by Donna Doyle
Deployment to Afghanistan and working as a police officer in Settler Springs had not shielded Troy from death. Each instance was separate, equally jarring. But as he pulled the body from the lake, looking away from the ravages that had been wrought upon the features, Troy realized that this grotesque development was more than just the ruin of his getaway fishing weekend. Was this just a random death, a suicide, a drowning—or was it murder?
11
Back Home
Hours later, Troy pulled into his driveway, having contacted the authorities and alerted them that he’d found a dead man in the lake and waited while the coroner and the ambulance came to investigate the grim finding. It had been a long day and he had stopped at the police station to update Leo on the events.
When he saw Kelly’s car by the sidewalk, despite his downcast mood, he felt his spirits lift as he realized that she was there, tending to Arlo. No one was in the house; she must have taken Arlo for a walk. Troy went into his garage and put away the fishing equipment that he’d packed with such enthusiasm. That endeavor seemed as if it was a lifetime ago. He went back into the house and waited.
“What happened?” Kelly and Arlo came inside, Arlo fresh from his walk. Kelly, seeing Troy’s car parked in his driveway, knew immediately that something had to be wrong. He wasn’t supposed to come home until Sunday evening.
Succinctly, he told her. Her brown eyes widened with disbelief. “Oh, Troy . . . how horrible for you.”
“And for him,” Troy quipped, dark humor helping to stave off the macabre turn to his fishing weekend.
“Who is it?”
Troy poured water into the carafe to make coffee. “Don’t know yet. Leo says no one’s been reported missing. It’s Easter weekend; people could be away, they might not know if someone is missing.”
“Did—do they think someone drowned?”
Troy bent down to give Arlo a hearty welcoming rub. Arlo rolled over on his back, his paws up in the air, luxuriating in the affection. “No one knows yet. The body—it was in the water for a while. At least a day, probably more.”
He didn’t have to elaborate. Kelly realized that a body left to the vicissitudes of a watery death would be subject to the laws of nature. Impulsively, she approached Troy, but he wasn’t ready for the sympathy that she was able to offer.
“Coffee?”
She felt rebuffed by his response, but realized that he was, in his own way, trying to come to grips with what he’d seen. “Sure,” she said.
They sat down at the kitchen table, Arlo settling down at Troy’s feet as if he sensed the tumultuous emotions which his owner was trying to contain.
“What happens next?” Kelly asked.
“An inquest. It’s probably a drowning, but you know me . . . I think everything is murder anymore. But it probably isn’t.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I think everything is murder these days.” He gave her a lopsided grin that was all the more melancholy for the effort he put into his attempt at cheerfulness. “You’re a bad influence on me.”
She smiled back at the comment. “I do my best. I might be driven to murder, though, if Mrs. Stark keeps it up.”
She sensed that Troy welcomed the change of subject. “What’s she doing now?” he asked.
Kelly told him, her tone growing more irate as she related the details of Mrs. Stark’s accusation that Lucas had stolen a check from the library moneybox just because it was from her and her husband.
“That’s just stupid,” Troy commented, willing to let this episode take precedence over the death of an unknown man in the lake because it was, however unjust, a feature of the living world and not the world of the dead. “She’s carrying her vendetta against the Krymanskis too far.”
“She said Lucas can’t come in the library anymore,” Kelly protested. “He comes to the library to help. And with his mother and Carrie arguing so much, I think it helps him to get away from it.”
“It sounds like Carrie is having a whole series of teen behavior, right at the end of her senior year. Weird; she seemed like a pretty together kid.”
“Break-ups can be hard at that age. At any age,” Kelly amended.
“Was yours?”
“My what? Oh, my break-up with Jarrod? It was at the time.”
“The time was last year,” he reminded her.
“Yeah . . . okay, it was bad. Yeah. I thought he was the one.” She grinned ruefully. “That’s what always gets a girl. Thinking that he’s the one. What about you?”
“And Angela, you mean? She wasn’t the one.”
“But you were engaged.”
“I know. I didn’t realize until after that she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t the one. Actually—”
He looked down at his phone which had just begun to ring. The ringtone he’d set for work. Lousy timing. “Yeah?”
“Troy, sorry to bother you,” Leo apologized. “That body that you found . . . we’ve just had a family report a missing person. They went up to camp to spend Easter with the deceased. Turns out he has a camp near there. I know him. John Parmenter; he was an ornery old cuss, but—anyway, I wanted to let you know. They’ve identified him . . . clothing, you know.”
Parmenter. When had he heard that name, Troy wondered.
“Nothing official yet, mind you, but John was dead before he was in the water.
There’s a bullet hole . . . I haven’t told the family yet. I wanted you to know. It’s not the way I’d have chosen for you to find a missing person or a body, but—well, I’m glad it was you and not one of the family or someone who couldn’t handle it.”
“Okay,” Troy answered, his voice devoid of inflection.
“We’ll learn more,” Leo promised.
“State police again?”
“Yes, but we’ll be involved. The camp isn’t in Settler Springs, but John lived here. I just don’t know why anyone would want to kill him. I guess we all felt like it at one time or another, but not really. You know?”
