Poisoned Ground (12 page)

Startled, Rachel took a moment to answer. This was the second time Winter had mentioned something they shouldn’t discuss in front of Simon. “I don’t really know much.”
And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.
“I’m sure Tom will get to the bottom of it. He always does.”

“Yes,” Winter murmured, almost absent-mindedly. “He does have a perfect solve rate, doesn’t it? This killer will have to be very clever to avoid being found out.”

The sisters stood in silence for a moment, and Rachel felt an odd thrumming sensation, an undercurrent among them. Fortunately, Simon seemed engrossed in the interaction of the rabbits and cats and wasn’t paying attention to the adult conversation. Rachel tried to cut Winter’s speculation short before the boy heard too much. “Why don’t we let them out so they can explore their new quarters?”

“Can I do it?” Simon reached for the latch on the wire mesh door.

Summer smiled at Simon. “Of course you may. Will you help us keep the cats from overwhelming them?”

“Sure!” With a flourish Simon pulled the door open.

The rabbits twitched their noses but didn’t move. Tootles, the Siamese, sat down a couple feet away and issued a string of the guttural sounds that constituted Siamese speech. Rachel thought she sounded encouraging. After a moment of hesitation and a lot of nose wiggling, the rabbits took their first cautious steps out of the carrier.

Without preamble, Spring asked, “Do you believe we should be worried about our safety?”

Simon, engrossed in the rabbit-cat encounter that was underway, seemed to be paying no attention to the adults, but Rachel nodded in his direction. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about this right now?”

Rachel didn’t know how to make her concern any clearer, but Spring continued as if she hadn’t heard. “After all, we do live in a rural area with no neighbors close enough to see our house. If someone wanted to hurt us, we’d be totally vulnerable.”

“But why would anyone want to hurt us?” Summer asked.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know exactly why,” Winter said. “If we don’t come to an agreement among ourselves soon about selling to Packard, we’ll have both sides mad at us. Heaven knows what could happen in the dead of night when we’re asleep in our beds.”

Simon looked up at Rachel with a troubled frown. What on earth was wrong with these women? She spoke to them in a low voice. “I sympathize with you, but could we please not talk about it in front of a child?”

“Oh, of course,” Spring said. “You’re absolutely right.”

“I’m sorry,” Summer added. “We’re being thoughtless.”

Rachel expected them to stop discussing the murders altogether, but instead Winter and Spring both took her by the arm, steered her a few feet farther away from Simon, and picked up where they’d left off.

“We heard that Lincoln and Marie changed their minds and decided to sell,” Winter said, keeping her voice to a near-whisper. “Well, it would have been Marie’s decision, with Lincoln in such a poor mental state. That must have been the reason behind the murders.”

Rachel despaired of her chances of making them shut up. All she could do was get Simon out of here. He was on the floor, petting both rabbits and cats, but his expression had turned solemn as the sisters talked on.

As Rachel started to make an excuse to leave, Spring said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the murders were purely personal. Lincoln and Marie were more than a bit on the self-righteous side—”

“Sister, please,” Summer broke in.

Spring threw a peevish glance at Summer and continued, addressing her comments to Rachel. “They were always trying to tell other people how to live. Would you believe Lincoln went around looking in people’s trash on collection day? To see who was committing recycling sins.”

“Oh, don’t tell that story,” Summer pleaded.

Spring ignored her. “He came to our door once with an empty toilet paper roll he’d fished out of our trash. He had to open a trash bag and root around to even find the thing. There he was at our door, holding it up like a trophy, as if it were evidence of the worst behavior he’d ever witnessed, and he proceeded to lecture me about the proper recycling of cardboard. I shut the door in his face.”

Under any other circumstances, Rachel might have been amused as she imagined the scene, but at the moment she didn’t find it funny. “I’m afraid we have to go. We have plans—”

“A fervor for recycling is not a motive for double murder.” Winter drowned out Rachel’s words. “The only person the Kellys had any serious trouble with was Jake Hollinger.”

