Murder in the Family

by Ramona Richards

  “Probably. People like to talk to Finn. I’ve done it myself. Talk to him for five minutes and you discover you’re revealing all your life’s secrets.”

  “A handy man to keep around, if you’re the sheriff.”

  “Why do you think I know someone will eventually spill it about the attack on you? If it were football season, we’d have the info by this weekend, from his tailgate partying. This time of year, we’ll have to wait for a cookout or a church picnic.”

  “You seem very certain.”

  “I’ve only been sheriff three years. I’ve been in Carterton a lot longer.”

  Molly raised a hand as Finn crossed into her yard, peering closely at the dumpster, tarps, and pavilions. “Want some water?”

  Finn waved her off. “I’m good, Miss Molly!” When he’d closed the distance between them, he continued. “Miss Sheila said y’all got a lot done today.”

  “We made a good start.” Molly pointed at the dumpster. “But that’s only about a quarter full. Lots to go, especially once we hit the attic and the basement.”

  Russell’s Mercedes pulled into the drive and he got out. Impeccable as ever in charcoal gray, his expression and stride were pure business.

  Molly stepped toward him. “So what’s wrong now?”

  Russell took a deep breath but hesitated, glancing at Finn and Greg. Molly dismissed his concern with a shrug. “Whatever it is, it’ll be all over town by morning, especially if Kitty is involved.”

  His brow furrowed. “How did you—?”

  “She’s been missing in action today.” Greg crossed his arms. “We knew she had to be stirring up something somewhere.”

  “She’s filed an injunction in an attempt to keep you from distributing property not named in the will.”

  Molly squinted. “But the will hasn’t even been probated! She can’t know what’s in the will. And what’s not. I’m not even completely sure.”

  “She doesn’t have to know. The injunction is inclusive of the property in the house that is, quote, ‘unnamed.’ Since we have the will, the burden falls on us. You’ll have to provide an inventory to the court as part of the probate. Her point is that you won’t be able to provide a complete inventory. She plans to prove she knows of things in the house that you don’t, since they aren’t named in the will. If she can, there will be grounds to contest the validity of the will.”

  “That’s garbage.” Finn yanked his cap off and hit it against his thigh. “She can’t do that, can she?”

  “She can try.” Russell closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if to push out a headache. “She can get it in front of a judge. What happens after that depends on the judge she gets and the case she makes in court. And how far along you are with the clean-out when she gets to the judge. One of her arguments is that Lyric lived with Liz and was promised certain items. She also claims that there’s a new will that may be hidden in the house, and that if you find it, you’ll destroy it.”

  “So, essentially, she wants a look at everything that comes out of the house.”

  “Essentially. And I’ve heard through the courthouse grapevine that she and Bird plan to contest the will when it is probated.”

  Molly sniffed. “No surprise there. Any word on the probate?”

  “That was the second thing I wanted to tell you. It may be set for a week from tomorrow.”

  “That’s quick,” Greg said. At Molly’s questioning look, he patted her arm. “I’ve seen them take as long as two years.”

  She looked back at Russell. “But you said, ‘It may be set.’”

  “We were lucky,” Russell offered. “All the potential heirs responded quickly. Most are in this area. Which brings me to number three, which is a puzzle. We’re in search of a young man named Frederick Davidson. He’s a distant cousin, but he’s mentioned in the will. Which is odd because he lives in Sevierville, Tennessee. I’ve never heard Liz mention him. We didn’t get a response to a certified letter, so I called his workplace, then his landlord. But he didn’t pay the rent at the first of the month and no one has seen him.”

  “Well, that is weird,” Finn interjected. When they all looked at him, surprised, he held out both hands as if the answer were obvious. “You’re talking about Freddy, right? Freddy Davidson. Good-looking young chap, about twenty-five or so? He came down here to look for a job, in Birmingham, Gadsden, maybe. He’s a driver, beverage and beer trucks, that sort of thing. Liz let him stay here a few weeks. He went home right before Liz died.” He paused, looking at each of them. “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” Greg straightened. “Go on, Finn.”

