“I don’t know, exactly. There are twelve suites. Some of them are doubles for couples to come together. Thayer wanted Lil somewhere that was close by and that reminded her of home.”
“If Doc was coming back anyway, why didn’t she just take care of her grandmother at the house?” Collier asked as he parked and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight.
“The obvious answer is Thayer’s hours are too unpredictable and she’s gone for long days. Lil sometimes needs more help than that.”
“And the not obvious answer?”
“Well, Thayer and her grandmother are very close and very much alike. While it seems like it would have made sense for them to live together, I think they were both aware it might have jeopardized their relationship.”
“Hmm,” Collier grunted. “I get it.”
“Oh, just a heads-up. Lil calls Thayer ‘Jo’ from her middle name Josephine.”
“Corey.” Lillian Thayer came around the side of the house. She was a tiny thing, barely over five feet, and Thayer clearly got her height from her father’s side. Lil’s face was creased with age and browned from the sun, her hair shock white and cut stylishly short to her shoulders. She always took advantage of the stylist team that came around twice a month and had her hair and nails done. She shuffled slightly but her steps were sure and steady as she headed for Corey. “Jo didn’t tell me you were coming. Or that you got your cast off.” She wrapped her arm around Corey’s waist in a strong one-arm hug.
Corey returned it pound for pound, knowing despite her size and physical limitations, she was deceptively strong. “It was last minute. I just told her this morning. And the cast just came off the other day.”
Lil pulled away to look up at her. “Take your glasses off for a minute and let me look at you.”
Corey hesitated, knowing how this was going to go, but slid her glasses off and met Lil’s gaze.
“Well.” Lil’s smile faltered as she studied Corey’s still slightly swollen nose and the bruising beneath both her eyes, which thanks to Thayer’s bar side reduction, was minimal. “I expect you’ll be explaining to me over lunch how that happened.”
Corey slipped her glasses back on knowing she would tell Lil everything because she would know immediately if she were lying, even by omission. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you must be Sergeant Collier.” She extended her left hand as her right wouldn’t grip.
“Jim, ma’am.” He shook her hand with his left. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Thayer. I think very highly of your granddaughter.”
“I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t. Call me Lillian, Jim,” she replied with a smile as she looked him up and down. “Jo has never mentioned she has such a handsome friend. How old are you?”
Collier’s eyes widened and he cleared his throat. “Oh, um, forty-nine, ma’am.”
“Hmm.” Lil frowned. “Too far outside my dating window to even consider.”
Corey coughed a laugh as Collier flushed with color.
Lil, unperturbed by the exchange, gripped Corey’s hand. “I’ve reserved a table on the patio but we must get along. There are a couple of old snakes here who would steal it without a second thought.”
The view from the stone patio overlooking the large pond was lovely. There were burning citronella lamps along the railing to keep the mosquitoes away. They sat at a cloth-covered wrought-iron, umbrella table for four.
The table was set beautifully and Corey sipped on her icy lemonade and gazed out over the pond while waiting for either Lil or Collier to start the conversation. They weren’t here to talk about her. Turns out she was wrong.
The serving staff came by and set a small, leafy green salad with goat cheese, cranberries and walnuts, lightly dressed with cranberry vinaigrette, in front of each of them. Corey hadn’t been here for a meal in a while and had nearly forgotten how good the food was.
“So, here is what I know to be true, Corey,” Lil said as she started on her salad. “I know Jo did not break your nose, and I know you have been instructed not to engage in that full contact fighting sport you enjoy, so how did that happen?”
Corey looked away, chewing her salad and strategizing a way out of a full explanation, but she felt Lil’s piercing gaze on her—despite having vision only in one eye. She glanced at Collier who looked equally as interested and slightly amused. Thayer was probably not going to be happy about this as Corey was certain Lil would be addressing it with her as well.
“The other night I found out a coworker of Thayer’s was…” she considered her words carefully, “…giving her a hard time.”
“Say what you mean, my dear,” Lil said calmly.
“Harassing her. Verbally and physically, I suspect,” Corey admitted, unable to miss Collier’s expression severely darkening. “I don’t know the details. She didn’t offer and when I asked, she told me to stay out of it and that she would handle it.”
“That sounds like Jo. Go on,” Lil encouraged after the server came and collected their salad plates, replacing them with small plates of assorted fruit and cheese.
“Yesterday I went over to the ED in the evening to see if she could take a break. She was at the registration counter and he had his hand on her waist.” Corey’s jaw clenched. “And I most definitely did not stay out of it.”
Lil nodded. “Nor would I have expected you to.”
“Did he hit you?” Collier asked.
“What? No. That prick? No, I removed his hand from her body.”
Lil’s lip twitched. “Did you remove his hand from his body?”
Corey shared her humor for a moment. “Not quite but he got my meaning. Anyway, Thayer wasn’t nearly as appreciative of my efforts as I thought she would be and let me know with some colorfully harsh words. I won’t repeat them. To be fair, I totally overstepped. And no, of course, she didn’t hit me.”
