13. A Punchable Face
A Punchable Face
Vedder
It’d been a couple days since I’d last seen Melody.
Taz had turned on the cameras she’d installed around Mel’s property when she’d rented a small plot of land and parked her trailer there.
With eyes on Mel’s farm, and some of Mack’s own security able to reach out towards her house with some adjustments we’d made under the cover of darkness, I knew she was alright.
She hadn’t called me, so I gave her space and went about the rest of the job I was supposed to be doing for Braun.
I had dressed for the firehouse cookout in my volunteer firefighter shirt, one of my nicer and less hole-riddled jeans, and some vintage jump boots I’d fished from a dumpster some years back.
I had been on a vow of poverty to rediscover who I was, but dumpster diving had not been my best moment.
I learned a lot about what I could live without… and what I needed to live with.
A good pair of boots, a pair of jeans, and access to running water.
Maybe a poncho, for when it rained. A good sleeping bag, too.
And something to do with my day. Something purposeful with immediate feedback was great.
Rebuilding a barn, for example. Putting up a fence.
Laying down concrete was also a good one.
So, coming here to interview this guy was not high on the list of things I wanted to do.
With my truck out of commission and sitting on jack stands at the barn, ready for me to salvage what I needed to fix all of it, I was driving one of Braun’s refurbished Dodge Charger Pursuits—a former police car complete with the police department scratched off the blue-and-white paint job.
At least the siren lights on the roof had been changed to feature different colors.
Not a bad ride. But when I backed into a parking spot flanked by a Ferrari and a Bentley, I felt like I’d been tossed off the back of a turnip truck.
The holes on the knees of my worn jeans didn’t help.
My work boots also clunked on their pristine drive—that wasn’t made of pebbles or concrete.
It had been paved by gray stones with a cream border that matched the manor that looked newly remodeled in the farmhouse chic aesthetic, complete with a western theme that I thought was out of place in upstate New York.
“I know she did something to him.” Turner Gray leaned forward in the buck skin seat, his slicked-back hair and too-wide smile giving me the impression of a cartoon frog.
“We’ve been swimming since before we could walk, and there is no way that my brother”—he took a shuttering breath that sounded less than genuine—“drowned.”
He was trying to play me. And I could do nothing but sit here and let him get it all out.
“That girl…” He shook his head. “That girl charmed my brother, and I don’t know how. He was smitten with her and her mother since the beginning.”
“By that girl, do you mean…”
“Melody Gray.” He had to have been a handsome man at one time.
I could see it in the cut of his jaw and his cheeks.
But frowning and depravity had soured him like a rotten grape.
“She and her mother…I don’t know what they did to make my brother fall head over heels.
I don’t know what games they played. But they had a hold on him that was fucked up, you understand my meaning? ”
I did not. Not that I couldn’t figure out the allure of my sweet Melody…but there was a certain acidity in his voice that made me wary. The kind of acid that
“Hell, my own boy, Ian, was smitten with that girl for a while, too. Until I got him over that nonsense.” He looked smug as hell, like a self-righteous prick doing the lord’s work.
I’d seen that look on my mother many, many times when she’d convinced me that some person in town who was trying to help us was really an agent of the devil. “Let me guess…”
He looked me up and down.
“You got a thing for her, too, don’t you?”
I wanted to punch him in the throat.
“I don’t blame you. Everyone does. She’s pretty and charming. And hell, there’s something about those exotic looks, am I right?”
Christ, this guy was punchable.
“Like a flame to us decent folk, you know?”
He really did sound like my mom. It was always them trying to tempt us, the good folks. There were two kinds of people, those who believed like us, and all the devils who didn’t. There was no middle ground.
“It doesn’t help that she looks so damn young…”
I wanted to puke.
“But that’s how they get ya!”
What?
I didn’t know what my stunned expression told him, but he seemed like a man used to getting his way, because whatever he saw had him thinking we were on the same side.
We were not.
This guy had slept with a girl when he was my age, and I wanted to send my fist through his face just at the sheer sight of him.
I understood now why Braun had sent me here alone. He’d said—and I quote!—“I’ve only ever killed one client. I don’t want to add a second to the list.”
“Just so I get the lay of the land here,” I said, interrupting whatever he was prattling on about. “Is there a specific reason why you’d want to find foul play? Why don’t you want Sheriff Whitlaw to finish her investigation?”
“Mmm…Dagny Whitlaw…” He savored the name, and I cringed in disgust. “She’s a good girl under bad influences.”
She was hardly a girl at all!
“I tried to save her once. Did you know the reason she got elected was because my family backed her?” he said with a nod. “Oh, yes. We campaigned for her and everything. Such a good girl, that one.”
I tried to hide my gag, searching for that inner peace those damn meditation tapes were supposed to give me. I breathed to center myself, to not let the external world ruin my internal serenity…
But I was almost sure that beating the fuck out of this guy would be the most serene thing I could do.
“She coulda had such a nice life, if only she’d made better decisions.
” He sighed longingly, and for one moment, I saw something in him that could have looked like a good intention.
Not much of one, but it was there. It was quick.
Like he really, really liked Sheriff Whitlaw.
Like cared about her in his own twisted way.
“But let’s just say she may have some misconceptions that might make her prone to coming to the wrong conclusions. You get me?”
I did not want to think about this too hard, because I didn’t want to kill a client. Though, apparently, that was an okay thing to do when it came to Braun Bailbondsman and Private Investigator. Maybe he’d count it as a mulligan?
“That girl is bad news…” Turner’s voice brought me back to the present.
“You mean the sheriff?”
“Melody!” he yelled, looking offended I’d tarnish Whitlaw’s name by mistaking the two. “She got her claws into my brother, and he made some damn stupid decisions. If she did him any harm, then…then…”
“Then…?” Say something, buddy. Give me an excuse, and I’ll beat you like a the eggs in grandma’s sugar cookies.
“Well, we come from money, don’t we? She shouldn’t benefit financially from my brother’s estate if she was the one who did it. Mark my words, I bet that’s why she did it.”
“Just so we’re clear, you allege that Melody Gray killed your brother for his inheritance?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened in Mourningkill.”
A lot of suspicious things happened here for a town with a population of 800-something residents. It sure as hell seemed like Braun was the only guy in a position to unravel all of the threads.
“Your desired outcome is that she be found guilty of murdering your brother.” I said it outright because I wanted to understand why he was forking out so much money to a ramshackle PI company instead of going with the best money could buy.
“I want the truth to be revealed, Mr. Vedder.” He steepled his fingers. “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out what that is.”
To him, there was only one truth. The one he wanted.
After working around enough warlords, the signs were obvious. The tone they used to imply there was only one way, only one means, and only one answer. It was their way, or the wrong way.
Turner Gray’s expression even showed the same thinly veiled threat. That smarmy plausible deniability.
Everything about him sent warning bells through my mind. And each warning made me want to wrap Melody up in a bubble made of Kevlar.
I left the manor through a separate entrance from the one I’d used the last time I was here; Mr. Turner Gray and Mrs. Valerie Gray apparently lived in separate wings of the building.
It seemed the elder Grays, Joplin and Ruth, were in another section as well, because I didn’t see them either.
What was the point of living together if they never saw each other? Seemed like a waste of space.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
GOOSE: Got your girl. Come to school.