Jessica Beck - Donut Shop 17 - Old Fashioned Crooks (17 page)

“Suzanne, there’s
only one problem with that.
 
Two
of our suspects have smudged
makeup,” Jake said softly.

“It might even be
three, for all we know,” Grace said.
 
“Remember, we never found any photos of Denny at Spirit Night.”

“That’s because
he wasn’t there,” Officer Grant said.

“What do you
mean?”

“While I was on
the radio, we just got confirmation that he was somewhere else when the murder
occurred.
 
I was about to tell you
all about it, but I wanted to hear your theory about the two sheets first,” the
police officer said.

“How solid is his
alibi?” Jake asked him.
 
I had a
hunch that he hated being on the sidelines, but there was nothing that could be
done about it at the moment.

“Rock solid,” Stephen
said.
 

“Nothing is
foolproof.
 
What did he have?”

“Denny was
running a red light in Asheville three minutes after the murder,” Officer Grant
said.
 
“We put out some inquiries
about our suspects, and Denny was the only one who came up.
 
They caught him with a red light camera,
and there’s no mistaking him, or his license plate.”

“Then he couldn’t
have done it,” Grace said.

“Not a chance,”
Officer Grant said.

“That still leaves
us with two viable suspects, Kyle Creasy and Amanda Moore,” I said.
 
“If I’m being honest, I kind of want it
to be Kyle.”

“Why’s that?”
Grace asked.

“I don’t like the
way he’s become fixated on Emma,” I said.

“In that case,
you’re going to really be unhappy about this,” Jake said as he showed me the
photo he’d found of Kyle.

“I already saw that,”
I said as I tried to hand it back to him.

“Look who’s
almost out of the picture right there,” Jake said as he pointed to a particular
spot.

The young woman
was stepping out of the camera’s viewpoint, so it was natural that I’d missed
her the first time I’d glanced at the photo, but when I took a closer look, I
could see without a doubt that it was Emma.

“This guy is a
real sociopath,” I said.

“Not
necessarily,” Jake said.

“You’re not
defending him, are you?”

“Of course
not.
 
He’s stalking Emma, and that’s
certainly bad enough, but it doesn’t make him a murderer.
 
Don’t forget, Amanda had her own reasons
to want to see Rick dead.”

“Who would have
ever believed it?” I asked rhetorically.
 
“Apparently Rick Hastings lived most of his adult life on the shady side
of the law, but the reason he was murdered was because of some twisted form of
love.”

“We still don’t
know for sure that either one of them did it,” Officer Grant said as he started
collecting the photos.
 

I held onto the photo
Jake had found.
 
“Can I keep
this?
 
I need to show it to Emma so
she’ll see just how dangerous Kyle is.”

“Sorry, but it’s
evidence,” he said sadly.

“May she at least
take a picture of it with her cellphone?” Jake asked.

“I probably
shouldn’t even allow that,” he said, and then the acting police chief winked at
me.
 
“Jake, do you have a
second?
 
I’d like your advice about
something else.
 
It shouldn’t take
more than thirty seconds.”

As he turned
away, I didn’t need to be hit over the head to get his message.
 
Taking out my cellphone, I snapped three
quick pictures of the photo just as Officer Grant turned back to me and grinned
as he reached for the photo.
 
“Like
I said, I’m sorry that I can’t help, but this is official police business.”

“I understand,” I
said with a smile, “and I’ll try not to hold it against you.”

“I’d appreciate
that,” he said, and then he collected the photos and the zip drive.
 
“Sorry, but I really do have to
run.”
 
Officer Grant was heading for
the door when he stopped and looked at me.
 
“One more thing.
 
How did you
know that we’d find a slit in one of the sheets?”

“I’d love to say
that it was directly due to deductive reasoning, but the truth is that I didn’t
know it would be there at all.”

“So then, you got
lucky?” he asked me with a smile.

“Hey, I’m never
one to discount Lady Fortune when she grins down on me.”

 
He accepted that with a nod, and then
continued his progress outside.

Grace walked him
out, and the moment they were outside, I told Jake, “Thanks.
 
I don’t know why I didn’t think to do
that myself.”

“I’m sure that you
would have come up with it on your own,” Jake said.

“Probably, but I
doubt that I would have done it in time.
 
What do you think?”

