Chapter 17
Seventeen
C iaran went straight to The Kicking Mule.
He’d texted Quentin and knew that was where they were going.
Matt had given him a heads-up that Joey had missed an important meeting with the suppliers.
Without seeing the transactions go down, Matt was stuck.
He couldn’t arrest them simply for being present, which meant he’d have to lean on the cousin, Tommy, get him to step up and take over as point man so they could finally put an end to all of this.
He knew Matt had planned to use the threat of a return to prison to bring Joey to heel, but that wouldn’t work with Tommy.
Of course, Tommy also wasn’t nearly the hard ass that Joey was, so it might work still.
In the meantime, Ciaran had his own suspicions about Joey’s death.
Silas was a man with his eye fixed firmly on the prize.
His current position was nothing more than a stepping stone to bigger, better, and more lucrative things.
A power-hungry politician with a liability like a relative of Joey’s ilk was a recipe for disaster. And Lowey was the perfect scapegoat.
Easing his truck into the parking lot of the bar, he noted the two sheriff’s vehicles present. He could hear the breaking of glass and smashing of furniture from inside. He could also hear Quentin yelling.
He acted quickly, crossing the gravel lot at a run and entering the bar. “You’ve a search warrant for a gun,” Ciaran said. “You’ll not find it hiding in the bottom of a clear vodka bottle. Smashing it is willful destruction of property—with witnesses!”
The deputy tossed the bottle to the floor, glass and liquor scattering as it shattered. “It slipped.”
Ciaran looked back at Lowey who stood there with her lips clamped firmly together and an expression of pure hatred burning in her eyes.
“It can all be replaced,” he offered.
“No. It can’t. And I’m not even sure I want it to be,” she said. “Maybe this is what I needed to push me out of the bar business after all.”
One of the deputies reached beneath the bar and retrieved a wooden box. Opening it, he removed the handgun from inside it. “Looks like we’ve found our weapon.”
“You’ve found a weapon,” Quentin stated, “Not the weapon. ”
The deputy, one of Silas’s brown-nosing sycophants, grinned. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…where were you this afternoon, Miss Tate?”
“I was with Quentin at Ash Grove Farm,” she replied. “And then at around five, we went to have dinner with his siblings at Mia’s home.”
“There are witnesses who can corroborate that?”
The question had come from Silas who’d just walked into the bar behind Ciaran.
“Mia Darcy, Bennett Hayes, Clayton and Annalee Darcy were all there,” Lowey replied. Her tone was robotic, without any inflection at all, as if she’d gotten so used to Silas’s accusations and harassment that it no longer registered.
Ciaran didn’t point out that he’d been invited to the fête and elected not to go.
The object was to remove Lowey from the suspect list, not to put himself on it.
But he did watch Silas closely for a reaction, and he wasn’t disappointed.
The man’s face paled, and his breath quickened.
He was scared, Ciaran realized, and guilty. Very, very guilty.
“Did the kids who found the body see any vehicles near there? Were any tire tracks found?” Ciaran demanded.
Silas turned on him then. “You might be Matt Crawford’s errand boy, but that doesn’t give you any jurisdiction here. ”
Ciaran walked over to him, met Silas’s guilty gaze directly and warned. “If you don’t dot every I and cross every T on this, you’ll regret it, Barnes.”
“Are you threatening an officer of the law?”
Ciaran smiled. “Only with legal action. You are an elected official, and any elected official can be recalled…especially if there are concerns of corruption and miscarriages of justice.”
“You might want to take a step back. This isn’t a John Grisham novel,” Silas replied. “And bringing yourself to the attention of law enforcement and immigration might not be to your advantage.”
Quentin stepped in then. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that since his father is a citizen, Ciaran’s kind of good there. But maybe you need to consult John Grisham on that.”
Silas flushed angrily. “I can arrest you for obstruction, Darcy. Don’t think I won’t.”
“You’ve found what you were looking for,” Lowey said. “And you’ve destroyed everything that was left intact in this bar after your cousin opened fire on it. So, just go, Silas. Take what you came for and go. ”
Ciaran’s lips firmed as he watched Silas’s expression turn smug.
God, he hated that bastard and what he was doing to her and to Quentin.
Sure, he and Quentin had their issues, but he respected him at least. At some point or other, he hoped they’d be able to at least be civil to one another.
But their strange-ass family situation aside, what Silas was doing was wrong, plain and simple.
The son of a bitch was railroading a woman who was innocent, whose only real crime was to have the unfortunate luck of having been married to Silas’s bastard of a cousin.
“I’ll go because I’m ready to, not because you demanded it.”
Ciaran wanted more than anything to tell him it didn’t matter why the hell he left, so long as he did. But saying anything would just escalate the situation and keep Silas trying to come out on top. So, he bit his tongue and watched the asshole walk out, taking his minions with him.
When he was gone, Quentin turned to Ciaran and said, “The only way she’s getting out of this is to figure out who did kill Joey Barnes.”
“That’s an easy enough question to answer,” Ciaran said. “Silas killed him.”
“What about the Russian drug dealers?” Lowey asked .
“They were waiting for him to show up,” Ciaran replied.
“And when he didn’t, Matt’s whole case went south.
He can’t arrest someone for trafficking if they don’t actually ever receive the trafficked goods…
Silas is a man with political aspirations.
When I told him what his cousin was up to, he saw that political career going up in smoke and decided to do whatever was necessary to prevent it. ”
Quentin shook his head. “That’s a pretty big damn leap there, Sherlock. How exactly, if you’re right, do we prove that?”
“ We don’t,” Ciaran replied. “ I do. In the meantime, you all put together a timeline of your whereabouts and anyone who can verify it. You’re going to need it.”
Lowey looked scared while Quentin just looked pissed off. He wanted to tell them not to worry, but the truth of the matter was they needed to. Silas had the tools at his disposal to make this very ugly, and he was highly motivated to do it.
“Right,” Ciaran muttered. “I’m out. I’ll work on what I can. You two…just stay the hell out of trouble for a change, will you?” Ciaran turned and headed for the door. His only remaining option was to lean on Silas, and for that, he’d need to do some digging.