Murder in the Smokies (10 page)

She finished taking a bite of sandwich, chewing slowly, a thoughtful look on her face.

He was officially in serious trouble, he thought, watching her eat and feeling the slow, steady burn of desire roiling just under the fragile surface of his control. If he couldn’t get his mind off sex while watching her chew a turkey sandwich and talk about serial murders—

“Let’s say this theory is right.” She set her half-eaten sandwich on her plate and looked at him with such intensity he felt the lid on his libido rattling from the pressure. “If these four victims were hired murders, who wanted them dead? And why?”

He took a drink of beer to wash down a bite of sandwich. “I’ve been thinking about that ever since Seth told me what he knew. Finding that answer isn’t really that much different than figuring out who a serial killer might be, is it? It’s all about the victim.”

“And two of the four worked at Davenport Trucking.”

“Actually, three,” Sutton corrected. “April Billings worked there part-time shortly before she was murdered.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s what Seth Hammond said.”

“Hmm. Mr. Davenport didn’t mention that. Of course, I didn’t ask. I got sidetracked by seeing the truck being cleaned out in the washing bay.”

“So three of the four are connected to the trucking company.”

“Marjorie Kenner’s body was released by the medical examiner this afternoon. The funeral is tomorrow afternoon.” Ivy’s brow creased in thought. “The day of the murder, Antoine and I canvassed the whole area looking for any potential witnesses, but her house is so far from any of her neighbors, we had no luck. And all of them swear there’s nobody in the world who’d want her dead.”

“But if it was a contract killing, maybe the motive isn’t obvious.”

“Right. Maybe we’ve been asking all the wrong questions.”

* * *

S
UTTON
AND
HIS
SIX
-
PACK
of Corona had left soon after dinner. Ivy knew she should have been glad to see him go, along with the reckless temptation he posed, but the house felt empty with him gone. Which was stupid, since she’d lived happily alone since she was twenty-two years old, with absolutely no desire to have her peaceful existence invaded by another human being.

But she’d never considered the possibility that Sutton Calhoun might come back to Bitterwood. He’d always been a game changer for her.

He couldn’t tell her where he planned to stay, and she wasn’t sure he hadn’t just parked off the side of the road and spent the night in his truck, but when she arrived at Padgett Memorial Gardens for Marjorie Kenner’s funeral the next morning, Sutton was there already, looking freshly showered and shaved and wearing an appropriately conservative charcoal suit and black tie.

He caught her eye as she entered the cemetery chapel, and she slid onto the pew beside him. “Where’d you find to stay?”

“Maisey Ledbetter took pity on me and gave me a room over the diner.” He smiled slightly. “Free biscuits and gravy for breakfast.”

“And they say your
daddy
is the con man,” she murmured, slanting a look at him.

“Any word on the warrant yet?”

Ugh.
She’d almost forgotten. “Apparently the judge didn’t think our conjecture constituted probable cause.” Antoine had called her early that morning with the bad news. “He’s willing to reconsider if we can bring him something new.”

“So we’ll just have to find something new.” He fell silent, leaving Ivy searching for something to say in response. But it was taking all her willpower, especially with his body so close, so warm and solid beside her, not to think about the night before, the way his hands had moved over her flesh, sure and possessive, as if marking her with his brand.

Apparently, his mind was traveling similar territory, for his next words came out low and seductive. “I didn’t want to leave last night.”

She closed her eyes against the assault on her senses. “I know.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t think it would be so hard. Being here in Bitterwood, I mean.”

“Maybe you left more unfinished business than you realized.”

He didn’t answer, and the opportunity for further conversation was lost as the minister of the local Methodist church entered the chapel, signaling the beginning of the funeral service.

The crowd was larger than Ivy had anticipated, although she supposed it made sense. A combination of nostalgia—Marjorie Kenner had been a four-year fixture in the lives of any person who’d attended the local high school during her twenty-year tenure as librarian there—and morbid curiosity had probably brought most of them here.

Most of the faces were familiar, though she didn’t recognize some of the mourners who sat in the pews set aside for family and close friends. She made a mental note to make contact after the graveside service and introduce herself.

Unfortunately, Captain Rayburn beat her to it. He made his way to the inner circle of mourners as soon as the graveside service was over, shooting Ivy a disapproving look as he spotted Sutton standing beside her.

“Your captain seems unhappy,” Sutton murmured.

“He told me to stay away from you.”

