Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries)

by Parshall, Sandra

Tom let that pass. He wasn’t going to tell her everything about Soo Jin’s accident until he had to. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask your children a few questions. Just to clarify some things. Do I have your permission?”

  “Of course. Whatever you need to do. I hope Beth will behave in a civilized manner. She’s been such a trial the last couple of days, all because of that awful Rasey boy. Gordon could handle her, but I’m not having much luck.” Vicky drew in a shuddering breath and let it out. “Oh, I miss him so much. He was my rock. My world.”

  Tom still had Dennis looking into Vicky’s background and her marriage to Hall, but not a scrap of evidence had turned up implicating her in his murder. Looking at her now, Tom dismissed any possibility that she’d been involved. “We’ll talk to David first,” he said.

  As Tom and Brandon walked down the sloping lawn toward him, the boy paused in his halfhearted assault on the soccer ball and pulled himself up straight, arms at his sides with his hands squeezed into fists. His posture reminded Tom of Marcy standing in the upstairs hallway the night before.

  “Hey, David,” Tom said when they approached.

  The boy didn’t answer but regarded them with a pinched, suspicious glare.

  “We need to ask you a few questions.” Tom and Brandon stopped six feet away from the boy, giving him enough space that he wouldn’t feel crowded. Even so, David took a step backward. “We need to be sure we’re clear about what happened the night Dr. Hall died. We want to get the timing straight. Were you in your room when your mother heard the telephone message your father left?”

  “Yeah,” David said, his tone guarded. He nudged the soccer ball with the toe of his athletic shoe. “Why does that matter?”

  “Like I said, we’re just trying to get everything clear. So you were in your room and you heard your mother scream?”

  “She didn’t scream, she was just yelling. Upset.”

  “Then Beth and Marcy went out to see what had happened to Dr. Hall? Why didn’t you go with them?”

  The boy kicked the ball hard enough to bounce it off Brandon’s ankles. His bad aim seemed accidental, but instead of apologizing, David glared at Brandon as if the deputy had been at fault. Tom caught Brandon’s eye, signaling him to ask the next question.

  “You must have wanted to find out what was going on.” Brandon picked up the soccer ball and tossed it back to David. The boy caught it, dropped it to the ground, and kept his gaze fixed on it. “I sure would have,” Brandon went on. “Was there some reason you didn’t go with Beth and Marcy?”

  David’s head jerked up. “I was locked in, that’s why. I couldn’t do a fucking thing ’cause he locked my fucking door.”

  “He?” Tom asked. “You mean your father?”

  “Stop calling him that! He wasn’t my father.” The boy’s voice had risen, but he cast a wary glance at Mrs. Hall on the patio and brought it down to a level she couldn’t hear at such a distance. “I don’t know what they ever wanted us for. They never acted like we belonged here.”

  “Why did Dr. Hall lock your door that night?” Brandon asked.

  David hesitated, and Tom could see him putting together an answer that avoided the truth. “I talked back to him. He did it all the time. Locked me in to punish me.”

  “Okay,” Tom said. “I want to ask you about something else. Did you see anybody messing around with Soo Jin’s car yesterday? Tampering with it?”

  The boy’s anger instantly vanished, replaced by a blankness so complete it had to be a calculated defense. This, Tom guessed, was the brick wall expression David must have cultivated for dealing with his adoptive father.

  “What do you mean, tampering?” David’s voice had gone flat.

  “Doing something to it. Spending time around it.”

  David’s indifferent shrug seemed forced and self-conscious. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “You’re sure Soo Jin left around eight o’clock last night?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah. It was—” David broke off, glanced up toward the house again, hesitated as if weighing his words. Tom waited him out. At last David met Tom’s eyes, shifted his gaze to Brandon, back to Tom. “She went out right after Ethan did. I think she was following him.”

  “Oh, really?” Tom said. Finally, something that might be meaningful. “Any idea where Ethan was going?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see which direction he went?”

  “Toward town.”

