Ax to Grind

by Tonya Kappes

  “How did you know?” She tugged me by the elbow and dragged me into one of the family consult rooms. She shut the door behind us.

  “I know that Hattie is her sister and that you go to the Inn regularly to make sure she’s doing okay.” I took my notebook out of my pocket along with my pen. “When did Beryle contact you about her sister?”

  “When Doc Walton was killed.” She reminded me of my first murder investigation as sheriff of Cottonwood.

  I’d like to say that was a bad memory, but it wasn’t all bad. Yes, it was terrible that Cottonwood’s beloved doctor, Doc Walton, had been murdered, but it was when Poppa’s ghost first showed up.

  Camille Shively and I were long-time acquaintances. I wouldn’t say friends, because we didn’t hang around in the same circles, but we were friendly. She tucked a strand of her black hair behind her ear, and then pushed her hands into her white lab coat. Her black eyes stared at me as she talked.

  “Darby called me and asked if I’d come to the Inn to see a patient. We all know that Doc Walton drove all over creation to see patients.” She laughed, bringing back many memories of him.

  If I had a fever, Mama called Doc Walton right away, and within minutes he was there. He did this with all of his patients, until I had to take his driver’s license away after he’d committed a hit and run, though he saw it differently.

  Apparently, he was still going to see Hattie Hankle at the Inn up until his death.

  “When Darby gave the cash payment, it was up front yearly. And that’s without insurance, so it’s a lot of money. Darby had asked me not to tell anyone, which I couldn’t anyway because of patient confidentiality. Still, I used it to my advantage because I had to know ethically where the money was coming from and wouldn’t treat her until Darby told me Beryle Stone was funding the account.” Her phone beeped and she took it out of her pocket. She hit a button and put it back in. “I’ve got to go.” She took a step toward the door. “Long story short, Beryle’s dad lived a very long time, and it wasn’t until his death that she found out that her sister was still alive. She had a hard time understanding how her parents could just lock Hattie away. She said that loyalty is the number one priority with her, and she felt betrayed by her parents. That’s when she brought Hattie here until she could complete her commitments to her career and move back, which to my understanding she was in the process of doing the past couple of months.”

  “One quick question before you go.” I stopped her as she took a step out of the door.

  She turned around and let out a long sigh.

  “Was Beryle sick?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Camille shook her head. “She had stage four brain cancer. It was just a matter of time.” She turned to head down the hallway. She stopped and snapped her fingers. “You know, they didn’t call me to pronounce her dead or anything. She made sure I didn’t tell anyone she was sick. Not even her assistant.”

  “Really?” I looked at her in disbelief. She shrugged and walked down the hallway, disappearing into another patient room.

  “What was that about?” Finn asked over my shoulder as we walked down the hall of the hospital.

  We got into the elevator.

  After the doors shut, I asked, “Paige or Dr. Shively?”

  “Both,” he said.

  “Paige said that she saw Sterling Stinnett at the shop the night she was attacked. That’s all she remembers. Which would make sense, because she probably lost all memory right before and after the attack. The security footage from Kim’s Buffet showed a tall shadowy figure running away. Those are probably the footsteps we heard. Sterling Stinnett.”

  “Lonnie said that he worked for Beryle too.” Finn leaned against the wall of the elevator and we stared at each other. “You know him much better than I do. Do you really think that he’s capable of this?”

  “I think anyone is capable of anything when secrets might leak.” The tell-all book still seemed to be the root of the attacks. “Even an even-tempered man like Sterling Stinnett.”

  “I didn’t see him at his regular places this morning. So it looks like I’m going be spending the rest of my afternoon looking for Sterling,” Finn said just as the door of the elevator opened. He pushed his hands in the pocket of his sheriff’s jacket. He pulled out an evidence baggie. “Here is that key.”

  “Thanks.” I took it. “I’ll head out to the estate at some point and see if I can find what it goes to.”

