Fatal Divisions

by Claire Booth

  The man started chuckling the second Sam said ‘bocce’.

  ‘Did the manager finally get pissed off enough to call the cops? That’s hilarious. It’s just a bunch of old men looking for a place to play.’

  ‘So people have been trespassing?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Technically, I guess. It’s a group of them, and they just pop up out of the blue. They never come when actual guests are using it. But I gotta tell you, that’s a rare thing. It’s not like it’s a hoppin’ attraction here. Most guests go for the tennis courts.’

  ‘So you don’t mind?’

  ‘Nope,’ said the man, whose name was Mike, according to the name patch on his shirt. ‘Heck, they even rake the sand back into shape most of the time.’

  There were six or seven that he’d seen, Mike said. All men. All probably about seventy years old. They usually snuck in about twice a week. He’d only seen them arrive once, and they came all together in two cars. Parked up in the guest lot to make it look like they belonged. He couldn’t remember what kinds of cars they drove. And he couldn’t describe any of the men beyond ‘old, white, and half of them bald’.

  ‘Pretty sure they’ve come at night, too. ’Cause sometimes in the morning, the court will be altered a little bit. Could be guests, I guess, but like I said, it’s not a hot ticket here.’

  Sam gave him a business card and asked him to call immediately if he saw the group again. Mike clearly thought he was overreacting.

  ‘They’re not in any trouble,’ Sam said. ‘I just need to talk to them about something. The welfare of one of their group. It’s not about any kind of trespass at all.’

  Well then, he was happy to help, Mike said as he pocketed Sam’s card. He went back to work, and Sam fled before Jermina could come corner him again. Next up was the Piney Cove Resort out off Stormy Point Road, which had a very old lady at the front desk who thankfully didn’t flirt. She just smiled and nodded and showed him into the manager’s office. That guy had no idea what Sam was talking about.

  ‘Our bocce courts are for guests only. We have signs posted all over. I can take you out and show you, if you want.’

  Sam did want, so they hopped in a golf cart and puttered down the hill at the posted five miles an hour. The little road wound past small motel buildings with about five rooms each and numerous little parking lots, with a few stand-alone cabins tucked in between. A bunch of sneaky old men would have no problem pulling cars into some of these spaces without being noticed, he thought.

  They arrived down at the bottom of the slope, where the swimming pool, one tennis court, and a kiddie playground clustered in a nicely landscaped area. Off behind the pool were two bocce courts. They climbed out of the golf cart and walked over.

  ‘All of this is pretty much closed for the winter,’ the manager was saying. ‘We usually open it all up again in late April and—’

  Sam held up his hand and the manager stopped mid-sentence. He was staring at the two long, narrow, perfectly parallel courts. The left one’s crushed gravel surface was lumpy and had damp spots. The right’s was flat as a board and spotless. Even the faint rake lines were straight as arrows.

  ‘Why would these look so different from each other?’

  The manager had no idea. He called maintenance as they stood there and was told that no one had done anything to the whole area since they shut it down three weeks earlier.

  ‘I … I suppose you might be right,’ he said, all flustered. ‘People sneaking in is the only reason it would be like this. This is horrible.’

  Sam thought leaving a resort asset to become a wintertime cat litter box was rather more horrible than trespassers maintaining what they obviously considered a precious amenity. He turned to look at the nearest cabin.

  ‘Are any of these occupied?’

  The manager stopped wringing his hands long enough to respond. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. Let me check.’

  He got on the phone again, but Sam didn’t wait. He walked to the nearest one and got no answer to his knock. He tried two more before he got lucky. A woman in her early sixties opened the door. Behind her was a man who had to be her husband. They had that thing couples get where they slowly start to look like each other. Like two halves of the same unit. He nodded politely and asked if they’d seen anyone down by the pool lately.

  ‘Oh, just the bocce bunch.’

  Sam’s eyebrows shot up. The woman blushed.

  ‘Sorry. That’s just what we started calling them. They came when? Three nights ago?’

  She looked at her husband, and he nodded. That would be two nights before Mr Timmons was found, Sam thought. He invited them both to have a seat out on the little porch and tell him all about it. They’d arrived Saturday to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. This was where they had honeymooned, and they thought it would be a kick to come back. It’d turned out to be not quite as great as they remembered it, the husband said in a wry tone. The place was practically empty and a little run down. Which was why it was so odd to see a group of old men show up.

  ‘I don’t know if they walked in or drove. They just kind of materialized. They looked like they were raking or hoeing or something, and then they started playing. They did it for a couple of hours with some sort of battery-operated lights, and then they left. Seemed to be having a great time,’ the husband said. ‘I was tempted to go out and ask to join them.’

  Sam asked for descriptions and got a frustratingly vague catalog of four men who were various combinations of bald, short, thin, tall, chubby, and average. He sighed.

  ‘Was there anything distinctive about any of them?’

  Both halves of the couple considered that.

  ‘Well,’ the wife said slowly. Sam could practically see her conducting a lineup in her mind. ‘One of them did have a lot of hair. Like, young-man thick. All gray, of course, almost white. But very thick. Came down over his forehead a little bit and was longish on top, but short in the back.

