Rose Hill (3 page)

“Anyone besides Theo giving you any trouble lately?”

Scott noticed some color rise into Drew’s cheeks, just subtly. He felt Sarah stir beside him and knew she noticed too.

“No,” he said. “Other than Theo being so thoroughly unpleasant, everyone else has been very kind.”

“Ever had a malpractice lawsuit filed against you?”

“No,” Drew said, “and I hope I never will.”

Whatever uncomfortable feelings the subject of threats had brought up were subdued, and Drew was as cooperative and calm as it was
possible to be with a dead man in his clinic.

“When Skip took you in to review the contents of the drug safe, you saw the body. Did you recognize the man?”

“No,” said Drew. “I did not recognize him.”

“What do you think?” Sarah asked Scott
.

Drew
had reviewed and signed his statement, and one of her deputies had escorted him back to his home.

“If everyone who ever had a fight with Theo Eldridge is a suspect, we may as well start at one end of town and interview everyone,” Scott replied.

“Keep an eye on the vet. I think he’s hiding something. JT will ask for the clothes he wore yesterday, and snoop as much as he’ll let us without a search warrant. If we find anything, we’ll hold him. Meanwhile, you can do a thorough background check on him.”

Scott nodded and forced himself not to react, although he bristled inside at being assigned a task more suited to one of his deputies.

“Okay, Scott,” Sarah said. “I’m going to go, but my team will nose around asking your fine citizens where they were on the night of, etcetera. When Mr. Harrison gets back we’ll look over his office and house and ask him for his clothes. I’ll leave it to you to get his statement and fax it to me.”

“If there’s anything more I can do I’ll be glad to,” Scott said, and forced a smile he hoped seemed cooperative.

“Be careful writing blank checks like that,” Sarah said with a smirk, eyeing him up and down. “Right now I could use a back rub and breakfast in bed.”

“Regarding the case,” Scott said, and then pretended to check the message light on the station phone system in order to put the front desk between them. “I meant can we be of any help to you professionally?”

“You really are no good at flirting,” Sarah said. “Why can’t you just relax and enjoy it instead of taking everything so seriously?”

“I just think it’s a bad idea,” Scott said. “I’d prefer we keep our working relationship on a professional level.”

“Suit yourself,” Sarah said. “But I’ll keep the offer on the table; on the floor, in a bed, up against the wall, wherever. Who knows, some day you might decide to take me up on it. Until then I’ll just have to assume you’ll make it well worth the wait.”

“It’s not going to happen, Sarah,” Scott said. “I don’t know what else I can say to convince you.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “When you get tired of waiting for your chubby gal pal to get off the fence, you give me a call. Meanwhile, would you mind taking a couple of my people out to Theo’s house to have a look around?”

“No problem,” said Scott. “I’ll see if I can’t find Willy Neff while I’m up there, and ask him a few questions as well.”

“Who’s Willy Neff?”

“He lives out at Theo’s lodge and takes care of the dogs,” Scott replied. “He served some time for receiving child porn through the mail a few years ago. He’s had some public drunkenness issues, but we keep a close eye on him.”

“Sounds charming,” Sarah said.

As soon as the door shut behind Sarah, Scott said, “All right, Maggie, you can come out now.”

Maggie came out of his office and made a pretense of yawning and stretching as if she had just woken up.

“Did you get all that?” he asked her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maggie said, unaware that red grill marks from the heating vent between Scott’s office and the break room were clearly visible on her pale, freckled cheek.

“How’s our friend Mitchell?” he asked.

“Sleeping like a big drunk baby. Who do you think killed Theo?”

“I don’t know,” Scott said, rubbing his face. “We’re just getting started.”

“I can’t think of anyone who won’t be glad he’s gone,” Maggie said.

“That narrows it down.”

“I might have done it,” Maggie said. “I had as much reason to hate him as anybody.”

“Lucky for you then the chief of police is your alibi,” Scott said.

