by S F Bose
“Raven?” Grandma repeated blankly.
“That’s my nickname,” Raven said quickly.
“I see,” said Grandma and her eyes narrowed. She looked from Raven to me and I smiled.
“We’ll talk later,” I said and she nodded.
***
I led Raven to the other side of the dining room where it was empty. The back of my neck tingled. I could feel Addie and Anna staring at us as we walked away. I picked a table and Raven and I tossed our hats, gloves, and jackets on an empty chair. He wore a black turtleneck sweater over his jeans. I took a chair with my back to my grandmother and great-aunt. I didn’t want them to see my face. Raven sat across from me and we both leaned in.
“Mr. Kearney?” I growled. “You lied to my grandmother?”
Raven’s face colored again. He ran a hand through his thick, red hair.
“I did not lie. That might be my real name.”
“Might be? And what might your real first name be?”
Raven looked uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “Dan. Dan Kearney.”
I rolled it around in my head and thought it was a very ordinary name. “I think Raven fits you better,” I said. He smiled and sipped his tea.
I cleared my throat and said flatly. “I’m not going back to Worldhead, Raven.”
“I suspected as much when we got an employment verification request from a private investigator.” He made a face like he had bit into a lemon when he said “private investigator.”
I just shrugged and drank some coffee. “It’s interesting work. I like it so far.”
“And how exactly do you use your language skills there?”
“I don’t. That’s a part of my past,” I replied. His blue eyes bored into mine and then he sighed.
“I came to tell you that you’re missed. Everyone sends their best.”
I softened a bit. “Tell them all ‘Hi.’ I miss them too.”
“Liz, I know you’re angry with me for sending Nate on that mission. I had no idea that he’d been ill. He never said a word,” Raven said, leaning toward me.
I looked down at my coffee mug. “He wouldn’t. Nate loved what he did. He didn’t want to let you down,” I replied, seeing Nate’s face in my mind’s eye. “But he should have been honest with you.”
“He was a special man and a good friend,” Raven said and his voice broke. I looked up and saw tears in his eyes. Without a word, I reached across and covered his hand with mine.
“I’m sorry, Liz,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “Raven, I was angry with you at first. But it was more my fault than yours that Nate went on the mission. We’d been at home on vacation for a week when he came down with the flu the very first day. He was much better by the time you called, but he was still feeling weaker than usual. He should have turned down the mission, but he wanted to go so badly. I could have argued with him or called you, but I didn’t do either one. He loved going on missions.”
Raven nodded. “Can we move on as friends then?”
I smiled and said, “We definitely can.” Raven’s face lit up.
“There’s one more thing,” he said and reached for his parka. I watched him unzip an inside pocket and remove a legal-sized envelope. “This is for you,” he said and handed it to me.
When I looked at the envelope, my heart stopped. My name was written on the front, in Nate’s unmistakable scrawl.
“You’ll want to read that in private. Nate left you that as a family letter. He didn’t have a chance to change his insurance, so that went to his parents.”
“I’m glad it did,” I said. “Thanks Raven.”
After a few more minutes, I got up and pulled my jacket on. “I have to shower and get to work. But I’m glad we talked.”
“Me too. Would you be free for dinner tonight?” he asked, standing.
“I should be, but I can never tell with this job.”
“I understand. Okay, if I don’t get a call from you by 7:00 p.m. I’ll assume you’re tied up. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds good,” I replied and smiled.
“Liz…”
Raven came around the table and held his arms out. My heart melted. He’d been such a part of my life for four years, but we’d always had a professional relationship. I had never seen this side of him.
I hugged him tightly. He smelled like moss and smoke. I inhaled deeply. When we separated, we both had tears in our eyes.
“Your granny is staring daggers at me,” Raven observed. I didn’t have to turn around to confirm that.
“I’m just wondering if I can blackmail you over your real name,” I replied and he laughed.
I left quickly, waving to Grandma and Nana Anna. I held Nate’s letter tightly as I jogged back to the coach house.
