Lost Legacy (A Zoe Chambers Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

“Terrific.” Patsy grinned. “You all have a nice lunch.”

Zoe gave her a sour look to match her sarcastic, “Thanks.”

Patsy headed to the far end of the barn.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Zoe said as she and Tom strolled outside.

“Okay. What about?”

“James Engle. I never knew you and he were friends.”

The smile faded from Tom’s face. “Your mother overstated the matter. We weren’t really that close.”

But Zoe wasn’t ready to give up on the matter. “Then why were you trying so hard to change the subject this morning when I was talking to Mom about what happened with her uncles?”

Tom stopped. He removed his eyeglasses and studied the specks of chaff on the lenses. “I wasn’t aware I was doing that.”

Zoe didn’t believe him. “You must know something about what was going on back then.”

He tugged a handkerchief from his jeans pocket and wiped his glasses with it. “Sorry to disappoint you, but as far as I know, those stories you’ve heard about it being a murder/suicide are true.”

“James Engle never told you anything?”

“Nope.” Tom shoved the handkerchief back in his pocket and put on his glasses, which even Zoe could tell were still smudged. “Jim never said a word. And I never believed the stories your grandmother spouted either. But that didn’t make me especially popular with her, so I learned to keep my opinions to myself. Your mom likes to carry on the family grudge, spreading rumors. I’d hate to see you picking up the banner and running with it. Jim’s gone. Let the whole mess end here.”

“But what if there’s a connection between Engle’s death yesterday and Vernon and Denver’s all those years ago?”

“How could there be? Jim committed suicide. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Is there?”

Was there? Zoe wished she knew what was going on at the Monongahela County Morgue. “Probably not.”

“Then drop it,” he said, a note of finality in his soft voice.

Zoe deflated. Tom was right. Once again, he proved to be the voice of logic and reason. She’d hated that about him when she was growing up. She didn’t much care for it now, either.

“Okay?” he asked.

She struggled to find a suitable argument against his rationale and came up blank. “Okay,” she muttered.

“Good. Now let’s go drag your mom out to lunch.”

“To the Dog Den? Drag may be exactly what you have to do.”

How the hell could an old man move so damned fast? Pete’s injured ankle prevented him from charging down the hallway outside the morgue, only adding to his frustration.

Harry Adams was nowhere to be seen.

Elevators to the hospital’s upper floors loomed at one end of the hall. Glass sliding doors to the underground parking lot flanked the other. Terrific. Was his father wandering aimlessly around the hospital’s interior or had he slipped outside?

With a faint whoosh, the glass doors slid open. But it wasn’t his father who strolled in.

“Hey, Pete,” Wayne Baronick said. “Is the autopsy done already?”

“Not yet. Did you happen to see an older man out there? About seventy, six foot, gray hair, blue eyes?”

“No. But I saw about five guys fitting that description hanging out at the coffee shop down the street. What’s up?”

“It’s my father. He’s...” Pete hated admitting his old man had Alzheimer’s. The word dementia didn’t sit well with him either. “He tends to wander off.”

“I didn’t think you had a father,” the detective said. “I figured you’d just hatched from an egg. Like an alligator.”

Pete resisted the urge to bite the young punk’s head off. Like an alligator. “Go back outside and see if you can spot him. I’ve already called security, but I’m going to head upstairs and look for him myself.”

“Yeah, okay.” Baronick backed toward the glass doors. “But, Pete, there are like ten or eleven floors to this hospital.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

The detective shrugged and jogged outside.

As Pete limped toward the elevators, the door to the men’s room halfway down the hall swung open.

“Well, hello, son,” Harry said. “What are you doing here?”

Relief poured from Pete in a sigh. “Pop. You scared the hell outta me. I told you to stay put.”

“I didn’t think I needed your permission to take a leak.” The old man sniffed in disdain.

Pete rubbed his temple where the seed of a headache had taken root. “You’re right. You don’t. Just let me know where you’re going next time.”

“I don’t need you keeping tabs on my whereabouts, you know. I’m not a child. Your sister treats me like a damned six-year-old. I won’t have it from you, too.”

Pete smiled in spite of himself. Yep, that was his old man, all right. “Okay, Pop. Let’s go back inside.”

“Inside where?”

“The morgue.”

“Oh.”

