“What else did he say in the journal?” Thompson asked.
“So much stuff. I told you I’d give you the journal when I got out of the hospital, Detective. Careful when you read it, your head might just explode.”
“I bet,” Ashley said softly. “How awful for Frank.”
“When those kids came up the hill that day and threw out an envelope that had a note that said, ‘We know what Frank did and he can die, but we know he’s guilty,’ well I had run in to talk to him, but he was dying and couldn’t explain. When I found his journal later, I cried thinking he had kept those secrets for so long. He was just a boy when he found out.”
“And they threatened him and his family when they saw him there.” Thompson said. “He didn’t tell anyone because he wanted to protect you and his father.”
“He was good boy. And a good man. He loved me and his Daddy so. He wouldn’t have ever let anything happen to us.” Arabella’s eyes were filled with tears. She looked up at the sky. “Told ya Frank. I was gonna clear your name, son.”
“Can you show us the third opening?” Thompson asked.
“I don’t’ know, but I’ll try,” Arabella said. “I only know about it from Frank’s journal. It said it was down the hill from the others near a big boulder.”
They all started walking down the hill in a right angle from where the initial hole leading underground was, and straight down from the top in the woods where the opening was. Thompson had his men mark off the coordinates as they walked. The dogs followed sniffing back and forth on the ground. After several minutes, Arabella stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Ashley said.
“I don’t remember now. Maybe his journal said across the field?” She looked at Thompson.
“I’m sorry, Detective, I’m old and my mind ‘aint so quick anymore. And when I read what he wrote down, there was so much to take in, and I was so upset that….”
Just then, two dogs picked up their pace and started sniffing and turning in circles, then they took off at full speed into the woods. The police followed, and there, behind a large tree, was a big boulder covered in moss. The ground all around it looked undisturbed and covered in vines and leaves. It didn’t look at all like anything was there, but the dogs were barking furiously and digging at the ground.
Thompson called to some men. “Dig here! If we need to, we’ll come back with big equipment.”
The deputies started digging with their shovels. Thompson cursed as they kept hitting other rocks and hardened vines. The men were sweating and kept moving their shovels around trying to find a softer spot. But the dogs didn’t move or give up their position. Their barks were getting louder and louder. A deputy hit something after his third shovelful down to the left of the boulder. He scraped the dirt away from whatever it was, then his face froze.
“Detective, come take a look.”
Thompson went over to examine what was there. “Oh my God,” he said quietly.
Laying in the ground was a human skull. Its teeth made it look like a macabre mask. The deputy carefully scraped more dirt away, and exposed shoulder and arm bones. Thompson’s face was drained of all color. He looked piteously at Ashley, Sean and Arabella. Ashley looked back at him, then turned around. Sean put his arm protectively around her.
“I knew it. Deep inside, I knew it,” Ashley said. “I’m not going over there. I’ll never get that image out of my head if I do.”
Arabella stared at Thompson with a defiant look on her face. “If that’s a body in there, let me tell you, I knew nothing ‘bout that, Frank knew nothing ‘bout that! He didn’t mention any of that in his journal, you’ll see when you read it—”
Thompson put up his hand. “Of course you didn’t know about this. And Frank was up there on the hill near the other opening when he got caught. He wouldn’t have known anything about this either. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have just threatened him that day, they would’ve killed him on the spot.”
Another deputy who had been digging called to Thompson. “Detective, found another one.”
Thompson walked over and looked down at the bones. Then he turned back to his men. “Get everything up here you need and dig this all out. Be careful about keeping everything as intact as you can. I suspect there are a lot more skeletons in here.”
“Detective, maybe so. Or maybe this is just an isolated situation—bodies that aren’t related to this case,” a policemen said.
“Anything’s possible, but considering the effort the players have put into covering everything up all this time, I’m willing to bet this is all most definitely related.” Thompson sighed, then walked out of the woods. “We’ll be heading back now. Keep me posted and I’ll see you all back at the station. Thanks everyone.”
Ashley looked around the beautiful field with the sun shining on it this cold winter day. How surreal everything seemed. What an amazing spot to come and enjoy Mother Nature’s bounty. Like many hikers had probably done for years, possibly taking photos of this isolated area as a reminder of where they had walked. Like her and Sean and her family up here flying a drone and having a picnic. Like Frank when he was a young boy, thinking he had found the ideal spot to go squirrel hunting, a place off the beaten track where he wouldn’t be in competition with other boys for the same spot. A place where he could’ve been just a kid, wandering in the peaceful outdoors and enjoying himself back before parents wouldn’t let their children out of their sight all day.
A long time ago, Ashley thought. In what seemed like another world.
Sean broke the silence as they walked to the detective’s car. “And we’re all worried about the dangers of the internet. Evil has always existed. In so many forms.”
Arabella nodded her head. “You got that right, son.”
“It’s just reported constantly now,” Ashley said. “Twenty-four-seven bad news. No escaping it.”
“All those secrets buried for so long with all those people. Can’t even begin to wrap my head around it,” Thompson said.
