by Lauren Carr
“I said I was with the Pennsylvania state police,” she said.
The corners of Silas Starling’s lips turned upward. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
As the weather was lovely, Joshua was tempted to drive his classic Corvette, but then he remembered that he’d told Cameron that he would stop at Clyde Brady’s farm to check on how the old man was really doing. The simple farmer’s driveway consisted of a rutted dirt road that led up to his old farmhouse. Joshua suspected that the sports car would be too low to the ground to make it without bottoming out.
It was midafternoon when he pulled up to the farmhouse, which was in dire need of new siding. A newer pickup truck was parked near the barn on the other side of the yard. He saw a half a dozen cattle in the small pasture.
Not recognizing the truck, Joshua strolled over to the fence. A calf who was eating nearby raced over to hide behind her mother.
“Hello!” someone said from the barn’s loft. “Can I help you?”
Joshua shaded his eyes and looked up to see a middle-aged man wearing overalls and work gloves.
“If you’re selling something, we’re not interested,” the man said.
“I’m Joshua Thornton. My wife is investigating Monica Brady’s murder. She’s out of town, and she asked me to check on Clyde. Can you tell me who you are? We weren’t aware that Clyde had any field hands working for him.”
The man in overalls disappeared into the barn. A moment later, he trotted into the barnyard, climbed over the fence, and took off his work gloves to offer Joshua his hand. “I’m Andy Simmons. My farm is right across from Clyde’s, and I’ve been helping him out for the last few years.” He gestured to the half dozen cattle in the pasture. “As a matter of fact, these are my cows here.”
“What happened to Clyde’s?”
“He couldn’t keep up with taking care of them,” Andy said. “Over the last couple of years, my wife and I noticed that the farm was being neglected, and we got afraid that the livestock was going to suffer, so I started to keep an eye on things, and if I noticed that the cattle hadn’t been fed by a certain time of day, I’d do it. It got to the point where I was doing it every day. One day, Monica asked me if I’d be willing to buy them. But she also asked me to just let them stay here and to not say anything to Clyde about it.”
“You mean she asked you to keep it a secret from Clyde?”
Andy nodded his head. “I know. It’s weird.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said they were having money problems, but she didn’t want to say anything about them to Clyde, because she didn’t want him to worry about money. So I paid the price that she asked for, and we didn’t say anything to Clyde. I have a receipt and can show it to you if you want.”
Joshua shook his head. “What kind of problems were they having?”
“I didn’t want to be nosy.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About a year ago,” Andy said. “Date I took ownership is right there on my receipt.”
“So you’d come over to take care of the livestock, and—”
“Most of the time, Clyde didn’t even notice.” The farmer shrugged his shoulders. “I think senility was starting to set in. My wife said that Monica told her that when I cared for the animals, Clyde would think that he’d done it.”
“Are you aware that Clyde has shown signs of paranoia?” Joshua asked.
“You mean because—” Andy sucked in a deep breath. “I wasn’t here the night that Monica got killed! I come over only in the morning or during the day, and if Clyde is around, I let him know that I’m here.”
“Have you and your wife seen how Clyde has been doing since his wife passed away?”
Andy nodded his head. “We’re keeping a close eye on him.”
“And what are you seeing?”
“Confusion,” Andy said. “There have been times when I’ve been here and he’d tell me to turn off my radio.” He chuckled. “Thing is, there is no radio playing. He’s hearing music in his head. Piano music. Rock and roll, I think.”
Recalling when Clyde had told him and Izzy to turn down the radio in the barn, Joshua nodded his head.
Andy continued, “My wife said that one day, he came over to our house and asked if Monica was over there. She’d been dead for six months at that point.”
Joshua suppressed a groan.
Andy lowered his voice. “Before Monica was killed—I didn’t tell the police this—but one day, I was out here helping Clyde add weather stripping to the windows here in the barn. I noticed that he was mad as hell about something. Finally, he told me that Monica was having an affair. Now, Monica was almost seventy. Well, I asked him what had made him think that, and he said that he’d found some pictures of her with this other man.”
“Did Clyde tell you who this other man was?”
Andy shook his head. “No. I pressed Clyde to tell me, and he just said that he was some young guy who he’d been seeing around and that he knew that he’d been putting the moves on his wife. He said that if he ever caught the two of them together, he’d strangle them both.”
“This is all a big misunderstanding,” Silas Starling’s lawyer, a surprisingly well-dressed and expensive defense attorney, said when Detective Gates walked into the interrogation room and closed the door behind her.
The lawyer’s clean appearance was in contrast to the clothes and appearance of the suspect sitting next to him. Silas’ right arm, which J.J. had shot, was heavily bandaged and in a sling. After a doctor had removed the bullet from his buttock, he had stitched up his wound and given him a special pillow on which to sit.
Silas Starling was a little man whose withered body was covered with a wide assortment of tattoos, many of which had faded with age and been distorted by his skin’s sagging and wrinkling over the years. His thin face and beady eyes reminded Cameron that Karrie had called him a weasel. That was exactly what Silas Starling reminded her of.
