by Lauren Carr
“I believe the congresswoman has a good point,” the police superintendent said. “I took the liberty of looking into cases in the Ohio Valley similar to Deputy Gardner’s murder. I found one in two thousand and two where a Pennsylvania State Trooper was run down right outside Pittsburgh while giving a ticket to someone he had pulled over for a broken taillight. A suspect was never arrested, but there has been speculation that the hit was deliberate. Now maybe—”
Cameron didn’t hear the rest. It was drowned out by the roar in her ears from the blood rushing to her head due to the rapid beating of her heart brought on by fury.
Sheriff Curt Sawyer slid out of his seat to step between Cameron and MacRae. “That case is in no way connected to Deputy Gardner’s disappearance,” he insisted.
“How can you be so certain?” MacRae asked.
“Trooper Gates was killed in a hit and run by a drunk driver,” the sheriff said.
“You’re just assuming he was drunk,” MacRae said. “No suspects were ever apprehended. The case was never closed. As long as it is open, an argument could be made that—”
“That was my husband, you idiot,” Cameron sputtered out while Sheriff Sawyer ushered her back.
“I think you should go sit down, Cameron,” Curt Sawyer said in a low soothing voice. “I’ll handle this.”
“But—”
“This isn’t your case,” Curt said in a low voice. “Go order a sundae for yourself. Make it a double. I’ll handle these morons.”
“Cameron, do you want some lunch or not?” Lorraine raised her voice a notch louder to catch everyone’s attention.
Curt grinned at the glare that crossed her face at Lorraine’s chastising tone. “Go join the hen party.”
Set off by one of the women suggesting that they make sure to say grace before eating, Lorraine was ranting about how God was no more than a myth and she refused to be a part of an ancient ritual when Cameron sat down next to Dolly.
“If you don’t want to say grace, Lorraine,” Dolly replied, “then no one is making you.” Her lips curled up into a smile. Her wrinkled little face was almost childlike when she continued in a sickeningly sweet tone. “While we’re giving thanks to God for our blessings, you can go home and pack for warm weather. Believe me, you’re going to be needing it where you’re going after you bite the big one.”
“Dolly!” Jan gasped.
“You’ll get there before me.” Lorraine’s eyes were blazing.
“Lorraine!” Jan turned to gasp at the old woman on the other side of the table.
The expressions on the faces of the other women around the table were a mixture of shock and amusement.
“I’m sorry,” Dolly asked, “did I say something wrong? I must have had another one of those mini-strokes that I’ve been known to have on occasion.”
“Funny how you only seem to have them when Lorraine is around,” one of the women noted with a smile.
With a wicked giggle, Dolly grasped Cameron’s hand, leaned over, and whispered into her ear, “Growing old does have its advantages.”
“What’s that?” she asked to take her mind off of the conversation at the other end of the table. Lorraine was still sputtering about Dolly’s low blow.
“Everyone thinks old people have bad memories,” Dolly’s voice rose. “In some ways, they are right. Sometimes I do forget what I had for breakfast, but things that happened years ago—people I have met, things that were said, plans that were made, treacherous things that people did, especially horrific things to good people, the evil that some people will do to others and get away with, I remember those things with the clarity of an engraving on my brain.”
A hush had fallen around them while Dolly spoke. The little old lady’s eyes bore into Cameron’s face. The corners of her lips curled into what resembled a devilish smile.
“Do you know who did it?” Cameron asked. “Do you know who the killer is?”
“Oh, yes,” Dolly said with a grin. “I know who and I know why.”
Cameron glanced across the table at Jan, whose face was white. She’s got quite a lot of details for someone who supposedly imagined this. “When did this happen? How long ago?”
“Friday the thirteenth,” Dolly said.
Cameron was still staring at Dolly in shock when there was a commotion behind them.
Sheriff Curt Sawyer jumped out of his seat when a full glass of water landed in his lap.
“Oh, I am so sorry.” Phillip Lipton grabbed a handful of paper napkins and tried to mop up the spill as best he could. But the glass of water had been full and had gotten all over. “The glass just slipped out of my hand.”
Meanwhile, the front of Curt’s uniform looked like he had peed his pants. Cursing, the sheriff stomped off to the men’s restroom. The congresswoman and the detective moved out of the booth to allow room for the server, armed with napkins and paper towels, to clean up.
As humiliating as it was, Cameron couldn’t help but smile at the crime lab chief’s embarrassment. Lipton glanced up in their direction while helping the server mop. Dolly giggled out loud at the scene. Lipton turned red all the way across his face and up across his bald scalp.
Meanwhile, Lorraine shook her head while making “tsk-tsk” noises with her tongue. “Idiot.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge about who’s the idiot,” Cameron muttered. “I’ll bet he knows how long an eternity in hell is.”
Hearing her, Dolly burst into another round of giggles while clapping her hands with delight. “You are such a clever girl.” Grasping her hand in her wrinkled paw, she said, “I like you. I have a feeling you’re going to be the one to find Ava’s killer.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re such a pretty girl.”
Cameron blushed.
“Such a shame about your breasts,” the old woman said with a shake of her head.
