The Fred Vickery Mystery Series: Books 1-3 (Fred Vickery Mysteries) Read online

  This time Fred thought her eyes held a little less contempt. “I really couldn’t say,” she said. “I haven’t spoken with her for some time.”

  Or maybe he’d only imagined the softening he thought he saw. A sick feeling began to grow in the pit of his stomach. Surely she couldn’t believe that ridiculous story. He studied her face for some sign that she at least had questions, but saw nothing.

  Enos jerked his head toward the door. “Maybe you should wait outside, Fred.”

  That wouldn’t do, so Fred raised one hand in a gesture of surrender and tried to look contrite. He’d just have to hold onto his questions until he got her away from Enos.

  With a little sniff of satisfaction, Enos sat again and fiddled with his pencil. “How long has it been since you spoke with her?”

  “About ten years.”

  Fred barely held back a comment, but ten years?

  “Why was that?” Enos asked.

  Kate shrugged. “No particular reason. We just drifted apart. People do, you know.”

  People do. Friends might. Sisters don’t. Fred knew he should keep his mouth shut but he had to make sure he’d heard her right. “You haven’t spoken to Joan in ten years?”

  Kate studied him again with those hard eyes and slowly turned back to Enos. “I don’t think that matters.”

  “Of course it matters,” Fred insisted.

  Enos’s face turned so red, Fred thought maybe Doc ought to check his blood pressure. But when he spoke, it almost sounded as if he’d taken Fred’s side. “It may have some bearing on her state of mind at the time of her death.”

  Kate looked confused. “I don’t see how.”

  Fred snorted and his hopes of finding an ally circled the drain.

  Enos shot him another warning glance. “Then you really don’t know if she was suicidal? Whether she’d been depressed or upset about anything before she died?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Did she have a history of instability when she was younger?”

  “Instability? No.”

  Fred sighed. Nothing more. But Enos pointed at him and Fred felt another warning coming.

  Luckily, Kate interrupted and gave Fred a reprieve. “Our family was not a typical one,” she said. “Our mother died when we were both quite young. Our father was Russell Talbot—perhaps you’ve heard of him. The Talbot Group kept him extremely busy, both before and after my mother’s death. We rarely saw him.

  “Joan and I were quite close as children, but as we grew older things changed. We had different goals. Different interests. After my father died, I worked in the Talbot Group for a year or two until it dissolved. After that, I moved on to a profession I found more rewarding, and since then I’ve pursued my career with a great deal of success. Joan never wanted any part of that life. The only thing she ever wanted was to create the perfect family—at least her idea of the perfect family: mother, father, and two-point-three children. Obviously, we had nothing in common, and it should come as no surprise that we drifted apart.”

  Fred sensed a hint of something he didn’t like. A note of disapproval for Joan’s choice. A suggestion, unspoken but clear, that Joan’s choice had been the lesser one. That Joan had somehow failed a test with her decisions.

  Enos looked a little taken aback by her words, too. “In your opinion, would Joan have been likely to commit suicide?”

  She crossed her legs and adjusted her purse on her lap. “How can I answer that? I don’t know what she was like before she died.”

  Enos made a note and looked back up at her, his eyes steady. “I think that’s all for tonight, Miss Talbot. Thank you for your time. I would like to talk with you again before you leave town, though.”

  She nodded curtly and stood. Fred hadn’t expected her to be so tall. Joan had been petite, but Kate stood nearly as tall as Fred himself.

  Enos yawned hugely. He looked tired. His body sagged as if he carried a great weight, and dark rims had formed beneath his bloodshot eyes. He massaged his face with an open hand.

  “Why don’t you go home?” Fred urged.

  Enos shook his head. “Can’t. Too much to do. I feel better already now that I know she has a place to stay tonight. Maggie didn’t have any problem finding the room?”

  Fred hesitated and in that instant, Enos’s eyes flew to his face.

  “You did ask Maggie, didn’t you?”

