Charlie answered, “Take a good look at her face, Chief. It’s Judge Hartman.”
“I’ll get a call out to the coroner,” then he asked, “Cause of death — acute burns caused by explosion?”
Charlie paused uncomfortably. “Chief, I’m not a forensics expert, but I’ve watched enough TV to suspect that she died before the fire.”
“How’s that?” the chief asked, processing the EMT’s theory.
“Look around this room. The thing that stands out is there’s hardly any debris in here. How would a six-inch-nail end up in her neck?”
“Good observation. Want to work for the police department?”
“Also, we found her wrapped in an old rug. It seems awfully heavy for a woman in her condition to wrap herself in it.”
“I see what you’re sayin’. Probably someone else was down here, less injured, and tried to help her, by putting out the flames.”
“Could be.”
“Thanks for your input.”
When Officer Troy walked in, the chief took him aside. “We may have another murder investigation on our hands.”
“The fire was deliberately set to cover up a murder?”
“Yep.”
“Is the victim Katherine Kendall?”
“No, it’s Judge Hartman.”
“What’s she doin’ here?” the officer asked, confused.
“Didn’t ya get my email? Katz and Jake were married here today. The judge presided over their wedding.”
“Okay. Okay. I got it. But why is the judge in the basement?”
“Don’t know.”
Officer Troy shook his head. “If I lived here, I’d never let anyone down here. It’s like wearing a red shirt on Star Trek. As soon as ya see it, you know they’re gonna get it.”
The chief agreed. “Well, this is a fine can of worms,” he said. “I’m anxious to hear what the fire inspector has to say.”
A firefighter nearby overheard the chief. “Chief London, Inspector Emrich is on his way. He was out in the country investigating a fire at the old county asylum. He’ll be here shortly.”
“That’s a tad bit of overkill. The asylum burned down years ago,” the chief noted.
“He said it was a small fire behind the asylum — some kind of storm cellar.”
Interesting,” the chief said, noncommittally, then to Officer Troy. “Get the coroner over here, and call the State Police. I’m off to talk to Jake.”
“Why Jake?” Officer Troy asked, curiously.
The chief looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Because he thinks that woman in here is his bride. Get it? After that, I’m driving over to the judge’s mother’s house, and break the sad news. Keep me updated.”
“Yes, Sir,” Officer Troy acknowledged.
The chief didn’t relish notifying next of kin. No police officer wanted that job, but as chief, he usually was the bearer of bad news. It was very stressful and emotional. He could still remember, in minute detail, the first time he had to tell a young mother of three that her husband had been killed in a horrible car accident. What made the current task worse — if that was possible — was that he knew the judge’s mom. She was a nice lady in frail health. He’d have to see if one of Erie’s pastors would accompany him.
The chief walked out of the classroom, and asked the closest EMT, “Anyone else injured?”
The EMT nodded. “A man named Jacky Murphy.”
The chief pulled at his beard. “Is he a relative of Colleen Murphy?”
“Oh, you mean the redhead, Daryl Cokenberger’s girlfriend? Yep, he’s her brother.”
“I wonder why he was in the basement. What’s the extent of his injuries?”
“He’s lucky he survived. No burns, but a broken leg.”
“I need to question him before you take him to the hospital.”
“Chief, he’s in a lot of pain.”
“Give him something. I’ll be right back.”
The chief walked off and spoke to a group of firefighters putting away their equipment in one of the trucks. “Has the entire house been searched?”
One of the men answered, “Yes, Chief, and there are no other casualties.”
“That’s good. Any of you seen Jake Cokenberger?”
The firefighter nodded toward the carriage house.
“Jake,” the chief shouted.
Jake and Daryl walked out. Jake deliberately walked over as slowly as possible. He didn’t want to hear the bad news. “Just tell me. Is Katz dead?” he choked on the words.
“No, but Judge Hartman is. Confidentially, it looks like someone murdered her, then covered it up with the explosion.”
