Poisoned Ground (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

“We have to start looking at this from a different angle.” Tom stood with Dennis and Brandon near the barn, watching the medics place Tavia Richardson in a body bag and zip it closed. Dr. Lauter had been there and gone, releasing the body for immediate transport to the medical examiner’s office in Roanoke. “One thing we know for sure is that Jake Hollinger didn’t kill Tavia. And she’d already agreed to sell her land, so she wasn’t standing in the way of the development. But I can’t believe this killing, three days after the Kelly murders, is a coincidence.”

“Maybe the other side’s hitting back, retaliating for the Kelly murders.” Dennis cradled his digital camera in the crook of his arm. “Somebody on the anti-development side could have shot Mrs. Richardson.”

“Aw, God, that’s the last thing we need, an all-out feud with both sides taking shots at each other.” Tom raked his fingers through his hair. He wondered briefly what Rachel and Simon were doing at the moment. She’d told Tom she might take Simon to the river this afternoon, and he’d felt a pang of disappointment that he couldn’t go with them.

The medics lifted the body bag onto a gurney. They had driven the ambulance into the field and it waited nearby, its rear doors standing open.

“How many people would be so set against the development that they’d do something like this?” Dennis asked.

The thought of Joanna McKendrick sprang up, unbidden, in Tom’s mind, and for a long moment he forced himself to face it. Joanna had turned a shotgun on Robert McClure because he showed up at her place to make another pitch for her land. An unloaded shotgun, or so Joanna claimed. Rachel had been present when it happened, but she’d brushed off Tom’s questions about it, insisting that Joanna would never hurt anybody. He could tell, though, that Rachel had been shaken by the incident. He should have pursued the matter, at least talked to Joanna about it.

Tom watched the medics roll the gurney to the ambulance. Did he believe that Joanna, a woman he’d known all his life, could have committed this cold-blooded killing? No,
he thought. An instant later he warned himself:
Don’t assume anything.

“The shooter must have known she was here with Hollinger,” Dennis said. “Or followed her over here.”

The medics collapsed the gurney and lifted it into the ambulance. They slammed the doors.

“Maybe Hollinger was the original target,” Brandon suggested. “Maybe the killer was on his way to shoot Hollinger and he panicked when he saw Tavia coming his way.”

“If he panicked,” Tom said, “he sure was neat about it. He didn’t even disturb the pine needles on the ground, much less leave footprints. I’m betting we won’t find any prints on the rifle and cartridge either.” He kept saying
he
, as if he believed, as if he knew, the killer was a man. But wouldn’t a woman, smaller and lighter, be more likely to come and go without disturbing the ground or leaving footprints?

“I don’t understand how the shooter got away,” Brandon said. “We didn’t see anybody, we didn’t hear a car driving off. Whoever it was, they just vanished.”

Joanna, Tom thought, could have cut across the fields to her own property. She was strong, in good shape. It would have been a quick walk for her.

The two medics raised their hands in farewell salutes and climbed into the cab of the ambulance. In a couple of minutes they would be on the road to Roanoke.

Dennis took the rifle and shell casing with him when he left to return to headquarters. A deputy would take them, along with the rifle Tom had confiscated from Tavia’s house, to the crime lab the next morning.

Tom and Brandon walked across the field to Jake Hollinger’s house, where Tom had told him to wait. The back door stood open, and Tom saw him inside the kitchen, sitting at the table with his head in his hands.

Jake didn’t look up when Tom and Brandon came in, but he said, “This is the third time.”

“The third time for what?” Tom asked.

“Third time somebody’s died on this land. Isaac Jones falling out of the barn loft. Autumn Jones going crazy after her daddy died and coming over here to hang herself in the barn.” Jake pulled in a shaky breath. “Now Tavia. This place has got a curse on it. It’s poisoned.”

“Jake, listen to me.” Tom pulled out a chair and sat across from him. Brandon remained standing, leaning in the doorway. “Is there anything I need to know? Anything you haven’t told me about? Has somebody been threatening you or Mrs. Richardson?”

