The Morelville Mysteries Collection Read online

  She picked up the rejected twenty gingerly and slid it into her shirt pocket then she nodded to Kris and moved to the door. I really had no choice but to follow. There was only one way out for customers.

  So this is the replacement for the sheriff, eh? The previous County Sheriff, Caden Carter, had been killed in a botched drug raid just prior to the last election. Carter was widely speculated as, at a minimum, being on the take. He was thought to be trying to up his polling numbers with a grandstanding move. What voters in the county didn't know was that he was involved in so much more than taking a little graft. He had been some sort of local key player in the counterfeit goods trafficking ring I was investigating.

  My boss had combed through the Muskingum County Sheriff's Department looking for evidence of corruption or complicity in the conspiracy by other officers on the department in the ring. He'd turned up nothing so far. As his Chief Deputy, the new Sheriff, Melissa “Mel” Crane, had been a squeaky clean and very able replacement for Carter until a new Sheriff could be elected. Word on the street was that she didn't want the job full time.

  I didn't like the way this woman was making me feel but I knew I could use a friend on the department. “Fine. I can give you about five minutes,” I said.

  I noticed as we walked outside that she was carrying. Good girl, prepared on duty and off.

  She stepped over to a somewhat muddy Ford pick-up truck. “If you don't mind, just a short drive? I don't want to have this conversation in this parking lot.”

  I blew out a breath and climbed into the passenger seat. She reversed out of the lot and headed out of the village. A silent eternity seemed to pass but, in reality, we stopped on a field access road just out of town.

  She looked me up and down. I found myself hoping that she liked what she saw and, seconds later, cursing myself for thinking that. Business. It's just business! I told myself.

  She extended her hand. “Sorry. I didn't catch your name?”

  I clasped her hand only briefly. I still felt as though I'd been burned. “Dana Rossi.”

  She continued to inspect me. I took the same time to look at her more closely too because I just couldn't help myself. Her eyes were so dark, they nearly matched the color of her hair. Though she affected a masculine form of dress and demeanor, her soft face and heavy chest gave her womanhood away. Yes, she was full of allure and contradictions all rolled into one.

  “You got any I.D.?”

  Sighing, I pulled out my Customs Agent badge.

  “You could have shown me that a little sooner.”

  I smirked. “I'm undercover.”

  “Are you carrying?”

  “Aren't you?”

  “Touché.”

  “Look, Sheriff, I really only have a few minutes.” I desperately needed to get away from this woman before I said or did something I would regret.

  “Mel, please. Call me Mel.”

  “Okay, look Mel, I got the money out of the ATM machine at the store back there in town. I didn't take a receipt because I didn't think I'd need one but, dammit, I'm sure the guy at the counter saw me get the money. He wasn't even ten feet away. Anyway, aren’t those machines supposed to reject bad bills? Isn’t that one of their purposes? Arrgh!” I groaned my frustration. “I can't tell you any more than that because that's all I've got.”

  I moved to get out of the truck. I'd walk the half mile back to town to get away from her and be on my way.

  She put her hand on my arm again, but more gently this time. “Please? I just have a couple of questions. I really need some insight from someone else in law enforcement.”

  “Thirty seconds ago, you didn't even know I was an agent.”

  She ignored my barbed tone. “What do you do with Customs?”

  “I work in special investigations.

  “Investigating what?”

  “Stuff.”

  “I see. Are you working on any “stuff” now that I should know about?”

  “It's doubtful,” I lied.

  She stared out the windshield a moment, lost in thought and then she flashed those pearly whites again. “Let me get you back to your car. I'm sure you’re eager to get on your way.”

  I was surprised by her rapid willingness to drop the subject but I schooled my face and tried not to let my shock show. “I'll just walk back.”

  “It's no problem. It'll just take a sec.”

  We drove quickly back into the village. I pointed toward the pizza shop. “My car is over there.”

  “Say, you wouldn't mind if I took a look would you?”

