“No problem.” She winced. Besides the gash, she had a strong feeling she’d have a few bruises following her tackle. “Hitting that guy was like ramming an oak tree trunk. Have you questioned him yet?”
Pete pressed the end of the self-sticking bandage onto itself. “No. I left him with some of your coworkers to get cleaned up and calmed down. I’m headed over there now.”
“Do you think there’s any chance the guy’s wife wasn’t really inside?” She squinted at the burning heap, barely recognizable as a structure.
“Can’t think of any other reason for a man to want to be a French fry.”
She cringed at having her own insensitive words tossed back at her. “Sorry.”
The corner of Pete’s mouth twitched. “The curse of anyone on the front lines. A sick sense of humor.” He motioned toward the jumpsuit on the ambulance floor. “The coroner hasn’t arrived yet, so you might want to be there when I question Frenchy. Get changed out of those wet clothes. I’ll wait.”
Inside the ambulance’s patient compartment, Zoe made quick work of stripping from her soaked barn clothes and stepped into the Vance Township Police Department’s jumpsuit. One size fits all. Provided the wearer was over six-foot and weighed at least two hundred pounds. Zoe rolled up the sleeves and cuffed the bottom of the legs. There wasn’t much she could do about the rest of the extra fabric.
She opened Medic Two’s rear door to find more fire equipment had arrived from the neighboring borough of Phillipsburg and Mt. Prospect Township. A white Ford extended cab pickup with a West Penn Gas emblem on the door rumbled up the hill, picking its way through the emergency vehicles.
Zoe found Pete next to his SUV, coordinating efforts with the state troopers and county officers. He spotted her and waved her closer. The other men moved off to handle their assignments.
“Let’s go,” Pete said to her.
The man Zoe had intercepted had also received a fire hose shower. They found him wrapped in a blanket and shivering on the jump seat inside Medic Three flanked by two paramedics who were checking him over and patching up a scrape on his jaw.
One of the medics completed his assessment and climbed out. He jabbed Zoe with his elbow. “Nice tackle there, Chambers. Next time we play football, you’re on my team.”
Zoe made a face. “Very funny, Barry. How is he?”
“Physically, the guy’s in good shape. Vitals are slightly elevated, but considering…” Barry Dickson shrugged. “Emotionally, he’s a wreck.”
Zoe thanked her coworker, and he ambled off.
Pete leaned into the ambulance. “Sir? Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
The second paramedic pressed a final piece of tape onto the bandage and excused himself.
The man turned toward Pete and Zoe. Devoid of the mud, torment plastered his suntanned face. Zoe guessed he was about her age, although at the moment anguish piled on at least a dozen years.
“Has anyone seen my wife?” His husky voice carried a hint of a southern upbringing. “Maybe she got out.”
Pete put a foot on the back bumper and used his knee as a desk for his notebook. “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Lill.” The man choked. “Lillian Farabee.”
Pete looked up. “Farabee? Are you Holt Farabee?”
The man’s eyes widened. “Yes. Did you locate her? Is she okay?”
Pete shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I was under the impression you and your family had been evicted.”
Zoe shot a look at Pete. “Evicted?”
He nodded in her direction.
Holt Farabee steeled his shoulders, but his eyes didn’t reflect the bravado. “Who told you that?”
“One of your neighbors. I asked him if anyone was in the house, and he told me the place was vacant.”
Farabee deflated. He twisted the gold band on his left ring finger. “I guess it’s no use trying to hide it anymore. Yeah. The bank seized our house. But I kept a key.”
“No one changed the locks?” Zoe asked
Farabee gave her a puzzled scowl. “No.” He dragged the word out until it sounded like a question rather than an answer.
Pete jotted a note. “How long ago did you move out?”
“About three weeks, I guess.”
“And when did you move back in?”
“A few days later.”
Zoe climbed in beside him, taking the seat vacated by Barry Dickson.
Farabee stared at his wedding band. “We had no place else to go. No family around here. We couldn’t afford to keep living out of a motel.”
Fire Chief Yancy bustled past and did a double take when he spotted Pete. “There you are. Just wanted you to know we have the fire contained. It’ll still be a while before we get it completely out and can get in there to recover the remains, though.”
Zoe stifled a groan. Yancy wasn’t known for his tact.
“Thanks, Yance,” Pete said through a tight jaw.
Yancy waved, oblivious to the fact the husband of the remains in question was sitting there. “No problem.”
As the fire chief strode away, Holt Farabee let out a strangled groan and doubled over, burying his face in his hands. “Oh dear Lord. I’ve killed my wife.”
Three
Pete checked his notes while he waited for Holt Farabee to regain his composure. Zoe had draped an arm over the man’s shoulders and was patting him in the uncomfortable manner of one trying to soothe a complete stranger.
Farabee scrubbed his face with the back of one arm and tried to lean back in the ambulance’s bench seat, but whacked his head on the overhead storage bins. He muttered a curse then said, “I’m sorry.”
Pete wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for swearing, for making Pete wait to continue his questions, or for killing his wife. “Sir, do you want to clarify your last statement?”
Farabee rubbed the knot on the back of his head. “What?”
