Wilson pulled in a sharp breath. “Well, my lord, I didn’t hear that part. I’m real sorry you had to see a sight like that.”
She’d told Wilson something Tom wanted her to keep quiet about, and she was letting herself get distracted from her purpose in coming here. Pulling herself back on track, she asked, “Can you remember when you heard the gunfire?”
Wilson frowned, considering, then nodded. “I’m pretty sure it was sometime between ten and ten-thirty.”
Rachel almost laughed with relief. If Wilson was right about the time, Ben couldn’t have been at the Taylor house. He had three people to give him a solid alibi—Angie, Holly, and Rachel herself. But if it wasn’t Ben in the Jaguar, then who? Had Ben’s mother made a stop at the Taylor house before she left the county?
Chapter Fifteen
When Tom drove up, he spotted Angie in the vegetable garden next to the Hogencamps’ small brick house, hacking at the ground with a hoe. He pulled into the driveway on the far side of the house and parked behind Angie’s Volkswagen.
She didn’t cross the yard to meet him, but stood stiff as a statue among the squash plants, with the hoe in one gloved hand and a bunch of weeds in the other. A shapeless straw hat shaded her face from the sun.
She cut off Tom’s greeting. “I think I should call Ben and tell him before I talk to you.”
“Come on, Angie. You know better than that.” Her father had once been a sheriff’s deputy and a cousin of hers currently wore the uniform.
She expelled a small huff. “All right, ask your questions.”
“Can we go in and sit down?” Feeling a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck, Tom wished he had a straw hat of his own.
Glancing toward the house, Angie said, “My mother gets upset if anybody besides Dad or my aunt and me comes in the house.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
Angie shrugged. “It’s not like she’s going to get well, is it? Her sister stays with her while Dad and I are at work, and she can’t tell the difference between my aunt and me anymore. Some days she thinks I’m a complete stranger and starts screaming at me when I come in the room with her.”
Good god, Tom thought, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. What could he say to someone whose relatively young mother was vanishing into the mists of Alzheimer’s? He’d seen the two of them together many times, looking like sisters, chattering like best friends on the same wavelength. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you—”
“You can leave my boss alone. Ben didn’t kill anybody.”
Tom spread his hands. “Did I say he did? I’m just trying to trace Cam Taylor’s movements before he was shot.”
“Yeah, right.” Angie flung the handful of weeds into a bucket at her feet. “Like you said, I know better than that.”
“What time did you get to Hern’s house yesterday morning?”
“Eight-thirty, like I always do, and I’ll save you the trouble of asking. Yes, Ben was there. So was his mother. She left around nine o’clock. No, Ben didn’t go out. He was at home all morning, up to the time he left to make sure Cam Taylor got off his property.”
“All right.” Tom noted that Angie was Hern’s only alibi for the time between his mother’s departure and Rachel and Holly’s arrival. “Now tell me what you saw and heard when Taylor was at Hern’s house yesterday.”
She adjusted her hat, tugging it lower over her eyes before she spoke. “Ben wouldn’t let him in the house the first time he showed up. The second time, we were all on the porch and he just barged right in and started his pitch again.”
“Hern was pretty ticked off at Taylor, wasn’t he?”
“Of course he was. I was mad too. But I guess I shouldn’t tell you that. You might accuse me of murder next.”
“That’s a little unfair, isn’t it?”
Angie let the hoe drop to the ground and crossed her arms. “Ben’s a wonderful man. If it weren’t for him, I’d be clerking at the grocery store and making next to nothing and bored out of my mind. Ben pays me a decent salary, he pays for my medical insurance, and he never makes me work late, so I can spend time with Mom and give Dad a little relief. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever known.”
She’s in love with him, Tom thought. In love with her boss, and determined to protect him. She might lie for Hern even if she believed he had killed Cam Taylor, because she probably thought Taylor deserved it. If she knew of anything in Hern’s past that Taylor could have been holding over him, she wasn’t likely to share it with Tom. “Yesterday wasn’t the first time Taylor went to Hern’s house, was it?”
Angie fixed her gaze on a bumblebee crawling around inside a yellow squash blossom. As if begrudging Tom the information, she said, “No. He was there before. And yesterday was the third time this week.”
“He was asking for money?”
“Yes. He even tried to get money from Ben’s mother. He already knew her because the two of them worked in the poverty program at the same time.” Her eyes flicked to Tom, then back to the bee. “You know, I can see Cam Taylor coming here to work with poor people, but looking at Mrs. Hernandez, I couldn’t see her doing something like that.”
“Oh? Why? What’s she like?” If Angie wouldn’t talk about one suspect, maybe he could get her to talk about another.
“She drives a Jaguar and I could tell every stitch she had on cost a fortune. She’s got a nice haircut, too young-looking for her, a little spiky, you know? And I don’t think her hair’s naturally that shade of brown. But it was cut just perfectly, you couldn’t get a haircut like that in Mountainview. And she wears a ton of jewelry, gold earrings and necklaces and bracelets and this gorgeous ring—” Angie held up a hand and wiggled her fingers. “She said it was a sapphire. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
“What did you think of her? What kind of personality does she have?”
