Murder & Sullivan

by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  I could have found it. Andrew told me the old quarry hole was out this way. That’s why I knew he might do such a dumb-fool thing as dive into it.

  “Come on, Virgil. Take me back or I’ll drive it myself.” She ran back to the truck and was halfway across the storage divider to the driver’s seat before she saw that he’d taken the keys with him. She scrambled back to the passenger door and down out of the truck. Not that she expected him to hand his keys over to her—putting them in the ignition and driving her back would be plenty good enough.

  Virgil jumped down off the stone. She heaved a sigh of relief and was starting to get back in when out of the corner of her eye she saw him stoop down and pick up a good-sized rock. But when she turned toward him, he turned away, so that his body hid his right hand from her. The shotgun crooked under his left arm was pointed safely down at the ground. What on earth was he up to?

  “Joan, you’d better come see this,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. He leaned over the rock-strewn rim and waved with the gun for her to do the same, like the witch telling Gretel to check the oven.

  “It was you!” Her hand flew to her mouth, but the words were already out.

  You brought me out here to get rid of me. You got rid of Zach so you could brain me with that rock and throw me in to drown. You’re not going to shoot me, or you would have done it by now. You want it to look like an accident. It’ll be Zach’s word against yours, and the way you’ve bad-mouthed him I don’t know why the police would believe him. They’ll believe you, instead. Why wouldn’t they? I did. When I think of how I taught the children they should never go with anyone who told them Mommy needed them, not unless he used our secret family word … Andrew couldn’t give the word underwater, but I could have checked some other way. All I had to do was call the police, but I climbed into your truck without asking a soul whether you were telling me the truth. I’ll bet Zach didn’t push Andrew. Maybe he’s not even hurt. I’m the one in danger. Rebecca would kill me if she knew, except that you’re going to beat her to it.

  While her mind raced, her feet were putting the truck between her and the shotgun, just in case she was wrong about that, too. Crouched behind the truck, she gauged the distance to the stacked quarry blocks on her left and ran for them, dodging trees and shrubs on the way.

  The ground was uneven, made more so by smaller stones and fragments that had been dumped in piles here and there. Old grass caught her ankles and greenbriar scratched her bare arms and face. Her bad ankle, which had been doing fine in town, jabbed her with new sharpness the first time her foot turned on an unexpected hummock, and kept jolting her with every step. She heard Virgil calling her, but she didn’t slow down to look back.

  At last she slipped into the maze of stones taller than she was. Overhead, the next layer blocked out the sun, except for bright cracks between the stones. She could stand upright in this man-made cave with slanting holes and rows of wide grooves drilled in its walls. Even as she twisted and turned her way through it, Virgil’s voice seemed to be coming closer, calling her name. Reaching the other side, she peered out from between two huge blocks, but the truck was invisible. She saw only the dam that separated the two quarry holes. From this angle, it looked just wide enough and flat enough to walk across. The trees on the bank would hide her until she reached the open stretch in the middle, and the water spilling over it would cover any noise she might make. Once on the other side, she could disappear into the woods.

  She tested her painful ankle gingerly, hoping it was the same old injury, and that she wasn’t doing some new kind of damage by walking on it. It didn’t matter. She had to. She wished for sneakers and considered taking off her sandals. The dam looked slippery—the stone was covered with algae—but the rough stones might cut her bare feet, and if nothing else, the straps gave a little support to that ankle. No time to hesitate—Virgil was gaining on her. She kept the sandals.

  Abandoning the comparative safety of the quarry blocks took all the courage she could muster. She had to, that was all there was to it. She made her feet pound the few yards to the bank as if her ankle weren’t killing her. Now she couldn’t hear Virgil at all over the waterfall’s music. Either he was in the maze and the stones muffled the sound of his voice, or he’d quit calling and might actually be much closer. Her heart was thudding loudly in her ears.

  I have to.