Jake pushed his chair back and stepped over to an under-counter cabinet. He yanked open the top drawer, scooped out a handful of envelopes, and tossed them on the table in front of Tom. “You think we’ve been pressuring Joanna and the Kellys? Take a look at that shit.”

Tom pulled latex gloves from his jacket pocket and drew them on before he touched the scattered items. Brandon moved closer to look over his shoulder. Some of the envelopes had been addressed with a computer printer and sent through the mail. Others were blank. All of them contained folded sheets of paper printed with similar messages. “TRAITOR. SELL-OUT. ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS MONEY. YOU’RE HELPING PACKARD DESTROY OUR LAND AND OUR PEACE AND QUIET.”

“They look like all of them could have been sent by the same person,” Brandon said.

Tom gathered them into a bundle to take with him. “Do you have any idea who sent them?”

Jake, slumped against the counter with his arms folded, shook his head. “Tavia got some, too. She just threw them away or burned them. We both got some phone calls, but we just started hanging up, we didn’t even listen anymore. Neither of us ever thought—” His voice caught on a sob, and he hung his head while he pulled himself together. “We didn’t think it would come to this.”

“Why didn’t you report that you were being harassed?” Tom was always amazed at the things people held back from the police even when their own safety was at stake.

“I told you, we never expected it would lead to anything. We thought somebody was just blowing off steam.”

“I want to know if you get any more letters or phone calls,” Tom said. “And I want to know immediately.”

Jake nodded.

“I’ll have to let her children know what’s happened.” Tom got to his feet. “I guess I’ll find their phone numbers at her house.”

“I doubt that. She doesn’t—didn’t—know where they are. She hasn’t heard from any of them in years.”

Tom wasn’t surprised by that. “Did she have any idea what states they’re living in?”

Jake shook his head.

“We’ll have to track them down. I might find something at the house to point me in the right direction. Whether they care or not, they need to know she’s died. And unless she made some other arrangements, they’ll have to decide what to do about her estate.”

As Tom and Brandon stepped onto the back porch, Jake said, “I’m coming, too. I’ll be right behind you.”

“No, you’re not coming.” Tom held the door open to speak to Jake. “You don’t have any business over there.”

“I have to get her cat and bring him back here. He knows me. It’s what Tavia would want.”

Tom sighed. “All right. But you need to stay out of our way. Lock up this house before you leave. I don’t want you to come back here and find somebody waiting for you with a gun.”

***

Tom opened Tavia’s front door with a key from the ring he’d taken off her body. While Brandon helped Jake gather up all the cat’s food, bowls, and bedding, Tom searched the small desk in a corner of the living room. The cheap, black-covered address book he pulled from the top drawer had only a few entries scattered through it. He looked for the names of her four children and found them—first names only, with no indication of whether the two daughters were now using married names. In each case, the address and phone number under the name had been crossed out and Tavia had written MOVED next to them.

Feeling a mixture of pity and anger, Tom slid the address book into one of the plastic evidence bags he’d brought in from the car. Maybe Dennis could do one of his Internet searches and track down at least one of the younger Richardsons. Why, he wondered, had they deserted their mother? By all accounts, she was more of a victim of their father’s violence than they were, sometimes deflecting their father’s rage from them and focusing it on herself. Did they see her as weak? Did they blame her for staying with him, not rescuing herself and them? For waiting until they were all gone and scattered before she killed him?

He slammed the desk drawer shut. A sudden high-pitched
“Rowwrrr!”
from the kitchen told him that Jake was forcing Tater into the hated cat carrier. Jake hurried through the living room and out the front door with the fat orange tabby clawing the metal grill door of the carrier and screeching nonstop.

Chapter Twenty-four

Rachel unscrewed the bottle cap and gulped down more ginger ale. She wasn’t being much fun, but Simon didn’t seem to mind. He was exploring the river bank, watching a flotilla of black ducks on the water and hawks flying overhead, and trying to keep Billy Bob away from the flock of Canada geese resting in the grass a hundred feet away.

