Death Sung Softly (13 page)

“One last question, and it's about your child; did you know that Barry and Janice Peet got married, and that he was trying to take the little girl back from his sister?”

Miller's eyes went wide, and Sam know the answer instantly. “No! He'd never said a word, not about getting married, and not about trying to get Abbie back! I had no idea, but I can tell you this, his sister will never let that little girl go. She couldn't have kids of her own, and when Barry said he had a child he couldn't raise, she jumped up to adopt her, and she's been very, very good for her. But give her up? If Barry was trying that, you might want to find out where she and her husband were the night he died.”

“Then they know that you were the mother?”

“Yes, but it was all sealed in the adoption records. I'll say it again, Mr. Prichard; if Barry was trying to take that little girl away from Marjorie and Philip, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they killed him. Abbie's their one and only reason for living.”

Sam left, completely blown away by everything he'd heard. Could it be possible that the killer was Barry's own sister, or his brother-in-law? He called Indie.

“Babe, it's too long to go into over the phone, but I need an address for Barry Wallace's sister, Marjorie and her husband. At the moment, they may be my top suspects in this mess.”

“Wow,” she said. “Hang on a minute and I'll have it for you.”

A minute later, Sam punched the address into his GPS and headed off into Arvada to find Barry's sister. He had a gut feeling that he was getting close to the real solution to the case, and wanted to bring it to a close as soon as he could.

He parked in front of the house and walked up to knock, but the door opened before he could raise his hand. A woman stood there, and he recognized her from the new story.

“Mrs. Newcomb? My name is Sam Prichard, I'm a private investigator hired to look into your brother's death. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Who hired you?” she asked.

Sam smiled. “Ma'am, that's confidential, and I'm not at liberty to answer that question, but I've come across some information that makes me think we really ought to talk.”

“I don't think I have anything to say to you, Mr...”

“Ma'am, you can talk to me and help me clear this up, or I have to turn it all over to the police, and let them come talk to you. Since some of it involves your daughter, I thought you might prefer to deal with me.”

Marjorie froze for a second, and then opened the screen door wide. “Come on,” she said stiffly, and let Sam enter, then led him into the living room of the house. A little girl of about twelve was sitting at a table in the adjacent dining room. Marjorie said, “Abbie, I've got to talk some business with this gentleman, Honey, so I want you to go up to your room for a while.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” the girl said, and picked up her things and walked up the stairs.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Prichard,” Marjorie said, and Sam sat down on a chair, while she sat on the sofa. “Now, what is this all about?”

“I know all the details behind your adoption of your little girl, Mrs. Newcomb, even the ones that are sealed. I also know that your brother was trying to take her back from you, and that you were dead set against that happening. I've also been told that you made threats about seeing Barry in hell, first and that you would send anyone who tried to help him there as well, at gunpoint.”

“That's ridiculous,” she said. “I've never said any such thing.”

“Mrs. Newcomb, Jimmy Smith is half convinced that you killed your brother and set him up to take the fall for it. If he goes on a lie detector and tells about his confrontation with you, I think you're gonna be trying to explain it to police detectives, not just me.”

Marjorie sat there and stared at him for twenty seconds. “Fine, that bastard Smith came out here and tried to convince me to let Barry have her back! He got pushy, and I lost my temper, and I grabbed my gun out of my purse and told him that if he didn't leave, I'd shoot him. And before you ask, yes, I have a concealed carry permit.”

“That doesn't matter to me, I have one, too. What I want to know is the last time you actually saw Barry and talked to him.”

“The last time I saw him was almost a month ago, when we met at my attorney's office to explain that the adoption is sealed, and can't be reopened. He got angry and said that he and his mew wife would be better for Abbie, and I said it was ridiculous to rip a child away from the only family she's ever known, and try to force her to accept a new one. He threw the papers he had at me, and stormed out the door, and I never saw him again.” She sighed. “The last time I talked to him, however, was the day he disappeared. He called me and said he'd been thinking about what I said, and that I was right; that taking Abbie away from us and trying to make her understand that he was her father would only confuse her and cause her problems, so he was going to drop the lawsuit. We made up that day, and talked for about an hour, the first time we'd really talked in weeks. I even invited him to come to her dance recital the next week, and when he didn't show up, I got angry and thought he was going to start playing games; I didn't know we'd never see him alive again.”

