Keeping Secrets

by L A Dobbs

  While Jo could tell their visit meant a lot to Irma, she could barely pay attention. She was eager to get into Tyler's room so they could inspect the boxes and see if they could find anything that would lead them to the location of the box for which he'd hidden that key.

  "We're getting along just fine, thanks to that donation from the police fund and the big deposit of Tyler's last check." Irma pushed the plate of cookies toward Sam.

  "Donation?" Jo flicked her eyes from the cookies to Sam. What was she talking about? Jo didn't know of any donation from the police fund, and she certainly didn't think Tyler's last check had been anything big.

  Sam gave her an I'll-tell-you-later look, and Jo snapped her mouth shut. But she noticed Sam also had a quizzical look on his face.

  Sam scarfed down his fourth cookie and patted his lips with a napkin that had a fancy design embroidered in pink on the corner. "I was wondering since we were here if you still had the boxes from Tyler's things. We have some police stuff that we might've put in there by mistake, and we need it back."

  "Why, sure." Irma pushed up from the table. "His room's just the way he always had it." Her eyes shone with sadness. "Haven't had the heart to go in there and clean anything out. Anyway, the boxes and everything are just the way they were when that other nice police officer brought them by."

  Jo had forgotten that Kevin had been the one to clean out Tyler's things and bring them to Irma. She didn't totally trust Kevin. She had a funny feeling that he was up to something, and it wasn't just her imagination. Last month, she'd seen him going into a restaurant where Thorne and their shady mayor, Harley Dupont, were meeting, and he'd lied to her about being there. Jo hadn't said anything to Sam about it. It was in her nature to be overly suspicious, and she might be seeing something when nothing was there. She needed more proof than him being seen in a restaurant before she accused Kevin of something nefarious.

  Irma led them down a narrow hallway into a small bedroom. The walls were a grayish blue, the twin bed had a blue bedspread, and there was a little blue rug next to it. Had Tyler lived in this room? Jo couldn't picture a grown man staying in the tiny room.

  "I'm sorry Clarissa can't be here to see you," Irma said. "She's getting some treatments. Thanks to that big deposit. I know Tyler would be grateful for that."

  "It's the least the department could do." Sam opened the lid of a box that sat on a small white desk.

  "Well, I'll leave you to it." Irma turned and went back down the hall.

  There were two boxes on the bed. Jo sat down on the bed and started going through one of them. It held the usual stuff-- pens, pencils, notebooks. She leafed through the notebooks, but there was nothing unusual, just handwritten notes on some of the tasks the police department was saddled with, like where the lights were stored for the town Christmas tree and how many fireworks should be purchased for the Fourth of July celebration and what kind of treats Rita Hoelscher's goat, Bitsy, preferred. Her heart weighed heavy as she looked at Tyler's writing and remembered what a stickler he was for jotting everything down. She put the notebooks back in the box. They weren't exactly confidential police work and didn't need to go back to the station.

  "Nothing in here." Sam closed the box and eyed the desk. "But maybe Tyler wouldn't keep it at the station. Maybe he kept it at home." He leaned back to look out in the hallway to make sure Irma wasn't coming then opened the desk drawer and started rifling through.

  "What was that business about a deposit and a donation?" Jo watched Sam open another drawer. He paused to look back over his shoulder at her.

  "You know how some police stations have a fallen-officer fund that donates money to the family?" Sam turned back to the drawer.

  "Yeah, but we don't have one of those." Jo looked under the bed. Nothing there but dust.

  "Well, I might've helped that along a little bit." Sam deftly avoided eye contact.

  "You mean you used your own money?" Jo stopped what she was doing to stare at Sam, but he simply shrugged and went to the closet. Her heart swelled. Sam really was one of the good guys.

  He reached into the closet, his broad shoulders framed in the doorway. "I have plenty. But, the thing is, I don't know anything about this deposit in his bank account. What do you make of that?"

