“I thank you, Sheriff, for calling me. It was making me ill, thinking about all this good food going to waste.” He started loading the bags of sandwiches into a cardboard box he carried. “I drove him to the festival and planned to pick up the sandwiches and stuff when I dropped him off again. After he died, I took the bags I had and passed them out there and told them I'd be back with more, but between you and me, I weren't real sure if I could.”
Tony and Wade helped Pops carry the food to the car. “Is this the normal amount?”
“Yessir.” Pops's whole body nodded along with his words, then he stopped. “No, there's the right amount of sandwiches, but there's usually a treat and some cartons of milk for the young'uns.”
The three men trooped back into the kitchen. Once the bags of sandwiches were out of the refrigerator, there was not much left except a half-bag of deli fried chicken and some orange juice. They checked the freezer. Bingo. It was filled with snack cakes. A picnic cooler sitting near the door held small cartons of milk and cooler ice.
Tony picked up one carton of milk and pressed it against his cheek. He was relieved to find it very cold, so they loaded all the stuff into Pops's car. “Why'd he ride with you? Why not drive out there in his own vehicle?”
Pops wasn't known for his ability to tell convincing lies, so when he said, “It had something to do with an undercover operation,” Tony believed it was what he'd been told.
They sent Pops on his way to deliver the food.
“Undercover operation?” Wade watched the car disappear around the corner and looked back at the open kitchen door. “I never would have guessed Hairy Rags would do anything halfway decent. I just don't know what to think. All these years, all the bad feelings.”
“He certainly didn't make any attempt to make people change their minds about him. Maybe he was told to do something good in the community, or else?” Tony wasn't proud of his feelings, but the cynical part of him distrusted the idea of there being such a wide gap between Ragsdale's public image and the private do-gooder. “Maybe we should see what's in the rest of the house. So far, I'm wondering if he actually lived here.”
“It's a bit creepy. I'd feel more at home in Quentin's trailer.” Wade grabbed his camera again.
Tony tried to stifle a laugh, but comparing this living space to Quentin's dilapidated trailer was like comparing a jet airplane hangar to the Thomas Brothers' garage. Not quite in the same league in size or cleanliness.
The single bathroom was functional. One bath towel hung from the shower curtain rod. There was no soap or shampoo in the shower. Without realizing he was doing it until Wade turned to locate the sound, Tony pressed his lips together and made a humming sound.
There were two small bedrooms. One was used as the lumber storage area. A rack made from two by fours held the boards flat and up off the floor. Tony could almost feel Wade's anticipation, mixed with his own, as he turned the knob on the second door. It was locked.
“Okay,” Tony mumbled. “I'm going to get into that room if I have to take an ax to the door.”
Wade jangled some lock picks in front of his face. “Won't be necessary,” Tony said. “This one fits.” Seconds later, the lock released and the door swung in.
Tony stared, not as surprised as he was shocked. “Look at them all.”
“Do-it-yourself taxidermy?” Wade's camera clicked several times. “Or professional?”
“And why lock this door? It's his own home.” Tony flipped on the light switch, and the overall effect became more of a natural history exhibit than trophy room. “Are they valuable?”
“Where did he sleep?” Wade stepped inside, taking more photographs. “There's no furniture in the house.”
“Did you see a basement?” Tony backed out of the taxidermy room. “I'll check.” He did find some stairs behind a door in the kitchen that had been overlooked in the excitement of the sandwich situation. Opening it, he found a pull cord to turn on a light. It lit three bulbs spaced out along the length of the basement. A dirt floor. A water heater and the furnace. The ceiling was too low to make the space useful for much else. He'd have to walk bent over at the waist just to get to the far end.
They returned to the woodshop. “Where did he live?” said Wade.
“The garage is the only place we haven't checked.” Tony doubted it doubled as a bedroom.
So they trudged out to the garage. The door wasn't one of the newer “overhead” doors but two wide, hinged doors. A padlock kept it shut. Wade had it open in seconds.
