by Donna Doyle
“There was a message left inside my car. Whoever did it broke in.”
“I thought you have an alarm on your car.”
“I do. I heard the alarm go off, but by then, the tires were already slashed. I went outside—it was late, my neighbors weren’t very happy about being awakened so early in the morning.”
“What time was it?”
“A little after six a.m.”
“What was the message?”
Again, Carmela’s voice dropped as if she feared being overheard. “Don’t tell the police or next time it’ll be your throat instead of your tires.”
“Carmela, you have to tell the police.”
“I can’t. I live alone. What if someone breaks into my house like he did my car, and is waiting for me when I come home?”
“But Carmela, if you don’t tell the police, there’s no way of finding who did it.”
“Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell Mrs. Stark.”
“She’s not here. She wasn’t here when I got here. I didn’t see your text until I left—I stopped to see Rev. Meachem’s baby and I turned my phone off. Carmela, do you want me to come and get you?”
“No, I—I couldn’t come in today. I had my car towed to the garage and they’re putting on new tires. My neighbor will take me to pick it up.”
“Will you be in tomorrow?”
“I’ll have to be there. I’m paying for four new tires.”
17
Picnic
Not much sleeping got done on the Saturday night sleep-over. The kids were too wound up with the excitement of going to bed in the library, their sleeping bags arranged in a circle in the children’s room. They ate a Beatrix Potter–style supper of bread and milk and berries, then watched a movie. Games and crafts followed, then a snack—Cheerios and juice—and then, when the lights were turned out, Chloe read the children a story by the light of an electric fireplace.
It took a while before silence reigned in the library, but eventually, all of the kids were asleep. The staff had agreed that they would sleep in shifts. While Chloe slept on her sleeping bag in the middle of the circle, Carmela and Kelly went into Kelly’s office and closed the door so that they wouldn’t awaken anyone.
“But why would someone say that to you?” Kelly wanted to know. The puzzle of the slashed tires continued to trouble her. There was no reason for it.
“I don’t know. But that note scared me, and I don’t scare easily.”
“You saved the note?”
“I should throw it away, but I can’t. Just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case someone kills me. I want proof that there was a threat.”
“Carmela, you need to tell the police. It might be that you’re not the only one being threatened.” She wasn’t going to tell Carmela that Mia Shaw had also been frightened by anonymous warnings designed to alarm her. But there had to be a reason why both women, whose only connection was to Travis Shaw’s involvement in the Lyola Knesbit murder, were targeted.
“You mean this is going on in town?” Carmela was incredulous.
“It might be. How do you know it’s not? There’s no reason for you to be singled out. You don’t have enemies.”
“Except Mrs. Stark.”
“Oh, well, in that case, I’m just as much her enemy as you are. If she could, I think she’d fire us all and put in new staff. The only reason she hasn’t made things difficult for Chloe is that Chloe is part-time.”
“And Chloe stays up in the children’s room. Mrs. Stark has no interest in the children’s room; she wouldn’t be able to gab with her friends if she wasn’t downstairs.”
Kelly was tired on Sunday morning, but she didn’t feel that she could skip church. Guest pastors were leading worship while Rev. Dal was taking his six weeks off to be with his wife and baby, which meant that attendance was already low.
After church, she went home. She knew that Troy was off today; Leo had said that he would work because Troy had ended up working on Easter Sunday. She supposed it was a long shot, but she wanted to discuss the possibility that the vandalism against Carmela’s car had been done by the same person trying to scare Mia Shaw. And if that was plausible . . .
“It could be,” Troy said, not committing himself to believing it. Nonetheless, Kelly could tell that the idea had already occurred to him and that he was working it out in his mind as if he were assembling missing pieces like a puzzle master. “I wondered, after you texted me about what happened, and then Carmela didn’t report it, if we were dealing with the same kind of thing.”
“That puts it back to Travis Shaw, doesn’t it? If they’re too scared to testify against him, there aren’t any witnesses. He can claim that he was bullied into pleading guilty because Leo had a grudge against him, and he gets off.”
They were sitting across from each other on one of the benches in Weiser Park. Kelly had proposed having a picnic lunch rather than eating at one of their usual spots and Troy had agreed, as eager as Kelly to enjoy the sunshine of a lovely spring day after the prolonged rain. As they sat on the benches, the sounds of children playing on the swings and slide all around them, Troy thought about Carmela and Mia. It didn’t bring the solution to the Parmenter murder any closer. It didn’t solve anything. But it was a link to something else. Of that he was sure.
Kelly had made lemonade, fresh and tart. He drank from one of the glasses she had brought—it was no surprise, when he considered the matter, that she had a real picnic basket, equipped with everything from a red-and-white checkered tablecloth to a pitcher, glasses, plates and utensils that all fitted neatly in their spots—and bit into his second sandwich.
“Carmela doesn’t know I told you,” Kelly went on. “She doesn’t want anyone to know about the note. She’s not even reporting the slashed tires to her insurance company, that’s how scared she is. Whoever is doing this is wrecking lives. Mia’s and Carmela’s. It can’t be a coincidence that it’s those two.”
