by Anne Hagan
“But it's Christmas...”
I blew a breath out and tried to hold my tongue. The holidays were a big deal to my mom and her absolute favorite time of the year. I didn't want to upset her. My dad, always a man of few words but observant to a tee, saw right through me.
“So what else is going on? This isn't just about painted sheep. You've been on edge all week.”
I couldn't lie to him, even by omission. “It's just rough right now dad. Our caseload is really heavy...there have been some robberies and some other stuff.”
“That murder, you mean,” my twin threw in.
“How did you know about that?”
Kris looked at me through a tight squint. “I'm talking about that Stiers' woman that was seeing J.D. and that Harper boy too. Who are you talking about?”
Trying to gloss over my slip, I went on, “We still have older cases working through the courts, the robberies, the Stiers case, now sheep...there's been dog-nappings...it's just never ending.”
Dad shook his head and clucked his tongue. “What’s happening in this county, happening in this country for that matter?” Everything’s going straight to hell!”
I was taken aback by the severity in the way he said it.
Before any of us could say anything, he continued, “I’ll tell you what’s going on; drugs, that’s what! All this killing and robbing and stealing, it’s all about drugs! It's so sad to see that kind of thing coming to this county now. They can keep that crap in the city; we don’t want it out here!”
I had no words. I didn’t even know where to go with that. I mean, dad was right in some respects and wrong in others; I'd been battling drugs and the problems they caused my entire career with the department, but his rant really had nothing to do with my current backlog of unsolved cases. I was grateful when Dana changed the subject.
“Hey, sorry to change the subject,” she said as if she’d read my mind, “but I just thought of something.” She looked first at her mama and then at my mom. “We've never really talked about who's doing what and where for Christmas.”
Oh, here we go! Mom will be all over this... She didn't disappoint. She forgot all about my problems and was off and running.
“Well now, how about that?” she asked but it was rhetorical. She didn't give anyone else a chance to speak. “We certainly have our traditions here that, since Beth and Cole were small, revolve around church on Christmas Eve with a little close family gathering out here after and then an all day party Christmas day where you never know who'll walk through the door. I imagine we'll do much the same this year. The kids are both participating in the Christmas Eve service and my brother Brian and his family will be here Christmas Day. They aren't going to her mom's this year.”
Lance cleared his throat and spoke up for the first time in over an hour, “My family likes to do a big Christmas Eve get-together after church. It's been our tradition for years now and,” he looked at my sister, “since this is the first Christmas with Kris and the kids, I was hoping we could spend a little time with them.”
“Church here is at 7:00,” Kris told him. “It will be over a little after 8:00, I imagine.”
Lance grinned. “That should work fine. It's just...I don't know how many more years their health will be strong enough to pull it off. I'm really worried about dad; his heart problems this past year have us all scared.”
I eyeballed my own father. He’d been on shaky ground recently too and he’s a good ten years or so younger than Lance’s dad.
“It sounds like it's all going to work out just fine for you two to spend a little time with everyone,” Chloe nodded approvingly nipping in the bud anything my own mother was trying to concoct to derail what sounded like a fair trade off to me.
“Well what about you and Marco and the boys,” I gratefully asked her in response. What will you be doing? Would you want to come here?”
“That's a good question,” Marco said.
Chloe shook her head, “We usually do Christmas Eve too, like Lance's family, but the house is practically empty since it's been staged to sell and we told the boys we probably wouldn't do anything this year. Vince and his wife are actually talking about going skiing since he's got some time off over the holidays. We'd like to join you here, if that's okay?” Marco nodded his agreement with the idea.
“Of course it's okay,” dad answered for everyone.
Mom added, “The more the merrier!”
Somehow, I got the eerie sense she might come to regret that.
Chapter 11 – Second Impressions
Janet
Tuesday, December 16th, 2014
Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department
There were no new burglaries over the weekend. To top it off, just as with the previous robberies, we didn't get a single useable fingerprint from the Powers' crime scene. The Coroner had let us know too that we shouldn't expect anything useful from his detailed autopsy of Lorene Jarvis. Her killer didn't seem to have touched her.
Thumbing through the four files we had now, I looked over each report. I shook my head at the sheer lack of a single useful clue. “These have to be related,” I said out loud to the empty squad room. “They have to be...but how?”
Frustrated, I pushed the stack of files to my left and folded my hands on the desktop while I continued to wrack my brain.
Across from me, Shane's desk sat empty except for a few files he'd left out in a little stack when he stepped out for a dentist appointment. After staring at them for a good minute, I half raised myself and reached across the desks to tug them toward me.
The top one was the 'Yuletide Ewe' file. I slid it off the stack and didn't even bother to look at it. Next was the file Mel had been keeping on the dog napping cases. Shane and I had spent part of the morning calling kennels and groomers and such, trying to get some sort of a lead there.
Mel had made it a point to remind me that, in the county, the Amish are responsible for a lot of the dog breeding and they don’t have phones, per se. She said I needed to get out and talk to those people. I set that file aside too. I had no desire to go farm to farm talking to Amish men who wouldn't really give a woman the time of day.
