Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 04 - Chocolate Mousse Attack (15 page)

A
nother building that could be a barn or a guest house crouched nearby. Plants in the vegetable garden on one side of the house were withered and sere in the late summer drought. A drooping clothes line supported several black garments and pairs of overalls ranging in size from small to huge. Kids must live there, but they were not outside laughing and playing.

The yard was closer to my style than
to Fred’s, and a few chickens wandered around, pecking here and there. As we crossed the yard, I realized the chickens were fertilizing as they went. Not a bad idea if you had a sidewalk. Maybe I’d get a few for my yard. Fresh eggs, fried chicken and free fertilizer. But I didn’t want to think about how the chicken made its journey from the yard to the frying pan.

Before we reached
the porch, the screen door opened and a thin older woman stepped out. She wore clothing similar to my outfit with a utilitarian apron very like the ones Paula and I wore at work except hers didn’t have chocolate stains. Her scarf (she had to wear it in the house too?) revealed the roots of steel gray hair pulled back tightly from a face that was a road map of wrinkles coated with sweat. Her dark eyes were tired. “What do you want?” She didn’t smile. I wondered if she ever had.

“Are you Esther Jamison?” Fred asked.

“I am.”

“I’m Jacob Sommers, this is my wife, Abigail, and our son, Hezekiah.”

I heard Rickie’s sharp intake of breath at the name Fred had given him, but he remained silent. That Vulcan mind control was an amazing thing.

“Your sons, Daniel and Joshua,
asked us to stop by and see you on our way home.”

The woman’s thin lips parted and her eyes widened in surprise. “Daniel and Joshua? You saw Daniel and Joshua?
Are they okay?”

Fred nodded. “We
just talked to Joshua today. He’s a lawyer. Our son ran away to the city, and Joshua helped us get him back. When Joshua found out we live on a big farm a ways down the road and were going to travel past your house to get home, he asked us to drop by and tell you they’re doing fine. Daniel’s a doctor. You have grandchildren.”

“
Grandchildren? Did Daniel marry Sarah?”

Fred shook his head slowly and the beard moved across his chest as if it was alive. Creepy. “No. He didn’t marry her.”

“What about the baby, the little girl?”

The baby.
Carolyn?

“She died.”

Esther’s eyes misted and she blinked a couple of times, but this was not a woman accustomed to showing her emotions. “It’s just as well. What chance did that poor little thing have without a daddy? What about Sarah?”

“She died too.”

Esther nodded. “I’ll tell her mother when I see her.”

“Has she heard nothing from Sarah in all these years?”

“Of course not. When they leave, they’re dead to us.”

“I’m sorry to bring bad news.”

“No good can come of going out into that world.” She shook her head. “I wonder if Matthew knows Sarah’s dead? He left home to look for her years ago. He may be dead by now.”

Matthew
? That got my attention. True, it’s a common name, but this wasn’t likely a coincidence.

“Who’s Matthew?” I asked.

Esther looked at me as if surprised I was able to speak. “Sarah’s brother. He was just a little boy when she took her baby and left home to find Daniel. It was rough on her, having a baby with no father. Then Ezekiel offered to marry her after his wife died. He was a lot older, but it was the best she could expect since she had that baby. But she didn’t want Ezekiel. She wanted Daniel. I hoped she’d find him and…” Her voice trailed off and she looked away into the distance. Whatever she’d hoped, she knew it hadn’t happened. Likely most of her hopes hadn’t happened.

An older man with a white beard that looked like it had been dead even longer than Fred’s stepped through the door and
aimed a shotgun at us. “Who are you people?”

I
took that as a sign we were not welcome there and should leave immediately, but Fred introduced us as if social interaction at the end of a gun was perfectly normal. I watched Rickie from the corner of my eye. He made a face at the repetition of his new name but he didn’t react otherwise. Was I the only one who thought that crazy man could squeeze the trigger and blow us into the next county at any moment?

“
They live on a farm down the road,” Esther said meekly. “They brought word from Daniel and Joshua.”

