Surrendering to the Sheriff (12 page)

“Probably to Aiden,” Kendall provided. “He called twice.”

Sarah nodded. “That makes sense, because here he is again on the phone.” She moved to that shot.

“Did he call anyone else?” Aiden asked the deputy.

“No. At least not while he was in camera range. Now, here’s what I want you to see.”

Aiden watched as Yost was on the phone, and suddenly the man’s gaze rifled to the area to his right. Not in camera range.

I gotta go,
Yost had said.
I see somebody.

Whoever or whatever it was the man had seen, it’d spooked him. Yost took off running, and it didn’t take long for the camera to lose him.

“Just wait,” Sarah said, advancing through more of the frames.

Aiden moved closer to the screen, waiting. Hoping this wasn’t something that would feel like a punch to the gut. And it didn’t take long for the camera to pick up more movement.

A person, more blur than image, on the far side of the screen.

“I enhanced it,” Sarah continued.

When the next image popped up, Kendall gasped and landed in Aiden’s arms again. Not his mother as he’d braced himself for. But definitely one of their suspects.

Joplin was there, and he was holding a gun.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“You need to eat,” Aiden reminded her again.

Kendall knew he was right, but she also knew her stomach was protesting the ham-and-cheese sandwich and three small containers of milk that Aiden had ordered for her from the café up the street. Apparently, Aiden had remembered that pregnant women should drink milk.

And rest.

Because he was making sure she did that, too.

He had her sitting at his desk while he munched on his own sandwich and pored over the preliminary financial info that Seth had managed to gather. Considering that it’d been only several hours since Aiden told him about Carla’s withdrawal, Kendall’s step-nephew had managed to come up with a lot.

Including a bank account in Carla’s name that had been closed within the past twenty-four hours.

Judging from the bits and pieces of the conversation Kendall had overheard, Seth hadn’t been able to find out what had been in the account, but he was still working on it.

Just as Aiden was working on making sure his mother came in for questioning.

Because Leland had initially been the one to call Carla, Kendall hadn’t heard any of that conversation, but Leland had relayed to Aiden that Carla refused, saying she didn’t feel well enough to be questioned. Aiden had intervened then with yet another call that Kendall hadn’t heard. However, at the end of the call, Aiden had assured Leland that Carla would be coming in at two o’clock and would be bringing her lawyer with her.

That was only an hour from now.

“Are you okay?” she asked Aiden.

He looked up from the computer screen, practically doing a double take when he saw her. It instantly made her aware of just how thrown together and frazzled she must look.

“Despite how bad I look, I feel fine,” Kendall volunteered. She didn’t want Aiden to worry about anything else. He already had enough.

“You don’t look bad,” he said, and tore his gaze from her and went back to the computer screen.

That shouldn’t have made her feel even marginally better, but it did. Because for just a second, she’d seen the attraction that had gotten them where they were now.

“Seth said you used to come up with baby names,” Aiden remarked, still not making eye contact with her.

That stopped Kendall in mid-sip of her milk. “He said what? When?”

“Right before he left, he pulled me aside and told me he once saw you doodling baby names.
Our
babies’ names.” A muscle flickered in his jaw.

That brought her to her feet. “Seth told you that?” He was a dead man, or at least a hurting one. “I was a teenager, barely thirteen, and had very romantic notions about that first kiss we’d shared.”

“Yeah,” Aiden agreed several snail-crawling moments later. “Since it was my first real kiss, I had a few notions about it, too. None involved baby names, though.”

“Because you’re a guy.” She hoped that was all there was to it anyway, and that the kiss for him had been fueled only by teenage lust.

Of course, maybe that was all it’d been, period.

And this was getting her mind off the question she really needed to ask.

“Why the devil would Seth tell you that?” she snapped.

“It was tacked onto a threat,” Aiden admitted. “He said if I hurt you he’ll pound me to dust.”

Oh.

“Seth shouldn’t have said that.” She could feel the heat rise in her cheeks and sank back down into the chair.

“So, do you remember what names you doodled?” Aiden asked. “They might come in handy.”

Of course she remembered. When you doodled something a hundred or more times, it was glued in your memory. “Matthew Landon.”

He made a small sound. Maybe surprise, maybe not. “Matthew, my middle name.”

“Landon is Roy’s middle name,” she provided in a mumble.

Definitely not something Aiden would want to hear. Her, merging the Braddock and McKinnon family names. Heck, there were plenty of things she was saying, plenty of things she’d done that Aiden wouldn’t want her to repeat.

