Winter Frost (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 2)

by Lauren Carr

  “Children understand a whole lot more than we give them credit for. Sierra resents her father—not because of anything I’ve said about him cheating on me and breaking up our marriage. Her feelings are based completely on what she saw and what she heard. I’m the one who keeps trying to get her to have a relationship with him.” Helen shook her head with a sigh.

  “How’s that working for you?”

  “Not well.” Helen ripped open the last box, which was filled with folders and paperwork. “To tell you the truth, she’s closer to Chris than she is her own father.”

  “That’s because they have something very much in common.”

  With a nod of her head, Helen agreed while leafing through the papers. “They both love riding horses. I keep saying no, but they’re wearing me down. I’ve come to resign myself to the fact that soon, and very soon, Sierra is going to have her own horse living in one of the stalls in that barn out there.” She gestured in the general direction of the barn only to have Doris grab her arm—capturing her attention from the papers in the box.

  “I wasn’t talking about the horses. I was talking about you. Both Christopher and Sierra love you. That’s what they have in common.” Doris smiled. “But you’re right. They love those horses, too.”

  Helen’s cheeks turned pink. “Bank of America.” She showed a folder label to Doris. “She had an account at the Bank of America.”

  “So did Christopher,” Doris said. “They had a joint account when she died—I mean the first time she died.”

  “I guess it would be too much to ask for her to have a safety deposit box.”

  “That would make it too easy, dear.”

  “Mom?” Having carried the box of angels to Emma’s room, Sierra returned. Her expression was one of concern. “There’s a couple of guys watching the house. Scopes and everything. We saw them up over the ridge when we were coming back.” She pointed in the general direction of the back of the farm. “In a dark blue SUV with Virginia plate. JYN-4958.”

  “You remembered the license plate number,” Doris said. “Very good. I’m impressed.”

  “Sierra has a photographic memory,” Helen said while putting the license number into a state police application on her phone. “It’s a rental car.”

  “Did Nikki and Emma notice them?” Doris asked Sierra.

  “Nikki did,” Sierra said. “We were afraid they were a couple of pervs.”

  “Could be,” Doris said. “Or they could be hunters who can’t read our no hunting signs.”

  “Hunters watching the farm house with scopes?” Sierra asked.

  “Are you sure they were watching the house and not looking for deer?” Helen exchanged glances with Doris.

  “Hunters watching the farm house with scopes?” Sierra asked. “What are you going to do? Call the police?”

  “I am the police,” Helen said.

  “Well, I meant …”

  “I’ll take care of this.” Doris stepped around her to go up the stairs to the main level. “You keep an eye on Nikki and Emma.”

  Sierra’s face brightened. “Are you going to shoot them?”

  Doris paused to think over her suggestion.

  “Doris,” Helen said, “you can’t shoot them just for watching the house.”

  Sierra’s face fell.

  “But I can play with them,” Doris said.

  “Can I help?” Sierra tapped her fingertips together. “I love to play.”

  “You’re too young. Helen, you come with me. If you’re good, I’ll let you play with my battery cables.” Doris stepped into the hallway. “Oh, ladies!”

  The Doberman and lab seemed to jump out of a sound sleep to sit at attention.

  “Follow me.”

  They scurried to take their positions on either side of their master.

  “It’s time for you to earn your kibble.”

  “Right now,” Bruce told the group gathered in the dining room, “all we have is a circumstantial case of unauthorize disclosure of classified information.” He tossed a piece of popcorn up into the air and caught it in his mouth.

  “Granted, that’s a felony,” Murphy said, “but killing everyone who gets close to uncovering it seems like overkill.”

  “We aren’t even close right now because we have no idea what was in that travel mug that Daniel Cross had passed to the courier.” Ripley took a handful of popcorn from a second bowl while putting her phone to her ear. “Nor do we even know if it got to Slade Industries.” Tossing some popcorn into her mouth, she hurried out of the dining room to talk on the phone.

  “In other words, we have nothing.” Jacqui reached for the bowl of popcorn, took a handful and placed it on a napkin laid out in front of her.

  “If what we have uncovered is so weak, why did they risk so much trying to kill Tristan?” Jessica asked while casting a glance in Chris Matheson’s direction. He had been quiet ever since they had been introduced.

  “Why did they kill Stephens and Hayes?” Murphy asked. “And tried to kill Chris just because he saw Blair at the metro station?”

  “Because he killed an international assassin,” Bruce said. “They assumed he did that because he was onto them.”

  “Conclusion. These people don’t take chances,” Tristan said.

  “Especially now,” Murphy said. “Daniel Cross’s confirmation hearings are starting in two days. He’s on track to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. If it comes out that he’s been giving, selling, doing whatever with classified information—”

  “And that he’s been passing it onto Leban Slade to give him an inside track on government contracts,” Francine said. “Think of everything that he can get his hands on if he becomes director.”

  “That’s not all,” Bruce said. “As director, Cross will get access to the agency’s resources. If he’s been doing everything we suspect him of doing, that means Slade can blackmail him to use those resources to do whatever he wants—beyond government contracts. We’re talking about using black ops to take out Slade’s enemies.”

