Page 64 of A Future To Remember

“What’d the mechanic want?”

“One of the cruisers needed a new alternator. It had to be specially ordered, and it came in the day my dad got shot. Norris was gonna drop off the cruiser the next day.”

I glanced out at the street. “The shop went out of business?”

“Sort of. It was owned and operated by Red Shoemaker. Red died when the lift of a car he was working on failed, and it dropped the car on top of him.”

I grimaced. “Yikes.”

“No kidding. That was a messy scene. Blood everywhere.”

“You saw it?”

“I did. I was the one who found Red after it happened.”

“You found him?”

Cash offered a grim nod. “The summer after my dad died, I was trying to bring in some extra cash for the family, working for the sheriff’s department. Mostly running errands, getting coffee, filing, that kind of thing. One of the items on my to-do list that morning was to pick up new windshield wipers for all the cruisers, and that’s when I found Red.”

Cash was staring off into space with a haunted look, no doubt remembering the terrible scene.

“I’m assuming Red had been cleared as a suspect before the accident happened?”

“Yep. He was out to dinner with his wife, Lynn, on the other side of town when my dad was shot.”

“What about your home phone?” I asked. My gut said that Cash Sr. had been set up. The thread to the communication that led him to that parking space at that time on that night was the key to everything.

Cash shook his head. “McQuade went through every call with me and Ma. Most of the calls were for her or me. The rest were from phone solicitors. The week he died, Dad didn’t get a single personal call at home.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Considering how much he hated talking on the phone, not even a little.”

I stared at the countertop and just let my mind go where it wanted to. It was so odd a sensation because there was an almost conscious effort to, I guess, blanking my mind enough to allow an intuitive switch to flip. In a way, it was like a muscle memory that I was actively aware of.

“What’re you thinking?” Cash asked after a minute or two.

I pulled my unseeing gaze from the countertop. “I think your dad was set up. Someone told him to meet them at that spot, at that time, when they could be fairly certain there were no witnesses around, and the killer both arrived and left, in a hurry, by car.”

Cash crossed his arms, wearing a skeptical smirk. “The thing that doesn’t make sense, though, about the killer driving off, other than Maydole swearing there was no other car on the street, is that the direction he would’ve driven in order to get outta town fast would’ve been north.”

“Why is that problematic?”

“Because for two miles up the road, the speed limit is thirty-five, and toward the very end of that stretch, Norris was staking out the speed trap. It’s one of the town’s best moneymakers.”

I smirked. “So, lemme get this straight: Town central ends just up the street at the library, but you guys have made sure to extend a lowered speed limit for two miles up the road?”

Cash shrugged nonchalantly. “Hey, I don’t make the laws, Maddy. I just enforce ’em.”

I shook my head ruefully. “Okay, okay, I guess Evansville’s gotta pay the bills somehow, but getting us back on track, let me guess, Norris didn’t stop anybody for speeding around the time of the murder.”

It was Cash’s turn to shake his head, but his gesture wasn’t rueful. “No, Maddy. Norris didn’t stop or even see a car around the time of the murder. The whole night had been a bust right up until he got the radio call that Dad had been shot.”

“Is there any place to turn off between the edge of town and the speed trap?”

“Nope.”

“Then he must’ve headed south.”