Brody & Hannigan 02 - Grand Theft Lotto (6 page)

Chapter Six

One thing was for certain. Mel Cooley was not the man Brody had seen driving the Kawasaki Ninja 650 the day before outside the alley where they'd found Dwayne Barlow's body. Cooley was about five inches too short and a hundred pounds too heavy.

"Dude, this is so messed up," he said again with a shake of his shaggy head. "Are you sure it was Dwayne?"

Hannigan, Brody saw, was starting to lose patience. "He's my cousin. I'm sure it was him. Did you see him at all yesterday or not?"

"Well, yeah, he came by the shop a little after lunch time to see if I wanted to knock off early and have a beer with him at Bug Swallows."

"Bigelows," Hannigan translated to Brody. "You couldn't go?"

Cooley angled a look toward the open doorway to the hall. Across from the break room where they had met to conduct the interview, the door to the manager's office was open. "No. My shift wasn't up," he said carefully. Brody read his answer to mean that his manager had been in the auto body shop the previous afternoon, precluding any chance of leaving work before his shift was over.

"How did he seem to you?" Brody asked. "Happy? Excited? Worried?"

Cooley frowned, his forehead folding into three fleshy ridges. "He seemed normal, I guess. He's always happy."

Hannigan slanted a quick look Brody's way before asking, "Did he mention what he did for lunch?"

"Uh, some family thing, I think he said. I kinda wonder if he wasn't shining me on about that, though, 'cause he had this sort of smug look when he mentioned it, like he had a secret."

A secret like jacking his cousin's winning lottery ticket? Brody wondered. He supposed it was possible that Dwayne was merely smug because he knew something Cooley didn't. It wasn't fair, in absence of evidence, to presume the man guilty of theft when he wasn't alive to defend himself. It also wasn't wise, as an investigator, to close the door on the case when the ticket still hadn't been found.

"Was he with anyone else?" Hannigan asked.

"Not in here. I didn't see his car, though." Cooley shook his head. "Dude, this is so messed up."

Hannigan sucked in a deep, sharp breath and let it go slowly, looking pointedly at Brody. He nodded and stood, pulling a business card from his jacket pocket and handing it to the man. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Cooley. If we have any more questions, we'll let you know. And if you think of anything, or hear anything you think might interest us, give me a call at the number on that card."

Outside, Hannigan waited for him to unlock the door of the department-issue Ford, her arms folded and her expression somewhere between thoughtful and frustrated. "You'd think if he stole the ticket, he'd have told his best friend."

"So maybe he didn't steal it."

"He was the most likely person on that list Mom gave us."

"But there were other possibles, right?" He unlocked the door. Sliding behind the wheel, he grimaced at the built-up heat inside. They were already entering the latter part of September, but summer seemed determined to stick around in all its sultriness. He cranked the engine and turned the air up to high.

Hannigan angled the passenger-side vents toward her. "I'll be glad when it starts feeling like fall."

He eyed her neat cotton suit. "You could take off the jacket."

She glanced his way. "You weren't kidding about wanting to see me naked, were you?" She said it lightly, but the words brought back memories of his sleepless night on her sofa.

By the time she had gone to bed the previous evening, he'd been no closer to knowing whether she thought they could change the tenor of their relationship. She'd softened, yes, even kissing him as they'd cuddled on the sofa. But she'd kept things light. Kept the heat on low.

And he'd let her, because she'd lost her cousin and she was clearly feeling unsettled. But how much longer did he plan to play the role of platonic lover?

"Who's next on the list?" he asked as he eased into traffic.

Hannigan consulted her list. "Jeff Bennington."

"Related to you?"

"Cousin. About twice removed. I think he's my grandmother's cousin's grandson."

"You take the extended family thing pretty seriously in the Hannigan family."

"You Brodys don't?"

He didn't have a lot of cousins. His mother had only a brother and his father a sister. Each of them had two children. Two girls on his father's side and a boy and a girl on his mother's. "I have four cousins. Three women, one man. None of them particularly close."

She gave him a mildly pitying look, though she smiled when she said, "No wonder you have money in your family. You haven't diluted the inheritance pool."

He didn't tell her that, as the only male left in the direct lineage on his father's side, he was under subtle pressure to carry on the family name. He didn't want her to think his sudden sexual interest in her had procreative motives. Babies were the last thing he thought about when he looked at her these days.

"What kind of rap sheet on Bennington?"

"Minor stuff. Drunk and disorderly. Disturbing the peace. Shoplifting." She sighed. "I come from a lovely family."

"You can't pick your relations."

"Some of them are great people, really." She consulted her phone. "I don't have Jeff's contact information. I'll have to call someone." She dialed a number, had a brief conversation and jotted something on the back of the list her mother had given her. "He's on workman's comp. Tilly says there's some question as to whether he's milking it a bit."

"What happened to him?"

"Strained back. He works at a grocery store as a stocker. Been off for two weeks."

"How did he and Dwayne get along?"

"Sometimes they'd get along fine. Sometimes you had to break them apart with a fire hose."

Relationships in his own extended family were less volatile, but it was hard to rouse any strong feelings for people you didn't see for years at a time. His cousins on his father's side all lived within an hour's drive, but he hadn't seen either of the girls in about three years. They were both married, both carrying on the gene pool if not the family name. His mother was fond of reminding him that both were younger than he was.

On the whole, he found a certain attractiveness to the Hannigan style of family relationships, fisticuffs and all. At least they saw each other now and then. He couldn't even remember either of his cousins' married names.

