Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) (32 page)

“I didn’t kill Gary. You have no evidence,” she says, her chin jutting out.

“Well, I do, actually. I have your fingerprint on the gun used to kill him, the one you stole out of the McClusky place to try to frame Angel. People think they’ve wiped a gun free of fingerprints, but they always forget the trigger.”

Her eyes narrow. She’s trying to remember whether she wiped the trigger off. I’m bluffing anyway, but I’m hoping she doesn’t guess that.

“Can you at least answer one thing for me?” I say. “I can’t quite clear it up.”

“I don’t know whether I can or not.”

“I know you stole the McClusky’s key out of Camille Overton’s utility room so you could get in and steal Angel’s gun, but why didn’t you use the key when you went back to replace the gun? Why break a window?”

I’ve got her now. She closes her eyes for a moment, making the decision to maintain dignity. When she opens them I see that she’s given in to the process. “That was awful. All that planning, and then I forgot the key. I changed purses that morning when I went to work and I completely forgot that the key was in a side pocket of the other purse. Pure vanity, wanting to be sure my bag matched my shoes.” A laugh bubbles up and she clamps a hand over her mouth to keep it from getting out of control.

“Oh, Cookie.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Then when I got to the McCluskys’ house and realized I’d forgotten the key, I had to decide whether I’d go back home and get it or break that little window.”

“Why did you want to frame Angel for the murder? Or was it Slate you wanted to pin it on?”

“That little bitch thought she was so smart and that nobody would guess she and Gary were sleeping together. She’d come sashaying into the bank and hang all over him. One more humiliation for Barbara Dellmore. What that poor woman had to put up with… anyway, I figured if anybody got close to finding out what happened to Gary, I might as well point things in Angel’s direction. And if you hadn’t butted in, it would have gone fine. Can you imagine James Harley Krueger figuring this out?”

“Probably not.”

“And how
did
you figure it out? I thought I had done a pretty good job of covering my tracks.”

“You did a damned good job.”

“It couldn’t have been that good, since you caught me.”

I put up my hands. “I mean it. You got lazy though, that’s what eventually led me to you.”

“I am not a lazy woman by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Let me ask you this. Why did you drive Gary’s car back to the park where you left Mrs. Witz’s car the night you killed him? That was laziness. You could have walked back to the car and driven it away, and I never would have made the connection to you.”

Cookie looks truly puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I tell her that Louis Caton noticed the car in both directions. “He thought it was the same car, but I realized that whoever did the killing parked up on the dam road and walked to the American Legion Hall to shoot Gary and then drove Gary’s car back and left it. If you’d just walked back and driven the car away, Louis Caton wouldn’t have come along and stolen it, and I wouldn’t have wondered whose car had been exchanged for it.”

She shakes her head. “Fool. I thought it was a brilliant idea, taking his car up there and leaving it. I thought it would be an extra little mystery for somebody to have to figure out.” She frowns. “But how did you connect the car with me?”

“Mrs. Witz. You know how old people are. They worry over every little thing. She called and told me that she thought somebody had driven her car. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but when I started wondering whether you might have had something to do with Gary’s death, I found out her car was an easy switch for Gary’s. It was the last piece I needed to put the puzzle together.”

“I thought it was clever to use Mrs. Witz’s car instead of mine, so in case anybody saw the car they would never connect it with me.” Her eyes glitter with triumph, but she quickly realizes that she wasn’t so clever after all. She doubles over as in pain. “I really thought I was going to get away with it. Why did you have to interfere? You said finding out Mrs. Witz lived across the street from me only confirmed your suspicion. What got you thinking it was me in the first place?”

“Something Barbara said. She said you and Clara were unlikely friends. It struck me as odd. Clara seemed glad to have you sit with the family at the funeral, so I wondered why the two of you were unlikely friends. And I began to remember all the times I had talked to you and how you talked about yourself and Alan as if you were partners.

“We were partners!”

“I know you were. Later I talked to Darla Rodriguez, and she said something like it’s only when a woman loses hope that she becomes dangerous. The remark had nothing to do with you, but it occurred to me that when Gary came on the scene, you started to lose hope that Alan would reward you for all your years of sticking by him. What I don’t understand is why now? Gary has been at the bank for a few years. Surely it wasn’t finding out that Gary was fooling around with Angel Bright that made you act.”

Cookie looks sick. Her voice is broken. “All those years I loved Alan and stuck by him. I worked so hard to make sure the bank thrived. It was my whole life. I watched Alan and Clara raise their kids and have another whole life. But lately Alan was starting to talk about retiring. I knew he was going to make Gary a vice president. I could see the handwriting on the wall. After all the work I had done, all my sacrifice for the bank, no matter that I deserved to be president of the bank, I knew Alan would see to it that Gary was promoted over me eventually. I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t fair.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her that Dellmore knew the bank board wouldn’t allow Gary to head the bank. He might inherit it, but he was never going to be in charge of it. Cookie killed Gary Dellmore for nothing.

