The Drop (Subtle Deceptions #4)

Chapter 1

ONE

GABE

Gabe blinked, then blinked again for good measure. Unfortunately for him, blinking did not make the mangled body disappear.

“Dammit.”

Holding his breath and gritting his teeth, he risked a longer glance at the scene before him. It wasn’t pleasant. A man’s body was slumped sideways, an impossible position in the uncomfortable-looking office chair.

Gabe was seriously regretting getting out of bed that morning. Specifically, he was lamenting answering a call from Unknown Number—especially on a Monday.

“Not a good move, Gabriel. Not a good move at all.”

The dead man in the office chair had died violently.

That was obvious, seeing as someone had done a number on his skull.

The hair on what was left of his head was snow white, what Heidi had always called preacher hair.

Appropriate, considering his vocation. His head was leaning back, angled awkwardly toward Gabe, and his vacant eyes stared wide-eyed into the space between them, like he’d been surprised by whoever had killed him.

Pastor Royal Wilson, whose picture Gabe had found numerous times on the Westfort Abundance of Light Church website before he’d left home an hour or so ago, was very dead.

“One of these days I’m going to start paying attention to my instincts. It would have been nice if that day was today.”

From where he was standing, Gabe could see blood soaked into the carpet below the mangled skull and splattered on the wall behind the corpse in a poor imitation of a Jackson Pollack painting. His stomach churned.

Swallowing, Gabe averted his eyes from the caved-in head. Gathering himself, he nudged the door further open to take a closer look. The man had asked to meet him, after all.

For his death-day, Roy Wilson had dressed in khaki slacks, a cream dress shirt with cuffs, and what looked to be a pullover sweater, maybe cashmere, that had originally been a tasteful shade of gray. Gabe wasn’t about to touch it to find out if his guess about the material was right.

Scanning the rest of the small room, he spotted a nine iron on the other side of the chair.

Craning his neck, he squinted at the club.

Bits of scalp and brain gore covered the business end of the thing.

Gabe’s stomach churned again, and he slapped his hand over his mouth and nose.

He knew better than to contaminate a crime scene.

His attention snagged on a carry bag leaning against one wall.

Several golf clubs were stashed inside it, but there was an empty spot where a nine iron would fit perfectly.

Murder weapon achieved. Probably the best choice since most modern golf clubs were made of carbon fiber, and the shafts broke with alarming ease.

Why hadn’t Wilson left his golf clubs inside the Mercedes parked outside, the one Gabe assumed was his? As far as Gabe knew, Irondale wasn’t a high crime area. Regardless, Wilson had no reason to worry about his clubs any longer.

Maybe this murder was an instance of a golf game gone horribly wrong.

Golf rage. Had Wilson been a cheater? Gabe had witnessed some pretty gruesome arguments on the links in his time.

But even if Wilson fudged his scorecard, bludgeoning him to death seemed extreme, and waiting until he returned to this temporary office space was just plain weird.

“Why did I answer the phone? Why did I agree to listen to what he had to say? Why didn’t I get back in the car when nobody answered the buzzer?” Gabe was questioning his very existence at this point.

As if you could’ve said no, Chance.

Fine. He wouldn’t have left without looking behind door number three, but he was starting to think his innate curiosity was a curse, not a blessing. His new favorite word needed to become no.

Additionally, Monday was his nemesis. If a day of the week had it in for him, it was Monday.

I’ll never say I told you so, Chance.

Thanks for that, Heidi.

Gabe dug into his bag, looking for his phone so he could make the call to the Twana County Sheriff’s Office. A number that a man like him should not know from memory.

“I need to report a murder,” Gabe told dispatch, and rattled off the address. “Yes, I’m sure he died by violence.” Boy, did he.

When that was over, he turned and walked back down the hallway to wait in the lobby as instructed. It wasn’t as if Roy Wilson was going to wake up and tell Gabe what had happened in the time between Wilson setting up their meeting and now.

Wilson was very dead. Extra dead, if that were possible.

“Wait right here,” a thin-lipped Acting Sheriff Bree Eagan directed, “and don’t touch anything. Someone will return to take your statement in a moment.”

Gabe’s hair fluttered in her wake as she strode past him.

Two deputies Gabe didn’t recognize followed behind her, carrying plastic cases that, presumably, held the necessary items for processing a crime scene.

A third deputy barred the entrance to Heron’s Roost. Whether it was to keep Gabe inside the building or to stave off curious onlookers, Gabe wasn’t sure. A little of both, he figured.

