A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  Maybe Billy Unger didn’t kill Grace. If he hadn’t, why didn’t he give up whoever he gave the gun to? Was it loyalty, as Tad suggested?

  When he poured a handful of coffee beans into the grinder, he was reminded of Gail’s addiction to coffee. His mind swirled to her murder. Stan considered that case closed. The special prosecutor was already on his way to Charleston to put his case together against Karl Connor. He had no interest in any more phone calls from Joshua saying it was not that pat.

  He stared at the beans swirling around in the grinder while they were sliced repeatedly until they were nothing more than dust, and re-enacted in his mind the scene in the dark in Gail’s living room.

  He had groped for the things he had knocked off the table.

  The wine bottle. The glass. The album.

  Footsteps in the hall.

  Fear that it was Gail coming out to make another pass at him.

  He’d rushed out the door, pausing to turn the button in order to lock it.

  The footsteps.

  She was passed out on her bed. She hadn’t even had time to take off her coat before she was smothered to death.

  The killer was already in the house.

  “Dad, are you making espresso?”

  Startled by Tracy’s voice, he clicked off the grinder.

  Realizing that her father had drifted off into his thoughts, Tracy giggled and opened the refrigerator to take out hamburger to make a meatloaf for dinner.

  The coffee beans had been ground to powder.

  “Too bad I don’t like espresso.” He unscrewed the bowl from the machine and took off the lid. When the finely ground coffee splattered onto his hand, he wiped it off on the backside of his hip.

  “Now you got your pants dirty,” she chastised him.

  “That’s not dirt, it’s coffee.”

  It was like déjà vu. Where had he heard those words spoken in that tone before?

  Tad had said them after Lou Alcott tried to run him down. Joshua thought it was dirt on the front of Tad’s shirt and Tad said it was coffee grounds from the broken bag he had bought at Rollins Corner Café.

  Struck with the thought of what the coffee grounds would look like against the khaki material, Joshua twisted his body to look down at the back of his pants.

  Coffee. Where else—? He saw a dark powder that he’d mistaken for dirt on the case of the pillow used to smother Gail. The forensics report said that the substance was finely ground coffee beans.

  The killer had coffee grounds on his hands when he pressed the pillow against Gail’s face. Coffee ground to dust.

  Tad was run down after leaving Rollins Corner Café where he bought a bag of coffee.

  Rollins. Phyllis Barlow. Tricia’s neighbor.

  Rollins Corner Café.

  Dorothy Wheeler had met Gail there for dinner the night she was killed.

  Joshua went to call Tad.

  Dr. Tad MacMillan wasn’t in his lab. He was in Steubenville at the same bar where he had tracked down Nicki Samuels earlier during his investigation. He found her on the same bar stool, once again drinking a vodka and orange juice.

  She barely acknowledged him when he took a seat on the stool next to her.

  “Hello, Nicki.”

  She eyed him over her glass while she drained it. Once more, Tad took in the size of the ruby on her finger and the stones that surrounded it. Before, he’d assumed they were rhinestones and the red stone was glass. Now, he was certain they were real.

  “So we meet again.” Nicki grinned. “Since this isn’t your first time, that means you’re not a virgin anymore.”

  “No, I’ve been becoming much more worldly.” He slapped a picture down on the bar between them. It was a snapshot of a group of jewels that Sheriff Sawyer had given him from the case file he had made when Margo Connor’s lawyer reported the theft of her client’s ring. The photograph was taken by Margo’s insurance agent when she had her jewels insured.

  “Recognize anything in this picture?” Tad pointed to the ruby ring that she was wearing on her finger.

  She gestured to the bartender for another drink. “It looks like mine. What about it?”

  “I think they are the same ring.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Okay.” He grabbed her hand. “You come down to my cousin’s office and we’ll call Margo Connor, and she’ll tell us if they are the same ring.”

  She wrested her hand out of his grasp.

  If he wanted to hold on to her he could have, but he didn’t need to hold her. He had achieved his objective of shaking her up.

  “Okay! It was Mrs. Connor’s ring, but I didn’t steal it. Heather gave it to me.”

  “Why would Heather give you a ten-thousand-dollar ring?”

  “Because her old lady doesn’t let her have that much cash.”

  “I assume it wasn’t a gift.”

  “No, it wasn’t a gift.”

  “It was a payoff. For what?”

  “Hush money. She gave me the ring to keep my mouth shut.”

  “About what?”

  “Guess.”

  “You tell me.”

  “About her and Billy not being together when Grace was killed.”

  “Were you with her when Grace was killed?”

  Nicki shook her head with a cocky attitude. “No, I was with Billy . . . in his room . . . alone. I was there when she called him to tell him that Grace was dead and told him that the police were going to be looking for him once they found out about him knocking her up. So she volunteered to be his alibi.”

  “You were sleeping with Billy, too?”

  “We’ve been friends since we were kids.” She licked her lips before she added, “Really good friends.”

  “Didn’t it make you jealous that he was also sleeping with Heather and Grace?”

