Miller Avenue Murder: An addictive police procedural legal psychological thriller Page 7

  And even still, Benjamin hadn’t been deterred, he’d stuck by the counter, through thick and through thin. However, soon passed away from terminal lung cancer.

  The business grieving the loss of its founder was as well on the brink of death, on its last breath when Benjamin’s only son Robert had rebranded to boost traffic. Suited with a new name and target audience, Robert Ellison unveiled a bar that was not only keeping his father’s dream alive, but his as well.

  Annabelle Dawson needed an exclusive interview with Robert Ellison. Startled that he’d even taken her call at almost midnight, she’d pitched her idea for an interview. He’d been delighted.

  “Yuck!” Amanda ran a finger over the stained Walnut table by the entrance. “People frequent this joint?” The preppy woman didn’t seem too sure.

  “It’s usually packed by night time.” Annabelle shrugged; her hands shoved in the pockets of her nude-brown trench coat.

  “How do you know that? Don’t tell me you’re one of the regulars?” She’d said it as if it were a bad thing?

  “Not me, my brother, Chase.”

  “The Detective?” Annabelle nodded, her stomach stirring at the sultry smile that made an appearance on Amanda’s heart shaped face. Chase Dawson had made one appearance at the Studio on Madrona Avenue and Amanda hasn’t been able to shut up about him since.

  “Anna, if he’s not here, we can talk to someone else.” Frank placed his camera on the marble countertop.

  She picked at her fingertips; jaw clenched.

  “I want to start at the beginning, Frank.” She met his eyes with her dark brown ones. They weren’t as dark as Chase’s, but to onlookers, they were nearly black. “I promised Simon Neil an in-depth look at the life of Blake Campbell before the murder.” She sounded exasperated. She couldn’t lose her job. She couldn’t be the reason the three of them were out of work. It was possible… Simon Neil was as predictable as a nuclear weapon; he could throw a fit and get the three of them replaced at the drop of a hat.

  The guilt would kill her if she was the reason that happened.

  She dropped his gaze and scrutinized her pealed nail polish.

  Maybe Frank didn’t get it. No one did. “I told you I spoke to him, he’s here.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut, she drew a breath.

  She’d had one too many sessions with Lisa Patterson to throw a fit and take a step backwards, especially when it wasn’t a step that mattered.

  “Who’s here?” A door creaked open. Out walked a man with warm beige skin and ash-grey eyes. He’d been dressed in a pair of well-fitting jeans and a collared short-sleeved shirt.

  “Mr. Ellison?” Amanda Hampton took the liberty to ask, her ‘on-air’ voice in full display.

  “In the flesh,” The man stopped by the bar and smiled.

  “Amanda Hampton, Anchor for Channel Six,” She jutted out a manicured hand to shake his.

  “You’re not the woman I spoke to last night.” He observed, taking her hand in a firm shake. He’d held Amanda in a hesitant gaze.

  “That would be me, Annabelle Dawson, Reporter for Channel Six.” Annabelle didn’t have an ‘on-air’ voice. And at first, her colleagues had referred to her as a cub waiting to get her roar, but having served five years with the channel, it was increasingly clear she was never going to get it.

  Perhaps it was like a birthmark? Some people were born with it and others weren’t.

  She stepped out of Amanda’s daunting shadow and shook the man’s hand. His grip was strong, but his smile was disarming. “I did my research on this place and I discovered our deceased frequented this bar the days after her husband had died?” That hadn’t been all she’d found out.

  She’d also learned that the name American Angels had been inspired by the surge of tourists flocking in and out of Tillamook for the town’s creameries and lumber companies. And Robert had aimed at targeting an all-inclusive market of locals and tourists alike in his neighborhood bar.

  “She did. And should we get the camera’s rolling so I could tell you all about it?” She nodded, grinning and gestured for Frank to do his thing.

  Robert guided them to a table for three by the window.

  The interior décor Anna had read was aimed at displaying the craftmanship of Tillamook’s lumber companies, the walls fitted with the finest strips of dark polished Walnut, the floors planked with a complementing maple finish.

