Poisoned Ground (4 page)
Authors: Sandra Parshall
Rachel was about to give Billy Bob a boost into her Range Rover when she spotted the strangers.
A black SUV sat on the road. Three men in suits and ties stood at the end of the driveway and seemed to be studying the property, the man in the middle throwing his arms wide in expansive gestures.
“What the heck?” Rachel muttered.
At her feet, Billy Bob gave a low growl from deep in his throat.
“Well, that’s definitely not an endorsement.” The bulldog had impeccable judgment when it came to people. Rachel wanted to get back to the vet clinic to check on a dog and a cat she had neutered that morning, but she couldn’t go anywhere as long as the strangers stood in her driveway. In any case, she wouldn’t leave and let them continue whatever they were doing. “Come on, boy. Let’s check this out.”
Billy Bob kept up a low rumble in his throat as they walked down the driveway together. The gesturing man dropped his hands to his sides, and all three watched Rachel approach with bland expressions that gave away nothing.
She stopped a dozen feet from them. “Can I help you with something?”
The man in the middle, tall with close-cropped dark hair, flashed a broad smile that transformed his face from pleasant to handsome. He looked to be in his early thirties, barely older than Rachel. He said, “And you are?”
Rachel stared at him for a moment. “You’re asking
me
to identify myself? I live here. You’re standing on our property, my husband’s and mine.”
“Oh, sorry about that.” The man’s smile widened still more. He glanced at the growling bulldog, and when they made eye contact Billy Bob turned up the volume and bared his teeth. The other two men decided to play it safe and backed off the driveway into the road, but the guy with the smile stayed put.
“My husband, by the way, is the sheriff of Mason County.”
“Ah.” The man nodded as if he’d achieved clarity on a thorny issue. “I see. Does he happen to be at home?”
Rachel folded her arms. “You haven’t answered my question. Who are
you
? And what do you want?”
“We’re with Packard Development.” He extracted a business card from an inside pocket of his suit coat and handed it to Rachel.
The card identified him as Lawrence Archer, Property Acquisition and Management, Packard Resorts & Development.
Frowning, Rachel regarded him warily, but his smile never faltered.
“We’re taking a look around at potential locations for development,” he added.
“This farm isn’t for sale.”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s always best to work with the existing landscape instead of trying to remake it. For some purposes, a fairly level expanse of land is preferable, and plots of that description are few and far between in Mason County. This property isn’t ideal, but with a minimal amount of work it could accommodate a small airport and a heliport.”
Rachel raised her voice as she took a couple of steps forward. “Either you didn’t hear me, or you misunderstood. This land is not for sale.”
Her sharp tone triggered a fresh round of growls from Billy Bob.
Now Archer took a step back, and his two associates moved farther away, edging toward the safety of the black SUV. Archer’s smile remained fixed as if it were an object plastered to his face. “We’d like to sit down with you and your husband—I didn’t get your name. You’re Mrs….?”
“I didn’t tell you my name. I’m Rachel Goddard. Dr. Goddard. My husband is Sheriff Bridger.”
“Well, then, Dr. Goddard, we’d like to sit down with you and Sheriff Bridger and talk about the opportunity—”
“No.”
“We’re prepared to offer you—”
“I said no.” Sometimes the only remaining option was rudeness. “And I meant no. We have nothing to discuss. I have to get back to work, and I’d like you to leave now.”
“I hope I’ll have a chance to speak to Sheriff Bridger at the meeting tomorrow.”
“I don’t know if he can make it. He’s working a double murder case.” Two murders, Rachel thought, that might have been triggered by Packard’s presence in this community.
Oblivious, Archer continued, “I hope we’ll see both of you there, so you’ll have a chance to learn exactly how our project can benefit Mason County.”
Rachel wanted to slap that smile off his face.
When she didn’t respond, Archer nodded and said, “Nice meeting you, Dr. Goddard, and I look forward to seeing you again.” All three men turned at once toward their vehicle.
Billy Bob issued one sharp bark at their retreating backs.
