1 A Small Case of Murder Read online

  “That’s Wally Rawlings, our prosecutor,” Tad whispered to Joshua, who was watching the report in disbelief.

  “Who are the other two?” Amber was asking.

  “Aunt Bridgette and Grandfather,” Vicki laughed. “If his congregation only knew that their leader was the biggest (bleep) drug lord in the whole (bleep) valley.”

  Joshua looked at Tad with surprise. “Did you know that?”

  “It’s common knowledge in drug circles.”

  “They’re going to get their butts sued.” Joshua indicated the television station playing the news broadcast.

  Tad turned off the set. “It’s also common knowledge that Vicki Rawlings hates her family. Rawlings’ lawyer can make a case that she made it all up and sue the pants off Bauer.”

  “How about this Amber? What family is she from?”

  “I have no idea. I never heard of her before, and I thought I knew everyone. Most likely some barfly wanting to get her face on television. When Rawlings sees this, she’s going to find out personally the high price for fifteen minutes of fame.” Tad took his empty mug to the sink. “Want some more tea?”

  “No thanks.”

  Tad washed his mug and the other dishes in the sink. “How are you doing?”

  Joshua avoided the real topic about which he was asking. “My back is killing me.”

  “That’s old age.”

  “It’s not.” Joshua revealed his somber mood. “When is the pain going to go away?”

  “It won’t.” Drying his hands on the dishtowel, Tad turned back to him. “It’ll become livable, but it won’t ever go away.”

  Joshua sat back in his chair. “I seem to recall you being more help when you drank. At least I liked your advice better then.”

  “Hey, blame yourself if you don’t like me this way. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be here, let alone drinking tea while watching the news.”

  “Are you sorry that I dragged you out of that shack and took you to Glenbeigh?”

  “No.” Tad grinned at his cousin as he sat across from him. “I never did thank you for that, did I?”

  Feeling uneasy in the face of gratitude, Joshua concentrated on an imaginary blemish on the kitchen table’s finish.

  In spite of Joshua’s discomfort, Tad continued, “How many men would fly across the country to break into a house, drag a guy out kicking and screaming, and take him to rehab?”

  Joshua felt brave enough to ask, “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Life isn’t fair, Josh. You read the Bible, didn’t you?” Before he could answer, Tad told him, “The word ‘fair’ isn’t in there. God never promised that life would be fair. I mean, why is it that a bum like me has some-one like you go out of his way to save him, while a good person like Valerie—?” His voice trailed off.

  Both men became lost in their own thoughts.

  Joshua changed the topic. “Did you know Lulu Jefferson?”

  Tad repeated the question with a naughty tone, “Did I know Lulu Jefferson?” He smiled broadly until Joshua caught the meaning behind his expression.

  “Wait a minute. Lulu was Mom’s friend.”

  “She was also a good teacher.”

  “What kind of teacher?”

  “Guitar.” Seeing Joshua’s doubtful expression, Tad went on, “I mean it. She did teach me how to play the guitar…and other things. Let me set it up for you. She was twenty-five with a tiny waist, big breasts, and legs that didn’t stop. I was fifteen and eager to learn.”

  “Do you mean that—”

  Tad said, “Aunt Claire didn’t know. She would have killed Lulu.” He paused. “Now if they didn’t make an odd pair.”

  “Why did they make an odd pair?”

  “Lulu played the guitar and knew all the guys. Aunt Claire only dated your dad from the time they were old enough be boyfriend and girlfriend. She dressed more like Laura Petrie than Joey Heatherton, which was how Lulu dressed, but they were the best of friends.”

  Tad took a couple cookies from the bag and handed one to Joshua. “Too bad,” he mused before biting into the cookie. “That was so bizarre.”

  “What?”

  “Lulu and Aunt Claire died separately on the same day.” Tad put his feet back up on the table and pushed his chair so it teetered back on its hind legs.

