Pinned for Murder (5 page)

She heard herself gasp only to stifle it as quickly as it came. “Does that mean you think he stole Martha Jane’s money?”

He shrugged. “Not necessarily. In all fairness, I don’t know Kenny all that well. He tends to keep to himself. Even on the days he bags groceries at Leeson’s Market he tends to say very little. In fact . . . the only time I’ve ever heard him say more than a sentence or two is whenever I see him with Rose.” Bending at the waist, Milo pushed a sheer white panel from the window and glanced outside, downed limbs and sagging power lines greeting them in taunting fashion.

“Why?” she asked, the purported relationship between the elderly woman and her former pupil tugging at something deep inside her soul.

“You mean why does he talk to her when he doesn’t talk to anyone else?”

She nodded.

“Because she believed in him from the start.” Milo turned his head to the left and then the right, his gaze traveling down the road in either direction. “She believed in him when the kids on the playground teased him for being slow. She believed in him when prospective employers questioned his ability to work. She believed in him when his parents passed away when he was in his early twenties, leaving him to fend for himself for the first time in his life. And she believes in him now despite what sounds like damning evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“Martha Jane Barker has stashed large sums of money in her house for years. Yet Kenny shows up to help her after the storm and it suddenly disappears?”

He was right. Things didn’t bode well for Kenny Murdock’s innocence. Then again, Tiffany Ann Gilbert—Sweet Briar’s town sweetheart—had shown up dead in the library parking lot not long after Tori came to town. And while there were many who linked the two instances together, they couldn’t have been more wrong. So didn’t it stand to reason the same could be said for the situation with Kenny Murdock?

She said as much to Milo.

“I suppose. I mean, anything’s possible. But you have to admit it’s a heckuva coincidence.”

A firm knock at Rose’s front door brought an end to further discussion. Peeking out the window once again, Milo nodded at a man standing on the front porch. “Doesn’t take them long to blow into town, does it?”

“Who is that?” she asked as she drank in the sight of the average-sized man with the dirty blond hair and sky blue eyes standing on Rose’s front stoop.

“A drifter. Storms like these bring them by the dozens.”

“Chasing work, I take it?” she asked as she noted the tool belt secured around the man’s hips.

“That about sums it up.” Milo shadowed her down the hall as she closed the gap between the window and the door with several quick strides. “If it goes as it usually does after these things, this guy won’t be the last knock we hear.”

Yanking open the door, Tori smiled at the man on the other side. “What can I do for you?”

Extending a calloused hand in her direction, the man, clad in a red and black flannel button-down over a white T-shirt, smiled back. “Good evenin’, ma’am. My name is Doug. Hewitt.”

“Doug,” Milo repeated along with a slight nod of his head.

Gesturing toward the house, Doug continued, his left hand finding the top of his tool belt. “I can see the storm has turned your house topsy-turvy. Trees down, windows broke, shingles torn off your roof. Was wonderin’ if you might need a little help. My prices are fair. I charge sixty dollars a day for labor, fifty if you can give me a roof over my head and food in my stomach while I’m workin’.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Tori stared up at Milo. “He could get this place cleaned up faster than either of us could do after work. . . .”

“What kind of roof do you need?” Milo asked. “I mean, would a cot in the garage suffice?”

“Stayed in a lot worse ’n that before.”

She looked back at Doug, studied the way his smile lit his face as his hand left his tool belt long enough to rake its way through his disheveled hair. “It’s not like I’m lookin’ to be real fancy or nothin’. Just need some work. Got myself a wife and two young-uns back home in Mississippi. Sooner I get some work lined up, sooner I can get it done and be on my way back home again.”

“It must be hard to be away from them like this.”

His eyes dulled as he nodded. “It is. But the souvenirs I bring back from each trip helps. Teaches them things, too.”

“When could you start?” Milo asked.

“Don’t see why I couldn’t start this very moment.”

Tori glanced at Milo over her shoulder, recognized the look of relief in his face. Turning back to the man on the porch once again, she stepped outside. “Then you’re hired.”

“Only instead of bunking here, you’ll be staying at my place, about six blocks away.” Milo, too, stepped onto the porch, his hand finding Doug’s and shaking it firmly.

