A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (24 page)

“Is that what happened?” Tad took a step towards him.

In a flash, the gun was no longer at Doug’s side. He aimed it at Tad. In the other hand, he clutched the ring like a lifeline.

Jan dropped down to crouch on the floor. “Josh! Hurry! Please! I think he’s going to shoot Tad!”

Chapter Nineteen

Holding up his hands, Tad stepped back from Doug and the gun. “Take it easy, man! I came here to help you.”

Jan had crawled back behind the china closet.

All was still. No one moved.

Joshua held his breath and prayed.

“Doug,” Tad spoke in a calm tone. “Give me the gun.”

The man with the gun wavered.

“I’m your friend. Have I ever hurt you?” Tad asked.

“Phyllis says that I’m not a good judge of people. I’m smart when it comes to things in books, but not when it comes to people.”

“I think you are a good judge of people, Doug. You were right about Trish, weren’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“She gave you that ring. A girl doesn’t give a guy her class ring if she doesn’t love him, does she?”

Doug wavered more. He gazed at the ring he clutched in his hand. “Yeah, Phyllis said she didn’t love me, but she gave me this ring.”

While Doug gazed at the ring in his hand, Tad inched towards him. “You were right there, Doug, and you’re right about me being your friend. You don’t want to hurt me. Give me the gun.” Tad’s hand was on the gun.

The doorbell rang. “Dr. MacMillan! Deputy Jones with the Hancock County Sheriff Department. Are you okay in there?”

Jones’s question was answered with a gunshot.

When he heard the shot come across the phone line, Joshua yelled and dropped into his chair.

Donny took in a sharp breath and tried to think of what to do to help the situation. He decided to call for help from his sisters and brothers.

Miles away in Birch Hollow, Deputy Jones kicked in the door and ran inside the house with his gun drawn.

The scene that greeted him was that of one man on his knees clutching a bloody hand while the other man stood over him with a gun.

A screaming woman was crawling towards the man with the bleeding hand.

“Drop the gun now!” Deputy Jones took aim on Doug, who looked at him.

“He said drop it!” Deputy Pete Hockenberry appeared in the doorway behind Deputy Jones with his gun drawn. He made it just in time to back up the rookie.

Seeing both guns pointed in his direction, Tad threw himself across the room to tackle Jan. Together they rolled across the floor until they landed with his body on top of her under the dining-room table. It was too late now for him to do anything to help Doug.

Doug smiled broadly.

Tad observed that it was the happiest he had ever seen his patient in all the years that he had known him.

“I’m coming, my love!” Then, Doug Barlow took aim on the deputies and fired a shot that missed them both by a mile.

The law officers did not have time to check out his aim. They only had and took the time to experience the jolting fear of having a shot fired at them. They had no choice but to fire their weapons in self-defense.

Hancock County Medical Examiner Dr. Tad MacMillan ruled Doug Barlow’s death as suicide by cop.

The woman known in the valley as an ice queen dissolved into tears. She was rousted out of bed in her cell and brought back down to the conference room to be told that her brother was dead after confessing to Dr. Tad MacMillan and Jan Martin that he killed Tricia Wheeler.

Phyllis broke down at the news.

Jan had driven Tad to the emergency room to get his hand bandaged up. It had been grazed by the bullet when the gun went off while he was attempting to take it from Doug.

Joshua and Curt sat across from Phyllis while Ruth comforted her client the best she could. Even the seasoned professional hadn’t realized that her confession to Tricia’s murder was a lie. If she had, she would never have let her do it.

While Phyllis sobbed, Joshua did his best to piece together what had happened for the sheriff and the public defender.

“When you got home on the bus after school that day, you could not find Doug. While you were looking for him, Cindy brought Tricia home and she went inside her house, which was just across the yard from yours.”

Joshua waited for her to confirm he was right with a nod before he proceeded. “That was when Doug shot Trish.”

Phyllis broke into loud sobs and dropped her head onto the table. Ruth patted her shoulder. Having anticipated the emotional scene, Joshua handed her a handkerchief he had brought along. He waited for her to wipe her face and regain enough control to choke out, “It was an accident!”

“I have no doubt that it was.”

Phyllis gave a hint of a smile of relief.

Joshua continued, “Doug had decided to kill himself because he came to realize that he could never have the woman he loved, but he could not do it without telling Tricia good-bye. So, he went home to get your father’s pistol. He had a key to the Wheeler house because it was rented from your family. Tricia found him waiting for her when she got home.”