  "No idea." Jo opened the middle drawer in the stand next to the bed. There was nothing inside but a bunch of hardcover mystery books. Tyler had been a reader? It looked as if they were well worn. Jo and Tyler had been fairly close and had worked together day in and day out for years, but there was so much she hadn't known about him, which made her wonder all the more about the circumstances of his death.

  "We should check into that. Might give us a clue as to what really happened." Sam closed the closet door and looked around the room. "In the meantime, I don't see anything here that will give us any clue about the key."

  "I was hoping to find a receipt from a gym or a bank or something, but no such luck." Jo tapped the laptop on the desk. "This is Tyler's personal laptop. I know Internal Affairs looked all through his work computer and his personal computer and didn't find anything, right?"

  "That's right." Sam frowned at the computer then turned back to the two boxes. "Did you find any thumb drives in those boxes?"

  Jo shook her head.

  "And these are the three boxes that Kevin brought from the office, right? Seems weird Tyler wouldn't have a thumb drive to transfer files, doesn't it?"

  "Maybe he used Dropbox or Google Drive or something. Maybe he did have a thumb drive and hid it like he hid the key." Jo carefully closed the flaps on the boxes then stood, taking one last look around the room as if she were saying one last farewell to Tyler. "Are we done here? I think we need to get to the cabin and look for that note."

  Sam followed her out the door then turned back, taking his own last look. His strong jaw tightened as his eyes roamed over the room. Jo knew that he was taking a mental inventory that he'd go over later in his mind.

  "Yep, we're done. Let's get a move on."

  Chapter Six

  Sam glanced up at the tall pine trees as he pulled into the dirt driveway of the Donnelly cabin. The vultures were gone, but not the blood on the grass or the bird droppings or the indentation where Mike Donnelly's body had fallen.

  Inside, the cabin was typical of the northern logging-road cabins. It was small, with two bedrooms and a combined living room and kitchen area. The ceilings were low, the walls covered with knotty pine. It was furnished with cast-off furniture that was probably worthless a generation ago but now would bring a pretty penny down at Clara Weatherby's antique store.

  Everything was neatly placed, down to the green-and-orange granny-square afghan that was folded along the back of the couch. If there had been a fight, it didn't happen inside the cabin.

  Sam didn't see any note on any of the surfaces in the living room. He crossed the faded green-and-tan braided rug, past the small black cast-iron stove, into the kitchen. The countertops were yellow-speckled laminate, the stove an old two-burner white gas stove. The fridge was a miniature style with a rounded top that must've been forty years old, and Sam thought it was a miracle that it still even worked. But there was no note to be seen.

  Lucy had come in beside him, and she sniffed around the trash barrel. Sam looked inside to see a plastic ham-salad container from the deli and an empty carton of milk. Dinner for one.

  He glanced at the sink. Two drinking glasses sat on the drying board.

  Jo came from the hallway that led to the bedrooms. "There's no note anywhere here."

  "No, but check this out." Sam pointed to the glasses. "Why would Mike have two glasses if he was the only one here?"

  "Good question." Jo spun around, taking in the scene. "But everything looks to be in place. If he did have someone here, then whatever happened to get him shot didn't happen inside."

  "And just because someone might have been here, doesn't mean they shot him. We can't rule out suicide just because there was no note."

&nbs
p; "Can't rule it in, either. What we need to figure out is who was here." Jo opened up the crime scene kit she'd brought and took out evidence bags. "These glasses have been washed, but there might still be something useful on them."

  Sam poked around the living room, looking for anything that seemed out of place. They couldn't actually call the cabin a crime scene yet. Maybe the autopsy results would reveal more.

  Jo focused on putting the glasses into the bags and casually asked, "So you really gave Tyler's mom money?"

  "Yep." Sam didn't like anyone knowing about his generous side. Why had he even mentioned it to Jo? He could have stayed silent and pretended it was tied into the mysterious deposit that Irma mentioned. But that would have been like lying, and he trusted Jo. She knew most everything about him, anyway... except for one thing, and that thing was something he hoped no one else would ever know.

