by Dale Mayer
Mack looked up and checked out the guy who had been hassling her. “What’s that smirk mean?”
“I think it has to do with one of the comments he made to me.”
“What was that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mack shot her an odd look.
She shrugged. “I think it’s safe to say, Hornby is one of those troublemaking kinds of people.”
“Yeah? Is that a new talent, or did he make trouble back then too?”
“I rather imagine he made a ton of trouble back then,” she said. “He’s probably gotten better at being subtler about it now.”
“Interesting insight,” he said.
She shrugged. “Not really. It’s just a fact of life. People get more experienced and become sneakier at causing pain. And they learn how to maximize the pain inflicted. It’s manipulation at its best.” Sensing his odd look, she refused to look at him.
After a moment Mack said, “Do you think Hornby had something to manipulate?”
“I didn’t believe anything that came out of his mouth,” she said, “so I assume he had an awful lot to do with either Johnny’s disappearance or his buddies who died in the vehicle.”
At that, Mack sucked in his breath, and his gaze turned lethal as he studied her face. “You think Hornby had something to do with their deaths?”
She tossed him a look. “It was one of the first things I thought when he said he couldn’t remember anything about the accident.”
“But that would also imply Susan knew all about it.”
“According to her uncle, she kept telling everybody who would listen that a vehicle had run the guys off the road.”
“And?” he prompted.
“Maybe a vehicle did,” she said drily. “Maybe she was trying to tell the cops without implicating herself. Maybe the vehicle that ran their friends off the road was the one they were driving.”
Mack nodded thoughtfully. “I didn’t see anything in the files, but I haven’t had a chance to get through the whole thing.”
“I’m sure not much is in there,” she said. “Johnny sat down on the bench, was having a beer, and the next thing his family knew, he was gone. Nobody supposedly knows anything about him. Yet the medallion he would never part with, the vehicle he adored, and his favorite dagger were all left behind.”
“When you put it that way,” Mack said, “it does sound like something very suspicious happened, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’m pretty damn sure Hornby was a big part of it.”
“We’re back to that assumption thing.”
“Absolutely no way to prove anything,” she said. “Everybody involved is dead except him.”
“Convenient, isn’t it?”
“Except Susan died of breast cancer,” she said. “Last year as I heard it.”
“Huh,” he said. “Maybe we should take a closer look at that death.”
Doreen froze, slowly turned to him, and in a low voice asked, “Do you think he could have killed her?”
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “Depends if she got ill and had a change of heart, wanted to cleanse her soul of some wrongdoing.”
“And how would we ever know that?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Maybe you should talk to Richie,” he said.
“That’s a great idea.”
Chapter 18
Saturday Midmorning …
Mack was gone; the groceries were put away, and she once again sat on the front stoop with a cup of coffee. She looked at her coffee and said, “I need a job, so I can keep drinking you at the same pace I have been. Talk about addictive.”
Still, a full-time job wouldn’t give her many free hours for her hobby. Something she was loving more and more every day—of course, she was still riding the wave of success, which reminded her of her current case. And right at the top of the things for her to do was talk to Richie.
She wondered how to get a hold of him. Was it fair to go through Nan? And would it bring up sad memories if she asked him questions about his great-niece? It seemed hardly fair when they’d only lost her a year ago. Would he have dealt with the loss mostly by now?
She pulled out her phone and sent Nan a text, asking about Richie’s great-niece’s health.
Nan called her. “What have you found out?”
“Nothing really,” Doreen said feebly. “I just wondered what her state of mind was before she died.”
“Richie is sitting here, playing poker with me,” she said. “I’ll put you on Speakerphone.”
Doreen heard cards slapping on the table.
“I’m here,” said a man with a rough masculine voice. “What’s this about my great-niece?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Doreen said. “I was wondering about her state of mind before she died.”
“What kind of a question is that?” he asked, snorting. “She was pretty darn sad. Knew she was dying of cancer. She was also in a lot of pain.”
“Did she give any signs that she wanted to, you know, go to confession or had trauma she wanted to … ask forgiveness for?” She winced. “I know that’s a really rough way to say it. I wanted to figure out if she wished she hadn’t done something in her life or had done something better.”
What an idiot she was. But this was better than her actual question. What she really wanted to know was did his great-niece confess to any murders before she died. And who could answer that question?
“She was very melancholy at the end,” Richie said gruffly. “Sad for all the things she wouldn’t get to do.”
“I’m sorry for her,” Doreen said. “She was young still.”
“Yes,” he said, “but she also knew she was paying the price for a life lived hard.”
“Drugs and alcohol, you mean?”
“That too,” he said. “She was also a thief for a while, due to her drug habit.”
“Ah, so maybe she was sorry about that?”
“Definitely,” he said. “But, if you’re asking if she had anything to do with the deaths of those two boys or Johnny, you’re barking up the wrong tree. She was a very gentle soul.”