  When she put her good foot out onto the dam the surprisingly frigid water took her breath away. The stone that appeared so near the water’s surface actually lay just below it. For the first time she realized that water was flowing over the whole dam, not just at the obvious waterfall at the center. Cautiously, she stood on that foot and brought her sore one forward. Maybe the cold would numb the ankle. She inched forward on the slick surface. Could she keep her balance when she couldn’t trust that ankle? Ahead of her, rippled by light wind, the water in both quarry holes reflected the stand of pines on the far side. She looked down at the water at her feet, greenish blue on the right, above the dam, greenish gray on the left, below it. She couldn’t see the bottom, or the hazards lurking there. Maybe it would be safer to crawl across.

  She risked glancing back. No sign of Virgil. Good. And then she spotted the cave. Half-hidden by shrubs and the roots of a sycamore, it opened into the bank she had just left, a couple of feet above the level of the water in the lower quarry hole. It looked big enough to hide her.

  I’d better do it. I’m never going to make it across the dam before Virgil catches up with me.

  Virgil, in sturdy boots, would be able to march across the dam without blinking. She knew she’d been fooling herself to think she could outrun him an inch at a time. Even so, it was all she could do to make herself turn back toward him. She managed the slippery turn and the few steps back to the bank. Still no Virgil. With a feeling of déjà vu, she slid down off the edge of the muddy bank, hanging onto bushes as she went, crawled over the exposed roots of the sycamore, swung her feet around them and into the cave, and lay panting on the cave floor.

  The floor of the cave was a limestone shelf several feet below the water level of the higher quarry hole. The red mud of its walls and ceiling must have eroded to form the cave at some earlier time, before the dam was built. The dam had lowered the water in the second hole and exposed the entrance.

  She couldn’t stand up, but it didn’t matter. She’d be invisible from the bank and could crawl in far enough to be invisible even from the dam. It would buy her time to think.

  If he doesn’t hear me breathing.

  At first she herself could hear little else, and fought to control it. Gradually her respiration slowed, the pounding in her ears subsided, and she heard the water again, and the birds. Somewhere in the trees outside, two cardinals were threatening to duke it out. Still no sign of Virgil.

  Doubt washed over her.

  Maybe he’s not after me. Maybe he really did see something in the water back there. Maybe he had a perfectly good reason for picking up that rock, and it was just a coincidence that he hid it from me. I blew it up in my own head into a threat that was never there in the first place. Now I’m stuck in a hole in the ground. And I need a toilet.

  You do not, she told herself. You can lie here for hours. And if worse comes to worse, you can just let go and wash in the quarry hole later on, when … But she didn’t know when. When someone came? When she decided it was safe to leave? Virgil couldn’t see her, but she couldn’t see Virgil, either. For all she knew, he was sitting comfortably on the bank above her, waiting for her to emerge. Her arms were already threatening to ache from leaning on the limestone. She pulled her knees up under her and maneuvered herself into an almost comfortable cross-legged sitting position.

  She could last. But why had she been so sure it was Virgil? And what had she meant by that, anyway? The words had popped out of her mouth and she had acted on them without thinking what they implied beyond her own immediate predicament. She tried to think now.

  She’d talked
to Virgil down by the dressing rooms, asked him about Zach. She hadn’t mentioned the awls, she knew she hadn’t. But she had mentioned David. And Henry. How could any of that have set him off like this?

  Suddenly she heard Virgil’s voice quite close. He was still calling her name, but he was also muttering something just too soft for her to catch. Torn between curiosity and fear, she inched forward until she was crouching just inside the mouth of the cave, ready to move again if she had to.

  “Joan!” he called again. And then, sotto voce, “Bitch! Where’d you go?”

  If you only knew.

  She was holding her breath. She heard a splash, and risked looking. Right, left, ahead, no Virgil. A second splash gave him away. Looking straight up, she saw the heels of boots covered by blue jeans. He was standing on the dam, with his back toward her. And he was still holding the rock, huge from this angle.

  “Bitch!” he shouted suddenly, and his voice cracked as it rose. “You’ll never tell them! Never! I killed Putnam and I’m gonna get you, too!”

