Poisoned Ground Series, Book 6 Read online

  Tom hefted Marie’s body, a surprisingly heavy dead weight for such a slender woman, and rolled her over. When she dropped onto Dr. Lauter’s waiting hands, her right arm swung wide and struck the doctor on the chest. She gasped and for a second her eyes shone with tears. The county’s part-time medical examiner, a small woman in her late fifties with salt-and-pepper curls, had rushed to the Kelly farm without removing the white coat she wore at the public clinic, and when she’d crouched on the ground to examine Lincoln’s body the coat’s hem had picked up dirt, bits of dried leaves, and streaks of chicken manure.

  “You okay?” Tom asked.

  “Of course. Just—startled.” Blinking away her tears, Dr. Lauter tucked both of Marie’s arms across her midsection. With a tenderness Tom had seldom witnessed from the doctor on the job, she smoothed the dead woman’s gray hair off her face and drew the lids closed over eyes that already looked dry and clouded. “Oh, Marie, you broke your pretty nose,” she whispered, touching a fingertip to a gash and a bulge where the dead woman’s nose had slammed against the edge of a step.

  Tom had to look away, his throat tight. For once he was glad his mother was gone, because she had been spared the grief of her friend’s murder. Forcing down a surge of irrational anger at Dr. Lauter’s emotional display, he drew a deep breath and got his own feelings under control before he turned back to the body.

  The front of Marie’s blouse bore a small circle of blood around a neat entrance wound in her left chest. A single shot had blasted through her chest and out her back. In their search for the slug, Keith Blackwood had spotted a hole in the brown aluminum siding next to the front door, and now the young blond deputy was using a pocketknife to dig out what was left of the bullet.

  Tom and Dr. Lauter stepped back to let Dennis Murray photograph the body. Pushing his glasses up onto his brown hair so he could use the viewfinder, the lanky captain moved around the steps, snapping pictures of Marie face-up, her head pointed toward the ground.

  “She would hate this,” Dr. Lauter murmured. “She would be humiliated.”

  “Hey, Boss,” Keith Blackwood called from the porch. With a gloved hand he held up the small, misshapen slug he’d pried from the wall of the house. “Got it.”

  “Good job. After you log it, see if you can help your brother and Brandon find the slug from Mr. Kelly.”

  Instead of trying to go down the steps past Marie, Keith swung his long legs over the porch railing and jumped into the yard.

  Dr. Lauter pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her white coat and blew her nose. Regaining a brisk, businesslike tone, she said, “I believe Marie was killed by a shot through her heart, or possibly the aorta. If that’s the case, it would have been quick. Instant, or nearly so.”

  A small mercy, Tom thought. “Looks like Lincoln took a little more effort.”

  Dr. Lauter moved farther into the yard, between the steps where Marie lay and the bloody patch of ground where her husband had fallen. “I’m having trouble visualizing what happened here. Lincoln was hit once from the front, once from behind, but which shot came first? Was he on his feet for both? And who was moving, Lincoln or the shooter?”

  Tom scanned the murder scene and stepped sideways a few feet until he thought he had the right position. “My guess is that Lincoln was hit first, in the back, from this angle.” With his hand he indicated the path of the bullet, then the fresh scuff marks on the ground. “I don’t think the first shot knocked him down. I’d say he stumbled but didn’t fall.”

  “Do you suppose he never saw the killer coming?”

  “Either that or they argued and Linc cut it short and started to walk away.”

  “So the shooter was enraged at being dismissed and shot him in the back?”

  “Could be.” Tom nodded as he watched the attack play out in his mind. The only thing he didn’t see was the killer’s face.

  “I think the weapon was a hunting rifle. Marie was in the kitchen cooking, she came out when she heard the commotion, and she probably got hit before she could take it all in. The shooter stood between Marie and Linc, and Linc was trying to reach his wife when he took another round in the chest.”

  “And the second bullet was the one that exited through his back.” Dr. Lauter gestured at the dark stain left behind in the dirt when Lincoln’s body was removed. “The one that killed him.”

