Payback, page 31
“So Charlie Hunt wasn’t tapping his old buddy Mark Worthy, but someone else right here in New Bern.” Justin looked genuinely perplexed. “But who? All those Survivors’ Club members lost a kid in that fire, so why would they do that? Unless Randolph really did turn on his own children. Maybe he’d taken out big insurance policies on them.”
“An insurance company isn’t going to issue a big policy on a couple of teenagers,” Trey pointed out. “And not every member lost a child in that fire. I’m voting for Michelle. She started that fire and somehow Holt knew it. That could be the reason she keeps spreading all those rumors about the Rollers. To keep the suspicion off herself.”
Gin lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Now why would Michelle kill the love of her life?”
“Jealousy,” Trey said with a definitive nod. “Her perfect boyfriend could have been stepping out on her, and she wanted to teach him a lesson.” His chin jutted out at Gin’s skeptical look. “Or maybe it was something as simple as him wanting to break up with her. My guess is she’s about as high maintenance as they come.”
“You don’t like Michelle, so you want her to be guilty of something,” Gin stated. She took her white bag back to the bed and sat down. Reaching inside, she pulled out her second blueberry bagel and took a large bite.
“It’s a plausible explanation,” Trey insisted. “And she has access to enough money to make those monthly payoffs. All Randolph has is a failing insurance agency. Mrs. Woodrow’s farm is barely covering their expenses, while Tambor is living paycheck to paycheck to support that big family of his. It all shows up in their bank statements.”
“And monthly withdrawals from Michelle Hillyer’s account didn’t show up in hers,” Gin stated. “Plus, if Scott Randolph was cheating on her, then Vivian Preston would have mentioned it. She said those girls were tight and had their own private club in high school, which means they told each other everything. If the lead cheerleader’s guy was playing around behind her back, believe me, that would have been a giant newsflash.” She took another bite of bagel and chewed as she thought it over. “I mean, Vivian told us about her drinking and smoking, and even that she played mixed volleyball with Seth, our Seattle victim.” Once again there was that niggling feeling that she was missing something. But it left as fast as it came, so Gin lifted the bagel and opened her mouth to take a bite. While she was enjoying the intense flavor of blueberry, she picked up a pen and scrawled words on a sticky note then moved to attach it to the last column.
“What’s that?” Justin asked, walking over to look at the latest addition of notes stuck to the desktop. “How was C. Holt found?” he read out loud. “What do you mean?”
Gin set her half-eaten muffin aside and paced away a few steps. “I mean if the blackmailer is responsible for killing the Rollers, how did he find them? Especially Charles Holt who had taken on a whole new identity. None of them ever came back to New Bern, and except for Ben, Holt’s brother, none of them had any other family members left in town.” She turned to face the two men and tapped an index finger against her lower lip. “Larry Brown in Louisiana was killed first, so he must have been the first one the blackmailer found. He’s also the only Roller who had a sister who made regular visits back to the old home town, so if our killer is a long time resident, he might have simply made a passing comment about her brother and she blurted out the information.” She paced back toward the desk. “So assuming that’s how the killer got the information on his first victim, how did he get the others? Especially Holt. His brother didn’t even know where he was."
"Kevin Amlin knew where Holt was," Trey pointed out. "So it's possible the others did, too.”
Gin slowly nodded. “Okay. So then Larry Brown tells the blackmailer before he’s killed. Then Holt is killed in Santa Fe which stops the cash bleed, and just in case Holt told the other Rollers, he ties off all the loose ends.” She blew out a long breath. “Worthy wouldn’t be hard to find. With the club opening and his general standing in the community, he’d be easy to trace through the internet.”
Justin leaned one hip against the desk and studied her face. “But you aren’t buying that they all kept in touch.”
