Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (66 page)

Another older couple stood on the porch across the street
and Robbins was aware of other eyes at windows, behind blinds. The visible ones
seemed more concerned than angry or afraid. He wondered if the hidden eyes had
something to do with the Newberry cop’s presence.

He headed up the driveway. “What’s the problem?”

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him.” She tilted her
head at Ellis.

He shifted his attention to the patrol officer.

“Guy’s gone,” Ellis summed up the situation in two words.

“George Beason wouldn’t just go off in the middle of the
night. And he shore would’ve told me he was going if he did leave.”

Rose Nelson wasn’t given to wild flights of fantasy. She
looked at the cold face of reality every day. That she chose to meet it with
love was a different story. “He left last night?”

“Must’ve. He always up early, out on his porch reading the
paper. I went down to the store at ten and his paper’s still sitting on the
stairs.” She pointed at the steps he’d climbed. “I knocked on the front door
and he don’t answer. I went ‘round to the back and seen the window on the door
broke in. That’s when I called the police.”

Ellis took up the tale. “I responded to a welfare check
request. Mrs. Nelson indicated her neighbor, Mr. Beason, had not been seen in
his usual routine. I found the rear entrance unlocked and entered the
residence. Mr. Beason is not present in the home.”

Robbins fingers rose to his breast pocket, before he
remembered he’d quit smoking.

Again.

“Miz Rose, you said he ‘wouldn’t go off in the middle of the
night.’ Did you hear him leave last night?”

“No. But his car be gone. It was here yesterday.”

“What kind of vehicle does he drive?” Ellis asked.

“A fine Cadillac. He takes real good care of it.”

“Gold-colored Eldorado?” Robbins asked. There were a number
of the one-time luxury automobiles in the poorer neighborhoods. The gold one
always looked freshly washed and waxed. He’d seen it plenty of times, parked
behind the old man’s store.

“That’s right.” She didn’t look surprised. Newberry had
about ten thousand residents. Most knew at least half the people—and their
cars—and recognized the rest.

“What makes you think he didn’t go visit a friend?”

She shook her head. “He don’t see too good at night. And he
don’t like driving on the highway. Said things moved too fast. Only times he
drives is to church or the store.”

“Family?” Ellis produced a notebook from his kit.

“His son died in the war.”

The military. The time-honored way out of small towns
everywhere, but no guarantee of coming home again. Robbins had used the army to
get out of Gaston—population 674. Somehow he’d ended up a Military Policeman, a
profession he’d used the GI Bill and a degree in Criminal Justice to continue
when he finished his tour.

“One daughter’s over to Marion. She has a fine job with the
college. The youngest one, she moved. She don’t come around much. The middle
one… Lord, I don’t know about her.”

Ellis jotted down names. ”Grandchildren?”

Her hand rose and traveled in a wide circle. “They all over.
Atlanta. Greenville. North Carolina. Great-grands, too.”

Why was he here? Robbins wondered. Ellis could handle a
missing person report, if that’s what this was.

“Miz Rose—Mrs. Nelson—we appreciate your concern, but
there’s no law that says Mr. Beason can’t drive off in his car without telling
anyone. Now if there’s a medical condition…”

“He don’t have Old Timers disease, that what you asking?
Something happened to him. His back window’s broke. He’d had that fixed. He
wouldn’t leave something like that.”

He glanced at Ellis. The officer nodded. “The window’s
broken.”

“Crime of opportunity?” Beason’s place looked a little nicer
than some of his neighbor’s, but Ellis could handle a simple burglary.

“Could be.” Ellis cut his eyes toward Miz Rose. “If the
guy’s old, he might not have been able to fix it.”

“Ain’t nothing George Beason wouldn’t make right.” Miz Rose
folded her arms and fixed both men with the no nonsense expression Robbins had
seen her use on her foster kids.

“There is something I’d like you to look at,” Ellis said.

Finally. The reason the guy had called for him.

Robbins smiled at the old woman, appreciating there were
still people who looked out for their neighbors. “We can file a missing person
report, but unless we have reason to believe he’s in jeopardy or has a medical
condition, there’s a limit on what we can do.”

