Poisoned Ground (2 page)

Chapter Three

Rachel felt like a gawker, a crime groupie, standing in the weeds beside the road with Robert McClure and Joanna.

A couple hundred yards of yellow police tape strung along the front boundary of the Kelly property snapped and trembled in the wind. The only people Tom had allowed in were his chief deputy, Captain Dennis Murray, several other deputies, and Dr. Gretchen Lauter, Mason County’s medical examiner. Joanna had ridden down the road with Rachel, and McClure had followed in his car, to find out about the gunshots they’d heard. Rachel would have left by now if Tom hadn’t asked her to wait and take temporary custody of the Kellys’ dog and two pet rabbits.

Trying to ignore the contentious chatter between McClure and Joanna, Rachel stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets to keep them warm and glanced up at the towering dark clouds. She wanted to go home, to get away from this quiet little farm that had been transformed in seconds into a place of violent death.

“I can’t get over this,” McClure murmured, shaking his head. “I actually heard the shots that killed them. And I brushed it off. I was sure it was just a hunter—”

“If you knew Lincoln and Marie at all,” Joanna said, “you wouldn’t have been so quick to shrug off gunshots over here.” Tears glistened in her eyes, and her face flushed with the effort of clamping down on her emotions.

“Yes, Joanna.” McClure sighed. “I’m woefully ignorant, and of course you were right to be worried. I talked to them earlier today, incidentally. About the land sale.”

“Oh?” Rachel looked at him with new interest. “They weren’t going to sell to Packard, were they?”

“Never.” Joanna cut off McClure’s response. “It was not going to happen. You were wasting your breath, Robert.”

“Well, now you’re the one who’s mistaken.” McClure spoke with the smugness that Rachel had always detested. “Marie called me yesterday and told me to have a contract drawn up for them to look over. She was thinking about Lincoln’s future needs, as his condition worsened. I brought it over this morning, and I feel sure Marie was favorably inclined.”

“No.” Joanna shook her head. “I don’t believe it for a minute. That’s wishful thinking.”

McClure issued another sigh, this one heavy with disappointment. “It’s all beside the point now, unfortunately. I’ll have to start over with their heirs.”

“What’s
unfortunat
e is that two decent, kind people are dead. I’m so sorry it’s creating extra work for you, Robert.”

McClure pressed his thin lips together and didn’t answer.

Rachel was surprised he’d gotten anywhere with the Kellys. She’d known them only because she was their veterinarian, but she was aware of their reputations as ardent environmental crusaders. They campaigned against anything that threatened the natural beauty of their rural mountain community. Rachel couldn’t see the Kellys surrendering their land to a developer who wanted to make it part of a luxury resort. But she kept her thoughts to herself, having no interest in arguing with McClure.

“Here comes Tom.” Joanna pointed up the driveway.

With a canvas tote slung over a shoulder, and holding a cat carrier with one hand, Tom tugged the reluctant dog toward them on a leash. Several times Bonnie stopped, looked back at the house, and whined. Poor girl, Rachel thought. The dog had just lost her whole world, but would anybody care about her broken heart?

When Tom reached Rachel he set down the carrier and handed her the canvas tote that held a couple of bags of rabbit pellets and some canned dog food. “I believe you know these three critters.”

“This is Betty and Patch.” Rachel leaned down to look in at the rabbits. They huddled together at the back of the carrier, bodies trembling, noses twitching. Taking the leash from Tom, Rachel stroked the dog’s head and murmured, “Hey, Bonnie. It’s okay, sweetheart. We’ll take care of you.”

The dog looked up at her with mournful eyes. Rachel saw red stains between the toes on both of the dog’s paws. Bonnie had stepped in blood.

“Are you going to tell us what happened here?” Joanna demanded of Tom. “Were they really murdered? It just doesn’t seem possible. Who would want to kill them?”

“Could it have been murder-suicide?” McClure asked.

“What?” Joanna rounded on him. “Have you lost your mind?”

“You just said nobody would want to kill them, so what else—”

“Can you tell us anything at all?” Rachel’s question silenced McClure.

Tom ran a hand through his thick black hair, his gaze flicking from Rachel to Joanna to McClure. “No reason you shouldn’t know, I guess. Yes, it was murder. They were both shot—by a third party, no doubt about that. We’ll need statements from all three of you to pin down the time the shots were fired. We’ll take care of that later, after I’m done here.” To McClure, he added, “Were you here to see the Kellys earlier today? Did you bring a contract with you?”

“Yes, and of course I’ll answer any questions you have. Just call my office and make an appointment.”

Yeah, as if that’s going to happen, Rachel thought.

