We saw shelves along the wall, but they appeared to be empty. On closer inspection, we saw that they were empty. Andrea slid the AA coin out of her plastic bag and put it on a shelf.
“I can’t see the point of keeping that,” she said. “Maybe the deputies will have some use for it.”
We went on through the front room and into what must have been the kitchen. I say must have, because there was virtually nothing left. Vandals and thieves had obviously ransacked the place ages ago. It appeared that there were cabinets on the walls at one time, but those had been taken, too. A filthy rug had been tossed into a corner; it probably had been Rosy’s bed.
Andrea looked out a window in the door at the back of the room. “He must have had an outdoor toilet. This seems to be all there is to the house.” She opened the door. “There’s a little porch back here, but there’s nothing on it. I didn’t notice it when we found the body.”
As we went back through the kitchen, Andrea stopped. “Do you notice something unusual?”
“Except for the fact that everything has been ripped out of the house, no…”
She knelt down on the floor in front of the stove. “Look at this. I wonder if this is a trapdoor.”
Five floorboards were cut neatly across in two places. The cracks between the first and fifth boards and the ones next to them were wider than the other cracks in the floor. “He must have had some sort of tool to open this,” Andrea said. “I can’t get it open.”
“Maybe you’re working on the hinged side.”
“I shined the light all around, and I think I see hinges on the other side. Maybe I could pry this up with a screwdriver, and I have one in the car.”
Of course she did. I was about to say something—I’m not sure what now—when we heard a car sloshing through the Hog Run mud. Andrea dragged the dirty rug from the corner and spread it quickly over the trapdoor—if that’s what it was.
“They’ve probably already seen it,” I said.
“Maybe. Anyway, let’s get out the back door. Possibly they won’t know we’ve been in the house that way.”
For once Andrea was wrong. The deputies had somehow managed to bypass her car and drive to the back of the house. They were just getting out of the car when we went out the door.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Miss Marple times two,” the tall one said.
The shorter deputy wasn’t in much of a joking mood, it seems. “Don’t you two know what the yellow tape across that stairway means?”
We squeezed under it and met them face-to-face. “We know, but we didn’t think it would apply to us, since we’re investigating Lea Logan’s death,” Andrea said.
He frowned and shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You two have no jurisdiction here. If we catch you around here again, we’ll arrest you.”
“Aw, Paul, let them have their fun. I think they’re kinda cute. I don’t think they can hurt anything here.” This from the tall guy.
“I swear, Bill, sometimes I think you don’t know how to run an investigation.”
I was ignoring the “kinda cute” insult. We’d show them both by solving not only Lea’s murder, but Ollie’s as well. But right now, there were more pressing things going on. Bill looked as if he might punch Paul in the face at any moment. Would we get to witness a fistfight between deputies?
“I suppose you two ladies better clear out, before Paul puts you in handcuffs and tosses you in the back of the cruiser,” Bill said.
So, no fistfight.
“We’ll be going along then,” Andrea said. “I did notice a medal of some sort inside on a shelf. I think it’s an Alcoholics Anonymous token.”
“We don’t need your help,” Paul grumbled.
“Just a couple of questions for you,” Andrea said. “Any idea yet as to whether the remains were those of Oliver Logan, and any idea about the cause of death?”
“I can’t see that that makes an iota of difference to you,” Paul said.
“Weren’t you taught to be kind to old ladies?” Bill said. “We’re virtually sure it’s Ollie, because the dental records check out. We’re doing DNA to be positive, but there’s really no doubt. As to cause of death, the medical examiner hasn’t ruled yet, but I noticed a hole in the skull that I’d guess is a bullet hole. No firearm was found at the scene.”
“Thanks for the information,” Andrea said. “If we hear anything that could assist you, we’ll let you know.”
We made our way to the car. “Is that an example of good cop, bad cop?” I asked.
“More an example of someone who got up on the wrong side of the bed. I guess you know what this means…we have to make another trip back here.”
“What in the world for?” And then I thought of the trapdoor. “Of course. But you know they undoubtedly already investigated that.”
“We can’t be sure. Besides, I happened to think that we’ve been neglecting Jack Bradley. Remember last year when we were investigating Cora Taylor’s disappearance? Jack wanted to be part of everything. And he’s listed as one of Jordan’s volunteers. I’ll bet he’d love to investigate that trapdoor.”
“I’m sure he would, but if those deputies find us back there again, we’ll end up in jail.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll come up with something to keep us safe.”
I hoped she was right. I’ve never been arrested in my life—well, maybe once by a traffic policeman—and I didn’t intend to start on Hog Run.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We were back at the Garden Room for the second time, because we invited Jack to lunch. Or maybe I should say we invited him to take us to lunch. While we waited for our salads, Andrea told him about everything we’d been doing in our capacity as volunteers.
“I thought you two were going to include me in your adventures.” He sounded slightly miffed.
“Sorry. We didn’t realize they were going to turn out to be such adventures,” Andrea said. “We went to Oliver Logan’s house to interview him about Lea, and instead we found his body. Everything escalated from there.”
