Poisoned Ground Series, Book 6

by Sandra Parshall

  Although she feared the answer, Rachel voiced the question. “Do you think the Kellys were murdered because they refused to sell their land?”

  “You bet I do. Nothing else makes sense.” Joanna’s shoulders felt rigid in Rachel’s embrace, and her expression was hardening, the sorrow and agitation giving way to a grim determination. “Well, nobody’s going to get me. The next time I point my shotgun, you can bet it’ll be loaded.”

  Chapter Six

  “This is kind of a Hatfields and McCoys thing, huh?” Brandon asked when they were in Tom’s cruiser, headed over to Jake Hollinger’s farm. Tom had left Dennis Murray in charge of the murder scene.

  “That’s an exaggeration. I wouldn’t call it a feud, just a running disagreement.”

  “We need to take precautions? I mean, what’re the chances Hollinger’s the shooter? What state of mind is he going to be in when he sees us coming?”

  “I can’t even guess,” Tom admitted. “Just stay alert.” A sick little knot had formed in his gut. He hoped this would be a routine visit, to give Hollinger a chance to provide a solid alibi for the time the Kellys were shot. He didn’t want to discover that Marie and Linc had died because of a petty dispute over a property line. But if Linc had torn the fence down in the last day or two, that might have pushed Hollinger to the breaking point. And Tom and Brandon could be walking into a confrontation with a man who had already killed two people today.

  Barely ten feet ahead of the car, three chocolate-brown sheep hopped over the narrow drainage ditch and landed in the road. Tom slammed on his brakes. When he tapped his horn, the ewes turned to regard the car with mild curiosity.

  “Are sheep as stupid as they look?” Brandon frowned in disgust at the animals blocking their way. “I never could figure out why anybody wants to bother with them. And what kind of sheep is brown, anyway?”

  “They’re Merinos. They must be from Jake Hollinger’s flock. He’s the only one around here who keeps Merinos. And yeah, sheep are a little dense. Dogs intimidate them, but they’re not afraid of people. Or cars, obviously.”

  “Why are they running around loose? They don’t have the good sense to look out for themselves. And they could cause an accident.”

  “Jake’s fence must be down,” Tom said.

  “You think Kelly and Hollinger might have had a fight about it this morning?”

  Tom didn’t answer as he inched the cruiser forward, encouraging the ewes to get out of the way. How long had they been loose? Why hadn’t Hollinger rounded them up yet?

  The three sheep, bunched together, seemed to have no plans to move. Tom shifted the car into park and got out to shoo them away. After balking long enough to make the point that they couldn’t be hurried, they turned in a leisurely fashion and ambled back to the side of the road, their hooves clacking on the pavement. One by one they jumped the ditch into the field.

  The Hollinger gate was another half-mile on. Both the Hollinger and Kelly farms, side by side, bordered the McKendrick horse farm. Joanna’s property dwarfed all of its neighbors. If this was the prime location for the proposed resort, Joanna’s land was the critical piece and would bring the biggest offer, but if the contract Tom had seen in the Kelly house was typical, the owners of adjacent properties could also sell for more money than they’d ever dreamed of having.

  Tom pulled into Hollinger’s driveway and parked behind his red pickup truck. The small brown-shingled house, with a screened porch on one side and an extra room tacked onto the other, looked neglected. Weeds choked the flowerbeds along the foundation, moss colored a patch of the roof dark green, and dead leaves had piled up in the gutters. Hollinger had apparently lost interest in keeping the place up after his wife died of cancer.

  “Back me up,” Tom said as he got out of the cruiser.

  Brandon stood in the yard while Tom mounted the front steps and knocked on the door. He got no response, and after three tries he gave up and rejoined Brandon.

  “He has to be here somewhere. Let’s walk.”

  They rounded the house into the backyard, where unraked leaves from a massive oak tree covered a scruffy patch of lawn. At the edge of the yard sat a large chicken coop with a fenced space for a flock of brown hens. A big vegetable garden, surrounded by high wire fencing to keep deer out, took up a broad clearing, and beyond the garden the land turned to rolling meadows.