“You’ll have to come to headquarters,” Tom told McClure. “I’ll let you know when I expect you to be there.” He turned back to Rachel. “You need any help getting them in the car?”

“No, I’m fine. Go back to work. I hope you can make it home for dinner.”

Tom gave her a quick kiss and started up the driveway toward the house. Bonnie whimpered and strained at her leash, trying to follow him.

“No, girl.” Rachel stroked her head. “You’re coming with me.”

“I also have work to do,” McClure said to no one in particular. “I can’t stand around here all day.” He turned to leave.

“Robert?” Joanna called after him.

He looked back.

“My shotgun wasn’t loaded.”

“Well, isn’t it nice to know that
now.
” His spine rigid, he strode to his black BMW a few feet away. When he made a U-turn on the two-lane road and sped off toward town, he almost sideswiped an ancient brown station wagon that was pulling up.

“Oh, Lord.” Joanna eyed the three women in the station wagon. “Here come the Jones sisters. Why didn’t I leave when I had the chance?”

“I have an excuse to go.” Rachel nodded at the animals. “I need to take care of them. They’re scared to death.” She wished, too late, that she’d avoided that phrase.

“Look, honey, I want to talk to you about a few things. Would you drive me back to my place so I can get my car and follow you home?”

Rachel didn’t want to rehash the land controversy or speculate about the murders, but she couldn’t say no to her best friend in Mason County if she needed someone to talk to. She handed Joanna the dog’s leash. “Sure. Help me with the animals.”

The three older women climbed out of their vehicle and hurried toward them, blocking their path to Rachel’s Range Rover.

“Oh, my goodness, what do you have there?” Summer, the youngest of the sisters, leaned close to peer into the carrier. The others, Winter and Spring, looked over her shoulders. The sisters shared the same finely cut features and large dark eyes, but in other ways they seemed as different as the seasons they were named for. Spring, the second oldest—Rachel guessed she was approaching seventy—defied age with shoulder-length hair dyed bright gold, ample makeup, and brilliantly hued clothes that would have better suited her forty years ago. Summer, younger than Spring by at least ten years, was probably in her late fifties. Her rosy skin had few wrinkles, and only faint streaks of gray here and there dulled her dark brown hair. Something about Summer, a soft childlike quality, always made Rachel want to speak soothingly to her.

The oldest sister, Winter Jones, squared her shoulders and took in the crime scene tape, the four Sheriff’s Department cruisers parked by the road, and finally the dog. Although she wasn’t as tall as Rachel, she seemed an imposing presence with her white hair pinned back into a knot and a long black coat draping her body to mid-calves. “Why are all these police cars here? And where are you taking Lincoln and Marie’s pets?”

Winter sounded affronted, as if someone owed her an explanation for this rip in the fabric of her day.

“I’ll put the animals in the car,” Joanna said as she took the carrier from Rachel. She edged past the sisters, pulling the dog with her, and left Rachel to handle their questions.

From experience Rachel knew they would keep her here for an hour if she let them. When one of their cats had an appointment at the vet clinic, however routine the visit, Rachel had a standing arrangement with the staff that after twenty minutes someone would knock on the door and summon her to a nonexistent emergency or a phone call that couldn’t wait.

“Has something happened to the Kellys?” Spring asked.

“I’m afraid so.” Up the road, Joanna waited beside the Range Rover, trying to restrain the dog. Rachel realized the vehicle was locked and Joanna couldn’t get the animals into it.

Summer stood with eyes downcast and one fist bunching the fabric of her blue coat. Her hands showed only a touch of the arthritis that had swollen her sisters’ knuckles into knobs.

Rachel answered Winter’s question. “Mr. and Mrs. Kelly have been shot. I’m afraid they were both killed.”

Spring gasped. Winter stared at Rachel, grimacing as if she’d blurted a string of obscenities. Summer ducked her head.

“Was it a hunting accident?” Winter asked. “We heard gunshots earlier, before we went into Mountainview, but that’s not unusual at this time of year. Or any other season, for that matter, but it certainly is worse with Thanksgiving coming up next week. Some idiot man is out and about every day, shooting at those harmless wild turkeys.”

“I don’t know anything for certain. I’m sorry, but I have to leave. I need to take these animals someplace where they can calm down and feel safe.”

Rachel took a step toward the Range Rover, but the Jones sisters weren’t finished yet.

“Perhaps it was a robbery,” Spring speculated. “Is anything missing?”

“Oh, dear.” Winter pressed a hand to her cheek. “This is frightening. We live so close, and we don’t have guns in the house to protect ourselves.”

Summer sniffled and touched a handkerchief to her nose.

“Oh, stop blubbering,” Winter told her.