Fuming, Rachel headed back up the driveway to her Range Rover. Billy Bob, satisfied that he’d driven away the intruders, trotted beside her on his short legs.
“Who the hell do they think they are, huh?” Rachel demanded of the dog. “Have you ever seen such arrogance? I wouldn’t blame Joanna if she wanted to shoot them all.”
Billy Bob answered with a low
ruff
that rose from deep in his throat.
Rachel had rarely heard Billy Bob bark before, and now he’d done it twice in a couple of minutes. “Wow, you really didn’t like them, did you? Well, I’ll try to make sure you never see them again.”
Although she wanted to give Joanna moral support, she hadn’t planned to attend the Saturday afternoon meeting because it would probably involve a lot of shouting between different factions. But now nothing would keep her away. She couldn’t bear the thought that Lincoln and Marie Kelly might have been killed because of divisions created by her slimy visitors and their bosses.
Would the Kellys’ killer be at the meeting, she wondered, looking as ordinary as everybody else while he made mental notes of which side people were on?
“Wow,” Brandon said.
“Yeah, wow.” Standing at the bottom of Marie and Lincoln Kelly’s basement stairs, Tom surveyed a thriving crop of marijuana plants growing in pots. They sat on tables that lined the walls and crowded the space in the middle of the basement. In one corner a thick layer of flower buds lay drying on a screen. The fruity aroma in the air made Tom think of pineapple and cherries.
Black plastic taped over the half-windows blocked the view from outside. Tom raised a hand to partially shield his eyes while they adjusted to the glare of the fluorescent lights hanging above the tables.
Dennis angled his camera to get a wide shot of the plants. “What would you say, maybe fifty altogether?”
“We’ll need a truck to get them all out of here.”
“And plenty of muscle to move them,” Brandon said. “These pots look like they weigh a ton. Man, this is wild. Who would’ve thought?”
Tom stepped over to the nearest table and brushed a hand along the bright green, fern-like leaves. “I hope Jake Hollinger was right about them growing this stuff for medical use.”
“It hasn’t got that skunk smell I’m used to when we confiscate pot,” Dennis said. “I’ve read about these really mild varieties for cancer patients on chemo who have trouble with nausea.”
“Let’s hope that’s what we’ve got here. If they were selling it to a dealer, that puts a whole new slant on the murders.”
“Hollinger said there’s more out in one of the fields,” Brandon reminded him.
“I doubt anything’s growing outdoors this late in the season. But let’s see if we can find anything else before we get somebody out here to move it all.”
Before leaving the house, Tom turned out the lights over the plants and the three of them sealed the basement door with crime-scene tape. They did the same with the front and back doors. The Kellys’ son and daughter had both told Tom they wanted to stay in the house while they were in Mason County, but they would have to make other arrangements. This was a crime scene in more ways than one.
Taking Brandon and Dennis along, Tom drove out into the fields toward the center of the small farm. Hollinger had described a spot away from the road, where tall corn disguised the marijuana plants growing between rows. Now, in mid-November, nothing remained of the corn except dried stalks, but when Tom and the deputies walked the field they found a few small marijuana seedlings struggling to survive in the chilly weather.
“How many people do you suppose know about this?” Dennis laughed as he snapped a picture of one marijuana plant. “Everybody in the county but us?”
“And why didn’t Hollinger report it?” Brandon added. “He sure didn’t get along with Mr. Kelly.”
Tom kicked a rock out of the way and tugged on one of the cannabis plants. It offered a little resistance, but when he yanked with both hands it came free with clumps of clay soil clinging to the roots. “I think we’ll find out Marie and Lincoln helped Sue Ellen Hollinger when her cancer was terminal. They would have been happy to help ease her pain. And Jake wouldn’t stand in the way of his wife getting some relief just because it came from the Kellys.”
They pulled up five more small plants, carried them to the cruiser and tossed them into the trunk.
