A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (17 page)

The judge told the prosecutor, “I believe the autopsy report alone throws your motive for Mr. Thornton killing Ms. Reynolds out the window.”

“But Ms. Reynolds did have a baby several years ago. She had told more than one witness over the years that Joshua Thornton was the child’s father.”

Hank handed the prosecutor and the judge each a copy of another report. “Mr. Thornton’s medical records, which include his blood type. Again, if you had simply asked, he would have volunteered it to you. A simple comparison of his blood type to the child’s, and you would have found that there is no way possible that he could have been the father.”

Stan blurted out, “The victim thought he was and was going to tell the world!”

“At which time he would have proven that he wasn’t.”

“Why would she have thought that he was the father if they had not had sex?” Seth asked.

Hank answered his question by telling the judge, “Ms. Reynolds’s contract with the network was not renewed because she had exhibited signs of unbalanced behavior and had been committed to a mental hospital shortly before her return to Chester. She imagined that she and Mr. Thornton had a relationship that never happened. The things that were found in her home had been stolen from Mr. Thornton in her obsession.”

Seth said, “There was a used condom in her scrapbook.”

“Can you prove that was his?”

Aware of the ability to gather DNA from the most minute and ancient material, Joshua held his breath.

“Josh, what are you doing?” Hank demanded when Joshua pulled away from her after they stepped out of the courtroom into the blinding lights of the media. “They want a statement.”

“Then give it to them,” he called to her while racing to catch the elevator at the end of the hall before Stan closed the doors. “You told me to let you do all the talking.”

Seth Cavanaugh had ducked out the back door of the courtroom to escape the public embarrassment of his failure to discredit the county prosecutor.

“What do you want, Thornton?” Stan asked when the doors closed to capture him and Joshua alone together on the elevator going to the offices on the top floor. “You heard the judge. You are cleared as a suspect, and my office is to release a statement to the media saying so. I will announce it myself tomorrow morning.”

“That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

The prosecutor observed the confines of the elevator. “You want a piece of me? Listen, I don’t blame you for being mad—”

“Stan, all you had to do was call me and I would have cooperated in finding out who killed Gail. Didn’t the attorney general tell you? I was the one who called him to ask for a special prosecutor. I knew that once the media found out that I was on the scene the night she was killed, there would be the appearance of impropriety no matter who was arrested.”

“My investigator said that you refused to cooperate and threatened him.”

Joshua gestured angrily. “Seth Cavanaugh never once asked me to come in for questioning. He only threatened to bring me in in handcuffs. I don’t deserve that, and I didn’t deserve any of this.” He took a deep breath. “But that isn’t what I got on this elevator to tell you.”

The elevator stopped its ascent. Stan waited for the doors to open. “What do you want then?”

“Gail was my friend. I knew that she loved me, but I wasn’t aware of the unbalanced nature of it. I didn’t know that she had a baby until the autopsy report.”

The doors opened.

“Which your cousin got for you.” Stan stepped into the corridor.

Joshua followed him. “It pays to have friends.”

Stan stepped to a picture window at the end of the hall. The top floor window looked out across the city of Weirton and the Ohio River. A barge filled with coal was traveling down the river.

Stan asked, “Do you know who the father of her baby could have been?”

“No, but I can find out.”

“I’d hate for you to waste your time on a dead end. She had that baby a long time ago.”

Joshua suggested, “Has your investigation even started down the avenue of the motive for her murder being her book on Tricia Wheeler? She had dinner with the victim’s mother the night she was killed. She told Dorothy Wheeler that she remembered something that she thought could be a link to Tricia Wheeler’s killer. Did you find anything about that in her research?”

“She had some research on a Randall Fine, but he lives in Columbus and was no where near the crime scene at the time of Gail’s murder.”

Joshua told him, “I heard that he’s got a couple of rape charges pending against him—”

“At the present time. The only reason he’s never been convicted for past allegations was because he’s got friends in high places.”

“He’s coming to our high school reunion.”

“Really?” A smile fought its way to Stan’s lips.

“You said you wanted to help.” Special prosecutor Stan Lewis had met with Joshua in the study of the Thornton home. It was the first opportunity Joshua had to examine all the evidence collected on Gail’s murder.

Curt had only been able to supply him with the evidence Seth Cavanaugh had given to him. In light of the detective’s suspicious behavior, they wondered if he had concealed or dismissed any evidence that could lead them to her murderer.

