Colorado 01 The Gamble (65 page)

“Kami,” I caught her attention, “if you had
a reason to borrow that money then you need to tell Mick what it
was. He’s trying to remove you from the suspect list. You need to
give him all the information he needs to help him do that.”

Kami looked at me and for the first time I
saw she was uncertain. “But I promised.”

I leaned closer and touched her arm. “You’re
being questioned for a double homicide. I think whoever you
promised will understand. If something else is going on here, we
need to ask Mick to leave so we can confer.”

Her eyes held mine for long moments then she
looked at Mick. “It was for Shauna.”

This surprised me. Shauna again.

My gaze also went to Mick.

“Shauna?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’s…” Kami paused, pulling her hand
through her hair, her eyes slid to me then to the side then back to
Mick. “She’s in trouble. Money trouble. They were gonna shut off
her electric, her water, gas. They already shut off her cable. Her
cards are maxed. And she doesn’t have any insurance and she’s
pregnant.”

“You gave the money to Shauna?” Mick
enquired.

“Yeah,” Kami replied.

Mick turned slightly in his chair so his
profile was facing the mirror behind him and he dipped his head,
communicating to whoever was watching they were meant to do
something.

“I got the permit and I got the gun,” Kami
went on, missing Mick’s movements. “It’s never been fired. It’s
never even been loaded. It’s in a shoebox in my closet.” Then she
leaned forward and repeated, “Mickey, you gotta know, no matter
what went down, I’d never hurt Curt, never send death threats and
I’d never, not ever, hurt Bitsy.” She bit her lip as her eyes got
bright and she finished, repeating, “You gotta know. You know me
and you gotta know.”

“All right, Kami,” Mick said gently. “Let us
check this out, yeah?”

Kami sat back and turned her face away,
nodding. Mick looked at me, rose and walked out of the room.

I turned to Kami. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes came to me and I noticed that
Vulnerable Kami was gone, Bitchy Kami was back.

“
No, I’m not okay,” she snapped. “I’m
sittin’ in a Police Station being questioned as a suspect in a
double homicide!”

“Mick’s just doing his job,” I told her.
“He’ll check your story and you’ll be fine.”

“I know I’ll be fine. I didn’t do jack, not
to Curt, not to Bitsy, hell, I wouldn’t do that shit to anyone. But
people’ll know I was questioned.”

“It’s my understanding a lot of people were
questioned. Mick even asked Max for his alibi.”

Bitchy Kami escalated to Uber Bitchy Kami
and she hissed, “
What?
”

“The morning after the murder, Mick came to
Max’s house, asked for his alibi.”

“That’s not even funny.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I agreed. “But since he had
one, it doesn’t matter.”

She looked away, her face tight, her mouth
muttering, “That’s just whacked, totally whacked, and Mick knows
it.”

I was surprised at her defense of her
brother but I wasn’t surprised at her reaction to his news.
Everyone felt the same way. More evidence that Curt was in some way
responsible for Anna Maxwell’s death and, in being so, the fact
that Macho Mountain Man Max didn’t exact retribution then meant he
was unlikely to do it now.

Before I could reply, the door opened and
Max and Linda walked in.

“
I’ll be givin’ Mick Shaughnessy a piece of
my mind for this, make
no
mistake,” Linda declared upon entry.

“What happened?” Max asked me.

“Since Kami explained things to me before we
let Mick interview her, obviously she explained things to Mick and
answered all his queries. He just needs to check their validity and
we can move on,” I told him.

“Thanks, Nina, for helpin’ out,” Linda
expressed the gratitude Kami not surprisingly had not.

“Not a problem,” I murmured then offered,
“Maybe Max and I can go get some coffees? Would you all like a
coffee while we’re waiting?”

“That’d be nice, thanks,” Linda replied.

“Knock yourself out,” Kami muttered.

Max opened his mouth, possibly to protest at
leaving his sister or to give Kami a piece of his mind for her
attitude but I gave him a look, got up, shrugged on my coat,
grabbed my purse and moved to the door. Max read my look and
followed.

I waited until we were out of the Station
and on the boarded sidewalk before I spoke.

