Real Murder (Lovers in Crime Mystery Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter Eight

“Close your mouth, Josh. You’re attracting flies,” Cameron said after breaking the news to her husband about the kindly blue-haired lady across the street.

Staring out the living room window through the  hedges that blocked his view of Dolly’s home, Joshua cleared his throat in search of his voice. As if seeing Dolly would make sense of it all, he leaned up closer to the window to peer at the red brick colonial. “I don’t believe it.” He turned back to his wife. “You heard her wrong.”

Cameron picked up the photo album resting on top of  a tall stack that Dolly had given her, opened it, and showed him one of the pictures. “Al Capone was her Uncle Al,” she said. “She was born in Chicago in nineteen twenty-five.”

“That woman used to babysit me.” Joshua pointed out the window.

“Gee, did your grandmother know what she did before her retirement?” Cameron asked with a smile.

“I wonder if Tad knows.” Joshua answered his own question. “Tad knows everyone and everything. He has to have known.”

“If he did, then he would have known about Ava being a hooker, which would have explained the murder Mike was investigating. If that was the case, wouldn’t he have mentioned something about it by now? Did you know about Dolly’s?”

Scratching his head, Joshua plopped down into a chair. “I had heard about it.”

“She said it closed right after the murder in seventy-six,” Cameron said, “You would have been just a kid.”

“I had heard of a private club down by the race track where they had dancing girls who were practically naked,” he said. “I was told that it was like something you would  see in the gangster movies with rich men in fancy suits  flashing a lot of money and beautiful women. I thought it was made-up stuff of pubescent boys … until today.”

“What happened to change your mind?”

“I finally got Mike’s mother to admit that he was adopted,” Joshua said.

“And his birth mother was Ava Tucker,” she finished.

“Who told you that?”

“No one told me,” she said. “Have you forgotten that  I’m a detective?” With a shake of her head, Cameron folded her arms under her breasts. “From what you and I have found out, Ava Tucker wasn’t a dancer, she was a prostitute—”

“And Mike Gardner’s mother.”

“And she was murdered.”

“That had to be the case Mike was looking into when he was killed. Ava Tucker’s murder at Dolly’s.” Still not believing it, Joshua turned to look over his shoulder at the house across the street. “We need to get that case file and have a talk  with Dolly, the sweet little madam next door.”

“Dolly was insistent that there’s something in one of these albums that will help.” Cameron resumed leafing  through the books. “I finally met the infamous Lorraine Winter today,” she added in a matter-of-fact tone.

“That woman scares the dickens out of me,” Joshua  continued staring out the window.

“She reminds me of an aunt I had who didn’t like  children,” she said, “especially me because I would let her know how much I didn’t like her back. The sound of Lorraine’s voice makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end  the same way it did when I heard Aunt Vivian’s voice.”

“One of my earliest childhood memories is of that witch,” Joshua said. “My grandmother about tossed her off our front porch—literally.”

“What did she do?” Cameron set down the album and went over to ask him.

“I was maybe about six years old,” he recalled. “Lorraine had come over to the house to meet with Grandmomma to go over something for some church committee they were on—”

“Lorraine went to church?” Cameron asked. “She made it very clear at lunch today that she was an atheist.”

“That happened after her son Toby killed himself,”  he muttered, “probably to get away from her. Lorraine is a nutcase. She was here meeting with Grandmomma and  Toby came over after school. He was a teenager then. Well, when I went to tell her that he was here, she almost knocked me over running out. She was mad as a wet hen over something. Grabbed him by the ear and dragged him bodily out onto the porch and slapped him.” He paused. “That was the first time that I had ever seen anyone hit anyone. I must have screamed, or maybe it was Lorraine’s screaming at Toby that brought Grandmomma out onto the porch just in time to see Lorraine backhand him a second time. Well, Grandmomma weighed in like a giant momma bear, grabbed Lorraine by the bun that she always wore her hair in, and gave her what for.”

“Lorraine really knows how to make friends, huh?”

