by Lauren Carr
Helen braced for meeting the federal agent from Washington DC. She saw a smile cross Chris’s face as he made his way across the ice to the driver’s door and opened it. “Patterson, what have you been up to?” he asked as he grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open.
“Oh, not much,” Agent Regina Patterson replied in a pleasant tone.
Seeing his former boss’s bulging stomach, Chris’s eyes opened wide and he let out a loud gasp, followed by a laugh. “You’ve been busy, Chief.”
He grasped her arm to help her climb out of the SUV and wrapped an arm around her thick waist to steady her on the ice.
Helen hurried across the ice to take her other arm to keep the pregnant woman from falling. When Chris started to guide her to the barn, Regina asked, “Is there a bathroom in there?”
When Chris answered that there wasn’t, she replied, “Then take me to the house. This baby likes to sit on my bladder.”
Doris, who had been watching through the kitchen window, met them at the door and ushered the agent to the guest bathroom. By the time Special Agent Regina Patterson returned to the kitchen, Doris had put a tea kettle on and set a platter of cookies on the table. She had also sent her granddaughters to the family room to watch a movie to allow them to discuss the case in private.
“What are you doing out here on an inch of ice eight months pregnant?” Chris asked his former boss while she poured honey into her tea.
“What are you doing with a dead mobster on your farm?”
“What was the cause of death?” Helen asked. “I didn’t see any gunshot or knife wound.”
“He did have a blow to the side of the head,” Regina said. “But even on-scene, the forensics people don’t think that was serious enough to kill him.”
“I saw bits of manure and straw on his coat and shoes,” Chris said.
“And you have a barn and horses,” Regina said with an arched eyebrow.
“Yeah, well,” Chris said, “just the presence of the manure and straw is significant because Tommy suffered from allergies. He was basically allergic to mammals.”
Helen and Regina exchanged glances.
Chris gestured at the dogs lined up along the French doors. They were peering out at the birds gathered around the feeders. Even Thor, perched between Sterling’s front paws, was watching the show. “Tommy couldn’t come into this room without an inhaler and antihistamine.”
“You’re saying that he wouldn’t willingly go into a horse stable,” Helen said.
“Not unless he had a damn good reason.”
“When was the last time you saw Tommy?” Regina asked.
Thinking, Chris shrugged his shoulders. “Close to twenty years ago? Back when I knew him, he was with the Krawford organization.”
Regina nodded her head. “Still is from what little I was able to find out before running out here. Eugene Krawford passed away six years ago. His eldest son, Boris, is now running things—which we believe will make it easier to pin a RICO charge on him. Morale is at a low point in the organization, and Boris is not one bit afraid of killing any one who threatens his criminal enterprise.”
“Chris listed the types of things the Krawfords were into,” Helen said. “Mostly white collar. What would one of their people be doing here?”
“Tommy loved to gamble,” Chris said.
“He was included in the inner circle of the Krawford Enterprise,” Regina said. “Loved to flash money and brag about being a big shot.”
“He was brilliant when it came to computers and information technology,” Chris said, “but he lacked what my dad used to call horse sense. I’m willing to bet he got mixed up into something he shouldn’t have at the casino.”
“His credit card indicates that he was gambling at the casino,” Regina said. “The last sign of activity on his account was checking out of the Stardust Hotel Monday morning.”
“If he liked to gamble, he could have gone to the racetrack, and that’s where he got the manure and straw on his shoes,” Helen said. “There’s a lot of shady characters who hang out at the track. That’s an expensive coat he was wearing. Maybe he got mugged.”
“That would explain why he had no wallet, identification, or cell phone on him,” Regina said. “He could have been gambling at the racetrack and gotten killed during a robbery gone wrong. The perps hid his body in a stall until they could dump it. That would explain the manure and straw. What do you think, Chris?”
Instead of answering, his brows were furrowed in deep thought.
“Chris?” Helen touched his arm.
Startled, he jumped in his seat.
“Are you still with us, Matheson?” Regina asked.
“You said Tommy was gambling at the casino and staying at the hotel,” he said. “He checked out Monday morning?”
“Yes, that is pretty much what I said verbatim.”
“Last night, a woman was murdered at the department store in town,” Chris said. “She’d gotten a DUI the day before, which would be Monday. She offered the police information about a murder in exchange for a deal. She hung out at the casino. She could have seen or heard something in connection with Tommy’s murder.”
“What exactly did she offer the police?” Regina asked.
“We’ll have to ask the deputy sheriff,” Helen said. “His name is Rodney Bell.” She saw Chris cringe at the prospect of bringing Rodney into the case.
“Let’s plan on meeting with him tomorrow.” Regina drained her cup of tea. “We should have a positive ID on the body by then.” She closed the notepad on which she had been taking notes and stood. “If the facts of the two murders show a connection, then we’ll go over to the casino and—Augh!”
Chris and Helen leapt out of their chairs to help the woman clutching her stomach. Doris ran in from the main part of the house.
“Chief! Are you okay?” Chris asked.
