The Root of Murder Read online

  Cameron took note of Brenda’s face pinched with hatred as she focused her tiny eyes on the cheating spouse on the television screen. Slowly, she nodded her head in agreement.

  Later, on her way to her cruiser, Cameron texted Tony: “Want full background check on Brenda Bayles.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You know I’m going to have to come clean with the wives eventually,” Cameron told Joshua.

  It was in the sheriff’s office in Lisbon, Ohio, that Cameron and Joshua stood behind the sheriff deputy’s chair to watch the traffic camera footage from the intersection of Route 170 and Dresden Avenue, one of Calcutta’s two major crossroads.

  “Bruno’s Pizza is less than a mile away,” Cameron noted while watching the traffic flowing through the traffic lights. “Kind of ironic that the Davis family was dining right around the corner from their patriarch’s secret apartment.”

  “Ironic or suspicious?” Lieutenant William Parks said while watching the recording through his small eyes. The mountain of a man was built like a tank. He stood with his muscular arms crossed. His face seemed to be in a permanent scowl. Cameron couldn’t decide if he was scowling or squinting because of bad eyesight.

  Next to her, Joshua pointed at a cream-colored SUV that sped through the intersection. “That’s Kathleen’s car. I recognize the gold trim.”

  The deputy took the recording back thirty seconds and replayed it at a slower pace. The luxury SUV with gold trim traveled in the direction of the freeway to East Liverpool and the Chester Bridge. They could see Kathleen at the wheel and a child in a car seat in the rear section.

  “She’s heading away from the apartment complex,” Joshua said, “and she has Luke with her. Unless she looped around and came back, I’d say this can clear her.”

  Her eyes still on the recording, Cameron grasped the deputy’s shoulder. “Hold it right there.”

  The deputy hit the pause button. The image froze with a purple SUV turning right onto Route 170. The street light overhead beamed onto the windshield.

  “Isn’t that Heather’s SUV?” Cameron asked.

  “Pennsylvania tags.” The deputy compared the registration number they had for Heather’s vehicle. “The plates are a match.”

  Cameron and Joshua moved in to peer at the woman driving the vehicle. They both recognized Heather Davis behind the steering wheel.

  “There’s a blonde in the passenger seat,” Joshua said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Cameron said. “That’s Madison Whitaker. Her sister.”

  “Two witnesses saw a blonde and a brunette leaving the crime scene,” Joshua said. “Our anonymous tipster says Heather’s SUV was used to transport Davis’s body.”

  “We can’t stall any longer,” Parks said. “We’ve got what we need to get a warrant to search Davis’s SUV.”

  “I don’t like anonymous tips,” Cameron said. “Been my experience that they always have their own unscrupulous agendas.”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do,” Joshua said. “But right now, the tipster’s agenda is irrelevant.” He pointed at the paused image on the monitor. “The point is Heather, and it looks like Madison, too, were in the vicinity of the murder and lied about it. We need to search Heather’s SUV.”

  “I’ll call Clark to get moving on a warrant,” Parks said.

  “I’ll go talk to Madison to see what she has to say,” Cameron said.

  Sherry Whitaker bred her Bichon Frise dogs at her home on the outskirts of Monaca, Pennsylvania. Full grown, the little white dogs were no more than eighteen pounds, which meant they didn’t require a lot of space. Cameron discovered during her investigation that Sherry Whitaker was noted in dog circles for being an accomplished dog trainer. This required room for working with her clients’ championship dogs, as well as caring for them. It would not be a good thing if one of Sherry’s charges were to get out onto the road and be hit by a car. For that reason, the Whitakers lived and worked in a red-brick ranch style home on four heavily fenced acres.

  After turning off the two-lane country road, Cameron lowered the window to her cruiser to press the security button on the gate, which slowly rolled open to allow her to drive up the long driveway to a detached garage. She noticed a spacious back yard that included numerous obstacles of various shapes and sizes with which to exercise and train the dogs.

  A compact red SUV with a magnetic sign on the side panel reading “Madison’s Dance Studio” was parked in front of the garage. The sign included the address, phone number, and website.

  “Have you found Shawn?” A tiny pup in each arm, Sherry Whitaker rushed out onto the side porch to greet Cameron when she slid out of the driver’s seat of her cruiser.

  Behind her mother, Madison chewed on her bottom lip. Her long blond hair blew in the chilly breeze. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose turned bright pink in the cold. She was dressed in rose colored leggings with a matching wrap-around sweater.

  “We’re following up some leads,” Cameron said.

  “You’d think you would have found his truck by now,” Sherry said. “We’re talking about an eighteen-wheeler with a sleeper cab. It should be easy enough to spot.”

  “Did Shawn keep his rig here?” Cameron asked.

  “Oh, no,” Sherry said with a laugh. “His truck is bigger than our driveway. Noisy, too. Some of my clients’ dogs can be pretty high strung. They’d have a nervous breakdown after hearing Shawn start that baby up. He kept it at the dispatch office up in Austintown. Did you talk to them?”

  Behind her, Cameron noticed that Madison’s eyes were wide with what looked like fear. Slowly, she shook her head.

