by Anne Hagan
“You?” Val was clearly shocked. “Why on earth would they think that?”
“Because there was a long running family feud between Purcell and my family and the night that he died I actually let him get under my skin and had words with him.”
Val flipped a hand at me, “Everyone knows you wouldn’t hurt a soul Faye; that’s just not you. Besides, everyone in town seemed to have some beef or other with them man. Craig could barely stand him but he didn’t kill him either, I can assure you.”
“Craig?” I pretended to be surprised.
Val wave her hand again, “Look, I’m not sure what started it all but I think it had something to do with the Quadvillians.”
“Those guys that work in the haunted house?” Chloe asked her.
She nodded.
“They’re all retired guys,” I said. “What was that all about?”
“All I know is, Craig has come to rely on the four of them to come up with ideas to make things bigger and badder with the haunt year after year. Apparently Purcell had some heartburn with one or other of them and Craig listened but he didn’t agree and Purcell just wouldn’t let it go.”
I knew I needed to probe just a bit more, “What was Purcell’s problem with them, I wonder?”
She shrugged, “Like I said, I’m not sure what started it. You’ll have to ask Craig that. I try to stay out of all of that nonsense.”
Chapter 18 – Friendly Neighbor
“Why didn’t we ask her about Ginny?” Chloe asked me as we reversed out of the Stroud driveway.
“I don’t think Craig had anything to do with the deaths Chloe and, frankly, I just can’t see a connection to her. His family has been tied to this village for years. She wasn’t originally from around here. She was old but not ‘old Morelville’, if you know what I mean.”
We drove back into the village and, on a whim, I turned onto her street and pulled the pickup up to the curb in front of her house. Police tape still marked it off.
Her neighbor on the left side, Horace Bailey, was outside picking up his weekly bargain paper from the end of his drive. I got out of the truck and approached him while Chloe stayed back and looked on.
I wasn’t at all sure what I was going to say to him without coming off as nosy but I shouldn’t have worried, he addressed me curiously first.
“Why Faye Crane,” he said, I didn’t figure you for one of the gawkers what’s been coming by here to look at whatever it is everyone else has been lookin’ at.”
“Oh Horace, you know me and you know that’s not what I’m all about. I just came by hoping to see if any family members had shown up or anything to...you know...go through the house. Mel’s folks have been trying to track people down, of course but, well, no luck so far. I guess we were just hoping someone that cared would have heard something through the grapevine and would have maybe come around.”
“In all her years her – her and her husband, really – they kept pretty much to themselves. I tell you, I barely knew her.”
“They didn’t strike me as being very neighborly.”
“Oh, they weren’t rude or nothin’ like that. After he died though, she...well, she just had too damn many cats. Now, I was tolerant of it all to a degree because they kept the mice and the moles down on my property but, between you and me, I wasn’t sad to see Animal Control tote them all away.”
“It’s sad that all of those poor animals have probably been euthanized. It wasn’t their fault, after all.”
He just shrugged. The thought of that didn’t seem to affect him but then I remembered something; he’d been a Marine in Vietnam and, as with most Marines and former Marines, I knew he was stoic by nature.
On a whim, I asked, “Horace, are you a member of the Zanesville VFW?”
He looked at me narrowly but he responded affirmatively nonetheless, “Yes but why do you want to know?”
“It just that I recently learned Old Man...Lawrence Purcell, that also recently died had been a Vietnam Vet and that he belonged there. They’re doing his burial, I guess, for lack of a better word.”
Bailey shook his head. “Purcell was another piece of work! In all honesty, I’m not sad to see either one go and I’m not going to dwell on it.”
I was a little shocked by his callousness but I steeled my face as he continued talking.
“Ed, over on the other side of Brown’s house there, probably danced a jig at her death.”
“Ed Taylor, really?” I asked him. “I wouldn’t have thought that at all!”
“He couldn’t stand those cats. Said he was allergic and their hair was everywhere outside his house. He went on and on about them.”
“I don’t see him around town much...him or his wife.”
“He ain’t there much these days; says he’s retired now. He comes and goes with the wind.”
Back in the truck, I asked Chloe how much she’d heard.
“Enough,” she told me. “I guess you were right, people didn’t like Purcell and Ginny doesn’t seem to have had a lot of fans either.”
She paused a beat as if thinking and then picked back up as I steered us back to the main drag. “Does this guy you were just talking to strike you as...I don’t know how else to put it, so I’ll just say it, double murderer material?”
“No. No, not him. He doesn’t...”
At my pause, she asked, “But someone else does?”
“He mentioned Edwin Taylor – everyone calls him ‘Ed’, who owns the home on the other side of Ginny’s. I’m friends with Rhoda Ellis who lives on the opposite side of him. She’s had her own go-arounds with him. He’s a real piece of work and it just so happens, he’s one of the four Quadvillians that works in the Haunted House for Craig Stroud.”
“And Purcell had some heartburn with the Quadvillians according to what Valerie Stroud told us.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter 19 – What a Find!