“Nope. Holt was too careful. I think only Kevin knew his assumed name and where he was, and Kevin was killed after Holt, not before.” Gin leaned over and peeled off her latest sticky note, holding it up for the two men to see. “How did he find Holt? He was the blackmailer so he would have been the primary target. And according to JT, the payments were sent to Arkansas, then forwarded to Santa Fe from there. How would the killer be able to follow them back to Holt?” She lowered the sticky note and stared at it. “And that’s not the only thing that doesn’t fit.”
Justin shrugged and pulled out the desk chair, then gestured for Trey to take a seat on the bed. “Okay. We’ll listen and you tell us what else looks funky to you besides the glitch about locating Holt.”
“Tambor,” Gin said. When Trey lifted an eyebrow, she planted her hands on her hips. “How did he know we would be getting a second car? He just hid outside our hotel and got lucky? Even so, how did he know Trey and I would be taking that car?”
“It was a good bet at least one of us would be taking that car,” Justin pointed out. “So maybe he didn’t care who went into the water. The whole think could have been just a knee-jerk reaction to us breathing down his neck.”
Gin turned her head and stared at him. “Not bad. Not bad at all. You might make a good homicide investigator yet.”
Justin grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever want to make a career change.”
Trey made a show of clearing his throat, shaking his head when he got their attention. “Then the current theory is that James Tambor was hounded by Holt, so he got rid of him, only to be hounded by us. So he snapped and decided to get rid of some of us by putting a tracker on the car, following us, and then shoving us into the river where we would have disappeared completely, with any luck. But when that didn’t happen, he decided to throw suspicion off himself by playing the good guy and calling for help.” He shook his head again. “Possible, but it seems far fetched. Tambor didn’t strike me as the type to snap and do something that risky and stupid.”
“Me either,” Gin agreed. “So what if Tambor is telling the truth? Someone set him up.” She paced to the other side of the room and turned around, once again planting her hands on her hips. “Just like that lighter set Randolph up, and the trip to Colorado set Michelle up.”
“Okay. How was Tambor set up?” Justin asked. “We found the tracker on your car so we know how you were followed. And I talked to his buddy he claimed to have sent the message, and that whole story was bullshit. The buddy never sent anything. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t set up. There are apps that will delete sent texts off your phone, depending on your messenger service. We’ve run into that same thing a time or two in my unit.”
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Oh, really? When were you going to share that little gem of knowledge with the rest of us?”
Justin’s eye’s lit up with amusement as he placed a hand over his heart. “This morning, boss. I swear it.” He dropped his hand and shrugged. “I only got hold of the guy last night and found out he never sent the text. So either Tambor was lying, or somebody else sent it cloning the buddy’s phone number and then deleted it. I’m not homicide, but even I wondered why Tambor would come up with such a weak story that could easily be ripped apart by making one call to that buddy.” He inclined his head toward Trey. “And like you said. Tambor didn’t seem like the type to be that stupid. When it seemed like we had our guy in Randolph, who or if someone sent Tambor a text message didn’t seem so important.”
“That means there must be a second tracker,” Trey said slowly. He lifted his gaze to Gin’s. “If the killer sent the message to Tambor, then shoved us off the road, he had to have timed it when he knew Tambor was coming up the road in his black truck with the silver grille.” He nodded. “Which would explain why he kept getting close to us than backing off. He was waiting for Tambor, who would then get the blame if we survived.”
“Covering his bases,” Gin agreed, then rolled her eyes at Trey’s pained look. “Or her eyes.”
“I still like Michelle Hillyer for it,” Trey said.
“Okay,” Justin cut in. “So the guy found Larry Brown through his sister, then somehow found Holt. “What about Littleton, up in Seattle?”
“He had a successful marketing career there, so he’d be easy to find through an internet search,” Trey said.
Gin stopped her pacing as her mouth dropped open. “Then to be sure you had the right address, the killer just had to send him something Littleton would have to sign for. FedEx would send him the verification information, including the name of the person who signed for it.” Turning her head, she met Trey’s gaze with wide eyes. “Volleyball,” she said before slowly standing up and walking over to the desk. She stared down at the notes under the column labeled Seattle Victim. “What time of year do high schools play volleyball?”
