Lia Farrell - Mae December 02 - Two Dogs Lie Sleeping (5 page)

D
riving into the Powell’s driveway, Wayne Nichols was impressed by the impeccably maintained home located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Deputy Robert Fuller had asked to go with him and Wayne was pleased to see that the deputy’s car was already there.

The two men walked up to the house together
, where they were met by July Powell, who was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a wrinkled T-shirt. Her shoulder-length dark hair was scraped back in a messy ponytail and her eyes were puffy. She offered them both iced tea and they declined.

“Mrs. Powell, I need to ask you some questions,” Detective Nichols
said. He motioned to Rob. “Deputy Fuller will be taping our conversation.”

July looked away. “Let’s go into the family room,” she said quietly and led them into a spacious room with brown leather furniture and an enormous television.

“I know you’re the person who found Tom Ferris yesterday,” Detective Nichols said. July nodded. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. Can you tell me about it?”

“It was awful
.” She stood looking out through the window into her backyard. July bowed her head for a minute and her shoulders slumped. She looked very small and alone, standing in the casually luxurious room full of oversized furniture and the detritus of family life. He waited for her to continue. Finally, she turned around and collected herself.

“Please sit down, Detective, you too, Deputy.”

Wayne nodded and sat at one end of the tufted leather sofa. Deputy Fuller grabbed a chair and set the tape recorder on a nearby end table. July Powell took a seat in a chair on the other side of a large, glass coffee table.

“Mrs. Powell, can you run through what happened
, starting with when you arrived at the mansion yesterday? Take your time. Anything you can remember will be helpful,” Deputy Fuller said.

“Please call me July.”
Her smile didn’t reach her dark eyes. “I got to the house around five. I was doing a final check of my space, which is the back entry to the house. I was just about to leave when I heard a loud bang. Oh, I forgot to tell Ben, I mean Sheriff Bradley, something else I remembered. I heard another noise, too. I think I heard a door closing.”

“Do you have a key to the house?”

July blushed lightly. “Yes.”

“How is it that you have a key?” Detective Nichols asked.

“I kept it, Detective,” she hesitated, “from the time when I was dating Tommy.”

“What time do you think you heard the loud noise?”

“It was probably close to six. I thought the sound came from the nursery so I went up the back staircase. It was dark up there and at first I didn’t see him. But then I saw a body lying on the floor.” She looked away again and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

“Go on.”

“I got down on the floor and asked him if he was all right.” She shook her head. “I realized then who it was. It was my old boyfriend, Tommy Ferris.” She closed her eyes.

“He’d been shot,” Detective Nichols said.

She stared at him. “God, I hate it that somebody did this to him. Who could have done such a thing?”

She looked angry now and not so pitiful. He hadn’t heard a false note yet. Maybe the sheriff was right.

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” The detective looked at her searchingly. “Let’s go back to where you were when you heard the bang. There’s a staircase from that back entry leading up to the second floor, is that right? One of two staircases in the house?”

July nodded.

“And you can get to the nursery from either staircase?”

She nodded again.

“When you heard the door closing, did you think it was a door to one of the rooms or the main entry door?”

July was quiet for a minute. “I think it was the front door, and I remember being startled that someone was leaving the house. Until then, I assumed I was alone. There was only one other car in the driveway when I got there and I thought it belonged to one of the landscape designers—they wouldn’t have been inside.”

“It’s possible that you heard the person who shot Tom Ferris leave. Among the designers, who tended to stay late at the house?”

“It couldn’t have been one of the designers
.” July looked at him with a knitted brow.

“Why do you say that?”

July shook her head. “I just can’t believe any of them would have been involved.”

“Did you shoot him?” Detective Nichols kept his voice
low and even, watching her carefully.

“No. I would never kill anyone. And it was Tommy
. I love him,
loved
him.” Tears shone in her eyes.

“Who else could have been in the house?”

“I really don’t know, Detective. Have you looked at the video footage yet?” July had regained her poise. “The Booth Showhouse committee installed a closed circuit camera at the front and the back doors in case there was a robbery or something, so they’d know who’d been in the house.”

Now she tells me.
“Okay, good. I’ll get the discs and we’ll check it out. Just one last question, did you think Mr. Ferris recognized you?”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Did he say something? Anything?”

She
paused just a fraction of a second too long and then shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

July nodded her head again but didn’t meet his eyes.

“All right, I need you to give me the key now,”
he told her. After a brief hesitation, July took an iron key out of her shorts pocket and handed it to him. Deputy Fuller turned off the tape recorder. July started to get out of her chair. “We’ll show ourselves out,” the detective told her, and she slumped back without saying another word.