  “And Soo Jin saw him leave?”

  The boy was getting into the story, and he looked more animated than Tom had ever seen him. “Yeah, she was watching from a window, and she went running out and drove off right after him. But he came back around ten—I looked at the clock—and Soo didn’t.” His voice dropped and trailed off. “By then I guess she’d already…”

  “Crashed her car,” Tom supplied. If Soo Jin had started back before Ethan, he must have passed by her wrecked car. Had he seen it and driven on? Or was he responsible for the accident? Had he run her off the road?

  Tom pulled himself up short. If Soo Jin had continued following him, Ethan would have been in the lead, just as when he’d left, and he might never have been aware of Soo Jin behind him.

  Tom thanked the boy, who had already reverted to sulking, and he and Brandon started back up the slope to the house. Brandon had that look he got, bursting at the seams with excitement, when he thought he was onto something significant. Before he could put it into words, Tom said, keeping his voice low, “I know what you’re thinking, but let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t have any evidence against Ethan.”

  “But it’s suspicious, isn’t it?” Brandon asked, matching Tom’s near-whisper. “He goes out, she follows him, he comes back and she doesn’t. Where did he go?”

  “He could have been driving around aimlessly, to get out of the house for a while,” Tom said. “This place feels like a pressure cooker to me. I can imagine how it feels to the people living here.”

  Brandon shook his head. “She thought he was up to something. She wouldn’t have followed him if she didn’t.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Tom said. They were close enough to the patio to be overheard. Vicky Hall seemed uninterested in them, but Rayanne watched them like a fox. Stepping onto the patio, Tom asked where to find Beth and Ethan.

  “They went off walking in the woods,” Rayanne said.

  “Together?” Tom asked, unable to hide his surprise.

  “Yeah. Darnedest thing, huh?” Rayanne gave a little laugh, but she sobered after a glance at Vicky Hall.

  “I’m sure Ethan has his phone with him,” Vicky said.

  Rather than calling the number she gave him, Tom jotted it in a notebook. “Point us in the right direction.”

  As they set off toward the trees to the west, Brandon said in an undertone, “Looks like Ethan and Beth have got something to talk about they don’t want the rest of the family to hear.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Tom said. “Right now I’d believe almost anything about these people.”

  They followed a path into the woods, crunching through fallen leaves and shoving aside drooping branches. A gust of wind shook the trees and brought down a shower of red and gold leaves that they had to brush from their hair and shoulders. About a hundred and fifty feet into the woods, Tom heard voices rising and falling in a furious argument.

  “You’re not having anything else to do with him, and that’s final,” Ethan said. “I forbid it.”

  Beth’s voice rose to a cry of outrage. “You forbid it? You sound just like him! You’re not my father, and you’re not taking his place.”

  They were too involved in their fight to realize they weren’t alone anymore. Tom and Brandon stopped twenty feet away from them among the trees, watching and listening. Patches of sunlight penetrated the woods, illuminating the brother and sister as if they were on stage but leaving Tom and Brandon in shadow.

  “Damn it, you’re going to listen to me, and
you’re going to do what I tell you.” Ethan grabbed Beth by the arm, squeezing hard enough to make her yelp and squirm. “That kid is scum, he’s nothing but trouble, and he’ll drag you down with him. Stay away from him.”

  “Where do you get off, calling Pete names?” Beth shot back. “After all the things you’ve done. Drugs and drinking and—Where do you get the right to act like you’re so much better than Pete?”

  “Shut up,” Ethan said, his voice carrying a dark warning note.

  “You’ve never been anything but trouble to Mom and Dad. Daddy was ashamed of you.”

  Tom took a step forward, sensing he would have to intervene.

  “Just look at you,” Beth taunted. Ethan gripped her arm tighter, making her wince, but she went on. “A drug company rep. You’re a salesman. Even an orphan from Korea’s better than you are.”

  Still holding Beth with one hand, Ethan drew back the other to hit her.

  “Stop it, Ethan!” Tom ordered.