When I went inside, my phone buzzed with a text message. I clicked on Messaging and found a text from Sam, “Meeting set at 4:00 p.m. today with Damian Fletcher.” I smiled. We were taking action! I texted back, “Awesome!”
I ran upstairs and into my bedroom. I propped the letter from Nate up on the nightstand next to my bed. I wasn’t ready to read it yet.
Chapter 24
Sam and I walked up the path to Ben and Mom’s white, two-story farmhouse near Cross Plains. It was -25°F with the wind chill and snowing pretty hard. In warmer months, the property exploded with a wide variety of flowers, berries, and fruit trees. Now, the flowers and vegetation were dormant and snow covered everything.
Trees and shrubbery surrounded the farmhouse, outbuildings, and pastureland. Balsam fir, red pine, and white pine trees were towering sentinels slowly turning white with snow. Ben bought the property years ago for privacy. Both he and Mom loved the old growth wild plum, black walnut, oak, ash, and quaking aspen trees. My favorite was a beautiful weeping willow northeast of the house.
The gusty south wind pushed us up the path toward the house where a Christmas wreath and Christmas lights decorated the front door. Strings of Christmas lights also decorated the screened-in front porch to the right of the front door.
“This is bigger than I expected,” Sam said, shouting over the wind. He stopped and looked out toward the pasture. “Do they grow any crops?”
“No. They have fruit trees, berries, and a small vegetable garden in the spring and summer. Mom grows flowers too,” I replied. “Then they have chickens for eggs and the goats for milk and cheese.”
“Where are the goats?” Sam asked.
“In the barn,” I said over the wind and pointed toward the big, red barn northwest of the house. He nodded and almost looked like he wanted to check them out. I squinted but the increasingly heavy snow obscured the fenced-off pastureland and forest beyond the barn. I couldn’t even see the equipment shed that I knew was next to the barn.
I quickly scanned the rest of the property. “That’s Ben’s laboratory,” I shouted, pointing to a big, one-story building with red siding east of the farmhouse. Sam followed my arm, narrowed his eyes, and nodded.
I nudged him and we continued up the path to the front door. Before we could knock, Mom opened the front door and waved us into the warmth of the farmhouse. She hugged me briefly and gave Sam a tight smile. Ben walked back and forth in the small living room and stopped to look at us.
Mom was 5’2” tall and seemed shorter with the three of us towering over her. Her straight hair, dyed auburn, fell just to her shoulders. Today she wore a short-sleeved blue sweater and black pants. Glasses rode on top of her head. Working around the farm had made her thin frame more muscular and fit. She looked good.
“Why did you stop outside?” she asked.
“I was just pointing out the different parts of your farm to Sam,” I replied.
“In a snowstorm?” asked Ben.
“You have a nice farm,” Sam replied, ignoring the question. “I like the idea of goats.”
We all looked at him and he smiled cheerfully.
“Sam’s more of a city boy,” I said and after a second both Ben and
Mom nodded. City boys could be strange.
Ben walked up to Sam and stuck out his hand. Sam shook his hand and smiled. They introduced themselves. Ben was a grumpy Santa Claus in worn blue jeans, gray tee shirt, and brown jacket. He was 6’2” tall and had big shoulders and a big chest. While his longish, wavy white hair looked wild, his white beard and mustache were neatly trimmed. Dark brown eyes considered us from behind the lenses of his wire rim glasses. A high forehead and Roman nose gave him an aristocratic look. I felt a quiver of doubt. In some ways, he fit Angela Apstead’s description of the man leaving the Emporium.
I felt the tension in the room. Mom was radiating impatience and anxiety. The frown lines between and above her blue eyes were deeper. She compressed her lips as if she was trying to hold back all words. I realized I hadn’t introduced her to Sam.
“Sam Nolan, this is Lilly Bean, my mother,” I said quickly. They shook hands and Mom led us to the dining room. She brought us coffee, tea, and cookies. Sam sipped his tea and smiled across the table at Ben and Mom.
“Can we please get on with this?” Ben asked, sounding irritated. I’d never seen him this stressed out.
