A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (2 page)

Things didn’t improve during the course of the day. Even though the rain stopped, Joshua still had a cloud hanging over his head. The next storm hit an hour before going home.

The prosecutor massaged his temples while he studied a financial report for his office. The numbers swimming through his head made him dizzy. He slapped the folder shut and tried to clear his mind by tapping his pen against the edge of his desk.

The royal blue pen with gold trim felt good in his hand. The night that she proclaimed her love for him, Jan had presented to him the pen and holder with his name engraved on the base in honor of his election as Hancock County’s prosecuting attorney. He felt guilty accepting it after telling her that he was unable to return her feelings, but she insisted, saying that she didn’t know any other “Joshua Thornton, Hancock County Prosecuting Attorney” to give it to.

The pen had just the right weight and feel for him to use as a drumstick against his desk when he needed to take a break to clear his mind. He had fallen into the rhythm of a Credence Clearwater Revival tune playing on the radio when Mary called on the intercom.

“Josh, Gail Reynolds is here to see you.”

He groaned.

“She doesn’t have an appointment.” She offered him an out to refuse to see the visitor.

Curiosity made him indecisive.

Gail Reynolds. What would she be doing here? The Gail Reynolds he knew from his past, the editor of the school newspaper, who went on to become a crime journalist, would not come back to Chester unless there was a reason. She never wasted her time on anything unless it meant something for her.

His interest was piqued. “Send her in.”

He sucked in his breath and shoved his pen into its holder before going to the door, opening it, and preparing for yet another fight with his adversary.

In junior high school they were contenders for class president. After Joshua won, Gail led a revolt to have him impeached for not fighting the school board on its decision to keep the dress code.

In high school, when Joshua was student council president, Gail wrote editorials against him in the school paper claiming that, due to his Christian faith, he lacked objectivity. He led the football team in prayer before their games. This, she claimed, was an example of their leader’s inability to separate church and state. Her view was moot when the praying quarterback led his team to the state championship two years in a row.

Gail was one Oak Glen alumnus Joshua had occasion to run into on a regular basis after he left Chester. Like him, she went on to the nation’s capital to pursue her career.

By the time her classmate arrived in Washington to serve with the Navy in the Judge Advocate General corps, Gail had developed a reputation as a crime journalist. When Joshua was assigned to prosecute a naval admiral for murder, she was right there on the front lines, criticizing Lieutenant Commander Joshua Thornton every step of the way.

He didn’t know why she was so critical. In youth, they traveled in the same circles. Yet there seemed to be nothing he could do that was not worthy of her criticism.

Joshua sucked in his breath, forced a grin on his face, and opened the office door.

Gail Reynolds was dressed in a blue pantsuit and gold jewelry that was hardly noticeable. Her makeup was understated and her short hair was combed back into place. Sexuality had no place in her life. She’d never had a serious relationship that Joshua was aware of.

She had a cocky grin on her face.

“Hello, Gail.” He refrained from asking her what she was up to.

“Hello, Josh.” She stepped into the small office and looked around before commenting with sarcasm, “I see you’re moving up in the world.” She was referring to the corner office on the top floor of the JAG office he’d had in San Francisco before he moved his family back to Chester. Now, he had a corner office in a basement.

Joshua closed the door and gave in to his inquisitiveness. “What’s up?”

She took the chair across from his desk. “What do you mean?”

“What are you doing here? I would have thought you would be in California covering the Reinhold murders.” In recent years, he had not known of one major murder case that she didn’t investigate in order to write a book afterwards. Her first book had been about him.

She sighed dramatically. “I just so happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“In New Cumberland? Doing what?”

“Taking a sabbatical.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?” She pretended to be wounded. “I’ve been working hard my whole life. I’ve never had a vacation—”

“That I do believe.” Gail was a classic workaholic.

“So, I decided to come back to Chester to take a rest.” She turned her head to peer slyly at him out of the corner of her eyes. “And write another book.”

Joshua cringed. He plopped down into the chair across from her. “Don’t tell me that you intend to write about the Rawlings case.”

The Rawlings case was a double murder in which he had been appointed special prosecutor when he returned back home. He had promised Jan an exclusive to write her first book about the case.

He dreaded what Jan would do if Gail wrote a book about the same case.

The two women had been rivals since they had ended up in the same sandbox on the playground in Tomlinson Run Park. Joshua could imagine that Jan’s sandcastle fell apart while Gail’s sandy home went on to become a summer residence for a fairy princess and her royal spouse. Both girls would, every year, compete for the same editorial slots of the school paper, and Gail would always win.

In their senior year, it turned out that both competed for the same scholarship. Gail won. Jan ended up working in her mother’s drugstore while her rival went out into the world to enjoy success and recognition.

