Killer in the Band

by Lauren Carr

  Tracy reached out her hand and helped him up from his seat and out the door.

  Cameron uttered a deep sigh of relief when she realized that their intervention had worked, made herself comfortable in the chair that Joshua had just vacated, and took out her e-reader so that she could continue to read a cute, cozy mystery set in and around Pittsburgh. The author was C. S. McDonald, who, according to the bio, lived in Hookstown. After the last few days, Cameron was in dire need of a light, fun mystery.

  In the hospital chapel, Poppy prayed continuously and bartered with God for J.J.’s recovery. Never had she ever imagined that anyone besides her father would lay his life on the line for her. Understanding the emotional turmoil that she was going through, Noah had offered to make sure that the horses and farm animals were taken care of while she held vigil in the chapel. She planned to pray and fast until J.J. was well on the road to recovery.

  The lack of news was maddening. Donny had told her that they had taken J.J. off of the ventilator and that he seemed to be doing well. But they were all warned that there could be any number of complications. Therefore, they had to wait and pray.

  So Poppy prayed.

  After two days of little sleep and no solid food, she felt drained. She figured that someone somewhere must have had some news.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said as she knelt at the cross on the altar with tears in her eyes. “Just give me some sign. I’ll do anything. I’ll stay with him forever and never leave his side if you save him.”

  She was aware that someone was opening the chapel door behind her. Over the last couple of days, visitors to the chapel had been few and far between.

  Maybe it’s someone with some news.

  After sitting up, she turned around to see if the visitor was someone who was searching for her.

  Instead, the sight that met her eyes stunned her. There in the doorway was a tall, slender young man with auburn hair, a chiseled jaw, and piercing blue eyes. He was dressed in blue jeans and a blue shirt, not a hospital gown.

  He’s well. They released him! We’re going home.

  Poppy was instantly out of her seat and running up the aisle, and she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, thank you, God! You’re okay! You’re really okay! Oh, J.J., I love you so much!”

  Laughing, he returned the embrace and said, “Thank you, but you’re hugging the wrong guy.”

  She pulled away and peered up into his face. Yes, it was J.J.’s face, and the man was his size and even had the same build, but on second glance, she saw that his hair was much shorter than J.J.’s—he had a military-style haircut. J.J. had mentioned his twin, who was an officer in the navy. She shoved him away. “You’re not J.J.”

  “That’s what I just told you. I’m Murphy, J.J.’s twin. I guess he never told you about me.”

  “He said he had a twin but not that you were identical.”

  “Now you know who I am.” Murphy flashed her the same charming smile that his twin had. Even his dimples were identical to J.J.’s. “Who are you?”

  She flushed from her chest all the way up to her hairline, which made her freckles become a brilliant shade of red. “Poppy Ashburn, and if you ever tell J.J. what I just told you, I swear—”

  His grin, dimples and all, filled his face. “You mean the part about you loving him so much?”

  “He just lost Suellen,” she said. “He’s in mourning, and my feelings about him are disrespectful toward her.”

  “I agree.” Then in a low, playful voice he said, “Something like that, you need to hear directly from the horse’s mouth—not from someone else, even if that person is your twin brother.”

  “How is J.J.?”

  “He’s stable,” Murphy said. “They’ve taken him off of the critical list. His condition is now considered serious.”

  “Thank you, God.”

  “Yes, thank God. That’s what I came here to do.”

  Cameron could tell that Fiona Quinn, a character in the little mystery she was reading, was about to get into trouble, and she was focusing on the story when beyond the page of her e-reader, she saw J.J.’s hand turn over. He reached his fingers out toward her. She lowered the tablet.

  J.J.’s eyes were open. He was looking straight at her. “Cam—”

  “You’re in the hospital, J.J.” She reached for her cell phone. “Your dad will be here—”

  “No,” J.J. said in a stronger voice. “Let him get some rest.”

