by Leigh Hearon
“Annie, it’s not your fault.” Kim apparently was good at her job of picking up on emotional cues of distraught witnesses. “This is a tragedy, but you’re not responsible for it. Ashley’s life was spinning out of control long before she approached you. So give it a rest. ”
Annie smiled weakly, sat back down, and put her head in her hands.
* * *
Before Kim left, she’d delivered Annie’s half sister new marching orders—Lavender was to come in for a second interview at two PM sharp, and she was to bring her cell phone with her.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Kim told Lavender on the phone, sounding exactly like Dan when he confronted Larry Bruscheau and his shotgun a few weeks before. “If you fully cooperate, we won’t need to get a court order for the cell or arrest you for making false statements to a cop.”
Annie heard a high-pitched wail over the phone and smiled grimly.
“If you don’t, well, I’m sorry, Ms. Carson, but I can’t guarantee that the prosecutor won’t decide to file charges against you for lying to a police officer.”
“As she should,” Annie had bitterly replied when Kim had hung up the phone. “I’ll make sure she comes in on time.”
“You might remind her that if she deletes any texts, e-mails, or phone messages, we’ll know about it and it will go a lot harder for her.”
“Will do.”
As she watched Kim slowly drive out of the ranch, she wondered how such a bright, sunny day in May could have turned so dark. She should work with Layla, she knew, although every time she did, she was reminded of the perceptive comment Ashley had made on how to back the Walker. Well, she’d just have to get over it. The person Annie felt most sorry for right now was Martha Sanderson, who’d opened her home to her wacky half sister, trusted her, and now was being repaid by the soon-to-be-divulged knowledge that she was harboring a lying witness in a homicide investigation. Poor Martha. She deserved so much better. It occurred to Annie that if Martha was too shocked about Lavender’s perfidy, she might ask her to leave. The potential consequences of that disaster were too horrible for Annie to contemplate right now. She headed for the stables.
CHAPTER 22
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 19
Lavender was in a sullen mood when Annie picked her up four hours later. Martha was also less than her usual sociable self; her face looked anxious and worried, and she said very little to either of them as they walked out of her home.
“Do not slam my truck door,” Annie hissed at Lavender as she walked to the driver’s side of her truck. “Try to act your age for once.”
Lavender flounced into the truck and shut her door with exaggerated care.
“And you don’t tell me how I’ve messed up.” Her tone was decidedly petulant, well honed from years of practice.
Annie glanced at her. Today, her half sister was dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt, her brown hair in two long pigtails. She looked twelve years old, just about on par with her emotional age, Annie thought. Maybe her outfit was a ploy. Maybe she thought Kim would go easier on her if she thought she was dealing with a minor. Fat chance of that happening.
Stony silence permeated the cab on the way to the Sheriff’s Office. Annie interrupted it only once to inquire crossly, “Did you remember to bring your phone?” Lavender did not reply, but merely reached into her purse and waggled it in front of Annie’s face.
“I hope you were smart enough not to erase anything,” Annie warned her. Judging by the look on Lavender’s face, Annie was not sure she was.
Kim and Dan were in the lobby when they arrived. Their faces looked grave, and Kim quickly motioned to Lavender and led her into an interview room.
“And so the little lamb is thrown to the wolves,” Annie muttered to Dan as they walked back to his office, where Dan shut the door.
“Not good, Annie,” he said. “I’m getting tired of getting half the truth from these women. I might lose my temper if it keeps up.”
“I lost mine this morning and still haven’t retrieved it.”
“Well, Kim’ll get the full story from her now, I’m sure of it. It might mean nothing. Or it might break the case. Kim’s told me you now know all about the heart-to-heart chats Ashley and Lavender were having right up to Eloise’s death. Ashley had to tell someone who her new boyfriend was.”
But did she? Annie wondered. Ashley might have had a very good reason for not divulging the name of her new boyfriend. True, she didn’t know what it was, but none of the possible reasons were good. At least Dan appeared to be taking the new boyfriend theory more seriously.
