“I hope your theory is different from mine,” Melinda said, heading for the coffee maker.
“I could be wrong, and I don’t want to scare you.”
Melinda let out a long sigh. From a cabinet over the coffee maker she took down three mugs and a bag of coffee. Her movements were slow and uncertain, the mark of a woman sapped of energy. “I don’t think I could be any more scared or worried or anything else than I am now. Know what? The January Club is sending moving vans in the morning.”
“That’s right, you went to the will reading,” Liz said.
“No surprises in the will, of course,” Melinda said, scooping coffee. “But they told me the vans are coming at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“What about . . . ?” Anna looked to the kitchen table but saw nothing of the letters and photo albums that had been there the night before.
Melinda’s lips curved in satisfaction. “They’re all gone. I’ll give some of them to my brother. The executor found him, by the way. He told me to sell the house and give him half the money. He’s not interested in it.”
“They’ll check your car for your dad’s things,” Liz said, hooking her camera’s strap on a chair and taking a seat at the table.
“There’s nothing there,” Melinda said, leaving it at that.
It was just as well. Anna didn’t want to know where Melinda had stashed her father’s belongings. That way she wouldn’t have to lie about it if someone asked, because the truth was she was on Melinda’s side. Will or not, there was something very wrong with people who could take family mementos from the recently bereaved.
Melinda started the coffee maker, took the chair next to Liz, and motioned for Anna to sit. “So what do you think is going to scare me?”
Best to say it straight out, Anna thought, joining Liz and Melinda at the table. That way Melinda could prepare herself. Or better yet, stay at a hotel tonight, where she would be safe. “I think someone is breaking into your house at night to steal some of your father’s things.”
Melinda, calmly and with a hint of a smile, raised a skeptical eyebrow—not at all the reaction Anna had expected.
“Take this seriously, Melinda. I think that’s what you saw a couple nights ago, when you thought someone was in your bedroom.”
“Anna, you weren’t here. You don’t know what I saw and felt. It wasn’t a living, breathing human being—it was evil. I never used to believe in evil as a presence, but that’s what it was.”
“You were having a nightmare.”
“But I woke up, and it was still there.”
“You said you didn’t find anyone.”
“Hang on,” Liz said. “Let’s explore this break-in theory for a minute. Anna, do you think one of the January Club members is breaking in?”
“It has to be one of them, or someone associated with one of them. They might have hired someone.”
Liz considered. “You mean like Soda Ashbrook?”
“Yup.”
“Who’s Soda Ashbrook?” Melinda said.
“A friend of Tanner Ostberg,” Anna said without elaboration. Soda’s and Tanner’s affair was their business.
“No, wait,” Melinda said, shaking her head. “Why would club members risk breaking into my house when they knew all they had to do was wait for the will to be read? It’s all legally theirs.”
“They didn’t know that. You said you had three nightmares, two before your dad died and the third on the night he died, before anyone knew he was dead.”
Anna fell silent. Her argument had ramifications. The third nightmare, the one Melinda had called a “whopper,” had occurred about the same time Henry Maxwell was murdered. Maybe just hours afterward. If one of the club members was the murderer—and that was almost certainly the case—then the murderer still chose to break into his house, even knowing Maxwell’s things would soon belong to the club. That left two possibilities: the murderer didn’t know about the will or the murderer and the thief were two different people acting for two very different reasons.
Then there was a third possibility: Melinda saw exactly what she thought she saw.
“So someone steals from this house,” Liz said, drumming her fingers on the table, “and the goods end up at Curt MacKenzie’s house or the Prices’ art galleries?”
“Or stay with the thief,” Anna said. “Or all three. A little for everyone.”
Melinda rose to pour the coffee, and as she brought the cups to the table, Anna began to poke holes in her own theory. Club members might well be stealing from the house, but that didn’t explain Melinda’s last nightmare, the one with her vision of Johannes Sorg. She had recognized the man in the portrait at Curt’s house, and her terror at seeing him had been real.
“The thief could be getting a cut for doing the stealing,” Anna said. “But maybe this thief thinks his cut is too small, so he decides to keep some things for himself.” She could tell by the look Liz shot her that she too was thinking of Tanner.
Anna sipped at the coffee she knew would keep her awake far too late into the night. The incident that had started it all and culminated in the murders of Jordan Hetrick, Henry Maxwell, and Beverly Goff—that’s what she had to uncover. The murders, the thefts from Maxwell’s house, and the answers to Melinda’s questions about her father’s past were connected somehow. The common thread? The January Club.
“Do you have a back door?” Anna asked, setting down her cup.
“There’s a sliding door that opens on the backyard,” Melinda replied. “It’s in the old master bedroom, across from my dad’s room. And there’s another door between the garage and backyard.” She swiveled in her seat and pointed at a wooden door on one end of the kitchen. “You can go through there.”
“Do you keep this door locked?” Anna stepped to the kitchen door and examined the frame, knob, and lock plate.
“Always. My dad was a stickler for locking doors, even back in Wyoming.”
“And windows?”
“Yes.”
