Murder in the River City Read online

“Just fine,” Pete said. She glanced in the review mirror. His eyes told her he was lying.

  They were at Discovery Park, a recreational area at the American River. She’d been here a couple times, but it was much too crowded in the summer.

  At night, it was completely empty anytime of the year.

  “In there is good,” Pete said. Callie pulled into the small parking lot. “Keep the car running. Gleason, I need to talk to you.”

  They both got out of the car. Great. They were talking without her. She had had it. When they got back to the apartment, she was leaving. She didn’t care if she didn’t have any money. She had a few things she could grab.

  Go, now. Leave.

  She bit her lip. She put the car into reverse, fear giving her the only advice worth listening to. Joey opened the driver’s door. She hadn’t even seen him walk around the car.

  He pulled her out. The car started rolling backward. She screamed. “What—Joey—what’s going on?”

  Pete shouted, “Fuck, the car!”

  Joey held her while Pete chased the car and put it in park.

  She fought. She knew they were going to kill her. She broke free once, but Pete pushed her and she fell hard onto the rough ground. Blood filled her mouth and she spit it out, then tried to get up and run, but Pete had his knee in her back and wrapped his belt around her neck. She couldn’t see anything, the only sound Pete’s grunts, her racing heart, and the cars on the freeway. People were in those cars, people who couldn’t see what was happening.

  I’m dying, people! Help!

  She tried to scream again, but couldn’t get any sound out. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to kick; the belt around her neck pulled tighter. Her head ached, practically exploding in pain. Her lungs burned. Her vision faded.

  The last thing she heard was “I knew she was going to be a problem the minute she opened her fucking mouth.”

  Though Callie regretted every choice she’d made, only her last decision was fatal.

  Chapter Two

  Monday

  Shauna Murphy ran down the wooden sidewalk, tears stinging her eyes, her curly hair bouncing off her back. She barely noticed her cotton dress clinging to her damp skin in the sweltering Sacramento heat, or people staring at her as if she were crazy. Her thoughts were focused on Dooley.

  Please God, please. He can’t be dead.

  She stumbled at the thought of her grandfather’s old body, broken and bleeding on the floor of his beloved pub. She grabbed a pillar to steady herself when she caught sight of the police cars, an ambulance and news crew double-parked on the street in front of Dooley’s Irish Pub. Taking a deep breath and swallowing thick tears, she pushed off from the support and sprinted down the block to the entrance.

  “Whoa, ma’am, you can’t go in there.”

  A burly cop reminiscent of a bear blocked the entrance, effectively stopping her momentum when she bounced off his chest.

  Winded and sweating from her sprint as well as the morning heat, she tried to speak. “My. Grand. Dad. I—”

  “Slow down, young lady. This is a crime scene; you can’t go in there.” His voice was nauseatingly placating, and a flash of temper rose in her throat, as red as her hair. She counted to three and took a deep breath.

  “Officer, my granddad is in there,” she said as calm as possible.

  “No one is allowed inside, ma’am.”

  “Dammit, he’s my grandfather!” She pounded his chest once with her fist.

  The nice cop persona disappeared and out came the mean bear. “Stand back or I’ll put you in handcuffs and you can spend the day in jail for assaulting a police officer.”

  “Oh, please!” Shauna wasn’t intimidated. She waved toward the news vans. “Fifteen minutes ago I heard a man had been killed at Dooley’s and I get here and the police are all over the place and you won’t let me go in and my grandfather owns this pub! Maybe the press knows what you refuse to tell me!”

  The officer looked sheepish, but held the company line. “We haven’t issued a statement to the press, they are—”

  “I want to speak to your superior, now!”

  “Thompson, what’s the problem?”

  If Shauna had pictured the mean cop as a bear, it was a baby bear, because this cop was a grizzly bear. Six and a half feet tall with dark hair and dark, probing eyes. He wore regular street clothes and Shauna assumed he was a detective.

  “Are you in charge?” she asked, hands on her hips, not willing to show the big cop he intimidated her.

