by Kathi Daley
I supposed I wasn’t surprised by that. If not for the fact I’d been assigned to cover the filming, I most likely would never have made the connection either.
“And his car never showed up?” I asked.
“No. And I looked through every barn and outbuilding in the area. Either Robert got a ride out to the location where he was shot or whoever shot him moved his car. For all I know, someone could have run the darn thing into one of the dozens of lakes in the area.”
“There are a lot of places one could dispose of a vehicle in this area,” I agreed. “Did you have a chance to follow up with Jeri?”
“I called and spoke to her. She didn’t overhear enough to give me anything tangible to act on, but based on what she said, it does sound like it was Robert’s opinion that Bill had done something to cause his own death. Something that had something to do with someone Bill and Robert both knew in the past. That actually fits the other clues that have presented themselves to date. The thing is that if someone from Bill’s past ran him off the road after he reopened old wounds, why now? Bill has been back in the area for years. Assuming the person he hurt was someone that both he and Robert knew from back when Robert lived here, what could Bill have done to cause this person to act now and not at any point in the past decade?”
“Good question,” I said.
“And if Robert was shot by the same person who ran Bill off the road, assuming he was run off the road, why would Robert do anything to antagonize this person if he already suspected them of being responsible for Bill’s death? And if Robert did suspect someone of running Bill off the road, why wouldn’t he say something to me about it?”
“All good questions,” I agreed.
“I feel like there’s an important piece to this puzzle we’re missing. The problem is that I really can’t figure out what that missing piece might be.”
“Maybe we should go back through our yearbooks,” I suggested. “Perhaps something will occur to us if we review what was going on back when Robert and Bill both went to high school here.”
Cass nodded. “That might be a good idea. Do you have yours handy?”
“They’re up in the attic. Go on up, and I’ll let Gracie know what we’re doing in case she has any ideas.”
When I’d first returned home to Foxtail Lake after having lived in New York, the attic had been a mess, but I liked spending time up there, so one of the first things I’d done, with Paisley’s help, was to clean and organize things. There were still boxes stacked against the walls, but I had set up a desk to house my computer and work files, and the window seat where I loved to sit with Alastair had a new cushion and pillows.
The yearbooks were in a box labeled Callie’s high school stuff, which not only held my yearbooks but items such as my cap and gown, class ring, and various photo albums as well. I was tempted to dig out the photo albums for a walk down memory lane with Cass, but I wasn’t friends with either Robert or Bill, so I doubted I’d have photos of either. Cass took the yearbook from our junior year, which was the year Robert and Bill were seniors. I thumbed through the one issued when we were sophomores.
A lot of the individuals pictured had moved out of the area at some point. There were still a few classmates living in the area, but for anyone with big plans for their future, Foxtail Lake offered limited opportunities. We didn’t have a college, so anyone who wanted to attend college left the area. It seemed like most young adults who chose to leave also chose to stay gone.
I paused when I came across the individual photo of Evie Johnstone. I barely remembered her from high school, but now that I’d found her photo, certain memories were beginning to return. Evie had been in the same class as Cass and me. As far as I knew, she’d never gone away to college and had never married. She’d inherited a midsized farm from her father when he passed away. I’d heard that her mother had remarried and moved to Atlanta, but Evie still lived alone on the isolated property.
“Did you ever track down Evie Johnstone?” I asked Cass.
“No. She lives on one of the farms on the north side of the road, which I haven’t gotten around to canvassing yet.”
“Evie was at the decorating party for the haunted barn Thursday two weeks ago, and she told me her grandmother was sick and that she was heading out of town. She’d been painting epitaphs for the tombstones, which she shared that she had been working on all night the night before the barn decorating party.”
“Which would have been the night Bill died.”
I nodded.
“Is there something that makes you believe that Evie might have had a reason to harm Bill?” Cass asked.
“No. As far as I know, Evie and Bill weren’t friends, although I suppose I really don’t know Evie well enough to know who she is and isn’t friends with. What I do know is that Harrison’s name came up at the barn decorating party. Evie told Dave, the man I was working with to set the tombstones, that she’d known Harrison Roberts back when he was Robert Harrison. He also told me that Evie had made a comment about not being a fan of the guy.” I paused to think back. “She told him that she’d had an experience involving Robert during her junior year that left a bad taste in her mouth.”
Cass flipped the yearbook to the page with individual photos of the juniors. “Evie was a junior when we were. Robert was a senior that year. If Robert did something to Evie that she still resented all these years later, then I might suspect that she was the one who shot Robert.” He paused. “That’s if she was back in town last Thursday. We know she was in town when Bill died.”
“Bill did have black paint on his hands, and Evie had been using black paint for the tombstones,” I pointed out. “I suppose it’s possible that Bill visited Evie the night he died, presumably to apologize for whatever he and Robert had supposedly done to her in high school. If whatever had been done to her was really bad, I suppose bringing it up might have opened old wounds, so she might have followed Bill when he left and ran him off the road.”