  “Well, now, I got to thinking that she’s got all those kids at home and their place is so small—”

  Enos brought his chair upright sharply. His eyes narrowed distrustfully, but he didn’t speak.

  “—and there I am just rattling around in that old house with all that extra room.”

  Enos made a noise suspiciously like a growl.

  Kate had been following their conversation like someone watching a tennis match. Now she said, “You expect me to stay with you? I don’t think so. I’ll get a room somewhere.”

  “There aren’t any other choices,” Fred said, but his eyes never left Enos’s face. “But it’s no problem at all. You can stay with me as long as you want. And I’ll be glad to show you around town . . . take you anywhere you need to go while you’re here.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” she said stiffly, “but I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Nonsense,” Fred protested. “Got the room all made up for you. Used to be my daughter’s. Plenty of privacy, and I’m a pretty good cook if I do say so myself. I’ll fix you up a breakfast in the morning you’ll never forget.”

  She opened her mouth to protest again, but Enos sent her a weak smile and said, “Cutler’s a small town, Miss Talbot. We don’t have a hotel and the Bed and Breakfast isn’t available for a few days. After Fred said he’d work something out with Maggie, I didn’t bother making arrangements.” He turned a venomous look on Fred. “If you can put up with him for one night, I’ll work something else out tomorrow.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t be staying. The only thing I need to do is speak with Joan’s banker in the morning. I plan to leave after that.”

  Fred’s mouth fell open in shock. “But what about the funeral?”

  “I’m sure Brandon will make adequate funeral arrangements and I really need to get back to San Francisco. I’m in the middle of an important ad campaign.”

  A campaign that was more important than her sister’s funeral? The more she talked, the less Fred liked her. If that didn’t prove there was some issue between the sisters, he didn’t know what would. He sent Enos a look that said I told you so and told himself that he didn’t need to like Kate Talbot. He just needed to pull her around to his way of thinking—by tomorrow.

  He pushed up out of his chair, crossed to the door and pulled it open for her. She came toward him a little reluctantly. As she drew abreast of him, she looked at him with something like curiosity in her eyes. At least the blatant hostility had vanished for the moment. And even if it came back, he could put up with anything for the sake of the truth. For a while.

  Fred could feel Enos watching them as he led Kate down the steps. He nodded toward a dark-colored Chevy parked next to Enos’s truck. “Is that your car?”

  She nodded and glanced around at the empty parking spaces. “Where’s yours?”

  “At home. I walked. Hope you don’t mind giving an old man a lift.” Fred rounded the car as he spoke and tried the passenger door. It was locked, and before she could get inside, Enos called her back.

  Chilled and impatient, Fred waited for her beside the car. He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, but the action only brought more pain to his already inflamed fingers and did little to relieve the problem in his neck.

  Enos leaned toward her, his voice low and covered by the wind making it impossible for Fred to hear what they said. After a minute, Enos touched his hand to his chest. Wonderful. He’d tell her about Fred’s bad heart. And he’d tell her not to let Fred get excited, not to let him talk about Joan because it would get him riled up and his heart might giv
e out.

  Now Fred not only had to get her to talk with him about Joan’s death, he had to convince her that she wouldn’t kill him by discussing it. Though he didn’t know whether or not she’d actually be concerned about that. She didn’t seem overly endowed with compassion and warmth.

  Finally, she unlocked the car and he got inside, but the air felt colder in the car than outside. Their breath became frosted mist when it hit the air. She turned the key in the ignition and as the engine caught, a blast of cold air from the heating system blew against Fred’s legs, sending the dull ache even deeper.

  “Which way?”

  Fred pointed at the intersection of Main and Lake Front, just a few feet away. Turn right up there. I’m two blocks down on the west side of the street, by the lake.”

  In less than two minutes, they were home. She didn’t look impressed, but Fred loved this house. He loved the rough log exterior, the wide front porch that ran the length of the house and the deck in back that overlooked the lake.

  Even now he could see the lake shimmering through the shadowy trees. It moved with the wind. Small silver waves pushed toward land with little force and ran out of energy as they moved ashore. Each wave melted upon the one before, merging with the sand and rocks in the night.

