Death of a Christmas Caterer (20 page)

Chapter 34

“That doesn't make any sense,” Sabrina said huffily, marching away from Hayley and Sergio, her high heels clicking on the tiled floor of her medical lab. “Now, if you excuse me, I have a lot of work to do.”

“Sabrina, wait. I'm convinced Hayley is onto something here. Would you at least take a look at the body one more time before the burial and see if you missed a bullet?”

Sabrina straightened her white lab coat and threw her chin up in the air as she stared daggers at Hayley. “I can't believe you are doing this to me again! Is it your life's mission now to ruin my reputation? My God, Hayley, I thought we were on the road to being friends again. I confided in you and fed you information on this very case, and now you're going to turn it all against me?”

“This has nothing to do with you, Sabrina. This is about getting Garth Rawlings the justice he and his family deserve,” Hayley said calmly, trying hard not to antagonize Sabrina more than she already had.

“Please, Sabrina. . . ,” Sergio said, a puppy dog look on his face. “One more examination, just to be sure.”

But not even his charm and South American good looks were going to work on her. Sabrina was refusing to budge.

“No. It's impossible.”

“Sabrina, nobody's trying to make you look incompetent,” Sergio said.

“I can't do it,” Sabrina said.

“I can always get a court order,” Sergio said, quickly losing patience.

“No, I mean I
literally cannot
examine the body. He was cremated yesterday.”

Hayley gasped.

It was like a blow to the solar plexus.

“What? How? Who?” Hayley sputtered.

“His wife,” Sabrina said.

Hayley turned to Sergio. “Maybe Tiffany knew her husband had been shot and wanted to get rid of the body quickly in order to make it impossible for anyone ever to discover the truth, so she ordered her husband's body to be cremated.”

“Tiffany did no such thing,” Sabrina said, folding her arms and shaking her head at Hayley. “She was simply executing the wishes of the deceased, who clearly stated in his living will that he did not want to be buried.”

“Does she have the ashes in her possession?” Hayley asked. “Maybe we can find a piece of the bullet there or in the oven, where the body was cremated.”

“The ovens are hot enough to destroy metal fragments,” Sabrina said, desperate to put this matter to rest. “We're done here.”

“What do we do now?” Hayley asked Sergio.

“Take one more look at the autopsy photos,” Sergio said, pivoting to face Sabrina, whose mouth was already open and ready to protest. He raised a hand for her to keep quiet. “I'm chief of police here, Sabrina, and it's part of your job to assist me in any open investigation. I have yet to close the case on Garth Rawlings—so, until I do, you are obligated to provide me with any information I request.”

Sabrina mulled over his words for a few seconds, ultimately deciding she didn't have much of a choice. She turned swiftly on her heels and marched over to a filing cabinet on the other side of the lab.

High heels
clicking, clicking, clicking.

“They haven't been uploaded to the computer yet, so you'll have to settle for the hard copies.”

She heaved a big sigh as she yanked open the top filing drawer and snatched a manila folder out before making a big show of slamming the metal door shut again. Then she hurled the folder down on top of a desk, forcing Hayley and Sergio to walk over to her instead of her bringing the photos to them. She was at the point where she would no longer go out of her way to help them.

Sergio picked up the folder and flipped it open, going through the autopsy photos, one by one, before handing them off to Hayley to examine.

“What is she, your deputy now?” Sabrina asked, adding a healthy dose of sarcasm.

They ignored the comment.

Sergio's eyes fixed on something in one of the photos. “What's that?”

Sabrina wrested the photo from his hand and gazed at it. “What? I don't see anything.”

Sergio pointed with his finger. “That.”

“That's the liver,” she scoffed.

“Yes, but look at that black dot. What is that?”

“It's liver damage, probably from the beating.”

Sergio's finger moved across the photo. “And what's that?”

“The intestines. I'm not here to teach you a class on the human anatomy!” Sabrina bellowed.

“Hear me out, Sabrina,” Sergio said. “I heard about a similar case once up in Toronto. If Garth was shot—”

“He wasn't,” Sabrina said emphatically.

“Okay, but for the sake of argument, let's just say he was.”

“He wasn't.”

She wasn't about to give an inch.

