“Well, thanks, then.” She backed away from Rich. “Have a good evening.” The trite expression flowed out her mouth even as she wished him to stay, or for herself to go somewhere far, far from death and fire and a good-looking cop that spelled danger to her heart.
“Lock up tight.” Rich turned and grasped the doorknob. “The night-duty officer will do frequent drive-bys, but don’t hesitate to call at the least hint of something out of the ordinary.”
“Will do.”
Then he was gone, and Nicole sought solace in a book. When she couldn’t remember what she read, she tried a sitcom, but didn’t crack a smile because all the funny lines fell on deaf ears. At last the news came on. There was a segment on the incidents in Ellington. A brief statement from Stan, the fire inspector, revealed last night’s fire as arson, but there was no comment from the Chief of Police. The next shot showed a scowling crowd of townsfolk standing on a downtown sidewalk around a microphone extended by a woman reporter.
“Them Kellers been part of this community all my life,” said a craggy-faced man dressed like a farmer or laborer. “Before I was born, I guess. Always did think they was too good to be true. Upstanding bank president?” The man snorted. “Kidnapping babykiller is more like it.”
People around him nodded. Nicole clapped a hand over her mouth and swallowed bile.
The reporter put the microphone to her own lips. “It hasn’t been confirmed that the bones found on the Keller property belong to the kidnapped Samuel Elling.”
The self-appointed community spokesperson sneered. “What other baby’s gone missing around here?”
Vocal agreement chorused through the group.
“What’s going on?” A woman’s voice blared in the background and heads turned.
The familiar figure of Darlene Hooper stepped out of her beauty shop behind the group. The beautician had given Nicole’s hair a trim more than once when Nicole was a little girl. Now the woman had aged to the point that she used a cane, and she stabbed it toward the crowd.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, talking about fine folks before the evidence is in. You’re all cruising for a lawsuit when the Kellers come out innocent.”
Heads lowered and people shuffled away, all except the blabbermouth, who turned toward the microphone, hunting another two seconds of fame. The reporter darted past him, microphone extended toward Darlene.
“What do you know about the recent incidents in Ellington?”
Darlene glared toward the camera. “I know what kind of folks the Kellers have always been. More good-hearted people you couldn’t hope to find. Whoever hurt that baby, it wasn’t them. And if I ever hear who hurt Jan, I wouldn’t mind schooling them at the end of my cane.” She turned and disappeared into her shop.
The reporter faced the camera, gaze alight. “As you can see, emotion runs high in the citizens of the little town of Ellington over the discovery of the remains of the Rose Garden Baby and subsequent events, including a violent attack on the woman whose backyard served as a burial ground and the fire that destroyed her downtown shop.”
The reporter babbled on, advising viewers to tune in to future newscasts for breaking developments. Nicole jammed her thumb on the remote button, and the television went dead. Too bad she couldn’t turn off the echoes of those cruel voices in her head so easily. Thank goodness for decent people like Darlene Hooper.
The phone rang, but inertia held Nicole on the couch. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. But what if it was the hospital with news about her grandmother? Nicole sprang up and scurried to the phone on the entry table.
“Hello?” Her greeting came out rather breathy.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I? You sound like you’ve been exercising.” It was Rich.
“No, that’s all right. I thought maybe it was the hospital calling about Grandma.”
“Just me. I—um… Well, I was just wondering if you watched—”
“Yes, I saw the news broadcast.”
Rich let out a sound akin to a growl. “I wasn’t sure whether to call or not. If you hadn’t seen it, I didn’t want to bring unnecessary hurt. But then I figured you’d probably watch the news, if not now, then tomorrow sometime. They’re likely to reair that segment. Juicy, you know. Anyway—” he huffed a long breath “—I just wanted to tell you not to pay any attention to Ralph Reinert. He hangs with the wild crowd around Mason Elling.”
“Ralph’s a bit old for that bunch, isn’t he?”
