The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(46)
“What do you want with me?” he asked.
“Actually, I came to ask you a few questions about some expenditures you made for the sheriff’s department.”
He said nothing, but he picked up a beer bottle from the floor and took a long drink. He was deeply tanned, with a smooth chest ripped with muscle. Bloster was good looking in an intensely physical, imposing way; he had a dangerous quality that was both appealing and disturbing.
Josie leaned against the doorframe of his garage and took her time continuing. “In looking at Red’s finances, I found some receipts for guns purchased by your department. In fact, two guns totaled almost four thousand dollars. Must be some kind of special guns.”
“Seeing how you work for the city police, and that equipment is for the sheriff’s department, I don’t think it’s any of your concern.”
“Well, Hack, seeing how I’m a taxpayer and those receipts are open for public record, I think they are my concern. I think your little club is selling guns to your department. You’re making a profit all over the place, aren’t you?” she asked.
“You’re out of your jurisdiction. You got no business out here.”
“No? I thought I was doing you a professional courtesy. We can talk at the department. We can even ask the sheriff to join us if that makes you feel better.”
Bloster took two steps toward her and shoved her chest. She fell back against the garage wall, and he drew his fist back as if to throw a punch. She pushed herself off the wall and bent forward, propelling her knee up into his stomach. He stumbled back from her and let his hand slide down to his front pocket toward the gun.
Josie pulled her gun and pointed it toward Bloster’s chest in one swift motion.
His face registered shock. He raised both hands in the air and took a step back, bumping into the workbench.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“You’re climbing higher on my list of suspects every day.”
“Don’t come on my property spouting shit you can’t back up, lady.” He pointed a finger directly at the barrel of the gun.
She felt the heat in her face and struggled to keep her voice level. “Then don’t play games with me. You’re a dirty cop, and I will expose you before this is over.”
Bloster brought his hands back down to his sides. Josie kept her gun out but pointed now at the ground.
“I had nothing to do with Red’s death. What purpose would it have? We were members of the same group.”
“He was president of a group that you had no chance of leading while he was alive. Looks to me like there’s a hell of a lot of money to be made off selling those guns. More than you’re making as a deputy,” Josie said.
“This is bullshit. Until you have something hard to charge me with, we’re through.” He turned and walked toward his house, slamming the door behind as Josie stood, breathless.
*
By the time Josie reached the department, she had calmed down and corralled her anger. As she passed through the lone traffic light and turned left at the courthouse, she called Lou on her cell phone and asked if anyone was waiting for her. Lou said no, her mother hadn’t arrived yet. Josie spotted her mother’s Buick sitting in front of Manny’s Motel, and she pulled her jeep in beside it.
The motel was built like a strip mall with all six rooms opening onto the street. The office sat in the middle of the rooms, its neon light advertising ROOMS FOR RENT. At forty-something, Manny had given up a successful Holiday Inn franchise in Arizona to start his own business in Artemis. Since opening the motel twenty years ago, he had put on fifty pounds, let his hair grow into a flyaway halo about his head, shaved once a week, and claimed to smile more often than he had during all his so-called successful years in Phoenix with a bitter, anorexic wife who had spent more than he could ever make.
“Chief Gray!” Manny stood up from the recliner behind the counter and laid his book on the seat.
The office was the size of a small bedroom and painted a nicotine-stained white. There was a four-foot-long counter with a grocery store cash register on top, and a metal lockbox with the word Keys written in marker across the lid. Behind the counter sat a tattered leather recliner and table with a reading lamp that altogether looked like a set for an old seventies sitcom.
“Manny, those things are going to kill you.” Josie gestured toward the burning cigarette under a small air purifier that sat on the table next to his chair.
Manny smiled warmly. “Chief, I am a lucky man. I have two passions in life: reading and smoking. I have the good fortune to attend to both of my passions all day long, without measure. How many men do you know that are that lucky? I will continue to enjoy my life with abandon as long as the good Lord allows.”
Josie smiled. “You’re doing all right, then?”
“Couldn’t be better. Steady customers and fifty percent capacity for months. Gets food on the table and the electric bill paid.”
“You hire a maid yet?”
He smiled and rubbed his belly. “No maid. I compromised with the doctor. I took up scrubbing toilets and changing bedsheets for exercise. I refused to go to the wretched gym, so Doc refused to see me. Said I was killing myself in my chair. He doesn’t give a whit about a man’s passions. So, I said fine, I’ll clean the rooms every day whether they need it or not. Two hours’ hard exertion. He bought it, and I got to keep my doctor.”