Draw and Order

by Cheryl Hollon

  Jennifer frowned. “Why should I do that? You’re not the sheriff.”

  “I’m investigating Howard’s death at the request of my aunt. She doesn’t trust that Sheriff Larson will get to the bottom of his murder.”

  Dorothy took Jennifer’s hand in both of hers and patted it with genuine concern. “Sweetie, my sister is not always as kind as she was brought up to be. She was very possessive of Howard. Is that why you kept your relationship from her?”

  “Who told you?” Jennifer pulled her hand away, then clasped her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles turned red. “I want to know who knew.”

  “It was Doris Ann,” said Miranda. “She hadn’t told anyone because, along with everyone else, she thought he had simply run away from his responsibilities.”

  Jennifer began to cry. “That part is true.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed with the abandon of a small child.

  Dorothy took a packet of tissues from her handbag and gave several to Jennifer. “I’m so sorry, honey. Did he leave right after you told him about the baby?”

  “How did you know?” Jennifer’s eyes held fear and began to fill with tears.

  Miranda put her hand on her mother’s arm and leaned in with an unspoken accusation in her eyes.

  Dorothy shook off the hand. “That’s usually why young men run off. They’re not ready for the responsibility of having a family.”

  “Yes.” Jennifer blew her nose and sniffed. She continued to hiccup through her words. “I had just told him the night before he disappeared. I assumed that was the reason. He was horribly upset—unreasonably upset—irrationally upset, but I didn’t think he was so shallow to just leave me.”

  Miranda looked over at her mother, who was now crying herself. Miranda took a deep breath and said what wasn’t being said. “You lost the baby, didn’t you? You had a miscarriage.”

  Jennifer bowed her head. “After he had been gone for a week. I was a mess. But he didn’t leave me. He would have been a wonderful husband and father.”

  Dorothy stood and brought Jennifer up into her arms, stroking her hair and making soothing noises.

  Miranda sank her head in her hands and let her mother give Jennifer what she needed most—unstinting sympathy.

  After several minutes, Jennifer stepped out of Dorothy’s arms and stood for a few moments waiting for her sobs to calm. “I haven’t been able to tell anyone. It all got lost in the alarm that Howard had run off.”

  “Why was there an alarm?” asked Miranda.

  “He was expected at a board meeting with the oil company. He was presenting his analysis for new drill sites in this area. When he didn’t show up, his boss called everyone who knew him to find out why he had missed such an important meeting. It was totally out of character.”

  “When did you accept that he was gone?”

  “We had a date that evening. He said he had important news, but that it was a surprise and he couldn’t let anyone know what was going to happen because of his geological study. He seemed to think it would cause a lot of trouble.”

  “Was he still upset about your condition?” asked Dorothy.

  “He seemed calmer and apologized over and over and over again.” Unconsciously, Jennifer put one hand on her tummy as if protecting herself again. “I never heard from him again. I honestly thought he couldn’t face marriage, fatherhood, a house. You know, the whole settling-down stage.”

  “You couldn’t know that he was planning to propose,” said Miranda. “That was part of his good news.”

  “Propose?”

  “Next to Howard’s remains, they found a silver bracelet fashioned by my grandfather. It’s family tradition. When an engagement is soon to be announced, the prospective groom gifts the bride with a handmade silver bracelet. I believe it was for you.”

  “Oh.” Jennifer collapsed into her rocker. “He loved me, after all.”

  * * *

  “Do you believe her?” Miranda asked her mother on the way back to the farmhouse. “She seemed a mess of reactions, and I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret Howard’s behavior.”

  “He seemed all over the place. He reacted badly to Jennifer’s news. He missed that important meeting.”

  “And yet, he also had that bracelet with him. That’s a complete contradiction to not wanting to marry Jennifer. I’m very confused.”

  Miranda pulled into her driveway and saw Ron standing on the front porch with Sandy in his arms. “Now what?”

  “He’s fine,” Ron hollered as soon as they got out of the van. “He somehow managed to open your bedroom door, and I found him out by the chicken coop. It looked like he was about ready to track the fox.”

  Miranda took Sandy from Ron and suffered an enthusiastic licking along with apology whimpers. “What were you doing, little one? You aren’t big enough to track game.”

  “He doesn’t know that. They’re born to track.” Ron shifted from one foot to the other. “Um, have you decided if I can work here?”

  “Not yet.” Miranda cringed inside. She had meant to think about the situation seriously today, but she hadn’t had a quiet moment to herself yet. “I’ll give you an answer tomorrow. I promise.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’m getting on with making the loft more comfortable. I found an old iron bed frame behind some wooden planks. This would really work well as a vacation rental, too.”

  Miranda and her mother looked at each other with the same wheels spinning.

  “Vacation rental?” Miranda tilted her head to one side. “Would that be a feasible way to make a little more income?”

  “He’s got a good point.” Dorothy moved her hands together in a handwashing motion. “You could rent it out as an opportunity to sleep over the moonshine distillery. I’ll bet plenty of tourists would be thrilled to claim that as an experience.”

