Clouds without Rain (12 page)

Branden said, “I need you to go over it again.” He took out a pen and a small red spiral-bound notebook.

MacAfee said, “Why not?” and started wiping out two old coffee mugs with a towel that had been lying under some papers on his desk. He set one mug at the front edge of his desk for Branden, eyed the dripping coffee maker, and said, “I came up last in line, while the buggy made its turn. There were four cars right behind the buggy. Well, one car and the sheriff’s car up front, and then two pickups a little further back, waiting in line.”

MacAfee stood up and poured an early cup of coffee for himself and then started to pour for Branden. Branden held his fingers flat over the top of his mug and said, “No thanks.”

MacAfee sat down with his coffee, sipped at it, and continued. “Anyways, I thought I saw the horse buck a little, and then the driver had trouble gettin’ him goin’ again. Next thing I know, that semi’s coming over the crest of the hill up ahead, and it tumbles across the road, and the cab hits that buggy. By then the deputy had his car in reverse, and when the semi hit the buggy, pieces went flying everywhere. Axles, wheels, splinters. Something long and heavy hit the deputy’s windshield. There were blankets, a briefcase, a battery, and torn bits of fabric. You name it, it all came flying out of that rig and started raining down all around. Guess it couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, and then it all lay there on the road where it landed. That’s when I noticed the fire underneath the first car. That one was smashed and pushed back a ways on the pavement, before the trailer came to a rest. It got plenty bad after that. I just sat in my truck at first. Couldn’t seem to move.”

Branden said, “There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

MacAfee shrugged with resignation and sipped at his coffee, eyes down.

Branden asked, “Are you sure you saw the cruiser backing up before the truck came over the hill?”

MacAfee thought a moment and then said, “Yes,” tentatively.

Branden said, “Something else?”

“Oh, I’m not sure, but I remember feeling the same way.”

“What way?”

“Like I should have been backing up, too.”

“Do you know why?”

“Nope. Just had an uneasy feeling before I saw the truck coming on. Did I tell you that when I came back to my senses, I had my truck in reverse?”

“No. You didn’t mention that.”

“Didn’t remember it until now. But I did, so I must have been wanting to back her up.”

Branden thought about the unlikely coincidence of two drivers throwing their transmissions into reverse, and asked, “Did you shift into reverse before or after the crash?”

“Don’t remember,” MacAfee said, looking puzzled. “It was our new truck, too. The gears are still stiff, so I would have really worked at it, to get her into reverse that fast.”

Branden asked several more questions that confirmed the recollections of the other witnesses, and then he closed his notebook, thanked MacAfee, got into his pickup, and headed back up onto the Walnut Creek hill, driving past the new inn and restaurant, to John Weaver’s house in the opposite valley.

All three men had told essentially the same story last Monday, he thought. Now two had affirmed their statements today, and Becker had described Weston’s account. There had been a line of cars and trucks, waiting for the buggy to make its turn. A sound like a truck’s backfire. A horse that gave out in the turn. Schrauzer’s cruiser backing up. Backing up hurriedly, Robert Kent had said. The semi cresting the hill and already starting to jackknife. And the impact that sent the buggy flying, detached from the horse that lay mangled by the impact, pawing at the air beside the road.

16

Friday, August 11
1:00 P.M.

 

 

BRANDEN found Ricky Niell in John Weaver’s trophy-room office, clicking through pages of documents on Weaver’s computer. Niell turned around when he heard the door open behind him and said, “Hi, Doc,” while holding his hand on the mouse.

Branden said, “How are you doing, Ricky?” and pulled a rolling office chair up beside Niell. “Find anything in there?”

“Normal stuff,” Ricky said. He adjusted the gray tie on his black uniform shirt and sat up straighter. “It’s like I said earlier. The newest entries are on a land deal with Holmes Estates, in Cleveland. He’s got all his notes and figures on the computer, but the contract is on top of that filing cabinet.”

Branden rose, took several papers off the cabinet and sat back down. The top document was a land purchase agreement with Holmes Estates. The last page bore signatures in two columns, one side signed by officers from Holmes Estates, the other side for Sommer Homes, where there were lines for two signatures, first Brittany Sommers, and then John R. Weaver. Sommers had signed, but Weaver had not.