***
Rachel braked in the middle of Main Street and stared at the building across from Mountainview Animal Hospital. When she’d left earlier in the day the storefront space had been vacant and dark. Now a small moving van sat at the curb, the door into the building stood open, and two men in coveralls worked inside, positioning three desks and chairs in a semicircle. A sign taped to the plate-glass window read PACKARD RESORTS.
“They’re really moving in, aren’t they?” No one was around to hear her except Billy Bob, and he lay snoring on the back seat.
When she pulled into her parking space in the vet clinic’s lot, she realized half a dozen clients with dogs on leashes had gathered outside the door, all of them focused on the activities across the street. A couple of women called out questions as she opened her car door. She ignored them for the moment, while she roused Billy Bob and helped him down from the Range Rover.
The women repeated their questions when Rachel approached with the bulldog.
“Do you have any news about the Kellys?”
“Does the sheriff know who did it?”
The other dogs, big and little, swarmed Billy Bob in a flurry of sniffing and tail-wagging.
Rachel held up a hand. “Please don’t ask me anything, because I don’t have any answers. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to Tom. Marie and Lincoln Kelly were killed today. That’s all I know about it.”
“Well, I can tell you what I think.” This came from Mrs. Wilson, an elderly woman with snowy hair and a sharp little nose in a pinched face. Her spotted mutt strained at his leash to get closer to Billy Bob.
“We can always count on you to tell us what you think, Oline,” said another woman of about the same age, rolling her eyes heavenward as she spoke.
Ignoring her, Mrs. Wilson pointed across the street. “There’s the cause, right there.”
All the women started speaking at once, their words tumbling together. The woman who had chided Mrs. Wilson raised her voice above the others. “That company’s the best thing that’s happened to Mason County in a hundred years. Nobody’s got a right to stand in the way of all those jobs coming in here. We need to think about what’s best for everybody.”
“I can’t believe somebody killed the Kellys because they didn’t want to give up their land,” another woman said. “I refuse to believe anybody’s that evil.”
Rachel didn’t want to listen to their gossip and speculation. She started edging through the clump of women to the entrance.
Rachel’s young assistant, Holly Turner, appeared on the other side of the glass door and pushed it open to let her and Billy Bob in. The last thing Rachel heard from the group behind her was, “It’s going to get a whole lot worse before it’s over, you can count on that.”
With the door closed and the babble of voices shut out, Holly blurted, “It’s all anybody’s talkin’ about, that nice couple gettin’ shot.” She leaned to pet Billy Bob, her long black hair falling forward over her cheeks. “And you were out that way when it happened, weren’t you?”
Rachel sighed. Shannon, the plump blond receptionist behind the front desk, had also turned her way, wide-eyed and expectant. “Yes, I was out there, but I can’t tell you anything. Now I need to check on my surgery patients—they’ll need to be ready to go home when their owners come in.”
She walked past the front desk and down the short hall to her office, where she planned to leave Billy Bob while she examined her patients. She was pulling on a white lab coat when Holly came in and shut the door behind her.
“I don’t mean to pester you,” Holly said, “but my grandma’s been good friends with Miz Kelly as long as I can remember, and she’s already called me, all upset, askin’ if I know anything about what happened.” Holly was a beautiful young woman with the dark olive skin that marked her as Melungeon, like Tom. Like Marie Kelly. Unlike either of them, Holly had brilliant blue eyes that made a startling contrast to her hair and skin coloring.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize they were friends. But I really don’t know anything you could pass on to your grandmother. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.” Rachel stepped around Holly to open the door.
Holly stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I think Grandma might be the one that’s got somethin’ to pass on. I think Tom ought to talk to her about what she knows.”
Tom wanted to question the rest of the Kellys’ neighbors before the day ended—and while the shock of the murders was fresh enough to prompt honest emotions and unguarded statements.
“The two oldest Jones sisters are the worst snoops I’ve ever come across,” he told Brandon as they headed over to the women’s home. Their property lay between the Hollinger farm and the land belonging to Tavia Richardson, and it was twice the size of either. “Summer’s not so bad, but Winter and Spring probably know more about their neighbors than anybody else does.”
