Last Diner Standing, page 17
Chapter 21
“You ready to talk to Brent?” I asked.
“You bet.”
We climbed into Joe’s truck and my phone vibrated. “Yeah?”
“Are you coming over tonight?” Sullivan asked.
The words sent goose bumps up my spine and heated my cheeks. I knew he didn’t mean it that way, like we were spending the night together, but his smooth voice asking me to come over made me wish otherwise.
“Yeah. Right now Ax and I are going to talk to a suspect.”
Annoyingly long pause. “Be safe.”
Ax took his eyes off the road for a second to watch me. “Sullivan? You know, for a bad guy, he’s pretty okay. In fact, I’m cool with having him around. You know, in case you guys start hooking up or whatever.”
I didn’t want to talk about hooking up with Sullivan. It was too complicated. I flipped on the radio. Jingle Bells filled the car and Axton forced me to sing along until we pulled up to Brent’s house—a nice, brick, middle-sized ranch with a three car garage.
“Being a liquor sales rep must pay pretty well.”
“Nah, he inherited this place from his grandma.”
“You got that from your phone before the pageant?”
He shrugged. “I’m just that good, man.”
A light burned in the window and a big ass truck with an extended cab sat in the driveway. Nine forty-five was late to be dropping in unannounced, but tough.
I knocked on the door and felt someone stare out at me. Then the carved door opened, but the screen door stood between Brent and us.
“Who are you?” he asked.
He was very handsome. Tall, muscular, blond hair with all-American good looks, but he wasn’t the man from the photo on Crystal’s bedside table. Who was that guy?
“Brent Crandall? I’m Jane Smith and this is…” I glanced at Ax.
“Bruce Wayne. Nice to meet you.”
Really, Ax? Batman? I refrained from a serious eye roll.
“I was wondering if we could talk to you about Crystal Waters?” I asked.
His eyes flickered between the two of us. “What is this about?”
Okay, hard part time. “I assume you heard about Crystal?”
He audibly swallowed. “Yeah.”
“We’re looking into her death,” I said.
“Why?”
“We work freelance for an insurance company,” Axton said. “Just want to make sure Crystal didn’t take her own life. And, there’s a double indemnity clause on her policy if she was murdered.”
Wow, call me impressed. I couldn’t believe he pulled that out of his ass. And he sounded so sincere.
“Crystal would never kill herself,” Brent said. “She loved life. Loved dancing. Well, the attention, really. She was kind of an exhibitionist. Besides, she was found in the trunk of her car. The police said she was…” He paused and shook his head. “They said she had been hit. Shouldn’t it be obvious she didn’t commit suicide?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense, but the insurance company has to be very thorough,” I said.
He held open the screen door. “Come in.”
He led us to a living room that hadn’t seen an update since Grandma passed. Gold-leafed mirrors and floral wallpaper. He nodded at a seafoam green sofa. “Have a seat.”
“I’m sorry about Crystal,” I said.
“Yeah, the police called me this afternoon. I’m in shock. We didn’t date anymore, but I still loved her, you know?”
What was it about Crystal that had men falling for her? Besides her obvious physical attributes, of course. By all accounts, Crystal had been a mean girl. Maybe men didn’t care about pretty on the inside.
“What can you tell me about Sheik Johnson?” I asked.
Brent’s face changed from grief to hard-edged anger. “She broke up with me for that loser a year and seven months ago.”
He was still counting the months. Bad sign. I pulled out my little notebook and pen. “Tell me about her. Did Crystal have any girlfriends?”
He looked a little dazed by the change in topic. “She was straight. She might have danced with other girls, but she preferred men.”
“No, I mean friends who were girls. Pals?”
“Um, not really. Other girls were jealous of her.”
“She was very beautiful,” I agreed.
“I know.” He rubbed his cheek with a palm and rose. “Wait here, I want to show you something.” He left the room and headed to the back of the house.
