Murder Casts a Shadow Read online

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I just kept walking,” Mia said. “I thought I was going to go to where we used to go. But then I kept walking. The more I walked, the more I knew I didn’t want to do that anymore. It’s one thing when you’re in rehab,” she said, looking up at her father. “But when you’re out, and you’re back in that world again, it’s not so easy. That’s why I came back home. I figured that all the dealers I used to know would either be dead or in jail. I could start over and I’d have you and Mom to help me and the kids were safe with you.”

  Troy could sense that Leo wanted to trust his daughter but feared that he was acting like her father.

  “Mrs. Shaw,” Troy said, “you understand that Mrs. Knesbit’s murder involves you.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Why did you faint when you learned that someone on the bus trip had been murdered?”

  “I was afraid that Travis had done it to scare me,” she answered. “So that I’d know he was serious about taking the kids if I didn’t let him see them. But I can’t let him see them because he will take them. I know he will.”

  “Do you have anything to back up your belief that he killed Mrs. Knesbit?”

  “No. Just what I learned from Carmela Dixon.”

  “And what was that?”

  “She told me that she saw a man with Mrs. Knesbit’s purse. She followed him. She saw him following me. She tried to take the purse from him.”

  “Are you and Mrs. Dixon friends?”

  Mia shook her head. He remembered Kelly saying that Mia looked as if she didn’t have enough to eat and didn’t get enough sleep. He agreed with both assessments; her eyes were too big for her face and had circles underneath. He knew that, whatever her financial situation, her parents would not let her go without meals. It was something else that was keeping her on edge. Being a suspect in a murder investigation, and having a predatory ex-husband, were more than most people would be able to handle with aplomb, particularly after just coming out of rehab.

  “She called me late last week,” Mia said. “She told me what had happened at Punxsutawney. She said she didn’t believe I was involved. It was so good to hear someone who’d been on the trip say that,” Mia told them, sagging against the back of the couch. “She told me what happened. The man she described . . . it sounds like it might have been Travis.”

  “Mia, why didn’t you tell me this?” her father wanted to know. “There’s a murder investigation going on.”

  “I know, Daddy, I know. But everything just keeps coming at me and I don’t know how to juggle it all. At rehab, we had therapy sessions for when we felt like this. But I don’t have that now. All I can do is what I’ve been doing. I walk, I volunteer at the church, I go to the library sometimes . . . the librarian is so nice and so helpful. She said I could volunteer there. But I’d need clearances and I’ll never get those, not with my past. I feel like I’ll never get everything to work at the same time.”

  “If you didn’t have to worry about Travis,” Leo said, “you wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.”

  “I’ll always have to worry about Travis, Daddy,” Mia whispered. “He’s out of prison now.”

  “If he’s dealing drugs, he’s going to end up right back in prison. How did he end up here, anyway?”

  “I’m here, the kids are here,” his daughter said wearily. “And I think he has some friends here. Or someone. A supplier, someone. I think he has a car, too, but I’m not sure if it really belongs to him. He was in an old, beat-up car—”

  “What make?” Leo and Troy asked in unison.

  It relieved the tension as both men laughed, and even Mia smiled.

  “It’s a dark something. I saw a Chevy logo. I don’t know the model, though. It was a cloudy night and I wasn’t really paying attention to his car. I wish I could help more,” she said sorrowfully.

  “You’ve helped quite a bit, Mrs. Shaw,” Troy told her. He and Leo stood up. “We’ll probably have more questions, but don’t be alarmed if you see me again, okay?”

  He wondered if the fear would ever leave her eyes, even though she nodded. Her father reminded her to lock her door.

  Back in the squad car, Troy said, “If we can get Carmela Dixon to identify the man who was carrying Mrs. Knesbit’s purse, and we can get Mia to identify that man as her ex-husband, we’ve got the first solid lead in breaking this case.”

