Dead on Ice (22 page)

Their ears were still ringing from the ambulance sirens that had whisked Peggy Lawson off to the hospital. It did not look good. She had slipped into a coma.

Looking distraught by the happenings next door only a few yards from her home, the woman was holding her young daughter with both hands on her shouldesr, while the girl clutched a long-haired black cat in her arms. The residents of the quiet neighborhood had suddenly woken up to emergency vehicles filling one of their yards.

“In the last twenty-four hours,” she noted, “we’ve had a hostage situation and shooting, arson and attempted murder, got nailed by your son for premarital sex, and now an attempted suicide.”

“Just your average day in a small town,” Joshua replied as Curt Sawyer crossed the driveway to join them.

“Well, so far, everything seems to be on the up and up for an attempted suicide.” The sheriff pointed his pen in the direction of the mother leading her daughter into their home. “Mrs. Clausson says Peggy Lawson gave her cat, Toby, to her daughter yesterday morning, without asking permission from her. Mrs. Clausson didn’t like that. So she kept coming over here to try to talk to Peggy about it. She says she was here knocking on the door about five times throughout the day and getting no answer. But she knew Peggy was home because her car was in the driveway. Then, last night, around ten o’clock, when she was getting ready to go to bed, she heard the car start up. She says she came running out in her bathrobe to try to catch her, but the car was speeding down the road and wouldn’t stop. She heard the car come back in a little after eleven. By then, Mrs. Clausson gave up and decided to let her daughter keep the cat.”

Joshua said, “Getting her affairs in order. Giving away her cat to make sure it was well taken care of.”

“But one last thing,” Cameron said, “before she went, take out the man who she blamed for ruining her life.”

Joshua opened the sedan’s driver side door. A puzzled expression crossed his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him. “Why are you giving me the face?”

“Did you see all the booze stacked up on that kitchen counter?” Joshua asked them.

“She was inebriated,” Curt said. “Liquid courage.”

“As much booze as she had in her, she drove over to Hookstown and set fire to a house with gasoline and matches, but she didn’t set herself on fire.” Joshua turned to Cameron. “Did you smell gasoline while trying to revive her?”

“No.” Startled, Cameron shook her head. “But I did smell vomit and body odor, which means she didn’t shower.”

“As drunk as she was, she would have smelled like gasoline.” Joshua studied the driver’s seat in the car. “How tall would you say Peggy Lawson is?”

“Five feet-eight inches easy.” She looked over his shoulder at the front seat of the sedan. It was pushed up all the way to the steering wheel.

“Whoever last drove this car was short.”

Cameron knelt next to the car to examine the tires.

Joshua shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you about the car and the arson. But I can tell you this, my gut is telling me that Peggy didn’t drive this car last. I think she spent the whole day locked up inside drinking up courage to take a bottle of pills.”

“Josh, come take a look, and tell me what you find in the treads of this tire.”

After kneeling next to her, Joshua studied the front tire. He sniffed at what appeared to be mud embedded in the tread. Not satisfied, he rubbed his gloved finger over it and held it up to his nose to smell. “Horse manure.”

“Horse manure. How do you know it’s not cow manure?” Curt asked.

“Cow manure has a distinctive smell and consistency,” Joshua replied. “This is horse manure.”

Cameron turned to the sheriff. “And Doris Sullivan breeds and trains Thoroughbred horses.”

Joshua slowly rose to his feet. “Forensics can extract the DNA from this manure and, if they can get samples from the horses on Doris’s farm, trace it back to the horse that left it, which would place this car at her farm if there’s a match.” He told Curt, “We need to impound this car, and have forensics go over it with a fine tooth comb. Whoever set that fire tried to frame Peggy for doing it.”

“I never said I didn’t have a second freezer,” Doris insisted from her hospital bed.

“But you did deliberately mislead us by not mentioning that you owned a second freezer,” Joshua said.

