Murder by Artifact (Five Star Mystery Series) (7 page)

Mike tapped the piece of newspaper with his pen. “Do you remember if there was any suggestion of foul play? Could the woman have just run off?”

“I’ll call the FBI and check into it,” said Tony. “As far as I remember from the news, she just vanished. She could have been abducted by aliens for all anybody told the media.” He reached for the telephone on his desk and changed his mind. He rustled in the stuff packed into his pencil drawer and found some sticky notes. “I left days after graduation. They could have found her twenty years ago.” He doubted it. If she had been found, he would bet it was her corpse.

He scribbled the woman’s name and the date on a notepad and handed it to Ruth Ann. “Do your thing.”

Tony called the FBI. They gave him little information.

So, he called Max, his former partner in Chicago. Max joined the FBI right after Tony left. He probably wouldn’t know nearly as much as the Knoxville office. Still, it was a good excuse to talk to his friend.

In spite of the serious nature of his inquiry, Tony found himself laughing. Max hadn’t changed a bit. Although he morphed into a suit, his irreverent sense of humor went with him. As soon as he recognized Tony’s voice on the phone, his former partner started in on him.

“So how’s the local yokel? People ever find out you’re really a mouse wearing an inflatable sheriff’s costume?” Max loved to tell people his old partner moved to the hills and became a sheriff. “Do they let you carry your own bullet around?”

Tony didn’t rise to the bait. “Did Luscious Laura decide she would rather be married to a real man instead of a suit?” Tony thought Theo was pretty. Max’s wife was stunningly beautiful and apparently blind to Max’s faults. “I’ll give Laura another week before she runs off with the bag boy at the grocery store.”

“Hey, I’ve missed you, partner.” Max sounded serious. “Why don’t you bring the family up and we’ll all go to a baseball game and you can soak up some civilization. Your kids can eat something besides fried squirrels and baked road kill.”

“You help solve my problem and I’ll buy you all the hot dogs you can eat and pass the bill on to the county.” Tony had automatically dialed Max’s number when he finished talking to the Knoxville office. He hadn’t been able to tell if the agency planned to take an active interest or not. “It’s not your area. I already called the Knoxville office. I’m wondering if I’ll soon have every initial in the country running around my county.”

“Damn, you sound serious. What’s up?” Max became all business when Tony explained about the body and the newspaper clippings. “Man, that’s just weird. What other initials are you talking to?”

“I’ve a DEA group, although they’re about gone, and the ATF.” Tony heard a rattle like the phone fell into a metal trash can. He moved the receiver away from his ear. “What are you doing now?”

“Hey, sorry about that.” Max swore under his breath. “I can’t type and hang onto this dinky little phone at the same time and I lost my ear thingy for it somewhere. ATF, huh? Are they up there drinking all the moonshine?”

“Not exactly.” Tony wouldn’t give out more information than that and Max clearly didn’t expect an answer.

Max did confirm that the FBI was very interested in the apparent resurrection of a cold case.

“I’d say that you’re about to get lots of visitors in suits.”

Theo frowned at the photograph in the evening’s
Silersville Gazette
. It covered half of the front page. In the picture, Queen Doreen smiled broadly, her very best political smile, and held one corner of the engagement quilt. Theo thought Doreen looked like a very attractive shark in a size-nothing dress. The caption below it read, “Doreen Cashdollar lends her family heirloom quilts to new museum.”

The accompanying article detailed all the family tree beginning with Abigail, for whom the engagement quilt was pieced, and her subsequent death, which led to the second quilt acquiring the designation of the murder quilt. Doreen received the quilt from her grandmother Bathsheba Cochran, Abigail’s sister. More rhetoric praised the mayor’s father-in-law. Robert “Sonny” Cochran was well known in horse show circles for his fine Tennessee Walking horses. There was mention of the horse farm where Doreen grew up. Another paragraph spread word of Doreen’s philanthropic deeds. Only at the very end was the new museum mentioned in passing. It was not the publicity they had hoped to get. The lure of quilts on display was greatly diminished by the blatant admiration of Winifred Thornby for Doreen Cochran Cashdollar.