  "What do you think that deposit was?" Jo asked.

  The deposit worried Sam. "I have no idea. Maybe it was nothing, but I think we need to find out. It could have bearing on what happened to him, but we have no idea what Irma means by 'big.'"

  "Apparently it was big enough for Clarissa to get that treatment, unless you gave her a huge sum."

  Sam remained silent on that one. "Well, whatever it is, it's not something normal. Which makes me even more convinced that Tyler was the person who taped that key under the desk."

  "And if that's the case, you gotta wonder... who was he hiding it from?"

  When they got back to the station, Reese was sitting at her desk, her long dark braid pulled over one shoulder and a look that waffled between patience and agitation flickering across her face. She was young, still in the police academy, but she'd already proven to Sam that her superior computer skills were a great asset to the department.

  Right now, though, she was negotiating with Bernie Cumberland about his sewer tax bill. In small-town police departments, one had to wear a lot of hats, and collecting tax bills and handing out licenses and yard sale permits were some of the many jobs Reese was assigned.

  Her pale-blue eyes lit up when they fell on the white donut bag that Jo had taken in from the glove compartment.

  Sam headed across the marble floor and straight to the K-Cup machine. The machine looked out of place in the old-fashioned building, which had been built eighty years prior and never been renovated. The building still retained the original marble floors, paneled oak partitions, and even the original craftsman-style oak desks.

  The best part was the old bronze post office boxes that had been left behind. Each box had twin dials at the top with gold numbers on a black background. Below the dials, a fancy embossed eagle with a US shield on its chest sat proudly amidst fluted rays that extended to the edge of the box. Below the eagle, a small beveled-glass window let you see how much mail was inside. Sam couldn't understand why the postal service preferred ugly new metal boxes, but he was grateful. The old boxes still sat in their oak wall and now created a partial divider between the reception area and the squad room.

  Lucy took up her usual station beside Reese's desk, watching intently as Reese explained to Bernie why he had to pay the full amount. As Reese talked, she slipped her hand into her drawer, took out a small dog treat, and fed it to Lucy.

  Kevin was already at his desk, his head bent over paperwork. He looked up as they came in, stopped working, and swung his chair around to face them.

  "The gun found at the scene was registered to Mike Donnelly," Kevin said.

  "Oh, you looked that up already?" Sam was surprised. Kevin didn't usually do things without being prodded, but this time, he'd taken the initiative. Perhaps Sam wasn't giving him enough credit or utilizing him to his fullest. "Good job."

  Jo sat on the edge of her desk facing into the room. She opened the white donut bag and tilted it out toward them. "Anyone want one?"

  "I do." Reese came in from the lobby as Bernie exited the building. She hopped onto the desk beside Jo and peeked into the bag then stuck her hand in and pulled out a donut. Kevin and Sam declined.

  Sam pulled a chair out into the middle the room and turned it so the four of them were in a circle. He sat leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs.

  "So did Mr. Donnelly kill himself?" Reese asked. Sugar sprinkled into her lap as she bit into the donut. Lucy had come to sit in front of Jo and Reese. Her eyes watched each falling grain of sugar as intently as a hawk watching a baby rabbit.

  "Not sure. He was depressed, and we didn't see any sign of a struggle. It was his own gun," Sam said. "But the position of the body in relation to the gun seems off. And those two glasses in the sink make me wonder."

  "Glasses?" Reese asked.

  Jo pulled the evidence bags out of the crime kit she brought in. "We found two glasses in the kitchen sink. It could indicate someone else besides Mike was there."

  "Or it could simply indicate that he used two glasses," Sam said. "It won't hurt to see if we can find any DNA or fingerprints on them, but they were in the dish strainer, so they've been washed."

  Reese leaned forward eagerly. "But right away those two glasses are somewhat of a discrepancy. He might not have been alone, and we have to treat every unattended death as potentially suspicious until the criteria of a suicide is met without a doubt."

