Murder One

by Allen Kent

  “Is that your land on the other side?”

  “No. I just go to the creek. But that’s flood plain. It gets covered every spring, so I don’t worry about anyone building there. Old Hank Pethybridge cuts it for hay.”

  “So beautiful,” she murmured. “I could use some of this peacefulness at the end of a day.”

  “And what do you have instead?”

  “A second floor apartment just off Park Central Square, if you know the city. Convenient. Nice places to eat. Hardly quiet. And no view.”

  “Well, when you get cleaned up, you can come out here and unwind. Why don’t you go into the spare room, toss your clothes out and I’ll run them through the wash, then head into town and get things filed while you shower and run them through the dryer. You’ll find a robe in the closet. I’ll leave some lotion on the kitchen counter to rub into your hands, neck and face as soon as you get showered. If you got the oil on your skin, it should help reduce the reaction.”

  She turned back onto the house. “Do you want all my clothes?”

  “Up to you. But I’m not separating whites. Everything goes in the same batch. Warm wash and rinse.”

  She disappeared into the spare bath while I found the lotion in my own bathroom cabinet. When I came back to the bedroom door, all of her clothes were in a loose pile outside. No whites. But some pale pinks. I couldn’t resist pausing for a moment to envision the lieth body I could hear splashing under the shower head just two closed doors away. It was the first time a naked woman had graced the premises.

  “Did you find the robe?” I shouted.

  The shower ended. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I’m out of here then. Make yourself at home. Be sure to put some of the lotion on any skin that was exposed. I’ll be about two hours.”

  “I expect you’ll find me on the deck.”

  “There’s beer in the fridge. I’ll bring a pizza back. We can decide where we go from here.”

  “Gotcha,” she called, and I left while I still had the resolve.

  7

  It took the two hours I’d estimated to get the paperwork filed, drop Joseph’s jacket at the cleaners, stop by the courthouse to ask Judge Werner for a couple of warrants, and call people Joseph might want to visit during the afternoon. She’d get a much better reception if I let them know a woman state officer might be coming by and was an alright person.

  When I got to the office, Grace had delivered Verl to Rocky for safe keeping and gone back out to check on a report that a cougar had been spotted roaming the Zeorlin farm. The big cats are just starting to show up in the state and every time one crosses someone’s land, we get a call. Marti had a couple of messages waiting, one that didn’t need attention until tomorrow and one that added another complication to my day.

  “The crime lab called,” she said after I’d finished my report and handed it to her to file.

  “You’ve waited until now to tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to put you in a foul mood before you got your paperwork finished. You hate it enough as it is.”

  I slumped into a chair across the desk from her, wondering what news could be worse than that Nettie’s death was a murder, which I knew already. “Okay. Hit me with it.”

  Marti Bleasdale has been with the department through three sheriffs, about fifteen deputies, and half-a-dozen mayors. Even if she weren’t the perfect administrative assistant, her institutional memory would be worth keeping her around. But she’s smart, discreet, completely loyal if you do your job and keep things on the up-and-up, and knows more about what’s going on in town than anyone but Jerry at the market. She’d been mainly responsible for turning in the last sheriff and half his staff when they started sharing the take with a meth lab that had sprung up on the east side of the county.

  “I can’t abide using the public trust to break the law,” she told the court, then swore that Grace, Rocky, and Bobby Lule hadn’t known anything about it. And she’d accepted the new sheriff as her personal project, believing she could turn me into “what this county really deserves.”

  “From the prints we sent to Springfield, they were able to identify four people,” she announced. “One set they can’t match.”

  “Who did they identify?

  “Nettie’s, of course. And one set was Reverend Latimer. He had prints on file from his time in the service and from some deal the church does that includes anyone who works with kids. His prints were on the arms of another chair in the living room. The third set belonged to Brenda Castoe.”

  “She had prints on file?”

  “Yeah. She’d been through the TSA Pre-Check process. Her prints were several places in the living room and kitchen.”

  “I guess that shouldn’t surprise us. She said she gets by there every few weeks. Do we know anything about the one’s they can’t identify?”

  “There were a couple of partials. They were just on the screen door. Like maybe someone pulled the door open, then decided to put gloves on or not touch anything else. Nothing in the trailer looked like it had been wiped down. They aren’t sure if they’re a man’s or a woman’s. But they don’t show up in any of the databases.”

  “Do we know that the Greaves have print records?”

  “Yes. Both. These weren’t theirs. But they did get a match on the blood and skin under Nettie’s nails. That’s the bad news.”

  Yes. Things could be worse. I could learn they belonged to Darnell Budgeon or some other citizen I really cared about. I sucked in a breath. “And . . .?”

  “They were hers. You don’t have any DNA of the murderer.”

  “They were hers? She scratched herself?”

  “She had some sores on her legs that she’d been scratching at. There’s nothing to indicate she scratched her killer.”

  “Damn,” I muttered and pushed out of the chair. “Tell Grace when she comes back that she doesn’t need to print Verl or check him for scratches. And call Springfield and tell them the same for LJ.”