  “What can you tell us about the day Blake Campbell walked into your bar for the first time?”

  Robert Ellison released a breath. “I sure as hell hadn’t been expecting her.”

  ◆◆◆

  Robert had his head ducked; fingers covered with a rag wiping down on a tipsy woman’s mid-afternoon mistake when Blake had walked in for the first time.

  Sure, it had been the first time she’d been in his bar, but it wasn’t the first time he’d heard about her.

  The overcast skies on the outside had mirrored her downcast demure walking in. And despite that, her presence alone had the small bar in an uproar.

  Her eyes had run over the faces in the room as if doing a head count. With slumped shoulders, and thin long legs that seemed to weigh a ton, she made her way further into the petite bar.

  People in Tillamook liked to talk and whenever she was around, locals didn’t bother to hide their talents. Gossip flew from table to table, till it had gotten to the bar.

  She was believed to have killed her husband for his money.

  Robert shook his head. The claims got more and more ludacris each time he bothered them a listening ear.

  So, what if she did? How was that enough to make the headlines?

  That was the problem with small towns, they didn’t have anything newsworthy, so they made the most miniscule and pointless things news worthy.

  The pasty man at the farthest end of the bar, the one who’d whispered beneath his breath about the latest claims against the Campbell widow, had been stealing glances at her over the paper he’d had opened in front of him.

  He wasn’t fooling anyone. His thick rimmed glasses were nearly down the bridge of his crooked nose—looked like the kind of guy regularly in a fist fight or the other despite his age. His brandy brown eyes twitching between the grieving woman and whatever the Tillamook Times considered content.

  Tables engaged in a hushed whisper, one the petite blonde seemed to turn a deaf ear to.

  She was not only a beauty, but a walking scandal.

  In Tillamook, that was entertainment gold.

  Clothed from the top of her head to the sole of her feet in black, a Moncler halter-neck knee-length, paired with Saint Lauren leather pumps and an Ann Guise Silk veil, she didn’t need to explain what half of Tillamook knew already. She was grieving her late husband, Christopher Campbell. And in the most stylish way she knew how.

  Robert wasn’t one to judge but he wasn’t deaf either. He’d heard as much about her as the next-guy—unfortunately, the next guy was peeping Tom whose glasses he could bet would glide the remaining distance down the man’s coarse face—She was thirty-two and widowed with a son for a man that was more than twice her age.

  “Martini, please,” Her voice was breathy, broken. She’d hoisted her lean frame onto a barstool. He’d never heard it before.

  “Coming right up,” Robert whirled, reached for a bottle of Gin, vermouth and a lemon, all the while thinking, she didn’t deserve this… the whispers, the scrutinizing gazes, all because she made some off kilter decisions?

  “My condolences,” He’d said as he poured two-and-a-half ounces of gin into the shaker. She’d shrugged, her eyes fixed on a spot he’d missed on the counter, he was tempted to reach for the rag and wipe down on the stained marble. He was however, too focused on the way her lips had been opening and closing. How the hell was she able to remain composed in a room full of gossips? Since she’d sat down, Robert had heard three women snicker… that couldn’t be healthy for her mental state.

  She had something she wanted to get
off her chest.

  She needed a listening ear.

  He didn’t have anything better to do with his afternoon. He didn’t mind being that listening ear.

  “I hear he was a good man,” He offered. It wasn’t as if their lives had been out of the media’s hawk eyes. It hadn’t. Everything their family went through; entertainment stations had carried as the latest headlines. They were Tillamook’s own royal family.

  She nodded.

  “He was, and, please, don’t believe what the papers have to say…I loved that man… even if he was… well… you know,” He poured in half an ounce of dried vermouth and an equal serving of olive brine and begun to shake.

  “I believe you…” He said between shakes, pausing to catch his breath. “…after all, they’re your feelings.”

  “Yeah, they are,” She looked up at him. Her reddened eyes had glimmered with true satisfaction at his words and her lips had twitched into a small smile. It warmed something in him.