I want to get out there and really shake something big up...show Mel that she picked the right woman for the job.
The third file caught my attention. It was the one on the Stiers case. I opened it and paged through it slowly, reading it more thoroughly than I had the day Shane first showed it to me.
It's all right here in black and white. I tapped the pages. We know who the killer is...we just have to get him to talk.
I wrote the Harper's address down and then replaced Shane's files as he'd left them.
It's time to go shake a tree!
###
“Ma'am,” I dipped my head in greeting, “I'm Detective Mason with the Muskingum County Sheriff's Office.”
“Elizabeth Harper,” she said, ignoring my outstretched hand. “How can I help you Detective?” She stayed framed in the doorway but I noticed her lip tremor slightly as she asked.
“I'm just following up on an old case. I was wondering if Nevil were around that I might chat with him for a minute?” I was vague on purpose.
“Junior or Senior? My husband isn't here right now and...Nevil Jr., I...I rarely see him anymore...we rarely see him.” Her nervousness was becoming even more obvious.
“Oh, something wrong there?”
She looked away from me in the classic textbook maneuver of someone about to lie. “There's been some sort of rift between him and his father...I don't know what all about but they've barely spoken in months. Junior only comes around when he knows for sure his paw won't be here.”
“Any idea when your husband will be home?”
“No, sorry.” She looked away again, “He's at the livestock auctions. He could be gone all day.”
Since I couldn't get past his wife to talk to Nevil Harper Sr., I decided to pay Nevil Jr. a quick visit at the Toyota dealership where he
worked.
When I introduced myself this time, the boy took my hand confidently. He told his manager he was going to take ten and then lead me into the employee break room to chat. Just 19, he had the air of confidence of a man with nothing to hide.
As we took seats, I said to him, “Look, I know you're working so I'm going to get right down to it.”
He nodded his consent.
“I took over your girlfriend's case. You have my condolences on your loss.”
Looking surprised, he thanked me.
“I've got all the files but I'd like to hear your story directly from you.”
“Sure, detective. No problem.” He proceeded to take a couple of minutes to tell me the same story Shane had relayed before, almost verbatim.
I interjected a few questions here and there but he didn't waver. He also didn't offer up any more information about his father other than to say that he saw him at the scene.
“Are you and your father on speaking terms?”
“No ma'am. I have nothing to say to him.”
“You're convinced he killed her?”
“Yes.”
“There isn't anything else you can tell me about that day when you found Olivia?”
This time, the boy shook his head no.
Hoping to get him to say more, I played my ace. “Nevil,” I leaned across the little break table and spoke low, “the DNA evidence is finally back and it doesn’t look good.”
His eyes flared briefly. “Good how, ma'am.”
“It doesn't look good for you.”
“Me?” he almost shouted. Lowering his voice, he pleaded, “I didn't kill her, I swear. I loved her.”
“The DNA says different.”
“DNA from what...she wasn't...wasn't...?” He couldn't finish the sentence and his eyes started to tear up.
“No; she wasn't raped, if that's what you're asking. She did try to fight off her attacker. That's where we got DNA.”
“It has to be my dad's!” He wasn't trying to hold his voice down anymore.
His manager stuck his head into the room and asked if everything was okay. Nevil Jr. waved him away.
“Ma'am, wouldn't my DNA be sort of like my dad's?” he quizzed me. “They must not have read it right...they couldn't have.”
I just shrugged and let him simmer.
“He's not going to get away with this anymore! I'm not going to jail for something he did. I'm going to go and talk to him today; that's what I'm going to do. I'll get him to admit to you all what he’s done! You'll see!”
I took my leave smiling inwardly. I lit a fire and fanned the flames, now I'm going to watch it burn and be there to put it out.
I watched the garage discreetly from my unmarked for the rest of the afternoon. When Nevil Jr. left, I followed him. Instead of going to his boss’s house, where I knew he was staying, he drove out to his family’s farm with me tailing behind.
I pulled off the road at the crest of a hill just up from the farm and watched as Junior parked, got quickly out of his car and headed toward the biggest barn, his fists balled. He never even looked my way, so intent was he on confronting his father.
I didn't have a viable vantage point to see anymore so I turned around and headed back down the road a little way then pulled off. I hoped to see the younger Harper going back by.
Only ten minutes went by before he sped back by me. I could see him gripping the steering wheel, his anger evident even in the slight glimpse I got of his face. Satisfied with the havoc I'd wrought, I headed back to the station.
Chapter 12 – And Again...
Mel
Late Wednesday Afternoon, December 17th, 2014
Janet poked her head around my door frame. “A word Sheriff?”
“What's up?”
“I just got a call...anonymous...he refused to give his name, but he had what seemed like pretty credible information about a suspicious vehicle in a wealthy suburb.”
She took a seat in my only visitor chair. I still hadn't bothered with updating my office or moving into old Sheriff Carter's office now that I'd actually become the duly elected Sheriff of the county. I didn't have the time or the patience for that and the county really didn't have the budget anyway.