Doreen held back her gasp when he acknowledged what she’d been hinting at. She hadn’t known the right way to say it. “Do you think there’s any chance she was in the vehicle that ran those two boys off the road?” she asked quietly. “If she was a passenger, and Hornby had been the one driving?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice thickening. “I have to admit though that the thought did cross my mind a time or two. According to her, the vehicle that hit Johnny’s car was patched with lots of pieces from other vehicles,” he said with a chuckle. “It was a very noticeable vehicle out there.”
“That’s what I mean. If there had been yet another vehicle on that road, surely the cops would have found it.”
“Well, you would have thought so,” he said. “But the truth of the matter was, they never did. Susan said she gave them the description over and over again, but, without a license plate, they could do little. They did put out an alert, but the vehicle was never seen again.”
Just like Johnny. But she kept that thought to herself. “Do you remember her description of the vehicle?”
“She said it was a small car with lots of different colored panels. But I think the real issue you should be looking at is, why would somebody run them off the road?”
“Right,” she said. “We’re back to lack of motive.”
“Except they were all into drugs,” Richie said with a hardness that surprised her. “I did everything I could to get that girl off those, but, once they got into her system, she was lost.”
“I’m sorry,” Doreen said. “I won’t bother you any longer. If you think of anything else Susan might have said, or if she might have kept journals or notebooks or a diary or something,” Doreen said hopefully, “keep me in mind.”
“You’re really looking into Johnny’s disappearance, huh?
”
“Penny is still looking for answers,” Doreen said without hesitation. “I’d like to see her get that before her time runs out.”
“Like George,” he said with a harrumph. “That was a sad day.”
“Also the day that George helped ID the two boys,” she said. “I’m sure, in the back of his mind, he was afraid one of those bodies was Johnny’s.”
“I think we all thought that,” he said. “It was his car. So who else would be driving that sucker?”
“Good point,” she said and hung up.
Immediately she called Mack. “Hey,” she said as soon as she heard his voice. “Can you check in the cold case file if anybody did a forensic check on the vehicle the two men died in?”
“I’ve got the file here,” he said, “but I haven’t gone through it all. Obviously the forensic team went over the vehicle. What aspect is bothering you?”
She grinned, happy he wasn’t asking her to butt out. “We know for sure it was Johnny’s car. But do we know for sure that, A, Johnny wasn’t in the trunk, dead already or dying from the vehicle crash, and, B, did any forensic evidence show something like a ton of blood to say that maybe Johnny had been there?”
“After a bad fire like that, blood wouldn’t have been traceable, but a body in the trunk would have been found,” he said. “Notes in here state Johnny had no reason to disappear and made no further contact with his family, but nobody could prove one way or another that he was deceased. He’s still a missing person’s case.”
“Did Penny or George ever try to declare him legally dead?” she asked.
“No notes are in the file about it,” he said, “and it’s not something necessarily that would have been followed up on here. That would be a question to ask Penny.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said. “I’m not sure how much tolerance Penny will have for these questions though.”
“She’s the one who asked you to look into it, right? So, therefore, she shouldn’t have a problem with you asking for clarification.”
“So far, she has been decent,” Doreen said, “but you never really want to push it.”
He chuckled. “I don’t think you understand what that point is. You’re forever pushing everything.”
“I’m not that bad. I can see how you might feel that way,” she admitted. “But I just find this case makes no sense. I mean, when you have a family who you love, why would you walk away?”
He said, “Let me ask you this. You had Nan, and you loved her very much, but still how much contact did you have with her in previous years?”
She could feel his words almost as a visceral blow. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t, but extenuating circumstances in your life stopped you from having a closer relationship with Nan. You have to consider maybe something similar happened in this young man’s life.”
“Like a wife?” she asked cynically. “More likely he was protecting George and Penny.”
After a moment of silence, Mack finally said, “That’s one angle the police had to look at. Was the family threatened? Was Johnny made to do something to keep his family out of danger? We don’t know what went on back then.”
“I still think it connects to the group of kids,” she said.
“Maybe it does, considering only one person is left alive from that group.”
“I think another girl was involved too,” Doreen said. “Somebody a little bit on the outside, kind of like Hornby was a little bit on the outside. I don’t know her name yet.”
“Well track her down,” he said humorously. “You seem to have taken over this case completely.”
“Can you tell me if any police man-hours are available for this cold case?”
“Depends what comes back from the testing on the medallion,” he said seriously. “I expect it to be only Johnny’s DNA. Who else’s would it be?”
“No clue but it would be nice if someone else’s DNA were on it. We’d at least have a suspect to look at.”
“At that point the case would become very active, and it wouldn’t be a case of us doing anything,” Mack reminded her in that tone of his that said she would be butting out, whether she liked it or not.
She groaned. “So I bring you all the information to help you move things forward, and then you force me to step back?”
“Remember the ‘It’s dangerous’ part?”
“It’s not my fault I always get to the root of the matter, and, by the time I get there, people are a little pissed that I found them out.”