“When I was a little kid,” Brandon said, “we all thought they were witches. If you got on their wrong side, they’d put a curse on you. Turn you into a frog or something. If we saw them downtown, we’d cross the street, pronto.”
Tom laughed, as appalled as he was amused. “What made you think they were witches?”
“Oh, you know. All living together, none of them ever got married, keeping to themselves. Who knows what they’re up to? They could be holding black masses and sacrificing babies for all we know.” Brandon chuckled as if dismissing an absurd idea, but he didn’t sound as dismissive as he probably thought.
“I’m pretty sure they’re harmless. Winter and Spring were both good teachers. I had Winter for English and Spring for history in high school. Summer was a nurse at the hospital until a few years ago. She worked with my mom. But she didn’t take to Dr. Hall when he bought the place, and she started doing private duty nursing. I’m not sure she works at all now.”
“They had another sister, didn’t they?”
“Yeah.” Tom had never known her, but he’d heard occasional references to her through the years. “Autumn. She was a year or two younger than Summer. She was in nursing school, then their mother got cancer and she dropped out to take care of her.”
“Their dad was a doctor or something?”
“A dentist. He had a big practice, with an office in town. Very successful, made a lot of money.”
“Didn’t he die in somebody’s barn?”
“Yeah. Jake Hollinger’s barn, in fact.” Tom tried to summon the full story, but the details wouldn’t come. “All that happened before I was born. For some reason Jones was in the loft, something to do with getting a sack of grain for their horse, I think, and he lost his balance and fell out the door of the loft, into thin air. Broke his neck when he hit the ground.”
“Jeez.” After a moment of silence, Brandon asked, “And Autumn, wasn’t she the one who—”
“Yeah.” Tom let the subject drop. He didn’t know that story in detail either, and in any case the tragedy of Autumn Jones had no bearing on their job today.
He swung into the Jones driveway, passing a pretty post-mounted mailbox in the shape of a Swiss chalet. The sisters lived in a Colonial-style farmhouse, spacious and handsome, painted a creamy white with blue shutters and fronted by a broad porch. Every detail spoke of meticulous upkeep. Late-blooming asters and chrysanthemums filled flower beds in front of the foundation shrubs, and not a single fallen leaf marred the still-green lawn. A blue jay drank from a pedestal birdbath under a bare-limbed maple.
Winter answered the doorbell, wiping her hands on an apron tied round her waist. Before Tom could tell her why they were there, she pushed open the storm door and said, “Hello, Thomas, Brandon. Come right in. We’ve been expecting you.”
She led them into the living room, where the mossy green walls and green and cream leaf-patterned fabrics made Tom feel like he was walking into a shaded garden. Spring and Summer stood by the sofa as if they’d been rooted there for a while, awaiting the arrival of the police. The aroma of warm chocolate wafting from the kitchen made Tom’s mouth water.
“I’m not sure we have anything of value to tell you,” Winter said, “but of course we want to help. I don’t mind admitting this situation scares me out of my wits, a killer being loose among us.”
“Can we bring you something?” Spring asked, her hands clasped under her chin in an oddly girlish manner. The youthful touch of long nails painted to match her red sweater only served to emphasize her gnarled, arthritic fingers. “Summer made a batch of brownies, and they’re still warm. Would the two of you like some?”
Brandon threw a hopeful glance Tom’s way. Tom didn’t want to conduct an interview while licking chocolate goo off his fingers, but he was suddenly ravenous and guessed that Brandon was too. “Yeah, thanks. That’d be great.”
As Summer scurried off to fetch the treats, Winter gestured at the armchairs facing the sofa. “Make yourselves comfortable, please. Let’s wait until Summer rejoins us, why don’t we? So you won’t have to repeat any of your questions.”
Winter and Spring settled at the two ends of the sofa and regarded Tom and Brandon with sorrow-tinged expressions. Tom found their silence interesting. Patient restraint wasn’t what he’d expected from these inveterate gossips. While Brandon grew fidgety, bouncing a knee up and down, Tom glanced around the room. His gaze settled briefly on the photos that lined the mantel. The sisters’ parents stood stiff and solemn in an old studio shot. The pretty young Autumn Jones smiling from what looked like a high school picture. All the pictures looked decades old.