When they got outside Rob cleared his throat. The deputy’s smooth skin and short, golden brown hair made him look younger than he actually was. The silver frames of his glasses reflected the sunlight. He wanted to become a detective and had informally apprenticed himself to Wayne.

“Do you have a question, Rob?”

“Why did you take July’s key away from her?”

“I don’t want her going back in there.”

Rob nodded. “Do you think she was telling the truth?”

“Yes and no,” Wayne answered. “C’mon, it’s too hot to stand out here.” They walked back toward their cars. A tiny blonde girl wobbled past on her pink bike. The cicadas buzzed in the trees. Wayne put his hand on the car door handle tentatively. It was hot, but not hot enough to burn. He opened the car door to release the heated air from the interior and then turned back to the young deputy.

“She seemed genuine to me,” Wayne told Rob.

“Yeah, I thought so too, except at the end. I think the victim said something to Mrs. Powell that she didn’t want to tell us
. Still, she was obviously upset about him dying.”

Wayne clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll be a good detective someday. Trust those instincts. I’ll see you back at the office.”

Driving back, Wayne thought about that tiny slice of time before July denied Ferris had spoken to her. He would bet his last dollar there was unfinished business between July Powell and the victim. And that Tom Ferris had said something to his old girlfriend.

The phone rang.

“Wayne,” it was Ben’s voice
, “are you on your way back?”

“We just finished up with July Powell. I should be there in about twenty.”

“Okay. I wanted you to know that I talked with the Chief of Investigations in Nashville, a Captain Paula Crawley. She made it clear that I can’t interview anyone connected with the Ferris case until we have someone in custody. I’ve been thinking about some way to get around her rules and still help with the investigation. She said she’d report me to IA if I got into it.” Ben sighed. “I hate this. Apparently, I can look at reports, including yours. You can update me daily and I can talk with anyone who calls on the tip line. She wants you to call her once a week.”

Wayne didn’t say anything, just gave a brief sigh.

“Anyway, Dory found some information for us. There was a rental car parked at the Booth Mansion the night Tom Ferris was shot. Ferris rented it from Enterprise. They had a cellphone number, a driver’s license number and an address, a P.O. Box in Colorado. When the Mont Blanc police went through his effects, there was a volunteer firefighter’s card in his wallet, plus a couple of check stubs from a resort in Telluride.”

“I was hoping you were going to find a hotel confirmation. One of our problems is that we don’t know how long he’d been in town.”

“Right. Here’s the good news. Enterprise will have a record of where they picked him up, the time and the date. George is there now, checking on the times. When he gets back here I’m going to have him start going over Ferris’ cellphone outgoing and incoming calls. It’ll take a while, but we could get some leads from the local usage details.”

“Excellent. You were right, by the way. I don’t get the feeling that July was the shooter, but there’s still something she isn’t telling us.”

“There always is,” he heard Ben say.

B
en Bradley and Detective Wayne Nichols had looked at the video from the closed circuit cameras a hundred times. They saw July Powell coming in through the backdoor of the house. They could see that the parking lot contained her car—a late model black Chevy Suburban—a green Mini Cooper and a silver Nissan Altima, the car Tom Ferris had rented. They could even see the person who left the front door of the Booth Showhouse at 5:58 p.m. yesterday. That individual was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a lightweight rain jacket with the hood up—although it wasn’t raining. They couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, much less identify them.

“Let’s get Dory in here,” Wayne suggested.

“Okay,” Ben agreed, knowing it was impossible to evade his office parents when they stuck together.

Dory walked in and sat down. Ben
replayed the video and looked at her questioningly.

“Man or woman?” Wayne asked her.

“That’s a woman, of course. Is that
all
you boys needed?”

“Why do you say that?” Ben tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Wayne and I couldn’t tell.”

“The thighs.” At their expressions, she added, “She’s thin, but she has some weight to the outside of her thighs, her saddlebags. Men don’t carry extra weight there.”

“How old?” Wayne piped up.

“She moves well, almost like a dancer, but I’d say in her late thirties.”

They had wasted two hours, Ben thought, feeling distinctly annoyed with himself.

“What’s your certainty level?” His detective was looking at Dory with obvious admiration.

“About eighty-five percent
.” She smiled up at Wayne Nichols.

Ben cleared his throat, “Do you two mind not having a
meeting of the mutual admiration society in front of me?”

“Later,
boss man, I’m going home.” Dory stood up and left the room.

Sheriff Bradley turned to his detective and said, “So we have a suspect—female, late thirties. And since July Powell was still in the room when the emergency medical techs arrived, she’s almost definitely not our shooter.” He gave Wayne Nichols a pointed look.

“Well, we don’t know that the woman who left the Booth Showhouse by the front door was the killer either, but I’m inclined to
agree with you about July. Her grief seems authentic. You said Mrs. Anderson saw a man leaving out the French doors on the side of the house. Too bad nobody thought to put a closed circuit camera back there. The perp just about has to be one of those two people—the woman who left by the front door or the man who went out the French doors.”