  “The slug’s not in the ground there. It exited before he went down, so he was standing when he was hit, and he fell backward.” Thirty feet beyond the spot where Lincoln had collapsed, Brandon and the other Blackwood twin were searching the walls of the chicken house for bullet holes.

  “Then the son of a bitch looked Marie right in the face and murdered her,” Dr. Lauter said. “Can you imagine what that split-second was like for her?”

  Tom didn’t want to imagine it. The sight of his mother’s friend lying dead on her back steps was enough of a memory to carry around. “Any thoughts on who might have had a reason to do this? Any enemies you know of?”

  Dr. Lauter shook her head. “I know Lincoln in particular rankled some people, but you don’t murder anybody because they lectured you about recycling.”

  ”You know it was more than that with him. Marie soft-pedaled it, but Linc was a fanatic about all kinds of things, and his behavior was getting more and more erratic in the last year. The Alzheimer’s, I guess.”

  Dr. Lauter nodded. “Yes, he was deteriorating rapidly. He wasn’t diagnosed until a few months after he retired from the bank, but I think his mental confusion was the reason he stopped working. It took Marie a while to make him see a specialist for evaluation.”

  “I think that explains him raising hell over Jake Hollinger’s fence.” Tom recalled a string of similar incidents with the two neighbors in their early seventies yelling at each other over a section of dismantled post-and-rail fencing. “Hollinger called me out here half a dozen times because Linc kept tearing it down.”

  “I know.” Dr. Lauter pulled her white coat closer around her against the wind’s assault. “Linc got hold of the idea that Jake was trying to steal some of his land. Marie couldn’t reason with him.”

  “He wouldn’t listen to me either. I think Jake was running out of patience. You know, that kind of petty fight grinds away at people. If it keeps up long enough, it starts to seem like the most important thing happening to you.”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting—” Dr. Lauter broke off when Dennis Murray approached.

  Slinging his camera strap over his shoulder, Dennis said, “I’m done here. Want me to get the guys to move her now?”

  Tom nodded and Dennis headed around the house to the driveway, where two funeral home employees waited with the hearse. A deputy would ride with them to Roanoke to deliver the bodies.

  Dr. Lauter picked up her interrupted thought. “You can’t be thinking Jake Hollinger did this, not over a few feet of fence?”

  “That kind of thing matters, Gretchen. And Jake had a legitimate grievance.” Some primal instinct stirred the blood when property was threatened and boundaries disregarded. “How many No Trespassing signs did you pass on your way out here? And how many of them said trespassers would be shot?”

  Dr. Lauter gave a humorless laugh. “Good point. I saw one that was hand-painted, with ‘That means your damned dog too’ added at the bottom.”

  Frowning, Tom swept his gaze over the stand of evergreens along one section of the fence between the two properties. Jake Hollinger could have come through the trees to avoid being seen near the Kelly farm in his truck.

  Dr. Lauter walked over to retrieve her medical bag from the bottom step. “I don’t want to think Jake Hollinger’s capable of doing something like this. I’d rather believe some random nut job came through here and killed these people.”

  “If that’s the case, we’ll probably never catch the shooter. Unless this turns out to be part of
a killing spree. You know as well as I do what the odds are against that. It’s a lot more likely the Kellys were murdered by somebody they knew. Somebody with a personal motive.”

  Tom’s thoughts returned to the unsigned Packard Resorts contract on the kitchen table, pinned down by a knife. Had Lincoln stabbed the papers in a fit of rage at the people who were trying to take his land? Where did the contract place the disputed property line? Tom wanted the prosecutor’s legal opinion on it. He wanted to question Jake Hollinger too. But first he had to find phone numbers for the Kellys’ son and daughter and notify them that their parents had been murdered.

  Chapter Five

  All the way home to the farm where she and Tom lived, Rachel listened to the dog in the backseat whine and paw the window glass. Letting Bonnie stick her head out might distract her, but Rachel didn’t dare lower the window and risk the dog making a break for freedom.