I turned to sneer at Ax. “Bruce Wayne?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “It’s the only thing that came to mind. Jane Smith isn’t exactly original.”
Brent came back and handed me two photos. In one, he stood with his arm around a stunning Crystal. They were at the beach. Her body was toned, tanned, and stacked like a brick outhouse in a tiny silver bikini. She wore expensive oversized shades and diamond hoop earrings. Brent was obviously very proud of her.
Ax leaned closer to get a peek. “The two of you look very much in love,” he said.
Brent sniffed. “We were until she dumped me for that asshole. I gave her everything she wanted. I told her to give up the dancing, that I’d take care of her, but she wouldn’t do it. I could live with that. But when she left…” He widened his eyes to prevent the tears from falling and he sank back down in a chair.
“We heard Crystal was pretty brutal to you after you guys broke up. That you became a regular.”
His cheeks infused with color. “Who’d you hear that from? Look, it’s the only way Crystal would talk to me. She wouldn’t take my calls, wouldn’t see me. What was I supposed to do?”
“What about family?” I asked. “Did she have any relatives she was close to?”
Brent shook his head. “She wouldn’t talk about her family. She left home when she was seventeen.”
I flipped a page in my notebook. “What about your relationship with your former fiancé, Diane Myer? I know she was upset when Crystal taunted her at the club.”
“What does my relationship with Diane have to do with Crystal’s death?”
“Just background information, sir,” I said. “Now, about Diane?” I looked him in the eye and tried to keep my expression neutral. I fully expected him to realize we were lying through our teeth and call the police. But he just continued.
“Diane and I were never engaged,” he said. “We dated for six months and she wound up pregnant. Diane wanted a relationship, but I wanted to keep it casual. I take care of Josh financially, see him twice a month, but I never loved Diane.”
Somebody give this guy a father of the year award. Still, he was a better dad than Asshat had been.
“And you met Crystal at the club?” I asked.
“Yeah, The Bottom Dollar is in my territory. I’m a liquor sales rep. Vodka. All flavors.” That explained Crystal’s bizarre vodka collection.
“I go into the club two or three times a week. Crystal and I started talking one day. She said I was a good listener.”
“And you didn’t think it would bother Diane that you were dating one of her fellow dancers?” I asked.
“I didn’t really think about it.” This guy’s lack of sensitivity was astonishing to me. The mother of his child had to see him come into her workplace and flirt with his new girlfriend. That sounded very painful. And another good reason to keep Diane as a suspect. But what was her motive for bashing Asshat?
“After you and Crystal broke up, how often did you see her at the club? When you worked, I mean.”
He blew out a breath. “Two, three times a week. And she ignored me. Like I was nothing.” His eyes lost focus as he gazed at the green carpet. “I had to watch her with other men. Grinding on them. Shaking her tits in their faces.” His voice took on an angry edge. “And she just ignored me. That’s why I became her regular.”
Not only wasn’t he over Crystal, he was still bitter about their break up. But was he angry enough to kill her?
“Well, thank you for your time.” I stood and held out the photos.
He took a deep breath and came back from the dark place in his head. “You can keep those, if you want. I have duplicates. Do you have a card or something?”
I patted my jacket and made a show of looking in my purse. “Damn, I must be out of them.” On my trusty pad of paper, I wrote down my number and handed it over. “Call me if you think of anything else.”
“When will I know about the insurance money? I’m the beneficiary, right?”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” Axton said and gave Brent a broad wink. “But you’ll be the first to know our findings.”
Back in the truck, I angled myself to face him. “We look nothing like insurance inspectors. I can’t believe he bought that.”
“People always want to think they’ve fallen into money. It’s just, like, human nature.”
“So what about Brent? He could have hit Asshat and killed Crystal. He had motive.” I buckled my seat belt and faced forward. “Jealousy.”
