Vanessa Gray Bartal - Lacy Steele 07 - Icy Grip of Murder (16 page)

He shrugged. “Jenny was good at
lifting cars. She had a light touch and she never came close to getting caught.
She got us some real beauties and we gave her a cut. It was win-win.”

“Where did she get the cars she
stole? This is a small town. Surely people would start to notice if all their
cars went missing,” Lacy said.

“Canada,” Bug said.

“She stole cars from Canada?” Lacy
said.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“How did she get to Canada if she
was hiding out?”

Bug gave her a look like she was
stupid. “She walked. It’s like fifty feet away. How she got back in with a car,
I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Jenny didn’t like to be checked up on.”

“How often did she bring you cars?”

“Before she went into hiding? All
the time, like two a week. After, not so much,” he sounded sullen and
disappointed.

“How often did you see her after
she stopped bringing cars?” she asked.

“I don’t know, once every few
months or something. Not very often.”

“And that made you sad,” Lacy
pressed.

He shrugged.

“Did Jenny like the ponies?”

“Yes,” he said. His voice became
thicker. After seeing firsthand Jenny’s taste in movies, she doubted very much
that the woman had liked a children show about magical horses. But she had
seemed very good at making people believe what she wanted them to believe about
her, especially the men in her life.

“Were you more than friends with
Jenny?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. His head came up
and his chin jutted defiantly in her direction, daring her to say otherwise.
Lacy tipped her head, trying to figure out where the defiance came from.

“Did she think that?” Lacy asked.

Some of his bravado faded and he
sagged a little. “Deep down, I think she loved me, too.”

Lacy paused again, recounting the
situation. It was a good thing she wasn’t a cop; her interrogations would take
forever. But she needed the time to sort her thoughts and put things in their
proper order. If she were looking for motive, which she was, Bug would have
just handed her two of them: resentment over a fading business partnership and
unrequited love. Which angle should she pursue first?

“You said that Jenny had stopped
bringing you cars,” she began.

“Yeah, the well ran dry, but we
found other avenues.”

“What about Jenny?”

“What about her?”

“How did she survive if she was no
longer splitting the profits from your car scheme?”

He frowned as if the question had
never occurred to him before. “I don’t know. I guess she found other ways to
make money.”

“How? She was sequestered in the
middle of the forest,” Lacy said.

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding
testier. “Jenny never had trouble coming up with a scheme. Maybe she was
running jewelry with Louse.”

“No, that dried up, too,”
Lacy
said. “I saw her place, though. Nice stuff. She had to
have money coming from somewhere.”

He shrugged one shoulder, trying to
look like he didn’t care, but he drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. She
gave herself a victory point for getting to him. She needed to press a little
harder, to see if she could get him to break.

“Do you think she had a sugar
daddy?”

“A what?” he asked, confused.

If she was going to get to him, she
should probably use terms that were familiar to him. Come to think of it, she
hadn’t heard anyone use the term “sugar daddy” since Marilyn Monroe was alive.
“A, uh, you know, an older gentleman who was paying her for…things.”

“What kind of things?” he asked.

“Favors.”

“Jenny never did favors for
anybody,” he said.

She was losing him. “Do you think
she had a rich old boyfriend who was paying her to…be illicit with him?”
Sometimes she was too modest for her own good. Why couldn’t she say the words?
It wasn’t as if her grandmother was in the room.

Bug laughed. “Are you crazy? Jenny
would have puked before she let some old dude touch her, money or no.”

“Okay, then where was she getting
the money? She couldn’t move around freely. She had to have help. Who was
helping her?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

He had lost his outrage over the
possibility that Jenny had someone else. She needed him to find it again if she
had any hope of keeping him off balance. “It had to be someone you know,
though, right? Jenny would never trust anyone outside your group. And they had
to be pretty close for her to depend on him so completely, don’t you think?
That kind of closeness and so much time together, I don’t know. Sounds like
love.”

“Jenny was not with anyone else in
the group,” he said, thumping his fist on the table.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because I would know, okay? She
would have told me.”

“Not if she was using you, not if
she was playing you like she played poor, dumb Flea. He hid her; he kept her
secrets. He probably thought he had a shot with her, too. But he didn’t, did
he? That’s kind of pathetic. Is that how it was with you?”

“No! Jenny and I had something
special.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Ye–I mean, I just knew. We had a
bond. We were raised the same, came from the same place,” Bug said.

“You all came from the same place,”
Lacy reminded him. “She had something special with Michael once until she
framed him for her murder.”

“It wasn’t like that with us.”