Jake shook his head in shock. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, but whoever did it had to be one of the guests at the wedding.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” the chief offered. “But Katz is missing. I’ll put out an APB.”
Daryl said, “Chief, Jake and I think Katz was abducted. We found a rag with chloroform on it.”
“Bag it, Deputy. We need to have the lab check it for prints, and any other useful trace evidence.”
Chapter Sixteen
Katherine felt terrible. The pain in her head throbbed; her eyes burned. The moldy odor in the storm cellar was overpowering; the smell alone made her nauseous. Even though the cot she was sitting on smelled equally as bad, she lay down anyway. She thought if she closed her eyes for a few minutes, she’d get up, refreshed, and figure out how to get out of this mess. She didn’t count on falling asleep.
Several hours later, she woke up, and felt invigorated. Her headache was gone. The awful cellar smell had mysteriously disappeared. A thin, shaft of sunlight filtered through the slits of the storm cellar doors. Katherine thought the sun was probably setting.
Rising off the cot, she pointed her arms upward, stretched, and took a deep breath. In the corner was a crowbar. Why didn’t I see that earlier? she thought. She stooped down, grabbed it, and held it to her side as she carefully ascended the planked steps. On the top stair, she peered through the opening, and observed a lock of some sort — a metal rod running through two latches. She inserted the crowbar, and pulled down with all her might. Finally, she heard the sound of something snapping. Flinging the tool to the floor, she pushed up on one of the cellar doors, and flung it open. She ran down the gravel lane. She had to get to a highway to flag someone down.
Occasionally she glanced over her shoulder to see if the kidnapper was following, but when she didn’t see anyone ready to snatch her as in a scary movie, she ran even faster. I can’t be having such good luck, she thought.
She worried. Something was off, and she couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Why wasn’t someone guarding the storm cellar? Was the person who abducted her lurking nearby, ready to seize her again? Was he or she armed? Would the criminal shoot her, rather than try to catch her?
In a few minutes, Katherine found her way to the front of the property. The weeds were so high that she didn’t see the old metal mailbox, nailed to a rotten post, until she almost stumbled into it. Catching herself, she grasped a rusted piece of barbwire, which dug into the palm of her hand. She gingerly pulled her hand off the barb, and blood started flowing down her wedding dress.
Ripping the hem off of her great-aunt’s vintage dress, she tied it around the cut to stop the bleeding. Hearing a car approaching, she stepped up onto the paved road. She spotted a shiny, black Dodge Ram, and couldn’t make out the driver because of the brilliance of the sun, and the glare it produced.
She thought she saw Stevie Sanders behind the wheel. I’m safe, she thought. Thank God, it’s Stevie. He’ll take me home. She felt an uplifting, almost transcendent sense of relief. Soon she’d be at home with Jake and the cats, safe in her new husband’s arms.
Chapter Seventeen
Russell Krow, driving his new Lexus sedan, was halfway to the armory when he heard the blast. Simultaneously, his cell pinged a text message, and he pulled off the street to read it. Explosion. Pink mansion.
“I can always count on good ole blabbermouth Officer Troy,” he said out loud. “Every reporter needs one.”
He texted back, Be there in a sec.
Perfect! he thought. That drunk Irish guy must have torched the place. Now they’ll never find the judge. Maybe they’ll think it’s the Katz woman.
Then he spent a minute thinking about his women. He liked women. That’s why he liked to collect lovers. Older unmarried or divorced women were the easiest to get into his bed. They were weak and easy to manipulate.
The judge was so naïve. He could explain away anything, and she’d believe him. But the real estate lady, she was a different story. She had him pegged from the beginning, but she didn’t care. Use me and abuse me, she’d say. He laughed, then became serious.
Katherine Kendall was a different story, he thought. Once she fell for that Erie hick, she only had eyes for him. He’d tried to get her interested — tried every trick in the book, but all he got was a cold shoulder. With her big money, she’d get tired of Jake Cokenberger and move on. He just wanted to be around when it happened.
