Poisoned Ground

by Sandra Parshall

  How could she say this without making Mrs. Turner shut down? “I heard that in the last few weeks before they died, Lincoln Kelly was so confused he thought things that happened a long time ago were happening now, in the present.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Holly said. After a sharp glance from her grandmother, she grinned and ducked her head. “Sorry. I’ll be real quiet while you two grownups talk.”

  “Don’t you sass me,” Mrs. Turner said. She shifted her attention back to Rachel. “That’s the way it happens, you know. Alzheimer’s, they call it now. Poor Marie. It broke her heart. He was just gone, the man she married. His body was still there, but he wasn’t.”

  “It’s devastating,” Rachel said. “I don’t know how anybody copes with it. It seems even worse than losing someone you love to cancer or heart disease.”

  Mrs. Turner nodded. “Marie told me she’d a whole lot rather see him drop dead of a heart attack, it would be easier on both of them.”

  “Was he worse in the last few weeks?”

  “Oh, lord, ever since Robert McClure started comin’ around, tryin’ to get them to sell their land, Lincoln was worked up all the time. He thought somebody was gonna throw them out of their house, off their land. He was scared to death, and he got a lot worse real fast. Marie couldn’t get through to him. Then he started bringin’ up stuff that happened all those years ago. It was like he reached way deep down in his mind and pulled all that rotten garbage up into the daylight. Things Marie thought they’d buried and put behind them.”

  Holly glanced from her grandmother to Rachel with wide eyes, looking as if she might burst with curiosity. Instead of continuing her tale, Mrs. Turner bit into her sandwich, chewed and swallowed, then spooned up tomato soup. Rachel did the same, deciding to wait until Mrs. Turner was ready to say more.

  “Grandma,” Holly exclaimed. “What kind of things?”

  Mrs. Turner threw an admonishing look her way. Holly blew out a long sigh of frustration.

  Wiping butter from her sandwich off her fingers, Rachel got to the point. “I heard that Lincoln had some old pictures, and he seemed to think they meant Marie was going to leave him for another man.”

  “Oh, lord.” Mrs. Turner patted her lips and tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate. “He took those pictures more than thirty years ago and they’re still stirrin’ up trouble. Marie let that Jake Hollinger turn her head when she was havin’ a rough time, and she regretted it every day for the rest of her life.”

  “Do you know who Lincoln showed the pictures to?” Rachel asked. “Recently, I mean. Not back then.”

  “People that didn’t have no business seein’ them. Joanna McKendrick, and Hollinger’s son, and that Richardson woman, the one Hollinger wanted to run off with. But Marie finally got hold of them, and the negatives too, and she burned them.” Mrs. Turner paused and sighed. “But he had some more hid somewhere, and he showed some of them to those crazy Jones women.”

  “Who was in those pictures?” Rachel wanted to see if Mrs. Turner would give her the same story she’d heard from Joanna.

  “Hollinger with their baby sister. Autumn was her name. Pretty little thing, and so young. Lincoln plumb forgot she was dead, he thought she was still alive and carryin’ on with Hollinger, and he thought her sisters ought to put a stop to it. You know about Autumn and Hollinger, I guess.”

  “I’ve heard that people gossiped about them having a relationship.”

  “It was way more than gossip. She was all by herself, stuck in that house takin’ care of her poor dyin’ mother every day and not getting’ any help from her daddy or her sisters. Jake Hollinger was like some animal that hunts, he was always on the prowl for a woman with a weak spot. It was just a game to him, but Autumn Jones was crazy enough to think he was gonna leave his wife for her.”

  Holly was agog, her mouth hanging open as she listened.

  “Why did she commit suicide?” Again, Rachel wanted verification of Joanna’s story. “Was it grief for her parents? Or because she finally realized Jake wasn’t going to get a divorce?”

  “I don’t know all of what happened. Just what little I heard from Marie, and I know she didn’t tell me everything. Besides, you know how secondhand tales can get things twisted around. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”

  “You can’t hurt the dead. Is there some big secret about Autumn Jones that nobody knows?”