Hannigan directed him to a boxy apartment complex just across the railroad tracks from Marie Barlow's house. Maybe four flat blocks of only moderately busy side streets between Jeff Bennington's apartment and his cousin Dwayne's last place of residence. And less than a mile from the dark alley where Dwayne had breathed his last. Walking distance, Brody thought. Not exactly an indictment against Bennington, but interesting, nonetheless.

He mentioned the proximity to Hannigan. "Your mother lives on this side of town, too."

"Yeah. My parents were the first to come to Weatherford. Several of her cousins followed."

"On purpose or just coincidence?"

"Everyone claims the latter, but I suspect the former," she admitted. "My parents weren't rich, by any means. But they got by, somehow. They didn't have to beg or steal, which put them better off than most of my maternal relatives. I guess some of her cousins thought they could find a better life in a little bit bigger place, so they left the mountain and headed here. I remember when I was younger—" She stopped short, her brow furrowed.

"You remember—?" he prodded.

Her lips quirked, not quite forming a smile. "I remember when we were little, we had relatives drop in to stay for a few days at a time. Someone was always being evicted or couldn't pay the power bill or the water bill. And they'd come stay with us for a few days, until my dad had his fill and told them to go find somewhere else to stay."

"Your mom's too softhearted for her own good?"

"She likes
you
, after all." She pulled a face, making him smile.

Jeff Bennington answered the door after several sharp raps, squinting as daylight hit his bloodshot eyes. He smelled like beer and old cigarettes, and he hadn't bothered to don any clothing, greeting them in sagging, formerly-white jockey shorts and a pair of white crew socks. He grimaced when he saw Hannigan. "God."

"Nice outfit, Jeff. That how you greet all your visitors?"

"I don't know who killed Dwayne."

Hannigan glanced at Brody, then shifted her gaze back to her cousin's scrunched-up face. "Go get dressed. We'll wait in here." She pushed past Jeff, nearly knocking him over. He staggered off down a short, narrow hall while Hannigan surveyed the cluttered living room with a slight curl of her lip. The place was, to be generous, a pigsty, but she managed to clear off a couple of sofa cushions and took a seat.

Brody stayed on his feet, looking out the grimy front window at the parking lot. "What does Jeff drive?"

"No idea," Hannigan admitted.

"Volkswagen Beetle," Jeff answered. "Why?"

Brody turned. Jeff had donned faded jeans and a Harley Davidson T-shirt. He'd also run a comb through his wavy brown hair, though he still looked as if he'd been up all night drinking.

"We're looking for a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle that was at the scene of Dwayne's murder," Hannigan answered.

"My last motorcycle was one of those cheap-ass Honda dirt bikes me and Jimmy bought together back in high school," Jeff said. If he was insulted by the implication that he was a suspect, he didn't show it. "Becky called last night to tell me about Dwayne. Sucks, man."

"Where were you yesterday afternoon around two?"

Jeff rolled his gaze toward Brody. "Look, I get you gotta ask these questions, but I didn't have nothin' against Dwayne. Didn't see a whole lot of him in the last few weeks, to tell the truth. He'd been hard to find. Seemed to be hangin' out with a different bunch."

"Oh?" Hannigan nudged.

"Yeah, some guy he met at the gym where he worked out."

Brody glanced at Hannigan. Dwayne Barlow hadn't looked much like a man who spent any time working out at a gym. "What gym?"

"Dunno." Jeff shrugged. "All I know is, every time I called him to see if he wanted to go to Bug Swallows or wherever, he always told me he was goin' somewhere with a guy from the gym."

"You never did say where you were yesterday around two," Hannigan noted, her tone non-threatening.

Jeff shot her a lopsided grin. "I was with a girl. Tammy DeMarco, over on Seventh Street. She works at the hardware store on Fifth—she's probably there now. She ain't supposed to get off until six tonight."

Hannigan got up from the sofa, shooting another look at Brody. She moved toward the door and pulled out her phone.

"Were you and Dwayne close?" Brody asked Jeff, distracting him.

"Yeah, I guess. Before he joined that gym."

"What was he into?"

Jeff's eyes narrowed with confusion. "Into?"

"You know. What did he do when he wasn't working?"

Jeff laughed. "Working? Dwayne wasn't much for working."

"How'd he afford a gym membership?"

His brow furrowing, as if the question hadn't occurred to him, he shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe he made some sort of deal with the gym people."

"What kind of deal?"

Jeff didn't answer right away.

"I'm a homicide detective, Jeff," Brody said. "I don't care about any other offenses. And now that Dwayne's gone, there's not much point in trying to protect him."

"I don't know. Honest. He was kinda secretive this last little while."

"What was he into before?" Hannigan asked. She shot a quick look at Brody, telling him without words that she'd verified Jeff's alibi with Tammy DeMarco. "Same as last time?"

"I don't know," Jeff repeated. "But whatever it was, it must have been pretty big for him to hide it from me. He used to let me know what he was up to, in case I wanted in on it. Not that I ever did. Much."

"Were you at the cousins' get-together last Wednesday?"

Jeff grimaced. "Gawd, no."

A quick call to Hannigan's mother when they returned to the car confirmed Jeff's answer. "He wasn't there," Hannigan told Brody as she hung up. "So, I wonder just what Dwayne was up to at the gym?"

"Do you think there was a gym at all?" Brody asked. "Dwayne didn't exactly look like the kind of guy who pumped much iron."

"Maybe one of the local gyms is a cover for something." Hannigan dialed another number, waited a second, then said, "Hey, Greg."

Brody's stomach dipped. Greg? As in Greg Kowalski, the head of Vice.

As in, Hannigan's ex?

"What do you know about gyms that might be a front for a criminal enterprise?" Hannigan listened for a minute, then laughed. Brody grimaced, wondering what the Vice hotshot had said that was so bloody funny as to make his usually serious partner giggle like a girl.