Theo’s outrage grew. The article sounded more like a public relations piece for the Cashdollar and Cochran families than an explanation about the museum goals. She tapped the newspaper with a finger. “I don’t see where it says anything about Her Majesty being a royal pain in the butt.”

“It also neglects to mention that Saint Sonny is rumored to have spawned children in at least three states and only produced one with his wife,” said Tony.

“That’s understandable. Have you met the Queen Mother?” Theo teased. “Imagine the world with more Doreens.”

Tony shuddered. “Maybe it’s a good thing that the museum is not pushed too much for now.”

“Why’s that?”Theo pushed her glasses up her nose and stared into his eyes. “I thought you were in favor of them pursuing this dream.”

“Oh, believe me, I am, especially since it’s keeping them from singing in bars.” Tony’s eyes sparkled. “All I mean is the museum’s not exactly finished yet, is it? Is there any sense in making a big publicity push until an opening date can be announced?”

“True.” She shifted in her chair and peered over her glasses at him. “Now, tell me why you came to the museum yesterday. I loved the expression on Doreen’s face. It has to be the first time anyone managed to silence her without resorting to a gag.”

Another newspaper article arrived in the mail. Again, there seemed to be no way to trace it to the sender. This clipping described a hiker missing on the Appalachian Trail. Evidently traveling alone, a young man whose last contact with his family had been in Pennsylvania, never reported in again. Several hikers remembered seeing him farther north. None had much information to share. No one in Tennessee had seen him. A series of media pleas and posters in the towns near the trail turned up no clues. Several years later, the hiker’s disappearance had even been the subject of a national television program. It didn’t produce any solid leads.

The note attached to the newspaper article simply read, “I could make a call and be on television tonight. I wanted you to have this.”

All information about the case went from his office to the FBI and the TBI. Federal, state and local law enforcement had the same information, or lack of it. The bones Theo had found were examined by forensic anthropologists under the watchful eyes of a host of interested observers.

They determined the bones belonged to a thirty-something Caucasian male. Other than that, nothing. The teeth were missing so dental records would not help. Tony found the number of men missing for at least three months to twenty years staggering. Lots of men had disappeared and could have passed through the area.

Rather than dedicate countless days, weeks or months sifting through the growing list of tragic stories, Tony wanted to throw all of the information into the trash and set it on fire. He wouldn’t, of course. As the case continued to worsen, he wondered if it would ever be solved.

By the middle of the following week, at least eight yard ornaments had been reported missing from different sites around town. The thief, or what seemed more likely, a group of thieves, seemed to specialize in the largest ornament from each property struck. Some of them had to weigh almost a hundred pounds, and the odd shapes would make stealing even harder to manage. Prying up these babies wasn’t like taking a wallet and slipping it inside your shirt.

Tony had quite a discussion with his regular night deputy, J. B. Lewis. Because his parents had not supplied him with first or middle names, only initials, he was often referred to by his fellow deputies as Jonely Bonely.

“Honest to God, J.B., I don’t know any more than I did after the first theft. I really assumed it was a copycat of last summer’s migrating gnomes.”

“So did I.” J.B. sighed heavily, sending the scent of spearmint chewing gum across Tony’s desk. “It wasn’t until the third one vanished and nothing reappeared that I realized we have a new ornament thief.”

Tony rubbed his forehead and reached for an antacid. “I can’t exactly post a deputy on each monstrous ornament. We don’t have that many deputies to start with, and the tourists keep those busy.”

“Speaking of tourists,” said J.B., “did Wade tell you about his new admirer?”

Pausing with one hand wrapped around the antacid bottle, Tony frowned. “No.”

“I get to be the first to tell you, then.” Excitement mixed with merriment gleamed in J.B.’s eyes. “I heard he stopped a girl who was driving a convertible with both tops down.”

Feeling mildly confused, Tony popped two antacids into his mouth and chewed slowly. “Okay, I’ve got the picture now.”

J.B. grinned. “He couldn’t let the girl drive around like that even if there weren’t laws against it. She could cause a major accident, couldn’t she? So he pulls her over and goes over to get her to cover herself when she wraps her bra around his neck and pulls him down so she can kiss him.”

“Okay, that’s it!” Tony reached for his telephone. “Wade is either going to wear an ugly mask or sit at his desk and do nothing except paperwork until September.”