  “What does any of this have to do with Blair?” Chris asked in an abruptly loud voice.

  Every head turned to face where he sat at the head of the table. He had been so quiet during their energetic conversation, that some had forgotten his presence.

  Chris swallowed. “Blair had never met Daniel Cross or Leban Slade.”

  “No,” Murphy said, “but she had uncovered something very damning to Cross. My sources found out that in the days leading up to her going to France, she met with her boss about something she had discovered while archiving Lithuanian communications.”

  “Daniel Cross had been deputy chief of station in Lithuania when Ambassador Brown was killed in that car bomb,” Francine said. “He put together the evidence that led authorities to the extremist terrorist group responsible for the bombing.”

  “Maybe they weren’t responsible,” Elliott said with an arched eyebrow.

  Murphy nodded his head. “Whatever it was had to be incriminating because Blair and her boss had a meeting with the chief of station in Switzerland. According to the communications chief’s assistant, Ned Schiff ordered them to bury whatever it was they had uncovered. Schiff is now deputy director of the intelligence directorate at the CIA, second to Daniel Cross. He’s first in line to take Cross’s place after he’s confirmed.”

  “He covered Cross’s butt,” Elliott said.

  “Blair implicated Daniel Cross in her letter to Senator Keaton,” Bruce said.

  “We have nothing,” Chris said. “Lurch walked right into the FBI, took all of the physical evidence connected to Blair’s murder, and walked out like he owned the place. That means even if we do figure out who killed her, we have nothing to convict them.”

  “We do have Blair’s body.” Ripley returned to the dining room. “The M
E says she drowned. He found a bruise in the shape of a footprint on her back, right between her shoulder blades. Her body shows no defensive wounds, which means she didn’t fight against her killer. He’s thinking she was drugged. He’s running a tox screen.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t steal that,” Francine said.

  “The fact is that they’ve taken everything.” Chris gestured at Murphy. “They knew about the letter before anyone even knew who wrote it. They had a team of international assassins ready to follow us to safe houses, chiefs of station in Switzerland ordering stuff get buried and when it isn’t then people shoot themselves in the back—” He held up three fingers. “Three times.”

  “Sounds like they have a lot of juice,” Bruce said.

  “They have a whole lot of juice,” Chris said.

  “They are also motivated by evil.”

  “Which is why we need to take them down,” Murphy said. “They already have more than enough power.”

  Chris gestured at the people around the table. “And how do you expect us, a group of retirees who pretend to be a book club because our families scare the crap out of us, to take these people down?”

  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Jessica said in a soft voice.

  “Edmund Burke,” Chris said. “I grew up with my dad saying that all the time. That’s why he went into law enforcement. But I had my mother. If anything happened to him, he knew my mother would take care of me. My daughters don’t have that luxury. They lost their mother. Blair would not want me to allow them to become orphans.” He rose from the table and walked out.

  Elliott started to stand up, but Jessica urged him back into his seat.

  “I’ll talk to him. You stay here.” Jessica hurried out of the room after Chris.

  “But—”

  “No need to worry, Elliott,” Murphy said with a wink. “Jessica can be very persuasive.”

  “That’s not what …” Elliott sat down. “He’s my ride.”

  Abruptly, one of the cell phones resting in the center of the table rang.

  Tristan rubbed his hands together. “It’s about time.”

  “What’s about time?” Jacqui asked.

  Tristan pointed at the phone as it rang a second time. “One of our hitman’s getting a call. Probably from the boss.”

  “Answer it!” Francine said as it rang a third time.

  “What do I say?” Tristan’s eyes grew wide. “What if they don’t recognize my voice and realize—”

  Murphy snatched the phone from the center of the table. He swiped his finger across the screen, pressed the button to record the call, and hit the speaker phone. “Yeah?” He had a heathy dose of annoyance in his tone.

  “What did you think you were doing?” the male caller demanded. “You blew up Faraday’s house?”

  “Covering up evidence.” Murphy uttered a wicked laugh. “If he had enough to follow the trail to Slade, then there’s no telling what evidence he had stashed away in his house.”

  “Since when did you start thinking? I don’t pay you to think. I pay you to take care of issues before they become problems. Blowing up a brownstone in the middle of Georgetown’s high rent district creates problems.”

  “You mean like walking into the FBI and walking out with all of the evidence for a murder.”

  “How’d you hear about that?” he snapped.

  “Word gets around. A tall man is hard not to notice.”

  “Listen, don’t you worry about me,” he said with a chuckle. “It takes more than skill for someone like me to walk into the FBI and walk out without causing problems.”

  “What do you need more than skill, and where do I get it?”

  “Protection from all the right people.”

  “If the client is so protected, why would he have to send you in to remove evidence,” Murphy said. “I mean, why not just make the investigation go away—if your contacts are as powerful as you say they are?”