As they turned, Baronick charged through the glass doors. “There’s no one out there matching that description—” He stopped midsentence and midstride.

“I found him,” Pete said.

“Damn it. I wasn’t lost,” Harry said. “I was in the damned can.”

Pete cleared his throat. “Wayne Baronick, meet Harry Adams. My father.”

A slow smile spread across Baronick’s face. “I can see the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

Pete bit back a remark about being neither an apple nor an alligator egg. “Did you find anything at Engle’s house?”

“You first. Did the autopsy reveal anything?”

“Only that Jim Engle had a perfectly healthy set of lungs.”

Baronick’s smile faded. “Get out. I thought he had lung cancer.”

Pete shrugged. “Apparently not.”

The detective swore under his breath. He placed a hand on the morgue door and swung it open, holding it for Pete and Harry.

Inside, the tech had peeled the skin back from the top of the corpse’s head. Franklin handed him a small power saw.

“Find anything else?” Pete asked.

“His liver shows signs of some excessive drinking, but not to the point of being life threatening,” Doc Abercrombie said. “Otherwise, I see nothing here that would be cause for impending death.”

“So if he committed suicide in order to cheat death...” Baronick’s voice trailed off.

“Then he was the one who was cheated, I’m afraid,” the pathologist said.

“Of course, we’re not done yet,” Franklin added. The tech fired up the saw and laid the blade against the skull.

Pete eased his father back onto the stool. He considered telling the old man to stay put, but that hadn’t worked so well the first time he’d tried it. Instead, he pulled up a second stool and sat down next to Harry, relieved to be off his ankle. “Now,” he said to Baronick. “What did you find at the house?”

“A lot of very neat files. Either James Engle was the definition of anal or he’d done one fine job of putting his affairs in order.”

“That’s it?”

“Not quite. One of the crime scene boys was crawling around, looking in and under everything. He found a crumpled piece of paper under the sofa. Turned out to be another interesting note.”

“Another suicide note?”

“No. A letter dated two weeks ago. I sent it to the lab.”

“What kind of letter?”

“I’m not sure.” Baronick pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pants pocket. “I made a copy of it. Thought maybe you’d have some idea of what it’s about.”

Pete took the paper from him and read. At first, the name didn’t register with him.

Dear Mrs. Jackson,

I suppose you’re wondering why I would be writing to you now. My days are numbered and I hope to make things right as much as possible while I still can.

As part of that mission, I feel I need to let you know about your husband. Gary was just trying to do what’s right. Mrs. Jackson, your husband did not die in that car crash.

I wish I could tell you more.

With Deepest Remorse,

James Engle

“What do you make of it?” Baronick asked. “Almost sounds like the old guy was playing private eye.”

Pete stared at the words on the page. The weight of their implication crushed down on him. “Engle wasn’t playing detective.”

“What then? Who the hell is Gary Jackson?”

“Chambers,” Pete corrected him. “Gary Chambers. He was killed—supposedly—by a drunk driver over twenty-five years ago.”

Pete didn’t remember the case firsthand. Back then, he’d still been in the police academy in Pittsburgh. But he knew the name.

Gary Chambers—Zoe’s father.

Six

Cause of death—asphyxiation due to strangulation. Manner of death—undetermined pending toxicology results.

Such were Coroner Franklin Marshall’s rulings. Undetermined. At least that left the case open for Pete to investigate. Had the ruling been suicide, there would’ve been no case.

And Pete intended to investigate. Something about this thing stunk worse than James Engle’s decomposing corpse.

Harry gazed out the passenger side window of the SUV. “Where are we going?” he asked for the third time since they’d left Brunswick.

“To Wilford Engle’s house.” Pete figured he could have told the old man Disneyland, and it wouldn’t have stuck either.

It had been a process of elimination regarding who to talk to first. Pete had called Warren Froats, but the former Chief of Police was away on a fishing trip, according to his wife, and wouldn’t be home until late. Dr. David Weinstein, James Engle’s physician, was out of his office until Monday morning. That left the victim’s brother. And Pete wasn’t about to call ahead and give the old coot a chance to make travel plans.

Harry turned to Pete. “Engle? Isn’t that the guy they were just cutting up back there?”

