Poisoned Ground
A Rachel Goddard Mystery
Sandra Parshall
www.SandraParshall.com
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Sandra Parshall
First E-book Edition 2014
ISBN: 9781615954742 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
Poisoned Ground
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
More from this Author
Contact Us
Dedication
For Jerry
Acknowledgments
As always, I owe my thanks to many people who made the writing and publication of this book possible:
My husband, Jerry Parshall, and my friends Carol Baier and Cathrine Dubie for reading and critiquing the manuscript;
My editor, Barbara Peters, for her perspective and guidance;
Jessica Tribble, Nan Beams, Suzan Baroni, and the rest of the crew at Poisoned Pen Press;
My friends in Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, who freely share their expertise in many professional fields and on a staggering range of topics;
And, most of all, my readers, whose notes of appreciation and encouragement make me believe the effort is worthwhile.
Chapter One
Rachel Goddard drove up to Joanna McKendrick’s brick farmhouse to make a routine veterinary call and discovered her friend standing on the porch, pointing a shotgun at a man in a business suit.
What on earth? Rachel pulled her Range Rover to a stop on the narrow farm lane and jumped out. A wicked cold wind whipped her auburn hair across her eyes and she had to hold it back with both hands to take a closer look at the surreal scene before her.
The man at the end of Joanna’s shotgun barrel was unmistakable, with his beaky nose and rooster comb of reddish brown hair: Robert McClure, president of Mason County’s oldest and largest bank. Holding up one hand as if to fend off an attack and clutching a briefcase with the other, he backed toward the steps.
Rachel couldn’t catch most of the words pouring out of Joanna, but her fury came through loud and clear.
“Joanna,” Rachel called. “What’s going on?”
“Stay out of this,” Joanna yelled back.
Under a glowering November sky, the wind rattled bare tree branches and sent a few dead leaves tumbling down the driveway. Rachel glanced up the road to a cluster of small houses where the farm employees lived, and beyond to the horse paddocks and the rolling hills. Where was everybody? Hadn’t anybody else noticed what was happening here?
When Rachel swung her gaze back to the porch, Joanna had advanced on McClure, forcing him to the edge of the steps. Another few inches and he would tumble backward.
Rachel jogged across the lawn to the bottom of the steps. From behind the glass storm door, Joanna’s two dogs barked to get Rachel’s attention. Nan, a golden retriever, wagged her tail, and the mutt Riley stood up against the glass, scratching and whining for release. Rachel had come over this afternoon to vaccinate the dogs and the barn cats, but it might be a while before she fetched her medical case from her vehicle.
His right hand still raised, McClure half-turned toward Rachel. “I’m glad to see you, Dr. Goddard.” He sounded calm. In his pinstriped suit and tie he might have been greeting her at his office under normal conditions, not at a horse farm while its owner held a gun on him. But his tall, bony body looked rigid with tension and he held his briefcase in a white-knuckled grip.
“Joanna,” Rachel repeated, “what’s going on?”
“Honey, you know I love you like a daughter, but I have to ask you to please shut up and butt out. And if Robert knows what’s good for him, he’ll get off my property and he won’t come back.”
A fit and still youthful woman in late middle age, Joanna normally tackled problems with an unflustered, practical attitude. Rachel had never seen her like this, her cheeks flaming, strawberry blond hair tangled by the wind, hands trembling so violently that the gun barrel jerked up and down. She kept a finger on the trigger.
“But—” Rachel waved a hand, indicating both Joanna and McClure. “This is…bizarre.”
“I just want him to leave.” Joanna feinted with the shotgun.
McClure took a quick step back into empty air. Arms flailing, fighting for balance, he dropped his briefcase and lurched backward down the steps.
Rachel jumped onto the bottom step and caught his arm to break his fall. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” McClure’s face flushed crimson. He pulled his arm from Rachel’s grasp, straightened his suit jacket, and snatched his briefcase from the steps. “I came here to offer Joanna the deal of a lifetime, and I expected a civilized response. I got a gun in my face instead.”
“Civilized?” Joanna cried. “After what you said to me? You threatened me.”
McClure snorted. “Oh, Joanna, don’t be so melodramatic.”
“Threatened you how?” Rachel climbed the steps to stand beside Joanna.
“I did not threaten her,” McClure said. “I simply pointed out—”
“He told me I’d be sorry if everybody else sells their land to Packard and I’m the only holdout. The whole county will blame me if Packard backs out. He said they’ll come after me, they’ll make me pay one way or another. If that’s not a threat, I don’t know what is.”
