The Peace Haven Murders

by M. Glenn Graves

  “Can you reach the phone, Sarah?” Rachel said.

  “Yeah,” she stretched across the bed to the phone and grabbed it. “You want I should call Robby?”

  “He would be the one.”

  “You know the number?” Sarah said.

  “By heart.” Rachel told her the number.

  Sarah dialed and waited. Rachel could hear the sound of the phone ringing through the receiver from across the room. Somewhere around the eighth or ninth ring, a sleepy voice answered.

  “Sheriff Robertson here,” he said angrily.

  “Sheriff, this is Sarah Jones. You need to come over to Rachel Evans’ house. Someone broke in and …” she hesitated. She didn’t want to make it sound worse than it was at the moment, at least for poor Henry’s sake. She knew that he had come to kill her, and maybe would have killed Rachel, too. She didn’t want to say all of that to the Sheriff over the phone.

  “And what?” Robby said. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, we’re okay. We took the gun from him.”

  “The gun?” he said in more of an awakened voice. “Who is he?”

  “It’s Henry Smith, Sheriff. He came here to harm me.”

  “Where is he now?” Robby said.

  “He’s sitting in the rocker in the corner of the room.”

  “Why didn’t he try to run away?”

  “Rachel has a rifle on him. He’s not gonna run anywhere, Sheriff. But we need you to come over here and take over. We’re both a little tired. Rachel’s a little edgy, if you know what I mean.”

  Robby Robertson said nothing else as he slammed the phone down and quickly dressed. He would be en route within ten minutes.

  “I assume the Sheriff is on his way,” Sarah said to Rachel.

  “Good.”

  Rachel took a long look at Henry Smith sitting in her rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom. He appeared to be a fragile man, maybe so fragile that he was starting to break. There were tears flowing down some of the lines on his tired face, but no sound was accompanying his emotion. Fear kept her from being sympathetic. She found it impossible to have sympathy for someone who wanted to kill another person, especially a friend of hers.

  “Why won’t you tell us who’s behind all of this?”

  “All of what?” Henry said, wiping both of his eyes on his shirt sleeves.

  “The murders?”

  “I never killed nobody. I stole your car, Misrez Evans, but that’s all. Marilyn and I went to a house to kill a man, but he died natural before we did anything to him. I never killed nobody.”

  “So you didn’t run down Skeeter Shelton and his nurse?” Rachel said.

  “No, ma’am. That wuz Marilyn driving.”

  “What about all of the deaths at Peace Haven?” Rachel said.

  “None of me, Misrez Evans. I laid no hand on no one. No time. I just did what Marilyn Saunders told me to do, mostly.”

  “So, Henry, child, why on earth did you come here to kill me? Why didn’t that Saunders woman come to do it if she did all of the other killings?” Sarah asked.

  “She said she’d had enough. Enough was enough, that’s what she said. Plain as day. Enough wuz enough and she’d have no more doings with it. She told me to take care of it. And I would’ve too, if it hadn’t been you, Misrez Jones. I couldn’t kill you. You were one person that wuz always kind to me. Always kind to me. Even back when I wuz a stupid kid, you wuz kind.”

  “Land of Goshen, Henry. How on earth did you get mixed up in all of this?”

  “I just worked for …,” he stopped. He knew somehow that he must not say the name.

  The doorbell rang and then there was rapid, repeated loud knocking. Rachel backed away from Henry without taking her eyes off of him. She had come too far to let her guard down now. She stopped at the bedroom door.

  “Come on in,” she yelled in the direction of the stairs.

  Sheriff Robby Robertson emerged in a few seconds at the door to the room. He quickly surveyed the situation and then drew his gun. Rachel took her finger off of the trigger and allowed the barrel of the rifle to point down to the floor. Sheriff Robertson crossed in front of her and handcuffed Henry Smith.

  Rachel and Sarah hurriedly told Sheriff Robertson what had happened. He listened while he cuffed Henry Smiths wrists behind Henry’s back. Robby just kept saying, “Hmm.” He nodded a lot as well.

  “Henry, you’re in real trouble this time,” the sheriff said.

  “Yes, sir. I knows it. Real trouble.”

  “Ladies, I’ll come back and get your statements. In the meantime, don’t go anywhere. I need to lock Henry up and get some paperwork started on this. But I will be back, probably early morning, to get your statements. You can tell me what happened then.”

  “It’s simple enough,” Rachel said as she crossed the room towards the foot of the bed and laid the rifle on the bedspread with the barrel pointing to the front window. “I convinced Henry Smith not to shoot my friend Sarah here. He was more than willing to comply.”

  The sheriff looked at her, then at Sarah, and then moved Henry through the door and down the steps without saying another word.

  59

  “She’s moving,” Rosey said.

  I looked towards the parked car from behind the tree we had used for a pillow for a few hours. Sam lifted his head and stared in the same direction.