  “It really wouldn’t take that much effort.” Miranda twisted her lips to one side. “This is a lovely quiet road and it would be great to have another income stream. It doesn’t look like I’m ever going to get the distillery up and running.”

  They both laughed and went inside.

  “I think there’s still something that Jennifer is hiding from us,” Dorothy said, heading for the kitchen.

  “She was surprised about the bracelet, but it was something else.”

  “Did you notice how she held her hand on her tummy?”

  “No,” said Miranda. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “Do you think she lost the baby because he hit her.”

  “Mom! That’s an awful thought.”

  Dorothy rubbed her eyes and frowned. “We don’t know the path that someone’s mind is a-taking. We just don’t know.”

  Chapter 31

  Sunday Afternoon, Sheriff’s Apartment

  Miranda called Sheriff Larson at home to report her findings about the situation between Jennifer and Howard. Felicia answered and said that he wasn’t there, but could Miranda come over and give an expert opinion on something?

  Driven by her curiosity, Miranda was standing in the sheriff’s apartment within twenty minutes. He hadn’t yet returned.

  “What is it you want me to see?”

  Felicia bit her lip. “I’m dying to show it to you, but it’s not worth the grief I would get from Richard if I let you see it without him to witness your reaction.”

  “No problem, I can wait.”

  They sat on the comfortable modern couch and Felicia prompted, “You said you had news?”

  “Did you know that Jennifer was pregnant with Howard’s baby at the time he disappeared?”

  Felicia’s eyes raised in surprise. “No. Wow, that’s completely out of left field. Pregnant.” She thought for a moment. “But what happened? Did she get—”

  “No, no, no. She had a miscarriage the week after Howard disappeared. But that’s got me concerned about Howard’s temperament.”

  “Why?”

  “Given the way Jennifer is acting, do you think there could have b
een some violence between them?”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. Maybe he didn’t want to get married,” said Felicia. “No, I don’t think that’s the case. Good to bring it up though.”

  “Yes. It’s a contradiction because the promise bracelet he was carrying meant that he was going to ask her. Probably the next time they met.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have thought about this angle five years ago, but things change: the violence might not have been from Howard.”

  “You mean it could have been from Jennifer?”

  “I’ve seen that more times than I am happy to think about.” Felicia rubbed her ear. “But, again, it doesn’t seem to be the case here. Neither Howard nor Jennifer have any history of physical violence against anyone. There would be a history. There’s always a history. That reminds me. I got an update from Dr. DuPont. She has discovered evidence of hairline fractures in Howard’s hands.”

  “Fractures?”

  “Yes. They could be the result of either defense wounds in a fight or hiking-related fractures. Dr. DuPont thinks they could be from a fall, but Sheriff Larson is convinced that he hit someone or something.”

  “Well, a blow to a pregnant woman’s stomach wouldn’t cause a fracture,” said Miranda.

  “No, but if you strike someone on the jaw, it could result in an injury to your hand as well as your victim could fall into something. She also found damage to the bones where the voice box would be.”

  Miranda winced. “So he might not have been able to yell for help.”

  A long silence followed.

  Sheriff Larson came into the apartment and hung up his hat on the coatrack by the door. He walked over and gave Felicia a peck on the cheek and frowned at Miranda. “What’s this?”

  “I thought she should know about the microfractures and could help us identify this last artifact.”

  A half smile showed up on Sheriff Larson, which was an improvement from his habitual eye roll. “Fine. I haven’t turned up anything on the internet or from the university.”

  “What is it?” Miranda’s curiosity kicked into high gear.

  Felicia got up and opened the lap drawer of the desk placed against the far wall of the living room. She pulled out a clear plastic pouch and handed it to Miranda. “We found several scraps of this material. The others are degraded beyond recognition, but this one is interesting.”

  Miranda turned the pouch over. It contained a two-inch square of fabric with inked lettering and squiggly lines. “These look like contour elevation lines. It’s a map.”

  “Good,” said the sheriff. “That’s what I think. What is the fabric and what was used to draw on it?”

  Miranda stood and held the pouch up to the light coming in the window next to the front door. She turned the pouch in all directions, including front to back. “This is old.”

  “Well, I figured that out, but how old?”

  “This probably dates to around the time of the lost silver mines.”

  “You can tell that from just this little scrap?”

  Miranda nodded. “That’s what a fine arts degree will get you. Most museums have thousands of artifacts that will never be seen by the paying public.” Then she turned the pouch over in her hands once more. “But things like this are available for scholarly research. In fact, most museums will give students a stipend to catalog and research unknown pieces in their collections.”

  Felicia stood beside her. “And you got one of those grants?”

  “I did. I was assigned to the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center at Mount Vernon. That’s where I got my love of big cities. It was so close to Washington, DC. Anyway, they had some original survey documents that were drawn by George Washington. I had a chance to study them closely. This is from the same era.”

  Felicia glared over at her husband. “See, I told you she could be helpful. She has a first-class education.”

  “Right, but how does that help us?” He put his hands on his hips. “How does an old map help find Howard’s murderer?”

  “If this is from the same time frame as George Washington’s surveys, then this could indeed be a fragment of the maps Jonathan Swift created to find his way back to the silver mines that he discovered here in the Daniel Boone National Forest.”

