Dust Up with the Detective (15 page)

Chapter Twenty

Blake reached over and turned on the heat in the truck, but no amount of warmth would dispel Jeremy’s numbness. How could they have missed this earlier? There had been so many lines running to the mayor, so many motivations to get Robert’s land and mineral rights. Yet they had written him off. They’d never thought to check out his wife. Was she the killer they had been looking for all along?

Judith hardly seemed like the type who could walk up to his brother and put a round in his head, but if he’d learned one thing in his years as a detective, it was that killers looked like everyone else. If anything, a killer was more likely to be the innocent-looking neighbor rather than the schizophrenic transient. It was always the ones that people didn’t see coming that ended up being the most dangerous—and the hardest to pin down.

Blake looked over at him and shook her head. “What are we going to do?”

He swallowed back the lump in his throat. “It’s more important than ever that we find Tiffany. We need someone...anyone...who can help us figure out what in the hell is going on.”

Blake nodded, but her lips were pursed like she knew exactly how unlikely it was that Tiffany would hold the answers they needed. “Ms. Davy was definitely in a rush to get us out of her house. Who do you think she was talking to?”

“No idea, but something was up.”

His phone rang, the sound making him jump. “This is Lawrence,” he answered.

“This is Sergeant McDonald with the Montana Highway Patrol. I’m just outside of Butte and I believe I have a truck pulled over that matches your description. I have taken the driver into custody. How would you like me to proceed?”

He pulled over, the truck’s tires sliding in the muddy grit on the side of the road.

“Do you have an ID on the driver?”

“The woman doesn’t have any form of identification, but she says her name is Sophia Lawrence.”

Lawrence?
It had to be Tiffany. “What does the woman look like?”

“Dark hair, about one hundred sixty-five pounds, and a tattoo of a peacock on the inside of her right forearm.”

Tiffany had gotten the peacock tattoo with his brother when they had eloped in Vegas. The sergeant had their woman.

“She’s the one we’re looking for. Bring her into county lockup.”

“No problem,” the sergeant answered.

“And hey, thanks for tracking her down.”

“Wasn’t hard to find her. She was pulled over with a flat tire,” the sergeant said. “Is it true that she’s being investigated for her role in that homicide I heard about? The one in the mine?”

“News travels fast.”

The sergeant laughed. “There are no secrets in our line of work, brother.” The man hung up.

Blake shifted in her seat like she could hear their conversation. Jeremy reached out and put his hand on her thigh.

She looked down at his hand. He’d wanted to be able to touch her like this for so long that it almost seemed too good to be true—like the world was just waiting for the opportunity to strike them down.

Maybe fate’s weapon of choice was going to be Tiffany. It was impossible to know what she would tell them, but if everything went right, she would give them the last pieces of the puzzle.

With the closure of their investigation, it would likely be the end of his time with Blake. Their stolen moments would be the only things left to remember her by when he went back to his life in Missoula. Yet with only memories to keep him, he couldn’t help the feeling that he would go back to a life that would be incomplete.

* * *

W
HEN
THEY
ARRIVED
at the station, Sergeant McDonald led them to the multimedia area where the soft interrogation room was being broadcast across the monitors. The room on the screens had pictures of trees and birds, magazines were strewn across the coffee table and there was an overstuffed couch. The place had more in common with a doctor’s waiting room than a regular interrogation room, which usually held nothing more than a table and a plastic chair that got hard on the perpetrator’s behind after a few hours of sitting around and waiting.

“How long has she been in there?” Jeremy asked.

“About an hour. Maybe a little longer,” the sergeant said. “She was a spitfire when she came in. Apparently this isn’t how she wanted to spend her afternoon.”

“Did you find out where she was going?”

The sergeant reached up and gripped the top of his bulletproof vest in his resting position. “I caught her at the northern edge of the county, heading toward Canada. There was a gas station map on the passenger’s seat. I bet you money she was trying to figure out a back road that could get her out of the country—that was, until she got the flat. You’re damn lucky we caught up to her.”