“No one else will put up with his sophomoric behavior. To put it bluntly, he’s known around town as a loudmouth. His opinion doesn’t count for much.”
Nicole traced her finger through dust on the entry table. She’d let her grandmother down already, not keeping the place up. The inane thought passed through her brain then she swatted it away. “I could tell this Ralph guy was a lot more talk than intelligence, but there are obviously folks who agree with him.”
“Every gasbag has his following.”
A tiny titter left Nicole’s mouth. “Thanks. You did manage to cheer me up. Some anyway.”
Her heart wouldn’t be in her laugh until he told her he’d caught the perp who killed a baby, and that it was neither of her grandparents.
Rich hunkered down in his police unit, gaze scanning the display area and parking lot of the second implement company in town. The dealership sat on the north edge of the city next to open fields. For camouflage, Rich had parked in the far end of the lot near some used machinery. Between him and the customer parking area lay a wide strip of grass that could use the services of one of the mowers he was guarding.
A yawn overtook him, and he shook sleep fumes from his head then sucked a mouthful from his coffee mug. The bitter, lukewarm brew hit his throat like sludge, but he forced it down. No way was he going to conk out on this impromptu, one-man stakeout. If the equipment thieves went after one implement dealership, they could well go after the other. But would it be tonight? Sometimes cop work was simply playing a hunch.
Rich had taken the task on by himself and on the sly because his police force was getting spread mighty thin between extra drive-bys at the Keller home, increased patrols downtown following the fire and the continued burglaries. He was pulling a double shift, but catching the larcenous outfit would be well worth the loss of a little shut-eye. Besides, tomorrow—well, today, actually, was his day off, and he could grab extra z’s.
So far, the area around the dealership remained peaceful. Tractors and combines sat illuminated by three tall yard lights. The smaller equipment, like lawn mowers and garden tillers, hunkered in the shadows next to the building.
Rich checked his watch—4:00 a.m. If nothing happened soon, he’d hang it up for the night. The sun wouldn’t peek over the horizon for another couple of hours, but the night sky was already graying. A predawn breeze wafted through the partially open driver’s-side window, carrying a whiff of ripe alfalfa from a nearby field and a faint noise that hadn’t been there before.
Was it the sound of tires creeping across gravel?
Rich stiffened, gaze sifting through the darkness for something out of place. Sure enough. The outline of a pick-up and trailer took shape on the approach from the county road near the side of the building. There was no reason for the owner or an employee to enter the area from that direction, and certainly not at this hour. Rich held himself still, watching, cautioning himself to patience. The perps needed to make a move on the equipment before he nabbed them.
Two dark-clad figures, shadows in the dimness, approached a riding lawn mower. A sharp snap announced the chain anchoring the mower’s wheels had been sliced with a bolt cutter. The pair began guiding the mower to the rear of the trailer.
Gotcha!
Rich picked up his radio and quietly told the dispatcher to send backup. Then he flipped on his lights and bleeped his siren. The perps went rigid. The saying “deer in the headlights” could have been written just for them. Ski masks and Western-style duster coats cloa
ked their identities, but Rich would know soon enough.
He climbed out of his unit and stood behind his door, gun drawn. “Hands in the air. Don’t move a muscle.”
The perps complied with the hand raising, but their heads swiveled away from him. Movement near the pickup caught his eye. A flame flickered and caught, as if someone had lit a giant candle. Then the flame sailed through the air. Glass shattered on impact with a nearby piece of equipment, and fire exploded. Rich dived into his vehicle. The cuts on his back from the incident at the shop pulled and stung. A wave of sharp heat chased him then ebbed to steady warmth. Being flash-broiled was getting old.
Rich sat up. The night bloomed with fire in the grass in front of his vehicle. Doors slammed and tires squealed as the thieves roared away. Rich peeled out backward away from the fire, then skirted the blaze, and shot toward the county road, but the pickup and trailer had disappeared.