“No,” Troy agreed slowly, the pieces of the puzzle still in motion in his mind, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. But if I can’t tell anybody, I can’t do much. Leo would agree with what you’re saying. I’m sure of that.”
Kelly shook her head, knowing that he wanted her to reconsider. “Carmela is afraid, and she doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Okay, okay. She doesn’t want the word to get out. Shaw is in prison; we assume that he’s waiting for his trial so that he can get off. So, who is it, in town, who’s doing this?”
“I don’t know. There are so many new people in town. Carmela is always complaining about them. Transients, she calls them.”
“Who are they? What brings them in?”
“I don’t know. They don’t come to the library. I wish they did, I wish there were some way to help.”
“Drugs? Are they coming into town for drugs?”
“Why would they have to?” Kelly said logically. “Drugs are available everywhere.”
“What, then? If they’re transient, they don’t have homes or families to tie them down. Why do they come to Settler Springs?”
“Low rent?” Kelly suggested. “A lot of the stores have apartments on the second floor. They don’t cost much. There’s a lot of turnover at the medical equipment factory. The pay isn’t bad, but people don’t like having to work the night shift, at least that’s what I hear. So, they get a few paychecks, enough to move on somewhere else.”
“Or they beat up their girlfriends and leave,” Troy said, thinking of Destiny’s broken bones and the boyfriend who had broken them.
“What? Oh, you mean the people who live on Truman Avenue,” Kelly said. “It’s rough out there. People move in and out so fast that no one really gets to know them.”
“Destiny Jantovick has lived there for over a year with her kids. Her boyfriend, Ollie, moved in with her earlier this year. They met at a Valentine’s Day party at the fireman’s club. He fits your picture frame. Moved into town, got a job at th
e factory, moved into Destiny’s apartment on Truman Avenue, beat her up, moved out, left town.”
He thought of the row of rental units on Truman Avenue. Not everyone was a hellraiser, obviously, but there were enough who were to make them identifiable just by the front of their homes. The Confederate flag that flew on the back of Jax Lightner’s beat-up motorcycle; the Christmas lights that were still hanging, five months after the holiday was over, on the window of #416, where Linda Harlow, her five kids, and a succession of revolving boyfriends lived; the battered Jeep with the vulgar bumper sticker that used to be parked in front of Destiny’s place. He hadn’t seen it there recently. At least that was one improvement in the dubious curb appeal of Truman Avenue, if Ollie had moved out and taken his Jeep—
“What?” Kelly asked, watching as a series of thoughts flashed through Troy’s mind, revealing themselves in his changing expression.
It was a longshot. It probably wasn’t even good enough to be a longshot. There were dozens of Jeeps in Settler Springs, Warren, and all over the place. It was a popular model of vehicle. But maybe, maybe, there was a connection between the Jeep that was no longer parked on Truman Avenue and the Jeep that had been seen at the camp by the lake near where John Parmenter had been murdered.
It didn’t explain why Parmenter was murdered. It didn’t explain the reason for terrorizing Mia Shaw or Carmela Dixon. But somewhere in the background, there were connections.
18
A Suspect on Truman Avenue
“If it’s Olivetti,” Leo said, “why would he stick around? Destiny said he moved out.”
The next morning, Troy brought up his suspicions to Leo. He knew that Leo would take some convincing, but that was a good thing because Leo’s doubt would help Troy work harder. What seemed obvious to him in an outline would need some hewing to get it into shape. Presenting it to Leo was part of that process.
“Moved out where?” Troy challenged Leo. “He might have left her, but that doesn’t mean he left the area. And maybe he didn’t leave after all but told her to say that so he wouldn’t be suspected if the investigation started to get close.”
“If you killed someone, would you stick around?” Leo asked.
“I don’t have all the pieces,” Troy admitted. “And maybe I’m way off base here. But it’s worth investigating. And the time frame works out if Ollie is the one making the phone calls to Mia and putting the dead rat in the mailbox.”
He knew that allegation, if none of the others were convincing, would prod Leo into believing that Ollie deserved to be questioned. But first, he needed to talk to Destiny.
He showed up at her door without calling first. She distrusted police officers and would have made an excuse to avoid him if he’d announced his arrival in advance. When she opened the door and saw him, a wary expression entered her eyes. Of course, given that one of her eyes was ringed in bruises, the wariness might have been a side effect of a recent beating. Either she’d gotten herself a new abusive boyfriend, or Ollie was back home.
“What do you want?”
“Just checking to see how you’re doing,” he said. Then, as she began to shut the door on him, he wedged his foot in the space between and added, “And to ask a few questions about Ollie.”
“I haven’t seen him,” she said right away, as if it were a trained response rather than an honest answer.
“No? Then why do you have a black eye? You didn’t run into a doorknob, Destiny. Ollie’s back, isn’t he?”
“He’s not here. He’s at work.” Either she knew it was no use maintaining the ruse that Ollie had taken off, or she was too tired by this time of the night to pursue a line of lies that Troy was not going to let go by without a challenge.
Troy had chosen the time deliberately, knowing that Ollie worked the night shift.
“I need to talk to you, Destiny. Where are your kids?”