They were lucky, but why had Tiffany been running? Only the guilty ran; the innocent stayed put.

“You got her from here?” Sergeant McDonald asked.

Jeremy nodded. “Thanks again.”

The sergeant gave them a quick two-finger wave and left the room, looking happier than hell that this wasn’t his problem anymore.

Jeremy gave a light laugh.

“Something funny?” Blake asked, crossing her good arm over her chest as she leaned against the wall.

“Nope,” he said, pulling himself together. “You want to go in there with me?”

“I’m supposed to be on leave. If I go in there, our entire investigation will be compromised. Anything she says might not be admissible in court. We have to make sure to follow protocol.”

He stepped closer to her and moved in to kiss her, but stopped as he remembered they were in the station. No one was around, but they still needed to keep it as private as they could.

Blake moved away, almost as if she was thinking the same thing—or was she thinking something else? Was it possible she regretted sleeping with him?

“You need to get in there,” Blake said, motioning toward the interrogation room. “If Ms. Davy is involved, then it’s only a matter of time before she runs. She has the money to go anywhere, anytime. If she gets loose, there’s little to no chance that we’ll get her back.”

Blake was right, but he wasn’t ready to let things go between them. He wanted answers. Leaving his heart open and exposed wasn’t something he was used to.

He tipped his head as he forced himself to stay quiet about what was going on inside. Whether he wanted them to or not, his feelings could wait.

Jeremy turned to go out of the media room.

“Wait,” Blake called after him. He turned back. “Good luck in there. I hope you get the answers you need.”

“You mean the answers
we
need.” He closed the door as he made his way out and across the hall. At the door to the interrogation room, he took a long breath and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He pushed opened the door, seeing Tiffany seated in a corner of the sofa, her arms crossed over her chest like she was protecting herself from attack.

“Well, well, Tiffany,” he said as he took a seat across the room. “Long time, no see.”

In truth, he’d been in the woman’s presence only a handful of times, and the last time he’d seen her had been a little over three years ago. She had changed. Her dark hair had more gray and her face was now so thin that her tan skin hung loose on her cheeks. She looked haggard. In a way, he found comfort in the fact she was stressed. It proved that she was feeling something about Robert’s death. Whether it was guilt or sadness he had yet to find out.

Tiffany glared at him. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d come for a visit. Catch up. A lot’s changed in the last few days with Robert’s death and all.”

Anger sparked in her eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak but held back.

He was getting a reaction.
Good.
Truth could be found in moments when emotions reigned.

“Did you really think you would get away with it?”

Her face contorted with rage. “I didn’t shoot Robert.”

“If you didn’t do it, why haven’t you come forward? You had to have known we were looking for you. Instead you ran. I’m sure you can understand why we have you sitting in cuffs right now.”

“I didn’t want to get caught up in all of Robert’s crap. I’m so tired of it.”

“Well, lucky for you, Robert’s affairs are now yours.”

Tiffany cringed. “I don’t want nothing of his.”

“Other than the money you took out of the bank last week, you mean?”

“I took the money because I was leaving his sorry behind. What does that have to do with anything?” Tiffany raised her chin in indignation.

“Nothing, but it sure is strange that you wipe out the bank accounts, then disappear just around the time your husband was murdered. Don’t you think?”

“Look, I took the money, but I didn’t kill your brother. We had our problems, but I never wanted him dead.”

“Did you want to threaten my partner, Deputy West, and her family?”

“Deputy West? You mean Blake?”

“You on a first-name basis?”

Tiffany rolled her eyes, the movement almost adolescent and in direct contrast to the wrinkles that surrounded her lips. “I’ve met her a few times.”

“And?” He motioned for her to continue.

“She’s been up to Robert’s and my place, breaking up fights. I ain’t got no problem with her. If anything, she’s saved me from spending a few nights in jail over the years. I wouldn’t want nothing bad to happen to her. Don’t she have a kid?”

Jeremy nodded.