“In the spring, I think,” Trey said. “Why?”
“And baseball is played in the spring,” Gin said softly. She turned to face the two men. “I’ll bet both of you played sports in high school.” When they nodded, so did she. “And did either of you play two sports during the same season?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“Too many conflicting games if you do that,” Trey said, then his eyes flew over to the notes on the desk. “Shit. Seth Littleton wouldn’t have played two sports in the spring, either. If he was playing volleyball with Vivian Preston, then he sure as hell wasn’t playing baseball. So why did he have that trophy?”
“Maybe he played baseball another year before he took up volleyball,” Justin offered, then frowned when Trey shook his head.
“That trophy had the year all those boys graduated on it,” Trey said. “So that’s the year it was passed out.”
“But not to Seth Littleton if he was on the volleyball team with Vivian Preston. Or not playing a sport at all. Vivian said they played together their junior year, but Seth didn’t play anything at all his senior year because of all the nasty rumors about the fire.” Setting the bagels aside, Gin reached over and opened the drawer in the bedside table, pulling out the yearbook that the very pregnant Cheryl had loaned her.
She flipped through the pages as Trey and Justin crowded around. When she found a picture of the baseball team, she quickly scanned the names. She didn’t see Seth Littleton listed, but she did spot someone else.
“Shit,” she said softly at first, then repeated the word louder. “Shit. Of course.” She went back to the front of the yearbook, to the section with the individual pictures of each graduating senior, with their accomplishments and activities listed under their photo.
“Of course, what?” Justin demanded. “What are you looking for now?”
“A killer. A stone-cold killer. Everything fits,” Gin said before glancing at Trey. “Remember our first case, when I asked you what the motives were for murder?”
“Sure,” he replied. “And I said, money, love, revenge, and something like the stupidity of the moment.”
“That’s right.” Gin found the page she was looking for and ran a finger over the pictures, stopping at one near the bottom. “Love and revenge are powerful emotions. It’s a lot for a teenage boy to handle, especially when it goes on for years.” She turned the yearbook around so both Trey and Justin could see whose picture she was pointing at. “Look who was manager of the New Bern High School baseball team.”
Justin and Trey sucked in a sharp breath at the same time.
Trey looked at Gin and grimaced. “Hell. Matt Hillyer.
She kept her stare on a young Matt Hillyer, standing slightly apart from all the players in their uniforms. “Oh, yeah. The guy who everyone says is really good on computers. The one guy of everyone we’ve come across who has enough money to pay blackmail. And the guy we told that the local Bureau office was sending us a second car.”
“So not the wife, but the husband,” Trey said in a soft, low voice.
“Imagine being infatuated with one girl since elementary school, and all she did was fawn over the star quarterback.” Gin set the yearbook on the bed and laid a finger on the picture of a boy with a slightly lopsided haircut and thick glasses. Matt Hillyer’s appearance had improved over the years, but that was still him. The class nerd in love with the head cheerleader. “I think Matt got tired of waiting in the wings, and when Michelle started talking about marrying Scott Randolph, he panicked and found a way to get rid of the competition.” She paused to rub two fingers against the bridge of her nose. “And he probably did see Charles Hunt that night, and Hunt saw him. With gas cans in the back of his truck, just like Michelle said. But when Matt told her that, he claimed it was Hunt’s truck, not his own. But Hunt knew the truth—that it was Matt who had set that fire out at the Bannon house.”
“He probably paid Hunt’s blackmail demands out of the company account. We can check if it’s with Truist Bank.” Trey said. “But that’s why we didn’t see it in the personal banking information we pulled on him and Michelle.”
Gin nodded. “Michelle said he took care of all the books himself. And that he was good with computers.”