  “Oh, I expect a few people know every little detail. I bet Hollinger does, for one, no matter what he claims. And the other Jones sisters. But I don’t know it all, and I’m not gonna say somethin’ that might not be true. I already feel embarrassed because I was so sure Tavia Richardson and Jake Hollinger killed Lincoln and Marie. I even told Sheriff Bridger that. But I was wrong. I learned my lesson.”

  “If you heard it from Marie, it was probably accurate,” Rachel said. “She lived close to them. Didn’t she know what was going on with Autumn?”

  “Well…” Mrs. Turner drew her spoon back and forth in the remaining inch of blood-red soup. “I always did trust Marie to tell the truth. And it’s not the kind of thing she’d make up. She wouldn’t have any reason to.”

  Holly almost vibrated with impatience, leaning toward her grandmother as if afraid she would miss something, but she bit her lip and stayed silent.

  Rachel felt equally curious and impatient, and she was going to be sorely disappointed if Mrs. Turner didn’t produce something worth waiting for. “What did Marie tell you about Autumn Jones?”

  Mrs. Turner took a deep breath and released it. “Marie thought it was all Lincoln’s fault, because he followed Jake Hollinger around and took pictures of him. He’d been doin’ it for a while, since Marie got involved with Jake. So Lincoln had some pictures of Hollinger and Autumn Jones, and he went and showed them to Autumn’s daddy. Everybody knowed what he was like when it come to his girls, never wanted any man gettin’ near them, and there was Lincoln, showin’ him a bunch of pictures of his baby carryin’ on with a married man.”

  Mrs. Turner reached for her tea and took a sip.

  “What did he do?” Holly asked. “Old man Jones?”

  “All I know is, Isaac Jones ended up dead on the ground in front of Hollinger’s barn. Hollinger put out a story about him buyin’ a bushel of oats from Hollinger for the horse he kept, and losin’ his balance when he was tryin’ to get it down out of the loft. Broke his neck, died on the spot. And there wasn’t a soul that saw it, nobody that could say it didn’t happen the way Hollinger claimed.”

  “Do you think Mr. Hollinger killed him?” Rachel asked.

  “Now don’t put words in my mouth. I told you, I don’t know the whole story. And that’s all I’ve got to say about it.” She fell silent and concentrated on finishing her tea.

  Rachel found the story Mrs. Turner told tragic and terrible. But did it really have anything to do with the murders of Lincoln and Marie Kelly and Tavia Richardson?

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Tom pulled onto the shoulder of the road a hundred yards beyond Joanna’s gate, flattening the brown stalks of Queen Anne’s Lace and wild aster left over from summer. “I want to get a better look at those pictures before we talk to the Jones sisters.”

  “I’ll get them.” Brandon opened his door. “Pop the lid for me.”

  They had stowed the box of photos, inside a plastic evidence bag, in the trunk along with the anonymous letters they’d collected from Ronan and Joanna.

  When Brandon returned, Tom slit the seal on the clear, oversized bag with his pocket knife and slid out the box that held the pictures. He scooped out half the photos. “Grab the rest,” he told Brandon. “Look for any with Marie Kelly in them, or—hell, I don’t know what we’re looking for. Let’s hope we’ll know it when we see it.”

  For a couple of minutes they worked in silence. The only sounds were the hum of the cruiser’s engine and the w
hisper of photos sliding off stacks and dropping back into the box balanced on the console atop Summer’s soft pink scarf. Tom’s glimpse of the pictures at the Kelly house had left him with the impression that Lincoln Kelly photographed Jake with dozens of women, but now that he examined them closely he saw only five. Each appeared in numerous pictures, in different clothes, in different locations. Passionate embraces on a blanket in the summer woods. Kisses in a parked car on a narrow dirt trail. Half-clothed groping in a secluded riverside spot. Twilight made some photos fuzzy and dimmed the colors, but most had been snapped in daylight.

  Tom recognized all the women. Two had died in recent years of heart disease and cancer. The other three still lived in the county, their hair graying and their faces etched with wrinkles as old age overtook them. He recalled seeing a couple of the women in church with their husbands and children every Sunday when he was growing up.

