“He knew about some of it,” Beth said. “I lied to him about the amount. I was afraid if I told him everything, how much and all, he might kill me and take it after you were gone. Oh, honey, I know you will never be able to forgive me. I was so wrong.”
Just as the conversation was moving along between Laurel and her mother, Sheriff Murdock and Deputy Smathers arrived.
“And what brings you two way out here?” Starnes said with intended sarcasm.
“Just got the official word from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. that Beth Call is to be charged with murder for hire. Seems that she paid some professional killer ten grand to …,” Murdock paused when he realized finally that Laurel was conspicuously present.
“You were saying, Sheriff?” Starnes said, not willing to give the man any slack.
“She hired a man to kill someone. You need to come with us, Mrs. Call,” he said.
“It’s Miss,” Beth said.
Beth stood up, and Deputy Smathers handcuffed her hands behind her back. He then escorted her to the sheriff’s car and placed her in the backseat. I watched Smathers gently guide her into the back since her hands were now in that awkward and inconvenient position.
“Laurel, you want to ride with me over to the jail?” he said, trying to sound sympathetic.
“Do I have to go back?” she said.
“I need to find a place for you to stay while all of this is unfolding,” he said.
“What kind of place?” I said.
“DSS will assist me.”
“She can stay with me,” Starnes said to Buster.
“I want her in a good home with some good influences,” he said.
Starnes took two steps towards Buster and I moved quickly into her path. Buster was already moving away from the porch. He had flinched first.
“You miserable old coon dog of a man,” Starnes began.
“Sheriff Murdock, you and I both know that Starnes will take good care of her. Let this little feud between the two of you take a back seat to what’s right,” I said.
Murdock took another step back while keeping his eyes fixed on Starnes Carver.
“If I hear one thing that’s out of sorts, then I’m coming after her. You understand that?”
I nodded. Smoke seemed to be rising around the back of Starnes’ neck.
Murdock climbed into his vehicle. We watched them back out of the driveway and move along Road 1310 towards Madison.
“It’s a good thing you stepped in,” Starnes said.
“Yeah, it is. For lots of reasons.”
“You okay with staying with me?” Starnes said.
“You know I am,” she said. “I’m just confused. I don’t know what to make of all this. You think I’ll ever sort this through?”
“I don’t know, Laurel,” I said, trying to be as honest as I dared. “I’m not so sure that I understand all of it yet. But I promise you this, I will let you know what I learn, …if you want to know what I learn. Sometimes knowledge is painful, but it does help us comprehend. I think in time you’ll come to understand.”
Starnes and I were waiting by the Jeep while Laurel was upstairs packing some things for her long sleepover with Starnes.
“You think that Murdock was shooting the breeze with that line about some official word coming through the Bureau?” Starnes said to me.
“Don’t think he would’ve arrested her without some official word or documentation. He certainly would not have come visiting Beth Call just on your word alone. He likely did some checking on what you lied about. Whatever clout you had with him is gone.”
“I had no clout with the man. He’s an idiot.”
“So where do you think the Bureau got their information?” I said.
“That computer of yours. Rogers probably hacked into the FBI main databank and planted it. She’s certainly not above such a move. And, it seems to me, that she intuitively knows when to do something like that.”
Intuitively … right.
I laughed, but figured that Starnes was probably correct.
Chapter 47
On our way to Starnes’ house, Laurel asked if we could call and check on Homer Gosnell. Her concern seemed genuine. Starnes placed the call.
“I’m his sister,” Starnes said into her mobile phone.
I glanced over at her briefly without saying anything. She was listening to someone but was not overly enthusiastic about it.
“Yeah, I know. We’re sort of a dysfunctional brood. Been gone a while. But he’s the baby of the group. So, how is he?”
Pause. The pause lingered. The voice on the other end seemed to have a lot to say to Homer’s estranged sister, Starnes.
“Jeepers,” Starnes finally interjected. “I just wanted to know if he came through the surgery.”
Again, the pause.
“Right. Right. Okay. Gee whiz … I got it. Thanks for nothing,” she said and ended the call.
“Well, that certainly was entertaining on this end. You’re getting better and better at this deceptive stuff into which we consistently find ourselves,” I said.
“Did you learn anything?” Laurel said from the backseat.
“He’s out of surgery and still in intensive care. His condition is critical. That’s all they would tell me besides the usual drivel about respecting the patient’s privacy and that they had no record of any family names when he came into the hospital.”
“Does Homer have family?” I said to Laurel.
“He said that they were dead to him.”
“That probably means he has a family somewhere, but they didn’t want anything to do with him, or he didn’t want anything to do with them. Hence his hermit-type living conditions, as well as the remote location of his cabin.”
“I figured that,” Laurel said. “You think they wanted to rid themselves of him because he was … slow?”
“That’s as good reason as any,” Starnes said. “Families have been known to abandon members for lesser rationales.”
“Families can be horrible,” Laurel said.
