Rose Hill (35 page)

Tommy told Ed and his mother everything that happened the night Theo died, and Ed was appalled at the magnitude of the secret the young boy had been keeping. Mandy and Ed spent the night talking in the curtained off area, with the young boy sleeping between them.

After Maggie called her, Sarah jumped into her county vehicle, and by using the lights and siren, and despite the treacherous roads, was in Rose Hill within forty-five minutes. Frank met her and a deputy at Phyllis’s trailer, but Billy was gone by then, along with Phyllis’s car and some money she had hidden in the freezer.

Phyllis, drunk to the point of losing consciousness, was not helpful with inquiries. As Sarah left the trailer, she saw a neighbor lurking nearby and went up to her.

“Did you see Billy leave?” she asked her, and the woman shook her head no, and quickly went back inside.

Sarah drove to Scott’s house and was infuriated to find Maggie there. Sarah was used to intimidating people, and didn’t know how to handle Maggie’s firm refusal to let her in.

“Unless you have a warrant to arrest him or to search this house,” Maggie said, “you are not getting past me.”

Sarah glared at Maggie for a moment before stalking back to her police cruiser.

“Bite me, Tiny Crimefighter,” Maggie said to her retreating back, and then shut the door.

Maggie sat with Scott for several hours, putting fresh ice packs on his head and the back of his neck, thirty minutes on and thirty minutes off, which seemed to help.

Fierce, protective feelings rose up inside her, manifesting as anger toward anyone who might hurt him, and a willingness to do anything to make sure he was all right. If someone was going to look after him, she thought, it was going to be her, and not Sarah Albright. Whether that was love or something less honorable, she stayed until she was sure the other woman wasn’t coming back.

When he finally seemed to fall deeply to sleep, she put his next dose of medication and a glass of ice water on the night table, cleaned up the bathroom, and left.

When Scott awoke, he had a migraine hangover he’d gladly have traded for the more manageable alcoholic version. He was in his own bed, a glass of water on the bedside table along with one tablet of his migraine medicine, and a note from Maggie that read: “I called Sarah–take one pill–get some rest. M.” He reached for his pill and swallowed it with some water. His throat was sore and the cold water felt good.

Scott heard the combination “bubububub” and “wheeeeee” purr which was Maggie’s vintage VW bug starting up in the driveway
, and realized she must have awakened him by closing the door as she left. What did “I called Sarah” mean? He was too weak and sick to think about it, and he no longer cared about anything except, where was Maggie going? When was she coming back? Those questions were his last lucid thoughts as he drifted back down into a peaceful, unaware state of less pain, less pain, and finally, no pain.

When Scott raised his sore head to look at the clock on his bedside table he saw it was just after 7:00 a.m. Outside the snow was pouring down, darkening the sky so that it seemed more like night than day. There were ten to twelve inches of snow on his front porch, and the weather forecaster on the radio said they were likely get six to eight more before it was over. Scott took a shower and got dressed, moving slowly, still feeling clammy and shaky.

He discovered Maggie had turned off the ringer on his phone, and he had fifteen messages. Instead of listening to them he called the station and Frank brought him up to date. Someone had just reported finding Billy, who had crashed his mother’s car in a sharp curve on Pine Mountain Road the night before. Tommy had been in an accident as well but was okay, and Sarah was going to interview him as soon as he got home from the emergency room. Scott reluctantly called Sarah, got her voice mail, and left a message, relieved not to have to talk to her.

Scott was looking for a coffee filter when someone knocked on his back door. It was Curtis Fitzpatrick, his tow truck idling behind him in the alley.

“That sheriff lady’s back in town looking for you. We’re headed up the mountain to get Phyllis’s car; thought you might want to ride along.”

Scott put on his warmest coat, boots, gloves, and hat, and joined Patrick and Curtis in the wrecker cab. Patrick handed him a bag full of doughnuts and a cup of hot coffee.

“Compliments of my mother,” he told Scott.

“God bless her,” Scott said before sipping the scalding hot coffee.

Curtis drove them up the alley to
Morning Glory Avenue, took a right and then a left onto Pine Mountain Road, where they met a waiting snowplow. The snowplow driver led them up the mountain at what felt like ten miles per hour. Over the scanner radio they listened to the ambulance driver report Billy’s condition as critical at the scene of the wreck.

“Driving that old Buick with bald tires in this weather…” Curtis said grimly.

Patrick asked him how his head was and Scott said, “Okay, now. Were you there?”

“Yep,” Patrick nodded. “But it was Maggie who stayed.”

Slowly, they climbed the mountain, and at one point, an ambulance crept past them going in the opposite direction, lights flashing but with no siren. They could see the paramedics inside, working on Billy as they passed.

“How’d they find him?” Scott asked.

