Red Picket Fences by Daphne McLean

Author:Daphne McLean [McLean, Daphne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781795151603
Published: 2019-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Four hours had passed since they had parked a decoy van outside of Vinny Malone’s brick row house. Stakeouts, as it turned out, were not as glamorous as Jennifer had thought they were.

The house itself seemed kind of plain to be the house of a mobster. A statue of Mary towered over the now-bare azalea bushes in the garden. A yellow-and-white canopy hung over the porch and gave the home a cheery appearance. The only movement they had seen in the time they were there was an orange tabby cat that kept jumping up into the window.

Jennifer had rented a white van for the mission. She didn’t want to use her or Jimmy’s car for fear of being tracked down. Jimmy had had his friend at the sign shop in town make a peel-and-stick logo for a fake business that they stuck on the side of the van so as not to raise suspicion. For their first stakeout, they were pretty prepared.

Jimmy sat crunching on potato chips, staring out the window. The sound of each little crunch grated on Jennifer’s nerves, but she stifled her fury. It wasn’t until Peter started slurping his soft drink that she finally lost it.

“Must you two be so loud with your crunching and slurping sounds?”

Peter and Jimmy looked at each other and shrugged.

“Whoa, Jen, calm down,” Peter said. “This is the stakeout life. Can’t take the heat? Starting to lose it?”

Peter was poking fun. He had insisted on tagging along when Jennifer had brought the whole stakeout idea up to him the night of the funeral. His reaction had surprised her, because she’d thought Peter would flat-out refuse.

Suzanne was at home watching William. She had no idea what they were up to. Jennifer wanted to wait until they had more information before she brought any of this up with her friend.

“Pete, when I let you come with us—” Jennifer started.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Peter interjected. “I demanded to come. No wife of mine is going to be trapped in a car with a hunky young rookie.”

Jimmy smiled. “You think I’m hunky?”

“Don’t let it go to your head, kid,” Peter joked. “It’s 20 percent you and 80 percent uniform.”

He and Jennifer smiled and winked at one another.

“Okay. Enough joking around, guys,” Jennifer said. “Let’s go over again what we have on Vinny Malone. What did your friend say, Jimmy?”

“Vincent Antonio Malone, forty-five years old, has been arrested but never formally charged for various petty crimes. My friend spoke to a local informant who said that our Vinny, here, operated as a small-time loan shark for 15 years. He seems to have been careful and remained under the radar until recently. Word on the street is that he’s claiming responsibility for Sarah’s and Ethan’s deaths. Ethan was a client of his who wasn’t paying.”

“Wait,” Jennifer said. “He’s claiming responsibility? Do people go around admitting to murder like that?”

“From what I understand, he’s not outright bragging about it,” Jimmy said. “It’s more like people are assuming, and he’s just not clarifying.

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