The man moved closer
to the edge of the porch and lifted the gun higher. He was old…probably not as old as he looked…but he stood tall, and his chest was wide beneath the overalls and dingy white shirt. I would not want to meet him in a dark alley. “I don’t know anything about another farm down the road, and Daniel and Joshua are not our sons anymore.”

Esther dropped her gaze. A properly subservient wife.

“I didn’t know you could divorce your kids.” The words just slipped out of my mouth. Shotgun or no shotgun, I was tired of listening to that rude man mouth off.

“You need to control your wife,” the man said.

I changed my mind. I did want to meet him in a dark alley. At that moment, I felt sure I could take him down even without my iron skillet.

“Our community allows women to express themselves during the days when the moon is waxing gibbous,” Fred said.

The man blinked a couple of times but had no response to that statement.

“We have miles to go before we sleep.” Fred turned and strode
away.

Rickie followed immediately.

“If we don’t get to express ourselves, we’ve been known to murder our husbands in their sleep.” I shot Esther a suggestive glance. “And we alibi for each other.”

I yanked off that suffocating
scarf, stomped through that yard as if the chicken poop didn’t bother me, and hurried to catch up with Jacob and Hezekiah.

“I get it,” I said as we walked
through the fields away from Dr. Dan’s parents. “Now I understand how two people could disappear off the face of the earth without anybody knowing.”

Fred pulled the beard from his face. “Nobody but Sophie, her parents and the murderer.”

“I want a Coke,” Rickie said.

For once, Rickie and I were on the same page.

Chapter
Seventeen

Fred’s immaculate car was not immaculate when we got back to it. A thick layer of dust had turned the gleaming white to dusty beige.

“Car’s dirty,” I said, just to see how he’d respond. I half expected him to freak out.

He gave it scarcely a glance. “It’s washable.” He unlocked the doors and we all got in.

After sitting in the sun
with the windows closed, the car was probably twenty degrees hotter than outside which was already pretty hot.

“Hey, my window won’t go down,” Rickie complained from the back seat.
“There’s no handle.”

“You’re correct. I control the windows.” Fred started the engine. “It’ll cool down pretty fast. In the meantime, just sweat. I’m sure you know how to do that.”

The car did cool down amazingly fast as Fred ambled along the dirt road. Really, that’s the only way I can describe his driving. Made me want to open the door, put my foot on the ground and push.

“What do we do now?” I asked. “We know Dr. Dan did it.”

“Do we?”

“Who’s Dr. Dan?” Rickie asked.

“Nobody you know,” I assured the kid, then turned back to Fred. “Okay, we
assume
Dr. Dan did it. Will you go with me on that?”

He nodded. “I will agree that it is possible Daniel did it.”

“He ran away from home to go to school, to escape from that house and that grumpy old man. Had a promising life ahead of him. Even married a rich woman so he didn’t have to struggle so much to get through med school. But then his past catches up with him. His girlfriend from back home shows up with a baby.”

Fred nodded.
“That fits with the data. Sarah left the farm and came to find the father of her child. Daniel felt a sense of responsibility, so he tucked her away in an old house in Pleasant Grove where his rich wife and his new friends would never find her. But then something happened.”

“What?” Rickie asked.

“That’s what we need to figure out,” I said. “Maybe the rich wife finds out. Or maybe Sarah wants to get married. With her background, it’s got to bother her that she’s a single mom. Remember, she did tell the Murrays Dan was her husband.”

Fred
squinted as he stared through the haze of dust stirred up by his car. I was amazed he could see enough to keep the car on the road. “That’s one possible scenario. He killed them, disposed of their bodies, sold the house, and there’s no evidence they ever existed. The family back home has already written them off. Who’s going to file a missing persons’ report? They don’t even have birth certificates on file. The doctor is home free, able to live out his dreams and be a physician to the wealthy. No bodies, no murder weapon, no fingerprints, no DNA.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Rickie was leaning forward, eyes wide, completely absorbed in our discussion. Considering the life he led, I doubted anything we said
was going to shock him or give him nightmares so I continued.

