by Donna Doyle
Murder Wears a Medal
A Kelly Armello Cozy Mystery Book 4
Donna Doyle
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
© 2020 PureRead Ltd
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Contents
1. Busy at the Bars
2. Flags and Friends
3. Unwelcome News
4. Bar Fight
5. The Return of Chief Stark
6. Basements and Porches
7. A Guest Returns Home
8. Mia’s Fears
9. Setting up the Shots
10. Comparing Notes
11. Reflection
12. Outlaws
13. Who Called the Cops?
14. Searching for Sean
15. Mason Goes Missing
16. Identifying the Body
17. Who Killed Sean
18. The Memorial Day Program
19. Meeting at the Diner
20. Memorial Day
21. Questions from Jimmy
22. The Funeral
23. What Side is the State Trooper on?
24. Tracking Eddie Kavlick
25. No Leads
26. Mrs. Hammond’s Observation
27. Cemetery Follow-up
28. Backlash on Grass-covered Shorts
29. The Cemetery
30. Stark is Back
31. Unanswered Questions
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1
Busy at the Bars
As he wearily got out of the squad car and headed into Tony’s, the bar on the outskirts of Settler Springs just next to the border between the town and Warren Borough, Officer Troy Kennedy reflected that, whether the coming Memorial Day might or might not be a boon for patriotism, it certainly was upping the profits for the local drinking establishments.
This was the third night in a row that he’d been called out to a bar fight.
Tony, the proprietor, looked relieved when he saw Troy enter. “We always get our share of drunks for the Memorial Day celebration, but this year is worse than usual,” he complained. “I don’t know why Memorial Day has to get a head start here when everyone else just celebrates the one day, and I don’t know why Settler Springs has to end up with every veteran in the vicinity of twenty miles showing up.”
“Where’s the fight?” Troy asked. It was late, past his shift, but he’d been warned by acting Police Chief Leo Page that there would be a lot of overtime in May over the Memorial Day celebration.
“They’re out in the back parking lot. Probably too drunk to do any real harm, but I don’t need fights. I run a clean bar here, no brawls, no misbehaving—”
He was still attesting to the purity of his establishment when Troy turned the corner and went to the back of the lot. The two men, hunched over, circling one another, didn’t hear the sound of his shoes on the gravel. Tony was right; they were probably too far gone to do any real harm. But a public disturbance was a violation.
“C’mon, guys, I’m taking you in.”
The two adversaries, now allies in their indignation, demanded to know what the police wanted.
“A quiet night,” Troy said as he prodded them into the back of the car. “Which I’m not going to get as long as every veteran in town thinks that the best way to remember the fallen is to get sopping drunk.”
“You’re no patriot,” declared one of the men, who by his age had likely fought in the first Iraq war. “If you’d served your country, you’d understand why sometimes, a man just needs to drink with his buddies.”
“I did serve my country,” Troy responded. “I was sober then and I’m sober now. You dishonor the uniform you wore when you start fights in bars. A night in jail might make you see the Red, White, and Blue in a different light.”
Whether it would or not probably didn’t matter, Troy thought after he’d concluded the evening and processed the arrest for the two drunks, now silent and sullen, and was on his way home. Arlo greeted him with his usual four-legged, wagging-tail zest when he came in the door. Troy put him outside on the leash and stayed outside, enjoying the peace of the night. Spring had deepened into the warmth of pre-summer. The daytime temperature was already hitting 80 degrees. The carnival was in town, a precursor for the festivities of Memorial Day. Kelly told him that Settler Springs had the best Memorial Day celebration in the adjoining three counties. He doubted if she thought that hauling in drunks every night was a tribute to that celebration, but it was something he was going to challenge her with tomorrow when they met at the Trail for their regular weekend run.
Thoughts of Kelly made him smile. Now that the weather was warm, the long-sleeved, long-pants running garb had given way to shorts that revealed her long, lithe legs, and sleeveless tops that showed her freckled shoulders and smooth, slender arms. Her red hair had golden glints in it from exposure to the sun, and her brown eyes were like a new discovery in the May sunlight. There was something about warm weather, Troy thought, that made romance seem a lot more likely. Arlo trotted up the steps and back onto the porch, waiting to be released from his leash. So far, Kelly had proven to be immune to his subtle suggestions that it was time for friendship to blossom into something more, just like the Shasta daisies that had sprung up, almost without warning, in the flower beds on each side of the library. From the barrenness of winter and a wet early spring, the life waiting beneath the soil had emerged as a reminder that spring couldn’t be vanquished. And, Troy thought as he put food in Arlo’s bowl and gave him fresh water, if flowers could bring the message that winter was over, so could summer clothes on a beautiful woman.
