Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve) Read online

  Mean Evergreen

  Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve

  AW Hartoin

  Mean Evergreen

  by A.W. Hartoin

  Copyright 2021 A.W. Hartoin

  Smashwords Edition

  * * *

  “This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Created with Vellum

  Also by AW Hartoin

  Historical Thriller

  The Paris Package (Stella Bled Book One)

  Strangers in Venice (Stella Bled Book Two)

  One Child in Berlin (Stella Bled Book Three)

  Dark Victory (Stella Bled Book Four)

  * * *

  Young Adult fantasy

  Flare-up (Away From Whipplethorn Short)

  A Fairy's Guide To Disaster (Away From Whipplethorn Book One)

  Fierce Creatures (Away From Whipplethorn Book Two)

  A Monster’s Paradise (Away From Whipplethorn Book Three)

  A Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four)

  To the Eternal (Away From Whipplethorn Book Five)

  * * *

  Mercy Watts Mysteries

  Novels

  A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book One)

  Diver Down (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Two)

  Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries BookThree)

  Drop Dead Red (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Four)

  In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Five)

  The Wife of Riley (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Six)

  My Bad Grandad (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Seven)

  Brain Trust (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Eight)

  Down and Dirty (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Nine)

  Small Time Crime (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Ten)

  Bottle Blonde (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Eleven)

  Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

  * * *

  Short stories

  Coke with a Twist

  Touch and Go

  Nowhere Fast

  Dry Spell

  A Sin and a Shame

  * * *

  Paranormal

  It Started with a Whisper (Sons of Witches)

  For the real Grandma J

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Also by AW Hartoin

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Some people say waiting is the hardest part and I’m one of them. At least I was until that snowy Tuesday when I sat in a frigid, windswept parking lot at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. I hated waiting, and I’d been doing it for forty-five minutes. Dad said to get there at eight sharp and I did. Well. Okay. Ten after eight. But I was only late because I didn’t want to do it. Nobody would. Freezing your butt off with the grand view of razor wire, a guard tower, and the brown buildings of a correctional center wasn’t high on anybody’s list. Why do they call it a correctional center anyway? Does it actually correct anything or anyone? I had serious doubts on that because I’d been roped into picking up Stevie Warnock and he was beyond correcting.

  Stevie was the dimwitted son of one of the smartest men I knew, Big Steve Warnock, a brilliant lawyer and long-time friend of my family. It doesn’t sound like a big deal to pick up one felon from a minimum to medium security prison, but it was. Stevie had been a problem all his life and specifically for me. The moron liked me and that’s why I got the pleasure of dealing with him. My dad and Big Steve said I had a good track record with the nitwit, but that was just luck. Something was going to go wrong with this assignment and I resented it. I was supposed to be in Germany on a case. A real case. A paying case.

  About two weeks ago, I’d been kidnapped by Anton Thooft and had then been hired by his sister Kimberly to find out why a fifty-something teacher working in Stuttgart, Germany at a Department of Defense school had suddenly flown back to his home state of Missouri, knocked me out with a chemical agent, and thrown me in a trunk. Nobody thought hiring me, the victim, was a good idea, except Kimberly, but I did it. I found out that Anton had been blackmailed over a family secret, which, as he might’ve predicted, tore his family apart. But Kimberly wasn’t done. She wanted to know who did the blackmailing and why. I was all set to hit the road until my mother got wind of the plan and, as all loving mothers do, she ruined it. “It’s Christmas. You have to rest.”

  It wasn’t Christmas, yet, and I didn’t want to rest. I wanted to know why Anton had targeted me, not to mention I had a bet with my boyfriend Chuck over the culprits and I intended to win. Bathroom cleaning was on the line and I take that very seriously. But when Mom couldn’t prevail upon me to stay home, she called in reinforcements and the rest of my family piled on. My grandparents, aunt, cousins even. They all had something to say about my trip. They all said that Kimberly didn’t care if I went before or after Christmas as long as it happened. That was true, but I cared. It didn’t feel right to let it lie. I was still going until my father, the great and bossy Tommy Watts, got into the act. Dad thought I should stay home and take it easy. “Rest, bake, relax,” he said.

  I should’ve known he was up to something. My dad doesn’t relax. He doesn’t understand the urge. The man couldn’t watch a movie with my mom without a case file on his lap or a phone in hand to answer emails. It’s just not who he is. I will admit he’d been trying and he’d even been described as calm recently. Once. And that’s why I fell for it. Dad was going to be a regular dad. He was going to do Christmas like people do. Yeah, right.

