by A J Sherwood
“Rodger?”
“Yeah, Dad confirmed that. He’s your first guess too, huh.”
“Well, really, he’s the most obvious suspect. Did your mom know?”
“Now, that is the question, isn’t it? I’m not sure. I…somehow don’t think so.”
I didn’t think so either. I couldn’t imagine Lauren letting this go, not with how it hurt her kids. “Do you want to do this sooner or later? You’ve either got to make the time, or you’ll have to wait until the case is solved.”
“Make the time,” he said decisively. Gesturing toward my far pocket, he asked, “Can you email or text everyone and arrange it? I want to get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later. I mean, Caleb doesn’t even know he has a grandchild, and that’s ridiculous. He should at least be able to meet Skylar. And I can’t introduce him to her until I figure out what went wrong.”
I pulled out my phone immediately. “I’ll get it arranged.” And hoped for his sake he got answers he could live with. I didn’t really think this was any of Natalie’s doing—she just wasn’t the manipulative type—but that left Lauren and Rodger. Rodger I could totally see doing something like this. He manipulated the whole family on a regular basis. Lauren was a harder nut to crack. I was never quite sure how much was her and how much was Rodger yanking on her puppet strings.
A red pickup pulled into the parking space next to Jon’s Humvee. I glanced up from the phone, realized the other two had arrived, and quickly finished the text message to Natalie and Lauren before pocketing it safely inside its EMP case.
“Body now under lock and key?” Jon teased his father as Caleb came around the bed of the truck to greet us.
“You bet your ass it is,” Caleb grumbled sourly. “The entire precinct is firm on the point that if anyone goes inside my morgue before tomorrow morning, heads will roll. I got in some of the bloodwork I requested. I’d go over them tonight, but—”
Neil gave his husband a firm look. “No work binges.”
Pointing to him, Caleb completed his sentence wryly, “I promised him I wouldn’t work overnight anymore unless it was an emergency. And this doesn’t qualify. Well, let’s go in. I’m starving. With one thing and another, I skipped lunch.”
We went inside the restaurant and I panned my head, taking in the interior as we were led to a table. It had brick walls, including a brick wall divider between the dining spaces, with arched windows to break it up. The lighting was mellow, the floors a painted concrete. It had a masculine vibe to it, and the smells…delightful. My mouth started salivating.
Best yet, they didn’t have those table kiosks we had to avoid.
We settled around a table towards the back end of the dining area and I looked through the menu, seeing mostly steaks, fish, and some Southern fare. We all placed orders for food and drinks, me ordering two appetizers as well.
Jon practically vibrated in his chair as he turned to Caleb. “Caleb. I’m going to do my best to sort out exactly what happened. And soon. I do not want this question festering. And I’ve told Natalie I found you. I’m frankly surprised I haven’t gotten angry demands for updates yet.”
Caleb’s face turned wistful. “I’d love to see her. How is she?”
“She’s great. I mean that. She loves her job. Natalie married a man named Aaron and he’s awesome. We all adore him.”
Jon pointed a finger at my phone and I knew what that silent command meant. Pulling it free, I thumbed through the gallery until I found a picture of him and Natalie I’d snapped about two months ago. I handed it over so Neil and Caleb could get a better look.
“Wow,” Caleb breathed, eyes greedily taking in the image. “She looks so like her mother.”
“Yeah, she does. Older she gets, the more she looks like her.” Jon shot me a look, uncertain, but I encouraged him to go ahead. There wasn’t any right timing in this situation. Taking a breath, he said, “You’re both grandparents.”
Neil and Caleb froze, looking at him like he’d announced the moon was going to fall tomorrow.
“Natalie has a child?!” Caleb squeaked out, eyes bugging from his head.
“Yeah. Donovan, you’ve got a picture on your phone, right?”
“Of Sky?” I snorted at the question. “Way too many, probably. She thinks it’s funny to take selfies with my phone for some reason. Here, Caleb, let me see it.” I flicked through three before finding one of her selfies and passed it back. “That’s Skylar.”
Caleb was beyond words. I might have been assuming too much, but the expression on his face suggested that just reconnecting with one of his children was a dream come true. The idea of perhaps getting them both back, and having a grandchild on top of it all, blew his mind. He was robbed of words as he stared at Skylar’s picture. His eyes grew bright with unshed tears. I thought Jon was going to join him for a moment, a sympathetic reaction to what his father felt.
“She’s beautiful, Caleb.” Neil put an arm around his husband’s shoulders, hugging him close. “How old is she?”
“A very precocious fifteen,” I answered dryly. “She’s incredibly smart, too.”
“That girl is a techno-wiz,” Jon agreed promptly. “She maintains what few electronics I have in my house and wants to work for the police in the future, be one of our tech gurus. She trains with Donovan on Saturdays in Krav Maga.”
Caleb startled at that, his eyes flying up to mine. “With you?”
“Yeah. I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave her defenseless,” I explained with a shrug. “And she’s good at it. She’s dragged more than a few people into my class, other teenagers she felt needed some self-defense training. She’s a good kid, Caleb. I hope you can meet her soon.”
