Reed Ferguson Mystery Box Set 5

by Renee Pawlish

  “Look!” Deuce almost shouted.

  We all turned to him, surprised.

  “What?” I asked.

  He pointed at his target, which was swinging from its track. “I hit the body.”

  We crowded around and studied the target. Sure enough, there was one hole in it, just at the inner edge of the outline.

  “How about that,” Willie said. “Good job, Deuce.”

  He smiled shyly.

  “I know I can hit it,” Ace said.

  “I’m sure you can,” Willie said.

  “You gotta watch me,” Ace told her.

  She grinned at me, and then spent the next fifteen minutes observing the Goofballs practice. She was finally able to break away and practice herself when I said I’d take a turn watching the brothers.

  Then Willie showed me her final target.

  “Look, they all hit the body,” she said.

  I arched my eyebrows. “Lucky shots?”

  She frowned at me. “It must be your gun,” she said to me.

  “Right, that must be it.”

  She leaned over and kissed me. “I think you owe me a dinner.”

  “I do?”

  “Uh-huh. You said you’d take me to a nice dinner after you finished your case.” She leaned closer. “And maybe we can have some fun after that.”

  “Ace, Deuce,” I called to the brothers. “Time to go!”

  “Aw, man,” they both said. “We’re having fun.”

  I winked at Willie. “That’s what I want later.”

  Ace looked puzzled. “Huh?”

  I waved for them to wrap up. “Never mind. I’ll take you guys home.” I glanced at Willie. “And I’ll take you to dinner, okay? Somewhere nice, and we can get a bottle of wine. And then we’ll go home and….” I winked again.

  She laughed. “Only thinking about one thing.”

  I shrugged. What can I say? I’m a guy.

  Turn the page to keep reading Small Town Focus, Reed Ferguson mystery book 14!

  Small Town Focus

  The Reed Ferguson Mystery Series, Book 14

  Chapter One

  She got right to the point. “I think my father might have killed my mother.”

  That wasn’t what I’d expected to hear. “Why do you say that?”

  She frowned. “I guess that’s not the best way to start the conversation.” Gina Smith was a petite woman with light brown hair that cascaded down her shoulders and long bangs that covered a high forehead. She was dressed in denim shorts, a striped blouse, and sandals, but her demeanor was anything but casual. She let out a little nervous laugh. “Something odd is going on.”

  “I’m going to need a little more.”

  “I know.” She sat back, drew in a breath, and let it out slowly. “When I told Willie I wanted to talk with a private investigator, I didn’t think it would be so hard to actually do.”

  I’m Reed Ferguson, the private investigator she was addressing. Gina Smith is a nurse, and a coworker of my wife, Willie – real name Willemena. It was a hot Wednesday morning in late August, and Gina and I were sitting outside at the Starbucks on the Sixteenth Street Mall. It is in the heart of downtown Denver, and since I no longer have an office, it is the perfect place to meet clients: easy to find, public, and I find that sitting with a Starbucks drink seems to relax people, despite all that caffeine.

  “It’s okay, I don’t bite.” I smiled to ease her tension.

  “What did Willie tell you?”

  “Just that you were raised by your dad, you never knew your mother, and you have some questions about your past that you want to talk to someone about.”

  She sipped an iced café latte, leaving a smudge of pink lipstick on the rim of the glass. “That’s true.” She fiddled with the glass for a moment and then began. “I’m an only child. According to my father, my mother left us when I was a few weeks old. We moved to Colorado shortly after that, and he raised me by himself.”

  “He never remarried?”

  “No.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Russell, Kansas, in 1985.”

  I’d passed through Russell, a long time ago, as I drove east on Interstate 70 on my way to college in Boston. The most I knew about Russell was that former senator Bob Dole hailed from there.

  “Has your father ever said why your mother left?”

  She shrugged. “He’s been very vague, and said that she was unhappy, and she had some problems. I always wondered if it was because of me, but whenever I brought up something like that, Dad would vehemently tell me that wasn’t the case. But…” Her lip trembled, and she cleared her throat. “If she’d recently given birth to me, and she was unhappy, how could her leaving not have been because of me? Having a baby is life-changing. I know; I have a son, Ethan.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight. He’s a good kid. I’m divorced, but my ex has been a great dad, really involved in Ethan’s life. I can’t imagine abandoning my son like my mother did me. But maybe she had postpartum depression, or something like that. That could’ve caused her to leave.”

  “What does your dad say about that?”

  “It’s a touchy subject, but when I’ve asked questions, he tells me that the past is in the past, that he loves me enough for both of them, and that I should let it go.”

  I studied her for a few seconds. “But you’ve had a hard time doing that.”

  “Yes. Dad doesn’t even have a picture of my mother, let alone anything that belonged to her. And he never even told me her name. I only found out what her name was two days ago. But I’ll get to that in a second. I figure I should give you the background stuff first.”

