A Willing Murder Read online

  The dealership didn’t want Jack’s old pickup for a trade-in, but since he bought all his vehicles for his company there, they relented.

  “I really do need to look at your finances,” Kate said and Jack smiled.

  She and Sara chose a beautiful truck: bright red, double cab, lots of chrome and fog headlights. Jack took one look at it, snorted, then told the dealer he wanted the black single cab.

  “Sure glad we could help you choose,” Kate said.

  It took nearly two hours for all the paperwork. Sara said she’d pay cash if they’d do it quicker, but Jack refused her offer.

  While they waited, Kate picked up a magazine. Sara went to the far side of the room and gave her full attention to her cell phone.

  Jack took a seat next to Kate. “So when do you go out with him again?”

  “We have an overnighter planned for this weekend.” When Jack was silent, she looked up. “Someday you’re going to have to deal with my having a real relationship.”

  Jack gave a little smile. “So this one isn’t real?”

  She put her magazine down. “I don’t know. Alastair is lovely. A real gentleman, but there’s something missing.”

  Jack leaned back in the chair, his leg in its cast stretched out. “Passion, maybe? That feeling where he so wants to touch you that he can’t sleep? When he leans over you, the smell of your hair makes him dizzy? The way seeing you even talk to another man makes him feel so primal that he wants to hit, maim and kill? That’s what’s missing?”

  She was blinking at him.

  “Sir, your truck is ready,” the dealer said.

  Jack stood up. “You ready to go? We need to decide what to do next. Or if we want to stop.”

  Kate was still thinking about what he’d said. Jack held out his hand as though to help her stand up. She didn’t take it but stood on her own.

  “Let’s let Aunt Sara decide.”

  “I’ll tell you now that nothing stops her.” He turned toward Sara. “Medlar! You ready to go or have you plotted a new Game of Thrones?”

  She got up and went to them. “Games the Children Plot is more like it. What have you two cooked up that leaves old me out?”

  “After what happened last time?” Jack said. “You’d probably drive your toy car up into the bed of my new pickup and ruin the paint job.”

  Kate smiled. “Her yellow, your black. You’d have a bumblebee truck. Hey! You could rename your company Bumblebee Construction. The motto would be Powerful and Fast.”

  “Or We Buzz to Please,” Sara said.

  Jack shook his head. “My two joke makers. Let’s go home.”

  Sara lowered her voice. “Can’t. We have someplace to go first. I found Verna’s landlord, Lester Boggs. Or his widow, anyway. She lives in Hollywood.”

  “We take a plane?” Kate asked.

  “Hollywood here,” Jack said. “The real one. What are we supposed to find there?”

  “Verna traded her nice car to Boggs for an old van, which she packed full of everything they owned,” Sara explained. “We believed they were, uh, ‘taken’ on Friday. Roy saw the van there on Saturday morning. But when Jack and Captain Edison went there later, the van was gone. So who took it?”

  Jack and Kate stared at her in silence for a moment.

  “Come on,” Sara said. “Let’s go see if his widow knows anything.” She hurried to the door, Kate behind her, Jack on his crutches coming up last.

  As always, Kate sat in the middle. She enjoyed fiddling with the new truck’s radio and its GPS system. Sara gave her the Boggs address and she fed it into the system. The female voice told Jack that he needed to make “a legal U-turn” and go back the way he’d come to get on I-75. The map showed the route as going south, then across Miami, then back up I-95. They were to make a huge U to get to someplace that was straight across.

  “That’s helpful,” Kate said.

  Jack ignored the GPS and drove them directly to an old, quiet suburb. Kate read the house numbers. The one they wanted was well kept.

  “Not like his tenants’ places, is it?” There was a muscle working in Jack’s jaw.

  As soon as he pulled into the driveway, the front door opened and a young man came out. “Hi. I’m Trent, Lester’s son. You wanted to see the things Dad stored?”

  Sara stepped forward. “I sent the text. Yes, we’d very much like to see what you have.”

  “I’d love to show it to you.” They followed him to the garage. He punched in the numbers and the door slowly rose. Inside was a hoarder’s paradise. Boxes, bags, a basket full of wigs, toys were all jammed together from floor to ceiling to form an impenetrable wall. The mass seemed to go all the way back but they couldn’t see past the outer shell.

  “How old is all this?” Sara asked.

  “Older than me,” Trent said. “My dad couldn’t part with anything.”

  Jack put his hand on a box at the far end and leaned on it. Things were jammed together so tightly that nothing moved. He caught Kate’s eye. There was one word on the box: Morris.

  Kate nudged Sara and she saw it, but she didn’t give away that fact to Trent.

  “What are you going to do with this?” Sara asked.

  “I...” He took a breath. “I don’t want to sound callous, but my mother isn’t well and as soon as... Anyway, we’ll go through this, sell what we can, donate some and toss the rest. My wife wants to hire a big Dumpster and get rid of it now.”

  “I’ll give you a check for five grand for the lot of it,” Sara said. “Jack’s workmen will clean it out for you this afternoon.”

  “My wife would like that,” Trent said, “but I worry that my mom will find out, then—”

  “Six,” Sara said. When Trent hesitated, she turned her back on him. “Let’s go. We have those storage units to bid on this afternoon.”

  She got only two steps before Trent yelled, “Yes! I’ll take it. Clean it out. It’ll be my gift to my wife.”

  It took only minutes for Sara to write a check and Trent to give them the garage code.

  “I’ll be at the hospital with my mother,” Trent said, “so come at any time.”

  The three of them got into the new truck and drove away.

  “Wow.” Kate hugged her aunt and kissed her cheek. “You were wonderful. Wasn’t she?”

  “Totally brilliant. What do you think is in that box?”

  “Photos of Cheryl with the boy who impregnated her,” Kate said.

  “And Verna with her daughter’s father,” Sara said.

  “You two are real dreamers.” He pulled his cell out of his pocket and handed it to Kate. “Call Gil and tell him to get the men to pick it all up and take it to the Morris house. Put everything in the bedrooms and shut the doors. And don’t flirt with my foreman.”

  “Even if he talks about my smelly hair?”

  Jack glanced away from the road long enough to give her a warning squint.

  “Let’s lie about this,” Sara said. “Too much info is getting out. We can tell Gil there’s some good furniture in there, but we had to buy it all. And don’t let him take any of it to the dump because that’s what men with trucks like to do.”

  “Men with trucks, huh?” Jack murmured, shaking his head. “Talk about typecasting. Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

  Kate held the phone while Jack told Gil what they’d decided, then hung up.

  “By four today everything should be in the Morris house. We’ll go over there and start going through it all. Text Gil to set up some stand lights so we can see.”

  “This should be interesting,” Kate said.

  Sara agreed eagerly. “I think so, too.”

  Jack said, “Let’s stop at a Lowe’s and get a lot of bug spray. Cockroaches love old boxes. Wait until you see a palmetto bug! The size of the palm of your hand.”