“I don’t know exactly what happened.” Rachel spoke more forcefully this time. “And I have to go now.”

Winter wouldn’t give up. “Hasn’t Tom told you anything?” Gesturing toward the Range Rover, where Joanna waited with the dog, she added, “And what about Joanna? She has a gun, but she’s still a woman living alone. If some maniac is running around shooting people—”

“There’s no reason to panic.” But Rachel couldn’t be sure of that. Maybe they all had reason to panic but didn’t realize it yet. Why was she bothering to reassure them?

Spring shook her head. “We’re too close for comfort.”

“Keep your doors locked, just to be on the safe side.” Lame advice, but Rachel wanted to get away from them before they freaked her out too. “I’m sure Tom will find the person who did this. Take care.”

As she clicked her remote to open the Range Rover’s doors, the Jones sisters began a conversation among themselves. Rachel pulled open the rear hatch and slid the carrier holding the rabbits into the back of the vehicle while Joanna coaxed the reluctant dog to jump in. Just before she climbed into the driver’s seat, Rachel heard Winter say, “I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with Jake Hollinger and that absurd fight over his property line.”

What was that about? Rachel was almost curious enough to ask, but she reminded herself she had other things to do. Police work was Tom’s job.

Chapter Four

Tom leaned over the steps where Marie Kelly sprawled facedown, steeled himself for what felt like a violation of his mother’s old friend, and slid his hands under her chest and hips. He tried not to breathe in the rank odor of the blood that saturated her blouse and sweater around the exit wound.

On the other side of the steps, Dr. Gretchen Lauter leaned over and spread her gloved hands, ready to catch Marie and ease her onto her back. Lincoln Kelly’s body waited in the hearse that would take the couple to the state medical examiner’s regional headquarters in Roanoke for autopsy.

Tom hefted Marie’s body, a surprisingly heavy dead weight for such a slender woman, and rolled her over. When she dropped onto Dr. Lauter’s waiting hands, her right arm swung wide and struck the doctor on the chest. She gasped and for a second her eyes shone with tears. The county’s part-time medical examiner, a small woman in her late fifties with salt-and-pepper curls, had rushed to the Kelly farm without removing the white coat she wore at the public clinic, and when she’d crouched on the ground to examine Lincoln’s body the coat’s hem had picked up dirt, bits of dried leaves, and streaks of chicken manure.

“You okay?” Tom asked.

“Of course. Just—startled.” Blinking away her tears, Dr. Lauter tucked both of Marie’s arms across her midsection. With a tenderness Tom had seldom witnessed from the doctor on the job, she smoothed the dead woman’s gray hair off her face and drew the lids closed over eyes that already looked dry and clouded. “Oh, Marie, you broke your pretty nose,” she whispered, touching a fingertip to a gash and a bulge where the dead woman’s nose had slammed against the edge of a step.

Tom had to look away, his throat tight. For once he was glad his mother was gone, because she had been spared the grief of her friend’s murder. Forcing down a surge of irrational anger at Dr. Lauter’s emotional display, he drew a deep breath and got his own feelings under control before he turned back to the body.

The front of Marie’s blouse bore a small circle of blood around a neat entrance wound in her left chest. A single shot had blasted through her chest and out her back. In their search for the slug, Keith Blackwood had spotted a hole in the brown aluminum siding next to the front door, and now the young blond deputy was using a pocketknife to dig out what was left of the bullet.

Tom and Dr. Lauter stepped back to let Dennis Murray photograph the body. Pushing his glasses up onto his brown hair so he could use the viewfinder, the lanky captain moved around the steps, snapping pictures of Marie face-up, her head pointed toward the ground.

“She would hate this,” Dr. Lauter murmured. “She would be humiliated.”

“Hey, Boss,” Keith Blackwood called from the porch. With a gloved hand he held up the small, misshapen slug he’d pried from the wall of the house. “Got it.”

“Good job. After you log it, see if you can help your brother and Brandon find the slug from Mr. Kelly.”

Instead of trying to go down the steps past Marie, Keith swung his long legs over the porch railing and jumped into the yard.

Dr. Lauter pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her white coat and blew her nose. Regaining a brisk, businesslike tone, she said, “I believe Marie was killed by a shot through her heart, or possibly the aorta. If that’s the case, it would have been quick. Instant, or nearly so.”

A small mercy, Tom thought. “Looks like Lincoln took a little more effort.”

Dr. Lauter moved farther into the yard, between the steps where Marie lay and the bloody patch of ground where her husband had fallen. “I’m having trouble visualizing what happened here. Lincoln was hit once from the front, once from behind, but which shot came first? Was he on his feet for both? And who was moving, Lincoln or the shooter?”