She knew the rules for children, probably better than he
did. Robbins had handled more than one AMBER Alert for a child who ended up
settled at her house afterward, until the dust settled a bit at home.

Adults were a different story.

“Diabetes? Blood pressure?” he asked. Any of the old age
ailments.

Miz Rose shook her head.

“Mrs. Nelson, if you hear from him, or see his car, you give
me a call.” Ellis slid his notebook back into his pocket.

She focused on Robbins rather than the uniformed officer.
“You gonna look for him, right?”

“We will,” he promised and followed Ellis inside the house.

The front door of the shotgun house opened directly into the
living room. Sofa on the left; recliner on the right. Ancient television in the
corner. The door straight across the room led into a bedroom. The kitchen stood
right in line beyond it.

The place was a shambles.

Robbins scanned the space. The table beside the recliner was
overturned; the lamp broken. That was it for actual damage, but the rest...
He’d seen plenty of trashed out residences over the years. This one wasn’t very
different. Drawers and cabinet doors hung open. Books, papers, photos and junk
littered the floor and shelves.

The room wasn’t dirty, though. It had been tossed.

In a hurry, with no effort to disguise it.

He stepped to the middle of the room and turned a slow
circle. “Somebody looking for …what?”

“First thing I thought was drugs. We got some old people
supplementing their Social Security selling oxy tabs. Nothing indicates the old
man was using or dealing.” Ellis shrugged. “Beason probably got scared after
the break-in and took off.”

“Could be. He’ll turn up at a relative’s house.”

“There’s one thing.” Ellis led the way into the bedroom. As
soon as they neared the door, a musty odor of old man, old dog and fresh urine
hit Robbins.

“Over there.” Ellis pointed at an area between the bed and
wall.

A medium sized mutt lay on the floor near a pallet. The
grizzled dog was half-buried under the jumbled sheets and blanket. Robbins
squatted and took a closer look. Not asleep. Dead. He ran a hand over the wiry
coat and felt the stiff body. The dog had been dead a few hours, but not long
enough for rigor to pass. “Old age?”

“Maybe. Looked to me like it tried to get to its bed.”

Robbins glanced at the surrounding floor and linens. “No
blood in here, but look.”

He pointed at an area of matted fur beside the dog’s ear.

“Do we do autopsies on animals?” Ellis asked.

“We can ask a vet how she died.” Robbins stood and stared
down at the dog, hoping it was old age and not a sad attempt to save her master
that got her killed. “Did you let Miz Rose in here?”

“No sir.”

“Good.” He turned and studied the rest of the Spartan
bedroom. Same condition as the living room.

Trashed.

“Either Beason was looking for something or someone else
broke in, through that smashed window,” Ellis said.

Robbins nodded, searching the room for anything obvious
missing amid the clutter. “Next questions are, did he or she find what they
were looking for? Did the old man leave with them or take off on his own?”

“In the old Caddy,” Ellis added.

“I think we have cause for concern for Mr. Beason’s
well-being.” Robbins folded his arms over his chest. “You get a BOLO started.
I’ll talk to the neighbors and the vet.”

Robbins stepped into the vet’s tile floored waiting room.
Carrying the blanket-draped dog brought back too many memories of childhood
pets—his kids’ pets, the day his son’s retriever got hit by a car. None of them
could bear the thought of another pet. Losing them hurt nearly as bad as losing
one of the kids would.

He squared his shoulders and shoved the grief into his
internal black well along with the rest of the emotions he didn’t dwell on.
Couldn’t dwell on if he was going to stay sane.

A fresh-faced teenager—he scrolled through the Rolodex in
his head for her name—stepped around the counter. “Detective Robbins? Dr. Lewis
is waiting for you.”

DaNeal. The name clicked into place.

He followed her across the waiting area, relieved he didn’t
have to sit around with the dog on his knees. A harried looking woman shifted
the box on her lap and gave him an irritated look, clearly wondering why he
could waltz right in while she had to wait. A muffled yowl came from the box.
Cats don’t take kindly to confinement.

“Did you find Mr. Beason?” DaNeal asked.

The cat lady jerked her head around, an intense expression
on her face now.

Word got around fast. He’d talked to several of the
neighbors and the pastor at the Methodist AME Church before arriving at the
vet’s clinic. Apparently the case had taken on a life of its own.

