Lost Legacy (A Zoe Chambers Mystery Book 2) (20 page)

Zoe seemed lost in thought, trying to make sense of Tom Jackson’s name linked to all four cases. She gave her head a quick shake. “Um, Saturday morning? I didn’t. They surprised me by taking an earlier flight and rented a car at the airport. They got to the farm around seven-thirty. I was still in the barn cleaning stalls.”

Pete scowled. “Why did I think you’d picked them up?”

“Probably because I was supposed to. At ten.”

Something whispered in the back of Pete’s brain, but he couldn’t quite grasp it.

“But, Pete,” Zoe said, “it was still
after
Engle died.”

“I know. I told you. Just because they’re on the board doesn’t make them suspects.”

She continued to stare at the list of names, an odd, intense glint in her eyes.

“Zoe? What’s going on?”

She blinked, as if coming out from under another spell, and she brushed a hand across her eyes. “I wanted to ask for your help with something.”

He knew that wasn’t what had been weighing on her mind as she studied the white board, but he decided against pressing it. For now. “What can I do for you?”

She took a deep breath. Let it out. “I was talking to Wayne Baronick yesterday about my dad. Wayne mentioned something I hadn’t thought about.” She met Pete’s gaze. “What if my dad saw something or was involved in something.” Her gaze became even more intense. “What if he faked his death and went into the witness protection program?”

Her words had come tumbling out of her mouth so fast, Pete had to take a moment to process what she’d said. “
Wayne
?” When had she run into him? And when had they gotten to be on a first name basis? “Witness protection? Zoe—”

“Just hear me out.” She planted her hands on the table and leaned toward him. “I kept wondering why Dad wouldn’t have let Mom or me know where he was all these years, but if he thought we’d be in danger? Yeah, he’d do it. He’d keep his identity and location a secret to keep us safe.”

“
Did
he see something back then?” Pete asked, pondering this new theory.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything, but I was just a kid. I asked my mom, but she thinks I’m grasping at straws.”

Pete didn’t reply.

“You think so, too.”

He hiked an eyebrow at her.

She straightened and folded her arms. “
Wayne
doesn’t think I’m crazy.”

Wayne again. Pete sighed. “And what do you think I can do about it?”

Zoe came forward again. “How can I find out? Who do I ask? Where do I start looking?”

Pete gazed into her eyes. The eager eyes of a child on Christmas morning. And Pete was the Grinch. “Zoe, witness protection—WitSec—is run by the U.S. Marshalls, and they do their job. I hate to tell you, but if your dad was in the program, there’s no way the feds would give you any information on his whereabouts.”

The excitement melted out of her. “But couldn’t you do some digging?”

Pete shook his head. “They wouldn’t give me any more than they’d give you. There’s a reason WitSec exists. If the feds started giving out information on subjects, the entire program would be compromised.”

Zoe slumped into one of the chairs.

Pete lowered his foot to the floor, ignoring the sharp pain that shot up his leg. Gritting his teeth, he stood, hopped to the chair next to Zoe, and flopped into it. He reached over and closed his hand over hers. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I don’t believe your dad is still alive. If I did—” He squeezed her hand and lowered his voice. “If I did, I’d move heaven and earth to find him for you.”

She met his gaze, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears. Swallowing hard, she rose. “I have to keep looking.” Her voice sounded moist, strangled. “But thanks.”

Pete watched her go. Damn Baronick. Why couldn’t he keep his bright ideas to himself?

Across the room, a chair creaked. Pete glanced over his shoulder. Harry had turned away from the TV and was giving Pete the same look he used to give him when Pete had tormented Nadine as a child. “That girl just asked for your help,” Harry growled. “And you sent her packing. What kind of numbskull move was that?”

Zoe had left home hours early for work with the intention of finding answers. The Vance Township Police Station had been her first stop, and Pete had been no help at all. Why had she been surprised? He hadn’t been the least bit supportive of her quest to find her dad. Pete kept insisting the letter meant something else. Or nothing at all.

Yet, he’d asked Wayne to look into her dad’s car crash. What was up with that?

She climbed into her pickup and headed for her next stop, the Volunteer Fire Department. The only person manning the station was a lanky young rookie who told her Bruce Yancy wouldn’t be in for forty-five minutes. Rather than sit around and wait, Zoe moved to what she’d intended to put off until last.

