1 A Small Case of Murder Read online

  “Seven boxes are missing,” J.J. reported.

  Joshua studied the list. J.J. had checked off every item except for seven boxes. He read the contents of each box: legal documents (will, birth certificates, etc), photo albums/family videos, diplomas, puzzles, and the CD collection.

  “How important is the stuff that’s missing?” Ten-year-old Donny lounged upside down in a wing-backed chair belonging in the study. The plump and bookish boy’s back was in the seat part with his legs up above him across the back of the chair.

  “They only include your birth certificates.” Joshua didn’t tell them about the lump that formed in his throat when he noticed that one of the missing items was the framed picture of their mother that he always kept on the corner of his desk. “I’m going to have to call them.”

  “I already did,” J.J. said. “They promised to call back first thing in the morning.”

  Pleased with his first-born son’s initiative, Joshua took another swallow of his beer.

  As if it would be news to them, Sarah said, “You’re aware that this house only has one bathroom.” She was practicing her juggling skills with ping-pong balls that she had found. Tossing multiple balls at the same time was easy for the tomboy. She wore her straight blond hair in a ponytail. No make-up ever touched her face. Cosmetics were for prissy girls, like her sister, who was older by two years.

  Joshua moaned. “Yes, Sarah, I’m aware of that.” Additional bathrooms were a top priority in renovating the house built before multiple bathrooms had become a necessity for large families.

  “Who ever heard of a mansion with only one bathroom?” she asked.

  “This isn’t a mansion,” Joshua countered. “It’s a big old house built over one hundred years ago when indoor plumbing alone was a luxury.”

  With admiration in her tone, Tracy added, “It was built by our great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah Thornton, as a wedding gift for his bride, Rachel. He laid the cobblestone driveway. She planted the lilac bushes out front and the rose garden around the wrap-around porch.”

  Sarah said, “I don’t care about that. If we don’t get another bathroom, one of these mornings I’m going to kill you for using up all the hot water like you did this morning.”

  Tracy said, “Well, if you didn’t sleep so late you wouldn’t be the last one to get the bathroom.”

  Joshua assured them, “We will get more bathrooms.”

  J.J. tapped Murphy on the arm. “I guess we better start cleaning out that attic if we want to put our room up there.”

  Before his sons could ascend the stairs to go up to the top floor, Joshua asked, “By the way, while we were gone this morning, did you find any skeletons up in that attic that I should know about?” He knew the monumental task before them when he had consented to the twins rooming in the attic.

  From where she sat in the living room’s window seat looking out onto the rolling front lawn, Tracy answered his question by handing him a stack of letters tied with the pink ribbon. “They seem to be letters your parents sent to each other while your dad was in the Navy.”

  Joshua studied the writing on the envelopes. When it came to his parents, he had vague memories of a young couple very much in love.

  Tracy handed him the unopened envelope. “There’s one letter that wasn’t opened. It’s from Virginia Avenue right here in Chester.”

  Joshua observed the difference in the handwriting across the front of the envelope from those in the stack bound by the ribbon. “This was written by a leftie.”

  “A leftie?” Murphy and his twin came back into the room to learn more about the unread letter.

  “I can tell by the slant in her writing.” Joshua showed them the handwriting across the front of the envelope. “This was addressed by a left-handed woman.”

  He noticed the post date: May 8, 1970. Struck by the date, he dropped back into the recliner. He studied the handwriting on the envelope.

  J.J. noticed the color drain from his father’s face. “What’s wrong, Dad?”

  “This was mailed the same day my parents died.”

  Tracy caught her breath. “The same day they died? I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t realize.”

  “That must be why the letter was never opened,” J.J. said. “The addressee was deceased by the time it arrived.”

  “Didn’t Grandma and Grandpa die at the Grand Canyon?” Sarah asked.

  “They went on a second honeymoon after my father got out of the Navy and were killed in a car accident on their way back.” Joshua opened the envelope and took out the letter written on two sheets of purple stationery. “Grandmomma must not have had the heart to open this so soon after they died and then forgot about it.”

  He digested the contents of the letter while his children studied his expression as he read and reread every word. In an attempt to read over his shoulder, they moved in closer. Even Donny rolled out of the wing-backed chair.

  Joshua muttered, “I didn’t know about any of this.”

  Demanding to know the contents, his kids crowded closer around him.

  “It’s from a Lulu…” Joshua checked the last name written on the return address on the envelope. “…Jefferson. I never heard of her.”

  Unable to summarize the letter in a few words, he read the letter out loud:

  Dear Claire,

  Tomorrow I’m leaving for Philadelphia. Would you believe I got a singing gig at a real club? Things are really looking up.

  Anyway, I tried to call you but Frieda…

  Joshua stopped reading to remind his children that Frieda was his grandmother, their great-grandmother.

  Anyway, I tried to call you but Frieda told me that you and Johnny are on a second honeymoon in the Grand Canyon. You two must be serious about giving Josh a little sister.

