Ronan yanked the door open and glared at Tom and Brandon.
“You wanted me to come this morning,” Tom reminded him. “If you’ve changed your mind, we can leave.”
“No, come in.” Ronan made the invitation sound like a threat. He moved aside, raking his fingers through his already messy black hair. “Sheila’s here.”
“Yeah, we heard,” Brandon said.
Sheila stood in front of the fireplace, arms folded and face flushed with anger. “Don’t do this, Ronan,” she said as they walked into the living room. “It’s private. Don’t you have any respect for our parents?”
“Why won’t you listen to me?” Ronan’s exasperation matched his sister’s barely controlled fury. “How many times do I have to tell you? This means something, I can feel it in my gut. It could be a motive.”
Sheila raised her eyes heavenward as if silently pleading for patience. “After all these years? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Tom held up his hands. “Hold on. I don’t even know what you two are talking about, but if it’s anything that could be connected to your parents’ deaths—”
“It’s not,” Sheila said.
“Let me decide that. What is it?”
Ronan reached around Sheila and grabbed a shoebox off the mantel. She snatched at it, gripping one end. Ronan didn’t let go, and they stood there playing tug-of-war with the box.
Tom heard a choking noise from Brandon as the deputy stifled a laugh.
Tom wasn’t in the mood to find it funny. “Come on, you two, that’s enough.”
Ronan shifted his attention to Tom, and Sheila took advantage of his distraction to yank hard on the box. The top peeled off in her hands. The bottom slipped from Ronan’s grasp and tumbled to the floor, spilling dozens of photographs as it went.
The brother and sister yelled recriminations at each other while Tom and Brandon scooped pictures off the floor by the handful. After a quick look at some of them, they exchanged a glance. The photos weren’t explicit, but Tom didn’t have to see people in the raw act to know they had a sexual relationship. He would need some time, though, to absorb and understand what he was seeing here.
Tom stuffed the last of the photos back in the shoebox, replaced the lid and stood. “Where did you find these?”
“Inside the basement ceiling,” Ronan said, “on top of those removable tiles.”
Tom frowned. “Why were you searching inside the basement ceiling?”
Before her brother could answer, Sheila said, “Yeah, did you think you’d find a secret stash of money you could make off with?”
Ronan’s face reddened. “Fuck off, Sheila. Mom told me Dad was always hiding things the last couple of years. We can’t sell this place without making sure we’ve found everything that’s here.”
“What makes you think these old photos have some connection to your parents’ deaths?” Tom asked. “They’re just old pictures of Jake Hollinger with different women.”
“A bunch of women,” Brandon added.
“Right.” Ronan nodded with the eagerness of someone sharing a revelation. “Dad must have taken these. If he showed them to Hollinger, that gives Hollinger a personal motive—”
“You’re accusing our father of blackmail.” Sheila was almost shouting. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to it.”
“Then leave, damn it!” Ronan flung out an arm toward the door, making Brandon duck to avoid a blow to the head.
“No,” Sheila said. “You’re the one who’s going to leave. I own the majority share of this property, and I want you out of here today.”
“You can’t—”
Tom held up a hand. “Stop arguing for a minute, will you? This isn’t getting you anywhere, and it’s wasting our time. Ronan, what are you saying? These pictures are old. Hollinger’s wife is dead, and some of the women in the pictures are dead too. There’s no leverage for blackmail here. And no motive for murder.”
Ronan pulled on his hair again, creating random spikes. Tearing his hair out, Tom thought. He’d never before seen anybody literally trying to do it.
“I know there’s a connection,” Ronan insisted, his voice tight with frustration. “Why did Dad keep those pictures all this time? Why the hell did he take them in the first place if he didn’t have any use for them?”
Something occurred to Tom, but he hesitated, reluctant to provoke a storm of anger aimed at him personally. He had to ask, though. “Is your mother in any of these pictures?”
“No!” Ronan and Sheila exclaimed in unison.
“How can you even suggest such a thing?” Sheila demanded.
“Just covering all the possibilities.”
“Well, you can forget about that one,” Ronan said. “I looked at every one of those pictures, and Mom’s not in any of them.”
“Did you expect her to be? Were you looking for her?”
“Hell, no. You’re twisting my words.”
“Okay, then. We’ll take these and look at them more carefully. I doubt they’ll be any help, but you never know.”
“We need the letters,” Brandon reminded him.
“Right. Ronan?”
“Here they are.” Scowling at his sister as if daring her to stop him this time, Ronan retrieved a plastic food bag from the mantel and handed it to Tom. “That’s everything I found. Nine of them.”
“They’re outrageous,” Sheila said. “They sound like they were written by an illiterate moron. Which they probably were.”
“So you read them too. And handled them.” Tom suppressed his irritation before it could turn into a lecture. Too late now for it to do any good.
“Of course I read them. I want to understand what happened to Mom and Dad. What they were going through the last few weeks of—” Sheila suddenly ran out of breath. She pressed a hand to her lips as her composure crumbled and her eyes brimmed with tears.
Rolling his eyes, Ronan turned his back on his sister.