Roth Funeral Home stood at the end of an old residential area in Phillipsburg. Zoe parked in the empty lot across the street from the well-kept red brick Colonial. Her throat tightened. The last time she’d been inside that building was last winter following the death of Ted Bassi, Sylvia’s son and Zoe’s best friend’s husband. His murder and the aftermath had nearly destroyed the entire family. Right now, Zoe would give about anything to have Rose to talk to. But she’d taken the kids off the grid somewhere out west for the summer—to heal.

Zoe shut off the ignition and sat in the truck cab until the sweltering heat encroached on her, forcing her to finally step outside. She fought to swallow the lump rising in her throat as she passed through the front door into an atrium, sickly sweet with the scent of floral arrangements.

A stout young woman with mousy hair and wire-rim glasses appeared from a back office. She extended her hand. “Good afternoon. I’m Judy Roth. How may I help you today?”

Zoe accepted the hand and introduced herself. “I’m looking for information about a burial you folks handled twenty-seven years ago. Is there anyone around who might have worked here then?”

Judy’s eyes widened. “Twenty-seven years ago? Oh. Our computer records only go back twelve years or so. It would take me some time to go through the old paper files.”

“Thanks, but what I was really hoping for was to talk to whoever actually prepared the body in question.”

“Twenty-seven years ago?” Judy repeated, her voice weighted with a heavy load of doubt. “That would either have been my father or Mr. Kurtz.” She motioned for Zoe to follow her back into the office where Judy settled behind a polished cherry desk. Zoe took a seat across from her. “You may recall that Roth Funeral Home used to be Roth and Kurtz Funeral Home.”

“I remember.” Zoe might have avoided the building as much as possible, but Mr. Roth and Mr. Kurtz had been long-time residents of Philipsburg and she’d encountered them at various functions and businesses around town over the years.

“Mr. Kurtz retired six years ago and moved to Arizona.”

“What about your father? Would he be willing to talk to me?”

“I’m sure he would.” Judy smiled sadly. “If he were able to. I’m afraid he’s in a nursing home over in Steubenville. He’s had a number of small strokes and can’t communicate anymore.”

A sharp rap brought Pete’s attention to Detective Wayne Baronick grinning at him from the conference room doorway. “Speak of the devil,” Pete grumbled.

Baronick didn’t wait for any further invitation and ambled in. “Now is that any way to talk to the man who’s been doing your legwork while you just sit around?” He set a cup of Starbucks coffee and an evidence envelope in front of Pete.

Harry swung away from the television to inspect the newcomer. “Who are you?”

“Pop, you remember Detective Baronick? You met at the morgue.”

“Hey, Mr. Adams.” Baronick gave him a quick salute.

Harry had that all-too-familiar vacant look on his face. “Morgue? I ain’t dead yet.”

Baronick chuckled and stepped across the room to extend a hand and an introduction to Harry, as if they had never met before. Pete rubbed the pain in his forehead. How was it that everyone else could be so at ease with his dad’s mental decline and not him? Pete knew the answer. It wasn’t
their
dad going through it.

Harry went back to his TV show, and Baronick dropped into a chair across the table from Pete. The detective pointed at the envelope. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

Pete took a sip of the coffee first. Then he read the notations on the envelope. He glanced at Baronick who laced his fingers behind his head and gave Pete a self-satisfied smile.

Pete set the coffee down and carefully dumped the lead slug into his palm. “Froats said this was floating around somewhere.”

“
Somewhere
being the courthouse basement. I ran into your girlfriend while I was there.”

“Zoe?” That answered one thing that had been nagging Pete.

“You have another girlfriend I don’t know about?”

He ignored the question. “What was she doing there?”

“Looking into her dad’s accident. Same as you’d asked me to do.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Not much. Accident report states Chambers was run off the road by a drunk driver and the car caught fire. And I understand you’ve already heard that Carl Loomis was the driver of the other car.”

Pete dropped the bullet back into the envelope. “Yeah. Anything else?”

“Coroner reported COD as smoke inhalation. But—get this—there was no autopsy done at the request of the family.”

“Kimberly Chambers Jackson made the request?” Pete’s gaze shot to the white board.

“That would be my guess.”

Pete looked back at Baronick. “I need you to do me two favors.”

The detective shrugged. “Sure. If I can.”

Pete pointed to the white board. “Write Kimberly Jackson in Gary Chambers’ column.”

“Easy enough. What else?”

“Drive me over to Carl Loomis’ place.”

Twenty

With a promise from Judy Roth to dig up the funeral home’s file on Gary Chambers, Zoe backtracked to the Vance Township V.F.D. to meet with Bruce Yancy. After striking out twice, her level of optimism had plummeted.

