2 Lost Legacy

by Annette Dashofy

  “What are you girls doing up there?” Mr. Kroll shouted to them. “Quit your lollygagging. We’re almost done.”

  The harassment was all in jest. During hay season, no one ever criticized the help. It was too sparse. Zoe had been shocked when Tom accepted her request that he assist. She had an ulterior motive, of course. She hoped he’d open up about his relationship with James Engle, but her questions would have to wait until the work was done.

  Patsy lugged two bales back to the corner where Zoe perched five rows up, wrestled a bale into the space against the sloped roof. “You never mentioned your dad was so good looking.”

  “Stepdad.” Zoe emphasized the step part of it. “My real dad died when I was eight. And isn’t Tom a little old for you? He’s in his sixties.”

  “Age has nothing to do with it. He’s hot.”

  Zoe glanced over her shoulder at her grinning friend. “You plan on stealing him away from my mom?”

  “Maybe.” Patsy winked at her.

  “Good luck with that. For some reason, he’s completely devoted to her.” A fact that had always puzzled Zoe. Patsy was right about Tom. Zoe remembered thinking what a hunk he was back when she’d been a hormonal teenager. Her mother, on the other hand, had always been self-absorbed and needy. More so after the car crash that claimed Zoe’s father’s life.

  Poor Tom. He could have had his pick of women. Instead he played caretaker to Kimberly and her daughter, marrying the young widow less than a year after the accident.

  Patsy heaved another bale up to Zoe. “Your mom’s a lucky woman.”

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t you get along with your stepdad?”

  “He’s great. Mom, on the other hand, is a little too perfect for my taste. I’ll bet she’s on the phone right now calling in a cleaning service to sanitize the house. My half at least.”

  “As long as she pays for it. And at least you know your parents. I never did.”

  Stunned, Zoe shot a puzzled look at Patsy before snagging another bale. “What are you talking about? I’ve met your mom.”

  “I mean biological parents. I’m adopted.” Patsy sneezed from the dust before Zoe could ask more. “Shall I ask the boys to crank up the production line again?”

  Zoe crammed the last of the bales into place and jumped down from her perch. “Yeah. Let her rip.”

  They returned to the top of the hay elevator which continued to clatter, chains driving paddles up a stainless steel slope that reminded Zoe of a sliding board. Or the uphill part of a roller coaster.

  “Okay, fellows,” Patsy shouted over the noise of the electric motor. “Let’s wrap this up.”

  Mr. Kroll stood on the wagon deck with the last few bales ready at his feet. “Amen to that.” He tossed one of them to Tom, who dropped it onto the elevator.

  With assembly line precision, they finished off the load within minutes. Tom yanked the elevator’s cord from the electric socket, and glorious silence fell over the barn as the machine rattled to a stop. Patsy headed for the ladder, but Zoe climbed onto the elevator and slid down, easing over each of the paddles on the way to the barn floor.

  “Tom was just telling me that you were over at Jim Engle’s place yesterday,” Mr. Kroll said once Zoe’s feet hit the ground.

  “Yeah.” She glanced toward her stepdad, but he was busy helping Patsy move some sacks of feed. “Did you know him?”

  “Yeah, I knew him.” Her landlord eased down from the wagon, accepting Zoe’s hand to steady him. “Didn’t have much use for him, but I sure wouldn’t wish something like this on anyone.”

  “Why didn’t you like him?”

  “Oh, now, Zoe, you know it ain’t polite to speak ill of the dead.”

  “I understand.” She wondered if Pete and Franklin had uncovered anything interesting. The autopsy would have been completed by now. “I don’t suppose by any chance you knew the Miller brothers who used to own that farm?”

  Mr. Kroll dusted off his coveralls. “The Miller brothers? They were a bit before your time, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah. But they were my mother’s uncles, so I’ve heard stories.”

  Mr. Kroll moved toward the tractor hitched to the now empty wagon and climbed into the seat. “I didn’t realize they were your relatives. I knew of them by name. Don’t recall ever meeting them, though.”

  “Oh.” Zoe made no effort to hide her disappointment.

  Mr. Kroll fired up the Massey-Ferguson. With a sputter and a roar, the old tractor lurched out the big doors.

  When the barn fell quiet again, Tom appeared at Zoe’s side. He slung an arm around her shoulders, putting her in a playful neck lock. “Well, kiddo. What d’ya say we head back to the house and get cleaned up?”

  “A cool shower sounds great right about now. I itch from head to toe.” Zoe leaned against her stepdad, resting her head briefly against his chest.

  She’d forgotten how much she missed him. No matter how rough things got with her mother or with her teenaged exploits, Tom had always been Zoe’s champion.

  “I’ll take you and your mom out to lunch,” he continued. “Is that hot dog shop still open in Dillard?”

  “The Dog Den? Yeah. It’s still there. I can’t imagine Mom eating there, though.”

  He released her. “You don’t give your mom enough credit. What about your friend?” He turned toward the tack room. “Hey, Patsy. Want to join us for lunch at the Dog Den?”