Uttering a deep gut wrenching groan, she said, “I think I’m having a baby.” She doubled over and let out a scream.
Sadie and Mocha whirled around and retreated from the kitchen with their tails tucked tightly between their legs.
While Chris and Helen stood frozen in shock, Doris ushered Regina toward the breakfast nook while snapping orders like a drill sergeant. “Don’t just stand there with your hands in your pockets, Chris. Pull the table out of the booth to make room. Helen, call emergency and order an ambulance.”
“But there’s an inch of ice outside,” Helen said while fumbling with the case to get her cell phone out, “and my car is blocking the driveway.”
“Then they’ll have to bring the gurney up the hill,” Chris said.
“How far along are you?” Doris asked Regina in a surprisingly calm tone.
“I’m not due for three weeks,” she said between gasps.
“That makes your baby one of those go-getter types,” Doris said. “That’s good. Chris was a month late, and I had to push him all through life. I have a friend whose baby was three weeks early, and he ended up being a type A—graduated top of his class a year early and went to West Point.” She patted Regina on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry. Your baby couldn’t be in safer hands. So you just sit back and relax and we’ll take care of everything.”
She turned to Chris. “What are you standing around for? Go get the truck and tow those cruisers out of the way and put more salt on the lane.”
“What do you want me to do, Doris?” Helen hoped Doris would order her outside to help Chris.
“Stay on the phone with dispatch.” Doris turned her attention back to Regina. “I’m just going to check on my granddaughters and get a blanket for you. I’ll be gone two minutes. If you need anything, Helen will be right here.”
As Doris hurried out of the room, Regina uttered a deep sigh of relief. “Wow. If I was going to go into early labor, I guess this was the place to do
it. What does Chris’s mother do? Is she a nurse?”
“She’s a librarian,” Helen said.
Regina wrapped both arms around her stomach.
“It’s okay. She reads a lot.”
Chapter Ten
The slimmest sunbeam poked through the curtains of Chris’s bedroom window. His cell phone started buzzing and vibrating on the nightstand next to his bed. He lifted his head from the pillow and saw that he needed to stretch across two life forms to reach it—Emma and Sterling.
Forget it. Too early for so much effort.
He dropped back onto the bed and waited for the buzzing to stop—which it eventually did. Closing his eyes, he drifted back to his dream—at which point the phone demanded his attention again.
“Damn it.” Chris stretched across the bodies to snatch the phone from the nightstand. He didn’t recognize the number listed on the caller ID.
The time was twenty minutes after six in the morning. He had been looking forward to sleeping in since the schools were still closed due to the ice-covered roads.
He punched the screen to connect the call and put the phone to his ear. “What?”
“Why didn’t you tell us that someone knocked off Ethel Lipton?”
Still waking up, Chris paused to put a name to the familiar voice. “Elliott?”
“I vouched for you to get you on the team. Keeping pertinent information to yourself makes you look like a lone wolf. There’s no place for lone wolves on the Geezer Squad.”
A draft across his neck made Chris shiver. “What the—”
“Jacqui thinks she found Sandy Lipton.”
“Are you kidding me?” Every bit of sleep left Chris’s body. He sat up straight in his bed. In doing so, he pulled the blankets off Emma and Sterling.
“Do you know where Billie’s is in Ranson?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Meet us at Billie’s at seven.” Elliott ended the call.
Sterling reached over, grabbed a mouthful of the comforter and plopped back with the blanket covering Emma and himself. She wrapped her arms around the German shepherd and buried her face into his fur. Chris noticed then that there were three bodies in bed with him—Emma, Sterling, and Thor. The bunny was tucked in between her friends on top of the blankets.
Chris tossed the phone onto the end table and climbed out of bed. As soon as his bare feet hit the hardwood floor, he jerked them back up. The floor was freezing. There was a chill in the air. A quick glance at the electric clock confirmed his first suspicion.
The power was off.
Ah, man!
Chris found his mother starting a fire in one of the house’s three working fireplaces. One fire was already going in the dining room’s fireplace. He was thankful that he had filled the firewood bin on the back porch as soon as the weather bureau had predicted the ice storm. Nothing was more miserable than hauling firewood from the wood pile during bad weather.
Billie’s Restaurant had been located on a street corner across from Ranson’s city hall. Ranson was a tiny town next to Charles Town.
Good on food, short on atmosphere, it was a favorite diner for local folks. Chris had seen the building boarded up and assumed it had closed. Obviously, the diner had moved to another location since the Geezer Squad was meeting there. The best source for finding their new location was Doris Matheson.
After reporting that Billie’s had relocated into a shopping center across from the post office, Doris followed her son into the mudroom. “You’re going out for breakfast?” she asked when she saw him putting on his coat and boots.
“I’m meeting Elliott and—” Realizing how strange it would sound to be meeting his book club for breakfast on such short notice, Chris stopped. “Elliott. He called and asked if I’d like to meet him for breakfast.”
