AFTER CLASSES THE next evening, Chip braked in front of Gary Shotwell’s address and eyeballed the blue tarp spread over the east end of the modest ranch-style home’s roof. There’d been no hurricane this year, but apparently Gary’s roof had sprung a leak. Although the tarp appeared seriously faded and could have been in place for a while.
Was Gary waiting for insurance money before he made the repairs? Did that mean money was an issue for the guy? Nothing unusual about that. Hell, money is an issue for me these days.
Chip surveyed the neighborhood. Pleasant, middle-class area. The yards were well tended, most with bicycles and other signs of families littering the grass. Not too many for-sale signs.
Chip shook his head. What was he doing here evaluating a neighborhood, wondering about a damn tarp over a roof? How had Lana talked him into becoming her undercover operative—and why had he agreed? He had over a hundred pages to read tonight and no time for this investigative nonsense.
He should be in the library, not in Gary’s front yard.
Gary expected his visit, but had been surprised by the phone call. Chip sensed the entire team had been unsettled by Coach’s retirement party, all sorts of memories—both pleasant and unpleasant—having been dredged from the deep recesses of time.
And eight years was a long time. Chip knew he’d changed, or at least his priorities had. Ideas that had seemed crystal clear as an eighteen-year-old, as if he’d focused them into clarity through binoculars, had blurred into a collage of bad mistakes.
And he’d participated in the bad judgment, or had gone with the flow, anyway. He hadn’t objected to decisions that could be considered interference with a police investigation, a crime. He was now in training to be an officer of the court, and he needed to set matters straight. Time to accept responsibility for his part in the disaster and help Lana correct the errors an entire team had made.
So he’d agreed to talk to Gary, to feel him out.
He needed to stop kidding himself about why. If he didn’t talk to Gary, Lana would, and Chip didn’t want her anywhere near a guy who looked more like a bouncer at a Mafia hangout than a delivery driver. What if Gary was a murderer?
Why was he sitting here procrastinating, like the old slacker Chipper? He needed to get this conversation over with and his butt into the library.
He stepped from the car and approached the porch, noticing a sign that read For Sale or Lease in the front yard of a bungalow-style home next door. He made a mental note of the Realtor’s phone number, wondering about the amount of rent required to lease a small house like that one.
Gary threw open the front door before Chip could knock, his red hair buzzed into a shorter cut than at Coach’s party.
“Chip, my man.”
“Hey, Gary. Thanks for seeing me.”
“Sure, buddy. You want a beer?”
“I can always drink a beer,” Chip said, following Gary into his living room, where a large flat-screen TV blared with some kind of ultimate fighting competition. Men wearing helmets danced around each other in a ring, looking for the opportunity to kick each other’s butt. Chip looked away. Not his type of competition.
But maybe it was Gary’s thing. The old team manager had bulked up big-time since graduation.
The living room was what his mother would call a pigsty. Empty beer cans and opened mail littered a coffee table. Newspapers covered the sofa, and a stack of pizza containers sat on the floor. Obviously the home of a guy who lived alone.
“Be right back,” Gary said. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks,” Chip said. He moved the newspapers aside and sat, his gaze sweeping the room, deciding the furnishings and decor had to be left over from Gary’s married days. According to Lana’s investigation, Gary had received the home in the divorce. That had seemed odd to her, and she was attempting to find out more about the circumstances of the marital split.
Gary returned and handed him a bottle of domestic beer.
“Thanks, man,” Chip said. “You working out?”
Gary muted the television with a remote. “Yeah, I joined a gym a few years ago.”
“You look good,” Chip said.
Gary took a long swallow of beer. “Thanks. What’s so important that you couldn’t ask on the phone?”
“I need to ask a favor,” Chip said. “And my daddy taught me it’s always better to ask favors in person.”
“What favor?”
“I need a job,” Chip said. “I wondered if you could put in a good word with ADS.”
