The Root of Murder Read online

  Heather glanced at Madison’s slender frame. “Obviously, you didn’t take him up on that.”

  “I was hiking back to my apartment—because I didn’t have enough money for the bus—when it hit me. I thought back—trying to remember the last time I had fun dancing. I’d spent every waking hour trying to please agents, choreographers, dance instructors, directors, and producers. I realized I was dancing for them—and they didn’t appreciate it. Even when I was dancing in competitions here, I danced for myself. I’ve always danced for myself—to bring joy to myself—and I was lucky enough that others found joy in it, too.” She stabbed the salad. “Five days later, I was home. Never again will I dance for anyone but me.”

  “I wish I could learn how to do that,” Heather said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Handcuffed to a table in the interrogation room, Ross Bayles sat with his head in his hands. After being transported to the sheriff’s department in Lisbon, he had been left to wait for hours. He could assume that the police were searching his office, apartment, and truck with a fine-tooth comb.

  He jerked upright when Cameron breezed through the door and dropped an evidence bag containing a thick brown envelope onto the table. Reddish brown splotches marked up the envelope.

  “Where did you get the ten-thousand dollars, Ross?” She dropped into the chair across from him.

  Lieutenant Parks stepped into the room. His massive arms crossed, he leaned against the wall.

  “Don’t tell us you never saw that money before,” Cameron said. “We found it in a duffle bag next to the door in your office. It was filled with your clothes and toiletries. I’m assuming you were using that for getaway money after dumping your wife’s body.”

  “I did not kill Moore,” Ross said. “Brenda did that.”

  “Good idea,” Cameron said. “Blame the dead woman. The dead woman you killed.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Ross said. “I found her dead this morning. I knew you guys were closing in and how it would look. I panicked. I decided to dump her where no one would find her and get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “And why would we be closing in if you were innocent?”

  Ross let out a deep breath. “I came back from getting her cigarettes that night and Brenda was in a rage. Now, she’d fly off the handle on a regular basis, but I had never seen her like that. That was when I found out that she had tried to blackmail Moore—one of our tenants. Like I wasn’t going to get fired if he ever reported that to the owners!”

  “And that’s why you killed her,” Parks said.

  “I didn’t kill her!” Ross said. “You have to believe me. She must have taken too many of her pills—she’s got them all over the house. That’s why we’re broke all the time.”

  “What happened Friday night?” Cameron asked.

  “I had told Brenda about my noticing Moore coming and going, looking like two different people. One week, he’d be driving the burgundy Audi. The next week, he’d be wearing jeans and driving the truck. I’d made a joke about him having a split personality. Suddenly, Friday night, Brenda announces she has no cigarettes and she’s beating on me to go get her cigs. So I go out.”

  “And stop in to see your mistress before coming back,” Cameron said.

  Ross raised his eyes to hers. His face hung in sadness. “The woman I married thirty years ago disappeared a long time ago.”

  Cameron felt a tug of sympathy. “Go on. What happened when you got back?”

  “I told you. She was like I’ve never seen her before. Practically wrecked the place. Cursing up a storm. She ran her wheelchair over a chair and crushed it. That was when I found out that she had let herself into Moore’s apartment and went snooping. She found out that he had two women. She’d gotten the phone numbers for both of his phones and had been harassing him. She ordered him to give her ten thousand dollars or she was going to blow the whistle on him to his women. She sent me out to get the cigarettes so that she could collect the money.”

  “And then he didn’t pay,” Cameron said, “you went to collect it.”

  “No, I did not!” Ross pounded his fists on the table. “That’s why I was running. Because I knew that was what it looked like.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “When I got back and found out what she’d done, I lost it. I admit it. I had given up so much for that woman. I moved her down here to get her away from her druggie friends in Youngstown. We were on our way again. But she had ruined everything. It seems Moore didn’t know who was blackmailing him. He didn’t know until Brenda showed up at his door. Then, he put it together. He realized that she had let herself into his apartment with the master key and snooped through his stuff. Not only did he refuse to pay her the money she demanded, but he was going to call the owners.”

  “Which would get you fired,” Cameron said. “When you found out, you went to talk him out of it, but things went south.”

  “You’re only half right,” Ross said. “I did go to talk him out of contacting the owners, but I found him dead already. Obviously, Brenda had lied. She told me that it wasn’t her, but who else would have done it? That woman was a pathological liar. I saw how mad she was. There was blood everywhere. I checked to see if there was any hope of him being alive and I found the money in his jacket pocket. I thought he didn’t really need it, so I took it. I didn’t even tell Brenda that I had it. I was going to stash it away in a rainy-day fund. Then, when I found her dead this morning …” He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the use? There’s no way you’re going to believe me.”

  Cameron wondered if she was getting soft. Not only did she almost believe the guy, but she felt a tinge of sympathy for him. She was grateful for the knock on the door.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Tony whispered to her once she stepped into the corridor.

  “Try me.”

