The Root of Murder Read online

  Susan shook her head. “No, he was his old self. He was on the phone when I was leaving so”—she cleared her throat—“I never even got to say good-bye. If I had known, I would have waited for him to get off the phone, but I was meeting some friends for drinks and all I did was wave to him and told him to have a nice weekend and then I left.” She wailed again.

  “You poor thing,” Cameron said. “It isn’t like you knew that he was going—” Susan’s statement hit her. She spun around to look at Tony, who was staring up at the ceiling. “Wait a minute! You didn’t say good-bye?”

  “I would have if—”

  “John Davis was on the phone when you left?”

  “His cell phone,” she said with a nod of her head.

  “You saw him?”

  Susan’s mouth hung open. Her eyes were wide. She nodded her head.

  “Are you saying John Davis was in the office at the plant when you saw him last? In Shippingport?”

  “That’s where our office is located. Yes. Where did you think he was?”

  Sensing that things were getting interesting, Tony sat up in his seat.

  “We were told he was traveling,” Cameron said.

  “Was he killed on his way someplace?” Susan asked.

  “More like coming back from someplace,” Cameron said. “When was the last time Mr. Davis traveled for business with the nuclear power plant?”

  Susan looked up at the ceiling. “I think … last spring … maybe …” Her voice trailed off.

  “Did he come into work every day this week?”

  “Oh, Mr. Davis never misses work. He was there morning to night every day. Why wouldn’t he be?” Susan’s eyes were wide. “Is something wrong? I mean, except for Mr. Davis being killed. What did I say?”

  Joshua tapped the brass covered knight on two squares and across one on the chess board before setting it within striking distance of his opponent’s silver-plated king. “Check.” He shot a grin across the kitchen table in Izzy’s direction.

  Izzy dropped her spoon into her bowl of rocky road ice cream. Her mouth dropped open. She sat up onto her knees. Dressed in her pajamas and bathrobe, she had been sitting in the chair with her feet tucked under her. A drop of water dripped from her freshly washed hair to land on the wooden chess board while she studied the situation. “Where?”

  With a chuckle, Joshua picked up his ice cream and sat back in his chair. “Look.”

  Seeing her predicament, she uttered a deep breath. “How did I miss that?” she seemed to ask Admiral, who was resting his head on top of the kitchen table. He was more interested in the ice cream than he was the chess match.

  “You were so focused on protecting your queen that you left your king vulnerable.”

  “Because you were going after her.” She moved her king one space back to protect him from the knight.

  “That’s what I wanted you to think. It’s called a distraction.” He slid his bishop across the board to snag her king. “What I was really after was your king.” He set the chess piece on the table next to the board. “Check mate. Game over.”

  “You’re sneaky.” She dropped back into her seat.

  “You’ve only just figured that out?”

  Izzy’s face brightened upon seeing Cameron push through the back door. “You’re home!” She raced Irving and Admiral across the room to greet her.

  Admiral won the race, with Irving a close second. After petting the animals, Cameron took Izzy into a tight hug. Izzy’s moist curls tickled her nose.

  While everyone greeted Cameron, Joshua placed the brass chess pieces into the wooden box and closed it shut. “Did you get Derek processed?”

  With a roll of her eyes, she took off her utility belt and handed it to him to hang on the coat rack on his way to the cabinet where they kept the games. “For now. I’m betting he’ll end up in the hospital with withdrawals before morning.” Their bowls of ice cream reminded her of a possible dessert. She headed for the freezer. “Izzy, did you and Tracy get Poppy’s gown taken care of?”

  Izzy shot a suspicious look in Joshua’s direction. One would have thought he was a spy from an enemy camp. “Poppy and I talked to Jessica.”

  Joshua narrowed his eyes in response to the suspicion Izzy cast his way.

  Oblivious to the looks being fired back and forth across the kitchen, Cameron dug spoonfuls of ice cream into a bowl. Irving and Admiral pressed against her on either side—willing the ice cream to drop to the floor for them to devour. “Do you think Jessica can help find it?”