  “There’s still nothing directly tying that no-good bum to the murder. There’s no motive. Why would he kill Mrs. Knesbit? I doubt if he even knew her.”

  “Maybe not. Probably not,” Troy admitted. “But he was in Punxsutawney and he was seen with her purse.”

  “The lab didn’t find fingerprints on the purse,” Leo reminded him.

  “Would you have expected them to? It was winter. He was wearing gloves.”

  “Yeah,” Leo said, sounding defeated.

  “But both Carmela and your daughter have personal reasons for wanting this to be over. If they’ll help us, we can at least confirm a few things. And maybe we can trick Shaw into confirming his guilt.”

  “Mia is so afraid of Travis that I don’t know if she’ll do anything to risk the kids’ safety. I can’t say that I blame her.”

  “One step at a time. First, Carmela. She’s not afraid of Shaw. Wary of him, but not afraid. She doesn’t know him. And she’s feeling the pressure of being a suspect. Mrs. Stark is camping out at the library; she had Carmela put on leave while the investigation is ongoing.”

  “I heard about that.”

  “The Starks have too much power in this town.”

  But Leo wasn’t ready to tackle that problem. “If the murder is solved and Travis is the killer, then Carmela gets her job back. Mia gets a chance to live without fearing that the kids are going to be abducted. It’s worth a try.”

  16

  Kelly on the Outside

  Kelly went to Carmela’s house after work, in response to the phone call she had received earlier in the day. Carmela met her at the door and led her to the living room.

  “If the real killer is found,” she asked immediately, “will you speak up for me at the board meeting at the end of the month? So I can get my job back?”

  “I’m going to speak up for you anyway, whether or not the killer is found,” Kelly said indignantly. “You don’t think I’m going to ignore what happened? Mrs. Stark might be the president of the board, and she might have the other officers cowed, but she can’t dictate to the entire board. Sarah Duso is furious at what happened, and you know there’s no power on earth that will silence Sarah. I talked to her at the coffee hour after church and she was . . . well, you know Sarah.”

  “What about the other board members?”

  “I haven’t talked to all of them. With Mrs. Stark at the library all the hours that I’m there, I don’t have much of a chance to probe them. But Sarah said she talked to Denny and Nadia, and they’re all of the same mind.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Carmela said.

  “You sound as if you didn’t think they’d feel this way.”

  “I know that I’m not always easy to get along with,” Carmela said, not meeting Kelly’s eyes.

  “You didn’t deserve to be put on leave,” Kelly said firmly. “You could sue the library for something. That’s what Denny says.”

  “I don’t want to sue anyone. I just want my job back.”

  Impulsive as she always was, Kelly leaned over to hug Carmela. Carmela, unaccustomed to such gestures, awkwardly returned the hug.

  As Kelly drove away, she wondered whether Carmela and her late husband had hugged very often. A married hug shouldn’t feel like it was something done by wooden marionettes.

  She pulled into the parking space behind the police car in front of the station and walked in. Troy was alone, paperwork before him.

  “Hi,” he greeted, standing up as she entered. “Nice to see you.”

  “I just talked to Carmela,” Kelly sa
id. “She sounds like she has some way of solving the murder.” Her brown eyes were accusatory. “The only way she’d have a plan is if she’s gotten one from you. Are you holding out on me?”

  “It’s a little more intricate than that,” Troy said weakly. “Leo doesn’t want anyone to know. He doesn’t want the Starks to know. He didn’t say that—he still won’t come out and admit the truth about them—but he said not to tell you because there are too many people coming in and out of the library.”

  “I’m not likely to blurt out anything, especially with Mrs. Stark there. So, what gives?”

  She deserved to know, Troy realized. But an order was an order, and Leo was the police chief.

  “I can’t tell you everything,” he said. He held up his hands as Kelly drew in her breath before responding. “But I’ll tell you this much. Mia Shaw can probably identify the person Carmela saw with Mrs. Knesbit’s purse. We still don’t know why Mrs. Knesbit was killed—and I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re going to find that out—but if we can connect Mia’s ex-husband to the murder scene, we may not have to prove a motive. Cash was missing from her purse. Robbery might be motive enough.”

