The Cantaloupe Thief (33 page)

“That's the angle we'll be working tonight,” the detective said. “We questioned Ramsey Resnick today as a Jericho Road volunteer. We'll backtrack to see if Heath could have obtained the van key through him.”

Branigan left, telling Detective Scovoy she'd swing by the next morning to get the latest information on his inquiry into Heath Resnick. If nothing else, it would provide the lead she needed for the anniversary story.

She stopped by the newsroom to update Jody and Marjorie. Resurrecting Heath as a suspect and introducing Amanda's presence at the murder scene wouldn't affect their stories, but she wanted to keep them in the loop. Luckily, Tan-4 had gone home, so she didn't have to tell him about his cousin's return to the suspect pool. Or maybe cousins, plural, if the police didn't entirely buy Amanda's story.

While Branigan was in the newsroom, she scrolled through her emails, discarding some, answering the rest. Julie asked her about a
Style
front for the Sunday after next. “Once I get past this anniversary story,” she promised, “I'll do anything you need.”

At 8 p.m. her laptop signaled it was time to call Davison. If she could get to the farm before dark, she planned to spend the night, so she hurried out into the last hour of daylight.

Halfway home, she called Davison and warbled the opening lines to “Rehab”.

“You used that already,” he replied.

“You sound tired.”

“Tired of your singing.”

“Ouch. What's up?”

He sighed. “Not a thing. Just learning why I got to say ‘no, no, no' no matter what.

“‘Nothing going to get better by putting dope on it.' ‘Nothing so bad dope can't make it worse.' ‘Sick and tired of being sick and tired.' More like sick and tired of all this recovery crap.”

“You're in a mood.”

“Aw, I'm fine. It's just that I've been through this so many times before. I
know
what I have to do to stay sober.”

She held her tongue.

He said it for her. Sheepishly. “But obviously knowing and doing are two different things. I've got to lick this.”

“That reminds me,” she said. “Has Liam called you?”

“Why would he?”

“He wants you to meet with Chan and him and Liz this Saturday.”

“What's the rush?”

“Chan is asking questions.”

There was silence for a long moment. “I guess that'll work. Make sure Liam has my cell number, okay? Brani G, I better run. Another meeting.”

He hung up before she had a chance to ask about the water bottle in the barn. The more she thought about it, the surer she was that he'd left it the week he'd stayed at the farm. She punched in his number again to ask. But this time it went to voice mail.

 

When she pulled into the driveway, it took Cleo a full minute to run out of the cotton field. Obviously she'd been beyond the patch — in the pasture, maybe. Or sniffing around the barn.

Branigan estimated there was another half-hour of light remaining, so she didn't even go inside to change clothes.

“Come on, Cleo,” she said. “Let's see what you've been up to.”

She kicked off her heels and left them in the driveway. The dirt path was hard-packed and relatively free of stones, warm on her bare feet. The barn door stood ajar, but that was not unusual, especially if Uncle Bobby had moved his cows earlier in the day. She pulled the door wide, to allow as much light in as possible. Keeping close to Cleo, she tiptoed to the stall closest to the door — the one with the Jericho Road bottle inside.

It was still there.

Only now there was a second one next to it.

 

Cleo barked, and Branigan jumped, letting out a shriek. The dog sniffed at the stall door, then ran up and down the line of empty stalls, whining and snuffling.

“Somebody slept here last night,” she said to Cleo. “Even without us at home.”

Branigan's skin was prickling, so she turned abruptly and headed for the house, checking to make sure Cleo was behind her.

Don't be a scaredy cat,
she told herself.
Cleo would tear anybody apart for you.

They hurried back to the house, slamming and locking the side door. Branigan heard the alarm beeping, but couldn't remember the code her mother had given her. As she clawed through her purse for the scrap of paper she'd written it on, the house phone rang.

“This is the alarm company. May I have your password, please?”

“I'm sorry! This is Branigan Powers. It was just installed today and I don't have the password yet.”