Sam looked at her for a moment, trying to read her body language, but nothing about her seemed to indicate she was lying. He thanked her for her time and left, and called Indie as soon as he got into the van.

“Can you still get into Barry's phone records?” he asked, and she said, “Sure. What do you need?”

“Tell me if he called his sister the day he vanished.”

“Gimme a minute,” she said, and he could hear her tapping keys. “Yep,” she said a moment later. “He called her about an hour before his call to Jimmy Smith.”

“How long did the call last?” Sam asked.

“Hmm. Fifty two minutes.”

Sam thought. “That doesn't sound like a call where people are angry and hateful, does it? According to his sister, he called her that morning to say he'd decided to drop his suit to take the little girl, because he'd come to understand that it would be a shock to her; the Newcombs are the only parents she's ever known, and she has no idea that Barry is supposed to be her father. To be honest, I believe she's telling the truth.”

“And you don't think Miller is involved?”

“Well, not in any way that's criminal, no.”

“Then that only leaves Janice, doesn't it?”

Sam sighed. “Yeah, and that's where I'm going next. I'll call you when I get done there.”

Sam pulled up to Janice's apartment building forty minutes later, and rang the bell to let her know someone was there. Her vice came over the intercom a moment later.

“Yes?”

“Janice, it's Sam Prichard. Can I come up and talk to you for a few minutes?”

The door buzzed and let him in, and he took the elevator up to the third floor, where her apartment was. He found it and tapped lightly on the door, and she let him in.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table and chairs. The apartment was an efficiency, with only a small bedroom, a bath and a kitchen, so he sat where she indicated. “What can I do for you, Sam?”

“The day Barry disappeared, Jimmy Smith called you. Can you tell me what it was about?”

“Jimmy? Jimmy didn't call me, not that day. I mean, I've talked to him before, but not that day.”

Sam sighed. “Janice, I saw his phone records, and they show that he did call your phone that day. It was just a little while after he called Samantha Harris and left that voicemail.”

Janice seemed to brighten a bit. “Oh, his
phone
! Yeah, I got a call from his phone, but it wasn't Jimmy.”

She stopped, and Sam looked at her, exasperated. “Well, if it wasn't Jimmy, then who was it?”

“Oh. It was his wife, I think her name was Sheila.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “She called you from Jimmy's phone? Did she say what she wanted?”

“Oh, yeah, she wanted to know if Jimmy had been over here lately. See, me and Jimmy had a little thing a couple years back, and she hates me. She called me to see if he'd been coming to see me again, and I told her no, and that I wasn't interested in seeing him, either. I didn't tell her me and Barry got married, but I said we were talking about it.”

Sam's mind began to race. “And you’re sure that was when she called you? That it wasn't Jimmy who called?”

She nodded emphatically. “Yeah, I'm sure. She was all mean and everything, really mad about something, and I didn't know what, but then she said he'd been talking to Sammie Harris, and I guess he just thought he'd been calling some of his old girlfriends. She said if I ever saw him again, she'd come after me, but I just told her to get a life, y'know? I didn't need that crap.”

Sam sat there and thought it all through for a moment, then got up and thanked her. He let himself out and started down the hall to the elevator.

Things were starting to make some sense, but he wasn't sure if it was any kind of sense he could put together and prove. He needed one more [iece of information before he could be sure of what he was thinking, and that was at the county jail.

It took him another thirty minutes to get there, and he hurried in and said he needed to see Jimmy Smith. The jailer on duty told him to wait a minute, then called another to take him back. He was seated in the same interview room, and a minute later Smith was brought in.

“Sam,” Smith said with a grin. “Can I hope you've got some good news?”

“I'm not sure yet, Jimmy, but I think I’m onto something. I need to ask you a question, though. The day you called and left the voicemail for Samantha Harris, right after that, you made some other calls. Can you remember who else you called?”

Smith hesitated for a second, but then he shrugged. “I called a guy named Bill Miller, he's a friend of Barry's. I figured if anyone might be able to get Barry to talk to me, he could.”

Sam nodded. “And after that?”

Smith scrunched up his face in concentration. “I don't remember calling anyone else, after that. I went to get something from my office, and remember I left my phone at the house.”

