Broken Places (7 page)
“He was trying to get a factory built here a few years ago,” Dennis said, “and he raised some money to promote that, but nothing came of it. I doubt any one person gave him more than a hundred bucks, though.”
“The Hogencamp girl who works for Hern,” Tom said, “her dad had a beef with Taylor, and Rachel said she brought it up when Taylor was at Hern’s house. She accused him of stealing from her family. Remember that fight we had to break up about a year ago? Taylor landed in the hospital with some pretty bad injuries, and Dave Hogencamp had to be treated in the emergency room. Neither of them filed charges, but we gave both of them citations for disturbing the peace. Maybe Dave decided to finish what he started.”
“Aw, now,” the sheriff put in, “Dave’s a good man. He might lose his temper, but he wouldn’t murder two people. He sure wouldn’t do something like
that
to a woman.” He gestured at the medical examiner’s report that described what her killer had done to Meredith.
“I’m going to question him,” Tom said.
That brought a sigh and a sad shake of the head from the sheriff, but he didn’t object. “Who were Cam and Meredith in touch with recently? Have you got their phone records yet?”
“Just the call log on Cam’s cell phone so far,” Tom said. “Nothing unusual showed up. Most of his calls were to and from Meredith, when she was at home and he was out. Cam talked a couple of days ago to the guy who used to sell ads for the paper. A two-minute conversation. On the morning he was killed, the only person he talked to was Meredith, calling him from home.”
“Could it be two people working together?” Brandon said. “One killed Cam, one killed Meredith and set the fire.”
“I’m not ruling anything out,” Tom said. “If two people are involved, there’s always a chance one of them will slip up and catch our attention.”
“Well,” the sheriff said, rising, “keep me updated. Tom, you going to the bank this morning?”
“Right.” Tom stood. “Lindsay’s meeting me here, then I’ll head over to see whether Meredith kept any secrets hidden in her safe deposit box.”
Tom swung open his office door and stopped in his tracks. Lindsay sat behind his desk, holding a sheet of paper in one hand and wearing the startled expression of an interrupted burglar.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tom marched across the room and snatched the paper from her.
The trapped look gave way to indignation. “I’m trying to get the information you won’t give me.”
“Lindsay,” he said, making an effort to keep his voice down, “you’re not going to read the file. You’re not going to be part of the investigation. I thought we settled that yesterday.” He scooped up the papers she’d spread over his desk and slid them back into the file jacket.
Lindsay stood and crossed her arms. “You’ve got witnesses. I want to know what they saw and heard. I have a right.”
How much had she read? How long had she been sitting here? “Look,” Tom said, softening his voice, “what you have a right to is justice for your parents. I’ll do my damnedest to give you that. But you have to let me do my job without interference.”
“Rachel saw something, didn’t she?” Lindsay demanded. “Or heard something. I want to know what it was, Tommy. Why won’t you tell me?”
So he’d walked in on her before she had a chance to read Rachel’s statement. Maybe her imagination was worse than the simple truth, but Tom would not let the daughter of the victims plow through what little evidence he had.
“I thought you trusted me,” he said.
“I do! But—”
“If you’re going to interfere, you can forget about going with me to the bank. I’ll get a warrant and have the box drilled. If you can’t let me do my job, I don’t want you there.”
Lindsay sighed and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again, she said, “Okay. All right. You don’t have to go to all that trouble. I’ll open the box for you, and I’ll behave myself. I promise.”
***
Within a few minutes the oblong safe deposit box sat on a table next to the evidence lockbox Tom had brought, and he and Lindsay were left alone in a tiny room next to the bank’s vault.
While Tom pulled on latex gloves, Lindsay stood with her gaze riveted on the box and her hands so tightly clasped that her knuckles went white. Since the day before, Tom realized, shock had set in, and the reality of her parents’ murders had left Lindsay looking disconnected, as if she couldn’t anchor herself in the present.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure.” Her voice wobbled. “I’m just really freaked out by all this. It’s surreal.”
Tom removed two manila envelopes with PHOTOS written on them with black marker, an envelope labeled MARRIAGE/BIRTH CERTIFICATES, and one labeled ESTATE TRUST. “Would this be the trust your grandfather set up when you were born? It was for you, right?”
Lindsay nodded. “I have a copy too. The payments went to Mom while I was growing up, to help take care of me. A whopping one hundred and fifty dollars a month.”
“Are you still getting money from it?”
“Oh, yeah, since I turned eighteen, but I’ve been sending it to Mom for years. She needed it more than I did. I can’t cash out the trust until I’m forty. Dear old granddad was a real control freak.”
“At least he cared enough to try to help.”
Lindsay expelled a short laugh. “Yeah, sure. My grandmother badgered him into setting it up. Then he felt like he’d done his good deed, so he left Mom out of his will completely.”
Tom let the subject drop and moved on. He placed the four envelopes in the lockbox and wrote a description of each item on an evidence log sheet. Returning to the safe deposit box, he picked up a clear plastic CD case. The disc inside had RED MOON written on the label area.
“Any idea what this is?”
“One of my mom’s novels. The manuscript file.”
“There are some more of them in here,” he said. “Four, five, six—there must be nearly a dozen CDs here. Did she write that many books?”
Lindsay nodded and blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. “She kept writing and writing and all she ever got published were stories in the newspaper and a few little articles in a regional magazine. So much wasted effort.”
Tom couldn’t come up with anything to say. He didn’t know what it would take to write a novel, but he knew it wasn’t easy, and writing book after book that no one wanted to publish had to be devastating. He placed the CDs in his evidence box and noted them on the log.
“Do you have to take them?”
“I need to verify what’s on them. I can’t take a chance on missing something relevant to the case.”
She exhaled. “Right.”
At the bottom of the box Tom found several blue velvet cases of different sizes and shapes, the kind jewelry came in. “Do you recognize these?”
“No.” Lindsay’s face had suddenly come alive with curiosity.
Tom picked up the longest of the cases, opened it. He and Lindsay stared at a necklace, a broad gold band set with diamonds. Tom whistled. “Is this real?”
Lindsay leaned into him, her eyes on the necklace. “Oh, yeah, it’s real. It belonged to Mom’s Aunt Julia. But she didn’t leave Mom anything in her will. I thought that was really strange at the time because they were so close. I wonder if…I’ll bet she gave Mom this stuff before she died. She asked Mom to go see her in New York last fall. That was just a few weeks before Aunt Julia died.”
“You didn’t know your mother had the jewelry?”
“No.”
Tom opened the rest of the jewelry boxes one by one. Diamond rings, bracelets, earrings. A fortune in jewelry. “Why was she keeping it all,” he asked, “if she wasn’t going to use any of it? Why stash it here? Do you think she was keeping it for you?”
Lindsay laughed, a humorless gust of breath. “As if I’ll ever have any reason to wear stuff like this. I don’t know why she hung onto it. One thing I’m sure of—Dad didn’t know about it. He would have made her sell it all to save the newspaper.”
“She cared about the paper too,” Tom said. “Seems to me that saving it
would have mattered more to her than a lot of jewelry she’d never wear.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Tommy, except…She didn’t care about the paper the way Dad did. I guess she didn’t want to pour any more money into a lost cause. Dad couldn’t face the truth, he couldn’t give up his dream any more than Mom could give up hers, but I’m sure she knew the newspaper couldn’t be saved.” Lindsay drew a deep breath and let it out. “If they’d sold the jewelry, they would have been able to start fresh, do something better with their lives.”
Tom placed all the jewelry in the evidence box. “I’ll keep these under lock and key, and I won’t let it get out that we have them.”
“There’s one more thing.” Lindsay pointed into the safe deposit box.
He pulled out another manila envelope. Brown packaging tape secured the flap. He could feel the shape of a CD case inside. Why wasn’t it lying loose like the other discs? What had made this one different, special, in Meredith’s mind? It couldn’t be yet another unsold book.
Tom placed the envelope in the evidence box. “I’ll wait and open it back at headquarters.”
Rachel smiled as she listened to Simon in the back seat, solemnly instructing Billy Bob about how to handle a horse, as if the bulldog planned to take up riding. “The most important thing you gotta remember is, you gotta stay cool and show the horse who’s the boss. Horses can smell it if you’re scared of them. Miss Joanna told me that.”
Rachel couldn’t let go of her curiosity about Simon’s reaction to Lindsay, but she didn’t want to spoil his happy mood by asking about it now.
When they pulled into the driveway of Darla and Grady Duncan’s rambling Victorian house, Darla rose from a rocker on the porch and came down the steps to greet them. Tall and thin, with light brown hair, she had none of her grandson’s striking features. Simon got his looks from the Bridger side of his family.
“Hey, you two,” Darla said when Simon and Billy Bob tumbled out of the vehicle. From the grass stains and dirt smudges on her khaki slacks, Rachel guessed that Darla had taken advantage of Simon’s absence to get some serious gardening done. “Have fun?”
“Yeah!” Simon ran over to hug her. “And Miss Joanna gave me chocolate cake for lunch.”
“But not until after the soup and sandwich,” Rachel clarified.
Darla laughed. “Simon always goes straight to the most exciting part of the story.”
“Come on.” Simon grabbed Rachel’s hand. “You have to see Mr. Piggles.”
“You run on ahead,” Darla told him. “Rachel will catch up.”
Simon charged up the front steps and into the house, with Billy Bob in hot pursuit. When Simon was out of earshot, Darla said, “I heard a while ago about that Taylor girl staying with Joanna. I never would’ve let Simon go over there if I’d known she was there.”
“Lindsay had to go into town, so he wasn’t around her long,” Rachel said as they walked to the house. “I couldn’t help noticing that Simon doesn’t like her. What’s that about?”
“He can see through her. She’s a nasty little piece of work. I never could understand why Tom took up with her again. Well, that’s behind him now, thank god.” Darla paused. “You know, Tom and I have had our problems, but I’m trying to get past that for Simon’s sake. I’m glad he found you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to him. Don’t you let Lindsay Taylor get her claws into him again.”
“I’ll do everything I can to prevent it.” Rachel smiled, but she wondered what she was up against and whether she could trump the years of intimacy Lindsay had shared with Tom.
Inside the house, she climbed the broad, winding stairs to Simon’s room. Billy Bob was already stretched out on the rug, eyes drooping. Simon was talking to Mr. Piggles, a butterscotch and white guinea pig who resided in an enormous cage on a table along one wall.
Rachel leaned down to look in at Simon’s pet. “Hey, there, Mr. Piggles, how are you today?”
The guinea pig responded by rushing to a corner of the cage and grabbing a tiny plastic bowl in his teeth. Facing Rachel again, he waved the little bowl at her while he squeaked.
“Who could resist that act?” Laughing, Rachel took a peanut from the bag Simon produced and reached through the wires of the cage to drop it into the bowl. Mr. Piggles scurried away and disappeared into a box that served as a private den. “Hey, you could say thanks, at least.”
“Rachel?” Simon slipped his small hand into hers.
