Insects, Ivy, & Investigations: A Camper & Criminals Cozy Mystery Series Book 17, page 15
“You can’t. Besides, you’ve got Hank to worry with.” She tilted her head. “Did Lester help you?”
“I don’t know how you got me to get Lester, but he did. I was just about to write down the clues.” I flicked the pen top and started to write. “Craig was either a drug dealer or taking drugs. I’m not sure what the code Lester was using was, but I do know it was one of those. Then he mentioned Craig’s prized possession. A picture.”
Betts eyes grew big.
“Didn’t Abby read something from the notebook about a picture?” She looked down at the paper.
“Yes. Alicia told me that when he’d gone to jail before and gotten out, he was more worried about the picture than seeing her or being home. She’d given the picture to a neighbor, and that’s when he went down there and got it. I don’t remember how that turned out, but I do know that he didn’t want her getting rid of it.” I circled the word picture I’d written down so it would stick out when we all got back together to talk about the clues.
“And if we can just get ahold of that picture, I think there has to be some answers.” Betts didn’t say anything that wasn’t already in my head.
“And that’s what I plan on doing when I go to the Milkery to say goodbye to Jami and Kenny.” I folded the notebook closed and put it back in my purse.
“Speaking of Kenny…” She let his name dangle in the air.
“Hank, more importantly.” My chin lifted, and I looked out the school bus window. “I don’t know what’s going on with that. But Ellis is here.”
“Yeah. She called me asking if she could join. She told me why she wanted to join. Can you believe she had the gall?” Betts laughed.
“Yeah. I believe it.” We snickered in the back seat for a few more minutes before I finally broke down to let her vent. “Tell me about what’s going on with Lester.”
“You know, I’ve always wondered how killers get wives in prison after what they’ve done. Then I go back to my situation, and I can relate.” Her face softened, and there was a tear on the edge of her eyelid. “I never thought I’d be a preacher’s wife. So that took a lot of soul-searching when that happened. I thought my trials and tribulations were paid. Boy, was I wrong. When all that went down with him and put him in prison, I really thought that was my trial and tribulation. Boy, was I wrong again.” She laughed as a tear fell from her eye. “Loving a man who killed someone and cheated on me…” She shook her head because she was unable to speak.
“Girl, that’s your real trial and tribulation,” I finished for her, letting her know I was right here when she needed me.
She tilted her head and lay it on my shoulder. Both of us sat there in silence for the remainder of the ride.
Chapter 19
The silos of the Milkery were a much-welcomed sight after the morning I’d had. Being with the people I loved and good memories from my past was just the break I needed until I went back to the campground, where I knew I would see Hank.
I wasn’t sure if Ellis was going to keep her mouth shut, but I knew in order to beat her to the punch, I was going to have to tell him myself—something I wasn’t looking forward to.
Hank did embrace that nosy side of me, but he did have a line that he didn’t want me to cross. I was pretty sure going to jail to snoop was crossing his line.
Warm smells of cinnamon and sugar floated through the kitchen’s screen door and around me when Betts let me out of her car.
“Something smells so good.” Her eyes grew big.
“Are you sure you can’t come in?” I asked. “I bet Mary Elizabeth is baking something very good.”
“No. I have to get back to the Laundry Club, but be sure to text the gals so we can go over the new clues and how we can get our hands on that picture,” she said.
“Don’t worry. The first thing I’m going to do when I get in there is question her. Well, maybe I’ll grab a snack first then question her.” I winked and shut the door behind me.
While I was walking up to the door, I sent Dottie a quick text to check on Fifi, and she texted back a quick thumbs-up emoji.
“Hello,” I trilled into the screen door before I opened it to announce myself. “What’s going on?”
“Hey!” Jami popped up from the kitchen table. “You’re just in time. We were talking about the time you and Kenny were supposed to go to that dance and how—”
Kenny interrupted her. “How you weren’t going to go, and I was insistent on it because I was a good boy. But you reached across the car and jerked the wheel, almost hitting the brick sign of the bank.”