  She was beyond beautiful, not that he was looking, but… her eyes were a radiant blue despite being tear-shut, hooded and clouded by grief, her cheeks flushed, and features firm. She was a face destined to linger on the minds of locals. “My friends, they’re all convinced I was with him for the money…” He handed the chilled cocktail glass to her. She didn’t reach for it, but reached a hand into her hair and pulled her veil, placing it on the counter.

  “Were you?”

  “No, no.” She waved her hands out in front of her, radiant blues widened. “It didn’t even start that way.” He poured the content of the shaker into her glass and finished it off with a lemon wedge.

  “Wanna tell me how it started?”

  She hadn’t gotten to. And he’d promised himself he would pick up where they left off but that opportunity never came.

  A man almost as notable as Christopher Campbell had joined her by the bar. Of course, a man in her social circle had snatched her attention.

  A single glance was all Robert had needed to match a name to the face of the naturally white-haired man chumming up to the widowed Blake Campbell like a vulture after a kill. Much like Robert, he’d offered his condolences, introduced himself as Richard Dean, an associate in the Tillamook House of Timber, a colleague of her deceased husband, and son of the Dean family—a dynasty behind creameries in Tillamook—and he’d entertained her in a conversation about Christopher, reminiscing over a corporate life with the late Campbell.

  She’d been instantly enthralled, blue eyes shimmering, fixed on Richard’s easy-going features.

  Robert hadn’t intended to eavesdrop on their conversation, he couldn’t help if the man’s roaring voice had made it harder for the bartender to mind his business.

  “Robert,” A voice called from the other end of the bar. A woman, a waitress, Dylan Jenkins. Her voice dropped to her whisper once he was within earshot.

  “You can’t do that,” She had her hands crossed over her chest.

  “What in god’s name do you mean,” He wasn’t a good liar. That didn’t stop him from trying.

  “Stop eavesdropping.”

  “I’m not…” She held him in a skeptical glare. She was a honey blonde, with brown eyes and perfectly plucked eyebrows. He’d worked with her for years since his father’s passing, since the rebranding, since inheriting American Angels. He shrugged. “…anymore, but you know what men are like here, they’ll take advantage of her.” Who better to know what a man is capable of than a man? He knew what Tillamook men were like, he knew what he was like once.

  “So?” Her hands dropped to her side and she sauntered past him to the front of the counter where a man was placing the $5 bill for his lady-friend’s Long Island Ice Tea.

  “Of course, you don’t mind, you don’t have a conscience, but I do. This poor woman has already been through it,”

  “And you think, you, a bartender from an average family can protect a wealthy widow?” He clenched his jaw. She was right. The man she was sitting next to worked in the lumber industry and was from a creamery family, Robert couldn’t compete. Richard had wedged himself in two of Tillamook’s strongest industries. But he wasn’t going to be that average bartender forever. He had big plans. Plans he knew she wouldn’t believe in.

  That didn’t stop him from keeping an eye on Blake from his post behind the counter.

  Four martinis’ later, and she’d let her hair loose from the bun she’d pulled it into. It had fallen in long waves over her shoulder, and thumping her feet to the music blaring through the speakers, her new found buddy had leaped from his stool taken her hands in his and had begun exploring the dance floor.

  Robert hadn’t been the only one who’d had his eyes on her. Many of his regulars hadn’t been able to focus on anything else.

  “Let her go, she’s going to be fine,” Dylan had said, joining where Robert had been leaned against the counter watching the pair laugh the evening away.

  Had that been what she’d wanted? To laugh as though her husband of over ten-years hadn’t passed away in her home?

  That should have been him.

  On that dance floor with her.

  Making her smile and throw caution to the wind.

  But it wasn’t and he couldn’t deny he’d been filled with a seething rage.

  Richard Dean had a bad enough reputation in Tillamook, not only had he been linked to multiple drug related charges, he’d been accosted for assault as well.

  “He’s bad for her, Dylan,”

  “And you’re better?”