  Joan stretched out her arm. Not quite long enough. Leaning far out of the cave, she hung onto the sycamore roots with her right hand and stretched her left up through the bushes. She thought again, I have to, reached around a denim-clad leg, and yanked.

  As slick as the dam was, that was all it took. He flew backward, his arms outstretched, and the shotgun and rock made their own separate arcs to splash in the water. Drenched and gasping, Joan clambered back out of the cave and onto the bank, ready to run again. She risked pausing to check on Virgil.

  He lay very still, half on and half off a stone ledge that extended into the water of the lower quarry hole. From the peculiar angle of his left leg, she was sure he wouldn’t be running anywhere for a long time. She thought he might even be dead. Then he opened his eyes.

  “Bitch,” he muttered, and tried to get up, only to grunt with obvious pain. He leaned back on his elbows and glared at her. Relieved, she nonetheless felt responsible.

  “Virgil, you’re hurt. Throw me your keys, and I’ll go for help.”

  “The hell you will.” His eyes blazed.

  “Have it your way.” His injuries didn’t appear to be life threatening. There was nothing else to do but wait. They’d come eventually, she was sure. Even if they didn’t believe Zach, they’d have to check his story.

  She sat down at last. Now maybe she could figure where she’d gone wrong.

  32

  Let us grasp the situation,

  Solve the complicated plot—

  Quiet, calm deliberation

  Disentangles every knot.

  —MARCO, GIUSEPPE, TESSA, GIANETTA, The Gondoliers

  That was how they found her, sitting on the bank dangling her feet in the water above the dam. In the absence of sirens and with the waterfall so close, Joan’s first inkling that help had arrived came when she heard the concerned voice of a young woman.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  Joan swiveled her head to see a young blonde officer in uniform blues standing over her.

  “Yes. But he’s not.” She pointed down at Virgil, who was mumbling something she couldn’t understand.

  “Is he armed?” the officer asked softly.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Over here!” the young woman called out, and started down the rough slope around the end of the lower quarry hole.

  Arriving in a nice-looking tan suit, Detective Terry watched her, too. He smiled down at Joan, who patted the grass behind her for the sandals she had set out to dry.

  “Time was, I would’ve torn holes in my new suit to beat her down there. But it looks like he’ll keep.”

  “That’s kind of what I thought.” She accepted the warm brown hand he offered and stood up, her sandals dangling from her left hand. “Don’t let me get mud on you—I must be a mess.” Then she remembered—how could she have forgotten, even for a moment? “Tell me about my son. Is he all right?”

  Terry looked blank.

  “He’s fine. He’s worried about you.” It was Fred, coming around the quarry blocks. “Terry, ask the dispatcher to lift the signal and call her son.” Mud and all, Joan ran into his arms. She hardly felt her ankle, or the stubble digging into her still-bare feet. He hugged her hard. “If he’d hurt you …” he said into her ear, and kissed it.

  “Oh, Fred, I was so scared.”

  “Me, too.” He was holding her away from him now, checking her over. “Thank God you’re okay. Andrew called me,” he said, and the crinkles around his eyes reassured her more than mere words could have. “Zach Yoder told him he thought he saw you being abducted.”

  “Zach showed up here, but Virgil turned a shotgun on him. Virgil told me Zach pushed Andrew into the quarry, and you sent him to find me.”

  “Ah.” The crinkles again.

  “Oh, Fred, I believed him!” she said. “I came with him, but when no one was here, and he wouldn’t take me back, I got scared. Then, when he picked up a big rock, I knew something was wrong. I got away, and, well, he’s still down there.” She pointed to where Ketcham was picking his way down to the quarry hole, and Fred nodded.

  “So you weren’t calling me about Shoals?” He was still holding her hand, as if he was afraid to let her go.

  “How did you …?”

  “The desk said a woman had been calling for me, and Andrew said you had something you wouldn’t tell anyone but me.”

