Poisoned Ground (24 page)
Authors: Sandra Parshall
“Yes, I know. How is he?”
“I thought he was okay. But I’m getting a little worried. He ate this morning, but now he’s acting like he feels bad. He threw up a little while ago, and he seems a little warm to me, like he might have a fever.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Animals are like people. The stress of major changes can lower their resistance to infection. Look, I have time to run out there and see him if you want me to. Or you can bring him in.”
“Would you mind coming out? I’d really appreciate it. I hate to haul him into the animal hospital on top of everything else he’s been through.”
“Let me get some things together and I’ll be right out. I’ll see you in a while.”
“They’re positive about that?” Tom asked Dennis between bites of his roast beef sandwich. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until a late lunch, in the form of sandwiches made by Brandon’s mother at the family shop, arrived along with a small basket of donuts.
“Yep.” Dennis sat next to Brandon in one of the visitors’ chairs, an ankle crossed over a bony knee. Pushing his perpetually slipping wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose, he added, “The Blackwoods managed to talk to three different employees at the lumber mill before Mark Hollinger even realized they were there. Everybody said the same thing. At the time the Kellys were shot, Mark was at the mill, running a saw himself, getting a special order of pine ready for a builder in Fairfax County. It’s going to be used for rustic ceilings in rec rooms, in case you’re interested.”
“He still could’ve killed Tavia Richardson,” Brandon said, “and he sure as heck had motive.” He popped the last of a frosted donut into his mouth and licked chocolate off his fingers.
“I’m not ready to give up on the idea of a single shooter.” Tom looked to Dennis again. “You haven’t found anything pointing to Ronan Kelly?”
Dennis shook his head. “If he’s got the money to hire a hit man to kill his parents, I don’t know where it came from. He’s so deep in debt he’s living on credit cards. One credit card, anyway. He was using four, and three of them have been blocked for non-payment.”
“If a single shooter killed the Kellys and Mrs. Richardson,” Brandon said, “then it’s got to be somebody who’s not even on our radar. The whole county’s mad about the development, but they’re taking sides, for it and against it. Who would kill a couple who didn’t want to sell, then turn around and kill a woman who did want to sell?”
“Those letters you brought in won’t help us,” Dennis said. “They could’ve been written by half a dozen different people. Some of them are just words cut out of magazines and pasted on sheets of paper. Most of them came off computer printers, no handwriting at all. When we do have handwriting to look at, there’s not much they have in common, except for three that I think could’ve been written by the same person. Somebody who’s practically illiterate, or wants us to think he is. It’s just garbage, no real serious threats. Bullying.”
Classic bullying,
Winter had said of the calls that came to the Jones house. Tom swallowed the last bite of his sandwich as he shuffled the printouts of telephone records. “Did you get the log for the Jones sisters’ home phone?”
“It’s in there somewhere,” Dennis said. “I was about to mention it earlier, then McClure showed up and interrupted us. Except for one from Rachel’s cell last weekend and one from Joanna McKendrick yesterday, they all came from untraceable cell phones. I think those two boys were responsible. I mean, you caught them putting a bomb in the Jones sisters’ mailbox, so making a few nasty phone calls wouldn’t be hard to believe.”
“All right, we’ve got some of this cleared up, at least.”
“The little stuff,” Dennis said with a wry grin.
“Right.” Tom dropped the phone records onto his desk and pushed them aside. Some aspects of the situation were starting to come clear, but others remained stubbornly out of focus. “Let me talk this through. Let’s say the murders aren’t directly connected with the development, not in a straight cause-and-effect way. I think when Packard came in here and started pressuring the owners to sell that whole section of land, it stirred up memories people thought they’d put to rest a long time ago. And that’s where we’ll find the motive for the killings.”
“How so?” Dennis asked.
Brandon leaned forward, frowning, elbows on his knees. “It all comes back to Lincoln Kelly, right?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Tom said. “He didn’t have much short-term memory. I can’t even imagine what it was like inside his mind, with all those burned out connections, but we know he was confused, and probably scared about losing control. When Robert McClure started coming around, talking about them selling their property to make way for the resort, Linc got it in his head that they were about to be thrown off their farm, the only place that felt familiar and safe to him.”
Dennis and Brandon both nodded.