“You should know something,” I whispered,
squeezing his hand as he’d taken mine when we left the Station.

“I’m guessin’ this is somethin’ I should
know that I won’t like,” Max remarked and I stopped and looked up
at him.

Deciding to get it out, I did. “It was
Shauna who talked Kami into buying that gun and it was Shauna who
needed the money Kami borrowed on the house.”

He stared at me a minute, his jaw tense, his
eyes hard then he looked away and muttered, “Fuck.”

I tugged at his hand until he looked back at
me then I said, “Okay, now I’m getting into possible slander here
but… what if Shauna knew that Curt had made changes to his will
around the time she told him she was pregnant?”

“What?”

“She didn’t know that Curt knew he didn’t
father her child. What she knew was that there was a possibility he
didn’t since she wasn’t exactly faithful to him. Kami said that
they’ve turned off her cable and she was close to having the
utilities stopped at her house. She needed money, Max, badly,
especially having no insurance and a baby on the way. If she knew
that he changed the will, she could speculate he changed it in her
favor. She was smug before the reading, she thought she’d come out
on top. But also she knew if she had the baby and he demanded a DNA
test, she would lose everything she worked for. Which would mean
she’d need him dead to collect before the truth came out.”

“She doesn’t have any money, Duchess, how’s
she gonna pay a contract killer?”

“She had twenty-five thousand dollars of
Kami’s money, Max,” I reminded him. “And anyway, men do stupid
stuff for women who are good with their mouths. We have no idea who
she’s been associating with.”

Max, being a man, nodded curtly to the
veracity of this statement then he pointed out, “She was in the
house when Curt was killed.”

“
She made the call
after
Curt was killed saying she was in the house
when
he was killed
and
time had elapsed between the
killing and the call, she even admitted that.” Max just stared at
me so I went on, “There’s a break in, you hear something, even if
you’re with a man and he goes to check on it, wouldn’t you call the
police?”

“Not if you don’t want anyone knowin’ you’re
there,” Max pointed out.

I nodded for this was true but suggested,
“She could have done what she needed to do with this PI guy then
gone back to Curt’s knowing what was going to happen there, made
the call and said she was there when she wasn’t. Or she could have
set the whole thing up to happen when she was in the house, knowing
what was happening with the PI. Either way, she was giving herself
an alibi.”

“So who killed the PI?” Max asked.

“Someone else she scammed?” I proposed. “Or
someone in on it, a partner.”

“So, you’re sayin’ she set Kami up?”

“How close are they?”

“For Kami, close. For Shauna, who knows?
She’s never demonstrated she’s felt a genuine emotion since I’ve
known her.”

“Then yes, I think it isn’t coincidence that
on a girl’s weekend to Denver, Shauna talked Kami into buying a gun
and then borrowed an extraordinary amount of money from her. To
come current on utilities and credit cards, who needs twenty-five
thousand dollars?”

“Shauna, like Kami, lives large.”

“From what Harry intimated at The Rooster,
she’s also had help living large, fleecing Harry and maybe even
Curtis and, who knows, maybe even that Robert guy she was with at
the restaurant.”

Max stared at me again then he muttered,
“Jesus Christ.”

“Max –”

Max cut me off. “What d’you think we should
do with this shit?”

“I think you need to look out for your
sister and let Mick find the trail of breadcrumbs.”

“That trail is leadin’ him to my
sister.”

I got closer to him and advised, “You have
to trust the truth will out. If not, you have to trust that I’ll do
what I can to help your sister.”

“Babe –”

“Watch out for Kami, that’s it. Just look
out for her, I’ll do the rest.”

I knew this was asking a lot of an action
man to stand by and do nothing, I could tell by the internal
struggle I saw him waging behind his eyes.

Finally, he said, “Let’s get my sister a
coffee.”

I leaned up and kissed his jaw before I
agreed, “All right.”

* * * * *

Coffees consumed, Kami was texting Shauna
for the fiftieth time on her phone.

Shauna who, by her own report, was going to
have a rough day due to her beloved Curtis being put in the earth
and thus needed her friend at her side, had somehow disappeared in
Kami’s hour of need if Kami’s unsuccessful attempts to contact her
through fifty texts (maybe a slight exaggeration) and five phone
calls (not an exaggeration) over the last hour.