“She’s a very unhappy woman,” Joshua said with a shrug of his shoulders. “She’s been playing the victim card since I’ve known her. Though as a child, I only knew that she scared the dickens out of me. But then, I got to know her story. Her husband died of a massive heart attack when  he was in his thirties—leaving her with a toddler to raise alone. Then, she got mad at Grandmomma about the fight and resigned from every charity board that Grandmomma was on. Then, more fights and arguments with more people in town. She got mad at the priest over something and left the Catholic Church. When Toby killed himself, she decided there was no God and that all of us was fools for believing there was a God who would let all of that happen to her.”

“Sounds more like she’s angry with God,” Cameron said, “not so much that she doesn’t believe in Him.”

“Didn’t you get angry with God when Nick was killed?” He watched her from over his shoulder while she paused to come up with the words to answer him.

“I don’t think I was so much mad at God as I was angry at whoever it was that took Nick from me and the lack of closure due to Nick’s killer never being caught. That’s the difference. Lorraine’s husband died of a heart attack. There’s no one to point to and blame. Toby killed himself … why did he kill himself?”

“He was in his early twenties,” Joshua said. “Imagine being told for twenty years that you’re a loser and you’re never going to amount to anything. After a while, you start to ask yourself why you bother.”

“Is that what Lorraine did?”

“Heard it myself.” He went back to peering out the window.

“Why did he kill himself at Raccoon Creek? People usually go someplace that has some significance to them to kill themselves. What was significant about Raccoon?”

“What wasn’t?” Joshua asked. “Kids around here either hang out at Tomlinson Run Park or Raccoon. Maybe that was where he had spent some happy times with his friends. He  did have friends. I remember he was pretty tight with Virgil Null.”

Cameron grabbed his wrist. “Virgil Null? The same—”

“Just a minute, hon!” Seeing Tad drive past, Joshua rushed outside. Cameron was directly behind him when he jogged to the end of the driveway and up Rock Spring’s cobblestone street to the house next door to intercept Tad climbing out of his SUV.

In Chester, when neighbors refer to the next street up, they are speaking literally. From the shore of the Ohio River, the small town was built into the side of the mountain. Each road that crossed the face of the mountain rose up above the street beneath it. One of the oldest streets was Rock Springs Boulevard, which crossed the width of the mountain before wrapping uphill. Side streets that contained  tiny homes, including the Gardner house, shot off of Rock Springs like tiny tree branches.

“What’s with the welcoming committee?” the doctor asked when he saw Joshua and Cameron jogging up the sidewalk to meet him in his driveway. “Should I be scared?”

“You’ve known Dolly Houseman your whole life, right?” Joshua asked.

A perplexed expression crossed his face when Tad nodded his head.

Folding his arms across his chest, Joshua asked, “Did you know she owned Dolly’s?”

“Dolly’s what?”

“The private bordello out by the race track,” Cameron said.

“That
Dolly’s?” Tad asked with a gasp.

“That
Dolly’s.” Joshua nodded his head.

Tad looked beyond them to the quiet red brick house across the road. “Are you telling me that our sweet little Dolly is the same Dolly who—”

“That’s what she told Cameron.” Joshua jerked his thumb in the direction of his wife.

“She was a madam,” Cameron said. “And a good one, too.”

“Whoever would have thought?” Tad replied in a low voice.

“Dolly’s was real?” Joshua asked. “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought it was an urban legend in these parts.”

“I didn’t tell you because that club closed back in the  seventies,” Tad replied. “The prostitution was only a small part of what Dolly’s was known for. By the time you were old enough to know or care about it, Josh, it was only a distant legend that most people thought had been blown way out of proportion.” He shrugged. “You know, it grows and grows until it’s almost impossible to know what’s real and what’s concocted.”

“Well, one thing that is true is that one of Dolly’s girls was murdered,” Joshua said, “and that girl was a prostitute.”

Tad let out a breath. “Was that the murder Mike Gardner was investigating?”

“We think so,” Joshua said.

“On record, that girl would have been a dancer,” Tad said.

“But the
police
knew she was a call girl,” Cameron said.