“My client had no idea that you were a police officer,” the lawyer said. “He lives alone on that deserted road. You wouldn’t believe how many troublemakers he’s had to fight off over the years.”
“Save your breath.” Cameron slapped the clipboard bearing the report about him shooting at her on the table in front of him. “We have all we need. When I was near the gate, I told your client that I was a detective with the Pennsylvania State Police and that I was looking for Silas Starling, and he shot at me. He’s being charged with shooting at a police officer and two counts of attempted murder. He’s going to jail for a very long time.”
“You say you said that you were a police officer,” the lawyer said.
“He blew out the windshield of my cruiser.”
“Which isn’t marked,” Silas said. “How was I supposed to know you were a cop? You didn’t announce yourself.”
“I remember—”
“You remember wrong, Detective,” the lawyer said.
“Well,” Cameron said with shrug. A look of uncertainty crossed her face. “You could be right.”
Silas grinned.
“I mean, all of the shooting and the excitement can get your blood pumping and your emotions running high.” She casually reached down to unclip a cell phone from her belt. “That’s why I always make it a point to record every one of my witness interviews.”
Silas’ beady eyes grew wide when she placed the cell phone in the center of the table and hit a button.
“Hello!” Cameron’s voice said over the speaker.
J.J.’s voice followed after a long pause. “I just saw someone look out through the one small window.”
Silas’ voice was far away but still distinct. “I’m not buying—”
“Police!” Cameron said, cutting him off. “I’m Detective Gates, with the Pennsylvania State Police. I’m investigating the murder of Dylan Matthew
s. Are you Silas Starling?”
“So you announced yourself, but my client didn’t hear you,” the lawyer said.
“Get out of here, you lousy coppers!” Silas said.
“Why did he call me a ‘copper’ if he didn’t hear me say that I was a police officer?” Cameron asked.
The sound of a gunshot blared from the phone’s speaker.
Cameron paused the recording. She winked at Silas, who was bewildered. “Like I said, I have all that I need to arrest you for firing at a police officer and two counts of attempted murder. See you at your arraignment.”
She started to stand up, but the lawyer begged her to stop. “Now wait a minute—”
“Why should I?” she asked while standing over them.
“You obviously went to see my client for a reason,” the lawyer said. “Maybe if he cooperates—”
“Too late for that,” Cameron said.
“Karrie sent you, didn’t she?” Silas said. “That bitch has been hounding me for years. I have a restraining order against her.”
“Why would she be hounding you?” Cameron asked.
“Vendetta,” Silas said, even though his lawyer was holding up his hand to indicate that he should be silent. “Claims I killed my wife. Me! Vendetta was the love of my life. I never would’ve done anything to hurt her.”
“Did you?”
“Don’t answer that,” the lawyer said. “Why would you want to interview my client about a missing-person case from 1998?”
“I didn’t want to see him about a missing-person case from 1998,” Cameron said. “I wanted to question him about a murder case from 1988.” She turned her attention to Silas Starling. “Dylan Matthews, his wife’s brother.”
“Dylan?” Silas screwed up his face. “He’s dead? I thought he was trying to make it to the big time in Hollywood.”
“No, he was found dead up at Dixmont State Hospital, about a mile away from your house.”
His beady eyes wide, Silas scoffed. “Why would I have killed Dylan? He was Vendetta’s big brother. She loved him. If I had killed him, she never would have married me. That would have been it. I never would have stood a chance with her.”
“So you killed him and ditched his body to make it look like he had deserted her—and like you were the only one she had left in the world,” she said. “The only one she could lean on, and the only one she felt like she could rely on.”
“All of that is true—except the part about my killing Dylan and dumping his body.” Silas shook a gnarled finger at her. “Dylan abandoned us—or at least we thought he abandoned us at a diner after the concert. We were going to leave for Hollywood that night. Dylan was going to drive at least halfway across Ohio, he said. So we were eating dinner. Dylan finished eating first, and he was anxious to get on the road. So he left us some money to pay for dinner and said that he was going across the road to gas up and that he’d come pick us up after. But he never did. He never came back. I went across the road to look for him, but he wasn’t there. We decided that he’d taken off without us—that he was dumping us like he’d dumped the band.” He sniffed. “Vendetta was shattered. I called my grandma to come get us, and Vendetta spent the next three months in bed. I thought she was going to kill herself.”
Cameron was uncertain of whether she should believe him.
“Are you saying that Dylan didn’t dump us and that someone killed him?”
“We believe he was killed that night,” Cameron said.
“Had to have been one of the band members,” Silas said. “Harrison—one of the guitar players—punched Dylan in the nose and tried to strangle him.”
“But Harrison wasn’t familiar with Dixmont State Hospital, which was where we found the body,” Cameron said. “Your mother worked there. You grew up at the bottom of the hill right behind the hospital. Don’t tell me you didn’t play in the complex when you were a little kid.”
“Why would my client have killed his wife’s brother?” the lawyer asked.
“Maybe because he knew Dylan that was planning to dump him—not his sister but him,” Cameron said. “Maybe because Dylan had no intention of taking you to Hollywood with him.”