  I was tempted to interrupt her here, but she was on a roll, so I decided to just let her keep talking.

  “It’s like he cut her completely out of his life, so she’s a complete mystery to me, and that’s always made it hard. I have an intense desire to know more about her, to know what she looked like, what things made her who she was, and what made her tick.”

  “And what made her leave.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. She took another drink, and stared at me with intense brown eyes.

  “This is all intriguing,” I said, then hesitated. “But I still don’t see why you think your father may have killed your mother.”

  “Let me explain.” Two women sat down at a table nearby, so Gina leaned closer to me. “Here’s the thing. I was never able to research anything about my mother because I didn’t even know her name. But I’ve looked up Dad, thinking that might help me locate her, and I can’t find anything on him. He told me one time that he was born in Boston, but I can’t find any birth records that might be his, or family history. Nothing.”

  “How thorough a search did you do?”

  She shrugged. “Some internet searches, and I went to some genealogy sites. But with my job and being a single parent, I’m constantly running Ethan somewhere, or taking care of something for him. I don’t have a lot of time to do research, and it’s not easy.”

  I mulled that over. “Has your dad ever talked about his childhood?”

  “He said he was born in Boston, and grew up near Deerfield, but I can’t find any school records, or an old address for him. He worked at a mill in Deerfield, but he wouldn’t tell me the name.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “He just wouldn’t, even when I pushed him. I looked up mills in that area, but there aren’t any.” She shrugged. “It’s like he only existed when we came to Colorado.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Witness protection program?”

  “If that was true, don’t you think the government would’ve told me by now, since I’d be in the program, too?”

  “Probably, unless there’s some reason to keep you in the dark.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her brow furrowed. “It’s like Dad made up his past.”

  “You’ve asked him about it?”

&n
bsp; “Yes. He just jokes that he was a hell-raiser at school, and then he dropped out. When I pressed him on it, he just told me to let it go. He doesn’t ever talk about that part of his life, only things that happened once we came to Colorado.”

  “Does he have family?”

  “If there is, I don’t know of them. He says he was an orphan.”

  “Who raised him?”

  “He stayed in an orphanage and then started working when he was twelve, and lived on his own.”

  “Let me guess, he won’t give you the name of an orphanage, and there’s no record of any orphanages in Deerfield.”

  She frowned. “Right. It’s possible he stayed at an orphanage in some other city, but he won’t say.” She let out another big sigh. “I should be able to find something on him, but I can’t.”

  “And all this has led you to believe your father murdered your mother and has covered his past by creating some kind of new identity.”

  “That’s part of it.” She turned red. “It sounds preposterous, I know.”

  I didn’t say anything to that, because it did sound unlikely, but I didn’t want to offend her.

  “There’s more,” she said.

  I took a sip of my macchiato, then set my glass down. “I’m listening.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting Dad and I went into the den. The news was on, and the anchor was talking about skeletal remains of a body that had been found in a field east of Denver. Based on the size of the bones, the authorities thought it was probably a woman. You should have seen the look on Dad’s face. He was in shock, just staring at the screen with his jaw open. I spoke to him three times before he noticed I was there, and his face was as white as a ghost. I asked him about the remains, and he snapped at me to shut up.” Pain wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “He never talks to me like that. I asked him why the news was upsetting him, and he told me it was nothing, and he changed the subject. Then, the next time I was there, a few days later, I overheard him on the phone. I have no idea who he was talking to, but he said something about the woman in the field, and about it being taken care of, and she was never supposed to be found. He was furious.” She tapped the table for emphasis. “He was talking about that woman.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We don’t even know if the remains are of a woman, remember? Did you ever find out whose body it was?”

  “As far as I know, she’s still unidentified.”

  “As far as you know.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’ve been watching the news since then, and they brought up the remains a time or two, but I don’t believe they know who it was.”

  “Does your dad know you overheard his conversation?”

  “When he got off the phone, I confronted him, and asked him pointblank who he was talking to, and what the conversation was about. He said I shouldn’t be asking questions if I knew what was good for me. That’s so unlike him, and I finally got mad back. I said if he was hiding something from me that maybe I should look into it myself. He blew up and said I’d better not go prying into the past, that sometimes things need to stay buried.”

  “That’s an interesting thing to say, given the news about the woman in the field.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  I put pieces of her narrative together. “And you think your father had something to do with this woman’s death? If it was indeed a woman?”

  It took her a long time to answer. “What if she was my mother? What if sometime in the past she came looking for him and he killed her?”

  “Why would he murder her?”

  “What if Dad kidnapped me, and my mother found us, and so he had to get rid of her? You see stories like that on TV.”

  I stayed silent for a minute. Gina had observed some odd things in her father’s behavior, and I wondered if she realized that she’d made a lot of suppositions, but she had no facts.

