Admit One (33 page)

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt so at ease.

“I don’t mean to sound forward,” Allie began.

“Oh, by all means, please do.”

She grinned, and his heart sort of… stuttered.

“I was wondering if you’d like to order dessert now.”

By the tone of her voice, Mason deduced that she had something besides dietary needs in mind. He leaned over her, caging her in with his arms. “You.” He nipped her bottom lip. “Are simply full of good ideas.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

WILL
pulled his SUV onto the shoulder of the dirt road, as the driveway was already crowded with squad cars and a coroner’s wagon. He showed his badge to the sheriff’s deputy who was posted at the end of the drive to keep out curious neighbors – not that there were many out here in the boonies.

The house – which was a generous description for the ramshackle structure constructed mostly of cinderblocks, it seemed – sat well back from the road, surrounded by moss-draped water oaks and a yard full of rusted out appliances. The nearby marsh lent a salty tang to the air, but it couldn’t entirely dispel the scent of death that grew stronger as he got closer.

He once again produced ID for another deputy on the sagging porch, and the man directed him toward the back bedroom, apparently where the corpse had been found.

Will nodded at more law enforcement personnel as he wound his way through the living room – which, aside from a number of cops, was populated with some of the sorriest looking furniture he’d ever seen and a large assortment of fast food bags and empty beer cans.

He saw Alan outside the bedroom doorway, hands on hips as he talked to the man Will recognized as the county sheriff. Alan spotted him and waved him over.

“Jones,” Will greeted the sheriff with a handshake.

“Hawbaker. Hate to drag you all the way out here on your night off, but when I saw the name on one of the credit cards I figured you’d want to know about it ASAP.”

“You figured right,” Will agreed. “Sorry I missed your call the first time,” he told Alan. “I think there’s a section of Savannah that’s like the Bermuda Triangle of cell phone reception.”

Will saw a flicker in the other man’s eyes at the mention of the city, but Jones was standing there, clearly anxious to talk, so Will shelved that as something to think about later.

“So what do we have?” he asked the sheriff.

“One Brian Owen, age twenty-five. This place belongs to the brother of an on again, off-again girlfriend. Brother’s doing time for aggravated assault and battery, so the girlfriend told Owen he could crash here. She’s the one who found him, called it in.” The man gestured toward a dazed-looking blonde who was sitting in a recliner in the living room, a blanket over her shoulders as she talked to one of the cops. “Won’t know the official cause of death until we get the ME’s report, of course, but it looks like an apparent drug overdose. Heroin.”

Will looked past the two men into the bedroom, where a photographer was snapping pictures of the corpse. The man’s empty eyes stared at the ceiling, his mouth slightly open, a tourniquet still tied around his arm.

Will was relieved it wasn’t July, or the stench would already be unbearable.

“The AWOL cousin,” he said, glancing at Alan, who nodded.

“There’s a dock out back,” Alan told him. “I informed Sheriff Jones that the boat needed to be searched for any evidence that Jimmy Owen had been onboard recently.”

Will considered that. “You think the Owen cousins had a falling out and Brian used the boat to dispose of Jimmy’s body – slicing off one of his arms in the process?”

“Falling out, accident.” Alan shrugged. “We won’t know until we have more evidence. Either way, the result is the same. And either way it makes sense that Brian wouldn’t have reported it. He wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself. Not when he was a junkie who was stealing to feed his habit.”

Will frowned and studied the corpse again, trying not to picture this man hitting his sister over the head and stealing her purse, her car. Then shutting her inside a mausoleum. Such thoughts tended to destroy his objectivity.

“Tell me about the credit cards,” Will said.

“Got a stack of ‘em,” Sheriff Jones told him, then gestured for Will to follow him into the small, dated – and filthy – kitchen. Getting high was obviously a lot higher on Owen’s list of priorities than living like a civilized human being.

Jones asked for a bag from the deputy who was cataloguing evidence.

“Gotta run a check to see if the rest of these have been reported stolen, the circumstances in which they were stolen and check for fraudulent charges and all that. But I figure you’re familiar with the circumstances of this one.”

Through the plastic, Will studied the card bearing Allie’s name.

“This is the only one of hers you found? She had three of them in her wallet. One of them being a debit card.”

“That’s it. So far at least,” Jones told him. “Could be he sold the others, maybe dumped them when he realized that your sister had been located pretty quickly and so those cards were likely to be canceled before he could use them. Who knows. And we looked, but we found no evidence to suggest what may have happened to her car. Sold to a chop shop, most likely.”

If the man had been desperate for cash, Will agreed that that was probably the case.

“Were there any credit cards belonging to a Nora Linn?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Alan glance at him sharply. He hadn’t told the other man about the flowers, as he’d wanted to keep that private until he knew how – or if – it connected to Allie’s mugging.  

Jones consulted the list that his deputy had compiled. “Doesn’t look like it.” He handed the list over so that Will could examine it himself. “You have reason to believe it should be on there?”

Will shook his head. “Not really.”

Both Jones and Alan continued to stare at him skeptically, so Will figured he owed them at least a partial explanation.

“Someone used a stolen credit card in that name to send an… unpleasant gift to my sister recently, and I was wondering if it might be connected. But at this point I can’t see how a heroin junkie would have had the foreknowledge or the motivation to send her this particular item. So it’s likely just a coincidence of timing.”

Alan’s hand fisted at his side, and Jones gave him a look that suggested he wasn’t entirely pleased with that answer.

“If you turn up any evidence that it’s more than a
coincidence of timing,
I expect to be kept in the loop.”

