A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (13 page)

Everyone in the Thornton household went to bed early that night. If they didn’t go to sleep, they each went to their rooms to be alone with their thoughts about the cloud of suspicion that loomed over their family.

Unable to sleep, Joshua surfed the Internet on his laptop in bed for information about Gail Reynolds and cases she had worked on. Possibly, someone with a grudge from one of her previous cases followed her to Chester in order to extract revenge. He wondered what Gail could have recalled that caused her to eliminate Margo as her prime suspect. He found himself replaying his senior year of high school over and over in his mind in search of what he might have missed.

He was discouraged with his progress when the phone rang.

“Everyone now assumes that we are sleeping together,” Tori purred across the line. “I guess we might as well do it.”

“The way I feel about you right now, I don’t think it would be humanly possible for me.”

The purr decreased in volume. “Gaston called me. I did not call him. Someone saw us together at Dora’s. Once again, you are blaming me for something that is not my fault.”

“You are not a stupid woman, Tori. You purposely suggested that there is more between us than there really is, or ever will be.”

The laptop dinged. The message balloon announced that he had an instant message from Hank, a friend in his contact list. He felt as if the smile that came to his lips was the first one he had all day.

“I’ve got to go.” Without waiting for a farewell or curse from Tori, he hung up the phone and opened up his Windows Messenger.

“Did you miss me?” the note read.

He typed, “I haven’t heard from you in four months. Where have you been?” He punched the SEND button and waited. A moment later, the messenger indicated that Hank was typing out a response.

“You know the Navy nowadays. I can tell you where I’ve been, but then I’d have to come kill you. What’s new?”

His fingers flew across the keyboard.

“Moved the kids back to Chester. Was elected prosecutor. Gail Reynolds came back home and got murdered. Boob detective trying to railroad me into jail. You still at Pearl? How’s the wedding plans?”

He sent his response and waited.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

He was still typing out his objection when the next note popped up, “Where’s Chester?”

Chapter Eleven

“Remember,” Tad warned Joshua before folding back the sheet to reveal Bella Polk’s body, “if Cavanaugh finds out that I discussed this case with you, he’ll have my hide.”

“Cavanaugh is either incompetent or crooked. I haven’t decided which.” The lawyer studied the landlady’s body. “While I’m trying to find that out, we have a killer or killers out there who have to be stopped before anyone else dies.” He picked up the old woman’s hand. Her hands and arms were covered with scratches and bruises. Tad had clipped her nails down to the quick and scraped out the skin and blood for evidence to identify her killer.

“She didn’t go with a whimper, but with a bang,” the medical examiner told him. “She put up a good fight. There was skin and blood under her fingernails and in her mouth, too.” He pulled back her lips to show her broken teeth. “He broke three of her teeth. When he punched her in the mouth, she bit him. I got his DNA.”

“But we need someone to compare it to.” Joshua concluded, “If she bit him, then that means we are looking for someone with a human bite on his hand.”

Tad held up a plaster cast he had sitting on his desk. “If the perp’s bite mark matches this impression, we got the guy with his hand in her mouth.”

“You are good.”

“And you look good.” Tad noted that Joshua had a fresh haircut and was dressed in pressed slacks, a gray herringbone sports coat, and tie. “Have you got a date?”

“What makes you think I have a date?”

“You’re wearing aftershave.”

“I wear aftershave.”

“Not since Val died.”

Joshua and Jan figured that if anyone had incriminating information about Margo Connor and wanted to share, it would be her ex-husband.

After he graduated from Oak Glen High School, Karl Connor went to West Virginia University in Morgantown on a partial football scholarship. Large and muscular, Karl was a good linebacker, but a lousy student. He was baffled to discover that the university expected him to study.

After flunking out of college, he returned home, married the recently widowed Margo Sweeney Boyd, failed at real estate, and was fired by his wife, who divorced him. He eventually became a fire fighter, a profession that let him use his muscles.

