Real Murder (Lovers in Crime Mystery Book 2) (14 page)

Alone in the parking lot, Cameron felt empowered by Joshua’s words of love for her. Suddenly, she felt silly for her insecurity.
Were my breasts ever perky?

She went back to Curt’s cruiser to lean against the fender while waiting.
I was never one of those girly girls anyway, and Josh knew that from the start. What’s wrong with me? What’s gotten into me? Must have been the bump on my head that led to that marital moment.

The slam of a car door directly behind her startled her out of her thoughts. She turned around in time to see a slender middle-aged man wearing baggy dark pants and a long dark jacket over a t-shirt crossing the parking lot in her direction. His dark hair was in stark contrast to his pale complexion, which served to make the deep scratches on both sides of his face stand out—scratches like those from a cat—a big one—maybe one that resembles a skunk.

He saw her at the same time that she saw him.

Cameron assumed that it was the look on her face that scared him. Rather, it was the Hancock County sheriff’s   cruiser that she was leaning against. “Anthony? Anthony Tanner?”

Immediately, he turned and ran back through the lot the same way that he had come—darting and dodging around the parked cars.

“Stop! Police!” Yanking her gun from where she wore it in her hip holster, Cameron gave chase.

While Anthony rounded a corner at the end of a row of parked cars, she took a shortcut by jumping up onto a trunk of a Cadillac and rolling over to drop down onto the ground and cut him off. When he rounded the corner, he found her crouching on the ground with her gun aimed at him. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

Anthony answered by whipping his arm out from behind his back and firing two shots from the gun he had torn out of his jacket pocket during his attempted escape. Cameron ducked and returned fire. She heard patrons in the parking lot scream and run in every direction.

One young dancer dressed in a form fitting, low cut dress made the bad decision to dart directly in front of Anthony Tanner, who reached out and grabbed her. Pressing his gun against her head, he yelled at Cameron, “I’ll shoot her. I swear!”

“That’s really not necessary, Anthony,” Cameron said while easing up to her feet. She kept her gun trained on him. “I only want to talk to you.”

“That’s bull and you know it!”

While she inched her way forward, he backed up. Whimpering, the young woman fought to stay upright in her stiletto heels.

“Gates!” Sheriff Sawyer shouted while coming around the side of a van. With his gun drawn, he was searching to locate the source of the threat.

“Get back!” Tanner ordered.

Seeing the man with the hostage, Curt dropped back  behind the van.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cameron saw Joshua, who had not come into Anthony’s line of sight yet, dart back  behind the van and go around.

Sheriff Sawyer pressed the button on his shoulder mike. “Dispatch, we have a hostage situation at the Blue Moon Club.”

Cameron held up her gun to show Anthony that she didn’t have her finger on the trigger. “Anthony, let’s take a deep breath and calm down. All we want is to get your side of the story. So just let her—” She asked the young woman, “What’s your name, honey?”

“Tiffany,” she blubbered.

“Tiffany,” Cameron said. “Anthony, why don’t you let Tiffany go and we’ll talk about who scratched you—”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Anthony said. “I was attacked by a rabid skunk.”

“A skunk?” Cameron fought the grin that wanted to come to her lips.
Of course, he’d think Irving was a skunk.

“Yeah!” Anthony yelled. “I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and this giant skunk, screeching like a bat out of hell, jumped out of the bushes and landed  on my head and started scratching the daylights out of me.”

Cameron spotted Joshua several feet behind Anthony, who was backing up toward an old truck. Jostling to stay  directly behind Anthony and out of his sight, Joshua kept low between the truck and the van parked next to it.

Keep your eyes on Anthony. Don’t give away that there’s someone behind him.

“If he was a skunk he would have sprayed you,” Cameron said.

“He was crazy, I tell you.” Anthony glanced over his shoulder toward the old truck.

Joshua ducked down. He caught Sheriff Sawyer’s eye. With hand motions, he communicated his plan. Then, he held up three fingers.

“Where did this skunk attack happen?” Cameron asked.

Joshua held up two fingers for the sheriff to see.

“We can’t let a rabid skunk go running lose.”

One finger.

“He may attack other innocent people.”

Springing forward, Joshua sprinted toward Anthony’s back. Simultaneously, the sheriff charged. Joshua grabbed the arm holding the gun and twisted it away from Tiffany  while delivering a kick to the back of Anthony’s knee. Throwing his arms around the dancer, Sheriff Sawyer yanked her out of Anthony’s grasp, spun around, and plunged her to the ground. He then threw his body on top of her to protect her from any possible gunshots.

In a matter of seconds, Joshua had Anthony Tanner pinned to the ground with his knee on his shoulder.

“Nice moves.” Cameron handed Joshua a pair of handcuffs to secure their suspect.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you, ma’am,” Sheriff Sawyer said to Tiffany while helping her up. He adverted his eyes while she adjusted her dress, which had come up to her hips to reveal a butterfly tattoo on her buttock.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Tiffany’s voice shook. Once her dress was pulled down and straightened, she threw both of her arms around Sheriff Sawyer. “I’m still shaking.”

