Time of Death (25 page)

In the truck bed was the utility vehicle she’d seen at May’s home, the garden cart, barely fitting between the rear wheel housings. Only now it held Arlan, naked and unconscious in the wood-slatted area where the gardener had been futilely tossing leaves. The cart’s engine was electric, so there was very little noise. She started backing the cart down the ramps. And promptly fell off. She had to restart the scenario a couple of times before she was able to get the cart down the ramps onto the gravel without overturning it.

Could May manage that? She could have practiced. Or she might just be more coordinated than me, which wouldn’t take much.

The utility cart had turf tires. It left no tracks and fit easily through the oversized barn door. She drove right up to the workbench with it, got out, and set up her portable light.

Now for the second part of her plan. How did the killer, unless he was a strong man or two people, get the two-hundred-pound weight out of the cart and up on a tall workbench?

PJ retrieved the duffle bag from the interior of the truck. Inside it were rope and a manual winch, no surprise to her because she’d set it up that way in the scenario. Looking up, she saw that one of the structural beams of the barn was above the workbench. She tossed the rope up and over, again having to try a few times before succeeding. Then she fastened the two ends of the rope to a winch, and stretching over the cart’s slats, worked the straps of the winch around Arlan’s body.

It was amazing how much trouble the killer had gone through to stage this murder so precisely, and in a place associated with both May and June. Powerful needs must go along with it.

Family traditions.

Working the manual winch, PJ easily raised Arlan from the cart and swung him out over the workbench. She had a little trouble positioning him just right and lowering him, and in the process scraped his back more than once across the workbench. Oak splinters had been found embedded in Arlan’s back, and it was easy to see how they’d gotten there.

PJ skimmed over the killing that came next, switching to an observer role and moving the simulation at ten times normal speed. In front of her eyes, a Genfem raced through the mutilations and dug into Arlan’s chest. She had no urge to linger on that again. When Arlan was dead and his severed parts nailed, PJ switched back into being the killer. She reversed her actions, using the winch to put Arlan back in the cart, pulling the rope down from the beam, and driving back out to the truck. This time, because she was pulling forward up the ramps, she had a lot easier time of it. In a few minutes, the truck pulled away from the barn.

“End,” she said. PJ felt exultant. It was something workable. She still needed a plausible connection between the kill site and the dump site, but the scenario had plenty of potential. PJ was surprised to find that it was eight o’clock at night. The time had sped by while she was working at the computer.

She called Thomas, who was watching a video at Mick’s house.

“Hey, you’re grounded. You’re not supposed to be watching TV.”

“It’s in the room I’m sharing with Mick. I’m supposed to make him turn off his own TV? Close my eyes?”

Grounding wasn’t as practical when Thomas was staying in another person’s house as it was when he was under her thumb at home.

“Okay, no using the computer, no phone calls to anyone except me or Schultz, and no going out, like to movies with your friends. When you get back home, it’ll be no TV, too. You can watch TV with Mick, as long as it isn’t anything R-rated.”

“Mick doesn’t get to see that stuff either, so that won’t be a problem,” he said.

She quizzed Thomas on what he thought about the dagger arriving at the academy. While PJ was still there, he’d been summoned to Mr. Archibald’s office and shown the dagger. He claimed no involvement with it, and she believed him. The principal did too, if she was correct in judging the man’s body language.

“I’m getting creeped out about it, Mom,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“What do we do if the police can’t find this jerk?”

“Let’s let the law do its thing,” she said. “And I’ve got something in reserve, too.”

“I’m really sorry about this.”

She was tempted to reassure him by saying everything was all right. But it wasn’t all right, so she clamped her lips together on that. She’d already lectured him enough about it.

“We’ll get through it, sweetie. We make a tough team, you know.”

“Yeah. You and me and Schultz.”

She hadn’t meant to include a third party, but hearing it from Thomas, it did sound reassuring.

“I still have work to do, so I’ll let you get back to your movie. Love you.”

“Love you, Mom.”

After hanging up, PJ used her computer to order flowers sent to Lilly Kane. Mick’s mother was being extraordinarily helpful, and PJ didn’t know how she was going to repay her.