Summer’s sharp intake of breath made Rachel glance her way. The woman bit her lower lip in an oddly girlish way and lowered her head.

“I don’t really know Mr. Hollinger,” Rachel said.

Winter snorted. “Well, you’re one of the few. A great many women in this county are
closely
acquainted with him.”

“Winter, please!” Summer exclaimed.

“You know it’s true,” Spring put in. “The man has always been a womanizer.”

Oh my God
.
Rachel glanced at Simon and found him grinning at the way the cats and rabbits were sniffing each other. Maybe he wasn’t listening after all, or the women were speaking so quietly he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“Our father started hearing stories about Jake and his women early on,” Winter continued, “after he sold that piece of land to him and Sue Ellen. There were even rumors about him and Marie Kelly at one point in those early years. Our father didn’t approve at all. He wanted to be rid of Jake. He even tried to buy the land back. The way Jake carried on with Tavia Richardson while his wife was dying—” Winter shook her head. “Well, I’m glad our father wasn’t around to see
that.
”

Summer stood with her arms wrapped around her waist, a deep flush coloring her cheeks. She seemed more than embarrassed by her sisters’ gossiping. She looked furious.

Winter wasn’t finished. “As for whether Jake killed Lincoln and Marie—”

“Would you like to try my pastry now, Dr. Goddard?” Summer cut in. “They’re fresh, I made them this morning. Don’t you think Simon would like a treat?”

“Oh. I—” Rachel saw the plea in Summer’s eyes. The woman had listened to as much vitriolic gossip from her sisters as she could take. Rachel felt guilty for wanting to run out on her. “Thank you. We’d love to have something, then we really will have to go.”

Summer hurried into the kitchen, and after a moment Winter followed. To prevent Spring from starting the gossip again, Rachel knelt next to Simon to watch the cats and rabbits interact.

Summer brought out dessert plates holding cream-filled pastries, each topped with a drizzle of chocolate. As Rachel had hoped, the conversation was constrained by Simon’s presence as they ate, and they let him chatter about the rabbits, the cats, Billy Bob and Frank, the pileated woodpecker pair he’d seen on Tom and Rachel’s farm that morning. Summer remained silent, never looking up as she nibbled on tiny bites of her pastry.

The encounter had been interesting, to say the least, but Rachel was so tense that the rich pastry made her slightly queasy. To avoid hurting Summer’s feelings, she forced all of it down. She was enormously relieved when they could finally get the hell out of there.

She let out a long breath as she drove away.

“Let’s get Billy Bob and go to the river,” Simon said.

Rachel smiled. “You got it.”

The queasy feeling wasn’t going away. The pastry had been too rich. She didn’t normally eat anything with so much fat and sugar. “Do you feel okay?” she asked Simon. “That pastry’s not making you sick, is it?”

“Nope. It was real good.” He looked at her with wide, concerned eyes. “Did it make you sick?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She wasn’t going to disappoint him by bailing on him when he was looking forward to an excursion to the river. She wasn’t sure they had any antacid at home, but they had ginger ale, which would work as well.

A spurt of acid rose in her throat, and she tasted the sourness at the back of her mouth. Swallowing hard, she concentrated on driving. Just get home. Drink some ginger ale. She’d be fine.

A wave of nausea roiled her stomach and she knew she couldn’t hold it back. She wrenched the steering wheel to the right and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. Slamming the gearshift into park, she flung open the door and scrambled out. Hanging onto the door for support, she leaned over and surrendered to the sickness.

Chapter Twenty-two

Tom suspected that Raymond Morton, Mason County’s prosecutor, had suggested they meet over lunch on Sunday because he knew Brandon Connolly’s parents were sending over sandwiches for Tom, Brandon, and Dennis. Morton, a thin, balding man of seventy, dug into a bag labeled “Connolly’s Fresh Deli” and came up with a fat sandwich before he took a seat at the conference room table.