  “Oh. But that was about Zach. At least, that’s what I thought then.” She told him about finding the extra awl in Zach’s tools. “Zach knew I saw it. I figured he thought I wouldn’t know why it was important. But maybe he’s the one who didn’t know.”

  “He didn’t …?”

  “Virgil put it there, not Zach. Virgil was backstage, and he was involved with building those picture frames, too. He could go anywhere without being noticed. Remember, I first thought the killer might have dropped the weapon into David’s toolbox? Only there wasn’t any awl in David’s tools. I think that’s because Virgil took it out of David’s tools to kill him and dropped it into Zach’s tools, then, or some other time. It wasn’t enough to hide the thing, he had to set Zach up. He was chewing Zach out when they were on my front porch the other day—it could have been then.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Unless I’m all wrong again, it’s still in Zach’s tools. And I’ll bet a cookie it matches David’s.” That would be easy to establish since the police had David’s toolbox. “Zach and Walt and I all handled it, but maybe Virgil left his prints on it, too. Maybe there’s even blood on it. I couldn’t say anything last night, of course.”

  Fred nodded. Two more OPD cars pulled up, and men hopped out. He waved them toward the quarry hole and turned back to Joan.

  “You thought Yoder had killed Putnam, and you were going to tell me.”

  “Yes.” It had made such good sense at the time. Now she felt foolish, but safe, with her hand in Fred’s.

  “Why would that make Shoals go after you?”

  “I think he thought I knew more than I did, or maybe that I would give too much away without actually knowing what I was doing. He’s had his eye on me for some time, and when I asked him about Zach, I must have said too much. While I was hiding, when he thought I couldn’t hear him, he said he was going to kill me the way he did David.”

  “Whaaat? Are you sure?”

  “I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘You’ll never tell them! I killed Putnam and I’m gonna get you, too!’ Fred, he was bragging about it.”

  “He was, was he?” Fred looked happier than she’d seen him since the murder. “He had opportunity, all right, and access to the weapon. But why? He was Putnam’s builder.”

  “I’ve almost figured that part out, but I need to ask Zach something. Could we do that?”

  “Sure. Soon as I go settle this guy’s hash.” His face turned grim.

  “You’re going to arrest him?”

  “You bet, thanks to you. Then we’ll ev
acuate him to the hospital and post an officer to keep an eye on him.”

  While Fred went off, Joan sat on the dry grass and buckled on her damp sandals. She had soaked her feet clean, but the sun was rapidly hardening the red clay on her clothes. She’d ask Fred to take her home first. Much as she wanted to talk to Zach, she wanted even more to see Andrew. If he was half as worried about her as she had been about him, he shouldn’t have to wonder another minute. Clean clothes would be a bonus.

  Several more cars arrived, including two with Alcorn County Sheriff’s Department on the side, and one from the Indiana State Police, all with lights flashing.

  In a few minutes Fred was back.

  “Let’s go. They don’t need me. They’ll have to wait for a basket to haul him up. He’s still shooting off his mouth about Putnam, and cussing you out something awful. I’m afraid he’s not too comfortable.” The set of his jaw and the malicious twinkle in his eye suggested that his true feelings would have been expressed in words he either didn’t consider professional or didn’t want her to hear. Was it because he knew Virgil was the murderer he’d been seeking? Or—and it gave her a silly little flutter to think it—was it because Virgil had put her in danger?

  Fred handed her into the police car with the kind of solicitude she thought cops reserved for little old ladies. But the kiss he gave her while he fastened her seat belt was anything but solicitous.

  “I was sure we’d lost you,” he murmured in her ear. “I don’t think I could have stood it.” And he kissed her again before closing her door and coming around to the driver’s seat. He turned on his siren to clear a path through the crowd of police and civilian vehicles that continued to arrive. At last she was on her way home. Fred patted her hand except during the worst curves.

  “So,” he said while negotiating the road that had terrified her when Virgil was at the wheel, even while she still trusted him, “why do you think Shoals wanted to set Yoder up?”