Sunday evening dragged into Sunday night. The only positive was that the DA didn’t work weekends, so at least Cecil was still sitting in a jail cell and hadn’t yet followed through on a bad decision to sign away his life on trumped-up charges and an inaccurate confession. Carter had called me that afternoon, but only to say he’d be headed home after work to try to get some sleep. I didn’t bother to ask him if he’d made any progress on proving Cecil innocent. The tone of his voice told me everything I needed to know.
Ida Belle, Gertie, and I had driven by RJ’s house when we’d gotten back to Sinful. Her car was still there, and a Mudbug deputy was parked out front. Apparently, Cecil’s being in custody hadn’t eliminated the threat to RJ either in her mind or Carter’s or both. It was a good thing, since I had serious doubts that the man sitting in that jail cell had done anything wrong.
The problem was, I also believed Cooper.
Which only left us with Gina as the one Cecil was covering for.
We’d spent the rest of the afternoon at my house, going over and over the facts as we understood them, but we couldn’t make a case for anyone except Sledgehammer and Gina. When we added Cecil’s confession into the mix, Gina was the only one left standing. And with Sledgehammer in the wind, there was no opportunity to get some evidence by listening in. In between bouts of mulling and complaining about no answers, we’d take a drive around Sinful, but there was no sign of the black Mercedes. And my phone remained silent. No calls from our friend Detective Price. Not that I was expecting any.
I’d given Price a day to find Sledgehammer but come tomorrow morning, I was telling Carter exactly who Jim Garmon really was and what he was doing in Sinful. No way I was letting Cecil sign a confession when the perfect reasonable doubt suspect was right in our midst.
I tossed and turned most of the night and didn’t manage to truly drop off until early morning. Of course, that meant I slept later than usual and woke up feeling groggy and exhausted. But as soon as my eyes opened, my mind started whirling again, so there was no use to try to sleep anymore. I headed downstairs and put on coffee. I wasn’t surprised to see I’d already received a text from Ida Belle asking if I was up. I texted back and she indicated she and Gertie would be over shortly.
Misery loves company.
I was on my third cup and had already broken out my backup pot when they shuffled in. Gertie saw me drinking from one of my oversize hot chocolate mugs and took out two more of them before bringing both coffeepots to the table. We all drank in silence for a couple minutes, then finally Ida Belle leaned back and sighed.
“I wish I could say I dreamed the answer last night,” she said. “But mostly, I just had frantic nightmares.”
“I had heartburn,” Gertie said. “All that talk about chili from Price, and I got a craving around midnight and made up a batch.”
I stared at her. “Price complained about the chili making him sick. And that made you want to eat some?”
She shrugged. “He said ‘chili.’ That’s really all it took.”
I understood. Eating chili was no worse a decision than the four beers and eight cookies I’d consumed in one sitting last night.
“I wish we could get in to talk to Cecil,” Ida Belle said.
“I don’t think it would do any good,” I said. “Look, I lost a night’s sleep over this, but I don’t see any way around it. We all believe Cooper was telling the truth and we all believe Cecil is lying. That only leaves Gina. And unfortunately, it all fits. Gina hated Brock and RJ and has no alibi for either night. Cecil might have told her about Brock being at the motel or she could have overheard him talking to Brock. She could have driven over there, fought with Brock, and left.”
“You think Cecil saw her at the motel?” Ida Belle asked.
I nodded. “Maybe driving away. Then when he got there all hell was breaking loose, so he left and called Cooper to warn him off. Sledgehammer was in the parking lot which is when he spotted Cecil leaving and heard his muffler.”
“So we don’t think Sledgehammer saw the woman who argued with Brock, right?”
“Doubt it, or he would have ID’d her as well to keep the cops looking anywhere but at him,” I said. “If I had to guess, Sledgehammer had his confrontation with Brock, then headed to his car. Maybe he went for some smokes or called his boss or was retrieving something from the trunk. What we know for certain is that he was in that parking lot after Brock died and so was Cecil.”
Gertie let out a long-suffering sigh. “You really think it was Gina, don’t you?”
“That was at the motel? Yeah. That caused Brock’s head injury? No. I’m still betting on Sledgehammer for that one.”
