Murder at Stake

by Constance Barker

  Everyone sat at the counter, and Deloris served coffee or soda to them all.

  Brody put his hand on my shoulder. “Just checking out the businesses on Main Street, Miss Howard. Is everybody okay?”

  “We’re all fine, Sheriff, and the place seems to be in one piece.”

  “Well, you’re lucky. The twister touched down on the edge of town, and there’s a lot of wind and lightning damage all around here too. I’m just getting ready to go out and check on the folks where the tornado was on the ground, but I thought I’d check with all the people along the avenue here first.”

  Babs looked at me and gave me a knowing smile, as if to say that Brody was hot for me. He was just a sheriff concerned for the townspeople.

  She handed him a cup of coffee. “Sit down, Sheriff. Relax for a few minutes first.”

  “Well,” he took a sip of the hot beverage with a lot of air to cool it off, “I really should get going...”

  Then a voice came over his walkie-talkie.

  “Sheriff Hayes, you better get out to the west end. There’s a lot of damage here, and there’s a tractor trailer on its side in the ditch. The barn at the Carl Jones farm looks like it’s flattened.”

  Our hearts all stood still when we heard that, and we looked at each other with a sense of fear for our friend. The rain was just a drizzle now, and the sky was hazy. There were tree branches, roof shingles, and a few cautious kitties out in the street.

  The sheriff fumbled for his walkie-talkie. “I’ll be right there, Stan. Are you okay? Did you check on the driver of the truck? Is the road open?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m fine, he’s fine too. There is some standing water in that low area a quarter-mile before the bridge over Paint Creek, but nothing you can’t drive through.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Chapter Four

  “My gosh.” I was a little stunned by the news of the damage at Jonesy’s farm. “Carl just left here right before the siren sounded. “I hope he got home in time to take cover.”

  “They have a storm cellar between the barn and the house, Mercy. I’m sure he and Josie are fine. I have to go.”

  “Sheriff...” I stopped him before he got out the door. “I told Jonesy I would go out there after the storm to pick up some meat and...”

  “Talk to Josie?”

  I nodded. “My car is at Arnie’s waiting for a new U-joint or something like that. I was going to have Babs drive me, but, what with the storm and all we’ll be busy soon, so she has a lot to do here. I was wondering...”

  “Come on. You can ride with me. Grab your sweater.”

  The men all rushed out the door with the Sheriff and me to check on the scene. Red and Smoke jumped into Jake’s big red pickup truck while Deloris and Babs started to get things in order at the diner. Everyone else went home to check on their houses and families.

  The ride was quiet, except for Brody talking to his deputy from time to time.

  “Just wait for me, Stan. We’ll go in together to check on Jonesy when I get there. Five minutes.”

  The wind damage was bad enough in town, but it was terrible once we got across Paint Creek. Some farm houses were missing parts of their roofs, cars were upended, and Charlie Dix’s hay wagon was sitting on his front porch. Hazel waved cheerfully from the front yard as we drove by, and Charlie was already out with his chain saw cutting a fallen tree into firewood.

  I shook my head. “A lot of damage, Brody, but at least things aren’t leveled.”

  He just looked pensively ahead as we approached Jonesy’s long driveway. Then he slowly raised his arm to point toward Jones’s house below the late afternoon sun in the distance. My eye brows slowly raised and I inhaled deeply at the site. A whole section of trees in the wooded area along the farm were lying in a mangled mess on the ground, the fence was flattened, debris everywhere. The farmhouse looked in reasonably undamaged shape, but the barn...was gone.

  “Oh, my God, Brody!” I instinctively put my hand on his firm shoulder and then quickly withdrew it as he turned toward me. “We have to get in there, Sheriff!”

  Stan was in his car at the mouth of the driveway waiting for us and turned on his blue and red lights to lead us down the long winding path to the farmhouse. Red, Smoke, and Jake were right behind us. The minute it took for us to traverse the quarter-mile driveway seemed like an hour.