  “Whoa.” Brandon held out a picture for Tom to see. “This is the first one I’ve come across that’s X-rated.”

  The picture showed Jake and a woman having sex on a blanket, surrounded by woods. The woman’s face was hidden below Jake’s shoulder, but her blond hair was visible. Tom couldn’t identify her, but he knew she wasn’t the raven-haired young Marie. “I guess Lincoln developed these himself. I seem to remember him having a darkroom a long time ago, but I didn’t see any sign of it when we went through the house.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if he got off on this stuff,” Brandon said, “sneaking around and taking pictures of Hollinger and his women.”

  Tom glanced at the back of one picture. “No date stamp. But he spied on Jake for a lot of years. Look at the hair.” He held up two pictures. In one Jake appeared to be in his thirties, with dark hair, in the other he was older, with silver streaks at his temples.

  “The whole thing’s pretty sad,” Brandon said.

  Tom tried to summon a cool indifference to what he was seeing, but didn’t succeed. Although none of these people meant anything to him personally, and he didn’t think he had a right to judge, he felt disappointed in them because they’d taken stupid risks that could have cost them their families. Lincoln Kelly was the biggest disappointment. He’d been a kind and generous man, quick to smile and easy to like. And apparently he’d been a stalker and a voyeur.

  “Hey, look.” Brandon passed a picture to Tom. “Autumn Jones?”

  Tom studied the pretty young woman in the photo. She wore a blue dress and her glossy brown hair hung loose to her shoulders. She faced the camera, and Jake’s arms circled her waist from behind, holding her close. The expression on her face as he nuzzled her neck was one of pure bliss. As if she were in the arms of the most beloved person in her life. Dappled sunlight fell in streaks of brilliance on the tree trunks and foliage around them, and a gap in the undergrowth revealed the river’s glittering surface.

  “Yeah, that’s her.” She was the only one of Jake’s women who had never grown older.

  “There’s more.” Brandon handed the pictures to Tom one by one.

  Jake and Autumn in different settings, different seasons.

  “It wasn’t short term. It went on for months. I wonder if her sisters knew.” Tom dropped all the pictures into the box. “No pictures of Marie Kelly.”

  “She must have found them and got rid of them.”

  Tom shifted the car into drive. “Well, we’ve established that Jake’s a real dog, but we’re no closer to finding our shooter.”

  As they drove off, Brandon slid the box of photos back into the evidence bag. He gestured at Summer’s pink scarf on the console. “That’s kind of pathetic, isn’t it? Her hanging around Hollinger. You think she’s trying to get something started with him?”

  “God, I hope not. I can’t see that ending well.”

  Although the Jones farm was adjacent to Jake Hollinger’s, Tom had detoured to see Joanna first and now doubled back to visit the sisters. Rolling along the rising and dipping road, he didn’t see the two young men at the end of the Jones driveway until he was barely a hundred feet away.

  “What the hell are they up to?” He hit the gas pedal hard to speed up.

  Brandon leaned forward, peering ahead. “Looks like they put something in the mailbox.”

  As the cruiser approached the two spun around, and Tom saw they weren’t grown men but teenage boys. He thought he recognized one of them.

  The boys sprinted for an SUV parked on the shoulder of the road nearby. Tom floored the gas. By the time the boys were in their vehicle he was pulling up so close to it that the driver had no room to maneuver the bulky SUV onto the pavement. He parked the cruiser at an angle, its nose pressed against the rear door of the larger vehicle.

  Tom killed his engine and jumped out. The young driver tried pulling the SUV ahead, but it was pinned in place. Tom positioned himself in front of it.

  The boy’s head swiveled as he sought an escape route, and his companion in the passenger seat gestured wildly, urging the driver to back up. Brandon was already standing behind the SUV when the boy began inching it backward and to the left. The vehicle jolted to a stop when one rear tire slid into the drainage ditch.

  Tom heard the engine die. The driver lowered his head and banged it against the steering wheel.

  The passenger door opened and the other boy tumbled out into the ditch. He took off past the rear of the SUV and leapt onto the pavement. Brandon was waiting for him. The boy stopped short of a collision with the deputy, stumbled backward, and fell flat on his back in the ditch.