  Ethan and Beth jerked apart and swung around to stare at the deputies.

  “What the hell are you doing, sneaking up on us?” Ethan demanded. He scrubbed the palms of both hands on his slacks, as if drying them. “Can’t I talk to my sister without you nosing around?”

  “You were doing a little more than talking,” Brandon said. “Didn’t anybody teach you it’s not cool to rough up a girl?”

  “I wasn’t roughing up—Look, this is none of your business.”

  “Until we find out the truth about your father’s death,” Tom said, “everything you do is our business. So you’d better get used to us sticking our noses into every corner of your life.”

  Ethan’s anger dropped away abruptly, replaced by a wary expression. “I didn’t have anything to do with my father’s death. Are you accusing me? That’s crazy.”

  Tom pressed ahead before Ethan could regain his composure. “What about Soo Jin’s accident? Did you witness it? Or did you just see her car after it went off the road?”

  Brandon added, “Did you drive on past and leave your sister out there to die?”

  Ethan’s heavy, rapid breaths sounded loud in the quiet woods. Beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead and upper lip, despite the cool breeze that swept around them. A scarlet oak leaf settled on his shoulder and he got rid of it with a furious swipe. “I wasn’t anywhere near the accident.”

  “You went out right before she did,” Tom said. “She headed in the same direction you did. I think she was following you. Did she catch up with you? Did she see something you didn’t want her to see?”

  “Who said—”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed your father,” Tom said. “You’ve done nothing but stand in my way. Why is that, Ethan? Most relatives of murder victims want to help the police any way they can.”

  Beth listened to the exchange with a smirk on her face.

  “You’re not asking me to help you,” Ethan said. “You’re asking me to incriminate myself.”

  “Oh? Are you saying your activities last night were incriminating?”

  “You’re twisting everything I say!” Ethan spun away in exasperation, raking both hands through his brown hair.

  Beth spoke up in a teasing singsong. “Yeah, where’d you go, Ethan? What are you hiding?”

  “Shut up!” Ethan snapped, pivoting to face his sister. “Where the hell were you until past midnight? Did you spend the whole evening spreading your legs in the back seat of Pete Rasey’s car?”

  “You—” Beth lunged at Ethan with fingernails aimed at his face.

  Brandon caught her around the waist. “Hey, now, settle down.”

  “Get your hands off me!” Beth writhed in Brandon’s grip.

  Brandon held on, wearing an expression of sorely tested patience.

  “I’d like to know where you were, too,” Tom said to the girl. “Were you with Pete?”

  “So what if I was?” She kicked backward, but Brandon shifted his right leg to keep her foot from connecting with his shin.

  “Somebody set my house on fire last night,” Tom said. “Do you know anything about that?”

  “Oh, great,” Ethan exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “That’s just perfect, you and your muscle-bound boyfriend setting fire to a cop’s house. Don’t you have any sense at all?”

  Beth strained forward, still trying to get at him. “You go to hell!” she screamed. Then she broke down and collapsed in Brandon’s arms, sobbing.

  “Beth,” Tom said, “were you with Pete when he did it?”

  “I swear,” Ethan said, “if you’re mixed up in something like that—”

  “Shut up, Ethan,” Tom said. “Beth?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she cried.

  “If you didn’t help Pete,” Tom said, “you won’t be in trouble.”

  Tom waited, but Beth had worked herself into a state of near-hysteria, and he knew he wouldn’t get anything else out of her. He nodded at Brandon, and Brandon let her go. She charged off, threading her way through the trees and crashing through the undergrowth toward the house.

  “Do you really think she helped Pete set your house on fire?” Ethan asked.

  “Let’s get back to what you were doing last night,” Tom said. “You’re not helping yourself by refusing to tell me where you went. You’re making me damned suspicious.”

  “All right, all right.” Ethan threw up his hands. “I went to see Leo Riggs, okay? I told him to back off and let the dog warden and Dr. Goddard catch the damned dog pack.”