“We'll send a deputy to this address immediately. Meantime, please see your paperwork for your code and password.”

“Yes, yes. That's fine.”

Branigan didn't try to talk the voice out of sending a deputy, because she wanted to report the barn intruder. She went to sit with Cleo on the steps leading to the side stoop, checking her watch. A Cannon County Sheriff's car pulled into the driveway in exactly eight minutes, a man and a woman inside. The woman took the lead, introducing herself as Deputy Mary Ann Hammond.

Branigan explained about the new alarm system. “But I was going to call you anyway. Someone has been spending the last few nights in my barn.”

“How do you know?” Deputy Hammond asked.

“He — or she — left water bottles from Jericho Road. That's the homeless church downtown.”

“The church under investigation for those hit-and-runs?” asked her partner.

“That's the one.”

“Do you want to show us?” asked Deputy Hammond.

“If you've got flashlights.”

The sky had turned from orange-red to dusky purple as she sat on the stoop, but Branigan could walk the cotton patch in her sleep. She led the deputies to the barn, explaining how Cleo had gone ballistic on Tuesday night and how she'd found a single water bottle the next morning. They'd spent last night in town and returned to find a second bottle.

The deputies poked around, but it was almost impossible for them to see anything in the murkiness of the barn's interior. With the darkness impairing Branigan's sight, she found her sense of smell sharpened. She smelled Uncle Bobby's hay on the wide shelf above the stalls, a faint lingering scent of manure from the stalls, but something else too — something pleasant.
Flowers,
she thought.
No, honeysuckle. Oh, of course...

Deputy Hammond interrupted her thoughts. “You say you have a new security alarm?”

They left the barn and headed single-file toward the house. “Yes, installed today.”

“And you haven't seen signs of anyone trying to break into the house?”

She shook her head.

The deputy handed Branigan a business card. “Lock yourself in,” she advised, “with that dog. If you hear anything, you can call me directly in addition to having the alarm company alert the sheriff's office.”

Branigan thanked them for coming and took the deputy's advice, checking all the exterior doors to make sure she and Cleo were securely bolted in.

 

Over a late supper of scrambled eggs, a toasted bagel and Aunt Jeanie's strawberry jam, Branigan pored over a folder on Heath Resnick she'd brought from the office.

Smug and arrogant, spoiled youngest child, perpetually dressed for a round of golf, he fit easily into her unschooled view of a murderer. She could picture him stabbing his mother in a rage after finding out she was cutting him from her will. She could picture him leaving his nephew's NYU Law cap, either by sheer accident or to implicate Ben Jr in the murder. (If the latter, he must have been surprised when the police never mentioned it!) She could picture him behind the wheel of the Jericho Road van, pressing his foot to the gas pedal to run down an unsuspecting Vesuvius Hightower, a drunkenly weaving Rita Jones. She could picture him lashing out at Max Brody with a broken whiskey bottle, angry that the drunk couldn't keep his mouth shut. She could even picture him calmly cutting her phone lines and creeping into the farmhouse, stabbing her as she slept.

What she couldn't picture was Heath Resnick sleeping in a cattle stall in her barn.

The first murder seemed spontaneous, a crime of fury and opportunity.

Vesuvius, on the other hand, took some planning. Did Heath buy a painting from him in order to strike up a conversation and find out what he knew? And then follow him to run him down?

And Rita. Did Heath know good and well that Rita Mae Jones was a family friend who had seen something on the weekend of the murder? Had she been blackmailing him? There was no obvious sign of money coming her way, but she could have smoked it.

And Max. Did Heath first try to buy his silence? And when that didn't work, did he bring a bottle to Max's tent? Things could have turned ugly, leading Heath to kill Max in the same rage in which he killed his mother.

Still, still, she couldn't picture Heath lying in wait in the barn for a chance to get at her. And she sure couldn't see him leaving two water bottles for her to find — unless, of course, he thought she never entered the barn.

She yawned. Despite her anxiety, she was getting sleepy.

