Saddle Up for Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  Wordlessly, she handed the papers over to Dan, who read both in a few seconds, and then spoke into his microphone. But Annie didn’t wait to hear what Dan had to say. She rushed out of the evidence room and down the corridor, Sasha running behind her. She reached the glass front entrance door and stopped. She couldn’t take Martha with her on her quest to save Lavender. But what could she do?

  Tony appeared out of nowhere.

  “Come with me.”

  She turned and ran with him to the back of the building, where she knew the police vehicles were parked.

  “Get in, put the dog in the back, and do exactly what I tell you to do.”

  Normally, Annie would have balked at being told what to do by Tony or anyone else, but right now she didn’t care. She was just grateful that someone on the police force was doing something. As he pulled out of the county parking lot, he glanced in his rearview mirror. Annie followed his gaze. Several other police vehicles were following closely.

  “Dan’s filled me in. Only one place Ron could have taken Lavender,” he muttered to Annie. “SWAT team’s on their way, but I don’t want to wait that long,”

  She silently agreed. Suwana County didn’t have a SWAT team. The closest trained group was thirty miles away.

  She was glad the storage unit was only a few miles away, and noticed that Tony activated only his overhead strobes en route, not his siren. He turned into the entrance; the black steel gate in front was closed, inexplicably locked at this time of day. Annie gave him her password and the door soundlessly swung open. It seemed to take forever. A long line of patrol cars silently followed them in.

  “Down there!” Annie pointed to the building where Marcus’s units were. She was fairly certain that Ron Carr’s unit was in the same structure; every unit she’d walked by had started with an A. Tony radioed the information to Esther, and Annie watched the other vehicles fan out in a circle, surrounding the enclosure.

  “Wait here. Don’t move.” Tony jumped out of the car and joined six other deputies already out of their vehicles, waiting for his instructions. It was a brief discussion; Annie watched the group quietly take up positions on all sides of the building, their weapons drawn. She noticed that two deputies had eschewed their regulation Glocks and had high-powered rifles trained on the interior. Behind them, she saw the bumper of a blue Toyota pickup, parked on an angle and nearly out of sight.

  Annie hesitated for one moment and then jumped out of the car. “Stay,” she sternly ordered Sasha. Sasha looked reproachfully at her but stayed put. Annie hoped her dog would be more obedient than her mistress. As far as she knew, Sasha had not learned to roll down electric windows—yet.

  A few seconds later, Tony emerged from the corridor on the north side of the building, and Annie jogged toward him.

  “I thought I told you to stay put!” he hissed when she’d reached his side.

  “You did! So what? Lavender could be dying right now.”

  “And you’re going to save her.” He put up his hands as if surrendering the argument. “We don’t even know for a fact that she’s here.”

  “Oh yeah? Look over your shoulder. See that blue Toyota?”

  Tony looked. “Same one you saw in Port Chester?”

  “And the same one Lavender said belonged to Ashley’s new boyfriend.”

  Tony groaned. “Let’s get moving. Where the hell is the SWAT team, anyway?”

  “Forget the SWAT team. Forget talking. Let’s find out where Carr’s taken her.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Civilians.”

  “Oh. Are there any?”

  “Just checked. Aside from you, none that I can find. Time to see which lock fits this key.” He held one of the matching set in his hand.

  “Did you bring both?”

  Tony stared at her. “If you think for one second that I’m going to . . .”

  She snatched the one in his hand and sprinted off.

  She realized Tony had no choice but to duplicate her efforts. Starting on the farthest corridor back, she began inserting the key into every lock she saw, whether or not it resembled the one she’d opened for the frustrated woman the day before. She worked fast. If Tony didn’t understand that two people could accomplish the job of finding Lavender in half the time, well, that was just his problem.