  “I’ve tried to find the name and phone number of the guy who ran the office,” Sherry said. “Shawn told me never to call them because they didn’t like personal phone calls. So, he would call me when he stopped at night—until we got cell phones. Then, he was able to call me from the road.”

  “We’ve talked to the dispatch office,” Cameron said.

  “And what did they say?” Sherry asked. “Have they heard from Shawn?”

  Cameron could see Madison holding her breath. “I’m sorry. They don’t know anything.”

  It was the truth. The dispatch office that Sherry stated her husband worked out of did not know anything about any trucker named Shawn Whitaker.

  Sherry slumped.

  Madison grasped her mother by the shoulders. “Mom, it’s cold. Why don’t you take the pups inside so they don’t get sick? I’ll talk to Cameron. Maybe together we can figure something out.”

  Sherry rubbed her face into the fur of the two pups while making her way into the house. Once her mother was inside, Madison turned to Cameron. “Let’s talk in the garage.” Without waiting for a response, she led the detective through a side door into the two-car garage, which turned out to be a workshop filled with woodworking tools.

  “Dad loved to work with his hands,” Madison said with a sweep of her arm at the workbench that took up the width of the building. Tools littered the bench. “There was nothing he couldn’t do. He and Mom put up that security fence by themselves.”

  “Your mother is going to have to be told,” Cameron said. “Sooner rather than later.”

  Madison shivered in the cold.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Only a few weeks.” Madison shrugged. “Not even a month.” She looked up. Her blue eyes met Cameron’s. “Was he killed at his apartment in Calcutta?”

  “Yes.”

  Madison blinked her eyes. Unable to stop the tears, she grabbed a rag from the bench and wiped her nose.

  Cameron patted her shoulder. “You connected with Heather through the ancestry website, didn’t you?”

  Madison nodded her head. “Heather did the test a couple of years ago as part of a research project she was doing for a class. I did the DNA test when I came back h
ome from New York out of curiosity about where my ancestors had come from. Dad never really told me very much and Mom didn’t even know when her family came here to America. Heather and I got the notifications about there being enough markers for us to be siblings right before Christmas. But all they gave us were user IDs. We emailed each other for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t believe it when I found out she lived in the same area. It was so nice having a sister. We decided to meet the day after New Year’s.” She let out a deep breath. “It blew both of our minds.”

  “Didn’t you exchange names in the emails?”

  “Even though we were sisters, we didn’t know if the other one was a psychopath,” Madison said. “We exchanged first names only. I’d known Heather all through school. I’d never realized in all those years that I’d never met her father. I’d met her mother, but never her father. Same with her. He never came to one of my recitals. He was always on the road. Now I know why.” She let out a chuckle. “Do you want to know how good he was?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Heather and I were born one day apart—luckily it was in different hospitals. He never would have managed to pull it off with two different names and two different mothers at the same hospital.”

  “What happened to all the hatred between the two of you when you realized—”

  “It went up in smoke.” Madison threw up her hands. “Suddenly, every fight, every nasty trick, slight, snub, it was all so trivial compared to what Dad had done not to us—but to our mothers.” She looked up at Cameron. “My mother adores that man. Same with Heather.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “He’d betrayed both of our mothers, we …” Her voice trailed off. Hugging herself, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “You found common ground by virtue of a shared trauma,” Cameron said. “You joined forces.”

  “We didn’t join forces to kill him!”

  “Heather’s SUV was seen in the area. Security cameras recorded you riding in the passenger seat. Witnesses saw a blonde and a brunette leaving his apartment after a loud argument. Are you telling me that you didn’t confront him?”

  “Yes, but we didn’t kill him!” Madison ran her hands through her hair. “Heather and I got together quite a few times to talk about what we were going to do. For all we knew, Dad had a few more wives stashed away somewhere. So we investigated. We snatched his cell phones. He had two different phones—one for each family.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Some calls from a woman named Bea on both phones. Heather asked her mother and she told her that Bea was a loon who Dad had gotten a restraining order against. Well, my mom said Bea was a fruitcake who Dad had helped when her car broke down. Obviously, this Bea, whoever she really was, was stalking him and must have killed him.”

  “She was calling him on both phones,” Cameron said, “which means she had knowledge of his two families. Did either you or Heather tell anyone about your father?”

  “No!” Madison shook her head.

  “What about Heather? Didn’t she tell her brothers?”

  “She didn’t know how. She said if she did that they’d kill—” Blubbering, Madison shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t have really killed him. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” Cameron said. “Madison, your father had withdrawn ten-thousand dollars from his savings account on that Friday. One that he had under John Davis. He got it in cash. We haven’t tracked it down. Did he say anything, or did you see a lot of money when you went to his apartment?”

  Madison’s mouth dropped open. “I saw a big brown envelope on the kitchen counter when we first got there. While we were fighting, he picked it up and folded it in half and shoved it inside his jacket pocket.” She let out a breath. “So maybe it was a thief who killed him. Maybe this had nothing to do with Dad being a cheat.”

  “We’re wondering if maybe he was being blackmailed because he was a cheat,” Cameron said. “Tell me about Elizabeth Collins?”

