bag down.

  “Rex Rollins.”

  Tad sucked in his breath and looked through the shattered window.

  The top of Rex’s head was splattered across the back of the passenger seat and side and front window. His mouth hung open. What was left of his head rested against the headrest and was tilted towards his right shoulder. His unseeing eyes looked up to the roof of the truck as if he were looking to the heavens for help.

  Tad snapped picture after picture while he reported what he saw. “Looks like two shots.” He glanced at the shattered window. “Came through the driver’s side window. Hit him square between the eyes. That one took off the top of his head and exited out. Betcha you’ll find the slug in here somewhere. Big caliber. A forty-five at least.” He turned the head to examine what was left of the back. “Second shot was in the mouth. He was already dead. We have overkill here.”

  He noticed the gun on the floor of truck where it had landed between Rex’s feet. “Did you see the gun here?”

  Seth followed the invisible line from the end of Tad’s finger to the floor of the truck where the revolver rested. It was concealed under the cover of darkness. “Yeah, I saw it,” he lied.

  Tad felt the body with his palm flat on the bloody corpse. It was cooling down fast in the chilly night air. “Been dead approximately two hours. Bar had to be open when it happened.”

  “Yeah. The barmaid who found him said the music was up and people talking. You know how bars are on weekends.”

  “No one saw or heard anything.” Tad spied a pretty blonde-haired woman sitting in the backseat of a patrol car. She was sipping coffee from a convenience store across the street. “Is she the one who found the body?”

  “Yep,” Seth chuckled. “Scared the hell out of her.”

  The medical examiner gestured to the attendants waiting nearby. “He’s ready to go.”

  “When will I get the report?”

  “After I’m done with the autopsy.” Tad put his camera back in the case and zipped it shut.

  “This time around make it only one copy for the sheriff’s department. Thornton doesn’t need to be in on this until I’m ready to make the arrest.”

  “Give it a rest, Cavanaugh.” He ducked under the yellow police tape more to end the conversation than to greet the woman in the back of the patrol car. “Hi, Rita.”

  Startled, the barmaid splashed her coffee on her white button-down shirt. Tad apologized and handed her a tissue from inside his medical bag. “I didn’t know you were working here at the State Line.”

  “Not anymore.” She stepped out of the back of the car. “I’m quitting. It was bad enough serving drinks to a bunch of drunks always looking down my blouse and telling wild lies, but this—” She pointed at the truck a few feet away and shuddered.

  Tad held her coffee cup in order to free her hands to mop the spill on her bosom. “Can’t say your mother didn’t warn you. She didn’t want you working in places like this. That’s why she broke her back to get money to send you to school.”

  “I know.” Rita sighed. “Mom is always right.”

  “What happened?”

  “What does it look like? Someone blew away a drunk.” She dug through her purse.

  “Was Rex one of your customers tonight?” he asked.

  “Yeah, he was already smashed when he came in.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About midnight.” She took a pack of cigarettes with a lighter tucked inside the wrapper from her purse. “I’ve seen him since I first started working here. He was always shooting his mouth off about how important he was. Then, Margo Connor fired him and he didn’t show up as much. Some of her crew hangs out here and I guess he was embarrassed. I don’t know.” With trembling fingers, she stuck the tip of a cigarette between her lips.

  “But he came back tonight.” Tad lit her cigarette. “Did he talk to anyone?”

  “Just me.” She took a drag from the cigarette and blew the smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Lucky me. Nut.”

  “Why do you say he was a nut?”

  She shook her head with a laugh. “He said that he had just finished writing a book—like I didn’t know that he was a loser. Everyone in Chester knows Rex Rollins. If brains were dynamite, he didn’t have enough powder to blow his nose, and he’s telling me loud enough for everyone to hear that he was the next Ernest Hemingway.” She scoffed. “Give me a break. He didn’t even leave me a tip.”

  “I guess everyone had a good laugh when he said that he had written a book,” Tad smiled.

  “Yeah.” She flicked the ashes from her cigarette to the ground and pawed at them with the toe of her athletic shoe.

  “Did he tell you what his book was about?”

  “He said it was about the wicked witch of Chester.”

  Tad squinted. “The wicked witch of Chester? Did he say if it wa
s fiction or—”

  “He said it was a true story about this wicked witch who got away with murder. Then he laughed and said that he was the only one who knew her secret.”

  “How did the customers in the bar react when he said that?”

  “Everyone laughed at him.”

  Tad felt sympathy for the dead man who spent most of his life being the butt of jokes. “Who all was in the bar tonight while he was there?”

  “Only the guys who worked construction for Margo Connor. They were all playing pool when Rex came in and started talking about how famous he was going to be. You should have heard him.” Rita paused to visualize the inside of the bar while sucking on the end of her cigarette. She flicked another ash to the gravel in the parking lot and pawed it into the gravel. “Herb Duncan was sitting at the end of the bar. He isn’t one of Margo’s crew, but he’s a regular. He came in right after Rex did. I remember because I served him a Coors Light after I waited on Rex. He paid for it with a twenty-dollar bill and gave me a five-dollar tip. He usually has me put his drinks on his tab, which he paid up tonight. By the way, Rex was three months behind on his tab. I guess the boss is going to have to eat that, which will put him in a foul mood.”

  “Did Herb hear about Rex’s book?”

  “Everyone who was there tonight heard about it. Rex was not exactly keeping it a secret. Herb had himself a good laugh right along with everyone else. He said that Rex was going to get himself killed.” She quickly explained, “Because he was so drunk.” She dropped the last of her cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with her toe. “Can I go home now?”

  Tad looked around for a deputy to inquire if they needed any more information from her. “Did anyone leave the bar right after Rex?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in the back getting a case of Miller when he left.”