“Whoa. Didn’t I hear you were in law school?” Gary asked.
“I am, but I’m living at home and need to get a place of my own.”
Gary laughed as if that were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Damn, bro. You’re living with your parents?”
“Go ahead and laugh,” Chip said. A burn of humiliation crept up the back of his neck. “It’s hilarious. Actually, I noticed a house for rent next door.”
“Yeah, thank God my pain-in-the-ass neighbor moved out.”
“Any idea what the rent is?”
“No clue.”
“This neighborhood is close to campus, but probably out of my price range,” Chip said. “Why I need that job.”
“Sorry, man.” Gary took another long draw on the bottle. “I wish I could help you, but we’re not hiring right now.”
“I only want something part-time.”
“We usually bring on extra help around the holidays.” Gary shrugged his massive shoulders. “Can you hold out that long?”
“If I don’t get something else sooner,” Chip said. He took the first swallow of a beer he didn’t really want. “Should I put in an application?”
“You can apply online. Use me as a reference, and I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Thanks, man.” He raised his beer in a mock toast. “I appreciate it.”
“No problemo. Anything for the old team, right?”
Chip noted a bitter edge to Gary’s voice, but his comment had given him the opening he needed.
“Coach looked good last week, didn’t he?”
Gary shrugged. “Put on a few years and too many pounds, if you ask me.”
“That party got me thinking about Dan,” Chip said.
Gary took another pull on his beer and didn’t say anything.
“About the steroid rumors,” Chip clarified.
“Yeah? What about them?”
“Maybe we should have told the cops about that.”
“What for?” Gary demanded. “None of us believed that shit.”
“But they never found his murderer. Maybe if—”
Gary leaned forward and slammed his beer so hard on the coffee table, liquid exploded out of the opening. “That’s old news, and I heard enough about Dan at the party last week.”
Chip nodded as if in total agreement. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to piss you off when you’re doing me a good turn.”
Gary took a breath, elbows on his knees. “I’m not pissed, just sick of hearing about the great Dan Lettino.”
Chip held up both hands in surrender. He’d expected Gary to still harbor resentment considering how Lana’s brother had treated him.
“I mean, come on, bro,” Gary said. “The dude has been gone a long time.”
“You’re right. I guess I’ve been spending too much time with his sister.”
Gary grabbed his bottle and sat back. “You dating Lana now?”
“We’ve been seeing each other since Coach’s party.”
“I always liked Lana,” Gary said with a nod. “She was a sweetheart.”
“I’m right there with you. Listen, Gary, thanks for the recommendation and the brewski, but I’ve got to hit the books hard tonight, so I’d better go.”
Chip stood and extended his arm.
“Sure, man.” Gary came to his feet and grasped Chip’s hand in a firm grip. “Always good to talk to an old teammate.”
“Okay if I take a leak before I go?” Chip asked.
Gary glanced at Chip’s almost-full bottle. “Sure. Down the hallway, first door on the right.”
Feeling like an ass, Chip moved into the hall. He didn’t need to use the facilities, but Lana had insisted he make the request before leaving so he could wander deeper into Gary’s lair. Lair had been her word, as if their old classmate were some sort of a predator lying in wait for a helpless victim.
He remembered what she had said. Look for anything suspicious.
Chip shook his head. He wasn’t a cop. How would he know what constituted suspicious?
But the huge hole in the hallway’s plaster definitely caught his attention. Chip stared at the wood framing beneath the gaping cavity in the wall and wondered what had caused such a mess.
A fist? A baseball bat?
He glanced at plaster dust on the carpet beneath the hole, but kept moving in case Gary was watching him. Except for the bathroom, the doors in the hallway were all closed, making it impossible to see inside any of the bedrooms. No way to know if there were any other punched-out walls.
Chip wrinkled his nose when he entered the bathroom. The placed reeked of bleach, as if Gary had recently cleaned. Had that been because of his visit? Didn’t seem like a housekeeping task Gary would take the trouble to perform, not when his living room hadn’t been cleaned in weeks.
