by Helen Gray
“Can do,” he said briefly and returned to his class.
When Toni entered the police station after school, the officer at the desk looked up from a computer screen and nodded in recognition. “The chief’s expecting you. Go right on in.”
There was a Coke sitting on the edge of Buck’s desk. “Have a cold one,” he said, indicating the soda and then the chair near it.
“This must be serious,” she said, taking the drink and sitting to face him.
“It could be,” he said, his smile disappearing. He leaned forward on the desk.
A knot of apprehension hit her in the gut.
“Nurse Vickers called last night and complained about your boy detectives. She said they came to her house to ask questions, and she refused to talk to them. According to her, they have no business running around asking nosy questions and pestering adults. I guess she isn’t aware that they’re out of school and considered adults.”
Toni blew a long breath of air. “What am I supposed to do? They’re no longer my students, and they’re acting on their own.”
“You can tell them about her complaint and encourage them to stay away from her. They might listen to you.” Implying he didn’t think there was much chance of them listening to anyone else.
“I’ll see them at the game tomorrow,” she said with a grimace. “I’ll talk to them, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop them.”
“Good enough. Now for my good news." He eased back in his chair and clasped his hands together in front of him. “I went out and talked to Donnie Fisher today. He’s in a wheelchair and living with his mother. When I asked him about the preacher’s car, he tried to play dumb. When I leaned on him he began a whining play for sympathy, going on about how crippled up he is, to dodge my questions. That’s when I got ticked off and really grilled him.”
Toni smirked at that.
Buck continued. “I let him know that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him, since it was a high speed chase away from a robbery scene that led to his injuries. Then I may have led him to believe we have more proof than we do of his ties to the chop shop.”
Toni chuckled. “So how much did he admit?”
“That he sold the roadster to the wrecking shop.”
“Does that mean he’s connected to the murder?”
Buck shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. He says he got a phone call telling him there was a car parked out at the Industrial Park, and that he should go get it. The key and five hundred dollars were in the console. If he would make the car disappear, the money as well as any profit from the car was his.”
Toni thought back, trying to recall details of that time span. “That would have been before Donnie's accident. He's been hustling since he was a kid.”
Buck heaved a sigh. “I’m afraid so. That last mess is still dragging through the courts, and now this one surfaces. He should do time, but because of the wheelchair they probably won’t find a jury who’ll put him there.”
“I wonder who his attorney is,” Toni mused casually.
Buck’s expression lit with interest. He jotted a note on his desk calendar. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
“I feel like we’re getting close to something. I just don’t know what it is,” Toni said, tapping her fingers against her thigh.
“Same here,” Buck agreed. “We’ll just keep talking to people, asking questions and following our noses, and learning bits and pieces from your trio. Sooner or later the dots will start connecting. Which brings me to the last thing I wanted to mention to you. Some ladies from the Temple of Light Church—I think it’s their mission organization or a Bible study group—are meeting tonight, and they’ve invited me to attend. They want to discuss their former pastor’s death and see if they can help us. Would you like to attend with me?”
It took only a moment of consideration. “It might be interesting.”
*
After ball practice Dack, Jeremy and Q each went home for supper. Then they met back at the school parking lot.
“Do you know where Cindy lives?” Jeremy asked Dack.
“Out in Misty Valley subdivision,” he said, grinning. “But we don’t have to go there. I’ve already called her. She’s meeting us at McDonald’s for milk shakes.”
“Let’s each drive our own vehicles then,” Jeremy suggested.
“Meet you in five minutes.” Dack hopped back into his car.
Q just took off.
When they caravanned into the parking lot and parked, Cindy was already there, waiting in her car. Dack trotted over and opened her driver's door. “Come on. Let’s go find those shakes.”
Cindy grinned and crawled out of the little white Cavalier. A tall dishwater blonde, she wore white shorts and a yellow tank top. “That’s why I’m here.”
The two of them led the way inside, Jeremy and Q behind them. The place was busy. Several of their classmates were hanging out and snacking. They placed their orders and stood back to wait for them.
“I hope you don’t mind being outnumbered tonight,” Dack said to Cindy with a grin.
“Actually, it’s flattering,” she returned good-naturedly. “I’m with three guys, while most girls only have one.”
When they were seated, munching and slurping, Dack jumped into the subject. “Cindy, we’ve found the place where we think your mother took you when you were pregnant. It’s not far, so we think she drove past it and circled around back to it to make you think it was farther.”
Cindy eyed him studiously from across the table. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I’m sure you’re right.”
“We’re hoping you’ll go back over your story for us and see if you can remember anything new. We think there’s something fishy going on out at that place, but we don’t know what.”
She frowned. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to forget it. I doubt I can remember anything different.”
“Just start at the beginning.” He slurped from his shake.