“I thought he just told you not to share investigation secrets with me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not doing so hot with that, either.” She let her gaze drift across the rest of the mourners now dispersing from the cemetery. One woman in particular caught Ivy’s attention, primarily because she had moved away from the rest of the crowd and now stood in front of another grave, one Ivy recognized from a previous funeral vigil only two weeks earlier.

She started moving toward the woman, her curiosity fully piqued.

Sutton fell in step with her. “What is it?”

She nodded toward the woman, who was tall and slim and dressed in a conservative blue suit. “I don’t know who that is, but she just left Marjorie Kenner’s funeral to visit Coral Vines’s grave.”

The woman looked up as they approached, her brow furrowed. Sadness darkened her red-rimmed blue eyes. “Can I help you?”

Ivy flashed her shield. “I’m Detective Hawkins with the Bitterwood Police Department. Were you a friend of Marjorie Kenner?”

“She was my neighbor when I was a little girl.” Her lips curved slightly. “We bonded over a love of books and stayed in touch ever since. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

Ivy nodded at the simple gravestone in front of the woman. “You knew Coral Vines, too?”

“Yes.” The word came out in a gusty breath. “She worked for my father for a while. We became friends until—”

“Your father?” Sutton asked. “Who’s your father?”

She gave him a wary look, as if she suddenly realized this was more than just a friendly conversation. “George Davenport. Coral worked at our trucking company in Maryville.”

Chapter Ten

“It’s been so surreal. I knew all four of the victims really well. How often does that happen?”

Her name was Rachel Davenport. Sutton supposed that, in less grief-stricken days, she’d be considered a pretty girl. She had cool blue eyes, fair skin dusted with freckles and long, straight hair the color of honey in sunlight. She was tall, towering over Ivy, but there was a fragility to her that made Sutton want to find her a chair before she collapsed.

“Not often,” Ivy answered, her tone gentle, as if she, too, realized Rachel Davenport was someone with whom she had to tread lightly. “Did you know the other women through their work at your father’s company?”

She nodded, her gaze lengthening, as if to take in the rest of the cemetery. “They’re all here. I guess that’s to be expected in a town this small, huh?”

She really did look as if she was going to fall down any moment, Sutton thought with alarm. He exchanged a look with Ivy, and she stepped forward, laying her hand on Rachel’s arm. “Do you have a ride home?”

Rachel looked at Ivy as if she’d asked a strange question. “I have my car here.”

Ivy glanced at Sutton again.

“I’m not going to break,” Rachel said, fire in her voice. Color rose in her cheeks, driving out the paleness. “I’m fine.”

Her irritation seemed to have strengthened the steel in her spine, for she looked stronger already. Ivy took her hand away from the woman’s arm and gave Sutton a shrugging look.

“I could use a cup of coffee before I get back to my normal day,” he said. “Would you ladies like to join me?”

Rachel and Ivy both gave him similarly disbelieving looks, as if to ask,
Is that the best you can do?

“Look, if you want to interrogate me or something,” Rachel said, directing her words to Ivy, “just say so. I’ll happily cooperate, though I’m not sure what I can add.”

“I really could use a cup of coffee,” Sutton said. “How about we grab a cup at Ledbetter’s and you can tell us all about your friends?”

A murmured request from Ivy to Maisey Ledbetter got them a corner booth at the diner, well away from the other afternoon patrons. Ivy slid onto the booth bench next to Sutton, the heat of her body against his generating a pleasant but bearable buzz of sexual awareness. Rachel Davenport sat opposite them, her slim hands worrying the small plastic container of sugar and sweetener packets.

“I feel like a jinx,” she murmured, her gaze focused on the movement of her fingers. “Everyone around me dies.”

“Your father’s sick, isn’t he?” Ivy asked.

Sutton looked at her. She slanted a glance his way as if to ask him to back her up with whatever she said. He settled back, letting her take the lead.

“Liver cancer. Inoperable. They’re hoping the chemo might give him more time, but I think he’s given up hope.” Rachel’s lower lip trembled, but she brought it under control. Sutton realized he’d underestimated her. She looked fragile, and clearly she was struggling with a hellish amount of personal stress and grief, but she was stronger than she looked.

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was fifteen.”

Damn, Sutton thought. No wonder she felt like a jinx.

“I bet Marjorie Kenner stepped in for you then. A maternal figure in your life.”

Rachel’s gaze flicked upward, meeting Ivy’s. “I’d never really thought of it that way, but, yeah. I guess she did.”

“Amelia and Coral were around your age,” Ivy said. “Did you socialize with them?”