He held up the picture of Tricia with the diamond necklace around her neck. “He brought this along to give to her as a good-bye present. When she saw that he intended to kill himself, she took the necklace to placate him while she tried to talk him out of doing it. The chain was too short to fit around the turtleneck of her cheerleading uniform, so she had to put it on under the sweater. Otherwise, her mother would have seen it and guessed what happened.”

Phyllis’s exhausted sobs were the only noise in the room.

Joshua resumed, “She must have still had her purse because her things spilled onto the floor, probably while trying to get the gun from him.”

Unable to speak, Phyllis nodded.

“After Tricia was killed, you cleaned up any evidence that Doug had been there and made her comfortable on the sofa. What you didn’t notice in your cleaning up was that Doug had found her class ring and taken it.”

“I didn’t know he had her ring until days after he killed her.” Even with the tears in her eyes, Phyllis had found strength to go on. “One day I walked into his room, and there he was with the ring. It became his most prized possession. I asked him where he got it, and he said that Tricia gave it to him. He totally forgot that he killed her! He had this whole story of how she loved him and killed herself because they could not be together, and she was waiting for him on the other side!”

She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I was so afraid that they would find out and he’d go to jail or some insane asylum. That nut has been wearing that ring all along under his shirt. So, I told him that he had to make sure no one ever saw it or they would take it from him, which is the truth.”

The sheriff asked her, “What about those times he was committed? How is it that no one in the hospital discovered it?”

“I’d keep it for him. When I went to visit, he would always ask to see it. So I’d have to bring it along with me to show him and let him hold it.”

“Did your parents ever know?” Joshua inquired.

She scoffed, “My father never even noticed the gun was missing. Sheriff Delaney never asked him if the gun was his. Delaney didn’t ask us anything. He said it was a suicide and left it at that.”

“But Rex knew.”

Phyllis was startled by his statement.

The prosecutor speculated, “Rex was working on the farm that day. He knew Doug killed her and he knew you covered up for him. So, he threatened to turn Doug in unless you married him.”

She sniffed. “Is that what he wrote in his book?”

Ruth interrupted him, “Now that you got her off the hook for killing Tricia Wheeler, are you going to try to hang her husband’s murder on my client?”

“No,” Joshua answered. “As a matter of fact, if you give me a chance, I can get her off the hook for Gail Reynolds’s murder, also.”

The public defender was surprised.                                                            

“Are you sure that you didn’t see anyone at Gail’s house that night?” Joshua warned her, “Think carefully before you answer.”

The media had said that Karl Connor was arrested for killing Gail but had given no details to the murder.

“I wasn’t there,” she confessed. “After I closed up the café I couldn’t find Doug. He’d never disappeared before. He was really upset about Gail and Mrs. Wheeler being there that night talking about Tricia. I went out looking for him.”

“Was he afraid that they were going to find out about him killing her?” Curt asked.

Phyllis shook her head. “He didn’t really care about that. He was afraid that Gail was going to make Tricia out to be a slut or a stuck-up bitch or something. You know how reporters are. Everyone is always looking for a skeleton in everyone’s closet.”

Joshua had to agree. “When and where did you find him?”

“I found him walking along Route 30 after two o’clock in the morning. I had no idea what he had done until Tuesday when the news said that Gail was killed. I asked him and he flat out said that he went to her place and waited in her closet and then smothered her with a pillow.” She looked from him to the sheriff. “If anyone had asked him, he would have said that he did it. He had no idea that he did anything wrong.”

“What about Rex?” Joshua suspected the answer.

“Neither of us killed Rex.”

“My client is now off the hook for both murders,” Ruth stated with the first sense of confidence she’d had since she was called for the middle-of-the-night meeting. “As of now, you have nothing against her.”

“Accessory after the fact,” Joshua responded.

“She was protecting her brother.”

“The law does not draw the line at family members when it comes to accessory.”

“Tell that to a jury.”

“Cool it, Ruth. I don’t think your client killed Rex.” He looked at Phyllis. “Rex blackmailed you. That’s why you dropped out of school to marry a man who didn’t have a steady job and beat you when he was drunk. You’re too strong a woman to stay married to an abusive husband. What you have accomplished against all odds proves that.”