  Patsy appeared at the door armed with a bucket full of brushes. “Thanks, but I’m going to take Jazzel out for a ride while I have the chance. By the way, did Zoe invite you and your wife to my picnic?”

  Tom shot a curious glace at Zoe. “Picnic? No, she didn’t.”

  “My birthday’s next Friday. I’m having barbecue and beer at my place. If you’re still here, I’d love for you to come.”

  He nodded. “Sounds like fun. Count us in.”

  “Terrific.” Patsy grinned. “You all have a nice lunch.”

  Zoe gave her a sour look to match her sarcastic, “Thanks.”

  Patsy headed to the far end of the barn.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” Zoe said as she and Tom strolled outside.

  “Okay. What about?”

  “James Engle. I never knew you and he were friends.”

  The smile faded from Tom’s face. “Your mother overstated the matter. We weren’t really that close.”

  But Zoe wasn’t ready to give up on the matter. “Then why were you trying so hard to change the subject this morning when I was talking to Mom about what happened with her uncles?”

  Tom stopped. He removed his eyeglasses and studied the specks of chaff on the lenses. “I wasn’t aware I was doing that.”

  Zoe didn’t believe him. “You must know something about what was going on back then.”

  He tugged a handkerchief from his jeans pocket and wiped his glasses with it. “Sorry to disappoint you, but as far as I know, those stories you’ve heard about it being a murder/suicide are true.”

  “James Engle never told you anything?”

  “Nope.” Tom shoved the handkerchief back in his pocket and put on his glasses, which even Zoe could tell were still smudged. “Jim never said a word. And I never believed the stories your grandmother spouted either. But that didn’t make me especially popular with her, so I learned to keep my opinions to myself. Your mom likes to carry on the family grudge, spreading rumors. I’d hate to see you picking up the banner and running with it. Jim’s gone. Let the whole mess end here.”

  “But what if there’s a connection between Engle’s death yesterday and Vernon and Denver’s all those years ago?”

  “How could there be? Jim committed suicide. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Is there?”

 
Was there? Zoe wished she knew what was going on at the Monongahela County Morgue. “Probably not.”

  “Then drop it,” he said, a note of finality in his soft voice.

  Zoe deflated. Tom was right. Once again, he proved to be the voice of logic and reason. She’d hated that about him when she was growing up. She didn’t much care for it now, either.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She struggled to find a suitable argument against his rationale and came up blank. “Okay,” she muttered.

  “Good. Now let’s go drag your mom out to lunch.”

  “To the Dog Den? Drag may be exactly what you have to do.”

  How the hell could an old man move so damned fast? Pete’s injured ankle prevented him from charging down the hallway outside the morgue, only adding to his frustration.

  Harry Adams was nowhere to be seen.

  Elevators to the hospital’s upper floors loomed at one end of the hall. Glass sliding doors to the underground parking lot flanked the other. Terrific. Was his father wandering aimlessly around the hospital’s interior or had he slipped outside?

  With a faint whoosh, the glass doors slid open. But it wasn’t his father who strolled in.

  “Hey, Pete,” Wayne Baronick said. “Is the autopsy done already?”

  “Not yet. Did you happen to see an older man out there? About seventy, six foot, gray hair, blue eyes?”

  “No. But I saw about five guys fitting that description hanging out at the coffee shop down the street. What’s up?”

  “It’s my father. He’s...” Pete hated admitting his old man had Alzheimer’s. The word dementia didn’t sit well with him either. “He tends to wander off.”

  “I didn’t think you had a father,” the detective said. “I figured you’d just hatched from an egg. Like an alligator.”

  Pete resisted the urge to bite the young punk’s head off. Like an alligator. “Go back outside and see if you can spot him. I’ve already called security, but I’m going to head upstairs and look for him myself.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Baronick backed toward the glass doors. “But, Pete, there are like ten or eleven floors to this hospital.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  The detective shrugged and jogged outside.

  As Pete limped toward the elevators, the door to the men’s room halfway down the hall swung open.

  “Well, hello, son,” Harry said. “What are you doing here?”

  Relief poured from Pete in a sigh. “Pop. You scared the hell outta me. I told you to stay put.”

  “I didn’t think I needed your permission to take a leak.” The old man sniffed in disdain.

  Pete rubbed his temple where the seed of a headache had taken root. “You’re right. You don’t. Just let me know where you’re going next time.”

  “I don’t need you keeping tabs on my whereabouts, you know. I’m not a child. Your sister treats me like a damned six-year-old. I won’t have it from you, too.”

  Pete smiled in spite of himself. Yep, that was his old man, all right. “Okay, Pop. Let’s go back inside.”

  “Inside where?”

  “The morgue.”

  “Oh.”

  As they turned, Baronick charged through the glass doors. “There’s no one out there matching that description—” He stopped midsentence and midstride.

  “I found him,” Pete said.

  “Damn it. I wasn’t lost,” Harry said. “I was in the damned can.”

  Pete cleared his throat. “Wayne Baronick, meet Harry Adams. My father.”

  A slow smile spread across Baronick’s face. “I can see the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Pete bit back a remark about being neither an apple nor an alligator egg. “Did you find anything at Engle’s house?”

