The Root of Murder Read online

  The Root of Murder

  A Lovers in Crime Mystery

  By

  Lauren Carr

  The Root of Murder: Book Information

  All Rights Reserved © 2019 by Lauren Carr

  Published by Acorn Book Services

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  For information, call: 304-995-1295

  or e-mail: [email protected].

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Designed by Acorn Book Services

  Publication Managed by Acorn Book Services

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  304-995-1295

  Edited by Jennifer Checketts

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  Cover designed by Acorn Book Services

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  ASIN: B07NLDJ9FQ

  Published in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  The Root of Murder: Book Information

  Cast of Characters

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Check Out Lauren Carr’s Mysteries!

  Attention Book-Clubbers!

  The Last Thing She Said

  Cast of Characters

  Characters in Order of Appearance

  Vera and Cliff Newhart: Elderly couple. They have lived a quiet simple life on their small farm in Hookstown, Pennsylvania until the night they find a body.

  Cameron Gates: Lieutenant with Pennsylvania State Police’ homicide division. Married to Joshua Thornton. They have an adopted daughter Isadora Thornton.

  Joshua Thornton: Hancock County Prosecuting Attorney. Retired after his first wife died suddenly to return to his home town of Chester, West Virginia, to raise their five children. Now he’s remarried to Cameron. They share an adopted daughter.

  Isadora Thornton (Izzy): Cameron and Joshua’s fourteen-year-old daughter. The light of Irving’s and Admiral’s lives.

  Irving: Thornton’s twenty-five pound Maine Coon cat. Black with a white stripe down his back, he resembles a skunk.

  Admiral: Thornton’s enormous Great Dane-Irish Wolfhound mix.

  Tony Seavers: Cameron’s new partner. Newly promoted to detective in homicide. This case has him hitting the ground running.

  Tracy Gardner: Joshua’s elder daughter and Cameron’s stepdaughter. She’s a successful caterer and business woman. Married to Hunter. She’d won his heart through his stomach.

  Poppy Ashburn: J.J. Thornton’s fiance. Trains J.J.’s champion quarter horses.

  Elizabeth Collins: Receptionist/office manager at Madison’s Dance Studio. She took dance lessons with Tracy, Madison, and Heather when they were in school.

  Madison Whitaker: Owner of Madison’s Dance Studio. Daughter of Shawn and Sherry Whitaker. Took dance lessons with Tracy and Heather when they were in school. She dated J.J. Thornton in high school.

  J.J. Thornton: Joshua Thornton’s eldest son. Owns Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards, inherited from his first love. Young criminal lawyer. Engaged to Poppy Ashburn.

  John Davis: Murder victim. Vice-president at nuclear power plant in Shippingport. Married to Kathleen Davis for over thirty years. They have four grown children. One of his daughters, Lindsay was killed in car accident three years ago. He and his wife have permanent custody of her young son, Luke.

  Lindsay Ellison: John Davis’s younger daughter. Got pregnant in high school. Dropped out and married Derek Ellison. Heavily addicted to alcohol and drugs. Killed three years ago in a car accident. She’d left behind Luke, her young son.

  Heather Davis: John and Kathleen Davis’s older daughter. Used to take dance lessons with Tracy and Madison. She dated J.J. Thornton in high school, too. Works in marketing.

  Kathleen Davis: John Davis’s wife. Heather Davis’s mother. Has four grown children. Her younger daughter, Lindsay was killed in a car accident three years ago. She and her husband have permanent custody of Lindsay’s young son, Luke.

  Luke: John and Kathleen Davis’s seven year old grandson, by their late daughter Lindsay. Derek Ellison’s son. The Davises have legal custody of him.

  Derek Ellison: John Davis’s estranged son-in-law. Addicted to drugs and alcohol. Murder weapon found in his home.

  Sheriff Curt Sawyer: Hancock County Sheriff.

  Hunter Gardner: Tracy Gardner’s husband. Hancock County Sheriff Deputy.

  Sadie Ellison: Derek Ellison’s suffering mother.

  Ollie: J.J. Thornton’s pet lamb. He thinks he’s a dog.

  Charley: J,.J. Thornton’s watch rooster. He’s got issues.

  Pilgrim: Rescued pregnant horse.

  Gulliver: Poppy’s Appaloosa horse. He’s a Houdini horse. Likes to open the stall door and roam around.

  Comanche: Izzy’s horse.

  Sherry Whitaker: Madison’s mother. Married to Shawn Whitaker, who is missing. Dog breeder and trainer.

  Shawn Whitaker: Sherry Whitaker’s missing husband. Madison’s father. Truck driver. Went out on a long haul. No one has heard from him since.

  Bishop Moore: Rents apartment in Calcutta, Ohio, where the police find the victim’s car. His application says he’s a travel agent.

  Ross Bayles: Manages apartment complex where Bishop Moore resides.