Arabella stopped as soon as they got to the cars. “I need to go home. I need to see Queenie. Can I go home, Detective?”
“Yes, you can. I’ll have a policeman drive you and we’ll keep a squad car at your place until this is all over.”
“Well, that’s real good. But can he take me shopping? I ‘ain’t got any fresh food at home for me and Queenie.”
“Well, I don’t know about—” Thompson started to say.
“We got it, Nate. We’ll take her shopping,” Ashley said.
“Well then, I’ll be making you some of my pies and cookies,” Arabella said. “You’ll be happy you volunteered after you taste ‘em.”
“I’m sure we will,” Ashley said. “You get home first and we’ll swing by later and take you to the store.”
Arabella walked over to a car and the policeman opened the door for her. She turned and waved at all of them, then got in. They couldn’t hear what she said to the policeman, but he was laughing hard as he shut the door. Ashley looked at the car disappearing down the road. She had an image of Arabella making him laugh all the way to her home.
“What a woman,” Sean said. “She’s gone through so much and she still has a sense of humor.”
“That’s how she’s survived,” Thompson said.
“Amen,” Ashley agreed.
They got in Thompson’s car and rode home lost in thought. Gratefully no one talked anymore about the case. There would be time enough to do that in the coming days. They all needed to rest and absorb what they had been though. And it was a day to remember how fortunate they were to have never personally been involved in that kind of evil.
Ashley couldn’t help but think of the people buried in the woods. What had their lives been like? What had they done to be so ruthlessly dispatched? How could people sleep at night after doing such monstrous things?
These are the age old questions, she told herself. And there are never answers that make sense.
A quote from Shakesp
eare’s Julius Caesar came to her mind. “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
She shuddered and leaned in close to Sean. Thompson looked at them in the rearview mirror. He fully realized then that he would never have her help on another case. It was time for her to return to a normal life. And he made a promise to himself that he would change his career path after he got married. Something where he could still help in law enforcement and use his skills. He’d have to think about exactly what. But he couldn’t go on seeing what he had seen. He didn’t have it in him anymore.
***
Later that afternoon, Sean drove himself and Ashley to take Arabella grocery shopping. She kept them entertained with funny stories that took their minds off what they had experienced in the field. When they drove her back, she invited them in.
“No thanks, we’ve got to get back home and take care of a few things,” Ashley said.
“And I’ve got to stop by at the bakery and check in on my crew,” Sean said.
“Now I’m sure you have some fine things at your bakery,” Arabella told him. “But like I told y’all, wait till you taste my cakes and pies. Ain’t nothing like ‘em!”
“I bet,” he said.
“So you coming back soon and taste everything?” Arabella asked. “I make some good strong coffee too.”
“Just how we like it,” Ashley said. “How about this weekend?”
“See ya then,” she said.
Arabella walked into her house, but not before she knocked on the cop car’s window and told the policeman a joke. They drove off watching the two of them laughing out front. Thompson had ordered the roof fixed and the porch propped up, but there was still a lot of work to be done at the old house.
Sean and Ashley spoke at the same time. “We need to get up here and help fix some things up…”
“Let’s get some friends and get up here and help fix things up…”
They both laughed.
Yeah, that would be nice, Ashley thought. That’s what one should do.
***
Thompson called Ashley early next morning. She was already dressed and ready to finish the summation of the case. She felt confident that he would be just fine wrapping it all up soon.
“Morning,” he said. You got your car back, right?”
“Yep, thanks. And I’m coming in,” she said.
“Are you sure? Was just going to run a few things by you on the phone, but if—”
Ashley cut him off. “I’ll just come in. Easier that way.”
Ashley drove off to see him, swinging by the bakery first and getting three big bags of apple cider donuts for the entire station. She left them with the cop at the front desk, whose eyes widened when he saw them.
“Hey, thanks for this,” he said.
“Welcome! Enjoy,” she said as she walked down to Thompson’s office.
“Hey, Nate.”
“Hi,” he answered. “Sit down.”
She pulled up a chair and they both sat there a minute, just looking at each other.
“I think I figured out everything,” she said. “But I’m sure you have lots of answers too.”
“Two minds are better than one,” he added.
“So Bergman was the one who was up on the ridge and killed Carlson. He had called him back to town on a pretense of more money or payment of some sort and got rid of him so there would be no witnesses to what had happened years ago,” she said.
“Yep, he admitted that,” Thompson said. “Bergman said he killed Carlson two weeks before he called 9-1-1 pretending that he was a ‘hiker’ who had found a body up there on the trail. He wanted it to look like Carlson had died of a heart attack from exertion and had been lying there for a while. He also wanted nature to take its course and the body to be decomposed from laying out in the elements.”
“I found old newspaper articles on the internet saying they had been busted in a theft ring in Scandinavia before coming to the states. So even though it was ruled that the old conviction could not have anything to do with the murder of the widow, it seems that they just moved their theft operation over here to this country.”