  “Detective John Black. And you are?”

  “Shauna Murphy and my grandfather is in there and this man won’t let me in and I need to know he’s okay and not—not—not—” She couldn’t say it, didn’t want to think it.

  Dead.

  Black said to the cop, “I’ll take care of this.” He took Shauna’s arm and led her into the pub. A cold draft from the air conditioner hit her over-heated skin, bringing goose bumps to the surface.

  “If your grandfather is Pat Dooligan, he’s alive and kicking,” Black said.

  “Thank God.” She crossed herself out of habit and twelve years of Catholic school. Relief made her lightheaded. She took another deep breath, and this one worked to steady her nerves. “Where is he?”

  “Shauna girl!”

  Spry, nearing eighty with the energy of a man half his age, Pat Dooligan claimed “a nip of Guinness every hour or so” kept him physically fit.

  “Da.” Relieved, Shauna rushed over to where he sat at one of the pub tables on the far side of the bar, away from the yellow crime scene tape that blocked off half the room, including the antique mahogany bar. A CSI and deputy coroner stood behind the bar, looking down, conversing, their backs to the room. She couldn’t see the body, but the jagged sound of a long zipper made her shudder. A body bag, she thought. So final.

  “Dooley, tell me what happened.” She ran a hand through her tangled curls as she looked around. Everything looked distorted because the bar-length mirror had been broken and the reflections she’d expected to see were gone.

  “It’s Mack.” Dooley rubbed his forehead with one hand and picked up a pint of dark beer with the other. Shauna had never seen him look so old.

  “No.” The tears she’d held back spilled over her lashes. Mack had been a bartender at Dooley’s for longer than Shauna could legally drink.

  “He closed last night.” His clear blue eyes watered as he watched the deputy coroner wheel the gurney out the front door.

  Shauna covered one of Dooley’s hands with her own and turned to the detective who stood next to them, watching with cool, dark eyes. “What happened?” she demanded.

  “Our investigation has just started, Ms. Murphy, but sometime after closing Mack Duncan was attacked and killed in an apparent robbery. The cash register was emptied, as well as the tip jar. There is no sign of forced entry, the front door was locked, but the rear entrance was unlocked when Mr. Dooligan arrived.”

  “I was angry,” Dooley said, his voice full of emotion. “Angry that Mack hadn’t locked up. And then—”

  “Shh,” Shauna said. “You didn’t know.” She wished her grandfather hadn’t found Mack dead. He shouldn’t have had to see his friend and employee murdered. Guilt ate at her gut. She should have been here this morning. She should have opened the bar like she’d done for years before taking over the day-to-day management at her family’s construction company after her father’s heart attack.

  Black continued. “Mr. Dooligan says several valuable autographed baseballs were stolen as well. My team is processing the evidence and we’ll do our best to catch who’s responsible. We’ve had a rash of robberies like this downtown, but until now, no one’s been seriously hurt.”

  Dooley shook his head. “They couldn’t have gotten more than a couple hundred dollars. I take a deposit to the bank when I leave so we aren’t targets. Everybody knows that.”

  “Perhaps,” Black said, “but people steal for a lot less than a couple hundre
d bucks.”

  Shauna squeezed her grandfather’s labor-worn hands and looked him in the eye. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Nothing, sweet girl, nothing. Just come to the funeral. I’ll be having a party here afterwards, of course.”

  “I’ll make the arrangements for you.”

  “Mack’s Catholic, though he hasn’t stepped foot inside a church since I’ve known him. Father Tim’ll take care of him.” He stared pointedly at the detective. “We can have the wake here, right?”

  “We’ll finish processing the scene today. You should be able to have access tomorrow. I need to ask you a few more questions, if you can give me a moment.”

  Dooley nodded, and Black excused himself. Shauna watched him walk over to the bar and talk in a low, indistinguishable voice with the other officers. What was he saying? Did he know more than he’d told them? Did he have an idea who was responsible?