“Just like Cecily,” he said. “You got into trouble at the end.”
“Okay, so you can get into trouble this time,” she said in exasperation, getting up in a huff and returning to the kitchen for more coffee. “I don’t have a death wish, you know? It’s not like I’m trying to cause trouble. I’m trying to bring peace and closure for Penny.”
“I get that. Penny gets that, and maybe half the world would get that, but whoever might be involved in this case won’t give a crap.”
“Like Hornby?”
“He really bothered you, didn’t he?”
“Not only did he come to my home,” she said, “but he also threatened me, and then he was flirting with me.”
“Which one bothered you the most?”
She pulled her cell away to stare at it, frowning. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Just wondered how terrified you are of getting back into a relationship. You never seem uncomfortable around me,” he said, “but Hornby was directly in your face, pushing the issue.”
She hated the direction he was going. “Whatever,” she said, dismissing it.
He chuckled. “I’ll be over there in a few hours. Try to stay out of trouble.”
She tossed her phone on the kitchen table, looked at her animals, and said, “Let’s go outside and do some work in the garden. Maybe that’ll make me feel better.”
Normally gardening was a soothing activity for her, a balm to her troubled soul, not to mention giving her some exercise and helping her to wear off some pent-up energy.
With her gardening gloves, a bottle of water, and her proverbial cup of tea, she headed out to the back corner, where they had pulled up the dilapidated fence and the posts. She figured, if she did the worst part of the weeding at the far back corner first, maybe it would be easier as she got closer to the house.
Setting down her water and tea, she pulled on her gloves. The corner was filled with what looked like huge pockets of daisies, black-eyed Susans, and maybe some echinacea. It was hard to be sure as most of the plants were just showing the early foliage.
She studied the leaves to confirm this plant was truly echinacea when she heard a soft noise. She spun around but couldn’t see anything. Then she heard Mugs chuffing—this weird sound he made that wasn’t a bark, wasn’t a growl, but like a heavy sniff upon a sniff, with some added background noise. He chuffed his way to the corner of the fence, but it wasn’t her fence; it was her neighbor’s fence. Mugs stood there, intently investigating everything around him. Goliath, not to be outdone, walked along at his leisure. And then he took off like a golden orange streak.
She followed the cat as she walked closer to the creek. “Goliath! Goliath, stay here please.”
Instead of answering her, Goliath remained silent. And the continuous chuff-chuff-chuff came from Mugs. Then, in a startling move, Thaddeus hopped on Mugs’s back. At this point Mugs was so focused on the trail he was following that he didn’t seem to notice the bird.
She studied the two cautiously. “Thaddeus, that might not be the best idea.”
“Giddyup, Mugs. Giddyup, Mugs,” Thaddeus squawked in a loud voice.
Doreen gasped as Thaddeus tried to ride her dog. Mugs took several hesitant steps forward, then stopped. Thaddeus dug his claws in and pecked at the dog’s head. Mugs took off, barking like crazy, racing around in a circle, as if trying to bounce Thaddeus off—which didn’t work—but finally Mugs slowed and returned to
the same spot. Thaddeus, apparently happy with his ride, hopped off, and strutted at the dog’s side.
She studied the area, trying to figure out what was upsetting them. The last time they’d behaved like this was when they found a license plate that led her to solve the previous cold case on Paul Shore. It had been an amazing and a very heartwarming, worthwhile exercise.
“Has this got something to do with my current case?” she asked Mugs.
Now Mugs couldn’t take his eyes off whatever was bothering him on the far side of the creek. Thaddeus, however, shot her a look that said, Boy, are you stupid.
She glared back at the bird.
He ruffled his feathers and ignored her.
She should be used to that by now but wasn’t.
Doreen walked closer to where Goliath had disappeared. Brush grew all alongside the creek. She didn’t spot Goliath, but she thought she spied Goliath’s tail twitching, flicking back and forth. She crept up behind him, not wanting to scare him into the water, but, at the same time, if he was hunting a bird or something equally lovely, she would tell him off right and royally.
And then suddenly Goliath exploded backward through the brush, wrapping himself through her legs, racing past Mugs.
She almost tripped and fell as she regained her balance. She stared at the streak as it veered toward the veranda. “Goliath, are you okay?” Unable to leave yet, she returned to where Goliath had been, and, holding on to the brush as an anchor, she crept down a couple feet toward the creek. Just two or so weeks ago, the water had been icy-cold. She hoped the creek water had warmed up by now, with all the sunshine and hopefully no more snowmelt. If she fell in, the water should be fairly warm at this time of year.
Standing just inches from the trickling stream, she inspected the area Goliath appeared to look at. But nothing was there. She crouched lower; then suddenly Mugs was at her side, chuffing away. Thaddeus, now at his side, hopped up onto her shoulder, and the three looked at the water.
Chapter 19
Saturday Afternoon …
“Okay, guys. You are really starting to freak me out,” Doreen said. “We’re not supposed to find any more bodies. Remember?”