“We’re asking you to join us now,” I said, hoping to placate him. “Andrea’s determined to go back to that house.”
“We absolutely have to check out that trapdoor,” she said.
The waiter brought our tea, and I added sweetener to mine before adding, “Tell him about your plan to keep the deputies from catching us this time.”
“There’s this young man named Chad Harris. He’s a former math student of mine, and he’s extremely good at technology. I have Lea’s laptop at home, and he’s trying to figure out the password to open it. Anyway, he’s excited about our crime-busting efforts, as he calls them, so I asked him to accompany us as a lookout. He’ll hide in the woods at the entry to Hog Run Road and text me if anyone turns in there. Then we’ll drive on up the run.”
“There supposedly are some other houses up there, although no one lives in them now,” I said. “We’ve seen that the road continues.”
“We’ll get out of sight and wait till Chad lets us know that whoever drove in has gone out again,” Andrea said.
Jack was smiling. He’d forgotten about being miffed at being left out. “Sounds like a good plan. When does this happen?”
“Which is your least busy day—Saturday or Sunday?” Andrea asked.
“Usually Sunday.”
“We’ll plan it for this coming Sunday. Chad’s a student at Morgantown, and he only comes home on weekends. We’ll do it Sunday morning. That way he can have time to drive back to school that afternoon. And we’d better take my car. The road isn’t good.”
“How about my pickup?” Jack said. “We can all go in that.”
Andrea thought about this for a moment. “That might be a good idea. If anyone sees us, they won’t recognize the truck. We’ll drive in to your place Sunday morning and take the truck from there.”
The waiter was just delivering our salads when we heard a commotion on the other si
de of the room. I looked up and noticed for the first time that our former sheriff and nemesis, Walter Stanley, and Stuart Kerr, the country club manager, were seated at a table there. A woman was standing beside them, and what we were hearing was her voice. I couldn’t make out everything she was saying, but she got louder and louder as she went along. “If you bother me again, I’ll make such a scene that you’ll…”
I couldn’t catch the rest. She slammed something down on the table and stalked away. I couldn’t believe my eyes—it was Ruth Freer. At this time I noticed that Tony Calabria had come out of the kitchen and was watching everything. He held the door open for her, and they went back into the kitchen.
In the meantime, Walter Stanley jumped up and walked out. I could see food on his plate—he didn’t stay to finish his lunch. The club manager still sat there, looking like he was not only at a loss for words but actions as well.
I dipped a little dressing onto my salad. “What do you suppose that was all about?” I whispered.
“Not sure,” Andrea murmured.
The entire room was silent except for the clinking of silverware on china, so we ate our salads in silence, too. Drat, I guessed Tony wasn’t going to be bringing us any dessert today. What the heck—I’d order some. People were beginning to come to life now and talk in low voices. I signaled the waiter. “Does anyone else want dessert?”
We all agreed that we should have coconut cream pie and coffee. By this time I was thinking I could get used to this life—excellent food and high drama.
#
We needed to take a couple of days off from sleuthing to take care of mundane household chores. I got up early and wrote checks for my bills—I hadn’t learned to pay them online yet, but I would eventually. I stamped the envelopes and would take them with me to Martindale. I desperately needed groceries.
I’d just gone into the grocery store when I saw Mrs. Harper walking toward me, pushing a basket. “Good morning! I was hoping to see you again.”
“Good to see you, too. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Would you like to go for coffee before shopping?”
I had plenty to do at home and wouldn’t have gone except that I remembered feeling like she wanted to tell us something when Andrea and I interviewed Farley Harper, the course superintendent at the country club golf course. “That would be nice. How about the shop next door?”
“Fine. I often have coffee there. Their coffee’s good.”
We ordered a couple of lattes from the girl behind the counter. We were the only customers. “How’s Mr. Harper?” I asked as we waited for our coffee.
“He’s okay. I wanted to talk to you about him, though.”
So my feeling that she had something to tell us wasn’t wrong. “Let’s sit over here in the corner.”
We had barely sat down when she said, “Farley hasn’t been himself since finding that girl on the golf course. I can’t get him to tell me what’s wrong, but something’s been wrong ever since then.”
Was this all I was going to learn? “It may be that finding the body of a young woman was that upsetting to him. I’m sure it would be to me.” And I was just as sure that I’d recover from the shock in time.
“I think it’s more than that. I keep trying to piece it all together. Do you suppose it has something to do with Chester Hubbard asking him to look for his golf club in the area where the body was found? I mean, what would make him so sure he’d lost the club in that part of the course?”
“I don’t know. Do you suppose the officials asked him not to say anything?”
She drank some coffee. “I’m sure they did. It wasn’t until just recently that he told me about looking for Hubbard’s golf club. He hadn’t told me anything before that other than the same stuff I read in the paper.”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “If he does have additional information, I hope he’ll give it to us. We’re working very hard to solve this case. We’ve gotten rather close to Lea since we started, and we never even met her. Figure that out if you can.”