  “How did Lulu die?”

  “A drug overdose on the same day your parents were killed in that car accident out West. That was one awful week.” Struck by a realization, Tad asked him, “Why do you want to know about Lulu?”

  “I heard the name.”

  “You heard the name from whom?”

  “Around.” Joshua stood up and stretched. “Thanks for the tea.” He patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Admiral waited for his master to open the door to make his escape from the other dog.

  “Want a piece of advice?”

  To answer Tad’s question, Joshua stopped at the door and turned around.

  “Watch with whom you spread certain names. Reverend Rawlings may be old, but he’s not dead.”

  “I said nothing about Reverend Rawlings.”

  “Didn’t have to. A mysterious death in Chester? You don’t have to look long before Reverend Rawlings’ name creeps up like a cancer. He didn’t become a drug lord by quoting Jesus.”

  Admiral looked longingly up at the unopened door.

  Joshua stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Did Lulu ever mention a dead body to you?”

  “Are you talking about the body your folks found on their prom night?”

  Joshua whirled back around. “They found a dead body on their prom night?”

  “I thought you knew about it,” Tad replied. “You brought it up.”

  “All I know is that Mom and Dad found a dead body, and Lulu and a Ricky Pendleton were with them.”

  “I didn’t know that. I assumed they were alone.”

  “But you know about the body.” Joshua gave up on leaving and leaned against the kitchen counter across from him.

  Admiral plopped down onto the floor between them.

  “I remember your folks talking about it like once. It really scared them,” Tad said. “Lulu never mentioned it to me at all."

  “Because you two didn’t talk that much,” Joshua replied. “How did they come to find a dead body?”

  Tad said, “All I know is that it was the night of their senior prom and your folks went to Bosley’s barn to make out—”

  “Make out?”

  “That wasn’t the way they put it when I was in the room, but I assume they wanted to have sex.”

  “I know what making out is. What happened at Bosley’s barn?”

  Tad shrugged his shoulders. “They found a dead body. It was a man.”

  “Murdered?”

  “I don’t know the particulars, but I assume so.”

  “Did they know who he was?”

  “Never saw him before,” Tad answered. “They went to get the sheriff. Chuck Delaney was the sheriff then. When they came back, the body was gone and the sheriff threatened to arrest them for filing a false police report.” He threw up his hands as a gesture of completing the story, as he knew it. “That’s all I know.”

  Joshua squinted. “The body was gone?”

  “Yep.”

  Joshua asked, “Who’s Ricky Pendleton?”

  “Maybe Jill Stewart’s brother. Her maiden name is Pendleton.”

  “This guy moved to Youngstown after he graduated from high school.”

  Tad said that he was thinking of the same person. “This guy moved to Ohio to work for General Motors.”

  “He was there,” Joshua muttered.


  “If you want to know more about it, I’ll ask Jill for Rick’s number. You can call him but be discreet. Your kids have already lost a mother. You’re all they’ve got left.”

  Chapter Two

  “Think.”

  “I’m tired of thinking,” Donny told his father. “I don’t know where it is.” In the same breath, he asked, “Are we going to McDonald’s for breakfast?”

  Joshua observed the two customers in line ahead of them at Chester Drug Store before checking the time on his watch.

  His family had wasted most of the morning searching for Donny’s asthma inhaler, which had been missing for twenty-four hours before he said anything about it. Their search turning up nothing, Joshua took Donny to the pharmacy to get the prescription Tad had called in.

  On the corner of Carolina Avenue and Fifth Street in the heart of town, Chester Drug Store had been owned and operated by the Martin family since 1960 in spite of business ownership in the Ohio valley being in a state of constant turnover since the closing of the steel mills.

  While waiting to pick up the medicine, Joshua acknowledged the pharmacist’s smile with a wave of his hand.

  He had recognized her instantly. Her thick, strawberry-blond hair was lighter and shorter. Freckles were still splashed across her upturned nose. Along with her pretty feminine features, she still exuded enough sexuality to stir his hormones.