  “But you can’t tell me any more than that? Even though you know I can keep my mouth shut, and I won’t tell anyone anything?”

  “Kelly—”

  She had gotten up to leave. “I thought you trusted me,” she said as she went out of the police station.

  “I do,” he said softly in the silence of the empty office. “But an order is an order.”

  Kelly returned home feeling as if she had been abandoned. She and Troy were friends. Maybe more than that. How could he withhold what he knew when she was the one who had pressed him to get involved in the case? He had said that it wasn’t up to the local police, but she had insisted that he was wrong. When he finally acted on her words, he had found that she was right. The murder had taken place in Punxsutawney, but the killing had its roots in Settler Springs.

  Her reliable measures for getting over the blues failed. She took a long, hot bath and got into her favorite flannel nightshirt. She turned on the Hallmark Channel to watch a movie that would have a guaranteed happily ever after ending. She ate a bowl of toffee butter pecan ice cream with chocolate sauce while she watched the movie. She drank a cup of chamomile tea before going to bed.

  Nothing worked. The digital numbers on the clock marked her lost hours of sleep. Finally, she surrendered to her emotions and sobbed into her pillow, crying for reasons that she couldn’t even understand. The crying helped and she finally fell asleep.

  Troy had learned a long time ago that if he compartmentalized his feelings, he could function better in the short term. So, he put his distress at disappointing Kelly to the side and concentrated on the plan that he and Leo had devised.

  • Find out where Travis Shaw was living.

  • Identify the car.

  • Keep Mia Shaw and Carmela ready so that they would be able to respond as soon as they were needed.

  • Keep an eye on the parking lot goings-on so they’d know when the next drug delivery would be taking place.

  For the last task, he knew that police car patrols wouldn’t work. They needed someone inside the high-rise for that, and to find that person, they needed Mrs. Hammond. Ordinarily, he would have enlisted Kelly in this task, since she knew the older lady from the library’s program delivering books to the elderly and those who stayed inside during inclement weather. But Leo was adamant. No one could know. Since Leo was not involving the mayor in the plan, Troy could not include Kelly.

  Mrs. Hammond was more than happy to oblige him, and she had no problem in vowing secrecy. “I’ll just ask Rosa if she’s seen anything lately,” she said. “Her apartment faces the parking lot and she’s a night owl.”

  “She’ll wonder why you’re asking.”

  “She knows why I’m asking,” Mrs. Hammond responded tartly. “She knows what went on in the alley here. She knows I’m concerned.”

  “Will she call you as soon as she notices that something’s going on in the parking lot?” Troy asked.

  “She’ll be glad to. The hard part will be getting off the phone so I can let you know.”

  Mrs. Hammond chuckled as she said this but Troy, well acquainted with the loquacity of some of his elderly neighbors, wasn’t appeased. They had to know immediately, he explained.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Mrs. Hammond said. “I’ll get off the phone. I’ll tell her I have to go to the bathroom. She understands the need for haste at our age. I suppose that’s TMI?” she asked.

  Troy laughed. “Not for a policeman,” he said.

  Tia Krymanski called the police station the following evening. “I don’t know what this means,” she said, “but I’m supposed to tell you that it’s a Chevy Cavalier.”

  “A Chevy Cavalier. Tell Lucas to tell his friends thanks.”

  “I thought you were going to tell them to stay away from trouble?”

  “I did,” he said. “With any luck, it won’t matter in a little while.”

  “Okay,” Tia said. “Well, back to work. I didn’t see you and Kelly this weekend. Didn’t you go running on the Trail?”

  “No,” Troy lied. “I had some schoolwork that I had to get done.”