A squawk on Dan’s shoulder mike interrupted their conversation. It was Esther, who as usual conveyed her message to the sheriff in near reverential terms. No wonder he fought so hard to keep Esther on board full-time, Annie thought. Who else would give him this much respect on a daily basis?
“Sheriff, your cousin has been trying to reach you for fifteen minutes. He stopped by the convenience store outside of town on his lunch break and thinks he’s spotted Pete Corbett inside. He wants to know if he should approach him or wait for backup.”
“Damn his hide! What in the Sam Hill do they teach recruits at the academy these days, anyway? Of course he should approach him! Tell him to ask him for his ID, and whether it matches or not, take him into custody. Why am I telling you this when I could be doing it myself? Tell Bill I’m on my way.”
Dan bolted from his desk and was out the door before Annie could fully take in the message. She stared after him. So Pete was still in the area, and with luck about to be put in handcuffs. That is, if Dan got there in time.
She wandered down the hall, lightly knocked on Esther’s door, and then opened it a few inches. Esther had her headset on and put her finger to her lips but motioned for Annie to sit down. It appeared Esther was doing the play-by-play on the impending arrest.
“Yes, Sheriff. I’ve told him. Yes, Sheriff. He said he won’t let him out of his sight. But he’s a bit worried that Pete will make a run for it as soon as he sees him in uniform.”
Annie could hear Dan’s loud, angry voice even without a headset. Esther gingerly picked up her earpieces and delicately pulled them away from her head, rolling her eyes as she did so. But Annie could tell that she was still intently listening.
“Roger that, Sheriff.” A short silence ensued. “On the scene.” Another silence, longer this time. Then she exclaimed, “Oh, well done, Sheriff! Will you or Bill be bringing him in?”
The voice on the other end was less vociferous now, so Annie couldn’t make out the words. But she picked up enough to know that Pete Corbett was now in police custody.
* * *
At three o’clock, Kim emerged from the interview room. To an outsider, her face did not convey any particular emotion, but Annie knew the deputy well enough to know that she had successfully extracted a great deal of new information from Lavender, although it could not have been easy—Lavender had an annoying habit of clinging to her version of events even when the facts were irrefutable. Annie knew this from experience.
She gestured to Kim and asked, “Is the victim still breathing?”
“Sobbing. Used up an entire box of Kleenex.”
“Sorry about that.” Whatever charming expression Lavender could muster washed off as soon as tears started rolling.
“She’s agreed to a polygraph.”
“Whoa! This is serious.”
“I want her to fully appreciate the consequences of withholding information from the police.”
Annie felt a pang of guilt. The last time she herself had been mixed up with a murder case, she’d done the same thing, for reasons she still couldn’t understand, and she’d gotten off a whole lot easier.
“Can you do us a favor, while we’re putting her on the box?”
“Sure, Kim. What do you need?” At the moment, she would have done almost anything to atone for her own previous omissions.
“Dan wants you to take a look t
hrough our mug shot books on the chance that you recognize the woman named Clarissa or the guy who drove the blue Toyota pickup. I’ve put the books in the second interview room for you. By the time you’re done, Lavender should be ready to go home. It would really help us out if we could ID either one of those witnesses.”
“No problem.”
Annie stepped into the small room, adorned only with a steel desk and two chairs. Not a terribly welcoming place, she thought, but then, she suspected that was the point. She sat down and started to go through the pages, one by one, carefully looking at each face. To her disappointment, Kim had informed her that identifying the license plate of the blue pickup based on the two letters she had been able to spot was impossible—no such database existed that matched vehicles with partial plates. So unless she recognized someone in these books, she realized, these two witnesses might never be found. Unfortunately, the brief glimpse Annie had had of the man who exited the Toyota and gone into the house didn’t provide enough time for her to pick out any distinguishing facial characteristics. But she had gotten a good look at Clarissa, first when she was in the circle smoking dope, and later running away, down the street.