Saturday Morning, November 8th, 2014
Dana & Mel’s House
Morelville, Ohio
Chloe and I were having breakfast with Dana in town at Dana and Mel’s place. Actually, Chloe and her daughter were having breakfast. I was practically entranced watching Boo as she sped back and forth from kitchen to family room and then back again carrying toys and chewy bones and such.
“Boo! Stop!” Dana called to her.
“Oh let her be,” Chloe told her daughter. “She isn’t hurting anything. At least she isn’t begging for table scraps.”
“It’s like she knows when we have training,” Dana whined, “and she’s trying to forget everything we learned the previous time and that we’ve been practicing all along.”
Chloe and I both laughed but Dana’s look backed us both down. “One of the things I was going to ask the trainer to focus on during our one on one time today is Boo’s new trick of getting herself out of her collar and off of her leash. Now, I don’t know. This stuff she’s doing with the craziness barreling around is starting to drive me nuts.” Her tone was serious as she pointed at the pup but then she smiled down at her as Boo circled her chair.
“She’s just a puppy Dana,” I reminded her. “She’ll outgrow this high energy phase, you’ll see.”
“I guess the leash Houdini stuff does bother me more. This is a busy road out here, being the only way in and out of town. I need to make sure she can’t get away from me when we’re walking. One minute, I think she has ‘heel!’ nailed, and the next minute, she’s loose and sprinting away.”
Dana looked at her mother, “Just like that night at the haunted house Mama, remember? I didn’t even know she was gone.”
We lingered a little long over breakfast. Chloe wanted to spend a little time talking with Dana about her feelings regarding she and her father possibly moving to the area and about the store. Dana was supportive overall but more worried about how her brothers might take their parents pulling up stakes and moving a couple of hours or so away. The decided to talk more later, after Chloe and Marco heard
back from Jennifer Coventry.
Dana didn’t want to be late to Boo’s training session so we offered to clean up and then lock up. Once she and Boo were safely out the door and out of earshot, I asked Chloe, “Remember where you got that dog for Dana?”
“Yes, from the Amish feed mill guy that breeds them.”
“You aren’t going to believe this, but the second body, Ginny Brown’s, was found on his property.”
“On his farm?”
“Out in one of his hay fields. I think we should pay him a visit and take a look around.”
“To see what?”
“We won’t know until we find it.”
We headed out to the feed mill in Jesse’s battered truck. When we got there, Silas Yoder was busy with a line of customers, mostly Amish. I waved at him as he finished ordering a teen boy in his German dialect to the back to get an order. “We’re in no hurry Silas. Do you mind if we look in on the pups?”
“Why sure,” he replied, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d take another,” he directed at Chloe, apparently recognizing her. Chloe smiled back at him but didn’t promise a thing.
We stepped back out of the little shop Silas maintained at the front of the mill and walked around the mill itself toward the dog kennels in the back. Instead of going into the kennels though, we skirted that building too.
I could hear the yapping of young puppies as I stood behind the building the Yoder children spent most of their chore time caring for. Out behind it, was a mown hay field, dozens of acres large.
Pointing, I said to Chloe, “See out there about 150 yards, there’s an area where a couple of rows of haystacks still lay. They haven’t been collected up yet. I’ll bet that’s where it happened.”
“Isn’t weird that he hasn’t taken it in by this time of year?”
“They’re Amish. Everything they do is a bit strange to me. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Out there; where do you think? We’re not going to find anything standing here.”
Chloe, sounding nervous, responded, “I don’t think we should go out there.”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” I didn’t wait for her response; I just started out across the field. It was slow going, picking my way through it. The hay had been mown short but the ground was uneven and the remaining stubble was still a bit damp from the early morning chill.
I smiled to myself as I heard Chloe’s slightly labored breathing right behind me but then I caught sight of something and I stopped short. Not expecting the sudden change, my sleuthing partner almost ran into me.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Look there,” I told her, pointing a few feet ahead of me at the ground.
“It’s a business card, it looks like.”
Covering the couple of feet to it, I stooped and picked it up by its edges. It was a fairly new card in good condition for a local gunsmith, Blake Wagner.
Moving back toward Chloe, who was still rooted where she’d stopped, I showed it to her and then put it into my coat pocket very carefully.
“Why would that be out here? The Amish don’t have guns do they; aren’t the peace loving?”
“They are but they do hunt deer and other game. It’s odd that a card for a gunsmith would be out here though. They typically take care of their own stuff.”
“So maybe a customer dropped it up there in the lot and it blew out here or maybe one of the cops that was investigating had it and dropped it.”
“Or maybe one of Ginny’s killers did,” I put in.
“I suppose, but the odds of that really seem to be a bit of a reach.”
“Not if you know Blake Wagner. He’s a local rabble rouser. The Amish might not use him but I wouldn’t write him off on having something to do with Ginny being out here or her being killed.” I let that hang in the air and turned to continue on across the field.
Chloe put a hand on my arm to stop me. “Faye, was this guy...this Blake fellow, connected to her in any way?”
“There’s no way for me to answer that 100%. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Did he associate with her at all?”
“No.”
“And what about Purcell? Was he connected to him or did he associate with him?”