“More than likely the sheriff and prosecutor were afraid of what would come out if they asked too many questions,” Tad said. “Some real movers and shakers from the tri-state area were regulars at Dolly’s, and they met there for more than the girls. I heard that if you wanted to have the most secret of secret meetings, then Dolly’s parlor was the place to go. Politicians would meet syndicate types and be all   buddy-buddy there and then call each other nasty names as soon as their limos turned out onto route two-oh-eight.”

Cameron nodded her head. “Sounds like the perfect backdrop for a murder. Maybe Ava overheard something she shouldn’t have while serving the wrong mover and shaker.”

“Do you think you could get your hands on the autopsy reports for Ava Tucker’s murder?” Joshua asked Tad.

“Wasn’t her john killed, too?” Tad asked.

“Yes,” Cameron said.

Tad looked her up and down. “I guess you have no intention of spending your medical leave resting.”

“You’re going to feed me, right?” Donny asked from the back seat of Joshua’s SUV. “I mean, that’s the only reason I’m coming.”

“You’re big enough,” Cameron shot back from the front passenger seat. “You can catch your own.”

Laughing, Joshua told Donny that they intended to stop for dinner on the way back from the sheriff’s office in New Cumberland.

“But I need to tag along with you and Cameron and wait while you talk to Sawyer about that murder case,” Donny said. “I wish you would have let me stay home.”

“So that you could microwave hot dogs for your dinner again,” Joshua said.

“Hot dogs aren’t bad for you.”

“They are if you eat them for every meal.”

Leaning forward, Donny grasped the back of Joshua’s seat. “How about pizza then? You can drop me off at Roma’s and I can hang out with my friends while you’re meeting with Sheriff Sawyer. Call me on your cell when you leave and I’ll order our dinner. By the time you get there, it’ll be waiting.”

“Now that sounds like a plan,” Cameron said.

“Anything that gets you out of cooking dinner sounds  like a plan.” Joshua turned onto Route Eight to take them out to New Cumberland. They would be passing Roma’s Pizzeria a few miles up the road. Without a yea or nay from his father, Donny waited in apprehension for the answer, which came when Joshua turned left into Roma’s parking lot.

“Don’t run up a huge root beer tab,” Joshua ordered while the teenager leapt out of the back seat. “Do you have your cell phone?”

Pausing, Donny tapped his back pocket. “Right here.”

With a reminder that they would call him upon leaving New Cumberland, Joshua backed out of the parking lot to resume the drive to the other end of the county.

Once they were back on the road, Cameron asked, “Have you ever heard of Douglas O’Reilly?”

“Actually, I have,” Joshua said. “Today, as a matter of fact.”

Cameron squinted at him. “You’re kidding.”

“He was the boy who got Ava Tucker pregnant,” Joshua said. “Her sister told me that she got pregnant on purpose because she was afraid of losing him after he went to West Point. Instead of marrying her, he committed suicide by driving his car off a cliff into Raccoon Creek.”

“Did he?” Cameron asked.

“O’Reilly couldn’t stay in the academy if he got married,” Joshua said, “and if he didn’t marry her, then she could claim statutory rape, which would have gotten him kicked out. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place and decided to take the coward’s way out.”

She said, “Back when I first became a state homicide detective, Doug O’Reilly’s mother came in to see me. Every year or two, she would come in and try to get a detective to take another look at her son’s case, which was closed as a suicide. She swore that he wouldn’t have killed himself.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “In light of how Mike’s cruiser ended up in the bottom of Tomlinson Run’s lake, don’t you find it interesting that his father’s Mustang was found at the bottom of Raccoon Creek?”

Joshua turned to look at her. In the moment that he took his eyes off the road, he swerved.

“Look out!” Cameron yelled.

Regaining control of the car, Joshua hit the brake to slow down on the winding country road. “Are you thinking it’s not a coincidence?”

“Think about it, Josh,” she said. “What are the odds?”

“It was suicide.”

“Was it?” Cameron asked. “Mike Gardner was murdered. Someone killed his birth mother. Isn’t it possible that Mike’s father, whose car was also found at the bottom of a lake, was murdered, too?”

“When you put it that way …” Joshua said. “Makes me wonder if it was a murder conspiracy or a family curse.”

