Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned

by Annette Dashofy

  Why did that word stick inside Zoe’s head like a burr to her jeans after a ride through the brush?

  Then there was the ball cap. She’d seen him wear it a number of times since he’d moved in. But when was the last time? When he’d argued with Tierney on Friday. After that she had no way of knowing. She’d been on duty. What on earth had happened here while she’d been out trying to save lives?

  She turned away from the window to fix her gaze on the closed door to Mrs. Kroll’s kitchen. Behind it waited the landlady and Nate. And Maddie. What was she supposed to say to Maddie? Your dad’s been arrested for murder. But everything will be okay because he didn’t do it.

  Or had he?

  Had Zoe invited a killer into her home? Hers and the Krolls’. Had she not only put herself in danger, but that sweet old woman as well? Had Zoe been blinded by her need to shelter Maddie? Had she refused to consider Holt’s guilt because he happened to be good-looking?

  Handsome men had blinded her to their fatal flaws in the past, too. It was a weakness. One Pete had pointed out. Zoe pressed her hands to her face, massaging her forehead and covering her eyes as if that would block out the images of all her mistakes. Right now she had to check on Maddie and call the attorney for Holt.

  Protect Maddie.

  From what?

  “You can’t be serious.” Anthony Imperatore thumped his briefcase down on Pete’s desk after the attorney’s meeting with Farabee.

  Pete leaned back in his chair. “Can’t I? Your client’s personal belongings keep popping up at crime scenes. Did he give you a viable explanation?”

  Imperatore gave him a tight smile. “You know any discussion I have with Mr. Farabee is subject to attorney/client privilege. Besides, he doesn’t have to. The burden’s on you and the DA to prove guilt. And if all you have is a Kentucky Wildcats ball cap and a promotional lighter, your case is a tad malnourished.”

  Imperatore was right, unfortunately. For now. “I have a few questions for him, which might help me fatten it up a bit.”

  The attorney sniffed. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I’ve told Mr. Farabee he shouldn’t speak to you at all, but he says he wants to clear his name.” Imperatore jerked his head toward the door.

  Pete pushed up from his seat and led the way down the hall to the interrogation room.

  Farabee sat motionless, his hands folded on the table. Imperatore took the empty chair next to his client. Pete lowered into the one across from them. For a long moment, he studied Farabee, his clenched jaw, his eyes glazed.

  Pete had sat across this table or others just like it more times than he could count. He’d seen cocky criminals convinced they were too smart to get tripped up by a stupid cop. He’d seen suspects who were clearly innocent and those who clearly were not, but tried to act that way. He’d even encountered a few with unreadable faces, stoic as statues.

  Farabee didn’t fit any of those categories. He seemed to be shooting for impassive, but there was a hurricane of activity below the surface of his eyes. If Pete had to make a guess, he’d say the man was scared out of his wits.

  Pete turned on the recorder between them and made his routine statement of who was in the room and confirming Farabee had been read his rights.

  With the preliminaries out of the way, Pete sat back. “How long have you known Stephen Tierney?”

  It was a simple question, but long seconds ticked off before Farabee answered. “Four, maybe five years.”

  “He was your neighbor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know him before you moved to Scenic Hilltop Estates?”

  “No.”

  “Did your wife know him before you moved to Scenic Hilltop Estates?”

  “No,” Farabee said tersely, his eyes darkening.

  Farabee’s reaction confirmed Pete’s suspicion. The topic of Stephen Tierney and Lillian Farabee was clearly a trigger. “Would you say you were friends with him?”

  “Friends?” Farabee’s voice deepened. “No.”

  “How would you classify your relationship with him?”

  Farabee fixed Pete with an unwavering glare. “Neighbors.”

  “How did your wife get along with Mr. Tierney?”

  Farabee’s folded hands tightened, his knuckles turning a mottled crimson and white.

  “Don’t answer that,” Imperatore said.

  The hands relaxed.

  “All right.” Pete turned a page in his notebook. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Tierney?”

  One of Farabee’s fingers started tapping the opposite knuckle. “I’m not sure of the exact date. Before the fire.”

  “Had you talked to him since you moved back in?”

  “Talked to him? No. I saw him coming and going is all.”

  Interesting. Pete wished like hell he could have asked Tierney a few questions before someone shut him up permanently. “Can you explain how your ball cap ended up with Mr. Tierney’s dead body?”

  Farabee’s hands remained relaxed, and he opened his mouth to reply, but Imperatore touched his arm. “Now, Chief. We don’t even know for certain the hat belonged to my client.”

  Pete eyed Farabee.

  All three men knew the hat belonged to him. But Imperatore had been right earlier. It wasn’t enough.

  A knock at the interrogation room door distracted Pete from contemplating his next question. He pocketed his notebook and clicked off the recorder. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  He opened the door to Baronick, who motioned him into the hall.

  “What?” Pete snapped.

  “Thought you’d like an update. The coroner is transporting the body to Brunswick and will do the autopsy either tonight or tomorrow, depending on when he can get Doc Abercrombie to come in.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not entirely. I pressed him for a guess about how long Tierney’s been dead. Marshall says since the decomp is so far along, he’d clearly been dead several days to a week. Maybe even a little longer.”

