The Passed Prop--The Morelville Cozies--Book 1 Page 11

  “It was a hell of a way to go though, for her and for Old Man Purcell too.”

  Chloe kicked me under the table at the mention of Purcell’s name. I gave her a look but, with Belinda looking on, I didn’t dare ask what she’d done it for.

  “Why didn’t you want me to try and establish some sort of connection between Purcell and Pierce King?” I asked my pointy toed sidekick as we strolled back to Mel and Dana’s house.

  “Did you honestly buy that he didn’t go with her to talk to Ginny, and then that they retired early the night she died? It’s like she was trying her damndest to alibi him! What if he is linked to all of this and she talks to him and mentions she talked to us about the two deaths?”

  “Oh...good point. So, now what?”

  “You said there are four of them that are an inseparable little group, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay then, got any ideas how to talk to the two we haven’t had contact with yet?”

  “Nothing right off the top of my head; I’ll have to work on that.” I was quiet, thinking for a minute. I looked Chloe up and down as we got back to the girls’ house and my car.

  “What? Why are you giving me the once over?”

  “Got any black clothes with you?”

  She shook her head no.

  “You and your daughter are about the same size and it looks like she’s still not home. Let’s go in and raid her closet.”

  Chapter 24 – Black Ops

  10:05PM, Saturday Evening, November 8th, 2014

  Morelville, Ohio

  Every other Saturday night, from the beginning of fall through the winter, there’s a square dance at the community center. Jesse loves to dance and, even though his health hasn’t been good lately, we’d have still gone had this been a dance night. Fortunately, it wasn’t and we retired early. By 9:30 I was relieved to find that he was out cold.

  I crept out of our bedroom and into the main house washroom to change from my nightgown into a pair of dark jeans, thermals, a dark long sleeve shirt and a black hooded sweatshirt over top of that. I knew it was going to be cold and I thought about putting on my Carhartt bibs over it all, but I couldn’t risk wearing them since they weren’t dark colored and they would stand out more in the night.

  While I was changing, Chloe crept down the stairs all dressed for cold weather stealth herself. “By the looks of you,” I whispered, “you’ve got your clothes on, Dana’s and then Mel’s over all of that.” She simply grinned and nodded.

  We got into my car because Jesse’s truck was too noisy to start up and we drove into the village. I debated about where to park because I didn’t want the car seen but I wanted to be able to get back to it fast if we needed to. I decided to put it behind the church that was about a block or so up from Blake’s house.

  As we snuck through a back alley, we roused a dog who caught sight of our movements when we were only about half way to our destination. Once he started barking and growling, we picked up the pace a little. I hadn’t thought about the animals and prayed that there were no dogs out close to Blake’s place.

  After reaching the back of the old Wagner homestead, I was undecided about how to proceed. We stood there in the open in the alley while I contemplated vantage points. I wanted one of us to be able to see one side, the back and the alley and the other to see the other side, the front and the road. Blake’s backyard was fenced with a shoddy and rusting chain link job and, while there was all sorts of debris laying around in it, there was little in the way of good cover. The front yard was a mess too but wide open.

  “We didn’t plan this very well,” Chloe leaned in and whispered, stating the obvious.

  I pulled her off the alley and into a tree line across the road from the house we’d set out to watch. We had maybe 20 feet deep of cover there after which a wide open feed corn field that had been cut down at harvest time stretched endlessly.

  “We need to watch both sides of the house and both roads,” I told her, “but there’s no cover right around his house. We’re going to have to split up. One of us needs to stay in this tree line and one of us needs to find a spot to watch the front from the other side of the street.”

  “How are we supposed to communicate with each other?” Chloe asked.

  Whoops! “I hadn’t thought of that...” I contemplated the mess our little surveillance mission was fast becoming for a minute. “Well, we have walkie-talkies back at the house. We could go get them and start over but I’m just afraid we shouldn’t use radios out here anyway; someone might hear or pick it up on a scanner or something.”