“I couldn’t talk Sheila out of paying Ronan’s bail.” Tom pulled out a chair across from Morton and Dennis. He took a sandwich for himself. Brandon, sitting next to Tom, had already emptied a bag of oven-baked chips into a bowl in the center of the table. The rustle of waxed paper filled the room as they settled down to eat. “And she didn’t want a deputy to drive him back to Joanna’s place to pick up his car. She insisted on doing it herself.”

“I thought she was afraid to be alone with him,” Dennis said. “What changed her mind? Is she feeling guilty because she’s getting most of the estate?”

“Yeah, I think that’s exactly what’s going on.” Watching them leave together, Ronan disheveled and unshaven and scowling, Tom had hoped he wasn’t seeing the prelude to a disaster.

“You still think the Kelly boy could have hired out the killings?” Morton sank his teeth into a roast beef sandwich.

“He’s got the motive. But Jake Hollinger’s just as likely a suspect.”

“And it would have been easier for Hollinger to pull off.” Brandon popped a chip into his mouth and crunched on it.

“We need to pin Hollinger down about his movements that day,” Tom told Morton. “He claims he didn’t see the Kellys, but we’ve got the Jones sisters saying he was arguing with Lincoln at the fence. And his own son didn’t back up his alibi. I got the strong feeling from Mark Hollinger that his father told him to lie, but he made a mess of it.”

“You think he’d be stupid enough to go after Joanna McKen-drick now?” Brandon asked. “I mean, if it’s obvious the only people getting hurt are the ones holding out on the land sale, Hollinger’s gotta know we’ll come after him.”

Morton swallowed a bite of sandwich. “If you don’t have the evidence, you can’t touch him. Don’t bring me a case I can’t prosecute. Tom, you think we’ve got reason to worry about Joanna?”

“You’re damned right I do. We’ve got the Jones sisters to think about, too. They say they’re undecided about selling, but I think they’re just divided. Winter wants to sell, and Spring might, too, but Summer doesn’t want to uproot herself. If they don’t all agree, they won’t be going anywhere.”

Dennis pushed aside his half-finished sandwich and reached for a bag of cookies. “Could they have some financial problems that we don’t know about? A reason why Winter wants to sell?”

Morton wiped a bit of mustard from his bottom lip with a paper napkin. “It would have to be serious to force them to sell out and leave. They’ve had some bad times in that house—it’s not exactly your normal family—but it’s the only home they’ve ever known. Regardless of what Winter says, if Joanna stands her ground, I believe the sisters will stand with her. And that’s going to make them targets, too.”

“The killer could be somebody we haven’t looked at yet,” Tom pointed out. “Somebody we haven’t even thought about. A lot of people feel like they’ve got a personal stake in that resort development.” His worst fear was that while he was trying to find evidence against the obvious suspects, the real killer was operating under the radar, free to strike again at any time.

They all fell silent as they ate. After a couple of minutes, Morton popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth and said, “Brandon, give your mom and dad my compliments. They make the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. They saved me from having to eat pasta salad with my wife and her sisters.”

***

In mid-afternoon, Tom and Brandon headed out to the Hollinger farm. Jake’s truck sat in the driveway, but Tom’s pounding on the front door brought no response. As they’d done on the day of the murders, he and Brandon set out to locate Jake. Thinking he might still be working on the fence Lincoln Kelly had knocked down, they went there first.

The fence was back up, and a row of crows perched on it, preening their feathers in the sun and carrying on a quiet conversation among themselves. The small herd of white and chocolate-colored Merino sheep grazed on late season meadow grass, and goldfinches chattered as they foraged among wildflowers gone to seed. Jake was nowhere in sight.

“I doubt he’s in the cornfields,” Tom said. “He’s probably already plowed them under for winter. Let’s head over to the barn.”

As they walked, Tom caught sight a couple of times of the barn’s faded red roof, but the rolling landscape and several massive old pecan trees obscured most of the building. Jake hadn’t harvested the fallen nuts, and squirrels pawed through the leaf litter to collect them and carry them off to store for winter.