As instructed, Chip waited until he flushed the toilet to open the vanity mirror, masking the sound. On the narrow shelves inside, he found nothing but toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss and an orange pharmacy container with out-of-date antibiotics.
Good oral hygiene, but nothing suspicious. No illegal drugs.
Gary waited for him in the living room, staring out a window, into his side yard. He turned when Chip emerged from the hallway.
“All set?” he asked.
“Thanks again,” Chip said.
Once on the road to the library, Chip placed a call to Lana. She was working, but got off duty at 6:00 p.m., so she might still be in her station house.
“What’d you find out?” she asked, her voice eager.
“If you thought Cindy was twitchy about Dan, you should have heard Gary.”
“He didn’t want to talk about Dan?”
“Didn’t even want to hear his name.”
“Did he agree to give you the recommendation?”
“Yeah, he was pretty nice about that. But I’ve never had a problem with Gary. I felt like a jerk spying on him.”
“What’s his house like?” she asked.
“Messy, but a normal middle-class home,” Chip said.
“Nothing unusual?”
“Maybe,” Chip said.
“Tell me.”
“I’m driving, Lana. This is complicated and has to wait.”
“Can you come over?” she asked.
Beyond tempted, Chip glanced to the backpack that was misshapen with heavy books in the seat next to him. A hundred pages, he reminded himself. A hundred pages of dense reading. Damn. He’d waited half his life for an invitation like this from Lana, but had to say no.
“Sorry, Lana. I’ve got too much work to do tonight.”
“What about after you’re done?”
Chip turned into the U of M parking lot. “It would be late.”
“How late?”
“The library is open until eleven, and I’m going to need every minute of that time.”
“I’ll be up,” she said.
“MR. CECIL FELDMAN, PLEASE.” Lana gripped the phone hard as she made her request. She’d tracked down the biology teacher who had tried to bench Dan senior year. Feldman still taught science, but had relocated to Orlando, Florida. Would he cooperate? Would he even remember anything?
“This is Cecil Feldman.”
“Hi, Mr. Feldman. You may not remember me, but my name is Lana Lettino.”
After a long pause, Feldman said, “Lana Lettino from Southeast Miami High? Dan Lettino’s sister?”
“Yes, sir. You should know I’m a police officer now.”
“What’s this about?”
“I’m investigating a murder.”
“Whose murder?”
“My brother’s.”
Another long moment of silence. “That was a long time ago. What can I do to help?”
“I understand there was some trouble between you and Dan while you were teaching at Southeast.”
“Yes. I wanted your brother suspended from the football team.” Feldman’s tone sounded outraged. But not worried.
“Why did you want Dan suspended?” Lana asked.
“Because he wasn’t doing his work. I went to Coach Robertson to discuss the situation, and the next thing I knew I was fired.”
“You were fired?”
Feldman laughed. “The official word was surplus of science teachers. The union wanted to fight it, but I chose to leave a toxic situation. I put academics over athletics. Southeast High didn’t.”
“So Coach Robertson didn’t back you up.”
“Not me or any other teacher that wasn’t a team player.”
“Did other teachers also complain about Dan’s work?”
“Am I a murder suspect?” Feldman demanded.
“Maybe,” Lana said.
“Then if you want to question me, you’ll have to do so with my attorney present.”
Feldman terminated the call.
“Got it,” Lana said to the receiver. She moved to the dining room table to document her conversation in the file. When finished, she sat back to consider. She’d had to check him out, but his reaction didn’t raise any red flags.
Yeah, Feldman’s termination from Southeast midyear was unusual. Maybe it had something to do with Dan’s grades. Or maybe it was an unfriendly relationship with Coach Robertson, or perhaps Principal Norton. If Feldman had been that upset with the injustice of his firing, he would have let the union file a grievance. Feldman had been living and working in Orlando for six months by the time Dan was killed.