He wasn’t positive, but from the way she spoke and the way her body seemed to relax, he guessed she was telling the truth. But just because she didn’t have something to do with the threat on Blake didn’t mean she didn’t have a hand in Robert’s murder.

“You guys like to fight? You and Robert?”

“You know how it has been between him and I. Nothing ever changed.”

“So you killed him?”

“I told you, Jeremy, I didn’t kill your stupid brother,” she said, looking him square in the eye. “There were days where I hated his guts, but I ain’t stupid.”

“What do you mean by that, Tiffany?”

She snorted. “Everybody in this whole damn county knows about me and your brother. We had some good fights over the years.” She paused and looked away. She gave a reminiscent chuckle. “It’s what made us
us
, you know?”

One thing he knew well was couples fighting. His parents had done it for so long that he still had nightmares of some of their fights from his childhood. It must have been the same for Robert, but unlike him, Robert had chosen to perpetuate the unhealthy cycle their parents had taught them.

If things worked out with Blake, they couldn’t be like the rest of his family. It would be hard, but he couldn’t let their relationship fall down the path his brother had taken.

“Do you know if Todd bought a gun in the weeks before Robert’s death?”

Tiffany’s face darkened as she nodded. “He bought it off the mayor, and then he got the dang thing stolen. I kept telling him to shut up about that gun, but he never listened... But I’m telling you, I don’t have nothing to do with what’s going on.”

He nodded. “Why did Todd O’Brien have your car?”

Her cheeks turned ruddy, and a thin sheen of sweat developed on her forehead as she bit her lip. She ran her hands down the legs of her pants, drying them.

“Tell me the truth, Tiffany. That’s the only way you are going to get anywhere here.”

“Todd and I are friends.” The redness in her cheeks darkened.

“How
good
of friends?” He knew the answer, but he had to have her admission.

She looked away. “We been dating on and off for a while now. ’Bout six months maybe.”

“Did Todd have something to do with Robert’s death? Had Robert found out about you two?”

“Robert knew. I moved out of our house about a month ago. The last time Blake was up I said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and got the hell out of there. Todd ain’t no peach, but he’s better than that brother of yours. All Robert ever cared about was that stinking mine.”

“Would you say you
hated
Robert?”

She didn’t look at him. “If you knew your brother like I did, you woulda hated him, too.”

In their adult lives, he and his brother hadn’t been close, but he hadn’t hated Robert. Yet it wasn’t hard to imagine how Tiffany could have gotten there.

“Did you want to get back at him for the way he treated you by having Todd force him off his land?”

Her eyes flew to his. “How in the hell do you know that?”

It was as good as an admission. She’d been in on Robert’s buyout. “What about the tax lien? Was that part of your or Todd’s doing?”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with that. That was all Todd’s idea. If he wouldn’t have been such an idiot, we could have found another way, but he was cash poor. Stupid man got mixed up in something he shoulda never been messing with.”

“How’s that?”

Tiffany rubbed her hands on her legs again, leaving behind a line of sweat. “He shoulda never got wrapped up with the mayor and his wife. Those two are nothing more than money-hungry vipers. I told him. And look where it got him—a one-room suite in the ICU.”

Todd would be lucky if he ever left that hospital, but Jeremy said nothing.

“If you want to know who murdered my husband, look to them. Those two will stop at nothing to get what they want.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Those two have been using Todd as the front man to scoop up land around the Foreman Mine for years. If you look at the map, Todd’s name is on most of the land that makes up the ravine that the Foreman Mine sits on.”

“Why do they have him buying up the land?”

Tiffany gave him an are-you-really-that-ignorant kind of look. “They have a lot of irons in the fire. Because of their company and the fact that John holds an office, it would blow back on them if they were ever caught buying up county foreclosures. So they set it up, and Todd signs his name on the dotted lines. He gets one hell of a kickback.”

“Why do they want all this land?”

Tiffany sighed like he was a pain in her butt. “Robert’s mine has been doing good. His claim sits right in the middle of a major source of copper ore. It could be worth millions, or more, depending on their buyer.”