Ripple of Secrets: Rose Gardner Mystery Novella #6.5 (Rose Gardner series Book 3) by Denise Grover Swank Read Free Book Online

I’d set him up.
    Shockingly, he didn’t take the bait. “Why does your father want Malcolm out of the way?”
    “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”
    “And he wants Mick Gentry to take over as the kingpin?” he asked, incredulous.
    “Or at least do the dirty work of taking care of Malcolm.”
    “But why does he care what goes on here?”
    “He says the sheriff is going to announce his retirement. My father wants me to run. I think he’s trying to make himself look good.”
    “That still doesn’t explain why he cares about who runs the Fenton County underworld. Does J.R. Simmons have business here?”
    I sighed. “Not that I knew about, but he mentioned something about you that makes me think he does.”
    “Me?”
    I’d laid awake half the night trying to figure out what to tell Deveraux. I knew I had to be careful in what I said—and didn’t say. “He claims he moved you to Fenton County because you were apathetic, and he suggested some of the citizens here might not like your newfound hunger for justice.”
    “Like my encounter with the much-loved Daniel Crocker.” Mason’s jaw tightened. “Your father has some stake here in Fenton County. Some illegal activity that Malcolm is impeding. Do you have any idea what it could be?”
    “How the hell would I know?”
    “He’s your father.”
    “Here’s a news flash for you, Deveraux,” I said, my temper rising. “I’m in law enforcement for a reason.”
    “So you can cover up your daddy’s illegal activities?”
    “Is that why you think I’m here?”
    “You’re obviously considering kowtowing to him.”
    “Get the hell out of my car!”
    He grabbed the door handle and shoved the door open. “Gladly.”
    After I watched him climb into his car and drive away, I wondered why I’d let myself lose control. But more importantly, I realized that I’d never told him there was someone out there who still wanted him dead.
     
     
     
     
     

Part Two

Chapter Five

    Mason
     
     
     
    I pulled into my parking spot in front of the courthouse, but instead of getting out, I gripped the steering wheel and berated myself for the millionth time in the last twenty minutes.
    My temper had gotten the best of me. I reached for my phone to call Simmons, but I decided to give it another hour. I was still pissed and I couldn’t afford to lose it like I had earlier.
    Dammit.
    It didn’t help that I’d gone into the meeting in a bad mood after my disagreement with Rose. Both Rose and Joe were right, of course. I’d been in Little Rock digging for dirt on J.R. Simmons. And while I hadn’t come back with any hard evidence, I had found two promising leads. One was a possible bribery scheme in Columbia County involving a construction company getting a county government job.
    The second was trickier. It involved a possible extortion scheme, and in Fenton County, no less. The only problem was that it had happened twenty-five years ago. It was definitely past the statute of limitations and worthless to me in terms of toppling J.R. Still, something nagged at me not to let it fall off my radar. Rumor had it that the shady dealings had gone down in the summer and fall of the year Rose’s birth mother had died…and the company involved was the very one that had employed Dora Middleton.
    What if her birth mother had somehow been involved?
    And while part of me knew I should tell Rose, I’d kept it from her—along with everything else I’d learned in Little Rock—when I came home. It wasn’t intentional. As soon as she came home, I learned that she and Neely Kate had been suspects in the murder of a psychic in New Orleans. She’d waved it off as nothing, saying that she hadn’t called me for help while I was in Little Rock because she knew I was working on something important, and besides, there was nothing I could have done.
    And that was the part that freaked me out the most. She could have been arrested for murder and I would have been powerless to help