December's Secrets (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 2)

by A. E. Howe

  I took a deep breath and decided that it wouldn’t be the biggest waste of my time to call the rest of the numbers on the list. I hated cold calls. I’d worked in a call center for about a week when I was in college. It was the only time I’ve ever been fired for being too nice.

  I got through twenty-five calls, half of them unanswered, before I got a bingo.

  “Hello?” said the voice on the other end. It was an older female.

  “Hello, I’m Deputy Larry Macklin calling from the sheriff’s office.” I decided not to cloud the issue with which sheriff’s office I was with. “The records show that you made a call to 911 at five-thirty on October fifteenth. According to the report, you called and said that there was someone outside, but then changed your mind, saying that it was probably nothing. You hung up after apologizing to the operator.”

  “I guess I… Oh, yes, I remember now. I thought I heard a noise outside in the woods. Shook me up for a moment. I’m really very sorry to have caused any trouble.”

  “If you could give me your name and where you live, that would be a big help.”

  “I guess you’re really with the sheriff’s office if you knew about the call.” She had a point. “I live in the co-op just north of Gainesville.”

  I sat up so fast I bumped my injured foot against the desk and almost blurted out the f-bomb. “Where in the co-op?” She gave me an address that was on the east circle, putting it almost in the middle of the property. I told her a little bit about what I was working on and asked if I could come talk to her.

  “Oh, of course. Horrible business.”

  I told her I’d be by around three o’clock. I would barely have time to look at some of the Good reports before I’d need to leave, but I didn’t know how much longer I could stay away from Adams County. If nothing else, at some point I had to return Mauser to Dad. I’d texted him earlier and he was expecting to get home sometime around midnight. I updated him on everything and he told me to take a couple days to let my foot heal. He even said he’d drive down if necessary and pick up Mauser. The old man was a pain in the ass sometimes, but he was a good man.

  I decided that I’d wait on the rest of the phone numbers. I was pretty sure that I had what I was looking for. I found Chavez at his desk, busy typing his reports on the Good murder. He looked up.

  “You know, I still need to interview you about what happened last night.”

  I looked at my watch. I told him about the call and when I was supposed to meet the woman.

  “I’ll make it short,” he said. “And don’t worry about looking at the reports from last night. There’s nothing there that will give you any new answers. I had some officers and a couple techs comb the site this morning, but it will be weeks before we get anything from the material they collected.”

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  After a relatively painless interview, Chavez walked me out to the van where Cara was reading something on her phone. She looked up and smiled. Chavez apologized for all the trouble that her family was going through and told me to call him if I learned anything.

  “So you haven’t met Ms. Kubelik yet.” It was less a question than a statement. “You’re in for a treat,” Cara said with an odd smile.

  Once in the co-op, we drove back to a small cottage. It was wood-framed with herbs hanging to dry on the front porch. I’d seen the house several times going through the neighborhood, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen a car in the driveway.

  As if anticipating my comment, Cara explained, “Ms. Kubelik doesn’t drive. She either walks or relies on the kindness of strangers.” She smiled. “Well, not strangers. Usually she shanghaies one of the co-op members into taking her to the store or wherever she wants to go.”

  The door opened as soon as we stepped up onto the wooden porch. The woman who stood there could have answered a casting call for a Brothers Grimm witch. She had a long narrow face framed by long black and grey hair. She wore gypsy jewelry and a multi-colored floor-length dress.

  “Come in,” she beckoned. Once we were inside she took Cara’s hand in both of hers. “Cara, it is so nice to see you again.” She looked at Cara’s hand, turning it over and tracing the palm with her finger. “Yes, you’re doing well. Good, good.”

  Then she turned her eyes to me and I felt as though I was being opened up and examined from the inside out. “I see,” she said finally.

  “I’m Deputy Macklin,” I said lamely.

  “You can call me Maria. You’re in pain,” she said, looking down at my leg. I tried to step back as she bent over and reached out to touch my calf. “Stand still, I won’t hurt you.”

  I started to tell her to back off, but I guess I was in her witchy thrall. Her hand felt very warm, even through my pants leg. The heat traveled down to my foot and I swear the pain diminished. After a moment she straightened up.

  “I’ll fix you something.”

  “No, really, I’m fine.”

  “Of course you aren’t. Just take a second,” she said and left Cara and me standing in the living room while she went into the small kitchen. We could see her through the open doorway as she piddled about with ingredients.

  Cara leaned in and whispered to me. “Mom comes to her for any aches and pains she has, but Dad is scared to death of her.”

  “You could have warned me,” I whispered back. Cara gave me a wicked little smile.

  In a few minutes Maria came back carrying a mug of something that smelled sweet with an odor of cinnamon, ginger and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  “Drink this,” she said as she handed me the mug. “All of it now.”

  I thought about protesting, but I didn’t want to get the interview off to a confrontational start. I looked at Cara for guidance and got raised eyebrows and that devilish grin. So down the hatch it went. It was warm, but not too hot and the warmth seemed to spread throughout my body.