“I like her, I guess.” Angie frowned as she considered an unspoken thought.
“But?” Tom prodded. “I get the feeling there’s a but coming up.”
Angie gave a little laugh, as if embarrassed by her obviousness. “She’s one of those people who are too friendly, you know? Like she’s knocking herself out to make you think she’s just a regular person and doesn’t put herself above you. She wanted me to call her Karen, but I couldn’t do that. I mean, I just met her, I don’t really know her, and she’s my boss’ mother.” She sighed. “Why is it some people are so determined to keep you from showing them any respect?”
Now there was an interesting question, but not one Tom wanted to debate at the moment. “Beats me,” he said. “So how did Mrs. Hernandez and Cam Taylor get along?”
“Oh, at first it was a big reunion, big smiles, you know. But it wasn’t more than five minutes before he pulled out his so-called business plan and started trying to get money out of her.” Angie paused. “I wasn’t deliberately eavesdropping or anything.”
Tom grinned. “I never thought you were. How did she react when Taylor asked for money?”
“You know…” Angie ducked her head, hiding her face behind the brim of her hat. “I don’t mean to criticize her, but I think she was kind of playing with him. He was practically begging, and she was enjoying it. She said—What was it exactly? Something like, Cam, look around you. The world has changed. You’re the only one in it who hasn’t. She made fun of him after he left.”
Far from sounding critical, Angie reported this with a clear note of satisfaction.
“What did Taylor say to that?”
“He must have been really desperate, because he kept on talking like she hadn’t said it. But he looked like he just swallowed a bug.”
“Tell me,” Tom said, “did you ever get the feeling that Taylor had some kind of leverage over Ben Hern or his mother?”
“Leverage?” Angie thought about that with a puzzled frown. “No. I don’t know what you mean. Is that important?”
“No, no, n
ever mind.” Angie wasn’t acting as if he was poking around a dangerous subject. Tom was inclined to believe she didn’t know that Taylor’s request for money was actually a blackmail attempt. “You said Mrs. Hernandez made fun of him. Do you think he deserved to be treated that way?”
Angie looked Tom in the eye. “He deserved a lot worse. He should have been locked up behind bars for stealing from my mom and dad.”
“So I guess you’re not sorry that he—” Tom broke off when Dave Hogencamp’s blue truck pulled up and parked in front of the house.
“Dad’s back.” Angie turned toward her father with the eager expression of someone about to be rescued from an ordeal.
Dave climbed out of his truck and loped across the yard, looking like a tall, gangly teenager with gray hair and bifocals. A plastic hardware store bag dangled from one hand.
“Hey, Dave,” Tom said. “How’ve you been?”
Dave glanced from Tom to Angie, then down at the hand Tom offered. After a hesitation, he shook hands briefly.
“What’s going on here?” Dave demanded. “I hope you’re not trying to get my girl involved in that murder case.”
“She’s one of the people who saw Cam Taylor right before he was killed. You know I have to get her account. And I want to ask you about your dealings with Taylor. You had a serious problem with him in the past.”
Dave snorted. “That’s one way to put it. He stole eight thousand dollars we couldn’t afford to lose. So yeah, I had a problem with him.”
“Your wife gave him the money,” Tom said, regretting the provocation but knowing it was necessary.
Dave’s face flushed a mottled red. He thrust the hardware store bag at Angie, letting go too soon and making her fumble to catch it. Through the thin plastic, Tom saw the bag contained a box of slug bait.
“You listen to me,” Dave said. “My wife didn’t give anything to that goddamn thief. He took advantage of a sick woman. He got her to thinking she’d be selfish if she didn’t help out her friends in the quilting circle.”
“He wanted to sell their quilts through a dealer, something like that?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, right, he was gonna make a fortune for them, selling their homemade quilts for big bucks in places like New York. Folk art, he called it. Rich people would hang them on their walls. All he needed was some money to rent a gallery and hire somebody to run it. He hounded my wife while I was at work, he wore her down until she was too confused to know what she was doing, and he drove her right to the bank to take that money out of savings and hand it over to him. I didn’t find out about it for almost a week.”
“That’s when you realized something was happening to her mind, wasn’t it?” Tom asked quietly.
Tom’s question brought sudden tears to Dave’s eyes, and his face twisted with helpless fury. Angie clutched the hardware bag to her chest, her head bowed and her face hidden.
“He took advantage of a sick woman,” Dave repeated. “I wanted to kill the son of a bitch.”
“Dad, don’t say that,” Angie whispered.
“You put him in the hospital,” Tom said. “He got your point.”
Dave shook his head. “I let him off too easy.”
“Did you ever get any of the money back?”
“Not a damn penny. By the time I found out, it was all gone. Handed over to strangers. You know how many of my wife’s quilts got sold through that scheme? Exactly one. And she didn’t get any damn fortune for it, either.”
“Where were you yesterday morning?” Tom asked.
Dave’s expression hardened and his eyes turned wary. “I went fishing, if it’s any business of yours. I had some comp time coming from the railroad, and I went fishing upriver.”
“Anybody with you? Did you see anybody or talk to anybody?”
