| |
––––––––
We wandered over to Loren, Bozeman lingering a step behind. Normally he’d be right on my tail, but in this case, his stride matched his enthusiasm.
Loren, just finishing getting a glass of Coke from the bar, noticed us coming and headed for the nearest table. He sat and waited for us to join him.
“Bozeman. Codi. How’s it going?” Loren asked. He drank from the glass and set it aside.
“Good, Loren,” Bozeman said.
We both shifted into chairs and got comfortable.
“You have additional questions for me?” Loren asked.
“Tell us about your restaurant, Loren,” Bozeman said, taking the lead.
He stared at Bozeman for an eon before, finally; he answered. “You know the full story?”
Bozeman felt his nod was enough of a clarification, but I wanted to make an addition. “We’d like to learn about it directly from you.”
Loren took another drink, put down the glass, and turned it between his fingers. The glass created a wet ring on the tablecloth, so Loren picked up the glass and set it in the ring.
“I overheard you speaking to Claude,” I said. “Care to share the truth with us?”
Loren fell silent once more. After another drink, he began speaking. “It was all true. What you heard. The town is using eminent domain to take the diner from me. The plan is to build something new and shiny on my lot, like a parking garage or some such nonsense.”
“They’re going to pay you fair value for your property, aren’t they?” I asked.
Loren shot me an expression that implied I was an idiot. “The bank was in charge of determining the value, so they took great liberty of determining what ‘fair’ actually meant.”
“You’re losing the diner for real?” Bozeman said.
Loren nodded. “Yes. In ninety days, I have to be cleared out. I found another location, but it’s on the south side of town. Far away from the highway that remains the lifeblood for this city. It’s also in an abandoned industrial area, so as you can imagine, there’s not a lot of call for morning pancakes there.”
“Will your clientele follow you?” I asked.
Loren’s caramel-colored eyes met mine. “Not likely. Some will, but the retirees that don’t drive? They’ll find a more convenient place to eat.”
“And it’s unlikely that the tourists will go to your diner since it’s far from anything else?” I asked.
“That’s a fair assessment.”
“Codi, let’s skip right to the brass tacks, shall we?” Bozeman said. “Loren, did you shoot Hawthorne Harris and later take a shot at Codi?”
“No.” Loren denied.
“No? Sounds to me like you had a good reason to hate Harris. And I know you tend to hold a grudge.”
Loren jumped to his feet. The chair he sat on fell back and crashed to the floor. He pointed a finger directly into Bozeman’s face. “I didn’t do it!” he yelled.
Bozeman, not one to be intimidated, took his feet as well, and headed into a stare down with Loren. I looked around the room and saw every face staring in our direction, so I realized I needed to deescalate things before the big boys got physical.
I stepped between the two men and held out a hand to each of them. “Come on, fellas, we had a nice civil conversation going. Why don’t we head back to that?”
Bozeman glanced at me, and I gave him a light nod. In response, he took his seat. I leaned over and righted Loren’s chair and invited him to sit. He did, took a drink, and regained his composure.
“I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have shot anyone,” Loren said, dropping his voice to a notch under a normal level.
“Why not?” I asked, cutting off Bozeman, who appeared poised to ask a question.
“Because. Look at this.” Loren held both hands out and attempted to make fists with each. I noticed as he did so, the pointer and ring fingers on each hand didn’t fold into the balls with the other three fingers.
“What are you showing us?” I asked.
“I’ve got severe arthritis problems in four fingers. Halfway is as far as I can close any of them. I couldn’t pull a trigger if I wanted to.”
I stared at his hands as he continued to hold them out.
“You think I’m faking?” he asked. “Try to push them closed. I won’t resist. Go on.”
I moved closed and took the index finger of his right hand and tried to push it in toward the palm. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
Loren shook his head. “Not really. I feel tightness, nothing more. Those joints are swollen, so you won’t get any farther than that.”
I applied more pressure and attempted to close the other three fingers with no better results.
Giving up, I turned to Bozeman. “I can’t do it. You want to give it a try?”
Bozeman shook his head. “Not necessary. Loren, I’m sorry I accused you of this. I should have known you didn’t do it.” Bozeman held out his hand for Loren to shake, but Loren didn’t extend his in return. Instead, Loren stood, moved around the table, and took Bozeman into a bear hug.