  I ran the baggie between my finger and thumb, wondering what on Earth the key had to do with the murder of Cecily Hoover. Images of her holding the key, fighting with someone, and being frightened enough to swallow it swirled around my mind.

  And Sterling Stinnett had been there? Was he really the killer? What would be his motive?

  “I just can’t believe that Sterling Stinnett could kill someone.” The words hurt my heart as they came out of my mouth.

  “You’ve said it before, and we both know it. People do uncharacteristic things in times of desperation. Maybe he knew something and wanted to get his hands on the tell-all?” Finn questioned.

  “Maybe.” I chewed on his question. “We won’t know what he knows until we pick him up. Be sure to check all his usual places like Cowboy’s Catfish, Ben’s, and Cole’s on the river.”

  Cole’s was a gambling joint where the men loved to go drink beer and play cards.

  I continued to rub that key between my finger and thumb. The plastic bag had grown warm under my fingertips. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I found out where the key went, our killer would be exposed.

  “I agree with you, Kenni-bug.” Poppa appeared next to me. “That key holds the truth.” He hesitated. “I’ve seen it before. At Beryle’s house.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Beep, beep. The walkie-talkie signaled Betty from my end.

  “Kenni, I was just about to call you,” Betty answered.

  “I’m on my way to the Stone estate to take another look around. Can you make a few phone calls before you leave for the day to see if you can locate Sterling Stinnett, or find out if anyone has seen him? If you find him, call Finn and let him know.” I asked, “Why were you going to call me?”

  “Myrna Savage just called and asked me what I knew about Sterling. Apparently Lonnie wants to find him, and Paige is telling everyone that Sterling has to be the killer and the one who attacked her,” Betty said.

  “Well, it’s all hearsay until we talk to Sterling.” I knew it was probably all over town by now. Which could be a good thing if someone would tell us where he was so we didn’t have to hunt him down. But nothing was easy in this investigation.

  “I’ll call around,” Betty said. “What about the estate sale? Are you going to have to cancel?”

  “I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I’ll be sure everyone knows.” We said our goodbyes.

  I hated to think that I might need to cancel the estate sale since I hadn’t cleared the house from the investigation. Granted, no crime had been committed on the property, but there were still so many out-of-town visitors here just for the sale. Cottonwood itself was benefiting from all the extra tourists and the money they were bringing into the town.

  “I know you hate to disappoint people, Kenni-bug, but sometimes as the law, we have to do what’s best for our town.” Poppa and I stood on the front steps of the Stone estate that overlooked the vast acreage.

  I gripped my bag, the feeling that I was missing something very important that was right in front of my face welling up inside me. Clear-cut lines of Poppa’s stern face told me that he too knew there was something here.

  The gray clouds off in the distance were rolling over the river and would soon be hovering over us. The wind whipped around us, curling around the old trees, knocking off what little leaves were left. The dried leaves tumbled and twirled across the land. A storm was brewing.

&nb
sp; “Where is that manuscript?” I was so sure the Beryle had hid it on the estate somewhere.

  “Have you looked in the barn yet?” Poppa asked. He turned to face it.

  “No.” My nose wrinkled. “I’m not sure if it looks stable enough.”

  “The roof looks a little caved in on the one side, but the walls look good,” he said. “No stone—”

  “Unturned,” I interrupted him, finishing his motto. “No stone unturned.” I pointed to the dilapidated old barn. “Why don’t you use those fancy ghost powers you have and look around before suggesting I put myself in danger.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m not ready to join you on that other side, so I’m not doing it,” I said.

  “Chicken,” Poppa taunted me.

  “Really? I can hear the scary music playing and people yelling, ‘don’t go in there.’ Like in those scary movies.” I got the shivers thinking about it.

  I suddenly wondered what movies Luke Jones was going to have playing in the next month. He loved hosting scary movies during September and October in anticipation of Halloween.