  Tom stepped into the ditch and hauled the boy to his feet. The surly-faced kid, his brown hair spilling over his forehead, didn’t stop struggling until Tom slammed him against the side of the cruiser.

  “You’re Robert McClure’s kid, aren’t you?” Tom kept a hand on the boy’s back as he checked his pockets for weapons. He found none. “Answer me.”

  The boy’s face was pressed against the roof of the car and his voice came out muffled. “Go to hell.”

  “What did you say?” Tom grabbed his jacket collar and shook him. “You want to say that to me again? See where it gets you?”

  The boy didn’t speak.

  “Get the other one out,” Tom told Brandon.

  A couple minutes later both boys stood against the cruiser, heads down. Now that Tom had a good look at the driver, he recognized him as the grandson of the county’s Board of Supervisors chairman. His last name was O’Toole, but Tom couldn’t recall his first, if he’d ever known it. He and the McClure kid were high school students, juniors or seniors. “Why aren’t you guys in school?” Tom asked.

  O’Toole looked so terrified that Tom almost expected him to wet his pants right there on the road. He gulped and mumbled, “Teachers’ conference.”

  Tom folded his arms and examined them head to toe. Well-dressed, in shoes, jeans and jackets that had an expensive look to them. That late-model SUV wasn’t a standard teen ride. Both had rock singer hair, combed down over their foreheads to their eyebrows. “So you decided to spend your time off hanging around the home of three elderly women? What are you doing here? What did you leave in their mailbox?”

  No answer.

  “Don’t let them move an inch,” Tom told Brandon. He walked back to the post-mounted mailbox, a fanciful little replica of a Swiss chalet. As he was about to flip open its door, both the boys shouted at once. “No! Don’t open it!”

  Tom jerked his hand away. “What’s in here?” When they didn’t answer, he strode back to them. “Look at me. Stop looking at your damned feet.”

  Both raised their heads just enough to show him their eyes.

  “What did you do? Did you rig a pipe bomb in there?”

  “It’s not a big one,” the driver said, his voice high-pitched and shaking. “It’s just like, you know, a few BB pellets mixed in some red paint. It wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

 
; Tom swore under his breath, imagining one of the Jones sisters opening the mailbox and getting a spray of paint and lead pellets in her face, in her eyes. “You’re both under arrest.”

  Their heads jerked up. “You can’t do that,” the McClure boy protested. “My dad—”

  “Don’t say it.” Tom pointed a finger in the boy’s face. “You don’t want to tell the sheriff that your dad won’t allow me to arrest you.”

  The boy responded with a self-confident glare. He still expected to come out the winner.

  “We’ll book you for trespassing and vandalism, and the U.S. Attorney will probably be bringing charges too. In case you didn’t know, putting a bomb in a mailbox is a federal crime.”

  O’Toole went pale and slumped as if he’d been socked in the gut. The McClure kid’s face flushed scarlet.

  Tom called the dispatcher and ordered a car to pick up the boys, then called the State Police and requested a tech to disarm the explosive in the mailbox.

  Almost an hour passed before the boys were gone, accompanied by Brandon, and the State Police tech arrived. In all that time, Tom had seen no sign of the Jones sisters. That seemed more than odd, considering how nosey they were and how promptly Winter had shown up at Joanna’s place when the stable was on fire.

  He left the tech to his work and pulled into the driveway, parking behind the ancient station wagon the sisters used to get around. Halfway up the walk to the front door, he remembered Summer’s scarf and had to go back for it. He rolled it tightly and stuck it in his jacket pocket. For more reasons than one, he wanted to see Summer’s reaction when he returned it to her.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  All the draperies in the front of the house were closed, as if the sisters hadn’t awakened yet. Tom knocked on the door anyway, and the sharp rap of the brass knocker startled sparrows from an evergreen foundation shrub. The edge of the living room drapery flicked aside. Winter Jones peered out between curtain and window frame.

  Tom raised a hand in greeting, and the drapery dropped back into place.