Blood Relations (26 page)

“Hi, it's Collette.”

“Hey, how's it going?”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Steve and I are going to Argentina in a week. I'm going to get away from all of this snow and cold and lie on the beach and, well, you know.”

“Great. I'm sure you will have tons of fun. Take lots of pictures.”

“I will,” she said. “Oh, and pictures are what I'm calling you about.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, I need those pictures that you said I could have—the ones of Granite County Lutheran and the cemetery. I'm not going to have the story finished for a while, but I wanted to get my visual material together so that I know what I've got and what I still need to get.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “I dropped them off for developing yesterday. There were still a few pictures left on the camera, so that's what was holding me up.”

“Can I come down for lunch and we can go get them? I want everything in place before Steve and I leave,” she explained.

“Sure, come on down.”

Forty-five minutes later, Collette showed up in my office with little boxes of Chinese food. “Knock, knock,” she said.

“Hey, come in. Oh, you're a goddess. You brought lunch.” As soon as I smelled the food, my stomach started growling. There isn't a place in New Kassel that has Chinese food. The closest one is over in Wisteria, and it's owned by a sixth-generation Texan. So Collette often brings Chinese food when she visits me.

“I'm a goddess for lots of reasons,” she said. “Bringing Chinese food is not one of them.”

“It is in my book.”

“Whatcha working on?” she asked.

“Well, I just got off the phone with a
Phantom
survivor. He said he heard the captain having an argument with a passenger. Seems he wanted this particular passenger to buy his boat in exchange for some jewels, possibly diamonds, because he was wanting out of the riverboat business. Supposedly, the captain told the passenger he was getting married. And I checked the census for Samuel Higgins, the guy who had mined the diamonds originally,” I said.

“Oh, the
original
owner of the diamonds.”

“Right. I think he was the one the captain was arguing with.”

“Makes sense. What did you find?” she asked as she opened the big box of rice and scooped some out on a paper plate.

“Well, it took me two days, because the Hills Mine records stated that they thought he was from Iowa. So I spent a whole day looking through the Iowa census records, only to find out he was from across the river, over in northern Illinois. Um … Rockford.”

“How'd you find that out?”

“I got frustrated and started checking the surrounding states,” I said.

“Hey, I got you that mushroom garlic stuff you like so well,” she said.

“Oooh, good, pour it on. Anyway, in 1920, he had seven kids.”

“Seven? Jeeeesus,” she said, licking her fingers.

“Yeah, and if this is the same passenger that the prostitute was talking about … She said she saw the diamonds in a passenger's room. What was she doing there?”

“This guy just couldn't get enough, huh?”

“Oh, he's nothing. I have an ancestor who had twenty-two kids,” I said.

“By the same wife? Surely not.”

“Yes, same woman. Sixteen single births and three sets of twins. Had her first kid at eighteen and her last at forty,” I explained.

“I would have shot him,” Collette said.

“I would have castrated him first. And I even like kids,” I said, laughing.

She handed me a plate of rice and garlic mushroom sauce. “Egg roll?” she asked.

“Please. So anyway, I gave the list of Higgins's children to Colin, and he's going to try to run them down and see if any are still living. If not, it's on to the next generation.”

“Can't you do that?” she asked. She took a bite of her teriyaki chicken and sighed. “God, I love Chinese food.”

“To answer your question, yes, I could track them down. Well, the guys at least. Girls are a little trickier.”

“Why?”

“Because they get married and change their names, and so often on documents, they're listed just as Mrs. Smith, or whatever the husband's name is. You know, no identity of their own.”

“Men are pigs,” she said. “Except for Steve.”

“Gee,” a voice said. “Guess that's my cue.”

I looked up to see Colin standing in the doorway. He was off duty and was wearing jeans, a blue sweater, and his parka. His face twisted into what looked like pain, but I soon realized he had smelled our lunch. “Mmm, is that Chinese?”

“Want some?” Collette asked.