She crossed off the biology teacher from her suspect list.
Gary Shotwell and Bubba Jones were the only ones left. Everyone else on the team had an alibi she couldn’t shake no matter how hard she tried. Lana had even reconfirmed Cindy had been at a freshman orientation at Eckerd College in St. Pete, so who knew why Dan’s former girlfriend had been so weird at Moe’s and Joe’s.
Gary and Bubba were the only remaining question marks, and her money was now on Gary.
Seated with her laptop, Lana scoured the internet for any fresh information on Gary or his ex-wife. Although she still needed to clear Bubba once and for all. She had a plan for that. All she needed was Chip’s agreement.
Lana took a sip of lukewarm tea, wishing she could access the police database from her own computer. She’d stay late tomorrow at the station to do a little snooping, although she needed a logical excuse in case she attracted the attention of her sergeant. Rudy would be seriously pissed if he caught her doing detective work on a hobby case.
That was his big thing in squad meetings. You’re not detectives. You don’t investigate. You’re patrol officers. Blah, blah, blah.
At a knock on her front door, her pulse slammed into overdrive. She took a deep breath. Her late visitor couldn’t be anyone but Chip. Why was she so excited by his arrival?
Because he had new information about Gary, and she needed to know everything.
Or maybe because of her other brainstorm, one prompted by her conversation with Gary’s ex. But that was a crazy plan—really out there—and she didn’t know if Chip would even consider her idea. How would he feel about it?
She didn’t even know how she felt about it other than nervous at the prospect.
She checked through the peephole, confirmed her visitor was Chip and then opened the door. She sucked in a quick breath at his appearance. Why did she always forget how tall Chip was, how good-looking—like some rugged, blue-eyed, blond-haired Viking who’d just pillaged the coast of England.
His cool blue gaze bore into hers. She couldn’t determine his mood.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
“I can’t stay long,” he said as he moved past her, into her living room.
She closed the door and clicked the lock into place. “But you don’t have an early class tomorrow.”
He turned to face her, eyes narrowed. “You know my entire class schedule?”
Great. She’d started by pissing him off.
She shrugged. “I needed to know when you’d be on campus last week.”
“I never did ask why you stalked me. What could you possibly learn?”
“Well, if I caught you torturing a small animal, that would be a clue.”
He held her gaze for a long time. “That’s not funny.”
An awkward silence fell between them. Why had she said that? She’d made another impulsive comment and needed to be more careful with Chip. He was no longer a ten-year-old boy.
Lana cleared her throat. “Sorry. That was a bad joke.”
He shook his head and muttered, “Damn, Lana.”
“It’s been a long day,” she said.
“For me, too.”
Of course it had. Chip had spent all day in class, after which she’d sent him to interview her suspect—which must have been an uncomfortable conversation—and then he’d holed up for hours in the library to study. And how did she reward him for agreeing to come over after an exhausting day?
She’d all but called him a sociopath. Good work, Lana.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.
“No, thanks. Like I said, I can’t stay long.”
“I understand.” Lana motioned for him to sit at the dining room table, where she’d stacked her files. “Thank you for coming over so late.”
Chip collapsed into one of the chairs. “Did you learn anything new?” he asked with a nod at her laptop.
Relieved he was still talking to her, she said, “A lot. I talked to Linda, Gary’s ex-wife, this evening. She moved back to Ohio after their divorce.”
“What did she have to say?”
Lana shot Chip a glance to make sure he was paying attention. “That Gary was violent.”
Chip’s eyes widened. “Violent?”
“He hit her on more than one occasion.”
“I thought Gary didn’t have a record.”
“He doesn’t. But I researched their address. There’s a record when a unit is called out on a domestic disturbance.”
“And there were calls out to their address during the marriage?”
“Three,” Lana reported. “From their next-door neighbor each time.”
“But no arrests?”
“Linda refused to press charges.”
“No black eyes? No split lips?”