“I think Farley feels the same way, and that may be part of what’s wrong with him.”
“She deserves justice, for sure.” I picked up my purse. “I have a lot to do today, so I must get started. Thanks for asking me for coffee.”
“I enjoyed it,” she said. “Please come by our house again. Maybe if you talk to Farley some more, he’ll open up.”
“We’ll try to do that.” I went on to the store, unsure what use we could make of this information, if any.
#
The weather had been dry since our last trip up Hog Run, so I was hoping the mud would be dry as well. We picked up Chad at the Harris home, and I wondered whether his parents knew what he was up to. I didn’t want to ask. We just filled him in on as much as we could about the case as we went to Martindale. He was fascinated, I could tell, and also impressed that two older ladies were solving crimes. He’d make a good helper, if his parents didn’t find out about everything he was up to and object.
We all got into Jack’s pickup and traveled on up the river. It was a quiet morning, with a little mist rising off the water and the sun just over the horizon. We couldn’t see a car in either direction when we got ready to turn in at the Hog Run Road. Jack stopped as soon as he turned in, and Chad got out.
I assumed he was a hunter. He was wearing camouflage, which would be perfect for today’s caper. Andrea pointed toward a pine tree. “That’s a good place to hide. Just have your phone out and ready. It’s not that far from here on to the house, and it won’t take those deputies long to drive it. We’ll need every second to be able to get out of there before they show up.”
Now she was making me nervous, but we’d come this far. There would be no turning back. We drove on to Ollie’s house, and Jack left the truck in the road, so we could take off easily if necessary.
“Someone actually lived here?” Jack asked as we went up the stairs.
“Yes. He was a man with problems, it appears. It’s become evident he was an alcoholic.” Andrea explained this as she dragged the rug off the trap door and pulled a large flat-head screwdriver from her pocket. “I’ll try this first, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll try the crowbar.” I was holding it in my hand—she’d asked me to carry it.
Andrea was wearing vinyl gloves, which she’d put on in the truck. She made one quick, upward prying motion, and the trapdoor popped up. We shined flashlights into the hole. I’d been expecting to see the dirt under the house, but a square, wooden structure had been built under the door. We saw some papers and a box. Andrea reached in and brought out the box. She removed the lid, and it was like déjà vu all over again. It was full of money.
“Let me get my gloves on, and I’ll help you count it,” Jack said.
“We can’t…” at that moment Andrea’s phone pinged. She glanced at it and started putting everything back the way we found it. “Head for the truck!”
We rushed to the truck, jumped in, and Jack headed on up the run. We were out of sight around a curve when we heard car doors slam behind us. The deputies must have been getting out at the house. We continued on till we came across what was once a house. All that was left now were a stone chimney and the stone piers the house had rested on. All around the place, the earth was black and without vegetation.
“Obviously it burned,” I said.
We got out and wandered around. Andrea went to the fireplace and knelt down with her screwdriver. She was pushing around a mixture of dirt and ash, and I could see something shining where she was digging.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Not sure, but I think it’s a gun.”
By this time Jack was looking, too. “It is a gun. I wonder if it’s the one that was used to shoot Ollie.”
“It’s possible,” Andrea said. “Someone must have hidden it here in this house, and it fell to the ground when the house burned. This isn’t the type of place where the owners would have had a handgun. The
y’d have had hunting rifles.”
“I wonder if someone who lived here killed Ollie,” I said.
“I don’t know, but remember that Ollie’s ex said he told her that he was the only one living in the hollow. The other two families had moved out.”
“What are we going to do about all this?” Jack asked.
“I have to let the Marshall County deputies know. There’s no way around it. But first, I want to take a look at the papers that were in that cache. And Jack, we can’t count that money. I shouldn’t even have touched the box. I’ll be careful with the papers, but I want to see what’s on them.”
We prowled around a while longer but didn’t find anything useful at the burned-out site. Jack had a container of coffee in the truck and some foam cups, so we sat on the foundation stones and drank coffee. It seemed like two hours, although it probably wasn’t that long, when Chad pinged Andrea again.
“They’re gone. I’ll tell him we’ll stop at the house for a bit, and then we’ll be there to pick him up.”
We went back to Ollie’s house, and Andrea went through the same procedure in getting the trapdoor open again. She carefully picked up each paper by the teensiest corner and looked at it. She was still wearing the vinyl gloves. “This is old bills, a letter from Lea, and here’s a deed to this property. I’m going to take this letter from Lea. If there’s anything in it the deputies should know, I’ll tell them later.”
She slid the letter into a plastic bag, and then picked up one last piece of paper. “A notice from Social Security about his benefit. What’s this under it?” She picked up a card. “This is strange.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s Stuart Kerr’s card,” she said.
“The Stuart Kerr, manager of the country club?” Jack was astounded.
“Yes, the same one. The club logo’s on here.”
“What would Ollie be doing with that?”
Evil Under the Moon (Moon Mystery Series Book 5) Page 9