“Which is now in the barn.” With a pained expression, she sat up to look down the length of the bed at where Cameron stood on the other side of Joshua. “I take it that it’s still there in the feed room.”

“Yes, it is,” Cameron said. “We’re talking about the other freezer—the one that was there before this one.”

“The one you tried to blow up in Albert’s house to keep from being discovered,” Joshua explained.

“You know,” Cameron said, “the one that had Cheryl Smith’s body in it.”

Doris pursed her lips together so tight that her mouth resembled a beak. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Now, leave. In case you didn’t notice someone tried to kill me last night.” She sat up. “I’m the victim here, and you’re accusing me of murder.”

Joshua placed a hand on Cameron’s and softened his tone. “I’m sorry, Doris. We’re simply trying to figure all this out. Someone did try to kill you last night, and someone also killed your daughter. We need to know the truth if we’re to determine if the two things are connected.”

“Angie was not—” Tears came to Doris’s eyes. She sniffed.

Never comfortable with sobbing victims, witnesses, or suspects, Cameron stepped away from the bed. It was additionally disconcerting for her since Doris had come across as so tough. Tears in her eyes did not appear right. They didn’t look like they belonged there.

Joshua took a box of tissue from the bedside table and handed a tissue to the elderly woman. “Who knew about you and Ralph?”

“No one,” she replied. “Ralph and I have a complicated relationship. The last time he and I were together was before Peggy came along. That was years ago.” She sucked in a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice grew stronger. “It used to be just sex between him and me. But then, after Angie died, we became friends . . . who had sex. No strings. It’s nice to have a companion like that. Then he took up with Peggy, and we became friends without sex. This weekend, after he broke it off with her, he came over and . . . Well, you know.”

“Did Mildred know?” Joshua asked.

“If she did, I didn’t tell her.”

“But you did tell her that Ralph had left her,” he reminded her.

“I was messing with her,” Doris said. “I’ve been messing with her for decades. It’s what we do. If Mildred doesn’t know what Ralph is, she’s deaf, dumb, and blind.” She chuckled. “I knew it the second I laid eyes on him.”

“If you know what he is, why do you put up with him?” Cameron asked.

Doris ticked off the points on her fingers. “He doesn’t tell me what to do, he doesn’t ask anything of me, and he’s damn good in bed.” She puffed out her chest and nodded her head. “You can’t ask for a better man than that.”

“There’s someone for everyone,” Joshua told Cameron.

Cameron stepped in. “Tell us about the freezer and you blowing up the house.”

Doris pointed a boney finger at her. “You can’t prove I blew up the house.”

“But you knew the freezer was down there,” Joshua said. “That’s why you blew it up. You didn’t want us to find the body.”

“It had your fingerprints and traces of horse feed in it,” the detective said. “That’s enough for us to take you in.”

“I’m an old woman,” Doris said in a mocking tone.

“Old women get convicted of murder all the time,” Cameron said.

Joshua again put his hand on Cameron’s. With his eyes, he told her that he would handle this questioning. Stepping back, she held her hands up in surrender.

He turned to Doris. “I’m trying to help you. I can’t if you don’t start telling me the truth. It is your freezer. Cheryl Smith’s body was found in it. Cheryl was a prime suspect in the murder of your daughter. That gives you a very strong motive for killing her. Cameron’s right. She has enough to arrest you for murder. I don’t want that to happen. I want to help you. So fill in the blanks. Tell us where she’s wrong.”

Doris stuck out her chin. Her nose was up in the air when she said, “Because you’d never believe the truth.”

“Try me.”

“Okay.” She paused to look from Joshua to Cameron and then back to him before saying, “Someone stole it.”

Cameron and Joshua exchanged glances before they both turned back to the old woman in the bed.

“Someone stole . . . your freezer and put a dead body in it and hid it in your neighbor’s basement?” Cameron asked.

