AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I need some fresh air,” she said, walking away from him, going to the back door and out onto the rotting little porch.
“Why’d you let her go yesterday?” Dewey asked, following her. “I thought you had her red-handed stealing a TV.”
“Mrs. Fontenot declined to press charges. What was the point, anyway? We got the TV back. And maybe I built a little faith with Rayanne.
“She used to work with Robbie Fontenot at the lamp factory,” she said. “Did you know that?”
His expression said he didn’t. That round face wasn’t very good at masking surprise. And surprise tended to short out the brain circuits from asking obvious questions like how long did they work together, and did they actually know each other, and wasn’t Rayanne high most of the time.
“Not just a junkie hooker after all,” she said.
Dewey frowned.
“Why did you come here, Dewey?” Annie asked. “Obviously Danny Perry called you right up, didn’t he? Why?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he returned. “This is my town. I should know what’s going on.”
“That’s a novel idea. Or maybe you were afraid you left something here last night when you came to see Rayanne?”
Red rose in his cheeks as his temper began to heat up. “I wasnothere last night,” he insisted. “I don’t frequent prostitutes, and I resent you suggesting I’m some kind of dirty cop.”
“Did I suggest that?” Annie asked. “I don’t think so, but I’m glad to hear you’re not, just the same.”
“You’re a really annoying person,” he remarked.
“Yeah, well, my family loves me, so I’m good…”
She looked over next door at Robbie Fontenot’s house and across the alley at the house with the security cameras, wondering if Dewey had even noticed that equipment. She bet not.
“A funny thing happened this morning,” she said. “I found $2,450 cash money that Robbie Fontenot had squirreled away.”
“What? Where?”
He couldn’t stop himself from looking over at the house next door, making Annie think he had searched that house better than she had first thought.
“At his mother’s house,” she said. “Where do you think Robbie got that kind of cash? He’s unemployed, and he didn’t work there long enough to collect benefits.”
“He’s probably dealing.”
“Maybe. But he’s never had charges for dealing. He isn’t on the radar for the drug task force. And I haven’t found any product anywhere.”
“Probably keeps it in his car,” Dewey said.
“I suppose that could be. Funny how nobody seems to be aware of it, though. People who should know—drug cops, town cops, people who have arrested him on multiple occasions. Yourself, forinstance,” she said. “Everybody knows Robbie’s drug history—which is as a user, not a dealer, but still, he might have graduated. People have an eye on him because of that history, but nobody knows anything about him dealing.
“You know,” she said, “when I was going over his record, I kept thinking it was funny how he has never gotten caught for anything really bad. Charges were always bare minimum.”
“Good lawyer,” Dewey said. “He comes from money. His father is a prominent surgeon.”
“Even so. I just keep thinking it looks like maybe he’s useful to someone. Maybe he’s been a good source of information. Maybe that’s where some of that money came from.”
Dewey said nothing. He had the body language of a man who wanted to leave, but he stayed out of a need to hear what she had to say next.
“I suppose I’ll know more when I have that cash dusted for fingerprints,” Annie said, and watched the color drain from his face. She turned and looked right at him, noting he was breathing a little faster than before. “Do you want to tell me something, Dewey?”
He shifted his weight from foot to foot and rubbed a hand across his jaw as he contemplated his options. There was no getting out of this if she had the money and the money had his fingerprints on it.
He ran a hand back through his bad haircut and sighed. “All right. I was throwing him a few bucks here and there for information. So what?”