  ‘And before you say it’ – she poked her husband – ‘it wasn’t a toupee. He kept running his hand through it, making it all mussed up. He wouldn’t have been able to do that if it was a toupee.’

  ‘Oh,’ the husband said. ‘That’s actually a good point.’

  ‘Actually?’

  ‘You know what I meant. Just—’

  ‘Anything else?’ Sam cut in.

  ‘No,’ she said, giving her husband an I’m-better-at-this-than-you look.

  The husband sat up straighter and thought desperately about how to even the score. Sam had to hide a smile.

  ‘I think one of them was named Owen,’ the husband finally said. ‘I heard that name a couple of times.’

  Excellent. Sam took out a business card and asked them to call if they saw the group again. The wife took it, rose to her feet, and then stopped.

  ‘Oh, and now that I think about it,’ she said, ‘when they left, they didn’t walk up the drive toward the main entrance. We would’ve seen, or at least heard them if they went that way. Does that help?’

  It sure did. Sam sidestepped the resort dude, who was hovering way too close, and walked quickly toward the stand of trees behind the bocce court without even bothering to ask permission. The guy scurried along after him until Sam told him to stay put.

  ‘You need to stay right here. If there are tracks, you could ruin them.’

  He could tell the man definitely didn’t like being told what to do by some young kid. But he also wasn’t going to disobey somebody in uniform, thank goodness. Sam walked on into the oak trees alone. He moved forward, the weak winter sunlight not doing much to illuminate the ground as it filtered through the branches. He turned on his flashlight. The blanket of leaves decreased the possibility of footprints. But these guys were old. They couldn’t have hiked in from too far away. There had to be a place to park a car.

  Ten minutes later he found it. Two vehicles had used the little turnout, from the looks of the tire tracks. The dirt lane ran along the bac
k of the resort property and curved around again toward the main road. It’d be easy to get in and out if you knew it was here. He scoured the area and found one clear footprint. He took a photo of the unusual-looking tread and then went back over the ground where the cars had parked. It looked like there had been some waiting around. He caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. Hallelujah. Someone was a smoker. He carefully bagged the two cigarette butts. He knew it was pretty much impossible that the department would spring for DNA testing or anything, especially without a concrete link between the homicide and the bocce guys. But at least he’d walk away from this sorry resort with something to show Sheila.

  THIRTEEN

  Sheila had farmed out as much as she could. Deputy Gabler was checking with all the local senior centers to see if Timmons attended any, and Orvan was tracking down red Cadillac registrations. Otherwise it was all up to her and Sammy – everybody else was needed on patrol. She refused to let herself think the thought that kept pressing against the back of her mind. They would be able to handle the workload, she told herself. She didn’t need to call in anyone from out of town.

  Her cell flashed with Kurt’s number.

  ‘Please tell me you found the murder weapon,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, no. But there’s some guy outside the Timmons’s house making a big stink. Ted’s trying to stop him coming in.’

  Sheila hung up without responding and started her squad car. She’d parked in the Branson Events Center lot and had been about to call the pathologist for an autopsy update. That could wait. She needed to get out to the house and meet the prodigal son.

  She pulled up to find Ted Pimental standing opposite a scruffy white boy with a half-hearted mullet haircut and an array of artistically challenged tattoos. Pimental, normally the most relaxed guy in the department, was standing stiffly with his hands on his duty belt. Sheila rested hers near her gun as well as she walked up.

  ‘Lonnie Timmons?’

  He whipped around.

  ‘Are you the one I talked to? This asshole won’t let me in. That’s why I drove all the way down here. You said I could get in, get my assets.’

  Pimental raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

  ‘I did not tell you any such thing,’ Sheila said. ‘I did say that your father’s assets would be reviewed. We haven’t yet found a will, so we don’t know how Mr Timmons wished to dispose of them.’

  Lonnie’s arms straightened at his sides and his hands balled into fists. He took one step toward Sheila, saw the look on her face, and moved right back to his original position.

  ‘You need to cool down, buddy,’ Pimental said. ‘Because otherwise you’re about to be arrested.’

  ‘I’m his only kin. I have every right to go in there.’

  ‘Your dad doesn’t have any siblings? Any nieces or nephews?’ She’d started the process of pulling Clyde’s birth certificate with the county health department, but answering her questions through that route would involve additional genealogical search work. She’d rather find out right here and now.

  ‘He did have a sister. My Aunt Leslie. She died a long time ago.’

  ‘And your mom?’

  His anger finally cracked, a little. A quick flash of sadness crossed over his face.

  ‘What was your relationship with her like?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘Normal. What do you want me to say? She was my mom.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  He scowled. Sheila and Pimental waited, silently pressing in on him from both sides.

  ‘He was an asshole. Always judging and bitching about stuff.’

  ‘Just with you, or with other people, too?’ Sheila said.

  ‘Everybody. He was always a hard ass.’

  Sheila asked for examples. He didn’t have any regarding other people. When it came to himself, though, the guy was a fountain of grievance and complaint. Daddy dearest wouldn’t loan him money to make rent, wouldn’t pay to fix his car, wouldn’t let him crash here at the house.