“That threw him into a tailspin,” Tom went on. “It took him back to another time when he felt threatened—when he found out Marie was having an affair with Hollinger, and he thought he was losing her. So he did the same thing he did the first time around, he set out to make as much trouble for Jake Hollinger as he could.”
“He dug up those old pictures and started showing them around like they were new,” Brandon said. “He must’ve shocked the heck out of everybody.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Tom said. “We know he went to Hollinger with his pictures of Jake and Marie. Mark was there, and he saw the pictures too. We know Lincoln went to Joanna, begging her to help stop Marie from leaving him. And Winter Jones says he showed up there with pictures of Jake and Autumn, demanding to see their father so he could tell the old man what was going on. It was a replay of what happened all those years ago, when Isaac Jones and Autumn both ended up dead on Hollinger’s property.”
“The girl committed suicide, but Isaac’s death was an accident, wasn’t it?” Dennis said.
Tom rubbed the back of his neck, trying to loosen the tension in the muscles. “That’s what most people believe, because that’s what Hollinger said at the time. He claimed Isaac bought a bag of grain from him and he lost his balance and fell out of the loft while he was getting it out on the pulley. But now Winter and Mrs. Turner are both telling a different story. Winter told me the same thing Mrs. Turner told Rachel—that Lincoln showed Isaac pictures of his youngest daughter with Hollinger, and Isaac went over there to confront Hollinger. That’s why he was in the barn that day, not because he needed some grain.”
“Ah.” Dennis tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Yeah, that makes sense. So how did he really die? I mean, he did fall out of the loft, didn’t he?”
“I think Jake was working in the loft and Isaac went up there after him. They got into a fight and—what? I don’t know.” Tom threw up his hands. “Jake pushed Isaac? Or Isaac really did lose his balance and fall?”
“Can we prove any of this?” Dennis asked.
Tom blew out a sigh. “No. It’s all hearsay. If it’s true, though, it gives Hollinger a motive for killing the Kellys. Just a few days ago, I thought a stupid fight over a fence line was enough to drive Jake to murder. But if Lincoln and Marie knew the real reason Isaac was in Jake’s barn the day he died, and Lincoln was dragging it all out in the open, well, that sure as hell beats the fence line as a motive.”
“Yeah, for killing the Kellys,” Dennis said. “But what about Tavia Richardson? Why was she murdered?”
Tom shook his head. “I still can’t answer that. All I know is that Jake didn’t shoot her.”
As Rachel drove out to Jake Hollinger’s farm on the quiet country road, she wondered how much probing she could get away with, how many prying questions she dared throw at him.
None, she decided. This situation was too serious, too dangerous, for her to risk angering any of the people involved. She would stay out of things that didn’t concern her and let Tom do his job without interference.
But she knew that every second she was in Hollinger’s presence, she would be thinking about the past, about the man he once was and the young woman whose affair with him ended in her father’s death and her own suicide.
She was about halfway to her destination when her cell phone rang. With no other vehicles in sight, she slowed to a crawl as she dug the phone from her shirt pocket and answered.
“Hello, this is Rachel Goddard.”
“Dr. Goddard—Dr. Goddard?” The woman’s voice sounded breathless, high-pitched, familiar but so distraught that Rachel couldn’t put a name to it.
“Yes, this is Dr. Goddard. Who’s calling, please?”
“You have to promise me—” The voice rose toward hysteria.
Alarmed now, Rachel steered the Range Rover onto the weedy shoulder of the road. “Who is this? Tell me who’s calling.”
The name came out on a trembling exhalation. “Summer. Summer Jones.”
“What’s wrong, Miss Jones? Has something happened?”
“You have to promise me—” Summer paused, drew a couple of gasping breaths, and when she spoke again she sounded calmer. “Please promise that you’ll take care of the cats. Please don’t put them to sleep. They haven’t done anything to deserve that. And the rabbits. Don’t forget the rabbits.”
Full-blown panic seized Rachel. “What are you talking about? What’s happening?”
“Do you promise? I want you to promise.”
“Yes, yes, I promise. What’s happening? Miss Jones? Summer? Answer me!”
Dead air. She had disconnected.
“Oh my God,” Rachel said in the sudden silence.
