The Passed Prop--The Morelville Cozies--Book 1 Read online

  “Yes, I’m listening, really, and I know you’re right but I’m...I’m scared.”

  I played a hunch, “Scared it’s going to happen again?”

  “Yes.”

  It was just a one-word answer but the strain in her voice was palpable. Ginny had been murdered the same way Old Man Purcell had and she was worried a serial killer was on the loose in Morelville.

  Now concerned myself, I questioned her, “When did they get Ginny, Mel?”

  “I don’t know Mom. Lucas did an on the scene examination of her and determined that she died about 2:00 AM in the spot where we found her. There were no clues, there are no witnesses...no one saw her leave her house, no one saw her being taken into that field...there’s nothing to go on.”

  “What field baby?”

  “I really shouldn’t be telling you all of this.”

  “It will get back to me even if you don’t.”

  “You’re right and I know it but...” She paused. I waited.

  “You know the Amish farmer we get feed from?”

  “The one that breeds dogs? Silas Yoder?”

  “Yes; that’s him.”

  “She was found at the Yoder place?”

  “Yes.”

  “On an Amish farm? Oh my, those poor children must have been terrified seeing something like that.”

  “Silas found her before any of the children did. Only he and his oldest boy saw her.”

  “His oldest is maybe 12 Mel. The poor child will have nightmares for life!” Somebody has to stop this monster!

  Jesse had come in to pour himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t know I switched his usual blend to decaf in the evenings and I didn’t tell him. He didn’t sleep right if I let him go on drinking black, fully caffeinated coffee after dinner time.

  I smiled at him but stayed quiet. He wasn’t buying my unusual silence for a minute.

  “What’s going on? I know you were talking to Mel.”

  I told him what I knew.

  “Well, you were here all night,” he replied when I’d finished, “so it couldn’t have been you that had anything to do with that.”

  It was all I could do not to hit him. “That’s all you can say? Jesse, people are dying vicious deaths; deaths I had nothing to do with! I’m going to prove that to you and get to the bottom of this!”

  “You don’t have to go proving anything to me and don’t you go getting mixed up in an official police investigation either. Let Mel and her folks handle this.”

  I just waved him off.

  Chapter 14 – Moving?

  Wednesday Afternoon, November 5th, 2014

  The Crane Family Farm

  I hugged Chloe and then Marco. “I had no idea I’d see you two again so soon!”

  “I hope we’re not inconveniencing you and Jesse, Faye with such short notice?” Chloe asked.

  “Nonsense! You two would never be an inconvenience.” I led them up to the house with their weekend bags for the midweek stay I’d found out they were planning only a few hours before they showed up. They dropped their stuff at the base of the stairs and then sat in the kitchen with me while I worked on supper.

  “So, Marco, you’re seriously considering taking the early retirement offer?”

  “Yes, yeah, I am. The mill’s been losing a little business to cheaper Chinese steel. We’re still doing okay but we’re top heavy with old guys like me. They want to lighten their payroll load some without layoffs; I get that.”

  I nodded. Jesse walked through the door from outside and said his greetings then took a seat at the table with the two of them.

  Chloe picked up from there, “We talked about the store here and about some of the other options you and I talked about.”

  “It sounds like it might work to me,” Marco put in, “but I want to see it all first. We called that Jennifer that you all talked to about coming up this weekend but she had something else going and could only meet with us tomorrow.”

  “So you’re going to retire and you’re thinking about moving here?” Jesse asked.

  Marco and Chloe both nodded. “Probably, anyway. They’re offering me and some other guys a sweetheart deal but I only got two weeks to decide...a week and a half now.”

  Jesse just nodded and sipped his coffee.

  “He had to burn a couple of vacation days to come up here,” Chloe said.

  “It’s no big deal. Since I’ve got seniority, I get weekends off usually so I have a lot of time to burn. I’ll get to sell most of it back.”

  Jesse harrumphed at that.

  “I suppose I better tell you before you hear it somewhere else,” I began. “There’s been another death.” I sketched what had happened to them very quickly.

  Mario was shaking his head, “I don’t know about all of this now. Chloe here has painted me this picture of this idyllic little village where we could maybe run the store and I could relax, fish maybe do a little game bird hunting, but this...this, makes it not so idyllic and maybe not a place that I might want to consider moving after all.”

  I watched as Chloe’s face fell. To my shock, Jesse was the one to speak up and defend Morelville.

  “I wouldn’t go jumping to conclusions there, Marco. This place is usually as quiet as they come. This is just some weird fluke is all.”

  More to throw Jesse off the scent than to placate the Rossi’s, I put in, “If anyone can get to the bottom of all of this, Mel can. Don’t you worry about that!”

  Later, when just Chloe and I were alone talking, I told her about the prop being in the barn.

  Her eyes grew wide, “Who on earth would have had access to your barn?”

  “It’s a cow barn. When we have feeder calves in there for the grandkids 4H projects, we close parts of it off to keep them in check but the barn itself is only closed up in a bad storm and it’s never locked. There isn’t even a way to lock the doors; anyone could get in there.”

  “That’s not good, Faye.”

  “That’s farming.” I shrugged. That’s just the way it is...