  Fred led her into the house and down the narrow hallway to the back bedroom, the one where Margaret had spent her entire childhood and where some signs of her still remained: a Cutler High School bumper sticker on the vanity mirror and the place she’d scratched Webb’s name into the wood of her dresser the night he proposed brought the young Margaret back to his memory. He liked this room. It felt good. He looked into it occasionally, when he needed a little something to help him through a long day.

  He pushed open the door and stood back to let Kate enter. He expected some recognition of the room’s goodness in her earthy brown eyes but received only scorn. Her mouth drooped and her eyes roamed without really touching anything.

  “This was my daughter’s room,” he said, hoping to spark something kinder in her face, but she returned an empty stare and a sullen mouth where her smile should have been.

  She looked at him expectantly, as if she wanted him to leave her alone. But that’s not how he planned it. He hovered a minute, hoping she would change her mind and join him in the living room. She didn’t give an inch.

  “Since you’re going to be staying here, it’ll be easier if you call me Fred . . .”

  She didn’t respond.

  “. . . and, of course, I’ll just call you Kate?”

  She didn’t even blink.

  He gave up reluctantly and showed her the bathroom and linen closet. Maybe in the morning she’d be more approachable. She must be tired after her long trip. Maybe she just needed a good night’s sleep. “If you need anything, just let me know,” he said, and topped it with a smile. “Good night, Kate.”

  She turned away and closed the door behind her without a word. What a strange woman! And what an odd, unemotional, almost void reaction to her sister’s death. Wouldn’t most women weep? Wouldn’t most people be angry or grief stricken? But Kate Talbot had showed absolutely no emotion. No matter what he’d said to Enos the other day, he couldn’t find justification for her behavior. She showed no more emotion than if she’d heard about the untimely death of a stranger. It didn’t seem . . . natural.

  Fred turned away from the door, all at once realizing how tired he was. The unbaked chicken was sitting in the oven, but Fred was too tired even to eat. The usual aches and pains had returned with force and he recognized the need to give up the fight for the night. Limping down the hallway to his room, he closed his own door behind him.

  He undressed quickly, crawling into the big old bed he’d shared with Phoebe for so many years. Even though she’d been gone two years, he still slept on his own side and after nearly fifty years of it, he didn’t suppose he’d ever change.

  He wondered how Brandon Cavanaugh was adjusting to sleeping alone. Did he feel as lonely, as inconsolable without his wife as Fred still did? Or was he relieved to be alone and glad that nobody suspected what he’d done?

  Stretching under the thick quilts, Fred hoped the warmth from his body would soon permeate the covers. He already knew he wouldn’t sleep well in this cold.

  He thought about phoning Margaret to see how she was, just to hear her voice and reassure himself that all was right with her world. But after a glance at the clock he decided to wait until morning. She would call him tomorrow. She always did.

  The wind moaned loudly and rustled the trees outside his window. Nature’s sounds didn’t bother him, he’d slept through everything imaginable in this valley, but beneath the storm, another sound reached his ears; a softer sound, but one that didn’t belong in his house.

  Groaning a little, he threw back the covers and got to his feet. He’d never sleep for wondering what it was. Something he’d left unlatched, maybe, or something one of the grandkids left lying around outside.

  Halfway down the hall, he passed Margaret’s door on his way to the kitchen, and pulled up short. The sound came again, slightly louder now. He stood for a moment, listening, then turned and crept quietly back toward his bedroom.

  He fell into bed, pulling the quilt up under his chin. No doubt Phoebe would think him wicked, lying in bed smiling at the sound of another person’s grief, but he liked Kate better for the tears and in them he found a certain sense of relief. She wasn’t the heartless woman she pretended to be and knowing this, he knew also that he could eventually reach her. Maybe he’d sleep well after all.

  six

  The lake shimmered under the pale morning light. In the early morning hours, the wind had finally died away, but not before it pushed a cold front into the valley. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees overnight, but even in this weather Fred loved the morning.

