Lia Farrell - Mae December 02 - Two Dogs Lie Sleeping (3 page)

T
he next day, after his morning shower, Ben dressed in his uniform and left for the office at six a.m. It was now seven-thirty. Although the Ferris murder wouldn’t be his job, he was on edge and kept thinking about July finding Tom Ferris. He watched from his office window as Miss Dory Clarkson, his office administrator, opened the front door and came in. She looked cool and composed in the August heat. A striking African American woman, she ran his office with a velvet tongue and a laser glance. She appeared to be about fifty years old, but Ben thought she had to be older.

Ben w
alked into the waiting room and smiled at Dory. The staff secretly referred to her as “Melting Moments.” Ben knew she was anything but sweet and yielding. Dory started the coffee, then sat down at her desk and pulled out a small mirror from her purse. She gave a self-satisfied grin. Apparently, her hair and lipstick met her high standards. Her smile grew wider as she glanced down at her red high heels; the color was a precise match for her red and white top. But when she looked up at Ben, the smile vanished.

“It’s a good thing I work here,” Dory said, looking at Ben askance.

“What do you mean?”

“Without me telling y’all what to do, you men would not have a clue.”

Ben could tell Dory was in one of her “men are idiots” moods.
He gave her a stern look, got a coffee and returned to his office. He flipped through a couple of “Return Call” slips and went into the conference room. In the next few minutes his two deputies, Robert Fuller and George Phelps, entered the room. Ben could hear them getting coffee. On the heels of the deputies, Wayne Nichols, Rose County’s Chief Detective, made his appearance, greeted Dory and joined the meeting.

“Good morning all,” Ben said when everyone was in their accustomed places. He looked at his chubby, redheaded deputy. “Let’s have reports. George, you’re first.”

George had opened his mouth to speak when they heard a knock on the door.

“What is it?” Ben called out, frustrated at the interruption. Dory opened the door. He frowned at her. He liked to start staff meetings on time and she knew it.

“It’s John Granger on the line from Mont Blanc. You’ll want to talk to him.”

He
walked out to Dory’s desk. She had reigned as the undisputed queen of the office for almost thirty years. Sheriffs might come and go, but Dory endured. She took no nonsense from anyone—especially him.

“Okay, which line?” Dory punched a button and handed him the receiver. “Good Morning, John.”

“Morning, Ben.”

“What’s up? I’m about to start a staff meeting.”

“What’s up is that the death at the Booth Showhouse last night is being turfed to your shop. Turns out it’s in your jurisdiction, not mine.”

“I was over at your station last night after your deputy brought July Powell in
,” Ben said. “She found Tom Ferris dying and called 911. I guess dispatch routed that call to you. Didn’t you interview her?”

“I did, just briefly. Dispatch assumed that it was in the Mont Blanc jurisdiction, but I checked this morning and the house is outside the city limits, so you get this one. Sorry, buddy,” John sounded anything but sorry.

“Are you sure about the location? As I understand it, the sheriff usually cedes jurisdiction over a murder if it happens in one of the cities with a police department. And since Mont Blanc has a police department, it should be yours.”

“Nice try, Ben. You’d be right in most cases, but you’re wrong this time. It’s yours unless you want to give it to the state boys. I’ve never handled a murder before and you were successful with the Ruby Mead Allison
case last spring, so I’m bowing out.”

Ben thought for a moment. “Have you heard from the Medical Examiner yet? Is it possible it was a suicide?”

“I just talked with him. The guy was shot only once—in the back.”

“Damn it. Well then, it’s murder. I definitely don’t want the state cops in here. They could dance around this one for months. They don’t know the local history or people. Hang on a minute.” Ben looked at Dory. She wasn’t even pretending not to listen. He put the call on hold and walked down the hall to his office.

He walked in, closed the door and picked up the phone. “Are you still there, John? Okay, here’s my problem. I’m dating July Powell’s sister, which might complicate things.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah, I talked about Ferris with my girlfriend yesterday. She said her sister and the deceased were high school sweethearts who still dated in college. I can’t see July killing him, but stranger things have happened.”

“Well, the good news is that my deputy secured the crime scene, sealed the room with crime tape and the CSI Team worked the scene last night
—photos, room dimensions, Luminol, searched for bullets, the works. I got their preliminary reports this morning.”

“Did they find anything?”

“Not much. It was right before the public viewing of the house and the cleaning service went through yesterday afternoon. Even if we do find some prints, they’ll probably be from the designers or cleaning crew. Apparently, about twenty designers have been working on the place for months—not to mention painters, tile installers, and landscapers. Other than ballistics, the scene won’t tell us much.”

“Okay, but I’ll still need all that information. I
assume the CSI guys were at least able to eliminate the ambulance crew.” Ben indulged in a little sarcasm.

“Yep, and they were able to lift a print from the victim’s hand using that new technology. It’s probably the Powell woman’s print. She said she held the man’s hand until the ambulance arrived. The ambulance took the body to the hospital
, where he was pronounced DOA. I understand that the victim owned the mansion where he was found. Anyway, while you wrestle with your personal and jurisdictional issues, I’ll ask Doctor Estes to call you.”

“I’ll need your report, too, John. Can you have the deputy who was on site come over here? I want to talk to him.”

“I’ll get on it. Good luck.”

“Yeah, right. I thought we were friends, John.”

He heard John laugh and then hang up.

Ben went back to the conference room to update his staff and give assignments for their current investigations. He dismissed them from the meeting without mentioning anything about Tom Ferris’ murder. He figured it was probably okay to see the body and read the reports, but he wouldn’t interview anyone until he got clearance from the Chief of Police in Nashville.