  She placed her cell phone on the night table. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I heard you.” His throat was sore from the ventilator tubes, and his voice was hoarse but grew stronger as he woke up. “I’m sorry, Cameron.”

  “For what?”

  “For how I’ve treated you. Poppy thinks that the reason I don’t like you is because you replaced my mom.”

  “There was only one Valerie Thornton,” Cameron said. “No one could ever take her place.”

  “I knew that the second I tasted your tuna casserole.”

  “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

  “You forgot to put the tuna in. Tuna casserole without tuna is just casserole.” He chuckled, which made him cry out in pain.

  Cameron jumped out of the chair. Frightened, she tried to run for the door, but J.J. grabbed her hand and urged her to sit down.

  “Cameron, the truth is that I don’t like you.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Sometimes the feeling is mutual.”

  “I didn’t know why,” he said. “Dad demanded that I tell him why, and he had all kinds of theories, and really, I couldn’t tell him, because I didn’t know. There’s really nothing wrong with you.” He stopped to catch his breath.

  “You need to rest, J.J.,” she said. “You don’t like me, and—”

  “I do,” he said. “Just now, I listened to you tell Dad to go home after—I don’t know how long he’d been here—and I heard how much you love him.”

  “I do love him.”

  “And he loves you.” J.J. turned his head and looked up at her with his blue eyes, which were so much like those of his father. “You’re good to him. So I’ve been lying here trying to understand what my objection to you is, and all I can come up with is that Poppy is right. I have this mental image of Dad always being with Mom, and even though she’s dead, I thought that if he married again, he would marry someone just like Mom—who you’re nothing like.”

  “I could learn how to cook tuna casserole,” she said with a grin.

  He reached out his hand to her. She slipped her hand into his.

  “I don’t like you, Cameron.”

  “And I don’t like you, J.J.”

  “But I do love you because Dad needs you. Not someone like Mom—you.”

  “And I love you because you’re the son of the man I love.” She bent over to kiss him on the cheek, and he returned the gesture. “Maybe over time, we’ll learn to like each other.”

  Tad MacMillan entered the room in time to see Cameron kiss J.J. “You’re not getting germs all over my patient, are you?”

  Cameron didn’t see that Sheriff Sawyer was behind Tad until after she sat down again. “Oh boy. This looks serious.”

  “It is.” Tad referred to J.J.’s patient chart.

  “Should I call Josh?” Cameron asked.

  “Let him get some rest,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “We’ll fill him in later.”

  Tad was checking the monitors and the equipment that surrounded J.J.’s bed. “You’re doing great, J.J. Keep it up, and you should be going home by the end of the week.”

  “I hope I’m not going to jail.” J.J. eyed Sheriff Sawyer.

  “The State Police took the lead on investigating Clyde’s death, and everything checks out,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “Justifiable homicide. Nothing to worry about.” He cocked an eyebrow in Tad�
�s direction.

  “J.J., how many times did you shoot Clyde Brady?” Tad asked.

  “You’re asking me?” J.J. groaned. “Everything that happened after I saw the footprints downstairs is foggy. I think I shot him three times. Why? How many bullets did you find during the autopsy?”

  “Four,” Tad said. “Three bullet holes and four bullets.”

  “How is that possible?” Cameron asked.

  “Three of the bullets were nine millimeters.”

  “That’s what I used,” J.J. said. “I had Dad’s nine-millimeter Beretta. He let me borrow it because the Pennsylvania State Police took mine for evidence after I shot Starling.”

  “One was a thirty-eight caliber from a Smith and Wesson,” Tad said.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “From the service weapon of Mitch Lee, a Hancock County sheriff’s deputy,” Sheriff Sawyer said.

  “Who’s that?” J.J. asked.

  “One of the two Hancock County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed in 1967,” Cameron said. “Clyde Brady’s brother, Seth, was killed in a police shootout three years later, after Seth’s gun had been found down by the river.”