“If I were going to start a vicious killing spree,” Maggie said, looking over his shoulder at the county car parked out front. “I can tell you who I’d start with.”

“I’m not interested in Sarah,” Scott said. “You know that.”

“It’s the principle of the thing. If you were hitting on her it would be sexual harassment. She shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it just because she’s a woman.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Scott said.

“I don’t really care,” Maggie said. “It’s none of my business.”

“You say that,” Scott said, “but you don’t mean it.”

Maggie glared at Scott but he just smiled.

“We need to get started on this right away,” Maggie said. “Someone must have followed Theo to the vet’s office, or lured him there. I’ll ask around and see what I can find out.”

“You need to stay out of it. I’m the chief now and you’re going to have to let me do my job. If the killer’s still in town you might make yourself a target if you’re too nosy.”

“I’m not stupid, you know. I’ll be careful. Besides, people won’t tell you the things they’ll tell me,” Maggie said. “Hannah will know everything there is to know by noon, anyway.”

“I guess there’s no point in trying to stop you.”

“Not really,” Maggie said, then buttoned her coat over her flannel pajamas and left the station.

Scott was looking forward to seeing the lo
dge again, even though it was because of tragic circumstances for the owner. He drove his own vehicle, leading the way for the two sheriff’s deputies, who had a signed search warrant.

The house was perched on one of the ridge tops of Pine Mountain, at the end of a long, curving driveway. It faced southeast, overlooking Gerrymaine Valley, a high alpine valley encircled by mountains on protected state forest land. When the humidity was low and the sky was clear, you could see all the way to Bear Lake, which shone like glass, reflecting the lush green of spring and summer, the burnished gold and red of fall, or the stark grey and white of winter. This part of the Allegheny Mountains still displayed a largely unspoiled natural beauty, mostly due to the laws that protected it from people like Theo.

Sarah’s team members used the dead man’s house key to enter the house, and pointedly did not ask Scott to join them, so he went in the opposite direction, up the drive toward the kennel. Willy’s old truck was not parked anywhere Scott could see, but the county animal control truck was parked between the garage and barn.

Hannah Campbell was supervising Theo’s dogs as they ran and played in the deep snow of a fenced meadow. Scott hailed her and she walked up to the fence to meet him.

“What are you doing out here?” Scott asked.

“Hello to you, too, Chief Gordon,” Hannah said, as she held up a net bag of tennis balls. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I can see that, but why?”

When she handed Scott a ball he threw it down to the end of the meadow. Baying and barking, a multi-colored pack of retrievers sped off to find it, kicking up snow as they went.

“Well, Theo can’t very well do it himself, now can he? Being dead and all.”

Hannah hitched herself up and over the fence.

‘She couldn’t weigh 100 pounds,’ he thought, as he helped her down the other side.

No one could call Hannah pretty, with her prominent nose, closely spaced hazel eyes and thin lips. She did nothing to try to enhance what she had with makeup or hairstyle, preferring to slick her mousy brown hair back into a stubby ponytail anchored down by a baseball cap, and to leave her plain face clean.

“Why are you doing it, though?” Scott asked. “Isn’t this Willy’s job?”

“Drew called me this morning and asked me to check on the dogs,” she said. “He said Theo was dead and Willy wasn’t answering his phone.”

Scott followed Hannah into the barn, where she picked up a pressure sprayer attached to a long hose, and turned on the water spigot. Hannah sprayed the concrete floor so the muck in each kennel rolled into a grate-covered drain.

“How did Drew say Theo died?” Scott asked.

“Said he didn’t know the details and I shouldn’t tell anybody.”

Scott took the hose from Hannah when she handed it to him and washed out the kennels on the other side as she disinfected the clean side. The mess was stinky, but it seemed a wholesome kind of smell compared to the foul stench at the murder scene. Hannah sprayed the disinfectant from a gallon jug connected to a sprayer and hose. It smelled like pine and reminded Scott of scout camp outhouses.

“And your good friend Maggie didn’t call you early this morning?” Scott asked.

“No comment.”

