I debated adding my own life-is-perfect photo, but I knew I couldn’t do it. I’d add some silly caption like, “Gorgeous morning, too bad the cops still think my grandpa killed two men,” and then I’d have to spend the rest of the day explaining and calming folks down.
Finally Fancy had had enough and we headed back. We passed Katie about a block and a half from home. I swear there wasn’t a drop of sweat on her, which made me reconsider that robot hypothesis. I ticked all the clues off. Cold handshake, minimal smile, no acknowledgement of people she knew when she saw them on the street even though she lived in a small town, and now no sweating after what must’ve been at least a forty-five minute run.
At least her cheeks were a little flushed, but I bet a good roboticist could pull that off. Sweating, though? They probably weren’t there yet. And women do sweat. I played sports in high school; I know. Or—for those ladies who claim not to do something as crass as sweating—women most definitely glisten. A lot.
Not Katie, though.
Muttering about the unfairness of life, I returned home, still not sure what I was going to do.
I finally settled for the sensible option. I called Matt at the station and reminded him that there was that robber’s cave hidden away up the mountain and suggested that maybe if he checked there he’d find some additional clues about the murders.
He, of course, wanted to know if I had any specific reason for believing that the robber’s cave held clues to the murders. I assured him that no, I did not have any specific reason for believing what I did and told him I would’ve been happy to investigate myself except for the danger of getting shot and all.
He laughed. “Oh, I see. You won’t go check because of how dangerous it could be, but you’re just fine with me getting shot?”
“No. I didn’t say that. But as Jamie pointed out to me, that’s your job, not mine.”
“Is it now?”
I could almost picture him smiling on the other end of the phone and glared at the wall where I’d written his name all those years ago. I was not flirting, I swear.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll check it out and then drop by after to let you know what I found.”
“Um, maybe call. Grandpa’s lawyer told me not to talk to you.” I bit my thumbnail and turned away so I couldn’t see his name anymore.
“And yet here you are…Just can’t stay away…”
“Would you please just check out the cave and let me know what you found?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, the laughter evident in his voice as he ended the call. Men. Can’t live with ‘em and you just can’t shoot ‘em.
That left me with nothing better to do but wait. I stationed myself in the backyard with Fancy and a book, but I wasn’t really reading it. I was too busy watching for signs of Matt heading up the mountainside.
He and Officer Clark passed by around nine o’clock. Matt waved as Fancy ran up and down the fence barking at him, but Officer Clark didn’t even look in our direction. I waved back and then settled in to wait for their return. But instead of either one coming back down the mountain, a police four-wheeler headed up the path about an hour later, an older woman behind the wheel.
I wanted to stay out there and see what happened next, but by then the sun was shining right down on me and Fancy was crying to be fed, so I reluctantly dragged myself inside. At least they’d found something. I just hoped it was the clue that would clear my grandpa’s name.
Chapter Twenty-One
Thirty minutes later there was a booming knock at our door, like a battering ram. When I ran to answer, hoping to see Matt standing there with a smile on his face, I instead found Officer Clark. He had on those mirrored sunglasses that wouldn’t let me see his eyes, but his hands kept opening and closing like he wanted to hit something and his jaw was clenched tight.
“Where’s Lou Carver?” he demanded, looming over me, his hand moving towards his gun.
“Why do you want him?” I asked, moving to block him from coming into our home. I know I should’ve been nicer, but the way he was acting scared me.
“None of your business. Is he here?”
I looked past him, hoping to see Matt coming up the drive, but it was just me and Officer Nasty in a showdown on my front porch. I was willing to poke the bear a little, but not enough to get arrested.
“Yes. He’s here.” I wanted to reach for my cellphone which was stashed in the pocket of my sweatshirt, but I suspected he’d draw his gun on me if I did. I needed Mason Maxwell there to run interference before something bad happened.
Officer Clark put his hand on the door and moved towards me, but I held my ground, trembling with fear, but determined to keep him away from my grandpa until I knew what was going on. “I’m sorry, but I did not give you permission to enter my house. Why are you here? Do you have a warrant?”
I know. Stupid. But Fancy had started barking in the background and I didn’t know what Officer Clark would do next. The last thing I wanted was for him to shoot her.
“Ma’am. I need to see Mr. Carver. Now.” His voice lashed at me and I knew he was about a second from shoving me out of the way.
“Okay.” I tried my best soothing the beast tone and held up my hands to calm him. “Let me just put the dog out back so she’s not in the way and then I’ll get him for you. Please wait here.”
He clearly wasn’t happy, but at least he took a step back instead of another step forward. I carefully closed the wooden door to a crack, wishing we had a screen door. The way Officer Clark was acting I wasn’t sure what he’d do when I opened the door next. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him draw that gun of his.
First thing I did was block Fancy in the backyard. She did not want to go, but I wasn’t going to risk her being shot. Second thing I did was call Mason Maxwell and tell him what was happening. He advised me to cooperate and keep calm and said he’d meet my grandpa at the jail. I wanted to ask why he thought they were going to take my grandpa in again, but given Office Clark’s behavior it was pretty clear that’s where things were headed.