  “It’s okay, Bonnie,” Rachel crooned over and over. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  For God’s sake, I’m lying to a dog, she thought. Bonnie ignored her and scrambled back and forth between the windows, her whines escalating. Rachel hoped the Kellys’ son or daughter would take all their parents’ pets, but she doubted either would provide the doting care that Bonnie was used to. An older dog, deeply bonded with her owners, Bonnie was also a victim of today’s monstrous act.

  In her rearview mirror Rachel saw Joanna’s Jeep Cherokee keeping a steady pace three car-lengths behind. Now that the Kellys were gone, with their property presumably willed to their absent offspring, how would the situation change? Joanna was probably thinking about the possibilities already and wanted to enlist Rachel’s help in some way.

  A fight over the Packard project had been brewing in the county for weeks, and Rachel sensed it was about to erupt into a nasty public battle. On Saturday afternoon, in a little over twenty-four hours, a Packard representative would speak at an open community meeting, and after that the lines would be clearly drawn between proponents and opponents. Rachel was determined to stay out of it, at least publicly. Privately, she would offer Joanna moral support, but any active opposition to the resort would cause trouble for Tom, who had been elected sheriff less than three weeks before and now had a double murder to worry about.

  She wished her friend Ben Hern were here to take up Joanna’s cause. Ben was a well-known artist and cartoonist, a big landowner and taxpayer in Mason County who wasn’t afraid to stand up to local politicians or big companies. But he happened to be in Europe and wouldn’t return for more than a week.

  The dog stuck her head between the seats and yelped. Rachel scratched her ears and murmured, “I know, I know. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

  Looking up at the hills flanking the two-lane road, Rachel wondered how Packard Resorts would market Mason County as a vacation spot. True, the mountainside trees formed a breathtaking palette of red, orange, and yellow in early fall, but now all the leaves lay rotting on the ground, packed down by recent rain, their colors faded. The bare branches along the ridges had their own bleak beauty, dark spears aimed at the scudding gray clouds. But this was not a welcoming place in winter. Did Packard Resorts want to create a mountain retreat that would be open only in warm weather months? Or did they have a grand plan for transforming this small rural county in southwestern Virginia into a winter wonderland?

  Their plans didn’t matter. The project would probably die if Joanna stood in the way. The only question was what kind of penalty Joanna would pay for killing a lot of people’s hopes for jobs and profit.

  Back home at the farm, Rachel pulled into the driveway ahead of Joanna and opened the back door of the Range Rover. Bonnie shot out and slammed into Rachel. Reeling, Rachel grabbed at the leash but it slid through her fingers. The dog bolted across the yard, heading for the sheep meadow. Heading toward home.

  “Bonnie, come back here!” Rachel yelled.

  Joanna jumped out of her Jeep and the two of them sprinted after the dog. Joanna couldn’t keep up with Rachel and quickly fell behind. When Bonnie charged across the meadow, the two dozen sheep scattered in every direction, uttering a chorus of frantic baa-aas. The dog swung to the right, then the left, as confused as the terrified sheep.

  Rachel caught up, lunged at the dog and threw both arms around her. Bonnie surrendered, panting, her tongue lolling.

  “You silly old girl.” Rachel sank to her knees, gasping for breath. “I’ll bet your arthritis is giving you fits right now.”

  The dog laid her head on Rachel’s shoulder and whined.

  “I know, sweetie. You’re scared and you don’t understand what’s happening. Come on, let’s go see Billy Bob.” Rachel pushed herself up, the leash firmly in hand, and led the dispirited dog back to the house.

  Joanna hauled the carrier holding the two rabbits out of the Range Rover, along with the bag of their food.

  When they entered the house with the animals in tow, Tom’s brown-and-white bulldog, Billy Bob, emerged from the kitchen at the end of the center hall. He barked with excitement when he saw Bonnie and trotted toward her, his nails clicking on the oak floor. Rachel unhooked Bonnie’s leash and let her go to meet Billy Bob.

  Frank, Rachel’s black-and-white cat with one and a half ears, made a brief appearance in the hallway. He took a look at Bonnie, growled and hissed, then shot through an open doorway into the den.