“And the food?” Doug asked.

“I’ll take care of that.” Tori motioned toward the downed trees that littered Rose’s small yard. “In fact, if you start on some of these trees now, I’ll head on home and be back with a pot of soup in about an hour or so. Will that work?”

Doug grinned. “Soup sounds mighty good, ma’am.”

“Tori.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s my name,” Tori said as she turned and placed a hand on Milo’s shoulder. “And this is Milo.”

“It’s mighty nice to meet you. And I sure appreciate the work.”

“Do a good job and we’ll appreciate you, too.”

Surprised, Tori looked up at Milo, his gruff words catching her off guard. If Doug noticed though, he didn’t let it show.

“I intend to do just that.”

“Then everything will go just fine.” Milo waved his hand around the neighborhood, his gaze propelling hers to follow suit. “Seems you’ve got a lot of friends looking for work in this neighborhood. That’s okay provided you understand that you will be watched.”

“They may be lookin’ for work same as me, but I don’t know any of them. I travel alone. Just me, myself, and my conscience.”

“Then we’ll get along just fine.”

She wasn’t sure what made her do it, what propelled her to stop at Martha Jane Barker’s house instead of going straight home. She didn’t really know the woman beyond overlapping visits to Leeson’s Market, and what she did know wasn’t necessarily the stuff that inspired an overwhelming desire to strike up a friendship. Yet the pull to stop by and offer assistance had guided her feet from Rose’s house to Martha’s front door anyway.

There was a part of her that simply wanted to help someone through a rough patch. It had been part of her nature since she was old enough to know right from wrong. But there was also a part of her that recognized the glaring truth in a situation.

Tori raised her fist to the door and knocked, the staccato sound a near match to the beat of her heart. Hiring Doug to get Rose’s place in order had been a smart decision, of that she had no doubt. Milo offering up his house as a bunkhouse for the man had removed any nagging worry about Rose’s safety.

But something was still amiss. Something far bigger than shattered windows and downed trees, something more gut-wrenching than a tipped lamp and damaged sewing machine . . .

Rose was hurting, plain and simple.

And it wasn’t the kind of hurt that would disappear with a few whacks of a hammer or the hum of a chain saw.

No, Rose’s heartache would be erased by one thing and one thing only. . . .

She knocked again.

“She’s sitting on the deck around back.”

Tori glanced over her shoulder, her gaze falling on a solidly built man of about thirty, his high-and-tight military crew cut squaring a face that already leaned toward boxy. “Oh, hi. Are you Martha Jane’s son?”

“No, ma’am.” The man tipped his head to the right to avoid the last of the sun’s rays. “I’m just here to get things back in order.”

“Oh, like Doug?” she asked as she waved her hand in the direction of the house whose backyard abutted Martha Jane’s.

He shot her a quizzical look. “Ma’am?”

“Doug . . . the man I just . . .” She stopped, realized she was speaking Greek to a man who was obviously one of the dozen or so drifters Milo had warned her about. “Do you think it’s okay if I walk through her backyard?”

He raised his hands in the air. “Don’t see why not. It ain’t like you’re walking on fine crystal or a bed of breakable diamonds.”

“It could be.” The second the words were out, she wished she could press Rewind. She didn’t know Martha Jane Barker well enough to be passing judgment, her only real knowledge of the woman based on hearsay. “Thanks for your help. By the way, I’m Tori. Tori Sinclair.”

“Ma’am.”

And with that, he was gone, his muscular frame disappearing around the opposite side of Martha Jane’s house.

Shrugging, she made her way toward the woman’s deck, the steady sound of a rocking chair confirming her presence. “Martha Jane? It’s Victoria Sinclair.”

A lined face peeked through the torn and tattered screen that wrapped around three sides of the deck, the mesh material serving as a buffer for insects and other pests. “I know you . . . you’re that new librarian that Rose is always talking about.”

“I am.” She motioned toward the screen door. “Would you mind if I come in?”

The woman stood and eyed her suspiciously. “Why?”

Why indeed.