“If Bill and Evie talked in the barn where she’d been working on the epitaphs, it would have been nearly impossible for Evie to go into the house, grab her keys, get into her car, follow Bill, and run him off the road before he got home,” Cass pointed out.
“Yeah,” I had to agree. “I guess that is a farfetched scenario.” I paused. “But I suppose she could have killed Robert if she was back in town on the night he died.”
Cass looked at his watch. “It’s early yet if you want to take a drive out to her place. If she’s home, maybe we can talk to her. Make sense of what’s really going on.”
“Okay,” I said, getting up. “I’ll just let Aunt Gracie know what we’re doing.”
Evie lived in the same general area as both the location of Bill’s accident and the site where Robert had been shot, only she lived on the north rather than the south side of the road. When Robert’s body had been found, Cass had focused on the houses on the south side of the road since their proximity to the location of Robert’s death was more likely than homes that were quite a bit further away. In terms of Bill’s accident, I supposed farms on either side of the old highway were equally likely.
When we arrived at Evie’s home, I noticed that her car was in her gravel drive, and the lights were on inside her home. After Cass parked and I stepped out onto the drive, I noticed that the gravel was comprised of crushed stone that included both red and green pebbles. It really did appear as if Bill had been at Evie’s farm on the night of his accident.
Cass knocked on the door, and Evie answered, looking more than a little surprised to see us. “Cass. Callie. Come in.” She stepped aside. “Don’t trip on that luggage. I just this minute got home from Cincinnati and haven’t had a chance to lug the suitcases upstairs yet.”
I realized that if Evie had just gotten home, she couldn’t have killed Robert, although she had been home on the night of Bill’s accident.
“How can I help you?” she asked, after showing us into the living room and offering us a sea
t on the sofa.
“We’re in the area asking folks about a couple events that occurred in the past two weeks,” Cass said.
“Events?”
“Bill Fuller’s auto accident eleven days ago and Harrison Roberts’ murder four days ago.”
She paled. “Bill was in an accident?”
Cass nodded. “His vehicle left the road, flipped, and hit a tree.”
“When?” she asked.
“It was the night before the decorating party at the barn,” I said.
She put a hand to her mouth and sat down. “Oh, my. I hadn’t heard.” She looked at me. “As you know, my grandmother has been ill, and I left to go out of town later in the day after we talked that Friday. I just this minute returned. Is he…”
I knew she was asking if Bill was dead, so I jumped in and answered that he was.
A single tear slid down her cheek. “I just can’t believe this. How did I not hear before I left?”
“The car was hidden in the trees, and wasn’t discovered until later in the day on Friday,” Cass said.
“I didn’t hear about the accident until Friday evening,” I said. “You would have left for the airport in Denver by then.”
“We suspect that Bill was visiting someone in this general area on the night of the accident,” Cass continued.
“Me,” she said. “It was me.” She swallowed hard. “Bill works at the paint store, and I’d called earlier to see if someone could deliver more black paint to me. I spoke to Bill, who informed me that he had a dinner date, but would be happy to bring it out after if I didn’t mind a late delivery. I knew I’d be up for most of the night getting the tombstones ready anyway, so I told him that was fine. I guess he showed up around ten-fifteen or ten-thirty. He didn’t stay long. I guess he left by eleven. Maybe eleven-fifteen.”
“The accident must have occurred shortly after he left here,” I said.
“Poor Bill,” Evie said. “I feel just awful that his death was the direct result of him doing me a favor.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cass said. “These things happen.”
“Do you know what happened?” she asked.
Cass admitted that he didn’t. Of course, if Bill had been visiting Evie and had flipped his car and hit a tree shortly after leaving her place, it seemed like we were back to driver error as the cause of the accident. There were a lot of deer in the area. It seemed likely that one could have run in front of Bill, who swerved and ended up in the ditch on the side of the road, which caused him to roll and then hit a tree.
Evie looked at me. “You said that Robert is dead too and that he was murdered.”
“Shot in the back this past Thursday,” Cass confirmed. “His body was found in the woods not far from where Bill’s car ended up. We’ve considered the possibility that the two deaths were linked, but if Bill had been here visiting you before the accident, it seems unlikely that’s the case.”
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to shoot Robert in the back?” I asked.
Evie laughed, although it came out as more of a snort. “Do you have a while? The guy was a real tool when we were all in high school.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember him being so bad. Of course, we weren’t really friends, so to be honest, I barely remember him.”
“Trust me, you were lucky that you hadn’t struck up a friendship with the guy. He was really nothing more than an insecure little twit who seemed to get a kick out of making the people around him look bad. I didn’t shoot the guy, and, in fact, wasn’t even in town when he was shot, which, by the way, I can prove, but I seriously have no sympathy for the low life, and I’m glad he got what was coming to him.”
I narrowed my gaze as I tried to work everything out in my mind. When I’d spoken to Jeri, she’d mentioned that she’d overheard a conversation Harrison had with someone on the phone where he mentioned Bill’s name on several occasions. Jeri had said she’d heard him mention something about him opening up old wounds after all this time. It sounded as if Evie wasn’t the only person he’d hurt in high school. I had to wonder who else he might have hurt who would still be so angry as to kill him all these years later.