Rachel looked down into the boy’s troubled eyes. His ebullient mood had evaporated. “What is it, Simon? What’s wrong?”
“She’s not gonna be Uncle Tom’s girlfriend again, is she? Lindsay, I mean.”
“No,” Rachel said. “I promise you that won’t happen.”
***
Back at headquarters, Tom logged the items from Meredith’s bank box into the evidence register and placed everything except the sealed envelope in the evidence room safe. Checking his watch, he debated whether to take a look at the CD in the envelope now or head out to question Angie Hogencamp and her father. The CD won. He took it into his office.
Waiting for his computer to boot up, Tom sifted through the stack of call-back messages on his desk. Newspapers and TV stations in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and other big cities wanted more details about the death of Senator Abbott’s daughter and her husband. By tomorrow out of town reporters would be on the ground in Mountainview, but for now he didn’t have to deal with them. He crumpled the messages into a ball, dropped them in his wastebasket, and tore open the sealed envelope.
The CD he pulled out wasn’t labeled. Meredith had set it apart for some reason, but he doubted it would yield information that would lead him to the killer. It probably held nothing more than tax or medical records. Anything he could learn about the Taylors’ lives, though, might aid the investigation in unexpected ways.
He was disappointed by what came up on his computer screen—apparently the title page of yet another unsold novel, this one called
Outside Agitators
. What was special about it? Tom clicked to the opening chapter to take a quick look.
Chapter 1: September, 1968
Every fiber of my being thrilled with excitement and anticipation when I stepped off the Trailways bus with Chad and three other new V
ISTA
s in Greenview, a little mountain town in southwestern Virginia. For the first time in my twenty-one years, I was free of my parents’ supervision and doing something that demanded selfless courage.I was beginning to wonder, though, whether we had been sent by mistake to the wrong place. Greenview didn’t look desperately impoverished. It looked like an ordinary small community, surrounded by mountains dressed in gaudy autumn colors. But I reminded myself that we wouldn’t be working in town. We were destined for the hills and hollows of the county’s poorest district.
This was real life, and I was ready for it.
The other members of my training class had predicted I wouldn’t even make it this far.
Tourist.
That was what they called me. They thought I was a little rich girl who wouldn’t last a day without the luxuries of my privileged life. To them I was a naive child who joined Volunteers in Service to America for my own amusement, whose ignorance would alienate the people I was supposed to help. It didn’t seem to matter that the others had grown up in affluent middle-class homes and never experienced anything more demanding than summer camp. I came from a wealthy family, so they had to show me I was too pampered to handle the hard work ahead. I wasn’t a
serious person.Of course, I realized what the true source of their animosity was: I was the daughter of a U.S. Senator who supported the war in Vietnam and denounced protesters as unpatriotic. A lot of young people thought he was evil, and they despised me for being his daughter.
Chad, however, treated me with respect. He believed I was capable of feeling empathy for the poor and helping them make their lives better. I had fallen in love with him the moment we met. Lanky and handsome, with shaggy brown hair, blue eyes, and a charming crooked smile, Chad could have any girl he wanted, but I was the one he chose. He demonstrated his trust by telling me things he had never told anyone. He confessed that he had shot off part of one of his fingers to make himself unfit for military service, and he begged me not to think of him as a coward. Of course I didn’t. All I felt was relief that he would never be sent off to be killed in the war.
Chad also confided in me about his family. His parents owned a chain of several loan companies—he said they offered something called “pay day loans”—that made money by charging exorbitant interest on small cash loans and locking working class people into a cycle of debt they couldn’t escape. Because no one was at home in the afternoons, he often went to the loan office his mother ran, and he saw the way she manipulated people and drew them deeper into debt. He heard her threaten legal action against people who fell behind in their payments. Those experiences gave birth to Chad’s need to help others who are less fortunate. He was deeply ashamed of his parents, and he wanted, in some small way, to make up for the damage they did. He swore me to secrecy because he believed others would hold him responsible for his family’s shameful business. He knew I wouldn’t judge him for his parents’ actions, and he trusted me to honor his confidence.
Chad and I were embarking on a great adventure together. Our future could be anything we wanted to make it.
The man who ran the Marsdon County Community Action Program met us at the bus station and walked us three blocks—almost the full length of Main Street—to the CAP office. He had been a high school social studies teacher before he was hired by the antipoverty program. I expected him to give us a pep talk about the good things we would do during our year in the county. Instead, we sat on metal folding chairs for an hour while the director recited the rules we had to live by. No drinking, not so much as a beer. No loud music. No dating local young men and women. We were forbidden to lend money to the locals. We couldn’t discuss Vietnam with anyone, because this was a place where parents were proud to have their sons fight, and die, in their country’s wars, and “hippies” were despised. Local politicians regretted allowing the antipoverty program into the county and didn’t like young outsiders coming in to work with the poor. If we messed up, we would jeopardize the program and the poor would suffer. We were expected to behave with dignity and to show consideration for the people we worked among.
At the end of the meeting we received keys to the old cars we would use on the job, and we drove single-file behind the CAP director, our caravan making its way out of Greenview and into a foreign land.
The other three girls would live with local families, but I would have a place to myself, and because the CAP director was concerned about my safety, Chad was assigned a house within sight of mine.
Could it get any better than this?
I thought. As we drove, I drank in the beauty of the mountainsides, soaking up the autumn colors that reminded me of the Adirondacks, where my family had a lodge. The sad little houses we passed were mere blotches on the periphery of my vision, and I never looked directly at them.Only when I saw the one-room shack assigned to me did I start feeling panicky. The place didn’t even have running water. In every kind of weather, I would have to use the privy in the back yard and the water pump next to the back door. For heat, I would have to keep wood or coal in the potbellied stove. I stood on the front steps, watching the CAP director drive away, and I wanted to run after him, begging to be rescued.
Then Chad called out from his car, “I’ll be over in a few minutes, after I stash my stuff. Hang loose.”
I forced myself to smile to show him I wasn’t fazed, that I was ready to tackle any challenge. But secretly, I felt ashamed of my weakness.
I can last a year
, I told myself as I walked back inside my awful little house. I didn’t even have a chair, so I crossed the room, making the floorboards creak with every step, and sat on the iron-frame bed. I looked up at the single bare light bulb that dangled from the ceiling and said a prayer of thanks that I had electricity.Beneath me, I felt big, solid lumps in the thin mattress. And what was that odor rising off it?
Oh my god! Urine!
I jumped up. At the CAP office, I’d been given two sheets and a pillow case, but I didn’t think bed linen would mask the smell.One year.
I would get through this. Chad was with me, and I had my dreams of the future to hold onto. After we fulfilled our commitment to the antipoverty program, Chad would go to law school and I would begin my career as an author. My experiences in Marsdon County were going to be priceless material for the novels I planned to write. I’d brought a thick notebook along to jot down my observations.One year,
I told myself,
then we can get out of this place and start our life together.I couldn’t have imagined, when I stood in the little house with my suitcases at my feet, what lay ahead for me in Marsdon County, Virginia.
***
When he reached the end of the chapter, Tom leaned back in his chair, eyes still fixed on the final line. What was this? Bad fiction with a few dashes of reality drawn from Meredith’s own past? Or the straight truth with only the names changed? If it was the truth, Meredith hadn’t loved her life in Mason County after all—at least not in the beginning. That had been decades ago, before Tom was born, and people could change a lot in that amount of time. But the story was probably ninety-nine percent fiction. It might offer some useful insight into the Taylors’ marriage and their relationships with other people, but he doubted it would help him solve their murders.
Tom glanced at his watch, then closed the file and ejected the CD from his computer. He had to question the Hogencamps. The rest of Meredith’s tale would have to wait.
Rachel had only the flimsiest excuse to visit Lloyd Wilson, but it would do. She set off to see him after dropping off Simon and Billy Bob.
She wished she could trust Tom to be fair, to assume Ben was innocent unless proven guilty. But that wasn’t Tom’s job. His job was to find a killer. He already disliked Ben and viewed him as a suspect, and Lindsay was probably pushing the theory that Ben killed her parents. To her own disappointment, Rachel realized she didn’t have much faith in Tom’s ability to be objective in this case.
She braked when she saw the roadside mailbox with TAYLOR painted on its side. Yellow crime scene tape drooped along the perimeter of the property, but no one was working the scene now. In the middle of the lot, dwarfed by the mountain that rose behind it, lay the ruins of Cam and Meredith Taylor’s house, a pile of ash outlined by a cinderblock foundation.
Rachel had met Mrs. Taylor a couple of times when she’d brought her dog Cricket to the vet clinic, once for routine vaccines and once for a cut on a paw. The wound was minor, but Mrs. Taylor had been distraught, worried about infection and blaming herself for not watching the dog more closely. A little over twenty-four hours ago, Meredith Taylor had lost her life in the fire, and her beloved dog had probably died with her. An image of flames licking at flesh invaded Rachel’s head and made her shiver at the horror of it.
What am I doing here?
Rachel doubted Lloyd Wilson would tell her anything he hadn’t told Tom. But Tom wouldn’t reveal what Wilson had seen or heard, and Rachel wanted to know what kind of evidence the police had.
She pulled onto the strip of bare dirt that served as a driveway and parked behind Wilson’s pickup truck. His two dogs loped around the side of the house, tails wagging and tongues lolling. Rachel got out and crouched to pet them. Maggie and Lisa were littermates, ten years old now, large brown mutts with suggestions of Labrador in their solid bodies and hints of German shepherd in their erect ears and long muzzles.
“Well, hey there,” Wilson called as he hobbled up the side yard toward Rachel. Raising a hand in greeting, he gave her a broad smile that almost made his eyes disappear in the bunched wrinkles around them. “Now how did I rate a house call?”
Rachel rose, returning his smile. “When I realized you live so close to the house that burned down yesterday, I wanted to make sure Maggie’s breathing hasn’t been affected by the smoke.”
You are such a liar.
The dog panted in the heat, and even without a stethoscope Rachel could tell her bronchial passages were clear. “I just want to have a listen, okay? I won’t charge you for the visit, since you didn’t call me.”
“I’d be willing to pay you to come visit me.” As soon as he said it, a bright pink flush rose on Wilson’s cheeks and he averted his eyes. “I mean—”
“Let me get my bag,” Rachel cut in, “and I’ll give Maggie a quick exam.” She’d always been amused and flattered that this tough old man had a crush on her, and the last thing she wanted to do was embarrass him.
“Now where are my manners?” Wilson said, still a little flustered. “Keepin’ you standin’ out here in the hot sun. Come on in the house, and I’ll give you a nice cold glass of tea. It’s sun tea, real smooth, best tea you’ll ever drink.”
“Oh, thanks, I’d love to have some.”
They walked together, the two dogs keeping pace. In the small living room, Wilson steered Rachel away from the easy chair. “Bad springs,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable on the couch, and I’ll get the tea.”