Tony wasn't sure why, but he held his breath as the well-oiled doors swung open. A perfectly ordinary pickup truck sat next to a perfectly ordinary lawn mower, and perfectly ordinary yard and garden tools hung from hooks and nails. With a whoosh, the air left his lungs. He felt better when he heard the same sound from Wade.
Just for fun, they placed seals on the house and garage doors and strung yellow tape about the place to discourage visitors. “Let's go have a chat with our county clerk and see how much more property Ragsdale owned. So far his wife and her fiancé think it's two to six houses.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“He owns how many houses?” Tony stared down at county clerk Marigold Flowers Proffitt's wig of the day, noting absently how much it reminded him of an apricot poodle's fur. Not his favorite of her rotating supply of wigs and turbans. She was one of Blossom's sisters, and her approach to the family tendency to carry thin hair and excessive weight was to shave her head and not eat. “Did you say eight?”
“Yes, eight.” Marigold squinted at the screen. Just as she refused to eat, she also refused to wear glasses. “I can print this list of addresses out, and you can take it with you.”
“Thank you.” Tony understood the message. She wanted him out of her office. He probably smelled like apple pie, and she wouldn't stand for it. He felt a bit dazed as he carried the printout from the courthouse to his office in the next building over. The paper gave the addresses, legal description of houses and lots, and current values for property taxes. The late game warden owned roughly a million dollars' worth of land and buildings. Tony considered his and Theo's own financial empire, a house she'd inherited and her shop building they owned jointly with the bank. Her bright yellow SUV was a gift or they'd never be able to afford it.
As he walked past Ruth Ann's desk, she waved her nail polish brush to attract his attention. She'd purchased a headset so she could talk on the telephone and leave both her hands free for her day job, the manicures. She spoke into the headset. “If you'll hold on just a second, I'll see if the sheriff is available.” She pushed a button with the eraser end of a pencil.
“Do I want to be available?” Tony thought he wanted to study the real estate papers, but Ruth Ann was capable of running his office, studying for the bar exam, and painting her fingernails. He didn't want to admit, even to himself, how much he depended on her. She nodded. “It's the pathologist. He's made positive identification of your crispy critter from the fire.”
Tony hurried into his office and picked up the telephone receiver. He knew this was news he needed. He doubted it was going to improve his life or solve his problems or cases. “Doctor?”
“I'm busy, you're busy.” The doctor's staccato words punched through Tony's haze. “Your dead body is Geordie Farquhar. He suffered a severe blow to the back of his neck, possibly paralyzing him. I talked to the arson boys. According to them and the burn pattern, someone splashed his body with gasoline before he fell to the garage floor.”
Tony came to attention. “So this is no accident?”
“Nope.” The doctor coughed as if he had just inhaled smoke himself. “I'm calling this a homicide. Whoever hit him and left him on a burning roof—not even his own burning roof—killed him. There was some extra damage caused by the gasoline and the fall. You want to hear about it?”
“No.” Tony thanked the doctor and said to put everything in the report. “I know his two brothers. I'll have to decide whether to arrest the first o
ne to rat out the other, or the one ratted on. Maybe both.”
It wasn't until he and Wade entered the third house belonging to Harrison Ragsdale that they could find signs he lived there. The first house had been the official address on his employment records, and it was where his mail was delivered. The second, a block to the west of the first one, was a tiny home, maybe two rooms. A family of six lived there. When interviewed, the nervous residents admitted they paid cash to Ragsdale and used a post office box for their mail.
The third house was two blocks to the east. It was larger than the others. Several rooms remained empty, but there was a normally furnished living room with a recliner, couch, and a television, a room containing a bed, dresser, and closet full of clothes. The bathroom cabinet held toiletries and a supply of medications, including allergy-symptom reducers. Normal food items filled the refrigerator and cabinets.
“Why use a fake address, park there, and walk to this house to sleep and eat?” Tony stood in the living room, glancing around.