While the brothers reconciled, I returned to Laurel and Viola.
“That didn’t seem like it went too well,” Viola said.
I shrugged. “Ended up fine, and we can scratch another suspect off the list. I don’t think Loren did it.”
“Who did?” Laurel asked.
“Honestly? My money is on either Jackie or Amelia, and now that they’ve both disappeared, possibly both.”
“Why them?” Viola asked.
“Jackie dropped on my radar first since she disappeared when Hawthorne got shot, and she stayed missing for an extended period. She didn’t show up again until much later, and she switched seats when the power dropped and someone left me this love letter.” I opened the notebook and paged toward the back, where I’d stuck the note between pages. “She also headed into some interesting emotional dispositions. When I spent time with her, or talked to her, she seemed to play the part of the grieving girlfriend, complete with plenty of tears and heartfelt sobbing. But when I wasn’t with her, she took on the demeanor of someone waiting for a plane to board.”
Viola listened, thought for a moment, and spoke. “That all seems thin. And circumstantial.”
I didn’t disagree, but since I wasn’t a trained detective, I would only go with my gut.
“What about Amelia?” Viola asked.
“If you thought my case against Jackie was thin, you’re going to love what I have on Amelia. I figured out that a phone app controlled the dinner gong and the lights. That app showed up on Amelia’s phone.”
“And she claimed she didn’t know about it?” Viola asked.
“Of course. In fact, she claimed her phone was missing for most of the night. I found it under this table right here. Where Jackie hung out for most of the night.”
“Anything else about her?”
“Jackie said she was involved with Hawthorne.”
“You mean like in a personal relationship?” Laurel asked.
“That’s what she told me.”
“If that were truly the case, why kill Hawthorne? Why wouldn’t Jackie or Amelia go after each other?” Viola asked. “Typically, in situations where a man is stepping out on a woman, the women will generally go after each other and leave the man out of the fight.”
I’d read that somewhere. “That factoid never made sense to me. Why not band together and go after the man instead of each other? He was usually the instigator of the whole thing.”
“Perhaps that’s what happened here,” Laurel said. “Maybe they decided to join forces and rub out the bad guy.”
I considered it for a moment, and it certainly fell within the realm of possibilities.
“Is there anyone else you’re thinking about?” Viola asked.
“No, not really,” I said.
“Why not? You need to have reasons to exclude someone as a suspect just as much as you need reasons to include someone.”
I smiled at the memory. “You got that from my dad, didn’t you?”
“Yes. One of the first things I learned from him when we became partners.”
“Okay. Let’s run through them. I don’t think Brantley is involved. No motive, and it’s hard to be a personal assistant to someone six feet underground. I believe Amy and Claude are somewhat in the same boat as Brantley. They have too much to gain with Hawthorne being around, and now that he’s not, I imagine they could both potentially take a financial hit.”
I scrunched my nose, trying to remember who I left out. “Oh, I almost forgot about Helen. Personally, I think you ought to put Helen on your list as a probable drug dealer. I’ve heard from a couple of people tonight that she’s been pushing things other than her personal training program.”
Viola leaned toward and whispered. “She’s already on my list. A person she’s been selling to works for me. I’m hoping she’ll lead us to her supplier, or anyone else higher up the ladder. Let’s keep that between us though, I don’t want her skipping town until I’ve had a chance to host her down at the jail.”
Laurel and I both agreed to keep the secret.
“Okay,” Viola said. “That only leaves Danny and the caterer’s staff.”
“I’d say you can ninety-nine and a half percent discount anyone involved with the caterer. Heather seems to have an excellent rein on her people, and I couldn’t find one all night that had anything that resembled a motive. Danny, well, he’s been on such a bender tonight. I’m sure he didn’t do anything. I’m also sure he won’t remember tomorrow he was here.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He has visited me down at the jail. He has a tendency to close the bars and stumble around on the street until one of my officers picks him up. Danny needs serious therapy and needs to get himself into a program before it’s too late, but I’d agree that he’s probably in the clear.”