Rachel leaned against a tree, keeping an eye on the boy and the dog. The nausea hadn’t completely gone away, but it no longer threatened to overwhelm her. She’d thrown up again at home, behind the closed bathroom door while Simon was in the yard with Billy Bob. Apparently she’d put on a convincing act with Simon and he believed she was okay now.

What had made her sick? The pastry was so rich, so sweet, that she’d had enough after three or four bites, but she’d finished it to be polite. Maybe she was paying a price for her good manners. Observation of Simon during the time she’d known him told her he had a cast iron stomach, so she wasn’t surprised the pastry didn’t bother him. Maybe the evil Jones sisters had tried to poison her just for the fun of it.

That thought brought to mind the cackling witches in a Disney movie and made her laugh aloud.

Simon pivoted in her direction and waved. Rachel waved back, her laughter subsiding to a soft smile. She loved watching him, loved knowing he would always be part of her life with Tom.

Her mind kept circling a thought that thrilled her and terrified her in equal measure: Could she possibly be pregnant? Morning sickness didn’t always come in the morning. She should do a pregnancy test. But first she would wait and see if the nausea persisted.

Lost in thought, she jumped when her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her shirt pocket and answered Tom’s call. “Hi. What’s up?”

His brief silence, followed by a weary sigh, told her something had happened and he hated having to tell her.

Rachel pushed away from the tree, her fingers tightening around the phone.

“There’s been another shooting,” Tom said.

“Please don’t tell me it’s Joanna.” Nausea roiled her stomach. A mixture of ginger ale and bile rose in her throat. “Please.”

“No, no, it’s not Joanna.”

Rachel went limp and reached out for the tree trunk to brace herself.

“It’s Tavia Richardson,” Tom went on. “She was killed on Jake Hollinger’s farm. I wanted to let you know I’ll be tied up for a while, I can’t say when I’ll be home.”

“Tavia Richardson? But why her? She’s not opposing the resort development.” Rachel wished she could feel more than the usual sadness for a victim, but she’d barely known the woman and hadn’t particularly liked her. Rather than grief or pity, Rachel felt a clutch of fear for what this death might mean and what might follow it.

“We’ve got a lot of unanswered questions,” Tom said. “Where are you right now?”

“At the river with Simon and Billy Bob.”

“Look, I want you to be careful, okay? Pay attention to anybody who’s around you, any car that’s behind you on the road.” He hesitated. “Maybe you ought to head home. Find a way to keep Simon indoors the rest of the day, without letting him know anything’s wrong. I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen next.”

***

Tom and Brandon had searched Tavia’s house with little expectation of finding anything useful. All they took away with them was a locked fireproof box Brandon had found on the floor in her bedroom closet behind a jumble of shoes and boots, plus a set of small keys Tom found in a desk drawer. The storage box or Tavia’s safe deposit box might contain something that would point to her children’s whereabouts.

With the box secured in the trunk of the cruiser, Tom drove over to Joanna’s horse farm. In the passenger seat beside him, Brandon sat rigid, his hands clutching his knees and his boyish face grave with tension. Tom, used to his deputy’s enthusiastic theorizing, felt grateful for Brandon’s silence now. Questioning Joanna about a murder was going to be one of the hardest things Tom had ever done as a cop.

Although the Richardson farm abutted Joanna’s property in the rear, the route from one front door to the other in a car involved two turns and two roads. The McKendrick horse farm had never belonged to Isaac Jones, but the swath of meadows and farm fields that wrapped around it in an L shape had all been his property before he sold off parcels decades ago to the Kellys, Hollingers, and Richardsons. Tom had never before had reason to consider how easy it was to walk between the farms without using a road. And without being seen.

Ronan Kelly’s car was no longer parked outside the McKendrick house, but Sheila Kelly’s rental sat in the driveway behind Joanna’s Cherokee.

