Poisoned Ground (23 page)

Chapter Forty

Back in her office, Rachel struggled to focus on her paperwork, but she angled her chair toward the window so she wouldn’t miss Tom’s cruiser when it passed on the street. She had to talk to him face to face. A quick phone conversation while he was busy elsewhere wouldn’t do.

How likely was it that Mrs. Turner’s story about the Kellys, Jake Hollinger, and the Joneses had any bearing on the recent murders? Not very. The twisted relationship among those people had existed for decades before anyone ever heard the corporate name of Packard, and they’d never gone after each other with guns. Jake Hollinger had continued to live next door to both the Kellys and the Jones sisters, his presence tolerated if not welcomed. All that personal turmoil was a sideshow, stirred to life again in a sick man’s mind by the fight over the resort development.

Rachel told herself that the Kellys and Tavia Richardson had been murdered because of their positions regarding the resort development.

Why, then, did she feel such urgency about talking to Tom, repeating what Mrs. Turner had told her? Why couldn’t she reason away the sick knot in her stomach, the dread that something terrible lurked just ahead, around a blind corner?

When a brown Sheriff’s Department car came into view, she jumped up to get a better look. Brandon sat in the passenger seat up front, but the car didn’t have SHERIFF printed above the department’s seal on the door. She couldn’t see who was driving, but through the tinted window she thought she saw a couple of people in the back seat. Where was Tom? Why wasn’t Brandon still with him?

She returned to her chair, working for thirty seconds at a time between glances out the window. Tom’s aunt called to report that her husband had fetched Simon from school and the boy would be waiting, safe and sound, for Rachel to pick him up on her way home. One enormous weight was lifted, at least temporarily.

Another hour passed before she saw Tom drive by. She stripped off her white coat and pulled on her jacket. The walk to Sheriff’s Department headquarters a few blocks up the street would give her time to compose her thoughts and Tom time to check in with Dennis Murray, his chief deputy.

She didn’t see Lawrence Archer until she pushed open the front door of the animal hospital. Striding through the parking lot at a brisk clip, he raised a hand in greeting when Rachel stepped outside.

She kept going. “I’m on my way somewhere. I don’t have time to talk.”

“I’ll walk with you,” he said, falling in beside her.

She wanted to swat him away like a pesky insect. “I’m not looking for company.”

Without acknowledging her statement, he kept pace with her as she crossed the two-lane Main Street. She continued past small shops toward the courthouse, an ornate relic of an earlier time that loomed over the downtown area from its own little hilltop. The Sheriff’s Department and the jail were tacked onto the rear of the courthouse.

Rachel tried to pretend Archer wasn’t at her side. What the hell did he want? Was he ever going to tell her?

At last he said, “I called your friend Mrs. McKendrick and invited her to sit down with me and talk, just the two of us face to face.”

“I’m sure she was overjoyed to hear from you,” Rachel said.

“I tried to tell her how sorry I am about the damage to her stable, and assure her that Packard had nothing to do with it and doesn’t condone criminal acts. She hung up on me.”

“And you’re telling me about it why, exactly?”

“I was hoping you could persuade her to meet with me.”

Rachel stopped and faced him. She let a couple of women pass them on the sidewalk and waited until they were out of earshot. “What does it take to get through to you? Joanna will never sell you her property. If the county tries to take it against her will, she’ll fight them every inch of the way. She’ll tie it up in court so long that you’ll grow old and gray waiting to get your construction crew onto that land.”

Archer held up both hands, not in surrender but in an effort to stop the words spilling out of her. “I’ve got a new proposal for her,” he said. “It’ll let her keep some of her land and continue her horse breeding operation, but—”

“Joanna wants to keep
all
of her land. She’s funny that way.”

He sighed and, hands on hips, bowed his head for a moment as if summoning patience to deal with Rachel’s stubbornness.

She started walking again, faster now. Another couple of blocks and she’d be with Tom.

Caught off-guard, Archer hustled to keep up. “Don’t you think she should make up her own mind? You can’t speak for her. She might like this proposal.”

“Fine. Go talk to her and find out. Why are you coming to me?”