Although it felt longer, the wait lasted three or four minutes until Summer bustled in with a tray and placed it on the coffee table. She’d brought two tall glasses of milk to go with the brownies. “There you go. Enjoy.”
Brandon grabbed a plate that held two big, thick brownies studded with pecans. “Thanks.” He took a bite from one, swallowed and nodded. “Mmm. This is great.”
Settling into the space between her sisters, Summer beamed. “That’s quite a compliment coming from someone whose parents own such a wonderful bakery.”
The women sat in identical postures, their spines straight without touching the back of the couch, their hands folded in their laps. Although they had different haircuts—Tom wouldn’t say any of them had a style—and Spring’s vivid clothes and dyed blond hair stood out, the Jones sisters made a set which would be broken up only by death.
Tom took a bite from a brownie but resisted the temptation to devour the whole thing. Wiping his fingers with a napkin Summer had provided, he got down to business. “I heard that you stopped by the Kelly place earlier, so you know what happened.”
“We know that Lincoln and Marie have both been murdered,” Winter said.
A sound that could have been a gasp or a sob escaped from Summer, but she stifled the surge of emotion and ducked her head. In her lap, her folded hands shifted and the fingers locked in a grip tight enough to turn her knuckles white.
Winter ignored her sister and continued in a brisk tone. “But we don’t know any details. Do you have any idea who could have done it?”
“We’re just beginning our investigation.”
Brandon reached for one of the glasses on the tray and swallowed a third of the milk in one gulp.
Spring shook her head. “Guns are an abomination. I’m so glad we got rid of all our father’s weapons after his death. When somebody has a gun, it’s too easy to use it to do harm. Think of all the people who are killed with guns every single day. If nobody had a firearm, that wouldn’t happen.”
No, Tom thought, but people had plenty of other ways to commit murder. He didn’t hold out much hope that the human impulse to kill one’s own kind would vanish if guns disappeared. “Where were all of you when it happened? You might have heard or seen something that could help us.”
“Spring and I were here in the house,” Winter said. “Summer was out collecting the last of our blueberries, but she came running back to the house after the shots were fired. We assumed a hunter was in the area, and we know better than to be outside when we hear gunshots. We drove into Mountainview to do some shopping, and we stopped on our way home because we saw the Sheriff’s Department cars on the road. That was the first we knew of what really happened.”
“Such a sad thing,” Summer murmured.
“Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary before you left? Or any other time this week?”
The sisters exchanged looks, and Tom had the sensation of witnessing a three-way silent consultation as they compared notes. Why were they so reticent? He’d expected them to be brimming with speculation and opinion about the Kelly murders.
Summer gave him an apologetic smile. “It’s not likely we would hear anything while we’re inside the house. Hearing problems run in our family. I’m the only one who doesn’t use a hearing aid.”
“You need one, though,” Winter said. “I’m growing weary of having to repeat everything I say.”
Summer’s face betrayed a flash of irritation, promptly squelched and replaced with a tight little smile. “My sisters don’t like wearing theirs, and most of the time the hearing aids are on their dressers, not in their ears.”
“Well, it’s uncomfortable.” Spring touched a finger to her left ear, and for the first time Tom noticed the small plastic device that was partially obscured by her hair. “You’ll find out for yourself soon enough, Summer.”
Winter cast a raised-eyebrow glance at her sisters. “I can hear what I need to hear. And I can tune out the useless chatter.”
Tom felt like he was getting lost in a thicket. What were they like with each other, he wondered, when they were alone? He tried to drag them back on topic. “Have you noticed anything unusual going on around here in the last few days?”
“No, not a thing,” Winter said.
“Have you seen any strangers in the area?”
The women’s eyes darted from their hands to the wall beyond Tom’s head, and sideways at the yard framed in the window. Then, at the same instant, they all focused on Tom and shook their heads no.
