Poisoned Ground (19 page)

Ronan threw a wary glance at Winter as if reluctant to say more in front of her. “I think it might. It could, anyway. I don’t know. I can’t be sure. You need to see it and figure out what it means.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of it. It might not mean anything.”

Why didn’t Ronan come right out and tell him what it was? Why didn’t he want to spell it out in front of Winter? “You want to show it to me now?”

“Oh, Ronan, for heaven’s sake,” Sheila said. “Can’t it wait until morning? These people want to go home and get back to sleep. Come on. Let’s go.”

Ronan hesitated, then gave in. “Yeah, yeah, it can wait a few hours.” As his sister pulled him away, he said over his shoulder, “You’ll come to the house in the morning?”

“I’ll be there.” Tom was beginning to think he’d spend the whole day in this neighborhood.

“What do you suppose that’s about?” Rachel asked, watching Ronan and Sheila go.

“God only knows. Miss Jones, can I walk you to your car?”

“Oh, thank you, Thomas. My eyesight isn’t very good in this poor light.” She looped her arm around his. “I’m getting to the age when I’m always afraid of stumbling and falling.”

With Rachel on her other side, they accompanied her down the road, past Tom’s cruiser and then Rachel’s Range Rover. A little farther along, car doors slammed and Ronan’s headlights flashed on. The three of them moved out of the way so he could turn around. As the car passed, Sheila waved from the passenger seat.

When they resumed walking, Winter said, “I confess I’m terribly curious about what it is Ronan wants to show you. He sounded so urgent. Thomas, what do you suppose it is?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could it relate to Lincoln and Marie’s deaths?”

Could I get that lucky? Tom wondered. He’d be willing to bet it would be nothing. The threatening letters interested him more. “I can’t even begin to guess.”

“He’s such a hotheaded boy,” Winter said as they reached her old station wagon. “He always has been. But do you think he was insinuating that Jacob Hollinger was the one who killed Lincoln and Marie?”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss that with you.” Tom opened the car door for her. “I’ll come by tomorrow and we’ll talk about ways to make you and your sisters feel safer.”

“Thank you, Thomas. But I do wonder—”

“Good night, Miss Jones.” Tom took Rachel’s arm and set off toward their vehicles at a brisk pace.

“Nice try,” Rachel said, “but don’t think you’re going to stop her from gossiping about all this.”

“At least I didn’t feed her any extra tidbits. God, I can’t wait to get back in bed. I have a feeling tomorrow’s going to be a hell of a day.”

Chapter Thirty-three

Under a clear morning sky and a bright sun, the stable and barn area looked much the same as always to Rachel—except for the dark streaks down the side of the stable and the gaping, black-rimmed hole in its roof. Horses draped with blankets grazed in the surrounding paddocks as if their night hadn’t been interrupted by a terrifying fire.

Rachel found Joanna inside the stable, using a push broom to clear sodden straw out of a stall.

When she saw Rachel, Joanna gestured at the mess around her. “Welcome to my own personal disaster area.”

Rachel could tell she’d never gone back to bed. Exhaustion had turned her skin pasty and darkened the half-circles under her eyes. She’d changed out of her wet clothes from the night before, but her fresh jeans were already splattered with grime up to her knees.

“It’s really not as bad as I expected,” Rachel said. “Most of it’s still usable, right?”

“Yes, thank God. After we get it cleaned up and dried out.”

The four men Joanna employed wielded brooms, pitchforks, and shovels, cleaning the two rows of stalls and loading the detritus into wheelbarrows. The stench of smoke stung Rachel’s nose and throat even now, hours after the fire. No one had touched the rear of the building, where chunks of charred wood covered the floor and a fallen timber had demolished the door and one wall of a stall. Sunlight streamed through the hole in the roof and glinted off a pool of filthy water in the center aisle.

Rachel returned the men’s greetings, but she couldn’t muster a smile for them. The sight of the damage, and the thought of the malice behind it, sickened her.

Joanna leaned on the broom handle, looking toward the rear. “We need to get that hole covered, but we have to wait until the guy from the insurance company takes a look at it.”

“Is he coming today?”

“Later this morning. Then I’ve got a builder coming after lunch to give me the bad news about the cost of repairs. God, this makes me want to organize a lynching party. All of my horses could’ve died last night.”

“Tom’s going to get the phone records,” Rachel said. “He seems sure he can find out who called you. Maybe by the end of the day the kids who did this will be in jail.”

“They’d damn well better pay a price for it. This ought to teach their parents a lesson. Kids hear mom and dad talking about me like I’m the devil incarnate because I won’t knuckle under, and they get the idea I’m fair game.”