Kenny made me laugh. “That’s not how I recall it.” I really didn’t remember it at all, but I still played around.
Alicia came into the kitchen.
“While you tell your version, I’m going to use the little boys’ room.” He got up and took a second to look at Alicia. “The prescription seems to have worked well. Are you still itching?”
Alicia stuck her arms out for him to look at. “No. I’m all good. I think last night, I had the best night of sleep I’ve had in years. Thank you.” She sounded very sincere. “And my bruises are going away too. The makeup is really covering them up now.”
She came over to the table and showed me, Jami, and Mary Elizabeth.
“You are healing well.” Mary Elizabeth looked pleased.
“What are your plans?” Jami asked a great question for Alicia to answer. I wanted so badly to jump in and ask about the picture but didn’t.
“I’m not sure. I think I’m going to just hang here for a few.” Alicia looked over at Mary Elizabeth. “Which means I’m going to have to haul up the duffel bag.”
Alicia winced when she walked over to the bag in the corner.
“Don’t fiddle with that. Maybelline is strong, and you’ve got that bruised rib.” Mary Elizabeth snapped her finger then pointed me to the bag.
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes before I walked over to get the bag.
“She’s staying in the second room at the top of the front stairs,” Mary Elizabeth told me.
The Milkery bed-and-breakfast was a pretty neat old house, and it was Dawn Gentry who had come up with the idea to maintain the historical integrity of the old mansion but add those little comfy and modern touches. Those upgrades brought the building back to life.
The rooms were each decorated to be warm, cozy, and welcoming. The room Alicia was staying in was decorated with items that related to the Daniel Boone National Forest. So when I walked in and noticed a picture on the wall that was abstract, it caught my attention.
“Thank you so much.” Alicia walked through the door.
“You’re welcome.” I twirled around, hoping she didn’t think I was snooping around in her room. “I want you to know that I went to prison to see if anyone had anything on Craig and had a motive to kill him.”
“And?” She was eager.
Kenny passed by, and when he noticed us in the room, he took a couple steps backward and stopped at the door.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I interrupt?” he asked.
“No.” Alicia waved him in. “Mae was telling me how she went to the prison where Craig had gone, and she was just about to tell me what she found out.”
“Yeah. It seems Craig was either a drug dealer or a drug addict. I’m not sure which one he was in prison, but—” My jaw dropped. “Is this the picture you were talking about when you said Craig had gotten upset when you gave it to the neighbors?”
“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes wide-open.
“I was told by a very reliable source that this was a prized possession.” I walked back over to the photo in the glassless frame.
“I have kept it because I just didn’t know if I’d ever go back to him. I’m ashamed to even admit that.” She gulped. “When I got here, I just took down the buffalo photo that was there and hung it up.”
“May I?” Kenny had walked over and gestured taking it off the wall.
“Sure.” Alicia didn’t seem to be hiding anything, while if she were the killer and there was something there, I’d sure have thought she wouldn’t want anyone to touch it.
“Fancy frame.” Kenny ran his hands along the outer edge and stopped. “Here.” He held out the frame. “There’s two little screws here.”
“What kind of screwdriver?” I asked.
“Let me go see if Mary Elizabeth has a Phillips-head,” Kenny said on his way out the door, shutting it behind him.
“Do you think it’s some sort of secret compartment?” Alicia looked over my shoulder as I took a closer look.
“It looks like it is.” I tugged on the frame to see if I could pull it apart. “I guess you don’t care if I break the frame?”
“Here.” She took it from me and smacked it on the ground.
The frame didn’t break, but it cracked on the corner.
She looked at it, shrugged, and smacked it on the ground again, causing the frame to break completely. A bunch of little pieces of paper fell out.
I picked up a couple and noticed they were doctor scripts.