“I never met him.”
“He was impossible. Always thought he was right, never wrong. Never admitted it when he was wrong. He was as unyielding as a cement block. Bull-headed—still, a man shouldn’t reach the age of seventy-five and get himself shot to death and left in a lake.”
“Did he have enemies?”
Leo sighed. “According to the family, he and his minister had had a falling-out.”
Troy’s eyes shot over to Kelly. That was where he’d heard the name. The man who’d argued with the pastor of First Church because of some change in a traditional worship service.
Kelly caught his gaze and looked quizzical. He held up a finger to tell her to wait.
“That seems like a longshot,” Leo went on. “Still, it’s the only lead we have.”
“Tomorrow’s Easter Sunday,” Troy pointed out.
“We’re not going to do anything yet,” Leo said. “Nothing to go on. We’ll wait, get the details or at least as much as we can, and go from there. We won’t be interrogating him on Easter. Anyway, I wanted to let you know.”
“Want me to work tomorrow? You can be with your grandkids.”
“You sure? If you mean it . . . I’d like our family to spend the day together. Mia is pretty shaken up over that phone call. I am too. Millie is always careful with the kids, picks them up on time, waits until they’re in school before she leaves. Still, it’s got us all on edge. I know Shaw is behind it.”
“Leo, he’s in prison.”
“I don’t care if he’s playing harp for Peter at the Pearly Gates,” Leo returned. “Somehow, someway, he’s involved in this.”
“You spend Sunday with your family,” Troy said, opting to change the subject. “I’ll work it.”
“Thanks, Troy.”
“Don’t mention it.”
As soon as Troy ended the call, Kelly wanted to know what was going on.
Troy told her. But he left out the fact that her minister was
the only suspect, so far, in the death. Nor did he tell her that murder was suspected. Knowing that a man she knew, however cantankerous he was, had died unpleasantly, was enough for her to deal with.
“John Parmenter?” Kelly repeated in disbelief. “John? I heard he was going to spend Easter at his camp, but . . .”
“I suppose word is out by now, since the family has identified the body.” At least the clothing the body was wearing.
“Poor Rev. Dal. He’ll be doing the funeral.”
Troy wasn’t so sure of that, not if the family had told the police that John Parmenter and Rev. Meachem had had a falling out. But he didn’t voice his thoughts.
“Don’t let on that you know anything,” he counseled Kelly. “Although I suppose it’ll be widely known at church tomorrow.”
“John had left LifeLight Church. His family still belong there, but I don’t think they’re active members.”
“They didn’t leave when he did?”
“Oh, if the family pulled up stakes every time John got angry with someone, they’d have no friends and no business,” Kelly said honestly. “They were used to his ways. I guess they had to be. Still . . .”
“I know,” Troy said. “They’ll mourn for him. Holiday deaths are the toughest.”
12
Murder Suspect in the Church
Troy was correct in his speculation that by morning, the community would know of John Parmenter’s death. The congregation at First Church was particularly affected as Rev. Meachem tried to keep the focus of the service on the day of resurrection rather than death. But as he preached of joy, there were some in the pews who cast hostile glances his way, seeming to blame him for the shadow that had fallen over the holiest of days in the church. Easter Sunday was usually a worship service filled with a feeling of triumph as if, once again, the tomb had been found empty. But John Parmenter’s death and the recollection of the last words spoken between him and the pastor brought death to the forefront of worship.
Kelly, who had already attended the sunrise service, helped to serve the Easter breakfast, and stayed for the main service, felt drained by the time the sanctuary had emptied and she was ready to leave.
Dal Meachem’s wife, Olivia, pregnant with their first child, went up to Kelly. “I feel so bad for Dal,” she confided. “He wanted his first Easter here to be perfect.”
“He couldn’t help this,” Kelly said. “John . . .” her words trailed off. What could she say?
“I know. Dal went up to John at camp to try to talk to him but no one answered.”
“When did he go up there?”
“Saturday morning. He went to the home first, and the family told him that John was at camp, so Dal went up to see him there and try to make things right.”
“And no one answered?”
Olivia Meachem shook her head. She was a petite woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed and hugely pregnant with a baby that was due any day. “He said he knocked and knocked, and even walked all around to see if he could find him out by the lake, but he wasn’t there. Dal thought that maybe John was inside but just didn’t want to talk to him.”
“That doesn’t sound like John,” Kelly said. “He was never one to avoid a confrontation, even if he was the one who started it.”
Olivia sighed. “No,” she agreed. “We’re having family over for Easter dinner. I think it’s going to be a long day.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and go into labor,” Kelly suggested.
Olivia brightened. “You know, I wish I would!”
With her own family still in Florida, Kelly had accepted Julie Leonard’s invitation to share Easter dinner with her and her family. The Leonards had relatives all over the country, but none close by, and they were glad to welcome friends to their table.
By tacit agreement, the conversation stayed away from the subject of John Parmenter’s death while the twins were at the table, but when the meal was over and clean-up finished, Kelly joined Julie and her husband Steve on their sunporch, where they could talk freely without being overheard by the boys, who were down in the basement playing video games.