“I’ll do my best to make sure it happens.” Jon had that stubborn look on his face again, the one that said he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“I’d love to.” Caleb reluctantly handed my phone back to me. “Jon, I don’t want you to get your hopes up about this, though. Natalie might choose not to see me.”
“Natalie is half the reason why I talked to you to begin with. She wants answers and is just as desperate to talk to you. Trust me, I think a lot of things are going to change when the truth comes out.”
I seconded that.
The food arrived and gave us a good break in the conversation. Once it was settled on the table, I changed the subject to something lighter. “So tell me. How did you two crazy kids meet?”
Neil laughed at the question and gave Caleb a fond look. “He ran into me. Literally. He claims it was an accident, but I still think it was on purpose.”
“I was carrying a box of recovered remains from a shallow grave,” Caleb met him look for look. “Believe me, if it was on purpose, I wouldn’t have done it with bones in my hands.”
“Really? Then why did you look like you’d swallowed your tongue after I helped you up?”
“Because you’re smoking hot and I’m not blind. At the time, I was absolutely mortified a hot stranger was helping me up while I was covered in dusty skeleton, but fortunately you didn’t seem to notice.”
“Oh, I noticed. I just didn’t care.”
This story rang a bell with me and I regarded Jon thoughtfully. On our first meeting, he’d also rather looked tongue-tied, although he hadn’t been, fortunately. Was it something about Bane genetics that they reacted around men so?
Jon caught my interest and made a face at me. “Uh, no, I did not fall for you first. You fell for me at first sight, remember?”
“Maybe I did, but you were interested first,” I teased.
“No, wait,” Caleb interrupted. “How exactly did you two meet?”
Jon obligingly told the story, and the conversation stayed light and easy the rest of the dinner as we caught up a little with each other. I mentally prayed that whatever the truth was, it would let Caleb reconnect with Natalie too. As badly as things had gone, everyone deserved a second chance.
The conversation wrapped back around to hashin
g things out with the family, and Jon admitted, “I had Donovan text everyone, see how they felt about a family meeting. I hope to work one in the next few days.”
“That would be nice.” Caleb bit his lip and shot his husband a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “I’d like to speak with her sooner rather than later, but it might be best you sort things out with them first.”
“I think it will be, although I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do that. This weekend, probably.” Jon sat up, a little more alert, head canted in question. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Look, I know you’re supposed to stay at a hotel while you’re working on the case out here, but how would you both feel about staying with us instead?”
That sounded potentially awkward, although it might work out for the better. Hotel rooms all had keycards these days. Jon and electronic locks were like wolves to bunnies. The former existed to rip the latter to pieces. I met Jon’s eyes, silently trying to read what he thought of this offer.
He seemed to share my own sense of potential awkwardness, but there was a stubborn tilt to his chin I knew quite well. He was game to at least try. “I have to admit, it would make life easier in some ways.”
I pitched in, “But you understand, he won’t be able to go into your kitchen at all. And any electronics in the living room would be iffy.”
“We don’t actually have a TV in the house. Neither of us are big on watching it. Our computers are all in a separate room, so he won’t be able to accidentally stumble across them. It was originally my parent’s house, so it’s not hi-tech anyway.” Neil sounded hopeful.
Okay, that all sounded promising as well. I felt like it potentially would be a good thing. “Then, we’ll sleep at the hotel tonight, join you tomorrow? Room’s already paid for, and all that.”
Caleb practically beamed. “Sure.”
9
The financials and property information came in mid-morning the next day. Neil pulled all the petitions and protests for us to look through and kindly printed things out for me. We all dug through the information, hoping multiple eyes might see something. At this point, we just didn’t know much about Witherspoon. We knew he was married, now widowed, with just one child. He had a very lucrative restoration business in New York for decades. He chose to come down here to retire. No one’s quite sure why—he’d never lived in the South. But we had no idea about his relationships, friendships, connections. Too much of this man’s life was a blank slate.
Neil, of course, had other cases to juggle, so he let us get a head start by putting me, Donovan, Sho, Carol, Sharon, and Garrett all in the conference room. This one showed its age in the stained carpet and marked-up white walls, although at least it had one window at the end, so we had some natural lighting. It wasn’t a large room, so the table was necessarily short, but we had enough room to stretch out and pile the evidence on the Formica top.
Jim went back to Nashville to handle the cases still coming in. He made a few noises about us possibly coming back and working a day in Nashville before the work overloaded. I hoped not. All the driving back and forth would be less than fun.
We were gung-ho on the idea of getting this mystery solved sooner rather than later. Even though it was a lot of paperwork to slog through, we divvied it up, with Sho tackling the questions requiring Googling. Since Sharon had the neatest handwriting, we gave her the marker and control of the whiteboard, giving us a rough timeline of not only the day of the murder, but the past year of Witherspoon’s life. At this point, everything was suspect.
