Deep-Fried Homicide (The Laurel Falls Mysteries Book 1) (27 page)

“Yea, and I think he’s pissed.” Rick laughed then. He had no sympathy for bad cops, former friends or not.

As they stepped into the shadows of the trees, they saw a bush thrashing around as though it were trying to pull itself from the ground. And as they got closer, they realized that Dooley had become entangled in that bush.

When they had cleared the first line of trees and come around to the side a bit, they saw that Dooley had somehow rolled into the bush – perhaps to hide from a wild animal – and then had gotten tangled up in it. He lay there on his belly, face pressed to the dirt, arms and legs bent and sticking into the air.

The two DEA agents stepped around the bush, coming into Dooley’s line of sight first. He lifted his head and craned his neck, trying to see who owned those shoes he was staring at. Rick and Logan stepped around the other side, behind Dooley.

“Get me outta here!” Dooley bellowed.

One agent elbowed the other and grinned. “Hey, Gary, what’s got more twists than a pretzel?”

“I dunno Steve,” said the other.

“Sheriff Dooley.” And they both laughed and slapped their knees.

“Aw, that’s real funny, you two. Now get me off the ground and untie me. I’ve been tied up here all night and I gotta take a whiz.”

“I dunno. I think we ought to leave you here for a while longer.” Despite Steve’s opinion, he bent over, flipped out his trusty keys, and opened Dooley’s cuffs.”

“Thank God one of you came to his senses!” Dooley struggled to get first to his knees and then to his feet. Much grunting and groaning was involved and he still hadn’t noticed Logan and Rick. “There’s no time to waste. A woman fell down in that hole…”

“Save it, Dooley,” Rick growled.

“You!” Dooley spat. He reeled on Rick, his face reddening fast and his eyes bulging. “You left me here all damn night, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Wild animals could have eaten me. I’ve been chewed on by bugs, starved, dehydrated and cramped up in places I didn’t even know I had muscles. You left me here to die, is what you did!”

“Well, where you’re going, you won’t have to worry about any of that,” Gary said, pulling out a fresh cable tie and fastening it on Dooley’s wrists.

“What are you talking about? What the hell are you doing, you idiot?”

Gary gave him a shove toward the car. “Looks like I’m arresting a bad cop.”

“Now wait just a ding dang minute!” Dooley said, staggering along in time with the agents who held his arms.

“You have the right to remain silent….please do.”

“Anything you say will damn sure be used against you,” finished Steve.

“You have the right to an attorney,” continued Gary.

“And we hope he sucks,” Steve added, and then everyone laughed. Everyone except Dooley who launched into a barrage of curses.

“A
re you asking what I think you’re asking?” Diane gasped. Her face was pale, her eyes bright. She did not have a poker face.

“I’m asking you to go with me. If you want to, that is. You could transfer your studies over to the university there. We could get a nice little apartment…”

Mike never got a chance to finish. Diane launched herself across the table and planted a kiss on his still-moving lips, giggling as she kissed him. When she pulled back, she rubbed her nose against his, still smiling. “I’d follow you anywhere. Anywhere at all.”

“Well, then, I think you ought to know the real name of the man you’re running away with.” He smiled feebly, looking embarrassed. “It’s Trent.”

“Mike. Trent. How about I just call you ‘my boo’?”

Then Mike kissed her and in the middle of the embrace, the doorbell tinkled and Logan and Rick walked in. Rachel erred on the side of discretion and slipped away from the others, leaving Mike and Diane alone. In seconds, Macy followed suit.

“Everything okay?” Rachel asked Rick.

“Perfect.”

Logan did a little dance and slide across the floor. “This is my Happy Happy Dooley’s Going to Prison dance.”

“Well done, gentlemen.” Rachel paused a moment, something slowly formulating in her mind. “You know, this leaves the town without a sheriff.”

Their eyes went wide. The men began to shake.