I just didn’t know why. What had they found in the old robber’s cave?
Finally, I went to find my grandpa in his workroom at the back of the house. He was in the midst of assembling one of his miniature planes. It amazed me he could still do such fine work at his age. I chalked it up to stubbornness. I’d seen him take five minutes to attach one piece because his hand was shaking too badly to place it. Fortunately, he was just sitting there, staring off into space. I didn’t think Officer Clark would wait five minutes.
“Grandpa. Officer Clark is here. He wants to see you. I think he’s going to arrest you.”
He nodded once, but didn’t look at me.
“Grandpa?” I glanced towards the front of the house, sure Officer Clark was going to break down the door at any moment.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and reached for his non-existent pack of cigarettes. When he didn’t find them he walked over to a locked cabinet in the corner, unlocked it, reached inside, and pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Grandpa! What are you doing?”
“If this is my last moment of freedom I’m going to smoke a cigarette by God.” He started to unwrap the package but I stepped across the room and put my hand on his.
“Please don’t do this, Grandpa. I know how hard it was for you to quit. And…Well, you won’t have the same motivation to quit again this time. Don’t let this set you back that way.”
He glared at me, his hand shaking, tears in his eyes, before pulling his hand away and flinging the pack of cigarettes on the table. The only other time I’d seen him cry was when my grandma was dying. It shook me to my core to see him like this now.
He pushed past me and stomped down the hall towards where Officer Clark was waiting. I ran after him and stopped him before he could open the door, sure that if he flung it open the way I suspected he was going to that Officer Clark would shoot him.
�
��Let me, Grandpa. Officer Clark isn’t in a good place right now. I don’t know what they found up in that cave, but whatever it is, it’s convinced him you must be the killer.”
My grandpa stared me down and I shrunk back. “Maggie May, how do you know where they were looking this morning?”
I bit my lip, finally realizing what I’d done. “I told Matt to look there. I didn’t know…I just…I thought maybe they’d find evidence of the real killer. I didn’t know it would come back to you…”
His look was cold as ice as he stepped back and smoothed a hand over his hair. “Open the door, Maggie.”
I grabbed the doorknob and slowly eased the door open, making sure to keep my body between Officer Clark and my grandpa.
“Here he is, Officer Clark,” I said in my calmest voice even though I was trembling from head to toe.
Officer Clark focused on my grandpa, his body rigid with anger. “Lou Carver. You are under arrest for the murders of Jack Dunner and Roy Jackson. Please step out onto the porch. And keep your hands where I can see them.” His hand dropped down to rest on his gun.
“He didn’t do this. He’s not a killer,” I cried.
My grandpa stepped past me, slowly, calmly, staring off into the distance like a man walking to the gallows who knew there was no rescue in sight, his hands held up for Officer Clark to see.
“Grandpa!”
“Stay out of this, Maggie. You’ve done enough.” He stepped onto the porch next to Officer Clark, never once looking back at me.
“He didn’t do this,” I cried again as Officer Clark wrenched my grandpa’s hands behind his back. “Where’s Matt?”
Officer Clark ignored me as he turned my grandpa and pushed him towards the squad car in our driveway.
“Does he know you did this?” I shouted.
But Officer Clark just kept on walking.
I dashed at the tears that filled my eyes as Officer Clark opened the back door of the car and pushed my grandpa inside, not treating him with the care you’d expect for an eighty-two-year-old man.
“I called his attorney,” I shouted at him. “You speak to my grandpa before he arrives, I’ll sue your asses to the end of time.”
(Yes, I did use that language with that man. No, I’m not sorry about it. You see your grandpa put in cuffs and shoved into a squad car and tell me what you’d want to say to the person doing it.)
I turned my attention to my grandpa even though he probably couldn’t hear me through the car window and still wasn’t looking at me. “Grandpa, wait for your attorney. You do not speak to them until he’s there, you hear me?”
Neither man acknowledged me as the cruiser backed out of our driveway and headed for the police station. I watched them go, my chest tight.
This did not look good. What had they found up there?
Chapter Twenty-Two
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know why they’d arrested my grandpa. I called the station and asked for Matt, but they said he wasn’t in. I figured he must still be up the mountain with whatever they’d found there. But what was it?
Only one way to find out.
I threw on my hiking boots, leashed up Fancy, and headed up the mountain to confront the man who’d said he was on my grandpa’s side but had just let him be arrested and was too coward to even be there when it happened.
I was full of righteous anger, rehearsing over and over again exactly what I was going to say to Mr. Matthew Allen Barnes, betrayer that he was. How dare he sit at my grandpa’s table and tell us how much my grandpa had done for him and then turn around and do this? What kind of man does that? Certainly not the kind of man I’d thought he was.
Fancy wasn’t too happy with me because I only let her stop to smell things when I had to stop to catch my breath. Hiking at seven thousand feet is no joke. I finally had to slow down both for my sake and Fancy’s. It’s a good thing I have her around. She keeps me healthy in more ways than one.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to be angry and yell at someone, because I was scared. My grandpa didn’t deserve this. He’d turned his life around. He’d been a vital part of this community for forty years.