Pete took his eyes off the road for a moment to study his father, stunned that he remembered the autopsy, let alone the victim’s name. “His brother. I need to ask him a few questions.”

“He the next of kin?”

“Yeah.”

“So he’s the prime suspect, huh?” Harry beamed. “I watch those TV shows. I know how you cops think. The next of kin is always the prime suspect.”

Pete chuckled. “Something like that, Pop.”

But Pete doubted Wilford Engle had killed his brother. At least not without help. Wilford could barely support his own weight, as Pete’s throbbing ankle still attested. No way could the old man hoist a body—live or dead—off the ground to make it look like a suicide by hanging. At the moment the biggest question in Pete’s mind had to do with whether Wilford really believed James was dying of cancer. Or was Wilford the one fabricating the whole tale?

Ten minutes later, Pete pulled into the surviving Engle’s driveway. He reached for the ignition, but hesitated. He couldn’t very well shut off the engine—and the air conditioning—if he intended to leave Harry sitting there. Not with the temperature outside teasing the ninety-degree mark. But was it a good idea to leave Harry unattended?

Of course it wasn’t. Pete cursed his sister under his breath. How was he supposed to do his job while babysitting his father?

“Well, what are you waiting on?” Harry asked. “Let’s go. Do you want me to play good cop or bad cop?”

Pete bit back a grin in spite of himself. “How about you play silent cop and let me do all the talking. It is my job, after all.”

Harry scowled at him. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re no fun at all?”

“All the time.”

Pete cut the ignition, and they climbed out of the vehicle.

“You again,” Wilford Engle muttered when he opened the door. He eyed Harry. “Who’s he?”

Pete made the introductions, and Harry extended a hand. Engle glowered at it for a moment then took it without much enthusiasm.

“Mind if we come in?” Pete asked.

“I do. But I don’t expect that makes much difference to you.” Engle stepped back, and Pete followed Harry inside.

As hot and miserable as it was outside, the interior of the house was worse. None of the windows were open. The blinds shuttered the room against the sun, but no fans circulated the stagnant air. The place reeked of old chewing tobacco and dust.

Engle didn’t invite either of them to sit, but Harry sank into an easy chair.

Pete leaned against the same wall as yesterday, keeping his weight off his bad ankle, and pulled his notebook from his pocket. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I didn’t figure you were here to see how I was holding up.” Engle gave a disdainful sniff. “What do you want to know that I haven’t told you already?”

“When was the last time you were over at your brother’s place?”

“Tuesday. I told you before. I took him to his doctor’s appointment.”

Pete made a small production of squinting thoughtfully at his notes. “And this doctor’s appointment was with his oncologist?”

“Oncalla-who?”

“Oncologist. The specialist treating him for his cancer.”

Engle stared at Pete as if he had sprouted a second head. “He wasn’t seeing no specialist. I took him to Dr. Weinstein in Brunswick. I told you that yesterday. That’s who I always took him to.”

“Is there any particular reason why your brother wasn’t being treated by a specialist?”

Engle’s gaze shifted toward the sofa, and Pete suspected he would prefer to sit down. “I guess Dr. Weinstein didn’t see no need for it.” Engle’s voice developed a quiver of doubt.

“So, if your brother was only seeing a general practitioner, why pick one that was fifteen miles away in Brunswick? Why not go to Dr. McCarrell in Philipsburg? That’s who you see, isn’t it?”

Pete braced for a tirade from the old farmer about poking into his business. In truth, Pete was only guessing about McCarrell. But while the man might come across as a folksy country doctor, without a court order, he’d flat out refused to comment on whether or not he ever treated either Engle, citing doctor-patient confidentiality laws. Pete hoped that Wilford was like virtually every other Vance Township resident over the age of sixty and chose the doctor who had been in the area for decades.

The tirade never came.

“Well, yeah. I do go to old Dr. McCarrell,” Engle said, his voice soft. “So did Jim before the illness.”

“Then why did he switch to Dr. Weinstein?”

“Because Weinstein’s younger, I suppose. Knows more about treating lung cancer.”

“Did you go in to see the doctor with your brother?”

“Why should I?” The vitriol was back in Wilford Engle’s voice. “Jim was a grown man. He didn’t need me holding his hand.”

“Did you ever talk to the doctor? Maybe have a family meeting to determine a course of treatment?”