  We passed a little green Rav4 about half way in or so. “It looks like Jake Junior is here. I hope he’s okay.” I looked back and saw Jake Sr. with his head out the window of his pick-up, staring at his son’s car with a very worried look on his face.

  There was red lumber from the barn strewn all over the property, ripped apart with some jagged sharp fragments sticking into the ground. The Sheriff pointed to a tree on his side of the driveway. I gasped to see a long shard of a two-by-four poking right through the trunk of a poplar tee. Large branches were blocking the way when we got close to the house. The Sheriff stopped and got out of the car. He put on his official hat and put his hands on his hips as he looked around.

  “Looks like a little funnel just sat down on top of the barn and then lifted off again, or there would be even more damage around here than there is.”

  All that was left of the barn, which had stood a couple hundred feet in front of us, was one 8x8 corner post and a patch of concrete where Jonesy used to park his car inside the main barn doors. His car was not there. Maybe he took shelter somewhere before he got home, I hoped.

  The big red pick-up truck pulled up next to us, and the boys all jumped out. Jake led the way, looking desperately for any sign of his son. “There!” He pointed towards a barely visible figure beginning to emerge through the haze near where the barn used to stand. He started running towards the form, which seemed to be a man with his arms raised over his head. Red and Smoke did their best to keep up with the stout construction foreman, but Jake flew like he was in an Olympic dash.

  “I didn’t know that man could move that fast,” we heard Red say as Stan and Brody and I trotted behind them.

  As we got closer I could see that it was Junior, holding his phone above his head to get some pictures of the damage. Then the three men stopped suddenly, a look of terror in their eyes. The Sheriff grabbed my arm to stop me as our eyes slowly went down to see what Junior was aiming his camera at between his feet. I let out a scream and pulled myself close to the Sheriff.

  “It...it’s Jonesy.” Red said.

  We all looked at each other with our jaws on our chest. Jonesy was lying on his back with a wooden stake sticking two feet out of his chest.

  Chapter Five

  Stan knelt beside him and put two fingers on Carl’s carotid artery on his neck to feel for a pulse. He shook his head and then grabbed Jonesy’s wrist. Then he looked up at the Sheriff and slowly shook his head.

  It was clear that Jonesy was dead, but I had to see for myself. “Let me make sure,” I said and took a step toward the body.

  The Sheriff grabbed my arm. “Mercy, you should stand back...go wait in the car.”

  “Sheriff, I was an ER nurse in the city for eight years. I got this.”

  From his expression it was clear that he hadn’t known this part of my history, and he loosened his grip on my wrist. I knelt down, but I could already tell from the dull eyes and the grey pallor of death in his flesh that it was too late for Jonesy. Our good friend had left this world. I touched his cheek and knew it must have been at least an hour ago, although the wind and rain made that hard to know for sure. I also noticed that there was no clotting around the entry point of the stake.

  “He’s dead as a doornail,” Jake Junior said as he took my hand and pulled me to my feet with his brute strength. He continued to stand there, straddling the corpse and snapping his camera.

  “What are you doing here, Junior?” Sheriff Hayes asked, quite confused. Why are you standing over Jonesy’s body?”

  “I’m taking pictures,” Junior said, stating the obvious.

  “Yes, but
why? And why are you here?”

  Brody looked at the ground a few feet from Junior’s feet and started walking towards an object there. It was a hammer. The handle was the size of a regular carpenter’s hammer, but the head on it was a sledge hammer.

  Junior looked over at the object. “Looks like a six-pound sledge. Must have been in the barn before that twister blew everything all to heck. There’s a hand saw over there and a pitchfork sticking out of a plank over there.”

  Brody took a step toward Junior and looked him straight in the eye, close up. “What are you doing here, Junior?”

  Junior’s head snapped up and his eyes grew wide as he began to realize that it might look a little suspicious for him to be standing over a corpse with a stake through its heart, just a few feet from a hammer.