Joshua did his homework before visiting his old friend. He learned from Karl’s divorce lawyer that, even though his ex-wife was a millionaire, Karl ended up paying her child support for their daughter. While Margo lived in the mansion they had bought during their marriage, he was forced by his financial situation to live with his parents in Newell.

“Do you want me to say that she killed her first husband?” Karl volunteered, “Yeah, she told me that. What details do you need me to say?”

Joshua looked at Jan, who fought to keep from smiling at his offer.

The three former classmates were sitting on the Connor family sun porch, which looked out onto the street where a group of children were playing kickball. Karl was drinking what could not possibly be his first beer of the day while they sipped iced teas.

Joshua replied, “Margo killed who?”

“Her first husband.” he answered. “Isn’t that what you’re here about?”

Jan’s ears perked up. She recalled that Margo’s first husband was killed in his dental office while working late one night. “I thought she had an alibi for his murder.” She turned to the prosecutor for the answer to her question.

Joshua was surprised not only by the news that Margo had been married before she married Karl, but that her first husband had been murdered.

“She was married for only a couple of years,” Jan explained. “That was after you had gone to Annapolis. She got a job working as a receptionist for his dental office and—”

“Stole him from his wife and kid,” Karl finished.

She added, “He was, like, fifteen years older than her. It was a classic Margo scandal.”

“And he was murdered?” The thought of another unsolved murder was daunting to the prosecutor.

Karl answered, “Yeah, he was stabbed while she was giving a big dinner party for her real estate friends. I can say that she told me while we were having sex that she paid someone to do it. Who do you want me to say she hired?”

“Karl, I do not work that way. I want to know the truth.”

“Truth is a foreign object to Margo.”

“Gail Reynolds was investigating Tricia Wheeler’s death,” Jan told him.

“That cheerleader who killed herself?”

“She didn’t kill herself,” Joshua announced. “Do you remember that she and Margo got into this big fight at lunch the same day Trish was shot? Now I seem to recall that you and Margo had a thing going back in school.”

“Hey, it was just sex, man. That was the one thing we were good at.”

“Did she ever tell you anything about Tricia?”

“She told me she was a bitch,” Karl said. “I didn’t think so. Trish was nice and had a hot body. Margo hated that. She was so jealous of her that she couldn’t see straight.”

“Do you remember when Trish died?” Joshua asked. “It was after school on a Monday.”

“ ’Course I remember that. Everyone does.”

“Do you know where Margo was?”

“You want to know the truth, huh?” Karl frowned. “She was with me, damn it. We went out to Adam’s apple orchard and was doing it in the back of my car. We were there until dark. But I can say that she wasn’t. It’d be her word against mine.”

Joshua looked at Jan with regret. Margo didn’t kill Tricia.

“When was the last time you saw Tricia?” she asked.

“Same time as Margo. When we were leaving school. Phyllis Barlow was harping on Trish about something.”

“Phyllis Barlow?” Joshua repeated the name.

“She was always harping on someone about something. Well, that day she was chasing after Trish, picking at her like some damn vulture.”

“What about?”

Karl’s answer was a shrug with raised eyebrows. He then suggested, “Cindy Patterson might know. They left together. I think Phyllis was still bitchin’ when they drove off in Cindy’s car. I remember it real good because it was the last time I ever saw Trish.”

“Yeah, I’ll check with Cindy to see what that was about.” Joshua was thinking of others who might be able to tell him what Phyllis was fighting with her about.

“What about Gail?” Karl interrupted his thoughts. “You want me to say Margo killed her?”

“Karl, all I want from you is the truth,” he asserted.

Jan shifted the topic. “Do you recall the Valentine’s Day dance following Tricia’s murder?”

Karl laughed. “No.”

Joshua prompted him with a reminder. “It was the Valentine’s Day dance in our senior year. Beth Davis and I got engaged that night.”

He responded with sarcasm, “Yeah, I remember the night the king and queen got engaged. Then, the king dumped his queen the second he got out of the kingdom.”