“Yeah, that had to kill him, seeing her naked with other dudes. I think I might dig a little deeper into Crystal’s past. Why wouldn’t she talk about her family? And why did she leave home as a teenager?”
“Maybe her parents kicked her out. It happens.” I was living proof of that.
“Maybe, but something smells off,” he said.
“Before we get your Better Than Sex fix, one more stop?”
He dropped his head to the steering wheel and groaned. “Where?”
“Huntingford Motor Lodge, room six.”
*
“What are we expecting to find?”
I slid my fingers over the old school metal key. “Probably nothing. I just wanted to have a look around. This is where Crystal and Martin Mathers spent at least an hour together every week.” I slid the key into the door and flipped on the light.
It was every bit as tacky as I imagined. Ugly blue carpet, a polyester bedspread in stale hues of gray, a floating laminate desk.
“Okay, now what?” Axton shut the door and moved into the room. “Surely they clean this place at least once a week, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I walked to the bed and threw back the bedspread. “Help me lift up the mattress.”
Together, Ax and I hoisted the mattress and I checked underneath. Nothing. We let it fall back in place.
“I’ll get the bathroom, you check under the bed?”
“Yep,” he said.
I checked behind the shower curtain, lifted the lid on the toilet tank. This was a waste of time and twenty-six bucks.
“Hey Rose, bring me the roll of toilet paper.”
I stuck my head out of the bathroom. “We are not stealing the toilet paper.”
“Just toss it here. Do you still have a flashlight from the other night?”
“Yeah.” I popped off the half-roll of paper and tossed it at Ax. “What are you doing?”
“Remember I told you that I’ve been checking for porn violators at work?”
“Ax, is there something you need to tell me?”
He scoffed. “Anyway, the philosophy prof digs these sites with amateur, hidden camera crap. Girls in bathrooms, dressing rooms. It’s creepy. So I checked with some of my techie friends on how to tell if there’s a camera in the room, because now I’m all, like, paranoid.”
I dug out my flashlight and handed it over. “How often does that happen, people using a hidden camera?”
“More often than you think.” He shut off the light switch and slowly panned the flashlight over the room. “Dude. You have to see this.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“Don’t move.” He pointed the light at my face.
I held up a hand to shield my eyes. Then he was next to me, shoving the flashlight into my hand.
“Hold the toilet paper roll up to your eye.”
I felt like an idiot, but I complied. “Now what?”
He spun me in the opposite direction. “Flash the light up there.” He guided my hand.
“The smoke detector?”
He moved the light around, flashing it at different angles. “Do you see the light reflect back at you?”
I moved the light in a circle, beaming it on the detector. There was a little spot that seemed brighter. “Oh my God. I think I did.”
“I did, too,” he said.
He moved away from me and hit the light switch. “Now, let’s check it out.” He grabbed a chair from the floating desk and pulled it over to the smoke detector. He climbed up, pried the detector from the wall, and peered at the back. “Yep.”
“Let’s see.” I grabbed the detector while he jumped down.
The camera was a small black square and attached to a circuit board. Bigger than a postage stamp, but not by much.
A knock sounded at the door. “Open up, please. This is management.”
I glanced at Ax. “Shit.”
Ax ripped out the camera and shoved it in his pocket. “Play it cool. Just maintain.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be fine.” I took the smoke detector and opened the door.
A man in a maroon vest and navy slacks with a severely receding hairline stood before me. “The computer alerted us to an error with the smoke detector. Is there a problem here?”
I thrust it at him. “Yeah, check the battery. It kept beeping every ten seconds. Totally blew the mood for this one.” I wagged a finger at Ax.
“Yeah, thanks a lot, dude.”
We shoved past him and walked at a normal pace toward Stoner Joe’s truck. The manager watched as we drove out of the lot.
“So they have old fashioned keys, but updated computers?” I asked.
“Maybe it’s a law. The detectors have to be monitored or something.”
