On The Prowl: A Margot Harris Mystery (Margot Harris Mystery Series Three Book 1) Read online

  “He said Mr. Hayes feared for his life if he ended up back here. He was trying to be coy about it, but he basically said while his cousin is a scumbag, he wasn’t going to send him to die, especially for assault on a person he described as ‘one of the worst examples of a human being to ever walk the earth.’”

  “His cousin doesn’t like the ex?”

  “I guess not. What it means is no help from the locals. If someone is bringing Mr. Hays back, it’s going to have to be one of us.”

  “With the sheriff trying to stop us?”

  “Maybe. He said he wasn’t going to send him to die; oddly enough, he didn’t sound like it was a problem if someone else did it.”

  “He doesn’t want the responsibility?”

  “It’s how I read it, but it’s still family so I can’t say for sure he won’t be a problem.”

  “So, are you going to be out of town for a few days?”

  “I was hoping you’d go.”

  “Why? Is it someplace awful?”

  “No, Colorado ski town. It’ll be beautiful this time of year.”

  “Too cold for you?”

  “Nah, winter is still a few weeks away. It’s colder than here, but it’s still nice. Fall out there is supposed to be beautiful.”

  “Why me?”

  Shaw took a second, she could tell he was thinking on how to say the next part. “I think it would do you good to get out of town,” he said finally.

  “Is that so?”

  “Look, if I had to put down someone who used to mean something to me, I’d be a mess.”

  “You saying I’m a mess?”

  “No, but you're heading that direction. Why are you here instead of at Radcliff’s place?”

  “I wanted a drink.”

  “You’ve got liquor at home.”

  Margot shrugged. “I guess I feel pathetic drinking at home alone.”

  “Radcliff is there.”

  Margot didn’t answer.

  “I’m just thinking a little road trip would be good for you. Also, it’ll put us in good with Bob and I don’t want to do it.”

  Margot shrugged; he wasn’t wrong. Everything in this town seemed to remind her of Mal, even what she was doing right now.

  “If you’re going, you need to get ready. The flight is first thing in the morning.”

  “So, I suppose I need to go home and get some sleep?”

  “It’d be advisable.”

  Margot finished her drink and cashed out.

  Chapter 2

  Margot put her bag in the trunk of the rental car before she took the weapons out. She checked her gun, a short-barreled S&W .40 ACP, and found it was just as loaded now as it was when she put it in her bag. The telescoping baton, extra magazine for the S&W, and can of mace were good to go as well. She put them all in the main pocket of her purse so they’d be within easy reach next to the digital tape recorder. She didn’t figure she and Hayes would be doing much talking, but she always brought it along when she was working. She checked the other pocket and found enough flex cuffs to subdue multiple suspects. Satisfied this should do the job—other than the incident with the ex-wife, Hayes’ long record didn’t feature much violence and Bob described him as a pussycat—Margot closed the trunk and got behind the wheel. Margot drove off thinking she’d like it if he resisted. Putting a beat down on someone who probably deserved it might make her feel better than a few days out of town.

  Shaw was right. It was colder than home but wearing long pants and a light jacket was plenty comfortable. Shaw may have been right about the weather, but he was wrong to think getting out of town would take Margot’s mind off Mal and Phoebe. The drive was nearly four hours, but it went quickly. Despite the mountains and fields of Aspen trees with leaves turning from green to gold, Margot still found herself thinking about Mal and the person who’d hired him, Phoebe Masterson.

  Margot often felt that if she could just go put a few bullets in Phoebe’s pretty face all would be right with the world. Until the part where she went down for first-degree murder. Phoebe was guilty, Margot had no doubts, but she couldn’t prove it. With her hatchet man gone, the police seemed fine leaving her alone. The sad fact was when it came to a lot of organized crime, the law was willing to look the other way as long as the violence was kept to a minimum. After using Mal to carve herself a nice place in the coast’s black market import-export business, Phoebe was smart enough to curb the violence, making it hard for Margot to get anyone who could do something about her to care.

  The worst part was if it wasn’t for Margot helping her beat a double homicide charge, Phoebe would have been rotting in jail instead of using Margot’s former lover Mal as her muscle. A job that led to him and Margot facing each other with guns in their hands.

  She was the only one who walked away.

  Even Phoebe’s rival mobster, Harry Lee, who lost people to her, was willing to call a truce. He knew as well as anybody that too much violence was bad for business and there had already been too much. So, instead of seeing Phoebe get what she deserved, Margot threw herself into work and drank herself to sleep most nights.

