“Yeah, I heard something about that,” I said as if I had any idea what that was about.
“The party was a riot. Lots of fun.”
“Lucinda helped you with the party?”
“She helped to plan it, and she brought over a ton of snacks, and some video games, movies, stuff that the girls would want to do on such a night as that,” Betty Jo chimed on.
“Lucinda didn’t spend the night,” I said innocently.
“Oh, no. Say, I don’t understand why you are so interested in a party for our girls. What has that got to do with her award?”
“We like to dig a little deeper for our awards than most companies. I was just doing the extra background stuff, you understand. Now, you were saying that Lucinda did not spend the night with you and the girls?”
“That’s right. She had more errands to run. In fact, she had to go back over to Johnson City, she told me, to get some stuff for Bonnie, that’s her oldest daughter. Her youngest is Rachel. Have you met her daughters?”
“No, that’s not my function. I am simply here to do research on her specifically and make my recommendation,” I said.
“Well, I was just saying that because …,” she hesitated and then pointed to the door, “here come the girls now,” she smiled enthusiastically over my shoulder as the infernal dinging bells sounded to alert the world that someone had entered the ice cream shop.
I turned to see three teenagers with backpacks entering the door laughing and talking.
“Come over here girls. I want you to meet someone,” Betty Jo said to the girls who were giggling as they approached.
“Can I see you a moment, Betty Jo, in private?” I said to her in a low voice.
I pulled her away from the three approaching young ladies.
“I don’t think it is advisable for me to meet the daughters of a potential recipient for one of our awards,” I said.
“A what?”
“I shouldn’t meet the girls,” I said.
“Why not?” she said practically horrified with me. “You can judge a goodly amount about a person by the way their children act,” she said.
“No doubt, but the company I represent would prefer that my work remain rather anonymous. It’s better in the long run for me to protect myself, you know, just in case I have to return some day to the same community to make an inquiry into other worthy candidates perhaps like you. My sphere of contacts should not be too extensive.”
“You’re what of what?” she said. There was the look of confusion quite evident on her face.
“I don’t need to meet too many people associated with Lucinda.”
“Oh,” she said, but she clearly did not understand what I meant.
“My work here is really on the down-low.”
More confusion.
“Secretive. We like our awards to be surprises.”
“Oh,” she said. I think the light came on.
She moved quickly away from me and toward girls.
“Never mind,” she said to them. “Y’all come on over here and let me treat you to some ice cream.”
She moved the small group over to the other counter and began taking their orders for the ice cream. There was a lot more giggling and some whispering as I quietly made my way out the door to the darling sound of the dinging bells. I had dodged a bullet but not the bells.
Chapter Nineteen
My little chat with Betty Jo served only to whet my curiosity. She was such an obtuse conversationalist that I would need a longer period to ask her questions and then ask her the follow up questions which helped her to understand the earlier questions. She at least had informed me of Lucinda’s absence from the teenagers’ party on the night that Abel disappeared and was likely murdered. It was my suspicion that ditsy Betty Jo knew more than she was telling me.
When I returned to the Carter house it was nearly supper time. Starnes was not home yet, so I thought I would surprise her and prepare a meal. I’m not generally acclaimed as a cook. Rosey would be glad to testify to that. So would my mother who would do so with great delight all the while reminding the listener that I was my father’s daughter.
It is partially my mother’s fault that I grew up and got away before I could learn the craft of cooking. The major fault of course lies with my personality as well as my interests. I was more concerned about tracking criminals, understanding the law, weeding out the guilty, following clues, and handling firearms with some degree of dexterity, that I had no time to learn domestic arts. That could explain why I am still single and enjoying loneliness in my all too swiftly advancing age. Such are the choices we make in life. Such are the ways of life when careers choose us as well.
That being said, I still had the ability to read cookbooks, throw some things together, and prepare an edible meal for most people to enjoy. Enjoy might be a stretch, but at least the things I can prepare generally do not send people to the emergency room of the local hospital. My preparations are nothing my mother would approve of, clearly a given in her assessment of my cooking prowess. And yet, my dearth of cooking acumen has not caused one fatality. Yet.
Starnes had a small shelf of cookbooks and I chose one that looked appealing. It had colorful photos of the way the food should appear. I think my choice of the cookbook addresses clearly the absence of my aptitude in food preparation.
I decided to fix something simple. I also decided to search the kitchen to see what Starnes had in the refrigerator and cupboards before I began my work. Even the greatest chefs are limited by the supplies on hand.
Frozen ground beef, angel hair pasta, and a jar of salsa proved to be the extent of Starnes’ gastronomic delights on hand. In an obvious effort to cover my cooking shortfalls coupled with the limited supplies on hand, I gave up the idea of surprising Starnes with a meal. I waited for her to arrive so we could go out and find some restaurant that had edible food to order.
It was after seven when Starnes pulled into the dirt driveway by the side of the house.
“You hungry?” Starnes said as she walked through the front door.