Chapter Nine

“We’re still waiting for forensics to finish examining the cruiser,” Sheriff Sawyer told Joshua and Cameron when they arrived at his office next to the county courthouse in New Cumberland.

“There’s no reason why we can’t proceed where things were left off when Mike disappeared,” Joshua said while Cameron took a seat in the sheriff’s small office. “He told me he was  going to meet with a CI. A good place to start would be to find out where he was in his investigation and the identity of this informant.”

Noticing two dusty white folder boxes, one stacked on top of the other, on the chair across from the sheriff’s desk, Cameron asked, “Are these the cold case files Josh requested you dig up?” Without waiting for an answer, she swung the top box around to read the label on the end. In black marker, it read:

Null, Virgil R.

02/13/1976

“They are,” Curt said. “Take a gander at the check-out roster.”

While Cameron peered inside the folder box, Joshua opened the flap of the envelope taped to the top of the lid. Inside the envelope was a roster on which officers and other law enforcement officials were to write their names, badge numbers, and the date and time they checked out the evidence box. There was an identical roster in the file room. If a detective or officer went looking for a case box, the roster would show who had it. Both rosters needed to be signed, even if the officer didn’t remove the box, as Curt had done.

While Joshua read the second to last name on the roster, Cameron gazed up at him. She could see the recognition in his eyes.

“I think you’re on to something,” Curt said.

“Mike Gardner checked out this evidence box ten days before he disappeared,” Joshua told her. “On September third, nineteen ninety-six. He checked it back in on Friday, September sixth. Then, a couple of months later, the files were checked out on Monday, November fourth, by Philip Lipton.”

“That name sounds familiar,” Cameron said.

“He’s the head of the state forensics lab in Weirton,” Curt said. “Been there around twenty years. I checked when I saw his name on the roster there. That check out date is less than a month after he took the position. He’s the clumsy bum who spilt his drink in my lap at lunch today.”

“What would prompt the head of the forensics unit to check out
these
files for two cold cases as soon as he came on board?” Cameron asked. “If your forensics unit is like ours, they don’t go digging into old case files unless something or someone, usually the investigating officer, asks for something.”

“Like a deputy,” Curt said.

“Which would have meant that Lipton would have known what case Mike was digging into,” Joshua said. “When I contacted the sheriff after Mike’s disappearance, I was told that no one had any idea what I was talking about.” He showed Sawyer the roster. “This right here proves that Mike was looking into Ava Tucker’s and Virgil Null’s murders. His disappearance was all over the news. At least Philip Lipton  should have noticed the missing deputy’s name on this roster and the check-out date being less than a month before he went missing. Why didn’t Lipton say anything?”

“Being new on the job at the time,” Cameron said, “it would have been to Lipton’s advantage in discovering a possible clue to Mike’s disappearance. Why did he keep his mouth shut all these years?”

“Don’t ask me,” Curt said. “Ask him. And I want to be there when you do.”

“Virgil Null.” Cameron read the name on the end of the box. “That’s the john who got murdered along with Ava Tucker.” She reminded Joshua. “He was tight with Lorraine Winter’s son who committed suicide.”

“There was never any question that Toby Winter committed suicide,” Joshua said. “He left a note.”

“What did the note say?” Cameron asked.

“Ask his mother,” Joshua said. “She’ll tell you it’s none of your bee’s wax.”

“Lorraine Winter is one nasty scary old lady,” Curt said in agreement. “She could make the Hulk pee his pants.”

The label on the box underneath Null’s read “Tucker, Ava” and contained the same date.

“How do you know about Virgil Null being Ava’s john?” Curt asked.

“Dolly told me.” She removed the police case file from the box.

“Dolly?” Curt turned to Joshua, who was digging through the top box as well. “The name of the gentlemen’s club where they were murdered was called Dolly’s. Are you saying there really is a Dolly?”

“Why else would they call it Dolly’s?” Cameron asked him.

“Because it was the place to go to meet dolls,” Curt said. “Remember, back when people were politically incorrect. Women were called chicks, broads, and …” He gestured with a shrug of his shoulders. “—dolls? That’s where I assumed the name Dolly came from.”

“No, there is a real Dolly,” Cameron said. “She’s in her eighties now. I had lunch with her today.”