  She was Beth Davis.

  Joshua had almost married her twenty years earlier when he was Oak Glen High School’s star quarterback and she was a varsity cheerleader. They were “the couple” in high school until Joshua went out into the real world and left her behind.

  Shuffling forward with the line, Joshua studied the changes he could see in Beth since the last time he had seen her. Tiny lines had formed around her mouth. There were dark circles under her eyes that he didn’t recall noticing in their youth. The pink glow in her cheeks seemed to have been extinguished.

  The grin she shot in his direction didn’t reach her eyes. Despite the air conditioning that caused goose bumps to form on his forearms, Joshua saw beads of sweat on her forehead and upper lip.

  With the air of a woman to be reckoned with, Bridgette Rawlings Poole blew into the store. She willed customers out of her way to fly to the front of the line.

  In her late thirties, Bridgette Rawlings Pool didn’t hold her age well. Her crimson hair and huge silicone breasts attached to her malnourished body added to her outrageous appearance.

  Her entrance interrupting thoughts of breakfast, Donny adjusted his glasses to watch the entertainment that commenced when Bridgette Poole slapped her hand onto the counter. “I want my prescription.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” was Beth’s response.

  “I don’t have a minute,” the customer snapped.

  Lured by the threat of a scene, Jan Martin came out of her office located in the back of the pharmacy. The store manager was a rail-thin woman with brown wire-framed glasses perched on her nose and long copper-colored hair tied back with an elastic band. She was dressed in a pair of khaki pants a size too big and a plain, white, button-down shirt.

  Jan’s father had died of cancer before her birth. After Joshua’s parents’ deaths, the two children had shared much time together under Frieda Thornton’s care while Jan’s mother ran the Martin’s family business.

  Beth’s smile resembled a sneer. “I’ll be right with you, Mrs. Poole, as soon as I’m finished with this customer.” Ignoring Bridgette’s eyes that were wide with outrage, the druggist returned her attention to her previous customer. “Now, that is erythromycin—”

  “Ms. Davis! I never—”

  Jan slapped a bag onto the counter and stated in a low, yet pleasant, tone, “Your prescription is right here, Mrs. Poole.”

  Bridgette snatched up the bag and checked the pharmacy slip stapled on the front.

  While giving her pharmacist a warning glance, Jan punched the buttons on the register before further enraging their customer by stating, “That will be forty-six, ninety-eight.”

  Bridgette shouted, “What?”

  Jan repeated the amount of the prescription in a calm tone.

  “I have insurance.”

  “I’m afraid your insurance doesn’t cover this prescription, m’am. I confirmed it myself, Mrs. Poole.” Jan offered her the phone. “If you would like to call the insurance company, you’re welcome to use our phone.”

  Grumbling, Bridgette dug her checkbook out of her purse and wrote a check. “Never mind. I’ll pay you. It’s obvious that you need the money more than I do.”

  Jan retaliated, “It isn’t because we need the money, Mrs. Poole. It’s because your insurance doesn’t cover elective drugs. But I must say that this ointment has done a wonderful job in erasing your frown lines.”

  Bridgette slapped the check onto the counter, grabbed the bag containing her prescription, turned to leave, and collided with Joshua.

  Like the changing of a dead light bulb, Bridgette’s arrogance was replaced with congeniality. “Josh?”

  Embarrassed to acknowledge knowing the unpleasant customer, Joshua murmured a greeting.

  A smile came to her lips. “Visiting the old homestead, huh?”

  “Moving back into the old homestead.”

  While Bridgette stood her ground to keep his attention, Donny asked Beth if they had time to fill the order for his inhaler. Joshua saw the druggist’s hand tremble when she took the insurance card he held out to her.

  “I heard Jan call you Poole.” Joshua divided his attention between Bridgette and Beth, who was inputting his insurance information into her database. “I guess you married Hal.”