“Sabrina, would it really hurt just to hear what Sergio has to say?” Hayley asked as gently as possible.

“Fine. Whatever. Okay. Hypothetically, he was shot.”

“Now, what if the bullet entered somewhere down here, near the scrotum, and tore up through him?” Sergio asked, tracing the trajectory with his finger. “Couldn't it cause roughly the same damage as blunt-force trauma?”

This caught Sabrina off guard. She remained silent as she thought it over. Her face was a mask of professional indignation. However, there was a crack in her veneer. A few seconds of doubt showed in her eyes.

Still, she was holding firm.

The wait for her response was interminable.

Sabrina shrugged finally. “I suppose so.
If
he was shot. But I stand by my autopsy results. Garth Rawlings's injuries were consistent with a savage beating.”

“In a locked room that showed no signs of a struggle while casually smoking a pipe,” Sergio said before thrusting the photo in Sabrina's face and pointing at the black spot on Garth's liver. “Take another look, Sabrina. Isn't that a bullet hole right there?”

Her lips quivered as she glanced once more at the photo, and then, a slight, almost imperceptible, nod.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” Sergio said, relief in his voice.

“I am
so
going to get fired over this,” Sabrina said under her breath.

Hayley tried to put a comforting arm around her, but Sabrina ducked away and dashed out of the lab in tears.

Chapter 35

Hayley stood outside the interrogation room, straining to hear what she could, as Sergio questioned Billy Parsons, who had just returned from his Massachusetts shrimping job earlier that morning. She was now convinced beyond a doubt that it was Nick Ward who shot Garth Rawlings through the wall of the warehouse and killed him. However, without the murder weapon or a viable witness, there was no way Sergio could prove it enough to warrant an arrest.

The plan now was to get one of Nick's coworkers, either Billy or Hugo, to turn on him, to tell the truth of what really happened that night. Hugo was a scared kid, whom Nick had successfully intimidated into keeping his mouth shut. Billy was now their best bet. He was a bit surprised when Sergio called him and asked him to come into the station and make a statement, especially since he had already told everything he knew about the incident at the scene. Billy was an agreeable man, though, and certainly wanted to stay on the chief of police's good side, so he offered to come in and go over the facts one more time.

Although the door to the interrogation room was closed and their voices were muffled, Hayley could make out most of what the two men were saying.

“Not sure what else I can tell you, Chief,” Billy said calmly. “Like I said before, me and the guys were just kicking back, drinking some beers, and didn't hear anything until the sirens. That's when we walked outside to see what was going on.”

She heard some faint
clicking.

Sergio was obviously typing on a computer. He was writing up Billy's statement as it was happening.

“So you swear you've told me everything? You're not forgetting any details?”

“No, sir.”

“You were drinking alcohol that night, and we both know that can sometimes make your memory a little fuzzy.”

“Trust me. I remember everything, Chief. I may have slammed down three or four beers, but I'm a big guy and it takes a lot more than that to get me drunk and sloppy.”

“Okay, then,” Sergio said. “If that's everything, let me just print out your statement and have you sign it.”

There was a
whirring
as the printer spit out a piece of paper. Hayley heard Sergio's chair squeak as he stood up to retrieve the statement.

A moment of silence as Hayley assumed Billy was scribbling his signature and handing the piece of paper to Sergio.

“Is that all, Chief?”

“Looks good. You can go now, Billy. Thank you.” Billy's chair squeaked as he stood up.

Hayley was about to dash down the hall to avoid Billy catching her eavesdropping at the door, when Sergio spoke again.

“Wait. There is one more thing.”

“What's that, Chief?”

“The coroner reexamined the autopsy photos and has changed her conclusion about Garth Rawlings's death.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Mr. Rawlings was shot.”

Another moment of silence as Hayley pictured the blood draining from Billy's face.

“That's not all. We found a patched-up hole right in the office where you were drinking with the boys. That's where the bullet entered the wall. And wouldn't you know, we found the exit hole on the other side in Garth Rawlings's kitchen, a few feet from where he dropped dead.”

“I don't know what you're talking about—”

“Of course you do, Billy. You were there. You know exactly what happened, and I think you better tell me. Right now.”

More silence.

Hayley pictured Billy shaking his head in defiance.