  “So, does Mel have anything at all to go on now with two of these?”

  I pursed my lips and exhaled deeply. Shuddering involuntarily, I said to her, Honestly? She’s sharp but I don’t think this is a case even Mel will be able to solve very easily unless someone comes forward that saw something or unless somebody gets tripped up. The only clues so far have been the missing prop and the stakes that can’t be fingerprinted. At least one of those might match a missing chunk of wood in our barn.”

  I hung my head and lamented, “At some point, I’m going to have to tell Mel what we’ve found. My own daughter will suspect me all over again.”

  Chloe got up and took hold of both of my shoulders. “It’s going to be all right Faye. You’ll see.”

  I looked up at her. Gently she asked, “Have you touched the prop?”

  “No. No way.”

  “Faye, if your fingerprints are nowhere on any printable surface, Mel can’t possibly think she needs to investigate you. She’s smart. She’ll know a framing job when she sees it.”

  Chloe pulled back, pulled her chair up closer to mine and then questioned me some more, “Who’s fingerprints might actually be on the thing?”

  “It’s mostly made of material but if there’s anywhere that would hold a print, just about anyone who worked in the haunted house, including Rich Johnson who worked that room could have touched it. Heavens, anyone that built that set, could have touched the thing.”

  “That’s not helpful then.”

  “What’s not?”

  Chloe didn’t answer me right away. She pressed two fingers to her forehead and seemed lost in thought for several long seconds. “I was going to recommend,” she said, “just going to Mel and getting her to take it in as evidence but, with no way to print most of it and with all the access to it others had, that might not be the best course of action.”

  “I don’t have a lot of options here. If I leave it sit up there, it’s going to d
rive me crazy because I don’t know any more than she does and I don’t have any way of finding out any more. On the other hand, if I tell her it’s there, it adds fuel to the fire that incriminates me.”

  “What’s the lesser of two evils, Faye?”

  “I suppose I have to tell her.”

  Chapter 15 – Again!

  Jesse took Marco out to show him around to some of the local spots that were good for fishing. As soon as they were gone, I dialed Mel’s home number. I was so happy when she answered herself and agreed to come out to the farm; it told me she was at least off duty and, maybe, in a more open frame of mind. At least, I hoped she was.

  The late fall evening was cold. Darkness would come pretty quickly. I knew Jesse and Marco wouldn’t be out long at all, especially since they knew dinner would be waiting, so I hoped Mel would come right out and we could get up to the loft and get the little show and tell charade over with quickly. I had no idea if she’d call in an investigation tonight or if she’d wait until morning. If I had thought this out better, I wouldn’t have had her out here with Marco around at all.

  Chloe and I waited at the kitchen table. When I heard Mel’s truck pull in right around 5:30, I jumped up quickly, grabbed my overcoat and headed outside. Chloe was right behind me.

  I wasn’t surprised to see Dana get out of the truck too but Chloe’s sharp intake of breath told me she hadn’t mentioned this trip to Morelville to her daughter.

  “Mama?” Dana questioned.

  “Hi Sweetie!”

  “This is a surprise.”

  “I know, right? Surprise!”

  “I didn’t think you were working on Barb’s house this week.”

  “I’m not...well, I’m not scheduled to anyway. I’m actually here with your father. We got in about an hour ago. It’s a long story. Why don’t you come on in the house and I’ll tell you all about it? Faye has something she needs to show to Mel.”

  Chloe smiled at Mel and sketched a wave to her and then turned toward the house with Dana following.

  Once we were alone, Mel asked, “What’s going on mom?”

  “There really is something you need to see.”

  “Out here?”

  “In the barn.”

  “Let’s go then. We’re wasting daylight.”

  We trudged across the driveway and down through the side yard toward the side entrance to the barn. Mel stepped in first. She swiveled her head around and then turned to me with a question in her eyes.

  I pointed at the stairs to the hayloft. “Up there.”

  Letting her younger, fresher legs precede me, I climbed up much more slowly after her. She reached the top and moved out of the way then offered her hand to help haul me up. There was no top railing so the last few steps were navigated most of the time by sheer force of will for a person nearing 60.

  “I still don’t see anything unusual. Why are we here?”

  “It’s over there.” I pointed again, this time at the stack of straw bales near the far end of the loft. I stayed put near the stairs while she picked her way over to the stack.

  She looked behind them then turned to me and asked, “Where?”

  “Right there where you are; right behind those bales.”

  She spread her hands and shook her head at the same time, “Mom, there’s nothing here, just straw.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. Is this some kind of game?”

  “No Mel, I swear, it was there.” I started to make my way toward her.

  “What was?”

  “Your father found it yesterday. It was right there. He tried to call you then but you were tied up with Ginny and...”

  “What was right here mom?” She was getting impatient now.

  “The prop was there.”

  “The prop? What are you talking about, the prop?”

  “From the haunted house, the vampire’s prop woman.”

  “That was here?” she asked as she pointed at the floor behind the bales.

  I nodded.

  “So where’d it go?”

  “I swear it was there yesterday. I don’t have a clue where it is now.”