“We’re making
progress,” Jake allowed.

“I’m not talking
about the case.
 
Well, at least not
directly.
 
How does it feel being on
this side of the investigation?”

Jake scowled for
a moment before answering.
 
“I have
to admit that I’m not all that fond of it, but I assume that I’ll get used to
it over time.”

“It will get
better.
 
I promise you.”

“I think you’re
right, but in the meantime, it’s tough to sit here and just do nothing.”

“Jake, it may
look like we’re not getting results, but so far, our investigation has been
phenomenally successful.”

“If you say so,”
he said.

“Was that what your
earlier lead was about?” I asked him.
 
“Did you know about the red light camera all along?”

“No, I didn’t
have a clue.
 
That came out of left
field.
 
Maybe that’s another reason
I’m feeling so frustrated.
 
I’m getting
my information second and even third hand.
 
It’s no way to run an investigation.”

“Sometimes it’s
the best that we can do, though,” I said.

Grace came back
in a minute later with a smile on her face.
 
“That was awfully nice of Stephen,
wasn’t it?”

“Providing the
food, or the information?” I asked her.

“Why can’t it be
both?” she asked in return.

“Truth be told, I’m
going to miss him being our chief,” I said.
 
“I have a hunch that Chief Tyler isn’t
going to be nearly as cooperative.”

“I thought you two
had worked things out?” Grace asked.

“Let’s just say
that it felt more like we were declaring a truce.
 
How long that will last, I have no
idea.
 
In the meantime, let’s take
advantage of the time that we’ve got left before he takes over for good.”

“The handful of
hours we have left, at any rate,” Jake said.
 
“We can’t forget that tomorrow at eight AM,
we all turn back into pumpkins.”

“Then we’d better
get busy solving this murder, hadn’t we?” I asked.

Chapter 21

“So, where do we
start?” I asked Jake.

“Let’s have one
more chat with our final two suspects.
 
I have a feeling that if we push them each a little harder, one of them is
going to crack.”

“Kyle seems particularly
on edge to me,” Grace said, “but do you honestly think that Amanda is going to
respond to pressure from three civilians?”

Jake
grinned.
 
“I’m counting on her still
not knowing that I’ve left the force.”

“Are you okay
with implying that?” I asked him.

“Suzanne, I agree
that it’s a gray area, but what other choice do we have?
 
I’ve never been pulled off of a case
before I’ve found the killer, and I don’t want to end things that way.”

“So, this has
become important to you, too,” I said.

“Of course it
has.
 
Once you and Grace involved me
in it, I started to take the murder personally.
 
That’s one of the secrets of my past
success.
 
Too many cops become
dispassionate over the years and they stop caring on a human level.
 
I never let that happen to me, though
I’m the first one to admit that I came close a time or two.”
 
Jake must have known how solemn he
sounded, because he clapped his hands together once to dispel the sobriety of
the mood and added, “Now, who’s ready to go find Kyle and Amanda?”

“I am,” I said.

“Well, you’re certainly
not going anywhere without me,” Grace added.

“Then let’s go.”

As we got into my
Jeep, Grace in the back and Jake in the passenger seat up front beside me, I
started the engine in the growing darkness as night began to fall in earnest.
 
We were at that time of year where we
were losing light in the morning and evening at an alarming rate, and the
temperature was definitely starting to drop.
 

“What are we waiting
for?” Jake asked as the Jeep idled in Grace’s driveway.

“Which one do we
tackle first?” I asked.
 
“I have to
know where we’re going before I can leave.”

“Well, Kyle is
closer, so I say we go after him first.
 
Do either one of you have any objections to that?” Jake asked as he
glanced at me first, and then Grace.

“One is as good
as the other in my book,” Grace said from the back.

“Kyle’s it is,
then,” I said, and I started driving.

“When we get
there, I want you both to let me handle things,” Jake said as I made my way to
Kyle’s place.
 
I knew that he lived
in a small guest cottage on the outskirts of town, a small home overgrown and
unkempt.
 
It had belonged to a
friend of my mother’s once, and I’d visited there when it had been in pristine
condition, but the last time I’d been by, I’d noticed that it had been severely
run-down.

“I thought we
were all doing this together, Jake,” Grace said.

“We are,” he said
as he turned slightly to face her.
 