  Everyone looked at Reese silently, and she explained, "That's what we learned in school, anyway."

  Sam didn't disagree. He had a funny feeling about this case. Maybe it was his predisposition to think that everyone was up to something sketchy. Maybe it was just his gut instincts that he'd learned to trust after so many years on the police force. But he didn't want to put the Donnelly family through the stress of an investigation, so he needed to proceed with caution. He wanted to make sure there was cause to investigate first.

  "I'm just glad Bullwinkle didn't have anything to do with it," Reese said.

  "He probably was just walking in the woods and something spooked him. Maybe the turkey vultures. Or maybe the killer came back. Either way, those vultures did a number on Mike. That makes it hard to look for any of the signs one normally sees with a suicide, and until we can rule it as a definite one, we need to investigate."

  "Vultures?" Reese looked down at the blob of jelly in her donut and swallowed hard.

  "Doesn't take long to discover a decomposing body. But that means he must've been there for at least a few hours. Likely overnight, because it would take a while for the gases to accumulate. Turkey vultures can smell that gas miles away, and that's what attracts them," Sam said.

  "It was hard to even tell where the bullet went in. We didn't even realize he had been shot until John found the gun under the body," Jo added.

  Reese wrapped her unfinished half of the donut up in a napkin and put it back in the bag. "So you can't really tell where the wound was at the angle of entry. In school, we learned that a suicide will shoot themselves in certain places, and the angle is critical."

  "That's right. Anything that wasn't covered by clothing was mutilated, so we know where he wasn't shot. Maybe John can figure out more. He could certainly figure out the time of death. Maybe he can rule out whether or not Mike could have shot himself. His hands were pecked up, and I don't know if there was enough skin left to find traces of gunshot powder."

  "Heck, we couldn't even tell if it was Mike," Kevin said.

  "Yeah, I don't want to subject the family to making an ID. How could they? His face was... unrecognizable," Sam said. "But he didn't come home, so it's a pretty sure bet he was the victim. And Margie said he'd been depressed."

  "But being depressed is one thing, and especially considering Margie's illness, it seems natural that he would be. Killing yourself is another," Jo said. "While we're waiting for John to come back with more information, it wouldn't hurt to find out if anyone might've wanted Mike dead."

  "Isn't it obvious?" Reese said. "The Donnelly farm is right next to all that acreage where Thorne is building the hotel. The farm is a perfect place for the golf course he
wants to put in. Everyone in town knows that Mike Donnelly would never sell to Thorne. Margie wouldn't either, but I know she's very ill and doesn't have long to live. The kids don't want the farm. So with Margie gone, Mike would be the only thing standing in Thorne's way."

  Chapter Seven

  By the time the end of the day rolled around, they'd gotten word back from the medical examiner. He'd been able to make a positive ID through the victim's dental records and a partial fingerprint on one finger of his left hand that hadn't been mutilated. It was Mike Donnelly.

  Around six p.m., Jo headed over to the local bar down the street from the police station with Sam. Sam's twin daughters were visiting from college, and he'd arranged to meet them there. Jo didn't want to impose on his family time, but he'd talked her into going. His daughters had mentioned they wanted to say hi to her, and since Jo had nothing else to do, she agreed.

  Holy Spirits was a decommissioned church. It was a favorite hangout for locals, and its reputation for making the best burgers in Coos County brought in a steady flow of outsiders too.

  The owner hadn't done much renovation, and opening the double doors felt like walking into the vestibule of a church. Even some of the original pews remained and were rearranged, facing each other with long tables in between. But that was where the resemblance to a church ended. The rest of the bar was dotted with round maple tables surrounded by captain's chairs. The lighting was dim, and it smelled of hops and grilled meat.

  The bar itself ran the length of the back, where the altar used to be. Jo liked to sit at the bar because the mirrored wall behind it gave her a view of the entire room without having to turn in her seat, and she could see who was coming up behind her. Above the mirror, a colorful stained-glass window lit the bar with a dim ambiance.