Joshua studied the forensics report from Gail Reynolds’s crime scene. “The killer smothered her with a pillow. Of course, there are no fingerprints on the pillow case, but there was epidermal matter.” He ran his finger along a line on the report. “Dark powder. Found to be finely ground coffee.”

“She drank the stuff all day long according to a lot of sources.” Stan referred to her intoxicated condition. “She should have stuck to the caffeine. Then she would have been alert enough to defend herself.”

“Tad had coffee all over the front of his shirt after Lou Alcott tried to kill him.”

“What?”

“He had just gotten a bag from the Rollins Corner Café when Alcott tried to kill him, and Gail had dinner there the same night that she was killed.”

“Who is this Alcott guy?”

“He drove a delivery truck for an appliance store.”

“His name hasn’t come up in our investigation. Why would he want to kill her?”

“I have no idea. We can’t come up with a viable motive for him trying to kill Tad, either.” Joshua set the forensics report aside. “Gail’s murder has to be connected to Tricia’s. She comes to town and announces that she is investigating her death. Why else would someone from Chester kill her?”

“In theory, start with the boyfriend,” Stan directed him. “Tricia dumped him that day. From what Reynolds says in her research file, Randy Fine had a big ego and a babe like Wheeler dumping him in public had to be a bruiser.”

“But you said that he was in Columbus when Gail was killed.” Joshua referred to her autopsy report. “Randy liked to be in control,” he recalled. “I don’t know the circumstances behind the assaults, but my guess is that he is a power rapist.” He sighed with regret. “I never would have guessed back in high school that he was like that. Now, looking back, all the bragging about the girls he was with, some he didn’t even know their last names—He would tell us about how they started out saying no and then he convinced them—I can see it now.”

Joshua dug through the folders on his desk until he found the yellowed folder that Tad had given him. It was Tricia Wheeler’s autopsy report. He flipped through the pages. “There was no sign of sexual assault in Tricia’s death, either,” he told Stan, who was reading the report for the first time over his shoulder. “I don’t think Randy killed her.”

“Are you concluding that as an objective investigator or as Fine’s old friend?”

“Gail’s murder doesn’t fit his profile, and he wasn’t here when she was killed.”

“Fine may not have committed the murder, but he could have been connected.” Stan removed a copy of a phone bill from his report. “Karl Connor was in town. He and Fine were good buddies.”

“I remember. They hung out together.”

“Randy’s lawyer threatened to sue Gail if she so much as mentioned him in her book. Right now, he is under indictment for two rapes. The last thing he needed was a book coming out insinuating that he was involved in a murder.”

Joshua placed the copy of the letter from Randy’s lawyer that Stan handed him on top of his pile of papers.

The special prosecutor continued, “Reynolds had contacted Fine to request an interview. That letter was not all she got. She had caller-ID on her phone. We traced all the numbers in the log and found that she got phone calls from Karl Connor.”

“Karl is Margo’s ex-husband. I’m sure that Gail used him as a source to get information against her.”

“Connor was also calling Fine. These phone calls did not start until after Reynolds came to town. Before that, they hadn’t spoken in years.” Stan smiled. “He recently deposited five thousand dollars in his account and became current on his truck payments. They were about ready to repossess it—until Reynolds died.”

With this information, Joshua dreaded the thought of appearing at the reunion. “If Randy didn’t kill Trish, why would he care about the book?” He gestured at her autopsy report. “He would have raped Trish if he was going to kill her, but no one touched her.”

“I guess this was for the book.” Joshua took a color photograph of a young man from Gail’s research file. It looked like his old friend from long ago until he noticed that the style of his shirt was too modern and his hair was shorter than he recalled. “Who is this?”

Stan told him, “That’s Gail’s baby. All grown up. Nice looking young man.”

Joshua’s eyebrows met in the center of his forehead. The teenager had dark hair and eyes, and a perfect profile. He was a handsome boy. “I know this guy.”

A knock on the study door interrupted their conversation. Stan stood up from where he had rested against the corner of Joshua’s desk.

Tracy smiled with anticipation. “Dad, your date is ready.”

Reminded of his first date since his wife’s death, Joshua’s hands went to his head to smooth his hair. He stood and buttoned his suit coat.

Hank O’Henry stepped into the doorway.

Stan let out his breath and said, “Now I see why you hired her for your lawyer.”