  “Well, that’s what’s weird. Lyric said he went home. He just up and left. But you go home, and you don’t pay rent, the landlord is gonna know where you are, y’know? No one just vanishes, not this day and age.”

  11

  Molly twisted around in the sheets like a rotisserie chicken. Nightmares—mostly about tornadoes ripping apart homes and families—plagued her until almost four. She dozed another hour, but finally, she got into the shower to blast away the last remnants of sleep. It was time to start the day.

  She got dressed and checked her computer to find a brief email from Jimmy, updating her on Sarah’s condition. It was the first since Sunday, despite her daily emails to him. This one was short and abrupt. Sarah was responding to pain stimuli, which was good news, but still not awake. Her father was still talking lawsuit.

  Get in line, bub. Molly definitely couldn’t worry about that now. She was more concerned about the tone of the note. Jimmy had always been the mediator of the team, friendly and optimistic. This note was curt to the point of being rude and had been sent in the middle of the night. Definitely not like him.

  But her own reassuring words in response did not come. She felt blocked, numb, as if she shouldn’t respond at all. A week had passed since she’d seen them, since Sarah’s accident. But it felt like a lifetime. Molly knew part of her numbness came from exhaustion. Brain fog from lack of sleep and too many long hours dragging around house trash. Yet she felt as if a curtain had dropped between them. Not just a lifetime ago … a life. She still wanted to return, wanted to be with them. But the past she had so carefully packed away had returned to her full force. And it now stood between them. But she had to say something.

  Finally, Molly typed,

  Good news about Sarah. No worries about dad. Will sort that out later. But how are you? Are you resting? Call me sometime if you want to talk. Evenings are best right now. More time to talk. Thinking about you. M

  The words felt false, as if she were just pretending. But they would have to do. Just as she hit send, her phone rang. She yelped. Who in the world?

  Greg.

  She answered the same way she’d greeted Russell. “What’s wrong?” This is becoming a habit.

  “Get to the house. Now.” And he hung up.

  In less than ten minutes, Molly turned onto Maple Street, but she was blocked from the house. A chaotic scene of flashing red and blue lights, shouts, and running first responders spread out before her. Working lights on tall poles had turned night into day. Two fire trucks—one on the street, one on her yard—anchored hoses snaking across hers and Linda Allen’s lawns to the pine grove behind the houses. Smoke billowed across the neighborhood in clouds thick with soot and ash.

  Molly leaped from the Explorer as soon as it stopped, coughing as the smoke rolled over her. Her skin prickled and her chest tightened as she fought to make sense out of the pandemonium. What’s burning? Her gaze darted from the flames in the grove to the house. It seemed to be safe, no blazes on the roof or sides, but bellowed orders echoed through the air as the fire captain directed the team leaders to different positions. The teams dashed from one spot to another, adding to the confusion and madness. The whole neighborhood was outside, families clustered in their ash-dotted nightclothes, holding tight to each other, faces wan and shocked. Wide eyes looked from trucks to firefighters … to the fire that still burned i
n the trees behind Liz Morrow’s house.

  Molly ran toward the main blaze, looking again from it to the house, and she spotted a clear line of burnt grass that ran between them. Stunned, she stared at it a moment, then searched desperately for Greg, calling his name as she darted between firefighters and sheriff ’s deputies. He found her, snagging her from behind. She spun, screaming over the mayhem. “What happened? What happened?”

  He searched her face, and for a split second, Molly knew he’d wondered if she’d set the blaze. But whatever he saw in her face apparently told him otherwise.

  He raised his voice as well. “Started about thirty minutes ago. One of the neighbors was up with a sick kid and smelled it. Called 911. Two deputies were close, got there quick. It’s mostly contained now. It never threatened the houses.”

  She pointed at the burned line on the ground. “Someone set it!”

  “Probably, but too soon to tell for sure.”

  “How else would it start?”