When Rachel sat on the sofa the dogs stationed themselves on either side, a canine chin resting on each of her knees. As she scratched their heads and looked around the room, a deep melancholy ambushed her. This house had never been grand, but she could see it had once been pleasant, perhaps even pretty. An oblong patch of light blue where a picture had been removed showed what the living room walls looked like before they acquired scratches, dents, smears, and grime from fireplace smoke. The braided rug bore so many spots and so much dirt that Rachel couldn’t tell what the original colors had been, but she could imagine it as the anchor in a homey, welcoming room. A woman had once lived here. Without her, Rachel guessed, the husband who had outlived her scarcely noticed the deterioration of his home, and wouldn’t care if he did.
While Wilson bustled in the kitchen, Rachel went through the motions of examining Maggie, listening to her lungs and heart, checking her eyes for signs of irritation. Nothing out of the ordinary. The second dog shouldered Maggie out of the way and presented herself with an expectant air, so Rachel examined her too.
Wilson returned with a tin tray that held two glasses of tea and a saucer of sugar cookies. Rachel took a glass and sipped. “Mmm. This is delicious.”
“Have a cookie.” He placed the tray in front of her on the coffee table and took a seat at the opposite end of the couch. “Fresh from the bakery this mornin’.”
She reached for one, took a bite. Not-so-fresh from a supermarket package was more like it. “It’s good.”
Wilson smiled and nodded.
“How’s the dogs?”
“Perfectly fine
.
Maggie’s asthma is very well-controlled. I can tell you’re getting her pills into her on schedule.”
“Oh, yeah. If I ever let anything happen to these dogs, my wife—” He paused and cleared his throat. “Well, I feel like she’s watchin’ everything I do for them. These two was her babies.” His voice faded to a near-whisper. “She just barely lived to see them full-grown.”
“I’m so sorry.” In the silence that followed, Rachel told herself,
Remember why you’re here.
“It’s terrible what happened to the Taylors. No one’s life should end that way.”
Wilson dropped his gaze to his gnarled hands, clasped between his knees, and didn’t answer.
“I guess you’ve talked to Captain Bridger about what you saw and heard yesterday.”
“Didn’t see nor hear much of anything,” Wilson said with a shrug. “I told the Bridger boy about seein’ Scotty Ragsdale’s car over there.”
“Scotty Ragsdale? Isn’t he the son of the Ragsdales who own the hardware store?”
“Yep. Him and Mrs. Taylor was real close, if you know what I mean.”
That was interesting. Rachel didn’t know whether to trust Lloyd Wilson’s assumptions, but the very existence of Meredith’s friendship with another man gave Rachel hope that the relationship had something to do with the Taylor murders.
Wilson went on, “But I seen Scotty’s car way before the fire started. Only other thing was that sports car. A Jaguar, that’s what it was.”
Rachel caught her breath. Ben drove a Jaguar. So did his mother, but she’d left the county hours before the Taylors were killed. At least, that was what everyone believed. “What time did you see the Jaguar? In relation to the fire.”
He shook his head. “Bridger asked me that, and I couldn’t place it just exactly. Now that I think about it, though, I reckon it was about the same time I heard some hunters shootin’ in the woods up the mountain.”
“Hunters?” Rachel said. “This time of year?”
“Oh, lord, the time of year don’t stop them. I hear shots in the woods all the time. And I heard some that morning—well, one, anyway—and it sounded closer than it ought to be. But that’s not out of the ordinary either. Damn fools don’t pay a bit of attention to where they’re pointin’ their guns. Anyway, I brung the dogs indoors. I was afraid them or me might get hit. But I didn’t hear any more shots, so after a while I went back out to work on my chicken coop.”
“You’re sure the shooting was in the woods? Could it have been at the Taylor house?”
He frowned at her. “You sayin’ the Taylor woman was shot? How could they tell? I thought if she was all burned up—”
“I haven’t heard anything about her being shot.” It made sense, though. If the killer hadn’t disabled Meredith first, she might have escaped the fire. Maybe the fire was the murderer’s attempt to make the death look accidental. “Did you tell Captain Bridger about hearing a shot?”
“No, I don’t reckon I did. It just come to me a while ago.”
Rachel wiped her damp palms on the knees of her jeans. Was this good for Ben, or bad? Was it possible he had committed these awful crimes? The memory of what she’d seen in the woods popped into her mind, and she blurted, “I was the one who found Cam Taylor’s body. Right after he was killed.”
Wilson pulled in a sharp breath. “Well, my lord, I didn’t hear that part. I’m real sorry you had to see a sight like that.”
She’d told Wilson something Tom wanted her to keep quiet about, and she was letting herself get distracted from her purpose in coming here. Pulling herself back on track, she asked, “Can you remember when you heard the gunfire?”
Wilson frowned, considering, then nodded. “I’m pretty sure it was sometime between ten and ten-thirty.”
Rachel almost laughed with relief. If Wilson was right about the time, Ben couldn’t have been at the Taylor house
.
He had three people to give him a solid alibi—Angie, Holly, and Rachel herself. But if it wasn’t Ben in the Jaguar, then who? Had Ben’s mother made a stop at the Taylor house before she left the county?
When Tom drove up, he spotted Angie in the vegetable garden next to the Hogencamps’ small brick house, hacking at the ground with a hoe. He pulled into the driveway on the far side of the house and parked behind Angie’s Volkswagen.
She didn’t cross the yard to meet him, but stood stiff as a statue among the squash plants, with the hoe in one gloved hand and a bunch of weeds in the other. A shapeless straw hat shaded her face from the sun.
She cut off Tom’s greeting. “I think I should call Ben and tell him before I talk to you.”
“Come on, Angie. You know better than that.” Her father had once been a sheriff’s deputy and a cousin of hers currently wore the uniform.
She expelled a small huff. “All right, ask your questions.”
“Can we go in and sit down?” Feeling a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck, Tom wished he had a straw hat of his own.
Glancing toward the house, Angie said, “My mother gets upset if anybody besides Dad or my aunt and me comes in the house.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
Angie shrugged. “It’s not like she’s going to get well, is it? Her sister stays with her while Dad and I are at work, and she can’t tell the difference between my aunt and me anymore. Some days she thinks I’m a complete stranger and starts screaming at me when I come in the room with her.”
Good god,
Tom thought,
I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
What could he say to someone whose relatively young mother was vanishing into the mists of Alzheimer’s? He’d seen the two of them together many times, looking like sisters, chattering like best friends on the same wavelength. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you—”
“You can leave my boss alone. Ben didn’t kill anybody.”
Tom spread his hands. “Did I say he did? I’m just trying to trace Cam Taylor’s movements before he was shot.”
“Yeah, right.” Angie flung the handful of weeds into a bucket at her feet. “Like you said, I know better than that.”
“What time did you get to Hern’s house yesterday morning?”
“Eight-thirty, like I always do, and I’ll save you the trouble of asking. Yes, Ben was there. So was his mother. She left around nine o’clock. No, Ben didn’t go out. He was at home all morning, up to the time he left to make sure Cam Taylor got off his property.”
“All right.” Tom noted that Angie was Hern’s only alibi for the time between his mother’s departure and Rachel and Holly’s arrival. “Now tell me what you saw and heard when Taylor was at Hern’s house yesterday.”
She adjusted her hat, tugging it lower over her eyes before she spoke. “Ben wouldn’t let him in the house the first time he showed up. The second time, we were all on the porch and he just barged right in and started his pitch again.”
“Hern was pretty ticked off at Taylor, wasn’t he?”
“Of course he was. I was mad too. But I guess I shouldn’t tell you that. You might accuse
me
of murder next.”
“That’s a little unfair, isn’t it?”
Angie let the hoe drop to the ground and crossed her arms. “Ben’s a wonderful man. If it weren’t for him, I’d be clerking at the grocery store and making next to nothing and bored out of my mind. Ben pays me a decent salary, he pays for my medical insurance, and he never makes me work late, so I can spend time with Mom and give Dad a little relief. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever known.”
She’s in love with him,
Tom thought. In love with her boss, and determined to protect him. She might lie for Hern even if she believed he had killed Cam Taylor, because she probably thought Taylor deserved it. If she knew of anything in Hern’s past that Taylor could have been holding over him, she wasn’t likely to share it with Tom. “Yesterday wasn’t the first time Taylor went to Hern’s house, was it?”
Angie fixed her gaze on a bumblebee crawling around inside a yellow squash blossom. As if begrudging Tom the information, she said, “No. He was there before. And yesterday was the third time this week.”
“He was asking for money?”
“Yes. He even tried to get money from Ben’s mother. He already knew her because the two of them worked in the poverty program at the same time.” Her eyes flicked to Tom, then back to the bee. “You know, I can see Cam Taylor coming here to work with poor people, but looking at Mrs. Hernandez, I couldn’t see her doing something like that.”
“Oh? Why? What’s she like?” If Angie wouldn’t talk about one suspect, maybe he could get her to talk about another.
“She drives a Jaguar and I could tell every stitch she had on cost a fortune. She’s got a nice haircut, too young-looking for her, a little spiky, you know? And I don’t think her hair’s naturally that shade of brown. But it was cut just perfectly, you couldn’t get a haircut like that in Mountainview. And she wears a ton of jewelry, gold earrings and necklaces and bracelets and this gorgeous ring—” Angie held up a hand and wiggled her fingers. “She said it was a sapphire. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
“What did you think of her? What kind of personality does she have?”
“I like her, I guess.” Angie frowned as she considered an unspoken thought.
“But?” Tom prodded. “I get the feeling there’s a
but
coming up.”
Angie gave a little laugh, as if embarrassed by her obviousness. “She’s one of those people who are
too
friendly, you know? Like she’s knocking herself out to make you think she’s just a regular person and doesn’t put herself above you. She wanted me to call her Karen, but I couldn’t do that. I mean, I just
met
her, I don’t really know her, and she’s my boss’ mother.” She sighed. “Why is it some people are so determined to keep you from showing them any respect?”
Now there was an interesting question, but not one Tom wanted to debate at the moment. “Beats me,” he said. “So how did Mrs. Hernandez and Cam Taylor get along?”
“Oh, at first it was a big reunion, big smiles, you know. But it wasn’t more than five minutes before he pulled out his so-called business plan and started trying to get money out of her.” Angie paused. “I wasn’t deliberately eavesdropping or anything.”
Tom grinned. “I never thought you were. How did she react when Taylor asked for money?”
“You know…” Angie ducked her head, hiding her face behind the brim of her hat. “I don’t mean to criticize her, but I think she was kind of playing with him. He was practically begging, and she was enjoying it. She said—What was it exactly? Something like,
Cam, look around you. The world has changed. You’re the only one in it who hasn’t.
She made fun of him after he left.”
Far from sounding critical, Angie reported this with a clear note of satisfaction.
“What did Taylor say to that?”
“He must have been really desperate, because he kept on talking like she hadn’t said it. But he looked like he just swallowed a bug.”
“Tell me,” Tom said, “did you ever get the feeling that Taylor had some kind of leverage over Ben Hern or his mother?”
“Leverage?” Angie thought about that with a puzzled frown. “No. I don’t know what you mean. Is that important?”