W
hen the Medical Examiner called, Dory buzzed him. She always screened his calls, and although Ben found this frustrating when he first took office, he now knew better than to try to wrest control away from Dory.

“Hello, Doctor Estes? Are you calling about the Ferris case?”

“Sure am. It wasn’t an accident. The angle of the shot was straight, and the victim took a single bullet in the back.”

Ben knew Doctor Estes well. He was exacting, fussy and somewhat touchy about his findings. He doubted he would tell him anything more without seeing the body, but he tried.

“Can you tell me anything else?” Ben asked.

“Certainly not,” he said, crisply. “If you wish to know more, I’ll be in the
morgue.”

“Do you have the bullet?” Ben asked.

With the supercilious air of one enlightening the ignorant, Dr. Estes declared that he did.

“Could you send it to our lab for analysis?” Ben asked
, ignoring the ME’s sarcasm.

“Yes. W
hen do you want to see the victim? I have other work to do, you know.”

“I’ll come over in about an hour if that will work with your schedule.”

“It will. See you then.” He was gone.

Ben looked up to see his detective standing in the doorway. Wayne Nichols was a big man, quiet and intense. He had hazel eyes with dark eyebrows and thick, graying hair combed back from his forehead. Pushing sixty, as compared to Ben’s age of thirty-two, he was very experienced, with an intuitive understanding of the darker recesses of the human mind. Originally Ben had resented Wayne’s attempts to be a mentor. However, over the last year they’d grown closer and for the most part worked well together.

“Looks like you have another case, Wayne.”

“How so?”

“A man named Tom Ferris was found near death from a bullet wound in the Booth Showhouse yesterday. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Mae’s sister, July, found the body.”

“Here we go again.” Wayne gave a slight shake of his head. “Did this one have the sense to call 911?”

“She did, right away. Dispatch sent over an ambulance, since she reported that he was still breathing. Ferris was taken to the hospital and pronounced DOA. The emergency dispatcher sent a deputy from the Mont Blanc station and the crime scene guys, so I assumed it was their case.”

Wayne waited. It was one of his strengths as an interrogator. Most suspects quailed and caved in that silence.

“But John just called and said that
911 really should have called us. It’s in our jurisdiction. Apparently the Booth Mansion is just outside the Mont Blanc city limits.”

“Boss, you have to stay out of this one.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too, but the house
is
in Rose County, so it’s ours. And you work both sides of the street, my friend, so it’s yours in any case.” Ben referred to Wayne working with both Rose County and the Mont Blanc police station when there was a serious crime to investigate. “If I reject it, John’s going to call in the state cops because he’s never handled a murder before.”

“I’m not talking about jurisdiction. What about your involvement with the December family? Or should I say lack of
objectivity
about the family?”

“I know. I really don’t need this. I’m going to call the Chief of Police in Nashville and go over it with him.”

“Okay. Just to clarify, do we know for sure it was murder?”

“One shot in the back, so murder definitely. The ME also found something else
of interest. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. I’m going to go see the body. Want to go with me?”

Wayne nodded, and they went out to his car. He was quiet, and Ben was lost in his own thoughts.

A
fter viewing the body, Ben and Wayne left the cold of the morgue in silence and headed for the car. The scent of disinfectant could never quite cover the smell in what Ben thought of as “the dead zone.” Doctor Estes had flipped on the bone saw just as they were leaving. Ben was pretty sure he did it just to see if he or Wayne jumped. The whining sound was horrific. Ben tried to shake off the image of the saw cutting into human flesh.

Enjoying the air conditioning, which gave them relief from
the sweltering heat, Wayne drove to the Donut Den on the town square for coffee. Rosedale had changed very little in decades and looked to be the perfect picture of small town charm on this sultry August morning. Two-story brick buildings surrounded the traffic roundabout, which circled an island of green grass. A statue memorializing Civil War casualties stood on the grass. Three flags—U.S., Tennessee, and Rose County—hung limply from the pole in front of the Courthouse. Wayne found a parking space just off the square on a side street near the Donut Den, and the two lawmen went inside.

They found an empty table and sat down with their coffees. Ben looked at Wayne across the scarred Formica surface. He was still dealing with his feelings about the autopsy.
As usual, Wayne’s demeanor was inscrutable.

“That was rough,” Ben admitted. Doctor Estes had told them that Tom Ferris would not have lived very long in any case. He had cancer with advanced tumor progression and residual Hodgkin’s in the lymph nodes.

“I wonder if he knew he was dying,” Wayne said quietly. “If so, it might have some bearing on his murder. What do you know so far?”

“Mae told me that Tom Ferris was her sister’s boyfriend in high school and college. They were crazy about each other and July expected he’d give her an engagement ring the summer after his sophomore year, but he disappeared in January.
That was over fifteen years ago.” He thought about the body lying naked on the cold, stainless steel slab, and winced slightly at the thought of the surgical “T” incision and the way the man’s skin puckered around the stitches.

“If July Powell found the body, she’s a suspect.” Wayne was calm but adamant.

“Ferris was alive when the emergency techs got there. He died in the ambulance. They put in their notes that she was sobbing uncontrollably.”

“So that eliminates her?” The detective raised his eyebrows. “Come on
, Sheriff, you said they were in love. Then he stays away for fifteen years. Then she finds him dying at the Booth Mansion where she just happens to be doing a final check on the space. I have serious doubts about her whole story.”

“I can’t believe July would kill him. She’s a happily married woman with three kids. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with her since Mae and I got together. She’s just not the type.” He wondered why he was defending her
. Mae had admitted that July never really got over Tom Ferris. Was she as happily married as she seemed?