She called Schultz, trying his desk first, and was surprised to actually reach him there. Explaining her insight about May being the killer, she left out Merlin’s role of talking it over with her. No one else knew about Merlin, and she preferred to keep it that way.

“So there are two things we need to do,” she said.

“You know, when you say that, you usually mean things I need to do.”

She flushed slightly, even though he couldn’t see her. “You are the official cop portion of this team, as you so often remind me.”

He sighed. “Let’s not get into that now. What is it
we
need to do?”

She talked him quickly through her simulation. “This scenario would have a lot of credibility if we could find two things.”

“One is the garden cart with Arlan’s blood in it,” he said. “The other?”

“Rope fibers on the beam above the workbench in Old Hank’s barn. There is one teensy problem.”

“Yeah?”

“I saw the garden cart in use at May’s home after the murder. The gardener was calmly loading leaves into it. You’d think he would have noticed if it had been heavily bloodstained.”

“It could have been scrubbed well enough that casual inspection wouldn’t reveal any blood,” Schultz said. “There could have been a tarp in it. Hey, maybe the cart was used to take the body to the dump site. You wouldn’t need one of those stretcher-body bags. Just drag the body out of the cart and roll it. The cart could have been pushed into the river afterward.”

“How about you go check out the cart, Dave goes to the barn, and Anita gets a search going in the river?”

“I can tell you right now that since this isn’t body retrieval, we’re not getting any divers until tomorrow, and that’s if we’re lucky.”

“Okay, then, Anita gets a night off,” PJ said.

Feeling that things were moving in the right direction, or at least a direction, PJ decided to follow through on the research she’d done about the parents of May and June and the mysterious third sister. It was time to put that theory aside or put some teeth into it. She got out her notes on the obituary with names of surviving relatives.

John T. Winter, the sisters’ paternal uncle, lived in Denver. It was only a little after seven o’clock there, not too late to give the man a call. She looked up his phone number on the Internet, pleased to find it with minimal effort. She identified herself when he picked up, and asked if he was the brother of Henry Winter, the husband of Virginia Crane.

“Yes, I am. Henry died in 1997, though, if you were looking to get in touch with him.”

“No, I’m calling to talk to you. Were you aware that both of Henry’s son-in-laws have died within the past ten days?”

“Oh, god, no. Nobody calls me anymore. After Henry died, I lost touch. Was it another accident? My brother died in a plane crash.”

“I’m sorry to say it was homicide, in both cases.”

PJ gave the man all the time he needed to absorb the information. She didn’t like being the one to bring him the news. “Mr. Winter, I’m sorry for your losses. This must be especially hard, hearing about both of these men at one time, and from someone who is not a member of your family.”

“I’m all right, just stunned, I guess. Is there anything you can tell me about their deaths?”

“Very little, I’m afraid. I can say that Frank Simmons was shot and Arlan Merrett was stabbed.”

“Jesus. No one called me.” His voice trailed off. “Thank you for letting me know. I guess I’ll get in touch with my nieces, see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“May I ask you some questions, Mr. Winter? It could be of help in the investigations.”

“Sure, anything. I just need to sit down first,” he said.

PJ heard some shuffling that sounded like a chair being dragged across the floor. “You said that you lost touch with the St. Louis families after your brother died. Were you in close contact before that?”

“It depends on what you call close,” he said. “Henry came out to visit me two or three times a year, and at Christmas, I usually went to St. Louis for a week.”

“Was that from the time he first got married to Virginia Crane?”

“Yes, but Virginia and I didn’t get along too well. I think I was a little too much of a reminder of our family’s middle-class roots for her. I was a traveling salesman. Cash registers.”

“Did Virginia ever talk about her little brother, the one who died when he was less than a year old?” PJ asked.

“Strange you should ask about that. She never did mention that to me, but my brother did. The boy’s name was Ellis, I think. Died of the flu.”

“There weren’t any rumors about Ellis being murdered?”

“What? No, nothing I knew about. He got sick and died, that’s what I heard.”

“Only one more subject, Mr. Winter. How many children did your brother and his wife have?”