“I told you that she… Look, will you ask her to hear me out? This could be a good compromise. Good for everybody.”

“I don’t work for you, Mr. Archer. I’m not your intermediary. I’m not anything to you.”
Except, perhaps, a thorn in your side. I hope so, anyway.
“Don’t ask me to do your job for you. It’s never going to happen.”

He threw up his arms in a sudden gesture that made Rachel flinch. She stopped and stared at him.

“You’re right,” he said. “None of this is ever going to happen.”

“Is that a promise?”

“You people are impossible, you know that? I’m sick of trying to get through to you.”

“Then stop. Please. Just give up and go away.”

Rachel walked on alone, fighting a powerful urge to look back and check the expression on his face. At the foot of Courthouse Hill, where wide stone steps led up to the building, she did look back. Archer was walking briskly in the opposite direction, returning to his office.

Rachel veered to the left and followed the driveway around the courthouse to the rear. She crossed the parking lot to the Sheriff’s Department headquarters.

The sound of a raised voice inside made her hesitate before swinging the door open. She couldn’t tell who was yelling. Cracking the door a few inches, she peeked inside.

At the front desk, where the middle-aged female receptionist looked on with amusement, Tom stood straight and solemn as a totem pole while a red-faced Robert McClure flung his hands about in broad gestures and shouted in Tom’s face. “This is outrageous! If you don’t bring my son to me this minute, you’re going to face serious consequences.”

Tom regarded him silently.

“Well, why are you just standing there?” McClure demanded. “Go get my son. And I warn you, if he has a scratch on him, you’ll be facing criminal charges.”

Rachel pushed the door open a little farther, madly curious about the situation. Why was McClure’s son at the Sheriff’s Department? Sounded like he’d been arrested.

Tom let a second pass in silence before he asked McClure, “Are you finished?”

McClure blew out a noisy breath. “I want an explanation of your behavior. But first I want my son out here, where I can see that he hasn’t been harmed.”

“Don’t worry about your son’s health,” Tom said. “You ought to be more worried about the people he’s harassing.”

“Harassing? What are you talking about?”

“Deputy Connolly and I caught him and a friend in the act of placing a bomb in the Jones sisters’ mailbox.”

A strangled laugh sputtered from McClure’s throat. “A bomb? Is this your idea of a joke?”

“No, but it seems to be your son’s idea of one. We caught them in the act, Mr. McClure. Your son William and his friend James, Supervisor O’Toole’s grandson. We’ve notified Todd’s parents. They’ll be here shortly.”

McClure’s face faded from blazing red to chalk white. “You’ve made a mistake. This isn’t possible. My son would never do such a thing.”

“Like I said, I’m an eyewitness, and so is Deputy Connolly. We’ll see how the prosecutor and the judge feel about it. The prosecutor’s in court right now, so we’ll have to wait for him to get over here at the end of the day. We can probably arraign your son and his friend sometime tomorrow—”

“
Tomorrow?
You can’t keep my son in jail overnight.”

“We can and we will. Before the judge can set bail, we have to find out how the U.S. Attorney for this district wants to handle the federal aspect of the case.”

“Federal… What do you mean?”

“As I explained to the boys, tampering with a mailbox is a federal offense. Putting a bomb in a mailbox is generally frowned on.”

Rachel stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind her. She didn’t know whether to be horrified by what she was hearing—a bomb in the Jones sisters’ mailbox?—or amused at seeing McClure thrown for a loop and momentarily speechless. Tom glanced at her with the barest hint of a smile.

“Oh, and one more thing I want to ask you about,” he said to McClure. For the first time Rachel noticed the papers Tom held in one hand. He brought them up now, held them out for McClure to see.

“What is that?” McClure blustered. “Am I supposed to guess what it means?”

“Telephone records,” Tom said. “I just walked in the door a couple minutes before you did and got these from Captain Murray. I haven’t had a chance to go over them thoroughly, but it appears that a call was made to Joanna McKendrick shortly after one a.m. last night from your cell phone.”

“What? Are you out of your mind? I was in bed asleep at one in the morning.”

