2 Lost Legacy

by Annette Dashofy

  “Who?”

  Pete closed his eyes. Here we go again.

  “You remember Zoe, don’t you, Harry?” Sylvia called back over her shoulder. “Pete’s girlfriend.”

  Pete shot Sylvia his best I’m-going-to-kill-you look.

  “Oh, sure,” Harry replied. “She’s a sweetheart.”

  “Indeed she is.” Sylvia glanced at Pete. “And she’s going to wring your neck when you show up to question her stepdad about three murders and a shooting.”

  “That’s two alleged suicides, a shooting, a traffic fatality, and only one murder.”

  “Well, that makes a huge difference. She’s still gonna wring your neck.”

  “Good thing she’s not my girlfriend then.”

  Sylvia muttered something, but the only word Pete comprehended was “idiot.”

  “What did you say?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. Not a thing.” Sylvia clicked on her turn signal as they approached the farm lane. “Just don’t come crawling to me when you’re old and lonely.”

  At the moment his concerns had little to do with getting old. How was Zoe going to take his suspicions? Sylvia might be right about her wringing his neck.

  A few minutes later, Pete crutched his way down the hill to the farmhouse’s enclosed back porch. Sylvia and Harry, arm-in-arm and looking very much like a respectable older couple, trailed behind. Pete struggled with the big step onto the porch and hobbled to the door to Zoe’s half of the house. He rapped lightly on the glass window in the door and expected the lace curtain to be brushed aside revealing Zoe’s inquiring face.

  Instead, the door swung open to a woman he’d never met before, but the striking blue eyes, blond hair, and incredible body were oddly familiar. This woman might have been a couple of decades older than Zoe, dressed in pristine matching pastels rather than a uniform or jeans, and must have used enough hairspray to keep her “do” in place even in a Florida hurricane, but otherwise the resemblance was striking.

  “Kimberly Jackson?” Pete said.

  The woman raised a critical eyebrow. “Yes?”

  Pete held up his ID and introduced himself. “Is Zoe home?”

  Kimberly crossed her arms in front of her and made no move to open the door any further. “No. And I don’t have a clue as to when she’ll be back.”

  A weight lifted from Pete’s shoulders. If Zoe was going to strangle him, at least his demise had been given a reprieve. However, he couldn’t help wondering where she’d gone. “How about Mr. Jackson? Is he in?”

  “Yes.” Kimberly’s gaze shifted past Pete to his entourage. A flash of recognition crossed her face. “Sylvia,” she said coolly.

  “Hello, Kim.” Sylvia’s smile appeared forced. “How long has it been?”

  Kimberly ignored the question and still made no move to invite them in.

  Pete made a mental note to ask Sylvia about her past relationship with Zoe’s mother. “Mrs. Jackson, I need to ask your husband a few questions.”

  Kimberly’s eyes came back to his. He’d been mistaken. They weren’t anything like Zoe’s. The only sparkle in these baby blues was the hard glint of steel. She gave a disgusted sigh and stepped back, opening the door wider. “Tom’s on the front porch.”

  Pete hobbled inside with a glance back to make sure Kimberly didn’t slam the door on Sylvia or his father. The look on Sylvia’s face told Pete he needn’t worry.

  He started across the space that served as both a living and dining room toward Zoe’s office.

  “Wait,” Kimberly called. “I’ll get Tom. You can talk here.”

  Pete paused and pivoted on his crutches. He shot a glance at Sylvia. “It’s no problem. I’d rather meet with him out there.”

  Sylvia caught Kimberly’s arm. “Why don’t we fix some lemonade for the men?”

  Pete bit back a smile. Good old Sylvia had picked up on his silent request. He needed some alone time with Zoe’s stepdad.

  Kimberly’s voice shot up an octave. “Lemonade?”

  As Sylvia led Kimberly to the kitchen, Pete continued through Zoe’s office. Behind him he heard Sylvia introducing his father to Zoe’s mother. He almost wished he could spy on the conversation going on behind that kitchen door. But he had more important matters to deal with on the front porch.