“I’m sure you’re right about that.” And organizing a protest and getting arrested had made Joanna an even more inviting target. Yet how could anyone tell her she was wrong to fight back against the people trying to force her off her land?

Joanna went on, “The crazy thing is, Packard wants my stable so they wouldn’t have to build one. They’d take my horses too if I’d sell them. So whoever set the fire wasn’t doing the developers any favors.” She propped the broom against a stall door. “Come on, I’ll make Marcella behave while you check on her. I’ve got a pocketful of sugar.”

The chestnut mare proved more cooperative than she’d been during the night. While Joanna fed her sugar cubes, Rachel examined the burn on Marcella’s flank, getting a better look than she’d had during the night. “It should heal without any problems.” She placed a fresh bandage over the injury. “By the way, where’s Sheila this morning?”

“Over at their parents’ house with Ronan. She’s curious about what he wants to show Tom.”

“He didn’t tell her last night?” Rachel was curious too, and she’d hoped that Joanna had ferreted out the information by now.

“No, she couldn’t pry it out of him.” They walked to the paddock gate and Joanna swung the latch up. “I didn’t tell Sheila this, but I’ve got an inkling what he found over there.”

“Really?” Rachel stopped outside the gate and turned to Joanna. “What? Is it something that’ll help Tom?”

“I doubt it. But I’m sure Ronan’s in shock, and Sheila will be too.”

“Oh, now you have to tell me. Come on, spill it.”

Joanna grinned and leaned back against the paddock fence. “I hate to disappoint you, but it’s not all that exciting. It just seems sordid and sad to me. You know Jake Hollinger’s got a reputation as a womanizer? Well-deserved, I might add. He made a pass at me once—groped me in my own kitchen—but I threatened to neuter him with my shotgun if he ever touched me again. I never had any trouble with him after that.”

Rachel laughed. “I’m sure you didn’t. He seems like an ordinary older man to me, but I guess he was attractive when he was young. Winter Jones made him sound like the local Casanova.”

Joanna snorted. “Like she has any right to be sanctimonious.”

Startled, Rachel said, “What? Don’t tell me she—”

“No, no, not her, for heaven’s sake. Can you imagine Winter Jones rolling around naked in the hay with Jake?”

The image was so ludicrous and unlikely that Rachel burst out laughing. “Yeah, that’s a stretch. So who—one of the other sisters?”

“Autumn, the youngest one,” Joanna said. “That was pretty low, even for Jake. She was just a kid. Nineteen, I think, and Jake was a married man in his thirties. He took advantage of that poor girl.”

“Winter was gossiping about other women, but she forgot to mention that her own sister was involved with Hollinger.”

“They don’t talk about Autumn. They’ve got her picture on the mantel, but aside from that it’s like she never existed. She killed herself, you know.”

“Don’t tell me she did it because of Jake Hollinger. Good grief, he couldn’t have been
that
special even in his heyday.”

Joanna shook her head. “No, I think it was her mother’s death that tipped her over the edge. Then her father died in that freak accident not long afterward. But I doubt that being involved with Jake did the girl any good. From what I hear, she was pretty messed up emotionally.”

“All of them seem a little…” Rachel couldn’t come up with the right label for the Jones sisters.

“Odd? Spacey?” Joanna grinned. “Downright weird? Am I getting close?”

“Well, eccentric is a kinder word. Winter comes across as very strong and capable when I deal with her, but you should have seen the little old lady act she put on for Tom last night. Summer really does seem fragile, though. She got upset when Winter was talking about Hollinger and his affairs. Now I understand why.”

“Yeah, bad memories. I think she and Autumn were pretty close. The older two are hard as nails, but Summer’s sweet-natured, and Autumn was the same way. I wouldn’t advise you to eat anything Summer cooks, though.”

Jolted, Rachel asked, “Why do you say that?”

“She’s got some awfully strange things growing in her garden. She likes to experiment, and you never know when you’re going to be her guinea pig. I learned a long time ago it was safer just to say no.”

Why had Winter told Rachel that tainted milk had made her sick? Made all of them sick—except Simon. No real harm was done, but Rachel felt uneasy about the differing stories.

She pulled her mind back to the original question. “So what do you think Ronan found in the house?”

“Pictures. Lincoln Kelly had some pictures he took of Marie with Jake, decades ago, back when they were all young. From the way Ronan was looking at Jake last night, I’ve got a feeling he found those pictures of Jake and his mother. I don’t know what else it could be.”

My God, it’s true.
Marie Kelly, a warm and unpretentious Earth Mother type who’d seemed devoted to her husband, had fallen prey to Hollinger’s charms. “Wow. Winter mentioned the rumors that they had an affair, but I didn’t believe her. Are you saying Lincoln spied on his wife and took pictures of her with her lover?”