  Dooley said, “Friday. Friday we’ll have the funeral and the party.”

  “Yes, Dooley,” Shauna said. “I’ll take care of everything. I don’t want you to worry about any of the details.”

  “You’re a good colleen.” He squeezed her hands. “But I need to do something. We’ll do it together.”

  Her grandfather’s eyes leaked as he stared at the damage behind the bar, but most certainly, he was thinking only of his dead friend. Shauna fumed. She wanted to hurt the bastard who’d killed Mack and made her grandfather look all his seventy-nine years. She didn’t think Dooley would fully recover from this tragedy. She doubted she would, either.

  Watching the cops and crime scene people collect evidence and process the bar brought home the truth of the violence that had been done here. Mack was dead. For no reason other than money. Was human life that cheap?

  She stared at the mirrorless bar. So much destruction for so little money. And Dooley’s baseballs—he’d collected them for years. He had just added a third shelf a few months ago. The Mickey Mantle alone was worth five hundred. And Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, the entire Brooklyn Dodgers. Babe Ruth was a fake, but Dooley kept it as a reminder that he was fallible, that even the smartest of men could be swindled.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “Da, what’s that?” She pointed to the lone baseball behind the bar.

  He laughed bitterly. “Babe Ruth. They left the only forgery.”

  That was odd. It looked exactly like Babe Ruth’s signature. It took a sports expert to determine it wasn’t. The average sports fan wouldn’t be able to tell, certainly not someone who killed a bartender in a robbery.

  “Shauna?” Dooley said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd the killer left the only fake?”

  Dooley shook his head. “Now, Shauna, I know exactly what you’re doing. Butting in where you don’t belong.”

  “I’m doing no such thing,” she argued, her mind already thinking about this oddity. Dooley didn’t talk about Babe Ruth being a fake, but some of the old-timers knew. The ones who’d been around when Dooley found out several years ago that he’d been duped.

  Was Mack killed by someone who knew more about baseball than even Dooley?

  Or maybe, he was killed by someone they all knew—and trusted.

  She jumped up and approached Detective Black as he spoke to one of his cops.

  “We’re almost done here,” he began but Shauna cut him off.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd the only baseball with a forged signature wasn’t stolen?”

  Black looked from her to the baseball behind the bar. He then made a note in his notebook and asked, “What signature?”

  “Babe Ruth,” she said.

  “Was it widely known that it was a fake?”

  “No,” she said when Dooley came behind her and said, “Yes.”

  “Grandad,” she continued, “it’s not like you put a sign over the ball saying it was a forgery.”

  “If someone asked I didn’t lie about it.”

  She shook her head. “You played a game with them, guess which one was fake and you’d give them a pint on the house. Few people got it right.”

  “’Tis true,” he conceded as he sat on a barstool.

  Black said, “How much was the collection worth?”

  “Last time I had them appraised, all together they’re worth about four thousand dollars.”

  “That’s a nice collection,” Black said. “Did you notice anyone in the bar paying undue attention to the baseballs? Did you play this game of yours recently?”

  He shook his head. “Not for weeks. Maybe months. Mack might’ve,” he added.

  “Did Mack have regular hours?”

  Dooley nodded. “Wednesday through Sundays, four to closing.”

  “Other staff?”

  “Three part-time bartenders, but they don’t have a regular schedule and never close. I always close early Monday and Tuesday. They’re slow nights.”

  She squeezed her grandfather’s hand, again relieved that he was alive. She asked the detective, “You don’t think someone who works here is responsible for killing Mack?” Before he could answer her question, she continued. “I think you should call everyone in and ask them about last night. Maybe Minnie or whoever was serving the bar noticed someone eying the baseballs.”

  Black stared at her, unblinking. He didn’t look happy, but his serious expression didn’t change much so she couldn’t be sure. If he thought he could intimidate her because he was an imposing figure, he was mistaken. She did get intimidated.