“Three.”

PJ’s heart nearly stopped. The rumor was true, then. “So there’s May, June, and?”

“And April. I didn’t know her very well. I was traveling a lot at the time. April was born only six months after my brother married Virginia. You know, like a shotgun wedding, only into a high-class family. Years later, when she was a teenager, Henry told me there were some problems with her, some behavioral problems, or problems at school. I don’t really remember, and he didn’t make a big deal of it. Doesn’t matter, though. She died when she was twenty. A horse riding accident. I went to her funeral. May was a young girl at that time, second or third grade, I think. Little June was a baby then.”

Not an imaginary friend. A real sister. Why would May lie and say June was delusional? To make June look crazy, apparently.

“Do you happen to have any pictures of April or of the entire family at that time?”

“I’m not sure. I can look through the old photos. If you’re interested, Jasmine, that’s Virginia’s sister, would probably know a lot more about it. She and Virginia kept in very close touch. Listen, I’d really like to call my nieces now.”

PJ checked her notes. “That would be Jasmine Singer, of Hannibal, Missouri?”

“Yes. Talk with her. She knew April well, I think.”

“Thank you. I’ll certainly do that. You’ve been very generous with your time, Mr. Winter. Again, I’m sorry for your losses.”

Tempering PJ’s excitement about confirming the existence of the third sister was the fact of that sister’s death. Why would May lie when she said she didn’t know of another child in the family? There could have been something traumatic about April’s death that caused May to block out the experience of even having a sister.

Far-fetched. That would take some horrendous trauma.

Too bad April was a dead end.

S
CHULTZ CALLED THE SIMMONS
home. The maid answered.

“How’s it going, Ms. Paulson?” Schultz said familiarly. Since their last conversation, he’d felt a bond with the woman who’d lost her child. The circumstances of her loss were different from his, but it gave them something in common.

“Please call me Mary Beth.”

“Leo here.”

“If you’re wondering how things are going in the household now that Frank’s gone, it’s been very smooth. Almost like nothing’s different. One fewer place to set at the table for dinner is what it amounts to.”

“Not much grieving in evidence, then?”

“Oh, yes. But it’s from the children, the poor things. They had a closer relationship with their father than with their mother.”

“Do what you can, Mary Beth. Those kids are going to need support.”

“Oh, we do. All the staff.”

“Speaking of staff, what’s the gardener’s name?”

“You mean Jimmy Drummond? He’s not on staff here. The landscaping work is contracted out to Green Vista.”

Schultz’s eyebrows rose. “You mean the company Arlan ran?”

“Uh huh. They have to maintain the grounds around their developments, and were constantly having to hire short-term help, so they decided to make the best of it and start a landscaping firm. Green Vista Groundworks, I think it’s called. They have GVGW on their vans. There’s a manager, so Arlan didn’t have to mess with the daily work. It was just a convenience for them.”

How are these families tied together? Let me count the ways.

“So, Jimmy Drummond is assigned to May’s account. Where might I find him when he’s off duty?”

Mary Beth giggled. “I have no idea. I have a crush on him, would you believe? But I only admire him when he’s on the premises. I don’t follow him home.”

“Okay, I’m sure I can find out where he lives.”

“Maybe I should. Follow him home, that is.”

Schultz said nothing. She wasn’t going to get any advice to the lovelorn out of him.

“Do you know if the Simmonses own a garden vehicle?” he asked, thinking that it was likely the cart PJ had seen belonged to Green Vista Groundworks.

“I think so. I don’t have much to do with that, you know. But Jimmy walks to the storage building at the back of the property, in some trees. He comes out riding a wagon with rakes and stuff in the back.”

“And he puts it away when he’s done.”

“Yup. Then he leaves in the van.”

“Thanks, Mary Beth. You’ve been very helpful.”

Schultz tracked down Judge Hector Martinez in the Central West End. The guy approved almost all of the search warrants Schultz took to him, which may have been because Schultz helped get the man’s crack-addicted daughter into a treatment program and dropped in to check on her after that, making sure she stayed straight and continued her schooling. The young woman was in law school now.