“Go ahead. Mussel up on me.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can always get yourself a lawyer and stick to your story, but here's the problem. Eventually the real facts are going to come out. And when they do, I have this.”

The police chief might not have mastered the English language, but he was one hell of a law enforcement officer.

“You see, Billy, signing a false police statement is illegal. You could get serious jail time.”

“Say what?”

“I got the judge on speed dial. I can have the warrant in a couple of hours. But I don't want to do that to you, Billy, because my gut tells me you weren't the shooter. Tell me who was and I will rip up this report.”

“Nick! It was Nick!”

Billy wasn't wasting a second.

“We were just fooling around. We'd only had a few beers. We weren't drunk, but Nick pulled out his pistol and was waving it around, trying to get a rise out of Hugo. He said he wanted to toughen him up and teach him how to shoot. He pointed the gun right at the poor kid, who was just sitting at his desk. I thought the boy was going to piss his pants—he was so scared. Nick thought the safety was on, but it wasn't. The gun went off and the bullet whizzed right past Hugo's ear.”

Garth had been at war with Lex's crew over their noisy shop machines.

The walls were extra thin.

The bullet went straight through.

“We . . . we never dreamed anyone got hurt, let alone—”

“Killed by the bullet.”

A long pause.

Hayley heard sniffling.

And whimpering.

Billy Parsons was crying.

“Hugo freaked out and Nick had to slap him hard across the face to calm him down. He tossed the kid another beer and we went back to drinking until we heard the sirens. Nick poked his head out first and saw what was going on. Rusty Wyatt told him Garth Rawlings was dead. That's when he put two and two together and warned us to keep our mouths shut and not say a word and just to follow his lead. When we all read in the paper that the coroner thought Garth died from a beating, we breathed a huge sigh of relief. But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It keeps me up at night. I should've spoken up sooner.”

“Do you have any idea where Nick may have disposed of the gun?”

“
Disposed of it?
No way. He'd never get rid of it. It's a family heirloom. Goes back in his family generations. He may have hidden it somewhere in his house, but he sure as hell would never, ever part with it.”

It made sense.

In Nick's mind nobody was ever going to find out Garth Rawlings actually had been shot, given what the coroner and the papers were saying. So, why toss out a prized possession if there was no danger of it ever connecting him to any crime?

That gun was the key to pinning Garth Rawlings's murder on Nick Ward.

Chapter 36

Sergio gave Billy Parsons a stern warning not to contact Nick Ward and alert him to the fact that the police were onto him. Sergio needed time to secure a police warrant to search Nick's house for the gun that killed Garth Rawlings. Billy knew the chief had that false police report to hang over his head, so he promised not to say a word. At this point Billy was more concerned with saving his own skin than protecting his good buddy.

Or so Hayley thought.

Sergio dismissed Billy, and Hayley watched him fly past her, not even noticing her standing outside in the hallway. He wiped his brow with a dirty, stained handkerchief as he scurried out the front door of the police station and into the night. Sergio put a call into the judge for the warrant, which would take at least a couple of hours to be issued.

Hayley checked her watch.

It was already half past five in the afternoon.

She prayed there would be no delays; because if Nick got word about what was happening, he would surely go to any lengths to get rid of the gun.

Suddenly there was pandemonium in the station as a call came through the dispatch radio about a major three-car pileup outside town, near the Trenton Bridge. A local woman hit a patch of ice with her Chevy Malibu and spun out of control, sideswiping a Ford pickup truck and a Prius. No fatalities, but there were reports of injuries. Sergio grabbed his coat and raced out the door, his deputies Donnie and Earl on his heels. The search warrant was going to have to wait.

Hayley heard the sirens screaming as they sped away to the scene of the accident. There was nothing left for her to do but to go home and wait for news from Sergio after he had a chance to surprise Nick Ward with the warrant and search his house. She walked outside to the parking lot and hit the button on her remote to unlock her car; then she heard a man's voice a few feet away from her. She glanced around and spotted Billy sitting in his Range Rover, parked a few cars away from hers. The driver's-side window was open partway and he had his cell phone clamped to his ear.

“They know everything, Nick! You've got to get rid of the gun or you're going down for murder. Do you hear me? Call me back the minute you get this message! I'm going to try to text you.”

