Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) (17 page)

She said that like it mitigated the crime.

The kidnap would take the shine off me, too. She’d been understanding when I passed on the Eller inheritance, and it wasn’t like there was much Turner money left for me to get someday, but I was now in with the Littlepages. They were just as rich as the Ellers, and the only Littlepage left liked me. He’d be sure to give me more than just an acre of land or a few keepsakes from my mother’s childhood toy box. Might even be I’d someday come into Littlepage money. And I didn’t even want any of it. Didn’t see what money could do. Get someone out of Crazy, and keep them out. Get someone to a warm white beach by a sea the color of John’s eyes, start a business and a home where it was flip-flops and swimsuits nine months a year.

So Craig and Doug had come, and she’d hidden in the back of Craig’s truck, and then it was just a matter of using one of the spare tazers from work, and tossing Boris treats and familiar pet names to distract him from causing bodily harm until they could get clear. She was back in the house in no time, her parents none the wiser, and Craig and Doug switched to Doug’s old car out by Grenville, and came back for Craig’s truck later, and it was done. All over but the waiting.

Tom rose abruptly, and stalked out. Harry nodded to the stenographer. “We’ll take a break,” he said quietly. “I think we’ve heard all we can handle for now.”

17.

W
e took our break. A couple of Vernon’s boys sat in the big meeting room with Kim while the rest of us walked outside to enjoy the fresh air, or down to the vending machines to drown our sorrows in junk food. I caught up to Tom in the parking lot. He was kicking the hell out of the front tire of the cruiser.

“I should’ve seen it,” he said when I sat on the hood. “Should’ve
seen
it. She wasn’t right. She wasn’t right for weeks.”

“It was the holidays, they drive everyone nuts.” I sighed. “But yeah, we should’ve seen something. I should’ve, that’s for sure.”

“No, Lil, you shouldn’t. You trusted her. We all did. But when you were gone… When you didn’t come back after they got the ransom…” Tom kicked the cruiser, and punched the door for good measure. Ouch. “Dammit! She was too freaked out. Too crazy. I should’ve seen! And I didn’t!”

Boris slithered onto my lap for warmth. He meowed. He almost sounded pitying. I kept my peace. I knew why Tom was being so hard on himself. He thought his crush on Kim had blinded him to her deceit. Maybe it had, but it was equally likely it hadn’t. Having your boss kidnapped is a pretty good brain-scrambler.

He cast me a despairing look, his big shoulders curving down. “Lil, swear to God…‌I thought I’d be sick. Like I never saw her at all before.”

I nodded, and let him rant it all out. Better to me than to Tanya.

He’d run out of words, finally, and Harry wandered over. He’s a well-dressed, sharp-witted man, never short of a caustic comment, but even Harry seemed subdued by all Kim had revealed. He leaned listlessly on the cruiser near Tom. “I can only hope,” he said, “that she will tell us where to find this man.”

Tom brightened. “She’s got to. She’s gotta know by now he used her.”

“She’ll never give him up,” I said sadly. They both turned to look at me, surprise wrinkling up their faces. “Look, you can tell she’s stupid in love. She won’t point a finger at John Emmitt. I guarantee it. Not without more leverage than we’ve got. We’ll have to find him on our own.”

Tom stammered, “B-b-but he killed those men!”

I bit the inside of my mouth and looked down at Boris’s furry head. He snuggled closer.

My worst fear finally dawned on Tom, and Harry. Harry groaned, and flung down his unlit cigar. Tom cried out, “No! I won’t believe she’d do that! Not that!”

“A week ago,” I said slowly, “you’d have said she wouldn’t be part of a plot to kidnap someone.”

Tom shook his head vehemently and stomped away. Harry sat next to me, and pulled out another cigar, closed the monogrammed gold case and slid it back into a hidden pocket. “These will kill me,” he said without his usual acid. “I think I might be glad to go, at that.”

I glanced at the building. Breeden was waving for us to come back in. “You know, I even had you on a list of people to suspect.”

Everyone else on that list would’ve been offended. Harry merely smiled. “Good girl.”

***^***

The rest of the story we mostly knew. Except that John had evaded Kim’s questions about where I was, why I wasn’t home, what was going on. John assured her it was all taken care of, Doug and Craig would never reveal a thing to a soul. That was not the point, Kim had said. I wasn’t supposed to get hurt. I’d been missing too long. What had he done?