  “Sshhh!” Izzy raced across the kitchen and waved her arms for Cameron to remain quiet.

  Startled by the sudden outburst, Cameron dropped the ice scream scoop to the floor.

  Irving and Admiral pounced. After delivering a paw filled with claws at Admiral’s snout, Irving won possession of the scoop—only to discover that it was too heavy for him to carry away. He relented to sharing it with the big goof.

  “Don’t say anything,” Izzy commanded.

  “About what?” Cameron asked.

  “About Poppy’s gown.” With her back to him, Izzy rolled her eyes and tossed her head in Joshua’s direction. “He can’t know.”

  “He’s not the groom.”

  “But he’s the groom’s father. If you say anything to him about the bride’s gown, then he’ll tell the groom, and Poppy and J.J.’s wedding will be cursed, and we don’t want them to be cursed before they even start.” She pressed her index finger to her lips. “Say nothing.”

  “Well, if you can’t trust Joshua, then you can’t trust me. I am his wife and we don’t keep secrets from each other.”

  “Do you want J.J. and Poppy to end up divorced? If they get divorced, then Poppy will leave, and she’ll take Gulliver with her, and Comanche loves Gulliver and the two of them will be separated. Comanche may even die of a broken heart. I heard of that happening—animals dying of broken hearts. And if Comanche dies of a broken heart then I’ll be heart broken and will probably die. You don’t want me to die, do you?”

  “I had no idea asking about a wedding gown could bring about such death and destruction,” Joshua said. “I’m not even going to ask why you’re calling Jessica in Washington about Poppy’s gown for a wedding here in Chester. I can tell you this. If Jessica’s getting that gown, it’s going to be expensive. Jessica’s contacts are high-end fashion designers and Poppy doesn’t have much money.”

  “I’m not saying anything else.” Izzy made a show of turning a key to lock her lips and dropping the key down the front of her bathrobe. She then kissed both Cameron and Joshua good night and trotted up the stairs.

  Since Cameron had ice cream, Irving and Admiral chose to stay with her.

  Once Izzy was in her room upstairs, Joshua’s eyes met Cameron’s. “Please tell me that Tracy and Jessica didn’t talk Poppy into some horribly expensive, custom-designed gown. J.J. is paying for the wedding and they agreed on a budget. He’s still got law school student loans to pay for. The last thing he needs is for this wedding to blow up out of control.”

  “You better not be talking about Poppy’s gown!” Izzy yelled from upstairs.

  “Go to bed!” Joshua replied in a loud voice.

  After hearing the bedroom door shut, Cameron said in a low voice, “Poppy has a sensible head on her shoulders. No one is going to talk her into anything.”

  “Tracy and Jessica can be very persuasive.” He followed her to the kitchen table where they sat next to each other. He asked about why she was so late getting home.

  “Davis’s executive assistant lived not too far from the police station, so Tony and I stopped in to break the news—just to see if there were any other suspects—possibly from his work at the power plant—who would want to see Davis dead.”

  Joshua dared to stick a finger into her bowl to steal a fingertip full of the desser
t. “He is a vice president—an executive. It’s not hard to imagine he’d make an enemy or two on the way to the top.”

  “According to Susan, John Davis did have an enemy. Bea Miller. A clerk who had applied for a job in his department. When she didn’t get it, she accused him of sexual harassment. She appears to have a long history of accusing men of sexual assault and harassment.”

  “Sounds like a possible suspect.”

  “Davis did get a restraining order against her. Definitely on my list.” She arched an eyebrow in his direction. Slowly, she twirled her spoon in the bowl of softening ice cream. “Susan’s big regret was leaving work yesterday without saying good-bye to Davis.”

  “Leaving work without saying good-bye?” He blinked. “That suggests that he was at work yesterday.”