“It’s just that I’ve had experience doing this kind of thing before.”

“So have we,”
Grace protested.

 
“Hey, take it easy.
 
We’re on the same team here,” I said.

“I know that, but
I don’t want Jake to forget that we’re all in this together.”

“You’re right.
 
That didn’t come out the way that I’d
intended it to.
 
I was wrong, and I
apologize,” Jake told Grace.

I glanced in my
rearview mirror and saw Grace studying Jake before she ever glanced over at
me.
 
“Does he do that very often?”

“What, be wrong?”
Jake asked.

Grace dismissed
that.
 
“No, lots of folks are wrong
more than they realize, or are willing to admit.
 
I’m just not used to someone owning up
to it and apologizing.”

“You’ve just been
hanging around with the wrong kind of people,” Jake said with a smile.

“Clearly,” she
said.

“Okay, then it’s
settled.
 
We go together, no matter
what,” I said.
 
“All I’ve got is a
tire iron for defense.
 
Is that
going to be enough?”

“Don’t worry
about it,” Jake said.

“What does that
mean?” I asked.

“I’m armed.”

“You’ve still got
a gun?
 
I figured that they’d make
you give it back,” I said, surprised that I hadn’t known that Jake was still
armed.
 
I knew that he had carried a
gun as a state police inspector, but I hadn’t realized that he owned one personally
as well.

“Suzanne, it’s
perfectly legal for me to carry a weapon.
 
I have a permit and everything.
 
You should know better than anyone that sometimes my past can come back
to haunt me.
 
I’ve put too many
people away to go around defenseless.”

“I doubt that
you’re all that vulnerable even without your gun,” Grace said with a grin.

“I’m not, but I
still feel better having it on me, especially in times like this.”

“Where do you
keep it?” I asked, now curious about it.
 
“I didn’t see a holster.”

“What, do you
mean like a cowboy?” Grace asked.

“I’ve got it in a
shoulder holster,” Jake said as he pulled his jacket back a little.

Sure enough,
there it was.
 
How had I missed it
before?
 
I prided myself on my
observational skills, but I’d somehow failed to see that Jake had been carrying
a weapon all along.

As we neared the run-down
cottage, I stopped a hundred feet from the door.
 

“There it is,” I
said as I turned the engine off.

“Let’s go,” Jake
said as he put his hand on the door.
 
“If it’s okay with you two, I’d like to try to intimidate him a little.”

“What are you
going to do, kick the front door in?” Grace asked with a smile.

“Not a chance,
but I am going to see how far I can push him using just words,” Jake answered.

“This ought to be
good,” I said.

At that moment,
Grace’s cellphone rang.
 
“It’s
Stephen,” she said.
 
“Do you mind if
I take it?”

“No, go ahead,”
Jake answered.
 
“It could be
important.”

After a moment of
conversation, I heard Grace say, “You guys go on.
 
I need to take this.”

“Is it about the murder
case?” I asked her.

“No, it’s more
like a crisis of faith.
 
Apparently
he feels overwhelmed by everything, and he needs a little pep talk.”

“Then he came to
the right gal,” I said with a smile.

“I’d like to
think so,” Grace replied.

“We can wait here
if you want to be a part of this,” Jake said.

“Thanks, but I
really need some privacy to do this properly.
 
Go on.
 
I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure,”
Jake said, and then he turned to me.
 
“Are you ready?”

“I’m raring to
go,” I said.

“Then let’s do
this.”

As we approached
Kyle’s front door, I saw Jake pull out his handgun and keep it at his
side.
 

“Do you honestly
think that you’re going to need that?” I asked him.

“Probably not,
but I’d like to have it out and ready, just in case.
 
Is that okay with you?”

“It makes me feel
a little safer, in all honesty.”

“Well, don’t let
up just because I’m armed,” Jake said.
 
“A weapon is just a tool.
 
I’d like to think that I don’t have to rely on it to do my job.”

I didn’t want to
be the one to remind him that he didn’t hold that particular position anymore,
so I just nodded in the last remnants of daylight.
 
Dusk was ending, and very soon we would
be in darkness.
 
That was going to
add a whole new layer of complications to our task at hand, but I refused to
worry about it, since there was nothing that I could do to stop it from coming.