  As each lock steadfastly resisted opening, Annie’s hopes began to wane, and her hands began to shake. She wished she’d remembered to tell Tony to push the key in fully before turning it. What if he’d found the right unit but didn’t understand the quirks of the lock? On the other hand, if she had taken time to explain, she probably wouldn’t be holding a key now, and she was convinced that time was running out. It might be too late; Lavender had been missing for more than twelve hours now, and who knew when Carr had caught up with her—probably early on, since Lavender had never made it to her meeting. She buried her thoughts and moved on to the next corridor.

  She could hear Tony on the other side of the hallway, trying locks in succession. They met in the middle; she could tell Tony was seething, but she merely said, “Push it in fully before turning” before escaping to the next corridor.

  She passed Marcus’s units and paused. Was there any chance Lavender might be in there? None, she decided, as she had both keys and there was no way they could have been duplicated by anyone else. Still, she decided to take ten seconds and give in to her paranoia. Digging into her pocket, she fumbled for the right set. At least these were easy locks to open. She tore open the aluminum roll-up door and stared inside. Nothing. Nothing but boxes and boxes of Hilda’s accumulated papers. She sighed and reached up to drag down the aluminum door.

  Then she heard somebody hiccup. She was sure of it. She looked around. What direction had it come from? She thought of calling out for Lavender but just as quickly realized this was a bad idea. What if Carr was with her? It might be enough to send him over the edge. So far, any sounds he might have heard would be interpreted as the normal sounds of people accessing their storage units, not seven deputies waiting to pounce. She left the door as it was and slowly walked up and down the corridor, trying not to make any noise. When she heard nothing more, despair started to fill her heart, despite the adrenaline running through her body that told her to keep on going until the right lock made itself known.

  She’d been concentrating on her feet, slowly traversing the concrete floor, back and forth, but looked up to see Tony watching her from the end of the corridor. She put a finger to her lips and then pointed around her. He nodded and began to walk toward her. She was at a loss; now she knew Lavender was here, and somewhere close, but how could she and Tony get to her in time, and without precipitating some disastrous outcome?

  Another sound came from the interior of a nearby unit. This time, Tony heard it, too. He pointed to the unit two doors left of the one holding Marcus’s business files. Both of them froze. Unlike every other door on the aisle, this one was not quite shut. The aluminum siding hung a bare inch above the concrete floor, allowing a small sliver of light to shine through. And no lock was present. Tony gave her the crossed hands sign to freeze and walked quickly out of the corridor. Annie realized that she had not once heard his shoulder mike squawk since he’d been beside her; he must have turned it off, she thought. A minute later, Tony returned with three other deputies, each silently running on their rubber-soled boots down the hall. They took up equidistant positions in front of the aluminum door. Tony motioned Annie to move back to the outside door, which she reluctantly did. Once she was out of the way, Tony gave a short nod. The deputies quietly drew their weapons and trained them on the door. Tony took one quick step forward and ripped it open in a clashing roar.

  All three rushed in and Annie ran forward, despite hearing Tony’s shouted admonition of “Stand back! Stand back!” Annie looked wildly inside the space for Lavender but saw only rows and rows of cheap shelving piled high with white plastic bags. Finally, in a
corner, she saw Lavender slumped on a chair, her head hanging over, her arms tied behind her back. A thick noose hung behind her from the rafters. Next to her stood Ronald Carr. He wore baggy cargo pants and an old sweatshirt, now stained with sweat, looking nothing like the real estate mogul he’d pretended to be when Annie had last seen him. Now he was being handcuffed by one of the deputies as another deputy read him his Miranda rights. Her gaze went back to Lavender. Tony was now on his knees, feeling for Lavender’s pulse on her neck. Annie couldn’t stop herself. She pushed her way into the crowded space, fell in front of the chair, and shook Lavender by her constrained arms.

  “Don’t you die on me now, Lavender! Don’t you dare die!”

  Lavender stirred. She tried to lift her head, but it clearly took too much effort. Annie held her sister’s chin and raised it for her. Lavender’s face was bruised, and her lips were swollen. She moved her mouth and tried to speak. One word finally emerged.

  “Sister.”

  CHAPTER 30

  LATER THAT SAME DAY

  It was Lavender who first remembered Martha. “Where is she?” Her lips were so swollen that the words came out sounding more like “Whereisthe?” but everyone knew to whom she referred.