  “Let’s sit down,” Maria said, waving to a large round table in the middle of the living room. The ceiling was low and the house was decorated with all kinds of odd wall-hangings. We each took a seat around the table as though we were about to perform a séance.

  “You want to know about my call to the sheriff’s office,” she stated as though she was doing a reading.

  “Yes. What made you call?”

  “I could say that it was a noise in the back woods. And that would be true. But it was more than the noise.” Dramatically, she let that hang in the air. “I felt a great evil pass by my house.”

  “Could you describe the noise?” I didn’t want to get too sidetracked by the evil feelings.

  “The noise…” She looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. “It was part grunt and part scream, I’d say.”

  “A scream? And yet you didn’t let the 911 operator send someone out?”

  “You hear things that sound like screams out here in the woods. It could have been a screech owl, a bobcat or a housecat. The feeling is what made me call.”

  “But you didn’t follow through?” I asked and this got me a narrow-eyed look from Maria.

  “No, because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to explain my feeling. I’m not stupid and I didn’t need some smarty-pants policeman smiling behind my back. Besides, the feeling passed.”

  “Did you see or hear anything else that day? Before or after the noise?”

  “Nothing unusual, I don’t think. That was a couple of months ago. And I’m sure you know that people don’t remember the routine things. If it was something that I saw all the time, particularly before I heard the noise, I wouldn’t be likely to remember.” She was right, and it left me with little to go on.

  I couldn’t think of anything else that might help. I felt a little discouraged and I was having a hard time letting it go. “Do you mind if we take a quick walk through the woods behind your house?”

  Outside the air was pleasantly cool, one of those Florida winter days that are so beautiful it breaks your heart. The smell of oak wood burn
ing in the distance added to the feeling of home and hearth. Cara and I looked around the back of the house until I found a deer path that lead in the direction of the rental trailers. I studied Cara’s map for a moment.

  “Your foot feeling better?” Cara asked.

  “Actually it is,” I said, somewhat startled. I hadn’t realized that I was using the walking stick less.

  Cara smiled, then pointed into the woods. “We’re about halfway between Debbie and Reed Holly’s house and the trailers. Terri Andrews’s place is a little farther that way.” With a lot of the oak trees having lost their leaves, I could just make out the Andrews place, but couldn’t quite see the others.

  “Let’s spread out a bit and search from about fifty yards toward Timberlane’s and fifty yards toward the Hollys’,” I suggested.

  “So you’re thinking that Timberlane was going through the woods from his place to the Hollys’?”

  “Exactly. Maybe he was still casing the place for a robbery, or maybe he was looking for an opportunity to do something worse. Maybe he did do something worse.” Saying it out loud, I realized I was putting the Hollys in the center of the crosshairs. Maybe.

  The fallen leaves made it difficult to see the trails. We separated and followed deer trails, looking for anything that might have been a clue to something we weren’t even sure had happened. It was frustrating.

  “I’m getting cold,” I said, limping up to Cara, who thought she’d seen something that turned out to be a leaf. The sun was setting and a chill breeze cut through the trees.

  We made our way back to the van. I got in while Cara went to tell Maria that we were done. I decided that if she had heard something, then maybe Terri had. The last time that I’d talked with her, I didn’t have a timeline. Now maybe I could give her more to go on. I pulled out my phone. I almost dialed and thought better of it. It was almost six here so it would be almost midnight in Rome. Better to wait. I put the phone down as Cara got into the van.

  “When did the Andrewses get here?” I asked her.

  “Hard to say. Sometime in October. We can ask Dad.”

  “We need to go back to take Mauser for a walk and feed him anyway.”

  Cara started the van and we wound our way over the dirt roads. Colorful lights on many of the homes reminded me that it was only a couple weeks until Christmas.

  Mauser jumped up and gave a big bellowing bark when we came in. Henry was sitting at the table working on a piece of wood with a Dremel tool. He put the tool down quickly as Mauser came bouncing past him on the way to greet us.

  “He’s already bumped my arm about a dozen times,” Henry said in mock irritation while Mauser bounced between Cara and me.

  “We thought he might be ready for a walk and some dinner,” I said.

  “He shouldn’t be that hungry since he got a fresh baked loaf of bread off the counter.”

  “He didn’t,” Cara said in a good-humored voice while scratching Mauser vigorously.

  “You get away with things that no other dog would,” I told him. He looked up at me, tongue hanging out as though he knew exactly what I was saying and couldn’t care less.

  Luckily for us, Anna had baked two loaves, so we were able to have fresh bread with warm homemade barley soup that had been on the stove for hours. I’d almost settled into this Hallmark-card evening, but something kept nagging at me. Henry eyed me from across the table.

  “You still thinking about the murders?”

  “Can’t really get them out of my head.”

  “Are you leaving us tomorrow?”

  “No, I’ve arranged to stay another day.”

  “I called Dr. Barnhill and asked for two more days off too. He didn’t seem to mind too much. I think he likes having Alvin around. He’s been taking him home at night,” Cara said. She’d confided to me that even Barnhill had his limits and that she’d have to head home in two days, regardless of the status of the case.

