1 A Small Case of Murder (10 page)

The clouds burst. Rain beat on the old roof above them.

In the reception area, Tad warmed his hands on the coffee mug of fresh brew that Joshua had poured while they waited.

“I was mad at Cindy,” he recalled. “I told everyone that she was a gold-digging bitch.”

His cousin consoled him. “You were hurt.”

“I was an idiot, that’s what I was.” After swallowing a sip of the hot coffee, Tad continued, “She wasn’t allowed to even speak to me and I didn’t want to talk to her. Then I got sober. I found God. I learned to love myself. I grew up.”

“You weren’t the boy who had worked so hard to get into Cindy’s pants anymore,” Joshua observed with a small smile.

Tad went over to the picture windows looking out onto the rain soaked street. “It was raining like this the last time I saw her. I had my office on Indiana for about a year. I did okay. Most everyone went to Doc Wilson, but my practice did grow steadily. I saw her outside my back window when I went up to the apartment for lunch. She was standing there under an umbrella looking at my back door like she wanted to come up. One of the steps in AA is to apologize to those you hurt, and I did owe Cindy one.”

Joshua said, “I’m sure she understood.”

As if turning his back on the memory, Tad turned around and leaned against the windowsill. “I didn’t even bother getting my umbrella. I got soaked, but I didn’t care. I came down with a terrible cold afterwards.” He laughed. “Funny, how you remember things like that.”

“Isn’t it,” Joshua replied.

Tad’s smile dropped. “She seemed more delicate than I had ever remembered her being. I asked her to come in, but she couldn’t. Then, I saw that she didn’t look well at all. She was so thin and her color wasn’t right. I asked her if she was all right, and she said that God was punishing her for her sins.”

“God was what?” Joshua gasped.

“Punishing her for her sins.” Tad’s voice raised a decibel as he spoke across the reception area. “That’s what Reverend Rawlings preaches. He tells these people in his church that God punishes us for our sins. If we get sick, if we lose our job, or if a kid of ours turns out bad; then that’s God punishing us for our sins. People are buying this crap Rawlings is selling them and paying a high price for it.”

“What was Cindy’s sin?” Joshua asked.

“Loving me.” Tad’s disgust was evident in spite of the pas-sage of time. “She hadn’t stopped loving me. Even though she had confessed to her husband about lusting after me, God was still punishing her because she couldn’t get me out of her heart. That was why she was unable to eat anything.”

“And she bought that?” Joshua didn’t recall Cindy being so naïve.

Tad’s expression darkened. “I grabbed her and tried to shake sense into her. It’s not a sin to love anyone. As for lust, we never did anything. How could God be making her sick? She said there was only one other explanation for why she was so sick.”

“Which was?”

Tad answered in a soft voice. “She was being poisoned.”

“Did she actually say that?” asked Joshua.

“She had no proof, but for over a year she had been get-ting sick every time she ate. From the way she described it, it sounded like gastrointestinal illness. Doc Wilson was treating her.” Tad indicated the town doctor’s former office. “She believed he knew Wally was poisoning her and wasn’t going to do anything to stop it.”

“Did you examine her?”

“I offered to,” Tad said. “I told her to order Doc to send me copies of the blood tests so I could take over the case. She really believed in this obeying your husband garbage, so she was afraid to do it.”

“Going to Sheriff Delaney was out of the question,” Joshua said. “How did you leave it?”

Tad told him, “I told her to tell Doc that she had come to me. That would give him a warning that someone else knew what was going on. I figured that might be enough to make it stop. We shook hands, and I took a chance and gave her one last kiss. She got into her car, smiled at me, and left.” He added in a soft voice, “She died that night.”

Joshua broke the silence by saying in a soft voice, “I’m sorry.”

Tad turned back around to look out the window. “I told Doc Wilson about her visit. He told me that I had to have been on drugs again. I knew someone killed Cindy, but I never had the authority to get the evidence to prove it.”

“Until now,” Joshua said.

Tad turned back to him. “Now, you know why I never married.”

Chapter Nine

Joshua went back home to his study to dive into the web of intrigue that lay before him.