Tom scanned the murder scene and stepped sideways a few feet until he thought he had the right position. “My guess is that Lincoln was hit first, in the back, from this angle.” With his hand he indicated the path of the bullet, then the fresh scuff marks on the ground. “I don’t think the first shot knocked him down. I’d say he stumbled but didn’t fall.”

“Do you suppose he never saw the killer coming?”

“Either that or they argued and Linc cut it short and started to walk away.”

“So the shooter was enraged at being dismissed and shot him in the back?”

“Could be.” Tom nodded as he watched the attack play out in his mind. The only thing he didn’t see was the killer’s face.

“I think the weapon was a hunting rifle. Marie was in the kitchen cooking, she came out when she heard the commotion, and she probably got hit before she could take it all in. The shooter stood between Marie and Linc, and Linc was trying to reach his wife when he took another round in the chest.”

“And the second bullet was the one that exited through his back.” Dr. Lauter gestured at the dark stain left behind in the dirt when Lincoln’s body was removed. “The one that killed him.”

“The slug’s not in the ground there. It exited before he went down, so he was standing when he was hit, and he fell backward.” Thirty feet beyond the spot where Lincoln had collapsed, Brandon and the other Blackwood twin were searching the walls of the chicken house for bullet holes.

“Then the son of a bitch looked Marie right in the face and murdered her,” Dr. Lauter said. “Can you imagine what that split-second was like for her?”

Tom didn’t want to imagine it. The sight of his mother’s friend lying dead on her back steps was enough of a memory to carry around. “Any thoughts on who might have had a reason to do this? Any enemies you know of?”

Dr. Lauter shook her head. “I know Lincoln in particular rankled some people, but you don’t murder anybody because they lectured you about recycling.”

”You know it was more than that with him. Marie soft-pedaled it, but Linc was a fanatic about all kinds of things, and his behavior was getting more and more erratic in the last year. The Alzheimer’s, I guess.”

Dr. Lauter nodded. “Yes, he was deteriorating rapidly. He wasn’t diagnosed until a few months after he retired from the bank, but I think his mental confusion was the reason he stopped working. It took Marie a while to make him see a specialist for evaluation.”

“I think that explains him raising hell over Jake Hollinger’s fence.” Tom recalled a string of similar incidents with the two neighbors in their early seventies yelling at each other over a section of dismantled post-and-rail fencing. “Hollinger called me out here half a dozen times because Linc kept tearing it down.”

“I know.” Dr. Lauter pulled her white coat closer around her against the wind’s assault. “Linc got hold of the idea that Jake was trying to steal some of his land. Marie couldn’t reason with him.”

“He wouldn’t listen to me either. I think Jake was running out of patience. You know, that kind of petty fight grinds away at people. If it keeps up long enough, it starts to seem like the most important thing happening to you.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting—” Dr. Lauter broke off when Dennis Murray approached.

Slinging his camera strap over his shoulder, Dennis said, “I’m done here. Want me to get the guys to move her now?”

Tom nodded and Dennis headed around the house to the driveway, where two funeral home employees waited with the hearse. A deputy would ride with them to Roanoke to deliver the bodies.

Dr. Lauter picked up her interrupted thought. “You can’t be thinking Jake Hollinger did this, not over a few feet of fence?”

“That kind of thing matters, Gretchen. And Jake had a legitimate grievance.” Some primal instinct stirred the blood when property was threatened and boundaries disregarded. “How many No Trespassing signs did you pass on your way out here? And how many of them said trespassers would be shot?”

Dr. Lauter gave a humorless laugh. “Good point. I saw one that was hand-painted, with ‘That means your damned dog too’
added at the bottom.”

Frowning, Tom swept his gaze over the stand of evergreens along one section of the fence between the two properties. Jake Hollinger could have come through the trees to avoid being seen near the Kelly farm in his truck.

Dr. Lauter walked over to retrieve her medical bag from the bottom step. “I don’t want to think Jake Hollinger’s capable of doing something like this. I’d rather believe some random nut job came through here and killed these people.”

“If that’s the case, we’ll probably never catch the shooter. Unless this turns out to be part of a killing spree. You know as well as I do what the odds are against that. It’s a lot more likely the Kellys were murdered by somebody they knew. Somebody with a personal motive.”

Tom’s thoughts returned to the unsigned Packard Resorts contract on the kitchen table, pinned down by a knife. Had Lincoln stabbed the papers in a fit of rage at the people who were trying to take his land? Where did the contract place the disputed property line? Tom wanted the prosecutor’s legal opinion on it. He wanted to question Jake Hollinger too. But first he had to find phone numbers for the Kellys’ son and daughter and notify them that their parents had been murdered.