  Mel sighed, “I hate to say this, but I think you hallucinated that being there. You’ve been watching too many crime shows and you’ve been nosing around too much in police business. This is nothing but a wild goose chase.”

  “Don’t you be so harsh now; I’m not even the one that found it, your father did! You ask him; he’ll tell you!” I was angry at her insinuation and angry that someone had trespassed on my property twice now in relationship to a murder crime.

  “What was dad doing up here?”

  I remembered the missing wood chunk. Walking toward the right side wall and talking to her back over my shoulder, I said, “He moved the cows to the upper pasture. When he came back down on the Polaris, he could see this from outside. This big chunk of wood that’s missing on this board that was already damaged caught his eye.”

  “Okaaaay...”

  “Seriously Melissa, think about it: Purcell was staked through the heart with a piece of aged wood. I dare say Ginny was too. All around you here is what?” I answered my own question, “Aged oak wood!”

  Mel walked over beside me and looked at the piece of siding I indicated. It was dry rotted from having been damaged years before but there was a noticeable to me fresh break that hadn’t previously been there. Someone had removed a chunk of the dried out wood.

  My Sheriff daughter wasn’t nearly so convinced. “It doesn’t look like a fresh break to me. It’s very weathered. Have you or dad checked around in here or outside for any sort of tracks or footprints or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Have you talked to Beth and Cole about anything they might have done up here recently, or even over the summer for that matter, that may have damaged that wood?”

  “No...” I was starting to see the reason for her disbelief. I hadn’t done the leg work and I just assumed the mannequin was still here. “Mel, I realize now that we should have called you yesterday. It really was here then. We never heard or saw anyone bring it onto the property and we never heard or saw anyone taking it away. So now what do we do?”

  “We get out of this loft and go into the house to talk to dad, for one.”

  “He’s out showing Marco around. I haven’t heard them come back yet.”

  “Why are Chloe and Marco here?”

  I related the story to her quickly as we made our way back to the house.

  Inside, Chloe and Dana were sitting waiting. Chloe’s look was expectant but all I could do was shrug and spread my hands. “It isn’t there,” I announced.

  “Chloe, did you see it?” Mel queried her.

  “No. I hadn’t even been here half an hour by the time Faye called you. There wasn’t time or I would have gone down there and...well...maybe we wouldn’t have called you then.”

  I shot her a look but it was already out of her mouth and Mel being Mel had already picked up on her tone.

  “And then what would you two have done? Would you have started investigating on your own?”

  Without thinking, I tilted my chin up just a little but I didn’t answer her.

  Mel took my actions as a sign of defiance and she cautioned both of us, “You two are in way over your heads on this one.” She ran two fingers across her brow and out to her temple, “Hell, so am I. There’s a sadistic serial killer on the loose out there. I don’t want to see you two hurt and, God forbid, I don’t want to see anyone else killed. Please, both of you, stay out of the investigation!”

  With that, she headed for the door. Dana wordlessly got up and left with her.

  Five minutes after Mel pulled out of the driveway and headed back toward the village, Jesse and Marco turned onto the drive from the opposite direction. I didn’t know whether to be mad hat he’d not been here to set Mel straight or to feel relief that he wasn’t here for Mel to give him the third degree in front of Marco.
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  After dinner, while Marco used the bathroom and Chloe moved their things upstairs, I pulled Jesse aside and asked him if he moved the prop.

  “Me? No. I never touched it.” His eyes narrowed, “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought it was best to tell Mel about it. She came out here but when I took her to the loft to show it to her, it was gone.”

  “Gone? How?”

  “If I only knew...”

  “It ain’t there at all?”

  “No Jesse, not anywhere.”

  He was still in a tither of disbelief, “So you mean to tell me it just got up and went?”

  “I’m not sure what happened and Mel doesn’t even believe me that it was there at all. There’s something really fishy going on around here.”

  “I know what your tone means Faye Crane. If that thing is gone, it’s gone and good riddance. From here on out, you stay out of it; you just let the police handle police business.”

  Chapter 16 – For Sale

  Thursday Morning, November 6th, 2014

  The Morelville Diner

  Chloe and Marco were sitting sat at a table in the furthest corner of the el that made up the dining area of the Morelville restaurant. Up front, the regulars, mostly farmers and oil men, sat having their normal, after early morning rounds, coffee klatch. They were loud and boisterous in their opinions and Marco was enjoying eavesdropping on their discourse immensely but Jennifer Coventry, sitting primly across from him, decidedly wasn’t.

  “I do apologize,” she repeated for the second or third time. “It’s not exactly the best place to try and have a business meeting but it’s only a block from the store.”

  “It’s okay,” Marco told her, “I’m getting a bit of the local color listening to them, for one thing.” He picked up his coffee and took a sip, “And the coffees’ pretty good too.”

  Jennifer wrinkled her nose in distaste but said nothing. Instead, she reached into an open top leather case and pulled out a ledger book and a sheaf of papers. Laying them aside, she addressed Chloe and Marco in a muted tone, “My mother has decided to plead guilty to the attempted murder charge in exchange for a plea bargain down to involuntary manslaughter on the death of the woman who accidentally took the shot she meant for Terry.”