Chapter

24

“Can I speak with the sheriff?” I asked the uniformed cop sitting behind a large desk an hour later. He grunted, motioning with his head to a frosted glass office with the word Sheriff etched on the side. I shot the cop a smile of thanks.

I knocked on the door of Danny’s office and waited.

“Enter,” a voice called from inside. I did as it asked. Danny sat with his broad back to me, his hair mussed. A few lone gray hairs mixed with the dark brown strands. Being sheriff had taken a toll on him. Arresting innocent people did that to a man.

I waited for him to acknowledge me. When he didn’t, I cleared my throat, loudly.

“Just set it on my desk and I’ll sign it later, Phyllis,” he said in
response.

“I’m not Phyllis,” I growled. “But I do have something for you.”

He turned around, slowly. So slowly. As if dreading every second of facing me. I felt the same, but at least I had the decency to try and hide it. Not that I did a great job, but it was resisting the urge to smack him that counted.

“What brings you by, Ms. Lucky?” he asked as if gargling with glass. His fingers clenched around the pen in his hand so tightly I thought it would break. I smiled at the fantasy of the ink-spattered Gett.

Shaking it away, I said, “I think … I mean, I know I have a tape of Roger’s last hour of life.” I paused for emphasis. An old acting trick used to add drama to a scene. A good pause brought people to tears. “Maybe even his last minutes.”

He snorted, apparently not a fan. “You always were a drama queen.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He let out a loud, long sigh. “Where’s this tape?”

I pulled it carefully from my purse and handed it to him. Danny held it up, his mouth forming a thin line. “What do you expect me to do with this?” he asked with a growl.

“Play it,” I said in a near shout.

“On what?” He waved a hand around his office. A fairly nice office at that. On the wall opposite his desk sat a trophy case, filled with shiny relics from his high school days. Danny had wanted to play in the NFL like his younger brother, but he never had Brodie’s determination.

If he could, Danny would always take the easy way out. Which explained his hands-off relationship with Willow Jones. She’d obviously loved him, had since our freshman year of high school, and yet, Danny chose to ignore it, for it was easier. Complicated wasn’t the word anyone with half a mind would use to describe Danny Gett.

I thought back to Brodie’s small house. Not a single trophy in sight. Maybe he was more complex than I’d thought. The notion made me a bit nauseated. It was easier to think of Brodie as nothing more than a typical jock jerk.

“Does it look like I own a VCR?” Danny snarled, dragging me back to the matter at hand.

I winced. “I know, but you need to see this. It proves someone else besides Jack was with Roger moments before he died.”

His face frozen, and for a second something—maybe fear?—flashed in his eyes. He quickly blinked it away. “Who?” he asked.

Interesting. Did Danny know more than he was letting on? “I don’t know,” I admitted, and then hastily explained before he threw me out of his office. “They’re in shadows.”

“You better not be wasting my time, running me around in circles like you do to my brother.” After his insult, he rose from his chair and called to a harried woman sitting in the cubicle outside. “Phyllis,” he said in his typical curt tone.

She snapped to attention, a guilty look on her face. I knew that look. I’d seen it reflected in the screen of my laptop often enough. Phyllis was an online shoe shopper.

“See if you can dig up a VCR,” he said.

“A VCR?” Her eyes widened like she’d never heard the word before.

He snorted. “Yes, a VCR. We’re going old-school. Check with Evidence. They might have one.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, picking up the phone on her desk.

Danny thanked her and then shut the door. He stared at me for a long moment, his face as hard as stone. Typical Gett. “You need to stop butting into my investigation.”

I raised an eyebrow. Like that was going to happen. “And you need to find out who really killed Roger.”

Danny ignored my interruption, seemingly warming to the topic. “Under any other circumstance, I’d haul your ass to jail for obstruction, but seeing as your granddad is a friend, I’m going to let it slide.”

I held back a snort. Jack was hardly a friend of Danny’s.

He added, “This time.”

“I—”

He drew back, frowning. “Let me be clear. Next time, you aren’t gonna be so lucky.” He smiled at his own unfunny pun. Like I hadn’t heard it a million times before, from his younger brother.

Anger burned in my chest, not quite escaping my throat. Before I could let him have it, Phyllis came into the office, a dusty VCR in her hands. I was impressed with her speed. She set it on the desk and then began connecting the frayed wires to Danny’s computer. It took five minutes to figure out the right adaptors and a few more to finally get the tape loaded.

The screen flickered to life as she pressed various keys.

Roger’s form appeared.

A chill ran up my spine as if a ghost had run his ethereal fingers up it.