McClure shook his head, making his cockscomb of
hair bounce. “You’re misconstruing—”
“Those statements are pretty hard to misconstrue,” Rachel said. “Who are you talking about, anyway? Who’s agreed to sell?”
“Nobody,” Joanna cut in, before McClure had a chance to answer.
McClure’s lips twitched in a faint, condescending smile that made Rachel want to kick him in the shin. “Actually, we’ve already reached agreements with Jake Hollinger and Tavia Richardson. I’ve been authorized as Packard’s agent to offer very generous payments, and they couldn’t turn down a windfall like this. I think the Jones sisters and the Kellys will come around—”
“Lincoln and Marie Kelly will never sell their farm,” Joanna protested. “If Packard wants to build one of their fancy resorts in Mason County, they can do it on somebody else’s land. I don’t want their money. I want to be left alone to raise my horses and run my business.”
“You know the whole county is depending on this development to create a lot of new jobs.” A pained expression creased his brow. “Each sale is dependent on every sale going through. If you hold out, the project won’t go forward.”
“Fine,” Joanna snapped. “That’s exactly what I want.”
McClure extended a hand palm-up as if entreating her to come to her senses. “As I told you, a lot of people will be very angry if you block this project.”
“And I told you not to threaten me.”
“I’m not—”
“Why do they have to have Joanna’s farm?” Rachel asked.
McClure hesitated and seemed to debate with himself before answering. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I want to be honest. They’ve determined that this is the only suitable place in the county for what they propose. We’re standing on the spot where they want to build the lodge. They want to offer horseback riding, so it’s an advantage to buy a property already equipped to keep horses. Joanna, you’re in a position to make a very lucrative deal, if you—”
“Are you saying they’ve already designed it?” Joanna demanded.
“Without knowing whether they can get the property they need?” Rachel added.
“That’s the way these things are done.”
These things. As if McClure, a small-town banker in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, had a wealth of experience with high-end development. Rachel almost laughed. “How could an architect draw up a plan without knowing what the land is like? Oh, wait a minute. They did know. They’ve been out here, haven’t they? Without Joanna’s permission. Or did they fly over?”
McClure, clearly losing patience with Rachel’s interference, threw an irritated look her way. He directed his words at Joanna. “Does it really matter? Nobody trespassed, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Joanna had her gun up all the way again. “I’ve never seen such arrogance in my life. You tell them to take their damned design and stuff it. Now I want you to get—”
The crack of a gunshot in the distance cut her off. The three of them swiveled their heads west, toward the sound.
Rachel felt suspended, waiting for something more.
“It’s just a hunter,” McClure suggested with an indifferent shrug. “They’ve been out in the woods all week looking for wild turkeys for Thanksgiving.”
A second shot rang out. Rachel’s heart broke into a gallop, the way it always did when she heard a gun fired.
Joanna lowered her weapon. “That came from the Kelly farm.”
“Maybe they’re trying to bag a turkey, too,” McClure suggested. “Or thinning out the rabbits.”
Rachel shook her head. “They wouldn’t shoot animals.”
“Robert,” Joanna said, “I don’t see how you could work with Lincoln at the bank all those years and still not know a damn thing about him and Marie. They keep pet rabbits in the house, for God’s sake, and Marie puts out food for the wild animals. They don’t even own a gun. And they don’t allow anybody to hunt on their land.”
A third shot made them all flinch.
“I don’t like this.” Rachel pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket. “If something’s wrong over there, we can’t stand here wasting time.”
She punched the speed-dial number to call her husband, Sheriff Tom Bridger.
Chapter Two
“But it could be bad, couldn’t it, Sheriff?” Brandon Connolly, the young sandy haired deputy riding with Tom Bridger, yanked on his seat belt to loosen it across his chest. After a few minutes of quiet, he’d picked up the conversation where they’d dropped it. “I mean, gunshots on private property.”
“It’ll probably turn out to be nothing.” With more than a decade in law enforcement behind him, Tom sometimes had to remind himself what it was like to be as young and eager as Brandon. “You getting bored? Hoping for a little excitement?”
“Well, Sheriff, it sure seems like a long time since we had much to do.”
Tom kept the pressure on the accelerator, holding the cruiser’s speed at fifteen miles above the limit. The two-lane road wound past fallow cornfields where crows scavenged, and skirted hills carpeted with fallen leaves—deceptively peaceful scenes in a rural Virginia county that had known its share of violence.