Figures, he thought, Gail would come home to write a book about the same subject as Jan’s.

Unaware of his dread, she elaborated on the subject of her next project. “I’m writing a book about Tricia.”

Joshua started. It had been so long, that it took time for him to realize whom she was talking about. “Tricia?” As soon as the question slipped from his lips, he remembered: “Tricia Wheeler.”

“Of course.” Gail was pleased to see recognition in his eyes. “It’s about time someone investigated it.”

Chapter Two

Nostalgia made Joshua rush home to find his high school yearbook. In one day, he had been assaulted by the past from all sides.

His master was in such a hurry to get his yearbook that Admiral, the family’s huge mongrel, only had enough time to get his front legs down off the sofa before Joshua raced into the study and to the bookcase. When the dog realized that he was not going to be chastised for trespassing onto the furniture, he pulled himself back up and resumed his nap.

Donny and Sarah were up in their bedrooms doing their homework. Tracy and the twins wouldn’t be home for another hour.

In no time, Joshua found the first section, which contained the student council’s pictures. As president, his picture was at the top and center of the page. Beth Davis’s picture was in the third row beneath his. Her title was secretary.

He cleared his throat when he recalled how pretty, with her strawberry blond hair and creamy complexion, the council secretary had been. She was the image of every boy’s wholesome desire.

Beth had been his girlfriend. They had become engaged the night of the Valentine’s Day formal in their senior year. The night of the prom, they almost eloped. Then they graduated and went out into the real world.

The newspaper staff was on the next page. Editor Gail Reynolds was front and center of the group photo. With her hair pulled back into a bun, she was dressed in gray slacks and a navy blue silk blouse with a plunging neckline. She looked like the serious news journalist.

Tucked in one step behind her, assistant editor Jan Martin was almost hidden. She struck an expressionless pose. She thought she looked stupid when she smiled. She had taken off her glasses for the picture. She only recently started wearing contact lenses on some occasions. She wore her straight hair loose. She was dressed in a blousy blue cotton suit with a long jacket. The suit’s shoulder pads and wide skirt looked out of proportion on her small frame.

Joshua found Tori Brody’s portrait shot several pages back. She had been a sophomore when they were seniors. The photograph displayed above her name bore only a slight resemblance to the lawyer he had met that morning. Even at fifteen, she had oozed sensuality. He sat behind his desk and stared at her picture.

In the decade following the era of sexual freedom, when it became acceptable for girls to let go of their virginity before marriage, the title of slut and whore was supposed to go the way of chastity belts. Not necessarily for girls like Tori Brody in Small Town, America.

She was from the wrong side of the tracks. She lived in a mobile home park by the river. Her father took off when she was a baby. Her mother was a barmaid with the reputation of having affairs with married men. Her older sister dropped out of school to get married. Without adult supervision, Tori was exploring sex when Joshua was still working up the nerve to ask girls to dance at the junior high social.

Tori Brody fell in with the type of people that Joshua and his friends avoided out of self-preservation. They were the first to smoke cigarettes and drink beer. By high school, they dressed in worn blue jeans and leather; rode in hot cars and motorcycles; dealt drugs; and thought nothing of inflicting injury on anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

With bleached-blonde hair; eyes framed with lush lashes; slender hips; and breasts accentuated in daring styles that pushed the envelope of the school’s dress code, Tori was hard not to notice when she entered Oak Glen High School. Within weeks, envious girls and lust-filled boys labeled her as not being the type of girl Joshua could take home to his grandmother. The most sensuous girl in the school, she was sought and won over by the leader of the school’s roughest gang.

That was Max Bowman. Everyone knew he carried a switchblade, though few saw it because switchblades were illegal. He cherished his girl like the trophy she was.

Joshua was indifferent to Tori and her friends. The gap between the two social classes in the world of high school was so wide that he would never even have met her if it weren’t for a photography class that he took in the spring of his senior year.

As circumstance would have it, she was seated next to him. She managed to smile at him whenever possible. Within a matter of weeks, he laughed at her sexual innuendoes, which she could summon better than Mae West.

Eventually, his apprehension around the promiscuous girl gave way to a friendship—until one spring afternoon when Joshua stepped out of the boys locker room after softball practice into a mob led by Max Bowman, who announced that he was going to make an example of him.

It was Joshua’s first fight for his life. Max was armed with his switchblade. Untrained in self-defense, other than the childhood stuff he had learned from his grandfather, Joshua was uncertain about how he had been able to disarm the brute, but he had done so. Under the threat of having the weapon turned on him, Max and his friends ran away and never approached Joshua again.

Tori claimed ignorance when confronted with the question of why her boyfriend had come after him. Joshua later heard that after finding out that her boyfriend had cheated on her, she started a rumor that she had slept with Oak Glen’s star quarterback.