  “That’s a stretch,” I finally said.

  “I know, but it’s possible. I even called the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and asked them about any children who went missing from Kansas around 1985, but nothing seemed to be a match. Then I found out my mother’s name, but that didn’t help.”

  I held up a hand. “The other night?”

  She nodded. “I went over to Dad’s, but he wasn’t home. I … snooped around. I probably shouldn’t have, but because of that woman in the field, and how he responded, I wanted to know if he was hiding something. Turns out he was.”

  She pulled her phone out of a large purse and scrolled to a picture, then showed it to me. It was a decorative birth certificate, an unofficial form given to mothers when they leave the hospital. It listed Gina Louise Madison as the child’s name, and included two tiny footprints and her weight and height. Mother’s present name was listed as Marsha Jenny Madison. Where the father’s name would’ve been listed, it was blank. Russell, Kansas was the city and state.

  “It was hidden in a box in his closet,” she said. “I almost took it, but decided to take a picture instead. I never even knew he had it.” Sadness flashed across her face as she stared at the photo. “That’s my mother.”

  “Does he know you found it?”

  She shook her head. “I almost called him later and asked him about it, but changed my mind. If he has done something wrong, I don’t want to alert him that I’m suspicious. And if this is all in my head, I’d prefer he didn’t know what I did or what I was thinking.” She sighed. “The whole thing’s been eating at me. I can’t get past why he won’t tell me anything, unless he has something to hide. I even asked him that, and he laughed it off.” She stopped and seemed to gather her thoughts. “I want to know what’s going on, and I’m willing to pay you to get to the bottom of all this.”

  I gazed into her pleading face. “Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll look into it.”

  Although her dad had certainly been acting strangely, I doubted there was anything sinister behind his behavior, but it would be easy enough to find out, and put her mind at ease.

  How wrong I was.

  Chapter Two

  I told her my fee and had her sign a contract. As she sipped her drink, I folded the papers and put them into my padfolio.

  “I usually talk to Willie about my cases,” I said. “Are you okay with that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Good.” I started firing more specific questions at her. “What’s your father’s name?”

  “John Smith.”

  I tried not to smirk. “Really?”

  She nodded. “What?”

  “John Smith? How unique.”

  She let out a wry laugh. “I know. Try doing an internet search on that name. Everything is for John Smith the explorer. When you get past all that, there are pages of John Smiths. Even when I narrowed my search down, it was impossible to find anything relevant to Dad.”

  “Narrowed down to what?”

  “Boston, or Deerfield, Massachusetts. Things like that.”

  “What’s his middle name?”

  “He doesn’t have one.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Really?” I repeated.

  She shrugged. “That’s what he says.”

  “If he changed his identity, what better name to choose?”

  She nodded. “I finally gave up my search. I was getting frustrated, and it was taking too much time.”

  I had my phone out and I started typing her answers into a notepad app. “When was he born?”

  “1939. He was older when I was born.”

  I thought for a second. “Have you searched your mother’s name?”

  She nodded. “I first searched just the name, and it came up with thousands of results, so I narrowed the search to Kansas, since that’s where I was born. I found four Marsha Madisons, and I checked them all. Two were too old to be my mother, one had passed away, and another had married a Madison.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “I called them.”

 
; “I see.” I rubbed my chin. “The problem is, they could’ve been lying to you.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And, if we assume the birth certificate is accurate, what if Madison was your mother’s maiden name, and she’s since remarried? Did you find a marriage license?”

  “No, but I haven’t had time to look very much. Maybe I just missed it.”

  “Entirely possible. And what if she didn’t get the license in Kansas?”

  She grimaced. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Also, still assuming Madison was her maiden name, and she grew up in Kansas, were there other records, like school information, or family history that included her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what if there was some kind of conspiracy, or witness protection thing, and her real name wasn’t even used on the birth certificate.”

  She fiddled with her drink glass. “This is going to be hard.”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  She fixed her eyes on me. “There’s got to be a way to find her.”

  I sat back, away from her glare. “There probably is, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, okay?”

  “All right, I’ve been warned.”

  “And if my search is successful, you might not like what I find.”

  “I know. I can handle it.”

  I thought for a second. “What does your dad do?”

  “He’s retired now, but he worked as an accountant.”

  I typed that, and then said, “Where does he live?”

  “A little east of DU.”

  The University of Denver is a private university located near Interstate 25 and Evans Avenue. I used to like the surrounding neighborhoods, but they’d lost some of their charm after many of the older homes were razed and replaced with pricey custom homes that didn’t appeal to me.

  “What’s the address?” I asked.

  “Twenty-one – wait. Why do you want to know?”

  I cocked my head. “I need to talk to him.”

  She shook her head forcefully. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “I can do it in such a way that he doesn’t know what’s really going on.”