But when he told Kelly the next morning that she looked great in her green running shorts and white tank top, she wrinkled up her nose. “I have a sunburn on my neck,” she said. “I always forget how much sun we get in May.”
“How’d you get sunburned?”
“I was out at the cemetery yesterday after work, pulling weeds around the gravestones. I didn’t realize the sun was so strong. The ladies from the American Legion Auxiliary will be going out next weekend to put wreaths on the graves before the parade and some of us go out before to make sure everything is cleaned up before then. I didn’t get a chance to do anything on the old part of the cemetery. There are gravestones there from the eighteenth century, but that part of the cemetery is in bad shape. It needs some attention.”
“Maybe I should send some of the drunks out to help, instead of putting them in jail.”
“What drunks?”
“The veterans who have to celebrate their service by putting away too many brews,” he said.
“It seems like there’s more of that this year. I don’t know why. We always get a lot of veterans from the nearby towns—they march in our parade because we have the biggest one in three counties—but this year, they seem different. I don’t know why,” she repeated. “It’s not usually like this. I was talking to Art Speering, and he said there are more strangers in town this time, veterans he doesn’t remember seeing before. And that doesn’t make any sense either.”
“It would help if all the bars stopped offering ten percent off draft beer for anyone who served in the military,” Troy said.
“They do that every year,” Kelly said. “That’s not what I mean. Art says—he was in Korea, so he’s seen a lot of veterans over the years—that he doesn’t recognize everyone either.”
“Maybe you’re importing them,”
Troy said. “There’s going to be one new face in town, but he won’t be taking part in the Memorial Day goings on.”
Kelly was curious. They were in The Café, and Kelly was tackling the Hungry Man’s Breakfast with her usual hearty appetite. “Who?”
“An old friend of mine from my days in Afghanistan,” Troy said. “Sean Claypool. He’s going to be spending a week or two here. I haven’t seen him in a couple of years.”
“Sean Claypool . . . there are Claypools in town. Is he related?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Actually, Sean came from here.”
“You mean you knew someone from Settler Springs before you came here yourself?” Kelly’s brown, direct gaze was alert. “I didn’t know that. I thought you just arrived here.”
“Not exactly. Sean had lived here, and he used to talk about it—his days growing up, when he was a kid. Got into some trouble, nothing serious, more like the kind of trouble that Lucas Krymanski finds. But he liked it here before his parents split up and he and his dad moved to Texas.”
“Is that why you moved here?”
“I guess.”
Francie came over to refill their coffee. “Troy, you’re a veteran, right?” she asked.
“Why?” Troy inquired warily.
“Veterans don’t pay for coffee once the Memorial Day schedule goes into effect,” she said.
“Oh. Well, that’s better than a discount on beer.”
Francie understood immediately. “I heard there was a fight at Tony’s last night.”
“And the night before that. And a fight at Outlaws the night before that.”
“I guess they get a little rowdy,” Francie said tolerantly. “Let me know when you want a refill.”
“It’s not usually like that,” Kelly said unhappily. “I know some of the guys act up some, and with the carnival in town, there’s extra activity going on, but I don’t think the police are usually breaking up fights.”
“Why does the town have such a long Memorial Day observation? Why not just do the business on Memorial Day?”
“If soldiers could give months and years out of their lives, and sometimes give their actual lives, we should be able to celebrate for longer than a day. Do you think your friend will want to march in the parade?”
Troy had already told her that he wouldn’t be marching. Kelly was disappointed but knew better than to prod him.
Troy shook his head. “Sean left the war behind him. He doesn’t want to bring it back.”
“I don’t see why marching in the parade is bringing the war back.”
Troy didn’t answer. Kelly wouldn’t understand. Most people didn’t. Sean had more reason than most for wanting the war to stay far away, even though it had followed him home. Troy wasn’t going to let the war find him either, and that was why he wasn’t going to march in the Memorial Day parade.
2
Flags and Friends
“I’m not sure why it’s so different this year,” Kelly said as she filled Carmela in on the rise in the number of bar fights that Troy had told her about over the weekend. She and Carmela had taken to arriving at the library a little early after the weekend so they could have a conversation before Mrs. Stark, the library board president, came in. “It’s the same holiday. We always invite lots of veterans, but this year there are new faces.”
“I suppose men might decide after a few years that they want to take part,” Carmela said.
The backdoor entrance opened abruptly, and Mrs. Stark emerged just as Carmela spoke. She held an air of triumph, as if she’d caught the two misbehaving.
“I decided that since it’s a lovely day, I’d walk over from the office,” she said, although neither had questioned her presence. “Kelly, I don’t like the little flags that you’ve put up in the flower beds. You know we’ll get rain and they’ll make the grounds look unkempt.”
“They’re plastic flags,” Kelly said. “The rain won’t hurt them.”