“Right. I’m going to talk with Mrs. December. She’s definitely not a suspect and she knows everything that happens in this town.”

“Hold on a minute, Sheriff. She’s in the December family. Are you sure she isn’t a suspect? Remember, you aren’t supposed to do any interviews.”

“Suzanne’s a local reporter, not a suspect.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Wayne said. “Tom Ferris broke July’s heart. The woman is very protective of her daughters.”

Ben shook his head. “No, it doesn’t add up. July is married now with three kids. She moved on long ago and got over her college boyfriend. And I know the Decembers don’t have guns. But you’re still right, damn it. My hands are tied.” Ben thought for a few minutes. “I guess I can do some research on the computer.”

Wayne drummed the table with his fingers. “I’m going to interview Miranda Booth Stackhouse. Dory told me she was the chair of the Booth Showhouse Committee and is related to the victim. I’ll ask Dory to find out who the nursery designer was and talk with her. I suppose it’s too late to do any of that tonight. First thing tomorrow I’ll call and see if I can meet with Mrs. Stackhouse.”

Ben nodded.
“I’m going to concentrate on the background and figuring out what Tom Ferris was doing before he came back to town. We found his driver’s license, his volunteer fire fighter’s ID and some paystubs from a resort in Colorado. I’ll contact those organizations and find out what I can about his life there and any ideas they might have about why he came back now.”

Wayne stood up and
turned to leave.

“Oh, hang on, Wayne
. Did I tell you Fred Powell came home early from his conference? Since he’s July’s husband, you better be the one to talk to him.” Ben frowned, still irritated at Captain Paula’s prohibition. Wayne nodded. “I know what I’ll do,” Ben snapped his fingers, “I’ll ask Dory for the local scuttlebutt about the Ferris family.”

After Wayne left, Ben dialed Dory’s number. He was
somewhat apprehensive. Dory did not like to be bothered after she left the office.

“Hello, Dory?”

“Is this Ben Bradley?” She sounded annoyed.

“Hi Dory. Sorry to bother you at home, but I need some background on the Ferris family. Could you find that for me?”

“Overtime, Sheriff. Overtime. Remember that little promise you made to add more staff? Well, until that happens, anything I do for the office after hours I get double time for.”

“Time and a half,” Ben said.

“Fine.” Dory was exasperated. “I’ll call you back.”

Ben heard the phone smack hard into its cradle.

Dory called back an hour later.

“This is what I found out,” Dory said, not bothering to identify herself. “The Booth and Rawlins families
—”

“I wanted information about the Ferris family,” Ben tried for an official tone.

“Sheriff,” she laughed, sounding like a kid. “I know.” He had no time for her lightheartedness.

“Dory, I’m working a murder here.” Sometimes Eudora Clarkson drove him slap out of his mind.

Dory suddenly sobered, “It’s just funny that you don’t know that the Booth, Rawlins, and Ferris families are connected.”

When the conversation ended, Ben ran through what Dory had told him again. If he had the multi-generational family story right, Judge Henry Booth, still remembered as a strict law and order man, had married Charlotte French after law school. They renovated the Booth Mansion, which was a family property. After years of waiting, they finally had one child—a daughter named Irene Booth.

While in her early twenties, Irene married Wade Rawlins
; according to Dory, it was against the wishes of her family. He was apparently quite the local playboy. Irene and Wade also had a daughter, Miranda Booth Rawlins, now the chairwoman for the Booth Mansion Showhouse Committee.

Irene, Miranda’s mother, died of cancer when Miranda was almost thirteen. After her death, Miranda’s father remarried. Wade Rawlins’ second wife was a woman named Joanna Ferris, a divorcee with a son—Tom Ferris. Tom was five when Miranda’s father married Tom Ferris’ mother.

The last thing Dory said—before she huffily reminded him that digging out this information would cost him big time—was that they needed to talk to Bethany Cooper, one of the designers.

“Why her especially?” Ben asked. “We plan to talk to all the designers to find out if anyone had a reason to murder Tom Ferris.”

“Just something I found out from one of my friends,” Dory said, enigmatically.

Ben decided not to push it.

As Ben drove through the darkened streets of Rosedale, he briefly entertained the fantasy of spending the weekend at Mae’s, while his young son played with the Tater. Matthew would love Mae’s new puppy. It was Ben’s weekend to have him.

Then he interrupted his own reverie.
The weekend he envisioned would not be possible. When there was a murder, they all worked 24/7. He’d have to tell Mae he would be working and Katie that he couldn’t take Matthew. Ben picked up his cell to begin the process of pissing off both the women in his life.