“I was never so glad to have Easter service over,” Julie declared, stretching out full length on the recliner end of the couch.
“I think a lot of people felt that way,” Steve commented.
“If only Rev. Dal and John hadn’t gotten into that argument,” Julie lamented. “Now it’s as if it’s Rev. Dal’s fault, and of course it isn’t. John quarreled with everyone.”
“I don’t know how his family put up with him,” Steve admitted.
“Maybe they didn’t have much choice,” Kelly said thoughtfully. “I know that Lara and John, Junior ran the business, but John still had control of everything, didn’t he?”
“That’ll change now, depending on the terms of the will.”
“I suppose they’ve been doing it for so long that they’ll carry on as before, John Junior running the shop and Lara keeping the books.”
“They seem to get along okay.”
“Olivia Meachem said that Rev. Dal went up to John’s camp on Saturday morning to try to talk to him, but no one answered.”
“Do you think . . . ?“ Julie didn’t finish but Kelly and Steve both knew what she was going to say. Was John Parmenter already dead by Saturday morning? While children were enjoying community Easter egg hunts and churches were busily decorating for the holiday, taking care of last-minute shopping for dinner and figuring out what to bring for side dishes, had John Parmenter already been dead?
Troy had said that holiday deaths were hard to get over and this one, with the gruesome reality of a lonely death in water, would be even worse.
“It seems as though we’ve had more than our share to deal with lately,” Julie said.
“I mean in Settler Springs. I always tell my family how much we enjoy living in a small town. They all live in cities, where things like this are happening all the time.”
“They’re happening,” her husband pointed out, “but they’re headlines. They don’t know the people most of the time. We know them. We knew John. I wish I could say I liked him, but I can’t. We knew Lyola Knesbit, peripherally, and . . . well, I didn’t much like her either. Bossy, judgmental, argumentative . . .”
“It’s almost like a version of And Then There Were None,” Kelly mused. “You know, the Agatha Christie mystery, where everyone on an island is killed and at the end, they find out it was because they all had a guilty secret.”
“If there’s a killer in town who’s murdering people because they have unpleasant dispositions, then there are going to be a lot of bodies,” Steve said.
“John wasn’t murdered, though,” Julie pointed out. “He must have fallen into the lake and drowned. It’s so muddy everywhere, with all of the rain. Still, it doesn’t seem likely that he’d fall in, does it, and not get himself out?”
No one had an answer to that.
Not long after, Kelly went home, taking with her a generous platter of Easter leftovers from Julie’s dinner. On impulse, Kelly called Troy. He was going to work for Leo and then, when his shift ended, the state police would be covering.
She doubted if he’d had time to make an Easter dinner.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Troy, have you eaten? I’ve got a ton of leftovers that I brought home and I can bring a plate over.”
“Okay,” he said eagerly, more for Kelly’s company than for the food, since he had planned to eat the hot dogs he’d brought with him to Leo’s camp.
Kelly changed from her church clothes into jeans and a long-sleeved tee-shirt and sneakers and was out the door and in her car in less than half an hour.
“Hi,” she greeted, presenting a plate. “Julie is a great cook. It’s still warm. There’s ham and scalloped potatoes and bean salad and coconut cream pie, and—”
Troy grinned. “And you. Come on in.”
He was in jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt as well, in stockinged feet. Hi
s hair was tousled as if he’d pulled the tee shirt over his head and not bothered to comb his hair afterward. He looked rugged and attractive to Kelly, the unshod feet somehow endearing on a man who was never entirely relaxed.
Kelly protested when he took two plates out of the cupboard. “I just ate,” she said. “That’s for you. I’ll have coffee, though.”
“It’s fresh, I just made it.”
“You go ahead and eat. I’ll help myself.”
Being in his kitchen felt comfortable. She knew where the cups were, poured milk into her coffee and got a spoon from the silverware drawer for sugar.
“There’s enough food here for both of us,” Troy said, gazing at the packed sectional plate.
“I still have plenty at home. Eat. You probably had a long day.”
“What about you?”
“Church was tough. People are looking at Rev. Dal as if he’s at fault.”
That was only going to get worse, Troy knew, once the verdict of murder came in. But he just nodded sympathetically as he began to eat.
“We were talking—I had Easter dinner at the Leonards’—about the way things are right now in town. This isn’t the peaceful small town we’re used to. We were talking about how John was so much like Lyola Knesbit.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Well, no, I mean John wasn’t murdered, but they were both such cranky people—what?”
“What?”
“Your expression. It changed, liked I’d said something . . . I don’t know, something.”
“You did say something,” he said, trying to extricate himself from Kelly’s acute perceptions. “You said that Parmenter and Mrs. Nesbit were both cranky people.”
“No, before—Troy, what aren’t you telling me?” Kelly demanded. “When I said that John wasn’t murdered, you were thinking something. What is it? Was John murdered?”
13
Mason’s Bike
Troy hadn’t bothered to even try to keep the news from Kelly any longer, not after she’d read his thoughts on Easter Sunday. It wasn’t long before the news was out anyway and not because Kelly had divulged what she had been told by Troy.