  “I plan to, Ms. Murphy,” he said. “I’ll be talking to everyone who worked last night, and I’ll make my way through the rest of the staff. But the M.O. fits several other crime scenes—robberies on Sunday and Monday nights, near or after closing, a lot of destruction, only a little cash taken plus whatever they can carry away—liquor, usually, or in this case the baseballs.”

  Black said to Dooley, “If you could please make a list of all your employees and their contact information, including anyone you let go or who quit in the last two months, that would help.”

  “I will,” Dooley said.

  An officer came over and whispered something in Black’s ear. Shauna eyed the exchange. “Is that about Mack? Do you have a lead?” she asked when the officer walked away.

  “Generally,” Black said, slightly bemused, “I get to ask the questions. There’s an Austin Davis outside, saying he’s your fiancé?”

  “He’s not my fiancé.” Three dates. And she knew after the second it wasn’t going anywhere, but he’d already gotten the tickets to the theater and she didn’t have the heart to cancel. He just hadn’t accepted she wasn’t interested. Just because he was rich, he thought any woman would love his attention. She certainly wasn’t any woman, and his attention had become creepy.

  Black raised an eyebrow. “We shouldn’t let him in then?”

  She sighed. “He’s a friend. That’s all.”

  “An ex-boyfriend who can’t take the hint,” Dooley said. “He’s being deliberately obtuse.”

  “Don’t start on me, Dooley,” she muttered.

  “I don’t like him.”

  “I know.” Shauna put both hands on the back of her neck and squeezed, working on controlling her temper. Considering the circumstances, it was easier than usual, but Austin Davis was a sore spot between her and her grandfather.

  She blamed Sam Garcia. If he hadn’t treated her like a lovesick fool, she wouldn’t have been so set on finding someone else to fill the void. Before Austin there had been other guys, but no one who got past the third date. The problem? No one could replace Sam Garcia.

  And she had never even had him to call hers. She really was blind when it came to men. Three strikes, you’re out.

  “I should have become a nun,” she muttered.

  “Excuse me?” Black said.

  Dooley shook his head. “Isn’t stalking someone against the law?” he asked, clearly not ready to drop the subject.

  “Grandfather!”


  “Are you being stalked by Mr. Davis?” Black asked Shauna.

  “No,” she said at the same time Dooley said, “Yes.”

  Black gave Shauna his card, then slid another one over to Dooley. “Any real problems, call me. I’m in homicide, but I’ll get you to the right officer.”

  Shauna pocketed the card without looking at it. “It’s fine. We have more important problems here than an ex-boyfriend—do you have any idea who could have done this?”

  Black didn’t answer her question. “Dooley, how long did Mack work for you?”

  “Coming up on ten years.”

  “Do you know if he had any trouble with customers? Maybe someone who didn’t like him?”

  “Mack didn’t make enemies,” Dooley said. “He didn’t care much for Dodgers fans, but he didn’t make enemies.” Dooley stared at his empty pint. He slowly rose from the table. “I need to call his daughter.”

  Shauna’s head shot up. “Daughter?”

  Dooley sighed heavily. “They don’t talk much. Mack wasn’t around when Missy was growing up, not understanding when he was so young what was important. He tried to get to know her, but, well, she didn’t much want to get to know him. Still, she sent pictures of his grandson recently. They started talking, a little here and again. Missy oughta know he’s gone.” Dooley shuffled through the storeroom to his small office.

  Mack had never spoken of a daughter or grandson. He had never talked much, kept to himself, did his job, and Dooley depended on him, especially as he got older.

  Detective Black said, “What about you? Were you close to Mack? Know of any trouble he was having?”

  She shook her head, her mind racing through the last few weeks. “I don’t come around here as much as I would like. That’s going to change now.” Dooley needed her. It was as simple as that. She could bring the books here at night rather than staying late at the office.

  Her phone rang. She put it on silent, but not before glancing at the number. “Damn,” she muttered. Austin. Why couldn’t she just make a clean break?

  Because she didn’t want to hurt him.

  It was worse what she was doing now.

  “Trouble?” Black asked.