  “Do people still use those...scanners, I mean?”

  I nodded. “There’s one on low in my bedroom right now. We got it when Mel decided to become and we’ve had it on whenever she’s working ever since.”

  Before Chloe could say anything else, we heard a car approaching coming up the alley from the direction we’d come. We scuttled back a little deeper into the vegetation and crouched low, each half behind a single stout maple.

  From our vantage point, we could see the back of Blake Wagner’s house. Lights were on in what I assumed was his kitchen. The rest of the back was dark and there was no sign of movement from inside.

  A Ford Ranger pickup came into view in the alley. Chloe got almost prone on the ground but, hidden mostly by the tree, I stayed in a kneeling position and watched as it passed. I couldn’t tell who was driving but I knew the truck belonged to a young couple who’d moved in a few houses up. Sure enough, it turned in behind their house and the man got out and went inside.

  Chloe must have been holding her breath; she let it all out in a rush.

  It was so overcast; there was no light from the moon at all. The little copse of woods was dark even though the trees had dropped all of their leaves. A light wind cut through us and sent the fallen foliage scattering from time to time providing the only sound besides our own breathing.

  “What should we do?” my companion asked.

  “For now, we may as well stay put,” I said. “The front is too wide open, and he doesn’t use the front door anyway. He goes in and out from the driveway on the left side of the house in front of the garage. Either this back door or that door would be where anyone trying to enter his house would probably go too.”

  “It’s all fenced back here so there’s no easy access to the back yard and we can’t see that other entry from here. The garage is in the way.”

  She has a point...I really didn’t plan this very well at all. Several long seconds ticked by as I gave some more thought to our problem.

  “Do you suppose,” Chloe asked, quietly, breaking the silence, “that we can hear most anything that comes down the road that runs in front?”

  “It’s pretty quiet out here, I imagine we could,” I whispered back.

  “So maybe we just listen for a while and see if anyone else sets up somewhere to watch him or approaches his house.”

  I nodded and checked my watch. It was all of 9:50. We settled in to wait.

  We waited and we waited and we heard not a sound made by humans other than the occasional comings and goings of cars passing out on the road or the occasional voice from a house along the alley.

  Several long minutes later, cold, and my joints stiffening from the cool, damp night air and my motionless kneeling position, I was about to give it all up when the sound of another vehicle traversing the alley caught the attention of both of us. I slithered into more of a prone position, joining Chloe who’d just stayed mostly prone on the ground after the neighbor a few houses up had passed through.

  The car or truck, whatever it was, was coming ever so slowly, lights out, and from the opposite direction of the way we’d come. Everything about it had alarm bells ringing in my head. As it got behind the young couples’ house, where lights were on in the back, I could see it was a pickup truck. It continued past their house but stopped in the alley a couple of houses up from Blake’s and idled there.

  I didn’t dar
e pick my head up and try to ID either the vehicle or the driver. It might have been Frank Lee – or, at least his truck – but I just couldn’t be sure. It was too dark. I watched from my low vantage point for what seemed like another eternity but the truck just sat in the alley, engine running with the driver in no hurry to get out or to move on.

  Beside me, Chloe mumbled something so low, I couldn’t make it out. Very slowly, I turned my head away from the truck that was really too far away to see me anyway, especially without the benefit of light, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Once I could see her face, I whispered, “What?” as softly as I could.

  She whispered back, haltingly, “I. Have. To. Pee.”

  “You’ll have to hold it!” I replied as forcefully as I could muster, under the circumstances.

  I tried to turn my head back again to look at Blake’s house. I couldn’t see much from my really low vantage point, just the chain link fence, his back steps and the lower part of his back door.

  It hurt my neck to hold it in the awkward position long, but I tipped my chin up and stretched my neck to try and get a better look. Now I could see the kitchen windows. Someone – probably Blake – seemed to be standing there looking out.