Easing his seat back, he lifted his laptop off the passenger seat, and plugged the power adapter cord into the cigarette lighter socket. He began moving the wedding pictures off his camera onto his hard drive. Back at the mansion, he’d already downloaded the “good stuff” onto an USB flash drive, so that he could relive the drama later.
He got his kicks sitting in his recliner, drinking a beer, and watching Erie’s finest screw up crime scene after crime scene. In particular, he liked watching that goof fire inspector. The guy was an idiot. Between the inept fire chief and the goof inspector, he couldn’t decide which one gave him more comic relief.
While the files were downloading, he reached inside his suit jacket for his USB thumb drive, and was startled when he couldn’t find it. “Oh, no!” he said, alarmed.
He hastily began searching other pockets, then got out of the car, and searched his suit’s back pockets. No USB flash drive. Nada. He searched the back seat and floorboard, then did the same up front. He unlocked the trunk, and searched in there, too.
“I’ve got to find it!” he said frantically. His face fell when he realized where he may have left it, next to the judge’s body, at the pink mansion. Then, he relaxed, and said out loud, “I’m sure the explosion destroyed it.”
Chapter Eighteen
Katherine couldn’t see through the tinted pickup windows, so she ran to the passenger side, stepped up on the running board, and pulled the door handle. She was smiling, so happy Stevie was going to save her, until a man grabbed her from behind, and held the smelly rag to her face again.
“No-o-o,” she screamed, waking up. She sat up on the cot, sweat pouring off her brow. I was having the worst nightmare. Then, she thought she heard a cat wail. It sounded like Scout. That’s impossible. I’m hallucinating. But something was outside, jiggling the exterior latch.
“Help me,” she called in a weak voice. “I can’t get out.”
“Waugh,” the Siamese said.
Katherine got up and slowly climbed the steps, until her head nearly touched the cellar doors. Through a knothole on the left door, a brown paw poked through. She gently took it and kneaded the cat’s paw pad. Scout squeezed her finger as if to reassure her that everything would be okay.
She swallowed hard and bit back tears. “This isn’t happening. I’m dreaming again. How did you find me?” she asked through the doors.
Scout muttered something in Siamese, pulled out her paw, and went back to jiggling the latch.
Katherine heard the sound of metal scraping, and then a thump on the ground. Scout returned to the knothole, and launched a series of emphatic ‘waughs.’
Katherine took her cue, pushed the left-hand door, and opened it. Scout peeked over the other side and squeezed her blue eyes. “Ma-Waugh,” she cried, which sounded like “Hurry up!”
Katherine picked up Scout and hugged her. “I love you, sweet girl.” She squinted, and adjusted her eyes to the daylight. Glancing at the burned-out shell of a two-story building, she wondered where she was.
Behind her was an overgrown yard with a rusted, barbed wire fence in front. She could make out weathered tombstones; some of them had toppled to the ground. When she looked back at the building, the apparition appeared behind a glassless window.
The teenaged spirit was wearing the same clothes as before: madras blouse with green shorts. First, the ghost pointed to the cemetery, then gestured toward a dirt lane that went around the building.
Scout chattered, “At-at-at-at!” Her tail quivered against Katherine’s side.
“You see her, too,” Katherine whispered, relieved that she wasn’t hallucinating. “It’s okay, Scout.” She was too frightened to speak any louder. Then the spirit disappeared.
Katherine moved Scout to her other shoulder. “Okay, hang on. I’m going to run faster than I’ve ever run before.” She jogged around the building, in the direction the spirit had pointed. She saw a long, graveled driveway on her left, and a shack on the right, with two vehicles parked in front. One looked like Stevie Sanders’ pickup, and the other was some sort of Ford sedan she vaguely remembered. Her gut feeling told her not to seek help there. The people inside were probably the ones who kidnapped her in the first place.
She darted to the lane, but her high-heeled pumps were slowing her down. She kicked them off, and ran on the grassy part of the lane, clutching Scout for dear life.