The three of us floated in silence for a few minutes. Laurel broke it. “Now what?”
I ruminated on the question. “I’d love to find the gun. Especially since I know now that it’s not Viola’s. I’d also like to track down Brantley’s missing keys, and of course I’d love to find out where Amelia and Jackie disappeared to.”
“I couldn’t find them,” Bozeman said.
Surprised to hear his voice, I turned in my chair, and there he stood behind me off to my right side. “Just now?”
“Yep. You sent me on that quest, remember?”
“Did you check everywhere?” I asked.
“Everywhere I could, which wasn’t much.”
I nodded. “Then I guess finding the keys should be our top priority.”
“Where did you find them last time?” Laurel asked.
“Brantley had them. I set them on the bar, then all of a sudden, I found myself under fire. I didn’t even realize I’d lost them until Ashley said something.”
“Maybe he took them back,” Bozeman said.
That seemed logical to me, so I wanted to find out.
“Can I have your keys?” I asked when I got to within three feet of Brantley and his almost empty bottle of wine.
“You already have them,” he slurred. He picked up a bottle and waved it in my face. “Even trade, remember?”
“You didn’t take them back after I got shot at?”
“Nope. Except for your round up, I’ve been here the entire time. Although, I’ll help you look for them, provided you secure me another bottle of wine.”
I decided against it and returned to my group.
“He doesn’t have them,” I said.
“Let’s go search then. Should we check people too, or just places?” Laurel asked.
“Start with things. Don’t bother them until you’ve exhausted everything else. It could be they just fell on the floor by the bar, or someone noticed them and set them down somewhere,” Viola said.
“All right, so that’s our plan, then. Laurel, you go left. Bozeman, you go right. I’ll head back to the bar. Viola, you stay here and check under the table next to you. Everyone got it? Good. Go.”
We disbursed, and I headed to the bar. Viola seemed right to me, and the most logical thing was they fell to the floor where I’d last seen them.
“Hey Ashley, how’s it going?”
“I wish I were home.”
“Me too. Did you see those keys?”
Ashley shook her head. “Nope. I checked everywhere back here, too, just in case I picked them up on accident to clear the bar.”
“Did you check underneath?”
“No. Let’s do it.”
Ashley released the brakes of the bar and gave it a light push forward. It moved with ease, and when it was a few feet away from its original position, she stopped.
I glanced at the floor and spotted a black straw, a wine cork and the screw top from a bottle of some sort.
“So that’s where that went,” Ashley said as she scooped up the top. Then she grabbed the straw and the cork and dumped them all into a trash can. “Satisfied?”
I nodded. It was a long shot, and it didn’t pan out. I sighed, then helped Ashley push the bar back into place, even though Ashley could handle it herself. Once back in place, I moved on, checking random tables as I passed them to make sure they weren’t hiding any secrets.
Eventually, I made my way to the stage area. I did a quick visual inspection. Everything looked the same except Bozeman’s acoustic guitar looked slanted in its stand. I did a quick check of the wings, discovered nothing, and intended to rejoin Laurel and Bozeman.
I stopped. Bozeman never left his guitar slanted. Well, he did once when we played at a county fair gig several years before. He’d reached for it in the dark before a new song, and because he hadn’t seated it correctly in the stand, he pushed it over onto the floor instead of grabbing it. When the lights returned, it took us a minute to get back on track while he performed a quick inspection to ensure everything worked fine. Since that day, he lined that guitar up in the stand as if it were a compass needle pointing north.
I picked up Bozeman’s guitar and noticed right away something was off about it. I turned it flat and picked up a simultaneous jingle and thump inside. Then I shook it for good measure, and that action confirmed my suspicions when I saw the tip of a key over the sound hole. Not wanting to damage the guitar, I turned the tuning pegs to loosen the strings, then fished the keys from the hiding spot. I returned the guitar to the stand and myself to the group.
“I found them,” I announced after Laurel and Bozeman rejoined Viola and me.
“Where?” Laurel asked.
“Over by the stage. By the way. Bozeman, you’re going to need to check the tuning on your Martin.”
He gave me a confused look, which I expected.
“You can do that if we ever get back on the bus. In the meantime, let’s you and I go for a walk.”