  He shrugged.

  “I didn’t do it, Greg. I swear to you.”

  Something in his eyes shifted, an acknowledgment. “I know.” Near the blaze, someone called his name. “Wait here,” he said, and trotted off.

  Molly hugged herself, feeling as shocked as her neighbors appeared. She looked from the fiery copse of trees, and again traced a three-foot-wide line of blackened grass toward the house.

  The house. Aunt Liz’s house.

  Desperation rolled over Molly, even as the madness around her began to subside. Hundreds of images flooded through her, a vertigo-inducing kaleidoscope made up of more than thirty years of good times and bad, fights and parties, storms and recoveries, her mother’s last days and long chats with Aunt Liz. The names on her aunt’s papers popped into her head, a roll call of good people who deserved better than the hand they’d been dealt by life … or her family.

  Molly did not want this house, but it had been part of her for a long time, and in just over a week, it had put yet another anchor in her, grounding her to this town and to this family. She hated it and she loved it. And she certainly didn’t want to see it burnt to the ground, despite her earlier declarations.

  I have to make this right. Aunt Liz gave me what I need to end it all. Make it right. I have to. No matter what!

  A hand rested on her shoulder, and Molly turned, screaming. “They tried to burn my house!”

  It was Linda. She arched back at the declaration, but then she nodded, compassion in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around Molly. Molly leaned heavily against her, dropping her head to Linda’s shoulder. As they held each other, Molly felt others surround them, adding their own arms to the circle.

  No one spoke, not even as the group began to break up. One by one, the neighbors drifted away, back to their now-safe homes. The fire doused, the firefighters gathered their equipment, preparing to leave. Linda and Molly finally released each other, brushing ash off each other’s shoulders and hair.

  “I have to get breakfast for the kids,” Linda whispered.

  Molly nodded and squeezed her friend’s arm. As Linda walked away, Molly turned her attention back to the house. The sun had breached the horizon, casting long, red-gold rays up over the pines. Smoke lingered, darkening some of the rays to purple and umber. The gables and the spires of the house rose far above the houses around it, the resulting shadows flowing over the ground with peaks and dips. With its peeling paint, dead overgrown vines, and solid structure, the house was both magnificent and shabby.

  “I can see why Aunt Liz loved you,” Molly murmured.

  “Why do you think someone would want to burn it?” Greg’s voice came from behind her.

  She turned. “I don’t know. It makes no sense. Everyone involved with this desperately wants this house and everything in it. The only person around who doesn’t want it is me, and I swear to you, Greg. I did not do this.”

  “I believe you. But that leaves only one obvious motive.”

  Molly nodded. “There’s something in that house they don’t want us to find.”

  “What better place to hide something than in a hoarder’s domain?”

  Russell, Greg, and Molly sat in one of Bailey’s Garden Bistro’s booths, discussing the fire over omelets and bagels. Russell’s question hung in the air a moment, until Greg countered. “But if you want to keep it safe and hidden, you’re not going to destroy it. You’d find a way to retrieve it.”

  “Say, for instance,” Molly continued, “during the chaos caused by a fire that appeared to threaten the houses, but your deputies arrived too fast.”

  Russell toyed with his omelet. “Which means we may never know why it was set or who set it?”

  “Unless they were trying to destroy it,” Greg said. “What better timing than just after you’ve threatened to burn it in a viral video? They destroy what they need to and you get the blame.”

  “That’s a truly insidious thought,” Russell muttered.

  “We’re speculating in circles.” Molly reached for a packet of strawberry jam. “We don’t know enough.”

  “Indeed. So I’ll put the patrols back on the house tonight. If they did intend destruction and not just distraction, they’ll be back.”

  “And I think I’ll move into the house as soon as it’s clean enough.”

  Silence hung in the air as the two men looked at each other, then at Molly. She focused on the jam, opening the packet and squeezing it onto her bagel. Russell spoke first. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with the house.”