“Wasn’t it? How many times did you
go to her cabin to bring her things—food, drinks, clothes,
magazines
? How many times did you do her bidding like a
helpless little puppy? How many times did you actually watch
My Little Pony
together?”

“Shut up!” he thundered. Behind
her, she could feel Jason and Michael tense, but she was almost there, she
almost had him.

“Jenny used you, the same way she
used everyone else in her life. She said you were special, but she said it to
all of them. She only wanted what she could get from you, and when she was
finished with you, she threw you away.”

His head swiveled back and
forth,
his fists shook with suppressed rage.

“And when you finally realized how
it was, you killed her,” she said quietly.

She thought she had him, but then
the emotion went away, to be replaced by confusion again. “What? You think I
killed Jenny? I would never, could never. I loved her.”

“But she didn’t love you back,”
Lacy said.

“Maybe not, but that wasn’t worth
killing her for.”

“What about the lack of cars she
brought you?”

“I told you we found another
source. We were doing okay. Why would I kill Jenny? That’s crazy. You’re
crazy.” He sat back and regarded her calmly. Lacy stared at him in
consternation. Had he somehow gotten himself under control or was his confusion
genuine?

She turned to Jason, looking for a
clue about what to do next. He winked at her and stood, effectively ending the
interview. “Thanks for your time,” he said cordially. He held his hand out to
Lacy. She took it and stood. They were almost at the door when Jason paused and
employed what she called his “
Columbo
Technique.”

“One more question,” he said. “Have
you been here all night?”

“No, I went out for coffee,” Bug
said, still distracted. “She liked the ponies, I know she did. She promised to
go to
BronyCon
with me someday.”

Though he had no idea what that
was, Jason nodded at him, and they were on their way.

“I’m sorry. I guess that didn’t go
so well,” Lacy said as soon as they were back in the car.

“What are you talking about? That
was brilliant,” Jason said. “I’ve never seen you do so well under pressure. It
was like you were a different person back there.”

“I sort of was,” she said.

“How so?” he asked.

“Never mind,” she said. He didn’t
see the differences in them; he didn’t realize that she hadn’t had a calamity
since they’d arrived and that he’d had all of them. “I wish I could have gotten
a confession.”

“Impossible to do if he’s
innocent,” Michael said.

“You think he’s innocent?” Lacy
said.

“Of being a pony-obsessed weirdo?
No.
Of murder?
Maybe. You got him to give an honest
reaction to the charge, and his honest reaction was confusion. Plus I believe
him that the car thefts had tapered before Jenny disappeared. There goes one
motive. And killing someone because she doesn’t love you back isn’t normal
behavior, not even for someone like Bug. Unless we’re missing another motive, I
don’t think he’s our guy.”

“So you don’t think he broke into
the house tonight,” Lacy said
,
feeling relieved that
she hadn’t just had a one on one with the man who had forced her to hide naked
and shivering under a stranger’s bed.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jason said.

“I don’t get it,” Lacy said.

“I think it’s possible that we’re dealing
with more than one person. The person who broke into Len and Linda’s house
might not be the same person who killed Jenny.”

“Why would there be two people?”
Lacy asked.

“Because Len and Linda have dealt
with a lot of troubled kids over the years, and Len is sick. Everyone probably
knows he keeps a lot of meds in the house. Druggies will do whatever it takes
to get their hands on those meds,” Jason said. “And a guy who covers himself
with tattoos of cartoon ponies has to be on drugs. Doesn’t he?”

“I did bump into a large box of
what sounded like pills when I was under the bed,” Lacy said.

Jason grimaced. “He should have
those locked in a safe. I’ll have a word with him about it before we leave.”

“Do you really think it was a drug
seeker?” Michael asked. “Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence?”

“It is a coincidence, and I don’t
like those, but I’ve dealt with too many pill poppers to rule it out as a
possibility,” Jason said.

A sleepy haze settled over the car.
Now that the interview was over, Lacy’s adrenaline came crashing down. The
evening had been eventful, and now she was exhausted. Her phone buzzed and she
knew without looking that it was Pearl. The tired, grumpy part of her wanted to
lash out, to tell Pearl to leave her alone, to tell her that there were more
important things in the world than her lousy play. But anything she said would
not only fall on deaf ears, it would make her feel guilty later when she wasn’t
so tired. So she ignored the phone and tried to stay awake on the short drive
back to the Swenson’s house.