  Seventeen hours after he said, “Relax, baby girl”—That’s right, I counted—I got the swell job of picking up Stevie Warnock from prison. I protested. I really did. “It’s for the family,” Dad said. Not our family obviously, but Dad didn’t make distinctions like that. Big Steve and his long-suffering wife Olivia were like family and that was the end of that discussion.

  I knew all about the legal maneuvering Big Steve had done to score a sweet deal for his son. Four years for whatever he did. I’m sure Dad told me what the charges were, but I wasn’t paying attention. It was probably a laundry list. I wouldn’t put anything past Stevie, except violence. He was never violent, more like accident-prone, and if there was an accident, Stevie was going to have it. The guy just rolled with whatever was happening. He never thought about it. If someone happened to cross his path and said, “Hey, drive this coke to New Jersey and bring back a crate of Uzis. You got nothing else going on.” Stevie would say, “You’re right. I don’t.” And there he’d be driving drugs and guns across state lines
.

  How the dufus was so consistently in the wrong place at the right time to do something bad was a mystery. It just happened. I’d asked Stevie and he had no idea. To be fair, no idea was the story of his life, but now I was involved in it again. The last time I’d seen him was in New Orleans, a lifetime and a half ago when he was on the run from the Costillas after stealing sixty-two stereos from them and leading a blood-thirsty Richard Costilla to my grandparents’ house where I ended up shooting him in the face. Not a good time and I still wasn’t over it. Mom said I should forgive Stevie, but how do you forgive someone who never apologized and probably had forgotten all about it. You can’t. You just can’t.

  I wasn’t going to forgive him for freezing my butt off either. I felt bad about running the engine and wasting gas, so I kept turning the car off, but then my hands and feet would go numb and I’d have to turn it on again. What was taking so long? It’s not like Missouri wanted to keep him.

  Get your little bag of crap and get out.

  I kept an eye on the visitor’s entrance with its snowy walkway, but there was nothing to see. The prison seemed like a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, even though it was very close to the Hwy 44 corridor. If I got out of the car, I could probably have heard the traffic and it was in-between Pacific and Eureka, two bustling small towns. All sorts of things were happening just a mile or two away, but right there it felt like Siberia with mounds of snow so high I could barely see the top of the sign for the prison when I drove in. Honestly, if you didn’t know it was there, you might miss the whole shooting match as my grandad would say. Just a little blue sign with gold lettering, oddly friendly for a prison. I didn’t miss it. I wish I had because the waiting turned out to be the best part of my day.

  Just when I picked up my phone to call Dad and report that Stevie had apparently not scored early parole for reasons unknown, the door opened and the dufus ambled out. His brown hair was shaved and he wore a white tee shirt and a pair of sweatpants that were brand new but way too short. He’d gained a little weight and wasn’t quite as spindly as before, but it was the same old Stevie, goofy as hell and totally confused, which was probably why a guard came out with him. I’d seen a few other prisoners leave when I arrived. But they were alone for their reunions. Stevie was the only one who rated an escort. She probably wanted to make sure he left. With Stevie, there was a possibility that he’d wander around the parking lot until he got frostbite or maybe she thought nobody wanted him back and he’d need a ride to his parole officer to check-in.

  Whatever the reason, a large black lady with rosy cheeks and an air of exhausted resignation pointed the way down the walk to Stevie and then accompanied him to the edge of the parking lot where she stopped to watch him wander around. I took a breath and got out to wave. Stevie spotted me and did a fist pump.

  “Hey, Mercy. What you doin’ here?” Stevie gave me an unwelcome hug and I gave him one of Chuck’s jackets. It engulfed him like he was wearing his dad’s clothes.

  “I’m picking you up,” I said.

  “I know. I requested that you get me.”

  Then why did you ask?

  “Swell,” I said.

  “Yeah, it is.” Stevie grinned at me and I felt a twinge of affection for the idiot. He wasn’t mean-spirited. I had to give him that.

  “Why did you ask for me?” I asked.

  “You and me. We got a thing going on.”

  I stared for a second, trying to get his meaning. He couldn’t mean a thing like a thing thing, even Stevie wasn’t that stupid.

  “We don’t have a thing,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. I told all the guys about you and me.” Stevie waved an arm at the prison and a pit formed in my stomach.

  “You told a bunch of prisoners about me?”

  “About you and me. They already knew about you. You got a lot of fans on the inside.”

  Awesome. Just what I don’t need.

  “I hope you told them that I have a six-foot-two cop boyfriend who likes to shoot people for sport,” I said.

  “Hell, no. Nobody wants to hear that,” said Stevie. “I told them about how much fun we had in New Orleans and how hot and cool you are.”