The server came by again to deliver the main course, a heaping plate of bacon and tomato quiche with a side of seasoned potatoes. Corey smiled at the delighted look on Collier’s face, knowing he’d worried he was only going to get salad and fruit for lunch.
“So, I stormed off with my feelings hurt and went to the gym. Against medical advice, I got in the ring and being quite out of fighting form and out of my head, I got my nose broken.”
“I see,” Lil said. “And Jo? Have you two reconciled?”
Corey nodded and she dug into her food. “She came and found me after her shift, apologized profusely and set my nose. And this morning she made me breakfast in bed.”
“And the man? Her colleague?”
Corey grinned. “I believe Thayer took care of him, as promised. Again, I didn’t get the details, but if she says she put him in his place, I don’t doubt it. If the tongue lashing she gave him was anything like the one she gave me, I imagine he’ll be too busy licking his wounds to bother her again.”
Lil nodded, seemingly satisfied for the moment. “I’ll speak to Jo about it when I see her next.” She looked hard at Corey. “As for you young lady, I don’t expect to hear about you fighting until a doctor has cleared you to do so.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes. Collier had already cleared his plate. “Now, Jim. You came out here to ask me about the Crandalls. What is it you would like to know?”
Chapter Seventeen
Corey looked up from her plate when Collier straightened in his chair and pushed his plate away before pulling his ever-present notebook from his inside jacket pocket. “I hope you don’t mind if I take notes, ma’am. I find it helps me keep my thoughts in order.”
“I’ve found the best way to retain information is to make eye contact and actually pay attention to what someone is saying.” Lil smiled. “In any case, I don’t have names or dates stored away, at least not ones the police wouldn’t be able to discover on their own. I have impressions and feelings or memories.”
Corey bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep her face neutral as Collier redde
ned at the gentle reprove and tucked his notebook back in his pocket. “Fair enough.” His mood immediately brightened when a chocolate mousse with Oreo crumble and whipped cream served in a hurricane glass materialized in front of him. “Holy…” He pulled out the long dessert spoon, covered in goodness. “Do you always eat like this?”
Lil laughed, amused by his childlike excitement at dessert. “We do. I have a few complaints about living here but the food is not one of them. And I am not easily impressed when it comes to cooking.”
Corey had never seen him look so excited with anything and made a mental note on the off chance they ever did anything nice for each other.
“While you enjoy your dessert, Jim, why don’t I tell you what I remember about the Crandalls.”
Corey gave Collier a triumphant smirk when Lil slid her dessert over in front of her. Lil didn’t have much of a sweet tooth and Corey often benefited when they ate together.
“Albert Crandall had his property on the lake a couple of years before I purchased mine and moved out to live full time.”
“He bought the land in 1973,” Collier added.
“See?” Lil beamed at him. “Who needs notes?”
Collier couldn’t help a smile and Corey kept her comments to herself and ate chocolate mousse to avoid getting into trouble.
“He never lived there full-time, but for many years he was at the lake every weekend to fish—even in winter. I didn’t go over with a pie or anything right away. It was a little difficult to be neighborly at a distance, but we would greet each other amicably from afar if he was out in his boat.”
“Was that a black bass boat?”
“Good heavens, no. It was a twelve-foot aluminum outboard.” Lil laughed. “I suppose an entire year went by before I got in my own boat and went over. I had a very productive vegetable garden with way more than I could manage and no one to share it with, and honestly canning is not that much fun. As far as I could tell Albert would go out fishing all day and then come home and clean and eat his fish. I started going over to share my vegetables with him. Now, don’t get excited that I know anything about him. He was a private man. He thanked me for the food, shared his catch with me if he had a good day, and we went our separate ways.”
“Sometime later he started bringing his boys.” Lil thought a moment. “They would have been teenagers when they started coming up, so late fifties or early sixties now.”
“Edward and Harold,” Jim said. “The oldest, Edward, died in a car accident a few years ago. Left behind a wife and one son of his own, Robert.”
“Yes, Robert was several years older than Jo.” Lil eyed him. “I don’t know why you need to speak with me at all if you know all this.”
Collier shrugged. “Good police work is about thorough information and evidence gathering. We don’t know upfront what may or may not be important in solving a case, and you may have information which isn’t a matter of public record.”
“Indeed.” Lil cocked her head suspiciously. “Now that you mention it, Jim, you haven’t told me why all the interest in the history of the Crandalls.”
“Well, ma’am, that’s not really something I can—”
Corey cleared her throat to get his attention and gave him a small shake of her head to warn him off.
Collier pursed his lips. “A body was recovered two days ago from beneath the house on the Crandalls’ property.”
Lil’s eyes narrowed. “Whose?”
“The remains were far too decomposed for identification and are being examined by our consultant forensic anthropologist.”
Lil took a moment to absorb this information and sat back, staring out over the pond. “If I were a gambling woman, my money would be on Robert Crandall.”
Collier blinked in surprise. “Why would you say that? It could be anyone. Someone just happening by or a transient looking for shelter.”
“The information on the Crandalls was the first thing you researched, correct?”
Collier nodded. “Of course.”