“Of course, if they used a lock pick, I wouldn’t be able to tell.” Anna swung the door wide and took one stair step down into the garage. “Are there storm windows throughout the house?” she called out.
“Yes, my dad put them in while I was still living here,” Melinda called back.
As far as Anna could tell, there was no sign of forced entry on either garage door, nor anything beyond the normal accumulation of key scratches on the doors’ locks. She secured both doors and headed down the hall for the old master bedroom, but on examining the sliding glass door in the room, she determined that no one had tampered with it. Henry Maxwell had even laid a cut-off pipe in the door’s track, preventing anyone on the outside from opening it.
A rustling sound from the hall made her turn. “Anna,” Liz whispered, “what did Schaeffer say you could tell me? I need to post a news story.” With one hand grasping the door frame, she waited in eager anticipation.
“Part of it you’ve already guessed,” Anna said. She took several strides to the door and peered around Liz and down the hall before continuing. “The medical examiner confirmed that the finger in the attaché case belonged to Jordan Hetrick.”
“Awful.”
“The good news is it happened postmortem. They knew that after they found Hetrick’s body.”
“Thank goodness. The other part?”
“A piece of paper with the name Johannes Sorg written on it was found on Hetrick’s body.”
In answer to Liz’s questioning look, Anna added, “For now they want to hold on to the details of exactly where it was found and what sort of ink and paper were used.”
Liz nodded slowly. “Then there’s no doubt his murder is connected to the January Club.”
“No doubt at all.”
“And Schaeffer doesn’t mind me breaking this news?”
“In exchange we can supply him with an inside view of the club. Plus, I think he realized the two of us uncovered more information about Sorg than all of
his officers put together.”
“It’s a reward?”
“Schaeffer style.”
Liz started to turn but twisted back. “But what does Jordan Hetrick have to do with the January Club? No one’s mentioned him as a member.”
Anna shrugged. “Haven’t figured that out yet. Is Dan still in Casper?”
“For two more days.”
“Research at my house? Not before eight o’clock, though.”
“You got it.” Camera in hand, Liz headed into Henry Maxwell’s bedroom.
Anna continued her search for signs of a forced entry into the house, but the remaining windows’ screw locks were firm and all the storm windows were in place. In the security sense, Henry Maxwell’s house was solid.
As Anna started for the kitchen, a knock sounded at the front door, and she waited in the living room, in sight of the door, as Melinda answered it.
Grinding his palms together and smiling obsequiously, Curt MacKenzie muttered an apology for showing up unannounced.
“Not until tomorrow,” Melinda said. “You don’t have the right.”
“That’s not why I’m here, Melinda.”
Anna marched to the door and made a show of standing alongside Melinda. If Curt thought he was going to get his mitts on anything in Melinda’s house, he was going to get an earful about this friend of hers who just happened to be a detective with the Elk Park Police. Melinda had been told the moving vans would arrive in the morning, and for the morning they would have to wait.
“What a surprise,” Curt said, acknowledging Anna with an embarrassed nod. Whatever he had come to say, it was for Melinda’s ears alone. But that wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps it was Melinda’s broken engagement to her fiancé, or maybe it was because she was alone in the world, as Anna had often felt before meeting Gene, but Anna had grown protective of her and wasn’t about to let anyone from the January Club pressure her in any way.
Grudgingly, Melinda invited Curt in and showed him to the kitchen, and his eyebrows arched in surprise once more when Liz entered and took the chair next to his.
Melinda still nursed her cup of coffee—she had hardly touched it, Anna noticed—but she didn’t offer Curt any. She sat in the chair on his other side and waited for him to speak.
“I wanted to warn you,” he began. He looked from Melinda to Liz and then up at Anna, who was standing next to Liz rather than sitting at the table, an advantaged position that appeared to make him uncomfortable. He yanked at the zipper on his wrinkled jacket and nervously dug the fingers of one hand into his haystack of gray hair.
“About what?” Melinda said. Her voice was flat and even, portraying no interest in what Curt was about to say.
Again Curt looked to Anna and Liz. Resigning himself to their involvement in his little talk, he sighed and said, “They’re targeting you. Beverly kept your father safe because, well, because you know.”
“They were having an affair?” Melinda said. “Dating or whatever you want to call it?”
So the depth of Goff’s attachment to her father hadn’t escaped Melinda’s notice, Anna thought. She too had noticed that Beverly alone, of all the club members, seemed truly upset by news of Henry Maxwell’s death.
“Dating, let’s say. But now that both of them are gone, there’s no restraint.”
Anna slid out the last chair and dropped noisily into it, conveying with her body language an insistence that Curt be straight with her. “Who’s targeting Melinda? Give me names.”
“The members, of course. Tanner, Dean, Rose.”
“What about you?”
“I’m here.” Curt punctuated his words by rapping the tabletop with his fist. “I’m talking to you. I’d hardly be warning you about myself.”
“What about Soda Ashbrook?”
Curt frowned and tucked in his chin. “Huh?”
“Tanner’s friend.”
“I don’t know that monkey’s friends.”
“Have you been in this house before?”
“Naturally.”