  Brenda Bayles: Ross’s wife. Wheelchair bound. Nasty woman.

  Bea Miller: Murder suspect. John Davis got a restraining order against her. Could she be mad enough to kill?

  Aaron Collins: Elizabeth’s husband.

  Jessica Faraday Thornton: Joshua’s daughter-in-law. Married to Murphy Thonrton, J.J.’s identical twin brother. One of Poppy’s bridesmaids. She’s an heiress.

  Murphy Thornton: J.J.’s identical twin brother. Married to Jessica. He’s J.J.’s best man. Can he get J.J. to the ceremony on time?

  Tristan Faraday: Jessica’s brother. He’s dating Sarah Thornton, Joshua’s daughter, which can be a dangerous thing to do.

  Sarah Thornton: Joshua Thornton’s younger daughter. Midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. Bridesmaid.

  Donny Thornton: Jo
shua Thornton’s youngest son. College student. Groomsman.

  Epigraph

  Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Prologue

  Hookstown, Pennsylvania

  “Cliff, what’s that smell?”

  Tying the belt to her bathrobe, Vera descended the stairs to go into the living room where her husband was snoring through the last half of a late-night talk show. On the farm nestled deep in the woods between the West Virginia state line and Hookstown, Pennsylvania, the elderly couple were accustomed to smoke from neighbors burning leaves.

  In mid-January, leaf burning season was very much over.

  Not only that, but this smell was different.

  Cliff responded to his wife’s question with a snort.

  Vera went into the kitchen and looked out of the window over the sink. Through the line of trees across the back yard, she saw the bright orange glow of flames in the pasture.

  “Cliff,” she called out, “there’s a fire out in the field!”

  The word “fire” shocked her husband into consciousness and propelled him out of the recliner.

  “Are all the horses in?” She followed him out onto the back porch.

  Cliff saw that his wife wasn’t imagining things. There was a fire. It was too far away to see if it was spreading across the field toward their house or not. With the brisk winter wind, it could reach their home in no time.

  “Someone must have dumped off their trash and tried to burn it.” Cliff grabbed his coat, a flashlight, and fire extinguisher and rushed out the door.

  Shrugging into her coat, Vera followed him across the back yard and through the gate into the pasture. It was only when she stepped in the icy mud that she realized she was still in her bedroom slippers. “It doesn’t smell like trash.” She ran as fast as she could in her slippers and the dark to keep up with her husband.

  “Smells like a dead animal.”

  “Why would someone dump a dead animal in our field and set it on fire?” Vera had to shout for him to hear her above the wind. The odor of gasoline reached her nostrils.

  Luckily, the pasture was too soggy after three days of heavy rain for the fire to have enough fuel to spread.

  Several yards ahead of his wife, Cliff reached the source of the fire first. It took only a couple of blasts from the fire extinguisher for him to douse the flames. He shone his flashlight on the figure to determine what someone wanted to get rid of so desperately. It was too small to be a cow or horse. Yet, too big to be a dog. His jaw dropped when Cliff was able to make out the shape of a man.

  “What is it?” Vera came to a halt when her husband threw up his hand.

  “Call the police.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes, Vera,” he sputtered out. “The police. Now!”

  Vera ran out of her slippers in her haste to get back to the warmth and safety of their farmhouse.

  Chapter One

  Rock Springs Boulevard, Chester, West Virginia

  Uttering a sigh filled with bliss, Joshua Thornton fell back onto the bed he shared with his wife. “Now that was something to wake up to.”

  Cameron Gates dropped to lie on top of him. The locks of her cinnamon colored hair tickled his nose. “Oh, yeah,” she breathed. “Lucky for you, I had a really dirty dream and couldn’t keep it to myself.”

  He could feel her heart’s rapid beat against his chest. It was like they were beating in unison. In the dark bedroom, he was only able to see her silhouette when she sat up.

  “Mad that I woke you up?”

  He kissed her with a chuckle. “Sharing is good for a marriage.”

  “Any naughty dreams you want to share with me?”

  He threw his arms around her and rolled her over to pin her onto the bed. “Remember,” he whispered into her ear, “you asked for it.”

  Her giggles turned into shrieks when he proceeded to tickle her ribs and stomach. It took several rings of her cell phone to break through the ruckus. Realizing it was her phone, they stopped laughing and stared over at the night stand on her side of the bed.

  It rang again.

  She looked up into Joshua’s eyes. With a sigh, he rolled over to his side of the bed. She snatched the phone from the night stand. “Detective Gates here.”

  “Lieutenant,” Joshua said.

  “I’m calling for Lieutenant Gates,” the dispatch officer said into her ear.

  “That would be me,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’m Lieutenant Gates. Sorry.”

  Joshua chuckled next to her, to which she gave him a good-natured punch in the shoulder.

  While she took down the address, Joshua pulled the blankets up to his chin, on which he wore an ultra-short beard.