Once there, she felt like a zombie.
She was drained of all energy. She was so tired that Jason and Michael took
pity on her and let her have first turn in the bathroom. She perched on the
edge of the tub to brush her teeth and dozed off, barely catching herself from
toppling backwards into the tub. When she left the bathroom, she made a wrong
turn, opening the garage instead.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Jason
asked, rescuing her from her daze before she curled up on the hood of the car like
a cat.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Come on, sleepy.” He took her hand
and led her to the proper room, giving her a little push toward the bed. Lacy
crawled inside and pulled the blanket over her head. Nothing had ever felt so
good as that bed, but when she closed her eyes, sleep wouldn’t come. She
thought maybe it was because she was subconsciously waiting for Jason, but when
he crawled over her and turned toward the wall, she still couldn’t fall asleep.
She felt as if her mind was trying to tell her something, but what?

“What’s wrong?” Jason whispered.

“I can’t turn off my brain, but I’m
so tired,” Lacy said.

He lifted his hand and began
smoothing his index finger over her forehead. “That’s nice,” she murmured.

“My mom used to do this when I was
little and couldn’t sleep,” he said.

It was nice to hear him say
something pleasant about his mother. Most of his memories and stories were
laced with bitterness. She was going to ask him a question about his mom, but
when she opened her eyes again it was morning.

Michael and Jason had already left
the room. Lacy stumbled out to the kitchen and saw them sitting at the table
with Len and Linda.

“Good morning,” Linda greeted her
cheerfully. “I heard you had some trouble last night with an intruder.”

“Yes,” Lacy said, not sure how to
continue. It was Linda’s house, and yet she seemed strangely unperturbed that
someone had broken in.

“I’m sorry about that,” Linda said.

“It’s not your fault,” Lacy said.
She sat and poured herself to a glass of juice.

“Yes, but Jason has a point,” Linda
said.

“I was telling them they need a
safe for Len’s medication,” Jason said. “Something sturdy enough that the whole
thing can’t be taken. I can recommend several.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Len
said. “We’ll get right on that. Drug addiction is a horrible thing, and
something we’ve seen too often. I’m glad most of our kids never went that
route, and the ones who did fell into it after they left our care.”

Michael arched an eyebrow in a way
that told Lacy he disagreed with that statement, but he didn’t comment. She
doubted all of the kids who passed through their care had been squeaky clean,
but maybe that was how they chose to see them. After all, they had whitewashed
Michael’s past and accepted him into their home with open arms. Maybe they did
the same for everyone else.

Something niggled in the back of
her mind, but what? It was the same feeling she’d had last night before going
to sleep. Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it in annoyance, expecting it to be
Pearl, but it was Kimber.

“Excuse me,” she said, removing
herself
from the kitchen to take the call.

“Hey, girl, when are you coming
home? This town is too quiet without the three of you,” Kimber greeted her.

“Soon, I hope. How is everything?”

“You mean how is your loony new secretary?
Crazier than a rabid chipmunk, but she seems to be doing a good job keeping
things together while you’re away. Someone hit a squirrel in the street in
front of the Stakely building and Suze picked it up and made a black funeral
dress for it. It’s on display downstairs. She put a little sign in its paw
saying that whoever hit it is a murderer. Businesswise, though, things seem
good. Joe’s been sneaking into your office at night and going over everything
to make sure it’s holding together. So far so good.”

“Give Joe a hug for me. And a
cookie,” Lacy said.

“Will do,” Kimber replied. “How are
things there?”

Lacy sat on the bed and filled her
in on the eventful week.

“So they arrested Michael for
murder, even though the girl was still alive,” Kimber said.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he tell them she was
still alive?”

“He did, and then I did after I
talked to her, but they wouldn’t believe me.”

“I bet they choked on crow when she
actually turned up dead,” Kimber said.

“No. They hate Michael.”

“How could anyone hate Michael?”
Kimber asked.

“They think he’s some kind of
criminal mastermind,” Lacy said.

Kimber laughed for a long minute.
“That’s ridiculous. Why? Because he’s from Ireland?”

“Uh, maybe,” Lacy said. It wasn’t
her place to disclose the truth of Michael’s past, not even to Kimber. “All I
know is that things are crazy here and have been since we arrived. Someone
killed that girl and I hate to leave until we try our best to figure out who.”

“Even after someone torched your
hotel room and slit the tires on your car?” Kimber said.

“It would be different if I was
alone, but Jason is here, and I feel safe with him nearby. You should have seen
the person who had to come give me a new rental in the middle of the night,
though. It was obvious she had just stumbled out of bed. She was wearing
curlers, bless her.”

“Curlers? Did she stumble out of
the fifties? What kind of car did they give you?”

“They gave me a…” Lacy cut off,
staring at the wall. She finally remembered what her brain had been trying to
tell her since last night.

“Lacy, you there?”

“Yes. I have to go. I have to talk
to Jason about something. Talk to you later.”