“My only crime was growing up.”

Jan gestured towards his beer mug. “I seem to recall seeing a bunch of jocks out in the parking lot drinking beer and shots.”

Karl scoffed. “So what if a bunch of us was drinking in the parking lot? There was always a bunch of us out there drinking during the dances.”

“I have a very good memory,” she stated. “So does Gail’s sister. She says that Gail was drinking with the football team. You were one of them.”

Joshua saw fear in Karl’s expression. “Was Gail with you guys?”

“What if she was?” Karl answered too firmly.

“She got drunk,” Jan told him, “and someone took advantage of her.”

“So?”

“She got pregnant.”

“I heard that was Josh’s baby.”

Joshua told him, “I was with Beth all that night.”     

“Are you sure you didn’t leave her for a little while to go out to your van and relieve yourself?”

Joshua drained his glass of iced tea before asking casually, “When was the last time you saw Heather?”

“A couple of months ago. You’d never know we lived less than twenty minutes from each other. Would you believe I pay child support for a kid I never get to see? Margo turned her against me. She spends more time in Steubenville with her friends than she does with me.”

“What friends?”

“Don’t know. Never met them. Once, I saw her at the mall with this girl—didn’t even introduce me—acted like she didn’t know me.”

“What did the girl look like?”

“She had orange hair.” Karl looked at Joshua. “Why are you asking me all these questions? You don’t think Heather killed Gail, do you?”

“She is the alibi for our chief suspect in Grace Henderson’s murder.”

“If Heather says she was with this guy, she was.” He stood up to his full height. “You got that, Thornton?”

“Yes.” Joshua stood up and looked him in the eye. His expression betrayed no fear. “But if she is lying, I will find that out.”

Jan stepped between the two men. “It was good seeing you again, Karl.”

He kept his glare on the prosecutor and the reporter while they climbed into his Corvette to go on to New Cumberland.

The Corvette came to a halt at the red light at the edge of Newell. Jan observed Joshua’s sports coat and tie. The scent of his aftershave excited her senses. “You look good today.”

“Thank you. I thought I always looked good.” He shot a grin in her direction. When the light turned green, he hit the gas and they raced along the river toward New Cumberland.

“You look especially good today. Court appearance?”

“No.”

She frowned. “Date with Tori Brody?”

“I’m not going out with Tori. Jan, I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t think that you had anything going on with Gail and I turned out to be wrong.”

“One time!” Joshua held up his index finger to make his point. “One time, twenty years ago! We were kids and why am I telling you this? I don’t owe you any explanation for my behavior!”

Miserably, Jan stared out the passenger window of the car. They were racing along the river. She widened her eyes in an attempt not to let him see the tears forming.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I am so sorry.”

She sniffed. “I took the liberty of looking into the history of that guy who tried to run Tad down,” she said more brightly than she wanted to sound. “Lou Alcott and his wife have been married for three years, and both have been cheating on each other left and right since day one.”

“Tad swears he did not sleep with Judy Alcott. The police in East Liverpool think Lou thought he was and that was why he tried to run him down. Tad says it was road rage.”

“I may have another motive,” Jan said. “Lou drove a delivery truck for Dell Appliance, an appliance distributor in East Liverpool. Judy works as a clerk in a real estate office. Guess whose.”

“Margo’s?”

“Yep.”

“Do you think she hired her clerk’s husband to run the county medical examiner down so he wouldn’t find any incriminating evidence for us to use against her?”

“Or her daughter,” she suggested.

“Margo has to be smart enough to know that if Tad died, the county would get another medical examiner. Besides, we just found out that she couldn’t have killed Trish because she has an alibi for the time of her murder. She was having sex with Karl.”

“And her daughter was having sex with Billy when her rival was killed.”

Joshua discovered the similarities in Tricia’s and Grace’s murders. “Like mother, like daughter.”

“You insulted me.” Tori had slipped into Joshua’s office when Mary left to deliver a warrant to the sheriff. She was waiting for him in the chair across from his desk after he returned from his interview with Karl Connor.