“Are you talking about one of those little old ladies you were at Cricksters with this afternoon?” Curt leaned forward in his seat. “Which one?”

“The sweet little old lady sitting next to me.”

Curt gasped. “That darling little blue-haired lady? Are you serious? She was a …”

“Madam,” Cameron said with a giggle. “And she used to babysit Josh.”

“Seriously?” Curt looked up at Joshua. “Your grandmother used to let a madam babysit you?”

“I don’t think she knew,” Joshua said.

“Still,” Curt said. “Did she ever give you any advice about …” He waved one of his hands in a circle. “You know … secrets about how to …”

“Secrets of the trade?” Cameron asked.

“No.” The pink that came to Joshua’s cheeks stood out against his thick silver hair, which brought a grin to Cameron’s face.

On the other side of his desk, Sheriff Sawyer shot her a wink at Joshua’s embarrassment. After clearing his throat, he settled back to business. “Well, it’s not surprising that no one knew what you were talking about back when you called in after Gardner’s disappearance. On record in these case files, Ava Tucker is listed as a dancer at a gentlemen’s club. There’s about a half dozen of those clubs around the track. Generally, the women who work there are considered dancers or bartenders, not prostitutes. If they hook, it’s on their own time, and I don’t think they list that profession on their resume. Did this sweet little blue-haired madam tell you why Gardner put his life on the line to look into this murder that had happened like twenty years before he became a cop?”

Cameron waited to let Joshua answer.

Deciding that it was best to keep their sheriff in the loop, Joshua replied, “Because Ava Tucker was his birth mother. It’s a family secret. Mike Gardner was raised by Ava’s sister and her husband. I only got Mike’s mother, or rather, aunt, to  confirm that today. So we need to be discrete.”

Understanding, Curt nodded his head.

“Both victims were suffocated to death,” Cameron noted. “The killer tied them up and then covered their faces, noses, and mouths with duct tape. They died of asphyxiation. What a way to go.”

Joshua took note of a comment in Virgil Null’s autopsy. “It may not have been so bad for Virgil. He had a fractured skull. He may have been knocked out before being suffocated.”

Cameron continued to leaf through the case file. “The roll of duct tape wasn’t found on the scene. The killer had to have taken it with him.” She scanned reports in search of the  witness statements. “They were killed in Ava’s room. Wouldn’t someone have noticed her taking two men up to her  room? Or was the killer hiding in her room when she walked in with this Null guy?”

Joshua reached into the box for the police report on Virgil Null’s murder. “Did the police at the time investigate to see  if Null was the intended victim? This was the seventies. Maybe he was into drugs as well as women. Ava could have been  collateral damage?” He scanned through the reports in the file.

“That’s a good question.” She closed the folder and held it in her lap. “Think about it. How long would Virgil Null have been in her room?”

When she turned to Curt, he shook his head while waving his hands. “Don’t look at me. I have no need to visit hookers.”

“Cameron’s point is,” Joshua said, “why kill both of them? If Ava was the intended victim, why didn’t the killer wait for Virgil to go home? It certainly would have been less difficult to control one victim instead of two.”

“And if Virgil was the intended victim,” Cameron asked, “why kill him in Ava’s room? According to this case report, there were possible multiple witnesses in the rooms on either side of hers. It was a Friday night—”

“Better for the killer to get lost in a crowd,” the sheriff said.

“Speaking of crowds …” Joshua folded the case file inside out to read through a section in a witness statement. “What type of person stands out in the crowd in a bordello?”

Both Cameron and the sheriff had to think before they could answer.

“An ugly woman?” Curt finally responded.

“Give the man a cigar.” Joshua held up the case file. “We have a statement from the bouncer that the bartender  reported walking in on a middle-aged woman in the kitchen who ran out the backdoor into the night as soon as he spotted her.”

“What time did that happen?” Cameron asked.

“Close to one o’clock,” Joshua said. “They assumed that it was a suspicious wife checking on her husband.”

“Any name on her?” Curt asked.

Joshua paused to read through the statement before shaking his head. He flipped to the statement from the bartender and shook his head again. “None. They had never seen her before.”