Billy started tapping out a message on his phone.

Hayley crouched down between her car and the one parked next to hers to avoid being spotted by Billy. She couldn't believe it. Billy had lied about keeping his mouth shut. And with Sergio on the outskirts of town dealing with the car accident, there was no way to stop Nick from disposing of the gun that would pin him to the murder.

Hayley's mind raced.

She had to do something.

Billy had gotten Nick's voice mail.

That was a good sign.

At least she had a little bit of time before Nick checked his messages.

She waited for Billy's Range Rover to pull out and drive off before she jumped in her own car and drove straight over to Nick Ward's house on Ledgelawn Avenue. She knew exactly where he lived; several years ago Nick had bought six boxes of Girl Scout cookies from Gemma and they had personally delivered them to his door.

Nick's house was a modest two-story structure painted white with black shutters. As a contractor he kept the property in immaculate condition, since basically it was an advertisement for his work. Nick had divorced seven years ago. His wife claimed irreconcilable differences, but rumors were he had knocked her around for years until finally she stood up to him and said enough was enough. But that was just idle gossip. Still, given recent events, and seeing what a bully Nick could be, Hayley was prone to believe the stories.

Hayley was surprised to see so much activity on the block. There was hardly any street parking and she watched as people poured into Nick's house, which was lit up with Christmas lights. She heard Madonna's version of “Santa Baby” playing from inside. Nick was hosting a Christmas party. That would surely explain why he hadn't answered his cell when Billy called to warn him.

She parked her car a couple of blocks away and hurried down the sidewalk toward Nick's house, blending in with a crowd of merrymakers who were heading into the house for Nick's soiree. The place was packed.

The guests Hayley arrived with shook off their coats and made a beeline for the open bar, which was serving spiked eggnog and assorted spirits. Hayley followed suit, but she kept a watchful eye out for Nick.

She scanned the living room.

No sign of him.

She wandered over and glanced in the kitchen.

He wasn't there either.

That's when Santa Claus, with a big sack of presents tossed over his shoulder, came marching down the staircase. “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

It was Nick.

No wonder he hadn't checked his voice messages or texts.

He was too busy playing Santa Claus.

A handful of children hovered in the living room near the fireplace. Their eyes lit up with wonder at the sight of Santa, and they clapped their hands wildly. Nick sauntered over to them. A couple of them grabbed his leg, hugging him, while two more jumped up and down excitedly. Nick began doling out presents to the tots as their beaming parents looked on.

This was Hayley's chance. Nick was going to be busy for a while. Here was the perfect opportunity for a quick search.

She rushed upstairs to see if she could find the gun. She started with a guest room that Nick had converted into a small office, furnished with a desk and a computer. The drawers were pretty much empty, except for a few bills and tax papers.

Against the opposite wall was a gun rack. Hayley carefully inspected each firearm, but they were all rifles. No pistol.

She then made her way into Nick's bedroom, closing the door behind her, and checked his dresser drawers. There were just socks and underwear and a small stack of white t-shirts.

She crossed to the closet. Mostly work boots, an assortment of plaid flannel shirts, and a few pairs of jeans and khaki slacks folded on the shelf.

She was about to leave and go back downstairs, but then she heard the doorknob to the bedroom jiggle. She scooted into the closet and quietly shut the door behind her as two people entered the bedroom.

“Are you sure Nick won't mind?” a woman's slurred voice said.

“Baby, he's never going to even know we were here. Relax,” an equally drunken male voice cooed.

Hayley opened the closet door a crack to see the couple fall back on the bed in a fit of giggles. The man slipped his hand through the woman's bright red blouse and began caressing her breasts as she reached down to work the zipper on his pants.

They were about to have sex.

And Hayley was going to be the captive audience.

She slid down to the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees, hoping this would not take too long. She didn't want to be stuck in the closet all night.

Through the crack Hayley watched in horror as the woman yanked the man's pants down as he lay on top of her, giving Hayley the perfect view of a full moon. She averted her eyes to the floor, where they settled on a shoe box, just to her left, tucked back in the corner of the closet.

She reached over and pulled off the top. Resting in the middle of some white tissue paper was a gun.

Hayley knew instantly she had just found the weapon that had killed Garth Rawlings.