The snap of the fingers in his face brought Joshua back to the present.

Tad MacMillan peered at him with curiosity. After entering his cousin’s home uninvited, he had raided his refrigerator to steal an apple. He was eating the stolen good while sitting on the corner of Joshua’s desk.

“What are you in such deep thought about?”

“Nothing.” Joshua held the yearbook on its end and slapped the front and back covers together to shut the book. When the album fell back onto his desk, the back cover flapped open to reveal the last page.

They observed the pretty face that peered up at them from the album. Her blue eyes were happy. Her golden hair was lush and full. Her smile was dazzling. She had her whole life before her and so far it had been a happy one.

Joshua ran his fingers across the face that lay before him. The words printed above her image read, “In memory of . . .” and below the picture “Tricia Wheeler” and beneath that: “1967–1984.”

“I remember her.” Tad took another bite of the apple and spoke around it. “That was awful. I would never have thought she would have killed herself.”

“That’s what everyone said.” Joshua closed the book.

“Did you date her?”

“No, I dated Beth. Remember?”

“Did you sleep with her?” Tad knew that he could ask his cousin anything, no matter how personal it might be.

“No.”

“Did you want to sleep with her?”

“She was my friend,” Joshua responded firmly. He put the album back on the bookshelf from which he had taken it.

Tad’s voice took on a naughty tone when he deduced, “She turned you down.”

“I never asked.” Joshua turned back toward him. “It was one of those situations where we liked each other, but one of us always seemed to be attached to someone else.” He concluded somberly, “She died before the opportunity could present itself.”

“Too bad.” His sympathy was sincere. “Why the nostalgia?”

“Gail Reynolds is in town.”

Tad chuckled.

“It’s not funny. She’s writing a book about Tricia’s death and she’s going to make me look like a fool. Why? Because she hates me and don’t ask me why.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“Then why has she made it her career to follow me around and criticize me on every case I get?”

“Sounds like someone has had a bad day.” Tad pointed out, “Gail was not here when you were working on the Rawlings case. She wasn’t here when you ran for office.”

Joshua resumed as if he had not heard his argument. “She was there at the courthouse every day when I prosecuted Admiral Thompson.”

Tad tossed the apple core into the trashcan. “When did you sleep with her?”

“What makes you think I slept with her?”

“Come on, Josh. I know you better than you know yourself. Gail isn’t the first pushy woman to challenge you and she won’t be the last. Why should you get so upset about her coming back to town?” He answered his own question. “You had a one-night stand with her and you feel guilty. When did it happen?”

“Right after that fight Beth and I had at your New Year’s Eve party,” Joshua confessed. “She told me that Beth sent her over to talk to me about making up. Grandmamma was out.” He shook his head. “She ended up seducing me. I found out afterwards that Beth didn’t send her.”

“Some friend.”

“That’s what I thought. It just happened. Only once. I told her right afterwards that it was a mistake.”

“Did she put a gun to your head?” Tad was unconvinced that Joshua was totally innocent.

“Okay, I went along because I was still mad at Beth for whatever it was we were fighting about. But then Gail tried to get me to continue seeing her; but I loved Beth. Within a few days, Beth and I were back together and a few weeks after that we got engaged. Gail and I never talked about it, ever, either of us. Beth never knew.”

Tad gestured at the image of Tricia Wheeler now sealed in the album shelved in the bookcase. “Was she friends with Tricia?”

“Everyone was friends with Trish.” Joshua rubbed an imaginary spot on the top of his desk. “I remember the day I found out she died. I was driving Beth to school in that red van I had back then and, when we got there, there were all these kids in the parking lot. The girls were all hugging and crying, and the guys were in shock. Cindy Patterson came running up and said that Tricia had killed herself.”

He looked over at his cousin, whom he admired for his wisdom. Tad was only a few years older, but he had learned much in his youth while traveling down the path of alcoholism.

“It hit me like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head. For the first time, I realized my mortality.” Joshua cocked his head. “Does that sound insensitive? My friend was dead, and all I could think about was all the things that we had in common. We were the same age. Suddenly, out of the blue, she was dead. That meant that I could die, too.”

“You were seventeen,” Tad stated simply. “We all think we are immortal when we’re seventeen. Her death was a shot of reality.”

“Yeah. Reality sucks sometimes.”

Joshua checked the time on his watch and realized that Tracy and his sons were late. “The kids must be gabbing with their friends and forgot about the time.”

Tad told him, “I saw Hancock County’s new star in action today.”

“What new star?”

“Seth Cavanaugh.”