The same gangly young firefighter Zoe had talked to earlier buffed an already spotless red and white engine and waved her toward the fire chief’s cramped office just off the truck bay. Boisterous laughter punctuated with some colorful language drifted out to her as she approached the door.

Yancy looked up with a smile when she knocked. “I heard you wanted to talk to me. Don’t tell me you can’t make it Saturday night.” 

Poker night. And this was Yancy’s week to host the game. Zoe gave him a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Yance. I’m on duty.”

Yancy’s visitor, who had his back to her, turned with a grunt. “You remember my old pal, our former police chief, don’t you?” Yancy said.

Warren Froats.

Zoe tensed. “Of course.” She still hadn’t decided if the man was part of the cover-up to help her father fake his death or was merely incompetent.

“So, Ms. Chambers, you’re one of the suckers in the infamous poker circle?” Froats said with a gruff chortle.

Yancy choked out a short laugh. “I don’t know who’s the sucker here. She won twenty bucks from me over the last two weeks, and I intend to get it back.” He shook a finger at Zoe. “Bring a pager. You can be on call from my house.”

“We’ll see.” Zoe eyed Froats. She’d have preferred speaking with Yancy alone, but Froats seemed quite comfortable and didn’t appear to have any plans to leave. So be it. No way was she going to put this off again. She turned to Yancy. “I was hoping you could answer a question for me.”

“Promise you’ll come to the game Saturday night, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

She forced a grin. “Promise none of our good citizens will get sick or injured and you’ve got a deal.”

He gave one quick nod of his bulldog head. “You got it. What d’ya need?”

“You probably don’t remember, but my dad was supposedly killed in a drunk driving accident—”

“I remember,” Yancy said. “What’s it been? Twenty? Twenty-five years ago?”

Zoe opened her mouth to answer, but he held up a hand to stop her.

“No. It was twenty-seven years ago. I know because I just celebrated twenty-seven years with the department, and that was the first really bad call I’d been on.” Yancy shook his head. “Sorry, Zoe. You just don’t forget the ones like that.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

He gave her a long hard stare. “Why on God’s green earth would you want to hear about that after all these years? Or ever for that matter?”

Her throat had gone dry and threatened to constrict. “I don’t want to. I need to. No one’s ever told me what really happened.”

Froats’ chair squeaked in protest as he shifted in it. “As I recall, I told you what really happened only a few days ago.”

Zoe cringed under the old chief’s scrutiny. Now she understood why he’d been so effective. That evil-eye of his would scare straight all but the most hardened criminal. “I know you did. But I still have questions.”

“Then ask them,” Froats barked.

She stood a little taller. “Fine. Is there any chance...Did my dad fake his own death?”

The tiny office fell silent. Both men exchanged stunned looks before turning back to her.

“Fake his own death?” Froats sounded aghast. “Why would you wonder that?”

Zoe considered telling him about the letter but remembered how Pete had cut her off the last time. “I have my reasons.”

Froats crossed his arms in front of his barrel chest. “I’d like to hear them.”

Zoe shot a glance at Yancy, who seemed to be struggling with a memory. She should have waited to speak to him alone. Too late now. And since he wanted to know, this might be the perfect time to tell him. “I did what you said. I dug up the coroner’s report on the accident.”

“And?”

“There was no autopsy.”

“So?”

“From everything I’ve learned, the body in that car—”

“Your dad’s body,” Froats said.

“The body in that car,” Zoe repeated with emphasis, “was burnt so badly no one could identify it except by personal effects, which could easily have been planted.”

Froats face turned crimson. “Planted?”

“The cause of death in the coroner’s report stated smoke inhalation, but with no autopsy, that was nothing more than a guess. Everything about the investigation was shoddy.” Zoe debated whether to go on, but decided to hell with it. “Either everyone involved in the case bungled it, or they were covering up something.”

Her implication wasn’t lost on the retired chief. Froats climbed to his feet and took one menacing step, closing the gap between them. “You realize you’re calling me incompetent.”

Zoe held her ground. “You
and
the coroner at the time. Martin Dempsey, I believe.”

Yancy jumped from his chair and put an arm in front of Froats, blocking him. “Zoe, you need to think this through. I saw the car and your dad’s body, too.”

“
A
body,” she reminded Yancy. “Not necessarily my dad’s.” She glared up at Froats. “If you’re not incompetent, that means you took part in a cover up. Was my dad involved in something back then? Did he testify against someone?”

Froats’ eyes shifted slightly. His expression softened.

Yancy lowered his arm from in front of Froats and took Zoe by the shoulders. “What are you saying?”