  “If Howard had managed to find an authentic map, he was the perfect person for locating the mines.”

  “Where would he have found a map?” Miranda sounded frustrated.

  “Maybe on one of his survey expeditions he found one of the mines that Jonathan Swift used for smelting silver coins. Those coins would be worth millions to private collectors. It’s a reasonable theory since he was exploring drilling sites for his company.”

  “I reckon it makes a bit of sense.”

  The sheriff paused. “It makes as much sense as anything else. He was good at following animal trails, plus he was a degreed geologist familiar with the history of this area.”

  Miranda sighed. “He was also in need of money to provide for his new family.”

  Chapter 32

  Sunday Afternoon, the Farmhouse

  Miranda returned home to hear her mother scolding Sandy from inside the farmhouse. “Now you’ve done it. Your mommy is gonna be mighty mad with you. Don’t you give me those puppy eyes? Bad dog. Bad dog.”

  Miranda tilted her head back to look up at the sky, blew out a puffed breath, then opened the screen door to go into the front room. “What has Sandy gotten into now?”

  Her mother pointed to the remains of an expertly ravaged hiking boot. Its untouched mate was only a few feet away. “I can’t believe how fast he managed to do that. I was only out of the room long enough to make a pot of chamomile tea. He was asleep on the rug. I’m sorry. Was that your only pair?”

  “Don’t apologize. I knew what I was getting into with a puppy. Yep, those boots are fantastic, but expensive. I’ll have to wear my high-tops. I may also have to choose a flatter trail for my tour on Tuesday. I’ll order another pair tonight. With any luck I can get a rush order delivered by Monday evening. Thank goodness for online ordering.” She picked up Sandy, gave him a nuzzle, and bopped him on the nose. “You’re a bad little puppy. No chewing on my favorite boot, only on chew toys.” He was far too young for much scolding, but you could never tell if puppies understood you or not, so she always tried to tell Sandy how she felt.

  She followed her mother into the kitchen. “Ugh. We’re a long way from the end of his teething phase. I’d better order more chew toys, too.”

  Dorothy poured two mugs of tea and motioned for Miranda to sit at the kitchen table. “What happened with Sheriff Larson and Felicia?

  Miranda briefly summarized her meeting.

  “Anyway, next I need to get a handle on Stephanie Brinkley. I texted Austin to come over and help me with the online searches, but he hasn’t answered. He might be busy.” Miranda heard the disappointment in her voice.

  “Text him that I’m making thick-sliced pan-fried pork chops with a blackberry sauce, twice-baked potatoes with fresh creamed corn. He’ll be by.”

  Miranda texted and got an instant thumbs-up icon from Austin.

  She fired up the laptop in her office and checked her business email first. After all, without clients, she couldn’t pay her bills. After responding to queries, processing payments, and scheduling tours for the week following her distillery training, she finally typed Stephanie’s name into the search engine.

  The first entries listed her as an associate pharmacologist working for Saint Joseph Hospital in Lexington. She had received her license from Frankfort, Kentucky, only a year ago. There were no links to any of the most popular social media sites. Apparently, Stephanie valued her privacy more than the rest of the Risky Business Adventurers.

  Miranda sat back in her office chair and wondered how nice it would be to opt out of the promotional posting she did for her business. It was a tempting thought, but pharmacists didn’t need to advertise. Tour operators who wanted to establish a moonshine d
istillery needed to be savvy users of social media. It was part of the deal.

  She pulled out her murder notebook and updated the page for Jennifer. She wrote all that she had learned but wasn’t satisfied that she had captured the complexity of the lady. Miranda still didn’t know much about Jennifer’s relationship with Howard and why they kept it secret.

  Miranda flipped the pages to Stephanie and wrote down the few sparse facts.

  A knock on the screen door alerted her that Austin had walked down the road for their meeting. She stood in the open door of her office and waved at him. “Come on in. You have perfect timing.”

  He smiled. “And that’s a wonderful aroma coming from the kitchen. Is your mom cooking?”

  Miranda bopped him on the arm. “She’s not the only fantastic cook in this house.”

  He pretended to be hurt and rubbed his shoulder. “I know that. It runs in your whole family. That’s why your moonshine is going to be a wild success. You have to be a good cook in order to make a good ole mountain dew.”

  She returned his smile. “You’re forgiven. Look, I’m trying to get some online information about Stephanie. I’m not having much luck; maybe your search phrasing will catch better results.”

  He sat down in her office chair and tapped in a few words. When the results had spilled out onto the screen, he pointed to an entry that declared she was a heavy contributor to a charity in Lexington that supported pancreatic cancer research. She was listed not only as a board member but also as a charter member of the newly formed organization.

  “Well done. I wonder why she’s supporting that particular cancer.”

  A crunching of gravel in the driveway alerted them to the arrival of a visitor. They went out on the front porch, and Stephanie got out of a bright red Porsche.

  “I hope you don’t mind an unannounced visit.” Stephanie smiled. “I heard from Jennifer that you’re trying to find out what happened to Howard. She confessed all that she had been holding back and said you were gentle and sympathetic. I want to thank you for that.”