Hank had not planned on a semi-formal evening when she threw her things into her backpack to rush across an ocean and a country to be at Joshua’s side. With only a couple of days notice that she was to be his working date at the reunion for the class of 1985, Hank had needed to enlist the aid of his daughter, who was a skilled seamstress and had a keen eye for fashion.

Honored to be asked for her assistance, Tracy had refashioned a sapphire-colored, sequined gown her mother had worn to the Navy ball with her father years before. She cut a slit up the side to show off Hank’s legs, and removed the shoulders and their pads to make it a halter dress. With a couple of inches taken in at the waist and reshaping the skirt to hug her flat stomach, Hank looked more sensuous than Joshua had ever imagined his assistant being.

“She can go over my briefs any day,” Stan cracked.

Chapter Fourteen

The before-dinner cocktail party for Oak Glen’s Class of 1985 appeared to be gearing up when Joshua Thornton and his date Alana O’Henry arrived at the Mountaineer Resort in Newell. The banquet room on the top floor of the casino had a balcony with a view of the river. The center of the room contained a dance floor for those who chose to dance to a selection of rock tunes from their youth.

Cindy Rodgers was manning the reception table set up next to the entrance when Joshua held one of the double doors open for Hank to step inside. Cindy was dressed in a two-piece evening dress with a paper nametag stuck to her left breast. It had a copy of her senior picture with her maiden name printed beneath it.

“Well, hello there, Joshua Thornton—and his date, I presume!" she announced loud enough for those nearby to hear. Heads turned in their direction. A few of the guests called out to him while others waved.

Joshua could see that Karl Connor had taken up residence on a stool at the end of the bar. After signing in and picking up his nametag, Joshua guided Hank with a hand on her waist in Karl’s direction.

“Hey, Josh, you’re looking good. You haven’t changed a bit.” A blond-haired man with a receding hairline and glasses took his hand and pumped it before Joshua had a chance to move in on his suspect.

Joshua checked out the man’s nametag to recall who he was. In an instant, he remembered Tom Jarvis. Tom had participated in all the sports, and, while he had made varsity, he had never stood out. Joshua did recall that he sat next to him in French class, was head of the Latin club, and was exceptional in both subjects. He also remembered that he dated Tricia Wheeler until she broke up with him after making the varsity cheerleading squad in her junior year.

After Joshua introduced him to Hank, Tom told them that he and his family lived in Beaver, Pennsylvania. He worked for a pharmaceutical company near Pittsburgh.

Joshua’s close working relationship with his date made it possible for him to communicate wordlessly. While he sipped the beer the bartender had delivered to him, he told her with nothing more than his eyes that Tom was a witness from whom he could gather information. She slipped onto the seat of the bar stool between Tom and Karl.

Joshua put his hand on Hank’s bare shoulder. Her flesh felt warm on his palm.

“Yeah,” Karl said. “You haven’t changed a bit, Thornton.” He made no attempt at discretion when he checked out Hank’s feminine features.

“Watch it, Karl,” Joshua warned. “Hank trained as a Navy SEAL before she switched to the JAG Corps.”

“What does that mean?” Karl’s speech slurred.

“It means that she is licensed to kill,” Tom interpreted.

Karl looked confused.

Hank smiled demurely in Karl’s direction.

“I bet you couldn’t hurt a fly,” he said as if he were speaking to a child.

“How much do you want to bet?” she asked.

Joshua wanted Hank to put Karl in his place, but he didn’t want her to turn him against the two of them. “Hey, Karl,” he said in a tone that he realized, as soon as the words came out of his mouth, was too abrupt, “what is Randy doing now?”

“He’s a big executive with some computer company in Columbus. He’s married to a rich bitch with important friends. They’re stopping in here on their way back from a health resort.”

“I guess you two have kept in touch.”

Karl paused before he responded. “Some of us remembered our old friends from the past.”

“Friends or debts?”

“What does that mean?”

“You had to make passing grades in order to remain on the football team. Before making the team, you were failing almost every course, but then suddenly you were passing. The question crossed my mind more than once if you were cheating. If so, you needed someone to help you do it. You certainly weren’t smart enough to get away with it on your own.”

Karl floated past the insult about his not being smart enough to cheat on his own. “Randy Fine was my real friend.”

“Did he help you cheat your way through high school? Is that why you flunked so miserably in college? Because you never learned the basics?”

The former linebacker rose from his bar stool. “Do you want to take this outside, Thornton?”

“No.” Joshua turned away.

Karl threw a punch.