“But there was a witness. Sophie saw it happen.
She ran out of the closet and Dr. Dan followed her home, probably intending to kill her too.”

“
That wouldn’t be easy with her parents there. Maybe he bribed them to move out of town and keep quiet. Remember the hundred thousand dollars deposited in their account?”

I considered that possibility. “You think he killed them after they moved to Nebraska? Why would he do that if he’d already bribed them?”

“Maybe they changed their minds and were going to talk. Maybe they wanted more money and he couldn’t get it without his wife finding out. Maybe their deaths were an accident after all.”

I gave a snort of derision. “
And Sophie almost died from the same cause after she came back to town. That would be a major coincidence.”

“Coincidences do happen. That’s why we have a name for them.”

He just said that to be argumentative. “Where does Matthew fit into this picture?”

“
He left home to find his sister. Esther Jamison knows him and his family which means he knows them. Maybe he tracked down the doctor, found out he owned my house during the time his sister would have been around, and that’s why he’s checking out the neighborhood.”

I wasn’t sure what that might mean for his relationship with Paula, but it didn’t sound good. “Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’s not like you to be uncertain, Fred.”

“We have no hard evidence. It’s all speculation and conjecture until we get a confession.”

“
A confession? Really? Any idea how we go about that?”

“Yes, I have a few ideas.”

I waited for him to share some of those ideas with me. He didn’t.

“Can we have pizza when we get home?” Rickie asked.

Home?
A wave of anxiety twisted my gut. He was referring to my house as
home
. What if Grace never came back to get him? What if Rick stayed in Hawaii? Was I going to be stuck with Rickie forever? I could just see myself taking him to school in the fall, going to PTA meetings, picking him up at the gate when he got out of prison.

A loud crash shattered my reverie a
nd I slammed forward against my seatbelt. “What the h—what was that?”

Immediately Fred hit the gas and the car leapt forward, speeding along the dusty, rutted road. Damn! Fred knew how to get that car out of second gear after all.

“What the hell just happened?” Rickie asked. I’d censored my words, but Rickie felt no need to do so, and I didn’t feel the need to chastise him at that moment.

“Rear end collision.
” Fred scowled as he stared intently at the road ahead and continued to accelerate. “Hang on.”

We’d been rear ended?

Fred was driving fast?

I didn’t know which of the two shocked me more.

I looked through the back window and saw an evil, grinning face…headlights and the huge grill of a black truck bearing down on us. “Holy sh…cow!” It was like a scene out of a horror movie. A demonic machine come to life and attacking the good guys. The truck’s windows were heavily tinted, so I couldn’t see anybody inside, just the evil vehicle with its toothy grin, determined to kill us.

Rickie
followed my gaze. “Who the devil is that?”

I
hadn’t seen any signs of a truck at the Jamison’s place or any way for a truck to get there. Even so, the thought crossed my mind that the driver was Esther’s husband. The truck even looked a little like him minus the beard.

“Rickie, why don’t you lie down
on the floor between the seats?” Fred suggested. He had added seatbelts to the front but not the back.

“I don’t want to.”

“Lie down between the seats,” Fred instructed, and Rickie complied without protest or swear word.

The monster truck loomed larger behind us, and I braced for another collision.

Suddenly Fred spun the car onto pavement, making the ninety-degree turn on two wheels. In spite of being in shock and probably terrified if I had time to think about it, I was impressed with that turn.

And then we were flying. Well, almost. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d pulled out a secret thruster and we’d gone airborne. I couldn’t see the speedometer, but I was pretty sure we were doing over a hundred, and that car was handling the speed with no effort. The
engine was still purring along, and the suspension held us securely on the road.

I looked over at Fred. I
half expected to find he had morphed into Batman or James Bond. He was still Fred. His jaw muscles looked a little tighter, but for all the strain that showed on his face, he could have been driving calmly down the street, going the speed limit as usual.

When this was over, I was going to demand that Fred tell me where he’d learned to drive like that.

And he, of course, would ignore my question and change the subject.