“Snowplow driver coming down the mountain saw the guard rail down and the trees broken over in the ravine, and knew they hadn’t been that way when he went up earlier,” Curtis said. “Glencora paramedics pulled him out. He’s lucky he didn’t freeze to death.”

On the drive home from the emergency clinic, Mandy was quiet, and kept her eyes fastened on the road ahead, looking as if she believed she could keep the truck from sliding if she was vigilant enough. The snow covered the roads again as fast as they were
plowed. Ed took them home, helped Mandy get Tommy to the bathroom and then to bed.

“Thank you for everything,” she said, with tears in her eyes.

He smiled at her, said, “I will check on you both later,” and left.

Ed stopped at the press office long enough to wake up Hank, take him for a short walk in the alley to pee, and then he delivered the town’s papers, several hours late. He didn’t even bother to roll them, just carried a paper to each subscriber’s front door and apologized for the delay. It felt good to do something repetitive, and not have to think too hard about it. After his task was finished, and the vending machines were loaded, he shut down the computers and lights in the office, and locked the front door.

He saw an ambulance, with lights blazing but no siren, rolling slowly down Pine Mountain road before it turned right at the light. The lights were on inside the ambulance and Ed could see the EMT's working on someone. He wondered if it was Billy.

Ed turned around and unlocked the door to the news office, and Hank looked at him, head cocked to the side as if to say, ‘what are we doing now?’

“I also write the news,” he told the dog.

There were few vehicles out on Pine Mountain Road save road crews and emergency workers. The road to Glencora stayed plowed no matter how bad the weather, in order for tourists to be able to get to the ski resorts, and the state road workers driving the big plows waved to the men in the wrecker as they passed, plowing in the opposite direction.

“They’ll be out all day,” Curtis said. “This is a nor’easter.”

Scott was glad for the coffee to counteract the sedative effects of his migraine medication. He was also glad to be with Curtis and Patrick, who seemed invincible and impervious even to the forces of nature. Patrick, usually the chattiest member of the family, was unusually quiet, and Curtis, a quiet man, was his usual self. They listened to the scanner and followed the snowplow, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

Scott was trying to piece the case together in his mind, with the view that Billy killed Theo, and trying to account for the threads that didn’t fit this scenario. He thought about Phyllis thinking Billy could be Brad’s son, and thus heir to part of the Eldridge fortune. If Billy had heard any part of the exchange between Theo and Phyllis, and thought by killing Theo he could inherit the Eldridge family’s money, there was a powerful motive.

But how had Willy ended up in the river? Was it just an accident? He wondered if Billy would live long enough to answer any of those questions. He figured Sarah would meet the ambulance at the hospital and question Billy, if he was in any shape to be questioned.

He wondered if he should have listened to those fifteen messages on his voice mail. He thought, and not for the first time, that he was not a very good policeman. Maybe he could become a firefighter instead. Except the smoke would give him a migraine and incapacitate him. Maybe he could tend bar at the Rose and Thorn, deep fry doughnuts at the bakery, or pump gas at the service station. Maybe Maggie would hire him as a barista in her café. He could get fat on pastries and sweet coffee drinks, and just be nice to people all day. That sounded good. There was no need to carry a gun or investigate your closest friends in that job.

As much as he loved his job, Scott thought maybe he wasn’t cut out to be the chief of police. Rose Hill deserved someone brave and unflinching in the face of any challenge; someone who stuck to the strict letter of the law no matter who got hurt; someone who didn’t care what anyone else thought of him; someone who couldn’t be so easily corrupted by redheads with big boobs and bad tempers. He was about as good a protector as Hank, snoozing by the fire in the newspaper office, or Lazy Ass Laddie at Bonnie and Fitz’s house.

‘It’s no wonder Maggie doesn’t want me,’ he thought. ‘I’m a lazy, incompetent coward, stopped dead in my tracks by perfume and cigarette smoke.'

His gloomy, depressed thoughts matched the scene outside: snow flying sideways against a gray sky and barren black trees frosted with white.

“Cheer up,” Patrick said, as he elbowed him in the ribs. “It could be worse.”

“How’s that?” Scott asked.

“You could be dead.”

“You’re right,” Scott said. “At least we’re not dead.”

“It’s still early, boys,” Curtis said, as they pulled off the road at the site of the wreck, which was marked by flares. “Let’s not celebrate just yet.”

Going back down the mountain a few hours later, with Phyllis’s Buick winched up behind the truck, the tire chains jingled like bells on a sleigh. Frank radioed from the police station to say Billy was dead on arrival at the county hospital. Scott thought but didn’t say that with him went all hope of a confession, and any of Scott’s questions answered.

In Rose Hill, snow was pouring down in big downy clusters, and both sky and landscape were clad in its ghostly gray and white cloak. The city looked deserted, and most of the businesses were closed.