“Of course,” Sam agreed. “We’ve done some initial investigating. There are at least two other men with white or gray beards who were at the Emporium the day of the murder. But more importantly, I think if you wait until the ballistics tests are done on the guns the police took, you’ll likely be exonerated...assuming you didn’t shoot Justin Church.”
“I did not,” said Ben sharply.
Mom jumped in. “We don’t want to wait. As I explained to Liz, I don’t trust young Durand as far as I can throw him. We want Ben’s name cleared as soon as possible.” She shot Ben a look and he nodded.
“I also want my guns back,” he added.
Sam nodded. “Okay then. We’d like to run through the events of the day of the murder with you. I know this is repetitive, but we need to hear it from you.”
We had agreed that Sam would handle the main interview. I fished my cellphone out of my pocket, hit the voice recorder button, and put the phone down in the middle of the table. Both Ben and Mom glared at me. I shrugged and pulled out my notebook.
“Ben, where were you and what did you do on Monday, the day of Justin Church’s murder?” Sam asked. Ben took a deep breath and exhaled. Leaning his body forward, he put the palms of his hands down on the table. I immediately noticed there was no bruising on either hand and made a note of that.
“I left the house around 10:00 a.m.,” said Ben. “Had the bike on the car rack and drove over to Dodgeville. From there I hopped on the Military Ridge State trail and rode thirty miles out. I rested for a bit, ate a sandwich and some fruit I brought. Then I rode thirty miles back.”
“Was Mrs. Bean here when you left for your ride?” Sam asked.
“No. Lilly left to go babysit the twins right after breakfast,” Ben replied.
“It was a little after 8:00 a.m.,” Mom added. “And call me Lilly,” she said to Sam. He smiled.
“Okay Ben, when you were on the trail did anyone see you?” Sam asked.
Ben’s white eyebrows arched down as he thought. “I passed some other cyclists. No one I knew.”
“Was the trail clear?” I asked.
Ben smiled for the first time. “Oh yeah, it was nice and clean. Just a little snow on the ground. The limestone surface on that trail made it a good ride.”
“When did you get back?” I asked.
“Around 6:00 p.m.”
“Was Lilly here when you got back?” Sam asked.
“Yes, Lilly was here. She’d taken care of the animals and started dinner.”
Sam nodded. “Okay. So you didn’t talk to anyone the entire trip?”
“That’s kind of the point of riding in the woods by yourself,” Ben said and I smiled.
“Mom, what time did you get home that night?” I asked.
“Around 5:00 p.m.”
“Were you worried that Ben wasn’t home?” I pursued.
Mom pursed her lips. “I was a little worried,” she admitted. “I called him on his cellphone, but the call went to voicemail. Then I figured Ben could take care of himself and went about my chores here.”
My eyes shifted to Ben. “Why did you get back so late?” I asked. I knew the answer but wanted to get it on the record.
He squirmed in his chair and glanced at Mom.
“Tell her,” Mom said.
Ben made a prune face. “I was on my way back to the car when I got a flat tire. Then I found that I didn’t have a patch kit in my pack. To make matters worse, my cellphone battery had died, so I couldn’t call Lilly. I was pissed.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “You were in the woods at night in the dark?”
“It wasn’t dark when I got the flat,” said Ben.
“What did you do?” Sam asked.
Ben looked at Sam and shook his head. “I ran back up the trail with the bike, of course. I figured I’d end up needing a new rim, but I had no choice. I wasn’t going to leave the bike on the trail.”
“How far were you from your car?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. A mile maybe? It wasn’t bad,” Ben said, defensively.
“And nobody saw you running back with your bike?” asked Sam.
Ben shook his head. “No, everybody had cleared out. My car was the only one at the trailhead.”
Sam twirled his pen and looked at his notes. “Okay, you left the house at 10:00 a.m. and returned at 6:00 p.m. That’s eight hours. Can you break the time down for me? Driving time, biking time, eating, and so on.”
Ben looked unhappy. “I don’t know. It was about an hour to drive to the trail and an hour back. My ride time until the tire went flat was four and one half hours. I ate in half an hour. Then the run back to the car with the bike after the flat was about an hour."