Jake and I got to
the front door, and I could see a light on somewhere inside.
 
At first I thought that more than one
person was inside when I heard the whispers of a conversation filtering through
to us, but then I realized that a television was playing in the background,
barely loud enough for us to hear.

“Kyle, this is
Jake Bishop!
 
I need to speak with
you!” Jake commanded after banging hard on the front door three times with the
flat part of his hand.
 
His voice
was even more intimidating than his knock, and I was glad that I wasn’t on the
other side of that door.

There was no
answer.

“Kyle, you don’t
want me coming in there after you!” Jake boomed.

I heard something
fall over inside just then, and I braced myself for a confrontation.

Instead, I
suddenly heard the back door slam shut.

Kyle had been in
there, but now he was running away.

“Stay here!” Jake
barked at me as he started around back in the growing darkness.

“Not a chance,” I
answered as I followed him.
 
If
something was about to happen, I meant to be a part of it.

Jake just
shrugged and moved on.
 
He was in
full attack mode now, and it was a scary sight.
 

As we rushed
around the house, Jake shouted again.
 
“You can’t run forever.
 
Stand your ground and face me like a man!”

I listened for a
response, but I didn’t hear a word of reply.

In fact, I
couldn’t even hear anyone ahead of us.

“Where did he
go?”

Jake held up a
hand, and we both stopped and listened.

There wasn’t a
sound anywhere around but crickets chirping.

“We lost him,”
Jake said softly, though I noticed that he still kept his gun by his side.

“Well, we
certainly managed to get his attention.
 
What do we do now?”

Jake
shrugged.
 
“There’s really not much that
we can do here.
 
Besides, I’m not in
the mood to stand around and wait for him to show up again.
 
At the very least, we’ve given him
something to think about.
 
Now let’s
go find Amanda Moore and see if we can rattle her up a little, too.”

“I’m guessing that
it won’t be as easy to do as it was with Kyle,” I said as we walked back to my
Jeep.

“You never
know.
 
I have my ways,” Jake said,
and I could barely make out his grin in the last vestiges of light for the day.

“I never doubted
it for a second,” I said.

Grace was still
on the phone when we got back, but she ended the conversation as soon as I
closed my door.

“How did your
conversation go?” I asked her.

“He’s fine.
 
There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll
rise to the occasion.
 
What was all the
yelling about?”

Jake
laughed.
 
“That wasn’t yelling.
 
I was merely announcing our presence on
the scene.”

Grace
grinned.
 
“Well done, then, because
it nearly scared the pants off me, and I was all the way out here.
 
What did Kyle have to say for himself?”

“We never got a
chance to find out.
 
He ran like a
scared little rabbit,” I replied.

“That’s pretty
telling right there, isn’t it?
 
Do
we go after him in the dark?”
 
It
was clear that she didn’t relish the prospect of stumbling around in the
darkness, and for that matter, neither did I.

“Without a search
party, we’d probably never be able to track him down,” Jake said.
 
“I say we go talk to Amanda again.”

“If you’re as
forceful with her as you were with Kyle, you might just end the night with two
confessions before the night is over,” I said.

“Actually, one is
all we need,” Jake said.
 

It was Jake’s cellphone’s
turn to ring as I pulled away from the cottage.

“Hey.
 
Okay.
 
Hang on.
 
Give me one second.”
 
Jake covered the phone as he explained,
“It’s my friend from the force, Terry Hanlan.
 
I told him that he could call me when he
got the chance.
 
He needs some
advice about a case he’s working on.
 
Do you mind?”

I knew State Police
Inspector Hanlan pretty well myself.
 
He’d been the one who’d first told me that Jake had been shot in the
line of duty, and he’d become a friend of mine over time, as well as being Jake’s.
 
“Go on.
 
Tell him I said hello.”

Jake did as I
requested, and then he got so involved with the conversation that he might as
well not have been with us on the drive to Union Square.
 

As I drove, I
asked Grace softly, “Is Stephen really okay?”

“He’s fine.”

“I’ll bet he’s
glad that he won’t be the police chief in the morning,” I offered.

“On the
contrary.
 
It turns out that now he’s
sorry to be giving it up.
 
That’s
why he called me.
 
He wanted my
opinion on why George didn’t choose him as chief, instead of bringing someone
else in from the outside.”