“And you haven’t been on the phone all morning gathering information from various sources?”

“I’d like to call my attorney before I answer any more questions.”

“Alright,” Scott said. “Off the record, just tell me the local consensus.”

“Well, by the state of him last night I’d say he either drank himself to death or drove into a tree.”

Scott turned, dowsing Hannah’s feet.

“You saw Theo last night? When?”

Hannah turned off the spigot, took the nozzle from Scott, and coiled the hose back up.

“Around midnight. He and Willy Neff came out to the farm in Willy’s truck. When we got outside Theo was yelling about the black lab I found out at the state park a few days ago. He said it belonged to him and he wanted it.”

Hannah began disinfecting the kennels Scott had washed out, and Scott sat down on the stairs to the hay loft.

“Was he driving?”

“Willy was driving, and he was none too sober himself.”

“Tell me everything that happened, from the beginning.”

Hannah hopped up to sit on top of several forty-pound bags of dog food stacked on a pallet. Ignoring Scott’s disapproving look, she took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lit up. The doors and windows were open, so a cold stiff breeze blew the smoke out of the barn as quickly as she could exhale it. She was far enough away from Scott so he wasn’t bothered by it, but he hated seeing her do it.

Hannah picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue and flicked it away.

“The dogs woke me up when they heard Willy’s truck come over the ridge. It was after midnight, maybe 12:30. I don’t remember but Sam might; he was still up working. I got up and threw on some duds, thinking there must be some kind of emergency. When we got outside, Theo was yelling he had come for his dog. Sam took a shotgun out with him and that, combined with our dogs barking at him, convinced Theo to get back in the truck.”

“He was drunk?”

“Mean and crazy drunk; you know how he gets. Said I’d kidnapped his dog and Drew was going to castrate it, and we were all in cahoots to steal this prize black lab, worth thousands of dollars”

“Thousands? Could that be true?”

“Oh, yeah. I heard a guy bought a German shorthaired pointer from Theo for four thousand and the dog turned out to be gun shy.”

“Expensive house pet,” Scott said, thinking fast and furiously, trying to work out a timeline. “So how long was he at your place?”

“I’m not exactly sure. It seemed like a long time but was probably only ten or fifteen minutes. I told him the dog was not in my kennel, that Drew had him at the clinic. He called me a liar, and a few other things. My darling husband took exception to this and fired a warning shot over the truck, so they left. Willy could probably tell you, if he wasn’t too drunk to remember. He’s not home, though. I checked.”

Scott wondered again what Willy Neff’s part in all this had been, and where he had gone.

“If Willy’s passed out in his truck somewhere it may be hours before he comes home,” Scott said.

“He could also be dead in a ditch, and who would care?” Hannah said. “Nobody, that’s who.”

“And when did Drew call you about Theo’s dogs?”

“About ten
this morning. I was headed to the store and he called me on my cell.”

“Which means the scanner grannies heard every word.”

Hannah nodded, saying, “Yep.”

“Any idea where Theo was headed when he left your place?”

“No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to Drew’s house.”

“He knew where Drew lives?”

“He should have; he was the landlord.”

Scott reflected that Drew hadn’t mentioned that fact.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Hannah asked. “You might as well, you know. The scanner grannies will tell me anyway.”

The scanner grannies were a group of senior citizens in town who kept their hearing aids glued to their older model police scanner radios. Using a cell phone in Rose Hill was akin to using a party line in the old days, as the
ir now illegal type scanners could pick up cell phone and cordless phone calls as well as firefighter and police radio communications.

“Somebody whacked him over the head in the back room of the vet clinic,” Scott said.

“He must have gone there looking for the dog,” she said. “Who do you think killed him?”

“I don’t know,” Scott said. “He had plenty of enemies.”

Hannah slid off the pallet of dog food, put her cigarette out in a puddle of water on the cement floor, and threw it in the trash bin.

“No one in Rose Hill will care who did it. Everyone will just be glad he’s gone,” she said. “That doesn’t make your job any easier.”