“I think the one big flag out front is sufficient. It’s looking a little worn, though. I’ll have my husband get us a new one from Representative Eldredge. I heard what you said about the problems with the veterans who gather in town and frankly, Kelly, you’ll have to take the blame. You invite entirely too many of them, and the town offers so many bargains that of course they’re going to tell their friends and loiter about.”
“I invited the same American Legion and VFW posts I always invite,” Kelly said, keeping her tone even. Obviously, Mrs. Stark had been listening at the back. Fortunately, neither she nor Carmela had indulged in any commentary regarding Mrs. Stark.
“Yes, well, they’ve plainly started inviting friends. I hope you’ve put in a way to make sure that they’re all really veterans.”
“In order to march in the parade and take advantage of the local bargains that the businesses offer, every veteran has to register at our American Legion post.”
“Art is getting old; he’s probably so busy talking to every last one of them that he can’t tell their old military identification from their AARP card. And if Officer Kennedy is bothered by the extra work, you can just take the blame for that as well. The police office wasn’t short-staffed when my husband was running it. And we didn’t have problems like this, either,” she added.
No, because Police Chief Stark let the state police take care of the dirty work if he chose to notify them at all. And if he didn’t, well, there wasn’t any crime, Kelly thought to herself as she went into her office. Memorial Day was one of her favorite holidays, and she enjoyed bringing the library into the observation of the day. Since she had become the director of the Settler Springs Public Library, the program had grown and the other businesses in town had enthusiastically come on board to make the Settler Springs Memorial Day Celebration, as Kelly had told Troy, the biggest one in three counties. On the Saturday before Memorial Day, the veterans would gather in the library’s community room and talk about their war experiences, then answer questions. The gathering of veterans from all the past wars was something that the participants and the audiences alike relished; for the veterans, it was a chance to exchange war stories—and sometimes, one-up one another in the process—and for the audience, the assembly provided an opportunity to honor the veterans for their service while asking questions.
Their last remaining World War II veteran, Wally Camp, had died over the winter, and his presence would be missed, Kelly thought as she logged onto her computer. Although wheelchair bound, his memory had been sharp until the end; and his stories of General Patton, under whom he had served, were always entertaining. It wouldn’t be the same, she thought, without Wally ending his presentation with the words, “Old Blood and Guts wanted to keep the Third Army marching straight into Russia. And we should have let him!”
Kelly smiled in reminiscence of Wally Camp’s vehemence. It always brought a cheer from the crowd and the other veterans, regardless of whether or not the policy would have been wise. That was for others to decide, she thought.
“Kelly,” Mrs. Stark’s voice floated into her office, “don’t forget about those flags.”
“I haven’t forgotten. After you bring the new flag from Representative Eldredge, I’ll remove the little flags.”
There was silence. It was, Kelly knew, a petty point of rebellion, but it was satisfying. She could sense Carmela’s pleasure in Kelly’s response, even though Carmela was ten feet away at the circulation desk.
“I’ll call him right now,” Lois Stark said, taking out her cell phone. “David, hello, how are you? Yes, we’re very busy with the celebration. It just gets bigger every year . . . why, thank you, David. I do what I can; you know how important our men in uniform are to me and to Roger. Yes,” she said, laughing congenially in response to whatever remark the state legislator had said, “to the men in blue as well. And we thank you for your support during this . . . situation. I’m sure that, with your help, we’ll be able to make things right very soon. Actually, I called to ask for a new flag for th
e library.”
As Mrs. Stark continued her phone conversation, Kelly’s mind was detoured to the previous remarks. Her umbrage that Mrs. Stark was obviously being given—and was taking—credit for the amount of work that went into the Memorial Day affair did not claim her full attention, however. It was the realization that the Starks were, from the sounds of things, on familiar terms with the elected representative from the Settler Springs congressional district. What did she mean when she had said, in response to a comment on the other end of the call, “I’m sure that, with your help, we’ll be able to make things right very soon”?
Kelly knew from Troy that former Chief of Police Roger Stark, who had been suspended from his position after the Halloween murder that had revealed not only his son’s guilt in the case but also Scotty Stark’s role in the town’s drug traffic, was angling to get his job back. He had not been formally charged with also being involved in the drug selling, although Kelly and Troy, who had staked out Daffodil Alley, the scene of the murder, were present, albeit concealed, when Roger Stark had driven there to speak to his son. Evidence was not sufficient to mount a case and Troy hadn’t revealed what he knew, waiting for a more opportune time to pursue Stark’s complicity in the matter. But was Representative Eldredge involved as well, Kelly wondered? Or was he merely an astute politician eager to stay on the right side of the police community? She disliked both possibilities, but the former was particularly unsettling. Cynicism was foreign to Kelly’s nature and when she encountered it, she was disheartened.