“No, no, never mind.” Angie wasn’t acting as if he was poking around a dangerous subject. Tom was inclined to believe she didn’t know that Taylor’s request for money was actually a blackmail attempt. “You said Mrs. Hernandez made fun of him. Do you think he deserved to be treated that way?”
Angie looked Tom in the eye. “He deserved a lot worse. He should have been locked up behind bars for stealing from my mom and dad.”
“So I guess you’re not sorry that he—” Tom broke off when Dave Hogencamp’s blue truck pulled up and parked in front of the house.
“Dad’s back.” Angie turned toward her father with the eager expression of someone about to be rescued from an ordeal.
Dave climbed out of his truck and loped across the yard, looking like a tall, gangly teenager with gray hair and bifocals. A plastic hardware store bag dangled from one hand.
“Hey, Dave,” Tom said. “How’ve you been?”
Dave glanced from Tom to Angie, then down at the hand Tom offered. After a hesitation, he shook hands briefly.
“What’s going on here?” Dave demanded. “I hope you’re not trying to get my girl involved in that murder case.”
“She’s one of the people who saw Cam Taylor right before he was killed. You know I have to get her account. And I want to ask you about your dealings with Taylor. You had a serious problem with him in the past.”
Dave snorted. “That’s one way to put it. He stole eight thousand dollars we couldn’t afford to lose. So yeah, I had a
problem
with him.”
“Your wife gave him the money,” Tom said, regretting the provocation but knowing it was necessary.
Dave’s face flushed a mottled red. He thrust the hardware store bag at Angie, letting go too soon and making her fumble to catch it. Through the thin plastic, Tom saw the bag contained a box of slug bait.
“You listen to me,” Dave said. “My wife didn’t
give
anything to that goddamn thief. He took advantage of a sick woman. He got her to thinking she’d be selfish if she didn’t help out her friends in the quilting circle.”
“He wanted to sell their quilts through a dealer, something like that?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, right, he was gonna make a fortune for them, selling their homemade quilts for big bucks in places like New York. Folk art, he called it. Rich people would hang them on their walls. All he needed was some money to rent a gallery and hire somebody to run it. He hounded my wife while I was at work, he wore her down until she was too confused to know what she was doing, and he drove her right to the bank to take that money out of savings and hand it over to him. I didn’t find out about it for almost a week.”
“That’s when you realized something was happening to her mind, wasn’t it?” Tom asked quietly.
Tom’s question brought sudden tears to Dave’s eyes, and his face twisted with helpless fury. Angie clutched the hardware bag to her chest, her head bowed and her face hidden.
“He took advantage of a sick woman,” Dave repeated. “I wanted to kill the son of a bitch.”
“Dad, don’t say that,” Angie whispered.
“You put him in the hospital,” Tom said. “He got your point.”
Dave shook his head. “I let him off too easy.”
“Did you ever get any of the money back?”
“Not a damn penny. By the time I found out, it was all gone. Handed over to strangers. You know how many of my wife’s quilts got sold through that scheme? Exactly one. And she didn’t get any damn fortune for it, either.”
“Where were you yesterday morning?” Tom asked.
Dave’s expression hardened and his eyes turned wary. “I went fishing, if it’s any business of yours. I had some comp time coming from the railroad, and I went fishing upriver.”
“Anybody with you? Did you see anybody or talk to anybody?”
“I’m not answering any more questions. That’s my right.”
Tom nodded. “Yes, it is. But if you don’t have anything to hide, it’s in your best interests to talk to me.”
“How the hell would you know what’s in my
best interests
? I’m done talking. Now I’m gonna see to my wife.” With that, he turned and strode toward the house.
Tom let Dave go. To Angie, he said, “Get him to talk to me, will you?”
“I don’t tell my father what to do.” Angie pulled the box of slug bait from the bag and tore open the spout. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave now.”
Tom was standing by his cruiser with the door open to release the built-up heat when Dave burst out of the house again. Thinking Dave had changed his mind about talking, Tom waited for him to walk over. But he went no farther than the porch, and he shouted his message to Tom.
“You oughta pin a medal on the man that killed that bastard!”
In her cramped home office, Joanna McKendrick sat at the desk and motioned for Tom to take the chair beside it. An icy stream of air from a ceiling vent whispered over his head and neck and raised chill bumps on his arms. He seemed destined to either bake or freeze today.
“Lindsay’ll be sorry she missed you,” Joanna said. “She went to feed the goats.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s coping okay. You know how she is.” Joanna paused. “I’ve tried to keep her away from Rachel. If I knew of anybody else who would take her in while she’s here, I wouldn’t have agreed to let her stay with me.”
“I understand that. How does Rachel seem to you? I think she was pretty shaken up yesterday.”
“She’s fine. She’s worried about Ben, though.”
“Worried about him?” Tom said. “Why?”
“I think she’s afraid you’ll rush into charging him with murder.”
“I’m not
rushing
to charge anybody.” Did Rachel actually think that of him, even after their conversation yesterday? “I’m looking at all the facts.”
“And how can I help you with that?”
“You knew the victims longer than anybody else in the county. I’m betting you know things about them that nobody else does.”
Joanna swiveled her chair away from him, so the late afternoon sunlight from a window struck her face. Most of the time Tom thought she looked younger than her age, but the strong light emphasized every line on her face and picked up the gray strands among the strawberry blond. “And now you expect me to betray confidences,” she said.
“They were murdered, Joanna. This isn’t a time to worry about confidences.”
She sighed, swiveled to face her desk, and pushed a stack of file folders to one side. “Here, look at this.”
Tom rose to look over her shoulder. She pointed to a photograph beneath the thick glass on the desktop. The faded color picture showed four young women and one young man, all of them wearing sweatshirts with college logos.
“That was taken a few days after we got here.”
Tom touched a finger to the image of a young Joanna. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Joanna gave his arm a light slap. “Flatterer. We were all different people back then. This girl—” She pointed to a pudgy young woman with short curly hair and a morose expression. “—quit and left after two or three weeks. I can’t even remember her name. Do you recognize everybody else?”
Three of the girls, including Joanna, had long, straight hair. Tom recognized Meredith, and the young Karen Richardson had the same high cheekbones and dark hair as the woman in Karen Hernandez’s current driver’s license photo. “My god,” he said, “look at Cam.”
“Oh, yeah, he was cute. And cocky as hell.”
The young Cam matched the description of Chad in Meredith’s manuscript: lanky and handsome with shaggy brown hair. Standing with one thumb hooked in a pocket of his jeans and his other hand resting on Meredith’s shoulder, Cam grinned at the camera with a confidence that verged on arrogance. The hand in view on Meredith’s shoulder was missing most of one finger. Tom had always assumed the injury occurred by accident, but maybe Meredith’s account in her manuscript was the truth. He could easily imagine Cam trading a finger for freedom from the threat of combat.
Tom took his seat again. “I understand why you stayed here—you met a local guy and married him—but I’ve always wondered why Cam and Meredith stayed. They could have had better lives almost anywhere else.”
Joanna ran her fingertips over the glass covering the photo, as if she were physically connecting with the past. “I don’t think they ever made a firm decision to stay here. It just worked out that way. When their year in V
ISTA
was up, the director of the Community Action Program offered Cam a job as a special projects coordinator—helping people get bridges and roads repaired, that kind of thing. He wanted to do it, and Meredith wasn’t going anywhere without him, so she got a job on the newspaper and stayed too.”
“That was when they got married?”
“Yeah. That was kind of sad. Her parents were totally against the marriage. They thought her joining V
ISTA
was a stupid idea, and when she was done they wanted her to come back home and go to graduate school—she’d already been accepted at Georgetown. They definitely weren’t impressed with Cam when she took him to meet them, so they weren’t about to throw a big wedding for them. They got married in Mason County, with nobody but Dave and me there. And they never left.”
“It couldn’t have been easy for them,” Tom said. “All the disappointments, everything Cam tried that didn’t work out.”
“You make it sound like everything he did was a failure,” Joanna protested. “He accomplished some good things. There are roads in Rocky Branch District that got paved because Cam pushed for it. There are people who’d still be using outhouses if he hadn’t worked to get sewer lines extended.”
“But—”
“Now wait a minute. You’re going to listen to me. You know about the outdoor play that told the history of the Melungeons? Cam got federal funding for that when he was still a V
ISTA
, and Meredith wrote the play.”
“And it lasted, what, one summer?” Tom said. “It was pretty bad, from what I’ve heard. Local people trying to be actors. My dad said it was so amateurish that audiences laughed all the way through it.”
“Well, okay,” Joanna conceded. “That wasn’t a good example, but that was one of Cam’s first projects. He did some very worthwhile things after that.”
“The antipoverty program didn’t last, though,” Tom pointed out. “He lost his official status as an advocate for the poor.”
“Yeah, that was a disappointment. The local politicians thought at first that the program was just going to bring money into the county and pay for a few public works projects. They didn’t like it one bit when they realized federal money was being used to stir up the poor. They wanted the program shut down, and they finally succeeded.”
“So Cam was out of a job.”
Joanna nodded. “They had to live on what Meredith was making at the paper, and I don’t think it was more than minimum wage. But Cam got himself elected to the county board from Rocky Branch District, and he went right on working to help low income people. Until that courthouse crowd found a way to get him off the board.”
“They redrew the districts, didn’t they? So all the low income voters wouldn’t be so concentrated?”
“Right. It was such a damned crooked, self-serving thing to do, and they were so blatant about it. And the courts supported them, for pity’s sake. Cam really took that hard. It was just a lucky coincidence that Kip Hardison wanted to sell the paper and retire. They got the money to buy it from Meredith’s aunt, and Cam threw himself into it heart and soul.”
“Why didn’t you help him keep the paper alive?”
Joanna spread her empty hands. “I couldn’t. I run this place month to month, and there’s never much left over. The rent I get from Rachel is my mad money, if you want to know the truth.”
Tom intended to get to the question of Meredith and Scotty’s relationship, but first he asked, “Why did Meredith dislike Karen so much?”
For a second Joanna seemed thrown by the change of topic. Then she shrugged. “Karen went after Cam for a while, way back then. She didn’t care about him, it was just a game to her. She was bored to death here, and she was just amusing herself. I doubt she even remembers any of that now. But poor Meredith took it very seriously at the time.”
“Did the two women see each other while Karen was here this week?”
“No. I suggested we all get together over dinner to reminisce, but neither of them wanted to.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “Tell me, how long was Meredith involved with Scotty Ragsdale?”
Joanna winced. “Oh, lord. Who’d you hear that from?”
“How much do you know about it?”
She glanced away, twisted a stray wisp of hair around one finger, crossed her legs and uncrossed them. “They were friends for a long time, that’s all I know.”
Tom raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“It
is
all I’m certain of,” Joanna protested. “How should I know what other people do in their private lives?”
“Meredith confided in you, didn’t she?”