“I’ll bet you wish your first real kiss had been with someone else,” Kendall said. “So that you’d actually want to remember it.”

Aiden’s eyes were already dark, and they stayed that way. “If I had a do-over on that first kiss, it’d still be with you. The only thing I’d change is that there would have been a second kiss.”

Had her heart actually skipped a beat? It certainly felt like it.

The silence came. The air was suddenly so still, it felt as if everything was holding its breath. Waiting. But it wasn’t Aiden or her who broke that silence, it was a knock at the door. A moment later, Leland stuck his head in.

“Joplin’s here,” Leland said. “He wants to know what we’re planning to
discuss
with him.”

That got Aiden and her standing again. Well, this was a surprise, since Joplin had been ignoring Leland’s calls for hours.

Aiden, Leland and she went back into the squad room, but Joplin was already making his way to them. “Your deputy here left five messages for me. Five! Before I get a sixth, you need to tell me what’s going on.”

“Are you armed?” Aiden asked, not budging.

Joplin made a sound of outrage. “Yes. I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”

“So do thousands of people, but you’re not going into the room with Kendall until you’ve surrendered your weapon. You’re a murder suspect, Joplin.”

No sound of outrage this time, but the lawyer did go pale. Kendall wanted to feel sorry for him, but if he’d truly done these horrible attacks, then she wanted him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Joplin took his gun from a shoulder holster that his jacket had hidden and handed it to Aiden. Aiden tipped his head to Leland. “Frisk him.”

If looks could have killed, Joplin would have done just that with the glare he shot Aiden, but he submitted to the search. Once Leland gave them the all-clear, Aiden handed his deputy Joplin’s gun and then escorted the lawyer not to his office but to an interview room.

“Bring me the recording,” Aiden added to Leland.

“What recording?” Joplin asked.

But Aiden didn’t answer. After they were seated and Leland delivered the phone with the message, Aiden hit the play button.

“You’ll get half the money now and half when the job’s done,”
Joplin said on the recording.

“You want it done at her place?”
the second man asked.

“It doesn’t matter,”
Joplin answered.
“Just get it done.”

Joplin was cursing before the recording even finished. “How the hell did you get that?”

“It doesn’t matter. What I want to know—is it true? Did you hire those men to kidnap Kendall?”

“No!” Joplin yelled, and he repeated the word several times. He looked at her, the glare gone. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Kendall. You know that.”

She wanted to believe it. “I’m not sure of a lot of things right now.”

That brought on more profanity. “You did this,” he accused Aiden. “You turned her against me.”

“Unless you can explain that tape, Kendall won’t need anyone to turn her against you.” Aiden leaned in and got right in Joplin’s face. “Did you hire those thugs?”

“No.” This time when Joplin answered, it wasn’t a shout, but it was just as intense, and his eyes had narrowed to slits. “The man on that recording with me is Barry McNease. He does occasional legwork for me during investigations.”

“What kind of legwork?” Aiden pressed.

Joplin stayed quiet for several seconds. “It’s no secret that I believe Jewell is innocent, so I’ve been looking at other possible suspects. Something that the cops and DA didn’t do.”

“Oh, they looked,” Aiden argued. “But everything pointed to Jewell. Sorry,” he added, glancing at Kendall.

She waved him off because he was right. Everything did indeed point to Jewell.

“Was this McNease helping you look for suspects?” Kendall asked.

Joplin nodded. “I wanted surveillance cameras set up so I could keep tabs on Meredith Bellows. She was someone else who was rumored to have had an affair with Whitt shortly before he was murdered.”

It wasn’t the first time Meredith’s name had come up, but the woman had been dismissed as a suspect. There hadn’t even been any solid corroboration of her affair with Whitt. Just rumors and gossip.

“Meredith had an alibi,” Kendall reminded him.

“She did, but her husband’s alibi was thin at best. I think he could have killed Whitt, and he’s big enough to have disposed of the body himself.”

Aiden dragged in a long, weary breath. “Did you ask Sheriff McKinnon to question Mr. Bellows?”

“Yes, and he did, but Bellows denied everything, of course. I thought maybe if I watched them, the Bellowses would do something that I could use to get the charges dismissed against Jewell.”

Kendall went back over every word of the recording. Yes, it was possible that that’s what Joplin was doing, but he was acting pretty suspicious for an innocent man.

“Let me guess,” Aiden said, “these cameras weren’t going in a public place. And you had no authorization for them.”

Bingo. That would explain the guilty look.

Maybe.

