A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  Playing friend and confidante, Tad continued to talk to Doug while Curt and Joshua rushed to get their evidence.

  Curt called his witnesses at the State Line Lounge to see if Lou was there the night Rex was killed. Phyllis never went into bars. She would have been noticed if she was anywhere near the scene of the murder.

  Recalling that both Gail’s and Rex’s murders happened at approximately the same time, they theorized that Phyllis was smothering Gail while her lover was shooting her estranged husband.

  Lou could have killed Rex for one or both of two reasons. Rex was abusing the woman Lou loved and/or to keep his lover’s soon-to-be ex-husband from exposing that Phyllis had killed Tricia.

  Perhaps Lou tried to kill Tad because he was afraid the medical examiner would prove Phyllis killed the author who was writing a book about Tricia’s murder. Tad had announced at the café that he was going to find the killer to clear Joshua of the murder allegations.

  It was all theory and had yet to be proven.

  Within the hour, Curt hung up the phone with a sigh. He had spoken to the last witness he was able to reach. “Lou Alcott was not at the State Line the night Rex was killed.”

  “Maybe he didn’t go in,” Joshua said, half paying attention while he scanned the forensics report on Margo Connor’s finances, more out of curiosity than anything else. If their theory proved to be correct, he would not need the report. All the murders would be tied to Phyllis trying to cover up her murder of Tricia.

  He did not see Curt shaking his head. “Nope. Alcott drove a ninety-two black Ford pickup. No one saw it in the parking lot. They saw a red and green ninety-two Ford truck, but not a black one. That belonged to Herb Duncan, one of the regulars at the State Line.”

  “Who just got a new truck, sold his broken-down trailer for a nice bundle, and is now Margo Connor’s foreman.” Joshua jumped out of his seat when he read an interesting point on the report. The connection was made in stereo.

  Before everything could register, Ruth opened Sheriff Sawyer’s office door without knocking. She was not smiling, but that didn’t mean anything when it came to her.

  “All right, guys. Start your camcorders.”

  “Is Ms. Rollins ready to make a statement?” Joshua asked.

  “Not a statement. A confession.”

  Joshua and Curt exchanged double takes before looking back at the defender, who stood in the doorway without any sign of amusement.

  “You’re kidding.” The prosecutor had to stop himself from revealing that they didn’t have any real evidence yet. The forensics report had not come back from the lab.

  Ruth’s response was, “Merry Christmas.”

  “That’s right. I killed Gail Reynolds,” Phyllis Rollins announced in the interrogation room with her lawyer at her elbow.

  Still stunned by how easy the suspect was making things, Curt and Joshua sat across the table from her.

  During her confession, Phyllis would stop and look at the video camera in the corner of the cramped room, along with the tape recorder in the middle of the table, and the stenographer at Joshua’s elbow making every word she said part of the record.

  “Why?” the prosecutor asked her.

  “You know.”

  “You need to say it for the record.”

  “Because she was writing that book about Tricia Wheeler’s murder, and I was afraid she’d find out that I killed Tricia.”

  Joshua paused.

  Ruth shook her head. It was a gesture of disgust at her client rather than an order for him not to go on with his next question.

  “Mrs. Wheeler called me,” Phyllis continued. “She wanted to know if I could remember anything that could help her with the book. She and Gail came into the diner that night and Gail started asking me questions about Tricia again.”

  She took a sip of her soft drink before she went on. “Everyone was saying how she had rented that big place out by the state line and so after we closed the diner that night I went out there. I parked in the trees down the road and went to her house through the woods. She didn’t lock her doors, so it was a cinch for me to get in. I saw you and her come in. After you left and she was asleep, I smothered her with the pillow.”

  “How did you leave the house?” Joshua asked.

  “Through the back door so that you wouldn’t see me in case you weren’t gone yet.”

  “Where were you hiding?”

  “Her bedroom closet.”

  He repeated his question about how she left.

  For the first time during the confession, Phyllis betrayed a sense of being perturbed. “I already told you. I went out the back patio doors.”

  Joshua moved on to the book and Tricia’s murder. “Did you even think of talking to Gail about the book? Maybe you could have convinced her not to write it.”

  Her response was a snicker. “Like she would do me a favor. She was Gail Reynolds, big-time journalist, and I was Ratched Barlow.”

  In school, Joshua recalled, Phyllis’s no-nonsense manner and lack of humor had won her the nickname Ratched, after the cruelly humorless nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  He swallowed and went on with his interview. “Tell me about Tricia Wheeler.”

  She began with a shrug. She glanced at the video recorder before she started. “She treated us like dirt, so I killed her.”

  The silence in the room forced her to continue.

  “She didn’t used to. She used to be our friend. Then she became cheerleader and made all these big important friends, and she was too good for us.”

  “What happened on the day of the murder?”

  “Tricia blew Doug off again. She blew him off for the prom. She told him in November that she’d go with him. Then, two weeks before the prom she said she’d go with Randy Fine, just because he was on the football team. I heard Randy bragging in study hall to his buddies about taking her.”