  Typical Franklin Marshall. Never one to give clear cut information prematurely. “Anything else?”

  “The Crime Scene Unit and my detectives are still there picking through the basement. I asked Zoe if we could search the house.”

  Pete battled a grin. “I have a pretty good idea of her reply.”

  Baronick huffed.

  “Actually it was pretty tame. The little girl was in the room. So unless we come up with probable cause for a search warrant, we aren’t getting access beyond the basement.”

  “I doubt we’d find anything anyway.”

  Baronick tipped his head toward the interrogation room. “You getting anything useful?”

  “Not with his attorney sitting next to him.”

  “At least we have his ball cap.”

  “Imperatore has pointed out we don’t know for certain it belongs to Farabee.”

  Baronick snorted. “Who else around here went to the University of Kentucky? We can test it for DNA if need be.”

  Pete breathed a soft growl. “Yeah.” If need be.

  The detective narrowed his eyes. “I know that look. What’s wrong? You know we’ve got our man.”

  Did they?

  Pete wasn’t so sure anymore.

  The coroner’s van had pulled out, signaling to Zoe that Stephen Tierney’s body no longer occupied the potato bin. Nate Williamson and most of the police and news media vehicles had also vacated the premises. However, the crime scene truck and a pair of unmarked sedans belonging to the county detectives remained parked behind the house. Footsteps and sounds of scuffling still floated up from the basement.

  Zoe found Maddie curled up with a book on the couch in the parlor. “How are you doing?”

  The girl looked up,
her eyes red and weepy. “When’s my dad coming back?”

  Zoe wished she knew. She searched for words that wouldn’t offer false hope, but wouldn’t scare the child either.

  Before Zoe could come up with a suitable answer, Maddie must have seen it in her eyes. “I don’t want to sleep in our room all by myself. Can I stay with you?”

  Holt’s words echoed in Zoe’s head. You. I need you to protect her. Don’t let her out of your sight.

  “Absolutely. If your dad isn’t home before bedtime, we’ll just move your bed across the hall into my room.”

  Maddie seemed appeased. She lowered her eyes to her book.

  But Zoe suspected the girl didn’t comprehend a word of it. “Hey, why don’t we go out to the barn? We can saddle up George and Windstar and go for a little ride.”

  Maddie drew her puckered mouth to one side of her face, contemplating. “No, thanks. I don’t feel like it.”

  In Zoe’s experience, it was never good when a girl turned down a chance to go riding. If equine therapy wasn’t going to work, maybe feline therapy would. “Then can you do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Merlin and Jade are locked in my office because of all the hubbub. I want to move them upstairs and put them in the bathroom instead. You know. In case one of those guys opens the office door.”

  “You don’t want your cats getting out. They might run away.”

  “Exactly.”

  Maddie placed her bookmark and closed the book. “Okay.”

  Zoe dug her key from her pocket and motioned for Maddie to follow.

  They crossed the wide center hallway, Zoe unlocked the door at the base of the front staircase, and they stepped into her office. Jade stood there as if she’d been waiting for them, her tail twitching. Merlin gazed at them from the sunny windowsill next to the fireplace.

  Zoe scooped up Jade and deposited her into Maddie’s eager arms. Then Zoe squeezed around her recliner to retrieve Merlin from his sunspot. Cats in hand, they returned to the hall and climbed the main staircase, slipping into Zoe’s bedroom at the top.

  With the felines contained securely in the bathroom, Maddie hopped onto Zoe’s bed. “I like your room.”

  “Thanks.” She took a seat next to the girl. “Everything’s going to be all right, you know. Mr. Imperatore will bring your dad back as soon as Pete’s done talking to him. They might even be on their way now. Or it may take until tomorrow morning.”

  Maddie scowled at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. “I don’t know.” She looked up at Zoe. “The police think my dad killed Mr. Tierney, don’t they?”

  A knot formed in Zoe’s throat. “They’re just trying to find the truth. It might take a little while to sort it out, but they’ll figure out who really did it.”

  A troubled line creased Maddie’s smooth forehead. “That’s what I’m afraid of. What if my dad did do it?”

  Twenty

  “Do us all a favor.” Imperatore glowered over his glasses at Pete. “Next time you get an urge to drag my client down here, just come to me first. It’ll save everyone some aggravation and gas money.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Pete watched as the attorney escorted Holt Farabee down the hall and out of the police station.

  Baronick leaned against the doorjamb to Pete’s office. “I can’t believe you let him go.”

  “What choice did I have? Imperatore said we had a flimsy case, and he was right.” Pete had jumped the gun. Again. Slapping handcuffs on a suspect every time a new shred of evidence showed up was a damned stupid move. He’d known better than that when he was a rookie. Of course, Zoe hadn’t been twisting him up inside like a lovesick teenager when he’d been a rookie either. “We have to build a solid case before we ask the DA to press charges. And I’m not convinced we have a case.”

  “I had the feeling you were hedging back there. What’s eating you?”

  Pete brushed past the detective and slid into his chair. “Holt Farabee is no fool. I have a hard time believing he’d kill a man and then hide the body in the house where he’s living.”