“Since you’re a lawyer,” Aiden went on, “I don’t have to tell you that anything you obtained from those cameras couldn’t have been used in a court of law.”

“It’s the same for that recording,” Joplin fired back. “But I wasn’t looking to use the footage to convict Meredith or her husband. I was looking for anything that I could turn into an investigation to help Jewell.”

That was really grasping at straws, but then again the trial wasn’t that far off, and everyone on both sides was feeling anxious and desperate.

Kendall included.

Aiden got in Joplin’s face again. “Now tell me why you’re on a surveillance video near the high school shortly before a man was shot and killed.”

For just a moment, Joplin’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he frantically shook his head. “No, you’re not going to try to pin that on me—”

“Why were you there?” Aiden demanded, talking right over Joplin.

“Because I got a call from one of the PIs I’d hired, and he asked me to meet him there.”

Kendall stared at him. “Really?”

“Really!” Joplin snapped. “I didn’t speak to the PI himself but rather someone from his office. When I arrived, he wasn’t there, and I saw that suspicious-looking guy hanging around, so I drew my gun.”

She wanted to groan. It was so unlikely that it made it likely. And while he looked guilty, Joplin could indeed have been set up.

“I’m trying to clear Jewell,” Joplin restated. “I don’t need to kill anyone to do that.”

Aiden did groan. Obviously, this was as frustrating for him as it was for her. “If you’re so innocent, then why did you ignore the five calls from my deputy?” Aiden continued.

Kendall was interested in hearing the answer to that as well, but before Joplin could respond, the door flew open. One look at Leland’s face, and Kendall knew something was wrong, again.

Apparently, so did Aiden, because he cursed. “What happened now?”

“Palmer and your mother got into an argument outside city hall.” Leland swallowed hard. “Carla’s holding him at gunpoint.”

*

T
HIS
DAY
JUST
kept going downhill.

Aiden had hoped Leland was wrong, that Carla truly wasn’t involved in a mess that she shouldn’t be involved in. Yet there she was, standing on the sidewalk outside the courthouse.

And yeah, she had her .38 revolver aimed right at Palmer.

“Oh, God.” Kendall’s gaze went to the fiasco about fifteen yards ahead of them.

Some divine intervention might help right now, but Aiden figured he’d be the one to handle this.

“Stay down,” Aiden warned her for the umpteenth time. “And wait with Kendall,” he ordered Leland.

That put a frustrated look on Leland’s face, probably because he wanted to be out there with Aiden, but the deputy was staying put with Kendall. There’d be no arguments about that. It’d been bad enough that he’d had to bring her here, but Aiden hadn’t wanted to leave her in the building with Joplin.

Of course, he also didn’t want Kendall anywhere near gunfire, either, so that was why he’d come in a squad car. Aiden fully intended to disarm his mother immediately, but just in case somebody else started shooting, he wanted Kendall protected as much as possible.

“Be careful,” Kendall said when he opened the cruiser door to get out. Her expression was similar to Leland’s but a lot more intense.

“It’s my mother,” Aiden reminded her. “She won’t shoot me.”

He hoped.

But since that didn’t lessen the worried look on Kendall’s face, he brushed a kiss on her cheek. Then her mouth.

Oh, man.

He was in a lot of trouble, and it didn’t have anything to do with what he was about to face. Soon, very soon, Kendall and he were going to have to sit down and talk about what the heck was going on between them. And also start making plans for the baby. Plans that would have to wait until he put out yet another fire.

Kendall added a second “be careful” as Aiden got out and started toward Palmer and his mother. They’d drawn a crowd, at least a dozen people who were thankfully hovered behind the building and nearby cars.

“Stay back,” Aiden warned everyone. “And put down that gun!” He added some volume and grit to his voice for that last order to Carla.

His mother spared him a glance but didn’t lower her weapon. Though she was licensed to carry the gun, he wasn’t even sure if she could shoot straight with it. And Aiden didn’t want to find out.

Everything about Carla’s body was wired and stiff. Unlike Palmer. His hands were raised in the air, but there wasn’t much concern on his face. This was like a joke to him, but Aiden sure wasn’t laughing.

“Aiden,” the man greeted as if this were a friendly meeting. “Glad you got here so fast. Your mother’s clearly lost her mind.”

“I’ve found it,” Carla snapped. “And I know Palmer’s the one who’s trying to set me up.”

“Set you up?” Aiden asked, going closer. He didn’t want to lunge for the gun, since it might accidentally go off, but he had to get it out of her hands.