“I have a lot of work to do. If you don’t have any business to discuss, then I would like you to leave,” Joshua hung up his sports coat and sat behind his desk.

Tori shifted tactics. “Do you intend to keep our agreement for the Rollins case?”

“What agreement?” He had forgotten about the deal he made with Tori in regard to Phyllis shooting her husband.

“That if Phyllis testified against Rex then you would not charge her for shooting him.”

“Now that Rex is dead, she doesn’t have to testify, does she? She doesn’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”

“She isn’t a suspect in her husband’s killing, is she?”

“There’s a reason the spouse of the victim is usually the prime suspect.” With a cock of his head, he told her, “He never changed the beneficiary on his life insurance. She just came into a cool one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Tori sat up straight at this news. “My client did not kill anyone.”

“What about Tricia Wheeler?”

“The Glendale Vindicator says that you killed her.”

“I never had any disagreement with Tricia about anything,” he told her. “But I have a witness who saw your client arguing with her only hours before she was killed.”

“Do you now suspect her of killing Tricia Wheeler, too?” Tori scoffed.

“Maybe. Rex was telling people that he wrote a book about the wicked witch who got away with murder. He was married to Phyllis. He had a beef with her. She lived next door to Tricia.”

“If you had any real evidence, my client would be at the police station.”

“That may come later.”

“You have a real problem, Josh,” she replied angrily. “Back in school you blamed me for my boyfriend attacking you, and now you are blaming me for a newspaper slamming you—all because of my reputation. Now, you are accusing Phyllis Rollins of two murders based on what? Because she called a stuck-up bitch a few names twenty years ago? How much do you want to bet that if she was lucky enough to get to sit in your lap back then that you would not be so fast to put her on your suspect list?” She concluded, “And if I didn’t grow up in a trailer park down by the race track that you would be more accepting of me?”

“You are out of your mind.” Joshua gritted his teeth. He hated saying what he was about to say, “Ms. Brody, I am sick and tired of you harassing me. Yes, I said harassing. I have rejected your offer for us to have a sexual relationship and you have done nothing to change my mind. On the contrary, I am less interested than I was the first time you came into my office. In the future, I will only see you to discuss your clients’ cases when you have an appointment. If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to report you to the public defender. Have I made myself clear?”

“You son of a bitch!” she hissed.

“It is best if you leave now.”

She made it to the door before she stopped, picked up the silver water pitcher in which he kept fresh water on a tray on the end table, and hurled it across the room at him. While the pitcher missed him, the water did not. It spilled across his desk, his papers, and him.

“Damn!”

She ran out.

Cursing women in general, he found a roll of paper towels in the outer office to mop up the water that had dripped onto the floor.

“Now that’s a sight worth flying halfway across the world to see: Commander Joshua Thornton on his knees at my feet.”

The lilt of her New England accent caused him to stop mopping. “Hank?” He sat back on his haunches and looked back over his shoulder at her.

Hank, a nickname she credited to Joshua shortly after she was assigned to him as his assistant in San Francisco, was slender from a life born to the outdoors. Her jeans hung low on her hips. Her white T-shirt was short enough to reveal a hint of her flat stomach. Her old Navy blue pea coat hung open. Hank was at an age when most women would have switched to less formfitting clothes, but her build and lifestyle let her put that off a while longer. A New England Patriots ball cap covered her shaggy reddish-brown hair, which was cut in short curly layers so that she didn’t have to spend much time taking care of it. Her purse consisted of a backpack that she had slung over her shoulders.

“What happened here?” She observed the flood.

“Women.” He climbed to his feet.

“They’re still chasing you, I see.”

“Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.” He gazed at her as if for reassurance that he was not imagining her presence in his office. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Hank slipped the backpack off her shoulders and propped it against the wall. She then took off the coat and draped it over the backpack. “From your message, I gathered you needed a lawyer. Being railroaded by a boob for murdering Gail Reynolds. That’s serious stuff, and a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” She held out her arms. “So here I am.”