“The sheriff’s department has the case, and I’m just helping out as they let me.”

“Ohhhh, so you spent the morning with the defective detective?”

“Officially, Hannah, only officially.”

“That woman is hornier than this
whole pack of dogs,” Hannah said. “She’ll be humping your leg by nightfall.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Scott said. “I’ve established strong
professional boundaries.”

“You better watch out,” Hannah said. “She’s got a pointy he
ad and a sharp tongue, and you’re on her to-do list. I was conferring with my investigative partner on this very subject just this morning.”

“You and Maggie need to stay out of this one. I mean it.”

“I can’t help it if people tell me things,” Hannah said. “I’m just a very good listener.”

“This is serious,” he said. “I don’t want you two involved. It could be dangerous.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hannah said. “I get it.”

“I may need to talk to you again, and I’ve no doubt someone from the sheriff’s office will be around to talk to you and Sam,” Scott said, preparing to leave.

Hannah clicked her heels together and saluted.

“I will make sure all my papers are in order, sir.”

“You might as well have your gun permits handy. They will probably want to see them.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”

“At ease soldier. Have you told me everything?”

Hannah followed him out of the barn, shrugging in response to his question.

“I’m working on a comic book name for Sarah,” Hannah said. “I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

The dogs were now lounging around the meadow, panting, and some were rolling on their backs in the snow.
After Scott helped Hannah climb up and over the fence, the dogs boosted themselves up from the ground and swarmed around her. Hannah took turns patting and rubbing them as they jostled each other for a position near her.

“How do the dogs seem to you?” Scott asked.

“Frisky and frustrated, just like your pint-sized policewoman,” Hannah said. “They need to run nonstop for a week just to get their ya-yas out. I’ll keep an eye on them.”

Scott admire
d the shiny coats and lean muscular bodies of the different breeds represented in the pack. There weren’t any black labs, but there were two chocolate and two yellow.

“Do you think that stray was his?” he asked.

Hannah herded the dogs toward the barn entrance and some of them veered off, not wanting to go back inside. She produced a bag of treats from her coat pocket to lure them back.

“If Theo had a black lab there’s no paperwork for him,” she said. “I checked that first thing when I got here. Everyone else is accounted for and their tags match the records in the office. You want to hear something weird, though?”

“Always,” Scott said.

“They’re all males.”

“So? Aren’t they supposed to be?”

“It’s a funny way to run a breeding business is all,” Hannah said. “Usually a breeder keeps some females and raises litters to sell or replenish stock.”

Scott didn’t know the first thing about the dog breeding business, so he just shrugged.

“Just thought I’d mention it,” Hannah said.

Scott leaned over the fence so he could still see her as she walked backward into the barn, enticing the dogs back in their kennels with the treats.

“So why would he claim the dog was his if it wasn’t?” Scott asked.

“Sheer cussed meanness,” she called as she backed out of sight.

Scott went to the back of the old stable, now a garage, where a flight of steps led up to Willy’s apartment. He knocked and called out but no one answered. He tried the door and found it was unlocked.

As he entered the apartment the stench hit him first. His eyes watered and he was immediately made nauseous by it. He propped open the door and went back outside to gulp a few deep breaths of clean air. A quick inspection revealed an apartment filled with garbage and filth, but no Willy Neff.

Willy skulked around town, a target of abuse and derision, and Scott could hardly stand to be in his presence for more than a few seconds. Willy avoided him for the most part, which was understandable, and when he did talk to Scott, it was in a whining, pitiful tone that irritated the hell out of him.

He wondered what would happen to Willy now, with his protector and benefactor dead. As small and physically weak as Willy was, and as much as he depended upon Theo for his home and any money he could earn, Scott couldn’t imagine him killing the much bigger man. He may have seen who did do it, however, and was hiding.

Scott went back to the lodge house, but stayed outside, out of the way. He wanted to sit down somewhere quiet with a pen and paper and try to figure out the timeline, and to make a list of people to question.