  Seventeen

  “Damn it,” Pete said through clenched teeth as he battled his way through the screen door to the front porch. He tried to block it open with one crutch while hopping on his good foot, but the second crutch snagged on the threshold, nearly toppling him onto his face.

  Tom Jackson jumped to his rescue, catching the obstinate door and holding it open.

  “Thanks,” Pete muttered. He was supposed to be the one tending to his township’s helpless victims, not the one needing assistance. Especially not from Jackson.

  Pete thunked across the wood deck and cast a glance at the pair of Adirondacks flanking a table bearing a potted geranium and an open can of Coke. Weighing the aggravation of climbing back out of the low-slung chair versus standing, he opted to lean against the wide wooden porch railing.

  “Chief Adams.” Jackson reclaimed his seat. “If you’re here to see my daughter, I’m afraid you’ve missed her.”

  “I’m not here for Zoe.” Pete propped his crutches against a support pillar and took what he hoped looked like a casual stance. From the set of Jackson’s jaw, Pete knew going head-to-head with this man would offer the same result as running into a brick wall. Better to keep things casual, if that were possible. “I hoped we could talk.”

  Jackson studied him. “About what? Because if this is about Mr. Kroll’s shooting yesterday, I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  Pete reached into his pocket and eased out his notebook, but didn’t open it. “All right then. What about James Engle?”

  Jackson’s right eye narrowed ever so slightly. Otherwise, the man showed no reaction to the name. Pete waited for a response. None came.

  Pete hated losing in the game of chicken. But Jackson showed no hint of backing down. So much for staying casual. “You lied to me, Mr. Jackson.”

  The man’s eyes never wavered. “Oh?”

  Pete flipped open his notebook. “Yesterday I asked if you knew James Engle. You said you didn’t.”

  The shift in Jackson’s countenance was subtle. A slight downturn to his lip—a momentary narrowing of his eyes. “I didn’t think my relationship with James Engle had anything to do with Mr. Kroll being shot.”

  Pete softened his own expression. “It was a simple question. I never said it was related to the shooting case.”

  Jackson picked up his Coke and sipped. Rolling the can between his palms, he said, “Yeah. I knew Jim. Past tense. I haven’t seen him in years. Decades.”

  “How many decades?”

  Jackson stopped toying with the can. “Exactly?”

  Pete watched him without answering.

  Jackson appeared to be looking back through his past. “Kimberly and I have lived in Florida for close to twenty years. I haven’t seen Jim since before then.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  Jackson again locked onto Pete’s gaze, and Pete had the distinct feeling the man was trying to read him. “We were close. Once. A long time ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  Jackson broke the staring match and chuckled. “About a hundred years.”

  Pete didn’t share the laugh. “You look good for your age.”

  Jackson shifted in the chair, relaxing. “I was a kid. In my twenties. Jim Engle was–more than a friend. He was kind of a father figure to me. But people grow apart. Life gets in the way.” He smiled beneath his mustache. “We haven’t been close for a very long time.”

  “Life gets in the way,” Pete echo
ed back to him. “By life, don’t you really mean death? As in the deaths of Denver and Vernon Miller?”

  Pete had hoped for a reaction. Instead, Jackson held the faint smile. “Now you’re really stretching, Chief. Is business so slow around these parts that you have to go back forty-some years to find a case to work on?”

  Pete crossed his arms and struck a laid-back pose. Or as laid-back as he could with his foot and ankle throbbing. He should have risked the Adirondack chair.

  “I don’t like coincidences, Mr. Jackson. James Engle’s body was found hanging in the same barn the Miller brothers died in. Your own wife suspects Engle had something to do with her uncles’ deaths. And rumor has it your falling-out with Engle happened about the same time. That’s too many coincidences to suit me.”

  Jackson’s smile had vanished. He seemed ready to go on the offensive, but appeared to swallow whatever argument he’d intended to use. “All right. Yeah. After Denver and Vernon’s deaths, Jim changed. He started drinking. A lot. He shut me out.”