“According to your phone records, right after you called Miller, you called your wife, but the call only lasted a few seconds.”

Smith's face lit up. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I called Sheila, cause I thought she was out shopping, but she was there at the house. When I called her I heard her phone ring and I turned around and she was just coming into my den, so I hung up and told her I had to run to the office for a few minutes. I thought I'd put my phone in my pocket, but I must have set it down without thinking, and left it.”

Sam leaned forward. “Jimmy,” he said, “think about this: how long was she right behind you?”

Smith sat there and stared at him. “I don't know,” he said after a few seconds. “I thought she was just coming in, but she might have been there for a few minutes, I don't know. Why?”

Sam shook his head. “Never mind that, tell me this,” he said. “Who else knew about the message you left on Samantha's voicemail?”

Smith scrunched his face again. “Well, no one that I can think of. Sam, why are these questions so important?”

“Jimmy, if they are, I'll know it soon, and I can tell you then. For right now, though, don't tell anyone, and I mean not
anyone
, that I asked them! I'll be back in touch pretty soon—but I think we just caught a break—sort of.”

Sam called for the jailer and left, thinking through everything that he had learned. He'd been after one piece of information for the past two days, and he finally thought he had it, but there was one thing that still didn't fit in. He had an idea of who had framed Jimmy; the only remaining question was how that person had come into possession of Barry's head and hands. He had to find that out to make it all work and nail the killer!

Sam pulled up in front of Jimmy Smith's house about forty five minutes later, and rang the doorbell. Mrs. Smith answered after a few moments, and smiled at him. “Mr. Prichard,” she said. “Is it good news, I hope?”

“Actually, it is, Mrs. Smith,” Sam said. “I'm pretty sure I’m going to be able to prove that Jimmy was framed, but I need your help with it.”

She looked excited. “Certainly, just tell me how! Won't you come in, where we can talk more comfortably?” She held the door wide and Sam stepped in, then follwod her to the living room and they sat on the couch.

“Mrs. Smith, I've got an idea of who framed your husband for the murder of Barry Wallace, but I need you to help me figure out a few details.”

She looked a little confused. “Details? I don't know how I can help, but I'm willing to try.”

Sam smiled. “Good, because the one thing I can't figure out is how you killed Barry Wallace.”

Sheila Smith's eyes went wide instantly. “How
I
killed him? Mr. Prichard, what on earth would make you think I would, or even
could
do something like that?”

“Mrs. Smith, someone sent an envelope containing some of Barry's hairs, removed from his head after he was dead, to Samantha Harris. The only reason for the person framing your husband to do that was because that person knew that your husband had left a threatening message on her voice mail system; with that message, and then the envelope turning up, there was just barely enough evidence that your husband might be involved to allow a search warrant to be issued, and of course, the search found Barry's head and hands buried in your back yard. The problem is that not more than another forty yards ahead was a creek, and if someone wanted to dispose of those body parts, they would have walked that little bit further and tossed them in. The creek flows pretty fast; those pieces of Barry would have been miles downstream by the next morning, and there would be no connection to your husband at all.d been the one to try to get rid of them, he would have thought of that.”

She looked at him coolly, and Sam realized that he was up against a shrewd woman. “I don't see how that leads you to think I killed Barry.”

“Only the killer would have known where Barry's head was, to get the hairs. And the killer would only know to send them to Samantha Harris if she knew that Jimmy had already left an incriminating message on her phone. The only one who knew that, who could possibly have known that, was you, Mrs. Smith.”

Mrs. Smith sat there and looked at him calmly. “And how do you intend to prove it, Mr. Prichard?”

Sam shrugged. “Actually, I don't think I need to prove it at all. See, this isn't about me getting your husband out of jail, Mrs. Smith. It's about me taking care of me. I was promised another fifty thousand if I prove he didn't do it. I'd think it would be worth a lot more than that to you for me to forget what I know, don't you?”

She smiled at him. “That depends on how much you want, doesn't it, Mr. Prichard. How much would that be?”

“Your husband told me that he keeps more than half a million here, in cash. I think half of that would make me forget.”

Mrs. Smith sat and stared at him for a full minute without saying a word, then smiled again. “And then what? I end up paying you over and over? You keep coming around to collect more when you run out?”