“While I have no doubt that Robert might have deserved being shot in the back, it’s still my job to figure out who might have done it,” Cass said. “We’re looking at those residents who live on farms and ranches on the south side of the old highway. Does anyone come to mind who seems to you to be more likely to have pulled the trigger than anyone else?”
Her lips tightened. I could see by the look on her face that she knew who would have wanted to shoot Robert, but instead of filling us in, she simply shook her head and then promised to think about it. Cass asked a few more questions and then asked her to call him if she thought of anything. Once we were in his truck and headed back to town, I asked him what he thought about things given the new information we’d just received.
“It seems likely Bill’s accident really was just an accident,” Cass said. “That was my initial impression, but I let Robert’s murder and the history between the men sway me into thinking the two were connected.”
“So if Bill really did simply swerve to avoid something or lose focus which led to the accident, then we need to focus on who would have wanted Robert dead,” I said. “Jeri told me that Harrison was telling whoever he was talking to that Bill was feeling bad about the way he’d treated someone, and he wondered if he’d been stupid enough to open old wounds after all these years. Maybe Bill had been the bad guy along with Robert back in high school, but unlike Robert, who didn’t seem to feel bad about whatever role he played, maybe Bill felt bad. Maybe he even apologized to this person at some point, and even if that didn’t lead to his death, maybe it reopened old wounds, which caused this person to go after Robert.”
“So how did this person get Robert out to the area where he was shot?” Cass asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I feel like we need to figure out who Robert was speaking to on the phone the day he died.”
“I requested his phone and bank records. I’ll take a look at them and let you know what I find.” He pulled into the driveway in front of Gracie’s house. “It’s been a long few days, and I have a busy day tomorrow, so I really should get home.”
“Don’t forget Milo,” I leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
“I won’t forget Milo,” he said, opening his door. “What time are you heading out to the movie site tomorrow?”
“Early. They were planning to wrap tomorrow, but now with having to rework things due to Harrison’s death, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. At this point, I figure I’ll just show up to record what I can via photos, interviews, and eyewitness accounts.” I put my arms around Cass’s waist and laid my head on his chest. “I’ll miss you.”
He kissed me on the forehead. “And I’ll miss you. Why don’t we plan to touch base tomorrow evening.”
“Okay.”
“I’d love to get Robert’s murder wrapped up before the film crew and cast leave the area,” he added. “While it looks as if someone from Foxtail Lake might have been the one to kill Robert, we can’t know that for certain.”
“I suspect you have at least a couple days before everyone decides to head out. I’ll see if I can find out exactly when they plan to wrap and let you know. For me personally, I plan to wrap up my coverage no later than Wednesday. Paisley’s play is Thursday, we’re going to the pumpkin farm on Friday, and Saturday is Halloween.”
“And I’m looking forward to all of it. Maybe I can put the rest of the pieces together and wrap up Robert’s murder by Wednesday as well.”
“I hope so. I’m ready to relax and enjoy my family and the holidays.”
Chapter 15
Thursday
The movie wrapped, and everyone headed home Wednesday as I’d hoped. I knew Cass was bummed that he hadn’t solved Robert’s murder, but it did seem as if someone with a grudge against Robert Harrison, the prio
r Foxtail Lake resident, and not Harrison Roberts, the movie star, had most likely killed Robert. Cass had talked to all the landowners who lived out along the old highway once again, but there wasn’t a single person who would admit to knowing anything. I supposed that most of the folks who lived out along that particular stretch of highway were quite a bit older than Robert was, so wouldn’t necessarily hold a grudge against him. If I had to guess, I would say that Evie knew something she was reluctant to share despite the fact that she couldn’t have killed Robert herself since she was in Cincinnati at the time of his death.
I went over the other residents who lived and worked the farms and ranches in the area. Most of the landowners were closer to Gracie’s age than Robert’s. Cass had been able to determine that the incoming calls to his phone on the afternoon he’d died had originated with a woman in town named Rose Milano. I didn’t know her well when we were in school, but I did remember that she’d been somewhat of a nerd like Robert, who was into computers, science, science fiction, and comic books. Cass had shared that he’d spoken to Rose, who told him that when she heard Robert was in town, she decided to try to set up a get-together. She’d called him a couple times, but he hadn’t answered. When he did finally answer, they talked for at least twenty minutes, during which time Robert shared that he and Bill had chatted over dinner about a girl they’d harassed when they’d all been in high school. He’d shared that Bill still felt bad over the pretty awful things they’d done to her and was considering the idea of looking her up and apologizing. According to Rose, Robert had thought that was a bad idea and had persuaded Bill to let sleeping dogs lie.
Cass had asked Rose about the identity of the girl Bill had wanted to apologize to, but she said she didn’t know. Rose told Cass that Robert had just referred to her as ‘this girl from high school.’