In any event, it was interesting to examine the visages of local criminals. It was obvious that on the occasions when these photographs were taken, none of the subjects were having a very good day.
Annie was so engrossed in her task that she was a bit discombobulated when Kim knocked on the door almost an hour later. The deputy entered quietly and sat down. She looked intensely serious.
“I think I’ve found Clarissa,” Annie began, and then got a look at Kim’s eyes. “What’s up?”
“Lavender failed the polygraph.”
“No!”
“I’m afraid so. Fairly conclusively.”
“On what subject, if I might be so bold to ask?”
“Whether she knew anyone involved in causing Eloise Carr’s death.”
“Oh, hell.”
“And she was borderline on whether she had been completely truthful in telling us everything about her relationship with Ashley.”
“Oh, double hell. What does this mean?”
Kim sighed. “I’ll check with Dan, but at the moment, we’ll probably do nothing—just give the usual admonitions about not leaving the area and being available to us if we want to talk to her again. Which we will. Soon.”
“Can I do anything? Would beating her up help?”
“It might, but I don’t recommend it. She’s pretty much a puddle as it is, and I don’t think she can take any more probing. She’s just so damn believable—if I hadn’t taken courses in how to uncover deception I’d swear she was telling the truth. I let my guard down during my first interview and am kicking myself now.”
“What did she say about those weird messages she and Ashley sent each other the day before they found Eloise dead? You know, the stuff about ‘today’s the day,’ and all that.”
“She says that was the day Ashley was going to ask you for a job. ‘What I gave you’ supposedly refers to a list of references, which Lavender said she typed up for Ashley on her laptop.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Annie said bluntly. “Ashley’s list of references was handwritten, and not by Lavender—I know her childish scrawl. So what do you think Lavender knows that she’s not telling you?”
“I think she knows more about Ashley’s private life than she’s letting on, and suspects at least one person of killing Eloise Carr, even though I’ve said nothing to imply that Mrs. Carr’s death was anything but accidental.”
“Don’t you still think this is possible? Or have you definitely ruled out suicide?”
“Sorry, I thought Dan already told you. The tox report came in on Tuesday. Eloise consumed a whole cocktail of drugs—many of which were found in her home, but at least two of which were not, and more important, no doctor had ever prescribed them for her. And, since Eloise didn’t drive, she couldn’t have procured them herself.”
Annie’s heart sank. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but think what Martha Sanderson would make of all this. After all, she was a senior citizen herself, and not terribly mobile. Would she still trust having Lavender in her home, when the police thought she was at least peripherally knowledgeable about the death of another old woman, someone Martha had known?
* * *
At least Dan was a happy guy. By the time he’d finished the booking process, it appeared that even his cousin, Bill Stetson, was back in his good graces.
“Chip off the old block!” he crowed to Annie. “Stopped Pete dead in his tracks as he was trying to flee the store.”
“Stopped him how?” Annie fervently hoped the use of firearms was not involved.
“With his foot. Tripped him.”
Dan’s exuberance extended to a phone call from Ron Carr, which Esther routed through as Annie waited for Lavender to appear. Her half sister was taking a long time in the women’s restroom, Annie thought, but she was in no particular rush to see Lavender, knowing that all the way back to Martha’s she would insist on telling Annie the many reasons why the polygraph results were just plain wrong.
“No problem, Ron! Happy to talk and bring you up to speed about the case.” Dan’s enthusiasm had catapulted his voice to a volume that made Annie wince.
“You’ll be glad to know we picked up Pete Corbett this afternoon. Yup, two-man collar, although my cousin Bill gets most of the credit. He spotted Pete at a local convenience store. I just mopped up.”
Ron must have been extending his congratulations, because Dan’s face broke into a wide grin. “That’s what we think, Ron. We’ve rounded up most of the players, and pretty soon someone’s going to figure out it’s in their best interest to talk.”