  Of course, finding the killer was only the first part of the battle. There’d still be a lot more work to do, and ultimately a trial. But identifying the suspect was the first and most vital step on the way to the wrapping this up and letting Cara’s family go back to living their lives in peace.

  “Thank you both for being here,” Henry said, reaching his hands out to both Cara and Anna.

  “I still can’t see how anyone who lives here could have done anything like that,” Anna said.

  “Someone targeted those three men and you. I think you have to accept that the killer is someone you know,” I said. “Let’s go back to the phone calls you received. Think about the voice. Could you have recognized it?”

  He closed his eyes. “He might have been purposely disguising his voice. It’s possible that it was someone I know.” He shrugged.

  “Think about means, motive and opportunity,” I said. “I don’t feel like we’ve found out much about any of them. Means? Doesn’t require much. Rope and probably a gun. No great physical strength. We can eliminate men over eighty years old, probably, and Mr. Andrews, who is too physically impaired, but not many other people. Opportunity? We’ve eliminated several people. Chavez’s men checked out the alibis for Timberlane’s murder and verified Riggs’s and Holly’s. But beyond that it’s only two and a half hours to Adams County. The murderer spent part of the day casing Timberlane’s place. I hate to put this on you, Henry, but they might have even followed you to Timberlane’s. Opportunity doesn’t rule out many people. Motive still has to be our focus.”

  “You think that the three of them raped or killed someone?” Cara said.

  “I do. Then the question becomes who? The sheriff’s office has two reports of females who went missing around mid-October. One turned up a few days later and the other one hasn’t turned up, but has no connection to the co-op.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the co-op. Couldn’t it have been a girl who lives in some other part of Gainesville? And the husband or boyfriend is someone we don’t know?” Anna asked hopefully.

  “Maybe they have an accomplice on the inside,” Cara said.

  “Someone from the outside with a friend on the inside? Not a bad idea. That would explain a few things. We have more females who might have been victims and very few males that could be our killer. But if a woman is passing information to someone who doesn’t live in the community… I guess that’s a possibility. Which gets us back to trying to discover the trigger event.”

  “Which you think happened around October fifteenth,” Henry said.

  “Yes. I think that Timberlane was working himself up to commit a rape, possibly a murder, a pattern we see with serial rapists and murderers. The incident with the Hollys, being warned off of Terri Andrews, grabbing Ellie.” I stopped myself before mentioning that Tyler had also become dissatisfied with consensual sex with Karen Gill. “All of those events indicate that Timberlane was either building toward or in the throes of a sexual rage. Finally, I think that Cathy witnessed the three of them burning the clothes they wore when the act was committed.”

  “But who was the victim?” Cara asked

  “It went unreported. All the rapes that Chavez and I found during that period already had suspects, or their related witness accounts eliminated our three—um, it’s hard to know what to call them—they’re victims and suspects both. An unreported rape is most likely. A rape that is being avenged by a boyfriend or family member. Someone who also blames you,” I said, looking at Henry.

  “I blame myself for all of this,” Henry said. Anna put her hand on Henry’s. “I know it’s not really my fault, but I think I understand why someone feels that it is.”

  “I know that being raped would be devastating. A horrible trauma, but would someone really kill three people because they raped someone they loved?” Cara asked.

  Henry and I answered at the same time. “Yes.” Everyone around the table was quiet for a moment.

  “So where do we go from here?” Henry asked.

  “Re-interviewing
folks with a focus on October fifteenth. We have to hope that someone will remember seeing or hearing something else. I’m going to call Chavez in the morning and have his crime scene techs go over Gibson’s and Good’s vehicles again with the thought that they might have been used for the rape or murder of someone else. I’ll call our people and have Timberlane’s truck gone over again too.”

  We talked for a little longer, but everyone was tired. My body was aching from the day before and my foot was beginning to throb. Maria’s magic elixir was definitely wearing off. We packed Mauser into the van and headed back to the motel. I wanted to drive myself, but Cara insisted that I give it another day. On the way, I called my neighbor who was cat-sitting Ivy and she assured me that while Ivy wasn’t happy, she was fine.

  Cara got Mauser out of the van and walked him while I made my way into the room.

  “What time do you want me to pick you up?” Cara asked as she helped me take my jacket off.

  “Eight.”

  “You’ll be all right with the big guy?” She nodded toward Mauser, who’d already jumped on the bed and monopolized all the covers.

  “We’ll manage.”

  She leaned in and we kissed. “I don’t know how we would have gotten through this without you,” she said.

  “We aren’t through it yet,” I reminded her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cara had Mauser and me back at the co-op before nine. Anna insisted on serving us breakfast while we discussed the plan of attack for the day.

  “Where do we start?” Cara asked brightly.

  “I’ve been thinking. I want to go back and talk with Ms. Kubelik. Maybe she’ll remember something else.”

  “Ha! You don’t fool me. You just want to get more of that tea she made for you,” Cara said, smiling.