Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery (27 page)

“Yes.”

“You’ve been working at the restaurant since the murder.”

“Yes.” My heart was smacking so hard against my rib cage, it sounded like someone was hammering in my head. I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I had a vague notion.

“Are you a reporter?”

“No.” It was a relief to actually admit that.

Jim Bob studied me carefully, rubbing his chin, working the beard off in the process. I don’t think he even noticed. He came toward the bed, his long legs closing the space between us in a few strides. He reached out his hand. “I’d like to see your identification.”

“Good thinking, Jimmy,” Julie cooed, clasping her hands together. “She might be undercover.”

“Undercover? As in, police?” Peggy Martin had wondered the same thing, and it tickled me to even think I’d been mistaken for a cop. “C’mon, guys, get serious.” But serious is exactly how they looked. I wet my lips. “Listen, why doesn’t everyone have a seat so we can discuss this calmly,” I suggested, though neither jumped at the invitation.

“Give me your handbag,” the preacher demanded in that mesmerizing voice, the one that got little old ladies to mail him their Social Security checks without flinching.

“You want it? Come get it.”

I still had the pepper spray clutched at my side; but it was two against one, and I didn’t like the odds. Part of me was sure they wouldn’t harm a hair on my head, but the other part wasn’t convinced.

“Okay, take it.” I held out my purse with my free hand, and the Reverend Barker stepped forward and snatched it out of my grip. He ripped open the snap and fumbled inside its leather belly. He pulled out my cell phone first and tossed it on the dresser with a clunk that made me wince. Then he found my wallet, flipped it open, and began thumbing through its contents. He passed one of my business cards to Julie.

“Andrea Blevins Kendricks,” she read aloud. “ABK Graphics.” Her chin jerked up. “You film pornos?”

Yuck.
“No, no. I’m a web designer.”

“So you do porno web sites?”

Was that interest in her eyes?

“I don’t do porn in any capacity,” I assured her. “Though I do pro bono work sometimes.” Which had her looking even more baffled. I half-expected her head to start spinning like Linda Blair in
The Exorcist.
“I design totally legitimate web sites,” I explained. “Like for charities and small businesses. And that has nothing to do with the reason I’ve been working at Jugs.”

“I don’t get it.” She pulled a few of my credit cards from their slots and tossed them at me. My Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the platinum Master-Card and Visa. “Well, it hardly looks like you’re broke.” Angry red blotches stained her face. “What else did you lie about, huh? I’ll bet you’re not even pregnant. Probably never been divorced. Have you even waited tables before? Because you suck at it, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

Geez, way to hurt my feelings.

“So I lied.” I shrugged, hardly wanting to defend myself to her. “But it was for a good cause.”

Molly, I nearly added, but didn’t want to drag her into this. Or maybe I was just afraid of Julie’s reaction.

“What cause? Like those Mothers Against Porn? Are you part of their operation . . . ?”

“No,” I interjected.

She shook a finger at me. “You want to tell us what’s really going on, or should we call the cops?”

“Go ahead,” I told her. “That’ll give me a chance to fill them in on you and Jim Bob.”

She laughed. “We’re not doing anything illegal, sugar. Immoral maybe, but that’s a different story. Can’t arrest us for what we do between the sheets.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Barker would beg to differ.”

Jim Bob frowned, obviously not finding that funny. “You’re the one who came barging in. Why don’t you tell us what you came for?”

He was right.

It was time to lay my cards on the table.

“I thought maybe we’d chat about ERA, Incorporated,” I said, watching Jim Bob’s eyes widen at the mention. “I’m sure the police would be interested in knowing why a TV preacher would own a restaurant like Jugs and have a jerk like Bud Hartman as his partner. I wouldn’t mind hearing that story myself.”

“How did you find out about ERA?” The preacher’s voice took on a frightened tone. Perspiration had loosened the gum on the mustache, and it hung cock-eyed over his lips. Every time he breathed, it danced. Not an attractive look for him.

“A friend of mine checked it out. A lawyer,” I said, figuring that would keep them in line. They wouldn’t hurt me—would they?—if they believed someone else knew what I knew. “He dug up info about the partner’s insurance, the ten million you’d get if anything happened to Bud. What I don’t understand is how you got tied up with him in the first place. Was it blackmail?” I inclined my head at the two of them. “Did he have photos of you and Julie? Is that why he was killed?”