My cell phone rang.
Out of a Blue Clear Sky
, Trent’s ringtone. I snatched the phone out of my purse and had my finger poised to accept the call, but hesitated. I really needed to talk to Trent, to hear his voice and to tell him how I felt about him in case I didn’t survive the attack of the monster truck. But he’d be very upset if I told him what was going on. Very, very upset, and there was nothing he could do to help. By the time he got there, we’d either be dead or free.

I put the phone back in my purse. If I lived, I’d call him later and maybe I’d try to be a little more forthcoming with my
feelings.

The truck was still behind us, but he was no match for whatever Fred had under the hood
combined with Fred’s driving skills. I was relieved to notice that we were gaining ground fast. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I was pretty sure we needed to get away from the demon in the black truck…or the demon that was the black truck.

Fred flew around a sharp curve…and kept on curving. He swung onto the shoulder of the road and made a U-turn. We were speeding straight for a head-on collision with the ominous black truck.

My stomach leapt upward into my throat. I could see no good coming of this turn of events. “Uh, Fred, are we going to eject out of the seats at the last minute or something?”

“Relax.”

I clutched the edge of the seat and gulped while my heart moved from double time to triple time. “That’s not going to happen.”

At the last minute the truck swung onto the shoulder of the road, missing us by inches, maybe centimeters. I could feel the hot, sulfurous
fumes from its exhaust as we passed. Well, I might have if the windows had been open.

Fred swung onto the opposite shoulder of the road and made another U-turn.

Ahead of us the truck seemed to have a little trouble getting back onto the pavement, but made it just before we caught up to him.

Again the chase was on, but this time we were the chaser instead of the chasee.

“Fred?” The word sounded tiny and alone, nothing like my regular voice, but I was pretty sure I was the one who said it.

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do with him if you catch him?”

“Beat him within an inch of his life and make him tell me why he damaged my car.”

“Maybe you could call him on his cell phone instead.”

“I’m kidding. I
only want to get his license number. He doesn’t have a front plate. I won’t do anything dangerous with the kid in the car.”

In all the excitement, I’d forgotten Rickie. I looked in the back. He crouched in the floor between the seats, looking up with no sign of fear. Apparently I was the only one in the car who considered our situation life-threatening.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Just hold on. We’ll be there soon.” I wasn’t sure where
there
was, but at the speed Fred was driving, we’d be there soon.

I peered through the windshield. “I got his plate number.”

“So do I. We’ll head home now.”

We squealed around another turn and onto the highway with Fred close on the truck’s bumper.

“Are we heading home now?” I asked as we continued to try to crawl up the truck’s rear end.

“This is the way home. As long as we’re going this way, we might as well torment this person who damaged my car.”

“Or we could do that later. Remember, kid in the car.”

Fred smiled. “You’re not worried, are you, Lindsay? You’re the one who’s always trying to make me drive faster.” But he eased off the gas and allowed the monster truck to merge into traffic and disappear ahead of us. “You can sit up now, Rickie.”

I drew in a deep breath. “Somebody was trying to kill us!”

“
I doubt he meant to kill us. Probably just trying to scare us. Dr. Dan must have found out about our visit to his old homestead. I saw that truck darting in and out of traffic on our trip over. You lost him, but he must have figured out where we were going. They shouldn’t have done that. Now I’m angry.”

He didn’t really sound angry, not the way he’d sounded when he’d learned about Rickie’s theft of Sophie’s ring.
He still looked the way he always looked. His white hair was immaculate. His black framed glasses sat squarely on his nose. He wasn’t white knuckling the steering wheel or scowling after the bad guys. But I did not doubt for one minute that he was extremely angry, angrier than I’d ever seen him before.

“Are we going home for pizza now?” Rickie asked.

“Yes, we are.” I took out my cell phone to order a pizza and remembered Trent’s call. He’d left a message. I checked my voicemail.

“Call me when you get a chance. I have information about Matthew Graham.”

I wasn’t sure at that point he could tell me anything I didn’t already know about Matthew, but I’d call him as soon as we got home.
Home
. It used to be a comforting word for a comforting place.

I ordered a pizza to be delivered to my house.