“Of course,” Will nodded toward Jones, noticing that his lieutenant had grown very quiet.

He and the Sheriff talked for a while longer, and then Will thanked the man before walking out to get a look at the boat.

He wasn’t surprised when Alan followed.

Will waited until they were safely away from the house, but not close enough to the dock – where they’d erected a klieg light in order to work – that the people examining the boat could overhear them.

“You’re angry with me for withholding possible evidence,” Will said as he turned around, met Alan’s carefully controlled face.

Alan waited a beat before responding. “I know this has been difficult for you,” he said. “And I appreciate the faith you’ve shown in me by putting me in charge of the case. But damn it Will, how can I investigate when I don’t have all the available information?”

Will sighed. Alan had a point, and he knew it.

“It wasn’t immediately apparent that this information was relevant to the investigation,” Will said. “Otherwise you would have had it immediately. But this was… very personal information regarding my sister, so I was cautious about sharing it if it didn’t look like it was necessary.”

Alan simply stared at him, and it was obvious that he was biting his tongue.

Will sighed. “I’m sorry. If I trusted you enough to put you in charge, I should have trusted you with all of the potential evidence, or else I should have handled the investigation myself.”

“Something we can agree upon completely.”

Will accepted Alan’s displeasure with a nod. “If this turns out to be as straightforward as it looks on the surface – that the Owen cousins were engaged in various types of theft in order to feed one’s addiction to drugs, and the other’s addiction to porn,” Will’s mouth quirked, thinking of Ms. Bushnell’s description of Jimmy Owen’s viewing habits “then it’s likely that the information won’t be relevant.”

“Unless Brian Owen was specifically targeting Allie as a way of getting back at you. You arrested Jimmy, put him in jail. That could have been part of the cause for their falling out – if that’s what happened – and maybe things got heated and Brian, either accidentally or intentionally, in the heat of the argument, kills his cousin. Maybe he feels guilty about that, blames you for it, and so goes after Allie.”

Will’s blood went hot, then cold. It was plausible.

But then he considered the sensitivity of the information. Now, he might be totally off base in his assumptions, but judging from all of the evidence he’d seen, he didn’t think that these boys had been bright enough to be computer hackers. They were old school as far as thieves go. And the execution of the psychological attack against Allie suggested both intelligence and cunning.

“Based on the available evidence,” Will said, “I don’t think that the information I withheld from you has anything to do with the Owens. You may be right about Brian Owen targeting Allie as a way of getting back at me.” And the thought of it made him sick to his stomach. “But I don’t think the man – especially if he was a junkie – would have been subtle enough to pull a stunt designed to mess with Allie psychologically. I think trapping her inside the mausoleum, stealing her car is more his style.”

Alan considered that for a moment. “Fair enough. But Will.” Alan hesitated, looking out toward the dock and then back at Will. He looked pained, but resolute. “I, uh, I think that you might have guessed by now that I…have an interest in your sister. A non-platonic interest.”

Will barely controlled his wince. He
had
noticed that Alan was acting a little strangely with regards to Allie, but he’d told himself that it was simply because she was Will’s sister, and he was concerned.

At least the way Alan had reacted to the mention of Savannah made sense now. No doubt he knew that Allie was off with Mason for the weekend, and wasn’t too happy about it.

“I have no idea how I’m supposed to respond to that, Alan.”

“Yeah. Most guys don’t like to think of their sisters that way, especially with one of their co-workers. And friends.”

Will scrubbed a hand over his face. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“It’s just… I know she’s sort of involved with that actor – and I could kick myself for not acting sooner, but you know I was going through a divorce and then for a while afterward I didn’t even want to talk to anyone with a vagina –”

“Please.” Will held up his hands, definitely not wanting to think about his sister’s vagina. “Get to the point.”

“My point,” Alan said “is that I don’t take kindly to Allie being the target of any sort of… retribution, whether it be physical or psychological. I don’t know what this psychological attack entails, because you
didn’t tell me,
but…” he stopped. Fisted his hands. “How well do you know this Armitage guy? Because I did a little research and let me tell you, that guy gets around. A real love ‘em and ‘leave ‘em type. But he’s smart, I’ll give him that. Allie didn’t want to have anything to do with him last year, and I can’t say I blame her. How do you know he didn’t… I don’t know, stage whatever it was that you won’t tell me about in order to make her more susceptible to him? So that he could keep playing the white knight, like he did when he popped that idiot Norbert.”

Will opened his mouth to issue an immediate denial, but then he forced himself to think. He remembered asking Sarah something very similar last year when Tucker kept riding to her rescue at very opportune moments. It was the classic Hegelian dialectic – create the problem, wait for the reaction, and then offer the solution.

The solution, of course, being your intended objective all along.

Allie had suspected Norbert of sending the flowers, which, even if the man hadn’t been guilty, had served to bring the scope of his betrayal back to her. Just in case she was reconsidering a reconciliation.

How well
did
he know Armitage? Mr. Johnny on the Spot. He seemed genuine, but after all, the man was a hell of an actor.

Had Armitage been close enough to overhear Allie’s conversation with Norbert that night at Stage Left? He
had
to have been close by, considering he’d knocked Norbert flat right after he’d grabbed Allie’s arm.

That was a far simpler solution than computer hacking, and one of the first rules of deduction was that when you heard hoof beats, you shouldn’t think zebras. Will guessed that if the man thought he was in danger of losing whatever ground he’d gained with Allie to the man she’d already agreed to marry once before, that it was conceivable he could have taken such drastic measures to prevent that from happening.