“I found those papers in a briefcase out beside the road,” Niell said. “Funny how Weaver hadn’t signed.”

“He’d have signed other copies,” Branden said. “There’d be no hurry for him to sign his own copy.” Then he asked, “What all’s in the files he kept on Holmes Estates?”

“Mostly notes on the land sale, and some figures,” Ricky said. “And some spreadsheets marked ‘Lease-to-Purchase.’”

“Can you bring up one of those spreadsheets?”

Niell said it would take a minute, and Branden rose to let him work. His eyes traveled to the gun rack on the wall, and Branden crossed the room and idly studied the rifles there, and then some of the hunting photos on the wall.

After a moment, Niell said, “I’ve got those files now.”

With Branden back at his seat, Niell selected a file from the active documents menu, and scrolled to the top.

“That’s an amortization table,” Branden said. He read from the screen. “Daniel P. Yoder. $80,000 at 8 percent for twenty years. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” The entries in the table began twelve years before, and finished up after twenty years, when the deed would transfer to Daniel Yoder.

Branden took the mouse, scrolled to the present year, and found that Weaver had underlined one entry. It was under the column headed “Accumulated Principal,” in the row for July: $30,934.21.

“Bring up another one,” Branden asked.

Niell took the mouse, clicked on another file, and found a similarly underlined entry, for July of that year: $28,928.93. The contract had been initiated several months later than the first one.

Branden whistled and said, “I think I know what he was doing.” He leafed through the Holmes Estates contract, and found a parcel similar in size to those they had found in the amortization tables. Then he opened the center desk drawer, found a small calculator, and began punching numbers.

“Let’s say Weaver sold a tract originally for the $80,000, as on that first one we looked at. After twelve years, Yoder would have paid $30,934.21 in principal.” Then Branden took the mouse, clicked back to the first spreadsheet and found another figure. “He would also have paid $62,079.03 in interest, so that’s profit to Weaver, clear and free.” Then Branden switched to the land sale agreement with Holmes Estates. “A tract like that just sold for $304,082.99.” He worked at the calculator and said, “That’s an increase of 380 percent over twelve years. Now, all he has to do is pay Yoder back his principal, $30,934.21, plus a straight 8 percent interest.” Again he punched numbers and said, “Total of $30,934.21 plus $2,474.74, or $33,408.95. Now, with the interest Daniel Yoder paid out over the past twelve years, that gives us $62,079.03 minus $33,408.95 for the buyback, or $28,670.08 in profit that Weaver figured to make just on buying the land back at a straight 8 percent interest. Now we figure the new selling price, and we have $304,082.99 plus $28,670.08, or $332,753.07 made on the whole deal.”

Niell said, “Now figure what Weaver bought the land for.”

“That’ll be over in the drawer,” Branden said. “Take a while to look it up. But, if we rough it out at, say, $60,000.00, that’s a net profit of $332,753.07 minus $60,000.00, or $272,753.07 on the whole deal, start to finish. That’s something like,” punching buttons, “450 percent, roughly, over twelve to fifteen years, before taxes.”

“No wonder he sold,” Niell said, and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, eyes trained on the screen.

“It gets better,” Branden said. “There were eight parcels.”

Niell’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead.

Branden said, “Let’s say they all pretty much went the same way as this one did. That’s eight times $272,753.00, or something like 2.2 million, walking away.”

Niell seemed flabbergasted. “I’m in the wrong business,” he muttered.

As they sat together in front of the computer screen, contemplating a clear profit of 2.2 million dollars, Branden’s eyes drifted to the file cabinet where land deals were crammed so tight into the folders of three drawers that it was difficult to pull a single folder loose from the others. And he began to wonder nervously what role Britta Sommers had played over the years in J. R. Weaver’s land speculations.

17

Friday, August 11
2:33 P.M.