Nice, Tom thought. “I want both of you to let me know right away if anything else happens—threatening phone calls, more letters, any vandalism on the property. Try not to be out in the open, exposed, any more than you have to be.”
“You think somebody’ll come after us, too?” Ronan’s contemptuous expression vanished as fear flooded in.
“I’m just telling you to take commonsense precautions. And do everybody a favor and stay away from Jake Hollinger.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Rachel flung the pen down. It bounced off her desk and hit the floor with a sharp thwack.
She couldn’t concentrate. She hated the paperwork associated with owning a small business, and she tended to let it accumulate until she needed a whole day to plow through it. Today had been set aside for the chore, but she couldn’t keep her restless mind on budget figures and supply orders and insurance renewal forms. Despite her best efforts, her attention kept circling back to her conversation with Joanna, to the unwelcome image of Marie Kelly and Jake Hollinger meeting in the woods for a tryst, to the memory of Joanna’s stable ablaze in the night.
She swung her chair around to the window and checked the progress of repairs on the Packard company’s plate glass window across the street. The two workmen had the new glass in place, and Lawrence Archer watched from the sidewalk as they applied putty inside and out.
The phone rang. Rachel swiveled around again and saw it was an outside call transferred from the desk. She reached for the receiver, expecting to hear a distraught owner with a question about a pet that didn’t seem well or had swallowed something potentially harmful. “Hello. This is Dr. Goddard.”
The voice on the other end sounded muffled, as if the caller had covered the telephone with a cloth. “If you don’t change your tune, your animal hospital’s gonna be next.”
A hot flash of anger jolted her. “What kind of co
ward threatens a woman on the telephone? Afraid to say it to my face? Afraid I might hurt you?”
The man didn’t answer.
Rachel waited.
“Or maybe that little boy’ll be next.”
A gasp escaped her before she could stop it.
“You can’t watch him every minute,” the caller said. Then he hung up.
Paralyzed, Rachel gripped the phone in her trembling hand and listened to the drone of the dial tone and her own rasping breath, in and out, in and out. Simon’s in school, she told herself. He’s safe. For now.
She slammed down the receiver and snatched her address book from the top drawer of her desk. Flipping through it, catching too many pages in her fumbling fingers, backtracking, she found the school’s number.
The woman who answered told her the principal wasn’t in her office, she was elsewhere in the building. “Let me take your number and she’ll call you back.”
“I have to talk to her right now. This is urgent.”
“I can’t leave the desk,” the woman protested. “There’s nobody to—”
“This can’t wait. Find her and bring her to the phone or give me her cell number.”
“I can’t give out her private—”
“Listen to me. Somebody has threatened to hurt Sheriff Bridger’s nephew, Simon. If anything happens to him because you wouldn’t let me talk to the principal—”
“All right, all right. Hold on.”
An interminable time seemed to pass before the principal, a Mrs. Rogers, came on the line. “Dr. Goddard? Maggie said somebody threatened little Simon. My goodness, this is terrible. What can we do to help?”
Thank God, thank God for sensible people. “Don’t let him leave the school with anybody except me, or my husband’s aunt or uncle, or my husband himself. If you see anybody strange hanging around the school, call the Sheriff’s Department right away.”
“Oh, absolutely. It’s just shameful, the things that have been going on around here lately. You have my word that Simon is safe here with us.”
After hanging up, Rachel sat at her desk, her face buried in her hands, until her heartbeat slowed. “He’s okay,” she whispered. “He’s okay.”
When she thought she could speak calmly, she picked up the receiver again and punched in Tom’s cell number, hoping he was in an area with reception.
He answered quickly. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I got an anonymous call a few minutes ago. A man. He threatened to hurt Simon if I didn’t stop opposing the resort development.”
“Aw, Christ—”
“I called the school and told the principal about it. They’ll make sure he’s safe while he’s there. But I knew you’d want to know.”
“I’m on the road right now. I’ll call Uncle Paul and ask him to go keep an eye on the school until classes are out. I don’t think we ought to pull Simon out of class.”
“No, no, I agree. That would scare him.” Rachel’s pulse was pounding in her temples again, and she pulled in a shuddering breath to calm herself.
“He’ll be all right,” Tom said. “Remember Uncle Paul’s a retired deputy. He knows what he’s doing, and he cares about Simon. We’ll find out where that call came from. Did it come in on your landline or cell?”
“Landline. The office number.”
“You’ve got Caller ID there, don’t you? Check it for me.”
Excited by the hope that it really would turn out to be that easy, Rachel hurried out to the desk. Her spirits plummeted when she looked at the incoming call record and found not a number but the word UNAVAILABLE. She returned to her office to let Tom know.
“I’m not surprised,” he said. “I’ll tell Dennis to get a warrant for the records. Don’t worry about Simon, okay?”
“I’ll try not to.” But if he gets hurt because of me…
She squelched the thought. None of this was her fault. She had to keep telling herself that. Drowning herself in guilt was nothing more than self-indulgence.
After she hung up, she rose and walked out, telling Shannon as she passed the front desk, “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” When she pushed open the front door, the chilly wind whipped her white coat around her body and lifted her hair off her neck. Ignoring the cold, she marched ahead, cutting through the parking lot and crossing the street.