“Nah,” Sam said, “I'm not that greedy. With a quarter million bucks, I can live good in Belize for the rest of my life, and that's what I've got in mind. You only have to pay me once, Mrs. Smith, and I'm out of your hair forever.”

She sat there another minute, and Sam was starting to think she wasn't going to go for it. Then she smiled once more.

“Will you wait here, Mr. Prichard, or are you going to insist on going with me to get it?”

“Oh, I'm not letting you out of my sight, Mrs. Smith. Lead the way.”

She got up and turned toward the back of the house, and Sam rose to follow. As they walked, he said, “There is one other thing you could do for me, though, just to satisfy my own curiosity.”

“And what's that, Mr. Prichard?” she asked.

“Tell me what really happened to Barry. I hate not knowing all the details.”

She glanced at him. “And I suppose you’re wearing a transmitter? Are the police listening to all of this, Mr. Prichard?”

“God, I hope not, since I just shook you down for a quarter million dollars! No, I seriously just like to know. If you don’t want to tell me, that's fine, I was honestly only trying to satisfy my own curiosity.”

She smiled but said nothing and walked on into a large room that was decorated like a major corporate office. She went over to a massive chair that sat near a wall, flipped its cushion over and reached down to turn the dial of a safe that was built into its base.

Suddenly she looked up at him. “Barry came over here looking for Jimmy, but he wasn't here. I didn't like Barry very much, not since he was our pool boy for a while back when he was in high school; he always seemed too arrogant for his own good, but I never cared much for him. Anyway, I didn't go to the door when he knocked, I just watched from behind a curtain, and I saw him slip something under a rock outside. That made me wonder what he was up to, so as he was walking away, I stepped out and looked, and it was a note from Samantha Harris, telling Jimmy she wanted to see him again. It said she still loved him, and wanted to talk about getting things going again, and I simply lost my temper.”

She looked back down and finished opening the safe, then looked back up at Sam. “I called him, and he turned and saw me and came back. He tried to play innocent with me, and said he was just stopping by to see if Jimmy was home, but I was so mad—I shoved the note in his face and called him liar, and then I just pushed him, and he fell back and hit his head on a rock. He laid there, and I thought, oh, dear God, I've killed him, and I panicked. I decided I needed to get rid of his body. I had some plastic sheeting, and I put that into the bed of Jimmy's old pickup truck, and backed it up close to where he was laying, and then I managed to get him into it. I slammed the tailgate and hid the truck out behind the old woodshed so Jimmy wouldn't see it, and then I got to thinking about where to hide his body. I thought if I cut off his head and his hands it would make it harder to identify him, and something about that got me all excited, so I went and got an ax. I got up in the truck, and swung the ax to chop off one of his hands, and he screamed, and I just about died, but I grabbed the ax and swung it agin and hit him in the head with it, and that was it. He was dead, then, so I went ahead and cut off his other hand and then his head. Do you know, Mr. Prichard, that it took me five chops to get his head off?”

Sam stood there, staring at her as she described murder and dismemberment, and barely managed to answer. “Yeah,” he said. “Those neck bones can be pretty tough.”

“Anyway, I put those parts in a big plastic trash bag and hid them in the woodshed, then waited til way past midnight and drove the truck out by the Air Force Base and roiled him out of it. I didn't come up with the idea to hang it on Jimmy til the next day, when I heard him calling that tramp and telling her to stay out of it. That made me madder, and I knew that if she got some parts of Barry, she'd go to the cops, and with that message, I figured they'd come search our place, so I cut off a piece of his scalp and mailed it to her, then took the bag with the head and stuff, and buried it out there that afternoon. Then it was just a waiting game.”

“Why did you agree to let him hire me?”

She shrugged, as if to say she didn't know if it was going to rain or not. “I didn't think there was anyway you'd figure out it was me. I thought I'd covered my tracks too well for that, so I figured, sure, let him have a little hope. It'd make me look all that much more innocent, the poor wife, all worried about hubby, right? Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it's gonna cost me another quarter million, but I've got everything else, and he'll still be gone. Works for me. The bastard should never have played around with those whores of his!”