  Interesting. When Tom saw Riggs earlier in the evening, he already seemed to know that Ethan had changed his mind about tracking down the dogs. “Why didn’t you want to tell me that?”

  Ethan swiped the back of a hand across his mouth. “I should’ve just answered your question.”

  “Did you know Soo Jin was following you?”

  “No. I never saw her. I swear.”

  “Did you see her car after it wrecked?”

  “Of course not. I would’ve called 911 if I had. And I would’ve stayed there and tried to help her.”

  For a moment Tom studied Ethan, who stared back at him with a belligerence that had a strong undertone of fear. Maybe it was time to reveal the truth and see whether Ethan was surprised by it. “We believe somebody tried to kill Soo Jin.”

  Ethan’s face went slack. “Kill her? What do you mean? How?”

  Tom doubted Ethan was faking that stunned reaction. “Somebody slit her tires. I think it was done at the house, probably sometime yesterday.”

  Ethan stared into space as if trying to absorb the information. Then he focused on Tom again. “Are you saying you think one of us did it?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “No. I mean—” Ethan stumbled over his words, and Tom had the impression he couldn’t keep up with his thoughts. He ended up saying firmly, “No. Absolutely not. Nobody in the family would’ve done anything like that.”

  “Soo Jin and Beth had a pretty bad scene over Pete Rasey.”

  Ethan took his time responding to that. When he did, all he said was, “Beth’s had a hard time of it lately. Because of that boy. I haven’t been here, but what I’ve heard… She’s been doing things I never thought she was capable of. It’s like he’s turned her into a different person.”

  “What are you saying? Do you think she could have gotten back at Soo Jin by slashing her tires?”

  Ethan raised his hands. “Now wait a minute. I’m not accusing my sister of anything. If she did something like that, it would’ve been vandalism. I mean, wouldn’t a kid expect the tires to go flat right away? She wouldn’t expect the car to be drivable and dangerous. And how would she know Soo would go out last night anyway?” He added quickly, “I’m not saying I think Beth did it.”

  First Ethan had seemed committed to total denial. Now he was defending the sister he’d been haranguing a few minutes ago. Tom wo
ndered how he would get any straight answers out of this family. “Do you think David could have done it?” he asked. “Did he have any reason to?”

  “Don’t expect me to explain what goes on in that kid’s head. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself. Now I have an appointment with a funeral home about my father’s service, so if you don’t mind, I’m leaving.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Rachel frowned as she pulled in next to Jim Sullivan’s van outside the animal hospital. Why was he here again? Just a couple of days before, he’d picked up enough medical supplies to last a month.

  Joe Dolan, still acting as her escort, parked his van beside Rachel’s Range Rover and waited while she went in to pick up vaccines for the dogs they hoped to capture that night.

  Inside, Rachel stopped in the pharmacy room doorway. This time Sullivan was taking bandaging materials, rolls of gauze and surgical tape. He looked like a farmer in his old jeans and plaid shirt, and his battered boots gave off a distinct odor of manure. “Hello again,” Rachel said.

  “Dr. Goddard,” Sullivan answered, without looking her way.

  “Did you forget something when you were here the other day?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “Obviously.”

  She moved past him, found the right key on her key ring, and unlocked the vaccine cabinet. “Thanks again for helping out at the rabies clinic,” she said. “And for helping us get that big dog under control.”

  He responded with a grunt. Whatever friendly feeling had led him to assist her the day before had apparently vanished overnight.

  “Dr. Sullivan—Jim—you treat some dogs on the farms you visit, don’t you?”

  “Some, yeah.” He stuffed boxes of gauze rolls into his leather bag as if he couldn’t get it done and leave fast enough. “No point in people bringing their dogs all the way into town when I’ll be stopping by anyway.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s fine with me.” Rachel plucked a vial of distemper vaccine from the cabinet. “I was just wondering if any farm dogs have gone missing lately.”

  He raised his head, frowning, and almost met her eyes. “You mean like the dogs in those notices out front?”