  “We haven’t had any luck in the house,” he said. And just like that, Poppa had whispered away, and I was sure he was already in the barn.

  My stomach knotted. He was right. And no matter how much I wanted to throw a girly fit and protest, to be just his little granddaughter and not the sheriff since no one was around to see me, I knew I couldn’t.

  “Fine.” My eyes drew up to the sky where the gray clouds hung. Why was it that gray cloudy days never represented the curl-up-and-read-a-book or binge-watch-movies kind of days for me?

  In fact, when I thought about it, cloudy and rainy days generally brought memories of sadness. Like the day Poppa died and was buried. Or the day that Doc Walton was found dead in his home.

  With each step I took toward the barn, I sucked in a deep breath of the fresh country air and let it fill my lungs. The smell of impending rain floated into my nose, lingering. I prayed the rain would hold off until I took a good look around the barn. The last thing I needed was a rainstorm—the darn thing really would come down around me.

  There was a broken-off broomstick jammed in the handles across the two large barn doors. It wasn’t a tight fit. Any critter could’ve gotten in the open space. Like Hattie Hankle, I didn’t like critters either. I set my bag on the ground and unzipped it, taking out the camera. Everything had to be documented whether it was evidence or not. I snapped pictures of the door handle and the broken broomstick from every angle before I retrieved my flashlight from my duty belt and pushed the button on the side to turn it on.

  Slowly I dragged the beam of light up and down the open crack before I decided to slip the broken broomstick out of the handles.

  “I’m looking!” Poppa’s voice echoed out of the crack.

  “Do I honestly need to come in there?” I questioned, feeling a little silly that I was relying on a ghost. Not that I didn’t believe in Poppa.

  “Everything looks stable. There’s a loft that separates the roof from the interior. I wouldn’t go up there without having an engineer look at the structure to make sure it’s sound, but the rest of the barn looks good. The loft floor is still intact too.” He gave me the reassurance I needed to proceed.

  The broom handle must’ve been in there a long time. The wood was splintered and weathered on both ends. What was left of the chipping paint on the handle gave a hint that it was once green. It was pretty tightly wedged through the handles and tilted diagonally.

  Bam, bam, bam. The butt of my flashlight knocked the broomstick loose enough that I could tug a little and push it toward the ground, letting the stick fall. I knocked it out of the way with my shoe. The doors of the barn opened slightly.

  “You in here?” I curled my hand around one of the handles and cautiously opened the door, just in case something was going to jump out or fall on me.

  “Yep, no critters. Come on in.” Poppa appeared at the front of the barn. “There doesn’t seem to be any lighting in here.”

  “It’s not been a working barn for years.” I swung the light up, down, and around to get my bearings. It was a typical abandoned barn, like I’d seen on a lot of properties around Cottonwood. Most serious farmers now used prefab and steel barns that were already constructed and came in pieces. Not the good old sturdy barns that lasted years, like this once was.

  The camera’s flash lit up the barn with each click of the shutter.

  “Look at all of these old tools,” Poppa said and pointed to a joint wooden plane. “I wonder why they didn’t come in here to get stuff for the sale.”

  “It’s probably included in the sale of the house.” I shrugged and walked around, snapping photos of everything I was seeing.

  The inside was a typical barn, a center aisle and stalls on each side. In the back there were two big doors, just like the front. I walked down the right side and stuck my flashlight in each stall as I walked by. There were a few old bridles and what looked like some shoeing tools, but other than that, it was musty and just plain old and dirty.

  The back right was where the tools were kept. Once I made it back there, Poppa had already started to look on the other side of the barn.

  “Did you see anything up in the loft?” I dragged the flashlight up the wooden stairs that led to it.

  “Nothing. It’s empty up there. I’ll be,” Poppa gasped with a giddy tone.

  “What?” I hurried down his way, skipping the first few stalls on the left side of the barn.

  “I think this is Beryle’s old car.” He pointed to something in the stall.