  He took his usual path on his walk, not from habit this time, but with a definite goal in mind. The sun had tinted everything amber by the time he reached the curve where he’d found Joan’s body—light enough to see clearly. He glanced around cautiously to make sure he was alone. Satisfied that nobody else was around, he carefully made his way down the embankment. The sheriff’s department had clamored all over the place and now a dozen different sets of footprints marred the earth. If Joan had walked to her death here, Fred would never be able to tell.

  Only a little discouraged, he climbed back to the path and walked slowly toward Doc’s place. Never once from the moment he found Joan in the lake, had he suspected she’d entered the water where he found her. He was convinced that her killer had put her in somewhere else along the shore. The Arkansas River flowed into the lake from the north; the current ran from northwest to southeast. For Joan’s body to wash up where it had, she must have been placed in the water somewhere along the west shoreline.

  A few houses dotted the shoreline here. Summer Dey owned the stretch farthest south, near the bottom of the lake, almost directly opposite Fred’s place. Doc’s extended a couple of miles to the north, and even farther north, the Kilburns owned nearly all of the lake front property between Doc’s place and the highway. It would be slow going for him to cover the whole west bank this morning, but he had to do it.

  He spent the next two hours climbing off the path every few dozen feet and inspecting the ground wherever the undergrowth permitted. In two places he found signs of recent activity, but all of the footprints looked much larger than Joan’s should have and none of them had been made by bare feet. It was just as he’d suspected.

  A little south of Doc’s property line, while still on Summer Dey’s land, he scrambled down a gentle slope toward the lake. Expecting to find nothing, he scanned the ground listlessly. Maybe he’d been wrong after all. Or maybe he’d been right, but he’d never find the evidence to prove it.

  Even when he actually found what he’d been looking for, it took a minute to register. Beside the path, the undergrowth had been crushed and where the mud showed through the gra
ss an occasional footprint, deeper than Fred’s own, had frozen into the soil.

  He stopped, letting the implications seep into his consciousness for a moment. He walked back toward the path a few feet, scanning more intently than before, but the undergrowth was thicker and the signs weren’t as readily apparent to his untrained eye.

  Near the lake, where the brush thinned and mud lay in a flat expanse near the shore, he found a clear set of footprints. Three prints close together, the last of which lay partially submerged in the cool blue water of the lake. Someone had moved through this clearing. Someone heavy—or someone with a heavy burden to carry. From the size of the prints, slightly larger than Fred’s own, he guessed they’d been made by a man.

  Excited by the discovery, Fred looked for evidence of another set of prints—a woman’s—but he already knew they weren’t there. Joan had been dead already when her killer brought her to the lake, and Fred knew he’d found the spot where the murderer had put her in the water. What would Enos make of this?

  From where he now stood, Fred could see the stretch of shore where he’d found Joan’s body. She would have floated easily in the current. Had Enos found this place? Had he even bothered to look? Fred thought not, or there would have been crime scene tape or something to keep people away.

  Trying to decide what to do with what he knew, he turned back toward the path. Something just under the surface of the water caught his eye. A pen. Shiny and gold, reflecting the sunlight. Reaching into the water, Fred picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It looked new. Obviously, it hadn’t been in the water long. Filing it away in his mind as a possible clue, he slipped it into his pocket and started for home.

  He’d been gone a long time. Kate would be wondering where he was or, worse, she’d be gone herself. But he was anxious to share what he’d found with her. Once she saw the evidence, she’d have to admit that Fred was right. And so would Enos.

  She was awake and sipping coffee in the living room when he got back. She’d been looking at the pictures that covered the surface of the big old oak table that had belonged to Phoebe’s mother. Every year Fred added a few new pictures to the clutter, but he steadfastly refused to remove any of the old ones. He just nudged them all closer together. His favorites, the old ones where Phoebe was young and the kids were small, stood at the back of the table; a faded history of the people he loved most at various life stages, evidence of time’s swift passage.