Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

to double everyone’s payout from ten thousand dollars a month to twenty thousand. You decided there was no reason to tell the others and that there was no way they would ever find out while you controlled all the money. So pretty soon you were getting twenty thousand a month, plus an extra forty thousand you were skimming off the other four. Sixty thousand dollars a month. For almost eighteen years. That’s nearly thirteen million dollars.”

I waited for Victoria to speak.

One minute.

Two.

Five.

Finally, she said, “After a year of getting an extra ten thousand dollars a month, I bought my first quarter horse. But it was so much more expensive than I thought it would be: the training, the travel, all the expenses. Soon, I was in over my head.” Her eyes started to water. “I went to David Ramsey, demanding that he double all our payouts. I couldn’t believe how easily he agreed to it. I had no intention of skimming from the others, but then I realized all the money came through me and that the others would never know.”

“Then you had nearly three-quarters of a million dollars coming in each year. So you bought yourself some property and a bunch of horses.”

She nodded.

“So there was no inheritance from your father?”

“No.”

I said, “But with Neil Felding threatening to blow the whistle on Lunhill, you stood to lose it all: the ranch, the horses, everything. Not to mention spending a few years in jail.”

“Neil wanted to meet,” she said. “I’m not sure how he knew I was involved. I got a text from Odell saying that I needed to meet at the Save-More at 8:30 p.m. that night.”

I doubt Neil Felding knew about Victoria’s involvement. I’m guessing he only knew about Tom Lanningham, Odell, and Greg Mallory. But Odell either decided that if he had to meet with Neil, then everyone had to, or he thought because Victoria controlled the payoffs, she would be able to reason with him.

I said, “You didn’t know exactly what Neil Felding knew. But you assumed that if he wanted you at the meeting, then he could very well know about the money and how you’d been ripping off your partners for almost twenty years.”

She shook her head, but I was on a roll.

“That’s where Lowry Barnes comes into play. You knew him from when he was a boy. You said it yourself. And you knew he was just recently fired from his job at the Save-More. So you offered him five hundred grand, half up front, half on completion, to kill Neil Felding. And while he’s at it, you tell him to clean house and get rid of Tom, Odell, and anybody else who shows up for the meeting. You masterminded the whole thing.”

“No,” she insisted.

“It would have looked suspicious if you didn’t get shot yourself, so you told Lowry to shoot you in two places where you knew you wouldn’t be mortally wounded.”

Tears were streaming down her face.

“Lowry did exactly what you told him to do, killed everyone else there, and put one in your shoulder and hip. Then Lowry leaves. What I don’t know is whether or not Lowry really did commit suicide or if you paid someone else to kill him.”

“I didn’t...I didn’t,” she muttered.

“After you’ve recovered from your injuries, all your problems have gone away. They all died that night. Except a couple years later, you hear from Eccleston that one of his officer’s, Mike Zernan, is still looking into the murders. Then you get word that I, a retired homicide detective, had been to see him.”

Here is where I was on shaky ground. “I’m guessing you used the same guy you used to kill Lowry. Who knows, you have millions of dollars, it wouldn’t have been hard to find someone. After all you’ve gone through, you couldn’t risk Mike divulging his suspicions, so you have him killed too.”

Victoria glanced up, her eyes red, swollen.

“You had my father killed!” Wheeler shouted. She picked up her martini glass and chucked it across the room at Victoria. It smashed into the window behind her, raining glass down into her scarlet hair.

“No, no…please,” Victoria cried. “Please, no…please no…”

Victoria fell to her side, curled into the fetal position, and began whimpering. A moment later, In the crotch of her jeans, a dark stain began to blossom.

I’d joked about having PTSD from falling out of the tree. And Eccleston had paid a psychologist to diagnose Mike Zernan with PTSD. But I was pretty sure what was happening to the woman in front of me was the real thing.

Had the crack of the martini glass reminded Victoria of gunshots and triggered something in her subconscious? Had it sent her back to that day? Or was she faking?

If so, she would be receiving an Oscar nomination come January.

I turned to Wheeler.

She was biting her lip, her eyes heavy and moist.

I grabbed her by the shoulder and said, “She didn’t do it.”

“What?” Wheeler asked. “What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t the mastermind,” I said, glancing at the broken woman on the couch. “She was the target.”

Chapter Thirty

The license plates were from all over. Texas. Florida. Colorado. Pennsylvania. Illinois. South Carolina. Evidently, people drove thousands of miles to come to Brookfield, Missouri the first weekend in August.

Brookfield was thirty minutes north of Tarrin, a small town of four thousand, which blossomed to around twenty thousand each summer for the Great Pershing Balloon Festival.

It was 2:00 in the afternoon on Sunday. According to the festival website, more than seventy-five hot air balloons would take flight in just under an hour.

Wheeler and I stepped from the car and headed toward the crowd gathered a quarter mile from the overflowing dirt parking lot. A storm threatened in the distance, white thunderheads overlapping above a graying sky, which I’m sure was causing some trepidation among the pilots and crowd.

“You said you came here a few times with your dad?” I asked.

Wheeler nodded. “Yeah, when I was little.” She hadn’t said much on the