  Molly shook her head. “I don’t. But I don’t want anything to happen to it either. This process is obviously going to take a while. I can’t keep staying in a hotel, and Greg can’t keep using the deputies as security on a private residence. It makes sense.” She looked up at them, looking from one to the other. “Right? Makes sense.”

  After a moment of stunned silence, they both nodded. Then Russell chuckled softly. “She’s getting under your skin.”

  Molly grinned shyly. “Maybe. A little. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to sell it. But maybe.”

  Greg grinned. “Yeah. Right.”

  Russell finally took a bite of his omelet. “You made good progress yesterday. How long do you think it’s going to take?”

  “A least a half a day per room, just to drag everything out. Probably three days each for the basement and attic.”Molly broke apart the bagel and popped a piece into her mouth. “Five rooms downstairs, seven on the second floor, so two to three weeks to get everything out. I did hire a cleaning service out of Birmingham that specializes in this kind of stuff. They start at the end of the week. The three guys, Betty’s friends, who helped yesterday are in it for the long haul. And whoever volunteers. I’ll start going through Liz’s journals, and I’ll start divvying up the furniture as soon as I can get an adequate list. So I’m hoping to be mostly done in a month.”

  Russell cleared his throat. “And the other stuff you found?”

  She paused, a portion of bagel halfway to her mouth. She put it down. “That’ll have to wait. I don’t know enough about it, where it came from. I do hope there will be something in the journals.” She glanced at Greg. “What are the next steps where the fire is concerned?”

  He shrugged. The shadows around his eyes seemed harsher than earlier, and Molly wondered how much sleep he’d gotten. “That line to the house was definitely spurred by an accelerant. The fire captain is sending a sample off to see if they can tell what it was, but it smelled like gasoline. I’ll check with the local stations, see if they remember anyone buying a large amount in cans, but I’d lay odds they siphoned it out of a car or a tractor. Some of the farms have their own tanks as well. I’ll talk to a few folks, especially the ones on the other side of that grove. But the kids come and go through there all the time. Even if they spotted someone, they might not think anything about it.”

  He paused for a sip of coffee. “To be honest, I don’t have a lot of hope that evidence is going to prove anything.�
��

  “Like the shooting.”

  He added more sugar to his coffee and stirred it slowly. “We’ll have to wait until someone gets nervous enough to talk. And I won’t be surprised if the two incidents aren’t related.”

  “I just don’t understand what they hoped to gain. Did they want to burn the house or not? Or did they think a threatening fire would stop my work on the house? If they think that, they don’t know me very well. And if they did want to burn it, maybe it’s less about what they want than what I might find. All of the above. None of the above. I don’t know.” She dropped her fork back on her plate in frustration.

  Greg gave a single nod. “But you might want to brace yourself for Bird. He’s never going to think you didn’t set it, especially after the shooting. You’re just tired and want it over with.”

  She pushed aside her plate. “I have thought about that.” She considered yesterday’s conversation over the drill bits. “Maybe. He saw what we got accomplished yesterday, and he knows I plan to carry this out.” She shrugged again, and ignored the looks that Greg and Russell exchanged.

  Greg put a hand on her arm. “Molly, what are you thinking?”

  Bird. She was thinking about Bird, picking up every item off the tables, studying each one as if it were made of gold. There had been a curiosity in his expression, more than just avarice.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Just tired, like you said.” She straightened. “If Bird wants to come at me, let him. It’s not like I’ve not already dealt with his blustering. If life were easy, I wouldn’t be chasing tornadoes for a living.” She smiled at Greg and put her hand over his. “Bird’s just a different kind of storm front.”

  12

  Molly stopped mid-sentence, as her breath caught and a chill slid down her spine and into her legs. She stared down at a pile of garbage bags and overstuffed duffels.

  No. Please … no. I don’t believe it. A spear of rage shot through her. How could they …?

  “Are you okay? Molly?” Dina, the cleaning service’s team leader, stood in the doorway of the attic. Her voice sounded flat, muffled by her Tyvek suit and mask.