  “Not to worry,” Annie assured her. “The last I saw Martha, she was napping peacefully in my truck in the county parking lot.” Although it occurred to her that Martha may well have awakened by now and might be wondering where she, and Lavender, were.

  “Tony, can you ask Esther to check on her?” she asked anxiously. With that, Annie raced off to make sure Sasha was all right in Tony’s vehicle. She was. She’d even managed to control her bladder until her mistress took her for a walk. The interior of the patrol car would not have to be scrubbed and fumigated by the jail inmates whose job it was to keep the county vehicles clean.

  The six deputies Tony had conscripted were ably doing their jobs. One had already escorted Ron Carr out of the building and into his waiting vehicle for a free ride to the county jail. The others had quickly sealed off the unit and were photographing and bagging the stockpile of drugs Ron had amassed there. Annie had only taken a quick look at the contents in her haste to get to Lavender, but now that her sister was untied, wrapped in a blanket, and huddling in Annie’s arms, she was able to see the extent of the real estate agent’s second job. Even Tony had seemed impressed.

  “I’ll bet you that’s the biggest haul Suwana County’s ever seen,” he muttered to Annie on his way to the main office to inform the proprietor, whom he’d hoped had surfaced by now, that his storage unit would be off-limits for the next several hours.

  “What’s in here?” she whispered back. To Annie, all white powder looked like confectioners’ sugar.

  “Crystal meth. Cocaine. Ecstasy. It’s a treasure trove of illegal substances,” he replied. “Probably enough to supply drug users from here to Olympia.”

  Lavender was anxious to reassure Martha that she was all right. But Annie, as well as Tony, insisted that she first be taken to the county hospital for an evaluation. No one had asked Lavender what Ron had done to her, and she hadn’t volunteered any information, but it was clear that Ron had caused her bodily harm. Annie wondered what kind of mental damage he’d also inflicted. It appeared that Lavender had been held captive for hours.

  Kim appeared just as the ambulance to take Lavender to the hospital had arrived. She’d come with the signed subpoena from Judge Casper to search the unit. Technically, it was no longer needed, since the unit obviously had been used in the commission of a crime, but Kim shrugged and delivered it to the main office on the basis that it couldn’t hurt. She then climbed into the back of the ambulance with Lavender, who was on a stretcher.

  “There’s only room for one of us,” she said, anticipating Annie’s request. “Besides, someone should go back and be with Martha. She’s been given the no-frills version of what’s happened, but she’s still pretty upset. I’ll give you a call from the hospital and let you know how things progress there.”

  Annie didn’t bother to argue. Kim was right—Martha did need to hear what portion of the story she could tell, and firm reassurances that her young friend was going to be fine. Besides, Annie knew that Kim would want to interview Lavender privately, and she’d be locked out of the examination room in any case.

  “Tell her I thried to call,” Lavender croaked from her stretcher. Annie nearly burst into tears just hearing her say it.

  After conferring with Tony and learning that he and the others would be taking inventory and cataloging evidence long into the afternoon, Annie drove back to the Sheriff’s Office. She decided to bring Sasha with her into the county building on the premise that doggy comfort would again be a good thing right now. Anyway, if Sasha was going to be Travis’s companion dog, she needed hours of experience being in public buildings amid large groups of people. Sasha was happy to accompany Annie as she walked the corridor down to Esther’s office, where Martha was now ensconced, and politely sat whenever a county employee passing by wanted to pet her. Privately, Annie thought the Belgian was beginning to enjoy the nonstop flow of compliments from strangers as much as she did doggy treats.

  She found Martha and Esther drinking tea and talking quietly in the small room.

  Annie tapped on the glass window on top of the door.

  “May I interrupt?”

  “Annie!” Martha stood up suddenly and swayed a bit. After using her hand against the wall to regain her balance, she gave Annie a hug. It was surprisingly powerful for such a small woman.