She washed up the few dishes by hand, then walked around to check all the doors once more. She turned on the outside lights and closed the window shutters tight. She turned the television on at low volume, more for its welcoming murmur than an intention to watch it. Then she stretched out on the den sofa. Within minutes, she was asleep.

 

She was walking to the barn at twilight, her hand in Pa's. She was too old to be holding Pa's hand, at least seventeen or so, but it felt natural. She glanced over to see Chan right behind them, kicking a soccer ball down the cotton field path. No, that couldn't be Chan. It must be Davison.

“Are we gonna see the cows and chicks, Pa?” he shouted.

She giggled to hear the childish voice coming from his almost grown body.

“Yes, son,” Pa chuckled. “But we need to be quiet so we don't scare them, okay?”

They heard a low moo. “She knows we're coming, doesn't she?” Pa asked. Davison answered by flipping the soccer ball from his foot into one hand. Only it wasn't a ball any more; it was a beer can. He popped it open, then flung the shiny metal tab deep into the cotton patch, glittering as it caught the setting sun.

“Don't litter,” she said automatically.

They reached the heavy barn door, and Pa let go of her hand in order to swing it open. She turned to look back toward the farmhouse and was alarmed to see two raggedy people running toward them. One was Malachi, his faded camouflage clothes and dreadlocks instantly recognizable. Behind him was a man running awkwardly because of the large plyboard painting he carried. Vesuvius, she thought. But aren't you dead?

What were they doing on the farm? She didn't mind them being here, exactly, but she didn't understand their presence either.

Pa had entered the barn's dim interior, and beckoned them inside. “I want to show you something,” he whispered. “Miss Moselle had a calf last night.”

He grabbed Davison-who-looked-like-Chan by the waist and tried to hoist him, but of course he was too heavy.

“A baby cow!” Davison shouted. “Brani, look! It's a baby cow!”

Again she laughed at the incongruity of this boy's voice in a man's body, but she didn't share Davison's delight. She was too nervous: clearly Malachi and Vesuvius wanted to tell her something.

“Unfortunately,” Pa said, “Mosie's having trouble feeding her calf. We need to help her.”

“I'll do it, Pa,” said Davison, and turned his beer can up for the calf to drink. She greedily sucked it down.

Her eyes darted to the barn door, where the two homeless men suddenly appeared, outlined against a shaft of dying sunlight. Vesuvius pulled out a hammer and nails, and began securing his painting to the wall facing the stalls. Malachi dashed forward and knocked the beer can out of Davison's hand.

“No!” he hollered. “She needs water.” He took a baby bottle from his pants pocket and lifted it to the calf's mouth. She could see the blue and white label in the gloom. And even though she couldn't read it, she knew what it said.

“God loves you. And so does Jericho Road.”

 

Cleo's yelping brought Branigan off the couch with a start, heart thumping. Her addled mind thought the alarm was going off again, but no, it was Cleo making all the noise. That meant that no one was trying to get into the house.

She turned off the television so that the side porch light provided the sole glimmer in the den. She tiptoed to the window, lifting a shutter slat to peer out. Cleo was on two legs, clawing at the door, barking frantically.

Branigan's body was on highest alert, heart hammering, nerves shrieking. She needed to look outside, but didn't want anyone to see her. A figure passed just beyond the porch globe's wide circle of light. A figure pushing a bike from the cotton patch down the driveway toward the road. Leaving.

A figure she knew.

 

A few moments later, Branigan flipped on the kitchen light and was surprised to find that it was 5 a.m. Little more than an hour to sunup.

She made a pot of coffee and looked up
The New York Times
and
The Rambler
online. She wasn't quite brave enough to step outside to pick up the newspaper.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Chan Delaney hadn't had a decent night's sleep since school let out. Last night was no exception.

The sun was up, but no one in his house was stirring when he knocked on his sister's door. Nothing. He knocked again, stuck his head in. “You awake?”

Of course she wasn't. He'd have to be less subtle.