Archer seemed startled when she walked up beside him, but he quickly produced a broad smile. “Dr. Goddard, it’s always a pleasure to see you.”
You smarmy bastard. “How’s your finger? Any sign of infection?”
Still smiling, he held up the bandaged finger. “I think I’ll survive.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if Mason County will survive.”
Archer’s smile faded a bit but he hung onto it. He didn’t respond to her statement.
“Somebody set Joanna McKendrick’s stable on fire last night,” Rachel added.
“I heard about that.” His smile vanished and he put on an unconvincing expression of concern. “The horses are all okay, aren’t they?”
“It’s pure luck that they survived. I think we’ll see more incidents like that, more damage to property. And attacks on people. Somebody just called me and threatened to hurt my husband’s little nephew.”
Archer frowned, and now his concern appeared genuine. “I’m sorry. That’s despicable.”
The two glaziers, outside and in, had stopped working to listen to their exchange.
“None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you and the company you work for.”
“That’s not fair, Dr. Goddard. We’re here to conduct business—and our business will benefit this community in more ways than you can imagine.”
“Why can’t you take no for an answer? Joanna McKendrick is never going to sell you her land. So stop pushing and look somewhere else.”
“But that property is—”
“As long as you keep telling people that’s the only property you’ll consider, it’s Joanna’s land or nothing, this county is going to be a war zone. But you don’t give a damn, do you? No matter how it turns out, no matter who gets hurt, you’ll just walk away from it and move on to the next place. I don’t know how you sleep at night.”
“I have no trouble sleeping.” Archer’s tone was mild, but his eyes had turned cold and hard. “I’m helping to bring jobs to this community. I don’t apologize for that.”
“Oh, that’s right. How silly of me. I was appealing to your conscience, and I forgot that you don’t have one.”
Rachel turned and walked back to the animal hospital, tugging her white coat closed and hunching her shoulders against the wind.
***
Tom paced Jake Hollinger’s driveway, cell phone to his ear. He’d caught Dennis Murray as he was leaving headquarters for the courthouse next door in search of a judge to sign warrants for Joanna’s and the Jones sisters’ phone records.
As Dennis returned to his desk to write up another warrant for the animal hospital’s records, he reeled off a list of complaints called in to the Sheriff’s Department so far that morning. Mailboxes knocked down. Threatening messages painted on houses in the dead of night. Cow dung dumped on front porches. “The targets are all people who oppose the resort development. I’ve sent four guys out to take victim statements and collect any evidence they can find.”
“I guess we ought to feel lucky our firebugs didn’t go on a spree last night.” Ending the call, Tom shook his head and told Brandon what he’d heard. “This is going to be normal until the resort issue’s settled.”
“It probably won’t stop even then,” Brandon said. “The losing side’s not going to give up easily.”
Jake opened his front door and called, “Y’all coming in, or you gonna stand on my driveway all day?”
The house felt stuffy, too warm, and the living roo
m, with its dust-coated tables and unlit lamps, looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. Jake led them through it without stopping, then through the small dining room into the kitchen, where the aroma of fresh coffee mingled with the fishy odor of cat food. His shirttail hung out over his khaki pants, he hadn’t shaved yet, and his silver hair looked as if he’d combed it with his fingers. Going downhill fast, Tom thought, without Tavia around.
“Want some coffee?” Jake asked. “I just made it.” When Tom and Brandon both declined, he motioned at the table. “Sit down. I don’t know what you’re here for, though. I don’t have any more letters to give you.”
Brandon took a seat at the table, but Tom stooped next to the cat bed where Tavia’s pet lay curled up. “What’s his name again? Spud?”
“Tater.”
“Hey, Tater.” Tom rubbed his knuckles over the cat’s head. “How’re you doing?”
The cat looked up at him with sad eyes and didn’t lift his head.
“He’s still down in the dumps, but he ate his breakfast this morning.” Jake pulled out a chair and sat across from Brandon, mug in hand. “There’s not much that can come between that cat and his food.”
“Be sure and call Rachel if he doesn’t adjust. She can help.” Tom joined them at the table.
Jake nodded, watching the cat. “They mourn, you know. Animals. They mourn like people do.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jake’s own grief for Tavia had deepened the lines around his eyes and mouth, and for the first time Tom had the conscious thought: This is an old man. An old man who would grow older alone, without the woman he’d loved, alienated from his only child. But that wasn’t Tom’s concern today. “Was everything quiet here overnight?”
Jake scrubbed a hand over his chin, and Tom could hear the scrape of stiff gray bristle against his palm. “Quiet as a tomb. I don’t expect it to last, though. Like I said last night, both sides are going to retaliate. One side set Joanna’s stable on fire, so I won’t be surprised if the other side torches my barn. Or my house.”
“You still planning to change your will today?”
“You bet I am. I’ve got an appointment with the lawyer. I need to shave and get out of here soon or I’ll be late.” Jake paused, then added, “My son might not be losing out on a fortune after all. With Tavia gone, I don’t care about the Packard money. I might as well stay put.”
Poisoned Ground Page 23