Sheila answered the door, a humorless half-smile twisting her lips. She held the storm door open. “Come to check up on me already? Well, I’m still alive and kicking, as you can see. Ronan got in his car and left after I drove him over here—he didn’t stick around. The only assault my brother has committed against me today was verbal.” She cocked her head to look past Tom and nod a greeting at Brandon.

Tom could imagine the barbs and accusations that passed between brother and sister during the drive from jail to Joanna’s house, and he wasn’t interested in hearing her repeat any of it. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, but I came to talk to Joanna.”

“She’s not here right now. She’s off somewhere, working.” Sheila indicated the whole of the farm with a vague wave of one hand.

“When did she leave?” If Sheila placed Joanna at the house when Tavia was shot, Tom could get back in the car and drive away, a heavy burden lifted.

“I haven’t seen her since lunch. Around twelve-thirty. You could call her on her cell phone and come in and wait.”

“We’ll catch up with her. There aren’t too many places she could be.”

As he and Brandon started down the steps, Sheila said, “Tom?”

He looked around, but gestured for Brandon to continue to the cruiser. “Yeah?”

“Was that a gunshot I heard a while ago?”

“Yes, it was. Where were you when you heard it?”

“Sitting out here on the porch. Thinking. Trying to figure out a few things. Who was shooting? What happened?”

“Was anybody with you?”

“No, I was by myself.” Her expression of concern deepened into alarm. “Just tell me what happened, for God’s sake. Has somebody else been shot, or was it just a hunter?”

“Tavia Richardson was murdered on Jake Hollinger’s farm.”

Sheila’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.” Then her eyes widened in outrage and she dropped her hand. “Were you asking if I had an alibi?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I didn’t have the slightest reason to hurt Tavia Rich—”

“I’ll take your word. Now I need to find Joanna.”

For a long moment Sheila’s eyes held his, and Tom expected her to launch a defense of Joanna, a protest against the idea that she could kill anyone. Instead, she nodded, her face solemn, then stepped back and closed the door.

***

“Her brother probably doesn’t have an alibi either,” Brandon said in the cruiser

“He also had no reason I can see to kill Tavia Richardson.” Tom shifted into drive and started down the farm lane. “They were on the same side, and her death is going to slow down the sale of her land. Besides, Ronan doesn’t have much to gain anymore. The land sale would help him, but it won’t save him.”

Beyond the wood frame house where the farm manager and his wife lived, the meadows and horse paddocks stretched out for almost a mile on both sides of the paved lane. Elegant American Saddlebred horses in a variety of colors grazed in small groups, their sleek coats gleaming. Farther on, the barn and the cavernous stable faced each other. At the far end of the pavement sat the small cottage where Rachel had lived for more than two years after she bought Mountainview Animal Hospital and moved to Mason County. At any other time, the sight of the cottage in the distance would be enough to make Tom smile. But even pleasant memories couldn’t lighten his mood today.

Brandon broke the silence. “You think anybody working this far out could’ve heard the shot?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Joanna’s house isn’t too far from Jake’s barn, straight across the fields. But out here, this is a long way from where Tavia was shot.”

“There’s Mrs. McKendrick.” Brandon pointed to the paddock on the right up ahead. “With that devil horse.”

Joanna stood in the grass, rubbing the long nose of a big chestnut mare named Marcella. The horse lowered her head and nuzzled Joanna’s neck. The three dogs, Joanna’s two and the one orphaned by the Kellys, dozed in the sunshine just outside the fence. The Kellys’ dog, Tom noticed, wore a leash that was looped over a post. It might be a while before she could be trusted not to run off toward home in search of her owners.

“The only other person who can handle that horse is Holly,” Brandon said, with a touch of pride. “I’ve seen Marcella run to Holly like a puppy, practically begging for attention.”

As Tom pulled to the side of the lane, Joanna gave the horse a last pat and walked over to meet them at the fence. She crossed her arms along the top rail. She wore jeans, boots, and a sweater, and her strawberry blond hair was gathered in a wide gold clasp at the back of her neck. “Hey, boys. What can I do for you?”