  “The medical examiner says her cursory exam of Brenda Bayles indicates that she died of a massive heart attack,” Tony said. “She found no obvious signs of murder.”

  “How about poison?”

  “No obvious signs,” Tony said. “The ME told me that Brenda Bayles was in obviously poor health. A broken back that never healed right and arthritis all throughout her body, which is why she couldn’t walk. Swollen feet.”

  “Her hands were swollen, too,” Cameron recalled.

  “ME is going to run a tox screen, but off hand, she believes it was a heart attack.”

  Cameron’s instinct kicked in. “She died of natural causes.”

  “But wait. There’s more,” he said. “The treads on Bayles’s truck don’t match those left at the Newhart farm.”

  “Which means Bayles didn’t dump Moore’s body,” she said.

  “Unless he has another vehicle stashed away,” he said, “but DMV records don’t show any.”

  “He didn’t do it,” she muttered on her way back into the interrogation room.

  Ross was sitting with his head in his hands. Lieutenant Parks even appeared to have softened.

  She slipped into the chair across from him. “How did Brenda seem when you got back from picking up the cigarettes?”

  “I told you,” Ross said. “She was crazy mad.”

  “You said there was blood everywhere in Moore’s apartment.”

  “Yeah. Someone had done a real number on him.”

  “Did your wife have any blood on her when you got back from the store?”

  Ross’s face went blank. He blinked several times before saying, “No.”

  “Was she wearing the same clothes that she had been wearing when you’d left?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded his head.

  “Had she bathed?”

  He shook his head.

  “I noticed that her hands were swollen—”

  “Arthritis. She had it really bad. That’s why she was collecting disability. She c
ouldn’t walk.”

  “I’m willing to bet she didn’t have any strength in her hands,” she said.

  “None.”

  “She probably wouldn’t have been able to grasp a knife in order to stab someone several times?”

  In silence, Ross shook his head.

  “Which means you killed Moore,” Lieutenant Parks said. “After all, you had the money.”

  “But the tire treads on his truck don’t match those found at the dump site,” Cameron said in a low voice before turning back to Ross. “You’ve only been in the area four months. Are you familiar with Hookstown?”

  “Heard of it,” Ross said. “Drove through it, but don’t really know where anything is.”

  “What did you do when you found Moore’s body?”

  “I told you. I took the money, but I left the body as it was and waited for someone else to find it and report it. Maybe one of his friends would come looking for him when he didn’t show up at the travel agency where I thought he worked.”

  “Why didn’t you report finding the body?”

  “Because I thought Brenda had done it and I knew you’d be asking why I had gone to talk to him and then it would all come out about Brenda being a murderer.”

  “Your wife went to jail for murder forty years ago,” Cameron said, “but that wasn’t the only murder she’d committed. That’s why you jumped to the conclusion that she’d killed Moore so fast. You completely knew that she was capable of it.”

  Ross looked at her from out of the top of his eyes.

  “What are you talking about, Gates?” Lieutenant Parks asked.

  “Bishop Moore,” Cameron said. “The real Bishop Moore. You told us earlier that Brenda told you that he had been run down by a truck at the bar he tended in Austintown a dozen years ago. I checked. Yes, he was run over. That was reported in the news. But it was never made public that evidence indicated that the police were looking for a truck. That’s what ran him over. Now, how would Brenda have known he was run down by a truck unless she was the one who did it?”

  Ross clenched his fists.

  “While cruising bars, Brenda ran into the old boyfriend who had sold her out and ruined her life all those years ago, didn’t she? She got her revenge. She waited for him to leave the bar after it closed and ran him over. Then, she backed up over him again, just to make sure.”

  “You want to know the really crazy thing?” Ross said. “When we ran into this Bishop Moore here in Calcutta, she was convinced it was the same guy. I told her that she’d killed the guy already, but she didn’t believe me. That crazy old bat had killed a man and forgotten all about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “We don’t have to do this now,” J.J. told Poppy after parking his truck one block from the dance studio. “Now that Heather and Madison admit to having known for weeks about their father.”

  Poppy threw her head back and laughed. “Too late to turn back now, J.J. We’re here. Besides, I went out and got a ballet skirt and dance shoes.” She threw open the door and scrambled out of the truck. “First, we’re going to learn the Viennese waltz. After that, the mambo.”

  J.J. grinned softly. It was plain by the bounce in Poppy’s step that she was looking forward to dancing again. Most of the time, she dressed in jeans, riding boots, and skipped makeup. When working with the horses, she would braid her hair or pull it back into a ponytail. On Sundays, she would dress up in dresses, style her hair, and touch up her emerald eyes with mascara and color on her lips.

  For their first dance lesson, she wore her hair up in a bun on top of her head and had put on black tights and leotard with a wrap-around skirt and sweater. She made him feel out of place in his running pants and sneakers.

  They walked hand in hand down the street to the dance studio. As they drew near, they passed Heather’s purple SUV.

  “It isn’t like it’s not out in the open anymore.” J.J. slowed down.