“Hell yes,” he said. He came into the room and began scooping up rice. “You know that your mother hates Chinese food.”

“I know,” I said, and winked at Collette.

“You want garlic mushroom or chicken teriyaki?”

“Yes,” he answered and held out his plate. I laughed at him. Obviously, my mother had not allowed him any Chinese food in awhile. Oh, well. Guess every marriage has to have a bump in the road somewhere along the line.

“Oh, and here are the pictures,” he said, handing me an envelope.

Colin had volunteered to go and pay for the pictures, since he would need copies of the ones of the church and cemetery for his report. He sat on the edge of my desk and tore into his lunch. “You got egg rolls, too?”

Opening the envelope, I couldn't help laughing again. The first couple of pictures were of a fish that Rudy had caught. He had insisted that I take a picture of it because it was the biggest fish he'd ever caught. I didn't mind taking a picture of it, because that would keep him from increasing the size of the fish when he told stories about it years from now. “Oh, here's that bass Rudy caught.” I handed the picture to Colin.

He whistled. “That's a beauty.”

It was ugly. A bass is just an ugly fish.

I flipped through a few more pictures of Rudy smiling at the fish. Next were pictures from the chili cook-off we'd had at the Knights of Columbus Hall. Eleanore's recipe had won. There was a shot of Sylvia standing in the kitchen, waiting for her tea to steep. And finally, I got to the pictures of Granite County Lutheran Church.

Handing them to Collette, I named them as I went. “That's the picture of the footprints,” I said. “Don't ask me why I took that. I was just snapping pictures. And here's the one of the woods. And there are the tombstones. That's the church from where I'd been standing in the cemetery. This is the one of the church that I took from the parking lot while I was standing next to my van.”

“These aren't too bad,” Collette said. “I mean, they're kind of grainy. But what can you expect from a disposable camera?”

“Let me see,” Colin said.

She handed him the pictures, which he tried to look at with one hand because he didn't want to set down his plate of food. “Oh, Torie,” he said. “I almost forgot.”

“What?”

“I heard back from Jefferson County on the ticket that Jeremiah Ketchum got,” he said, handing me back the stack of pictures. “He got a speeding ticket at seven-fifteen on the night Jacob Lahrs was killed.”

“What?” I asked, almost choking on my rice. “But then that means he wasn't in his hotel at the time of the murder. We figured the attack was between six and seven in the evening.”

“In broad daylight?” Collette asked.

“No, not broad daylight. It gets dark at about five. With the snow and overcast sky, it was already pretty dark that day,” I said.

“What time did you find the body?” Collette asked.

“Well, now that I really think about it … the train goes by at seven on the nose. By the time we walked and talked, it was probably about seven-fifteen or so.”

“Is that enough time for Jeremiah to have hopped on the train, gotten in his car, which he would have had waiting somewhere, and driven back to the Murdoch Inn?”

“Don't forget he went at least ten minutes up the road, because he got the ticket in Jefferson County,” I said. “I don't know. What do you think, Colin?”

“It might have been enough time, because you figure I didn't get there for another ten minutes after you guys found the body. By the time we knew what was going on and actually got Newsome in the Murdoch Inn to start checking on the guests there, oh it had to be at least seven-fifty or so. I think he had enough time.”

“My gosh, Jeremiah would have been slipping into the Murdoch moments before we were trying to get my big butt up the hill,” I said.

“
If
it was Jeremiah,” he said. “He denies it was him. Says his wallet was stolen.”

“Do you believe him?” Collette asked.

“He didn't cancel any of his credit cards or anything until the day after he claims it was stolen,” Colin said.

“You don't act like it's a big deal,” Collette said.

He shrugged. “I got two witnesses.”

“What?” I asked. I started flipping through the pictures. “What do you mean you have two witnesses? Two witnesses to what?”

“I've got the officer who issued him the ticket,” he said. “The officer said that the man he pulled over didn't have his driver's license on him. Said he'd lost it. But the officer also said that he'd be happy to come down here and take a look at a picture or a lineup. He said he would remember him, since Jeremiah, or whoever it was, was doing eighty in a fifty-five zone.”