  “At what? My car? What for?”

  “With this counterfeiting operation I'm working on, I just can't be too careful.” Her gaze never wavered from my eyes.

  Exasperated, I gave up. “Whatever! Be my guest, but make it quick.” I tossed her the keys and then walked over to a picnic table outside the shop. I sat down heavily. I just couldn't wait to get out of this little hole in the wall town and put some distance between myself and Mel Crane.

  While she went about her search, I sipped my bottle of tea and thought about my mission. My team and I were working on a smuggling operation that was bringing knock-off designer goods into the U.S. by way of the Canadian border or across the Great Lakes. We'd snapped up a couple of low level guys and we'd been watching old Sheriff Carter hoping he'd lead us to the king pin when he'd been killed in the drug raid fiasco. We needed to find the new local boss or the big boss and we needed to find one of them soon.

  “You're under arrest.”

  I looked up from my reverie. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me. Stand up.”

  “Why am I being arrested?”

  “You have some merchandise in your trunk that, though it looks good, is definitely fake.

  “You're making a big mistake!”

  “We can talk about it at the station. Hands behind your back.”

  Chapter 2 – Dana in Deep Doo Doo

  Stripped of my back up weapon – I don’t carry my service issue when I’m undercover – my badge and my I.D., I felt naked. I didn’t like the feeling and I was fuming. Sheriff “Goody Two Shoes”, since she was off duty, called for a squad to pick me up and then she read me my rights while we waited. Instead of kissing her, I now wanted to kick her.

  “I need to make a call.”

  “Later. You’re going to the station first. Then we’ll see about your call.”

  I rode the 25 minutes to the Sheriff’s Office in Zanesville, the county seat in sullen silence. The officer driving wasn’t the subject of my ire but I wasn’t about to give him anything to tell his boss either. When we got to the station, I was subjected to the indignity of being fingerprinted right away and then being locked in an interview room to wait for my interrogator.

  After cooling my heels but not my temper for half an hour, Sheriff ‘Walks On Water’ herself appeared. She was now in full uniform and she was all business.

  She sat down carefully opposite of me and then sized me up. I looked her square in the eye. I wasn’t about to give an inch.

  “So why are you hanging out in Morelville Ms. Rossi?”

  “I told you. I work special investigations for Customs.”

  “And the designer knock off stuff in your trunk is...”

  “Part of a case.”

  I watched her closely too. The smile was long gone. She now looked stressed beyond anything that I might be doing in her jurisdiction. Still, I wasn’t inclined to help her and she’d just have to deal with that.

  “How long have you been coming around?”

  “Today was my first and last day in the village.”

  She wasn’t amused. “Not staying around for the Mushroom Festival then?” She got up and leaned against the wall near me.

  I didn’t favor her with a response to her sarcasm. I slumped back in my chair, tilted my chin in what I hoped was a way that signified my boredom with her questions and said again, “You need to let me make a phone call.”
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br />   I never saw her move. She went from ‘good cop’ to ‘bad cop’ in the blink of an eye as she uncoiled and hauled me by the shirt collar out of my chair. She quickly pinned me face first to the wall she'd been leaning against only a split second before. She had me by nearly eight inches of height and a solid 50 pounds at least, as she leaned into me. I was no match for her and she knew it.

  I yelped my surprise at the sudden roughness but, then, my body betrayed me. My pulse quickened, my nipples hardened and my crotch grew moist. I felt the heat of my desire burning my neck and cheeks. She took my embarrassment at my physical reaction to her as rage and she leaned in harder.

  “Whoa! Ease up. We're on the same team here!” I tried to sound like her equal and not the sex starved lunatic I was currently channeling.

  She spun me around to face her. We were so close; I could feel her warm breath on my face as she looked down at me. I was breathing hard but she was the picture of calm resolve.

  “Are you going to cooperate now?”

  I didn't get a chance to answer her. As she stepped back, eyes trained firmly on me, someone rapped on the door. She backed up to it and, still watching me, inquired about the interruption.