I stand up. “Cookie, I’m going to have to take you in. But what I’d like to do is take you to the jail in Bobtail. That way you’re not going to have to face people you know here in town. At least not right away. I can keep you here in our jail, though, if you prefer that.”

She gets quiet and gradually straightens up. Her lips are trembling, but she has restored some measure of dignity. “Bobtail is better. I appreciate it.” She stands up and falters as if her legs won’t hold her, but she takes two steps and grabs the back of the sofa to steady herself. She looks around her place like she’s never seen it before. “What can I take with me?”

“Put together some personal items, toiletries, any medication you need. They’ll confiscate them at first, but you’ll get them back.”

“What will happen to my house?”

“I’ll come by and check on it. You have any pets?”

“No, my dog died last year and I decided not to get another one.”

“I’ll have to keep an eye on you while you get your things together.”

She looks puzzled and then understands. “Oh, I’m not going to kill myself. If it comes to that, the state will have that satisfaction.”

When we get outside, Zeke Dibble is sitting in his car out front where I’ve asked him to wait. He pulls in behind us as I drive away from the curb.

The crowd is upbeat at the opening of Ellen Forester’s new art gallery and workshop, nobody more so than Ellen herself. She hugs me when I walk in. “Thank you so much for your help,” she whispers.

I don’t dare look at Loretta and Jenny, who I’ve brought with me, but Loretta prods me. “What was that all about?”

“I helped her hang the art and lent her a couple of my paintings.” That’s not all I did. She called me one night when her husband showed up, and I went out to the little rental house she’s staying in while her place is being renovated. I told him if anything happened to Ellen or any of her property, he was going to jail. Period. I don’t know if we’ve seen the last of him, but at least I’ve put him on notice.

Gabe LoPresto is here with Sandy. She apparently decided she liked the look she adopted when Gabe was gone, and Gabe looks at her like he does, too. He’s strutting around like he never did a thing wrong and as if Darla Rodriguez never existed.

The gallery looks good, although, as I feared, I’m not partial to the kind of art Ellen displays. I want her to be successful, that’s why I spent the last couple of days helping her hang pictures. I wanted to lend Ellen the Remington as a showpiece, but it’s stuck in Houston, waiting for a verdict on the provenance. They can’t seem to locate the man Slate McClusky said gave it to him in settlement of debts, and Slate couldn’t find any papers. I let Ellen borrow my Melinda Buie instead. It’s an abstract, but at least people can recognize it as a cow.

Slate and Angel have mysteriously disappeared. Jenny says it will take some time to put together a case against them, and even then it may not be worth the trouble since they don’t appear to have salvaged much from their high-finance days. I expect the only thing we’ll see of them for some time to come is if they manage to locate the Remington’s former owner. And if he isn’t found, I don’t know that I’ll ever get my hands on it.

Alan and Clara Dellmore haven’t shown up, and I doubt that they will. Alan tried in vain to have Cookie let out on bail, her expensive lawyer claiming that she was no threat to the community. But there was the matter of the premeditation that the judge didn’t take kindly to. I’ve gone to see her a couple of times, and she’s not doing well.

Once when I went to see her, I stopped at the bar where James Harley Krueger is working. He seems to have settled into his job, but he didn’t appreciate my request that he not supply Rodell with any alcohol.

“That’s none of your business,” he said. “Rodell is a friend of mine and he was good to me when I was a cop. The least I can do for him is see that he’s happy.”

Patty has come to the opening, but she says Rodell is still not up to such a tiring event. I’ll look in on him tomorrow, maybe see if I can get him in the car and down to the station. I’ve come to enjoy his sense of humor, something he had lost in the bottle.

Barbara Dellmore has shown up tonight looking like a new woman. Most people in her situation wouldn’t have shown their face, but she’s defiant. She didn’t kill her husband, and she stuck by him despite his affairs. She has nothing to be ashamed of, she told me, and she intends to let everybody know it.

I want to acknowledge the amazing members of my high school class at Brazosport Senior High in Texas, many of whom I haven’t seen in decades, who rally to celebrate my books in person at signings, put out the word on social media, and generally make me feel like a superstar. In particular, thanks to Sheila Skaggs Hale (she missed her calling—should have been a publicist), Gretchen Muehlberg Williams, Cheryl Hill Dancak, Sandra James Booth, their husbands, and all the people they roped into coming to readings and prodded to read my books.

And then there are my relatives, that crazy Gaines gang, in-laws and outlaws, who read the books and try to guess who the characters are modeled after. No matter our different philosophies and lives, your love surrounds me. How lucky can I be?

A shout-out to Detective Ruben Vasquez of the Georgetown Police Department for his fascinating talk about murder investigation in Texas. He set me straight on some things, forcing me into feverish last-minute edits, but they were worth it to get it right.

A special thank you to my husband, David, for his insights into how financial arrangements work between banks and big business—especially the shady side.