  “What about her?” Madison scrunched up her face. “She was a good friend back when we were in school.”

  “Why the look? It’s like you’re trying to convince yourself that she’s a good friend.”

  “Elizabeth is a little … I guess needy is the word. When I came back home, I ran into Elizabeth at the mall. We chatted a bit and I mentioned opening the dance studio and she just latched onto me. Calling me. Offering suggestions. Doing stuff. I couldn’t get rid of her.” She lowered her voice. “To tell you the truth—I can’t afford to have an employee, even if she is only part time.”

  “She claims the two of you went out Friday night. Obviously, that’s not true.”

  “J.J. told you.” Madison let out a breath. “I wish Elizabeth had said something to me about that. She lied to protect herself. She had told Aaron that she was going on a girls’ night out with me so that she could go meet some guy at a bar. The dummy should have told me that to give me a heads up. Aaron has been working on our computers at the studio. What if he had said something to me and I had no idea what he was talking about? I didn’t know a thing until J.J. asked what I was doing Friday night and Elizabeth jumped in to say we were together.”

  “When in actuality, you were with Heather.”

  “She did have a blind date, but it was just for drinks after work,” Madison said. “We started texting each other about which family Dad was with when. After a few weeks, we figured out his pattern. We knew he had to have a halfway place where he changed his clothes and phones and vehicles. He had spent the week here when he was supposed to be in Seattle. He was supposed to return to Chester on Friday. So, I followed him in the morning, and he went to that apartment complex in Calcutta. I knew that had to be where he switched from Shawn Whitaker to John Davis. Then, I followed him to the power plant. Heather had that date and couldn’t get out of it. So, I had to follow him from the plant. He went back to Calcutta. I met Heather at the Time Out Bar and Grill in East Liverpool to have a couple of drinks and work up our nerve to go confront him. I was so nervous, Heather had to drive.”

  “What time did you go back to confront him? What did he say?”

  “I think we got to his apartment right before seven o’clock.” Madison shook her head. “The rest of the night was a blur. I remember …” She sighed. “He didn’t deny it. Actually, I think he looked a little relieved that we knew. He said—he said that he loved both of our mothers and that he couldn’t decide between the two of them. So, he decided to have both families. That he loved all of us equally. Have you ever heard such a thing?”

  “What did Heather and you say to that?”

  “I cried like an idiot. I just stood there and bawled. Heather, she let him have it. The harder I cried, the madder she got. When we left, we told him to stay away from our families—stay away from our moms—I remember Heather said that if he came near her mom again that she’d kill him.”

  Cameron cocked her head.

  “But I know Heather didn’t mean it that way. She’d never—”

  “Are you sure?”

  “She couldn’t have.”

  “What time did you leave your father’s apartment?”

  “I have no idea. I remember walking past the apartment manager’s office. There was a woman in a wheelchair sitting outside watching us. She was a very unpleasant woman—scowling at us like we’d done something wrong.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “We had to go back to the Time Out Bar for me to get my car,” Madison said. “We were so upset that we were shaking. So, we went inside to have a couple of drinks to calm our nerves.” She sighed. “The next thing I remember is waking up here at home the next morning. My car was still in East Liverpool. I had to ask Elizabeth to take me back to the bar to pick up my car.”

  “That’s why you had a headache when we saw you at the dance studio,” Cameron said. “You were hung over.”

 
“I’ve never blacked out before,” she said. “Really. I have no idea how I got home.”

  “Did you ask Heather?”

  “Heather said the bartender called an Uber to take us home when the bar closed at midnight. She paid for it.”

  “Do you remember the two of you being together the entire evening?”

  Madison nodded her head. “Heather and I were together the entire time.”

  “But you just said you blacked out and can’t remember how you got home,” Cameron said while digging her vibrating cell phone from its case.

  “I may not remember how I got home, but I’d certainly remember killing my own father, wouldn’t I?”

  With a shrug, Cameron read the text from Joshua: Parks got the warrant to search Heather’s house and SUV.

  “Anonymous tip?” Heather Davis blew her top when Cameron and Lieutenant William Parks met her at her single-family home in Shippingport after she had arrived home from work with a search warrant. Uncertain of who to stop first, she followed the uniformed Columbiana sheriff’s deputies searching through her things.

  “What anonymous tip?” She glared at Joshua, who had met them to offer what support he could. “Why would I kill my father?”

  “We know, Heather,” Joshua said.

  “Madison! I should have known!”

  “No,” Cameron tried to explain as Lieutenant Parks stepped through the open door. “Lieutenant Gates, you’re going to want to see this.”

  Cameron hurried out the door with Heather directly behind her. In the driveway of the small house, the rear compartment of the purple SUV was open. Lieutenant Parks and two deputies parted to make room for Cameron. The spare wheel cover had been removed. A dish towel was spread out across the spare tire. The white towel was marked up with brownish splotches that Cameron recognized as dried blood. One brown mark was a streak across the towel in the unmistakable shape of a knife blade.

  “I never saw that towel before in my life,” Heather said.

  “That’s what they all say,” Lieutenant Parks said with a chuckle.