“Have you located Robert yet?”
“No,” he admitted after a moment. “Or Harold.”
Corey had remained silent long enough. “You don’t seem surprised. Why would you think that, Lil?”
“After Albert stopped coming out, I suppose he was too old or too sick, Harold really spent the most time out at the lake. Then when Robert was old enough, he started joining his uncle. I paid particular attention because by then Jo was spending her summers with me and they were close enough in age that I thought it would be good for her to have a friend out here. She had Dana when we went into town or when Dana’s mother dropped her by for a play date, but she didn’t have anyone else even close to her own age. I knew immediately, however, a relationship with my granddaughter and that young man was never going to happen.”
“She and Robert didn’t get along?” Collier asked.
“I never even introduced them.” Lil’s eyes darkened. “In fact, I did everything in my power to ensure they never crossed paths. Jo has always been a beautiful, kind, and thoughtful girl, and Robert, even separated by a few hundred yards of water, was trouble. And I don’t mean smoking a joint behind the house or nicking a bottle of booze, although I’m sure there was plenty of that too.”
Both Corey and Collier were listening intently and Corey could tell from the way his fingers were drumming excitedly on the tabletop that he was itching to get his notebook out.
“Please, go on, Lillian.” Collier used her name for the first time.
She inclined her head slightly in apparent approval. “He was an abuser of animals.”
Collier looked perplexed. “I don’t follow.”
“He had a pellet gun. When he was younger, he would sit out and shoot at whatever small critter, squirrel, rabbit, chipmunk, skunk even, had the misfortune of getting within his line of sight.”
“That’s not so unusual.”
“If he didn’t kill them right off—and I’m all but certain he wasn’t trying to—he would build a fire and burn the poor wounded creatures alive or devise some horrible contraption with a cage and a pulley strung up over the water to drown them over a period of hours.”
“Jesus Christ,” Corey blurted. “Little fucking psycho.”
“Corey,” Lil admonished, without heat.
Collier frowned. “How do you know this? You couldn’t see them from across the lake.”
“With binoculars you can see quite clearly. The property wasn’t nearly as overgrown as it is now. I didn’t set out to snoop, but I admit, I was curious about the boy, and when I started hearing the shots—sound travels across water like you’re standing right next to someone—well, I snooped.”
“Where was Harold Crandall in all of this? For that matter, where was the boy’s father, Edward?”
“I suspect Harold was fishing. He had the taste for it like his father before him. As for Edward he was probably home with his wife crying, praying or drinking about how they bore such a soulless little monster. I always wondered if Harold took Robert under his wing because they were more like minded.”
Corey’s eyes widened. She had never heard Lil speak so harshly about someone. “And Thayer never met him?”
Lil blinked, considering. “She did once, though she may not remember. She was maybe six or seven. Robert would have been a young teenager. I took her into town to see a film at Tower Theater. She was very excited. We bumped into Harold and Robert. Harold remembered me from the times we had met before when he was younger and stopped to chat. Robert was outwardly polite and pleasant but his eyes held the truth—cold and cruel. They were going to the movies as well and my skin simply crawled at the idea of even being in the same building with them and breathing the same air.”
“What happened?” Corey asked.
“Nothing.” Lil pressed her lips together thinly. “I told Jo I was getting a headache and didn’t think I could sit through a loud, bright movie and promised I would take her another day if we could go
out for hot dogs and ice cream instead. She was very disappointed but she understood.”
Collier nodded, his expression tense. “I appreciate your thoughts and recollections, Lillian, but how does it explain why you think the body is Robert Crandall?”
Lil gazed across the pond for a moment before turning her attention back to them. “He was without a doubt a bad seed and destined to die horribly. I hope he did.”
Chapter Eighteen
They had managed to turn the conversation to more pleasant topics before they left. Lil took them around to walk off some of their lunch and showed them the work she had been doing in the gardens.
They had parted warmly with promises to visit again soon and Lil even extended an invitation to Collier to come back and bring a date. He reddened and insisted there was no special someone, while she eyed him, clearly not believing a single word. Corey wasn’t certain she believed him either.
“I can hear the rusty gears turning in your head,” Collier said into the silence on the drive back to campus. The first half of the drive he spent on the phone—first to Steph, telling her to expect him back on campus, then ordering Kelly Warren to meet him there, and finally to an officer named Taggart to take over skeleton sitting duties.
Corey gave herself a small shake and continued to stare out the window. “I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around the way Lil described that boy, Robert. It was chilling. Thayer is very much like her grandmother. She’s warm, caring, has a huge heart and sees the good in everyone. She can find humor in everything. Hearing Lil refer to someone as a soulless monster surprised me just as much as if Thayer had said it.”
“You don’t believe her?”
“Oh, no, I absolutely do. That’s what’s so disturbing.”
“With all due respect, is there any chance Lillian isn’t all there?”
Corey snorted. “Besides Thayer, Lil is the most level-headed and put together person I know. I obviously didn’t know her before the stroke, but Thayer tells me if she didn’t know better, she would say Lil is sharper now—perhaps due to her physical disabilities.”
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