Gin Fling (Bootleg Springs, #5)(82)

I needed to move my car. I needed to go find this son of a bitch and rearrange his face. I needed to glue myself to her side. “Gray or blue sedan missing the front passenger side hubcap,” I muttered.

“You stick with Shelby,” Gibson said. “GT, move the car. Jameson and I are gonna do a few laps around downtown looking for this asshole.”

“If you find him, you’ll call me?” I said.

“You’ll get the first crack at his face,” Gibson promised me.

“Dibs on what’s left over,” George called over his shoulder as he jogged toward where my truck was backing up traffic.

I nodded and clapped my brother on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Go be with your girl,” Gibson said, shrugging off the thanks.

It was good to have family.





*



Cassidy was just wrapping up her questions when I got to them. Shelby looked relieved to see me, and I elbowed Scarlett out of the way to get to her.

“Hey!” she complained.

“Do you know of anyone who might want to hurt you?” Cassidy asked, tucking her notebook into the back pocket of her shorts. She nodded as her father strolled up.

“The only person I can think of is whoever ran down Abbie Gilbert or whoever intimidated Mrs. Benefiel into retracting her claim that Callie Kendall was being abused in junior high,” Shelby said. She didn’t sound scared now. She sounded downright pissed off.

“The girl who pretended to be Callie is dead?” Scarlett screeched.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Cassidy insisted. “Dad just told me this afternoon.”

“I need to call June,” George said, tossing me my keys. “Make sure she’s okay.”

Gibson and Jameson jogged up. “We saw a dark gray four-door sitting about a block down,” Jameson reported. “But when Gibs started running toward it looking like he was gonna bust open the windshield, the driver pulled a U-ey and peeled outta here.”

So he’d been waiting. And watching. I pulled Shelby a little closer.

“What’s with you, man?” Jameson asked Gibson. “You look like you’re ready to either get up and murder someone or give up and pray for the good Lord to take you now.”

Jameson’s phone rang, saving Gibson from having to answer.

“Leah Mae,” Jameson said.

George was on his phone, plugging one ear.

Shelby’s phone rang. “Dang it! Which one of you big mouths told my parents?”

My phone vibrated next. It was my mother calling. News traveled fast.

Sheriff Tucker appeared in full uniform, a face etched with concern. “Why don’t we all go someplace a little less chaotic and talk this through,” he suggested.





*



We descended on the Tucker house. The sheriff felt like privacy was more important than professionalism in this case.

June arrived shortly after with her potbellied pig on a leash. In a much-appreciated moment of empathy, she’d swung by our place and picked up Billy Ray, who was snuggled up in Shelby’s lap in the Tucker dining room while Nadine made tea and put out a buffet of snacks. The lights, the crowd of friendly faces, it all seemed to calm Shelby down.

I, on the other hand, was so angry I could feel it vibrating in my bones.

Sheriff Tucker, with help from June, filled everyone else in on the now infamous road trip and what they discovered.

“I don’t know if this is connected,” Shelby said. “If it’s not, it’s an awfully big coincidence that once I start poking around into this case file and the Callie Kendall impersonator, someone just happens to decide to play cat and mouse with me on Mountain Road.”

I noticed my brothers and sister sharing a quiet look. Mountain Road was where their mother had lost her life when her car went through a guardrail. Until recently, it had been thought to be an accident.

“Look. I know it sounds all conspiracy-theory-like,” Shelby said when silence descended around the table. “And I know that we don’t have proof. But how many coincidences have to occur before we start asking questions?”

Sheriff Tucker leaned back in his chair. “I passed the information along to the investigators,” he began. “They said they’d look into it.”

“Bullshit,” Devlin muttered under his breath.

“I also decided to reach out to the Bethesda authorities and raised some concerns with them,” the sheriff continued. “They were pretty interested. Went to her house to pay her a visit. A neighbor told them Mrs. Benefiel and her dog left with suitcases at around four yesterday afternoon.”

“That is approximately thirty minutes after we left,” June said.

“Another coincidence?” Shelby snorted.

“And at around midnight last night, the Bethesda authorities got a series of calls of suspicious activity at the Benefiel house. Seems the neighbors keep a close watch on each other and noticed two people ringing the doorbell and peering in windows. They were gone by the time authorities arrived on the scene.”

Shelby’s hand tightened in mine.

“So we’ve got an unsolved vehicular homicide, suspicious activity at a retired teacher’s home, and now someone trying to chase Shelby down in a car the day after she goes looking for the dead girl and the teacher,” Cassidy summarized. “That’s more than coincidental.”