by Leigh Hearon
“How is she?” Annie asked.
“Surprisingly well, considering what she’s been through,” Kim told her. “No serious injuries, and in case you’re wondering, no signs of sexual assault, which Lavender confirmed. There’s nothing wrong with her that time and rest won’t heal.”
“Thank goodness for that. Did she tell you anything to help the case?”
“She gave us a lot. In fact, I think Lavender gave me the most candid account she’s provided in the last week. Ron was to the breaking point when he picked her up—or, I should say, kidnapped her, because that’s what he’s going to be charged with, among other things. He told her a lot more than he probably expected would ever be repeated in court. He’d planned to hang her, of course, once he’d made sure she’d told him everything she knew about his business. He’d already put the noose around her neck just to scare her into talking.”
Annie digested this unpleasant piece of information for a moment, then asked Kim, “Did she? Know much about his drug business, I mean?”
“She was surprisingly innocent of most of the facts. Ashley had told her about Pete’s drug usage, but until last night she still thought Ron Carr was just a sweet guy who loved his mother.”
Annie was almost sorry she’d asked.
* * *
Martha sprang up when Annie told her Lavender was waiting for them at the Port Chester hospital and willingly conceded the game to Esther.
“We should do this more often,” she told the operator. “I haven’t enjoyed a good game of Scrabble since Fred died. It’s been too long. Besides, we’ve got to keep those brain cells active. That’s what I read every time I pick up an AARP magazine.”
“I’m all for it,” said Esther.
Annie planned on being busy when the invitation came.
* * *
At nine o’clock that night, Annie admitted a weary sheriff into her home. Dan had called her a few minutes before, asking if he could stop by. She wondered if he felt guilty about giving Ron Carr information about Lavender that ultimately led to her kidnapping and narrowly averted death by hanging. Or if he now regretted being so slow on the uptake with the information Sasha had literally wrung out of Ashley’s toy lamb, which identified Ron as her new lover and the location of his drug stash. Whatever his reason, Annie was feeling rather benevolent at the moment. Her sister was safe, the worst of all the bad guys was in jail, and most important, she was sure that the killings—both animal and human—had stopped.
When she brought down the bottle of Glenlivet from its usual high space, Dan waved it aside.
“Too tired, Annie. If I have a drop, I’ll have to sleep on your couch.”
Annie hastily replaced it and put on the kettle for tea instead. When they both had mugs in their hands, she thought of the right way to ask her question.
“How far along are you in wrapping up the cases?” This seemed open-ended enough, she thought, and not at all accusatory.
Dan yawned, and Annie looked away. An inside look at the sheriff’s molars was not a particularly pretty sight.
“We’re getting there,” he began, taking a big slurp of tea. “It helps that we now know Ron’s motivation for his killing spree. He never recovered from the real estate crash of 2008—just too heavily invested in too many properties to ever see daylight again. Meanwhile, his mother’s health was failing, and he needed to find in-home care. Fortunately, Mom had enough money to pay for it, so that wasn’t a problem. And for the record, from here on out, I’m merely guessing. But I think the inventory from the searches we performed today will bear me out.”
Annie got up and, after searching, found a box of semi-stale oatmeal cookies. She put them on the kitchen table. Dan tended to talk more when dessert was readily accessible.
“Ron probably went to his mother to ask for a bailout. For whatever reason, she wasn’t in the mood to help. I’ve talked with her broker and learned that, while she may have been a bedridden old lady, she still had all her marbles. She talked to her broker several times a week, and he said she often gave him stock suggestions that paid out better than his own. So we have to assume that if Ron asked for a handout, Eloise said no.”
“If she did, I’ll bet she’d helped him out before and was just tired of bailing him out.”