He’d never seen the Cat Woman before. She must be living in
one of the new subdivisions that had sprouted between Newberry and Columbia,
the state capital thirty miles south of town.

“Do you know Mr. Beason?” he asked DaNeal.

“He goes to my church.”

The rest of the information about her dropped into place.
“Your mama still directing the choir?”

Her teeth flashed, brilliant against her coffee-hued skin,
“She’s still hoping I’ll learn to carry a tune. The animals don’t seem to mind
if I’m off key.”

“Long as they don’t howl along.”

She opened an inner door and a chorus of barks greeted them.
“I hope you find him soon,” she said.

Robbins listened to the dogs. A thought nagged at him from
the back of his mind.

“Right here. Dr. Lewis will be right in.”

He gently settled his burden on the exam table, fished his
cell phone from his pocket and poked in Jordan’s number. Jordan was so new,
Robbins had a hard time believing the kid had passed the detective’s exam, much
less put in enough time to merit the promotion. But his partner, Perrin, had
retired, and Jerry Jordan was who the chief had come up with.

“You still in Beason’s neighborhood?” he asked when the
younger detective answered.

“Yeah. News people just showed up. Want me to say anything
to them?”

Must be a slow news day. “Emphasize Beason’s old. Do the
human interest thing. Ask people to watch for him.”

“Okay. Couple more people just came in down the street. I
was headed over to talk with them, but I can leave if you need me,” Jordan
said.

“No, stay there. Ask everybody if they heard the dog bark
last night.”

“Right here.” Dr. Lewis pointed to a dark spot on the x-ray.
It looked like a little spider web or his windshield when a rock nailed it
straight-on. A divot with thin lines radiating outward.

Lewis returned to the exam table and ran a gloved hand over
the old dog’s head. “Right beside the ear. That spot you noticed. Blunt force
trauma. Old girl like this, blind, she never saw it coming.”

“You think Beason could hit her that hard?”

“Beason? He loved this old girl.” Lewis returned to the
viewing box. “Depressed area’s deep, tapered at the end. She was hit with
something hard and cylindrical, like a baseball bat. Someone with some muscle
swung it.”

Or some anger.

Robbins started to pull out his phone and tell Jordan to
check the house for anything that looked like a baseball bat, but he left the
cell in his pocket. He’d do that walk through himself. “Anything else?”

“Not unless you want a full-out necropsy. But this blow to
the head definitely killed her.”

“Poor old girl.” Robbins ran his hand down her flank.
“Thanks, doc.”

“Has anyone made arrangements?”

“For…”

Arrangements.

Robbins’ jaw tightened. The word hit him with the same blunt
force as the baseball bat blow Lewis had mentioned. Arrangements for the dog’s body.
Funerals for goldfish, gerbils, assorted dogs and cats paraded past, along with
tears large and small. To make matters worse, this dog was evidence. Evidence
of what he wasn’t sure. But if some scumbag who could kill a blind old dog had
Beason and his car, Robbins hoped they found the old man soon.

In one piece.

Robbins pushed the thought aside and considered the vet’s
set up. The police occasionally boarded an animal they need to hang onto, but
Lewis didn’t have the facilities to store the dog’s body.

Wonder how the guys at the morgue feel about dogs?

He opened the door to return to the waiting area. DaNeal
stood beside the Cat Woman, reaching for the carrier. He made his routine
assessment of the woman. Caucasian, mid-fifties. Stick thin, hair from-a-bottle
red.

Cat Woman turned as he stepped forward. “What is the status
of Mr. Beason’s case?” she asked.

He was used to nosy people. “He’s missing. Do you have
information that could help us locate him?”

“He’s of no interest to me. It sounds as if his past finally
caught up to him.” With that pronouncement she swept into the vet’s inner room.

Robbins took an automatic step, then stopped and turned to
DaNeal, who watched, wide-eyed. “What’s her name?”

“That’s Dr. McKinley.”

“Is she a vet?”

DaNeal’s dark hair bounced around her face as she shook her
head. “She doctors people, but I don’t think I’d want her doctoring me. Mr.
Beason’s a nice man.”