  I craned my neck to the right next to look again toward the truck. The neighbor to the left of Blake had a higher board fence that ran along between the properties. It was hard to tell how much of the alley, past his own property line, Blake could even see. I wasn’t about to jump up and go find out. I had a sneaking suspicion, it was Frank Lee or another of the Quadvillians out there waiting and watching. I wonder if Blake can hear the truck running and he’s wondering what’s out there?

  Chloe started to fidget. Carefully, I turned back to her.

  “I really gotta’ go Faye!” she hissed. “It’s colder than I thought out here.”

  Slithering half sideways, I tried to get a look behind us. The tree line was dense in terms of tree coverage but it just wasn’t that wide. Though the truck driver didn’t have his lights on and it was mostly a moonless night, if we stood and moved now, I thought we’d surely be seen.

  Contemplating the landscape to our backsides again, I hit upon an idea. I scooted back around to face the alley and slide closer to Chloe to be right at her side. In her ear, I whispered, “If you slide backwards and left at about a 45-degree angle, you’ll go over a little rise and then come to a pretty good sized tree in about 10 yards or so...not that far. You could...uh...use that...”

  “I’ll probably wet myself in the process of moving back there!” She was adamant but still speaking in a whisper.

  I didn’t know what else to do and so I told her, “It’s up to you.”

  She didn’t hesitate after that, asking, “You’re coming too, right?”

  Before I could answer, tones went off at the fire station only a couple of blocks away. The shrill sounds pierced the night. We both froze, rigid to the cold, hard ground.

  Within a minute or so, a siren screamed.

  “Ambulance.” I said out loud. I know them all by sound.

  Glancing back at Blake’s house, I saw the kitchen light go off. Immediately after that, the driver of the pickup truck gunned the engine and started moving. Oh, oh...now what?

  The truck lurched down the alley, gaining speed. I thought for sure it was headed to Blake’s to ram the fence but it passed his place and kept going. Now I was sure though; it was Frank Lee’s Ford.

  Jumping up, I yelled to Chloe, “Let’s go! I don’t have a good feeling about this!”

  Chloe, her distress obvious, was much slower to get up. I reached a hand down and, adrenaline flowing, practically hauled her off the ground.

  We moved to the edge of the alley. Frank had turned his lights on as he made a right turn off of it, onto the side street that led back to the road that ran in front of the houses.

  Running as fast as my old, tired and cold body would allow me to, I pulled Chloe along the chain link between Blake’s house and his neighbor on the other side back toward that road that ran past the front of the home. We ducked behind a Christmas pine that had been planted along the property line years before, just as Frank sped by the front of the house. Wherever he was going, pants on fire, it didn’t have anything to do with Blake Wagner.

  My shoulder’s sagged as my heartbeat slowed just a touch. “Let’s get you to a restroom.”

  “It’s okay, I can hold it now...I think it got scared back in, instead of out!”

  Not sure what was going on, we crept back to the car and climbed in. I drove carefully out of the back lot of the church into yet another little alley. Rolling toward Main street, I saw a familiar sight; whatever the ambulance was called out for, Mel must have been too. She flew past, portable blue strobe flashing on her own pickup, headed in an out of town direction.

  “That was Mel. Wherever that ambulance is going, so is she.” I thought about following but then I figured, whatever that was about, seemed to have spooked Frank Lee enough that he wasn’t going to continue with whatever he was doing. The village was probably safe from the Quad’s for one more night.

  ###

  11:05 PM, Saturday, November 8th, 2014

  Crane Family Farm

  When we pulled back in at the farm, all of the downstairs lights were blazing.

  “Uh oh, Jesse’s up...”

  Chloe looked more pained than worried. She rushed from the car to the house, burst through the door and blew past my bemused husband leaving me in her wake to explain why we’d tucked him into bed then crept out of the house dressed like cat burglars.