“Was Craig going around to different pharmacies and collecting pills to sell?” I lifted them in the air and noticed the script was from a doctor in Perrysburg.
Alicia gathered up the other ones.
“They all look to be from the same doctor. There’s a number on it,” she noted.
“I’ll call it.” I pulled my phone out from my pocket and pulled up the phone app to punch in the numbers and hit send.
My heart stopped. Literally, I felt like I was going to faint when I noticed I already had the number plugged into my phone.
Kenny Jolly.
I quickly hit the red off button.
“We have to get out of here.” I grabbed Alicia by the arm and practically dragged her over to the door. “Kenny is Craig’s killer,” I said and opened the door to find Kenny on the other side.
“I’m guessing we all need to have a little talk.” Kenny took a step inside, making us take a step backward. He looked down at the prescription pad in my hand. “I’ll take those.”
“Kenny, what happened?” My brows pinched together. I didn’t fear I was in danger. It was Kenny Jolly. My friend.
“Being a pharmacist has its perks, and one of those is having ready access to many sought-after drugs. When you’ve got a junkie like Craig Sutton who will do practically anything for a fix, then you can run a pretty profitable business, even when he is in jail.” The lovable Kenny had suddenly turned into a devil right in front of my eyes. “The laws changed. There is no more writing scripts. Everything is done over the internet, so it really cuts down on little side hustles like mine.”
“Is that what drug dealers are calling it nowadays?” I could see where he was going with this whole line of thinking, and I didn’t like it. “Come on, Alicia. We are calling Hank.”
Kenny took a step in front of the door to block us and shut it quietly behind him.
“Move, Kenny,” I told him.
“You might be the love of my life and super adorable, but I’m not going to let a lowlife, as my mama liked to call you, from the wrong side of the tracks bring me down.” He had the screwdriver in his hand. He brought it up and twirled the sharp end on the pad of his pointer finger of his other hand. “Pretty sharp, and I know exactly where this needs to go for sudden death.” He stuck it up to his neck to indicate the carotid artery. “It will be sad to have to tell everyone how I went to the bathroom and found both of you in here, dead. I picked up the screwdriver and accidentally got my fingerprints on the handle. It’s a shame that all this time, Mary Elizabeth believed Alicia had turned her life around, but she’s still the same strung-out little girl who got pregnant and couldn’t care for her own daughter.”
“I see her.” Alicia was letting him get under her skin. “I did the right thing by letting Doris Jean raise her up. I did the moral thing. You, on the other hand, you are a murderer.” Alicia’s hands were fisted at her sides.
“Kenny, honestly, do you think you’re going to get away with this?” I asked. “Did you come here with Jami because you wanted to make sure that I didn’t find you out? All that we’d-be-good-together stuff was all lie, wasn’t it?”
“I guess you did get you an education in the streets, since you never graduated from high school,” he mocked me. “My mama was right after all of these years.” His gaze moved to the tip of the screwdriver, and he lunged forward.
The door popped open off its hinges, and a shot rang out. Me, Alicia, and Kenny fell to the floor.
I kept my head covered with my arms and heard the sound of footsteps as someone circled me.
“Are you okay?” I heard Hank’s voice and felt his familiar hand on my back.
“Hank.” I jumped to sit and threw my arms around him. Over his shoulder, I noticed Kenny was on the floor, holding his knee to his chest, blood pouring out of it where Hank had shot him.
Al Hemmer was putting him in cuffs while the EMT was addressing the wound.
“Make sure you stop the bleeding. I want to make sure we escort him to prison, where he belongs.” Hank was very pleased.
“That’ll teach him not to go after your girl.” Alicia snickered, making me and Hank smile.
She didn’t know we weren’t on the best of relationship terms, but at this moment, I was very grateful he was here.
“How did you know?” I let him help me out of the room so they could conduct the rest of their investigation and get Kenny ready to transport.