  “Grace knows,” Marti said. “But she and Rocky already made Verl strip. I suggest we don’t tell him we learned this. He’s mad as a trapped polecat as it is.”

  “Won’t hear it from me,” I promised and headed for the cleaners.

  When I got back to the house, Joseph was stretched out in a lounge chair on the deck, still in the bathrobe. She looked up with a grin as I stepped through the sliding doors.

  “Not what you were expecting? Sorry, but I’m not going back out with a shirt that isn’t pressed. I looked in every closet and couldn’t find an iron.”

  “Not every closet. It’s on the shelf in the master bedroom, just above the ironing board.”

  “I didn’t feel right poking around in your room.”

  “I appreciate that. I’ll get it for you, and you can iron while I get us some lunch.”

  She pushed out of the chair and padded barefoot back into the living room. “I already had a sandwich—and there’s one for you in the fridge. You need new lettuce. What you have is pretty limp. I also used the last of your tomatoes.”

  “Did you make a list?” I said with a chuckle, following her into the house.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. It’s there on the kitchen island. I did put spicy mustard on your sandwich, but no mayo. Hope I guessed right.”

  I’d gone into the bedroom for the iron and had to shout back into the kitchen. “Good read! Am I that transparent, or are all guys spicy mustard and no mayo?”

  “I think maybe all guys who live in cedar houses with carpets on the floor they brought back from Iraq,” she called back. Pretty damned perceptive.

  I set up the board beside the kitchen island, plugged in the base for the cordless iron, and retrieved the sandwich and a light beer. She ironed, and I ate while I ran through the rest of my morning.

  “I’ve got a warrant for the Greaves place and one that will allow us access to any bank accounts Nettie might have through the branch. I’ll run you back to your car, and thought I’d go che
ck out the report the Greaves were poaching timber, then stop by the bank to see if she had an account. If she has a will, Able Pendergraft probably drew it up. She wouldn’t have trusted one of the two young lawyers in town. Able’s office is on the square opposite the front doors of the courthouse. Pendergraft and Sumner. Do you need to get back to Springfield to file a report on the shooting?”

  She lifted the shirt to see if the collar folded over the way she wanted it to. There was something comfortably domestic about the whole scene and I found I liked it.

  “I called my troop commander,” she said. “Told him about the shooting, and that we had a little more work to do down here this afternoon. I can file the report when I get back tonight.”

  I finished off a pickle slice and started on the second half of my sandwich. “Why don’t you start with Pendergraft and check on a will. Then go visit with Jerry Covell at Family Market. He needs to get to know you. See how Nettie bought her groceries. Like you said, it’s a bit strange that we didn’t find anything at the house related to Social Security, Medicare, or savings accounts. In fact, you might also check in at the clinic and talk to Doc Waterman’s receptionist. I can’t imagine she hasn’t been in there for something. Be good to know how she paid her bills.”

  The thump and shush of the iron had stopped. I looked up from my last bite which was, I had to admit, better than anything I ever made at home. Joseph had put the shirt aside and was stretching her jeans out on the board.

  “You iron your jeans?”

  “I saw you looking at them when I first arrived this morning. It wasn’t because they were wrinkled.”

  I grinned over at her. “You’re right. I admit it was the fit I was appreciating.”

  “The pressed fit,” she corrected.

  “Oh, right. The pressed fit. But back to this afternoon. Family Market is a block off the square to the east.

  She cradled the iron, carefully picked up the shirt and pressed jeans, and disappeared down the hall to the spare room. I heard her hanging the robe in the closet. Within two minutes, she was back at the table as if this was something she did at every first lunch.

  “I assume you have warrants for the doctor’s records and for the attorney’s office to see the will.” She slid into a chair opposite me.

  “If Nettie has a will, we’ll get a warrant. No reason to add to the judge’s load if there’s no will. And I’m not asking to look at medical records. Just find out how she paid.”

  “Technically, that may also require a warrant. HIPAA’s about as fussy as any set of laws we work with.”

  I shrugged. “Nancy will tell me. It can’t compromise Nettie’s privacy for me to know how she paid her bills.”

  “If you have to ask, it compromises her privacy. I thought you were telling me people were all about privacy and personal rights around here.”

  “They’re also about helping out, especially when one of their own people’s been killed.” I leaned over and examined her neck. “Did you get that lotion on everything that might have been exposed?”

  She held out her hands and turned them in front of me. “Everything except my hair. And I double washed it. I’m not feeling any itching.”

  “Did you clean your weapon?”

  “Very thoroughly.”

  “Have you ever had it before? Poison ivy?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then if you got it, it’s going to be a few days before it shows up. You’ll know it if it does. Ugly rash and itches like the devil.” I looked down at my empty plate. “And by the way, great sandwich.”

  “One of my specialties.” She glanced at a black Apple watch on her wrist. “If we’re going to catch places before they close, we’d better get moving.”

  “I’ve got a couple of chops in the fridge. Let’s meet here after we make our visits and compare notes. I’ll grill them outside so it doesn’t get too warm in here.” I smiled over at her. “You’re going to be at the market. Why don’t you pick up what we need for a salad? You have the list.”