Close to the highway, she heard a vehicle. She partially hid behind a tree, and watched it approach. It was a shiny, black Dodge Ram. “Oh, no,” she said to Scout. “We’ve got to find another way to get out of here.” Then she saw the front license plate — not clear at first, but readable enough to know it was Stevie’s logo — Stevie’s Electrical. She hobbled to the edge of the highway, crying out in pain, as the rocks tore her feet.
Stevie was a hundred feet away, when he saw Katherine holding her cat. He jammed on the brakes, and pulled over to the side of the road. “Ms. Kendall, what are you doing out here?”
Katherine sighed, and said, “Does everyone in town drive a black Dodge Ram?”
“Get in,” he said, ignoring the question. “Half the county’s lookin’ for ya.”
Katherine stepped up onto the running board, and opened the passenger side door. She got in, shut the door, and set Scout on her lap. The Siamese eyed Stevie suspiciously, growled, then jumped onto the floorboard. Katherine reached down and petted her on the head. “It’s okay, honey.”
“I love it when you call me honey,” Stevie said. “Again, what are ya doin’ out here?” he asked, putting the truck in gear, and getting back onto the highway.
“I can ask you the same?”
“I drive around all day looking for good lookin’ damsels in distress.”
Katherine’s internal distrust-gauge began to rise.
Stevie said, “I’m just messin’ with ya. I’ve got a rewiring job a half-a-mile up the road. I’m late, so I’m tryin’ to git there. Now it’s your turn.”
“I was kidnapped in the back parking lot of the mansion.”
“Damn, woman. Did you see who done it?”
“No, they grabbed me from behind, and held a smelly rag to my nose, then I passed out. Do you know who owns the property back there?”
“Yeah, the county does. It started out as an old folks home, then turned into a nut house, and ended up being a hush-hush place for unwed mothers.”
“What do you mean by a hush-hush place?”
“Years ago, when a girl got pregnant, and couldn’t git a husband, her parents would send her to that place back there. She’d have the baby, which would be taken away, then she’d go back home, to finish high school.”
“That’s heart-breaking! What year was this?”
“Don’t know. 1960s, maybe.”
“Was it one of the buildings torched by the arsonist?” Katherine asked curiously.
“Oh, no, I can
tell you exactly what happened. One of the girls was smoking in bed, and set the place on fire. The building was in awful shape to begin with — a deathtrap. It went up like a bonfire.”
“What happened to the girls?”
“Well, Ma’am, I remember my mom said a bunch of them died, but their babies were saved.”
Katherine became quiet, and started putting clues together. Could the spirit at the yellow Foursquare be one of the girls burned in the fire? Was she an unwed mother who was forced by her parents to live in shame, in a god-forsaken hell hole, then have her baby taken from her? Was she an employee of the Clay family, or her great-aunt Orvenia? Katherine needed to find out, so the young girl could finally be at peace.
“Cat git your tongue?” Stevie asked.
Katherine said wearily, “I’ve been through a lot today. Being thrown into a storm cellar was the final coup de grace.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, I mean being kidnapped, and thrown in a cellar, was the finishing touch of a very bad afternoon.”
“Cellar? In the house?”
“It’s out back behind the burned building. It reminded me of the one in the movie “Wizard of Oz.”
“Yeah, I git what ya mean. Ya know, if I was gonna kidnap someone I would have found a more secure place. Why ain’t you wearin’ shoes?”
“I ditched them back there.”
Stevie looked in his rear-view mirror, and floored the accelerator.
“Waugh,” Scout cried in alarm.
“Stevie, slow down,” Katherine said in rising terror. “What’s wrong?”
“Somebody’s followin’ us, and they’re drivin’ up fast.”
***
The woman staggered out of the building, and headed to her car. A flash and small boom let her know that the man had dealt with the kidnapping problem. Then she looked down the lane, and saw a Dodge Ram truck picking up a woman. She started screaming toward the back of the asylum. “Get over here!”
The man ran around the building. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Did you check the cellar before you torched it?”
The Cats that Stalked a Ghost (The Cats that . . . Cozy Mystery Book 6) Page 9