“You said you killed your wife.”
He froze. “Oh. No, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it’s my fault. I mean…”
Pete thought Farabee was about to double over again, but he drew a deep breath and met Pete’s gaze.
“I mean,” Farabee said, obviously choosing his words with great care, “she’s dead because I moved her back into the house. We weren’t legally supposed to be here. But I wanted to fight the eviction order.” He paused, twirling his wedding ring on his finger. “I told her they’d take the house over my cold, dead body. Mine. Not hers.”
“I understand you have a daughter.”
Farabee nodded. “Maddie. Madison.” He slouched down in the jump seat, apparently having learned his lesson about the storage bin, and let his head drop back against the wall. “Dear God. How am I gonna tell Maddie about her mom?”
“Where is Maddie now?”
A troubled scowl crossed Farabee’s face as he stared at nothing in particular.
Pete had a feeling there was a lot more happening behind the man’s eyes than he was letting on. “Mr. Farabee?”
He blinked. “Yes?”
“Your daughter? Where is she?” Pete hoped the girl hadn’t been with the mother.
“She’s with a friend from school. I dropped her off earlier.”
Zoe, who’d been listening to the interview in silence, shifted in her seat to face Farabee. “Why did you take her to visit her friend today?”
Pete contained a smile. Zoe was thinking the same thing as he was.
“What do you mean?” Farabee asked.
“Is this a regular play date? Why today?”
He seemed clueless. “Lill had a job interview in Brunswick. I had a call about giving an estimate on an addition.” His jaw tightened, and again Pete had a strong sense the man was holdi
ng back. A lot.
“An addition?” Zoe prodded.
A flash of anger in his eyes quickly faded. “I’m a carpenter. Unemployed carpenter. Someone phoned about having me put a new addition on their house. I thought this might be the job to bail us out of this mess. But when I got to the address he’d given me, there was nothing there. I tried calling the guy back. Figured I’d gotten the address wrong. But there was no answer. No answering machine. Nothing.”
If Farabee was attempting to create an alibi for himself, he sucked at it. “Do you have the guy’s name and number?” Pete asked.
Farabee shifted in his seat and reached into his pocket. “The name was Smith.” He pulled out a phone and tapped the screen once, then twice. He turned it over in his hand and pressed a button. With a loud sigh, he said, “I guess it’s not waterproof. I’ve got everything written down in my car if you need it.”
“I do.”
Farabee studied his lifeless phone. “I need to go pick up Maddie. I don’t want her finding out about her mom from someone else.”
“I’ll have one of my men take you.” Farabee was in no condition to be behind a wheel. Pete noted the name of the family who was babysitting the daughter before directing Seth to escort Farabee and retrieve the information on “Smith.”
As Seth and Farabee drove away in one of the Vance Township cruisers, Zoe hopped down from the patient compartment and stood at Pete’s side. “I think I’ve been hanging around you too much,” she said.
Startled, Pete shot her a questioning glance. “Why?”
She motioned after the departing Holt Farabee. “Because here we have a man in obvious agony over a horrible tragedy, and all I can wonder is why he’s already so sure his wife’s dead when her body hasn’t been recovered yet.”
“You’re starting to think like a cop.”
Zoe gave an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, crap. Just shoot me now.”
Pete had a few more questions for Stephen Tierney. Key among them—how could he have missed the fact that the evicted Farabee family had moved back in? But Tierney was no longer part of the looky-loo crowd. Pete made his way to the house Tierney owned, hidden behind an eight foot tall wooden slat privacy fence.
Behind the fence was a fashionably oversized, cookie-cutter two story house, faced in brick and swathed in beige vinyl siding, same as the other four remaining homes. The lawn was pristine green turf bordered with expertly groomed landscaping. Of course, no one outside the fence could see it.
Tierney answered the door before Pete had a chance to ring the doorbell. “How soon before all those fire trucks are gone? They’re blocking the road, and I have someplace I have to go.”
“And where might that be?”
Tierney eyed Pete as if this were a trick question. After a moment’s deliberation, he apparently decided it was safe to answer. “The airport. I have to fly to Chicago on business.”
Pete thought back to their previous encounters and recalled Tierney worked for one of the conglomerates headquartered in Brunswick. “What kind of business?” Pete tried to keep his voice light, conversational.
The man continued to study Pete. “I’ve told you before I work at Monongahela National Bank.”
Ah. Yes. That was the one. “What time do you have to leave? I can probably help direct you out.”
Tierney relaxed. “Forty-five minutes. No later.”
Pete nodded amiably. “Not a problem. In the meantime, I have a few more questions for you.”
Tierney leaned against his doorjamb and crossed his arms, making it clear Pete would not be invited inside for coffee. “Make it quick. I have to finish packing.”
Pete thumbed through his notebook, but kept his gaze on Tierney. “You told me your neighbors had been evicted.”
“Right.”
“And they’d moved out a month ago.”
“More or less. Yeah.”
“Have you noticed any activity over there since they left?”
“Activity?”
Pete held the man’s gaze and waited.
“What kind of activity?”
Pete shrugged. “Cars coming and going. Lights. Anything.”