  Annie looked at her critically to see if she was all right, but Martha waved her away.

  “I’m just a bit sleep deprived, that’s all. How’s Lavender? Sit down, dear, and tell us everything you know. Would Sasha like one of these Girl Scout cookies?”

  Sasha would and did and would have loved many more, but Annie insisted Martha stop at one. She told the women what had happened after she’d left Martha resting in her truck. She omitted the tirade she’d delivered to Dan and her wild dash out of the evidence room; Annie figured Esther probably had heard and seen everything, anyway. And she saw no reason to tell them about snatching the key from Tony’s hand. She had merely assisted Tony in his search for Ron Carr’s unit, she said, and Tony didn’t seem entirely ungrateful, especially after she’d heard the sound of activity within one of them. Esther hid a smile.

  Annie also glossed over the scene that she’d encountered when the deputies rushed into the storage unit. She said only that Lavender was seated in a chair with her hands tied behind her, but once freed was able to talk, walk, and seemed perfectly normal, under the circumstances. She was now being checked out at the hospital, but Annie was certain that she would be able to go home later today. She hoped she was right.

  Martha was shaking her head by the end of Annie’s whitewashed story, but not because she thought Annie had omitted any important details.

  “I just can’t believe Ron Carr turned into a drug dealer,” she said in astonishment. “I knew his mother and father. They were friends of ours. Good, upstanding people.”

  “I remember Ron Junior as Port Chester’s star football quarterback,” Esther added, a touch of sadness in her voice. “His father started that real estate business and made a real go of it. I don’t understand why Ron Senior’s son would decide to embark upon a criminal career, either.”

  Annie recalled that before becoming Suwana County’s primary 911 operator, Esther had been a first-grade school teacher and knew the childhood successes and foibles of most of the county’s leading citizens.

  “Perhaps he was having a midlife crisis.” Martha’s tone was thoughtful. “Do you know anything about his marriage, Annie?”

  “I don’t,” Annie replied. “But I do know he was having a midlife financial crisis.”

  Martha tsk-tsked. “That’s no excuse,” she said firmly. “Besides, Eloise and her husband were very successful when they had the real estate business. Surely Ron could have asked his parents fo
r help if his finances were in trouble.”

  But he didn’t, thought Annie. Or, if he did, he didn’t get the answer he wanted. And now, with luck, they were going to find out exactly how he killed his mother, then his girlfriend, and finally her ex-boyfriend. The question of why he’d taken this path had been asked and answered: first, for money, and then to keep a dirty secret.

  Martha was right. It was no excuse.

  “Where’s Dan?” Annie asked.

  Esther informed her that Dan was meeting with the prosecutor, Judy Evans, and then was heading out to the storage unit to check Tony’s progress. He planned to talk to Trey, in an hour or so. Unbeknownst to either Trey or his father, Ron Carr’s home would be searched this afternoon. Judge Casper had signed the warrant without bothering to read the fine print.

  Suwana County’s deputies were being stretched thin today, Annie thought, but then, most of the recent crime in the past month had been committed by just two individuals—Ron Carr and Pete Corbett. With Pete dead and Ron in bright orange jail garb, chances were good that nothing more than a squabble at the local tavern or a missing bicycle would require law enforcement’s attention.

  * * *

  Lavender was discharged at four o’clock that afternoon. Since every single Suwana County deputy seemed to be out on missions ordered by Dan, there wasn’t much for Annie to do but hang out with Martha and Esther, who gleefully started a game of Scrabble. Esther had unearthed the game from one of the cupboards, although it was missing two Es and one S.

  “And I know who took them,” she said darkly. “We used to have a deputy who played in the lunch room every day. He was the sorest loser I’ve ever seen. He probably took all three letters when he retired.”

  Annie was dragged into the game and proved an unworthy opponent next to the likes of two women whose combined age was almost four times her own. When her cell phone finally rang and Kim told her that Lavender was ready to go home, Annie was immensely relieved—first and foremost for her sister, of course, but also because she wouldn’t have to play another humiliating word that netted paltry points.