  “You first. Did the autopsy reveal anything?”

  “Only that Jim Engle had a perfectly healthy set of lungs.”

  Baronick’s smile faded. “Get out. I thought he had lung cancer.”

  Pete shrugged. “Apparently not.”

  The detective swore under his breath. He placed a hand on the morgue door and swung it open, holding it for Pete and Harry.

  Inside, the tech had peeled the skin back from the top of the corpse’s head. Franklin handed him a small power saw.

  “Find anything else?” Pete asked.

  “His liver shows signs of some excessive drinking, but not to the point of being life threatening,” Doc Abercrombie said. “Otherwise, I see nothing here that would be cause for impending death.”

  “So if he committed suicide in order to cheat death...” Baronick’s voice trailed off.

  “Then he was the one who was cheated, I’m afraid,” the pathologist said.

  “Of course, we’re not done yet,” Franklin added. The tech fired up the saw and laid the blade against the skull.

  Pete eased his father back onto the stool. He considered telling the old man to stay put, but that hadn’t worked so well the first time he’d tried it. Instead, he pulled up a second stool and sat down next to Harry, relieved to be off his ankle. “Now,” he said to Baronick. “What did you find at the house?”

  “A lot of very neat files. Either James Engle was the definition of anal or he’d done one fine job of putting his affairs in order.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not quite. One of the crime scene boys was crawling around, looking in and under everything. He found a crumpled piece of paper under the sofa. Turned out to be another interesting note.”

  “Another suicide note?”

  “No. A letter dated two weeks ago. I sent it to the lab.”

  “What kind of letter?”

  “I’m not sure.” Baronick pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pants pocket. “I made a copy of it. Thought maybe you’d have some idea of what it’s about.”

  Pete took the paper from him and read. At first, the name didn’t register with him.

  Dear Mrs. Jackson,

  I suppose you’re wondering why I would be writing to you now. My days are numbered and I hope to make things right as much as possible while I still can.

  As part of that mission, I feel I need to let you know about your husband. Gary was just trying to do what’s right. Mrs. Jackson, your husband did not die in that car crash.

  I wish I could tell you more.

  With Deepest Remorse,

  James Engle

  “What do you make of it?” Baronick asked. “Almost sounds like the old guy was playing private eye.”

  Pete stared at the words on the page. The weight of their implication crushed down on him. “Engle wasn’t playing detective.”

  “What then? Who the hell is Gary Jackson?”

  “Chambers,” Pete corrected him. “Gary Chambers. He was killed—supposedly—by a drunk driver over twenty-five years ago.”

  Pete didn’t remember the case firsthand. Back then, he’d still been in the police academy in Pittsburgh. But he knew the name.

  Gary Chambers—Zoe’s father.

  Six

  Cause of death—asphyxiation due to strangulation. Manner of death—undetermined pending toxicology results.

  Such were Coroner Franklin Marshall’s rulings. Undetermined. At least that left the case open for Pete to investigate. Had the ruling been suicide, there would’ve been no case.

  And Pete intended to investigate. Something about this thing stunk worse than James Engle’s decomposing corpse.

  Harry gazed out the passenger side window of the SUV. “Where are we going?” he asked for the third time since they’d left Brunswick.

  “To Wilford Engle’s house.” Pete figured he could have told the old man Disneyland, and it wouldn’t have stuck either.

/>   It had been a process of elimination regarding who to talk to first. Pete had called Warren Froats, but the former Chief of Police was away on a fishing trip, according to his wife, and wouldn’t be home until late. Dr. David Weinstein, James Engle’s physician, was out of his office until Monday morning. That left the victim’s brother. And Pete wasn’t about to call ahead and give the old coot a chance to make travel plans.

  Harry turned to Pete. “Engle? Isn’t that the guy they were just cutting up back there?”

  Pete took his eyes off the road for a moment to study his father, stunned that he remembered the autopsy, let alone the victim’s name. “His brother. I need to ask him a few questions.”

  “He the next of kin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So he’s the prime suspect, huh?” Harry beamed. “I watch those TV shows. I know how you cops think. The next of kin is always the prime suspect.”

  Pete chuckled. “Something like that, Pop.”

  But Pete doubted Wilford Engle had killed his brother. At least not without help. Wilford could barely support his own weight, as Pete’s throbbing ankle still attested. No way could the old man hoist a body—live or dead—off the ground to make it look like a suicide by hanging. At the moment the biggest question in Pete’s mind had to do with whether Wilford really believed James was dying of cancer. Or was Wilford the one fabricating the whole tale?

  Ten minutes later, Pete pulled into the surviving Engle’s driveway. He reached for the ignition, but hesitated. He couldn’t very well shut off the engine—and the air conditioning—if he intended to leave Harry sitting there. Not with the temperature outside teasing the ninety-degree mark. But was it a good idea to leave Harry unattended?

  Of course it wasn’t. Pete cursed his sister under his breath. How was he supposed to do his job while babysitting his father?

  “Well, what are you waiting on?” Harry asked. “Let’s go. Do you want me to play good cop or bad cop?”