He’d done nothing. He insisted it had been Craig and Doug. They’d not told him where they’d taken me. For his own safety, so he could honestly deny knowledge if it became necessary. So he couldn’t help her. He didn’t know where I was any more than she did. If things had gone…‌wrong…‌it wasn’t on him. Or her. It was on Craig, and Doug. The people Kim had found.

It turned out guilt was a better diet than any other Kim had tried. Pounds dropped off her in days. When Craig’s body was found, she’d called John in a panic. Lying low for a couple of months was not easy when she had to look at me every day, but it got downright impossible when people turned up dead. John had soothed her, told her he’d picked up their share of the money from Doug as planned, at the truck stop where Craig once worked. What happened after that, he could not say. She had to be patient, stay calm. It would be okay.

“It’s not okay,” I said, startling her. “Doug Winston’s dead too.”

Kim lost all trace of color. She swayed in her chair. It’s odd, how distant I was, watching her. Gauging the impact of my words, and the nature of her reaction.

“Where’s John Emmitt now?”

She shrugged.

Breeden slapped down our sketch. “The TV stations have this, Miss Lincoln. You can make this easy or you can play tough, but he will get caught. You want to ask yourself how you can help yourself here.”

Dumbass. Kim might have loved and left plenty of guys in her time, but she thought this one was her True Love. She was going to pull a total Tammy Wynette and Stand By Her Man.

Sure enough, Kim recoiled. “No! He ain’t bad! He ain’t that way!”

I lost it. My chair flew back, I was on my feet, and I didn’t give a hunk of cat poo for the rules. “Are you really that stupid? He stole! He lied! He kidnapped! He
killed
! And you know it! Or you wouldn’t have run, and you wouldn’t have called me to come get you! Because you know I’m stupid enough to do the right thing instead of leave you to rot the way they left me!”

Whoops. Said too much. Nothing like humiliation to shut me up. And make me sit down.

Crimson, Kim burst into tears. God Almighty, that girl can cry.

“Knock it off.”

The words were cold, the tone vicious. And they came from Tom.

“Knock it off, Kim, we’re not buying the act,” he went on bitterly. “You can’t sell us twice. You know good and well your best hope is to throw John Emmitt to us to save your own ass, and frankly, I’m not too keen on letting you do it. I think maybe we ought just let you do his time for him.”

Skip Warner drew breath. Tom snapped a glare at him that froze him solid.

“You sat there, at your desk, sniffling and sobbing for poor Lil, and the whole time you knew who had her and why. You shook that man’s hand and said nice to meet you Mr. Clay, and you knew his name was John Emmitt. You let me and Punk and the whole damn police force of the whole damn Commonwealth of Virginia be made fools of.”

Kim trembled. “I didn’t think…”

“You thought enough to give Boris tuna treats. You thought enough to take them into Lil’s house.” Tom’s hand smacking the table sounded like a cell door slamming shut. “And you thought enough to get scared and run.” He smiled, but it was a nasty grimace, the kind Boris makes when he’s in a mood. “You think now. Where’s John Emmitt?”

She shook her head. She’d betray the plot, but not the man. Lord save me from idiots.

I caught Tom’s eye, shook my head slightly, and leaned down the table, getting a face full of Boris on the way. “Kim. Look at me.”

Kim refused. Like a kid not taking the spoon of medicine.

“
Look at me
.”

She did look. Fleeting, sideways. Enough to see my face and know I wasn’t going to put up with this another moment. Enough for me to see I was going to be breaking a lot of hearts in the next few minutes. Mine included. But I had the leverage. I had to use it.

“One thing’s been bugging me here, Kim,” I said softly. I pitched my voice low and lulling, the way I do for Boris when he’s not feeling well from a hairball. “You left the office before Chief Danes found Doug’s body. You ran when we were still just looking for Doug. Now that can mean one of two things. So you tell me which it is.” I pulled back enough to keep one eye on Boris’s tail. All the tension in the room had him nervy, but he wasn’t worked up enough for a good tail-lashing yet. I figured I could trust his lie detector. “First option is, you worried Doug Winston would tell us everything. Second option is, you already knew we’d find him dead.”

What with all the crying and stress, it was hard to know if she lied when she said, “I thought he’d tell on us.”

Except for Boris’s tail, twitch-twitching the truth.

