Double Trouble (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator Book 10) (20 page)

I unhooked a couple of the bills from the clothesline and went back upstairs to the living room. The three Flahertys were seated with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Tommy was on the floor red-faced and looking numb. Lissa and Candi sat at opposite ends of the couch staring straight ahead. Lissa looked ready to kill and Candi softly whimpered as tears ran down her cheeks.

“Really nice to see you again, Candi. I suppose with those handcuffs on there’s really no way you could show me what I was missing the other night.”

“Hope you’re happy, asshole,” Lissa shouted at me from the other end of the couch.

“Very,” I replied and smiled.

“Transport’s on the way,” Dondavitch said.

“Little something for you, from the basement,” I said and handed her the damp, red twenties.

“Apparently there’s a hearse parked out in the garage. Where’d you find these?” she asked holding one of the red bills up toward the window light.

“Basement is full of them.”

“You’re violating my damn rights, Haskell, I demand to talk to a lawyer,” Lissa shouted from the couch.

“You haven’t even been arrested, let alone charged yet, honey. Just settle down for a bit, you’re gonna have plenty of time to think about what you’ll say,” Dondavitch said.

Chapter Forty-Seven

It was well past
noon by the time Luscious and I finished giving our statements to the police. The bowl of M&Ms had been emptied, twice and the empty bag lay crumpled on Lissa’s dining room table. I found Luscious in the kitchen, standing in front of the open refrigerator door scanning the contents for anything edible and not looking too happy.

“Luscious, what are you doing?”

“All this excitement going on I’m about to faint from hunger, Dev. Nothing but a jar of pickles and some kind of pasta sauce in here. That stuff don’t exactly thrill me.”

“Hey, there’s a McDonald’s about a mile and a half from here. My treat if you’re interested.”

That brought a smile to his face and he stood up, kicked the refrigerator door closed and said, “Now you’re talking, you just lead the way.”

We said our good-byes to Detective Dondavitch. Red-dyed Tommy Flaherty was already enroute to the police station. Two detectives were in the basement gathering trash bags full of evidence. Tommy’s two lovely sisters, Lissa and Candi, remained sitting on the couch, hands still cuffed behind their backs awaiting transport.

Candi sat there quietly sobbing with puffy eyes and mascara running down her cheeks. Lissa still hadn’t lost any of the anger from two hours earlier and in fact appeared to be even more enraged. She sneered at me as I walked from the dining room over to the couch. Luscious followed behind, stopping to double check the crumpled M&M bag for crumbs.

“Gee, sorry to dash off like this, girls, but I’m afraid we’ve got another appointment, otherwise I’d stay and chat.”

“Can’t you do something? I’m really sorry, but we didn’t know,” Candi sobbed.

“I’ll kill you, Dev. I swear to God, I’m going to kill you,” Lissa hissed.

“Detective, did you hear that, a death threat. Can she do that? Isn’t there some sort of law against that sort of thing?”

“I think we’ll be able to add that to her list of charges,” Dondavitch said. Then she took out a pen and wrote something down in a pocket size spiral notebook. When she’d finished, she held the notebook up so I could read what she’d written. “Very angry bitch.” She’d drawn a smiley face sort of image, but with a frown just after that.

“Yes, that will be perfect. Gee, I guess I’ll just have to say farewell, girls. It’s been a real pleasure, payback can be such fun. You’ll probably be old and grey by the time you get out, if you ever do get out. Enjoy the vacation,” I said.

“Old and grey?” Candi whined, looked over at her sister and then began to sob uncontrollably.

“Shut up, Candi, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about and by the way, you were the worst lay I ever had, Dev. You hear me, the worst, ever. Ev-er,” Lissa screamed from the couch as we stepped outside.

“You know her, personally, like?” Dondavitch asked out on the front porch.

“Yeah, both of them, from years back, but I didn’t know they were involved in this thing until Lissa showed up at Denny’s this morning. What do you think they’ll get?” I asked.

“The brother will probably get up to twenty years. He’s got a list of priors as long as your arm. The girls, unless I missed something, it’s a first for both of them. Probably five years probation, pee in a paper cup for sixty months and promise to behave. Even if they were involved in the ATM heist, they can dodge that without too much trouble, well, unless the brother turns, but that’s not going to happen.”

“What a bunch of idiots, must be something in the gene pool.”

“That’s a pretty strong indictment coming from the likes of you, Haskell,” she said and smiled.

Luscious had pulled the pickup truck around the block and I could see him coming down the street.

“Glad I could be of help, how long will you hang onto those coffins.”

“God, what a creepy deal that is. Maybe they’ll make ‘World’s Dumbest Criminals.’ How long? Depends on when they’re brought to trial. They all plead guilty that speeds things up. Be at least a couple of months. Is there a rush?”

“No, I guess not.”

Luscious honked the horn on the pickup and motioned me toward the street.

“Looks like my crime fighting partner is getting anxious, I better go.”

“Thanks again, I mean it. Things were getting cold on the ATM, so we all appreciate the help.”

Luscious honked the horn again.

“Better hurry, he’s no doubt wasting away,” Dondavitch said.

“We’re about to take care of that. If you could find it in your heart to keep the ladies locked up for an extended time in maybe your grimiest cell, it would be okay with me,” I said then hurried to my car before Luscious died of hunger.

Chapter Forty-Eight

I retrieved the envelope
with cash from Luscious. I’d learned from past experience that it would work best if we went inside to eat rather than attempting to cram a couple hundred pounds of Big Macs and fries into the car.