She checked the screen to make sure Summer had truly disconnected, then with trembling fingers punched the speed dial button for Tom’s cell number. Before he could say hello, she blurted, “Something’s wrong at the Jones house. I got a strange call from Summer. Send somebody over there, please. Now.”
“What do you mean, a strange call?”
“Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer. Just send somebody.”
A moment of silence.
“Tom!”
“Okay, all right. I’ll head out there myself. Talk to you later.”
“Thank you, thank you,” she whispered after he’d disconnected.
She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and took several long, deep breaths, in and out, in and out, until she felt her heartbeat slow, felt the band of tension around her throat loosen. Probably nothing, she told herself. The Jones sisters were odd women with a sad history, and Summer seemed the most fragile of the three, the one most likely to bow under the weight of their history and the fear generated by the murders of their closest neighbors.
Rachel eased her Range Rover back onto the road. She had an appointment to keep with Jake Hollinger and his sick cat. And that would take her near the Jones house, so maybe she’d be able to find out what was happening there.
***
Tom and Brandon jumped into Tom’s cruiser and tore out of the lot.
“What do you think?” Brandon asked. “You think Winter’s done something to her sisters?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to guess. But I’ll tell you, nothing can surprise me at this point.”
“They don’t have any guns, do they?”
Winter’s angry words earlier in the day came back to Tom, but this time he heard a different meaning in them. “Winter told me I could search and I wouldn’t find any guns
anywhere inside the house.
”
“But you think she’s got some stashed—”
The dispatch radio crackled to life, cutting Brandon off. The department’s young dispatcher sounded like a frightened child. “Sheriff Bridger? Are you there?”
Brandon pulled the mike from its hook and held it up for Tom.
“This is Sheriff Bridger. Go ahead.”
“Joanna McKendrick called and said she heard gunshots, then right after that Jake Hollinger called and said the same thing. They both thought the shots were coming from the Jones sisters’ house.”
“We’re on our way,” Tom said as he sped past the Mountainview city limits. “Get all our men over there. On duty and off. And send an ambulance.”
***
Rachel was tempted to drive on past Jake Hollinger’s driveway to the Jones house, but she forced herself to turn in. Tom didn’t need her underfoot.
But what on earth was going on over there?
Put it out of your mind. Concentrate. Do your job. Let Tom do his.
Medical bag in hand, she walked to the front door of the brown-shingled house.
Jake didn’t answer her knock.
She knocked again, harder, and tapped her foot as she waited. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. She strained to pick up sounds in the distance but heard nothing. Even the birds had gone silent.
When she got no response to her knock, she retraced her steps to the driveway, then cut around the side of the house to the back. He might be in the yard, unable to hear her knock on the front door.
She didn’t see Jake out back, so she mounted the steps to the porch. Despite the chilly autumn air, the main door into the kitchen stood open and the storm door wasn’t fully closed. Not good. She would have to warn him about the danger of the cat pushing his way outside and getting lost. Tater wasn’t exactly equipped to cope with the great outdoors.
Shading her eyes, she leaned into the glass in the storm door and peered inside. The fat orange tabby was there in the kitchen, sitting up in his bed and looking alert. When he saw Rachel, he meowed.
She pulled the storm door open and stepped inside. “Mr. Hollinger? Are you here?”
She thought she heard movement, somewhere to her right.
“Mr. Hollinger?” she called again. “It’s Rachel Goddard.”
She walked over to the doorway that opened off one side of the kitchen. It appeared to lead to a hallway that ran alongside the stairs.
Turning left into the hallway, she found her face inches from the barrel of a rifle.
She yelped, staggered backward, and dropped her bag. Her back slammed against the door frame. Dragging her eyes upward, away from the black hole at the end of the barrel, she saw the tear-streaked face of Summer Jones.
“What are you doing here?” Summer cried. She sounded grievously disappointed with Rachel. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“What—What’s—” Rachel couldn’t catch her breath.
“It will all be over soon.” Summer sounded as if she wanted to reassure and calm Rachel. “I’m the last one left, and I’ll be gone soon. Then it will be over.”
“Where’s—”
Breathe, breathe. Stay calm, stay calm
.
“Where’s Mr. Hollinger?”
A faint smile curled her lips. “In the basement. He fell down the stairs.”