“No, it was nothing like that!” Julie blurted out. “Bud and Jim Bob go way back,” she said, ignoring Jim Bob’s attempts to silence her. “They’re both from Magnolia, Arkansas. Jimmy used to own a bar called Hillbillies. Bud hung out a lot there after he got bounced from Texas Tech.”

Hillbillies, huh?

“The theme of the restaurant,” I voiced my thoughts aloud.

“It was years ago, before Jimmy got religion, sold the bar, left Arkansas, and made a new life for himself in Dallas.”

“Julie, please . . .”

But she didn’t heed his warning. “Bud tracked Jimmy down. His church was just starting up then, and Bud took advantage of that. He decided to settle in Dallas and open a restaurant. He got Jimmy to invest and called it ‘Jugs’ to remind Jimmy where they came from, of all the hell-raising they did together once. The drugs and the booze. All the women.”

The preacher turned away, shaking his head.

“Bud had photographs from those days. Bad ones.” She reached over to stroke Jim Bob’s arm, but he pulled away like she’d burned him. “Bud showed me a couple of them one night. They were in bed with a girl. Bud said she was thirteen. He called it a ‘hillbilly sandwich,’ if you know what I mean.”

“I get the picture.”

And it wasn’t pretty.

“Bud told me he had enough on Jim Bob to ruin his career. He had Jimmy running scared, thinking of his church and his TV show, everything he’d lose if word ever got out. All that money going down the tubes.”

Glug, glug.

Now that wasn’t hard to imagine.

It was mere embezzlement that had toppled Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and a single hooker had tarnished Jimmy Swaggert’s once-shiny image. Allegations of fraud had scattered Robert Tilton’s flock to the winds.

But a photo of Jim Bob and another man in bed with a teenaged girl?

He’d be lucky if his congregation stopped at tar and feathers.

“How much were you paying Bud?” I said to Jim Bob’s back.

He slowly turned around. “A hundred grand.”

“A year?”

Julie snorted, gazing at me as if I were an idiot. “No, silly. A hundred grand a month.”

My mouth fell open.

Bud Hartman had been bleeding Jim Bob out of nearly a million and a quarter annually? That was hardly pigeon feed.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Did you kill him?”

“No.” Julie took her lover’s hand and held on tightly. “Jimmy had nothing to do with that, and neither did I.”

“Can you prove it?”

This time, the preacher responded. “We were together the night Bud was murdered.
All
night,” he emphasized, not seeming embarrassed in the least at admitting the indiscretion. Well, what was the point? “Julie pretended to feel ill so she could get out of closing up with Bud. We met here, probably around the same time as tonight. Neither of us left ’til right before sun-up.”

“Did you pay cash?”

“The night clerk will remember me,” he said. “I registered under the name of Larry Jones, as usual. It’ll be in their records.”

How cozy, providing each other with alibis.

“We’re in love,” Julie declared, gazing up at Jim Bob with gooey eyes. “Sometimes it just happens, whether you want it to or not.”

Gag me with a silver spoon.

I squirmed on the bedspread, still hiding the pepper spray. “The police might not be so quick to buy your story. Bud’s death set Jim Bob free of his blackmailer, plus he’ll get the money from the partner’s insurance. Not to mention full ownership of the restaurant. I’d say he had more than enough reason to want Bud gone for good.”

“No,” Julie piped up. “That’s not the whole story.”

Oh, man, there was more?

“So fill me in.”

“Bud left all his worldly goods to his mama in Arkansas. Though she hasn’t been right in the head for years. Lives in a nursing home, and she couldn’t care less about a restaurant in Dallas. Probably doesn’t even know where Dallas is. Bud was her only child. He assumed her power of attorney when the Alzheimer’s got bad.” Julie paused to glance at Jim Bob, who sighed, chin sagging to his chest. She kept going. “He had his lawyer fix up a document that said I had first dibs on buying his half of Jugs from his mama if anything ever happened to him. He wanted to make sure there was money to pay for his mama’s care, and he didn’t want Jim Bob taking over. He knew Jimmy would shut the place down, and he wanted it to be a burr in Jimmy’s hide forever and ever.”

That certainly sounded like Bud Hartman.

Still, it didn’t add up, not enough to satisfy me.

“How’re you paying for Bud’s half?”