“It’ll suit me fine if this is just somebody trespassing and shooting at squirrels or wild turkeys on the Kelly property.” Silently, Tom challenged his own statement. If the Kellys had a trespasser, why hadn’t they called it in themselves? And why weren’t they answering their telephone?
“But, Sheriff—”
“You know, you don’t have to call me Sheriff every time you speak to me.”
Brandon laughed. “Hey, I like the sound of it, Sheriff. You getting elected was the best thing that’s happened to Mason County in years. Too bad we don’t have a newspaper anymore. I can see the headline.” He framed the imaginary words between his hands. ‘Bridger Wins in a Landslide.’”
“That wasn’t hard to do with no opposition.” Tom spoke absently, his mind fixed on the Kellys. “None to speak of anyway.”
“Yeah, I almost felt sorry for the guy. I don’t think anybody voted for him except his relatives, and probably not all of them did. Must’ve been downright embarrassing.”
“He’ll survive. He makes more money selling cars than he would in this job.”
The Kelly place came into view up ahead on the left.
Their dog, a collie mix, paced in the driveway, looking like she was about to jump out of her skin. Tom’s grip tightened on the steering wheel.
Brandon sat forward, peering at the dog. “Uh oh. Something’s wrong, all right.”
Tom swung the car in a U-turn and braked beside the silver mailbox with KELLY spelled out on its side in black stick-on letters. Opening the car door, he told Brandon, “Wait here.”
The shaggy brown and white dog ran toward Tom. He held out a hand. He’d encountered her before, at Joanna’s place. What was her name? Bonnie? “Hey, Bonnie. What’s up, girl?”
She halted before she reached him. Backing up, she barked once, a high-pitched yelp. She ran a few feet up the driveway, turned and barked again.
Tom got into the cruiser, turned onto the driveway and followed the dog at a crawl. “You know the drill,” he told Brandon. Keep your hand on your gun. Go in slow and stay alert.
The farmhouse, a two-story box covered with faded brown siding, sat a hundred feet off the road. The only vehicles in the driveway were Marie Kelly’s blue Chevy sedan and Lincoln’s mud-splattered pickup. The patchy lawn between the house and road had been raked clean of leaves shed by the two oaks that framed the house. Along the front of the porch, coneflower seed heads bobbed under the weight of foraging goldfinches. Nothing looked out of the ordinary—except the dog, now pacing in the grass where the driveway ended and barking as if begging the men to follow her to the backyard.
After killing the engine, Tom sat behind
the wheel for a moment, scanning the house and the area around it. The dog’s barking escalated to a nonstop plea that made his skin prickle and his breath come a little faster. Disturbed by the racket, the goldfinch flock rose in a flutter of yellow and green and disappeared into a nearby spruce.
“I’ll try the front door first,” Tom said. “Just in case. You keep an eye out.”
Brandon waited by the cruiser, one hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, while Tom knocked on the door.
He got no response.
“Lincoln? Marie? Anybody home?”
Again, nothing. The dog barked, spun in a circle, edged toward the backyard.
When Tom and Brandon started for the rear of the house, the dog broke into a run ahead of them. A cluster of hens, some white and some red, were pecking at the ground in the side yard but scurried out of the way as the dog streaked past.
As Tom rounded the side of the house, he spotted the couple. Lincoln, a rangy man in his sixties, lay in the yard with his arms flung outward, his eyes staring at the sky. A wet red stain soaked the front of his flannel jacket. Marie sprawled facedown on the back steps, head toward the ground and the toes of her shoes still touching the porch, as if she’d been standing there and pitched forward when she was shot. The exit wound had blown a ragged hole in her green sweater, and the wool had wicked enough blood from the opening to cover her back.
“Jesus Christ,” Tom said. “Keep the dog out of the way.”
While the dog whined and yipped and strained against Brandon’s hold on her collar, Tom pressed two fingertips to Lincoln’s temple. The man’s skin still felt warm, but Tom didn’t find a pulse. He repeated the fruitless exercise with Marie, brushing her hair back from her face. Like Tom himself, Marie was Melungeon, a mix of several races, with olive skin and thick black hair that had been beautiful before it turned gray.
Straightening, Tom blew out a breath and stood for a moment thinking of his late mother, letting memories of her and Marie Kelly crowd into his mind. The two friends had spent long hours together, spinning wool from the Bridger farm’s sheep, coloring it with vegetable dyes Marie had concocted, winding it into skeins. Tom had known Lincoln and Marie all his life.
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