I eased back into my seat, and blinked away a sting of tears. “Okay, Kim.” And I played the biggest wildest guess-card of my career. “It’s nice camping up by that cabin, isn’t it.”

Kim twitched. I cursed, but in my head, where only I had to hear it.

Tom’s voice held a lot of hurt. “Lil?”

I sighed, to myself. To the room, I explained, “Naomi kindly let us have a photograph from Kim’s album. Her and some college friends camping. Doug Winston was in that photo. So was Craig McElroy. And here’s the thing, Tom,” I said in my official bereavement-notification voice. “What’s the odds she
didn’t
know about that cabin? What’s the odds someone else could get Doug Winston up there?”

Harry put it together faster than anyone else. “John Emmitt is not from around here. You dated Doug Winston, who is cousin to Craig McElroy, whose great-grandfather moonshined at that cabin many years ago. They are, in fact,
both
of that family.”

Skip Warner half-rose. “That’s enough. That’s enough. My client’s told you all she can.”

She hadn’t, but she wouldn’t be telling us any more. Not until he’d worked out a plea agreement with Harry.

***^***

We sent the sketch of John Emmitt to New York, Key West, Pennsylvania, anywhere else we could think. Steven Clay dug up the company records on him, but they told us nothing new. Breeden sent the sketch to all the motels up and down the interstate that runs through the Valley of Virginia. We didn’t expect much.

Kim’s cell phone records showed she had been calling John Emmitt for quite a while. Hourly, for a few days before she’d fled. His personal cell phone records showed he’d paid a hefty three hundred bucks to cancel his contract early. His credit cards had not been used in weeks. No activity on his checking account, either. For all intents and purposes, John Emmitt had vanished three days before Kim had done her disappearing act.

With time on my hands, I went to see Bobbi. She was getting bigger by the minute, she said. She still wasn’t too happy to see me. I didn’t have the energy to play games, so I came right out and asked her, “What’s going on? You’ve been nervous around me for ages.”

She pinked. She poured Boris more half-and-half. “It’s stupid.”

“Tell me what isn’t.”

She flinched a little. No sparkle to her. “It’s…‌Raj’s parents. They gave us this money. All this money. It’s for the baby, and we’re grateful, and it’s fine but…‌Lil, I can’t let you be godmother.”

The words cut me deeper than I’d expected. “Why not?”

Her face twisted up. “I’m sorry! It’s just…‌the money! It means we have to have Raj’s sister. And she’s nice, she is, but…”

I had had about all the ouch I could take. “Fine. Screw you, too.”

Her mouth rounded in horror. “Lil!”

“Hey, what’s another friend selling you out for cash?” I snapped. Yeah, I know. Royal bitch, that was me. “Kim was angling for two million, what’d you get?”

“Lil,” she repeated, mouth crumpling. “Lil, that’s not fair. It’s for the baby, not us. And it’s only a hundred grand.”

Only a hundred grand. I snorted.

“Lil,
please
. It’s a stupid formality, that’s all. Just a stupid formality!”

I could have told her my one chance at motherhood would be godmotherhood. That I’d been looking forward to being someone’s Aunt Marge, without the having to raise them part. But I wasn’t enough of a bitch to do more damage.

And she was right. Raj’s sister lived in Cleveland. I was right here. “You moving to Ohio?” I asked.

“God no,” she said instantly. “Have you
been
there? Way too flat. And way too close to his parents for Raj. Or me,” she added. She put out a hand, let it drop. “We okay?”

I wasn’t, but we were, as weird as that sounds. “Sure,” I said. “It’s good.”

“No, it’s not,” said Bobbi astutely, and hugged me as best she could with her belly in the way. “I’m sorry, Lil, I should’ve said something but what with… Well, there wasn’t a great time, y’know?”

I did know. I sat down and listened to her plan the baby’s room, because that is what friends do.

18.

T
hings got back to normal. Sort of. For a given definition of normal. As it applies in Crazy.

I hadn’t forgotten Punk kissed me. Kind of hard to forget the only kiss I’d gotten in more years than I am going to bother to count. We were still friends at work, didn’t say a word about it. Which put me in the awkward spot of wondering if he didn’t say anything out of regret, or if, like me, he just had no idea what to say.

There were a lot of reasons to pretend it didn’t happen. First off, and biggest of them all, I was his boss. Office romances are a no-no. When one of you can fire the other, it’s a guaranteed disaster.