  Leo, when informed of the make of the car that Travis Shaw was reportedly driving, had the same reaction as Tia. “Are those kids still hanging around there? And is something going on that your contact didn’t tell us about?”

  “I’m betting that Lucas pressed his friends to try to remember more details. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. And nothing has happened. I’m pretty confident of that.”

  “I hope that’s true. I want this solved.”

  “What about the state police?”

  “They’ll find out after we take care of things,” Leo said.

  It was progress, Troy realized. Leo still wasn’t ready to tackle the monolithic power of the Starks and the Truverts, but he was at least willing to show some independence rather than relying on the state police the way that Chief Stark had always done.

  “What happened at the council meeting?” he asked, keeping his voice casual with an effort. “Anything new?”

  “Nothing that matters to us,” Leo said vaguely.

  Which probably meant, Troy decided, that something had indeed happened. Was Chief Stark closer to getting his job back? Did Leo realize that and was that why he was intent on solving the murder before Chief Stark could meddle in the operation? That presumed that Chief Stark was involved in the drug part of it, a notion which was entirely credible to Troy but which, he knew, Leo was not yet ready to confront. Leo wanted his daughter out of danger and that meant sending her ex-husband back to prison. A murder conviction, even if on something as flimsy as a robbery charge, would put Travis Shaw behind bars forever. If Travis Shaw had any connection to the drug operation that Scotty Stark had been running before his arrest, he might not divulge the fact, for fear that the long arms of the criminal network would silence him. If he was going to go to prison for murder anyway, might be the reasoning, why risk his safety behind bars to expose anyone in the drug trade.

  That was Troy’s reasoning anyway, and he had a strong inkling, much as he wished otherwise, that he would be proven right. If all went as planned, Travis Shaw would go back to prison, charged with murder and robbery; Lyola Knesbit, just a tourist on Groundhog Day, would be viewed as a random victim. The web that the Starks had woven would not be mentioned. Small towns held onto their secrets.

  17

  The Parking Lot Surveillance

  Ever since she had been solicited by Mrs. Hammond, Rosa Dereskewicz had made parking lot surveillance the main event of her nightly routine. Mrs. Hammond had told her friend that she was thinking of putting her name on the list to move into the high-rise. But if she was going to move, she wanted to be sure that whatever was going on in the parking lot was taken care of. Eager to have her longtime friend join her in the high-
rise, and just as zealous to find out if crime was indeed taking place outside her window, Rosa took up her position in her living room nightly. She had her binoculars ready if anything happened. Everyone knew that cars were appearing briefly and then leaving; no one wanted to make an issue of it for fear that it was something really bad. One of the residents of the high-rise thought it was the Mafia. Another attributed the occasional presence of new cars to youth gangs. For others, it was something to be ignored; it only happened later at night, it didn’t affect the daytime routine of the residents, and it was best to mind their own business.

  Rosa had never put much stock in minding her own business. So, she sat on her recliner, the television turned down low, and looked out the window after the sun set. The cars usually didn’t show up until eight o’clock or so, when most people were home and settled in for the night. Rosa was ready for them; she had a thermos of coffee and a tray of snacks at her side when she got hungry.

  It was funny, Rosa thought, that the weather didn’t seem to matter. Even if it was snowing to beat the band, the cars might show up, their wipers clearing their windshields as they got out of their cars, which they left running, to approach the car that didn’t move, although it too, remained running throughout the span of time that it was in the lot. Snow made it harder to see from her window. Which was why she was glad that the old junker that always came first showed up in the parking lot on a clear, cold, snowless night, with the moon overhead. She reached for her phone.

  Troy was glad, too. It would be easier for Carmela to identify whether the man in the parking lot was the same man she’d seen in Punxsutawney. She was in the front seat, bundled against the cold. Leo was in the back. Troy was in the driver’s seat, but the car was turned off, no lights, no exhaust to give away the hiding place across the street in the unoccupied driveway of a house that had been abandoned years ago and was slated to be demolished in the spring.