Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [23]
He pretended to be engrossed in the chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, and the green beans on his plate. While eating, he listened carefully to every word Lily Wong said.
“Oh, Charlie, that’s wonderful. When do you start?” she asked. “Monday?”
Apparently Charles Wong had found a new job.
“We should celebrate this weekend, maybe Saturday night,” Lily said. “We can’t tomorrow night. Remember I’m doing that mother-daughter campout thing with Jenny and Jessica’s Brownie troop.” She lowered her voice to a soft whisper. He strained to hear what she said. “We’ll be home by ten Saturday morning and I promise that I’ll get a babysitter for the girls so that you and I can have our own private celebration.”
As soon as she returned her phone to her pocket, she walked over to him and asked, “Is everything all right? Do you need more rolls or coffee?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine.” He offered her a big, friendly smile.
If Lily and her daughters wouldn’t be at home tomorrow night and Charlie would be, then tomorrow evening at midnight would be the perfect time to kill him.
The minute Maleah hung up the phone after her conversation with Sanders, she brought up Mike Birkett’s number from her list of contacts. When she had agreed to take Lorie Hammonds’s case, she had thought it a good idea to include both the sheriff’s private number as well as the department’s number.
During the four days she had been on the job, she had spent most of that time digging into Lorie’s past and present acquaintances. When she had lived in the LA area, Lorie had encountered a few unsavory characters and had even lived with one, a guy named Dean Wilson, who, under the stage name of Woody Wilson, had starred in a string of low-budget porno movies.
And as fate would have it, just that morning, she had received information via Powell’s investigative research department that Dean Wilson was dead. He had been murdered in January and his killer was still at large. His brother had discovered Dean’s body at the family mountain cabin outside Gatlinburg, a short drive from Knoxville.
She remembered that Lorie had mentioned the first threatening letter she received had been postmarked Knoxville. Before talking to Sanders, Maleah had thought perhaps it was nothing more than an odd coincidence that Lorie’s old lover had been murdered only a couple of months ago.
“These two murders—Dean Wilson and Hilary Finch Chambless—cannot be a mere coincidence,” Sanders had said. “Both were shot several times, both were stripped naked, both were wearing fancy masks. Add to that the fact they were both porno stars and had worked together in numerous films and you pretty much erase the possibility of coincidence.”
“What about threatening letters?” Maleah had asked. “Did Dean Wilson and Hilary Chambless receive letters?”
“Jared Wilson did not know anything about his brother receiving threatening letters. But Hilary Chambless received two letters, the wording identical on both and the same as the ones Lorie Hammonds received.”
“We have to take these threats seriously. Lorie told me that she made one porno movie, just a bit part, but the stars of that movie were Hilary Finch—better known then as Dewey Flowers—and Dean ‘Woody’ Wilson.”
“Notify the local authorities, as well as Ms. Hammonds,” Sanders had instructed her. “And I will call Derek Lawrence. He should arrive in Dunmore tomorrow. You will work together on this case and the two of you will share all information with Holt Keinan and with Ben Corbett and Michelle Allen. Holt is in charge of the Chambless case. Ben and Michelle start work on the Wilson case tomorrow. Since it is obvious the three cases overlap, this will be a joint effort, as of now.”
Maleah groaned silently. The last person on earth she wanted to work with was Derek Lawrence. The man was a cocky, egotistical know-it-all. He’d been an FBI profiler and now worked as a consultant for the Powell Agency. In the course of various cases, their