“Not as much as you seem to think.” Joanna sat forward, her expression earnest and pleading. “Look. When Scotty’s sister Denise died—it was awful, the poor girl froze to death outdoors in the snow. I wasn’t here when it happened, I was back home in Kentucky making plans for my wedding, but I heard all about it. Scotty was just devastated, but his parents didn’t have time for him, they were too caught up in their own grief. Meredith sort of took him under her wing. She became a substitute big sister, I guess you could say.”
“What did Cam think of their friendship?” Tom asked.
Joanna shrugged. “He certainly didn’t see Scotty as a rival, if that’s what you’re getting at. Cam was sure of Meredith.”
“Was Meredith sure of Cam? Were there any other women in the picture? Anybody who might have been jealous or might have a jealous husband?”
“If he ever cheated on Meredith, I never heard even a whisper about it. I know she was worried about that before they got married, and she told him she wouldn’t marry him unless he took a vow to always be faithful to her. And he did. He loved her, you know. I never knew anything about Cam’s background, but I got the feeling Meredith was different from any girl he’d ever known. She was refined, cultured. Sensitive. He admired that.”
If Meredith’s description of Cam’s family was accurate, Tom could understand his attraction to a girl like Meredith. “Now, let’s get back to Scotty.”
“Oh, Tom, please don’t ask me about that again.” Joanna’s voice cracked, and she hesitated, letting her gaze roam over the photos of champion horses on the walls. “He was crazy about Meredith. Anybody could see that. He would have done anything for her. And he despised Cam. Do you think the frustration got to be too much for him and he finally broke? Did Scotty kill them both?”
When Tom walked into Rachel’s cottage a few minutes after leaving Joanna, he felt as if he were coming home. Cicero the parrot squawked his crazy cry for help and flew over to land on Tom’s shoulder, Frank issued one of his rusty-hinge meows and rubbed against Tom’s leg, and Rachel greeted him with a kiss.
If he could come home to Rachel every evening, Tom thought, he’d have everything he wanted out of life.
Holding her with an arm around her waist, he said, “What’s up? You know, all you have to do is invite me, you don’t have to lure me out here with mysterious promises.”
Rachel wriggled out of his embrace. “Let’s sit down and talk. After I divest you of the shoulder ornament.”
“I don’t mind Cicero.” Tom turned his head toward the parrot and got a bite on the nose, Cicero’s version of a kiss. “Ow!”
Rachel laughed. “Still don’t mind him? Cicero, go back.” The parrot resisted as he always did, treading on Tom’s shoulder and uttering a stream of protesting squeaks. She said more firmly, “Cicero, go back.” He flapped away, returning to the top of his big cage by a window.
They were settling on the couch, Frank between them, when Holly stuck her head out of the kitchen. She grinned at Tom, her mood obviously improved since the day before. “Hey, Captain. You want somethin’ to eat or drink?”
“Thanks, Holly, but I can’t stay long.”
“Well, if you change your mind, let me know.” She disappeared into the kitchen again.
“Now, finally,” Tom said to Rachel. “What’s this vital information you’ve got for me?”
She smoothed her auburn hair back behind her ears the way she often did when she was getting serious. “I went to see Lloyd Wilson this afternoon—”
“What? Why?”
“Because his dogs are my patients. One of them has asthma, and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t affected by the smoke from the fire next door.”
“Rachel. Come on now. If the dog was sick, wouldn’t he call you? Why did you go out there?”
Instead of answering the question, she said, “Lloyd told me he heard a gunshot yesterday morning. He thought it was up on the mountain, but it could have been next door.”
Tom frowned. “He didn’t say anything to me about hearing gunfire.”
“That’s why I wanted to tell you. Was Meredith Taylor shot?”
He ignored the question. “Did Wilson say what time he heard it?”
“Between ten and ten-thirty. Tom, Ben was at home then. Holly and I were with him.”
“So this is all about constructing an alibi for Ben Hern.”
Indignation brought a pink flush to her cheeks. “It’s about finding out the truth.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s my job. I don’t need an amateur going around questioning witnesses. You’ll do more harm than good.”
“Will you talk to Lloyd about it? You can’t ignore this.”
“Yes, I’ll talk to him.” Tom got to his feet. “He gets things mixed up, though. He can’t keep track of time. He also has a long history of bad blood with the Taylors. He might have his own reasons to create confusion about the facts.”
Rachel rose and faced him. “Well, if you think
Lloyd
killed them, Ben’s in the clear, right?”
“Aw, for god’s sake.”
“Go back to work.” Rachel waved a hand. “I won’t take up any more of your time with my silly theories.”
“Rachel—” But her face was a closed door. “Fine. I’ll go back to work.”
Tom patted Frank’s head and left.
***
“Help! Help! Save me! Save me!”
Rachel jerked upright in bed, startled awake by the parrot’s cries from downstairs. The luminous face on her bedside clock read 12:10. Why was Cicero making such a racket?
She threw back the covers, swung her feet to the floor and pushed them into her slippers.
“Help! Help! Save me! Save me!”
Rachel stopped cold. Cicero cried out that way only when someone other than she and Holly came into the house.
She held her breath and listened. A moment passed in silence. Then she heard Cicero’s cry again, followed by a loud crash downstairs. Frank’s furry body brushed against her arm as he slid off the bed to hide underneath.
With trembling fingers Rachel found the lamp base and slid her hand upwards along cool ceramic to the switch. The sudden glare made her blink. She grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table and pressed the 911 button.
A young, high-pitched female voice answered. “Mason County 911. What is your emer—”
“Somebody’s in my house!” Rachel whispered. “Somebody broke in, they’re downstairs.”
“Ma’am, what is your name and where are you loca—”
“The McKendrick farm. I’m Rachel Goddard. In the house at the end of the farm road. Hurry! Get somebody out here.”
“Yes, ma’am. Now don’t hang up.”
Rachel heard the dispatcher contacting a patrol car, repeating the information. She held the phone away from her ear, trying to quiet her own harsh breath, listening for sounds from downstairs. Nothing.
“Ma’am? Are you there?”
Rachel brought the receiver back to her ear. “Yes, yes, I’m here.”
“A deputy’s on the way. He’s close by, it’ll just be a few minutes. Are you in a safe place?”
“The bedroom.”
She heard footsteps downstairs.
“All right, ma’am, don’t you leave that room,” the dispatcher ordered, sounding like a stern child. “You lock the door and stay right where you are.”
The bedroom door—it was standing open so Frank could come and go during the night. Rachel propelled herself off the bed, shut the door as quietly as she could. No lock on it.
What now?
Something to block it.
From downstairs came another crash, the sound of breaking glass.
Cicero squawked, no words, just a scream of fear.
Heavy footfalls. Somebody running through the house.
“Call Tom,” Rachel gasped into the phone. “Call Captain Bridger.”
“I’m calling Captain Bridger right now,” the dispatcher said. “You stay on the line, you hear? Don’t you hang up.”
Rachel waited for an eternity, listening, hearing nothing. Was Holly awake, terrified and defenseless in the next room?
If he comes up here—
“Somebody lives with me,” Rachel whispered to the dispatcher. “I have to go warn her.”
“No! No, ma’am, don’t you leave—”
Rachel dropped her hand to her side, reducing the dispatcher’s protests to a distant whine.
She opened the bedroom door, quietly, slowly, and came face to face with Holly.
They both yelped. Rachel grabbed Holly’s arm, pulled her into the bedroom, closed the door.
“Ma’am?” the dispatcher called. “Ma’am, are you okay? What happened?”
“I heard something,” Holly said, her eyes wide. “It woke me up. I smelled—”
“Shh, hush,” Rachel whispered. “I called the police.”
Holly shook her head. “Listen to me! I smelled gas in the hall, real strong. It’s comin’ from downstairs.”
“Oh my god. Open the windows!”
Rachel shoved one window up while Holly pushed the other open. Warm, humid night air billowed into the room.
Cicero.
The thought of her parrot blotted out everything else. Rachel hurried to the door. “The gas will kill Cicero. I have to get him—”
“No!” Holly caught Rachel’s arm and held on. “You’re not goin’ down there! You’ll get yourself killed.”
“If there’s gas downstairs, he—whoever —he can’t be down there breathing it. And I heard somebody running a minute ago. He ran out, he’s gone.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Holly said. “Captain Bridger’ll kill me if I let you go down there.”
“Listen!” Rachel heard a siren, distant but rapidly drawing closer. She pulled her arm from Holly’s grasp. “I’m going downstairs.”
“Just wait for the deputies.”
“Cicero could be dead by then. Roll up the bedspread and block the bottom of the door to keep the gas out.”
When Rachel stepped into the hall, the rotten-onion odor of natural gas filled her nostrils and brought on a wave of nausea.
She felt her way down the stairs.
He’s gone,
she told herself.
It’s safe. He’s gone.
Her nightgown was drenched in sweat, but she felt icy cold.
At the bottom of the steps she reached around for the light switch, afraid she would see the intruder standing in front of her. She flipped the switch. The living room was empty.
At first, relief flooded through her, but the smell of gas was strong and she had no time to waste. Cicero might already be dead in his cage, under the night cover. Before she faced that possibility, she had to get air into the house.
She rushed across the room, stepping around an end table that lay on its side, avoiding the jagged shards of glass that had been a lamp, the spilled water from a flower vase, the magazines fanned out on the floor like playing cards.
Edging behind Cicero’s cage, she shoved the window up. Now she had to turn off the gas.
She ran into the kitchen. All four burners on the range were turned on and unlit, pouring gas into the air. Rachel grabbed a dish towel from a rack to cover her nose and mouth. Gagging and coughing, she flipped off the burners.
She turned to open the back door and let air in. But the door already stood open a couple of inches.
Rachel backed away. The intruder could still be on the porch. She wouldn’t think about that, wouldn’t let it scare her upstairs to a locked room. She ran back to Cicero. Yanking off the cage cover, she found the small gray parrot lying motionless on the floor of the cage.
“Oh no. No, no, no.” She unlatched the cage and lifted him out. Holding him close, she got the front door locks open and ran outside. She barely heard the siren of the police car coming down the farm road. “Breathe, sweetie, please,” she begged, pacing the yard. “Please, Cicero, please don’t die.”
The limp body twitched and stirred in her hands. His claws groped for something to close around. She gave him one of her fingers.
Sinking to her knees, cradling the bird against her chest, Rachel burst into tears of relief.
From a quarter mile away on the farm road, Tom saw the flashing lights of police cars, beacons in the ink-black night. An icy fist squeezed his heart.
The 911 dispatcher had wakened him with news of a break-in in progress at Rachel’s house. He’d thrown on jeans, tee shirt, and shoes without socks and hurtled along the empty mountain roads, unable to raise a radio signal and connect with the dispatcher or the Blackwood twins. He didn’t know what he would find when he reached the horse farm.
A pair of Sheriff’s Department cruisers sat outside Rachel’s house, their light bars splashing red and blue over the three people on the front porch. The two young blond deputies, twins Keith and Kevin Blackwood, stood talking to Holly.
Tom parked and jogged to the house. “Where’s Rachel? Is she all right?”