“My mom has them right now . . .”
“Did you lose them?”
“No! They just—they make noise when Ollie is trying to sleep. I figured it would be better if they spent some time with my mom.”
So, she let Ollie come back. After he broke her nose and her ribs, she let him come back. She sent her kids to stay with her mother so that they wouldn’t do anything to provoke Ollie into a temper that might erupt into violence against them. And now she had a black eye.
“Let me in, Destiny. Or I’ll take you down to the station for questioning.”
He saw fear in her eyes, and he knew that he was on the right track. Destiny might not know what her boyfriend had done, but she guessed that something was not right. Out of fear and a mutated idea of love, she would try to protect
Ollie, but she didn’t know how much Troy knew versus what he suspected. That was going to limit her ability to shield Ollie. Especially since she probably didn’t know herself what her boyfriend did when he wasn’t with her.
Destiny opened the door and let him in.
“Where was Ollie on Easter weekend?” he asked. She didn’t invite him to sit down, so he remained standing. Destiny leaned against the kitchen counter; beside her, an ashtray held a burning cigarette, its ash growing longer as it rested, unsmoked.
“He—we were fighting. He took off on Friday morning sometime after work.”
“What were you fighting about?”
She shrugged. “The usual. Not enough money. His temper. He gets mad, sometimes he just flies off the handle at nothing. The kids—they don’t understand that he’s trying to sleep in the evenings, and they have the TV on too loud, they want to have their friends over, they make noise. He can’t sleep when they act up.”
“Drugs?” Troy disregarded the litany of blame against the kids. It wasn’t Destiny’s kids that prodded Ollie into rage.
“I’m clean. I’ve been clean for six years.”
“What about Ollie?”
“He’s clean too.”
But she didn’t sound convincing.
“Doesn’t it matter to you?” he asked. “You want your kids to grow up and become addicts?”
“No! They aren’t going to! They’re with my mom.”
“Ollie means that much to you?”
“Look, what do you want? Why are you here? Ollie’s at work and I have laundry to do.”
“Tell me what was going on Easter weekend.”
“I told you. We argued, he got mad and he left. He didn’t come back until after Easter. He was kind of quiet, but not . . .”
“You told Officer Page that he was moody.”
“Ollie’s always moody,” she said. “He was just moodier. Didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to do anything but drink. Then we had a big fight. He—I ended up in the hospital. You already know that.”
“You told Officer Page that he had left.”
“He did leave. But he came back.”
“Did he leave, or did he tell you to say that he had left?’
She wasn’t sure what to say to that, suspecting that Troy’s questions were too specific for comfort on a subject that was still murky to her. “He left,” she said stubbornly. “He took the Jeep and he left. I didn’t see him for a while.”
“How long was he gone?”
“I don’t know! He came back, said he would give me another chance.”
“Another chance for what? To get beaten and maybe killed the next time? Where did he stay while he was gone?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t. I’ll bet you don’t dare ask questions, do you? So Ollie comes back and you take him in, and you send your kids away because 1) you don’t want Ollie to get so mad when they make noise that he ends up beating them like he does you and 2) you made your choice. It’s Ollie. Your mom can take care of the kids because you’ve made your choice. Ollie over them.”
“That’s not how it is at all! Ollie is a veteran! He was over in Afghanistan. You don’t understand—”
“I was over in Afghanistan, too, Destiny. I came back
too. But I don’t beat up women.”
“You don’t understand,” she repeated. “Ollie is trying so hard. I thought that maybe, with the kids away, he’ll be able to conquer his demons.”
“Maybe he’s one of the demons, Destiny. Did you ever think of that? Maybe he’s one of them.”
When he left Destiny’s apartment, he drove past the medical equipment factory. The Jeep was parked there. He wasn’t going in to the place where Ollie worked to accost him. He didn’t have enough evidence for that.
The pieces still didn’t fit. Why would Ollie move out of Destiny’s place? If he’d killed Parmenter, and as yet there was no conclusive proof that he had, why didn’t he want her to give him an alibi? To state that he’d never moved out, that she could vouch for where he was at night.
Shifts at the factory weren’t the usual format; the night shift was ten p.m. to six a.m. But that would have given him time to put the dead rat in Mia’s mailbox, on his way from work, without being seen in the darkness of the late winter mornings. It would also have given him time to slash Carmela’s tires on his way home, break into her car and put the note inside, then quickly speed away before he was seen. It was a tight time frame, especially with dawn breaking earlier in late April, but it could have been done. Especially if Ollie was the kind of risk-taker who liked the adrenaline rush of a challenge and who enjoyed frightening women.
But their only connection was to Lyola Knesbit’s murder. Ollie had no link to the killing; that was Travis Shaw. Did Shaw have a connection to Ollie? Tomorrow morning, he’d check Ollie’s record to see if he and Shaw had ever been locked up at the same time. What was the link to Parmenter?
And overarching it all was the shadow of someone who was at work in stealth, manipulating people and lives for a purpose that was not yet apparent. The puzzle pieces weren’t joined yet. But Troy knew in the depths of his policeman’s soul that the Starks were involved. Proving it, that was going to be the hard part.