She looked down at the open safe, and then reached in and took out a bag and began filling it with stacks of money. “Would you come over here for a moment, Mr. Prichard?” Sam walked slowly over to where she was standing, and she pointed into the safe. “As you can see, Mr. Prichard, I am giving you exactly what you asked for, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. I'm not even deducting the fifty thousand you already got from me, but what I really wanted you to see, Mr. Prichard, is the pistol that was laying in the top of the safe. I could easily have pulled it out and shot you just now, Mr. Prichard, while you were so engrossed in my story, but I didn't. I find that I can't sleep very well since I killed Barry; he haunts me, even in the daytime. I keep seeing him everywhere I go, everywhere I look, so I didn't want to kill you, Mr. Prichard. I don't need another ghost to haunt me.”

She closed the bag and offered it to Sam, but he didn't take it. Instead, he said, “I don't want your money Mrs. Smith. All I wanted was to get you to confess to murder, and you jut did. You asked if I was wearing a transmitter, and I said no, because I'm not. You don't need one, not in the age of cell phones. All I did was call Detective Parks and tell her where I was going and that I was going to ask you to pay me off to keep me quiet, and that all she needed to do was listen in, because I left the line wide open.” He took his phone out of his shirt pocket, and showed her the red light that said it was in an active call and on speaker phone setting. “Did you get it all, Karen?”

A tinny voice came from the phone. “Every word, Sam, and all of it recorded. We're driving into the estate now.”

Sam put the phone back into his pocket, took the bag of money from her hand and set it back down in the safe, then closed it. He took Sheila Smith by her arm and walked her out through the house and into the waiting arms of Detective Karen Parks of the Denver Police Department's Homicide Division.

“You're coming down to give a statement, aren't you, Sam?” Karen asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I'll be there shortly. I need to go see my client first, is that okay? I think I should be the one to tell him.”

She nodded. “That's fine, I want to see you right after, though. And I'll see that he's released when you get there.”

Sam nodded, and walked over to get into his van. He drove back to the jail, and the jailer smiled when he walked in.

“I got a phone call from the prosecutor's office a little while ago, and they said to release Mr. Smith to you, Mr. Prichard. He's almost through processing, and will be right up.”

Sam just nodded. “Don't tell him anything yet,” he said. “I think I should be the one to tell him what's going on.”

“No problem, all we know is that the charge against him has been dismissed, and we're to let you take him out of here. He should be done in a just a few minutes.”

Sam sat down in a chair and waited, and about ten minutes later, Jimmy Smith was escorted out of the jail. He saw Sam and broke into a huge grin.

“Sam! You did it, man, you did it! I don't know how to thank you!” He reached out and grabbed Sam's hand, and shook it till Sam thought it was going to come off.

Sam finally got it back. “Look, Jimmy,” he said as they walked out the door into the sunlight, “there's something I gotta tell you...”

“Well, first, just tell me who it was who did this to me! That's what I want to know more than anything!”

Sam nodded. “Well, that's part of it. I did find out who really killed Barry, and who was trying to frame you for it, but I don't think you're gonna be all that glad.” He cleared his throat. “Jimmy—it was your wife, Sheila. She caught Barry bringing you a note from Samantha Harris, and lost her mind over it, and she hit him and thought she'd killed him, so she was trying to hide his body before you found it.”

Smith looked shocked, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He tried to say something twice, and then managed to croak out, “Sheila...”

“Yeah. She had it in her head that if she cut of his hands and his head, it'd make it harder to identify him, so she got an ax and chopped off a hand, but he wasn't dead, and he screamed, and—well, then she hit him in the head with the ax, and that pretty much did him in. She went ahead and cut his other hand and his head off, and then dumped the body that night out where it was found. I don't know where she kept his head and hands, but she planted them in the yard and sent the hairs off to Samantha to get back at you for your affairs.”

Smith was just staring out through the windshield as Sam drove, and didn't say anything more for a long time. Sam took him to the police department with him so that he could talk to the detective, and gave his statement to another cop while Karen talked to Smith. When he was done, he drove Smith to his house.

He parked in the driveway and let Smith out, then started to drive away.

“Hey!” Smith yelled at him. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

Sam stopped and looked at him. “What?”

Jimmy managed  a weak smile. “Hell, man, I owe you another fifty thousand dollars! Aren't you gonna come and get it?”

Sam looked at him. “Mail me a check,” he said, and drove out of the estate. He had one more stop to make before he considered himself finished, and wanted to get it over with.