Mason continued, “The guy said he's one of the 'hired hands' at the Joseph Samuels estate.”
I let out a low whistle. “That's a horse farm northwest, up near Dillon Lake.”
“This is probably bunk then, a crackpot calling.” Janet looked frustrated.
“Why do you say that?”
“The guy was telling me that he'd heard about a couple of robberies and, because the Samuels are away in Europe right now, they were all being a little more vigilant. He said he'd seen a florist van cruising the area that shouldn’t have been around, like it was casing the houses in the area. If the Samuels place is a big farm, that doesn't make any sense.”
“Actually, it does. There's a development way up there that Samuels is on the back side of. He owns all of the acreage surrounding the development. His neighbors aren't real close together but they're not acres apart either. I think he originally owned all of the land and sold some of it off so he could raise a little cash for the expansion of his stables.”
Mason gave me a look, “Is there anybody in this county you don't know?”
“Sure, lots of people. As it happens, Joseph is big into pulling ponies, among many other horsey things, and so's my dad. We've been out to his place a time or two. What was the hand able to tell you about this florist van? Did he get a plate number?”
“No. He said he wasn't close enough. He said it was wrapped in a flower wrap like you see commercial vans. What he thought was odd was that there was no company name really visible at all and no phone number or website that he could see, just the FTD and Cookie Bouquet symbols.”
“Yeah, he's got something there.” Bingo! I did my best to control my excitement. “Janet, a real florist would have that stuff plastered all over the vehicle. They want their name and contact info out there.Finally,” I said, “we get a break!”
“Do you really think so Sheriff?”
“Listen to me; it’s the perfect cover. Florists run around in these areas like where these robberies have been happening all of the time, especially at this time of year with the holidays and parties and whatnot.”
“Yes, but at 1-2:00 in the morning?”
“That's when he said he saw it?”
“No, I'm just saying that our hits seem to have been late at night.”
“Well, there’s that...maybe they’re using a different vehicle for the burglary jobs but the florist van is a good cover when they’re casing neighborhoods.”
“So what do we do?”
###
In theory, staking out the temporarily empty Samuels' home seemed like a great idea. In practice, I was now regretting the decision. It wasn't bone chilling cold out, but it certainly wasn't warm and there was a steady breeze making things worse. I was well bundled but still cold and I didn't dare run the car and the heater much in fear of giving our hiding place away. I only ran things long enough to keep the windows clear but the constant wind was helping to keep the cold from settling on them from outside.
Then there was the other problem; the occupant of the passenger seat. Given my late day decision to do the stakeout, it was either bring Mason along again or pull someone from patrol. I really needed the deputies that were scheduled for patrol on the road tonight anyway since we were running a little thin so Mason it had to be.
So far, she'd been quiet – probably only to keep the window fog down inside – and well behaved but, I looked at the clock on the dash, – 10:32 – the night was still quite young.
###
Janet
Mmm, Mmm, Mmm. That's one fine looking woman sitting over there! And smart too...
I gotta figure out what makes her tick, what turns her on... I need to impress the hell out of her; get her to see what she's missing. I hope this business
with Nevil Harper blows sky high! I'm gonna be all over that...then she'll see.
We waited and watched until nearly 2:00 but there was no suspicious activity in the area at all...nothing. After 11:00 or so, nobody was out and about and moving anywhere.
“I guess we should call it,” Mel said aloud after several long minutes of silence between us. “I wonder if it’s just too cold for anyone to bother?”
“Wish I could answer that for you Sheriff. I guess we just have to keep trying. Maybe tomorrow night?”
Mel sighed and I turned to inspect her face more closely in the darkness of the car. “It's frustrating isn't it?” I asked her.
“It's not that...not really. This is all a part of the job.” She turned the key and the engine sprang to life. Adjusting the heater knobs to start heat flowing, she continued, “I don't know how you're working it out with your mom. Personally, the late nights in these far flung northern parts of the county that are an hour’s drive home for me over back country roads and the early mornings back at my desk are starting to wear on me a little and...well, I know Dana's getting annoyed too.”
I was surprised at her revelation and had to hold back a smile. “Actually,” I told her, “so Shane and I are staggered a bit, he's been coming in early and I've been coming in, in the late morning, these last couple of days. I've been able to help mom in the morning and then, tonight, I gave her, her night pills and got her settled in for the night before I reported back to the station.”
These hours aren't affecting me at all. It's too bad about Dana...not! I couldn't help but smirk a little.
Chapter 13 – What’s Up?
Dana
Thursday Afternoon, December 18th, 2014
Morelville, Ohio
Mama's health department certification finally came in. We were both at the store, giving it the once over one more time before her Saturday grand re-opening.
Helen came up from the back. “We're all set Chloe,” she told my mother. “It's not fully stocked now, just so you know, since we called in after he was on the road for the day, but he gave us what he could. He'll resume his old dairy deliveries here on Monday's and Thursday's like before, he said, unless you want to change it.”