Before his fist could make contact with Joshua’s skull, his leg collided with Hank’s. Thrown off balance by the interception, he fell forward. His collapse to the floor was assisted by her elbow to the back of his neck.

Oak Glen’s Class of 1985’s star linebacker fell flat on his face.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Joshua told Hank in a low voice while Tom helped the fallen athlete to his feet.

Humiliated, Karl shoved Tom away and returned to his bar stool to brood while he started on his next beer.

“I saved you from a punch alongside your head,” she muttered.

“Go to the ladies’ restroom and freshen up. I need to question Tom, and you are a distraction.”

Hank took her glass of wine and pretended to go in search of the powder room.

Joshua stepped up to the stool on the other side of Tom, down from where Karl was perched at the end of the bar. Tom started the conversation. “I heard that you were a widower. How long were you married?”

With a pang of guilt about being on a date with someone other than Valerie, Joshua answered, “Seventeen years. We had five children.”

“Everyone thought you were going to marry Beth Davis.”

“I loved Beth, but us being married would never have worked.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve been married for eighteen years and I love my wife, but I still think about Tricia every day. I never really got over her, you know.”

“That’s right.” Joshua pretended to be surprised by the mention of her name. “You two were going steady at one point.”

They were surprised to discover that Karl had been listening to them from his seat three stools away. “Yeah, she dumped him after she made varsity.”

Tom claimed, “But I never held it against her or anything like that. I mean, she got all taken in by that high school social stuff.”

Joshua responded, “Which she never got to outgrow because someone killed her.”

“Even if she hadn’t died, Tom, she never would have come back to you,” Karl said, “because she dumped you because you weren’t good enough for her.”

Tom responded with a nervous chuckle. “Is that what this reunion is all about? How I ended up like everyone figured? A working stiff.” He turned on Joshua. “And so did you, Mr. Most Likely to Succeed. A hero—overseas and at home. Me? No one knows who I am. Admit it. You didn’t even remember who I was until you looked at my nametag and class picture. What is my claim to fame? Dating the class beauty until she dumped me after she discovered she could do better.”

“It could be worse.” Karl scoffed. “You could have married her.”

Joshua apologized, “I was only making conversation. I didn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, you did,” Karl shot at him before telling Tom, “Didn’t you hear? Josh is the county prosecutor. Gail Reynolds’s book was about Tricia’s murder, and he’s trying to find out who killed the two of them.”

Tom’s eyes widened. He looked at the lawyer searching for the killer of his high school sweetheart. “Do you think I killed Trish?”

Karl answered, “And Gail.”

Joshua wanted to put a cork in the drunken linebacker’s mouth, and he had precisely the right one to shut him up. “Who said Gail got herself killed because of her book?”

“What?” Karl gestured for yet another beer.

“Tricia’s murder was a long time ago.”

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” Tom reminded them.

“But up until now, everyone assumed that it was suicide,” Joshua said. “What are the odds that Gail showing up here and asking questions would dig up anything incriminating against anyone? Without evidence to prove that Tricia was murdered, Gail’s book would have been mostly speculation. It is more likely that there was another motive for Gail’s murder.”

Sensing that he was going to witness one of the most interesting scenes in his boring life, Tom edged up closer to the prosecutor so as not to miss a word directed at Karl. “Like what?”

Joshua explained, “Gail grew up around here. She was the editor of the paper and she made a lot of friends and enemies. She pulled no punches about anything.”

Karl growled, “Who cares?”

“This is a small town,” Joshua reminded him. “In small towns, reputations, once you get one, last forever, unless something happens to change it.” He added in a low voice, “Like an accusation.”

“What kind of accusation?” the edge in Karl’s voice held a warning.

“Did you know that she had a baby?”

Tom’s gasp was audible. “Gail Reynolds had a baby?”

“He was born in mid-November of 1985, which means he was conceived in February 1985. Now what happened in February?”

Karl paused with his beer mug perched at his lips.

The prosecutor prodded him, “Do you recall anything significant about that time period, Karl?”

Karl took a gulp of the beer before he quipped, “I guess she loosened up.”

“I remember,” Tom interjected. “I remember because it was so unlike her. I was coming into that dance, on Valentine’s Day with my date. Judy, I think . . . Anyway, it was so weird, I saw a bunch of guys smoking pot over by the practice field and I saw Gail with them. She was laughing real loud. I never saw her like that.”

“What guys?” Joshua asked.