  I couldn't hear what was said. Swiftly, she stepped out and closed the door firmly behind her.

  I paced the room for a couple of minutes. I either needed to make a call or I needed a cover story and I needed it now. I couldn’t go into the details of my investigation with her. My mind began to race but, mid-stride in my pacing, she returned.

  Without preamble she said, “You're free to go. I don't know what connections you supposedly have but the Deputy Director of Customs and Border Protection says that I have no jurisdiction to hold you.”

  Great! Just great! Word of my arrest traveled so fast the DD got involved! Now the entire agency will know I got picked up in a backwater, hick town. I'll be a laughingstock. Just what I needed!

  I quickly masked my face and strode by Ms. Mel Crane as though I owned her station. I wasn't letting her know she'd even temporarily gotten the best of me. “I'll need my badge, I.D. and weapon back immediately,” I tossed over my shoulder. “I also need a ride back to my car and not in a squad. You've done enough damage to my cover for one day.”

  I hit the gas and ignored my own dust as I left tiny Morelville in my rear view mirror. I headed north again but, this time, I avoided Zanesville. I didn't intend to visit there again anytime soon either.

  I was assigned to the Chicago field office but I was working this case with a team out of the Cleveland Port of Entry. That's a nice way of saying I had a desk there.

  For now, I was temporarily sharing an apartment in a Cleveland suburb with another agent who was assigned full time to the Ashtabula Port of Entry. The apartment wasn't home for me and it never would be. I didn't have a real home anymore. My job took me wherever a case blew me, in our region or outside of it. I loved the work but I hated life on the road.

  Not relishing a three hour drive back to the city from nowhere Morelville, I opted for a cheap, no tell motel a half hour away from Zanesville, just off the highway. I paid cash. No one checked my twenties there.

  In my room, I dropped my go bag on the floor, took off my boots, splashed my face in the tiny sink and sank down on the bed. It was time to call it a night.

  I slept only fitfully. A certain county sheriff kept invading my dreams. I gave up any thought of real sleep well before dawn and I hit the road. I showered and changed at the apartment and was in the office before 8:00 AM. I was too late though for the pranksters on my team, all male, who had pulled out all the stops to decorate my desk with fuzzy handcuffs and crudely worded fingerprint cards. Obviously, they’d had nothing better to do with their time the evening before.

  I ignored their juvenile humor and stuck my head into the local boss’s office. My team leader, Geno “Gene” Corelli was on the phone, deep in conversation. He was responsible for the day to day function of the port office but, he’d come up through the investigative ranks himself and he managed investigative cases and teams throughout Ohio as well.

  I went back to my desk and booted my computer. Since I couldn't pick Gene’s brain, I needed to look up the current players in Muskingum County myself. Though starting with a more in depth search of my would be informant Brice Buhler crossed my mind, I quickly shifted to a more interesting to me search of the background of one Sheriff Melissa “Mel” Crane.

  A document that I opened provided me with an overview of the background of Crane. She was a twin and shared living arrangements with her sister Karissa Crane in, of all places, Morelville. Could Karissa really be “Kris” from the gas station? I tried to picture the cashier in my mind as she informed me that my bill was supposedly fake. I had been so thrown by Mel that my usual memory skills were all out of whack. I just couldn't quite picture Kris.

  I pulled up a search for Karissa Crane and had my answer. Mel's twin sister was the cashier at the station. She must dye her hair...

  The twins, at 35, were slightly older than me. Mel had done well to make Deputy Chief with the Sheriff’s Department so young and even better to accept the temporary appointment to Chief. Maybe there was more there than met the eye. I closed out the file and sat back in my chair, trying to connect the few dots I had. I was drawing a blank.

  I turned to my teammate, Tim Singer, who’d come in while I was scanning online databases. “How's the follow up on Carter coming?”

  “Nothing but dead ends. It seems like he took all his secrets to the grave with him.”