  “No more than it made him jealous that I was fucking his friends.”

  Tad told himself that he wasn’t as old and prudish as he felt. He was okay. It was the rest of the world that had gone mad. “Why would Billy agree to use Heather for an alibi if he had you?”

  She shrugged. “Because Heather needed him. I mean, Grace and her were like a couple of wildcats when they got into a room together lately. If he had an alibi, wouldn’t you assume she did it?”

  “Did she do it?”

  Nicki went on to her next drink in silence.

  He fired off his next question. “Walt Manners gave Billy a thirty-eight Colt revolver. What happened to it?”

  She had returned her attention to her vodka and orange juice.

  “Billy is dead. So is his lawyer, whom he was sleeping with. He got Grace pregnant, and she ends up being shot with this gun. Now you just admitted that you were sleeping with him. That makes you either a suspect or a potential victim.”

  “Heather took it.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?”

  Nicki turned to him. “She showed it to me when she gave me the ring. She told me that was it. If I asked for anything else, then the next thing she would be giving me was a bullet.”

  That was all Tad needed to give Curt to get a warrant for Heather Connor’s arrest.

  Joshua Thornton and Sheriff Curt Sawyer lost no time in jumping into action when Tad told him that Nicki Samuels admitted that Heather had the murder weapon and that she, not Heather, was with Billy when Grace Henderson was killed.

  Since Grace told Nicki, who told Heather, that Billy said he was going to marry her, Heather had motive for killing Grace. Heather also lost her alibi when Nicki confessed that she was with Billy at the time of the murder.

  Even though Joshua was still nagged by doubt over the problem of Heather not fitting the description of the shooter, they had enough for an a
rrest warrant. Her arrest might be catalyst enough to get things sorted out.

  It was like a relay race.

  Joshua had run down the stairs from the third-floor judge’s chambers with the warrant to hand to Sheriff Sawyer through the passenger window of his cruiser in which he had waited with the engine running, ready to speed to the Connor home to pick up Heather as soon as she got home from school, only to find her not there.

  Upon learning that her daughter had not been in school that day, Margo turned on the sheriff. “My baby is missing! Aren’t you going to do something?”

  “Three people are dead,” the sheriff told the angry mother. “We have a witness who saw her with the murder weapon. The witness says Heather threatened her with it.”

  The realization that her daughter was going to be arrested for murder hit her. “Joshua Thornton is using his job as prosecutor against me. He arrested my ex-husband. He’s been insinuating that I killed Tricia Wheeler. Now he’s trying to railroad my daughter into jail.”

  “Heather has been missing for ten hours and she is armed,” Curt reminded her. “Do you know where she was Friday night?”

  “She was out at a concert with her friends.”

  “When did she come home?”

  “Sunday night.”

  The sheriff was doubtful. “She went out Friday night and you didn’t see her again until Sunday night?”

  “She went to a party,” she replied as if that were enough of an explanation.

  “When was the last time she saw Billy?”

  “I have no idea. He called here Saturday morning.”

  Margo did not notice his head snap up at her claim that Billy called on Saturday morning when he had died Friday night. “Are you sure of that?”

  “Of course, I am,” she said. “He woke me up at I don’t know what time. He told me to tell Heather that Plan A was in effect and to come over as soon as possible.”

  “What is Plan A?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you ask Heather?”

  “I don’t interfere in her business. I gave her the message last night after she woke up. She had had a long weekend and she bitched at me for not giving her the message when she got home. Anything else?” She dared him to ask another question.

  He took the dare. “Do you know where she could have gone?”

  “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. I’m calling my lawyer now. Get out.”

  Margo left it up to the maid to show him out of her home while she called her lawyer to start spinning the defense that the county prosecutor had framed Heather for murder.

  Curt was in his patrol car making a note that Margo neglected to ask the names of the murder victims when he got the call on his cell phone that Joshua Thornton had another warrant.

  This one was to pick up Phyllis Barlow Rollins for Gail Reynolds’s murder.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Phyllis Barlow Rollins didn’t resist when the deputies swooped into Rollins Corner Café to take the grinder and samples of her coffee stock in for evidence and her into custody. Her only display of emotion was for her brother, who watched the arrest with confusion and anxiety.

  Well aware of Doug’s fragile condition, Tad was waiting at the sheriff’s office to take care of him during their interrogation.

  She was only being taken in for questioning.

  Until the lab analyzed the samples of her coffee to determine that the dust found on Gail’s pillowcase came from Rollins Corner Café, they had no proof that she killed her. Even if the coffee was found to come from there, her lawyer could argue that anyone who bought coffee from the café could have committed the murder—even Tad, who was a regular customer.

  The circumstance of the evidence was damning. Lou Alcott attempted to kill Tad after he had lunch at the diner. Gail had dinner there shortly before she was killed. If the coffee grounds from the handprint found on the pillow came from the café, a jury would want to know how it got there—if Joshua could get the case in front of a jury.