  “According to her, he was—all day,” she said. “Kathleen told us that the last time she’d talked to John was yesterday morning when he’d called her from Seattle. She said he was flying home.”

  “Maybe he stopped in at the plant after flying into Pittsburgh. Shippingport is between the airport and Chester.”

  “John Davis was not booked on any flights coming in from Seattle. As a matter of fact, he was not booked on any flights arriving in Pittsburgh on Friday. He never left the area.” Her dessert finished, she rose from the table and took the bowl to the sink. She turned around to face him. “He was in Shippingport yesterday morning. John Davis was at work every day this week. He just didn’t go home after leaving work.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Good question. Where was Davis going after he left work every day? Where was he coming from when he went to work in the morning?”

  “Mistress?” He frowned. “But I’ve known John Davis since we were teenagers. He dated Kathleen in high school. They got married right out of college. He’s always been faithful to her. He was never a cheat. He adored Kathleen and the kids—bragged about them—”

  “Josh, you’re not naïve. You and I have both run into enough cases where everything seems honky dory to the outside world, but behind closed doors …”

  Joshua nodded his head in agreement. “I never would have thought that of John.”

  “My next question is this. Did Kathleen know about it? If she found out her husband was a cheat, it’d give her motive to kill him.”

  “Kathleen didn’t act like she knew about it this afternoon.”

  “Operative word is acting. She’s a smart woman. Certainly smart enough to have planned and executed the murder and plant that knife to frame their loser son-in-law who threatened to kill them.”

  “I’ve known Kathleen for years. I can’t see her losing it and killing John like that.” Joshua slowly shook his head.

  “You also couldn’t see John Davis as a cheat.”

  “You’re just assuming he was a cheat,” he said. “You don’t know that for certain. He could have been doing something else when he told Kathleen he was traveling.”

  Cameron folded her arms across her chest. “Like what?”

  At a lost for a suggestion, Joshua shrugged his shoulders.

  “The medical examiner estimates the time of death to be between eight and ten last night. Susan left the office shortly after five o’clock, and Davis was alive and well then. We’ll get a more precise time of when Davis left after security checks their cameras to see if something happened at the plant that we need to know about. Maybe this Bea Miller decided to violate the restraining order.”

  “Right now, we need to find out what John Davis was doing between five and eight o’clock. That’s three hours.” Joshua got up from the table and joined her at the counter. “He obviously didn’t go home.”

  “We only have Kathleen’s word for that. Maybe he did go home. She confronted him and killed him there.”

  “If Kathleen was going to kill her husband, she’d choose a neater method besides stabbing him multiple times and setting him on fire. You saw her house. Not a speck of dust. She never has a hair out of place. Her kids are the same way. Kathleen is very precise, very neat. If she was going to kill her husband, she would have used something clean and neat—like poison.”

  “Unless she was so enraged, she lost it.” She placed her hand on her hip. “Forensics took Derek’s clothes into evidence during check in. He was filthy. Clearly, he hadn’t showered or changed his clothes in days. A cursory examination of him and his clothes show no blood.”

  “Davis was stabbed thirty-two times,” Joshua said. “Whoever did it would be covered in blood.”

  “Maybe he changed out of the bloody clothes into dirty clothes without blood. But then, you’d think he’d have blood on his hands or in his hair…” With a sigh of exhaustion, Cameron wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. “My brain is tired. I can’t think about it anymore.”

  He held her tight. “It sounds to me like you have some huge holes in your case.”

  “Where had John Davis been all week while Kathleen thought he was in Seattle? He couldn’t have been up to anything good if he lied to her about it.” She took in a deep breath. “I need to think about something else. What were we doing when I got the call about them finding Davis’s body?”

  “We had just acted out your dirty dream.” He kissed her on the forehead.

  She kissed him softly on the lips. “But we didn’t get a chance to discuss your dirty dream.”

  He grinned at her.

  “I believe it’s your turn,” she said.