  “What do you know about the Millers?”

  “Not much.”

  Pete wanted to stomp across the porch and grab the man, but knew he’d fall flat on his face. Instead he slammed his hand down on the railing. “Come off it, Jackson. Your so-called father figure inherited the farm that should have gone to your wife’s family. Don’t tell me you don’t have some knowledge or insight into what happened.”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I really don’t know more than anyone else who was around back then. The Millers were both involved with the same woman and it got ugly. As for Jim inheriting? He worked damned hard for the brothers. They showed their appreciation by leaving him the farm. That’s it.”

  For a moment, the only sound was a pair of robins squawking from the pines in the front yard. Pete studied Jackson as he asked his next question. “Who was the woman?”

  Jackson remained nearly unreadable. Nearly. “I don’t know.”

  Pete kept his own face expressionless in spite of his triumph. Tom Jackson was lying through his teeth. “Okay. As for James. Had you spoken with him?”

  Jackson frowned. “I told you. No.”

  “You said you hadn’t seen him,” Pete corrected. “Did you have any contact at all? Phone call? Email? Letters?”

  “Nothing.”

  Pete nodded as if he believed that one, too. “What about Gary Chambers?”

  Jackson’s eyes darkened. “I haven’t talked to him recently either.”

  Now Pete allowed himself to smile. “I would guess not. I didn’t take you for psychic. But you knew him?”

  “Of course.”

  “How well?”

  Jackson no longer made any effort to appear relaxed. He clenched the can so tight the aluminum crinkled. “We were best friends.”

  Pete pretended to read his notes. “You made a pledge to take care of Chambers’ wife and daughter if anything happened to him. Isn’t that right?”

  “Who told you that?”

  Pete leaned a shoulder against the pillar, confident he would win this game of chicken.

  Jackson let out a slow breath. “Yeah. I said I’d watch out for them.”

  “When?” What Pete really wanted to ask was if he’d made that pledge before Chambers’ death? Or after he’d allegedly faked his death? But asking that would have given credence to Zoe’s wild suspicions.

  “I don’t know. It was just one of those things. We’d been drinking. Celebrating after Zoe was born, I think. He got emotional and made me promise I’d look after Kimberly and Zoe if anything ever were to happen to him.”

  Jackson sighed. “It was one of those drunken buddy moments. I told him I would. But I never in a million years expected...”

  Pete reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the copy of the letter from James Engle’s house. The one about Zoe’s dad’s accident. Pete pressed away from the porch railing to hand the folded paper to Jackson. “What do you make of this?”

  Jackson set the Coke can next to the flower pot and took the letter. He unfolded it and squinted at the words on the page for a moment, and handed it back.

  Pete didn’t take it. Instead, he folded his arms and resumed leaning on the railing.

  A flash of annoyance crossed Jackson’s face. He let his hand and the paper drop to his lap. “This is the damned letter that has Zoe in knots.”

  “So you’ve seen it before?”

  “Yesterday morning. Zoe confronted her mother with it.”

  “And you hadn’t seen the letter before then?”

  “No.”

  “How about your wife?”

  “What about her?”

  “Had she seen it before?”

  The screen door swung open, and Kimberly breezed onto the porch carrying a glass pitcher Pete recognized from Saturday night poker games here at Zoe’s place. A smiling Harry followed with a bowl brimming with potato chips.

  “Had who seen what before?” Kimberly asked. She set the pitcher on the table, carefully moving her husband’s Coke aside.

  Sylvia, carrying glasses, trailed behind and gave Pete an apologetic grin in reply to his glare. He’d hoped for a little more time alone with Zoe’s stepfather. But Sylvia had a chance to redeem herself. Pete raised an eyebrow at her and shot a glance at Jackson’s Coke can. Sylvia’s minute nod let Pete know she understood.

  Jackson waved the letter at his wife. Kimberly pinched it between her thumb and index finger and held it at arm’s length, straining to see. “Oh.” She crinkled her nose as if the page carried a stench.