  “Yeah, I married him,” Bridgette replied. “He handles the church’s public relations. I manage our finances.”

  “I’m not surprised you two kids got married. I remember in school how Hal followed you around like a lost puppy.”

  “He’s still devoted.” Her grin was like that of a predator as she admired Joshua’s firm body. “I heard you got married. Are you divorced?”

  “She passed away. It’s me and the kids now.” Joshua gestured towards Donny, who had returned to his father’s side after having completed their business.

  Bridgette’s smile contorted at the sight of the boy. “How sweet.” Seeming to recall why she was in such a hurry. “I have to go. I have a breakfast meeting at the club.” With a wave of her hand, Bridgette flew up the aisle and out the door.

  “Some people never change,” Joshua muttered before turning his attention to his son. “Ready to go?”

  “To McDonald’s,” Donny answered. “I’m hungry.”

  Joshua squeezed his shoulder while ushering him towards the door. “I could go for a sandwich myself.”

  Donny asked along the way. “Who was that witch, Dad?”

  “Believe it or not, that was Reverend Rawlings’ daughter.”

  “She didn’t look like any pastor’s kids I’ve ever known.”

  Joshua had hoped to return home to find empty moving boxes piled up on the front porch. Instead, the boxes were slightly less filled and repositioned from one room to another.

  The twins and their sisters were concealed behind stacks of law books that had yet to be shelved in the built-in bookcases in the study. Murphy manned his laptop.

  “What are you doing?” Joshua demanded to know. “I gave you jobs to do and you’re playing computer games?”

  “We’re taking a break,” Sarah explained. “We’ve been working ever since Donny woke us up with his crisis this morning.”

  “We found Rick Pendleton,” J.J. said.

  Joshua’s heart dropped into his stomach.

  After Tad’s reminder of his status as a single parent, Joshua had dropped the issue of the letter. Lulu Jefferson had di
ed of a drug overdose; the body in the letter wasn’t a matter of official record; and Reverend Rawlings wasn’t someone anyone wanted for an enemy.

  “Why are you looking for Rick Pendleton?” Joshua asked.

  Murphy replied, “Because he was there when Lulu and your folks found that dead body. He’s the only one still alive to tell us what happened.”

  They told Joshua about J.J. checking the Internet for news articles about Lulu’s death. After discovering that the local paper’s web site had no articles dating back that far, he went to the library to check their newspaper archives.

  J.J. plunged on, “They didn’t have anything on file about the dead body, but there was a lot of stuff on Lulu.” He showed him a folder with copies of newspaper articles.

  “She got a lot of press.” Joshua balanced the folder in his open palm like a human scale.

  “Unfortunately, she got it all after she’d died,” J.J. said. “In a nutshell, her death had been ruled an accidental overdose of heroin or a suicide. Her sister, Karen Jefferson, swore it was murder.”

  “Heroin?” Joshua raised an eyebrow.

  “Lulu liked to party,” Sarah said. “Booze, pot, and rock and roll.”

  “The newspaper editor agreed with Lulu’s sister about it being murder.” Murphy yanked an article out of the stack Joshua held in his hand. “You were right, Dad. Look at her publicity picture.”

  Joshua studied the clipping that included a picture of Lulu, an attractive woman with blond hair sitting cross-legged with

  a guitar perched across her lap. It was a left-handed guitar. His deduction when he saw her handwriting had been correct.

  “The heroin tracks were in her left arm,” Murphy pointed to the section in the article that reported details from the autopsy report, “which means she would have had to inject it with her right hand.”

  Joshua read on. “The sheriff theorized that she had a friend do the injection and after she OD’d the guy split.”

  Tracy argued, “Yeah, but if she had been serious about her career, she wouldn’t have put tracks in her arms. She would have had the injections where the tracks wouldn’t have shown, like between her toes or under her arms.”