“She’s upstairs makin’ sure Frank’s okay,” Holly said as Tom mounted the steps to the porch. In her pink robe, her shoulders hunched as if she were cold on this hot night, she looked small and vulnerable.
Kevin Blackwood said, “Somebody got into the house—”
“—and turned on the gas on the kitchen range,” Kevin finished.
“Somebody tried to kill us!” Holly cried. She clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling a sob.
“Hey, hey, take it easy.” Tom patted her shoulder. “You’re safe now.”
Holly sniffed and wiped her eyes with trembling fingers. The poor kid was scared to death.
“Did you get a look at him?” Tom asked.
She shook her head. “We stayed upstairs until he left. I’m sorry.”
The lack of a description would make his job harder, but he sure as hell didn’t want to hear that Rachel or Holly had confronted an intruder. “Don’t apologize. You did the smart thing.”
“We opened all the windows,” Kevin said.
“To let the gas out,” Keith added.
“Good job,” Tom told them. “I’ll talk to Rachel before I go over the scene. Stay out here until I’m done inside.”
He barreled into the house, nothing on his mind except getting to Rachel, but the mess in the living room brought him up short. He guessed that something had startled the intruder enough to make him stumble around in the dark, crashing into furniture. What had he been looking for in the living room? Maybe nothing. Maybe he’d been on his way upstairs to Rachel and Holly.
“Hey, Tommy.”
At the sound of the voice, he jerked his head toward the kitchen doorway. Lindsay stood there, in jeans and a red tee shirt printed with
I’m a detective trapped in a CSI’s body.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” Tom demanded.
“I want to help.”
“This is a crime scene. You’ve got no damned business being in here. What kind of story did you use to get past the Blackwoods?”
“What’s the problem?” Lindsay looked mystified. “I can save you some time by collecting prints and trace for you. I’m perfectly well qualified to do that. I’m trying to help out here.”
“What have you been doing?” Tom pushed past her into the kitchen. “What have you touched?”
“I haven’t touched a thing. I’m not an idiot. I
am
a criminal evidence professional, you know. Why do I have to keep reminding you of that?”
“Then act like one, for god’s sake. This is probably connected to your parents’ murders. Rachel and Holly are witnesses in that case. You’re the daughter of the victims. What the hell makes you think it’s acceptable for you to even come in here, much less collect evidence?”
Lindsay’s cheeks reddened at the rebuke. “Well, excuse me for trying to help. But I’m not leaving. If this is connected to Mom and Dad’s deaths, I want to know what happened here. I want to know what evidence you come up with, and I want to be damned sure nothing is overlooked.”
“You don’t think the Sheriff’s Department is competent to investigate a break-in?”
“I think
you
are, but I’ve got my doubts about those two little boys out there.”
Tom clenched his hands at his sides to keep himself from shaking her. “Those two little boys, as you put it, have been trained in evidence collection procedures, and since they probably heard what you said, I think you’ve just made a couple of enemies. Now get out of here, and don’t expect anybody to let you back in.”
Lindsay spun around and marched out. She shoved open the screen door and let it bang shut behind her. Tom followed to make sure she actually left.
The Blackwood twins watched her leave, then shot nervous looks at Tom. “Sorry, Captain,” Keith said.
“She showed up and said you sent her,” Kevin added. “Man, I feel dumb.”
“It won’t happen again,” Keith said.
“It sure as hell better not happen again. Keep her out of the house, her and anybody else who isn’t authorized to be here.” Tom noticed Lindsay’s car for the first time, parked on the road outside the circle of light around the house. She was headed toward it.
“Mrs. McKendrick’s upstairs with Dr. Goddard,” Keith said. “She didn’t touch anything or walk around downstairs. You want us to make her leave?”
“I’ll handle it.” Tom crossed the debris field in the living room again and took the steps two at a time.
He found Rachel sitting on her bed in robe and slippers, cradling Cicero in her arms. The parrot nuzzled her chin and neck, his small sounds of distress making Tom think of a frightened, whimpering puppy. The cat, Frank, pressed against Rachel’s thigh. Joanna sat beside her.
“Here’s Tom, honey,” Joanna said.
Rachel didn’t look up. She stared at the floor, her face drained of color, her auburn hair draped over one eye.
Tom sat beside Rachel, put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. But her rigid body didn’t yield to his embrace.
“Is Cicero all right?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happened,” Tom said, “with as much detail as you can remember.”
In a monotone, sounding not at all like herself, Rachel described the events of the night. “Cicero saved our lives,” she concluded.
“Yeah, he probably did.” Without this scared bird, Rachel could be lying dead in her bed right now. A rush of nausea made Tom’s throat close up. He wanted to hold her, feel her warm and alive against him. He tried to pull her closer.
She shrugged off his arm, which surprised Tom and hurt more than a little. Was she still angry about their stupid argument over her visit to Lloyd Wilson? Tom knew he’d been right, but he wished he’d handled it differently.
“This is connected to Cam and Meredith’s murders, isn’t it?” Joanna said. “The killer’s trying to get rid of witnesses.”
“Probably. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Holly and I didn’t see anything,” Rachel said, her voice flat. “We don’t know anything. Why would anybody come after us?”
“Rumors get around,” Tom said. “Every time something’s repeated, the facts get changed, and before long the whole story’s a fabrication. Look, I want you and Holly out of here, at least for the rest of the night, maybe longer. You can stay at my place as long as you want to.”
“No. Thank you, but no.” Rachel sounded oddly formal and distant, as if he were a presumptuous acquaintance.
“You have to stay somewhere. This house is a crime scene, and we’ll be here for a while.”
“The crime scene is downstairs. We’ll stay up here. There’s no reason we have to leave.”
Tom raked his fingers through his hair. How could she be so stubborn under these circumstances? “It’s not safe for you to—”
“Tom,” Joanna broke in. “Go do your work. Let me talk to Rachel.”
He hesitated, but gave in. Maybe Joanna could get through to her. He wanted to touch Rachel, wanted to kiss her, but he held back. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
He returned to the kitchen. Crouching at the back door, he examined the lock and the wood around it. Rachel had said the intruder left the door standing open. He’d undoubtedly left this way, probably entered this way too. But Tom saw no evidence of a break-in. No damage to the lock, no marks or chips in the wood.
He moved on to check the front door and the windows. They all stood open now to let the gas dissipate, but none of them showed any sign of being forced. Tom didn’t believe Rachel would go to bed leaving a door unlocked, but it was possible a window had inadvertently been left unsecured. It was also possible that somebody had gotten hold of extra keys to the house.
He didn’t want to interrupt if Joanna was persuading Rachel to leave, but Holly was available for questioning.
Out on the porch, Holly shook her head and told him, “No, sir, we don’t ever leave the doors or the windows unlocked at night. Everything was closed and locked up tight before we went to bed.”
“All right then.” Tom rubbed the tight muscles in the back of his neck. “Your visitor either picked the lock or used a key. Does anyone besides you and Rachel have a key?”
“Nobody but me,” Joanna said from the doorway. She stepped out onto the porch. “There’s a key to the back door and one to the front door, and only three copies of each. My copies are in my office at the house.”
“Then this had to be somebody who could pick locks.”
“Both doors have deadbolts that have to be opened with keys from inside and out.”
“Aw, hell,” Tom muttered. “That’s right.” Back during the winter, when he’d been concerned for Rachel and Holly’s safety, he’d checked out security at the cottage.
He looked to Holly, but she answered his question before he could ask it. “I told you, we locked the doors. With the keys.”
“Then we’re back where we started,” Tom said. “Somebody, somehow, got a key to the back door. As soon as you get back to your place, make sure your keys to this house are still where they’re supposed to be, and call and let me know.”
“I will,” Joanna said, “and I’ll get the locks changed tomorrow, if I can find a locksmith who’ll work on Sunday. Holly, honey, you go up and get what you need for the night so you can go home with me. I talked Rachel into coming too.”
“Now wait a minute,” Tom said. Rachel in the same house with Lindsay? “That’s not a good idea.”
Joanna’s eyes met his. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s just for the rest of the night. If it doesn’t bother Rachel, it shouldn’t bother you. We’ll go back to my house and go straight to bed. First thing in the morning, Rachel and Holly can come home.”
“I don’t like it. I’m going to talk to Rachel again.”
“Tom, she was very firm about not wanting to stay at your place. Don’t be so bossy. Anyway, it looks like my other guest doesn’t plan to go back to the house for a while. Give us time to get there and go to bed before you run her off.” Joanna nodded toward the road.
Tom looked around. In the shadows, barely visible, Lindsay sat cross-legged on the hood of her car, watching Rachel’s house.
Rachel stretched out on a strange bed in Joanna’s house, but when she closed her eyes the drumbeat of panic started in her chest, building to a roar that jolted her out of bed, onto her feet, ready to flee.
But she didn’t have to run. She was safe now, wasn’t she? She had nothing more to fear.
Frank meowed, the sound oddly muffled. Rachel switched on the bedside lamp and saw a squirming lump under the covers she’d thrown back when she jumped out of bed. She pulled away the top sheet and light blanket. Frank blinked up at her.
“I’m sorry, love,” Rachel whispered. She sat on the bed and petted him until he purred.
On the dresser, Cicero was quiet in a small cage, now draped with a towel. He hated that cage, which Rachel used only when moving him from place to place, and he hated being in unfamiliar surroundings, but he’d been unnaturally docile since coming out of his stupor. If the gas had harmed him, Rachel doubted she could reverse the effect. She had to hope he was suffering from stress that would pass once their lives returned to normal.
When would that be? Would life ever return to what it was a few days ago, before the Taylors were killed and their daughter showed up?
She shouldn’t have let Joanna talk her into coming here tonight. Joanna had been persuasive and logical, assuring Rachel that she probably wouldn’t cross paths with Lindsay in the house, and Rachel felt it would be childish to refuse to spend a few hours under the same roof with her. When she’d put Frank and Cicero in her SUV for the move to Joanna’s house, though, the sight of Lindsay in the shadows, perched on her car’s hood and watching, had sent a chill through Rachel. Lindsay hated her and wanted her out of Tom’s life.
A shocking thought invaded Rachel’s head: Maybe it wasn’t the Taylors’ killer who had tried to murder her and Holly. Maybe it was the Taylors’ daughter.
Paranoid.
She could never voice such a suspicion out loud. Everybody, including Tom, would think she’d lost her mind. Rachel herself had trouble believing Lindsay would go that far.
I have to get some sleep. I’m not even thinking straight.
Rachel switched off the lamp, but she didn’t lie down. Joanna’s house was silent except for the faint hum of central air conditioning. Joanna had gone back to bed, and Holly had settled on the sofa bed in the den downstairs. Lindsay hadn’t returned yet. Was she still at the cottage?
I’m wasting an opportunity,
Rachel thought. She might find nothing of interest in Lindsay’s room, but then again she might learn whether Lindsay had been systematically collecting information about her.