  “Toy car?” I asked on my way over.

  I curled up on my tiptoes and noticed the stall was a little bigger than the others, but not by much. There was an old brown cloth tarp that covered something fairly large.

  “Man, oh man.” Poppa rubbed his hands together. “I haven’t been in this car since that last day I told you about me and Beryle riding down to the river so she could paint.”

  I opened the stall door and walked in and around the tarp while taking photos from the front, sides, and back.

  “Well, let’s take a look.” I pulled the tarp off with one jerk. Dust flew everywhere.

  “Smart,” Poppa joked about me jerking off the tarp. I smiled. I loved that his ghost had a sense of humor.

  “Wow.” My jaw dropped at the sight of the old convertible MG car. “This is really cool.”

  “And I bet no one knows it’s in here, because it would bring a lot of money to the sale.” Poppa nodded. “Beryle loved this car. Back in the day, she’d take a scarf and put it over her head, knot it under her chin, and put a pair of big black sunglasses on. She looked like a famous person before she became famous.” Poppa grinned. “She was one of those women that when you looked at her, you knew she was going to be someone.”

  “This sure is pretty.” I dragged my hand down the side. The paint was still immaculate, and though I was no car expert, it made me do a double take. “I bet you’re right. This will fetch a lot of money. I need to tell Ruby about this.”

  The photos I had taken weren’t doing the old car justice. It was in amazing condition. Obviously, it wasn’t used much.

  My phone rang deep in my pocket. When I pulled it out, the baggie with the mystery key in it came out too.

  “Kenni,” Poppa whispered with a hint of disbelief. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this. Beryle loved this car. Maybe Cecily saw Beryle keeping this key close to her side, and she knew it was the key to where Beryle hid the tell-all.”

  “And maybe Cecily didn’t know that the key belonged to this car. That’s why she couldn’t find the manuscript.” It was possible that Beryle would’ve hidden something in the car. Cecily did say that Beryle would escape for a couple of hours outside and she didn’t know where she went. “Well, let’s see if the k
ey fits.”

  The phone continued to ring in my hand. The baggie warmed under my grip.

  “I’m telling you, it belongs to this car,” Poppa said with confidence. “Back in the day, the keys were tiny. None of them fancy key fob thingies. Try it.”

  I didn’t hesitate. I opened the baggie and took out the key. I held it up to my face. There weren’t any sort of markings on it. Just a small gold tarnished key with a round top and a half-moon hole in the middle.

  I stuck the key in the driver’s side door and turned.

  My eyes slid across the black convertible soft-top and stared at Poppa, who stood on the other side of the car.

  It worked. The smell of leather pushed out of the open door. I turned my flashlight and looked inside. The bucket seats were black with a tan stripe on each side. There was a small backseat with something under a cloth.

  “I wonder what that is.” I shined the light on the cloth. Poppa shrugged.

  I ran my hand down the side of the old leather driver’s seat and found the small lever that moved the seat forward. I bent down and reached into the backseat to pull out the draped item.

  I had to put my flashlight down on the barn floor so I could get both hands on it.

  “I could use some muscle here,” I teased Poppa about his ghostly inabilities to help me with any physical stuff.

  “Listen, I told you it was safe to come in,” he joked back.

  “This is fancy,” I said about the red drape.

  I leaned it up against the car and picked my flashlight back up.

  “Pull that cloth off.” Poppa had ghosted next to me and squatted down next to me.

  I stood the flashlight on its end so the light shined up to the ceiling. My phone started to ring again, but I ignored it. If it was important, dispatch would call me over the walkie-talkie.

  “It’s a canvas.” I slipped the drape off.

  “It’s one of her paintings.” Poppa leaned in and took a closer look.

  Boom! A clap of thunder rolled through the sky and I felt it in the ground, giving me a shimmy shake. I shook it off and picked up the flashlight and shined it on the canvas.