I knew she hit send when I heard the beep,
she flipped her phone shut and Max started, “Kami –”

“Don’t, Max, just… don’t,” Kami muttered,
staring at the wall.

The door opened, Mick walked in, shutting it
behind him and we all looked to him.

“Found your gun, Kami, right where you said
it would be, never fired, not loaded,” Mick stated.

“Is that surprising?” Linda snapped, her
eyes fierce on Mick’s face, her bearing proving true what she said
that morning, a mother loves her children, maybe not the same way
but the same amount. She was deep in Lioness Mode.

“No, Lins, it isn’t surprising,” Mick said
to her and then looked back at Kami. “Though Shauna doesn’t have a
deposit of twenty-five thousand in her account.”

We all straightened and Linda and Kami grew
pale.

“What?” Kami asked.

Mick pressed his lips together then he went
on, “Your bank reports that you made a check to a Robert Winston
for twenty-five thousand dollars, your check was cashed the day you
wrote it but not deposited in his account, nor was any money
deposited in Shauna’s that day or since, except for a monthly
deposit we’ve tracked to Dodd’s business account.”

“Holy crap,” Linda muttered.

“Wh… what?” Kami stammered, her hand flat on
the table, her face bleached white.

I kept quiet as I processed the news that
Curtis was giving Shauna money through his business account. Not
good.

“You know Robert Winston?” Mick asked.

“He… he’s a… a friend of Shauna’s,” Kami
answered instantly if stiltedly. “He lives in Chantelle, moved
there, I don’t know, not long ago. He has a house in one of Curt’s
developments. I think he’s been around three months, maybe four.
Shauna knew him from Aspen. She didn’t want anyone to know about
the money, you know, even the tellers talk, so she asked me to make
it out to him, he was going to give it to her.”

“Unless she’s sittin’ on the cash or she
blew it as cash, she never got it,” Mick told her, “least, not in a
way that leaves a trail.”

Kami shook her head, visibly stunned at this
news then she asked, “What about her bills?”

“Ain’t my place to tell you but I’m doin’ it
all the same,” Mick said to Kami. “Shauna’s fully current on all
her bills, never been in arrears. Far’s we can tell, for at least
seven months, Harry’s been payin’ ‘em.”

“
Holy
crap,
”
Linda snapped on a near shout.

“He’s also been payin’ her doctor bills,”
Mick went on.

She had Curt giving her money and Harry
paying her bills. She was being kept by two men. Now she had none,
except, perhaps, this Robert character.

I looked at Max and resisted the urge to run
to him, tackle him to the ground and sit on him. He looked ready to
explode.

“It’s worse,” Mick announced and the room,
already tense, became suffocating.

“What?” Kami whispered.

“Not too long ago, Shauna sold her house.
She closed about a month ago, paid rent to the new owners to stick
around.”

“I don’t believe it,” Kami was still
whispering.

“She’s closed her accounts,” Mick finished.
“Closed ‘em yesterday. She’s also put orders in to shut down gas,
water, electricity, phone and cable, startin’ first of May.”

Kami wasn’t letting this information sink
in. “But, if she sold her house, she’d have hundreds of thousands
of dollars. She owned it outright. Why would she ask me for
money?”

“
Maybe because she hired a
contract killer?”
Linda
screeched and I changed my mind and decided I should probably
tackle Linda first before she continued, “
With my daughter’s
money!
”

“
That’s… that’s
crazy
, Mom!” Kami shot back, deep in the pit of denial.
“She’d never hurt Curt. He told her he loved her, he wanted to
marry her, he was gonna leave Bitsy for her.”

“Yeah, she told you that like she told you I
took her ring shoppin’,” Max clipped.

“But –” Kami said.

“I never took her ring shoppin’, Kami,” Max
went on.

“But –” Kami repeated.

“Never fuckin’ entered my mind,” Max carried
on.

“She said –”

“She lied, Kams, Jesus!” Max exploded. “We
weren’t even exclusive, I made it clear she could go her own way
when I was gone and I’d go my own. I had a woman on the job I was
on and she knew it.”