Tom opened his mouth, and then, seeing Karl’s glare, closed it. “It was so long ago, Josh. Besides, what does it matter now? Why would anyone kill her because she had a baby out of wedlock twenty years ago?”

“That’s my thought exactly,” Joshua said. “I mean, the baby was adopted and has grown up. He doesn’t care about his birth parents. Child support is no issue. So what does it matter?”

“Yeah,” Karl grunted.

“She found this baby she had put up for adoption. She had made assumptions about who the father was. But then, I think, when she found him, now, as a young man, she realized who the father was and started to recall events that his birth father would not want to be made public.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Karl growled.

“Gail recently had a nervous breakdown. She was hospitalized. She told someone that she remembered something that happened and was investigating it for her book. Her sister found Gail after the Valentine’s Day dance and her panties were missing. I suspect that what she remembered during her hospitalization was what happened to her panties.”

“So what? Isn’t there a thing called statute of limitations?”

“But for people who have reputations to protect, it’s not too long to do any damage. Nowadays, it would not be called taking advantage of an opportunity, but rape, especially if the one who took advantage of her gave her the booze and pot to get her in a condition in which she couldn’t say no.”

“Go to hell, Thornton.” Karl took his beer and left.

“So, I’m not one of your suspects, huh?” Tom asked as soon as Karl was out of earshot.

“Should you be?” Joshua didn’t want to say he wasn’t a suspect.

Tom said, “Of course, you wouldn’t think me capable of something so brazen as killing the head cheerleader?” He seemed to be asking the prosecutor to suspect him. “Could I be so clever as to kill the beauty queen and not even be suspected of it? I, Tom Jarvis? Oak Glen’s invisible man.”

“Why would Oak Glen’s invisible man want to kill the beauty queen?” Joshua didn’t know if he should take him seriously.

“Because she was a stuck-up bitch.” Tom had drained his beer and waved to the bartender for another one.

Once again, there was a social event in Chester that Jan Martin had organized, but did not attend due to the lack of a date. She was able to bear such humiliation in her youth. Back then, she knew that it was only a pipe dream that the man she loved would invite her. This time, she had a glimmer of hope, only to have it dashed with the appearance of Hank O’Henry.

That was more than she could stomach.

Since Jan did not drink heavily, she was unable to drown her sorrows with alcohol. Therefore, she decided to spend the night of the reunion consoling herself with a carton of broasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy from a little place called Hot Shots, located down the street from what had once been her drugstore. She broke into the comfort feast while deep conditioning her hair and waiting for the mud mask on her face to set. She was on her fourth piece of chicken, and had downed half of the quart of mashed potatoes when the doorbell rang.

Wiping her greasy fingers on the front of her rattiest bathrobe, which she always wore when she needed coddling, Jan glanced out the window to see Tad waiting on her porch. Instead of his usual faded jeans and baggy sweatshirt, he was dressed in a sports coat and slacks.

“What do you want?” she asked when she opened the door.

Her eyes widened when he pulled a bouquet of red roses from behind his back. “I thought maybe you would like some cheering up.”

“I don’t make a very good mercy date.”

He turned away. “Then forget it. I’ll go find another girl to take to the club.” She made a noise that he took as a request to stop. With a sly grin, he turned back to her.

She took the roses and quickly counted them. There were a dozen, and they were long-stemmed, too. No man had ever given her a dozen long-stemmed roses. “Why would you want to take me to the club?”

“I like you, Jan.”

“Tad MacMillan,” she said with a hand on her hip, “there’s not a woman on God’s green earth that you don’t like.”

“Oh, I’ve met one or two that I have not been very fond of,” he laughed. “But I am very fond of you. I know I tease you, but I only tease people I like.”

“Then you must really love me, considering some of the things you have said to me.”

His smile held a hint of shyness. He said in a soft tone, “I don’t like to see you hurt. I was hoping that maybe we could go out tonight and have a good time since you didn’t go to the reunion.”

She hesitated. A date with Tad MacMillan would certainly add a new dimension to her reputation, which at this point was non-existent. When she looked down to admire the roses in her arms, she saw the old chocolate stain on the lapel of her bathrobe. Her hand flew to her face, which was crusty with dried mud. Her hair was twisted in a discolored orange towel.

“Hey, Doc! How you doing?” Fred and Patty Sinclair slowed down as they strolled around the corner during their evening walk to wave at them.

With a shriek, Jan ran back inside her house and slammed the door.

“That’s never happened to me before,” Tad muttered to himself.