“Yeah, where are you taking me?” I said without looking up to see that she was carrying a couple of grease-stained sacks.
“Right here,” she said as she held up a sack full of something that was causing the slick, dark brown spots on the bags displayed in front of me. “I stopped off at Fat Eddie’s and brought home some barbeque sandwiches, potatoes, slaw, beans … you name it, and I got it.”
I was too hungry to debate with her the virtues of Fat Eddie’s. Besides that, it smelled good and we ate all of it. At the conclusion of our feast, I had a hunch as to why he was named Fat Eddie.
“You substantiate her alibi?” Starnes asked me as we were relaxing in the living room.
“For the time being. It seems that she made a trip to Johnson City that night and was there shopping for her daughters.”
“Reliable source on that alibi?” Starnes said.
“Don’t push me too far on that one. For the moment, I will believe the source. You find anything from the farmer … what was his name?”
“Jasper Franklin. No, dead end. Jasper is an old man who walks with a cane, has poor eyesight, and his sons do most of the cattle farming. I doubt if Jasper could have pulled off this murder.”
“He could have been lucky, you know, a shot in the dark,” I said.
“Jasper’s been recuperating since late September. Had a stroke and spent some time in rehab. He was playing bingo the night of October 28 in McAdams Manor. I don’t think he shot anybody, but he did win several games.”
“So, we are at some dead spot in this thing?” I said.
“Maybe, but I did get a ballistics report from Raleigh finally. Had to send off the slug pieces we found inside the carcass. The experts over there said that it definitely was a 9mm.”
“No way to identify the gun from the pieces of the slug,” I said.
“Yeah, they said as much. What they did say was that if we found a w
eapon which we suspected, then they could test it for verification and match it to the one piece that had some markings on it.”
“So, we’re looking for a 9mm,” I said.
“Popular caliber, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We just have to find the right one.”
“Nothing to it.”
“Cain Gosnell shot at me with a handgun the other day,” I said rather nonchalantly.
“Really?” Starnes said in real surprise.
“Really. He missed by a long ways, so I never felt threatened.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Didn’t think it was important.”
“He can’t go around shooting at people. I’ll have a talk with him.”
“We both can go over there and talk with him. He was shooting at me with a German Luger of WWI vintage,” I said.
“Really?”
“The truth be known.”
“What caliber was it?” Starnes said.
“9mm.”
Chapter Twenty
Sheriff Starnes Carver decided to arrest Cain Gosnell for a handgun violation so she could confiscate his German Luger and send it to Raleigh. We didn’t have sufficient evidence to place him at the scene of the crime, so Starnes used some chicanery to get what she wanted. Besides, I don’t think you’re supposed to go around shooting at people even if they come onto your property, but apparently it can be a gray area.
Starnes sent the Luger by courier to Raleigh to save time and placed Cain in her jail while we waited. Adam and Evelyn Gosnell posted the bond for him because he was, after all, their son. We figured it might take a couple of weeks for Raleigh to get back to us with the results even though Starnes asked them to expedite their tests because this was a murder investigation. She believed it would help our cause. I had my doubts.
We spent the first week going back over the crime scene, studying photographs, reviewing more than once what we knew as well as what we thought we knew, and checking out some dubious leads which led us exactly back to the place we were before we did all of that. We ate out several times, discovered that we liked beans and cornbread more than cheeseburgers, walked Sam around the Carver property multiple times, and waited impatiently for something to break in our investigation. All through this passing of time with no-new-leads activities, Starnes and I remained friends. She did not once threaten to send me packing to Norfolk.
On the Monday morning of the second week we were still waiting on Raleigh to call, Bart Ramsey phoned instead and invited us out to his land near Bear Mountain Creek. He had something to show us. We weren’t all that busy at the moment, so we drove out there. Something new to do, some new place to go, at least new for me. I was still enjoying my exploration of McAdams County. It was quite massive in land geography.
Bart said that late Sunday evening he was walking his fence line to be sure that the cows were secure from those disease-ridden sheep owned by the deceased Abel Gosnell who leased the parcel that adjoined his tract. He wanted us to follow him so he could show us what he found.
“Why don’t you just tell us what you found?” Starnes said not really wanting to walk nearly a mile up the side of the mountain on a late November day with the wind blowing harder than usual. It was cold, too.
“You won’t believe this. Trust me,” Bart said.
“Tell us what we won’t believe so we will have the incentive to go see it and believe it,” Starnes said.
Bart shook his head in exasperation.
“Gosnell’s sheep, out there. They’re all dead.”
“Dead from what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t cross the fence to see what killed them. But if I had to guess, I’d say they were all shot. There’s blood everywhere. Dead sheep and blood and … gosh-dang, the smell is nasty.”
“Someone shot all of his sheep?” Starnes said.
“Looks that way, Sheriff,” Bart said. “Really sad about those sheep, isn’t it?”
“You better hope I don’t find out that you did it,” Starnes replied.