“Amelia was my best friend from college. We bonded over our love of old movies,” Rachel said with a faint smile. “We used to go to that revival theater in Knoxville on weekends when they were showing the old romantic comedies. Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunn, Myrna Loy—” She looked back at her hands. “We were supposed to go the weekend she died.”

“What about Coral?” Sutton asked.

“Coral was a mess.” Rachel’s voice darkened with regret. “She just couldn’t get past losing Derek. I tried to make sure she had something to eat and that she didn’t drink herself to death. I was so afraid she’d give up and do something terrible to herself. I just never thought she’d go the way she did.”

Four victims, Sutton thought. They’d thought Davenport Trucking might be the connection. But that was only half the answer.

The real connection seemed to be Rachel Davenport herself.

“Do you have any enemies?” he asked aloud.

Two sets of eyes snapped up to look at him. “Enemies?” Rachel asked, sounding confused.

Beside him, Ivy closed her hand over his knee, her grip strong. “Of your family,” she said. “Since three of the victims worked for your father.”

Sutton took advantage of the situation to close his fingers over Ivy’s below the table. She shot him a questioning look and he returned it with a wicked half smile.

“You think someone is killing these people because of my family?” Rachel looked horrified by the thought. “But I thought it was a serial killer or something. You think it’s not?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ivy said quickly. “We’re just trying to figure out if there could be some sort of connection in the way the killer chooses his victims. Maybe he lives close to the business, for instance. Or rents a truck from you now and then.”

“We rent out a lot of trucks,” Rachel said doubtfully. “Most of our customers are business owners who don’t need a truck enough to warrant buying a company vehicle, though. Normal people.”

Seemingly normal people could commit heinous crimes, Sutton knew. Some of the most notorious serial killers in history had struck their neighbors as perfectly normal people.

“I asked your father to let us see the rental records for the past month or so,” Ivy said. “He didn’t want to—privacy concerns, he said. I totally respect that, but if we knew who the renters were—”

“You think the killer could be one of our renters?”

“We think it might be,” Ivy said, apparently unwilling to elaborate on their suspicions about how the rental trucks were really being used. Sutton didn’t blame her. That was a lot of nightmarish speculation to lay on a civilian.

“I guess it makes sense. If he rents from us, he could have seen all of his victims there at the office,” Rachel conceded. “Three of them worked there, and Marjorie often dropped by to take me to lunch when she was in town.”

Sutton didn’t say it aloud, but there was still something about Marjorie Kenner’s murder that didn’t fit. Even if she dropped by now and then to take Rachel to lunch, what were the odds that she happened to be there at the same time as a truck renter? Or that she’d catch his eye when he seemed to be more focused on women in their late twenties and early thirties?

“I’ll talk to my father,” Rachel said. “Make him see that we need to give you those names.”

“We’ll be very discreet about interviewing them,” Ivy promised, a tremor of excitement underlying her calm tone.

Rachel pushed aside her coffee cup. “I’d like to go back to the cemetery now.”

“Okay,” Ivy agreed, glancing quickly at Sutton. He could tell she was worried she’d pushed too hard, but with Rachel’s next words, she visibly relaxed.

“I’ll talk to my father as soon as I get back to the office. If I can get him to agree, I’ll call you to pick up the list of renters.”

Rachel rode with Ivy back to the cemetery, while Sutton followed in his truck, keeping an eye out for any signs of outside surveillance. If there was anyone stalking him or Ivy, he didn’t spot them during the drive, and they returned to the cemetery without incident.

Rachel’s car was still parked just off the access road near Marjorie Kenner’s new grave. Hers was the only car left when Ivy pulled up and parked behind the Honda Accord; all of the other mourners had left already.

Ivy got out with Rachel and exchanged a few words that Sutton couldn’t hear. She waited outside the Jeep until Rachel was safely inside her car and driving away. But as she turned to get back into her Jeep, she stopped suddenly, her gaze directed toward the newly dug grave. Moving slowly at first, then gaining speed, she started walking up the modest incline toward the grave.

Sutton got out of the truck and followed, catching up at the grave. “What is it?”

Ivy crouched beside the grave and pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket. As he watched with confusion, she reached out and examined a small flowering green plant that seemed to have been planted at the head of the grave, close to where the small granite nameplate lay, a placeholder until the family could arrange for a proper grave marker.

“I saw this same plant at Coral Vines’s grave,” she told Sutton, pushing to her feet. She started walking across the graveyard, leaving him to keep up, and stopped a few plots away at a second grave. “See?”

He bent to examine the plant growing next to the simple gravestone. “I think I know what this is,” he told her, feeling a strange quiver in the middle of his gut. “It’s belladonna.”