  “Okay, where’s Cicero?” Joanna asked. “We might as well get his opinion, too, while we’re at it.”

  Right on cue, Rachel’s African gray parrot called “Hello, Rachel, hello” from the den.

  “He’s going to stay where he is,” Rachel said. “He’s one animal more than I can deal with right now.”

  “I’ll take the dog home with me, if you want me to. She gets along with my dogs, and if she gets loose and runs back home I won’t have far to go after her.”

  “Oh, God, yes, thank you,” Rachel said. “Now what the heck am I going to do with these rabbits? They’re used to running around loose in the house, but that’s not going to happen here. Do you think the Kellys’ son or daughter will take them?”

  “Lord, I don’t know.” Joanna, holding the bag of supplies, used the fingers of her free hand to comb her reddish blond hair, smoothing the mess her short run had made of it. “I couldn’t predict what those two will do about anything. Ronan and Sheila are both very different from their parents. And that worries me.”

  “Come on, I’ll put the rabbits in the office for now.” On their way down the hall, Rachel asked, “You think they’ll sell the land to Packard?”

  Joanna nodded and opened the door to the home office to let Rachel carry the rabbits in. “I feel so selfish for even thinking about it at a time like this, with Lincoln and Marie—” She shook her head. “But I can’t help it. If Ronan and Sheila decide to sell, I’ll probably be the only holdout, and I’ll never have another minute’s peace as long as I live.”

  While Rachel tried to find words that would calm Joanna’s anxiety, she set down the carrier next to the desk and peered in at the rabbits. The white female had burrowed under the towel in the bottom of the carrier, facing the back, so that only her puff of a tail showed. Her male companion crouched, frozen in terror, next to the lump she created. Rachel took the bag from Joanna and removed two bowls and the rabbit kibble. “But what about the Jones sisters? They don’t want to uproot themselves at this stage of their lives, do they?”

  Joanna hugged her waist and bounced on her toes, her whole body thrumming with tension. “Who knows what those flakes might do? I can’t get a straight answer out of them.” Joanna launched into an imitation of Winter’s stern schoolmarm tone. “We prefer to keep our own counsel for the time being. We won’t be rushed into a commitment one way or the other.”

  Rachel had to smile at the pitch-perfect rendering, but she didn’t find anything about this situation amusing. Two good people, a
couple Tom had known all his life, had been gunned down in their own yard in broad daylight, the person who did it was walking around loose, and their deaths would pit neighbor against neighbor in a nasty fight over the resort development. Rachel crouched to pour kibble into the rabbits’ bowls and place the food inside the carrier. “What about your other neighbors? Won’t anybody stand with you?”

  “Oh, Tavia Richardson’s hell-bent on selling to Packard and getting her hands on all that money, and that means Jake Hollinger’s in favor of it too. Tavia’s got him dreaming about the two of them living the good life someplace where it never gets cold.”

  Rachel stood, frowning. “Hold on, you’ve lost me. Mrs. Richardson and Jake Hollinger are an item? Since when?”

  “Oh, they’ll admit they’ve been seeing each other since Sue Ellen Hollinger died last year. But the truth is, it started months before that. All the time Sue Ellen was going through torture with chemo and radiation, her shit of a husband—” Joanna’s voice choked up. “I can’t even think about it without getting mad enough to strangle him. Sue Ellen was my friend. And so were Lincoln and Marie.”

  Joanna didn’t cry easily, and she was fighting the tears now, but her pain escaped in tremors and gulped-back sobs. At a loss for words or actions that could make a difference, Rachel placed an arm around her shoulders. This basket case was not the strong woman Rachel knew. In Joanna’s distress Rachel saw something more than grief for lost friends, something darker than anger over events she couldn’t control.

  A half-formed fear had been niggling at the back of Rachel’s mind for the last hour, and now she couldn’t stop it from pushing forward, full-blown. Joanna seemed positive the Kellys would not have sold their land to Packard, that they would have stood firm with her to block the company’s plan for a luxurious mountain resort in Mason County. Now the Kellys were dead.