Gabe was tempted to point out that this wasn’t his first murder but thought better of it. Brevity was not always appreciated by law enforcement. A shame, really.

He took a moment to look more carefully around the lobby since he’d been intent on the meetup with Roy Wilson his first pass through.

A light brown leather couch flanked by a set of awkward-looking chairs sat off to one side.

Additionally, there was a low table with artfully fanned pamphlets expounding the virtues of various real estate opportunities in the area: Your Walden Pond, Peace in a Busy World.

Waving to catch the attention of the stern deputy, he pointed at the furniture, making a can-I-sit-down gesture. The guard nodded.

Gabe sat and began to replay the ill-fated morning in his head. The core issue? He hadn’t finished his first cup of coffee, so his judgment had been impaired. Had he missed signs that the meeting was a setup? He recalled the phone conversation, and yeah, probably.

“Am I speaking to Gabe Karne?” The mystery caller had asked.

“Uh, yes?” Who else would answer his cell phone?

“I have a proposition for you.” There had been the tiniest pause between a and proposition.

All before Gabe could ask how the caller had gotten his number. Should’ve been his first clue the proposition was not on the level.

Although he doubted the caller expected this outcome.

“And you are?” Gabe had asked.

“My apologies. Roy, Roy Wilson. A mutual friend passed along your contact info.”

Wilson’s voice had been smooth, and he had seemed well-versed in using it as a means to an end. Heidi would’ve said that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“Who’s the mutual?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ll pay in cash. That’s all you need to know.”

“My mother always told me to never take money from strangers,” Gabe said drolly.

A hearty laugh boomed across their connection, loud enough to make Gabe hold the phone away from his ear.

And I was right, Chance.

Gabe sighed, and the deputy at the door glanced across the lobby at him. He grabbed one of the glossy pamphlets and pretended to be interested in it.

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that a mutual had given Wilson his number. Gabe did do the occasional odd job, odd being the operative term. And he did live in a relatively small community.

“A wise guy, huh?” More laughter had followed. Wilson had seemed to find himself very funny, a second sign that something was up. “We have more than one mutual, but it was Emmett Spurring who gave your number to me. He says you might be able to help with an unusual problem I’m having. Quietly.”

That had piqued Gabe’s caffeine-starved curiosity. Former Deputy Emmett Spurring was not a friend or even a fan of Gabe’s.

“What’s the problem?”

Gabe sighed again, dropping the pamphlet back onto the low table. One of these days he was going to wise up and stick his nose out of other people’s business; today was also not the day for that either.

“Some conversations are best in person. Can you be here in an hour or so?” Wilson then rattled off the address of Heron’s Roost, a community workspace in Irondale, a small municipality between Heartstone and Westfort.

“Today?” Yes, he was self-employed, but still.

“It’s… urgent.”

Wilson hadn’t wanted to be seen speaking with him, Gabe could tell. He wasn’t the only one, so Gabe decided not to be offended. Curiosity—which would be listed as his cause of death one day—led him to agree to the meeting. After all, he figured he could always say no to whatever Wilson wanted.

Like that’s gonna happen, Chance.

Gabe sighed and adjusted himself in the chair. The furniture was just as uncomfortable as he had expected.

Heron’s Roost was flanked by a convenience store and a vacant building and had once been real estate offices, Gabe guessed.

Or a bank. Something that required solid, bland architecture.

An enterprising local had turned the abandoned franchise into shared workspaces that could be rented by the hour, day, or month, creating a place where work-at-home types could concentrate or have a meeting that didn’t require hiring a cleaner to tidy up their living room.

Heron’s Roost even had a mailing address for monthly renters; Gabe had noticed this when he’d gone online to confirm the address was legit.

Why did Wilson want to meet there when he had a perfectly good church to put to use?

The church, Gabe had discovered during his quick recon, was being remodeled.

Fast forward to his arrival. After barely managing to avoid a pickup pulling out one of the deli’s spots, the possibility that the meeting could be some kind of ambush by the Colavito family had crossed his mind.

Larry Colavito had liked to ride around in late model Mercedes sedans like the one parked by Heron’s Roost. Always leased, of course.

Damn. Gabe hadn’t thought about Larry or the rest of his family in months.

“Larry’s a guest of the feds for a very long time,” Gabe had reminded himself as he climbed out of the Honda. But then he’d discovered Roy Wilson’s mangled corpse.

And the alarm bells had finally started clanging.

“I only have myself to blame if Monday does a fucking number on me,” he muttered.

The remaining deputy must’ve heard him because he shot a grim look Gabe’s direction.

If? It’s almost a guarantee, Chance.