  Disconnecting the call, she turned to him. “Silver foxes do give out rain checks on dirty dreams, right?”

  His blue eyes, which were striking even in normal light, shone in the moonlight. “Depends.” He ran his fingers through her hair, which she wore in short layers.

  “On what?”

  “On how long you’re gone. I can’t promise that I’ll wait for you. You’ve seen the hordes of women beating on our door.” He kissed her softly on the lips. “Now I know how Valerie must have felt.”

  Stroking his wavy silver locks, she asked, “I’m not sure how to take that. We make love and minutes later you’re thinking about your late wife. Should I be offended?”

  “No,” Joshua said. “What I mean is, when I was in the Navy—doing investigations—more than once I would get called out in the middle of the night for a mission and … sometimes that call would come when we were in the middle of …” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “What not?”

  “What not. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Now my police lieutenant wife is getting the phone call in the middle of the night and running off to Lord knows what, and I’m the one being left in bed alone.”

  “Yeah, well, this is not a matter of national security.” Cameron kissed him quickly on the lips and climbed out of bed. “Nor am I jetting off to Naples or some undisclosed location someplace.” She yanked open a dresser drawer and proceeded to get dressed. “I’ll be back in the morning, or at the latest, in time for dinner … unless you make tuna casserole. Then I may have to stake out a burger joint someplace.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “A farmer in Hookstown found a dead body in his pasture,” she said. “Someone tried to burn it.”

  “In a field?” Propping himself up on pillows against the headboard, he admired her slender body. For a woman in her mid-forties, she kept herself in good shape. Chasing down murderers helped.

  “It’s the Newhart farm. Back off one of the side roads this side of Hookstown,” she said while pulling on a pair of black slacks. “The killer could have thought the farm was abandoned.” Offering him one more kiss, she shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll run out there, check out the scene, catch the killer, and come back to you to cash in my rain check for your fantasy—just like I always do.”

  Joshua grinned into her pretty face. “You make it sound so simple.”

  She strapped on her utility belt and tucked her service weapon into its holster. “I only make it look that way.” She pecked him on the lips. “Love you.”

  “Love you more.”

  She stepped out into the upstairs hallway of the three-story stone house on Rock Springs Boulevard to discover that another member of the Thornton family was not in bed. Izzy, her and Joshua’s fourteen-year-old daughter, was at the top of the stairs at the other end of the hallway.

  Everyone called her Izzy because hated her proper name, which was Isadora.

  Cameron had met Izzy during a murder investigation in which her mother had been the victim. There was an instant emotional attachment, and J
oshua agreed to Cameron’s request to adopt the orphan.

  Since Izzy had never had a father, she found it easy to call Joshua “Dad.” However, she called Cameron “Cam” out of respect for her late mother. Unsure of how the name “Mom” would sound when directed at her, Cameron was totally okay with that.

  With a shriek, Izzy jumped high enough to cause her long nightdress to float up. Her head full of tight blond curls bounced. She thrust both hands behind her back. “You’re up!”

  Cameron regarded the young girl staring down the length of the hall at her with her big eyes.

  Looking equally guilty, Irving, Cameron’s twenty-five-pound Main Coon cat, circled around Izzy’s skinny bare legs and feet while gazing up at the goodie behind her back. With his long black fur and white stripe from the top of his head to the tip of his tail, Irving was notorious for frightening their neighbors who regularly mistook him for a skunk.

  Close to forty pounds heavier than Izzy, the Thornton’s Great Dane-Irish Wolfhound Mix stood two steps behind the girl. Admiral’s focus was also directed at the hidden treasure.

  Cameron cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “Yes, I’m up.” She sauntered down the hallway toward her. “I have to go to work. What’s your excuse?”

  “We wanted to tell you to be careful out there.”

  Placing a hand on the girl’s bony shoulder, Cameron eased her around to peer behind her back. Discovering a bowl filled to the top with rocky road ice cream and slathered in hot fudge sauce, she let out a laugh.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” Izzy bounced with a wide smile across her face. “I’m too excited about going shopping for bridal gowns tomorrow.” Worry crossed her face. “You’ll still be able to go with us, won’t you?”

  “I’m going to do everything I can to go,” Cameron said. “Even if I can’t make it, you’re still going. You can’t not go. Poppy can’t pick out her bridesmaids’ dresses without her maid of honor.”

  Izzy’s curls shook. “I can’t wait to pick out my dress. Poppy said we’ll get to pick out whatever we want.”

  “But you and your sisters have to agree on what it is you want,” Cameron said. “Sarah is talking about desert camouflage. Tracy is thinking more along the line of Jane Eyre.” She lowered her voice. “It’s your job to keep them in line. Even if Poppy is allowing all of you to decide what to wear, she is the bride. Don’t let anyone ram something atrocious down her throat.”