Tom slammed his door and joined her at the fence, Brandon following him. “I guess you haven’t heard the news.”

The same alarm and dread he’d seen on Sheila’s face spread over Joanna’s. “Oh, good God. Now what?”

Genuine apprehension? Or was she fearful because he had sought her out so soon after the killing? He told her what had happened.

Joanna lowered her head to her folded arms and stood that way, her shoulders rising and falling with her rapid breaths. Glancing at Brandon, Tom found the deputy watching her warily, as if he was afraid she might erupt with an extreme reaction at any second. Tom wavered between concern for Joanna’s own safety and the reluctant recognition that she could be the person who waited in the woods and fired one expertly placed round through Tavia’s chest.

Drawing a deep breath, Joanna lifted her head and swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand.

“You and Tavia weren’t close, were you?” Tom asked.

“No. We didn’t like each other. But does that mean I can’t be upset that somebody murdered her?”

Tom gave a noncommittal grunt. “So you didn’t hear the shot?”

Joanna shook her head. “I wouldn’t expect to, with all the hills and trees between here and there. Who would do this? Do you have any idea?”

How long, Tom wondered, would it take a woman Joanna’s age, in good shape, to run between the Hollinger farm and this end of the horse farm? “Somebody opposed to the resort development. That could be totally off-base, but it’s my first thought. Do you know anybody who feels that strongly about it? You’ve all been getting together, haven’t you, to talk about stopping Packard?”

Joanna stared at him for a long moment, her expression gradually turning cold and guarded. She pulled her arms from the rail and folded them across her chest. “I’m not giving you a list of possible suspects, if that’s what you’re after.”

“I don’t expect you to do that. But I do expect you to give me any information you’ve got that could help stop these killings.”

Another long, silent stare before she spoke. “I don’t know anything that could help you.”

Tom nodded. He looked around and saw none of the farm hands. One person who had been here with her, just one…that was all he needed. “Where is everybody?”

“It’s Sunday, Tom. Nobody works all day on Sunday. You know that. A couple of the guys will be back to help me get the animals inside before dark.”

“Have you been out here all afternoon? Just yourself?”

Her gaze, cold and defiant, held his. “And the dogs. Too bad they can’t talk. They can’t give me an alibi.”

“People are dying,” Tom said. “I’m trying to put a stop to it. I can’t be worried about anybody’s feelings right now.”

Joanna’s eyes shifted from Tom to Brandon. “Pay attention,” she told him. “Tom’s going to teach you how to lose every friend you’ve got in the world.”

“I’m doing my job,” Tom said.

“Well, I don’t have to prove anything to you. You’re the one who has to come up with proof. Now I want you to leave. I have things to do, and I don’t have anything left to tell you.”

Joanna turned and walked off toward the stable, her gait barely short of a jog. The horse, Marcella, snorted and trotted after her.

***

During dinner Tom commented that Rachel wasn’t eating and asked if she felt okay. She was fine, she told him. Just not hungry. She avoided making eye contact for the rest of the meal. No point in telling him about upchucking the offending pastry, at least not while he was trying to eat.

Later, when they were getting into bed, Tom studied Rachel’s face. “You look a little green around the gills.”

“Oh, thanks.” She smiled as she drew back the covers and slid into bed. Her stomach lurched, but the spasm of nausea was mild and quickly passed. “You say the sweetest things.”

He got into bed beside her and propped himself on an elbow. Running a finger along her jaw line, he said, “Seriously, do you feel all right?”

“I’m fine. Really. The Jones sisters tried to poison me today, but I’ll survive.”

“What?” Tom sat up straight, looking horrified.

Rachel laughed. “Kidding, kidding. They gave me some pastry that didn’t agree with me, but I’m perfectly all right now. Come on, let’s get some sleep. We both have busy days tomorrow, and we have to get Simon off to school early.”

Tom lay down, stretching out his legs. He kissed her goodnight, and gave her a last look, his brow creased with stubborn concern, before he turned off the lamp.