She found her slippers with her toes and shoved her feet into them. Careful not to make a sound, she opened the bedroom door and peered into the hallway. A nightlight burned at the far end, outside the bathroom, accentuating the pool of darkness surrounding Rachel. Joanna slept in the room directly across the hall. Lindsay’s room was next to Rachel’s.
She crept into the hallway, holding her breath in anticipation of a creaking floorboard that might give her away.
Paranoid,
she chided herself again. In the unlikely event that Joanna might spring out of bed to demand where Rachel was going, she could always claim to be on her way to the bathroom. Still, she didn’t want Joanna to know she was awake and roaming around.
She expected Lindsay’s door to be locked and felt a pleasant little shock of surprise when the knob turned freely. In a second she stood inside with the door closed behind her. Lamps burned beside the bed and on the dresser. The bed was made up, the puffy blue comforter still covering it. In the middle of the bed lay a closed laptop computer. Rachel went straight for it.
She figured Lindsay had a password to prevent anyone else from using her computer, but it was worth a try. Prepared to be stymied, Rachel almost laughed aloud when she opened the laptop and found a bright, active screen. Like the rest of Mason County, Joanna’s house had only dial-up internet access through the cable TV company, and Lindsay’s laptop wasn’t plugged in at the moment. The browser history would reveal what sites she’d visited lately, though.
Rachel wasn’t surprised by what she learned. Lindsay had visited several law enforcement databases she could access because of her professional position, databases that would give her more information than public records would. She had also been reading old stories from the Washington Post archives. Rachel had no way of knowing, though, exactly what Lindsay had discovered.
Frustrated, Rachel pushed the computer closed. For the first time, a legal pad beside the laptop drew her attention.
Rachel’s birth date was scrawled on the pad—not the day she was actually born, but the day she’d celebrated as her birthday since she was a small child. The word MINNESOTA had been printed in block letters, with
Minneapolis? St. Paul?
scribbled under it. Below that, the names of her mother, father, and sister.
Damn her. The snooping, malicious little—
Rachel caught herself, told herself that as long as Lindsay stuck to the most obvious aspects of Rachel’s background, her prying wouldn’t be a threat. Lindsay wasn’t the type to stop there, though. She would dig deeper and deeper, in the hope of finding something juicy. Something Rachel didn’t want anyone to know.
Outside, a car door slammed.
Rachel shot off the bed and out of the room, through the hallway and into her own room. Leaning against the closed door in the dark, she tried to catch her breath while her galloping heart banged against her ribs.
She heard the faint clicks of the front door opening and closing. A minute later, she heard movement in the hallway, drawing near. Then sudden quiet, and Rachel sensed—she
knew
—that Lindsay had paused outside her door, inches away. Rachel held her breath, waited. Lindsay walked on. Her door made no sound when it opened, but Rachel heard it close.
In the dark, Rachel found her bed and sank onto it. Had Lindsay already learned that no child named Rachel Goddard had been born in Minnesota on the date Rachel claimed as her birthday? What would Lindsay make of it if she discovered all the blank spaces, all the unexplained gaps, in Rachel’s past?
The rising sun hadn’t yet burned the mist off the mountaintops when Tom parked in the Hogencamp driveway.
“I know you’re mad as hell, and so am I, ” he told Brandon, “but remember that losing control with a suspect won’t get us anywhere. All that does is give
him
control of the situation. Okay?”
Brandon nodded, his mouth a tight line. Tom had phoned him at five a.m., waking him to tell him what happened to Rachel and Holly so there would be no chance of him hearing a garbled account from other sources.
Tom was stepping from the car when Dave Hogencamp flew out the front door of the house and down the steps.
“What the hell do you want now?” Hogencamp yelled. He looked like he hadn’t been out of bed long, with his tee shirt hanging loose over his pants, his hair flattened on the left side from being slept on, brown and gray stubble darkening his chin.
“I want to know where you were last night,” Tom said.
Brandon slammed the passenger door and watched them across the cruiser’s roof.
“Where the hell do you think I was? Right where I am this morning, trying to take care of my wife. I look out the window and here you are again.”
“Did you go out at all during the—”
“Dad!” Angie called from the front door. She was still in her robe, and her dark hair spilled over her shoulders. “You’ve got to help me! She’s pulling everything out of the kitchen cabinets and dumping it all on the floor.”
From somewhere in the house, Tom heard an incoherent cry that might have been a plea, might have been a scream. Angie darted inside.
“You gonna let me take care of my family,” Hogencamp said, “or you gonna make me stand out here answering stupid questions?”
“We need to talk, Dave. Either here or at headquarters.”
“Go to hell.” Hogencamp hustled back to the house.
Tom took a step forward, then stopped. What good would it do to wade into a family crisis? “Come on,” he told Brandon. “We’ll catch up with him later.”
In the car as they drove away, Brandon asked, “What do you think? He’s got a solid motive—what Cam Taylor did to them. But why would he go after Holly and Dr. Goddard? They didn’t see anything. If they could I.D. the killer, we would have arrested him by now.”
“That makes sense to us,” Tom said, “but the rumor’s going around that they
did
see something, and the killer wouldn’t want to take chances. A man in Dave’s situation, with a wife who’s totally dependent, might do anything to make sure he can stay with her.”
“Or his daughter might do anything to protect her dad and make sure the family doesn’t get split apart.”
“Yeah.” Her father wasn’t the only man Angie wanted to protect, though. Her fierce defense of Ben Hern had betrayed feelings that went deeper than the loyalty of an employee. Was Angie capable of trying to kill Rachel and Holly to protect Hern? Tom didn’t even have to consider the question. He’d learned a long time ago that most people, if they had a compelling reason, were capable of anything.
***
Rachel rose at dawn, hoping to grab a cup of coffee and be out of Joanna’s house before Lindsay woke, but by the time she dressed and washed her face she was already too late. Halfway down the stairs, she caught the aroma of fresh coffee. She found Lindsay in the kitchen, fully dressed in jeans and tee shirt, leaning against a counter and sipping from a mug.
“Hey, good morning,” Lindsay said when she saw Rachel. She held up her cup. “Want some? Gotta warn you, I make it pretty strong.”
“I’ll get it.” Rachel would have preferred to turn around and walk out, but she didn’t want Lindsay to sense her apprehension. She wouldn’t sit down, though. After a couple of quick gulps for the caffeine jolt, she’d make her escape. She plucked a mug from a cabinet.
Before she could reach the coffeemaker, Lindsay snatched up the pot. She poured steaming coffee into Rachel’s cup. “Tom must be totally baffled,” she said as she returned the pot to the hotplate.
Refusing to take the bait, Rachel sipped the coffee. Too bitter to drink. Grimacing, she set her mug on the counter
“I mean,” Lindsay went on, “there was no sign of forced entry at your house. I don’t suppose you’ve been handing out keys left and right, and I’m sure you wouldn’t leave a door unlocked at night. So…what other explanation could there be?” Her blue eyes widened in disingenuous inquiry.
Rachel stared at Lindsay.
Good god,
she’s accusing me of making the whole thing up.
She wasn’t going to defend herself to Lindsay or stand here debating theories. “I have things to do,” she said, and turned to leave.
Joanna appeared in the doorway, yawning. “Oh, my lord,” she groaned, “I’m getting too old to stay up half the night. I need caffeine, delivered by IV if possible. Rachel, honey, are you okay? Did you get any sleep?”
“Yes. I’m fine. I was just on my way out.”
“Here you go,” Lindsay said, handing Joanna a mug of coffee. “Sit down and I’ll make breakfast for us.”
“Thanks,” Joanna said. She told Rachel, “I’ll get a locksmith out to the cottage this morning. You tell him what it’ll take to make you feel safe. I don’t want you to settle for less, okay?”
Rachel smiled and gave Joanna an impulsive hug. “Thank you. And thanks for taking us in.”
As Rachel walked down the hall toward the stairs, the door to the den opened and Holly stuck her head out. “Come here a minute,” she whispered.
Rachel slipped into the room and Holly closed the door after her. “What’s going on?” Rachel asked.
Holly kept her voice low. “I can’t
stand
her. I’ve gotta get away from her. Can we go home now?”
“Absolutely. Let’s get our things and go right now.”
They moved their few belongings, along with Cicero and Frank, into Rachel’s vehicle. Rachel heard Lindsay talking in the kitchen when she quietly pulled the front door shut for the last time.
On the drive to the cottage, Holly burst out, “I’m startin’ to think Joanna’s not a good judge of people like I thought she was. That woman—Lindsay—She’s just—She’s…she’s
mean.”
Rachel couldn’t help smiling at Holly’s limited store of derogatory descriptors. “Let’s hope we won’t see much more of her.”
“I’ve seen enough already.”
“Has she done something I don’t know about?” Rachel glanced at Holly to find her face screwed up as if she were about to cry.
Holly’s cheeks puffed out when she expelled a noisy breath. “I wasn’t gonna say anything to anybody.”
“About what?” Rachel braked to let one of Joanna’s farmhands drive a pickup truck loaded with hay from the barn to the stable and paddocks across the road. The driver lifted a hand in greeting and Rachel answered with a wave. She prodded Holly, “Tell me what happened.”
“I got up real early, and I thought I’d get some cereal.”
“And?” Rachel drove on toward the cottage beyond the stable.
“I opened the door to go in the kitchen and there was Lindsay, comin’ out of Joanna’s office. She was closin’ the door real quiet, and she didn’t see me at first. Then she turned around and saw me and she got this look on her face, like she just wanted to hit me or somethin’. She talked real low so nobody else could hear her, but she was practically spittin’ in my face. She said I was spyin’ on her, and if she ever caught me at it again she’d make me sorry. But I wasn’t spyin’. I was just goin’ to get some cornflakes, and I couldn’t help seein’ her. And the really weird thing is, she told me I’d better not be gossipin’ about her, tellin’ people I saw her. I didn’t ask her what she was doin’ in Joanna’s office because she probably would’ve bit my head off, but her tellin’ me to keep quiet about it sure made me curious, you know?”
“I would have been curious too,” Rachel said. “Heck, I’m curious
now.”
Joanna didn’t like anyone entering her business office without an invitation. Rachel had always assumed Joanna kept the door locked when she wasn’t in the room, but apparently she didn’t. What reason did Lindsay have to go in there?
“Something tells me we’re about to get another warm reception.” Tom pulled into Lloyd Wilson’s yard.
Like Dave Hogencamp, the old man had seen Tom and Brandon drive up. Flanked by his two big mutts, Wilson hobbled toward them as fast as his arthritic limbs and his cane allowed.
“Dogs look friendly, at least,” Brandon said, reaching for the door handle.
“The devil himself could walk into the yard and those two would be drooling all over him, begging to be petted.” Tom stepped out and raised a hand in greeting. “Hey, Lloyd. I need to—”
“You’re just the man I want to see,” Wilson broke in. He sounded excited about something, far from hostile. “I was gonna give you a call this mornin’.”
“Oh?” The dogs presented themselves, one on each side of Tom, tails wagging and tongues lolling. He used both hands to pat their heads. “What about?”