 

 

THAT afternoon, Branden drove west on State Route 39 and merged with U.S. 62 at Berlin, joining the slow-paced tangle of commercial and tourist traffic that labored its way through the town like the cars on a roller coaster, clawing their way to the top of the first hill. For a stretch of about a mile, on both sides of the road, through the little roadside town of Berlin, there could be found every conceivable type of vendor of Amish goods and country crafts, ranging from the finest handmade quilts and grandfather clocks, going for thousands of dollars, to dime-store plastic trinkets and jewelry for the kids. Dried flowers arranged in wicker. Amish oak furniture. Coat racks with Shaker pegs. Dried goods and tack. Postcards. Restaurants. Religious books. Throngs of people in cars, or crossing the highway on foot. The town was so overrun, and the traffic so backed up, that to drive the single mile could easily take three-quarters of an hour.

Branden fell in behind a dump truck loaded with gravel and started the crawl westward through town. On his cell phone, he tried Cal Troyer’s number at the church, and left a message on the machine. Next, he tried the number at the coroner’s office in the hospital. He let it ring several times, but Melissa Taggert’s answering machine did not pick up.

As he sat in the traffic, he remembered her first year in Millersburg. Elected county coroner, but considerably overqualified for the position. She held advanced degrees from Ohio State, first her M.D. and then a Ph.D. in forensic pathology. Directly out of school, she had worked for several years in the medical examiner’s office in Cleveland, and then had moved to Millersburg. She could have gone anywhere, Branden realized, but she came to sleepy Millersburg because of the uncomplicated quality of life in Holmes County. She had settled for the life of a small-town coroner, trading the salary and the perks of a big-city job for the country life. She had responded to the same allure of down-home living that had inspired Holmes Estates to develop farmland, so that rich people from places such as Cleveland, Columbus, or Pittsburgh could put up half-million-dollar homes on five acres of hillside, overlooking the picturesque fields of an Amish neighbor’s farm.

In time, she had built a decent morgue and laboratory in a basement corner of the hospital, and with the right kind of steady pressure on the county commissioners, she had even managed to upgrade her duties, to something more along the lines of a medical examiner. Now, after several years with Bruce Robertson’s help, she had built what could be regarded as an excellent forensics lab, in a county where life could be as simple as an afternoon game of horseshoes.

Branden smiled and remembered what Robertson had extracted from her, in exchange for his help over the years—a guarantee of her support when it came time to move the sheriff’s office out of the little red brick jail next to the courthouse and into a modern facility on a hillside north of town. Using his own money, Robertson had hired an architect in Wooster to render an artist’s sketch of how the facility might look on the hill he had chosen near the County Home, and without making a noticeable point out of the matter, he had hung the drawing in his office in the red brick jail. When people asked about it, he would reply, “Just doing some dreaming, is all. Just a little dreaming.”

When Branden pulled free of the traffic snarl in Berlin, he continued into Millersburg on 62, circled the courthouse square, and parked one block north on Monroe Street. He walked into the county recorder’s office, in an old converted grocery store, and at the front desk, he spoke briefly with the recorder. He took what he learned to one of the computer terminals and began a search for any land transactions involving Holmes Estates. After some effort, he concluded that no such transactions had been recorded.

Branden paused at the computer, thinking, aware now that neither Sommers nor Weaver had filed the land sale with the recorder yet. Then why not Holmes Estates? They should have filed by now. Another thing. Who would handle the transaction with Sommers missing and Weaver dead? Perhaps the new trustee of the Weaver estate. Would there have been copies of the land purchase agreement at Sommers’s house? Or in her office at the bank? Why wouldn’t the trust officer have filed on behalf of Weaver’s estate by now? Why hadn’t Brittany Sommers filed the papers herself?

At the front counter in the recorder’s office, Branden found the recorder’s assistant, an attractive, middle-aged woman, sorting papers at her desk behind the counter. She glanced up from her work, straightened the papers briefly, stepped to the counter, and said, “Yes?”

Branden said, “Mike Branden, working for the sheriff’s department,” and displayed his badge.

“You’re that big professor up on the hill,” she said and smiled genially.

Branden said, “Yes,” blushed slightly as she continued to smile at him, and asked, “Can you tell me how long it usually takes to file a land sale?”