But unless a miracle happened he was going to go back to spending his life in a cramped space with a bunch of dangerous men. At eighty-two-years-old. He couldn’t do it. He’d die.
I pushed forward, scared and furious, my free hand clenching and unclenching, my calves aching, my lungs burning. Fancy kept looking at me, the worry clear in her eyes, but I couldn’t calm myself, not even for her.
I found Matt outside the cave, flipping through a plastic file box full of folders. I could see the four-wheeler parked nearby and a woman I didn’t know inside the cave taking pictures.
“How could you?” I shouted as soon as I was close enough for him to hear me
“Maggie! What are you doing? You shouldn’t be here.” He snapped the lid closed on the file box and stepped towards me, hands out to restrain me.
I glared him down. What did he think I was going to do? Make a mad dash for the stupid box and run away with it?
“How could you?” I screamed at him again, Fancy whining at my side.
“How could I what, Maggie? What are you talking about?”
Like he didn’t know. I started to cry. I hate when I get angry and cry. I hate it. Which just makes me cry more. But I wanted so badly to hurt someone and I had no one to hurt. My grandpa had just been arrested and now Matt was standing there like he didn’t know or didn’t care?
“Don’t pull that dumb act with me. You had him arrested. Officer Clark just dragged him away from our home in handcuffs.”
Matt’s first reaction was confusion, but that was quickly followed by a dawning realization of what must have happened, which was just as quickly replaced with an anger that matched my own. He pressed the button on his radio and said, “This is Officer Barnes. Get me Officer Clark. Now.”
I crossed my arms, realizing I should’ve brought a coat with me. Even in early summer it can be chilly once you get into the higher elevations. I focused on taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself enough to make the tears go away. The area around the cave had an earthy, decayed smell that was almost but not quite unpleasant.
A woman replied over the radio, “Sorry, Officer Barnes, but Officer Clark is with a suspect. He said not to disturb him.”
Matt swore and glanced back at the cave and the file box. “Sue, you okay if I take the four-wheeler for a bit?”
The woman in the cave nodded. “Yeah. Actually, if you take the boxes down with you, I can just walk back down on my own.”
“Thanks.” He strapped three boxes onto the back of the four-wheeler with bungie cords, his movements quick and efficient, those of a soldier in battle.
“What’s going on, Matt?” I pulled Fancy closer when she tried to sniff at the boxes.
He jumped like he’d forgotten I was even there. “I can’t tell you that, Maggie, I’m sorry.”
He started to get on the four-wheeler and then turned back to me, his jaw tight as he flicked a glance at the woman in the cave. “There were photos, Maggie. Photos of your grandpa and Lesley Pope. Together.”
“Together together? Or just sitting on the couch holding hands together?” Had Lesley lied to me? Were she and my grandpa having a full-blown affair?
“Sitting on the couch. Nothing…intimate. But for Officer Clark that was the motive he needed. I told him to wait. That your grandpa wasn’t going anywhere. But…” He cussed. “I should’ve known. I don’t know what his issue with your grandpa is, but he’s had it in for him since day one.”
He was standing so close I could smell his aftershave. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t look good right now.”
“Thank you.” As he turned away, I glanced at the file boxes. Three of them. All of my grandpa and Lesley? “Wait.”
Matt was already on the four-wheeler, ready to leave.
“Are those
all of my grandpa and Lesley Pope?”
He shook his head. “There are photos in there of pretty much every single person in town. You were right about Mr. Jackson and the pot, by the way.” He glanced at the boxes. “Anyone who thinks people in small towns don’t cheat or lie should look through those boxes. But I gotta go, Maggie. Before Ben does something we all regret.”
I pulled Fancy out of his way and watched as he drove down the mountainside. Now that my grandpa had been arrested and they’d found a motive for why he’d killed Jack Dunner, I wasn’t sure what Matt could do. But I was glad he was still willing to try.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I couldn’t go home. I was too upset. So I headed to the big rock and sat cross-legged at the edge, looking down at the town I’d always thought of as a perfect haven from the real world.
How wrong I’d been. Creek was just like anywhere else in the world, a bubbling pot of conflicting needs and wants that occasionally boiled over into the worst sort of things people could do to one another.
What they’d found in the cave made a lot of sense. In our one brief meeting Jack Dunner had struck me as the type of man who wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail his own mother if he thought there was profit in it. (Disagree if you want, but I think the fact that a man is willing to bark at a complete stranger shows a lot about his character and does in fact call into question his loyalty to his mother.)
I didn’t want to believe my grandpa had killed Dunner. He’d told me he hadn’t and I’d never had cause to doubt him before.
But…
It was his gun. And he had threatened the man. He had also made it quite clear he thought the world would be a better place without a man like Jack Dunner around. And he’d also made it more than clear to me that he’d do almost anything, including go back to prison, to protect Lesley Pope’s reputation.
A Dead Man and Doggie Delights Page 11