Cameron glanced down at her chest. “What’s wrong with them?”
“They aren’t perky enough.”
Chapter Seven
It wasn’t until Joshua had pulled up in front of the little white house located one block up the hill from Rock Springs Boulevard that he realized how long it had been since he had visited his childhood friend’s home. Mike Gardner had been his best friend. Yet in the decade since he had been back in Chester, Joshua had never stopped by to visit Mike’s parents—until this moment.
Stopping by to visit Mike’s parents at the same home where Joshua used to hang out with his best bud would confirm that Mike was no longer around. He was missing. Presumed dead.
Now he was truly gone—his body was in Tad’s morgue.
There was no denying it any longer.
After sucking in a deep breath, Joshua let it out, unhooked his seatbelt, and climbed out of his SUV to descend the steps down to the two-bedroom house built into the hillside that made up the oldest part of Chester.
Cynthia Gardner, Mike’s mother, opened the door before Joshua had the opportunity to ring the doorbell. Her eyes were red rimmed. She clutched a worn tissue in her wrinkled hand. “Josh … it is him, isn’t it?”
Joshua nodded his head.
She clutched his arm in both hands and sobbed. “I should be relieved. Now I know, but I guess … as long as there was no word, then there was a tiny bit of hope. Now … it’s gone.”
“I am so sorry.” Joshua wrapped his arm around her, eased her across the threshold, and closed the door.
He half-expected to find Lyle Gardner sitting in his easy chair in the living room. Seeing the worn, blue recliner, he recalled that as children, they knew better than to sit in Mike’s father’s chair. Seeing it empty, he asked, “Where’s Mr. Gardner?”
“He’s at the club.” She wiped her nose with the tissue. “He spends a lot of time there now—ever since …” Her voice trailed off.
She offered Joshua a seat. Still too intimidated to take the recliner, he chose to sit on the sofa. “I’m hoping that … with our finding Mike’s body … maybe you can remember more details about the time leading up to his disappearance to help us catch whoever killed him.”
Her face went blank. Eying Joshua, she eased down onto the recliner. “So it wasn’t an accident?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. No, he was murdered.”
She stared at him in silence. Her face was devoid of expression. Her eyes were searching as if she didn’t know what to say.
The only sound in the room was the ticking of the big cuckoo clock on the wall.
Finally, Joshua spoke. “Mrs. Gardner, I need to ask you a question.”
“I don’t know who would have wanted to hurt Mike,” she said with a shake of her head.
“I was the last one to see Mike alive except for his killer,” he reminded her. “He told me that he was investigating the murder of a prostitute—”
A flash of anger lurked beneath the surface when she said, “You told me that already and I told you long ago that I have no idea what he could have been talking about. Have you talked to Belle?”
“Yes, she doesn’t—”
“She was married to Mike. If anyone knew what types of cases he was investigating on his own and had gotten into, she does.” Cynthia’s tone was bitter. “If she was a loyal wife,” she added under her breath, “she would have kept on top of that type of stuff.”
Joshua pounced on her anger directed toward her daughter-in-law. “Was Belle less than loyal?”
“She only waited the minimum amount of time before having Mike declared dead so that she could marry her boss and move to that big house,” Cynthia said in a low tone. “She’s done everything that she could to cut us out of her life. For years after she remarried, I tried to maintain a relationship with her. I’d call the house and she wouldn’t even speak to me. Royce told me that she said it was too painful talking to me because I reminded her of Mike.” She blinked away the tears of anger in her eyes. “Hunter is all we have left of Mike.”
“Royce keeps a firm rein on his family, huh?” Joshua recalled how persistent he had been when they had visited Mike’s widow the night before.
“He considered Mike beneath him,” Cynthia said. “He was just a lowly police officer. Royce is a highly regarded scientist and executive. He wasn’t one bit pleased when Hunter got accepted to the police academy.” A hint of pride and pleasure came to her face. “He’s starting this fall.”
“So I heard,” he said before gently taking her back to the reason for his visit. “Mrs. Gardner, someone murdered your son. If someone killed my son, I would reveal every family secret we had if it meant finding who was responsible.”
She sat up tall with her shoulders back. Her chin jutted out when she asked, “What are you talking about, Joshua?”
His tone was equally firm. “Was Mike adopted?”
“How dare—”
“I have it from a reliable source that he was,” Joshua replied. “I also did a background check and found that you had a sister whose employment was listed as a dancer. Ava Tucker. In nineteen seventy-six, she was murdered at a boarding house in Newell where she was living. Now this area does not have a big dancing community. There are a few clubs around that employ women who would call themselves dancers. Was that her real profession?”
Tears were streaming down her face when she stood up and turned away. Joshua heard her sobbing with her back to him.
Hating himself for what he had to do, he stood up. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gardner, but you do have to make a decision. Would you rather protect your family’s reputation or find Mike’s killer?”
She kept her back to him. “Do you know what it’s like to be responsible for someone’s death?”
“Yes.”
She whirled around to face him.
“I was an officer in the navy,” Joshua said. “I served in Desert Storm. It’s the hardest thing anyone can do, make a decision that you know could result in people, good people, being killed. But someone has to make the hard decisions. I can only pray that the decisions I make are the best ones overall.”