“Elliott?” Doris clasped her chest. Even Sadie and Mocha were cocking their heads at him. Three pairs of eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Why not?”
His quick response gave her reason to pause, but not long enough for him to make his escape. “You do know the power is out?”
With a nod of his head, Chris responded that he did. “Do we have enough milk, bread, and toilet paper? I can stop in town if we don’t.”
“Yes, but you know those girls are going to have fits when they realize that we don’t have cable or wi-fi.”
“Which is why I’m leaving before they wake up,” Chris said with a wicked grin.
“And you’re leaving me here alone with them?”
He grasped her shoulders. “Mom, no one is better in a crisis than you. I saw you practically deliver a baby yesterday.”
“I did not deliver a baby,” Doris said. “I only calmed three hysterical law enforcement officers highly trained to handle emergencies until the ambulance got here. And don’t think I didn’t notice you taking an extremely long time to clear that lane, which you conveniently didn’t finish until just when the EMTs arrived. Even after the ambulance got here, you hid in the barn until after they took Regina away in the ambulance.”
“I was being thorough in salting the driveway.”
“And all of that was for what? False labor.”
“Do you think Patterson wanted to go into false labor out here? She just landed a big case—one that can make her career if we can prove the Krawford family had something to do with Bukowski’s murder. Now she’s bedridden until she has the baby.”
“You get along with her, don’t you?” Doris asked. “Can you trust her to not frame you like Rodney Bell is probably going to try to do for Ethel Lipton’s murder? From what you told me about this Tommy Bukowski, someone with a grudge against you could spin it to make it seem like you whacked him. They could say you saw him around town and decided to get even with him for getting one of your witnesses killed.”
“And left his body on our property for me to find? That would be just a little bit stupid.”
“Or just a little bit genius depending on how you look at it.”
“Regina Patterson does respect my experience and skills,” Chris said. “Plus, she’s fair enough to keep me in the loop during her investigation, which is why I agreed to help her while she’s bedridden.”
“I knew you’d find some way to worm your way into this case,” she said. “Is Regina still at Jefferson Medical? If the power doesn’t come on soon, I’ll take the girls in for breakfast and we can stop by to visit her.”
“No, she’ll be gone,” Chris said. “Her husband was going to take her home as soon as they released her. He’s a nice guy. Helen and I waited around at the hospital last night until he got there. She’ll be working remotely from her bed. Speaking of Helen, why didn’t you tell me that she’d moved back here?”
“I did.”
“Did not.”
“Did so.” Her hands were on her hips. “It was the Friday after Sierra started working at the library and Helen came in to pick her up.” She wagged her finger at him. “I told you at dinner that night.”
“Mom, I’d remember if you’d told me that Helen Lawson had moved back here.”
“We were eating tuna casserole, and you said, ‘Uh-huh.’”
“That explains it.” He wrapped his scarf around his neck.
“What?”
“We were having your tuna casserole,” he said. “I was obviously too traumatized to notice what you’d said.”
“Stop being a smart ass. I told you that Helen Clarke has moved back, and you said, ‘Uh-huh.’”
“Her name was Helen Lawson.”
“Her name is Helen Clarke.”
“Now,” Chris said. “Back when we were dating, it was Helen Lawson. When you told me that Helen Clarke had moved back here, I had no idea who you were talking about.”
“If you didn’t know who I was talking about, why didn’t you ask me?”
> “Because I didn’t care.” He zipped up his coat.
She folded her arms across her chest. “If you didn’t care, why are you upset now?”
“I’m not upset.”
“If you’re not upset, why are you beating my chops about not telling you that your first love had come home.”
With a low growl, he yanked open the door—allowing a sharp breeze through the mudroom that sent Sadie retreating into the kitchen.
“Don’t forget your hat! You’ll catch your death of cold!”
With a sigh, he reached through the doorway to snatch his knit hat from the coat hook.
Power company service trucks were all over town. With the temperature still in the single digits, the heavy ice had taken its toll on many tree branches—causing them to snap and take down power lines.
Chris found that the power was on in Charles Town and its neighboring town of Ranson, which proved to be a very good thing. Many residents drove into town to get breakfast. The roads were busy with cars, SUVs, and trucks—all filled with folks in search of some place to stay while waiting out the power outage.
Billie’s was packed. Chris only counted two servers, who looked exhausted from trying to take care of the unusually large crowd.
It was Chris’s first time at the new location, but he quickly saw that the atmosphere hadn’t changed. The restaurant had its regular crowd—mostly local residents who knew each other. Patrons would greet each other with handshakes and pats on the back. The servers seemed to know each customer by name and would take time for a friendly conversation while taking orders.
Chris found Elliott, Jacqui, and Francine occupying a table tucked in a corner away from everyone.
“Sit right here, my hunk of beefcake.” Francine patted the chair next to her. “Because when you find out what we’ve uncovered, you’re going to want to kiss someone and I want that someone to be me.”
As Chris took his seat, he noticed that each of them had a copy of a recently released thriller book resting next to their place setting.