“Oh, that new star,” Joshua replied with no hint of emotion. “Sawyer wanted to promote one of his deputies from within the department, but the commissioner saw Cavanaugh on the news lapping up the media attention after the Quincy boys got convicted and went all gaga over him. She said that having a noted detective working in Hancock County would be good for our reputation.” He confessed, “Between you, me, and the lamp post, my gut tells me that he’s not as brilliant as the newspapers made him out to be. But that’s just my gut talking.”

Tad frowned. “My gut is telling me the same thing. He was there to question Rollins about the shooting. Funny thing is . . . I didn’t hear him ask one question. He just nailed the guy. Isn’t it the job of investigators to ask questions of everyone?”

Before Joshua could respond, the phone on his desk rang. While he reached across his desk to answer it, Tad’s cell phone hitched onto his belt rang. The two men said “Hello” in unison.

They were speaking to two different callers about the same subject. While Tad was listening to the emotionless tone of the sheriff department’s operator sending the medical examiner out on a call to conduct an on-scene examination of a murder victim, Joshua was listening to his eldest son report that one of their friends had been killed at the high school.

It was déjà vu.

As his Corvette rounded the corner of the high school into the parking lot, Joshua was struck by the similarity of the scene to what he saw that morning after Tricia Wheeler died. The girls were crying while the boys tried to decide how they should react to what had happened.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The only difference between then and now was the clothes and hairstyles.

To collect their statements, the sheriff’s deputies separated Joshua’s three older children, as well as the other students who were there during the murder. Most of the teenagers wore athletic wear for football and other sport practice. Several girls were dressed in cheerleading uniforms.

Under the protective eye of J.J., Deputy Pete Hockenberry, an older officer, was questioning Tracy at the van while Murphy, dressed in shoulder pads under muddy sweats for football practice, spoke with another policeman several feet away.

J.J. and Murphy were their father’s sons in every way. At seventeen years old, they equaled their father in their lanky builds. They’d also inherited his blue eyes and wavy hair, which J.J., the introspective twin, kept cut short.

Tracy looked and lived the role of the teenage girl with her silky auburn hair, creamy complexion and petite build. For her, it wasn’t a matter of role-playing when she chose cooking and fashion for her interests. Unlike the other girls there, Tracy was dressed in her school clothes. The tryouts for cheerleading had been in the spring, before their move to Chester. She would have to wait until next year to exercise her dancing talent on the cheerleading squad as she had done ever since she was old enough to hold a pom-pom.

Yellow police tape was draped along the fence surrounding part of the practice field and across the walkway leading to the murder scene on the other side of the maintenance shed located at the end of the field.

While Tad took his medical examiner’s bag and ducked under the tape to jog to the shed to check out the body of the murdered teenaged girl, Joshua crossed to the van where Tracy and Deputy Hockenberry leaned against the front fender. As soon as her father took her into his arms, she broke down and sobbed against his chest. Someone had given her a linen handkerchief in which to cry.

“It’s okay,” Joshua murmured into her hair.

On her other side, J.J. slipped his arm across her shoulders. “She’s been putting up a brave front. I was wondering when it was going to hit her.”

Deputy Hockenberry observed Seth, slipping evidence gloves on, cross the field toward the crime scene. “I see that our new investigator is here to show us how it is done.” The deputy had put in for the job of chief detective. He had the experience and training, but none of the publicity Cavanaugh had acquired breaking the murder case in another part of the state. The deputy hitched his pants up over his potbelly, slipped his notepad into his pocket, and joined two other officers.

Seth was questioning the coach, who looked like he was going to be sick. The older man seemed unable not to stare at the shed at the far end of the field. The coach led the detective to where the girl had been killed.

Murphy had finished answering the deputy’s questions and joined his family. “Can you believe this? In broad daylight with the whole team and cheerleading squad on the other side of the building? That guy had a lot of balls.”

“What guy? What happened?” Joshua found it difficult to refrain from studying the forensics team searching for minute pieces of evidence. He yearned to be with them, working the case, instead of just being a concerned father consoling his children.

“The killer.”

“Who was he?”

His children shrugged. “No one seemed to recognize him,” J.J. said.

“Who was killed?” Joshua asked.

“Grace,” Tracy sobbed.

“Grace?” Joshua felt as if he should know whom she was talking about.

“Grace Henderson,” Murphy said. “She was one of the varsity cheerleaders.”

“Remember?” Tracy added in a choked voice. “She came over a couple of weeks ago.”

Joshua sighed and swallowed. “I remember her now.” He strolled toward the practice field.

Murphy fell in beside him while his brother stayed to comfort Tracy, who didn’t want to go near the scene where her friend had died. He sensed his father’s nostalgia about when he used to lead his team toward field goals. History was repeating itself. Like his father before him, Murphy had made first-string quarterback in his junior year. So far, under his leadership, Oak Glen’s Bears were undefeated.