  We waited until she was standing at the front door. I wondered if she would ring the bell to announce her presence. Off in the distance I thought I heard some chimes sounding. Soon enough the maid came and opened the door, allowing Marilyn Saunders to enter the mansion.

  “Let’s split up,” Rosey said. “I’ll go through the front entrance. You go around to the back, go to that room where we met with the preacher, the one with all of the windows. One of those windows is likely open and a place for you to get inside.”

  “What about Sam?” I asked.

  Rosey’s look led me to believe that he was not about to answer that question. We were both running now and Sam was stride for stride with us. Rosey stopped at the main entrance and waited. I continued on my trot to the far side and Sam came with me.

  “I’ll give you three minutes to get in place,” Rosey said loudly.

  It’s funny how your mind starts to race when the adrenalin begins to flow freely. My immediate focus was this fast approaching early morning meeting between Saunders and the preacher. As Sam and I trotted towards the backside of Rowland’s country home, I thought of Mother and Sarah and suddenly felt this need to call them and check in. Henry Smith was also on my mind. Where was Henry and what was he doing? Too much was happening too fast. It was hard to know what to do. Perhaps the best you can do is to simply play the hand that is dealt, or so they say. One day I must take up poker to see if those analogies were any good. Maybe they sounded better than they were. At the moment my hand was full of wild cards.

  Two minutes later, Sam and I rounded a back corner of the house and could see the large room with the more-than-enough windows lining the entire side of the building. I could see that people were in the room. The only one I recognized at first was Saunders.

  I slowed to a trot and moved cautiously along the side trying to avoid detection. I could now see that Preacher Rowland was sitting at his large wooden desk with Saunders and the maid standing by the door. They appeared to be talking to him, or to one another. It was hard to tell from my angle.

  The problem at hand was that there was no way I could enter the room through one of those windows without being detected. The good news was that one of the long, rectangle windows was in fact opened enough for me to enter. Sam followed suit.

  I finally came into the view of Saunders, who appeared to be frightened when she saw me. She turned and started to leave the room just as Rosey entered. He encouraged her to stay.

  “We have a situation here,” Rosey said.

  I looked over in the direction of Preacher Rowland and could now see that he was slumped in a chair, l
ifeless. I assumed he was not asleep. We detectives know these things.

  “Oh, my,” I said. “Sleeping temporarily or is it a more permanent slumber?”

  I walked over to the preacher and felt for a pulse. There was nothing, either at his wrist or his neck. “Appears to be of a more permanent nature,” I said.

  I noticed a magazine on the floor beside him and an empty glass on the desk in front of him.

  “So, ladies, what happened?” Rosey said.

  “I just got here,” Marilyn said. “I have no idea.”

  She sounded as if she were telling the truth; but then, that’s another thing that we detectives must never do. We must never believe anyone is innocent of anything. The other thing we have to believe is that everybody is capable of lying.

  “Okay, so ….Marie is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the maid said.

  “Can you tell us anything?”

  “I came in after his breakfast to give him his medicines.”

  “What does he take?”

  “Normally I give him potassium and insulin.”

  “How do you give it to him?”

  “Both are injections.”

  “You are a nurse?”

  “Yes, LPN. I’m working on my RN certification.”

  “You said, normally you give him potassium and insulin.”

  “Yes, ma’am. His doctor recently added some weekly B-12 shots. I give him those twice a week, following the doctor’s instructions.”

  “So, today you gave him an injection of potassium, an injection of insulin, and another injection of B-12.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “One after another?”

  “Yes, he prefers them all at once. I give them along with his prescription pills.”

  “What else did he take?”

  “Mainly heart meds and a daily vitamin.”

  “The epitome of health,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am, considering his age, he was doing well.”

  “Except for the diabetes, bad heart, and low potassium.”

  “I think he has been living with those conditions for a number of years.”

  “There’s an empty glass on the desk here.”

  “He likes to drink pomegranate juice with his pills.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That I administer to him?”

  “Yes, did you give him anything else this morning?”

  “Just a magazine.”

  “Tell me what happened after he had taken his medicines?”

  “I gave him the three injections. I then set his pills down in front of him next to his pomegranate juice. I handed him the magazine … then the doorbell rang. Miss Saunders was at the door, I let her in and we walked back to the room. I knocked and told him that Miss Saunders was here to see him, but there was no answer. I knocked again and again. He told me never to open the door until he answered. So, we waited in the hallway. It was several minutes.”

  “It was a long wait,” Saunders interjected.

  “Go on,” I said to Marie.

  “After we waited a long time, like she said, then Miss Saunders told me to open the door, and I did. We came in and found him like that, like he is now,” she said as she looked at the lifeless body of Robert Lee Rowland.

  “He was okay when you left him to go answer the door?” I said.

  “Yes ma’am. I think it he was reading the magazine.”

  “How much time passed from the moment you gave him the drink and your return with Miss Saunders?”