“Probably so. Anyway, by then, Ashley was on the scene, and somehow Ron learned that she was upset over her boyfriend’s drug use. We know this because Ron kept a coded log of his meetings with Pete. They start a few months after Ashley began working with Eloise. But Ron also was beginning to meet secretly with Ashley. In short, he was playing both of them. Pete was the perfect foil to run the drug business. I’m guessing Ron fronted the money and Pete and his friends would take all the risks, including manufacturing, procuring, and delivering them down the line. The guy you saw at the county dump was one of the prime distributors.”
Dan yawned again, and Annie poured him more tea.
“And Ashley? How’d he play her?”
“Oh, that was purely for pleasure. Ashley probably was crying the blues over her boyfriend and Ron saw a way to, shall we say, comfort her. Only problem was that Ron’s a married man. His family’s been an established part of the Cape Disconsolate community for three generations, if not longer. He couldn’t just up and divorce his wife to marry some chippy.”
“I’m surprised that Ashley was with him. Not just because of the age difference. But the letter I found made it obvious that Ashley knew what he and Pete were up to. Why would she break up with one drug dealer just to hook up with another who was twice her age?”
“From what Kim gathered from Lavender, for a long time Ashley really didn’t have a clue that her new paramour was involved with drugs or with Pete. She just knew that Pete was dealing and wanted to get as far away from him as possible, especially after she was popped for prescription pills.”
“That always seemed incongruous with Ashley’s character. What was up with that?”
“She told Lavender that Pete stuffed them in her purse as they were being pulled over on a traffic stop. Pete seemed impaired to the cop, blew a .10, and was arrested on a DUI. When Ashley pulled out her cell phone to get a ride home, the pills fell out in front of the arresting officer.”
“Poor thing.”
“Definitely. But, to make my point, we found a date on that letter your dog uncovered—May fourth.”
“The day she came and talked to me at my ranch.”
“And the day before she died. That implies that Ashley had only recently put together the pieces of the puzzle. According to Lavender, Ashley gave her the extra key to the storage unit the day they found Eloise Carr— she didn’t know Ron had made multiple copies. At that point, I think Ashley realized her new boyfriend was no better than the first. She either intended to turn everyone in or to blackmail Carr. We’ll never know, although the fact that she told her girlfriends she planned on meeting up with him that night implies that blackmail was on her mind. We do know that she and Pete already feared Ron Carr. Otherwise, why would they have lived in the woods, hiding from the world?”
“Did his family have any idea what Carr was doing—extramaritally and otherwise?”
Dan shook his head. “Apparently Ron’s whole family was in the dark, including Trey and his wife. They’ll probably bankrupt the business just paying for Ron’s defense.”
“How about Pete? Can you prove that he killed him, too?”
“We’re close. We found several fake IDs in Ron’s home office, including one for Roger Woodstock.” He took a deep breath. “I shot off my big mouth and told Ron that Pete was in custody. Then Ron bails him out using one of his aliases and kills the sorry son-of-a- . . .”
“Stop.” Annie didn’t want to hear it. But Dan was determined to continue.
“I killed Pete Corbett,” he said simply. “I killed him as much as if I put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
Annie shook her head.
“Remember, the person Ron killed wa
s killing innocent animals simply because the woman who broke up with him loved them. Somehow, I think that evens things out.”
Dan gave a short laugh. “So Pete needed killing, is that it, Annie? Well, justice doesn’t work that way, at least not the way our courts have set it up. But I’ll tell you one thing. Ron Carr killed three innocent people, including the one who gave birth to him, and I’m going to make sure he pays for it.”
Annie had no doubt the sheriff would follow through on his promise.
EPILOGUE
SUNDAY, JUNE 12
Jessica had agreed to join the board of Alex’s Place, and Annie was delighted. When the vet insisted that the next board meeting be held at her large-animal clinic, Annie was a bit surprised but didn’t question the request. She assumed that Jessica simply wanted the other board members to know the breadth of her diagnostic tools and medical facilities, and that was fine with her. They weren’t on the scale of Running Track Farms, of course, but were still impressive.