  “What in the hell have you two been up to? I was worried sick, don’t you know, when I got up and didn’t find you here and your car gone.” He scratched the back of his head but he stood his ground, his eyes boring into mine.

  “Chloe wasn’t tired. We just ran out to do a little deer spotting,” I lied. “She’s never watched deer before.” I hated lying to him but telling him the truth, at this point, was an even less appealing option.

  “Spotting’s illegal now you know and I wasn’t born yesterday either. You’re both dressed all in black. You better not have been out there messing in police business.” He glared at me even harder.

  I swallowed gingerly, my throat aching from both the cold night air and the heat of my guilt. As I started to frame a response to him, Chloe, oblivious to Jesse’s ire, came out of the hallway from the bathroom and asked, “Jesse, are you feeling okay? When we stepped out for a few minutes, Faye said you were sound asleep.”

  “Asleep? Harumph...” He coughed out the sound. “First I roll over and she’s gone,” he jabbed a finger in my direction, “and then I hear on that infernal scanner that another woman’s been found dead, possibly staked like the last one was, and...” He stopped speaking when Chloe fainted and fell to the floor.

  Chapter 25 – Off Track

  Faye Crane

  5:00 PM, Sunday, November 9th, 2014

  Family Dinner at the Crane Family Farm

  I looked at Mel closely as she talked to her father and Dana over after dinner pie and coffee. Normally, she wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but this evening she was working on her second full cup. She’d been out most of the night investigating an attempted murder this time. She seemed so tired.

  Chloe smiled thinly as she noticed the line of my gaze. “A mother’s concern,” she said out loud, “it’s never ending.”

  “She’s in critical condition and, frankly, a really bad way,” Mel was saying. “They’ve got her in an induced coma and I’ve got her under 24-hour watch. Unfortunately, word spread quickly that she’s alive and that at least three suspects got away.”

  “This is just insane,” Jesse interrupted. “You’ve got to catch these people!”

  “I’m trying dad. We’re doing everything we can. We know now that we’re dealing with a group of at least three men and one has a dark colored Ford pickup that they all jumped in. We’re combing lists of Ford Owners in a five co
unty area.”

  “No ID on any of the men?” I asked her. She shook her head no. “Anybody even have any suspicions? I mean, what about the guy that caught them and scared them off before it was too late for poor Kimber?”

  “He didn’t see any faces mom. He told me it all happened so fast...He was out coon hunting, he says, and happened upon them. The thing is, he didn’t have a dog or a gun one with him.”

  Jesse hacked loudly. After he cleared his throat, he reminded us all, “Nobody much coon hunts in the dead of night in November without a coon dog or a gun unless he was trapping. Even still, the season doesn’t even start ‘till tomorrow! He was up to no good himself, he was! He just happened on somebody doin’ worse that weren’t prepared to deal with him too and so they ran.”

  “Are you holding him in custody?” Dana asked.

  “No. No reason to. He’s cooperating and we can’t prove he was hunting or trapping. Truthfully, it’s the least of our concerns right now. I won’t tell you who it is because he’s a local and we don’t need to get his name out there. I’m sure he’s deep underground, so to speak, right now, waiting this one out after what he saw.”

  Mel put down her cup and ran her hands into her hair to rub her own scalp. “My best hope at this point is that Kimber gets well enough to be brought out of the medically induced coma and that she can ID those men.”

  She put her hands back down on the table and levered herself up then looked at me and Chloe, “Mom, Mama Chloe, thanks so much for dinner. I hate to be a party pooper but I brought a foot-high stack of printouts home with me to comb through.”

  “You go,” Dana told her, before either one of us could say a word. “I’ll stay and help with cleanup.”

  “No, no,” Chloe told her own daughter. “You go with Mel. You’re not that far out of your own career as an investigator. You could be a big help to her there if she’s willing to let you help. Faye and I can handle clean up here.” She raised an eyebrow in Mel’s direction and gave her a no nonsense look.