  Phyllis squinted at the prosecutor. “You should have seen Doug when I told him. He wouldn’t believe me. So, he went running over to Tricia’s and told her to tell me that it was a lie, and she said it wasn’t.”

  Her face contorted with anger. “She said that it wasn’t her fault. They didn’t really have a date because he never told her for certain they were going.”

  Joshua prodded her to go on while she paused to take a sip of her soda. “Did he?”

  “She said if he could go, she’d go with him. It wasn’t his fault Mom wouldn’t tell him yes or no about going. Only the night before Mom said he could, but Trish didn’t give him a chance to tell her. She went ahead and accepted Randy’s invitation.” She scoffed, “Like she ever intended to go with him.”

  He asked her again, “What happened six months later? On the day you killed her?”

  “I didn’t know it was possible for any one man to cry so much. When Tricia went to the prom with Randy, Doug cried for a week solid, without stopping. Then she started going steady with Randy. He couldn’t stand to see the two of them together.”

  Joshua leaned across the table at her. “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You say you killed her.”

  She sighed and sat up straight. “I love my brother. I hated what she did to him.”

  “What happened on the day you killed Tricia?”

  “After she broke up with Randy, Doug didn’t let any grass grow under his feet. The little dummy thought he stood a chance with her. But that bitch blew him off again. She let Randy punch him, and then she took Randy back.”

  Phyllis sighed again and took another sip of her soda. “I knew she was going to do it. I followed Doug to pick up the pieces but there were so many—he ran away from me. He was so hysterical, I didn’t know if he was going to make it home okay. I kept calling the house, but he wasn
’t there. I was crazy with worry.

  “When school let out, I went looking for Tricia to talk to her about it. She wouldn’t even talk to me. She completely blew me off. That made me even madder. So I went home and got my father’s old army pistol, and when she got home, I was waiting for her. She tried to blow me off again, so I shot her. I barely remember doing it.”

  “Was Doug there when you shot her?”

  “No,” she answered firmly. “To this day he doesn’t know.” Her tone held a note of warning.

  Joshua recalled something he read in Dorothy’s statement in the former sheriff’s case file. “Trish’s mother says both you and Doug were out in the front yard when she got home.”

  “He was in his room.”

  “He didn’t hear the shot?”

  She responded with certainty. “No.”

  “What did you do after you shot Trish?”

  “I left.”

  “When you shot her, did she fall on the sofa or did you lay her down on it?”

  Phyllis looked at her lawyer. “I don’t remember everything. It was so long ago and I was really mad.”

  Ruth spoke for the first time. “My client did say she was distraught at the time she killed her.” There was her defense.

  “She wasn’t distraught at the time she killed Gail Reynolds,” Joshua pointed out. “She admits that she planned and executed it.” He turned back to Phyllis. “Tell us about Lou Alcott.”

  “What about him?”

  “He was your boyfriend. He tried to kill Dr. MacMillan. Did he know about the murders?”

  “Doc MacMillan said that he was going to find out who killed Gail. Lou thought that if he killed him, then he wouldn’t find out it was me. I didn’t ask him to do it.”

  Phyllis swallowed. Her face twisted before she took a deep breath and continued in a surprisingly strong voice, “Lou was a good man. He really loved me.”

  After Phyllis was taken to the holding cell, Ruth Majors followed the county prosecutor into the sheriff’s office to barter for a deal for her client in exchange for a guilty plea. It was an exercise in futility, considering that Phyllis Rollins had confessed to killing two people. She was destined to spend the rest of her life in jail.

  Curt waited until Ruth left to ask why the prosecutor stopped short of getting a confession from Phyllis for the murders of Rex Rollins and his landlady. “Why did you stop? Why didn’t you question her about Rex’s murder? I thought we agreed that Lou killed Rex for her.”

  “Because she had nothing to do with their murders,” Joshua answered, before Tad knocked on the door and stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. “Plus, my gut is telling me that she didn’t kill Gail or Trish.”

  “Your gut is having an off day,” the sheriff said. “She admitted to it.”

  “She says she went out the back door.”

  “What was that all about anyway? So she went out the back door?”

  “I locked the front door. Karl said that he couldn’t get in the front door because I locked it, but it was unlocked and opened when Jan went there three days later. Plus—Phyllis didn’t make any mention of seeing Karl, who admits he was there!”

  Tad interjected, “I’m sorry to interrupt this celebration at the closing of this case, but there’s a matter of a man out here in need of a guardian.”

  “What are you talking about, Doc?” Sheriff Sawyer said with a hint of annoyance.

  “Social services can’t find a halfway house for Doug to stay at.”

  “Isn’t he over eighteen?” Curt asked Joshua in a rhetorical manner.

  It was Tad’s turn to respond with irritation, “Doug’s parents had him declared incompetent after his second stay in the mental hospital. When they were killed in that accident, Phyllis became his guardian.” He pointed to Joshua. “It is your responsibility to have the family court appoint Doug Barlow a new guardian. In the meantime, Jan and I are taking him back to his house. I’ll stay with him tonight. I would appreciate it if you would address this matter first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Jan?” Curt looked out the door to see her sitting with Doug and making notes on her notepad. She appeared to be interviewing their latest defendant’s brother.