“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You mean to tell me that you walked into the barn one morning and—” said Joshua.

“Found it missing,” Doris said. “All the feed was taken out of it and sitting in a pile in the feed room. There were tire tracks leading up to and into the barn.”

“Did you ever report it?” Cameron asked.

“Are you kidding? It was an old, broken-down freezer. I used it to store the horse feed in to keep the mice and raccoons out. It had no monetary value. I just bought an old freezer from a garage sale and used that.”

“Do you recall when this happened?” asked Joshua.

Doris gestured with a wave of her hand. “So long ago that I can’t remember. I had forgotten about it until you gave me a tour of Albert’s house to see what had to be done to get it cleaned out so that I could buy his farm. When you took me down to the basement and I saw my freezer, I about had a stroke. I recognized it because of a dent in the front from where a horse had broken out of his stall and gotten into the feed room and kicked it. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Albert had stolen my freezer. Later, I came back. I remembered I had a key that Albert had given me eons ago. So I went to look inside to see why he had stolen it—” Her eyes grew wide at the memory. “I didn’t even recognize her as Cheryl Smith. Albert was my friend. I meant it when I said I had forgiven him for helping Cheryl get permission to leave town after killing Angie. When I saw that dead body, all I wanted to do was help cover it up so people wouldn’t be saying all sorts of cruel things about him. I figured that if he was a killer or sex fiend, then he would already be getting his judgment and punishment up in heaven. I wasn’t thinking about any of this tracing back to me. I was trying to protect Albert, not me, when I made that bomb.”

“But there were a dozen people in that house,” Joshua said.

“That’s why I came upstairs to get you,” Doris said. “I’d set the timer to give you enough time to get everyone out. When you weren’t there, I took her down,” she pointed at Cameron, ”and let her put out the call to clear the house.”

Joshua opened his mouth to argue, but Cameron cut him off. “Let me get this straight. You went out to the barn one morning and found that your broken down freezer had been hauled away in the middle of the night. Then, almost thirty years later, it turns up in your neighbor’s basement with the dead body of the woman accused of killing your daughter. So then you built a bomb and tried to blow up the house to protect said neighbor’s reputation without knowing anything about who stole the freezer, who killed your daughter’s suspected killer, and who hid your freezer containing the dead body of your daughter’s suspected killer in your neighbor’s basement.”

“That’s right,” Doris smirked.

“I believe her,” Cameron told Joshua.

“You also believe sugar-free ice cream has zero calories,” he replied.

“Which is why I can eat as much as I want of it,” Cameron said while answering the buzz on her hip from her cell phone.

Simultaneously, Joshua’s cell phone vibrated to signal an incoming call. While Cameron read the text message on her phone, he was talking on his.

“Gail Hildebrand just texted. She and Ned want us to stop by the Mountaineer ASAP,” Cameron told them.

“And the state attorney general suggests I call his people who are doing the audit at the Mountaineer. I guess they found something,” Joshua said.

Chapter Eighteen

“This is unbelievable!” In his corner office on the ground floor of the Mountaineer, Ned Carter was pacing and cursing while Gail Hildebrand pleaded for him to calm down. He stopped and whirled around at the two investigators who had traveled up from Charleston, West Virginia, to audit the casino’s books. “I called you! Why would I call you to come up here and investigate my business for fraud if I was stealing from it myself?”

The shorter of the two men shrugged. “Maybe because you sensed the jig was up.”

Meanwhile, the taller and older investigator chewed on a toothpick while leaning with his back against the wall.

When Cameron and Joshua came in, Gail rushed to them. “Cameron, Josh, you have to do something. They’re accusing Ned of embezzlement. He didn’t do it. Tell them he didn’t do it.”

“He didn’t do it,” Cameron said.

“Exactly who are you?” The shorter investigator took a step toward Cameron only to collide with Joshua’s arm that shot out to block him.

“She’s with me.” Joshua looked down into his eyes.