“Oh, they weren’t pictures of them having sex. But it’s pretty clear something was going on between them. You know, kissing, touching. The way they looked at each other.”

“How do you know all this? Have you seen the pictures?”

Marcella had ambled over to the fence and now laid her chin on Joanna’s shoulder. Joanna rubbed the horse’s muzzle up and down. “I wish to God I hadn’t, but Linc showed them to me. Just recently, about three weeks ago.”

“Why?”

Joanna hesitated. “It was pitiful. It just broke my heart. You know Linc had Alzheimer’s?”

“Yes.”

“His short-term memory was just about gone. So he began confusing past with present. When he came across those old pictures, he thought they were new. It didn’t matter that Jake and Marie looked so young in them. He seemed to believe
he
was young too. He thought everything was happening right now.”

“Oh my God. How did you get involved?”

“He came over here crying like his heart was breaking, and he begged me to help him get his wife back. But he hadn’t lost her. Marie never left him and the kids. Jake never left Sue Ellen. I don’t know how Marie coped with Lincoln. She had a lot more resilience than I would under those circumstances.”

While telling the story, Joanna had stopped petting the horse, and now Marcella lifted her head and caught the end of Joanna’s ponytail in her teeth. “Hey, whoa, girl! You can’t eat my hair.” Joanna tugged on the ponytail but the horse held on.

“Maybe she wants more sugar,” Rachel suggested.

Dipping into her barn jacket’s pocket, Joanna found a couple more sugar cubes to offer the mare. Marcella let go of the ponytail, scooped the cubes off Joanna’s palm, and moved off to resume grazing. Joanna fussed with her ponytail, which the horse had pulled askew.

Rachel nudged her back to the subject. “Are you sure Marie didn’t destroy the pictures? That’s what she should have done.”

“She told me she was going to, if she could get them away from Linc, but she never told me whether she did. I didn’t bring it up because she was so embarrassed that I’d seen them and I figured she wanted to pretend it never happened. But I’ll bet you anything Ronan found them. He’s been over there tearing that house apart.”

“Do you think Ronan believes Jake Hollinger killed his parents?”

“I’m afraid that’s exactly what he believes.” Joanna shook her head. “But Jake didn’t kill Linc and Marie. He’s got his faults, but I don’t believe for a minute that he’s capable of that. He knew Linc was sick and harmless.”

“Those pictures weren’t harmless.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Marie was embarrassed that Linc was bringing it up again, but I don’t think Jake cared. His wife is gone, she can’t be hurt by it now. And God knows Tavia never had any illusions about him.”

“Tell Tom all this when he comes by later,” Rachel said. “He’ll want to know.”

“Honey, what’s the point? It just confuses the issue. He doesn’t need to go off on a tangent while people are getting killed and buildings are being firebombed. This is about the resort development. It’s big business, big money.”

“But who would kill over it?” Tom’s own frustration, so deep and intense it was palpable, was infecting Rachel. “If everybody in the county’s a suspect, how is Tom ever going to find the killer?”

“He doesn’t have to look too far. And no, I’m not going to tell you who I’m talking about. But I’ll point Tom in the right direction. I’m not going to let him waste any more time thinking I could have killed Tavia, when it’s obvious as the nose on his face who had a reason to want her dead.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Tom, accompanied by Brandon, pulled into the driveway at the Kellys’ small farmhouse and parked behind Sheila’s blue rental. Ronan’s black sedan sat in front of his sister’s car. “Looks like we’ll have to deal with both of them at the same time.”

“Can I just hide in the car?” Brandon asked.

Tom laughed. “Not a chance. If these two start throwing punches and heavy objects at each other, it’ll take both of us to separate them.”

They heard the shouting before they’d made it as far as the front porch. Tom exchanged a look of commiseration with Brandon and banged on the door, hoping the battling siblings could hear over their own racket.

Ronan yanked the door open and glared at Tom and Brandon.

“You wanted me to come this morning,” Tom reminded him. “If you’ve changed your mind, we can leave.”

“No, come in.” Ronan made the invitation sound like a threat. He moved aside, raking his fingers through his already messy black hair. “Sheila’s here.”

“Yeah, we heard,” Brandon said.

Sheila stood in front of the fireplace, arms folded and face flushed with anger. “Don’t do this, Ronan,” she said as they walked into the living room. “It’s private. Don’t you have any respect for our parents?”

“Why won’t you listen to me?” Ronan’s exasperation matched his sister’s barely controlled fury. “How many times do I have to tell you? This means something, I can feel it in my gut. It could be a motive.”