Derek, who was on night duty, arrived to back him up a few minutes too late, and then the volunteer fire department turned out to douse the grass fire. The sky had lightened to pewter, and the turf still smoldered by the time Terry pulled up. He climbed out of his black-and-white, eyes bleary and bloodshot. Rich gave him a sharp look.
“Short night, early call-out,” the man clipped in response.
Tell me about it. Rich kept the thought to himself. “Apparently, our equipment thieves know how to make Molotov cocktails.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“This look like a joke?” Rich jerked a thumb toward the smoking grass.
“So these guys bombed the sewing shop, too.”
“Looks like it.”
“Should give us more evidence to piece together if it’s the same perps.”
“You’d think, but unless they got careless this time, and there are fingerprints or some other evidence on the glass shards, we’re pretty much still at square one. I didn’t even get a make or model on the vehicle, though the trailer was a flatbed with low sides.”
Terry snorted. “About a dime a dozen around here.”
“You got it.” Rich pointed toward the gravel approach the thieves had used. “You’re our best tire specialist. See what you can do about finding a clear set of tread marks. Maybe they’ll match what we found at the other implement dealership.”
“Will do, Chief.” Terry strode past his boss.
A heavy dousing of Old Spice tweaked Rich’s nostrils. Terry obviously hadn’t had time to shower due to the emergency call-out. Which woman’s cologne was his deputy trying to cover up this time?
Rich went over to Derek. “Look into the whereabouts of Ralph Reinert the evening of the fire at the shop and also this morning. He’s been way too vocal about the Kellers to suit me, and he’s just the sort of knothead who’d think of lifting small equipment as a sideline career.”
“I’m on it.” The young cop jerked a nod.
“And I’m heading for the sack. We won’t be locking up any thieves today.”
“Well, maybe you scared them enough they’ll lay off for a while.”
“I hope not. They need to keep at it so we can catch them.”
Derek pursed his lips. “Funny the local grapevine hasn’t caught wind of anyone bragging or letting a careless word slip. It’s hard to keep anything under wraps in a small town like this.”
“Keep the feelers out there.” Rich walked away, frowning.
The kid had a point. Usually, it wasn’t much of a challenge to get information on penny-ante drug dealers or shoplifters, but no one seemed to know a thing about these thefts. And the identity of the thieves wasn’t the only secret well guarded around here. Something terrible had happened in the Elling mansion years ago. He’d stake his badge on it. And the kidnapping was the tip of the iceberg.
What had Goody Hanson meant about “those poor women”? Nicole interpreted the statement to mean the hardships of the Elling wives over the decades. Rich had checked her research, and she was spot on. Henry the Eighth didn’t have much on the Elling men. But the context of Goody’s outburst smacked of a specific reference to when Derek’s grandmother worked for the Ellings. What did the old woman know, and why couldn’t she speak of it without tipping off her rocker?
Rich shuddered. A part of him didn’t want to probe the darkness and find the answer. But even an ugly truth was better than a beautiful lie that protected the guilty and wounded innocents like Nicole. Even if the facts proved one or both of her grandparents guilty in that infant’s death, wouldn’t the knowledge be easier to bear than forever wondering?
ELEVEN
After a short night’s sleep, disturbed by every creak and groan of the old house, Nicole was unable to stay in bed past the first birdsong. She found the insurance policy on the shop shortly after sunup in a stack of papers removed during the police search from a drawer in her grandmother’s china hutch. She read the name of the agency and smacked her forehead. Of course, Grandma would take her coverage through the bank where Grandpa Frank worked his way up from teller to president.
Nicole flopped onto the couch, wiped out before the day hardly began. Now that she knew who to contact about the insurance, she needed the official word to go ahead and have the debris cleared up. She pulled out her cell and punched in Rich’s number. The connection started to ring and she gasped. What was she thinking? It wasn’t even 6:30 a.m. Rich must be sleeping. She started to close her phone but his crisp voice answered on the first ring.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Rich,” she burst out. “I shouldn’t have called so early. Did I wake you up? You certainly sound chipper.”
