“What do you think you’ll learn from it?” Ray waved the recorder in front of him, the half-smile working now.
“Is this one of your teaching moments?”
Sue Ellen burst in the door. Before it closed, startling bright November afternoon sunlight made Tony squint. She spied him after her eyes became accustomed to the bar’s dim interior and made her way to the back of the room.
“No bodyguard?” Tony asked while she pecked her uncle’s cheek and shrugged out of her coat.
“Nope. DEA spotted Garcia way down in old Mexico two days ago. It looks like he’s settling in so we called off the detail. I’m a free woman now.”
Ray smiled at the couple sitting close across from him. They looked good together.
“And two of the LKs in custody are starting to see if they can out-snitch each other. The trial might be postponed and we’re getting some really good stuff.” The bartender delivered a round to the table. Sue Ellen took a healthy sip of white wine.
“Boof says hi,” Tony told her. Ray looked puzzled.
“I’m done for the day. Let’s go see him.” Visiting the part time dog was not what she had in mind.
“Suze, put on your DA hat for a minute, enjoy your wine. I want to lay something out and see if we can make a case.”
“Sure.”
“What case?” Tony decided to have a serious talk with his partner about springing things like this on him.
“It was this tape got me thinking.” Ray started the recording, turned down low so Karen’s shrieking wouldn’t carry far in the bar. Tony closed his eyes and listened. He remembered the look of fear in her eyes and the panic and confusion in Sean Stuckey’s. The knife clattered to the floor. Stuckey got his hand over her mouth, struggled to get a word in. He said he wanted them to take him in. Karen screamed he had come for money, the motive that they had all searched for.
The sound of the gunshot was so loud several people at the bar looked over, surprised.
“Go back, like fifteen seconds.” Tony still had his eyes closed so he didn’t see his partner smile. He heard it again right before the rifle barked.
“Money?”
“Stuckey didn’t go over there for money.”
“Nope.” Ray took a long pull on his drink.
“He was asking us a question, asking her a question.”
“Yes he was.”
“So why was he there?”
“She called him.”
“What are you two talking about?” Sue Ellen knew little about the case.
“I went back and watched the clip again, too.”
“What clip?” Sue Ellen asked.
“The porn clip. Quit interrupting.” Tony was focused on what Ray had to say.
“Deanna Fredrickson never recognized Stuckey. She was off screen, right? Stuckey’s back was to her the whole time and then he ran off to the right. She came in from the left. She had no clue what he looked like. She never recognized him as one of her son’s roommates and she probably saw him several times.”
“And he probably didn’t recognize her either,” Tony said.
“But Karen did.”
Tony took a pull on his beer. “Uh huh, and I think Karen wanted to go for another ride.”
“She made the money story up.”
“He had no idea what she was talking about, and he had plenty of dough from the guy in LA.”
“So why did she kill her?” Ray asked, finally voicing his suspicion.
“That’s where it gets murky.”
“STOP!” Sue Ellen held her hands up. “Thank you. You’re saying this Karen Hewes woman killed the Fredrickson woman?” Both Ray and Tony nodded. “Okay, I’ve got my DA hat on. Just lay it out in order, okay?”
It took two more rounds of drinks, a bathroom break, and three bowls of peanuts for Ray and Tony to lay it all out. They described the scene at the strip club, how Lakisha had identified Stuckey as being in the bar. They told her about the aborted video shoot and how they thought it was Dee Fredrickson that had burst in. They told her about Karen boldly lying about knowing Sean Stuckey and about David Hong’s having given her his number. She wasn’t sure she needed to know how big Stuckey’s dick was.
Sue Ellen questioned them about details, coldly separating fact from speculation. She wanted to know how Stuckey ended up being roommates with the son. Neither of them had a good answer. It was fate or coincidence or both. That got a frown.
At the end, she pressed them for a good reason for Karen to have killed her friend Deanna. It was Tony who came up with the best theory, the one that fit with everything they knew.
“Karen recognized Stuckey at the house. She approached him, maybe on the street or at school-she came on to him. She wanted to have some fun. Maybe they even did it, maybe more than once. She wanted Deanna to help her with cover stories for Gary. Deanna knew about the video, the history, maybe even the attraction and she didn’t approve any more now than she did back in LA. Karen freaked out, they fought, and she killed Deanna.”
Ray picked up the thread from there. “Now she has to cover her tracks. She wiped the knife handle with a silk blouse, thus the smeared prints. She wiped the mug in the sink, but forgot to wash it out. Deanna drank OJ, not coffee that morning. The last problem is Stuckey.”
Tony took over. The more they talked it through the more sense it made. “Now it gets complicated for her. Stuckey’s phone gets run over so she loses the way to contact him. She’s panicked because we’re onto him and has to call Hong to get the new number. She fakes the intruder in the yard to get her bedridden and insanely protective husband all worked up and somehow lures the kid over that morning.”
“Why that morning? Because she knew we were coming to talk to her.”
“And the husband’s getting better.”
“She set him up.” Each of them in the booth wore dark, scowling frowns. Sue Ellen’s was the grimmest of all. She took a deep breath and finally looked up.
“I buy it,” she said flatly. “I buy the whole thing. Just one eensy problem, fellas.” She paused for a beat.
“You’ll never be able to prove it.
Chapter 33
“Lakisha?”
Karen Hewes opened the front door wide, surprised to see her friend standing there. Lakisha, bundled in a parka and floppy wool hat, shivered in the doorway. December had been unkind since its arrival. Not only were the frequent icy snows a great nuisance, the blistering cold waves seemed downright cruel so early in the season.
“I was in St.Paul and I haven’t seen you since…”
“Come in. Get in here, girl.” Karen, smiling, wrapped her arms around Lakisha and hugged her close. “It’s freezing out there.”
Lakisha let Karen help her with her coat and hat and followed her into the kitchen. She lagged behind briefly, taking in the room, the doorway, imagining the bullet’s trajectory. In the kitchen she found herself tuning out Karen’s words while she scanned the cabinets and floor for bloodstains or other remnants from the shooting. Silly woman, she silently berated herself, of course there’s nothing to see.
“It is so good to see you.” She was dragged from her grim revue by Karen’s chatter. “Finally, someone’s brave enough to come to the house. Coffee?”
“Well, with the holidays and this weather…” Lakisha made her lame excuses. None of the other ‘Go Girls’ had apparently been burning up the phone lines or rushing to visit Karen either. Lakisha knew that Roxy and Tia had visited her in the hospital. They felt like they had to. She was in there for almost a week. She also knew that Ally was on the fringe of the legal issues Gary was still dealing with.
“So what’s new?” Karen poured mugs of rich smelling coffee and gestured for them to sit. “How’s the new book coming along?”
Lakisha studied the woman across from her. Karen was dressed in a festive red flouncy skirt and a white blouse with a Christmas patterned shell over it. Her makeup was perfect. Her hair had been done recently, cut shorter and highlighted. She looked like she was going out for the day. Actually, she looked turned out for holiday party or an evening out.