  Baronick took the chair across the desk. “Obviously it wasn’t planned that way. I figure Tierney showed up at the farm. They got into it. Farabee whacked him and hid him there until he could move the body.” The detective shrugged. “Zoe found it first.”

  “Hide him in the basement? Two floors down from where he and his little girl are sleeping?” Pete shook his head. “You don’t shit where you eat.”

  Baronick’s phone jingled and he dug in his pocket for it. “He didn’t drag it in there. For some reason he and Tierney happened to be in the basement. That’s where Farabee killed him.”

  “And hid him in the root cellar?” Pete huffed. “Why the root cellar?”

  The question was for himself as much as the detective. And it pertained to the killer in general, Farabee or not. Why had the killer buried the body in the potato bin of all places?

  Baronick frowned at the message on his phone. “I may have to take back what I just said. It looks like Farabee did drag Tierney into the basement.”

  “What’d they find?” As soon as Pete asked the question he waved away Baronick’s response. “Never mind. You can tell me on our way out. I want to see for myself what your county detectives found.”

  Zoe put an arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “Why would you think your dad would hurt Mr. Tierney?”

  The little girl toyed with her fingernails as if trying to decide whether a manicure was in order. “Dad hated him.”

  “You said that once before.” When Zoe had witnessed a confrontation between Holt and the man she’d thought of as the guy from the fort on Friday. This was Monday. Considering the stench of the body and the subsequent rate of decomp, it was very likely Tierney had died shortly after the encounter.

  How shortly?

  Maddie sighed. “I used to hear Mom and Dad arguing. They said it wasn’t anything important. Grownup stuff. They said I’d understand when I was older. And I guess it was okay because I’d see them getting all kissy and lovey dovey afterwards. But lately it was different. A couple of times, Dad was really mad. Really mad. They weren’t just arguing. Dad was yelling. Loud.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But I remember Dad yelling about Mom and Mr. Tierney. Dad called him bad names.” Maddie swallowed hard. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and her voice wavered when she said, “One time, he called Mom a bad name, too.”

  Zoe tried to picture troubled, bereaved Holt calling his late wife a name their daughter couldn’t repeat. “Sometimes adults say stupid stuff. Things they don’t mean.”

  Maddie met her gaze, the little girl’s dark eyes wide with sorrow. “He said—one time, he said—if he ever saw Mom and Mr. Tierney together again—he’d kill them both.”

  The mental image created a knot in Zoe’s heart. She shoved the picture away. Before she could think of a response to sooth Maddie, a door slammed beneath them followed by the rapid thump of boots on the staircase.

  “Maddie?” Holt’s voice echoed up to them.

  “Dad!” Fear and worry forgotten, Maddie tore out of Zoe’s bedroom and into the hallway.

  By the time Zoe reached her door, Holt had made it almost to the top of the stairs, and Maddie had flung herself into her father’s arms. He crushed her to him, smothering her with kisses. As Zoe watched the father-daughter reunion, faded memories of similar moments with her own dad threatened to rip open the old scar yet again.

  Holt met Zoe’s gaze over Maddie’s blond head. He mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

  Zoe responded with a tight smile. “They let you go, I see.”

  He set Maddie down, but kept a hand on her shoulder. “They don’t have a case and everyone knows it.”

  Everyone. Exce
pt Zoe.

  Holt dropped to one knee and cupped his daughter’s face in his hands. “Sweetheart, I want you to go in our room and pack up all the nice stuff Zoe’s friends have given you. And then pack the clothes we brought with us.”

  “But why?”

  Zoe wondered the same thing.

  “We’ve taken advantage of Zoe’s and Mrs. Kroll’s hospitality long enough.”

  “You’re leaving?” Zoe asked.

  He looked up at her and nodded once. “I don’t feel right taking all this stuff from your boarders. I’m sure you can see it gets back where it belongs.”

  “Don’t be silly. No one wants their things back.”

  “I know, but—”

  “It was an act of kindness on their parts. Returning toys and clothes that Maddie enjoys… They’d take it as an insult.”

  Holt appeared to reconsider.

  Maddie tugged at the front of his shirt. “Please, Dad.”

  His face softened. “All right. Pack up everything.”

  “Where are we going?”

  From the look on Holt’s face, Zoe guessed he hadn’t gotten that far.

  “Just go pack. I have to talk to Zoe.”

  Maddie shot a forlorn glance at her before darting into the room across the hall. Holt climbed to his feet and closed the distance between him and Zoe.

  He made a couple of false starts before he finally said, “Thank you for everything you’ve done. I’m sorry I can’t stick around and finish the repairs.”

  She studied his face.

  It was a handsome face. Strong jaw. Tortured eyes. They didn’t look like a killer’s eyes. But then again, she’d been fooled before. “Did you kill Tierney?” she whispered.

  “No.” His voice sounded like it had been roughed up with 12-grit sandpaper. He held her gaze and the creases in his forehead deepened. “I could never…” He shook his head. “But I can’t expect you to believe me.”

  “I want to. But if you didn’t, why are you running?”