“To hide from your enemies?” Wade scuffed a toe across the carpet. “And how much do you want to bet he's not paying taxes on the cash he's getting for rent?”
Tony couldn't disagree. By the time he and Wade located the five remaining houses on the list, and learned the tenants paid in cash and had post office box addresses, he was certain Ragsdale was not on the up and up. In his local bank account, he maintained a decent but unremarkable balance. No safe deposit box.
“So, what did he do with the cash?” Tony absently stared out the window. “With several houses yielding monthly cash infusions, I'd think his balance might fluctuate. His salary is the only deposit.”
“Does he own all of the houses free and clear?” Wade sat forward on the chair. “Maybe every dime is used to make the payments.”
“Nope. He paid cash each time he purchased a house, but he hasn't bought one in the past ten years.”
“At least not here.” Wade scribbled in his notebook. “He could own property in other cities or states.”
“Or countries.” Tony groaned. “He had to keep his documents somewhere. Home ownership entails reams of paperwork. Let's search houses one and three again. He didn't seem to spend any time in the others.”
By the end of the afternoon, both men were exhausted. The more they explored Harrison Ragsdale's belongings and real estate holdings, the freakier Ragsdale became. Only by constant searching did they find his cache of money and deeds, hidden behind a sliding panel built into the back of a display box in the taxidermy room.
“If you keep it behind a locked door, in a locked house, can you call this a display?” Wade was busy emptying the contents of the first case into a box, keeping a running tally of the types of documents.
Semantics aside, Tony admired the beautifully constructed display. The box appeared to be made of something like maple inlaid with cherry and possessed a space containing a safe, a fireproof box requiring a key to open it. He flipped through the keys, pulling out the one he wanted. “So that's what the peculiar key opens. That lock looks like it needs the business end of a Philips screwdriver to open it.”
Wade glance up from his cataloging. “Ragsdale was a freak. Who hides money like this?”
“A paranoid one.”
“A rich one.” Wade stared at the stacks of cash resting on another sheaf of legal-sized documents. “Maybe too paranoid to pay taxes.”
“Someone is certainly going to be a lot richer.”
“Even without counting it all, I'm thinking this much money is a powerful motive. One might immediately suspect the heir.”
“Probably his wife.” Tony mused. “Or someone engaged to the heir.”
“One who was about to become an ex-heir when the divorce was final. Grab the money and run? Or possibly a tenant who felt Ragsdale was taking advantage of him. Maybe he overcharged his tenant or threatened eviction.”
“Certainly, the more we learn, the more motives show up.” Tony picked up a stack of bills, hundred-dollar bills, and ran his finger across them. “There's at least five thousand dollars in this little bunch.”
Wade sat back on his heels. “And there are piles of those.”
“Let's get the money all counted and logged into evidence before either or both of us succumbs to temptation.” Tony began working on a list of his own. “Have you seen anything like records we could check against?”
“Nope. Just cash and property deeds.” Wade put the lid on the box. “I wouldn't mind inheriting the lot.”
“With a million dollars in real estate and cash to be lost in a divorce, Jessica and Vic have a powerful motive. Do you suppose they knew Ragsdale was changing the will?” Tony was not expecting an answer. His cataloging was interrupted by a call notifying him the Farquhars were in custody. He sighed. “Let's lock it up and go talk to the remaining Farquhar boys. Like we haven't had enough fun yet.”
It was getting claustrophobic in the greenhouse. Tony sat in his favorite chair and waved his suspects, Jocko and Shawn Farquhar, into the seats facing him. Wade pulled a chair to the corner of the table, leaving the Farquhars' attorneys with what was left of the seating. Folding chairs.
Tony considered interviewing the boys separately, but decided he might learn more if they could bicker with each other.
The whining began before the brothers reached their designated spots. Jocko waved his manacles, showing them to an uninterested audience. “You see the way he treats us? Like we're some big shot criminals or something.”