“All right. Be careful.”

“You, too,” Lacy said absently and
hung up. She was about to retrieve Jason, but there was no need. He and Michael
came into the room almost as soon as her conversation was finished.

“How’s Kimber? Does she miss me?”
Michael asked with some of his former cockiness. Lacy
was too
distracted to be annoyed
by the thought of him hitting on her friend.
She stood and closed the door, pressing her back to it.

“What’s going on?” Jason asked.

“The car. Last night when I
accidentally wandered into the garage, I saw Len and Linda’s car.”

“So?” Michael pressed.

“So it’s a gray sedan, the same
kind that was following us when we first arrived.”

“What? That’s crazy. Why would they
have followed us?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know,” Lacy said.

“It can’t be the same car. There
are lots of gray sedans,” he said.

“I caught a partial on the plate,”
Jason said. “Minnesota Whiskey Tango Bravo.”

“All right, I’ll go check, but I’m
telling you there’s no way it was them,” Michael said. Lacy moved aside so he
could leave the room. She and Jason didn’t speak until he returned, although
she did cross the room and sit beside Jason on the bed.

Michael returned a couple of
minutes later looking shell-shocked. “It is a gray sedan, and the plate is
WTB-4295.” He sat on the other side of Lacy.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“It means we can’t talk here,”
Jason said. “Let’s go.”

“I haven’t had coffee yet,” she
said.

“We’ll get some. I know a place.”

“Do they happen to sell doughnuts?”
Michael asked.

“How many times do I have to say
that I’m on vacation?” Jason said. He tugged his hat low over his ears,
obscuring most of his brow.

“It would benefit you to look up
the meaning of that word sometime,” Michael said. “I think you might find that
it doesn’t entail dressing like you ride a moose to work and eating your weight
in pastry.”

Jason took a breath to defend
himself
, but Lacy intervened. “Come on, I’m getting a
caffeine headache.”

“Are you sure it’s not just from
staring at his hat?” Michael asked. “It becomes dizzying after a while.”

“Lacy likes my hat,” Jason said.
“Don’t you, Lacy?”

“It’s, uh, very, very nice.
Sophisticated, even,” Lacy said.

“I don’t believe this. Can’t a guy
expand his wardrobe choices without getting flack? Plus, it’s warm. You guys
only wish you were as warm as I am,” Jason said.

“I think that has less to do with
the hat and more to do with the seal-like layer of blubber you’re adding,” Michael
said.

“Seriously, head exploding here.
Come on.” Lacy grabbed the keys and led the way to the car while the men
bickered. Was this what brothers were like? Somehow she thought so. Strangely,
it didn’t bother her. It was much better than the caustic
cat
fights
she and Riley had shared over the years. Michael and Jason liked
to pick on each other, but it was all in good fun.

Her good feelings lasted until they
arrived at the coffee shop. After a few rejuvenating sips of caffeine, she
remembered why they were there. It was hard to believe their sweet hosts had
been spying on them, but what else were they to think? Everyone seemed
reluctant to start the conversation. After Jason ordered his doughnuts and sat
down, Lacy began.

“Why do you think Len and Linda
were following us?”

“I’m still not convinced they
were,” Michael said.

“For the sake of argument, let’s
say it was them. Why would they do it?” Jason said.

“Maybe they heard I was back in
town and wanted to see what I was up to,” Michael suggested. Lacy and Jason
didn’t respond, and he sighed. “That’s idiotic, I know.
But
wishful thinking on my part.
I don’t want them to be guilty of anything,
to have had any part in Jenny’s death.”

“Let’s lay the facts on the table.
Jenny’s dead and we’re reasonably sure that someone killed her. She had been
involved in illegal activity with Bug at the auto shop and Louse at the jewelry
store, and then she wasn’t. Yet she still somehow had money coming in. Flea, at
the very least, was hiding her. He may have been participating in some scheme
with her, although I don’t know what. Len and Linda were following us and
seemed unnaturally upset about Jenny’s death, despite the fact that they hadn’t
seemed to like her very much,” Jason listed.

“I just thought of something,” Lacy
said. “We’ve left a stone unturned. We haven’t talked to your other insect
friend since we found Jenny, the baby faced one.”

“Larva,” Michael supplied. “I agree
we should talk to him, but I don’t think we’ll find much. His innocent
expression is a good match for his personality. He dabbled in light
stuff—lifting the occasional wallet here and there—but he never had
a heart for crime. He was always an outdoorsy kind of kid, a big fan of being
in the woods. He prefers nature to people.”

“Northern Minnesota’s answer to
Walt Whitman,” Lacy said.