A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  Doug had been hiding in the bedroom the whole time Rex was there, and he never knew it.

  Rex froze.

  While he watched in horror from the bathroom, Doug ordered Tricia to take the necklace as a last gift from him. Telling him all the while that she did love him, she did what he asked and put the necklace on.

  Doug did not believe her. He turned the gun on himself. Tricia grabbed the revolver.

  Too shocked to move, Rex watched while the boy and girl struggled for the weapon.

  The gun went off.

  For a moment, Rex was unsure who the bullet struck.

  Then, he saw Tricia fall onto the sofa.

  Doug lost what little sanity he had left.

  Rex ran to the Barlow house to get Phyllis. Together, they cleaned up the Wheeler home. He also cleaned up any evidence that he had been there so that no one would know he was a witness. Not wanting Dorothy Wheeler to find her daughter sprawled out on the sofa with her skirt askew, Rex laid her out with her head on a pillow.

  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that it occurred to Rex to use what he knew to get Phyllis to marry him. He believed that over time, he could make her love him.

  He was not a good provider and she had to quit school to get a full-time job to support them both.

  Her resentment made Rex depressed, and he drank more. When he drank, he got mean and, more than once, he was arrested. If it wasn’t for a bar fight, it was for beating Phyllis.

  Then, when her parents were killed in a car accident, and she and her brother were left with the farm, Phyllis announced that she wanted a divorce. She was taking Doug and moving out of the area.

  Rex risked losing her forever.

  That was when the devil knocked on his door.

  One night, he backed into a parked sports car at the convenience store and cracked its fender.

  It was Margo Boyd’s car. At that time, she was a dentist’s wife who dabbled in real estate. His car insurance had been canceled because of his accidents and DUIs long ago. He offered to have her car fixed.

  The next day, she offered him a job. When he asked her what kind of job, she asked him to meet her at a vacant house. Rex hoped that if he got a good job, Phyllis would be convinced to stay. So he met with Margo.

  Here, the plot turned sinister.

  Margo needed to have something done and if he did not go along she would turn him in for a hit and run. She had a doctor lined up to say she was injured, even though she was inside the store buying cigarettes at the time of the accident. He could do this job for her, and she would hire him to renovate the houses she wanted to buy and make it possible for him to buy a house for his wife.

  Her offer, simply put, was a job, a house, and his wife, or jail. Rex felt he had no choice. He had to kill Dan Boyd.

  According to the book, Margo had found out through a real estate friend that her husband was going back to his first wife. If he left her, she would have nothing to invest in her business. If her husband was killed, then the savings accounts would be hers, plus she would have his life insurance.

  She told Rex when and how she wanted the deed accomplished. It was to be done on the same night in which she was throwing a dinner party. That way she would have an alibi.

  On the night of the murder, Rex drank heavily while he waited inside his truck for the receptionist to leave. There was no way he could kill a man sober. He bought a pair of work gloves so he would not leave fingerprints. He would get rid of them after the murder. He would use the dentist’s scalpel so the murder would have no connection to him.

  His plan was to go in, do it, mess up the place, take whatever pills he could find, and get out as fast as he could. Then, the police would think it was a drug fiend’s crime.

  Speed, he concluded, was essential.

  Rex called Dan from the pay phone right after the receptionist left to cancel his appointment, which he had made to insure the dentist would be in his office that night. Then, working to stay steady on his feet, Rex went up to Dr. Boyd’s office to kill him.

  He described it all as happening in a drunken fog. He went into the office to which he had never been before, and the man he had never seen before appeared in the doorway of his examination room to greet the unexpected visitor.

  Dan Boyd smiled at his killer when he asked if he could help him. Rex said nothing when he stepped up to his victim, grabbed him by the throat, and pushed him back into the examination room.

  The dentist put up a fight, but Rex had at least fifty pounds on him and was about ten years younger. Once he pinned Dan down onto the dental chair, Rex went after him with the razor-sharp scalpel.

  “Why are you doing this?” Dan cried out. “At least tell me why you are doing this?” He begged when he saw that there was no saving himself.

  Rex owed the man an explanation. He had a right to know. It was the only thing he said during the murder and the words echoed in his drunkenness.

  “Because your wife told me I had to.”

  “Margo!”

  Rex nodded before plunging the scalpel into his throat and cutting it open with one slice. He heard a gurgle and his victim slumped down onto the chair.

  Wasting no time, Rex grabbed any pills he could find, rushed from the office, and never looked back.

  To show her thanks, Margo Boyd offered Phyllis and Doug seventy-five thousand dollars for their farm and offered to sell them a house on two acres in Birch Hollow for eighty thousand dollars. Phyllis, who never knew about her husband’s deed, didn’t question why Margo would offer seventy-five thousand for a seven-acre farm the tax assessor said was worth fifty thousand and sell them a house for eighty thousand, which the original owner sold the real estate agent for a hundred thousand. It was too good a deal to pass up. At least that was what the bank vice-president, who happened to be Margo’s mother, said when she approved their application for a five-thousand dollar mortgage. Margo gave him a construction job renovating the houses she bought with her late husband’s insurance money.