I made no comment. Laurel’s painful knowledge of her mother’s behavior was still raw for her. I could not imagine having to deal with the fact that my mother wanted to kill me for money. Regardless of the amount of money, just the idea of a mother selling a child out like that was almost too much for even me to handle. To say nothing of a young teenager.
“Can we go see Homer?” Laurel said.
“We’ll go, as soon as we know he’s out of the woods. At the moment, they probably will not allow us into the ICU.”
“They’d allow a minister,” Starnes said.
“Shall we go home and look for your clerical collar?” I said.
“Not likely. I can pretend many things. Ministerial attitude is not one of those. However, I have many contacts,” Starnes said.
By the time we arrived at her place, Starnes had called one of her minister-friends and asked if he would go visit Homer Gosnell in the ICU at Mission Hospital in Asheville.
The dogs greeted us when we pulled into the graveled drive in front of the house. We hadn’t been gone that long, but they seemed overjoyed. Their ecstatic behavior got me to thinking. Never in the annals of human history has a dog sold out his or her master. At least, I had never read of such an event. It seems that we humans have the rather undistinguishable position of being the singular species, no doubt, that can sell each other out for sordid gains. Or something like that. It made me wonder about that line from a psalm in the Bible that says that we were created a little lower than God. It seemed to me that we were a lot lower than God.
While Starnes settled Laurel into her new living conditions, I called Rogers to see what mischief she might be involved in at the moment.
“My hands are clean,” Rogers said after my accusation.
“You have no hands, of course they’re clean. But you are not denying it.”
“Did he save your bacon?”
“It was a well-ti
med event.”
“No thank you, no glad you helped out …none of that?”
“I don’t want to encourage such actions.”
“Such gratitude,” she said.
“If they discover the source of that data, they will put me away for a long time,” I said.
“Tsk, tsk. It’ll never happen. And, you’re welcome. So, what’s the fallout?”
“Beth Call is in jail in Madison and Laurel is staying with Starnes.”
“Laurel okay?”
“Your concern is touching,” I said.
“I have my moments.”
“Yes, amazingly so, Laurel is … well, seemingly okay. Does that compute for you?”
“It seems that human beings have a complexity that is not wired as I am. While I can understand pain and loss, I do not totally comprehend what it might be like to experience betrayal from one’s mother. I suppose it would be like you trying to get rid of me, but the comparison breaks down in many directions. Still, I trust you more than any other human with whom I work. So, I have some idea of the magnitude of Laurel’s confusion.”
“Well put. But it seems that at least you get the gist of it.”
“I do. And I do have some concern for Laurel,” Rogers said.
“Do you understand mysticism?”
“I’m not sure where this line of questioning is going.”
“Just a question. Something else I’m dealing with,” I said.
“Mysticism … hmmm … the concept is beyond my rational CPU.”
“Another one of those complexities that people like me might be concerned with,” I said.
Laurel was resting. Starnes and I were in the kitchen fixing supper. Starnes was fixing supper, and I was watching her while drinking a cup of day-old coffee I had heated in the microwave. It was something less than delicious but it was black and hot and full of caffeine.
Starnes was heating some leftover green beans on the stove. She was presently cutting up some squash she had found in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator.
“You want me to help?” I said.
“You sit there at the table and drink that coffee. I got this.”
I took a sip, and the taste wasn’t getting any better.
“So, who do you think that old woman was who visited Beth and Laurel before we arrived?” I said.
“You know who it was,” she said without looking me.
I watched her cut three pieces of squash in rapid motion. She then took an onion, peeled off the outer layers, and began dicing it.
“You want to add a green pepper into that mixture?” I said.
“I do.”
I retrieved the last green pepper in the refrigerator. It had lost some of its vitality. She took it from me, washed it with less than significant care, cut off the top, scraped out the seeds, and proceeded to chop it into small, thin, slices. She then added the onion and the pepper to the olive oil in the skillet. After they began to sizzle, she threw the cut squash into the pan and stirred. She allowed it to sit and cook after a few seconds of stirring.
“But we can’t prove anything,” I said.
“No, we can’t. Funny how we can know something, know it for a fact, but can’t prove a damn thing. Funny how that is,” she said and turned to look directly at me for the first time.
“And she would deny it, of course,” I added.
“Yeah, that too,” she said. “I have some strange friends in these mountains.”
“She saved Laurel’s life,” I said.
“No doubt.”
“I’m just not sure how she managed it.”
“Tea and muffins.”
“Right. I was thinking of how she could get from her house on one side of the county to Beth’s house on the other side. What about the tea and muffins?”
“I’m just sayin’ … she saved Laurel’s life with the tea and muffins. I know nothing about her travel arrangements.”
A movement to my left caused me to shift my gaze immediately from Starnes to the place where Laurel entered the kitchen. Her eyes were puffy. She had been crying.
“You okay?” I said.
“I don’t think so,” she said and came over and hugged me.