“I’m not answering any more questions. That’s my right.”
Tom nodded. “Yes, it is. But if you don’t have anything to hide, it’s in your best interests to talk to me.”
“How the hell would you know what’s in my best interests? I’m done talking. Now I’m gonna see to my wife.” With that, he turned and strode toward the house.
Tom let Dave go. To Angie, he said, “Get him to talk to me, will you?”
“I don’t tell my father what to do.” Angie pulled the box of slug bait from the bag and tore open the spout. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave now.”
Tom was standing by his cruiser with the door open to release the built-up heat when Dave burst out of the house again. Thinking Dave had changed his mind about talking, Tom waited for him to walk over. But he went no farther than the porch, and he shouted his message to Tom.
“You oughta pin a medal on the man that killed that bastard!”
Chapter Sixteen
In her cramped home office, Joanna McKendrick sat at the desk and motioned for Tom to take the chair beside it. An icy stream of air from a ceiling vent whispered over his head and neck and raised chill bumps on his arms. He seemed destined to either bake or freeze today.
“Lindsay’ll be sorry she missed you,” Joanna said. “She went to feed the goats.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s coping okay. You know how she is.” Joanna paused. “I’ve tried to keep her away from Rachel. If I knew of anybody else who would take her in while she’s here, I wouldn’t have agreed to let her stay with me.”
“I understand that. How does Rachel seem to you? I think she was pretty shaken up yesterday.”
“She’s fine. She’s worried about Ben, though.”
“Worried about him?” Tom said. “Why?”
“I think she’s afraid you’ll rush into charging him with murder.”
“I’m not rushing to charge anybody.” Did Rachel actually think that of him, even after their conversation yesterday? “I’m looking at all the facts.”
“And how can I help you with that?”
“You knew the victims longer than anybody else in the county. I’m betting you know things about them that nobody else does.”
Joanna swiveled her chair away from him, so the late afternoon sunlight from a window struck her face. Most of the time Tom thought she looked younger than her age, but the strong light emphasized every line on her face and picked up the gray strands among the strawberry blond. “And now you expect me to betray confidences,” she said.
“They were murdered, Joanna. This isn’t a time to worry about confidences.”
She sighed, swiveled to face her desk, and pushed a stack of file folders to one side. “Here, look at this.”
Tom rose to look over her shoulder. She pointed to a photograph beneath the thick glass on the desktop. The faded color picture showed four young women and one young man, all of them wearing sweatshirts with college logos.
“That was taken a few days after we got here.”
Tom touched a finger to the image of a young Joanna. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Joanna gave his arm a light slap. “Flatterer. We were all different people back then. This girl—” She pointed to a pudgy young woman with short curly hair and a morose expression. “—quit and left after two or three weeks. I can’t even remember her name. Do you recognize everybody else?”
Three of the girls, including Joanna, had long, straight hair. Tom recognized Meredith, and the young Karen Richardson had the same high cheekbones and dark hair as the woman in Karen Hernandez’s current driver’s license photo. “My god,” he said, “look at Cam.”
“Oh, yeah, he was cute. And cocky as hell.”
The young Cam matched the description of Chad in Meredith’s manuscript: lanky and handsome with shaggy brown hair. Standing with one thumb hooked in a pocket of his jeans and his other hand resting on Meredith’s shoulder, Cam grinned at the camera with a confidence that verged on arrogance. The hand in view on Meredith’s shoulder was missing most of one finger. Tom had always assumed the injury occurred by accident, but maybe
Meredith’s account in her manuscript was the truth. He could easily imagine Cam trading a finger for freedom from the threat of combat.
Tom took his seat again. “I understand why you stayed here—you met a local guy and married him—but I’ve always wondered why Cam and Meredith stayed. They could have had better lives almost anywhere else.”
Joanna ran her fingertips over the glass covering the photo, as if she were physically connecting with the past. “I don’t think they ever made a firm decision to stay here. It just worked out that way. When their year in VISTA was up, the director of the Community Action Program offered Cam a job as a special projects coordinator—helping people get bridges and roads repaired, that kind of thing. He wanted to do it, and Meredith wasn’t going anywhere without him, so she got a job on the newspaper and stayed too.”
“That was when they got married?”
“Yeah. That was kind of sad. Her parents were totally against the marriage. They thought her joining VISTA was a stupid idea, and when she was done they wanted her to come back home and go to graduate school—she’d already been accepted at Georgetown. They definitely weren’t impressed with Cam when she took him to meet them, so they weren’t about to throw a big wedding for them. They got married in Mason County, with nobody but Dave and me there. And they never left.”
“It couldn’t have been easy for them,” Tom said. “All the disappointments, everything Cam tried that didn’t work out.”
“You make it sound like everything he did was a failure,” Joanna protested. “He accomplished some good things. There are roads in Rocky Branch District that got paved because Cam pushed for it. There are people who’d still be using outhouses if he hadn’t worked to get sewer lines extended.”
“But—”
“Now wait a minute. You’re going to listen to me. You know about the outdoor play that told the history of the Melungeons? Cam got federal funding for that when he was still a VISTA, and Meredith wrote the play.”
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