On the appointed day, the mercurial weather patterns the Northwest was known for emerged in full force. After a glorious May, in which rainfall had been at an all-time low, June had begun with a steady drip, and on this particular Sunday the drip had turned into a downpour. Local residents with gardens and lawns were delighted; Annie was less so, but she knew to keep her rain ponchos within easy reaching distance year-round. As she turned out her herd into the pasture that morning, she noticed none of her horses seemed to mind the warm rain.
Marcus was flying in that morning by private jet. Annie had offered to pick him up, but he’d nixed the idea, saying the airport was so close to Jessica’s clinic that it would be silly for her to make a special trip. So she’d had an entire morning to prepare for the meeting. To her annoyance, she spent far more time on her dress and makeup again than she did prepping for her report on future ranch horses. As she had suspected, Patricia Winters had gently disabused her of the idea that any were suitable as ranch projects, but Annie had located a dozen good candidates among local rescue shelters.
Driving over to Jessica’s, she wondered if Dan had managed to take the morning off. In the three weeks since Ron Carr had been taken into custody, he had worked practically nonstop to wrap up the remaining unanswered questions in the case, starting with the death of Eloise Carr. The search of Ron’s home had revealed a small pharmacy of psychoactive drugs and narcotics. Some had been prescribed; others had been obtained online. It wasn’t difficult to match the drugs found in his mother’s body with ones taken into inventory, and Dan was confident that link would ensure Ron’s conviction at trial.
Placing Ron at the scenes of Ashley’s and Pete’s deaths proved more difficult, but not insurmountably so. Both victims had traces of phenobarbital in their system, another drug in Ron’s possession, and the crime lab had just reported finding traces of Ron’s DNA in the fibers used in both nooses. Ron’s wife had supplied an alibi for him on the night and day of both murders, but Dan wasn’t too concerned. He’d told Annie that the least believed witnesses in homicide trials generally were family members, and the scientific evidence would trump a wife’s story any day.
As Dan had predicted, the Carr family was using all of its financial resources to marshal the best possible defense for their patriarch, but the funds from Eloise Carr’s estate were excluded from that pool, at least for now—Judge Casper had seen to that.
“They can throw all the money they want at criminal defense attorneys,” Dan scoffed. “The jury’s still going to come to the right conclusion.”
Ron Carr was unable to contribute any funds to his own defense. Tony had deciphered the coded book and concluded that while Ron had used his last ounce of credit to fund his new drug business, Pete had managed to keep most of the returns. Apparently, Ron’s skills in drug dealing were even worse than his skills in the real estate business.
At the moment, Dan and Judy Evans were discussing whether to charge Ron with charges of aggravated murder, which could result in the death penalty. The cost of mounting the trial would be astronomical but, as Judy pointed out, the charges might convince Ron’s legal team to try to bargain for life imprisonment, instead. Dan was betting on it.
Annie wasn’t much interested in the outcome of the case. It didn’t change her day-to-day life, and all she was concerned about at the moment was making sure that Lavender was recovering from the trauma of that night. Surprisingly, for someone whom Annie had always considered the ultimate drama queen, her sister had been remarkably understated about her adventure. Annie knew from experience what it was like to survive a near-death experience, so she understood, in part, why Lavender might wish to put the memory behind her rather than continue to relive it in all its sordid detail. She couldn’t imagine a better place for Lavender to be right now than under the watchful eye of Martha Sanderson.
“I know how you feel about Lavender pulling her weight, dear, but we’ve decided it’s best for her to take a short break from her employment,” Martha had told her the day after Lavender returned home. Annie had agreed with this decision. True, she’d jumped back into her horse training business the day after the attempt on her life, but then, she was tougher than most people. Lavender deserved a break.
