The Dawson brothers tell me about the party. Beer and pizza for a couple of hours. Nobody getting out of hand, just them, Jake, and Brian—until Becky showed up with a bottle of Jägermeister. She had gone home and changed into a vee-necked T-shirt, short shorts, and sandals. She was on the prowl for Brian. They were embarrassed to say it to their favorite kindergarten teacher, but Danny finally tells me she was pouring shots into everyone’s red cups. When she bent over the table, they couldn’t miss the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Jake made it clear that he didn’t want any part of the booze and he put his hand over the top of his cup, and she poured about an ounce onto his hand. The brothers, being older and wiser, knew that the sooner they made an excuse to leave, the sooner Brian and Becky could hook up. They left her hanging on to him while Jake started cleaning up. They wanted to leave before midnight, and Becky’s arrival hastened that decision.
“She uses booze to act slutty,” Sharon says of the woman who was supposed to stand next to her at the wedding and say nice things about the bride and the groom at the reception. “She puts on this facade of ‘miss goody-two-shoes’ around town. To let her freak flag fly, she needs to get plastered. Saw it with her in high school and summers when we were home from college.”
“The booze made me do it,” I say as we head back into town.
“Exactly.”
I reminisce. “I witnessed it firsthand in college. My roommate got drunk and gave herself permission to act stupid. More than a few times, I came back to my dorm room to find a sock on the door and had to sleep in the TV lounge.”
“Ouch,” Sharon says.
“She’s now a big-time lawyer at the state capitol,” I say.
“No kidding.” Sharon laughs and then asks, “Do you want me to drop you somewhere, Mrs. Strong?”
“Is it going to feel weird calling me Gwen?”
“Yeah, Mrs. Strong. It would be like me calling my mom or dad by their first names.”
“No problem, Sharon, I get it. Don’t feel that you have to be formal with me, though.”
“Okay.”
“Let me off here. I need some time to think.”
“Going to see Brian at the body shop?”
“An old homicide detective once told me, ‘Ain’t nothing to it but to do it.’ Things happened fast today, and I don’t want to just stumble into it.” I go through the facts in my mind. Brian and Becky at the after-party. Also, Brian being the 911 caller, not to mention how he kept taking the Stillman twins’ cash. I must be careful how I approach the interview.
“Don’t forget he was Jake’s best friend,” Sharon reminds me.
“You’re right, honey. That must be my first concern. I am sure that he is hurting.” Maybe she’ll find out that Brian is about to get a million-dollar payout or that he was laundering money for the Stillman twins, but today is not the day, and I will not be the one to tell her. Not yet.
She lets me out of her car, and instead of walking to the body shop, I take the alley to Yvette Strohmeyer’s house a few blocks away from the main drag through town. She and her husband Michael were classmates with Brian, Jake, Sharon, and Becky. Mike, a sheriff, may know something about the Stillman twins.
I approach their small wood shake house, painted gray, from the alley and intercept Mike coming to his truck. He is in gym clothes, toting a lunch box and carrying his uniform on a wooden hanger. He’s probably heading off to work out before going in for the evening shift at the jail. Shaved head, short trim goatee, and reflecting sunglasses give off the take-no-crap attitude that goes with his ripped physique. The change in demeanor is apparent when he spots me. “Hi, Mrs. Strong. How are you?”
“I am fine, Michael. How’s Yvette?”
“Doc says she’s doing fine, but we are getting antsy. Her due date was almost two weeks ago.”
“Any talk of inducing her?” I ask.
“No, the doctor says she doesn’t want to do that yet with this being our first.” He laughs. “We even tried your pepperoni pizza trick, and that didn’t work.” He reaches for the door handle.
“It was worth the try,” I say as he hoists himself into the cab. “I need a minute with you if I can.”
He turns the key, and the engine fires up. I walk up to the window as his diesel idles. “Mabel and Warren Dawson have asked me to look into Jake’s death.”
“Really? I thought that was ruled a death by suicide.”