Again I had to answer no, “Not to my knowledge.”
“Okay then I gotta ask; what makes you think,” she pointed to the pocket I’d put the card in, “he’s even capable of doing something like this?”
“Honestly Chloe,” I ran a hand through my hair, “I seriously wouldn’t put it past him. If Mel came and told me he’d done something like this, I would have thought he’d of done it with a gun, given his background which is quite a long story but, other than that, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“What would be his motive?”
“That’s just it; I don’t know. Call it a gut feeling.”
“Right now, I’m going to call that card being out here a fluke; that’s what I’m going to do.”
I wasn’t ready to concede that yet but I kept my opinion to myself.
We continued on out to the little hummocks of mown and bundled hay that passed for haystacks to the Amish who lived without the benefit of any sort of automation. There were a couple of rows of stacks still in the field minus a couple that would have been right next to each other in one of the rows.
I cast around trying to take it all in. All around us I saw trampled short mown hay, presumably mostly from the police and other responders to the scene and vehicle tracks where they brought their four-wheel drive vehicles and the coroners vehicle in from a dirt road to the east of the field, about a hundred yards or so away.
Chloe voiced what I was thinking myself, “Any evidence of a crime being committed here has been removed. I’m not sure what we expected to find out here. The police got anything that was here.”
“Except this,” I patted my coat pocket, then took another quick look around. An eerie feeling rolled over me. Suddenly, I felt very exposed standing out in the middle of a wide open field as the perfect target for someone bent on keeping their activities a secret. “Let’s get out of the open,” I said to Chloe.
When we re-entered the mill, Silas was finishing up with the last customer. We bought a bag of calf crunch that I knew would keep from the mice in one of our metal cans until we actually got fair calves again for Beth and Cole in February.
“So, can I interest you in any puppies today?” Silas asked hopefully.
Chloe, seemingly calmer now, didn’t miss a beat as she responded with another smile Yoder’s way, “Not this time.”
Chapter 20 – Gunsmith
I steered out of the feed mill lot and glanced over at Chloe. She grimaced and shook her head at me.
“What? What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Two days at it and we have a big, fat zero, that’s what.” She waved a hand in the air dismissively.
“I wouldn’t say that. We need to follow the Blake Wagner angle wherever it takes us, that’s for sure.”
“What’s got you thinking he might have something to do with this?”
I glanced at Chloe and then back at the road, thinking. Putting my thoughts together I told her, “Blake Wagner is a pretty unsavory character in this area. He lives in his dad’s old house in Morelville but doesn’t do any upkeep on it now that his dad is gone. It’s an eyesore and annoying to most of the people in town who do try to keep their property looking nice.”
She shrugged, “So he’s a slob. That’s not a crime.”
“He’s not at all well liked in town as a person either. If you need anyone to stir the pot or get people riled up, he’s there with really crazy, off beat, out of step ideas and a grating personality. No one really knows what to make of him.”
“All of that said, I have to give him a little credit. His father was a gunsmith and he passed the trade down to Blake. He does a decent job at it and he actually doesn’t charge an arm an
d a leg for his work, he gives people a fair price, but still, there are guys in town who will drive two hours to another gunsmith rather than use him. Because of all the other stuff, they just don’t like him.”
We pulled into the village from the back country road the feed mill was off of. I started to head through to go back out to the farm but then I thought better of it. I took a quick left on a side street instead.
“Where are we going?”
“I want to show you something.”
Reaching the end of the street that was really no more than an alley, I took another left and proceeded west, toward the direction we’d come. The road was only slightly wider. Gotta love the village life!
As we neared the end of the street, I noticed a pickup truck parked only a few feet back from the stop sign. Since there was nothing at that end of the street, I thought it an odd place to park.
When we drew alongside the truck, I realized the driver was Frank Lee, a man who lived just outside of town who’d considered himself a Morelville resident for years. He’d actually gone to school with my Jesse, who was a few years older than me. We weren’t friends but we were acquainted and so I waved but, if he saw me, he didn’t acknowledge the greeting.
When I got up even with the sign, I turned left again to head back toward the main road. The road we’d come off of was right across from the township building the road crews worked out of. Frank must be waiting for someone that’s in their building...
A few houses down from the township maintenance shop sate Blake Wagner’s house. I slowed down and pointed the hovel he called a home out to Chloe. Glancing in my rearview mirror to make sure we weren’t holding anyone up, I noticed that I could see the front, left corner of Frank’s truck and part of the driver’s side windshield.
Hmm... He’s got a good view of Blake’s place and several others along here from where he’s parked, but his truck being where it is doesn’t look out of place.
Suspicious, instead of lingering, I edged Jesse’s truck on down the street and stopped at the intersection with the main road into town. When I got to that point, another glance in the mirror told me Frank had pulled out of his spot and started up the road behind me. I turned left again, completing the loop I was heading toward the road to the farm, not thinking about much of anything, when I realized as I neared the turnoff, that Frank had made that last left too and he was trailing some distance behind me. That’s odd. He has no family in town and his property is the other direction. I think he’s following us...