At first, his kids had refused to spend any more of their time searching through musty books that they had already been through. Then, Tad removed a handful of twenty-dollar bills from his billfold and offered it to the one who found the autopsy report he sought.

With that, Dr. Tad MacMillan had obtained his search party.

Tad’s account of Cindy Welch’s death gave Joshua a new sense of determination to bring Orville Rawlings to justice. He didn’t care if it was for Vicki’s murder, or Cindy’s, or being the valley’s drug kingpin.

It was time to bring the Reverend down.

The best place to start would be with John Doe’s missing body.

Without the body, there was no proof that a murder had actually been committed, let alone that Reverend Orville Rawlings had been connected to it. Not only did Joshua lack a body or a name, he also didn’t have a motive for the Reverend killing him.

Joshua suspected that Sheriff Delaney had been the trigger man. He had heard more than once from more than one person about the sheriff being Rawlings’ man.

If Delaney had killed John Doe on Reverend Rawlings’ orders, they would be wasting their time pursuing John Doe’s murder because the former sheriff was dead and unable to testify against Orville Rawlings.

Just because it was impossible didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

The best way to go after Reverend Orville Rawlings was to attack him from the rear. As long as the pastor didn’t know about the letter Joshua kept locked up in his wall safe, he believed he could do it.

When he reread the letter, Joshua found Orville Rawlings’ vulnerable spot. He picked up the phone on his desk and placed a call.

At his desk in the Judge Advocate General’s office in Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Bruce Crawford answered on the third ring.

“You’re getting slow in your old age,” Joshua greeted his former assistant.

“Commander,” Bruce sang out, “how are things in West-By-God-Virginia?”

“I’m a civilian now.” After a few minutes of talking about their families and gossip about the office, Joshua eased into the reason for his call. “Hey, Bruce, I need a favor, when you get a chance.”

“I’ll see what I can do. What is it, sir?”

“I need a list from the VA of all the men in a unit that served in the army during the Korean War,” Joshua said. “I don’t know specifically what year or unit.”

Bruce replied, “That will make it tough.”

“The person I am looking for is an army chaplain named Orville Alexander Rawlings. I need to know who served with him in his unit and what happened to each of them.”

Bruce’s voice went up an octave, which made him sound like an adolescent boy. “What happened to each of them, sir?”

Joshua elaborated on the information he wanted. “Who is dead? Who is alive? Those who are dead, how did they die? Those who are alive, where are they now?”

Bruce wanted to know, “What are you looking for?”

“A murder victim.”

Jan was ready to quit and go home, except she couldn’t. Her mother owned the place. If she left, no one would be in charge.

The pharmacy had been in chaos ever since Beth got fired. Busy training the new pharmacist while trying to keep her customers from deserting to the bigger, more modern pharmacy across the river in Calcutta, Jan hadn’t had time to mourn the loss of her friend.

After escorting a new mother upset about how long it took to fill a prescription out the door, Jan put the closed sign in the window only to have Joshua thrust his foot across the threshold before the door latched.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

“Good day to you, too.”

She caught her breath. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.” She held the door open to let him in before locking it.

As they walked down the aisle towards her office, he reminded her that she had left a message with J.J. for him to call her.

“Sheriff Sawyer has been coming around,” she announced another source of annoyance.

“That’s natural. According to your inventory, Beth had been dealing drugs out of your store. He’s going to want to know if you knew about it. For all we know, you were in charge of the whole thing.”

“That’s why I need a lawyer.”

Joshua frowned teasingly. “Were you involved?”

“No, I didn’t know about any of it,” Jan said. “Beth was in charge of the pharmacy’s inventory. That’s a mistake I will not make again. I need you to make sure I don’t get railroaded.”

Understanding her concern, he told her, “Don’t talk to the police again unless I’m with you. If Sawyer calls you, tell him to call me.”

“I don’t trust Curt Sawyer. He’s too tight with the Rawlings.”

“Well, they are politically powerful,” Joshua pointed out. “He has to stay on their good side or risk being upset in the next election by someone they hand select.”

“How do you think he got to be sheriff?”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I can take care of him.”