  “Well?” Pete asked.

  “What?” Kimberly gave him a vapid look.

  He waited. From the periphery of his vision, he noted Sylvia pour the rest of Jackson’s Coke into one of the glasses. Slicker than a sleight-of-hand artist, she swept the can out of view.

  “Oh,” Kimberly said again. “Had I seen the letter before? No. Not until Zoe shoved it at me yesterday before church. I swear that girl does stuff like that just for the shock value.”

  Shock value? Zoe? Did Kimberly even know her own daughter?

  Harry, still holding the chips, offered the bowl to Kimberly with one hand and held out the other one, palm up in an invitation to swap snacks for the letter. Kimberly eagerly complied.

  “Any idea why Engle wrote it?” Pete asked.

  Kimberly shrugged, uninterested. “How should I know?”

  “He addressed it to you, Mrs. Jackson.”

  “But he clearly decided not to mail it,” Zoe’s stepfather said.

  Harry frowned at the letter while Sylvia leaned closer and read it over his arm.

  Pete glared at his pair of would-be assistants, but neither one noticed. He turned back to the Jacksons. “Do either of you have any idea what Engle meant when he wrote about Chambers not dying in the accident?”

  Jackson took the bowl from his wife and examined the contents. “I can tell you what he didn’t mean. He did not mean that Gary’s still alive, no matter what Zoe says.” Jackson popped a chip in his mouth.

  Kimberly planted her hands on her hips. “Obviously it’s the ramblings of an unstable man. Jim was dying, after all. He clearly wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “Except he wasn’t dying,” Pete said.

  Jackson choked on the chip. “What?”

  Finally. An unmasked reaction. Pete made a mental note. Tom Jackson did not know about James Engle’s feigned cancer.

  “Hey. You two about done in here?” Devon, the clerk gatekeeper of the courthouse crypt, stood at the end of the aisle, scowling at Zoe and Baronick. “It’s quitting time. I want to lock up and get home.”

  Zoe glanced at the thin folder lying in the bottom of the box in front of her. Done? She’d been done before she started.

&nb
sp; Baronick shot one of his killer smiles at the clerk. “I need about fifteen more minutes, pal. Do you mind?”

  Devon muttered something and disappeared.

  Baronick stood and offered a hand to Zoe. She ignored it and climbed to her feet.

  “Fifteen minutes?” She picked up the box. “What for? There’s nothing here worth copying or signing out.”

  The detective took the box from her and slipped it back where they’d found it. “True. But this isn’t the only case I was asked to look into. You can go, though.”

  “No way. Not until you tell me what you meant about knowing why my dad would disappear without a word to his family.”

  Baronick crooked a finger at her, beckoning her to follow as he strode off to another section of the storage room. “You say you think he may have faked his death. That no one saw his body?”

  Zoe jogged along behind him. “No one I believe.”

  Baronick paused to orient himself. He looked around, grunted, and started off again. “Had your dad been involved in anything...shady?”

  “No,” she snapped. “What are you getting at?”

  “Have you ever considered that he went into witness protection?”

  Zoe stopped. “What?”

  Baronick located the row he’d been searching for and veered down a new aisle, squinting at the faded labels on the boxes. “If he’d seen something he shouldn’t have or testified against someone in a big case, someone who might have wanted payback, he may have gone into witness protection. The feds would have helped him fake his death. And he’d have just disappeared.”

  “That’s nuts. He never testified against any mobsters.” At least Zoe didn’t think he had. “You’ve been watching too many old movies.”

  The detective chuckled. “Very likely.” He stopped. “Ah. Here we are. Vernon and Denver Miller.” He reached up and pulled out another box, this one in worse shape than the first.

  Baronick set the box on the floor and hunkered down next to it just as Zoe’s mind skittered back in time. Her memories of being eight years old were vague at best. Just about everything else had been obliterated by the agony of losing her dad. But what had gone on before that? Had he been involved in something? Seen something? Was there any merit to Baronick’s bizarre theory?