He took me back down to the kitchen, where everyone had been cleared out and into the yard. Hank sat me down in a chair at the kitchen table. He opened the screen door and waved someone in. It was another paramedic.
“I want you to get looked over.” Hank took a step back from me and let the EMT do the usual vitals check, flashlight to the eyes, et cetera.
When the paramedic had cleared me, Hank came back over with a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid before he handed it to me.
“Drink this,” he told me then started to tell me how he figured it was Kenny who killed Craig. “Violet Rhinehammer beat you to the punch.” He smiled. “She was on the trail Kenny had marked through the woods. He’d gotten in contact with Craig and told him to meet him on the trail near the Old Train Station. Kenny had dropped Jami off downtown to shop, and it gave him enough time to drive to the motel after he’d stopped into Deters Feed-N-Seed to pick up some trail mix for a snack. He ended up getting to the motel a little early and took the trail down to the cascades, where we believe he figured it would be a good idea to come up through the woods. That’s when he started to tear up the plastic bag to leave a trail for him to follow.”
All of it was making sense.
“We also believe Craig was going to blackmail Kenny about how Kenny had Craig going from pharmacy to pharmacy to fill the pain medications. He would sell them for Kenny, and Craig got a cut. Kenny even funneled the pain meds to Craig while he was in jail. We’ve got Kenny on camera at the jail, and we have him on camera at Deters Feed-N-Seed.”
“That’s how Lester knew about the drugs.” I started to connect what Lester had said in the jail to what Hank was telling me. It all was coming together like a puzzle.
“Lester?” Hank questioned.
“I’d heard Craig was in the jail because Betts had been going to visit with Lester. Lester told her he knew Craig from prison, so I went with the Bible-thumpers to go see Lester and what he knew.” I could tell by Hank’s firm jaw the news didn’t sit well with him.
“Mae, I’m not going to talk to you about this right now. But you know my feelings on you going to the jail. Snooping around with gossip is one thing, but going into a federal prison with real killers who will snap you in two is another.” His nostrils flared.
“Your sister was there too.” I thought I could bring up Ellis being there and it would lessen the feelings he harbored around it.
“You aren’t Ellis,” he said, his voice cracking. “I don’t know what this is.” He gestured between us. “This is much bigger than me not wanting you to go to an all-male prison where who knows what could happen to you. Do you know what goes on in there, Mae? Why can’t you just use your head for once and not your heart?”
I stepped back. Dumbfounded, I blinked at him in disbelief.
“Mae.” He reached for me as he called my name in a soft tone. I jerked my hand away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. If I didn’t care for you, then I wouldn’t be so upset that you went to the prison.”
“You of all people know that I am loyal to the ones I love. I will do anything to protect them, and if going to a jail to question an ex-preacher is part of that, I’m going to do it. If my boyfriend’s job is on the line because of a murder”—I brought back the time Hank’s job was on the line and, once again, I risked my life to come face-to-face with the killer to save him from being fired—“I’m going to do all I can to keep him from losing his job.”
I stood up and started to walk toward the door.
“Mae, please.” He stopped talking when I turned and put my hand up in his face.
“I’m not sure where I stand in this relationship, and I need some time.” I walked over to the screen door and opened it.
Mary Elizabeth had taken me home, where I was greeted by a very happy little puppy. I was too tired to answer the calls from the Laundry Club Ladies and told them I’d meet them in the morning. I assured them I was okay, life as we knew it was good at Happy Trails Campground, and we could now focus all of our energy on Bobby Ray and Abby’s upcoming wedding.
I also knew Hank wouldn’t be back to the campground anytime soon, because he was at the scene of the crime and transporting Kenny was his number one goal for right now.
The day quickly shifted into night. Before it was even nine o’clock, Fifi and I got curled up in the bed and flipped on the television to get in some mindless relaxation.
The rumble of a truck revved up outside, and I peeled back the bedroom-window curtain to see which campground guest was leaving the campground early.