Holding her tight, the sheriff picked up the sweet scent of citrus in her hair. “It’s okay, ma’am. We’ve got everything under control now.”

“Tiffany,” she said into his chest. She took in a deep breath. “Call me Tiffany.”

“I think you’ve finally stopped trembling,” Sawyer said.

She squeezed his muscular biceps. “You’re so big and strong.” She pushed herself back into his arms. “Hold me please. I’m still scared.”

“Cameron,” Joshua said in a low voice, “we should go put Tanner in the cruiser and take him back to the sheriff’s department.”

“Did Sawyer just giggle?” she asked Joshua while they ushered the gunman to the car.

“Yeah, he did,” Anthony answered from where he was between the two of them.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Cameron said.

“I thought I told you to behave yourself,” Joshua said.

“I was until this crazy woman tried to arrest me,” Anthony said.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Tanner,” Joshua said. “I was  talking to her.” He pointed at Cameron. “What was the last thing I told you before going into the bar?”

“He started it,” Cameron pointed at their suspect.

Sighing, Joshua turned around in time to see Tiffany passing her business card with her phone number to Sheriff Sawyer, who was grinning like a teenage boy getting a date with the prom queen.

Chapter Sixteen

“Well, his DNA places him in Dolly’s house,” Sheriff Sawyer said while conferring with Joshua in the observation room. On the other side of the two-way mirror, Anthony Tanner was sitting handcuffed to a chair at the conference table.

“Is it a match for the second blood-type found on the knife and at the scene?”

“Forensics is still working on that,” Curt said. “But we can place him in the house.”

“Not necessarily.” Joshua turned his back on the interrogation room.

Cameron told them, “Tanner claims Irving attacked him outside while he was walking down the street … while he was minding his own business.”

“Since I was knocked out under the bookcase, I can’t refute that,” Joshua said. “I didn’t get a look at the killer. I didn’t see Tanner kill Dolly. So without real evidence connecting Tanner to the murder, a case could be made for Irving picking up his DNA outside where he was an innocent bystander.”

“I hate lawyers,” Curt grumbled.

“We haven’t lost yet,” Joshua said. “I found a burner phone in his pocket. Do any of the numbers in the call log connect him to the phone you found under the sofa at Dolly’s house?”

“Several,” Curt said. “The last call on the phone at the scene was made to the phone in Tanner’s pocket. It was placed less than two hours before you found her body.”

“Forensics get a match on the fingerprints on the phone and medallion yet?” Cameron turned around to ask.

“Not yet,” Curt answered before asking Joshua, “Do you want to take this or me?”

“You do it,” Joshua said. “Pretend we have more than we do. I’m convinced Tanner’s a gun for hire. I want the guy who hired him.”

Curt chuckled. “Do you really want to go up against the Ice Queen?”

“Ice Queen?” Cameron asked.

“That’s the name those in the government arena use for Congresswoman Rachel Hilliard,” Joshua said.

“Rachel,” she gasped. “From Dolly’s album. Is that the same Rachel?”

“According to our source inside the Blue Moon,” Curt said. “Her lackey, Colonel MacRae, was looking for someone to off Dolly for them to clear Hilliard’s way to the governor’s mansion.”

“But something isn’t sitting right with me about that,” Joshua said.

“What’s that?”

“You saw the Blue Moon,” Joshua said. “You saw the clientele. Colonel MacRae is a polished professional. His face is known in Charleston and the Ohio Valley. I can’t see someone as smart as he is walking into an exotic dance club and asking for someone to do a hit for him. That’s so sloppy.”

“I can’t see that either,” Cameron said.

“You think they’re being set up?” Curt asked.

“I definitely want to get Tanner to talk,” Joshua said.

“Well, he didn’t talk before when he was arrested for  murder,” Curt said. “What makes you think he’ll flip on who hired him this time?”

“Let’s hope he didn’t like jail enough to want to take the fall again.”

Cameron waited for Curt to step out into the hall before she said, “Dolly’s closed back in the seventies. Apparently,  she’s been collecting blackmail money for at least that long. Why would the congresswoman suddenly want her dead now?”

“Maybe Mike’s body being uncovered made her nervous,” Joshua squinted at her. “You know, if I were to investigate Ava Tucker’s murder, the first thing that I would do is contact every one of Dolly’s girls to find out what was going on in that cat house in the days or weeks leading up to the murder.”

“Which means Mike would have contacted Congresswoman Hilliard,” Cameron said, “who probably wouldn’t have been very happy about that connection.”  She grinned. “Sounds like a motive for killing him to me. Dolly was with me when I ran into them at Cricksters. Wouldn’t  be a very big jump for her to delete that connection to her past.”

Joshua pointed into the interrogation room. “Curt’s getting started.”

Anthony continued to slouch in his seat when Sheriff Sawyer, carrying a folder under his arm, came in. Placing the closed folder on the table between them, the sheriff sat in the chair across from him. “Anthony, looks like you’ve been up to your old tricks again.”