She began to cry softly as she sat down in my lap. I embraced her and stared at Starnes. I wanted to cry out, help me… I’m not used to this. Starnes smiled and turned back to her work at the stove.
Chapter 48
It was late. The jail cells were dimly lit. One of the other two prisoners in lockup was staring at the blackness above her. Another prisoner was breathing heavy in her slumber. It was quiet now after a ruckus had broken out during the meal time. Someone was unhappy with their food.
Beth Call was sitting on the side of her rack and thinking about her life. The tea had worn off from her earlier encounter with Josephine Starling. Beth was now back to her old self. The one exception to being back to her old self was that she was now keenly aware of what she had done. She was also keenly aware of the possibilities ahead of her. The darkness in her small cell only mirrored the darkness inside of her mind.
Fear gripped her as she pondered her imminent fate at the hands of the justice system.
There is no justice for someone like me, she muttered to herself. Her words were too soft to be heard by anyone, even the prisoner who was awake three cells down.
I’m not worth anything. My own child … my own daughter. What have I done? What have I done?
Beth Call began crying uncontrollably. She rolled over into her bunk into a fetal position and used the cheap pillow to muffle her sobs. Her anguish was real. The realization of her betrayal against her daughter was too much for her. The burden was too great.
The sobbing ceased. She turned over in the bed and stared at the darkness above her. She was thinking of plans, her actions, her plotting. She was thinking of what she hated about herself. She was thinking of Laurel, her only child. She had a passing thought for William Shelton, her ex-husband, now dead. More of a longing than a thought. But, it was too late. Too late to go back. Too late to change what she had done.
An hour later she was still staring at the darkness overhead. She stood up and took off her brightly colored prison garb. She stood there alone in her own self-pity in nothing more than her underwear and socks. She had kicked her flip-flops across the cell in her only display of anger. No need to lose it now, she reasoned. I must be in control.
Using her teeth, she bit into the mid-section of the prison issue jumpsuit and began ripping it apart. She refused to be found in her bra, panties, and socks when the authorities would arrive the next day, although, it mattered little. But, besides that, she needed half of that singular prison-issued garment to carry out her strategy.
Once she succeeded in ripping the garment into two pieces, she put the legs back on and secured them by using one of her socks to tie a knot between two holes she had chewed into that bottom portion of her jumpsuit. Modesty apparent even in this action.
As quietly as she could manage it, she slid the bed closer to the iron bars. Standing on the pillowed end of the rack, she first tied one of the arms of the now separated upper garment to a position as high as she could reach on the bars. She made certain that it was securely tied by pulling on it with her entire weight. She lifted her legs off the bed and the garment held her body weight.
Then Beth Call tied the other arm around her neck, making certain that it was tight.
Goodbye, Laurel … she muttered … May God have mercy even if my daughter will not ... I hope you will one day forgive my … her voice ceased as she jumped away from the bed and the bars that held her neck.
Chapter 49
A sound awakened me. I must have been in deep sleep. It took a moment for me to realize that it was a cell phone sounding off somewhere in the house. I grabbed my phone by the bed to check the time.
2:43 in the morning. Yikes. Much too early. It must be bad.
I stumbled from the bed to the doorway. The phone was still ring
ing. My mind finally shifted into some gear that allowed a rational thought. It was Starnes’ phone.
I headed towards her room. By the time I arrived, she was lying on her back mumbling into the phone.
Suddenly, she sat up in the bed. I moved awkwardly over to her and sat down on the edge of her mattress. The light from her cell allowed me to see that she pointed to the lamp on the bedside table. Detective that I am, I took that to mean that she wanted me to turn it on.
“When?” she said.
Long pause. She was listening intently.
“No one figured that.”
Short pause.
“Yeah, maybe we should have,” she said.
Another long pause. The person on the other end seemed to have a lot to say about something bad that had happened. I could tell from Starnes’ demeanor something awful had taken place.
My mind was racing. It was probably Homer. The hospital was calling the dysfunctional sister of the family … or the minister had received a call and he was alerting Starnes to what had transpired.
I waited in my sleepy stupor. I felt helpless sitting there on the side of the bed, listening to half of a conversation. But then, I felt helpless most of the time, even when I was alert, walking around, doing the things that I normally do in my work. Helplessness seems to be a way of life for me.
“Thanks for calling,” Starnes said. “Yeah, we’ll come early.”
I watched her click off the cell. She tossed it behind me down near the foot of the bed.
“Damn,” she said as she looked at me in her almost awakened state.
“Homer?”
“No. Beth Call hung herself in the Madison jail.”
I shook my head and didn’t really have much to say. After a few minutes of early morning angst and silence, I finally found some words.
“Let’s wait till morning to tell her,” I said.
“Yeah. But you know we won’t go back to sleep now.”
“Not likely. Shall I make some coffee?” I said.
“Yeah. Go do your expertise with the coffee pot. Should I dig around and find my dad’s aged bottle of bourbon?”
The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon Page 23