“It was, but nobody can come up with a motive. Barney and the State Police aren’t saying for sure there was no note, so the family is scratching their heads.”
With the diesel rumbling away, his voice doesn’t carry past my ears. “Word is that he didn’t want to get married to Sharon.”
“I heard that rumor floating around, too.”
“Did anybody tell you Jake had a girl on the side?”
“Who?” I try to keep my voice calm and my reaction minimal, but I am reminded why I don’t play poker.
“Yvette didn’t believe it either when I told her. She thought that Jake and Sharon were soulmates. That’s why he and the girl had to sneak around. Barney might know more. He caught them parked down by the river.”
I think back to the time before Ken and I were married when things got hot and heavy. I’d be mortified if a police officer had poked his flashlight into the truck at the wrong moment. “Still, is that a reason to shoot yourself in the head?”
“Depends. Could he handle somebody standing up at the wedding and objecting?”
I will admit, I’ve watched a handful of cringeworthy wedding videos on YouTube with morbid curiosity. “I can see it now that you mention it. Milford’s childhood sweethearts. Sharon totally oblivious to Jake’s philandering, standing on the altar and getting blindsided. But looking at how’s she’s suffering now, I think this is a ton worse.”
Mike doesn’t flinch. “Who said that suicide is a noble act? Maybe Jake couldn’t deal with getting outed, and he didn’t have the guts to fess up to Sharon.”
I do the math. Gunshot residue on his hand. Contact wound to his head. Girlfriend on the side. Happens the night before he is to get married. It all weighs down one side of the scale. Brian and Jake arguing about the Stillman cash and the million-dollar policy rest on the other side of the scale. Pile on the twin’s fear that Jake will snitch about their real business, and I have a real tottering scale going on.
I move ahead with my real business for wanting to talk to Mike. “Candace Dawson tells me that Jake and Brian’s biggest customers were the Stillman brothers and that they always dealt in cash. Jake and Brian had disagreements about not reporting that income.” I shy away from any reference to the cash being dirty or how the Stillmans generate all that cash.
Mike shuts off the truck and stares out the window at me. I have struck a nerve. He shrugs his shoulders. “Not reporting cash to the IRS, so what? I wish I had a nickel for every businessperson who ‘forgot’ to report cash.”
“What if Jake’s death was not a death by suicide, Michael? What if it had to do with where the Stillman cash was coming from? You said nothing about them. If somebody killed Jake, why the night before he was to get married?”
For a nanosecond, I see his true reaction before he laughs and says, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Strong, I think you’ve been watching too many reruns of Murder, She Wrote.”
“I don’t think I ever watched one, but tell me, Michael, why are you avoiding telling me what you know about the Stillman twins?” I might look up at a buff man in his truck, but to him, his kindergarten teacher is looking down at a six-year-old boy, and she is repeating a question.
At that moment Yvette walks up to us. “Hi, Mrs. Strong.” Turning to Mike, she adds, “Is everything okay, honey? I heard your truck stop running.”
He smiles at his very pregnant bride and says, “Turned it off to talk to Mrs. Strong for a sec. Told her the pepperoni pizza trick didn’t work.” He clearly doesn’t want to talk in front of her about Jake’s murder or the Stillman twins.
“How are you doing, Yvette?” I ask.
“No change. Doc says any day now. Can’t wait. I think our baby will be a soccer player though, Mrs. Strong.” She holds her bulging belly and groans.
I laugh. “Everything will work out fine, guys.” I give her a peck on the cheek. “I will see you later.”
I walk in the direction that Mike’s truck is facing. I hear him fire it back up again. I wait at the intersection of the alley and the cross street on the sidewalk out of sight for him while he finishes talking with Yvette.
Finally, he pulls up, looking sour. He says, “Mrs. Strong, the Stillman twins are bad news. Jake killed himself because he didn’t want to face the music at his wedding. Let it go.” He checks both ways again and lurches away from me, leaving me in a black cloud of diesel exhaust.