Tierney pushed away from the doorjamb. “Are you saying…someone was staying over there?”
“Are you saying you didn’t know?”
“Of course I didn’t know.” He slipped a finger into his collar. “Who?”
“Didn’t you see Holt Farabee running toward the fire a little while ago?”
“No. I came back here right after I spoke to you earlier.” Tierney loosened his collar from his throat. “You mean Holt was staying over there even after being thrown out?”
Tierney’s surprise seemed genuine enough. But something about the man was setting off Pete’s bullshit meter. “Not just Holt.”
“Lillian? And the little girl?”
Pete waited and watched.
“But, you said Holt came in after the fire. So he’s okay. And Lillian and their daughter weren’t home, right?”
“You expect me to believe you haven’t noticed anything suspicious? You haven’t seen lights over there? You haven’t seen their car in the driveway?”
“No. I haven’t.”
Pete took one huge stride closer to Tierney, who was several inches shorter, and glared down at him. “They’re only a hundred or so yards away from here. How could you not notice anything?”
Tierney held his ground and pointed toward the Farabee house. “Look.” When Pete didn’t turn, Tierney said again, “Look.”
This time, Pete obliged. Not only did the eight foot tall fence keep nosy neighbors from seeing Tierney’s exquisite landscaping, it completely blocked the view of the other houses in the development. Pete made a slow pivot, taking in the entire periphery. Not a hint of the farm bordering the property was evident. In fact, Tierney’s lot could have sat smack in the middle of the city, or on the moon for that matter, for all Pete could tell from inside the fence.
“No,” Tierney said. “I did not notice any activity. Now tell me…Lillian and their daughter. They weren’t home, right?”
Pete studied the man. “The daughter is at a friend’s house.”
Tierney appeared to shrink. “And Lillian?”
“She seems to be missing.”
“Oh my God.” Tierney reached out to steady himself against the doorjamb. Tears gleamed in the man’s eyes, and for the first time today, Pete believed Tierney’s reaction was sincere.
Zoe hiked to the highest point of Scenic Hilltop Estates, her feet squishing in her still-wet boots. The lot on the peak of the hill remained vacant and overgrown. She sat down in the weeds, plucking a piece of over-ripe timothy grass, browned from the drought and summer heat, and combed the furry seed head.
At the edge of the next lot, a sign proudly proclaiming the housing development’s name tilted as though a car had run into it. Scenic Hilltop Estates. What a joke. Paved roads looped around the empty pasture. Already, bits of green poked up through cracks in the asphalt. Mounds of reddish-orange clay indicated where additional houses should be, but brown, sun-dried weeds sprouted from the dirt spoke of aborted efforts. Scenic Hilltop Estates had boasted all of six completed homes. Five now. Of those remaining, three had shattered windows and two suffered melted siding from the heat of the fire.
Not so scenic.
Zoe stuck the stalk of timothy between her teeth and chewed on it, releasing a flavor that matched the smell of freshly mown hay. Bees buzzed nearby. A hot breeze whispered through the grass. Idyllic—except for the still-smoldering heap of rubble which had been the Farabee house.
Firefighters continued to pour water on it while several men wearing uniforms from the gas company stood nearby, waiting to sift through the debris.
Was Lillian Farabee i
n there? Zoe shuddered.
She spotted a familiar figure with a familiar gait striding away from a house with a high privacy fence. The kind with the slats so close together, no one could see in. Or out. Why bother living in “Scenic” Hilltop Estates if the only scene you wanted was a wall of wood?
As she watched, Pete stopped on the road, looked around, and headed up the hill toward her.
“What are you doing up here?” Pete asked. “Loafing on the job?”
“I’m not on the job. Everyone who needed medical attention has been treated. Until someone locates a body, there’s nothing else for me to do. I’m off duty today anyhow. So I’m just taking in the view.” She gazed across the valley to the next hillside. “If it weren’t for the trees, you could see my place from here.”
“Did you see the explosion from over there?”
“I felt it.” Zoe told him about working on the colt in the indoor arena when the blast occurred. She didn’t mention her visitor. “Did you get any answers from the neighbor down there in the fort?”
Pete scowled and turned to look down the hill. “Oh. The fort. Yeah. That guy’s an odd one. He’s from Pittsburgh. Moved out here to live in the country, or so he says. But he’s filed at least five complaints against Leroy Moore.”
Now it was Zoe’s turn to scowl. “Leroy?” The quiet, unassuming farmer who owned the bulk of the property between the housing development and the Kroll farm. “What kind of complaints could anyone have against him?”
Pete huffed a short laugh. “The cattle stink. The manure stinks. Moore’s running his tractor too early in the morning or too late at night or too close to the property line. Take your pick.”
She eyed Pete incredulously. “Are you serious? It’s a farm. And it’s been a farm forever. Did the guy not happen to notice it before he bought his property?”
Pete shrugged. “I’ve asked Tierney the same thing. He never gives me much of an answer.” Pete’s expression soured. “Didn’t give me much of one now either. He’s the one who’d told me the Farabees had moved out and the house was empty. I asked him why he never noticed they’d moved back in.”
Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned Page 3