“I’m talking about a kid making a foolish, purely selfish decision that cost a good man his life.”
“What decision was that, Mrs. Gardner?”
“Ava was a fool.” Her face was hard. “A selfish fool. Her boyfriend, Douglas O’Reilly, got appointed to West Point. He went away. She was scared to death that she was going to lose him, so the next summer, when he came home, she got herself pregnant.”
“Got herself …”
“She seduced him with the intention of getting pregnant and then forcing him to marry her,” Mrs. Gardner said. “She was sixteen years old and so wrapped up in herself that she thought that he would take her back to West Point as his wife.”
“Wives can’t live on campus—”
“This was nineteen sixty-six,” she said. “You couldn’t be a cadet at West Point and be married. In order to marry her, Doug would have had to drop out of West Point. Or, to stay in school, he would have had to abandon her. He was nineteen. Back then, if he had done that, he could have been charged with statutory rape, which would have gotten him kicked out.” She dropped her head. “The morning after she told him, he was found in his Mustang at the bottom of Raccoon Creek. Everyone knew that Ava drove him to kill himself. I was already married to Lyle. After she had the baby, we moved here, hoping that people wouldn’t know about it. Ava blamed herself … I guess. She was completely lost. Next thing I knew, she was one of Dolly’s girls.”
“Dolly’s girls?” Joshua asked.
“Private club out by the race track in Newell,” she said. “Dolly’s. The girls would dance for the customers and then, if they wanted something extra …”
“My father dealt in libations.”
“Libations?” Cameron fought the tug at the corners of her mouth at the old-fashioned term Dolly used to describe her father’s business.
The inside of Dolly Houseman’s red brick colonial home was exactly as the detective had imagined. It was neat, tidy, and old. Cameron guessed that the décor was like a flashback to the 1940s, or maybe even to the 1930s.
Jan had unsuccessfully tried to give her an out. “You look tired,” she noted when Cameron climbed out of the SUV along with Dolly. “The doctor said you shouldn’t exert yourself. You really should rest.”
“I’ll go home and rest after visiting with Dolly,” Cameron said with a slam of the door before taking the elderly woman’s arm to help her up the sidewalk to her porch.
Lorraine, who appeared to still be stewing about Dolly’s comment at lunch, had climbed out of her seat in the front of the SUV and closed the door.
“Lorraine,” Jan objected, “I’ll drive you home.”
“No need to,” Lorraine replied over her shoulder while storming up the hill to her home, which was on the street behind Dolly’s house. “I’ll walk.”
“But I was plan—”
“I’m old, not crippled,” Lorraine shot back.
With a sigh, Jan climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV, put it in gear, and pulled it into her driveway across the street and next door to the Thornton’s three-story stone home.
After Cameron took a seat on the Queen Anne style sofa, Dolly placed a photograph album in her guest’s lap.
“Is Ava’s picture in here?” Cameron opened the cover to look at the first picture.
“If she isn’t in this album, she’s definitely in another one.” Dolly tottered over to the bookcase against the wall and peered at the album covers. “I have pictures of all my girls.”
Cameron let out a gasp and instinctively reached for her gun, which she forgot she didn’t have strapped to her hip, when there was an abrupt movement next to the sofa. A black and whi
te body leapt from the floor to land on the arm of the sofa. With a sigh of relief, she realized it was Irving who had tucked his head under her hand to demand a petting.
“Oh, it’s only you,” she said before realizing her cat was in someone else’s house and she didn’t bring him. “Irving, what are you doing here?”
“Most likely he let himself in through the cat door,” Dolly replied while studying the dates on the spines of the photo albums lined up along her bookcase. “That’s how he lets himself in.”
“Lets himself in?” Cameron gave Irving a chastising look. “How long has he been doing that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the elderly woman said. “The days have all blended together for this old mind. He just showed up one day while I was eating my Cheerios and demanded the milk at the bottom of my bowl. I gave it to him and he’s been coming over ever since. He’s here every morning for breakfast. He loves Cheerios.”
Irving flicked his ears with their tuffs sticking out at his mistress. He seemed to smirk at her while plopping down on the arm of the sofa to wash his paws.
“You naughty boy,” she said before turning her attention back to the photo album.
“Most boys are.” Dolly patted Irving on the head. “Naughty, I mean.”
Cameron gasped when she saw a familiar face in one of the pictures. The heavy-set man was sitting in a wing-backed chair with a small girl with curls in his lap. “Is this—”
Dolly squinted her eyes to study the picture that Cameron was pointing at. “Oh, that’s me with Uncle Al,” the elderly woman said in a matter-of-fact tone before turning back to the bookcase to resume her search. “Ava can’t be in that album. That was at least two decades before she was born.”
“Uncle Al,” Cameron said with a stutter. “Do you mean Al as in Al Capone?”
“Yes, that was his name.” Dolly pulled a heavy album from off the shelf and handed it to Cameron.
“You called Al Capone ‘Uncle Al?’”
“He was really a very nice man,” Dolly said. “He was one of my father’s biggest customers.”