  Thinking that her husband had grown up, Phyllis chose to stay.

  Rex got what he’d always wanted.

  Here, his book could have ended, but it didn’t. He went on to tell the price he paid for killing Dan Boyd.

  Rex did not have the heart of a killer.

  Not a day went by that Dan Boyd’s killer did not think about his victim. He tried to drown with alcohol the image of his victim gazing up at him from his dental chair, asking him why he was doing this to him, and the sound of him drowning in his own blood.

  His guilt over the murder he committed to save his marriage ruined it. In the end, Rex Rollins lost his family and his soul—he lost it all.

  The fire in the fireplace was out when Joshua finished reading the last fragmented sentence of Rex’s masterpiece. He turned the page and rested his head back on the headrest of his wing-backed chair. He observed the time on the mantel clock. The next day was Thanksgiving, and the courthouse would be closed. He would have to wait another thirty hours to get the warrant for Margo Sweeney Boyd Connor’s arrest.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Joshua Thornton waited until he had all his ducks lined up before sending Sheriff Curt Sawyer and his deputies out to Margo Connor’s real estate office to arrest her for three counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Grace Henderson, Rex Rollins, and Bella Polk.

  As he expected, Christine Watson had her client playing the mother in mourning to the hilt to the media in front of the courthouse after she was arraigned. She was dressed all in black with her bosom concealed behind a high collar. A wide-brimmed black hat adorned her head.

  Joshua was cast in the role of the heartless politician.

  She continued to play the victim when they met in the conference room in his office for what is calle
d a discovery meeting, in which he told the defense attorney, as ordered by law, what he had against her client.

  Christine scoffed at the two witnesses who were going to testify that Margo paid them, one with real estate and the other with jewelry, to eliminate the victims. It was their word against hers. “My client is a pillar of the community. She herself has supplied employment for hundreds of people. She is a generous contributor to local charities. Who is going to believe that my client is capable of, or would have any reason to arrange, the murder of three people?”

  “Including her daughter’s teenaged rival,” Joshua said distaste.

  “If anyone arranged for that girl to kill that cheerleader it was Heather, and she is dead.”

  Margo didn’t flinch while her lawyer tossed up her dead daughter as a murder suspect to save Margo’s skin.

  “We checked with your client’s secretary,” he told Christine. “Nicki Samuels did show up one afternoon with Heather. When your client came in that same morning, she was carrying a jewelry box. One day after Grace was killed; your client filed a report with the police and insurance company that her ruby ring was stolen.”

  “Heather stole the ring and gave it to Nicki for killing Grace.”

  “Why did your client show her the ring?”

  “Because they asked to see it. She didn’t know what Heather was thinking,” Christine countered. “Face it, Josh, you can’t prove that a word of what Nicki says is true. They were fighting over this boy. Margo hardly knew him. Why would she get involved?”

  “Because her daughter wanted something, and Grace stood in her way. Your client taught her that if something gets in your way, you get rid of it, even if that something is your husband.”

  “Do you mean Rollins’ novel? Let me remind you of the difference between fiction and non-fiction,” Christine said with a smug smile. “By the time we are through in court, if you can even get that pack of vengeful lies admitted into evidence, the jury will surely know the difference.”

  “Oh, I intend to prove that every word of it is true. Phyllis Rollins is ready to testify that she accepted your client’s extremely generous offer for her parents’ farm.”

  Christine countered, “And years later my client made back that investment with a housing development she built on that land.”

  Joshua said, “Your client also sold Rex Rollins a house for twenty thousand less than your client paid for it. Rex claims in his book that it was payment for killing Margo’s first husband.” He gestured toward Margo. “That is the motive for your client hiring Herb Duncan to kill Rex. If the book is a lie, why would Margo hire Herb to kill Rollins in exchange for the same deal: buying his property for well over its worth and selling him a new house in her latest development for a fraction of its value?”

  He slapped the forensics accountant’s report onto the center of the conference table. “Our accounting people went back twenty years, before the time of Boyd’s murder. The only times your client ever lost money on a deal was when her husband died and when Rollins was murdered.”

  Christine was unfazed. “Two mistakes, in all her years of doing business, are pretty damn good. Donald Trump has made more mistakes than that in his career.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  Christine stood up. “Then I will be awaiting your dismissal of the charges.”

  “That’s why I checked out every word of Rollins’ book . . . and I found his mistake.”

  “His mistake? That proves the whole book is a lie.” She slung her purse over her shoulder.

  “Pros make sure their victim is dead before they leave the scene.” Joshua turned to Margo. “Your husband was not dead when Rex left. That gave him the opportunity to tell us exactly who had him killed.”

  Christine stopped and looked at him.

  Margo’s expression of grief gave way to one of curiosity.