“I’m sure you can. Anyone who can bypass Wally to get Vicki Rawlings arraigned for anything in this town has to have something on the ball.” Jan cocked her head towards the street outside. “I saw Tad go by on his bike earlier. Have you talked to him? Has he been—” The rest of her question was unspoken.

“He was sober. He went to visit Maggie.” When he saw a flicker of concern cross her face, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about Beth. We had our differences, but she was my friend.”

“That’s right. You went to the hospital when she collapsed in the courtroom?” he muttered in a questioning tone.

She said slowly, “Yeah, she took off while Tad was on the phone with Glenbeigh.”

“Did you drive her car to the hospital?”

“No,” she answered, “I drove my own car.”

“Where was Beth’s car?”

She shrugged.

With a shake of his head, Joshua started up the aisle.

“Josh, what’s wrong?” She turned him around by the arm. “What are you thinking?”

His eyes met hers. “Tad said Beth couldn’t have driven in her condition when he had left her.”

“I thought the hospital video tape showed someone helping her out of the hospital. They drove her. That’s how her car got to Vicki’s place.”

Joshua said, “Vicki had a new truck. A sweet new Ford. It was in front of her trailer. Sawyer found the dealer she bought it from a week ago. She gave him a check for forty thousand dollars, and it cleared the bank. The killer drove Beth’s car to Vicki’s to kill her, then went to the hospital to get Beth and take her back to Vicki’s to make it look like a murder-suicide.

But then, how did he or she get away. There has to be another vehicle.”

He seemed to be talking to himself while pacing up and down the aisle. “Or someone went to kill Vicki while their accomplice drove Beth’s car to the hospital and brought her back to Vicki’s. That would explain the two different methods of murder and the time difference. The first killer waited for the second, and the two left together.” He grinned with pride.

Jan asked him. “But who are the two killers?”

His grin turned to a frown. “I’m still working on that.”

“Is Tad on your list of suspects?”

“Why would he be? You’re thinking something,” Joshua asked, “What is it, Jan?”

“Something I saw. But Tad would never ...”

“Never what?”

“At the emergency room,” she said, “Beth was crazy. She told Tad that she hated him.”

“Don’t you remember when Tad got high? He’d say things—”

“She told him that she was going to tell Maggie everything, and she was going to hate him. Then, Tad got this look in his eyes; I swear he was going—” She covered her mouth with her hand to stop short of saying “kill her”. “He grabbed her by the throat and shoved her down onto the table. That was the last time I saw Beth.”

Joshua laughed. “Tad didn’t kill Beth.”

“I can’t believe he would do it either, but the last one to see her alive was Tad, who had his hands around her throat.”

“The last one to see her alive was Trench Coat. The security tape proves it.”

“Tad could have been Trench Coat,” she said. “Anyone can get a trench coat.” Her conviction softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything to Sheriff Sawyer, but I think you should know.”

“Even if Tad had a trench coat, which he doesn’t,” he said, “There’s a logistical problem with your theory.”

“What? You said that there had to be two killers and they left together,” she said. “Tad knows everyone. All he had to do was call up one of his old drinking buddies and set it up for him to kill Vicki who was clearly going to get off for making his life hell. Then he met this guy outside the hospital in Beth’s car, and they took her over to Vicki’s to get rid of her because of this secret that would make Maggie hate him. He killed two birds with one stone.”

“Come on, Jan. Do you really believe Tad is capable of murder, let alone a double murder?” Joshua laughed out loud.

“Anyone is capable of murder in the right circumstances.” Jan stomped a foot and slapped his arm with a newspaper left on the checkout counter. “Stop laughing. If he wasn’t your cousin you’d be taking me seriously.”

“Okay.” Joshua threw up his hands and leaned against the pharmacy counter with his arms crossed. “Say Tad got a couple of his old party buddies to kill both Vicki and Beth, while he was setting up an alibi by looking for Beth in all the bars within walking distance of the hospital.”

Jan said, “He got two of them to do it for him. One drove Beth’s car. The other drove the getaway car.”

Joshua frowned. A jury could buy Jan’s theory, but he re-fused to believe it.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

“I’ll look into it.”

“No, you won’t,” she said, “because it’s Tad.”

“I said I would question all suspects, and that includes Tad.”