  “Now, just hold on there for a minute, Sheriff...” Junior’s father stepped forward to defend his son. “Git on outa there Junior...Are you insinuating that my boy had something to do with this terrible tragedy here?” He pulled Junior away from the body.

  “Not at all, Jake...”

  “It’s pretty obvious that the tornado ripped a board off the barn, split it down the middle longways, and sent it flying right through old Jonesy’s chest.”

  Red stepped forward now too. “Sure looks that way to me too, Sheriff. Junior, go ahead and tell Brody what you were doing here.”

  Yes, please...I wanted to know that answer too.

  Junior had a confused look on his face. He stepped to one side of the body and knelt by Jonesy’s head. “What the heck are you guys talking about? It’s obvious what happened here, but it wasn’t that tornado, and it sure as heck wasn’t me.” He put his hands on Jonesy’s mouth and started to pull back the lips.

  “Whoa there, Junior!” The Sheriff grabbed the big man by the collar and pulled him to his feet.

  I can’t believe that, under these tragic circumstances, a small part of me swooned at the lawman’s demonstration of strength.

  “You can’t touch the body. Even for something like this we’ve got to get a report from the medical examiner. What are you thinking, Junior?”

  “Well, you’ve all got these crazy ideas about what happened. I just wanted to show you the fangs.”

  The men all looked at each other, and Jake slapped his forehead and shook his head. “Fangs?” Red finally said.

  “Yeah. It’s obvious that Jonesy here was a vampire. Why else would he have a wooden stake through his heart?”

  Jake was red-faced and tried to deflect the situation as Red and Smoke giggled into their closed hands. “Junior, just tell the Sheriff why you were here.”

  “Well,” he looked at his dad, “Pops, you know, I was bidding that job on tearing out the old loft in Earl’s barn and putting in a new one. So, I was just heading back to town. I was about half a mile up the road there, and I saw that twister lift that barn clear off the ground, and then it seemed like it just blew up into a million pieces. The twister wasn’t very big and started heading away from me, so I just pulled up the drive and found him lying here...just like this, with that piece of lumber sticking right out of his chest. I thought I’d take some pictures – just to help you out, Sheriff. I mean, it’s not very often that we see the work of a professional vampire hunter right here in Paint Creek.”

  “Mmhm,” Brody was sliding his thumb across his phone. “That’s why you already have some shots of the scene on Facebook...to help me out, right?”

  This conversation could wait. “Has anybody seen Josie? Junior, did you see her at all?”

  The men all looked at each other. “I’ll check the house,” Smoke said, heading to the front porch.

  Stan headed toward the back of the house. “I’ll knock on the back door.”

  “Well, ya dern fools,” Red said. “They got an underground a storm bunker right behind the tractor.”

  Sheriff Hayes was already halfway to the storm cellar, and we all followed him around the old tractor, except for Junior who stayed by the body to take more pictures. It looked like that old tractor hadn’t been moved at all by the storm. It was just so odd how some things were destroyed completely and other things, including the house, were totally untouched.

  There was a slanted door covered with corrugated steel sticking out of the ground, like the one on the side of my grandparent’s house leading to their basement. But this door was not attached to the house. It was just in the middle of the graveled area between the house and the barn. The door started to lift open slowly as we approached, and Brody pulled it open.

  “Josie!”

  It was such a relief to see her, unharmed but shaken, as she emerged from the bunker with her little terrier in her arm. The dog did not yip at us, which was his usual custom, and looked a bit traumatized as he nuzzled his head in Josie’s bosom.

  I gave her half a hug as she looked around. She looked alarmed when she looked towards the barn, but smiled when she saw the house.

  “Thank goodness the house is still standing,” she said. “That old barn didn’t have that many years left in it anyway.” She looked around as she cuddled Skippy. “Have you seen Carl? Is he in the house? He ran out of the storm cellar to get my heart pills when there was a break in the storm. I told him not too, but I was shaking so badly he was afraid I was going to have a heart attack, Thank God the house was safe.”