“Right. Then they amped it up by targeting people in a lot of different towns,” Thompson said. And those that complied, were left alive, albeit poorer, and those that didn’t—”
“Are laying up in the field,” Ashley finished.
“I’m sure. And maybe other places too, in other fields, outside other small towns,” he said.
Ashley’s face went white. “Did Bergman say that?”
“Not exactly. But he did say there were ‘many victims,’ although he said he only killed Carlson; that all the rest of the killings were done by ‘other people.’ He also declared that he only killed Carlson because he didn’t want him to hurt anyone else.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll bet he wants to imply that he was brainwashed, or a victim too,” she said.
“He did say that. He mentioned that he was acting on Carlson’s orders; that he did what he said as far as the thefts were carried out because he was in love with the widow who was the murder victim and wanted to keep her safe.”
“Then who did he say killed the widow?” she asked. “You mentioned that testing turned up his DNA, Carlson’s DNA, and the handyman’s DNA at the crime scene.”
“Correct. But I’m willing to bet that it was Carlson who was in love with the widow and had been visiting her, the handyman who had been in and out fixing things in her house, but reported to Bergman or Carlson for a ‘cut’ of what they had planned to steal from her, then Bergman who was the one who killed her when she found out what was going on and threatened to go to the police.”
“She found out from Carlson. He was trying to protect her and her assets and didn’t want her included in their theft ring. He was trying to help her,” Ashley said.
“Think so too. And when the police found her, the house had been ransacked to make it look like a spontaneous robbery, all the implicating evidence gone, and letters left where she had talked about her estrangement from her brother to make him look like a suspect, and fingers pointed at the handyman who had just been in her house the day before,” Thompson said.
“So when the trial ended with no conviction, Bergman and Carlson left town, the handyman went off the radar as Bergman had paid him a bundle of money to keep his mouth shut, and the case went cold, “Ashley said.
Thompson looked at her and nodded his head. “Yeah. But the body that turned up in Arabella’s backyard was the handyman. And Bergman must’ve killed him there to implicate Arabella.”
Ashley grimaced. “Of course. Get rid of all the witnesses. And because Arabella was Frank’s mother, Bergman figured in case she was wise to anything, he better get rid of her or her testimony too. Blame it on the old lady living alone on the mountain road. Make it look like she went crazy up there.”
“And when they found her passed out, she had her gun in her hand. But ballistics from the handyman’s body didn’t match her little pistol of course,” Thompson said. “She said she had fired in the air to scare whoever off that she heard in her house.”
“Bergman knew it would create a diversion, though, and get the police investigating that instead of pursuing the cold case,” Ashley said. “Boy, when the news said new DNA evidence was going to hopefully solve that old crime, it must’ve driven Bergman nuts.”
They both sat in silence for a minute.
Ashley looked at the pile of notes and files on Thompson’s desk. She cleared her throat. “And let me guess, the widow Beatrice Small was in on it. And Margaret too.”
“Unfortunately, they were. Little widow Small who you thought must be so sweet, was in love with Carlson, but when she found out he had the hots for the murder victim, she helped Bergman with his theft ring, doing whatever he asked. And she said she was the killer so it would throw everyone off Carlson once and for good. Loved him to the end. We questioned her pretty hard the second time and she
just cracked. It was jealously, that’s all. Now she can sit in prison and wonder if it was all worth it.”
“And those poisonous earrings? Were they hers?” Ashley questioned.
“She swore up and down they weren’t. We have to keep looking into that. Hopefully, we’ll get more answers when we test the remains we found and can determine how they died.”
“Maybe they’re Margaret’s?” Ashley said. “Have you caught up to her and questioned her yet?”
“Well, bad news. We tried. Seems she flew to New York the evening we saw her get in a taxi at Beatrice Small’s. It will be tough finding her in New York.”
Ashley look stunned. “Why did she go all the way across the country? And maybe she didn’t stay in New York. Maybe she’s somewhere else. Ask widow Small where she is!”
“We did. Beatrice swore they knew each other but weren’t close friends, and she had lent her the car because Margaret’s was in the shop. She said she didn’t know anything about Margaret leaving for New York.”
“That’s bull,” Ashley said. “Maybe she’ll say more after she’s been locked up for a while.”
“Hopefully,” Thompson said.
Ashley stood up and paced his office again. Something was gnawing at her. Something she was trying to remember. She stopped and looked at the pile of notes on Thompson’s desk. The photo of the young dark-haired woman with the cat on a leash looked back at her. The one standing behind the murder victim years ago. She gasped and looked at Thompson.
“There was a woman I passed one day, walking Charlie. She mentioned that she used to have a cat who walked on a leash! And she said ‘that snake Carlson ran over her cat but finally got what was coming to him!’ The woman in this photo isn’t Beatrice Small. It must be that other woman I saw on her porch, a photo taken years ago when she was younger!”
Thompson peered at the photo. “Do you remember where she lives?”
“Yes! Let’s go over there! I’ll point out the house, but I’m sitting in the car.”
Ashley Crane Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 85