She sat silent for several moments, but then whooshed a long breath and began to speak. “I met Rick at a pool party that my sister had during the summer before my freshman year. He was from another school and a year older than me. We hit it off, and you know what it led to. When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t know what to do. Neither did he. We were only fourteen and fifteen and had no way of supporting a baby and ourselves. I put on a little weight, but was able to hide the pregnancy for a long time. No one at school knew. But of course my mom eventually found out.”
“It had to have been bad for you,” Dack said in sympathy.
She nodded, her eyes glistening. “All I could do was cry. All Mom could talk about was putting the baby up for adoption. I felt so bad about everything that I couldn’t argue with her, but I really didn’t want to give it away. She never asked what I wanted. Since I wasn’t showing a lot, and it was so near the end of school when she found out, she let me finish the term. But she made me promise not to tell anyone. The weekend after school was out she made me pack a suitcase, and she took me to that house. I spent the summer there. When I started school two weeks late, Mom wrote a note saying I had had surgery.”
“How many girls were at the home that summer?”
Her brow furrowed in thought. “It varied, because they came and went, but there were usually about a dozen.”
“What about staff? How many people worked there?”
“Well, there was a Nurse Vickers who came by regularly. Reverend Goldman visited us two or three times a week, and there was a doctor who checked on us and came to deliver our babies there at the clinic when we were ready for him. There was only one person there all the time. She was an older woman and was what I guess you’d call a house mom. Her name was Charity. I guess the place is named after her.”
Jeremy plopped his drink cup on the table. “So there really is a Charity. What’s her last name?”
“I don’t know. Charity is all I ever heard her called.”
“How did you spend your time?” Jeremy asked.
“We were each assigned chores—laundry, dusting, kitchen duty, things like that. We could watch movies or read, and there was an activity room with a pool table and some other game tables in it. We weren’t encouraged to be out around the grounds.”
Dack nodded. "So there's not much activity around the place." He exchanged a meaningful glance with the other guys. “Were the girls all from around this area?”
“Oh, no,” she said instantly, shaking her head. “They were from everywhere. My roommate was from Kansas. Like Dorothy and Toto,” she added with a grin. Then she sobered. “Her baby died, too.”
All three boys stared at her in silence.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, gazing from one to the other of them. "Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it's just a strange coincidence,” Dack said. “When did your roommate have her baby?”
“Just three days before mine,” Cindy said. “We talked some, and we figured we were put together because we were due so near the same time. We found that we had some of the same feelings, too.”
“What do you mean?” Dack leaned forward, listening intently.
“Well, we both knew we weren’t ready to take care of our babies, but we also weren’t ready to give them up. By our last month we had agreed that we were going to refuse to sign away our rights to them.”
“What was your roommate’s name?” Jeremy asked, pulling a pen from his shirt pocket. His hand poised over a napkin.
“Melanie Wheatley,” she supplied promptly. “I teased her about having such an appropriate name for a Kansan.”
Jeremy scribbled on the napkin. “Did you talk to her after she delivered?”
“Just a few minutes. When they brought her back to our room she was real dopey from the anesthetic. But she was upset and crying.”
“Because her baby died?”
Cindy nodded. “The next morning her parents came and got her. I missed her terribly, but it was only three days later that I went into labor.”
Dack's mind had been racing. “Then your baby died, too. Are you sure they died? Did you ever see any kind of paperwork, like birth or death certificates?”
“No-o-o,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know about things like that.”
“What were the exact dates you each had your babies?” Jeremy asked.
“Mine was the eleventh of August, so hers would have been August the eighth.”
“What about a doctor?” Jeremy asked as soon as he had the dates noted.
“I don’t know,” she said, struggling to remember. “Doctor…doctor…” She paused to think, and then her gaze intensified. “It was something that made me actually think of some kind of doctor.”
Her mouth moved soundlessly as she tried names under her breath. “Spurgeon!” she blurted suddenly. "Like surgeon. He was Doctor Spurgeon.”
*
Toni didn’t want to abuse the good nature of the Zacharys by leaving the boys with them too much, but tonight's meeting might provide a small lead of some kind. And her friends always insisted they loved having the boys stay through the evening. As for Gabe and Garrett, they reveled in spending time with John and Jenny.
Toni drove to the police station to meet Buck as they had agreed. When she pulled into the parking lot, he was there talking to a citizen. When he saw her, he wrapped up his conversation and motioned her to his patrol car. He grinned and opened the passenger door for her. A file folder lay on the seat.
“Toss that in the back,” he said.
She did, and scooted inside.
“If we keep this up, I’m going to have to put you on my staff,” he kidded as he backed the car out of its space.
“I might give that some consideration,” she returned with a laugh.
When they arrived, they found half a dozen women already in the sanctuary of the little church. One of them, obviously the leader, was setting up a chalkboard on an easel at the front of the room. The two women Toni had met at the beauty shop, Mrs. Keene and Mrs. Greeley, sat in a pew near the front, their heads together in conversation. Three others occupied the pew behind them.