  “I can’t say for sure. I would have to guess.”

  “Okay, what would be your guess?” I asked.

  “Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s a long time between placing a glass of juice and some pills in front of Mr. Rowland, walking to the front door of this house, and returning with Miss Saunders.”

  “I didn’t leave the room right away.”

  “Okay, tell me what you recall doing.”

  “I put his drink on the desk. I gathered up his breakfast dishes and put them on a tray. He asked for a magazine. I walked over there,” she pointed to a table that appeared to have several magazines displayed, “found the magazine he wanted, and brought it back to him.”

  “What was Reverend Rowland doing at this point?”

  “He was drinking his juice.”

  “And taking his pills?”

  “I would assume so.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I heard the doorbell ring, so I picked up the tray of dishes and left him. He was looking at the magazine when I left the room.”

  “Had he finished his drink?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “Is this his glass?” I pointed to an empty glass on his desk.

  “Yes, that’s the glass I gave him.”

  “Is this the same size glass you give him every day?”

  Marie nodded.

  “It appears to be at least eight ounces,” I said.

  “It’s a ten ounce glass. He likes a lot of juice for breakfast.”

  “Where did you go when you left the room?”

  “I took the dishes to the kitchen and placed them near the sink. Then I went directly to the front door.”

  “Did you do anything else in the kitchen before going to the front door?”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “Not that I can recall. I think by that point I was in a hurry to answer the door.”

  “After you opened the door, did you and Miss Saunders remain at the door for very long?”

  “I didn’t open the door directly. Reverend Rowland instructed me to look through the peep hole to see who was outside wanting to come inside. He told me that you could never be too cautious.”

  “You recognized Miss Saunders?”

  “Yes. I opened the door and she entered. We walked together back to his room.”

  “Then you and Saunders came back here and waited outside for Reverend Rowland to answer your knocking.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You think you waited five minutes?”

  “Maybe. That seems to be a long time, but we did wait several minutes.”

  “Miss Saunders finally told you to open the door, and when you opened the door and entered, you found the preacher just like he is now?”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed genuinely shocked to have found his body there. It all sounded plausible, but then again, that’s another one of those no-no’s for detectives. Nothing is really plausible until all the evidence is gathered.

  “And you are positive that this is the glass that you gave to Reverend Rowland and it was filled with juice?” I said to Marie as I took a handkerchief from the pocket of my jacket.

  She nodded without saying anything. She seemed to be slightly emotional, but still under control.

  I placed the handkerchief over the glass then picked it up.

  “Marie, would you happen to have a large plastic bag I could have for this glass?”

  “In the kitchen. I’ll get you one.”

  She retrieved a gallon size plastic bag and I placed the empty glass inside the bag and zipped it shut. I then put the plastic bag into my coat pocket.

  “Do you still have the syringes you used this morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re in the kitchen on the tray of dishes I removed from this room.”

  “Show me,” I said. As I was leaving the room, I nodded at Rosey as if to pass a signal to keep any eye on Marilyn Saunders. He nodded back.

  “Sam, you stay and keep these lovely people company.”

  Sam offered a low growl. I couldn’t tell whether it was an affirmation or a disagreement.

  As I entered the kitchen Marie pointed to the tray of dishes on the counter by the sink. Sure enough there were three syringes. Two of them were clear plastic, but the third one was an amber color.

  “I’ve never seen a syringe this color,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re
used when some medicines are light sensitive. It sort of protects the medicine and keeps it from breaking down.”

  “Which medicine was this?” I said as I held up the amber colored syringe using my trusty handkerchief.

  She hesitated in her answer, moved over to the tray of dishes and reached for the other two syringes.

  “Don’t touch those syringes. Evidence. Could have prints on them besides yours.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “You have three more plastic bags? Smaller ones, this time, please.”

  She opened a drawer, took out three medium size plastic bags, and handed them to me. Using my trusty handkerchief, I put the amber colored syringe in one and the other two clear plastic syringes each in its own bag. I handed her the three plastic bags with syringes.

  She studied them briefly and then handed them back to me.

  “The amber one had the potassium,” she concluded.

  “And you remember this how?”

  “Well, notice the largest syringe there, that’s for the B-12. The other one, the one for the insulin, is marked on the side. That only leaves the potassium.”

  “Where do you fill the syringes?”

  “I always fill them here in the kitchen.”

  “Where do you keep the medicines?”

  “In this cabinet,” she moved towards the double sink and started to open the top cabinet to the right of it.

  “Don’t touch that. Let me open it.”

  I put the three bags of syringes in my other coat pocket. Balance with the glass. I then tore off a paper towel and used it to help me open the cabinet without adding my finger print to the collection already there. Inside the small, narrow cabinet was what I suspected to be Rowland’s collection of meds. I used the paper towel to pick up the different bottles to examine them. I checked the pills while I was at it. Nothing but thorough.

  “Where is the potassium?”