Logan grabbed Rick’s arm and began to shake it violently. “Run, Rick. Run!”

“Think of how much good you could do for this town, darling,” Rachel said. “Seriously, who has a better chance of getting elected than the man who caught Dooley and cleaned up the seedy underbelly of Laurel Falls?”

And Rick covered his ears with his hands and walked away, loudly proclaiming, “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you! La-la-la-la…”

Macy grinned and elbowed Rachel in the ribs. “I don’t think he’s buying it, hon.”

“That’s okay,” Rachel said, folding her arms and drawing a bead on Rick. “I’ll wear him down. I alllllllways do.”

FREE PREVIEW: MURDER, SOMETIMES

Book 1 of the Jason Calahan Psychic Detective Series

Chapter One

J
ason Callahan, ex-cop, private detective, and all-around nice guy smiled. He was in his element, finally had a job that not only didn't bore him to suicide but thrilled him. At that moment, he stood in a huge convention hall, surrounded by thousands of people and just about every piece of sports memorabilia a guy could ever want. It was the happiest day he'd had in ages. It was a dream come true.

Jeans, a Yankees T-shirt and baseball cap and a pair of Nikes were the uniform of the day. He hadn't combed his light brown hair, hadn't even looked at a tie. For Jason, this was as good as it got.

Nobody on Earth would have suspected why he was there. Oh, sure, he wanted to get a gander at all those collectibles and maybe even snag an autograph or two for himself. All those things aside, he was being paid to do every bit of it.

His right hand slipped out of his jeans pocket and he thumbed through a stack of programs, neatly tucked inside a worn and musty-smelling cardboard box. His head was bowed but it was not the old baseball programs he was really interested in. His eyes found the pudgy man two tables down. He was clean-looking and a smiley sort of convivial. His table was covered with baseball cards.

Jason had been hired to check this guy out. Several months ago, one Richard Armstrong III had purchased a complete set of signed baseball cards from the man. By complete set, Armstrong had explained, he meant every Shane Wiggins card ever made. Problem was, at least four of those cards were reproductions, made eleven years after the great pitcher had gone to that big diamond in the sky. In short, they were fakes.

Jason moved slowly along the line of tables, nonchalantly making his way toward the fat man with the stack of cards. He could well understand why Armstrong was pissed. When you pay $40,000 for a set of baseball cards and get crap, you tend to be a little testy, no matter how rich you are. In Jason's mind, it was on the same level with selling bum organs for transplants. There ought to be some sort of hideous penalty attached to a crime like that.

Someone behind Jason grabbed a generous handful of his backside and Jason spun, ready to swing. But when he turned, no one was there. A shrill laugh split the distance between himself and the nearest person and Jason's gaze shot downward. Two small boys clung to a pair of chinos, half hidden behind their dad and laughing like loons. Jason frowned at them and made a face.

"Some people just shouldn't be parents," he mumbled, barely loud enough to be heard.

Back to business. That little incident had brought him a few inches closer to the card forger. Jason took two steps sideways and began fumbling with a stack of cards. The first few were right on, dates and signatures definitely a possibility. But the next one he came to was a 2003 Catfish Hunter. Not possible. Next was a 1984 Babe Ruth. Yea right! One more card…just to be sure. 1999 Smoky Joe Williams. Smoky Joe died in 1951….or '46, depending on which story you believed.

Jason moved in on the man, the three cards clutched neatly in his hand. His face was still boyish, made even more so by the backward baseball cap which shielded his hair. He smiled at the pudgy man and waited, eyes sparkling. The man gave him a cursory glance, then returned to his conversation with the man in the suit.

"Are you Benny Detwiler?" Jason asked softly, tipping his cap back a bit.

"That I am. There something I can do for you, my friend?" He offered a smile of his own. It sat on his fat lips like a hastily perched bird.

"I think there is. These cards. They're hand signed, right?"

"They are indeed, my friend."

"By the players. They're genuine, am I correct?"