Justin smiled and reached out to tweak the end of her ponytail. “I don’t think I would have ever gotten around to the owner of a car dealership. So assuming Matt Hillyer is our man, he must have killed Charles Hunt when his blackmail demands got too rich for his blood. But what about the rest of the Rollers? And what do we do now? Call out the posse?”
“Something like that, but there’s something else we need to do first.” Gin glanced at her watch. “Matt and Michelle should be at the dealership by now. Let’s hope they stay there for a while. Michelle mentioned that her husband had a thing for cars and had a separate building where he stored them. Let’s find it and go take a quick look for a black truck with a silver grille. If anyone can get hold of a truck like that, it’s the guy who owns a car dealership.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It didn’t take long to locate Matt Hillyer’s stash site. Trey’s quick search of the public records yielded a building at the end of a long driveway on the edge of town. Gin didn’t want to risk renting a car, and maybe tipping off Matt that they were on the move, so they were forced to wait four hours for another BuCar to be delivered.
While they waited, all three agents were bus on their laptops and phones, tracking down more information on the movements of Matt Hillyer. It was Trey who uncovered the plane ticket out of Norfolk to Denver, the night before The Oasis was set on fire.
When the two agents arrived, Gin shoved the key fob to yet another dark-colored sedan into the pocket of her jeans, and sent the agents off to James Tambor’s house to search his vehicle for a second tracker.
As soon as the two Charlotte agents were off, Gin, Trey, and Justin piled into the sedan and headed out of town. It was midafternoon when they pulled up to the one-story, cement block building with a flat, tin roof. They ran into their first piece of luck when a quick search around the structure didn’t come up with any security cameras.
“I guess he’s not too worried about anything being stolen out here,” Gin commented as she studied the large, ground to roof double doors that were securely padlocked shut. But that didn’t prove to be much of an impediment since they’d picked up some heavy-duty bolt cutters on their way to the outskirts of New Bern.
It still took some effort, but Trey finally got the thick lock to snap off. He handed the bolt cutters to Gin then he and Justin rolled open both sides of the large door.
Despite what Michelle said, the building was empty, except for a desk with a computer tucked into one corner, and a table covered in a black tarp in another. There wasn’t a collection of cars anywhere to be seen, but parked in the middle of the cement floor was a black truck with a silver grille. Gin looked at Trey and pointed at the computer, then waved Justin toward the tarp-covered table. The two men immediately headed in different directions while she made a beeline for the truck.
It didn’t take her long to find what she were looking for.
“Damage to the front grille and headlight,” she called out, her voice grim as she squatted in front of the truck. “I’ll bet it will match up to the backend damage done to the car that was pulled out of the river.” Gin leaned down to get a better look at the scraped paint and large dents in the grille. “We need to have the Charlotte off send a forensics team to go over this truck.” She straightened up when Trey strode across the dingy floor, with Justin not far behind him.
“The computer is password protected, so we’ll need some geeks to work on that.” When Trey stopped in front of her, he held up a clear evidence bag with what looked like several labels inside. “But what we have here are USPS labels, undoubtedly bought on line through their official website.” As Justin joined them, he gave the bag a small shake. “It looks like Hillyer came up with a simple solution to find Charles Holt. Slap one of these on an envelope, and the United States Postal Service will be happy to track it for you.”
Gin squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed two fingers across the bridge of her nose. “Holt would have known that too the minute he saw it attached to the envelope, which is why he was making preparations to bolt. He made the one call to Kevin to let him know, but he wasn’t quick enough.” Gin shook her head, her green eyes drooping at the corners. “Hillyer caught up with him before he got out of town.”
“And then like you said, dealt with the other Rollers as loose ends,” Trey said.
“And leaving his revenge message behind,” Justin said. “Underneath that tarp is laser engraver.” At Trey’s low whistle, Justin nodded. “Yeah. A very efficient way to engrave words onto metal.”
“I’d say we’ve got him,” Trey proclaimed.