“In the past couple of days?”
“No, why would I?”
“To steal Henry Maxwell’s things.”
Curt’s jaw dropped. “I don’t steal. What on . . . That’s not . . .”
Curt stuttered and squirmed, and for a second Anna thought he might storm out of the house, but he remained seated, though he bristled with anger. Throw questions at him, see what sticks—it had been worth a try. But he seemed genuinely confused and offended by her questions.
“Well, someone has been stealing from this house,” Melinda said.
“It wasn’t me,” Curt said.
“Then why are my dad’s things ending up in your house and the Prices’ art gallery?”
Curt opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. A smile slanted across his face. “The Prices’ art gallery? Fascinating.”
“What about your house?” Melinda said, refusing to let him off the hook for his own part in the thefts.
“My house is the January Club, and all members’ gifts are on display there.”
“Did my dad give them directly to you? Did he explicitly say, ‘Here, this is for the club’?”
“It doesn’t work like that. He periodically sent gifts in exchange for help from the club.”
“Exchange?” Anna said. In the art gallery, Rose had said something similar. It was more than a fair exchange. “What sort of help did he get in exchange for his so-called gifts?”
Curt leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and gave Anna an oily smile. “You understand what the club is about.”
“No, I don’t,” Anna replied. “You and the other members are coy about it. You say ‘encouragement’ or ‘necromancy’ and leave it at that. Do you prey on the bereaved and lonely? Those who have lost wives—or children? Is that it?”
Once more Curt looked bewildered. “Who better to help with visits from January Man? He appears to those in sorrow, bringing messages of comfort.”
“John Sorrow,” Anna said. “Like John Barleycorn, not a real person.”
“I’ve told you he’s real.”
“I’m a genealogist, and I can’t find anyone by that name who died in Norway in 1749 or was born in Norway forty-six years earlier.”
“Then you’ve missed him. That’s possible, isn’t it?” Curt glared at Melinda. “You know he’s real, don’t you? Why are you so quiet? Speak up.”
“Stop it,” Melinda said. “You may have done this to my father, but you will not do it to me.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got it in your blood,” Curt said.
“It was my imagination.”
“Then how did you know who he was?”
“It was my imagination,” Melinda repeated. “Wasn’t it, Anna?”
Anna rose to her feet. “Knock it off, Curt. I know why the club preys on people who have lost love ones. Or jobs or promotions to editor in chief at the Elk Park Herald.”
Curt gaped.
“They’re vulnerable,” Anna continued, hoping her comment about the Herald would shock Curt enough to keep him from pursuing his conversation with Melinda. She gathered coffee cups from the table, set them clanging in the sink, then opened and closed the cabinet where the coffee was stored. Everything she could think of, every noise she could make, to distract Melinda. “And they’ll take comfort where they can find it, even when they know better than to get involved with the occult. They’re desperate.”
“What do you know about the Elk Park Herald?” Curt asked.
Gotcha. “I know that seventeen years ago you wanted the job of editor in chief, and for some reason Henry Maxwell got it instead. It must have seemed unfair. Is that why you’re harassing Melinda? You can’t punish Maxwell so you punish his daughter?”
Curt gave a small, unconvincing laugh and began to fiddle with the zipper on his jacket. In the short time Anna had known him, he had never been without a stinging comeback, and suddenly he had nothing to say. She had exposed what was perh
aps the greatest shame of his life, and she felt a twinge of regret at that. It was the first Melinda had heard of Curt losing the job to her father, and she stared spitefully at him as though she had discovered the ultimate weapon against him—and planned to use it.
It was time to distract Melinda again. “Curt, what do you know about Adrian Armstrong, the former editor in chief?”
“The child molester,” he said quickly, glad for the sudden change in tack. “He resigned after admitting he molested a couple of fourteen-year-old girls at Elk Park High. It wasn’t much of a surprise when it happened. At least not for those of us who worked with him.”
“Beverly Goff was principal then, wasn’t she?”
“She was. She was living in Billings when she got the job. She wanted to live in a small mountain town where nothing ever happens. That’s what she used to say to me. ‘I wanted to live where nothing ever happens.’ Soon after she lands the job, that throwback editor starts the biggest and smelliest scandal in Elk Park history.”
“Not that big of a scandal,” Liz said. “He never went to trial and he quietly resigned.”
“I know,” Curt said. “No one was happy about that, but there were two young girls to consider. If something like that happened today, he’d end up in prison.”
“What happened to the girls?” Liz asked.
“Their parents took them out of state. Utah, Idaho, somewhere.”
Anna heard a muffled text tone and from the corner of her eye saw Liz digging into her coat pocket. She decided to ask Curt one last question. “Curt.” She paused, waiting until he met her gaze so she could watch for the tiniest flicker of emotion. “Do you know who Jordan Hetrick is?”
“What?”
Not who, but what. It was an instantaneous, reflexive answer—one meant to buy a few seconds while he settled on the appropriate expression and came up with the right words. Anna said nothing.
“He’s the fellow who was murdered around New Year’s Day, right?”
The Club (Anna Denning Mystery Book 4) Page 11