  Tom and Brandon found Hollinger on his fence line, lifting rails and shoving them back into slots in the posts. The contested fence between the Hollinger and Kelly properties was a simple post-and-rail that was easy to take apart and just as easy to put back together, but either chore would be time-consuming. Each section had three thick rails made of pine branches, six feet long between posts. About a hundred yards of rails, stretching down a slope, lay in the grass. A mixed flock of about forty brown and white sheep grazed nearby, ignoring the call of the wild that had led a few of their sisters to wander when the fence went down.

  Hollinger looked up as Tom and Brandon approached. Pausing in his work, he wiped sweat from his face with a handkerchief. Despite the chilly November day, he had hung his denim barn jacket on a fence post and rolled up his shirt sleeves. A tall man in his sixties with thick white hair, he looked fit and strong. And not the least bit rattled by the appearance of two cops on his property.

  Tom relaxed a little. “Hey, Jake.”

  “Hey, Tom. And you’re Brandon, right? The Connollys’ boy?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brandon said.

  “Haven’t seen you since the election, Sheriff.” Hollinger stuffed the handkerchief into the back pocket of his jeans and offered a hand. “Congratulations. The best man won.”

  “Thanks.” Tom shook his hand, feeling the strength of the older man’s grip and the calluses on his palms. “By the way, we saw some of your ewes in the road on our way over. I ran them back into a field.”

  Hollinger blew out a sigh. “Those girls never pass up a chance to go exploring. Usually they come back on their own. If they don’t show up soon I’ll go find them and give them a ride home in the truck.”

  “They’re over on the Kelly property.” Tom glanced to his left, but the stand of evergreens hid the Kelly house from view. “How long have you been working out here?”

  “Just came out. I’ve been at the mill, and when I got home and started making my rounds, I found this.” Hands on hips, Hollinger scowled at the dismantled fence. “Fourth time this month. He even managed to get one of the posts out of the ground. I thought I was securing them when I sunk them in concrete.”

  “He?”

  “You know who I mean.” Hollinger flung a hand toward the Kelly land. “You here to take my complaint?”

  “No, I came by to find out if you heard any gunshots in the last hour or two.”

  Hollinger displayed no surprise or interest. He turned away from Tom and hefted one of the pine rails off the ground. “Nope. Like I said, I was at the mill. Somebody going over their limit for turkeys?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Tom said. “Somebody shot Lincoln and Marie Kelly in their backyard.”

  The rail dropped from Hollinger’s hands and landed on the ground with a thud that Tom felt as a vibration under his feet. “God damn,” Hollinger said. “Are they all right?”

  “No.” Tom watched the man’s face for his reaction. “They’re both dead.”

  Hollinger stared slack-jawed at Tom for a moment. He raised a hand, scratched his head. “God damn,” he repeated. “Who did it?”

  His shock appeared genuine, but if he was the shooter he’d had time to prepare for Tom’s inevitable visit. “We don’t know yet. Have you seen or heard anything out of the ordinary today? Any voices, shouts? Any strange vehicles passing by?”

  “No. My God. This is unbelievable.” Hollinger pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and swiped his face again. “Was it a burglary or what?”

/>   Tom ignored the question and asked another. “Why were you at the lumber mill today? I thought you retired and turned it over to your son.”

  “Yeah, I thought so too.” Hollinger seemed distracted, his gaze fixed on the trees in the distance that shielded the Kelly house. “But every time he screws up an order I have to go straighten it out for him.”

  “Was Mark there when you were? Can he vouch for you—what time you got there, when you left?”

  Hollinger snapped his head around, anger flaring in his eyes. “Oh now, hold on. You can’t be thinking I shot Linc and Marie.”

  “You’ve been fighting with Lincoln Kelly for a while now.”

  “About a fence, for God’s sake, a property line. I wouldn’t kill a man over something like that. Much less him and his wife.”