  Remember that dead body we found in the Bosley barn? How could you ever forget? His face is seared into my mind. Well, I saw him today in Reverend Rawlings’ office. I went there to talk to the reverend and Marge and Al about the music for their wedding, and there was his picture on the wall. It was a picture of Reverend Rawlings and Sheriff Delaney and some other guys in army uniforms. Reverend Rawlings said it was a picture of him and some of his buddies from the Korean War. That’s why Sheriff Delaney said we lied. Our body and them were all war buddies.

  It was him. I’m positive. Tell Johnny and see what he thinks. I tried to call Ricky Pendleton about it, but since he moved to Youngstown I don’t have his phone number. Maybe Johnny has it. I’m sure Johnny will be able to make sense out of all this.

  Call you when I get back.

  Peace & Love,

  Lulu

  P.S. Good luck on that baby sister for Josh.

  Joshua folded up the letter and put it back into the envelope. Once again, he studied the handwriting on the front of it.

  J.J. spoke first. “So your dad died before he could check into it. I wonder what she did about it.”

  Sarah asked, “Was this body in the barn murdered or—”

  After Tracy pointed out that Lulu referred to it as simply a body in the barn, her sister proposed that they go find Bosley’s barn to see where the body had been discovered.

  “That was over thirty years ago. That barn is probably long gone by now.” J.J. asked his father. “Who is this Reverend Rawlings, Dad?”

  That was one question to which Joshua knew the answer. “Now, there’s a piece of work,” he replied to the question. “Reverend Rawlings has a church in New Cumberland. I went to school with his son, Wally.”

  “Were you friends?” Tracy asked.

  Her father laughed. “Not exactly. Wally always tried to make me feel like there was something wrong with me since my parents were dead. He’s now the county’s prosecuting attorney.”

  Joshua dismissed the conten
ts of the letter in his hand with a single shake of his head. “We’re talking about a thirty-year-old letter from some lady I never heard of that’s about a body that may not have been murdered. It was probably a vagrant who crawled into the barn to keep warm and died of natural causes.”

  “If that was the case,” Murphy argued, “why would it be so important to this Lulu to tell your folks that this reverend knew the guy? She couldn’t even wait to get back from her singing gig to tell them. She had to write them a letter to make sure they knew about it as soon as they got back from making you a sister.”

  Joshua confessed to his own curiosity. “I’ll find out what happened when Mom didn’t get this letter.”

  That prospect was promising to the children.

  “How are you going to do that?” Murphy wondered.

  “One of the advantages of small towns over the big city is that in every small town there’s one person who knows every-thing.” Joshua winked at his children. “Fortunately, I know him.”

  Late that night, after his children had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Joshua used the excuse of taking Admiral for a walk to go visit the best source for information about Lulu Jefferson.

  Dr. Tad MacMillan’s office was on the ground floor of a two-story cape cod tucked between two red brick houses on Indiana Avenue, near the corner of Sixth Street. When he wasn’t tending to patients, Tad lived upstairs in a one-bedroom apartment with Dog, an unruly stray he had nursed back to health after it had been hit by a car.

  “I’ll get it!” a feminine voice called out when Joshua knocked on the screen door located at the top of the steps for the back entrance in Church Alley.

  When Admiral saw Tad’s shaggy mongrel peek out from under the kitchen table, he hid behind his master’s legs and stuck his head between his knees to peer back at the dog half his size.

  Tad sat back in a kitchen chair with his bare feet perched up on the corner of the table and one eye aimed at the news on the portable television set hooked up under the cupboard. Even though he was a few feet away, instead of ushering the visitor inside, he laughed at Admiral. “What is that? A pony?”

  “He was much smaller when Valerie and the kids picked him up from the pound,” Joshua told him through the screen door between them.

  Her legs swishing under an oversized nightshirt, Maggie MacMillan hurried in from the living room and through the kitchen to answer Joshua’s knock. The hairbrush she wielded in her hand told him that she had been brushing her wavy, strawberry-blond hair. Judging by her tan, she hadn’t spent much of the early summer indoors.

  After allowing him inside the apartment, Maggie threw her arms around his neck. “Uncle Josh, how was the move?” She kissed him on the cheek.

  “Maggie?” He felt old.

  She asked, “Who did you think I was?”

  “I haven’t seen you since …” Joshua held his hand out to his hip.

  Tad laughed out loud. “This is what they grow into.”

  Seeing that they were blocking the view of the television, Maggie led Joshua by his hand to the living room doorway. “I’m passing through on my way to Penn State.”

  “Pennsylvania State? That’s where I went to law school.” Joshua shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’ve graduated from high school.”

  “Did you see the car Dad bought me for graduation?” When he answered with a shake of his head, she led him back across the room to show off the blue coupe parked next to Tad’s motorcycle in the alley. “I wanted a convertible, but Dad said it isn’t safe.”

  “This from a man who only drives Harleys?” Joshua said when he heard Tad growl at the joke made at his expense.

  Explaining that it had been a long drive up from Florida and she was tired, Maggie excused herself. After once more kissing Joshua on the cheek and hugging Tad, she trotted off in the direction of the bedroom.