I read through the petitions and protests with a gathering frown. The basic gist of it was that because the plantation house was a historical building, it shouldn’t be touched at all except for repair work. The preservation group Historic Districts Council was the main spearhead of the movement, but a few architects and other advocates were behind it. Someone had even documented the physical protest held the day Witherspoon had gone in to the Sevierville City Hall to get the permits to renovate. I looked through the pictures, noting faces and getting a rough head count. Roughly ten people altogether, holding various signs.
“Seems like he wasn’t really going to do much that would change the look or structure,” Donovan noted. He held the permit plans. Frankly, he was the only one in this group who would understand them. Well, and Sho too. “He’s got plans here to update plumbing and electric, which I understand. Wiring that old could potentially burn the house down. And the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom, according to his notes to the city, had a major leak that was damaging the ceiling downstairs.”
I hadn’t noticed that, but I hadn’t walked through the entire house, either. For various reasons. “Is that why he was tearing into the bathroom linen closet, do you think? To find and stop the leak?”
“Only way to get to the plumbing, unless he chose to go in through a wall. Or the ceiling itself. Depends on how they did the plumbing.”
And without plans to go by, he must have been guessing. I’d certainly choose to go through the false back of a closet first. “But if all he was doing was updating things and fixing potential problems, why the protests?”
“That is a very good question,” Sho agreed in a tone that said he knew something we didn’t. I turned in my chair to look in his direction. He was at the far end of the table—basically as far from me as he could get without going through a wall. Well able to read the query on our faces, he continued, “It doesn’t make sense he’d get protests now. I cannot find a single protest against the renovation in 1976. No one was against it, or even murmured a possible worry.”
“Ho~,” Garrett said, voice lilting. He turned in his chair as well to face Sho more directly. “How long has that historical committee been around?”
Sho’s arch expression went up another notch. “Established 1970.”
“So they were around when the first renovation happened.” Sharon came out of her chair to mark all of this on the white board. “Anyone else find that strange?”
“Especially considering the 1976 remodel was just as intensive in some ways.” Donovan tapped the plans that he had. “They updated plumbing and wiring, replaced three doors and four windows, and completely redid the roof. If that was okay, then why protest Witherspoon’s plans? His wasn’t going to be nearly as intensive.”
Carol dropped the file in her hands for a moment, peering at the whiteboard over her glasses. “Something smells, and it’s not fried chicken. I’ve got a property estimate of the house, and it was worth a great deal more than what Witherspoon paid for it. It should have fetched almost a half million, especially considering how much property it’s sitting on. He bought it for $176,000.”
I whistled long and loud. “Woah. Seriously?”
“It was on the market for a year before he came around to snatch it up, but…there’s something not right about a price drop like that.” She frowned at the records some more. “And his was the only offer that was entertained.”
Donovan just rolled his big brown eyes at her. “Excuse you, why is this even a question? We know that place is haunted. Spooky stuff happens in there all the time. Why would anyone sane want to buy it?”
“The locals likely knew better,” Sho agreed wholeheartedly. “I mean, really; would you want to be eating dinner and then have random, murderous screams coming up out of the floorboards? That’s a whole lot of not-gonna-happen in my book.”
“It’d take an out-of-towner to be interested. I suppose that’s why Witherspoon got it. According to his financials” –Garrett tapped a finger to them— “that was low-balling for him. His company—before he sold it—did really well. He dealt with million-dollar projects all the time in New York. He retired with quite a bit in the bank. This was literally his retirement project. He didn’t need to invest in anything.”
The situation just got stranger with every fact added. I watched as Sharon wrote all this on the board, trying to put the pieces together into some overall picture that made sense. But
we still really didn’t understand what the motive was in killing him. As interesting as all this was, who could be our suspect?
Caleb came into the conference room with a file under one arm, wearing scrubs that were thankfully clean. Mostly clean. A few questionable stains dirtied the hem of his pants. He looked tired and more confused, which wasn’t the direction we wanted him to take. With a general wave at the room, he snagged a water bottle before dropping heavily into a chair. Uncapping it, he took a long pull from the bottle and put it down on the surface before even attempting to speak.
“Good news does not seem to be forthcoming,” Garrett noted. “Tell us something good, Doc.”
“How about something weird?”
“No, we have a lot of weird already.” I shook my head. “No more weirdness.”
“You’re not getting your wish on that one,” Caleb said, sliding further into the computer chair with a sigh. I could see from this angle his lower back hurt, likely because he’d been bending at a forty-five-degree angle for several hours. “Test results show he was given a very high dose of ketamine.”
“How was it given to him?” Donovan asked.
“Orally, I believe. It wasn’t found in his water glass, so I can’t be positive about that. I found no traces of an injection site, but—” He grimaced, and we all nodded in understanding. “It’s normally a perfectly legal prescription. It can be used as an anesthetic because it blocks sensory perception. In high doses, it depresses breathing and works as a sedative. I don’t believe the drug was an accidental overdose on Witherspoon’s part. I requested medical records for Witherspoon, and he has no history of prescriptions, aside from a blood pressure medication. Which, considering he was sixty-two at his death, isn’t unusual.”
“So definitely the work of our murderer. It doesn’t take any medical knowledge to know about the drug, right?” Sho inputted with a thoughtful frown. “I believe ketamine is also a recreational drug.”