  “People are murdered every day over a lot less,” Tom said. “How much land were you and Linc fighting about? How many feet?”

  Hollinger threw up his arms in exasperation. “Who the hell knows? He kept changing his mind. He’d say six feet one week and twenty the next. Look, I knew the man had Alzheimer’s, and I tried to make allowances. But the survey shows I put this new fence right smack on the property line. The old one was six feet inside the line. I just took back what’s mine.”

  “Does it make any difference?” Brandon asked. “A six-foot strip on one boundary?”

  “Hell, yes, it makes a difference. I’ve been thinking for a while about selling, even before Packard came looking for land to buy. That’s why I wanted a fence right on the property line, so there wouldn’t be any confusion when I found a buyer.”

  “I hear Packard’s already been handing out purchase agreements,” Tom said. “Have they made you a firm offer in writing? One that you like?”

  “You bet I like it. They’ll give me top dollar—a lot more than my acreage is worth, to tell you the truth, but they’ve got it to spend and they want the land. That was just one more reason for Linc to raise hell about the property line. He swore he’d do everything he could to stop me from selling.”

  “Do you expect things to change now that Lincoln and Marie are dead? Will Ronan and Sheila be easier to deal with than their father was?”

  “Aw, God.” Hollinger winced as if he’d forgotten about the killings for a moment and Tom’s question had brought it all back with a jolt. “Who knows what’ll happen? Their kids haven’t lived here since they graduated college. They’re professionals, they’ve got careers. I can’t see either one of them wanting to come back here to live on the land.”

  “So you think they’ll go against their dad’s wishes and sell?” Brandon put in.

  “Now don’t put words in my mouth, son. I don’t have the least idea what they might do. I’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Hollinger lifted a rail and shoved one end into a slot in a post. Tom grabbed the other end and maneuvered it into the opposite post. “Why are you so gung-ho about selling?”

  Straightening, Hollinger flexed his back as if loosening stiff muscles. Sweat rolled down his face, and half-moons of perspiration darkened the armpits of his shirt. He scrubbed the handkerchief over his face again before answering. “I don’t want to live here alone anymore. That’s the plain truth. It’s not the same with Sue Ellen gone. Anyway, I’m almost seventy years old. I want some of that retirement leisure everybody talks about. If I sell to Packard, I’ll be comfortable the rest of my life. More than comfortable.”

  Tom nodded. “Especially if you and Tavia Richardson combine your assets. The two of you together would have quite a nest egg.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Hollinger muttered, avoiding Tom’s eyes.

  Tom was surprised to see a deep flush rise in the man’s cheeks. Was he embarrassed by his relationship with Tavia? They didn’t flaunt it, but they hadn’t hidden it either. Plenty of people knew about it.

  “I guess you realize,” Tom said, “that Joanna’s not going to sell. Packard’s probably going to scuttle the whole project if they can’t get her land.”

  Hollinger waved off Tom’s remark with an impatient gesture. “I’m not going to stand here talking about selling land when Linc and Marie…good God, I still can’t take it in. Shot to death. Who could have—”

  “Can you think of anybody who had a grudge against either of them?” Aside from yourself, Tom added silently.

  Hollinger looked at Tom, his eyes widening as if something startling had occurred to him. “The drugs. It could have had something to do with the drugs. I know they had the best intentions, trying to help sick people, but I was always afraid it might turn dangerous.”

  “Wait a minute.” Tom held up a hand. “What are you talking about? What drugs?”

  “Not the hard stuff, I don’t mean that. Pot. Marijuana. The Kellys have been growing the stuff and selling it for years.”

  Chapter Seven

  Rachel was about to give Billy Bob a boost into her Range Rover when she spotted the strangers.

  A black SUV sat on the road. Three men in suits and ties stood at the end of the driveway and seemed to be studying the property, the man in the middle throwing his arms wide in expansive gestures.

  “What the heck?” Rachel muttered.

  At her feet, Billy Bob gave a low growl from deep in his throat.