“I noticed the damage to your home and just want to make sure you’re okay . . . see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“You mean the way Rose helped when she sent over that—that criminal?”

She felt her shoulders slump. “Martha Jane . . . are you
sure
Kenny stole your money?”

“Of course I’m sure,” the woman snapped, the shrillness of her voice making Tori wince. “One minute my money was there . . . in my top dresser drawer. The next it was gone.”

“Is it possible someone broke in? That
someone else
took your money?”

“No! That money was there for more years than you’ve been alive. And then suddenly, yesterday, it disappears right out of my drawer—poof! And you want to know what the only difference about yesterday was?”

She waited, knowing the answer would come whether she asked for it or not.

“I’ll tell you what it was . . . it was Kenny.”

The snap of a twig on the other side of the deck made her pause. “What about the other man you have working here?”

“You mean Curtis?”

She bobbed her head to the right, took in the man’s muscular frame as he picked his way across the woman’s backyard, his hands scooping up scattered tree limbs. “Curtis? Yeah . . . I guess.”

Martha Jane propped her wrinkled hands on her hips. “I hired Curtis
after
Kenny stole my money.”

Her shoulders slumped further. “Martha Jane, Rose is crushed by the news. Absolutely crushed.” Glancing toward the man in the yard one last time, she willed her voice to take on a conspiratorial tone. “Would you mind if I saw the spot where Kenny found your money? So I can explain it to Rose in a way she’ll understand?”

The elderly woman’s eyes narrowed. “You want to come into my home?”

Tori held her breath and nodded.

“You want me to let you look inside my dresser drawers?”

Again, she nodded. “I know it seems odd, but I’m just trying to help Rose face reality sooner rather than later.”

After what seemed like an eternity, the woman stepped backward, her hand tugging the screen door open. “Suit yourself. It’s high time Rose faced facts about that good-for-nothin’. She’s wasted enough time on that boy as far as I’m concerned.”

Tori cringed at the woman’s terminology. “Rose seems to think Kenny is a good guy. That he’s honest and hardworking and—”

“Well she’s obviously mistakin’, isn’t she?” Martha Jane stamped her slipper-clad foot on the wooden floor, her hands coming together in a clap as she peered through the screen beside the door. “They’re all the same, I tell you. Rude and lazy to the core.”

“All?” Confused, Tori followed the path of Martha Jane’s gaze.

“See that one? He should have that yard cleared by now.”

She looked past Curtis and into Rose’s yard, the blond man she’d hired bending to retrieve sticks again and again, stopping occasionally to toss them into an ever-growing pile not far from the property line that separated the two homes. “It looks like he’s working to me. . . .”

“Hogwash,” Martha Jane argued. “He’s pretending ’cause he knows we’re watching. And look at
my
help. That man should be up on the roof patching holes instead of writing notes in that notebook of his. Writing doesn’t fix things. A hammer and nails does.”

Realizing the men were both within earshot of everything the elderly woman said, Tori lowered her voice to a near whisper. “When did Curtis start?”

“About thirty minutes ago.”

“Thirty minutes?” she echoed in disbelief.

“That’s right . . . thirty minutes.”

“Maybe he’s prioritizing the jobs, writing them down so he can refer to them as he goes along.”

Stamping her foot once again, the woman gestured toward the yard. “He can do that in his head
while
he’s fixing my home. That
is
what I’m paying for, isn’t it?”

She considered arguing, contemplated defending the stranger on the other side of the screen enclosure who appeared to be working rather diligently in her view, but she opted in the end to let it go. She was there to help Rose, not to try and talk sense into someone who prided herself on arrogance and a sense of entitlement.

“Could I see that drawer now? The one where you kept your money until it disappeared?”

“You mean until it was
stolen
, don’t you?”

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Tori simply nodded.

“Then follow me. My room’s just inside this doorway.” Martha Jane shuffled into her home via a door that led to the screened porch. One foot inside, she turned around, extending her finger within mere inches of Tori’s nose. “Don’t touch anything.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” she mumbled as she made a mental note to use Rose’s neighbor as a local example the next time Leona took a dig at Chicago’s big city dangers and paranoia.