  “I can’t be too late starting back.”

  “You’ll have to have dinner somewhere,” I said, and guided her back out to the patrol car.

  I deposited Joseph at her Tahoe in front of Nettie’s doublewide and drove back over to see what the Greaves had been up. She followed me up onto the ridge road, then turned toward town to see if the old woman had a will and to try to find out how she paid her bills.

  Property lines in this part of the state are kept as much in shared memory as in public record. Everyone could tell you that the line between Nettie’s property and the Greaves runs just west of the spring that bubbles out of the base of the hill on the south side of the valley, creating the little brook that runs by her trailer before flowing into the creek. A barbed wire fence had once separated the properties, maybe two or three paces west of the spring. It had long since been flattened by falling branches and the weight of multiflora rose that climbed, then crushed anything it could get its tendrils about. There was an iron pin there somewhere marking the corner. But the families had owned the property for so long no one had reason to look for it. Neither ran cattle, so keeping a fence in good shape didn’t seem all that important.

  A dozer track cut through the trees behind the Greaves’ metal building in the direction of the spring. I stopped where I knew the old fence line once ran, not wanting to drag some hidden wire up over an axle. But I could see what I needed to see from where I sat. Two or three acres in front of me had pretty well been clear-cut, with anything over sixteen inches harvested and smaller trees knocked over as trunks fell and logs were dragged back behind the dozer.

  With the spring keeping the ground wet, this had been prime bottomland for walnut, ten or more mature trees to the acre. And I could see the limbs of half as many white oak stacked in brush piles across the stripped land. The old boys must have figured Nettie was too deaf to know how close the sound was, would never make it back here to look, and no one else would be prowling this part of the hollow before it got flooded.

  I pulled off my boots and climbed onto the hood of the cruiser. With my phone, I took a long sweeping video, starting where the spring rose and making a full 360-degree turn, narrating as I went. “I’m parked on the fence line between the Greaves and Suskey properties, looking east onto Nettie’s land. I came down here with a warrant, based on reports that people up on the ridge had heard logging going on that sounded like it was on the Suskey land. As you can see, about three acres have been pretty well clear-cut on the Suskey side, with the only dozer track heading back toward the Greaves. There’s been some cutting on the Greaves property behind me, but most has been walnut along the creek bottom. There are logs back beside their house. I’ll make a count, then check with the mills around to see where the Greaves have been selling their cut logs and try to get a total. Most of what’s been taken recently has come from Nettie’s property.”

  I clambered off the hood, pulled on the boots, then sat for ten minutes wondering if the two worthless sonsabitches would have killed the old woman over this. Of course they would, if she’d confronted them. But it wasn’t like Nettie to drive her old jeep down into the back of Blackjack Holler to face off with the Greaves. And if she’d complained to anyone else, I’d have heard about it from Jerry.

  I swung the Explorer around, drove back to the building, and made a count of the saw logs, jotting down the number of walnut and white oak. With the squad car back up on the ridge road, I sent a copy of the video to my email and to Grace’s, then gave the deputy a call.

  “I know you searched Verl for scratches” I said when she answered, “but let’s get a DNA swab while we’ve got the both of them, in case some trace shows up on her clothes or somewhere..”

  “You think they did it?” Grace asked.

  “They did a lot of cutting on her place. So they had reason. I just sent you a video to put in the evidence vault. And God knows they’re mean enough.”

  Grace grunted. “I hope
they did. I’d love to have some reason to send them both away for as long as either of them’s alive.”

  “Right now,” I admitted, “they’ve got to be at the top of our list.”

  8

  When I reached home, Joseph hadn’t returned. Maybe she’d decided she needed to get that shooting report in and had driven back to Springfield. But I didn’t judge her to be the type to leave town without letting me know what she’d found.

  I’d been keeping a couple of pork chops in the meat saver, threw them in a plastic bag with some marinade, and fired up the grill. If she’d skipped on me, I could probably manage both on my own.

  I’m a traditional old charcoal type when it comes to grilling. No self-starting briquettes. Just a chimney starter and a sprinkling of soaked hickory chips for flavor. I was spreading the coals out across the grill when I heard her pull into the drive. She gave two quick knocks and walked on in, coming straight through to the deck.

  “Looks like you counted on me staying for dinner,” she said, lifting the foil cover off the plate of chops.

  I grinned. “Or I’ve worked up an appetite.”

  She dropped the foil back over the meat. “Which is it? I’ll be getting on the road if I need to get back into fast food land by seven.”

  “I was thinking of tossing up a salad to go with these. If you want to skip fast food, you can help with that. And there’s a pretty good California Merlot in the rack in the island.”

  She unbuckled her weapon and hung it over the back of one of the porch chairs. “I’ve had an interesting afternoon and may as well help you with that second chop while we talk. I saw most of the salad fixings when I was making up the sandwiches so should be able to find them again.”

  I laid the chops on the hottest part of the grill with a pair of tongs, clicked the timer on my phone for three minutes to braise the sides, and followed her back into the house. “I’ll get some plates set. In here, or out on the deck?”