“I got it straight in my mind now, what was goin’ on over there—” Wilson jerked his head in the direction of the Taylor property on the far side of the woods. “—that mornin’ before the fire got started.”
While the dogs turned their attention to Brandon, Tom leaned against the cruiser and studied Wilson for any sign that he was mounting a diversion. How he could have gained entry to Rachel’s house was a big question, but Tom could easily see him losing his balance and stumbling around the living room in the dark. “Is that right? What’s your story now?”
Wilson bristled at that, squaring his hunched shoulders. “It ain’t a
story.
It’s what happened.”
“I’m more interested in where you were last night,” Tom said.
“Last night?” Wilson looked baffled. “I was right here at home. Why?”
“Did you have any visitors? Can anybody back you up?”
“Back me up? What are you gettin’ at? What happened last night?”
“Somebody tried to kill Rachel Goddard.”
“Oh my lord.” Wilson’s face went pale and he started to sink.
“Hey, watch out!” Brandon yelped. He and Tom grabbed Wilson by the arms to keep him upright.
Clutching his cane, Wilson looked from Tom to Brandon. “Is she all right? Why would anybody want to hurt that sweet young woman?”
“She’s fine,” Tom said. “We’re not sure of the reason, but somebody tried it, there’s no doubt about that.”
“That’s wicked. That’s just wicked.” Wilson fumbled in a pocket and pulled out a handkerchief that looked as if he’d used it to clean garden tools. Unashamed, he mopped at his teary eyes and wiped his nose.
“What did you want to tell me?” Tom asked.
Stuffing the cloth back in his pocket, Wilson drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and said, “They was both over there at the same time.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
Wilson looked up at Tom. “Scotty Ragsdale’s car and that sports car. They was both over there at the Taylor house at the same time, the mornin’ Miz Taylor died. And it was around that same time I heard a gunshot.”
***
Tom and Brandon debated all the way to Ragsdale’s house, but neither of them could stick to a single side of the argument.
“We have to take Lloyd seriously,” Tom said, “because he’s the only witness we’ve got who can put both Ragsdale’s car and a Jaguar at the Taylor house that day. On the other hand, he’s about as unreliable as they come. We still can’t be sure he’s right about the time, and the time would tell us whether the Jaguar was Hern’s or his mother’s.”
“Wilson’s not even sure it was black or dark blue,” Brandon said. “Does it mean anything if one of them was over there the same time as Ragsdale? Can you see Ben Hern or Karen Hernandez teaming up with Ragsdale to kill the Taylors?”
“It’s not likely,” Tom said, “but even Lloyd’s not claiming they
left
at the same time. Ah, hell, this isn’t the first story he’s come up with. He might tell us something different tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Brandon heaved a sigh and fell silent.
“One thing we can believe is that he heard the shot that killed Meredith,” Tom said. “When we get a match on the slugs from both her and Cam, we’ll know for sure we’re not dealing with some weird coincidence.”
Scotty Ragsdale didn’t answer a knock on his door, but Tom heard the whine of a power tool coming from the back yard. He and Brandon walked around to the shed behind the house. The wide door stood open. Inside, Ragsdale bent over a small chest, his eyes protected by goggles, his gloved hands guiding a power sander across the top of the chest. When he caught sight of Tom and Brandon, he switched off the sander, pushed the goggles to his forehead, and watched the deputies warily as they entered the shed.
“Morning,” Tom said. He gave the chest an appraising look. It had been stripped down to bare wood, and curls of apple green paint littered the floor around it. “That’s a nice little piece. You refinishing it for somebody?”
“Restoring it,” Ragsdale said, his voice flat, his eyes cold with distrust. “Some idiot slapped green paint on it.”
Tom nodded. He’d heard that Ragsdale did good work. “How are you holding up? You took Meredith’s death pretty hard.”
“I’m doing all right.”
“Glad to hear it,” Tom said. “It’s not easy losing a good friend.”
Brandon strolled around the shed, checking out the tools, chemicals, and paints on the shelves. Like a rabbit surrounded by foxes, Ragsdale tried to keep an eye on both deputies. Brandon ended up behind Ragsdale, and he nodded to let Tom know he was ready in case the man gave them any trouble. Ragsdale glanced over his shoulder but seemed reluctant to turn his back on Tom.
“What do you want?” Ragsdale asked. “I don’t have anything else to tell you.”
“You remember Karen Richardson, don’t you?”
Ragsdale opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips. “Who?”
“Come on, Scotty, you know who I mean. She was a V
ISTA
, same time Cam and Meredith were.”
Ragsdale rolled his tongue around in his mouth, swallowed, shrugged. “So? What are you asking me about her for?”
“Her name’s Karen Hernandez now,” Tom said. “She was here visiting her son last week.”
Ragsdale didn’t respond, and Tom let the silence draw out. A line of sweat popped out on Ragsdale’s upper lip, and he wiped it on the sleeve of his tee shirt. “So what? That supposed to mean something to me?”
“How well did you know her back then?”
“I—” Ragsdale paused, yanked off his gloves, bunched them both in one hand. “I didn’t really know Karen at all. Just to say hello to.”
“She wasn’t a friend of your sister like Meredith was?”
“No. They didn’t get a—” Ragsdale stopped abruptly and clamped his mouth shut.
“Your sister and Karen didn’t get along?” Tom asked. “Why was that?”
“I don’t know. Girls. Who the hell understands what goes on between girls?”
Tom smiled. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Did Meredith get along with Karen?”
Ragsdale rubbed the palm of his free hand on his pants leg. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Were they friends? Meredith and Karen?”
“Yeah, I guess. Sure, why wouldn’t they be?”
“Well, then,” Tom said, nodding, “if they were old friends, I guess Karen stopped by to see Meredith when she was in the county.”
Ragsdale’s gaze jumped from one spot to another, landing everywhere except on Tom. He threw a glance over his shoulder at Brandon, who stood behind him with arms crossed. “I don’t have any way of knowing who she went to see.”
“It’s kind of puzzling you’d say that, since you were at Meredith’s house when Karen stopped by.”
Ragsdale’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Your car was seen at the Taylor house at the same time as Karen Hernandez’s Jaguar. The morning Meredith died.”
“Says who? Who have you been talking to?”
“Anybody driving by would have noticed it,” Tom said. “A Jaguar stands out around here. What went on that morning? What did Meredith and Karen have to say to each other after all this time?”
“I don’t know anything about it. I wasn’t there.”
“Your car was there.”
“No.” Ragsdale shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
“We have a witness, Scotty.”
“I don’t give a damn what you’ve got.” He might have been aiming for bravado, but his voice wavered like a guilty child’s.
“And we have a witness who saw you driving near the McKendrick farm last night,” Tom lied, “around the time somebody broke into Rachel Goddard’s house and tried to kill her and Holly Turner.”
Ragsdale’s breath was coming fast and rough now. He backed away from Tom and collided with Brandon. With a startled cry, he stumbled forward again, banged a knee on the chest. “God damn it!” he cried, hopping on one leg and grasping his knee.
“What’s going on, Scotty?” Tom asked. “What’s your part in this?”
Ragsdale straightened, sweat dripping from his hairline. “I’m not saying another word to you without a lawyer.”
“Scotty—”
“You can’t ask me any more questions until I get a lawyer. You hear me? I’m done.” He still looked scared, but resistance had taken hold in his eyes and voice. “You might as well leave.”
Tom hesitated, but he knew when he had to quit. “You’d better go ahead and hire a lawyer soon,” he told Ragsdale. “You’re going to need one.”
As they drove away, Brandon said, “He sure acts guilty.”
“But guilty of what?” Tom said. “Did he fire the shots, did he light the fire? I believe he’s capable of it, especially if he wanted Meredith to himself and couldn’t get her away from Cam.””
“If I can’t have her, nobody can? That kind of thing?”
“Yeah. Maybe what we’re seeing now is remorse, and panic over the way things are snowballing.”
“What about Hern and his mother?” Brandon asked.
Tom thought about it. “I wonder if Karen Hernandez showing up here could have somehow triggered the Taylor murders. But why, and how it all fits together—I can’t see that yet. And I can’t even guess whether Karen Hernandez is alive or dead.”
***
By the time they returned to headquarters, a small swarm of journalists occupied a corner of the rear parking lot. They surged forward when they saw Tom pull in.
“Wow,” Brandon said, craning his neck to watch the reporters and camera operators trailing the car. “CNN. MSNBC. I wonder if Campbell Brown’s here. My mom’s a big fan of hers.”
Tom parked as close as possible to the back door of the squat cinderblock building, hoping to get inside before he was waylaid, but a dozen journalists surrounded the car before he’d yanked the key from the ignition.
“You gonna make a statement?” Brandon asked. “This is big news, a famous senator’s daughter getting murdered. Mom says they’ve been talking about it on all the cable news stations. Mysterious circumstances and everything.”
Tom didn’t answer. Putting on what he hoped was a forbidding expression, he shoved his door open, nearly knocking a slick-haired male reporter off his feet. He slammed the door shut behind him and held up both hands to quiet the explosion of questions. “We’ll have a statement later in the day.”
And exactly what am I going to tell them?
he asked himself as he elbowed his way toward the sanctuary of the building.
That this is the third day since the Taylors died and I’m not one damned bit closer to an arrest?
That the killer’s still around and now he’s after Rachel and Holly?
When Tom and Brandon walked into the squad room, Dennis Murray waved Tom over to his desk.
“Tell me you’ve found Karen Hernandez,” Tom said.
Dennis cupped a palm over the telephone receiver. “Sorry, no luck with that. But somebody from the NYPD’s on the line. He’s got something for us on Hern.”
“Transfer the call to my office.”
The cop on the line, Jim O’Neal, turned out to be a booking sergeant at a Manhattan precinct, with an accent Tom had never heard outside of TV and movies. “This guy you’re looking at, you know he uses two names?” O’Neal asked.
“Yeah, I know.” Tom sat forward, pulling a pad and pen closer. “Benicio Hernandez and Ben Hern.”
“Yeah, Hernandez is still his legal name, I hear. Never changed it. I didn’t know he was the guy in the funny papers till after it was all over.”
Tom heard a squeak like a swivel chair that needed oil. He pictured O’Neal as a grizzled veteran in middle age, spending most of his working day in a chair while he waited to retire.
“Until what was over?” Tom asked.
“We never got all the details because nobody brought charges. Once Hernandez got his lawyer involved, the girl’s daddy decided not to put his little darling through the ordeal of making a case. In other words, Hernandez paid him off.”
“Whoa,” Tom said. He grabbed the pen, poised it above the pad. “What girl? What kind of charges could have been brought?”
“She was a minor. Fifteen, sixteen, I forget which. Her father was threatening to charge Hernandez with statutory rape.”
Rachel swiped a cloth over the coffee table one last time and turned to survey the living room. “Are we finished?” she asked Holly.
“Yep, we got it all.” Holly sat at the bottom of the stairs, holding a filthy cleaning rag. “But it’s not right we had to do this. The cops ought to clean up after themselves.”