Dan stopped talking again to hear whatever Ron was saying in response. “Well, there’s one more little detail we have to wrap up,” he said in a more serious tone. “Can’t have a case go too smoothly. Never happens. It appears that the woman Ashley was training isn’t being entirely truthful with us—yet. She knows something about your mother’s death that she hasn’t said. But don’t you worry. We’ll get to the bottom of her story.” Dan turned and winked at Annie.
Annie’s cell phone buzzed, and she gratefully exited Dan’s office and went out to the foyer, where Lavender was now sitting, waiting to be taken home. Jessica Flynn was calling to tell her that Fish and Wildlife had reported another sheep killed and that she would be performing the necropsy in the morning.
“It was close to your place, Annie,” Jessica told her. “I thought you should know in case you want to take any extra precautions tonight.”
At the moment, Annie couldn’t think of a single thing she could do to stop the onslaught of bad news.
CHAPTER 23
FRIDAY, MAY 20
As it turned out, Annie needn’t have worried about Martha’s reaction to Lavender’s disingenuous performance before Deputy Williams. True to her saintlike persona, Martha was primarily concerned about the emotional impact the experience had had on Lavender.
“I’m worried about her, Annie,” Martha told her the next morning on the phone. “She was up half the night, sobbing in her bedroom. She won’t tell me what’s wrong, and every time I ask her, she just says that I wouldn’t understand. I’m not sure what to do.”
Annie wanted to suggest hitting her upside the head. But she resisted the impulse. It was critically important that Lavender cough up whatever she was keeping from the Sheriff’s Office, but Annie knew that convincing her half sister to untangle herself from the web of lies she’d already spun would be an uphill battle and not won by force. She sighed.
“You know she failed a polygraph,” she told Martha, reluctantly. Annie truly didn’t want to tell tales, but she thought Martha deserved to know.
“Yes, Lavender told me that straight away. But that’s not what bothers me. Someone with Lavender’s temperament might easily give responses that register as deceptive when they were r
eally telling the God’s honest truth. No, it’s this overriding belief that she has to protect someone that has me concerned. Someone entrusted her with a secret, and she’s determined not to give it up. Her loyalty is admirable, but it’s getting in the way of her mental health. I thought you might know what to do.”
Nothing that you’d like to hear. “I’ll try to think of something, Martha,” Annie said without much enthusiasm. “She’s already in hot water with the police and certainly not doing herself any favors by not telling them what she knows. I’ll be by this afternoon and see if I can talk some sense into her.”
“Thank you, Annie. I know she’ll listen to you. She holds you in such high regard, you know.”
* * *
Against her better judgment, Annie hauled out the boxes of family photos and memorabilia that she’d warned Ron Carr the Third might still be untouched years after he’d neatly stored them. This certainly had proved true in her case. Over time, all of her mother’s coveted china, linens, and knickknacks had been brought out into the open and integrated with Annie’s own household furnishings. True, the Lenox china on display in her kitchen hutch had not once been brought out and used in the past fifteen years, but still, it reminded Annie of her mother’s love of cooking and entertaining, at least when her father was still around. After he’d fled the household with his secretary—who already was pregnant with little Lavender—the elaborate dinners her mother had once made for friends had abruptly stopped. There was no longer time and even less money for family entertaining. The full-time job that Annie’s mother had found with the county took almost all her energy, and any that was left over was spent making sure Annie’s life was on track.
The boxes of photos, however, had remained in Annie’s back closet, sealed and mostly undisturbed. It was simply too painful for her to look at the pictures, especially the ones from when the Carsons were still a tight-knit, presumably happy family. The later ones only revealed the weariness with which her mother went through life as a single woman with a daughter to raise. In the first few years following her parents’ divorce, her parents had made an attempt to meld the two families, but the disparities in lifestyles and personalities soon proved that a disastrous idea. Soon Annie’s visits to see her father and his new family in Florida stopped, and Lavender’s rare trips to Washington State petered out as well.