  “It was a rush job. Jenn called this afternoon. Said it was a lose end that the client thought had been taken care of years ago. I had to make sure nothing problematic ended up getting in the wrong hands.” His tone became increasingly annoyed. “Why all the questions?”

  “Just looking to move up to more challenging assignments,” Murphy said with as casual a tone as possible. As soon as the words left his lips, he realized the caller was weighing his options.

  The silence on the other end of the line stretched on forever.

  Everyone held their breath.

  “When’s my next job?” Murphy asked.

  “I’ll call you.”

  Click.

  “Jenn,” Elliott said. “Who do we know named ‘Jenn?’”

  “Sterling!” Chris called out from the front porch in the general direction of the estate. “Come. Let’s go.” He listened for any sound of Sterling answering the call. He heard nothing. The last time he had seen the German shepherd, he was getting his face kissed all over by the blue merle sheltie.

  “I think Spencer took him to the river to show him her favorite spot.” Jessica stood on the front step looking down at where he waited for the dog with the truck’s driver’s door open. “She seems to be quite smitten with him.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend already,” Chris said. “Her name is Thor.”

  “Sounds like she could kick Spencer’s butt.”

  “Not really. Thor’s a bunny.”

  “Ah.” Jessica made her way down the steps. “Chris, I totally understand where you’re coming from. Right now, we’ve got nothing against Daniel Cross, except a letter written by a woman who was supposed to be dead. So even if you were able to dig anything up, Cross’s friends in Washington will spin Blair’s allegation faster than a chocolate milkshake and smear her.”

  She stepped over to him and gazed up into his gray eyes. “The only thing that they value is power. Human life means nothing. Anyone who gets in the way will be squashed like a bug. They’d think nothing of making your children orphans.”

  “Are you trying to change my mind?” Crossing his arms, Chris leaned against the front fender of his truck. “You’re not doing a very good job.”

  Jessica folded her arms across her chest. “My mother was murdered.”

  This was news to Chris. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She dropped her gaze to the pavement beneath her feet. “She was one of those women who could never be happy. She always saw what she didn’t have. It was during my freshman year of college that she kicked Dad out.”

  “Before he inherited his fortune,” Chris said.

  Jessica allowed a slight smile to cross her lips. “Boy, did she regret that—especially after the man she traded him up for dumped her.” She shook her head. “My point is, it’s not just lip service when I say I know what your daughters will be going through. It is devastating to have someone you love ripped out of your life. The pain never goes away. You just learn to live with the hole in your heart.”

  “And now they’ll have to go through all that again,” Chris said.

  “I was older than your daughters, but I still needed my dad to cling to. He made me feel safe. Mom’s murder made me realize how easy it was to have someone I love taken away from me.”

  “You do understand why I need to walk away from this.” Chris called out to Sterling who he saw round the corner of the house with Spencer. He gestured for the dog to jump into the seat, only to have Sterling stop and look longingly at Spencer, who uttered a whine.

  “But I also had questions. Without the answer to those questions, I couldn’t have closure.” She scooped Spencer up when the little dog tried to follow Sterling into the truck. “I depended on my dad to do everything he could to get those answers for me.” She rubbed her cheek in Spencer’s fur while the dog cried to go wit
h Sterling.

  Chris pushed Sterling over into the passenger seat, climbed into the truck, and started the engine. “What would it have done to you if you had lost your father because he went after those answers? Then, you would have been without both parents. That’s an awfully high price to pay for closure.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Helen didn’t know whether to be impressed or frightened by the sixty-five-year-old librarian.

  Within minutes of learning about the two men in the dark blue SUV, Doris had concocted a plan to capture them. She had read it in a book—though she couldn’t remember the author or the title. She did recall that it had a red and black cover.

  The two women put on Chris’s worn work coats and rubber boots that he wore for messy farm chores and jumped into the old “farm-use” truck with Doris at the wheel. She looped around the farm to approach the two men in the rental SUV.

  Then, she floored it to rear end them. Cursing, the two men, one obese and the other short and boxy, jumped out of their vehicle to check on the damage.

  At the same time, Doris and Helen spilled out of the truck and went at each other—arguing about who caused the accident.

  The men were equally amused and dumbfounded by the cat fight. It was when they stepped in to separate the women that Doris and Helen pulled out their stun guns and knocked both men off their feet.

  After hiding their SUV in the barn, Helen hurried to the workshop.

  Kirk Matheson had hand-crafted the lovely woodwork in their farmhouse in his workshop. Over the years, he had collected so many tools, that most men would consider his workshop a carpenter’s heaven, which he had passed on to Chris.

  In the workshop, Helen found that Doris had spread a blue tarp across the floor and had their suspects duct taped to two straight back chairs—naked. Sadie and Mocha guarded them while Doris searched their wallets and cell phones.

  They looked like a human version of Mutt and Jeff. Maybe it just seemed that way because one of them was obese—mostly in his gut, which hung down to almost conceal his crotch. She was perplexed about how Doris had managed to get the three-hundred-pound man upright in a chair. Then she noticed the pully with a rope hanging from the ceiling.