Only Shawn had a response. “Yeah. Like we're really bad dudes.” His smile indicated his pride and joy in the moment. Being accused of a felony, arson, and potentially the murder of his brother appeared to be the highlight of his career in crime. He swaggered to the chair and sat.
Tony started with some simple questions, like verifying their names and addresses. Ones even the Farquhar “darlin' boys” might be expected to answer honestly. They did. Preliminaries over, Tony said, “Why were you boys at the Smith home on the day of the fire?”
“We was out for a walk, it bein' a nice day and all.” Shawn nodded to emphasize his ludicrous statement.
“So, to make sure I have this straight,” Tony squeezed his pen. Hard. These boys had never been known to walk across the street without a beer waiting on the other side. “You, all three of you, went for a walk in the sunshine.” They nodded. Tony jotted a few words in his notebook—never happened. The entire interview was being recorded on video, but taking notes was a habit, a good one so he also wrote down what they said. “Go on. Just tell us what happened next. You got to the Smith house?”
Shawn must have forgotten the script and silently began digging for something in his nose while he thought about it. Jocko took over. “It looked like someone upstairs was stuck in the window and calling for help.”
“Um-hum.” Tony wrote down a word—fantasy. “And then?”
“We climbed up to help.” Finger out of his nose, Shawn rolled his eyes, making his opinion clear. “What didja think?”
Tony squeezed his pen more tightly. When he felt it start to bend, he forced himself to relax. Thanks to the photographs he'd recovered from Olivia Hudson's cell phone, he felt he had the upper hand in this interview. “Go on.”
Jocko, marginally more perceptive than his remaining brother, said, “We shoved Geordie up on the garage roof so he could check on them. When he got to the window, it was open and he found one of them drop-down ladders and me and Shawn climbed up to help.”
Tony believed two-thirds of the story. It certainly explained how they got inside the house to burglarize it. “Who was calling for help?”
The Farquhars shook their heads.
“Okay, then, let's go on.” Tony watched the attorneys sit up a little straighter. To this point, their clients had confessed to nothing more sinister than attempting to rescue a family from an unknown threat. “What happened next?”
“Geordie fell through the roof of the garage.” Shawn waved his shac
kled hands making his chains rattle. “It was the owner's fault our Geordie died. We'll sue.”
Wade checked his notes and cleared his throat. “I thought Geordie went inside and dropped the ladder down?”
Shawn and Jocko looked at each other and fell silent. The lawyers stood and said their clients had said all they had to say.
Tony assumed the group hadn't quite worked out all the glitches from their confessions. He wasn't surprised. He switched off the recorder. “We'll let you confer with your lawyers for a moment. I want to hear how Geordie ended up dead.” He and Wade stepped out and closed the door behind them. “What do you think? Who's the weak link?”
Wade said, “Shawn.”
Tony agreed. A couple of minutes passed before one of the attorneys knocked on the door. When he and Wade were back into position, Tony turned the recorder back on. “What happened on the roof?”
Jocko nodded, giving Shawn permission to talk. “Geordie started actin' all goofy. Said he just come along to get some pills, only they wasn't any around and we should leave. He said those people didn't act snooty like some.”
Tony watched Jocko. He was known to be a hard case, amoral, and a liar of the first order, the worst of the younger generation of Farquhars. He turned to Wade. “Put Jocko in the holding cell.” Tony escorted Jocko's attorney from the greenhouse before turning to Carl Lee. “It might do Shawn some good to hear his options from you. When Jocko's near, Shawn's brain—what there is of it—shuts down.” He left them alone.
Carl Lee wasted little time before he knocked on the door.
Tony returned and sat after turning on the recorder. “Let's try this again, shall we?” He rested his laced hands on the table. “You said Geordie liked the Smiths.”
“He did.” Shawn's oversized upper teeth gnawed on his lower lip.
“Did he work for them?” Tony asked. Shawn stared, open-mouthed. Tony thought employment was not a concept that meant anything to him. “Okay, so how'd he know them?”
Barbara Graham - Quilted 04 - Murder by Vegetable Page 24