She glanced up at Jim Bob. “I’m getting some help from Jimmy, and he’s happy to do it, aren’t you, sugar? I told him it was a small thing compared to his church finding out what a bad boy he’s been.”

Ah. So the blackmail continued.

I almost felt sorry for the Rev.

Almost.

Well, I’d heard enough for one night. I wanted to call Malone and spill the beans on Jim Bob and Julie, see what he wanted to do. I’m sure the police would definitely be interested in knowing what I’d just learned.

I wasn’t entirely certain they weren’t guilty of stabbing Bud to death, yet nothing they’d told me so far had convinced me they had.

My only hope was that the cops would find something on the surveillance tapes from the Jugs’s locker room that would settle everything once and for all.

Because my detective skills seemed to be sorely lacking.

My watch showed quarter past eleven.

I was wiped out, and I wanted to get home.

Nancy Drew probably packed it in every night by ten.

“Wow,” I said. “Look at the time. It’s been fun, folks, but I’ve got to run.”

Julie stood before me, hands on hips. “Sorry, sugar, but the party’s not over till we say it’s over.”

Sugar.

The word set off a loud ping in my brain.

My heart did a nosedive into my belly as my pre-dinner discussion with Brian tumbled quickly through my head.

“He had acute hypoglycemia . . . low blood sugar . . . no prescriptions found in his belongings besides some arthritis medication . . . they also ran something called an insulin C-peptide level, which showed the combination of very low blood sugar and a normal C-peptide . . . someone likely administered insulin from an outside source, an IV or possibly a syringe . . . the police are investigating it as a suspicious death . . .Hicks didn’t have a heart attack . . . someone tried to kill him.”

Another conversation surfaced as well, remarks Julie had made after Bud’s funeral that hadn’t seemed to matter at the time.

“Have you ever seen Mrs. Jim Bob? She looks like somebody blew her up with a tire pump. That’s probably how she got diabetes, from eating too much sugar.”

I stared at the Reverend Barker.

His wife had diabetes, which meant he had access to her medication and supplies.

Jim Bob had killed Bud and then he’d gone after Fred Hicks, too, giving him an overdose of insulin via syringe.

Julie was his alibi for the night of Bud’s murder. She was lying for him.

It all fit well enough that I believed it. Which scared me silly.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.

Julie was wrong. The party
was
over.

For me, at least. I wanted out.

“You know what? I apologize for interrupting your, uh, prayer meeting.” I couldn’t look at Jim Bob so I switched my focus to Julie, who still blocked my way to the door. “Without further ado, I’ll say goodnight and let you go back to your, um, praying.” Calmly, I slid off the bed, forgetting that I clutched the pepper spray. Without thinking, I pointed it toward Jim Bob, who still held my purse. “Would you mind giving that back, Reverend?” My voice was barely audible, even to my own ears. But apparently what I said didn’t matter.

“Jesus, she’s got mace!” Julie cried.

You ever see your life flash before your eyes, and it looks like an awful B-movie? In slow motion?

Jim Bob lunged at me.

There wasn’t time to move.

He tackled me, throwing my body onto the bed, flat on my back, and knocking the wind from my lungs.

I felt the mattress bounce as Julie threw herself into the mix, and four hands grabbed at mine, prying the pepper spray from my fingers. We were so tangled up, like three big kids caught in a wild game of Twister, that I didn’t even know which body parts were mine.

“Stop struggling,” I heard Julie growl, but I wasn’t the one who struggled, pinned down as I was beneath her and Jim Bob, their combined weight making it impossible for me to draw in a deep breath, much less wrestle.

“Help,” I gasped, which is when the blast of pepper spray hit me square in the face like a welder’s torch, burning everything it touched. I wanted to scream, but no sound emerged, my throat paralyzed. They scrambled off of me, and I doubled over, rubbing at my eyes, which only made the pain worse. I coughed and retched at once, my chest tightening horribly, so that I thought I would die then and there.

Somebody yelped, “Now look what you’ve done,” but I was in too much discomfort to care.

I was barely aware of being carried into the bathroom and thrown in the tub. Pipes screeched as the shower was turned on and cold water rushed at me. Voices churned around me, and hands splashed water at my face while I moaned and flopped around blindly, swallowing mucus and saliva, feeling dizziness sweep over me.