“That’s—”

“Deadly nightshade,” he finished for her.

“I don’t see any of those plants on the other graves around here.”

“Could be a coincidence,” he suggested, not sounding convincing even to his own ears.

She started walking again, moving at a determined clip. He caught up and followed her to a third grave. The headstone read “Amelia Sanderson.”

With her foot, Ivy nudged a leafy plant growing by the grave, making the leaves and star-shaped purple flowers gently shake. The flowers alternated with darkening purple berries—belladonna again, Sutton recognized. “Same plant, right?” Ivy asked.

He nodded. “The whole plant is poisonous.”

She scanned the graveyard, then started walking again. By the time they stopped at a fourth grave, Sutton wasn’t surprised to find a fourth belladonna plant growing near the headstone of April Billings’s grave.

“It’s his calling card,” he said.

Ivy looked up at him. “What does that do to the idea that these murders are professional hits?”

He rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know.”

“Could these plants have gotten here by natural means? Birds scattering seeds or something like that?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t think so—it’s not a native plant in this area.”

She bent and grabbed leaves, flowers and berries from the plant, stripping off her latex glove inside out and tying the end to create a makeshift evidence bag. Pulling more gloves from her pocket, she repeated the process at each of the other three grave sites until she had samples from each. “I’ll get these tested to be sure we’re right about what they are.”

He nodded. “Good idea.”

“Meanwhile, I’m going to go talk to our surveillance teams. We’ve had the cemetery under surveillance since the third murder.”

In case the killer wanted to spend some quality time with his kills, Sutton thought with approval. It made sense. “Nobody’s reported anything unusual?”

“No.” Her dark eyebrows flicked upward. “But maybe I haven’t been asking the right questions.”

* * *

I
T
WAS
LATE
IN
THE
afternoon before Ivy heard back from the Knoxville botanist with whom she’d left the plant cuttings. While waiting for word, she’d spent most of her time sifting through the stacks of surveillance notes and photos from the shifts of two-man teams who’d kept the cemetery under watch for the past three weeks.

Nothing jumped out at her as significant in the surveillance files. Photos showed exactly what she’d have expected to see at a graveyard—mourners, grounds crews, regular weekly visitors to specific graves. She saw nothing that struck her as significant.

The call from Dr. Phelps at the University of Tennessee proved more interesting. “It’s definitely
Atropa belladonna,
” Dr. Phelps told her. “Deadly nightshade, in the vernacular.”

“And it’s not a native species here in eastern Tennessee?”

“It’s not a native plant, but it’s a cultivated plant species here in the States, so it’s not that strange to find it growing. It has weedlike characteristics such as self-cultivation.”

“So it could have gotten into the cemetery naturally?”

“Theoretically,” Dr. Phelps agreed. “But from your description of where you found the plants, I’d say they were deliberately planted there. The sheer odds against the plants all self-cultivating in the same general area of the grave, near the headstone? It just defies belief.”

“Is there any way to trace where the plant originated?”

“Possibly. But any tests we could run would, at the very least, require that you find the original rootstock.”

“Are there legitimate reasons to cultivate the plant?”

“Oh, absolutely. Atropine, which derives from
Atropa belladonna,
is an anticholinergic agent. It’s a common treatment for organophosphate poisoning.”

“It’s a poison but it’s also a poison antidote?” Ivy asked, confused.

“Not an antidote per se. In the right dosage, it blocks acetylcholine—” Dr. Phelps cut off the explanation, as if he sensed he was only making things less clear for Ivy. “Basically, it limits the effectiveness of poisons attacking the nervous system. Soldiers in battle who might encounter chemical weapons generally carry atropine injectors with them as an antidote.”

“Do you know of any growers here in Tennessee who cultivate belladonna?”

“Not off the top of my head. I could look into it for you.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

“You’ve got a lead?” Antoine Parsons had come into the bull pen while she was talking to Dr. Phelps. He’d perched on her desk until she’d finished the call.

“I’m not sure I’d call it a lead exactly. It’s more like a whole new set of questions.” She caught him up on the plants she’d found in the cemetery. “What about you? Anything new?” Antoine had gone out to recanvass the neighborhoods around the previous victims’ homes, with the potential truck angle in mind.

“People apparently don’t pay that much attention to trucks driving through their neighborhoods,” Antoine answered with a grimace. “They’re not uncommon sights, and unless the damned thing’s painted pink with yellow polka dots or something, a truck driving through the neighborhood barely pings the radar.”