  “The Review has hired her as their news editor.” Tad turned back to Joshua, “I guess you didn’t read the retraction in today’s Vindicator that has reinstated you as the valley’s golden boy.”

  “I stopped reading that paper weeks ago.” Joshua assured him, “I will find a guardian for Doug.”

  “Can you pick up Dog on your way home?”

  Joshua groaned. He held his easygoing cousin’s untrained pet responsible for teaching his own dog bad habits, like sneaking up on the sofa.

  Curt chuckled after Tad left. “He certainly goes out of his way for his patients.”

  “That’s what makes him a good doctor.”

  Curt returned to the matter of Rex Rollins’ murder. “You don’t think Alcott killed Rex because he was going to blow the whistle on Phyllis?”

  Joshua shook his head. “Nah, Rex’s book wasn’t about Phyllis.”

  “Don’t you think he knew about her killing Wheeler?”

  “By all reports I’ve heard, she didn’t ever love Rex. He worked out at her parents’ farm. I think he knew about the murder. Then, he blackmailed her into marrying him.”

  “So she killed Tricia.” Curt said. “Then, after she divorced Rex, he wrote his book about her killing the cheerleader who broke her brother’s heart.”

  “That falls into the category of who cares.”

  “I care,” the sheriff stated in his most authoritative tone.

  “Curt,” Joshua said, “you knew Rex. I knew Rex. We are also men of the world and have been around. Do you really think any publisher is going to care about a village drunk’s little book about a farm girl who blows away the local cheerleader for breaking her brother’s heart?”

  “Now you are saying that his book was not the motive for his murder, which, I might add, blows the wind out of our sails about it being the motive for his landlady’s murder.”

  “Oh, it’s the motive for his murder,” Joshua mused. “It is also the motive for Bella Polk’s murder. It just wasn’t about Tricia Wheeler’s murder. Her murder was small potatoes compared to the murder he was writing about.”

  “Whose murder would that be?”

  “I’m thinking that Rex knew something about Margo. Herb Duncan has had a string of good luck ever since Rex’s murder, and I think his fairy godmother is Margo Connor.”

  Joshua retired to his study where Doc Wilson’s folder containing his report on Tricia Wheeler’s murder lay in the center of the desk. He tossed it into his IN box.

  Time to concentrate on Margo Sweeney Boyd Connor’s dirty dealings.

  He concluded that it was best to start at the beginning . . . with the murder of her first husband, which put her on the road to prosperity.

  That night, after his children had gone to their separate corners to do their homework, he built a fire in the fireplace. Admiral and Dog wandered in to take up what had become their customary spots on the carpet in front of the flames. The domesticated beasts lay like a couple of lion statues at the gate of a grand city to stare into the blaze and imagine themselves as creatures in the wilderness bringing down their food in the glory of bloodlust.

  A frosted beer mug at his elbow, Joshua sat back in his recliner with his feet up to read Dr. Dan Boyd’s case file, which he had borrowed from the Columbiana County Sheriff’s Department in Ohio.

  According to the copy of the notes in the folder, the case had not been looked at in years, despite letters sent annually from Gregory Boyd, the victim’s son, to request that the murder not be forgotten.

  He noted the return address on the e
nvelope of the last letter. It was Ohio State University. Dan Boyd’s son was now a first-year law student. His father had been dead for eighteen years. He was four years old when his father died and he still had not given up hope for justice.

  Dr. Dan Boyd was thirty-eight when his throat was slashed while working late in his dental office on a Thursday night. Meanwhile, his wife was giving a dinner party in their home.

  The murder was estimated to have happened shortly after seven o’clock. The dentist had sent his receptionist home at six o’clock. He was the only one at the office because he had a seven o’clock appointment with a new patient.

  The appointment book had “canceled” written across the last appointment for the day. The receptionist said the patient had not canceled when she left. The name of the patient was Harry Smith. The phone number proved to be a phony.

  Joshua studied the crime-scene photos. Dan had put up a fight. He had defense wounds on his hands and arms.

  Blood squirted everywhere from his severed jugular vein: in his examination room where the struggle seemed to have started, in his office, and in the reception area where the cleaning crew found his body under the receptionist’s desk the next morning.

  When he studied the pictures with his magnifying glass, Joshua could see the bloody fingerprints all over Margo’s wedding picture on his desk in his office. It appeared as if he had grabbed it.

  Immersed in studying the crime-scene pictures, Joshua leapt in his seat when the phone rang. Even the dogs were startled out of their fantasies. He pried himself out of the chair to go pick up the phone on the desk.

  “Hey, sailor,” Hank greeted him.

  Guilt washed over him. “Hey. I take it that your flight back to Hawaii was uneventful?” He sat down in his chair.

  She assured him that it was.

  Silence.

  He tried to recall if ever he and Hank had suffered from awkward silence between them before.

  She finally asked, “I wanted to know how things were going on finding out who killed that cheerleader friend of yours?”