He let out a dry chuckle. “Chipper? No. Awake? Yes. I haven’t been to bed yet. I just got home from a crime scene.”
Nicole groaned. “Another robbery?”
“Attempted. They got away when one of them chucked a Molotov cocktail at me.”
“Are you hurt?” Nicole’s throat tightened.
“Not a scratch or a singe. More than I can say for the other evening outside your grandmother’s shop.”
“Does this mean that these thieves are responsible for what happened there?”
“It’s a pretty strong connection.”
“Maybe they stole sewing machines and then burned the place to hide the crime.” Several beats of silence answered her. “You don’t think theft was involved?”
“I can’t rule it out, but stealing household appliances hasn’t been among their interests. But to eliminate the possibility, have the crew you hire for cleanup check to see if the remains of sewing machines are among the debris.”
Nicole ran her fingers through a rat’s nest of bed hair that she hadn’t combed out yet this morning. “Cleanup is what I was calling about. Do I have your permission to get it done?”
“The sooner the better. That kind of wreckage is a hazard to the public.”
“I’ll get something going as soon as possible then.”
“Have you called a security company about wiring the house for intruders?”
“Done,” she assured him, “but they’re not sure how soon they’ll get here.”
“I’ll call and jack them up a bit. See if it’ll get faster action for you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
They ended the call. The concern in Rich’s voice touched Nicole’s heart. Then again, maybe she should set no store by it. He might be mostly thinking about his staff that could ease up on the extra drive-bys after the house had a security system. It would be best to interpret the note of caring in his tone as impersonal. After all, she and Rich could never be anything more than friends. For the sake of her own sanity she should probably keep her distance from him. Hard to do when this case kept throwing them together.
Gusting a long breath, Nicole stretched out on the couch. She could afford to relax for a few minutes. It was too early to call anyone about insurance or cleanup anyway.
She stirred awake to the neighbor’s dog barking. How long had she slept? Nicole lifted her head and looked at the wall cl
ock. Yikes! She’d been totally zonked for more than three hours. It was after nine. She sat up and stretched. But the z’s had sure felt good.
A quick call to the hospital yielded the usual report. Jan Keller was stable, but still comatose. Next, Nicole called the insurance agency at the bank. The agent was warm and sympathetic. He even recommended an excavation crew. But after a ten-minute conversation, she closed the connection with her stomach dropped somewhere near her toes. Grandma had insured the shop, all right, but at a rate that might have replaced the business twenty-five years ago. The payout would nowhere near cover reopening the business at today’s costs.
“I’m so sorry,” the agent had said. “I kept recommending that Jan increase her coverage, but she didn’t want to pay a higher premium.”
Nicole had assured the man that she didn’t hold him responsible for her grandmother’s decisions. She didn’t add that she understood his frustration with her stubborn, frugal grandmother. Now the store might never be rebuilt. Grandma would be devastated. And that wasn’t all. She was devastated. Nicole hadn’t realized quite how deeply she was emotionally invested in her idea for a machine embroidery business. There had to be a way!
Nicole sat down at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and her checkbook calculator. Twenty minutes of noodling and doodling later, she sat back with a smile. The dream might still come true. She’d have to deplete her husband’s pension and the life insurance benefits she’d socked away, but she’d end up owning a large share of the business outright. Grandma could still have her yard goods and sewing notions, and maybe…hopefully—oh, please, God!—they could both be happy in a symbiotic setup.
There was a lot to do between then and now. Nicole picked up her cell phone and called the number the insurance agent had given her for the excavation company. They agreed to start at the shop tomorrow. Now she could use the rest of the day to work on setting the house to rights. Her stomach let out a yowl. First things first. A little sustenance. She went to the refrigerator. Pretty slim pickings. She took out the milk, sniffed it, and made a face. Sour. A trip to the grocery store was in order.
Jill Elizabeth Nelson Page 11