  “Hell yeah!” He boomed earning a few curious glances. He was agitated she even needed to ask.

  “Christopher was bad for her, everyone in Tillamook thought so, but she seemed to care a whole lot about the dead man,”

  “Where are you driving at?” He was getting tired of their conversation.

  “Who’s to say she won’t be happy with, Dean?”

  Again, she was right. She was always right. He couldn’t say if she would be happier as his friend or friends with the ex-con, but he couldn’t help but remain bothered… why had she sought the attention of a man so soon after her husband’s passing?

  ◆◆◆

  He’d completely missed his number by the time he’d returned to the Tillamook Wellness Center. He hadn’t intended to catch up with it. Once he’d gotten the opportunity, he’d leaned over the counter and requested to speak with Lisa Patterson.

  “Miss. Patterson is with a client at the moment, if you have an appointment with her then we can go ahead and verify that with the system.” The woman at the other end of the desk smiled up at him. She was a lean makeup-caked woman, in her mid to late thirties, older than him. She’d looked up at him with eyes that would turn icy if he didn’t have a good enough reason to be there. He tensed his shoulders. He would have been less agitated had her voice not sounded like nails against a blackboard.

  “Here’s the thing, I had an appointment, but I missed it,”

  “I’m sorry sir, you can go ahead and schedule another appointment, and if you’re feeling creative you can access our website or our mobile app.”

  “Sherriff Pierce booked my last appointment,” She seemed to deliberate his words.

  “You’re with the Sherriff’s Department?”

  “Not exact—”

  “I’m not taking any more clients, Julie,” A woman paused in her tracks. She'd been sauntering through the door hung open by the waiting region. She was tall, endowed in all the right places with enough to spare, with skin that gave Rachel Olson a run for her money. Melatonin wasn't shy on her and she'd worn it with a boldness that radiated. A warm and floral fragrance trailed her. He cleared his throat.

  “That’s fine, Miss. Patterson but there’s this man, claims to be with the Sherriff’s department.” Lisa Patterson evaluated Paul Campbell and reached into her pocket for her phone. She’d typed something on the screen and sent it back where it came from.

  "Sherriff Pierce insisted I see you," Her espresso brown sk
in and generous height piqued his curiosity. Her eyes were amber despite her skin. She had to have Caucasian roots. Though faint, there had to be. She was exactly his type, out of his league. He sought for women that would huff at the idea of going to bed with him. That way, he relished in the chase and lavished in the sweaty, milky outcome of a dying passion. But those were the days before he'd been saddled down.

  "Go wait in my office, second floor, third door to your right. If you can't find it ask around. If my last patient hasn't left the room yet find yourself a seat outside and wait." With that said, she'd continued her journey towards the exit.

  He followed her instructions and took the stairs to the second floor.

  Bright. That was his first impression on the second floor of the Wellness Center.

  Windows lined the left side of the building; a sitting area swallowed the middle of the floor and doors lined the right. Beige formed the foundation of the décor as it branded the walls. Motivational quotes had been framed and hung on the walls. Informational banners had been collected on a wooden notice board by the stairs, a board he was subtly drawn to.

  Hardwood had been spread beneath his feet.

  Light poured in from the floor to ceiling windows.

  He’d journeyed across the waiting area and past the desk of what seemed to be the floor secretary, she’d called after him.

  “I’m here for Dr. Lisa Patterson.” He was here for a psychologist. The odds of that happening had the scenario not called for it, were slim. He was a firm believer in his own strengths and having a stable mind was always one of his strengths. Claire in a way shared his disbelief in psychologists. She rather advocated for Hindu mantras to soothe her rattled nerves.

  The stout pale woman returned to her seat and back to her computer. “That’s fine, take a seat and I’ll get your details in a bit,” Her tone was calm. She’d stretched her hand out, directing him to the waiting area.

  It was a circle of armchairs spread out. In the middle was a sculpture. His heart lurched. How much was consultation going to cost him? Between what he and Claire had saved up for their wedding, he doubted he would be able to cover the cost of a place like this. This was a lot to take in.