A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) Page 15

  While Jan watched him plop down behind his desk with the phone at his ear, her mind reeled. She had done it. She had helped Joshua in the case Seth was racing to put together against him.

  But once again, Gail had one-upped her. Not only did she live the life Jan had dreamed of having, but her rival also had the pleasure of having Joshua make love to her, even if it was only once. Jan imagined the feel of his body touching hers.

  With a curse, he hung up the phone.

  “What?” she snapped out of her thoughts to ask him.

  “The housekeeper at the motorlodge just found Bella Polk’s body. She had been beaten to death.”

  “Who is Bella Polk?”

  “She was Rex Rollins’ landlady,” Joshua told her. “You know, she was very inquisitive about if there was any reward for information leading to the arrest of Rex’s killer. I wonder—”

  “If maybe she knew who killed him.”

  Joshua squinted while asking himself more than her, “You don’t think Rex’s landlady was foolish enough to have gotten hold of his manuscript and tried to blackmail his killer with it?”

  Excited by the prospect of getting the jump on one of Ernie’s reporters, Jan raced out to get the story of yet another murder in Chester.

  Joshua sat in silence. He stared out the window at the backyard without seeing anything but the swift second hand making its way around the clock while Seth Cavanaugh put together his case against him.

  “Did you read the newspaper?” Sheriff Curt Sawyer tossed The Glendale Vindicator, its front page displayed, on the center of his desk as a gesture for Seth to read the subject of their meeting, which had been called before the detective had a chance to finish his first cup of coffee.

  Seth frowned deeply in order to conceal the smile that crept to the corners of his lips.

  Somehow, somewhere, the owner and editor of The Glendale Vindicator had found a picture of a teenage Joshua Thornton and Gail Reynolds, her sitting in his lap, to print on the front page of the newspaper with the headline, “All the Women Thornton Has Loved.”

  After suggesting that Joshua and Gail had had a secret love affair for years, Ernie Gaston then led into the collection of mementoes she had. He insinuated that the prosecutor was currently having an affair with lawyer Tori Brody, whom he had been seen sharing drinks with at Dora’s.

  When asked about her relationship with Hancock County’s prosecuting attorney, Tori stated that she was unable to comment. “After all, a sexual relationship between a defense attorney and prosecutor could be construed as a conflict of interest in some criminal cases.” The newspaper journalist then noted that Joshua Thornton had struck deals for two of Tori’s clients, including a murder suspect.

  The editor went on to list the women in Joshua’s life who were now deceased: Beth Davis, his late wife, Gail Reynolds, and finally Tricia Wheeler. The last name was complemented by a picture: Tricia, the deceased topic of Gail’s book, held in the arms of the valley’s favorite son.

  The chronology ended with an unasked question about his innocence. What was his connection with Tricia Wheeler? Was there something in their relationship that he feared Gail would discover during her investigation? An unnamed source had told The Glendale Vindicator that he was the last person to see the journalist alive. Gaston left much up to the readers’ imaginations—which was more damaging than drawing a conclusion.

  “Who is the unnamed source in the Hancock County Sheriff Department that told Gaston about Josh’s stuff being at the murder scene?” Sheriff Sawyer flipped the newspaper to show a second article about Grace Henderson’s murder. “Is it the same idiot who leaked that Grace Henderson was pregnant?”

  “That source could have been any of those rent-a-cops you have working for you.”

  Curt was almost half a foot shorter than his chief of detectives, but his solid muscles, which bulged when he crossed his arms across his chest, were enough to make Seth flinch. “You mess with Thornton and you mess with everyone in this valley.”

  Before Seth could respond, Joshua came through the glass door to the sheriff’s office. He held the newspaper with the article in his hand. “You son of a bitch!”

  “Hey!” Seth held up his hands. “Don’t blame me if your womanizing has finally caught up to you! All of the women I have slept with are still alive!”

  Joshua grabbed him by the front of his suit jacket and threw him up against the wall. “My children read this over breakfast before I woke up!”

  The doorway to the sheriff’s office was filled with deputies hoping to see their chief of detectives brought down to size by the county prosecutor.

  In spite of the pair of fists threatening to damage his pretty face, Seth Cavanaugh was smug. “Looks like the great Thornton has a temper.”

  Ashamed of his display of anger, Joshua released him.

  Seth smoothed his hair with both of his hands. “You were at the scene of the crime and that is your skin under her fingernails.”

  “I did not kill her. We weren’t having any affair. My love life is no one’s business.”

  “But murder is everyone’s business.” Seth suggested to the sheriff, “Considering Thornton’s involvement with the victim—”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Joshua interjected. “I called the attorney general yesterday—before this article came out. A special investigator will be here today to take over the Reynolds case. I’m out of it.”

  “Do you have everything you need?”

  Tad could see the answer to his question in Hallie Shearer’s face. The widow-to-be lied when she said that she had all she needed. There was no health insurance for her dying husband, nor was there any life insurance that would help with the financial burden she was doomed to encounter after his death. Bankruptcy was the only thing that kept the family from losing their home along the rural stretch of Route 30 on the Pennsylvania side of the state line. It was because of the desire to spend his last days with his family as much as to conserve money that Bert Shearer refused to stay in the hospital.