  “Thanks. That’s just great.”

  I started to open the passenger door for him and he said, “See, we got a thing.”

  “If by thing you mean you do something stupid and I have to help out with it, then yeah, we have a thing.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  I opened the door. “Whatever. Get in and let’s get this over with.”

  “Where are we going?” He held up a small paper bag. “My bags are packed.”

  “I see that. Get in.”

  “Don’t you get it? That’s a movie quote. I’m the crazy prisoner.”

  I covered my eyes for a second. “Yes, you’re the crazy prisoner. Please, get in. We’ve got a lot to do. I have to take you shopping, get you cleaned up and presentable for your mother and your parole officer. This could take a while.”

  “The Green Mile. I’m Wild Bill. That’s what the guys called me.”

  “That’s not a good thing, Stevie,” I said.

  “It’s my first nickname. I always wanted a nickname.”

  “You have a nickname. Stevie’s your nickname. Your name is Steven.”

  “That’s no good. Stevie.” He blew a raspberry. “I wanted something cool. Call me Wild Bill.”

  “That’s a hard pass,” I said, pointing to the passenger seat.

  “Why not? Come on. Call me Wild Bill.”

  “That guy was a deranged child rapist and killer.”

  “Other than that, he was pretty funny and we look alike,” said Stevie. Always the one to miss the big picture was our Stevie.

  “Get in,” I said. “I’m supposed to take you to Macy’s.”

  “Ooh, I like Macy’s. Let’s go. My bags are packed.” He grinned at me again and I rolled my eyes.

  And that’s when it happened. It was all fine. I mean as fine as it gets with Stevie and then it went to crap. Just like that. Stevie started to duck into the passenger side and I saw the back of his head for the first time.

  “Oh, my god!” I lunged for him, dragging Stevie out of the seat and throwing him against the car. Not bad, considering I still had one arm in a cast. “What the hell is on your head?”

  “What? What?” Stevie slapped his hands over the back of this head and started spinning. Think dog chasing his tail as if he could see the back of his head if he just went fast enough.

  I watched for a second in amazement and then grabbed him, shoving him back against the car. “Stop that!”

  “What is it? What is it?” he asked in a panic. “Do I have fleas?”

  “Probably, but no.” I turned him around to get a better look, hoping I’d seen it wrong. A mistake. A trick of the light. “Crap on a cracker. Are you insane? Have you lost what little mind you had?”

  “What is it?” Stevie started feeling the back of his head again.

  My heart was pounding and my vision got a little misty. I had to fix it. How was I going to fix it? “A tattoo.”

  Stevie slumped against the car and patted his chest. “Oh, Jesus. You scared me. I thought something was really wrong with me.”

  “Something is,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  I’m not gonna lie. If I’d had a weapon, it wouldn’t have looked good for Stevie. But since I didn’t, I buried my face in my hands.

  “Dude, it’s fine,” he said. “Just a tattoo. Everybody has tats.”

  I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. “Everybody doesn’t have that tattoo.”

  “Jeez, I didn’t know you were a drama queen. You gotta do what ya gotta do.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I did. You see, I joined this club and you got to get tatted up. Don’t worry. Chaz did it for free. Didn’t cost me nothing.”

  I looked up and stared into his blank face as he glanced around lookin
g just as happy as all get out. “What are you planning on telling your parents?”

  Stevie shrugged. “Nothing. Who cares? My hair’ll grow. I got hair, Mercy.”

  “Not right now you don’t,” I said.

  “A couple of weeks and presto, it’s gone.”

  “But it will still be there.”

  “Nobody will know,” he said, and I could see his interest in the situation fading. Not that he was much interested in the first place.

  “You’ll know. I’ll know, and it’s right there on your head. Didn’t Big Steve and Olivia visit?”

  “Sure. Dad came a few times, but he’s mad about something. Mom came every week. She loves me.”

  Not for long.

  “How’d you hide it?”

  “Huh?”

  “That…that thing on your head, Stevie. How’d you hide it?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. They probably didn’t care.”

  My fists clenched, even the one in the cast. “They would care. I care. Everybody in the whole damn world would care.”

  “Don’t get excited about nothing, Mercy,” said Stevie.

  That’s when I got excited. I got super excited. I snatched his little brown paper bag right out of his hands and started smacking him with it. A debit card, razor, and toothbrush all went flying.

  “Hey!” Stevie ran and I chased him, right around the car in a circle.

  “Come back, you moron. I’ll smack that thing right off your head.”

  “You’re crazy! What’s wrong with you?” Stevie yelled and put on a little speed to dash out of my reach.