  “She’s a lovely girl.” Joshua sat at the table across from his host. “She must get her looks from her mother.”

  “She gets them from me.”

  “Do you ever hear from her mother?” Joshua asked.

  Tad responded with a shake of his head and a sideways glance in his cousin’s direction before returning his attention to the television. “You never stop, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” Joshua said. “Look, it’s been eighteen years, and you have never once referred to Maggie’s mother by name. It’s only been ‘the mother’. You never even told your own mother—Maggie’s grandmother—”

  “It was a one-night stand, ancient history, and none of your business. What do you want besides to pick a fight?” Tad pushed against the table with his feet to balance his chair on its hind legs. As a further sign of his coordination, he shoved a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies across the table to Joshua in the form of an offering while performing his balancing act.

  While he accepted the offer, Joshua noticed that Tad wasn’t eating the cookies, but instead feeding them to Dog. “I saw your light was on while I was walking my ‘pony’.”

  Admiral had lain down dangerously close to the only two legs of Tad’s chair touching the floor.

  Keeping an eye on the television, Tad plopped the chair down onto its four legs and got up to pour two cups of tea from a kettle warming on the stove.

  Joshua nodded towards the portable set. “What are you watching?”

  Tad set a mug with the tea bag seeping in the boiling hot water in front of Joshua. “Tess Bauer, she’s a local girl, went off to Pittsburgh and is with the station out there. She’s been doing an in-depth investigation into the drug traffic here in the valley.”

  Joshua took a sip of the hot tea.

  Much to Dog’s dismay, Tad tossed a cookie to Admiral. “She actually found a source willing to go on camera. They’ve been showing interviews with her all week.” With the remote resting at his elbow, he turned up the volume on the television. “There she is.”

  Joshua turned his attention to the portable set.

  The woman appeared to be barely out of her teens. Her hair, a reddish hue that matched that of freshly spilt blood, was a fraction of an inch longer than a crew cut. She wore a black top with spaghetti straps, which revealed a black widow spider tattoo on her bare left shoulder. Her stark make-up, including black lipstick, on her pale skin made her appear eerie. She wore a thick collar of dozens upon dozens of black strings, leather straps, and silver beaded necklaces; matching bracelets on her arms; and rings on every finger. Her hands were further adorned with black fingernails that looked more like the claws of a carnivorous beast.

  Observing her high cheekbones and facial bone structure, Joshua thought she would be pretty if it weren’t for the morbid make-up and attire.

  Journalist Tess Bauer contrasted her source’s appearance in a conservative pale blue women’s suit. With bangs chopped straight across her forehead, she wore her honey-blond hair straight down to her shoulders. Tess was what Joshua called handsome.

  “Her name is Amber. She doesn’t give her last name,” Tad told him.

  The interview took place in what appeared to be some-one’s living room. The conservative furniture didn’t appear to be what one would expect to find in a drug addict’s home.

  “Amber claims to have been involved in the drug trafficking here in the Ohio Valley,” Tess was saying from off camera.

  Amber’s expression was between that of a sneer and a smirk. “I don’t do the trafficking myself, but I’m real close to one of the top people.”

  “Who is that?” Tess asked from off-camera again.

  Amber said in a brisk tone, “Vicki Rawlings.”

  “We’ve talked about Victoria Rawlings before.” Tess was sitting in a chair with a forest of house plants behind her. “You said in previous interviews that Victoria, the granddaughter of the Reverend Orville Rawlings, is heavily
involved in the drug trade in the Ohio Valley.”

  Amber appeared on camera again. “You might say she’s the manager and Reverend Rawlings is the CEO.”

  “Do you believe—” Joshua started to ask Tad, who held up his hand to hush him.

  “Now, as I told you before off-camera, Amber, you can’t make statements on-camera that you can’t prove.”

  “Oh, I can prove everything.” The girl slapped a micro-cassette tape onto the glass top coffee table. “Here’s your proof.”

  The setting changed. From behind the news desk, Tess Bauer spoke to her television audience. “I brought the tape that Amber had given me during that interview here to the studio. It contains a telephone conversation between Amber and a woman she identified as Victoria Rawlings. We will play that tape for you now.”

  “But—” Joshua tried to object only to be shushed again.

  The transcript of the telephone conversation on the tape was displayed on the screen while the audio played two women discussing a drug shipment they had delivered.

  “I never saw so much money in my life,” the woman identified as Amber was saying. “Let’s go to Hawaii.”

  “Someday, girlfriend, some day,” Vicki said.

  Joshua noted that Vicki’s voice sounded younger than Amber’s.

  “But there was so much,” Amber argued. “How much was there?”

  Vicki answered, “Two hundred thousand.”

  “Two hundred thousand?” Amber cursed, “Damn! Let’s move to Hawaii.”

  “I only get to keep ten (bleep) percent.”

  “How many ways is the cash split?” Amber asked.

  “Two. Three, if you count that man they call my father.” Vicki giggled. “But he doesn’t really count because I can usually get him to give me some, if only to shut me up.”