On Friday, the morning mail included a new envelope, just like the previous ones carrying cards and newspaper clippings. Instead of an article about another unsolved missing-person case, this one held a ticket to that night’s baseball game in Cincinnati. A note on the now-familiar index cards used for stationary read, “Want to solve four murders? If so, Tony, use this ticket.” Tony glanced up at the tense faces watching him. “Real cloak and dagger stuff, huh? It gets weirder.”

He cleared his throat, preparing to wow his audience. “Park your Blazer in Newport, Kentucky, and walk across the Purple People Bridge. Show this ticket to the elevator operator and go up to the Club level. Plan to be there anytime between five-thirty and the first pitch. I promise you are in no danger. I only want to share some information. You do not need to bring other cops, although I’ll understand if you don’t trust me. I’ll be watching for you.”

“Tonight? That’s not much notice for a three-hundred-mile drive,” said Wade.

“I agree.” Tony tapped the ticket on the desk. “Whoever sent this knows exactly how long the drive is and how long it usually takes mail to get from there to here.”

Ruth Ann stood in the doorway. Her eyes were focused on the letter. “He, or she, also knows you drive a Blazer.”

“And I’d say this person knows you and maybe even knows the FBI has been looking over your shoulder.” Wade stared at him from across the desk, surprise and concern in his dark blue eyes. “It sounds like a trap to me. Are you going?”

“It’s a trap all right,” Tony nodded. “We’ll just see who gets caught in it, though.” He reached for his telephone. “I don’t think this person is dangerous, still, a little backup is a comforting thing.”

“Do you think it’s just a prank?” Ruth Ann asked.

“Maybe.” Tony paused with his hand over the receiver. “I do think this person knows a lot more about what happened twenty years ago than showed up in these newspaper clippings. What really baffles me is why he waited so long to bring it to light.”

“Will they let you take your gun into the ballpark?” Wade leaned forward. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you have a few enemies out there.”

“Most of them live in our county jail or prison. I can’t imagine any of them would be in Cincinnati.” He mentally cataloged the most dangerous ones. There were not many, and none of them would know half of the details displayed in the letter. “I’ll find out about the gun. It shouldn’t be a problem. Telling Theo will be worse.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s a lot more dangerous than anyone in Ohio.”

He noticed although Wade and Ruth Ann both laughed, neither disagreed.

“And, you can bet Theo will make sure I’m wearing my heaviest vest.”

Tony stopped by Theo’s quilt shop to tell her where he was going. He told himself she would feel better if she got to fuss and fret a bit and remind him to be careful. His wife had a lot of spunk and was smarter than him. Her views often helped him professionally, however, she did not deal well with being kept in the dark.

Gretchen Blackburn, Theo’s fulltime assistant, stood behind the wide counter, cutting a length of fabric and chatting with several out-of-town customers. Tony always wanted to call her Brunhild because her voice and body type were Wagnerian. So far he’d managed to stifle the words. When she braided her long blond hair, like she had today, all she needed was a Viking helmet and spear. She looked up and smiled at him. “Theo’s in her studio.”

Tony returned the smile and nodded as he moved toward the staircase to Theo’s studio. From that vantage point, he could see a group of four quilters gathered in the big workroom, quilting on the current charity quilt. A couple of them were tiny old women who looked like garden gnomes and a pair of young women. Susan and Amy, the younger ones, belonged to the Thursday Night Bowling League, a joke name for Theo’s quilting group.

Susan’s voice carried to him. “I heard Doreen might change her mind about letting the new museum display her great-aunt’s quilts.”

“That’s okay by me.” One of the gnomes spoke. “That woman has been a pure aggravation ever since Calvin married her, and I doubt she’ll get nicer with more publicity.”

Tony noticed Theo had added a chain that went from railing to railing at the base of the staircase. On it hung a small wooden plaque, simple and to the point. “Private.” The chain and sign were new.

Wondering why she hadn’t mentioned being bothered, he unclipped the chain, stepped past it, and clipped it behind him. At the top of the stairs, he turned the knob and strolled into Theo’s world, so different from the one he worked in. Hers was full of light and color and the scents of lavender and fabric sizing.