  “Well, that’s definitely not an endorsement.” The bulldog had impeccable judgment when it came to people. Rachel wanted to get back to the vet clinic to check on a dog and a cat she had neutered that morning, but she couldn’t go anywhere as long as the strangers stood in her driveway. In any case, she wouldn’t leave and let them continue whatever they were doing. “Come on, boy. Let’s check this out.”

  Billy Bob kept up a low rumble in his throat as they walked down the driveway together. The gesturing man dropped his hands to his sides, and all three watched Rachel approach with bland expressions that gave away nothing.

  She stopped a dozen feet from them. “Can I help you with something?”

  The man in the middle, tall with close-cropped dark hair, flashed a broad smile that transformed his face from pleasant to handsome. He looked to be in his early thirties, barely older than Rachel. He said, “And you are?”

  Rachel stared at him for a moment. “You’re asking me to identify myself? I live here. You’re standing on our property, my husband’s and mine.”

  “Oh, sorry about that.” The man’s smile widened still more. He glanced at the growling bulldog, and when they made eye contact Billy Bob turned up the volume and bared his teeth. The other two men decided to play it safe and backed off the driveway into the road, but the guy with the smile stayed put.

  “My husband, by the way, is the sheriff of Mason County.”

  “Ah.” The man nodded as if he’d achieved clarity on a thorny issue. “I see. Does he happen to be at home?”

  Rachel folded her arms. “You haven’t answered my question. Who are you? And what do you want?”

  “We’re with Packard Development.” He extracted a business card from an inside pocket of his suit coat and handed it to Rachel.

  The card identified him as Lawrence Archer, Property Acquisition and Management, Packard Resorts & Development. Frowning, Rachel regarded him warily, but his smile never faltered.

  “We’re taking a look around at potential locations for development,” he added.

  “This farm isn’t for sale.”

  He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s always best to work with the existing landscape instead of trying to remake it. For some purposes, a fairly level expanse of land is preferable, and plots of that description are few and far between in Mason County. This property isn’t ideal, but with a minimal amount of work it could accommodate a small airport and a heliport.”

  Rachel raised her voice as she took a couple of steps forward. “Either you didn’t hear me, or you misunderstood. This land
is not for sale.”

  Her sharp tone triggered a fresh round of growls from Billy Bob.

  Now Archer took a step back, and his two associates moved farther away, edging toward the safety of the black SUV. Archer’s smile remained fixed as if it were an object plastered to his face. “We’d like to sit down with you and your husband—I didn’t get your name. You’re Mrs….?”

  “I didn’t tell you my name. I’m Rachel Goddard. Dr. Goddard. My husband is Sheriff Bridger.”

  “Well, then, Dr. Goddard, we’d like to sit down with you and Sheriff Bridger and talk about the opportunity—”

  “No.”

  “We’re prepared to offer you—”

  “I said no.” Sometimes the only remaining option was rudeness. “And I meant no. We have nothing to discuss. I have to get back to work, and I’d like you to leave now.”

  “I hope I’ll have a chance to speak to Sheriff Bridger at the meeting tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know if he can make it. He’s working a double murder case.” Two murders, Rachel thought, that might have been triggered by Packard’s presence in this community.

  Oblivious, Archer continued, “I hope we’ll see both of you there, so you’ll have a chance to learn exactly how our project can benefit Mason County.”

  Rachel wanted to slap that smile off his face.

  When she didn’t respond, Archer nodded and said, “Nice meeting you, Dr. Goddard, and I look forward to seeing you again.” All three men turned at once toward their vehicle.

  Billy Bob issued one sharp bark at their retreating backs.

  Fuming, Rachel headed back up the driveway to her Range Rover. Billy Bob, satisfied that he’d driven away the intruders, trotted beside her on his short legs.

  “Who the hell do they think they are, huh?” Rachel demanded of the dog. “Have you ever seen such arrogance? I wouldn’t blame Joanna if she wanted to shoot them all.”

  Billy Bob answered with a low ruff that rose from deep in his throat.