“No,” Silas said with a small grin. “I was going with them.” He chuckled. “And there is no way that you can prove I wasn’t.”
As he maneuvered over the hill beyond which the orchards were located and made his way down the dirt road to the main house and the horse barn, Joshua was grateful for his forethought that had led him to purchase a four-wheel-drive SUV. Assuming that he would find Noah working in the orchard, Joshua had used the orchards’ entrance two miles down the road and traveled to the other end of the farm only to learn from Tom that Poppy had requested that Noah be transferred to the horse farm so that he could assist her.
“I understand that you took Noah in. How did things go last night?” Joshua had asked the orchards’ manager before making his way across the back road to the other end of the farm.
“Great,” Tom said. “Noah’s a good kid.” He cleared his throat. “If there’s anything I can do to help him out and to keep them from taking him back to Atlanta—”
“Glad you said that,” Joshua said with a grin. “Do you still have that apartment above your garage?”
Tom’s eyes lit up. “Sure. I’ve been trying to rent it out for quite a while now. It’s been empty ever since my daughter remarried and moved to Morgantown. But the kid’s only sixteen—”
“And he’s been taking care of himself for over a year—and staying out of trouble. I’ve prosecuted men twice his age who were legally adults but couldn’t stay out of trouble to save their lives.”
When he arrived at the main house, Joshua found a work van with “Countryside Farrier” painted on one side parked outside the barn. Izzy, with Charley by her side, was sitting on the top step of the porch. Suellen was enjoying the sunny day from the porch swing.
As Joshua drove past the barn, he saw three men, one of whom was Noah, and Poppy working on Comanche’s hooves. Judging by the amount of whinnying and noise coming from the barn, Joshua concluded the mare was not happy about the process.
“I see that you two are staying over here, where it’s safe,” Joshua said with a chuckle after climbing out of his SUV.
“Poppy told me that it’s too dangerous for me to be in the barn while they shoe the horses.”
“Captain Blackbeard hates getting shoed,” Suellen said.
“Comanche isn’t getting any shoes,” Izzy said.
“So you’re getting off easy, Josh,” Suellen said.
“If she’s not being shoed—” Joshua looked across to the barn and at Gulliver, who was nibbling on Noah’s ponytail as the teenager held Comanche. The farrier set down the mare’s hind leg, patted her on the rump, and turned to Poppy. “Oh, she’s getting her hooves trimmed.” He slapped his forehead. “It’s taking a while for all of this farm stuff to come back to me.”
“Poppy said that since Comanche has never had shoes and since her gait is fine, it would be much ado about nothing to put shoes on her now,” Izzy said. “But we do have to keep her hooves trimmed and clean and stuff.”
When she saw Noah lead Comanche out of the barn, Izzy jumped to her feet. Charley hopped to the ground to follow Izzy down the sidewalk to take the lead from Noah, who was dressed in his usual worn, oversized overalls that were covered in soil from the pasture. Joshua noted that his body was cleaner than it had been the last time he’d seen it. He guessed that Noah had taken a long, hot shower at Tom’s place the night before. One can only be so hygienic when he lives in a barn.
Glad to see Izzy so happy, Joshua grinned at the sight of his daughter and her beloved horse.
“She’s a lovely girl,” Suellen said to his back. “You’re blessed to have such fine children. They’re all good kids.”
“Yes, I’ve been very
blessed, and I thank God every day for them.” Joshua turned to her. “I heard from J.J. and Cameron.”
“I was going to ask,” Suellen said. “I expected J.J. to call, but—”
Joshua climbed the steps. “He and Cameron got held up in Moon Township when they caught up with Silas Starling, Wendy’s husband.” He sat down in the chair across from the swing.
“Oh?”
“They’re both okay.”
Suellen clutched her chest. “What happened?”
“Silas shot at them. J.J. put a couple of bullets in him. He was treated at the hospital and then released, and he’s now in custody.”
“Did he kill Dylan?”
“Maybe,” Joshua said. “Cameron is working on a theory that Silas killed Dylan because he was taking Wendy to Hollywood and breaking them up. So Silas killed him. It turns out that Silas’ grandmother’s home, which he lives in now, is directly behind where the mental hospital was. So he had access to and knowledge of the dump site. Do you know if Dylan planned to take Silas with him that night?”
“I really don’t know,” Suellen said. “I found the songs that Dylan asked me to write lyrics for. When we—J.J. and I—looked at the music, we realized that it had been written for a piano, but Dylan didn’t know how to play piano.”
Joshua nodded his head. “So he didn’t write the music. Who did write it?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Where are they now?”
“Cameron and J.J. are continuing on their way to State College. J.J. told me to tell you that he’ll call you when they check into the hotel.”
Seeing Noah come out of the barn after finishing with the farrier, Joshua hurried to catch up to him before he went on to his next duty, which appeared to be putting fresh water in the water barrels for the horses.
Although Noah’s smile was polite, Joshua noticed a trace of fear in his eyes when he greeted him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Thornton.”
“Last week it was Joshua. But that was before you found out that I’m the prosecuting attorney.”
