Addison sat on the floor of his apartment and stared down at the files that he'd spread out across his living room. It had taken him weeks to track down the bits and pieces of paper in front of him and he still couldn't really make heads or tails out of what he'd found.
David didn't know where his father and Grover had stolen a million dollars worth of jewelry from. He hadn't gone looking for answers, even after the necklace that had come spilling out of Trish's box spring matched the bracelet that had been found with his mother's corpse. David had called it a blessing in disguise when Curtis broke into the house and stolen the jewelry.
Addy picked up the pawn ticket they'd found in Kerry's house. It was the only document, other than his own chicken-scratch notes, that wasn't at least 30 years old. Addison still didn't know why Kerry, stickler for the law that he was, would have knowingly pawned stolen items. Cal seemed to think that Kerry had been Curtis's willing accomplice, but Addison had his own doubts. Kerry had never been much for taking the easy route, even when it would have saved him a significant amount of personal distress.
Addison figured that Kerry had been blackmailed, or outright threatened, into cooperating with Curtis's plans to kill Trish. What he couldn't figure out was how the stolen jewelry tied into the head that Sully had found in Kerry's trunk or the break-in at the jail. He had, however, figured out how the victim had been tied to the jewelry.
Taking a deep breath, Addison smoothed out the folded photocopy of the papers he'd borrowed off of Sully's desk earlier. The Silver City Lab had gotten a positive DNA match between the head Sully had found in Kerry's trunk and a missing person's case out of Rockdale. The head that was currently being reunited with it's arm in the Silver City morgue belonged to a woman named Beverly Jones.
Beverly Jones was the name of the pawn broker who had purchased the twice-stolen jewelry from Kerry.
Addison was pretty fucking sure it wasn't a coincidence.
Beverly Jones had been the first legal owner of the jewelry in more than a quarter of a century. Addy had a generalized idea of how the pawn process worked. Beverly Jones had purchased the jewelry in good faith, and for quite a bit of nice, hard-to-trace cash, from Kerry. She'd then cataloged every individual piece for her store and logged them into her official inventory.
Addison didn't know precisely how whoever was looking for the jewelry had learned that Beverly had purchased it. His best guess was that she'd probably registered the purchases in an official database that had been created to help cut down on the number of stolen items that got pawned. Lot of good that good deed had done her.
He didn't need to be a genius, or even a particularly good cop, to figure out that someone had gone to Silver City Highway Pawn looking for the jewelry. What he couldn't figure out was why this nightmare hadn't stopped right then and there. Beverly Jones had the jewelry and, even if she had fought her attacker, the discovery of her decapitated head in Kerry's trunk made it pretty clear she had lost. Why the hell was her attacker still looking for the jewelry?
Why had he gone to the trouble of tracking the jewelry all the way back to Possum Creek if he already had the jewelry Kerry had sold to Beverly?
Unless maybe Kerry hadn't sold all the jewelry. The very dim light bulb in Addison's mind suddenly clicked on. He frowned down at the old newspaper clippings and police reports that he'd been gathering up for the last two months. He'd spent entirely too much of his medical leave time going through decades of paperwork. Even knowing that it might be a total waste of time, collecting every story or report that featured jewelry that roughly matched the items Grover and Ricky had stolen had kept Addison from going completely insane while he'd been recovering from getting shot.
Now, as he sat and took in everything he'd gathered, even knowing that some of it was utterly useless, he realized that Kerry had never had all the jewelry. David had never found all the jewelry. He'd only found Grover's half of the jewelry plus one horrible bracelet that had been on Maureen Breedlove's wrist when she'd died.
Addy wasn't exactly known for making brilliant deductions, but it seemed fairly obvious that the killer had found the pawn ticket and made the assumption that Kerry still had whatever horrible little trinket that he thought was worth killing for. Now he was coming after the whiny deputy.
Addison massaged his own temples tiredly as his cell phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered it, more out of habit than intention.
“Hello?”
“Where the heck are you?” His sister's voice crackled through the line and she sounded slightly panicked.
“My apartment. Why?”
“You're at your house?” Gracie asked in obvious disbelief. “It's almost six o'clock. I'm at the church. You're supposed to be here to practice walking me down the aisle.”
“Oh shit. I'm sorry. I lost track of time.” Addy was already standing up and heading for the bedroom to change outfits. The ragged jeans and t-shirt he'd been wearing all day wouldn't work for Gracie's high class rehearsal dinner.
“Did you forget about me?” Gracie sounded like she was near tears.
“No, I didn't.” Addison stripped down and tossed his clothes at the hamper. They missed and slid down onto the floor as he yanked a lime green button down shirt out of his closet and pulled it on. He really hadn't forgotten about Gracie. He'd just gotten preoccupied and lost track of time.
“Look, I know that whatever you and Mak do on your own time is your business, but I really thought my wedding was more important to you than getting laid.”
“I'm not-.”
“Don't lie to me,” Gracie said. “Just get here as soon as you can, please. Someone's taken my wedding dress and replaced it with a dress from a nightmare. Please, Addy. Drive fast.”
“Fuck,” Addy said. “Give me five minutes.”