“In a hurry to get back to the Murdoch Inn and establish his alibi,” I said. But it still didn't make sense to me. The amount of snow on his car in the parking lot proved that it had been there the whole time. He couldn't have had his car parked somewhere else, waiting for him to jump off of a train. But before I had the chance to mention this, Collette spoke up.

“And the other witness?” she asked.

“The other witness is the one who rented him the car,” Colin said.

My head snapped up. “He
rented
a car?” That would certainly explain why his real car had been at the Murdoch Inn the whole day.

“Showed up on his credit-card statement, and it matches the license number given on the ticket. Jeremiah Ketchum was driving a rented car at seven-fifteen on the night Jacob Lahrs was killed.”

“But he denies it,” I said.

“Totally,” the sheriff said. “Said his wallet was stolen and he knows nothing about a rental car or a ticket.”

“You know, he did mention that his wallet had been stolen the day that woman rammed into his car in front of the Murdoch Inn,” I said.

Colin just shrugged.

“But he had to know about the ticket. Why else would it turn up on the dashboard of his car?” I asked.

Colin gave me a “There you have it” expression.

“You realize that if he really is the one who rented the car, it's premeditation,” I said.

“Yup,” the sheriff replied.

“What if he's telling the truth?” Collette said. “Is the car-rental clerk reliable?”

“He's a guy in his mid-thirties,” he said. “He seemed trustworthy.”

“Did the rental car show up in the video footage from Channel 6?”

“No,” Colin said. “And believe me, I checked. But he could have easily parked it one street over and walked back to the Murdoch Inn. With all of the people going in and out, we wouldn't have paid any attention to a set of prints leading into the Murdoch Inn from up the road.”

“True,” I said.

Upon closer inspection, something in one of the photographs caught my eye. I stopped eating and held the picture up closer so I could see better.

“What is it?” Collette asked.

“Maybe Jeremiah Ketchum is telling the truth,” I said. “Maybe his wallet was stolen. And maybe somebody planted the ticket in his car.”

“I dunno,” Colin said. “I guess it's possible, but I think you're reaching.”

“Maybe not,” I said, staring at the photo.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Danny Jones was the one at the cemetery, checking out those seven graves the day I was there,” I said. I handed the photograph to Colin, pointing to the telltale item. “That's Danny Jones's car.”

“How can you be sure?” Collette asked.

“Rusty white Chevette with the ‘Jesus Is Coming. Look Busy' bumper sticker,” I said.

“Yeah, but so what?” Collette said. “I thought you said Danny Jones and Jeremiah Ketchum didn't know where the diamonds were hidden.”

“I said that
they
said they didn't know where the diamonds were hidden. That doesn't mean they were telling the truth. What if Danny Jones did know?”

“How would he know?” Collette asked.

“From Jacob Lahrs,” I said.

“But why would Jacob Lahrs tell Danny and not Jeremiah? Why would he tell either one of them, for that matter?”

“Nobody said he voluntarily told Danny where the diamonds were. You do remember that his head was bashed in. Think about it. Maybe Danny beat it out of him.”

Colin's eyebrows creased and he finally set his plate of food down.

“Did the guitar pick at the crime scene turn out to belong to Jones?” I asked.

He picked up the phone, staring at the photograph of Jones's car the whole time. Then he dialed a number and waited a moment. “Yes, this is Sheriff Colin Brooke of the Granite County Sheriff's Department. I was wondering if you had the fingerptint results back on item…” He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and flipped it open. “On item P-one forty-five, from crime scene NK seven sixty-one.”

A moment went by and he said nothing. Then finally he said, “Thank you.” He placed the phone back in the receiver and looked at Collette and then at me. “It's a match. It belonged to Danny Jones. And it was dropped there sometime during the latter half of the snowfall. They can't be more specific yet.”