  “Ballistics proved that the bullets that had killed the two Hancock County sheriff’s deputies had come from a gun registered to Seth Brady, Clyde’s older brother,” the sheriff said. “It was Seth’s service weapon when he was in the army.”

  “The two sheriff’s deputies were shot and killed after they pulled over a car that had run a red light down by the racetrack,” Tad said. “They didn’t know the car had been stolen. The thief had just robbed a couple of kids who had parked down by the river, raped the girl, and stolen the car.”

  “Deputy Lee fired off three shots at the bastard when he drove away,” the sheriff said. “Then the car was found, and it had three bullet holes in it, but the police found only two of the bullets. There was a bullet hole in the driver’s seat, so they assumed that the cop killer had a bullet in his back. All of the hospitals and clinics were canvassed for someone with a bullet in his back, but nothing turned up.”

  “Until the gun that was registered to Seth Brady was found three years later.” J.J. turned to Tad. “But you just said that Deputy Lee’s bullet was in Clyde.”

  “And Vinnie Brady told me that his father had a bullet wound in his back,” Cameron said.

  “He did,” Tad said.

  “Which was evidence enough to confirm that Seth had done it,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “Between that, the gun, and the fact that he fired at the police when they went to question him, the case was closed—until Tad called me this morning after ballistics identified that fourth bullet he took out of Clyde.”

  “After ballistics identified that fourth bullet, I checked Seth Brady’s service record. He was shot in the back when he was in Vietnam. The bullet was removed in a military hospital,” Tad said.

  “When the investigators found the wound and no bullet, they must have assumed that Seth had found someone to remove it without reporting it to the police,” Cameron said. “They never bothered to check his military records.”

  “Guess they just went through the motions after Seth opened fire on the police,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “They saw that as a confession.”

  “But it wasn’t Seth,” J.J. said. “It was Clyde.” He shook his head. “I never…I knew he considered me a threat, and he was saying crazy things when he was trying to shoot Poppy, but I never would have dreamed—”

  “His record was totally clean,” Cameron said. “Vinnie told me that his mother had always insisted that his father hadn’t raped that girl or killed those deputies. She claimed that Seth had lost the gun in a poker game but that she didn’t know who he had lost it to.”

  “Clyde was a hell-raiser before he married Monica,” Tad said. “That was before my time, but I’ve heard that he used to be a heavy drinker and was into drugs. After Seth was killed, Clyde did a one eighty—”

  “Vinnie said he stopped drinking completely,” Cameron said. “Probably out of guilt over the fact that Seth had died for what he had done.”

  “Then he developed dementia and started drinking again, which released all of his old demons,” Tad said.

  “Poor Vinnie grew up as the son of a cop killer,” Cameron said.

  “Well,” Sheriff Sawyer said, “now we know the truth, and the record will be set straight.”

  “I guess some good has come out of my being shot.” J.J. clasped Cameron’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

  Epilogue

  Two Weeks Later

  The sunlight on his face woke J.J. up.

  Tad had made him promise to take it easy for the next couple of weeks when he’d released him from the hospital three days before—a promise J.J. had failed to keep.

  How could he take it easy while hosting the Fourth of July picnic that Suellen had wanted to throw for her employees and their families only one day after getting out of the hospital? It seemed only fitting to go forward with Suellen’s plans and to hold a memorial service for her as well. There wasn’t a dry eye on the farm when he and Suellen’s stepson spread her ashes across the pond next to the peach orchard.

  By the time of the fireworks, J.J. was exhausted. The pain in his ribs, one of the places he had been shot, told him that he had overdone it, so he left the hosting duties to Poppy and went back to the main house. Even the booms of the fireworks going off in the sky overhead failed to keep him from falling into a deep but pleasant sleep.

  His first love, Suellen Russell, was at peace.

  It was time for him to focus on studying for the bar exam, which was only six weeks away.

  Maybe just one more hour of sleep—doctor’s orders.