  “They need to tell their mothers,” Poppy said. “Better for them to hear from their daughters than the news media. You know once the media finds out, and they will, it will be all over.”

  “Cameron and Dad invited both families to their place tonight,” J.J. said. “They think it’s best to break the news on neutral ground.”

  As they neared the store front, a top-forty tune floated out into the street. J.J. opened the door and held it for her to step through.

  “That doesn’t sound like ‘Endless Love,’” Poppy said.

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” J.J. asked as they went through the empty reception area into the studio.

  They stopped when they saw Heather and Madison dancing from one end of the studio to the other. While Madison wore yoga pants and dance shoes, Heather was dressed in slacks and button-down shirt. Her feet were bare.

  “Don’t look in the mirror!” Madison chastised Heather while doing a jump and landing in front of Poppy. “Your form is perfect! Don’t worry about it! Just feel the music and move with it. Do what your body tells you to do.”

  Heather stopped. “Anything?”

  Her arms spread out wide, Madison spun around on her toes. “Anything!”

  Heather backed up against the far wall. “You asked for it!” She took off at a run down the length of the room, took a flying leap, somersaulted, and ended with a spin on her back.

  Poppy let out a gasp. Madison shrieked and clapped. J.J. was speechless. He’d halfway expect that of Madison, but not Heather. By the time Heather stopped spinning, she was giggling like a maniac.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said while Madison pulled her up onto her feet. “I practiced for years in high school but was afraid people would think I’d lost my mind.”

  “You’re right about that,” J.J. said.

  “But I had fun.” Heather hugged Madison. “Never did I ever have so much fun dancing. For once, it was what I had imagined when I signed up for lessons.”

  Madison and Heather were giddy.

  “I didn’t know we were having a party.”

  Madison jumped at the sound of Elizabeth Collins’s voice from the doorway.

  With a tight grin, Elizabeth regarded them. She took off her parka to reveal that she was clad in blue dancing tights with a matching wraparound skirt. Her eyes were heavily made up with bold blue coloring and dark eye-liner. Her lips were painted bright red.

  “Elizabeth,” Madison said, “I thought I told you that you didn’t need to come in today.”

  Elizabeth went behind the reception desk. “I know, but I need to work on the newsletter for our students. We need to send those out regularly if we want to keep them engaged.” Grasping the medallion around her neck, she dropped into her chair.

  Madison looked back and forth between Elizabeth and Heather.

  J.J. opted to ease the awkward moment by suggesting that they get started on their lesson.

  Heather went to put on the high-heeled shoes she had removed for dancing. “I should go. I want to see Mom before the meeting tonight.”

  “No, stay,” Madison said. “Poppy and J.J. want to do the Viennese Waltz for their wedding. You used to do it so beautifully. Remember when you did it for the competition in our junior year? I’m sure you’ll have some suggestions.” She winked at her. “It’ll be fun.”

  “Fun can be addictive.” Heather dropped her bag.

  “This isn’t going to end in a cat fight, is it?” J.J. asked with a sly grin.

  “Not unless Poppy starts it,” Heather said with a giggle.

  At the impound yard located in a back corner of New Cumberland, Hunter studied the vehicle number listed in the case file and compared it to the numbers on the tags glued to the windshields. Searching for the dark blue 2002 Chevy Impala, Joshua made his way up and down the rows of vehicles, many wrecked, some simply taken in for evidence in crimes.

  “Even i
f we do find it, it’s been sitting out in the elements for three years,” Hunter called out in a loud voice so that Joshua could hear him wherever he was. “What makes you think there will be any viable evidence inside that car that we can use?”

  “Over here!” Joshua called out to him. “I found it.”

  Not knowing where Joshua was, Hunter jogged down the main roadway, searching the side aisles until he found his father-in-law peering through the driver’s side window of a mangled dark blue sedan.

  “Sawyer’s right,” Hunter said. “Any evidence we find of Elizabeth being in this car, she can claim happened on the way to Chester Park.”

  “We’ll never know if we don’t look.” Joshua pried open the driver’s door and bent over at the waist to examine the inside. “There’s yet another avenue we can travel.”

  “What’s that?” Hunter went around to the other side of the car.

  Joshua squatted to examine the dashboard and steering wheel. “We can talk to Aaron.” As the odor of mildewed body fluids assaulted his nostrils, he grabbed his nose and stood up.

  Hunter chuckled. “I told you it’s been sitting out in the elements for three years.”

  “Smells like an old diaper pail.” Joshua frowned.

  “I don’t have that much experience smelling diaper pails.”

  “Yet.” Joshua bent over and put his face close to the driver’s seat cushion. The strong odor of mildewed urine made him want to wretch. Once again, he covered his face and stood up.

  “You look like you’ve found something.”

  Joshua rested his arms across the smashed top of the car. “Say you’ve been drinking. Your bladder is full, and you get behind the wheel of a car. Suddenly, you get into an automobile accident. What other type of accident are you likely to have?”

  “Are you sure that’s what you smell? Wouldn’t it have stopped smelling by now?”