  He pulled away from her and went to the refrigerator. With a wicked smile, he opened the fridge, reached inside, and took a container of whipped cream out.

  “Really?” She giggled.

  He took her by the hand and led her up the stairs to their bedroom.

  Chapter Five

  By Monday morning, the news about Derek Ellison being charged with the murder of John Davis, husband and father of four, was all over the Ohio Valley. The bloody knife he had wielded in his hand when the police had arrived at his trailer proved to be the murder weapon used to stab John Davis thirty-two times.

  Joshua would have considered it to be a dream case, if he were prosecuting it. Derek had motive, means, and no alibi—proving that he had opportunity. So why did he feel so guilty? It was the guilt that made him open the door to welcome Sadie Ellison into his home when she tearfully rang the doorbell.

  Izzy was at school and Cameron was at the police station preparing for Derek Ellison’s arraignment.

  The lines on her face and bags under her eyes said it all. Derek’s father had abandoned his family and left the area when his son was in middle school. Sadie cleaned houses and did odd jobs to put food on the table because the courts couldn’t track down her ex-husband for child support. Eventually, their home had been foreclosed on, and they were forced to rent a small trailer in a park near the casino.

  It was no wonder that Derek chose to act out on his feelings of abandonment.

  Joshua took Sadie into a hug. “I am so sorry.”

  That was enough to turn on the faucet. Sadie collapsed into his arms and cried gut-wrenching tears into his shoulder. She let out a wail of grief that prompted Irving to arch his back, hop off the stairs in the foyer, and scurry down the hallway to the kitchen where he escaped through the pet door.

  Joshua closed the door and ushered Sadie into his study, where he sat her on the sofa and retrieved a box of tissues for her. “Have you seen him?”

  Sadie shook her head. “They won’t let me. Only his lawyer can see him. Since we don’t have any money, the court will appoint him one at the arraignment. I talked to the public defender in Beaver. He said Derek’s best bet would be to ask for a plea bargain, which means he’ll go back to jail. Since he’s already been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon—” She lifted her eyes to his. “They know about that.”

  “It’s on his perm
anent record.”

  “Derek would never have killed John,” she said. “I know—”

  “Derek threatened him. He has a history of violence.”

  Sadie collapsed against him into a sobbing mess. “What am I going to do? It isn’t Derek’s fault. He never did have a good male role model. Everyone who he has ever loved has been taken from him. His father. Lindsay. Luke. He’s been so lost—”

  “Being lost is no excuse to kill someone,” Joshua said.

  She sat up. “I just can’t believe he did it. I know my son. Yes, he threatened John and I talked to him. I made him see that Luke needs him. That he had to pull himself together and needed to straighten himself out and maybe then he could get the Davises to let him be a part of Luke’s life. I made him see that he had to give Luke up for now for him—make that sacrifice. I thought I had made him see that. He was determined to clean himself up. If he killed John Davis, then he wouldn’t ever get to see Luke again.”

  “Was Derek clear thinking enough to see it that way?” Joshua asked.

  “I’m sure he was.” Sadie grasped his hand. “The public defender is going to make Derek cop a plea. He’ll go to jail. If he goes to prison, then I know I’ll lose my son forever. Josh, can you—”

  “I can’t defend him,” Joshua said. “I’ve got a contract with the county. I can’t take any other cases.”

  “But don’t you know someone who can help Derek?”

  Joshua sighed. “With everything that they have against him, if Derek doesn’t want to take a deal, he’s going to need a pit bull for a defense attorney.”

  “Do you know a pit bull?”

  “Teaches me to drop in without calling first,” Joshua told himself when he turned the corner of J.J.’s barnyard to find that the spot where he usually parked his truck was vacant.

  Joshua had driven to J.J.’s farm because he had concluded that he would be more persuasive in person.

  Discovering that his son was not home, Joshua brought his SUV to a halt and backed up to turn it around to leave. While turning the steering wheel, he saw two pairs of eyes watching him.