Luscious was easily the size of any four individuals in the place and he hurried to a booth in the back carrying two trays mounded with food and three strawberry shakes. He inhaled a double cheeseburger along the way just to keep his strength up. I carried the tray with all the desserts plus my cheeseburger and small coke. More than a few heads turned as we passed, then they would lean forward to whisper to one another once they realized it was just the two of us and all that food. I noticed the young woman who took our order leaning over the counter to watch as Luscious waddled toward the rear booth.

By the time I sat down, Luscious was cramming half of a Big Mac into his mouth and reaching for one of the strawberry shakes. I knew better than to get between him and food and there was certainly no point in attempting conversation. So, we sat there in relative silence while I finished my cheeseburger. Then I stretched out on my side of the booth, sipped my coke and people watched. After thirty minutes, Luscious had cleared off two entire trays and was beginning to work his way through the desserts, washing them down with strawberry shake.

“How is it, good?” I asked.

A man focused on the mission at hand, he simply nodded and continued eating. At about the fifty-minute mark he pushed the final, empty tray off to the side, tilted his head back, closed his eyes and let out a very loud and long belch. The air suddenly smelled of strawberry shake and French fries. The couple across the aisle from us immediately got up and walked swiftly out the door.

“Luscious, you still have that final strawberry shake left. Hope you’re not going to let that go to waste.”

“No, sir, I’m saving that for the drive back to that rental place.”

It served me right for asking and I didn’t dare ask if he wanted anything else. “You ready to head out?”

“I thinks it’s time,” he said like we had both been waiting for me to finish some task, then he cupped the shake in a massive paw and groaned as he got to his feet. Our table was awash in wrappers and just about every head in the place watched us as we walked toward the door.

“Good-bye, thanks for choosing McDonald’s,” the woman who had waited on us called as Luscious oozed out the side door.

“You follow me, okay, Luscious? I’m going to pull onto that street behind the rental place and we’ll switch drivers again so it looks like I drove the truck this afternoon, got it?”

Luscious sucked down about an inch of strawberry shake and nodded, then climbed behind the wheel of the pickup. The thing leaned far enough to the left that it looked like the shocks were broken on that side.

It’s not a busy street running past McDonald’s, but we had to wait for a couple of cars to pass, we made a right out of the parking lot and then about fifty feet down the road I made a sharp left. Unfortunately, Luscious did not. Focused on his strawberry shake, he missed the turn, then to make matters worse he apparently mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal and floored the pickup about fifteen feet before hitting a tree.

The hood buckled, the front bumper was dented and the grill was hanging in two pieces. If I had to guess I’d say there was about three to four grand worth of damage to the truck. Luscious stepped out with a guilty look on his face, at least I thought he looked guilty. It was hard to tell with strawberry shake dripping down his chin.

“What the hell happened?”

“I think a strawberry got stuck in my straw.”

“A what? Luscious, there aren’t any strawberries in those shakes, it just strawberry flavored. Didn’t you see the tree?” Which, I knew was a stupid question before I finished asking it. I remembered the guy at the rental place saying,
‘You want our rider insurance? Forty-five bucks, don’t mind me saying it might not be a bad idea.’

It took the better part of an hour to fill out the accident report at the rental place. We’d called the police on the way over, but they’re stretched so thin in our town that unless there’s someone injured, they don’t have the manpower to dispatch someone. They took my name and address and said they’d mail out an accident form for insurance purposes then gave me a website address if I wanted to download the form myself.

The two guys at the rental place were still sipping coffee and acted like they weren’t all that surprised. “But you were driving, is that correct, Mr. Haskell?” It was the fourth time they’d asked me.

“Yeah, I told you before, it was either the tree or hit some senior citizen on a motorized wheelchair. I didn’t have any choice, isn’t that right, Luscious?”

“Just like he said,” Luscious replied not taking his eyes off his feet.

The rental guy looked at the two of us for a long moment then decided there wasn’t anything he could do to improve the situation. “Okay, we’ll be in touch. Have a nice day,” he said, flashed a smile for a nanosecond and sent us on our way.

I took the scenic route along the river as I drove Luscious home then stopped in front of the steps to his building. “Luscious, it’s been real, thanks again for your help. I’ll have a check in the mail to you tomorrow if that’s okay.” I was turned partially around, talking to him stretched out in the back seat.

“Be fine with me, Mr. Dev. Real sorry bout that little bump and spilling that shake and all,” he said sounding genuinely apologetic.

“Not a problem, based on what we did today, I’d say we got off easy.”

That brought a smile to his face and then my car rocked back and forth as he climbed out of the back seat. “Be seeing you now, you need my help again you just call me, Mr. Dev.” Then he stood on the curb and waved as I drove off.

Chapter Forty-Nine

My phone rang as
I was pulling into my driveway.

“Haskell Investigations.”

“I hear congratulations are in order.” It was Aaron LaZelle.

“Yeah, things worked out pretty well, for a change. I recovered those coffins and my hunch paid off for Dondavitch,”

“Apparently there were some unhappy campers on the scene.”

“You mean the sisters?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hopefully this will shake them up and they’ll fly right. The good detective seemed to think they’ll get off with probation, their brother probably won’t be quite so lucky.”

“It always amazes me how many times people get caught and they still think they can get away with shit. That kid will be north of forty years old before he sees the light of day.”

“Yeah, the sad thing is he’s actually a pretty nice guy if he would just get his act together, but he just never seems to do that.”

“Some guys never do. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks. You still owe me dinner, by the way.”

“Just let me know when you’re free.”

“You’re safe for the foreseeable future.”

I’d barely hung up when my phone rang again.