Their synchronized movements struck him as creepy. He was beginning to see why kids concocted weird stories about them.
“But that’s not necessarily meaningful,” Spring said. “If someone approached the Kelly farm from the opposite direction, he wouldn’t have passed our place, and we wouldn’t have seen him.”
Tom glanced at the window. He could see the roof of Hollinger’s house in the distance. Beyond that lay the Kelly farm. “With the leaves down, can you see Lincoln and Marie’s house from your second floor windows?”
Winter’s eyebrows went up. “We don’t spend our time spying on the neighbors.”
“Like hell you don’t. Come on, spill it. “What’s been going on over there lately?”
“Well…” Winter patted the knot of white hair at the back of her head and pushed a stray strand into place. “I did happen to glance that way this morning. Not at the Kelly house, but at the fence between the properties. Lincoln and Jacob Hollinger were standing there, and they were gesticulating vigorously. I could only assume they were yelling at each other over that blessed fence. I noticed that Lincoln had knocked it down again.”
Brandon sat forward in his chair, and Tom told him with a nod to jump in.
“What time was that?” Brandon asked.
“Oh, it was early. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock.”
Summer sighed. “Our father should never have sold either of them a square inch of his land all those years ago. If he’d known it would come to this…” Her voice trailed off.
“And things have been considerably worse between those two since the Packard company started waving money around,” Spring said. “Figuratively speaking. I guess they’re waving contracts around, with promises of big money.”
“Did any of you see which of them ended the argument today?” Tom asked. “Which man walked away first?”
They all appeared reluctant, but after a hesitation Winter answered, “Jake did. In fact, Lincoln appeared to continue shouting at him as he walked off, but Jake wasn’t drawn back into the argument.”
Tom wasn’t impressed. If the sisters were telling the truth, Hollinger had lied about being at his lumber mill all morning. He might have returned home after the argument, stewed over it for a while, then grabbed a gun and gone back to finish his fight with Lincoln once and for all. “Has Hollinger been pressuring the Kellys to sell their farm to Packard?”
For a second none of the women spoke. Winter slid a sidelong glance at her sisters before she answered. “Apparently so. We only know what Marie told us. It was upsetting Lincoln terribly, she said. In his mental state—you must know he suffered from Alzheimer’s—he simply couldn’t cope with the thought of leaving his home.”
“How do you feel about your neighbors selling land that used to belong to your family? The Kelly farm, Hollinger’s place, the Richardson land, that all used to belong to your parents, right? Are you planning to sell your own place to Packard?”
All three took on identical expressions of distress—furrowed brows, faces screwed up as if they were in pain.
“That’s such a contentious issue,” Spring said. “I wish it had never come up. Who could ever have imagined that a huge development company would want to put a luxury resort here? In Mason County, of all places.”
“We’re not even handy to the interstate,” Summer added.
Winter’s lips twisted in a cold smile. “That’s the point, I suppose. It would be a retreat from the rest of the world. But with all the conveniences of that world, of course. For wealthy people who can’t imagine living a day without their e-mail and smartphones and cable television.”
“They want to put the lodge where Joanna McKendrick’s house is,” Tom said.
“Oh, we know,” Spring said. “Isn’t it awful? Poor Joanna is just beside herself, and who can blame her? Especially with Robert McClure badgering her. He can be such a vile man sometimes.”
The other women murmured agreement.
“I guess you’re not considering selling, then,” Tom said.
“Well…” Winter glanced at her sisters.
“You
are
selling?” Tom had expected the Joneses to be Joanna’s allies in blocking the project.
“Now slow down, Thomas,” Winter said. “We are uncommitted at this point. This is our home, we’ve lived here all our lives, and we’re naturally reluctant to leave it. On the other hand, we have been offered a princely sum for the land, and frankly, that money would make us quite comfortable in our declining years, especially when we develop the inevitable health problems. So, we are not committed one way or the other, but we are considering the offer—keeping in mind the changes the development would bring to the county.”