  Tad was willing to make time to come to their home to check on his progress instead of forcing Hallie to go through the ordeal of transporting him to the doctor’s office to be told that the cancer was spreading through her husband’s body with the speed of a pop culture fad. On this last visit, he was barely aware that they were in the room.

  “How much more time does he have left?” Hallie wanted Tad to tell her that he would soon be dead. It was exhausting to care for her husband, work full-time, and at all times appear optimistic in front of their children.

  Tad took the medical bag he had asked her to help him to carry to his motorcycle and slipped it into the carrying compartment. “Jesus was the one who said that no one knows the day or the hour.”

  “But it’s close.” She lowered her eyes to her feet. “It will all be over soon.”

  “Soon.” He clasped the compartment shut.

  Tad took her hand. Hallie grasped his fingers and palm to take in the comfort of his touch. Instead, she felt paper against her palm. She tore her eyes from his sympathetic expression to study her open palm. He had slipped a wad of twenty-dollar bills into her hand.

  “Doc—”

  He couldn’t hear her objection over the roar of his cycle as it sped out onto Route 30. He didn’t stop until he got to Rollins Corner Café to have lunch before going to the hospital for his afternoon rounds.

  “Hey, Doug,” the doctor greeted yet another one of his patients when he stepped up to the counter to order a bag of cinnamon coffee and an egg sandwich. He unzipped his coat and set his helmet on the stool next to him.

  Doug rushed back to the kitchen.

  Tad swung around on the stool to take in the handful of customers during the mid-morning lull. Two farmers were eating a late breakfast. Their table was filled
with an assortment of food that made up a major feeding. In the corner booth behind Tad’s seat, a deliveryman was enjoying a slice of pumpkin pie and a mug of coffee.

  “Hey, aren’t you Doc MacMillan?”

  Tad didn’t recognize the deliveryman, whose bushy hair was collected into a ponytail that extended to his mid-back. His clothes were worn and his face was unshaven. Phyllis was sitting in the same booth across from him in what appeared to be a break for the café owner.

  “That’s what they call me.” Tad scanned the menu that consisted of a single typewritten sheet of paper encased in a plastic cover. Its torn edges were sealed with yellowed tape.

  “You’re the one whose cousin killed that reporter he was screwing around with,” the man in the booth chuckled after Phyllis returned to the kitchen.

  Even with the distance between them, Tad could smell the stench of cigarettes and beer on the deliveryman.

  Before he could respond to the comment, Phyllis escorted Doug from the kitchen. She held up the coffeepot as if in a toast to offer Tad a cup, which he accepted. With shaking hands, her brother grabbed the cup and saucer to place before him.

  “What was he afraid of? Her finding out about him and that cheerleader?” the bushy-haired man asked. “Or did she know that he was screwing around with both of them at the same time and was afraid that she was going to ruin his goody-two-shoes image?”

  “Want some more coffee, Lou?” Phyllis blurted out the question.

  “Nah, I had enough.”

  She went back into the kitchen. On her way, she stopped to give Doug a silent order.

  Lou continued, “You know, it isn’t like I give a shit about who killed that stuck-up bitch or shot some cheerleader back before the beginning of time.” He rose and put on his ball cap with “Dell Appliance” embroidered in the front. “What irks me is that just because some guy has a pretty face, he’s going to get off for murder while if it was some working stiff like me, I’d be strapped to a table with a needle in my arm.”

  “Josh didn’t kill anyone.” Tad slapped the newspaper on the counter with his open palm. “Before this is over, Gaston is going to print a full retraction with the truth in it.”

  “Whose truth?”

  “The whole truth. People can’t get away with murder that easily anymore. Science has come too far. Whoever killed Gail was in her house. They left physical evidence of their presence there and I will find it. When I do, I’ll find them, and Josh’s name will be cleared, and idiots like you will be sorry for what you are assuming based on jealous innuendoes made up by a eunuch like Gaston.”

  He realized as the words were coming out of his mouth that he was wasting his breath. Lou’s response proved it when he strutted out the door. With a sigh, Tad turned back to the counter. Seeing the picture on the front page of Joshua and Gail, the cause of the encounter with the deliveryman, he shoved the paper aside.

  Doug placed the egg sandwich on a white saucer in front of Tad and a brown bag containing the freshly ground coffee with the top folded down and secured with a twisty next to it. Anxious to get out of the restaurant, Tad took a big bite from the sandwich.

  He was chewing as fast as he could when Phyllis rushed out of the kitchen with a paper bag in her hand. Without taking the time to put on her coat, she ran out the door to the parking lot.

  “She had no right coming here to write that book.”

  Tad was so startled by Doug’s statement that he had to ask him to repeat what he had said in order to decipher the words and their connection to the argument with Lou.

  “She didn’t even know Trish, not the way I did.”

  “Did Gail ask you about her?”

  “Yeah, but Phyllis said we didn’t know anything.”

  “When was this?”