Sheila raised her eyes heavenward as if silently pleading for patience. “After all these years? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Tom held up his hands. “Hold on. I don’t even know what you two are talking about, but if it’s anything that could be connected to your parents’ deaths—”

“It’s not,” Sheila said.

“Let me decide that. What is it?”

Ronan reached around Sheila and grabbed a shoebox off the mantel. She snatched at it, gripping one end. Ronan didn’t let go, and they stood there playing tug-of-war with the box.

Tom heard a choking noise from Brandon as the deputy stifled a laugh.

Tom wasn’t in the mood to find it funny. “Come on, you two, that’s enough.”

Ronan shifted his attention to Tom, and Sheila took advantage of his distraction to yank hard on the box. The top peeled off in her hands. The bottom slipped from Ronan’s grasp and tumbled to the floor, spilling dozens of photographs as it went.

The brother and sister yelled recriminations at each other while Tom and Brandon scooped pictures off the floor by the handful. After a quick look at some of them, they exchanged a glance. The photos weren’t explicit, but Tom didn’t have to see people in the raw act to know they had a sexual relationship. He would need some time, though, to absorb and understand what he was seeing here.

Tom stuffed the last of the photos back in the shoebox, replaced the lid and stood. “Where did you find these?”

“Inside the basement ceiling,” Ronan said, “on top of those removable tiles.”

Tom frowned. “Why were you searching inside the basement ceiling?”

Before her brother could answer, Sheila said, “Yeah, did you think you’d find a secret stash of money you could make off with?”

Ronan’s face reddened. “Fuck off, Sheila. Mom told me Dad was always hiding things the last couple of years. We can’t sell this place without making sure we’ve found everything that’s here.”

“What makes you think these old photos have some connection to your parents’ deaths?” Tom asked. “They’re just old pictures of Jake Hollinger with different women.”

“A bunch of women,” Brandon added.

“Right.” Ronan nodded with the eagerness of someone sharing a revelation. “Dad must have taken these. If he showed them to Hollinger, that gives Hollinger a personal motive—”

“You’re accusing our father of blackmail.” Sheila was almost shouting. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to it.”

“Then leave, damn it!” Ronan flung out an arm toward the door, making Brandon duck to avoid a blow to the head.

“No,” Sheila said. “You’re the one who’s going to leave. I own the majority share of this property, and I want you out of here today.”

“You can’t—”

Tom held up a hand. “Stop arguing for a minute, will you? This isn’t getting you anywhere, and it’s wasting our time. Ronan, what are you saying? These pictures are old. Hollinger’s wife is dead, and some of the women in the pictures are dead too. There’s no leverage for blackmail here. And no motive for murder.”

Ronan pulled on his hair again, creating random spikes. Tearing his hair out, Tom thought. He’d never before seen anybody literally trying to do it.

“I know there’s a connection,” Ronan insisted, his voice tight with frustration. “Why did Dad keep those pictures all this time? Why the hell did he take them in the first place if he didn’t have any use for them?”

Something occurred to Tom, but he hesitated, reluctant to provoke a storm of anger aimed at him personally. He had to ask, though. “Is your mother in any of these pictures?”

“No!” Ronan and Sheila exclaimed in unison.

“How can you even suggest such a thing?” Sheila demanded.

“Just covering all the possibilities.”

“Well, you can forget about that one,” Ronan said. “I looked at every one of those pictures, and Mom’s not in any of them.”

“Did you expect her to be? Were you looking for her?”

“Hell, no. You’re twisting my words.”

“Okay, then. We’ll take these and look at them more carefully. I doubt they’ll be any help, but you never know.”

“We need the letters,” Brandon reminded him.

“Right. Ronan?”

“Here they are.” Scowling at his sister as if daring her to stop him this time, Ronan retrieved a plastic food bag from the mantel and handed it to Tom. “That’s everything I found. Nine of them.”

“They’re outrageous,” Sheila said. “They sound like they were written by an illiterate moron. Which they probably were.”

“So you read them too. And handled them.” Tom suppressed his irritation before it could turn into a lecture. Too late now for it to do any good.

“Of course I read them. I want to understand what happened to Mom and Dad. What they were going through the last few weeks of—” Sheila suddenly ran out of breath. She pressed a hand to her lips as her composure crumbled and her eyes brimmed with tears.

Rolling his eyes, Ronan turned his back on his sister.

Nice, Tom thought. “I want both of you to let me know right away if anything else happens—threatening phone calls, more letters, any vandalism on the property. Try not to be out in the open, exposed, any more than you have to be.”

“You think somebody’ll come after us, too?” Ronan’s contemptuous expression vanished as fear flooded in.

“I’m just telling you to take commonsense precautions. And do everybody a favor and stay away from Jake Hollinger.”