“I didn’t say you made the call. In fact, I’d be amazed if you had, so thanks for confirming it wasn’t you. Somebody used your cell phone last night to call Mrs. McKendrick and tell her that her stable was on fire. It sounded like a boy’s voice, she said. And she heard another boy laughing in the background.”

McClure took a wobbly step backward.

“Hey, watch it.” Tom grabbed McClure’s arm to steady him. “Don’t pass out on me.”

“I can’t believe this,” McClure said, his voice losing volume with each word, ending his sentence in a breathless near-whisper.

“Believe it. Your boy and his friend are in a lot of trouble. Now if you want to sit down on the bench over there and wait for Todd’s parents, somebody will take all of you back to see your sons. But those boys aren’t going anywhere tonight.” Without waiting for a response, Tom gestured for Rachel to follow him.

Amazed, amused, and gratified, Rachel had trouble holding back her words as she and Tom walked down the hall. Inside his office with the door closed, she exclaimed, “Robert McClure’s baby boy? He set fire to Joanna’s stable?”

Tom dropped into his chair with a sigh. “I hope that phone call is enough to get a confession out of him. Even if he won’t admit it, I’m going to charge him with arson. Maybe he’ll break down and implicate the O’Toole boy. We’ve got them on the bomb charge, in any case.”

“Oh my God, this blows my mind.” Hands pressed to her cheeks, Rachel paced the room, too keyed up to sit. “Is the McClure boy the one who called me today?”

“Probably. And he and his friend probably made some of the other calls too. We found a whole collection of disposable cell phones in the O’Toole kid’s SUV.”

“Good grief,” Rachel said. “Well, I guess now McClure and O’Toole and the rest of them won’t dare try to push you out of your job.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

She stopped to look at him. “Oh, I never got around to telling you, did I? Lawrence Archer came to see me. He said if I didn’t behave myself and stop opposing the resort development, the Board of Supervisors would find a way to fire you. He said it would be my fault if you lost your job.”

“That goddamned son of a—” Tom jumped to his feet, sending his chair crashing into the wall behind him. “Where the hell does he get off, telling you something like that? I ought to—”

“Calm down, calm down.” Rachel moved around the desk to lay placating hands on his chest. “No harm done. I think those boys have wiped out any advantage the powers-that-be thought they had.”

Tom was making a visible effort to rein in his temper. “I’d still like to take Archer’s head off, just on general principle.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that. Be sure to include me if you decide to do it.”

They both laughed.

“Come here,” Tom said, pulling her into his arms. “I haven’t kissed you since this morning, and I really need to.”

He did, more than once.

She pulled away at last, reluctantly, and said, “I came over here to tell you about something. I don’t know if it’ll help your investigation at all, but I thought I should tell you just in case.”

“Okay. What is it?”

To avoid the distraction of his closeness, Rachel went to sit in one of the visitor chairs facing his desk. He sat again, and she recounted everything Mrs. Turner had told her.

“If it’s all true,” she finished, “there’s something very fishy about the way Isaac Jones died. And it all happened because of those pictures Lincoln Kelly took.”

Tom didn’t respond. He sat with a grim expression on his face.

“Tom?” she said. “What are you thinking? Does it mean anything?”

He roused himself, focused on her. “I’m not sure yet. Is that everything Mrs. Turner told you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Thanks. It could be useful.”

He stood, and she knew he wanted her to leave so he could get back to work.

“All right then,” she said, getting to her feet. “I guess I’ll see you at home later.”

He walked her to the door and kissed her. Feeling a little let down, she left the building, ignoring Robert McClure on the bench in the lobby. In the parking lot, she saw a woman in casual clothes and a man in a business suit get out of a silver Lexus and rush toward the building. The O’Toole boy’s parents, she guessed. At least one piece of the puzzle had fallen neatly into place.

Had the information she relayed stirred something in Tom’s mind, or was she imagining things? She would have to wait and see whether anything came of it.

She was walking back down Main Street to the animal hospital when her cell phone rang in her shirt pocket. Jake Hollinger was calling.

“I hope you don’t mind me calling this number,” he said. “The girl at the animal hospital gave it to me.”

“No, no, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”

“Well, it’s Tater, Tavia Richardson’s cat. You know I’ve got him here with me now.”