  J.J. rolled over, buried his face in the pillow, and drifted off again—only to be woken up by the sweet scent of cinnamon. Then he recalled Poppy’s telling him that Tracy had given her one of her recipes.

  After throwing off the covers, J.J. eased out of bed, minding his wounds; put on his bathrobe; and made his way down the stairs to the kitchen, where he found the hot cinnamon rolls on the counter and freshly brewed coffee. A plate and a napkin were resting next to the pan.

  After pouring his coffee and putting one of the rolls on the plate, J.J. made his way out onto the porch, where Poppy was swaying on the porch swing and enjoying a mug of coffee. Unlike J.J., she had been up for several hours. Noah had been taking over more and more of the barn chores, and she had been concentrating on the training and business end of the horse farm. She was also spending a lot of time talking to contractors about renovating the Bradys’ old house so that she could move in. Until then, she would stay in a guest room at the main house and care for J.J. while he recovered from his gunshot wounds.

  “Good morning.” He sat across from her on the swing.

  “Morning.” She resumed watching the variety of critters that had gathered in the front yard to enjoy the morning with her.

  Charley was taking a dip in the birdbath, which he was much too big for. Gulliver and Comanche were grazing in the corner of the yard. The dogs were scattered all over the porch. The mother cat was teaching her kittens how to stalk bugs in the lawn.

  J.J. took a bite of the roll and let out a moan of pleasure.

  She shot him a smile, and he returned it. He noticed that beyond her, there was a suet ball hanging from a branch of a maple tree for the birds. A big blue jay was clinging to the side of it and pecking at it. “Where did that come from?”

  Poppy glanced over her shoulder to see what he was nodding his head at. “I made that yesterday. That blue jay can be really snarky. Yesterday, he chased one of my yellow finches away from the sunflower feeder.”

  “One of your yellow finches?”

  “Yes.” Her emerald eyes met his. “I put up the feeders, and I fill them twice a day. That makes them my yellow finches and dove
s. You can have the bossy blue jays and rude woodpeckers. We’ll share the cardinals.”

  That was when J.J. noticed that the trees in the front yard were alive with birds feasting on feeders that had been set up during his hospitalization. He counted no fewer than six different types of feeders. He had been so busy with the Fourth of July picnic that he hadn’t noticed them. The birds were not only feasting on the feed but also gathering on the branches of the trees right next to the porch. Closing his eyes, he sat back and silently enjoyed the notes of their songs as they sang to one another…and to Poppy and him.

  The sound of an SUV gunning its engine startled him out of his tranquility and caused him to almost drop his cinnamon roll.

  The birds on the feeders flocked higher up in the trees so that they could survey the situation that was interrupting their breakfast.

  Poppy’s eyes became like emerald slits as she glared out into the driveway in front of the house.

  Interpreting the slam of Cameron’s driver’s side door as a sign that mealtime was over, the birds took flight from the trees. She paused to pet Comanche and Gulliver before greeting the humans on the porch.

  “Good to see you up,” Joshua said to J.J. as he trotted up the sidewalk and toward the house. “You had me worried last night. You looked terrible when you went to bed.”

  J.J. narrowed his eyes. “I got a good night’s sleep.”

  “Where’s Izzy?” Poppy asked Cameron when she joined them on the porch. “After riding Comanche yesterday, I expected her to be here bright an early this morning.”

  “I couldn’t get her out of bed this morning,” Cameron said. “Maybe Donny will bring her by later. To warn you, she has grand plans of her and Comanche entering some horse shows.”

  “She’s too late and green for this season,” Poppy said, “but maybe next year if she works hard enough.”

  “We’re taking Murphy to breakfast before he goes to the airport for his flight home,” Joshua said. “You two are welcome to come with us.”

  Suddenly remembering his twin, who had been staying with him so that he could help with the picnic, J.J. looked around the porch and to the driveway. He saw that Murphy’s rental car was gone.