“It could just be a coincidence,” Cameron said. “At those types of places, it would not be unusual for a wife to sneak in to check on her husband. But even if she’s not the killer, she may have seen something upstairs while looking for hm.”

“The bouncer’s name is Bart Walker,” Joshua said. “I know his family. He died more than ten years ago. Maybe the bartender is still around. He’s the one who saw her. He might be able to give us a description.”

“Listen to this.” Standing up, Cameron read from a statement in the case file for Ava Tucker’s murder. “One of the girls at the club, who had the room next to Ava’s, swore that she thought she saw someone on the verandah off her bedroom. She tried to check it out, but her client had other things on his mind and wouldn’t let her. She said that was about midnight. The murders were discovered shortly after one o’clock.” She closed the file. “Verandah? Could that be like the verandah  off our bedroom, Josh? It wouldn’t be that hard to climb up. The killer could have gotten into her room from the outside and escaped the same way without anyone seeing him.”

“It was late at night,” Curt said. “Dolly’s was way out in the country. Secluded. The killer would have had no problem escaping into the night.”

“I think the killer has gotten away with these murders due to luck, not skill,” Cameron said. “How did he control both Ava and Null without them running for help from the people in the rooms around her bedroom?”

“Maybe he had a gun,” Joshua said. “He just decided to use the duct tape because the shots would have attracted too much attention.”

“I’m hearing a lot of speculation and no proof of anything,” Curt said.

Cameron resumed scanning the reports. “Did Null and Tucker have any connection before that night?”

Joshua turned to the sheriff who shook his head while shrugging his shoulders. “These are two cold cases. I haven’t had a chance to read the reports yet.”

“Can I take them home to examine them more closely?” Cameron asked.

“No,” the sheriff replied. “Did that concussion make you forget that you don’t work in this state, let alone this county?”

With a chuckle, Joshua asked, “Can I check out these case files to go over them?”

“Yes, you may, Mr. County Prosecutor.”

While Joshua went about signing the roster to check out the case files, Cameron asked, “How many people would Virgil have told that he was going to a whore house? Do men advertise that type of stuff?”

“Dolly’s was a prestigious and very private club,” Curt told her.

“Null was only twenty-four years old,” Joshua noted from the file.

“His brother is a county commissioner,” she told him. “Dolly told me that.”

“According to a statement here from the bouncer,” Joshua said, “it was Null’s first time there, and he was very nervous.” He leafed through the other statements in the file. “The other witnesses all say the same thing. It was Null’s first time there. One witness noted in her statement that he looked scared to death.”

Curt said, “Maybe it was his first time in more ways than one.”

Ignoring the chuckle in the sheriff’s voice, Joshua asked, “If this club was so prestigious and private, how did this  twenty-four year old guy get in there?”

“Dolly said that perspective members had to be vouched for by current members,” Cameron said.

“We’re talking about people who have both power and money.” Joshua leafed back to the first page of the police  report. “Virgil’s occupation is listed as a gardener in his father’s landscaping business.”

“He certainly didn’t have the money to pay for any club membership,” Cameron said.

“Unless he got the money from his daddy,” Curt said.

“Brandon Null was the type to belong to those types of places,” Joshua said in agreement. “Virgil’s father is retired now. His son Russell is running the business and on the board of county commissioners. I think I’m going to go have a talk to him.”

Cameron said, “Meanwhile, I’ll poke around to see if I can find the connection between all of these murders.”

“I thought you were on medical leave,” Curt said.

“Cameron is reopening a cold case that smells funny to her in her own jurisdiction.” Joshua winked at her while saying, “Douglas O’Reilly. Mike Gardner’s birth father.”

Cameron turned to Curt. “What do you think? What are the odds of three members of the same family all being killed separately without there being a connection?”

“Pretty bad,” Curt said. “Was Mike Gardner’s father murdered?”

“His car was found at the bottom of a lake, just like Mike’s,” she said. “His death was ruled a suicide. His mother swore that it wasn’t. The police have been stonewalling her for years claiming that she was refusing to accept the truth.” She gestured at the case files in the boxes. “Now, I’m thinking it would be worth taking a closer look.”