“Possibly. Anyway, Crystal and Martin Mathers had room six every week. Never deviated. So was he taping her? Or was she taping him?”
“Maybe a third party was taping them both,” Ax said.
Chapter 22
We pulled up to Axton’s house and he practically sprinted inside, convinced Joe had scarfed up all the Better Than Sex cake. I followed at a more sedate pace.
When I entered the living room, Sullivan waited for me in the dining alcove. “How’d it go?”
“Oh my God.” Axton walked out of the kitchen with a slab of cake on a plate and a full mouth. “This is literally almost better than sex, Rose. You have to try this.”
I glanced at Sullivan and saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “Let’s go downstairs and talk.” He gestured for me to lead the way to the basement.
“Take a piece of cake with you,” Axton called after us.
“I found out lots of interesting things today,” I said, standing at one end of the shuffleboard.
Sullivan sat on a folding chair and crossed his legs. “Do tell.”
I walked to a Chewbacca sleeping bag and collapsed on top of it. It smelled like citrus and sandalwood. I wrapped my arms around the pillow and gazed at Sullivan. “Your boy, Martin Mathers, was Crystal’s sugar daddy. And Ax and I just checked out their love nest, better known as the Huntingford Motor Lodge. Always room six, which just so happened to contain a hidden camera in the smoke detector. What do you think about that?”
“You’re sure about this? That it was Martin Mathers?”
I yawned. “As sure as I can be. He sleeps with strippers, he gambles. How can you trust someone like that?”
“Who says I trust him?”
“I thought you owned his ass. What with his gambling debt and all.”
“Let me tell you about men like Martin Mathers. They play all sides. You can never trust a dirty cop. Not unless you have a lot of information that could ruin him. And even then, if a cop’s on the take, you have to be on your guard.”
“Do you? Have a lot of information that could ruin him?”
He raised a brow. A Sullivanism for ‘duh, of course I do.’
“Well, someone recorded his little trysts with Crystal. That wasn’t you, was it?”
“No. So what else did you find out today?” he asked.
“Crystal’s ex, Brent Crandall, is one angry, jilted lover. Diane, his ex and Crystal’s fellow stripper, hated her guts. And the police know that Crystal is dead. They took Janelle in for questioning and released her two hours later.”
“You did have a busy day,” he said.
I rose on my elbow and watched him. “I’ve been thinking about your situation. Why would Clay go to all that trouble to put a hit on you? Why wouldn’t he just have Stuart do the deed? Why outsource when he already has Stuart on the payroll?”
He stroked his chin with his thumb. “I’ve thought about that. Maybe Clay wanted someone down the chain so it couldn’t be linked back to him. Or maybe he wanted Stuart’s hands clean for some reason.”
“No, Stuart is hired muscle, just like Henry.”
“Henry’s more than just muscle,” he said.
“Do you two have a bromance I should know about?” I flopped my head back on the pillow. “I keep thinking about Crystal’s ex, Brent. He went from boyfriend status to customer. That had to suck. Crystal dumped Brent for Sheik. Brent could have attacked Sheik in jealous fit and then when Crystal wouldn’t take him back, he killed her.”
“Jealousy’s a powerful motivator. So where’s the missing money in this scenario?”
“Crime of opportunity. Brent took it because it was there. But if Clay isn’t behind the hit, who is? Just how many enemies do you have?”
He narrowed his eyes in thought. That was troublesome. Did he have so many enemies he needed to stop and think about it?
“Did you ever do something stupid over a girl?” I asked.
His expression changed and a grin spread across his face, causing little creases to appear around his mouth. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think you probably ruined your rival’s life and crushed his soul.”
“That sounds about right.”
“So, what did this girl look like?” I don’t remember his answer, because I zonked out.
When I awoke, I was sore, stiff, and starving. I blinked at the sleeping face two feet away from me.
Henry was a drooler.
I sat up and arched my back as I glanced around the basement. No Sullivan.