  Her attorney lowered herself back into her chair. After regaining her composure at the announcement, Christine objected, “If Boyd left a dying message, why are you telling us this now? Why wasn’t Margo arrested when her first husband was killed?”

  “Because no one bothered checking to see if he left a message.”

  Joshua took the case file for Dan Boyd’s murder out of his briefcase. He laid out the crime-scene pictures on the conference table. The top picture was of Dan Boyd’s body lying behind the receptionist’s desk. The corner of the keyboard on the desk was in plain sight. There were also photographs of Margo’s wedding picture sitting on his desk. It was bloodstained. There were other pictures of blood splatters on the walls and a trail of blood on the floor and carpet.

  “This murder happened in 1988. Forensics has come a long way since that time. The detective in charge of the case thought that your husband was trying to go for help when he died behind the receptionist’s desk. Rex said in his book that he was so anxious to get out of there that he didn’t think that your husband might be alive, let alone be able to say who did it.”

  “Did he write a note?” Christine wanted to know.

  “No,” Joshua answered. “Rex said in his book that he called to cancel his appointment, which was the last one of the day. Boyd was getting ready to leave. He had locked up his desk in which he kept prescription pads, thus, locking up his pens and pencils.”

  Joshua paused to see how what he was telling them was affecting them. Silent, Margo stared at him.

  “Your husband,” he said, “had a very short time to live and he was not going to waste it getting to the hospital to die without saying who was responsible for his murder.”

  “Rollins killed him,” Christine argued. “He said so in his book. Why would he say my client did it if she was giving a dinner party at home?”

  “Because Rex told him. He said so right in his book. It was the only conversation they had. Boyd asked him why he was killing him, and Rex said ‘your wife told me I had to do it.’ ”

  Christine stated what they knew was not true, but salable to a jury. “Rollins was lying when he told Boyd that.”

  Joshua shrugged and laughed. “Why would he? Rex was not a drug user. Drugs were stolen. He was never arrested for dealing. He was not known in the drug circles. He was a drinker. He had no beef with the victim, nor had he ever met Boyd.”

  He pointed to Christine’s client while he told the lawyer, “Margo had a beef with the victim. Rex says in his book that she told him her motive for wanting her husband dead. He was going back to his wife and taking his money with him. Eve Boyd is available to testify that that was true. So—” He held up a finger to stop her before she could say it. “—when you try to make a case for Rex meaning Boyd’s first wife, she had no motive. We have witnesses to testify that Boyd had told them that he was leaving Margo.”

  Putting on a face of determination, Christine gestured for him to continue. “Humor me! How did Boyd leave this dying message when he could not talk and had no pen or paper?”

  Joshua gestured to the pictures of the crime scene. “Well, at first, I thought, like the original detective investigating his murder, that the blood splatters in the dental office were from the struggle. But then, using today’s knowledge and technology, we had an expert look at these pictures and got a different story, which Rex’s book confirmed.”

  Joshua said, “The blood-splatter expert took up the story from when Rex left the scene after slicing through your husband’s throat in the examination room.”

  While Joshua told the story, he pointed to each picture in the series. “Boyd got up from the chair and went into his office. If you look at the pictures, you see that the blood is shooting out, but not splashed against the walls, as it would be if there was a struggle going on at the time. He was alone and moving. In the office, he went to his desk.”

  The prosecutor held up the picture of his desk. “Notice on the de
sk he has two pictures. One is of his son. There is no blood on that. The other is a wedding picture of his bride. Notice all the bloody fingerprints on that.”

  “He picked up the picture of his wife while he was dying.” Christine shrugged. “How many soldiers on the battlefield clutch the picture of their wives to their chests as they die?”

  “He knew you were going to say that!” Joshua smiled at Margo. “I realized what was going through your husband’s mind when I found out that he was an Agatha Christie fan. I had seen the pictures and couldn’t make any sense of it. Then Eve told me that he had all of Christie’s books. So I asked myself, ‘What would an Agatha Christie fan do in that circumstance?’ Boyd thought, ‘Get his bloody fingerprints all over her picture.’ But then, you have to remember that this case would go before today’s courts.” He gestured to the defense attorney. “You’d say his putting his fingerprints on her picture was an act of love. So he had to make his message crystal clear.”

  More in an attempt to intimidate him than out of disgust, Christine rolled her eyes while Joshua, amused by her annoyance, reached down under the table and held up a bloodstained keyboard wrapped in a plastic bag.

  Her face fell. “He sent an e-mail?”

  “This was before the Internet,” Joshua said.

  “He typed it out on the computer?” she scoffed. “If he did that then they would have arrested my client before now.”

  “The computer wasn’t on.” He fingered the keyboard. “Luckily for us, every fingerprint he left on this keyboard, and each one was blood covered, was recorded at the time. However, it was not recorded the way he meant for it to read. Now—”

  For the first time since the interview began, Margo spoke, “Dan didn’t know anything about computers.”

  “But he could type.” In response to their looks of confusion, Joshua continued, “He typed out the name of his killer on the keyboard.”