  Prior to Sheriff Carter’s death, we'd gotten a code name for the smuggling op ring leader, ‘Relic’, and a date for a major shipment of knock off couture, handbags and heaven only knew what else, “moving” on or about May 20th. What we didn't know was who Relic was, where the shipment was coming in and where, specifically it was headed to be broken down for distribution. We just didn't have enough information to capture the shipment or to bust the ring wide open.

  “We need to find Relic. To get to him,” Tim continued, “we're just going to have to keep catching these low level guys as they move merchandise.”

  “Tim, we've caught several low level guys. None of them have a clue who Relic is.”

  “Patience Dana. Patience.”

  “Patience be damned. Time isn't on our side my friend.”

  ###

  On a “good traffic day”, the likes of which were rare in Cleveland, our office was only 30 minutes from the actual Cleveland ‘sea’ port on Lake Erie. Though we felt like the shipment was probably coming overland – air was too risky since 9/11 - we had to cross all the “T's” and dot all the “I's”. Tim and I headed north to the port to do a little recon work.

  The Port of Cleveland is tiny. Between the two of us, it took us less than 15 minutes to talk to most of the grizzled old hands there and realize there was nothing they could tell us. Hoping for something, anything, we set out west along the lake shore to the port at the Avon Lake Basin. A round of 20 questions there and another further up the road at the Loraine Basin docks also yielded zip.

  We continued West on State Route 5 – a long but scenic trip – to the Huron Basin. We spent much of the afternoon talking to anyone there who would talk to us but we got nowhere. We'd spent a full day striking out. We were 0 for 4.

  A long drive back to the office left me in a foul mood. We were no further along than yesterday and a day closer to “the day”. Our options were even more limited than they had been the day before. Beaten, I headed to the apartment with a pounding headache.

  I didn't even remember falling asleep when I woke to the sound of my cell ringing somewhere in the furthest reaches of my brain. I came out of my fog just enough to find it, check the caller's ID and answer Gene's summons before my voice mail kicked on and pissed him off. Patience wasn't one of his virtues either.

  “You had a visitor after you left the office.”

  “Who?”

  “Sheriff Melissa Crane.”
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  “Why? What did she want?”

  “She wants to be in on our investigation. It seems that she thinks we may be investigating the same thing.”

  “She doesn't have a clue what we're working on. What did she say when you sent her packing back to Zanesville?”

  “I didn't send her packing.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Before Carter was killed, we know there was a steady flow of goods into or through that county. Somebody there is in charge of that or somebody there knows something. Crane grew up there. She knows everybody and she knows everybody’s business. We don't have a lot of time. She could be the asset we need.”

  “All she is, is a pain in the asset!”

  “It isn't my problem Dana.”

  “What are you saying Gene?”

  “I'm saying, you stirred up that hornet's nest and you've been to the area. You'll be her liaison from our team.”

  “This isn't a good idea.”

  “Then you try to talk her out of it. Something tells me you'll be spinning your wheels.”

  Chapter 3 – They Meet Again

  Dana

  The Border Patrol arm of the agency had caught an illegal selling knock off high end handbags in Texas. He sang a crazy tune and fingered a gang banger in Chicago as his goods connection. I drew the lucky assignment to fly back to the Windy City, track down one Mr. ‘Freestyle’, and try to figure out what he knew.

  I landed at Midway late the next morning. I headed straight to the Chicago Field Office for a brief with the task force boss on what was known about Freestyle. I learned that the word on the street was that he had recently gone underground after a dust up with another member of his own gang. Armed with my sidearm and the names, addresses and phone numbers of his known family members and associates, I hit the pavement. As it turned out, my quarry was hiding in plain sight.

  Freestyle's Grandmother lived in the Englewood neighborhood. Thinking I was the mail carrier, she opened the door to me when I stepped onto her stoop. My luck turned. The former gang banger was sitting in her living room watching afternoon soaps with her when I got there.