“No obvious signs of abuse, according to the incident reports.”
“Wow,” Chip said. “Hitting a woman doesn’t sound like the Gary I remember.”
“Well, according to Linda, he’s got serious anger-management issues, which forced her to give up on the marriage. She insisted he go into therapy, but he refused. After the last incident, she got scared and let him have all the marital assets, except the family dog, a deaf dalmatian.” Lana glanced up from her notes. “She even claims he kicked the dog.”
“I found a giant hole punched into a wall in the hallway,” Chip said. “Looked deliberate and new. There was still plaster on the carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed.”
Lana leaned toward Chip. “Excellent work. That’s more proof that Gary has violent tendencies.”
“Or he could have had one too many, tripped and rammed his shoulder into the wall.”
“Maybe. Anything else?”
“The bathroom smelled strongly of bleach, as if scrubbed recently. I doubt Gary would clean for my benefit.”
“Unless he had something to hide,” Lana said. Like a meth lab.
“I don’t know.” Chip shook his head. “It’s a stretch to go from spousal abuse to murder.”
“Is it?” Lana sat back. “Think about it. You say Gary was bullied during high school, right?”
“Right.”
“So consider this. Gary somehow found the courage and the opportunity to turn the tables on his tormentor. He might have planned the attack for weeks or months. Killing Dan would have given him a real rush, and he becomes the new aggressor, especially on women, anyone weaker than him. That’s how bullies work.”
Chip stared at her. “That’s a big leap.”
She shrugged. “Maybe, but it fits.”
“How did Gary overpower Dan? With a gun?”
Lana hesitated. Time to decide. If she wanted Chip to help her in this investigation—and she did need his help to go through with her plan—she had to trust him. Trusting him meant sharing information the public didn’t know.
She took a deep breath. “Dan’s autopsy revealed he’d been tased. The medical examiner found an obvious mark.”
“Tased, huh.” Chip swept a hand through his hair. “That’s why you said even Cindy could have committed the murder.”
“Exactly. A Taser changes everything.”
“So would a gun.”
“But Dan wasn’t shot. The information about a Taser was deliberately kept out of the newspaper reports, so please don’t say anything. I didn’t know about it until I got access to the department’s files.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a record of citizens who purchase Tasers like there is for guns.”
“There is, yes, and I can’t find one. But he could have obtained one illegally.” She sighed. “For that matter, he could have obtained a gun illegally, too. Anyone can if they want one badly enough.”
Chip sat back and stared at the computer. “But this is just a lot of supposition based on little or, frankly, no evidence.”
“Nothing admissible in court,” she agreed. “I’m working out a theory. That’s what detectives do.”
“The world is full of bullies and men who abuse their wives. They’re not all murderers.”
“But some are. Anyway, it’s a place to start. We need to find the proof.”
He leaned forward again. “Why are you so convinced the murderer was someone on the football team?”
Lana jumped to her feet and, from his reaction, she knew her quick movement had startled him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m going to make some more tea.” She hurried into the kitchen. “Are you sure you don’t want anything? Maybe some water?”
“Do you have any coffee?”
“No,” she said, making a mental note to buy coffee for Chip as she turned the stove on high to boil water. She shot him a glance, and he observed her with an expression that said he didn’t trust her.
“Just some water, then,” he said.
She made him a glass of ice water and carried it to the table. She needed to stop dancing around and either go all in with Chip or find someone else to help her. Or concoct a new plan.
She handed him the glass. “Do you remember reading that Dan’s championship ring was stolen?”
“Yeah, sure.” Chip sipped his water. “We were all pissed about that.”
“Well, that’s the only thing that went missing that night,” she said, watching for his reaction.
“The only thing?” Chip lowered his water. “Seriously?”
She nodded.
“You’re saying his wallet wasn’t taken?”
“Nothing else was taken. That’s one reason I’m convinced the murderer was someone on the team. All they wanted was that championship ring.”