  The county prosecutor didn’t have any viable motive for Phyllis Rollins to kill Gail Reynolds. The only motive he had come up with in his investigation was that she was angry with Tricia Wheeler for rejecting her brother six months before she was killed.

  Could Phyllis have killed Tricia for that reason and then killed Gail so she would not discover her crime? There was no evidence that the writer even suspected Phyllis.

  So far, he didn’t have a case. Ideally, she would make it easy for him and confess.

  The courier had delivered the accounting autopsy of Margo Connor’s business dealings from the forensics expert to his office when Joshua was leaving to cross the back parking lot to the police department. He tossed the report into his briefcase and rushed out the door and arrived in time to see Phyllis climb out of the back of the cruiser. Two deputies escorted her inside.

  “She waived her rights for a lawyer,” Curt told him. “Tori Brody was her lawyer.”

  “I don’t care. Don’t let anyone talk to her until the public defender gets here,” Joshua said. “The way the courts are going, anything she says won’t be worth the paper it’s written on unless she has a lawyer present.”

  As lost as a lamb in a wolf’s den, Doug Barlow, his ball cap pulled down over his head, wandered into the sheriff’s department. The deputies had ushered his sister into the interrogation room. One deputy pushed him back and closed the door when he tried to follow them inside.

  Doug took off his cap like his mother would order him to do when he was inside, and sat in the straight-back chair outside the room where Phyllis waited for the public defender.

  “Doug?” Tad feigned surprise when he came out of Curt’s office and crossed to where Doug sat. He pulled up a chair and sat next to him. “How are you doing?”

  Nervously, Doug nodded and grinned for his answer. Tad was always nice to him. He looked beyond the doctor to the closed door.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while.” Tad shifted to distract Doug from what was happening inside the room. He grabbed his hands in which he twisted the ball cap. “You got a new hat?” He noticed the lettering on the front.

  Doug grinned.

  “Let me see.”

  He put the cap on his head. It was dark blue with gold lettering that read “Dell Appliance.” Doug said proudly, “Lou gave it to me.”

  “Lou who?”

  “Phyllis’s boyfriend. Lou Alcott. They gave him this from work, and he gave it to me.”

  Tad grinned broadly. “Lou Alcott was Phyllis’s boyfriend?”

  Doug’s smile faded. “Yeah, but he died. Phyllis said these things happen, but I still feel sad. I liked him. He was real nice, like you. He said he loved Phyllis just like I loved Trish.”

  Tad was about to ask how much Lou loved her when there was a commotion at the door leading into the hallway.

  Joshua came in with a white-haired woman dressed in an overcoat over a suit the color of which was faded with age.

  A chain smoker, Ruth Majors dared anyone to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to smoke in the courthouse. No one did. She had been the public defender in Hancock County for over forty years.

  Joshua hated to admit he was afraid of her. Ruth was a good eight inches shorter than he was, but her inner strength made her appear to be as big as he was.

  Even before the defender had spoken to her client, they were arguing the case while they crossed the sheriff’s reception area to the interrogation room.

  “Bullshit!” Ruth waved her cigarette. “So she sold coffee to the victim right before she died. Unless you found poison in that coffee, you have nothing!”

  “Coffee grounds were on the killer’s hand. We also picked up epidermal samples and sweat on the pillowcase. If that matches with your client—”


  Tad stood up next to him to await a break in the argument.

  “If is a big word, Counselor!”

  “Josh?” Tad interjected.

  “You have nothing,” Ruth said, ignoring the doctor’s presence. “My client sold the victim a bag of coffee and that is all that I’m going to tell her to say.” She stuck the end of her cigarette between her lips, which were lined with wrinkles and void of lipstick, went into the room, and slammed the door in their faces.

  Exhausted from the battle with the diminutive defender, the prosecutor sighed and turned to his cousin. “Do you want something?”

  Tad indicated Doug, who was still sitting in the chair with the cap on his head. “Look at Doug’s new cap.”

  Annoyed to be bothered with something so trivial, Joshua looked at his suspect’s brother, who, proud to be wearing a cap the doctor considered to be special, grinned up at him. The prosecutor forced himself to be kind in the midst of the disintegrating murder case. After all, Doug was a victim in it all. “That’s a nice cap.”

  “Isn’t it?” Seeing that he did not get it, Tad added, “Phyllis’s boyfriend, Lou Alcott, gave it to him.”

  Joshua’s forced smile faded, and then reappeared with sincerity when he realized the significance of the relationship. “Really?” He looked at Tad to confirm he heard him correctly.

  Tad nodded.

  Joshua’s smile broadened.

  Ruth didn’t confer with her client, she argued—for almost an hour. Sometimes their loud voices seeped through the thin walls of the interrogation room in the building packed with the county’s offices, courtrooms, and jail cells on the third floor. In wealthier counties the offices would have been spread over three buildings.

  Joshua and Curt used the hour to the best of their advantage. The case came together in their minds. Now, they needed proof to back it up. They had no doubt that Ruth would not let her client confess, so they had to prove Phyllis killed Gail.