  ‘When was the last time you asked him for money?’

  It had been about a year ago. He called and left a message. ‘The bastard never even called back.’

  ‘And have you talked to him at all since?’

  ‘Once. About six months ago.’

  ‘And when did this all start – your dad not helping you out?’ she said, considering her phrasing carefully.

  ‘It was always “Make your own way, boy” since I left home. But he at least used to let me come and stay. I could crash here if I needed to.’

  ‘And when did that change?’

  ‘When Mom died. He went from hard ass to asshole,’ he said. Then his brain caught up with his mouth. ‘But I wasn’t, like, holding a grudge or nothing. I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t even in town.’

  He turned toward the house and started to fidget. He looked from Pimental to Sheila, both still bookending him from less than two feet away.

  ‘I think I better stop talking.’

  She expected better judgment from someone with his criminal experience, frankly. He should have shut up several questions ago.

  ‘We are going to need your contact information. For when we have information for you – you know, since you’re next of kin. Could you write it down?’

  She pulled out her notepad and laid it on the hood of her car. He flipped it open, took the offered pen and leaned over to write his cell number, holding the paper down in the chilly breeze. With her insistence, he also listed two possible places where he might be staying.

  ‘I don’t want you leaving town, understand?’ she said, handing him her business card. ‘You need to change where you’re staying, you call and tell me.’

  She finally stepped away and Lonnie stomped off toward the old two-door Chevy parked across the street.

  ‘You get the car’s license number?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Pimental said. ‘I’ll run it as soon as he leaves.’ He pointed at her car. ‘And I’m guessing you want Kurt out here to dust your hood for prints?’

  She grinned at him. ‘And the notebook. It’s got a plastic cover. Should’ve picked up some pretty good ones.’ She raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘I just want to confirm he is indeed the wayward son. And have them right here ready for comparison with anything they lift from inside the house.’

  She moved toward the house. Pimental lifted the crime scene tape for her and then walked the short distance to his own squad car. She stopped on her way to the front door and watched him. His limp had gotten so much better; you wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t know to look for it. He was just about back on full duty after the spring shooting that had almost severed an artery in his leg. He’d been so far out in the backwoods that it was a miracle they’d gotten him to the hospital in time. She shook her head to clear it from silly tangents and hollered for Kurt. She got Alice instead.

  ‘He’s up to his elbows in that mess in the bedroom closet. I’ll do it.’

  She reappeared with a latent kit and a wool hat over her short, spiky gray hair. She trotted over to Sheila’s cruiser, where she was delighted with the plastic notebook.

  ‘You need anything out of this?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Nah. It’s brand new. You can bag the whole thing.’

  She was turning to go into the house when Pimental called her name. He carefully maneuvered himself out of the cruiser and stood looking over the car roof at her.

  ‘That car he was driving? It got a parking ticket four days ago. In Branson.’

  Darwood Hardy, Foremost Expert, lived in a condo complex that housed the same kind of middle-aged, middle-class professionals as his ex-wife’s. He did not, however, keep a house key hidden on the front porch. Hank was actually glad. He didn’t want the temptation. It was bad enough having Tina’s key, which felt like stolen property in his front jeans pocket. He still wasn’t sure he would use it. He had no badge in this town and no open investigation of his own to legitimize his trespassi
ng.

  He used the same story he had in their old neighborhood as he went door to door in Darwood’s condo development, professing surprise when people said that there was no Mrs Hardy living there. Nobody knew much about the Foremost Expert, either. He kept to himself, didn’t have many visitors, and was always polite out by the mailboxes. All tidbits that were completely ordinary and totally unhelpful.

  Hank walked back to the BMW and pulled up Lew’s company on his phone once he was settled in the driver’s seat. The satellite map showed several warehouses on the land off Paris Road just north of Interstate 70. It would be nice to know which one held the Closeout Castle main office. He called Fin.

  ‘Oh, heavens. You can’t go out there now. Lew is there.’

  ‘I thought you said he wouldn’t be in the office today?’

  ‘I didn’t think he would be. But he called a few hours ago and said his meeting in Jeff City got pushed to tomorrow, so he’d be working late at the office tonight.’

  Hank sighed. He’d been hoping to catch the employees at the end of the day, chat them up, see what they thought of their boss and the absent Tina.

  ‘So sorry,’ Fin was saying. ‘I hope this doesn’t mess things up. Does it ruin your schedule?’

  Hank smothered a laugh. Investigations didn’t really run on a schedule, he explained. So putting it off wasn’t a big deal. He could just pick up again in the morning. He heard Fin breathe a sigh of relief. And now, he told himself, he could spend some time poking around online for more information about both Lew’s company and Darwood Hardy. Or …

  ‘Hey, Fin? What are you doing tonight?’

  When he told her what he was thinking, she was totally game. She told him she’d be ready by six o’clock.

  FOURTEEN

  Two more resorts had suspicious bocce court usage. The guy at the corporate-owned facility thought it was hilarious, but said he’d have to report it to New York anyway. The owner of the family-run place said he’d handle it with a shotgun if he ever caught them on his property again.