“That’s good. Eight hours exactly,” Sam said. “Okay, what guns did Chief Durand take?”
Ben folded his arms on the table and his mouth tightened. “My Walther PPQ and Sig Sauer P226.”
“Do you own any other 9mm pistols?”
“I do not,” Ben replied.
“Can you describe your relationship with Justin Church?”
Ben sat back in his chair and glared at Sam. “We weren’t friends but I didn’t kill him.”
“Tell me about the fight with Justin at the Emporium,” Sam said.
“It wasn’t really a fight,” Mom snapped.
Ben grimaced. “It was just before Christmas. Lilly and I were at the Emporium looking around. Justin saw me and came over. He started talking about a new housing development going up in the country outside of Black Earth. He was for it and I was against it. The discussion got heated. Then Justin started poking me. I told him to back off and when he kept poking me, I stiff-armed him. He saw it coming and jumped back before my hand touched his chest. Peter got between us and told Justin to get to work in the office. I went outside to wait for Lilly. That was it.”
Sam nodded and spun his pen around his middle finger. “No charges filed?”
“None,” said Ben.
“Any other encounters with Justin?” asked Sam.
“Last year we probably had words three or four times. That’s in addition to the dust up at Christmas. Always about land development. He was never physical before though,” Ben replied.
“Justin was different that day,” said Mom. She frowned as she remembered. “He was much more aggressive and loud.” Ben nodded in agreement.
“Had he been drinking?” I asked.
“No, I don’t remember smelling alcohol. But he was definitely more excitable,” Ben said.
“Drugs?” Sam asked.
Ben shrugged and held his hands out palms up. “I have no idea.”
Sam checked the notes he had taken. “Anything else that we should know?”
Ben shook his head and looked at Mom. She shook her head too.
“So what do you think? Can you solve this fast?
” Mom asked.
Sam smiled. “I can’t make any promises about speed, Lilly. We have to go through a kind of tedious process. We identify people we should interview. Track down anything that might be evidence. Look for inconsistencies. It’s sometimes fast and sometimes slow.”
Mom pursed her lips. “I’d like to sit in on the interviews. I’m really good at reading people,” she said. I ducked my head so Sam couldn’t see my smile.
Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lilly, we can’t do that. There are licensing and liability issues involved. This will require patience from both of you. We’ll run the investigation and report back to you weekly.”
“Well then we’ll need daily reports,” said Lilly.
“Our standard is a weekly written report,” Sam said with finality.
Mom looked at Ben and he shrugged. “What else can we do, Sunshine?”
Sunshine? Mom looked miserable. I glanced at Sam who sat with a straight face.
“Okay,” she said finally.
I turned off the voice recorder and renamed the audio file. I’d upload it later to our server and attach it to the case file.
Sam explained the contract to Ben and Mom. They both insisted on reading the entire contract. Periodically, they asked questions which Sam answered. Finally, Ben signed the contract and Mom gave us a retainer check. We were officially on the case!
As we walked back down the path, bent into the snow and wind, I heard Mom shout, “I still want this done as fast as possible.” Sam and I both waved without turning around.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Sam said, as we bent into the wind. I glanced at him. I hadn’t detected any sarcasm. I had to admit that aside from the tension and dark looks, the visit hadn’t been the torture I expected.
“Not too bad,” I agreed. “Did you notice Ben’s hands?”
“Yep. Not a bruise on them,” Sam replied. “He didn’t give Justin a beating. Now we just have to prove Ben didn’t shoot him.”
Chapter 25
When we returned to Mystic Grove, the “Open” sign was in the window of the Emporium. Sam and I decided to talk to Peter and Martha Church.
We walked through the front door, but the Emporium was empty. We stood in the front sales area. Glass display cases filled with antique jewelry, old stamps, watches, memorabilia, and more treasures ran along the perimeter of the room. Behind the cases, old wooden shelving held additional antiques. A cash register sat on top of the last case on the right. Behind the cash register was a door to the Emporium office.