Danny leaned in, his eyes squinting as if he needed reading glasses but was too vain to wear them. His hand stroked his chin. “Play it back from the beginning,” he said to Phyllis.

She did as he asked. The machine squeaked as the tape rewound to the start. Slowly, frame by frame, we watched as the car pulled up to the gas pump and Roger stumbled out. I again suffered through his public urination, and then the car and Roger were gone.

“Play it one more time,” Danny said, leaning in until his eyes were less than an inch from the screen. “Stop it,” he ordered when it reached 37 seconds.

Phyllis did.

The tape froze on Roger, his hand on the top of the car, and the outline of the driver.

Danny straightened. “Stay here,” he said to me in a tone suggesting he could care less if I listened to him or not. “I have to make a call.”

“Now?”

“Yes.” Without another word, he yanked out his cell phone and left the office. I watched him through the doorway as he paced back and forth in the hallway, his phone glued to his ear. He wasn’t happy, if the coldness on his face was any indication.

Danny’s eyes locked on mine. He stepped forward, slamming his office door to prevent me from eavesdropping. As if I could read lips. I stifled an eye roll, focusing on the computer screen. I sat with my hands in my lap, the face of a dead man a foot away. “Can you make out the driver?” I asked Phyllis a few seconds later. She shook her head. I let out a sigh. The only clue I had wasn’t enough to free Jack. Not until we identified that silhouette.

My eyes remained locked on the screen, taking in every detail until I thought I might go blind. My eyes blurred as I memorized the way Roger’s hand rested on the hood. Memorized the outline of the driver. I even memorized the shape of the decal on the windshield. I now knew every inch of the vehicle. And yet, not a clue as to the color of the paint. Frustrating to say the least, like auditioning for a coveted part only to learn the director’s girlfriend also wanted it.

After what felt like hours, Danny returned, his face pinched. He appeared older than he had a few minutes before, as if whoever he’d talked with had sucked the life out of him. “I’ll call you after I’ve taken care of it,” he said to the person on the other end of the line, and then hung up before facing me. “Thank you for your input.”

“What?” I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means, I’ll take the tape under advisement.”

“That’s it?” I rose, my limbs shaking with fury. “Are you kidding me? You’ll take the tape under advisement?” I stomped my foot like a child. I would’ve screamed like one too, if it would get Danny’s attention. Which I knew it wouldn’t. He liked his women endlessly meek, like Willow Jones. “That tape proves Jack wasn’t with Roger,” I declared. “That someone else killed him!”

He held up a hand. “Calm down.”

“I will not.” Now I did yell. When it didn’t help, I took a deep breath, doing my best to get my rage under control. It wouldn’t do Jack any good if both of us wound up in jail. “Please,” I said, “you have to—”

“I don’t have to do anything,” he said, his body as rigid as his voice. “Listen to me, and listen good because I won’t say it again.” He waited for my full attention. I gave it grudgingly. “Stay out of this or you’re going to get hurt.”

“Is that a—”

He cut me off. “Go back to your distillery where there’s real work to be done.”

I flinched, knowing he was half right. I had neglected the distillery since Jack’s arrest, and now we’d almost lost the entire thing. I needed to call the county inspector to find out when he could come out. “Can I have the tape, please?” I said to Phyllis.

Danny snatched it out of her hands before she could pass it my way. “This is evidence,” he barked.

“But you said—”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He tapped his fingertips with the tape. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound frayed my last nerve. He tilted his head, eyes on mine. “Could be Jack in the driver’s seat. We don’t know. Therefore, this is evidence until we sort it out. We as in the cops”—his gaze flickered over me—“not some half-assed actress with delusions.”

My body vibrated with rage at his hastily hurled accusation. I might be delusional, but I was a hell of an actress. To prove it, I smiled my best smile at him, nodded, and left the office without giving in to my baser impulse to knock Danny upside the head until he gained some sense.

Mostly because I didn’t have the hours it would take to spare.

Once outside, I released a muffled scream. A cop walking on the other side of the parking lot stopped cold, his hand going to the gun on his hip. He looked my way, measuring the threat. I gave him an apologetic wave and then slid into my car. I pounded on the steering wheel until my anger subsided. The palms of my hands gave out before my rage did. I rubbed away the stinging in my hands, working the tingling away, and finally my anger.

Danny might’ve dismissed me and confiscated my only hard evidence, but I wasn’t going to let that or his warnings to stay out of the investigation stop me.

Not until Roger’s killer was securely locked up behind bars and Jack was free.