Mind Games

“Can we make candles later?” Regular stuff, Thea thought.

“That’s a fine idea. We’ll do just that.”

Chapter Seven

Because Detective Phil Musk won the toss on the rental car at the airport in Kentucky, Detective Chuck Howard suffered through his partner’s driving.

Worse, the airport sat a full hour from Redbud Hollow, and Musk never drove one damn mile an hour over the posted limit.

He liked Musk, trusted him without a ghost of a doubt, even admired his dog-with-a-bone stubbornness, attention to detail, and suspicious mind.

But he drove like an old woman.

“At this rate, we may get there by nightfall.”

“Enjoy the scenery, Chuck. It’s pretty country.”

“We’re not here for the scenery. We don’t need to be down here in Nowhere Kentucky anyway. For Christ’s sake, we got our guy, Phil. He knows it, his lawyer knows it, or they wouldn’t have taken the deal.”

“Life times two’s still better than the needle or the chair.”

“So he’ll live and die inside. Now we’re down here going to interview the grieving mother and a twelve-year-old? He confessed, right down the line. We had evidence to stick right up his ass.”

“And why’d we have that evidence, why’d we find him so fucking easy? The kid dreamed it? Bullshit, Chuck.”

Musk took his eyes off the road long enough to give his partner the hard eye.

“That grieving mother’s got guardianship of the kids, and the kids are going to roll in the dough. Dreamed it all? Give me a fucking break. Riggs did the murders, and yeah, we got him. But the rest?” Eyes trained on the road, Musk shook his head. “It doesn’t smell right. None of it.”

“If this Lucinda Lannigan—who doesn’t have a mark on her record—set this all up, convinced the kid to say what she did, why didn’t Riggs roll on her?”

“Don’t know, and maybe it wasn’t Lannigan, maybe it was the kid.”

“Christ.”

Because he’d given it considerable thought, Musk bore down into it.

“Kids that age can be devious, can be murderous. You know that as well as I do. The kid’s down here with grandma and baby brother, and Riggs picks that time to murder the parents?”

“He’ll be charged in Maryland, too, to ice the cake,” Howard reminded him. “The Mercedes, the jewelry, the MO. Two more murders.”

“Harder to tie him to those. Claims he bought the gun off the street in Baltimore, says he found the Mercedes, keys in it, out of gas when he tried hitching on some back road in rural Maryland.”

Deliberately, Howard sniffed the air. “Now I smell bullshit.”

“Yeah, and they’ll wrap him. But they can’t wrap him on those like we did on this one. We talk to the kid, the grandmother, and we get the truth. Local sheriff, he’s too close to it, and when’s the last time he’s investigated a double murder? That would be never,” Musk said helpfully.

Howard searched for patience. “It’s a stretch, Phil, and you know how much of a stretch.”

“Dreaming it all’s a bigger stretch. It’s a Mister Fantastic stretch. We’ve got to wrap this up, Chuck. We don’t want that little bastard coming back later, crying he was framed by a twelve-year-old kid.”

Howard hissed out a breath because there, he couldn’t argue.

“I’m driving back when we’re done with this.”

* * *

In the kitchen, Thea and Rem helped work on a batch of candles. Lucy called the finished product Just Peachy for its scent and color. First they set the containers up, some travel tins that came with lids, some squat mason jars, and two bigger glass jars that had swirls of pink and orange. The bigger would get three wicks—Lucy said they gave a nice fragrance throw—and were Thea’s favorite.