  Shaw was wrong to call it a ski-town. While it was in the mountains and certainly within an easy drive of more than one ski area, it didn’t have the tourist vibe of a winter resort town. This was a place for locals, the people working the lifts, restaurants, and hotels at the resorts lived here. This was good for their expense account since the fee they were charging Bob the Bondsman didn’t even cover their modest travel expenses. Shaw would say they were taking a loss on this one to establish a relationship with Bob. Thanks to his cable television commercials with the tag line ‘Can he bond them? Yes, he can,’ cribbed from a popular kid’s show, Bob was doing a booming business. Margot knew better; this was about Shaw wanting to get her out of town, as if geography was her problem.

  Margot drove past the hotel. It looked nice enough. It was already getting dark and the plan had been to go grab Hayes early in the morning. Since criminals were often more night people than morning people, catching them while they were sleeping often made it easier to bring them in without incident.

  Only Margot wasn’t in the mood to stay the night. It was right around dinner time, another great time to catch a guy at home. She pulled into a gas station and filled up so she wouldn’t have to stop with Hayes in custody. She plugged his cousin’s address into the GPS and headed that way.

  Hayes’ cousin, Gabe, didn’t live in town. Margot found herself on a winding dirt road that made her wish she’d rented a four-wheel drive. The remote nature of the location meant they’d see her coming from a long way away, and this wasn’t the type of road that got a lot of traffic. She had to assume they’d know she was coming for them.

  Hayes might not have a long history of violence, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable and Margot didn’t know anything about his cousin. Gabe having a clean record might just be a combination of luck and having extended family in charge of local law enforcement. Plus, while it might be a stereotype that people living in the mountains all carried guns, but it was based on some truth.

  One thing was for certain, if they wanted to shoot her down and bury her body somewhere in the woods, they had a good chance of getting away with it.

  Margot drove by the house, deciding she’d rather do this in the morning. She slowed and got a look at the place. It was a mobile home, but it looked well kept. There was one light on and she figured at least someone was home. There were three vehicles parked out front: a Jeep, a truck, and a motorcycle. So, it was possible Hayes and Gabe weren’t the only ones there. Another reason to put this off until the morning. Margot took note of what was there in case she saw one of them driving out when she came back. She drove until she found a place she could turn around and gave the place another good going over as she went back past.

  Driving back to town, she spent some time considering the bar she’d passed on the way to Gabe’s. They’d have whiskey and ice, probably even Maker’
s Mark, and food too. She’d also be alone in a strange place where the local men might see her as an opportunity. Even if she was looking for a man, this wouldn’t be the place so she drove on.

  Margot stopped by a liquor store instead and picked up a pint. She went through the drive-through of the town’s only fast-food chain and got a cup of ice to go with her burger and fries.

  She ate her feast and washed it down with whiskey over ice in a paper cup in her room. Sleeping in a different bed did nothing to make her forget that she had put four bullets in a man she once loved.

  Chapter 3

  Margot got up with the sun. It was colder, but the stillness was nice. She double-checked to make sure everything was in her purse and started for Cousin Gabe’s place.

  The drive didn’t seem near as hairy in the light of day. With any luck, Hayes, Gabe, and the owners of the other vehicles had been up half the night drinking and would still be feeling the effects enough for Margot to in and out before they knew what hit them.

  She drove slow as she reached the house. If anyone was awake, there was no indication. The truck and the motorcycle were gone. It’d be nice to know how many people were home in case things got complicated.

  Margot parked where the road widened just past Gabe’s trailer. She palmed her gun in her left hand, since at close range she was nearly as good with either hand, and put the telescoping baton up her sleeve on her right since if she had to hit someone, she wanted to do it with her strong hand. Hopefully, Hayes would recognize he was caught and come with her without resisting. Most of the time, in Margot’s experience, this is how it went. No one goes to their second-best hiding place when skipping bail. If they have half a brain, they figure if they can be found once, they will be found again and there’s no reason to keep wasting everyone’s time.

  Margot knocked on the door. A dog barked, another factor she needed to keep in mind as it didn’t sound like a small dog, but no one stirred. She waited and knocked again, putting some force into this time. She jumped back when the door fell down. The dog kept barking, but no one came to check and the door hitting the floor was plenty loud.

  Margot looked at the hinges and the lock. It looked like someone had already kicked it in and then set it up so anybody passing by wouldn’t notice. She wondered if she wasn’t the only one Bob hired to track down Hayes. It wasn’t unusual to run into Bounty hunters who got into the business just to kick in a few doors.

  If that was the case, congrats to them for either getting up earlier than Margot or having the guts to go in at night. The kicked in door didn’t explain the lack of response. The dog barking alone should have gotten someone to stir.