  “The other night. She was here with Trish’s mom, looking through some picture books.”

  “What other night?” Tad wondered if Rollins Corner Café was the last place Gail went before she was killed.

  “That night. She started asking Phyllis about Trish and she told Gail that we did not want any part of her book.”

  Tad wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Doug, do you know anything that you want to tell me?”

  Doug grinned. “Trish didn’t want anyone to know.”

  The slam of the door signaled his sister’s return. “Let Doc eat in peace!” She grabbed Doug by the arm and led him back into the kitchen.

  “I was just telling him—”

  “Shhhh!”

  Normally, Tad would not notice who was behind him when he was on his motorcycle. But after he had left Rollins Corner Café, when he hit the crest of the hill on Route 30 that led to the bridge across the Ohio River, a delivery truck flew over the top and came up behind him so quickly that he thought it was going to ram him and his motorcycle across the road, over the guardrail, and down the steep slope into what had once been Rock Springs Park.

  Better watch this guy, Tad told himself. He had been riding motorcycles since getting his driver’s license and was aware that some drivers used motorcyclists as targets for whatever rage they might be harboring.

  With the straight stretch of the bridge across the river, the truck bore down on the back of the Harley-Davidson.

  If Tad had not been watching the truck in his rearview mirror, he would not have been able to make the lane switch that sent it whizzing past him. Wondering who could want to run him over, he looked over at the driver.

  His bushy ponytail blew out the open window.

  It was Lou from Rollins Corner Café.

  Lou threw the steering wheel to the left to send his truck sideways in an attempt to crush the motorcycle and its rider against the guardrail acting as a lane divider.

  Tad dropped back.

  The truck hit the guardrail to send sparks flying when speeding metal hit metal.

  The motorcycle whipped around the careening truck, off the bridge, and down Route 11 in search of the exit for the hospital.

  Tad’s hope that Lou had worked out his aggression on the guardrail was in vain when he checked out his rearview mirror and saw the truck with a crumbled fender bearing down on him again.

  “Damn!”

  He whirled his bike around onto the exit before the hospital and hit the access road leading up the river toward Midland, Pennsylvania. After crossing under the bridge, the freeway narrowed to two lanes. It had turnoffs going up the steep hill into the East End of East Liverpool. Some roads, blocked with cement barricades, had been closed since the freeway and bridge were built.

  By the time Tad crossed under the bridge with the truck a hair’s breath from seizing its prey, he knew where he was going to lead him and what he was going to do.

  Now well aware of his mortality, Tad had not pulled a hazardous stunt in the decade since he had stopped drinking. He knew he could do it. Hey, isn’t drinking supposed to dull your reaction time?

  He led his pursuer halfway through East End to a service road that ran under Route 39. While making sure the truck did not clip his rear wheel and send him flying, he tried to recall where the road he could use to end the chase was located.

  It was the second entrance. Or was it the third entrance?

  Mentally, he flipped a coin and said a prayer. He chose the second because it was closer. He leaned over the handlebars and raced under Route 39 with the truck close behind him.

  If it was to work, he needed the truck right on his tail. If not, then Lou had time to slow down, go around the obstacle, and continue the pursuit.

  Tad came up onto the barricade and looked for the ramp he and his buddies had made out of dirt dumped by the road crew from which to launch. If his memory served him correctly, and if kids were indeed the same today as they were back in his youth, it would still be used, if not improved, to jump AT
Vs.

  The cyclist found the jump as soon as the barricade came into sight, and he was indeed born lucky. It was not wide enough for a truck, nor was there room on either side of the hurdle for it to get around.

  Tad rose up on his haunches and hit the gas with all he had.

  While sailing through the air, he experienced all the exhilaration of his youth. He wondered why he ever stopped doing stunts like this. Then, the sobering reality hit him, and he recalled why he had stopped doing foolish things.

  Fear.

  There is something to be said for lack of anxiety. It leaves you free to concentrate on what to do and not on what could go wrong. One of the things that can go off beam is that the state road crew can dump a pile of dirt on your landing strip.

  Tad hit the fresh soil as if he were doing a belly flop into a pool of water. Upon impact, dirt flew up to create a mushroom cloud.

  His chest hit the handlebars; he toppled over the front of the bike and somersaulted down the hill until he landed spread eagled on his back. The air knocked out of him, he lay while he waited for his head and the world around him to stop spinning.

  He heard a roar in his ears that he assumed came from the pain and injuries he had inflicted on himself. When he regained his senses, he realized that the noise was from outside his body.

  In his shock at making the jump almost perfectly (except for the landing) and in his amazement at the fact that he had survived, Tad had forgotten about the man trying to kill him. Too shaken to stand, he crawled on his hands and knees around the dirt pile.

  Lou had followed the cycle up the ramp.

  He tried the jump—and failed.

  The delivery truck was too big for such feats. It toppled forward onto its front, shattering the windshield, before somersaulting onto its back. Propelled by its speed, it then whirled around on its back not unlike an overturned turtle. Gasoline spilled from the tank. When the sparks from the spinning metal on the cement road caught the fuel spilt from its ruptured tank, it caught fire.