And she deserved an apology. As soon as Lavender’s bruising had subsided and her larynx was no longer sore, Annie invited her out to dinner at the fanciest vegetarian restaurant in Port Chester. Lavender had wanted Martha to come, too, but her friend had insisted on letting the two sisters have their time alone. Privately, Annie wondered if Martha didn’t secretly relish the idea of eating a big steak in her sister’s absence. Probably not. However, Annie had consumed a double hamburger for lunch just to make sure her protein level wouldn’t plummet after a vegetarian meal.
Saying she was sorry never came easy to Annie, but that night she simply spoke from her heart.
“I didn’t realize how important you were to me until I thought I’d lost you,” she told Lavender. “I know I haven’t always been kind to you, or given your needs a lot of thought in the past. I just want you to know that I’ll try to do better in the future.”
“I’ve always known you’ve loved me, sister,” was Lavender’s placid reply. “Even when you were the most mad at me.”
“Really? How?”
“Well, you’re always so annoyed with me. If you didn’t care about me, you wouldn’t be annoyed. So I figured that you really must like me a lot.”
Annie decided not to comment on this. She nodded thoughtfully at her sister as she passed her the hummus.
* * *
Annie pulled into Jessica’s clinic promptly at 1:45, just as the rain stopped, and saw that the rest of the board already had arrived. Inside, she saw everyone except Marcus sitting around Jessica’s conference table. Travis was holding forth. He stopped talking long enough to welcome Sasha to his side, and invited Annie to sit down.
“I was just telling the others about my well-meaning family, whose efforts to run my life are not succeeding,” he said.
“Delighted to hear it,” Annie said, pulling up a chair. “Did you remind them that you’re now the chair of a very important board, and don’t need any help?”
“Well, I’m not entirely delusional about the state of my health, Annie,” Travis replied. “But I think I still know how to best take care of my needs. They’ve been after me for years to sell my home and move into a retirement community. Every week, my daughter-in-law leaves brochures on my table extolling the virtues of senior living, and every week I toss them into the recycling bin. I think I’ve come up with a better idea.”
“I’m sure you have. Do you want to share it?”
“I was just about to when you walked in. How about including living quarters for the organization’s founder into our new ranch structure? I’d like nothing better than to have hands-on, day-to-day contact with what’s going on, and this way I wouldn’t have to worry about the commute, since the Department of Licensing doesn’t think I should drive anymore
. It would be on my dime, and I’d make sure the space would accommodate an old man like me—minimal stairs, walk-in bath, everything that everyone’s so concerned about these days to make sure I don’t fall and hurt myself.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Annie immediately responded. “Dan? Tony? What do you think?”
“I think it’s great,” Tony agreed.
“Makes sense to me,” was Dan’s contribution.
Travis displayed one of his rare broad smiles. “Well, then, we should get this show on the road and make it part of our official discussion. We are a quorum, you know.”
“Where’s Marcus?” Annie asked anxiously. “Did his jet come in on time?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Jessica with a smile on her face. “It came in an hour ago.”
“Well, then, where is he?” Annie demanded.
The sound of children’s laughter came from somewhere at the back of the clinic, in the area of the outside paddocks.
“Are those children I hear?” she asked incredulously.
“It’s the Bruscheau children,” Dan explained. “Jessica invited them over to visit with Molly the mule.”
“Lovely. How’s Molly doing, by the way?”
“Why don’t you see for yourself?”
The meeting’s agenda was taking a strange turn, Annie thought, but she dutifully got up and walked outside with Jessica. The rest of the board followed in her wake.
To her astonishment, she saw Marcus sitting astride Molly and being led around by three giggling children. He was wearing jeans, a red flannel shirt, and—Annie was amazed to see—Western riding boots. He was desperately trying to look nonchalant in the saddle, she thought, although she noticed that his right hand was clutching the saddle horn. Marcus had always looked incredibly handsome in Armani suits, but now, in Annie’s eyes, he looked even better.
“Hey, cowboy,” she called over. “Is that your new girlfriend?”
“Not at all!” Marcus shouted back. “I’m just learning how to meet the one I really want halfway.”