She sat up straight and regarded him with surprise. “What have I accomplished?”

“You built a successful business while taking care of an ill brother, even though you were in an abusive relationship. You had the strength to stand up to Rex and throw him out. And then you sat here and faced a lifetime locked up in jail for two murders that you didn’t commit in order to protect your brother.” He touched her hand. “Phyllis, you’ve made sacrifices for others your whole life. Not everybody is that unselfish. You are awesome.”

“So she’s free to go?” Ruth snapped and rubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray she carried in her purse. “I assume in your admiration that you are dropping the accessory charges.”

“While I admit the evidence we have against your client as far as accessory is circumstantial, it is indeed damaging, and I think a jury, even without a confession, would know what she did.”

He sat back and directed his comments to Phyllis even though he was speaking to her lawyer. “I am in a position to not file any charges. I’ll be the first to admit that it would be a loser case. The jury will refuse to convict out of sympathy. This whole thing has been a horrible tragedy all the way around. I would like to put an end to it and let us all move on as best we can. I’m asking for her help. I’m not going to play hardball. We are all too tired for that. I’m asking her to help me out simply because she can.”

“How can I possibly help you?” Phyllis asked suspiciously.

“I think you have information and can offer testimony in catching your husband’s killer.”

Ruth shook her head. “Why would she care to catch his killer?”

“He cared enough for Doug to not turn him in to the police after she kicked him out.”

“I don’t know who killed Rex,” Phyllis insisted.

“You know more than you think you know. That information can help us to bring justice in more than one murder.” He ignored her lawyer’s scoffing. “I’m going to get this killer with or without your help. It will be easier with it.”

“How are you doing?”

Joshua stepped into Tad’s apartment without knocking when he saw him sitting at the kitchen table with his bandaged hand and wrist stretched out before him. Only his fingers were left exposed. The doctor had spent the night in the emergency room as a patient.

“I’ve been better,” Tad said before rising from his chair and going to the counter to make a pot of coffee.

“Hey, Tad, you would never believe what Ziggy just told me.” Clutching her cell phone, Jan rushed in from the bedroom. She stopped when she saw Joshua. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and she was dressed in the same clothes she had worn the day before.

Despite the frigid cold, Tad was shirtless and dressed in a pair of blue jeans that had seen better days.

“Hello, Jan,” Joshua said.

“Hi, Josh.” Her eyes wide with embarrassment, she stammered out the reason for her outburst. “I was talking to Ziggy at The Review—dictating my story about last night—and he said that the AP has just released a report that Seth Cavanaugh was arrested in Los Angeles.”

Tad stopped spooning coffee into the filter with his hand in midair. “Are you talking about our Seth Cavanaugh?”

Joshua said to Jan, “You’re kidding.”

She was shaking her head. “No, it’s true. Yesterday, the Quincy brothers were released from prison. Their lawyer’s private detective proved that they did not kill their parents. It was their uncle.”

Tad said, “Sounds like Cavanaugh was a screw up even before he came to Chester.”

“More than a screwup,” Jan announced. “He was arrested for accepting a bribe and tampering with evidence.”

“Then I was right about him,” Joshua said. “He did take a bribe from Margo to steal the evidence placing Billy on the scene when Grace was killed.”

“I guess it wasn’t his first time,” Jan continued. “The PI found evidence that Seth found out about the uncle committing the murders and accepted a payoff to keep quiet about it. Not only did he accept a bribe, but he tampered with evidence to ensure that the Quincy brothers were convicted, which made them ineligible to inherit their folks’ estate. Once they went to jail, the uncle got it all. But now Uncle Quincy is going to jail … and so is Seth Cavanaugh, as soon as they get him back to West Virginia.”

Joshua surmised, “Seth didn’t give Curt two weeks’ notice before taking off for California. I wonder if one of his friends in Parkersburg gave him a heads up about what was going down.”

“Since he’s in jail now awaiting extradition to West Virginia, I guess he didn’t get enough of a heads up,” Tad said with a wicked grin.

“Jan, you just made my day,” Joshua said.

She was equally happy. “Tad, do you have anything for us to drink in a toast to justice?”

“The orange juice is in the fridge.” Having lost count of how many spoonfuls of coffee he had put into the coffeemaker, Tad emptied the filter and started over.

“How’s your hand?” Joshua sat on top of the kitchen table.