They were crossing a low spot, with no view ahead, when a gunshot rang out.

The birds took wing and the squirrels scattered.

“Aw, no,” Tom groaned. It could mean nothing. It could be something harmless. But he knew it wasn’t. “God damn it.”

His heart pounding, he took off toward the barn with Brandon beside him. When they crested a slope, the weathered old barn loomed before them, a couple hundred feet away. And Jake Hollinger was running from it, streaking toward a stand of evergreens.

“Tavia!” Jake cried. “Tavia!”

Tom changed course and, with Brandon on his heels, raced after Jake.

He heard Jake screaming before he saw what had happened. “Oh God, oh God. Tavia, Tavia!”

By the time Tom and Brandon reached him, Jake was on his knees in the grass, rocking back and forth and clasping Tavia Richardson’s limp body to his chest.

***

Tom was still trying to pull Jake away from the body when Brandon returned from his pursuit. Bending over, hands on his thighs, Brandon gasped, “Nothing. Didn’t see anybody. But I found the weapon. Hunting rifle.”

“Jake, come on now.” Tom tugged on the sobbing man’s arm. He had been gentle up to this point, but he wanted Jake under control before the EMT unit showed up. Not that they could do anything for Tavia. As Jake held onto her, Tom had felt her neck and wrists for a pulse and found none. He couldn’t see the entry wound because of the way Jake held her, but he saw the hole the round had blasted open in her back on its way out. One of Jake’s hands covered part of the wound, and her blood drenched his skin and the cuff of his plaid shirt.

Brandon moved to the other side of the two, grasped Jake’s arm and helped Tom pull him upward. Jake held onto the body, dragging it with him.

“Let her go,” Tom told him. “You hear me? Let Tavia go. Put her down.”

They needed several more minutes to pry Jake’s arms off the body and return it to the grass. As two emergency techs charged toward them, equipment bags banging against their legs, Tom led the still weeping Jake back to the barn.

Inside, Tom steered Jake to a bench along one wall. His sobs echoed in the dim and nearly empty space. A tractor and a long rack of hand tools took up one corner. No animals were inside at the moment, but a mixture of odors familiar to Tom, sheep manure and lanolin, permeated the building.

Tom stood over Jake and tried to break through his grief. “Did you see anybody? Did you see who did it? Come on, Jake, I need you to talk to me.”

Jake shook his head. “No. Nobody.”

“Was anybody here with you and Tavia? What happened here?”

Jake took a shuddering breath and swiped his shirtsleeve across his nose. “There wasn’t anybody else here. She was going to walk home. She likes to walk.” He choked up again. “I was still in the barn when I heard the shot.”

“Damn it.” Tom scraped his fingers through his hair.

“I left the rifle where it was,” Brandon said. “Want me to go get it?”

“Show me where it is.” Tom told Jake, “Stay right here until I get back. I don’t want you to move. All right?”

Jake nodded. As they walked out, Tom heard his sobs start up again.

On their way to the wooded patch, Tom stopped to look at Tavia’s body. The emergency techs knelt on either side of her, but they weren’t working on her. One of them, a middle-aged woman named Janice, looked up at Tom. “Nothing we could do. You don’t want us to transport her yet, do you?”

“No. I’ve got deputies on the way, and I told dispatch to get Dr. Lauter out here. It’ll probably be about an hour before you can take her.”

One of them, Tom noticed, had closed Tavia’s eyes. Except for the wound in her chest and the smears of blood on her cheeks, she looked peaceful.

The rifle lay on a springy bed of pine needles among the trees. Tom stooped to take a closer look without moving it.

“Why do you think the shooter left it behind?” Brandon asked. “Stumbled and dropped it, maybe?”

“Maybe. We might get prints. Even if we don’t, we’ve got the weapon.”

“This is our break, right?”

Tom looked up at Brandon. “The only problem is, this rifle doesn’t fire the same caliber ammo that killed the Kellys. This isn’t the same gun.”