The lady at the front looked back when Buck and Toni entered. She smiled and headed toward them. “Hello, Chief Freeman and Mrs. Donovan,” she greeted them warmly, probably recognizing Toni from the funeral. Toni remembered seeing the woman’s face, but didn’t know her name.
“I’m Janet Gifford,” she said, extending a hand to Toni, and then Buck. “As I explained on the phone, our group is concerned, and horrified, at what happened to our pastor. We decided to invite you to tonight’s meeting so we can talk with you personally and see if you can give us any answers.”
“I’m not sure I can,” Buck responded. “But I appreciate your concern and will answer whatever questions I can. I took the liberty of inviting Toni along. Not only did she and some of her students find the remains, but she teaches a forensics class at the high school.”
“We’re pleased to have her,” Mrs. Gifford said. “Why don’t you have a seat down front? We’ll start the meeting in ten minutes. There should be several more of us by then.”
By seven o’clock another ten ladies had arrived, and Mrs. Gifford opened the meeting. “We’re going to postpone our normal Bible study for tonight and spend the time talking with our chief of police. I’m going to ask Mrs. Greeley to open our meeting with prayer. Then I’ll turn it over to Chief Freeman.”
After the prayer, Buck stood, made his way to the front of the room, and faced the women. “Ladies, I wish I had the answers you want, but I don’t. All I can do is assure you that we’re actively pursuing the investigation into your pastor’s death and go over some things with you. I’m hoping that you can provide us with some information, or remember details that might give us needed direction.”
He went over the facts of the case and explained some of the things that had been done, first in identifying the remains, and then in the timing of their pastor’s death. “We’ve been able to pretty much track your preacher's activities during the time just prior to his death, which we believe happened sometime Sunday evening at the end of the Fall Festival that year. We’ve talked to a number of people who had any kind of conflict with him. But we need to know more about his normal routine, his closest associates or friends, anything that could help us understand what was going on in his life. If anyone has any comments at this time, I’d like to hear them.”
A lady pushed slowly to her feet. “I know there’s been talk about him squabbling with a lot of people, but those people didn’t understand how hard he worked for the good of the community as well as our church here. He was a good man whose mission was always to help others.” Her defense made, she sat.
Mrs. Greeley stood next. “Betty Keene and I heard someone complaining that he was seen arguing with Keith Ryker outside a restaurant. Do you have any idea what was going on there?” She sat.
Another lady spoke without standing. “Those two disagreed on nearly everything, from what I remember hearing about some of the city council meeting reports. They had different ideas about how the city should handle its budget, how to clean up trashy areas in the city, how to solve our sewage problems, and on and on. Brother Goldman may have been aggressive and rubbed some people a bit, but he had good ideas—and he stood up for his convictions.”
Toni found the comments supportive of their former pastor, but not necessarily helpful to the investigation.
“What about when he first disappeared? What was your reaction?” Buck asked. “Weren’t you concerned?”
There was silence while they considered the question.
“Not too much at first,” Mrs. Gifford finally said. “We were accustomed to his absences. It was different that time, though. We usually had an idea where he was. He let us know when he was going to be out of town, and that time he didn’t. But we figured he must have forgotten, or thought he had told us where he was going.”
“That�
�s why we didn’t report it to the police,” someone else added.
“When his furniture was moved out, we were worried, but we still thought he would show up and explain to us what was happening. When his mother came down and reported him missing is when we got scared,” Mrs. Gifford said.
“We didn’t know what to do,” another interjected. “But since Margaret, his mother, talked to you, we assumed the police would find him and let us know where he was.”
Buck had been listening intently. “Did anyone here speak to him that last Sunday?”
“I did,” someone said. “But it was just a casual greeting at the festival. He was busy, so I didn’t bother him with anything personal.”
There were a few more comments, but nothing really new was established. Buck let the discussion flow in that vein for a few more minutes, and then brought it to an end. He declined their invitation to stay for refreshments, explaining that he and Toni needed to be going.
On their way back to the station, he jerked his head toward the back seat. “Why don’t you look over that file? I’ll leave the dome light on so you can see.” Rain spattered on the windshield.
Toni reached back and retrieved the folder she had put there earlier. When she opened it, she found that it contained photos of the crime scene and surrounding area, including the bridge, embankment, and creek—also of the shoes where they had been found. There was a sketch of the area and a report that included measurements from where the body was found to the highway, under the bridge, and to the park.
“Do you have any theories?” Buck asked as he pulled into the parking lot next to her van. He made no move to get out in the rain.
“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve been talking to the people he was said to have conflicts or close relationships with, getting the players identified. I’ve heard a lot of repetition and criticism, but the picture that’s forming in my mind is vague and full of holes.”
He drummed a hand on the steering wheel. “You’ve been a good sounding board in the past. Care to talk through it a bit?”
Toni shrugged, staring at the pounding rain and not crazy about jumping out in it, even for the few feet necessary to reach her van. “You start.”