“But we can’t prove it,” Ida Belle said. “And the reality is, both Cecil and Gina being on site wouldn’t be a good look. No smoke without a fire is what the DA will think. So even if Cecil knows Brock argued with a man before Gina showed up, he’s still not going to come clean. Doing so would send the police right back out to find that woman as soon as our friend Detective Price has to come out of the shadows and tell everyone his witness statement as Jim Garmon was accurate. Cecil confessing stops the investigation.”
Gertie threw up her hands. “We have to do something!”
The knock on my back door surprised us all. Carter usually came in the front and I wasn’t really sure how Mannie got in, but it was rarely by knocking or in broad daylight. I opened the door and found Ronald standing there holding my Queen dress encased in plastic and looking a bit annoyed. He hung the dress on a hook next to the back door then sat at the table with Ida Belle and Gertie.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“God no,” he said. “It’s horrible for the skin. I want you to know it has taken me days to get that dress clean but I did it, one sequin at a time. Went through four boxes of Q-tips.”
“Is that why you look aggravated?” Gertie asked. “You know, all that frowning doesn’t help the skin either.”
“Oh no!” He tried to blank his expression but didn’t quite manage it. “That woman is a nightmare! I’ve had a harder time controlling frown lines the past week than I have in the last year.”
“What woman?” Ida Belle asked.
“That loser RJ,” he said. “She was at the bank this morning, complaining and being rude to everyone. And since employees can’t say anything because of all that ‘customer is always right’ nonsense, I told her exactly what a crap person she was.”
“And what did she have to say to that?” I asked.
“She called me a ridiculous queen,” he said. “Like being ridiculous or a queen is an insult. So I said, ‘at least one of us is a queen,’ and everyone laughed, so she went huffing out of there. Thank God she’s leaving.”
I sat up straight. “She’s leaving?”
He nodded. “She said she was running an errand for her mother, then was headed back to Nashville. I saw luggage in her car.”
“Carter must have had to cut her loose,” Ida Belle said.
“Well, she’ll never make it through New Orleans without being pulled over for that plastic taped on her window,” Ronald said. “Assuming the car can even get her to New Orleans. It sounded like the engine was falling out when she left the bank.”
“It’s supposed to rain today,” Gertie said. “That’s probably why she left the plastic on.”
“So then stick around a day longer and get the window fixed,” Ronald said. “She cashed a check for five thousand dollars. I’m sure Sawyer could afford to loan her a couple hundred.”
“Guess her line of credit funded,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie nodded. “And contractors love their cash. But RJ loves her creature comforts. I’m surprised she’d risk leaving with the weather looking like it does.”
“Her protection disappears along with the order to keep her in town,” I said.
Ronald rolled his eyes. “I would ask who would want to hurt her but that’s most everyone. So the question is who would make the effort?”
“She and Brock ran afoul of a drug dealer back in Nashville,” I said.
“Good God!” Ronald said. “Then why on earth would Carter keep her around? Let her leave and take her trouble with her. There’s already enough damage in the wake of those two. The next bullet meant for her might go through a car window and into a neighbor.”
My cell phone rang and I checked the display.
Shadow Chaser.
“Who’d you rent a room to this time?” I asked when I answered.
“There’s a woman here,” he said, his voice low. “She asked me for a jump and I’m not sure, but I think it’s on that car the dead guy was driving. The cops told me the bank was sending a repo guy to pick it up. She has keys and waved a paper. If it had started, she would already be gone, so it’s not really my business, right?”
“Dark hair, green eyes, curvy, and rude?”
“That’s her.”
I started to tell him to call the cops but given that Mandy said it was the SUV ‘they’ had purchased, her name was probably on the title. That meant she wasn’t stealing it and a repo was the bank’s problem, not law enforcement’s.
“Where are you now?” I asked.
“In the office. I told her I’d drive around back and help her out once I found the jumper cables, but then I looked out the back window and saw her standing by the car smoking a cigarette and I had this flash…like I’d seen her before.”
I felt my pulse quicken. “When?”
“That night. The night the dude died.”
She cashed a check for five thousand dollars.
Her voice is shot.
She knew I could see her.
I went straight from my car to the back patio.
RJ ran everything, including Brock.
I think he had something on her.
She always insisted on being in the front seat.
He couldn’t even hold a pick.
I jumped up from my chair and ran for the door. “We have to get to the motel!”