  The woman looked at our wide eyes and long faces as we all tried to avoid her gaze. She gasped. Then Junior hollered to us.

  “Hey, Sheriff! The sun is burning through pretty good now. You better get someone to come and pick up the body, or the smell is going to have a pack of coyotes stopping by to start nibbling on old Jonesy here.”

  Josie dropped Skippy, who let out a little yelp and then a whimper. Brody put his arm around her waist to hold her up. Her face turned pale and she went limp.

  “Stan,” Brody said, “call Sylvia Chambers at the county. We need the Medical Examiner here to take care of this.”

  Some of the neighbor had been gathering to check on Carl and Josie when they saw the barn was missing. Florence Carwinkle from the next farmhouse saw Carl’s body and was running toward her best friend, Josie, with her arms open.

  “Oh, you poor dear!” The large sturdy woman hugged Josie and then led her to the house, holding the stunned widow with both arms. Skippy followed behind them as they entered the back door of the house.

  “Take Miss Howard back to the diner,” Brody continued, “and then come back here and help me document the scene. Guys,” he said to Red, Smoke, and Jake, “see if you can find Jonesy’s car.”

  “It’s parked right behind the house, Sheriff, fine as can be.”

  At least Josie was in good hands, and I did have to get back. A blue-green car drove out of a wooded area way back by the driveway and headed out toward the street as we walked to Stan’s patrol car. I guess neighbors were coming and going, and a crowd had gathered near the body. The Sheriff moved everyone away from the body.

  Junior was just retuning from his car with a spool of yellow tape. “Here, Sheriff. It says “Caution” not “Police,” but I use it around construction sites sometimes.”

  “Caution is all we need around this storm damage, Junior. This isn’t a crime scene. Thanks.”

  They went about cordoning off the area while the old boys looked around and checked the house for storm damage. Stan and I drove back to Paint Creek.

  Chapter Six

  Word of Jonesy’s death had already made its way back to the Old School diner, and just one table of regulars had trickled in for coffee and gossip so far. No doubt, more were on the way.

  “How’s everything going around here, Babs?” I asked as she brought a tray of freshly washed silverware out of the kitchen.

  “Well, my home sweet home is fine, Mercy. No leaks or broken windows or other damage,” Babs reported happily. She lived in the little apartment upstairs, above the diner. “Lollipop was hiding in the closet and might have a little PTSD. She jumped into my ar
ms and started to purr like crazy when I went into the bedroom. Otherwise everything is fine.”

  It was obvious, though, that she had been shaken by the storm and by Jonesy’s death, though she was doing her best to put on a brave face. Deloris gave her a hug, and a single tear started to stream down Babs’s brave round face. “Jonesy was a good man, Babsy, but everything is going to be all right. I hope everything is all right at my place too.”

  “You two should be in good shape on the other side of town,” she said to Deloris and me as she tied her apron on. “Looks like the storm just took a swoop through the west side. Just a lot of leaves and branches around here in the middle of town. The power lines are still standing.”

  Deloris and I both lived in the northeast corner of Paint Creek on the big hill between the town and the cemetery. “I’m worried about Wizard and Grace,” I said. “Maybe I should go and check on them.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Mercy,” Deloris said in her brusque, confident tone. “Those darn hamsters are doing fine. They probably didn’t hear a thing, and if they did they’ll just cuddle up and make some babies.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about!” I kidded. That actually brought a hint of a smile to Deloris’s face as she sat down to fill salt shakers and roll silverware. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be dead around here for the next hour,” I continued, “but...”

  “...but the whole town will be here by dinner time to exchange stories and spread gossip about poor old Jonesy,” Babs added, quite correctly.

  “I’d better get the roast in the oven for Smoke,” Deloris said, as she got up from the big corner booth and headed for the kitchen. “He won’t be back until the CSI team is done and gone.”