He took her into his arms. When her body made contact with his, he felt a wave of warmth flow through him that he had not felt for a long time. He tightened his arms around her and brushed his cheek against her ball cap. “I’m glad you came. It’s good to see you again.”

She smiled up at him. “It’s good to hear you say that.”

Joshua offered her the chair that Tori had vacated moments before. “There’s a lot we have to go over if you are going to be defending me.”

She sat down. “Civilian life hasn’t changed you one bit. Still work now; play later.”

He handed her a yellow notepad. “Valerie used to say that she hoped that you could loosen me up a little.”

“I miss Val.” She reached for the pen he offered her. “How are the kids?”

“Good.” When he realized that their fingers were touching, he released the pen with the quickness of an electric shock.

“And you? How are you doing?”

“Everyone thinks I’m a lady killer—figurative and literal.” He swallowed the frustration that he felt creeping into his tone. “How do you think I’m doing?”

“Anyone who knows you knows that you would never do that.” She lowered her eyes to the notepad. “Tell me about Gail. What was she doing here?”

Joshua tried to be brief while still giving as many details as possible of the series of murders that had occurred since Gail arrived in town, until her death, which revealed her obsession with him.

“Well,” Hank mused, “that explains why she kept showing up every time we were assigned to a major case. I suspected that she had the hots for you. This proves it.” She tapped the pen against the notepad. “Do you think Gail’s murder is connected to that cheerleader you went to school with?”

“A murder made to look like a suicide. The killer gets away with it. Then, twenty years later, a journalist decides to write a book—”

“And a second cheerleader is killed.”

He interrupted her. “Grace Henderson’s murder has nothing to do with this.”

“A cheerleader is murdered then and a cheerleader is murdered now. You can’t ignore that.”

“I have one or two suspects for the Henderson murder. All I need is to break an alibi, which will probably happen as soon as a romance is broken up.”

“What do you have on the Wheeler murder?”

“Nothing. There is no physical evidence whatsoever.”

She laughed. “Stop kidding me. What about the murder weapon?”

He shook his head. “I wish we had it. Every ten years the county cleans house. They throw out everything they don’t need, including the physical evidence on closed cases. Since her case was closed as a suicide, her evidence box was disposed of—including the gun used to kill her.”

“Don’t you have anything?”

He held up a folder. “The case file and that’s it. Tad is still hunting—”

“Who is Tad?” She snatched the case file out of his hand. It contained nothing but a simple form, typed up on a typewriter, a narrative by the former sheriff, copies of internal memos and a couple letters.

“My cousin,” Joshua answered her. “He knows everyone and everything. He’s also the county medical examiner. He thinks that he might be able to find the former medical examiner’s file with the pictures of the crime scene. I’m hoping that that old pack rat kept more detailed records that would be of help. That’s one advantage to pack rats. They don’t clean house.” He checked his watch and put on his sports coat.

She looked up from where she was studying the narrative of Tricia Wheeler’s death. “Where are you going?”

“I have an appointment. I guess since we are working together again, you’re coming with me.” He was surprised to hear himself say, “Then we can go have dinner.”

“Who is the appointment with?” Hank noted that she was not dressed for any legal hearings.

He picked up the scent of the outdoors in her hair when he reached behind her to pick up her backpack. “Tricia’s best friend.”

Tricia’s best friend, Cindy Patterson, was now Cindy Rodgers. Shortly after high school, she quit her job as a grocery store clerk to marry an older boy she had met at a Catholic youth retreat. The Rodgers family owned a plant nursery outside the park on Tomlinson Run Road. The greenhouse rested along a creek at the end of a steep dirt road behind their home, which was in a constant state of renovation.

Cindy fell close to a foot shorter than Joshua. Weighing just over a hundred pounds, she was the one on top of the pyramid when she was cheerleader. He recalled that no party was complete without the jocks picking her up and tossing her around. She had put on a few pounds, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.