  “Gabe?” Margot called. “Is anybody home?”

  No one but the dog replied. Margot got a bad feeling when the breeze brought a familiar smell her way. She put the gun in her strong hand—if this was what it felt like, she wasn’t messing around with the baton—and went inside.

  The sound of a truck engine behind her had Margot spinning around, raising her gun. She felt dumb as the truck continued toward her. There was no reason to think it wasn’t just somebody heading to their own home even farther up the road. She hoped whoever was driving didn’t see her swinging a gun in their direction.

  The truck slowed as it neared the house and Margot thought they might pull into the driveway. It might explain why no one was answering the door. Maybe Gabe and Hayes just went to get some breakfast, though that wouldn’t explain the door. If it was them, she worried she’d spooked them. Hayes had to know someone was looking for him and he could figure that a gun-toting city girl probably wasn’t there to sell something.

  Since they’d already seen her, there was no reason not to stand there and wait. The truck however, after slowing briefly, continued on up the road. As far as she could tell, there was only one person inside so it wasn’t Gabe and Hayes together, though it could have been one of them alone. Margot noticed a magnetic sign on the side that read G&G Landscaping and Maintenance. She figured they’d slowed down because they were looking for their customer’s property and slowed until they realized this wasn’t it.

  She stepped inside and found she was in the mudroom, probably added by Gabe or a handyman with mediocre skills, maybe even the G&G guys. There were three coats on the hooks and three pairs of boots on the floor under the coats. One coat and one pair of boots looked about Margot’s size while the other two were bigger but roughly the same size. As far as she knew, Gabe had lived alone until he took in his fugitive cousin.

  Margot called out again before she went through the door into the main house. No one answered.

  She stepped inside and saw a kitchen table covered in empty beer cans and full ashtrays. It looked like her assessment that previous night Gabe had a few buddies over for beers was on the money. A closer look revealed a deck of cards sitting neatly in front of one of the chairs.

  Margot found herself hoping Hayes won since this would be his last poker night for a while.

  She was about to call out again when she saw the first body.

  It was a woman. Margot guessed this was the owner of the small coat and boots. Her throat was slit from ear to ear. It looked like the wound had killed her, but someone had continued to cut her up. What was left of her shirt was soaked through with blood. Margot looked closer and saw somebody had dug out the woman’s eyes as well. Margot didn’t see any eyes on the floor. She made an effort to look away. The killer could still be there and Margot would be an easy target if she stood there transfixed by the carnage.

  Margot went from just holding the gun at her side to holding it up and looking at everything from the perspective of the iron sights. She worked her way through the living room. There was nothing new, just blood on the floor and more empty beer cans. She walked right past the big window over the sofa without noticing it was gone until she felt the cool breeze hit her.

  She went over and saw most of the broken glass was on the ground outside, meaning whatever went through it came from the inside. On some of the glass, she could see more blood. Someone was either thrown through or they jumped. She made a note to check the back of the house after she’d made sure the killer wasn’t still inside.

  The back bedroom door was open and there was a body on the bed. Same wound to the throat plus many more wounds to the chest. No eyes on this one either. It could have been either Hayes or Gabe; same height and build. Margot had a list of Hayes’ tattoos that could help her confirm which was which, but she wasn’t going to check it until she cleared the house.

  She checked the rest except for the closet someone had locked the dog inside. No killer and no eyes either. If the killer was hiding in there with the dog, they’d stay hidden for a while longer. Margot didn’t want to risk being attacked. The last thing she wanted to do was shoot someone’s dog, even if that someone was dead.

  Margot went out the back door and noticed a shed. She checked the door and found it locked. She moved on to the glass on the ground. After some looking, she found a bloody footprint and little ways father, she found a sock, stained a familiar shade of red.

  She could see signs of more tracks heading into the woods behind Gabe’s trailer.

  She didn’t see any other footprints to indicate somebody giving chase, but she wasn’t exactly a tracker so she didn’t draw any conclusions. It could be there was another body in the woods, but Margot wasn’t going to venture in there to find out. Instead, she went back inside to see if she could identify the body on the bed. Even though she’d cleared the house, she kept her gun ready.

  Margot found Hayes’ picture and his stats on her phone. Height and weight were right, but the body in there didn’t have the same tattoos or at least, not the same tattoos in the same places. The dead man wasn’t Hayes.

  Margot went outside and checked her phone. She wished she didn’t have service out here so it would give her an excuse to leave the property. She was no stranger to brutal crime scenes, but the senseless mutilation she’d just witnesse
d was weirding her out. Since she did have service, she dialed Nine - One - One and then went to wait for the sheriff to come and probably find one of his cousins was dead.