“I don’t kill animals unless I have to. Even sheep. Don’t like ‘em, wouldn’t dare raise ‘em. But I don’t cotton to slaughtering animals like that, especially ones that belong to someone else. I got some principles. Besides, it’s wasteful. There’s money involved.”
“Yeah,” Starnes said.
We finally checked out Bart Ramsey’s story about the sheep and discovered the horrible situation exactly the way Bart described it. Starnes called her office and had them send out some town employees to bury all but two of the sheep. She sent those to the lab in Asheville to be sure that the sheep were shot to death, and, hopefully, to find some slugs inside the sheep to help us identify a possible gun used. For me there was sufficient evidence that the sheep were all shot. I didn’t need a lab telling me that. But then, I’m no scientist.
While all of that was ongoing, Sam and I did a walk around of the field amid the slaughtered sheep just to see what we could see besides the death of the innocents. Sam was his usual stoic self as we trekked through the revolting scene of blood and mayhem and foul odor. I tried to remain objective, looking for whatever it was I could find. It was my professional judgment that every one of the sheep had been shot in the head, but some of the sheep had been shot in other parts of their anatomy making for a painfully, slow death for those animals. That is to say, unless they were shot in the head first, they did not die instantly. The head wound was the kill shot.
On the way back through the massive burial work of the Madison town employees, I noticed a slug lodged in one of the locust posts. Using my trusty penknife, I dug it out and had one of those aha moments detectives sometimes have while working a case. I had not had many of those moments on this one thus far. It was a good moment. A revelation of sorts. The slug was a 9mm.
“There must be close to forty sheep in this pasture,” Starnes said to me when I approached with Sam after my walk around.
“Forty-seven,” I said.
She looked surprised.
“I heard one of the town guys talking. He had counted carcasses,” I said.
“Forty-seven livestock needlessly killed,” she said to me with absolutely no inflection. “You make anything of that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “This was personal.”
“Like somebody venting?”
“Be my guess. Angry reaction intended to inflect pain, especially to one who cared a great deal about his livestock,” I suggested.
“You think the same person who did this may have killed Gosnell as well?”
“Can’t be certain about that, but the obvious money would be on the same person doing both.”
“Let’s go talk with Cain,” Starnes said.
When we arrived at Cain’s place, he was sitting on his porch. It was too cold to be sitting on anything outside, but there he was with his heavy jacket, earmuffs, gloves and sour disposition. A rifle was resting across his lap and his hands were resting atop the gun. It was late Monday afternoon. He appeared to be brooding and nursing a lousy mood. Our mood was none too good.
“You kill those sheep?” Starnes asked.
“What sheep?”
“Your brother’s sheep, the ones pastured out by Bart Ramsey’s cows?” Starnes clarified.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Cain answered with a laissez faire demeanor.
“Didn’t figure you would,” Starnes said. “This will get us nowhere. We have nothing here. It’s a waste of time. I’m goin’ to call Raleigh to see if they have anything for us yet,” she said and walked towards her Escort.
I stood looking at Cain Gosnell and wondering what was going through the mind of a man who had lost his entire family because his brother was low-down enough to have had an affair with his wife. Hatred would have to be at the top of the list of feelings.
“What you lookin’ at?” Cain said to me.
“A man hurting,” I said.
“You know no
thing.”
“Certainly not the pain you know.”
“I got no pain. And you got no case.”
“We’ve got your handgun that shoots 9mm cartridges. We’ve got a dead man with 9mm slugs from his remains being matched against your gun as we speak. We’ve got forty-seven dead sheep slaughtered by someone using a 9mm weapon. I’d say we have some incriminating evidence against you. All we need is verification that the slugs match.”
“You got nothing on me,” he insisted.
“We’ll see.”
A cold late November wind was blowing across the two of us as our conversation ended. My gut was telling me that he was involved somehow, but I had no idea to what extent. I was trying not to allow the biblical story to get in the way of reality. How powerful the pull towards conclusions when life imitates art.
Chapter Twenty-One
On Friday Raleigh called to say that they had faxed a ballistics report on the weapon and the slugs Starnes had sent. They told Sheriff Carver that the last slug sent from the sheep slaughter was a positive match to the gun that we had sent. The first slug, or the fragment that we had sent them earlier, was about a sixty percent match to the same gun. That same day we received a finger print match for Cain Gosnell on some of the tin cans we found at that camp fire along the creek road close to where Abel Gosnell’s body was discovered.
When Starnes returned from the D.A.’s office across the street from her official workplace, she had better color in her face.
“D.A. says we’ve got a case,” Starnes said to me.
“She think it a good case?”
“I think Cain Gosnell killed his brother because he slept with his wife for two years. I sent Stanton and Slater out to arrest him for murder. I decided to allow someone else to enjoy his acerbic attitude.”
“You certainly have a strong enough motive, I suppose,” I said.
“You seem reticent.”
“Not completely satisfied.”
“The evidence is solid.”
When Blood Cries: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 6) Page 10