"Yea, they're genuine. Why do you ask?" The man suddenly looked very uncomfortable.

"Well, the reason I ask is because these cards were made a long time after the players died. There's no way in hell these are genuine signatures." Jason paused, the smile running away from his face. "I guess that pretty much makes you a crook."

The man laughed. It was not the reaction Jason had expected and not nearly as satisfying as chasing the fat bastard across the crowded convention hall, tackling him, and cuffing him.

"Actually, they are genuine." The voice was female and it came from behind and just to the right of Jason's shoulder.

He turned to face the informant, forgetting the one cardinal rule of surveillance: never take your eyes off the suspect. Before him stood not just any woman, but a woman so out of place and time as to make Jason think of gypsies and horse-drawn carnival wagons. She was dripping with beads and bangles, her blonde hair tied back from her face with a scarf of many colors and her carpetbag tilting her entire body off to the left. She was just the sort of woman he had tried to avoid all his life and yet those crystal-clear blue eyes made him want to know her…intimately.

"Excuse me?" he replied anyway, his hands finding his hips in a disgusting parody of his mother's own perturbed stance. "Just who the hell are you?"

The music of bangle bracelets and cheap beads ushered her hand into his. "Trina Dane, newspaper columnist and psychic advisor to the stars. And I'm telling you, those signatures are genuine."

Jason laughed at that. He pumped her hand a few more times than was necessary, but he laughed at her just the same. "Pardon my French but…bullshit!" He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the fat man was still where he had left him. He had to give the guy credit. A lesser man would have bolted.

"Sorry, but it's not." Trina folded her arms over her chest and peered up at him with a dour look. "You see, Benny here is a channel. He channels the spirits of dead sports figures and in return for him delivering messages to their loved ones, they sign stuff for him. Isn't that right, Benny?"

"That's it in a nutshell." Benny the fat man nodded and leaned on the table. The table groaned.

Jason laughed again, this time more loudly and through his nose. "Look, lady, this is probably none of your business. But if it is and you two are in cahoots together, I'll be running you in, too."

"Take them to an expert if you don't believe me. Any one you want."

"Okay, now. We all know that these cards are brand new, made after every one of these guys died. And I don't know about you, but a signature can't be genuine unless the hand of that genuine person actually held the pen. So, I think you both better be coming with me. There's a certain millionaire who has a bone to pick with you."

"I'll gladly come along." Trina unfolded her arms and shored up the strap of her bag. "We can go anywhere you want to authenticate those cards. Anywhere. You'll see."

"You wanna know what I think?" Jason paused for effect. "I think every card on this table is a stone-cold fake. That's what I think. And I think we should all three take a little walk down the street to see a friend of mine."

"Sure thing, friend." Benny began packing up his cards. If he was a crook, he was the calmest crook Jason had ever seen.

"You got a Jackie Winfield card somewhere in there?" Jason wanted to know. His eyes narrowed a bit as he watched Benny search through the boxes.

"Got one…right here." Benny held the card up and smiled. "Why?"

"Bring it. Let's go."

Jason turned on one heel and walked away, expecting the two of them to follow. Follow they did, though Trina made faces at the back of his head and muttered things under her breath.

"You're a very close-minded man," she said when they had finally gained the street. "You don't believe in anything you can't touch, do you?"

"Nope! I sure as hell don't. But I'll tell you what I do believe in." He swiped the cap from his head and wiped his forehead with one arm. "I believe you'll both get ten to twenty for fraud and forgery."

"I believe you'll get a load of bad karma."

"Oh, are you going to put a curse on me, gypsy lady? Ooh! I'm shaking in my shoes here!" Jason laughed and the sound was more jovial than he'd intended.

"Please don't fight, you two." Benny sighed and shook his head. He had broken out in a sweat after only two blocks of walking and it made Jason wonder if the man wouldn't drop dead before he was ever brought to justice. "You're making my blood pressure go up."