“You can’t prove I had anything to do with it.”

“Do with what?” Sheriff Sawyer asked.

The two men regarded each other.

“You’re looking for a scapegoat and since I’ve got a record, you figured you’d come after me, that’s all,” Anthony said. “Well, this isn’t gonna be like the last time. This time, I’m  not taking the fall for anyone, especially when they set me  up. I didn’t do it, and since I didn’t do it, you can’t prove it.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Nah, I think we can because we got evidence to prove you were there. For one, we have a witness.”

Anthony sat up in his seat. “It was too dark for that guy to see my face!”

Wordlessly, Curt looked across the table at him. A grin slowly crossed his face.

Realizing his blunder, Anthony’s face screwed up into a deep frown. “I didn’t do it,” he said with a pout. “I didn’t kill that old woman.”

“If you didn’t kill her, what were you doing there?”

“I went there to kill her,” Anthony said, “but someone else did it before I got there. I told you, I was set up!”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Cameron muttered to Joshua.

He shushed her.

“You expect me to believe that you went there to kill her, but someone beat you to it?” Curt asked with a laugh. “Who?”

“I think it was the woman who hired me.” Anthony pounded the table with his fists. “Here’s what happened. A couple of weeks ago, I got a call on my burner phone from this woman, she was an old woman. She dropped the name of a friend who vouched for her that she was clean. So I thought she was on the up and up. She had a job for me—to whack this other old woman.”

“Why did she want her killed?”

“She said it was none of my business and told me not to ask her again.” Anthony shrugged his shoulders. “She offered me ten thousand to do the job and I told her that I needed half up front. So I gave her a drop point, she made the drop.”

“Did you see her?”

“No,” Anthony said. “I don’t want to see my clients. That way I can’t rat out any of them.”

“Nor can you help in your own defense when you get caught,” Curt said.

“I would have been out clean if I wasn’t set up and that skunk didn’t go ape on me.”

“Get on with your story.”

“She didn’t want it done right away,” Anthony said. “I had to be on alert for when it was time to do the job.”

“Why did she want you to wait?”

“I don’t know,” Anthony shrugged. “Probably because she needed time to set me up! She told me to stand by and that she would call when the time was right and the old woman was alone. So, a couple of days ago, in the middle of the  afternoon, she calls my burner phone and says that it was the day. To go to the house at the address she had given me and to come in the back door, that it would be unlock—oh!”  Jabbing his finger in the air, he sat up. “Another thing! She wanted it done a particular way.”

“What particular way?”

“I was to bean her in the back of the head and knock her out,” Anthony said, “And then I was to wrap duct tape around her head to cover her mouth and nose so that she would  suffocate.” He pointed to the two-way mirror. “I still have the duct tape that I brought to do it.”

In the observation room, Cameron grabbed Joshua’s  elbow. “That’s the same way Ava Tucker and Virgil Null were killed.”

“Can’t be an accident that whoever hired Tanner wanted Dolly killed in precisely the same way one of her hookers was killed,” Joshua said.

His brows furrowed, Curt folded his arms on top of the table when he asked Tanner, “Did your client tell you why she wanted Houseman killed that way?”

“Hey!” Anthony held up both of his hands as best he could with them handcuffed and shook his head. “Like I said, she refused to give me any details.”

“Which is bad for you since you’re looking for a deal,” the sheriff said. “Go on. So your client wanted the old lady killed in a specific way. She wanted her knocked out, tied up, and suffocated with duct tape. Tell me what happened next.”

“I go to the place like the lady on the phone told me to do,” Anthony said. “It was dark. The back door was unlocked, like she said it would be. I went in, like she told me to do. I crept into the dining room and found furniture overturned and went into the living room, expecting to find the old lady reading or watching TV or napping or whatever it is old women do at night. I had the numb chuck to knock her out like I was supposed to, but when I went in to the living room I found the old lady on the floor with blood all over the place—not at all the way the lady on the phone told me. So then, I’m thinking, ‘This is not good,’ and that was when the skunk and that man came in and everything went to hell.”

“Sounds like it did,” Curt said.

“You’re telling me.” Anthony nodded his head. “So I grabbed the knife from the floor in case I needed to defend myself. I mean, I knew then that I had been set up. Next thing I know, I’m wearing a skunk cap.” He pointed at the scratches on his face.

“Do you have the clothes and shoes that you were wearing last night?”

“Why? So you can prove I was there by the skunk hair and—”

“The pattern of the blood on the clothes—”

“There was blood all over and that guy went after me,” Anthony objected.

“The blood splatter pattern could prove that you walked in after she was dead, or that you were there when she was killed. The clothes you were wearing can prove if you are  telling the truth or not.”

Anthony’s face fell.

“What did you do with your clothes, Tanner?”

Hanging his head, he muttered his reply.

“What did you say?”

“Burned them,” Anthony said. “I burned them in the trash.”

“You’re an idiot, you know that, Tanner?” Curt said. “You do know where you made your first mistake, don’t you?”

“Sure do,” Anthony replied. “I never should have trusted that old woman.”