Curtis parked the wrecker beside the service station and went inside to relieve his brother Ian, who was covering his shift. Patrick and Scott went to PJ's and ordered some pizza to be delivered across the street to the bar. When they entered the Rose and Thorn, kicking the snow off their boots and removing their heavy outer garments, Ian was already there, sipping his first beer of the day.

“I’m glad it’s Sunday and we don’t have to open,” the older man said. “We probably wouldn’t have any customers even if we did.”

Scott realized he had once again missed church and a meal at his mother’s, and called her, prepared to grovel and make excuses. She surprised him, however, by telling him
that Maggie had stopped her before church to tell her about Scott’s migraine.

She further surprised her son by adding, “I’ve always liked Maggie. You ought to bring her for dinner sometime.”

Scott hung up thinking he should probably write this date down somewhere, so he could remember when his mother’s first dementia symptoms began.

After they ate, Scott decided to go see Tommy and take his statement, hoping to save the boy from being interrogated by Sarah. He was asleep when Scott got to their trailer, and Mandy wasn’t about to let anyone wake him up. She went on and on about how Ed had saved his life, and had driven them to the emergency clinic in a blinding snowstorm. Scott listened patiently, foreseeing many free drinks and doughnuts in Ed’s future.

Scott went down to the newspaper office and found Ed working on his account of Theo’s murder for Pendleton’s daily newspaper.

“They can have it in tomorrow’s edition, but I won’t have another Sentinel published
for a week,” he said. “I thought about putting together a special edition, but the God’s honest truth is I’m just too damned tired. You don’t look so good yourself.”

Scott sat down at the work table and Ed sat across from him.

“How do you know what happened?” Scott asked. “Did Billy confess to someone?”

“Tommy told us,” Ed said. “After the fight at Phyllis’s, Tommy saw Billy follow Theo down the alley. Tommy was afraid to be in the alley with them, so he ran down Iris Avenue and hid in the walkway between the antique store and the insurance office, to see where they went. He saw Theo banging on the windows of Willy Neff’s truck, which was parked in front of the antique store, and then cursing when he couldn’t get in. He saw Theo take the bat out of the bed of the truck, cross the street, and go behind the vet’s office. Billy, who was hiding in the alley, followed Theo, carrying a piece of the iron pipe railing which used to be in front of the antique store.”

“The murder weapon,” Scott interrupted, and Ed nodded.

“A few minutes later Billy came back with the piece of pipe still in his hand. Tommy said Billy looked in the windows of Willy’s truck, then pushed in the vent window, reached inside the truck to unlock the door, got in, started it, and drove the truck down the street into the fog. Tommy heard the truck door slam, and then heard the truck roll down the hill into the water, but he couldn’t see anything through the fog. He also couldn’t see where Billy went afterward.”

“Wait a minute,” Scott said. “If the fog was so thick Tommy couldn’t see the river, then he couldn’t have seen the barriers were down. That means Billy couldn’t have known they were down either. How far down the street did Billy take the truck before he let it roll?”

“Tommy couldn’t see,” Ed said. “My guess is he let it roll from the intersection of Pine Mountain Road and Lotus Avenue, so it only had to roll a couple hundred feet. He had Willy passed out in the truck, so if he just wanted to plant the murder weapon on him, he could have left him parked on the street. I think he knew the barriers were down, thought Willy would be found drowned with the murder weapon, and everyone would assume Willy killed Theo.”

“Tommy didn’t know Willy was in the truck?”

“Willy must have been passed out across the front seats. Tommy didn’t know Willy was in the truck until they pulled it out of the river. He though
t Billy was just getting rid of the pipe in an empty truck.”

Scott thought the pipe was probably still in the cab of Willy’s truck, which was sitting in the parking lot behind the station.

“That poor kid; he must have been terrified.”

“He said he waited a few minutes to make sure Billy wasn’t coming back, and then he w
ent home. Said he got home right ahead of his mom, and got in bed, pretended to be asleep. Of course, he couldn’t sleep. He heard Billy come home later, and crept out to the front room so he could see what he was doing. Tommy saw him come out again, carrying a bag. He disappeared into the fog, and Tommy doesn’t know where he went.”

“Getting rid of the clothes he wore to kill Theo.”

“That’s my guess,” Ed said. “Tommy said he went back to bed, but didn’t fall asleep until morning. He really did oversleep, and that’s why he didn’t show up for work. He felt bad about it. He had no idea I would be the one to find Theo.”

“And he’s been keeping this secret all this time.”

“He hoped that by telling us he saw Billy fight with Theo that it would be enough to put us onto him. He was too afraid to tell the rest of it for fear Billy would hurt him or his mom. When he heard about Willy being drowned in the truck he really panicked. Then last night he heard Billy threaten to kill Phyllis if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, and came to get me. I wasn't in the office so he turned around and went back down the alley, just as I turned the corner and saw him. Then I heard a car come crashing down the alley...”