“I reckon.”
“Almost nobody knows this, but Frank was beat to death with a hammer. It might even have been the same hammer used to smash the computer that you
found
. Then there are the FBI agents who are prepared to testify they saw you drive up to the museum and do a turnaround.”
“FBI?” Sheldon involuntarily looked down the rutted track for Jimmy Stewart and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Then he gave me a cagey look. “You had me going there for a moment. Now, why would the FBI be in Remmelkemp Mill?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but they were there tailing that orange Hummer you saw.”
“Oh Lord.”
“So, you were at the museum. Add that to the fact that Frank and Marie were having marital problems and that you probably made no secret of how much you disliked your brother-in-law. Now what do you think a jury would make of all that?”
Sheldon propped the bat between his legs and dug a package of Camel nonfilters and a disposable lighter from his shirt pocket. Lighting up a cigarette, he said, “I didn’t kill Frank.”
“I believe you; but it looks as if you’ve been left holding the bag.”
It took a second or two for him to understand what I was inferring. “By Marie?”
“Sorry, but that’s sure how it appears to me.”
“But she’s my sister.”
“And family has screwed-over family ever since Adam ate the apple and blamed Eve.”
“Did Marie tell you about me? Is that how you found me?”
“No, but she sure didn’t go out of her way to protect you either. Why did you go to the museum?”
“I was going to kick Frank’s ass, but I wasn’t going to kill him.” Sheldon sucked deeply on the cancer stick and blew out a furious stream of smoke. “Marie done called me on Saturday morning all crying and mad. She said that Frank just told her he was moving out that day after he finished up at the museum.”
“Do you know if there was any advance warning that this was going to happen?”
“Back in the winter, Marie told me that she thought Frank was stepping out on her. But she didn’t think he had the guts to leave.”
“But when he decided to, you were furious.”
“Nobody does that to my sister.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She needed my help. Marie told me Frank was writing a book on that computer and she’d be damned if he sold it and spent the money on his girlfriend.”
I swatted at a big horsefly that was buzzing around my face. “And so she took a hammer to the machine.”
“I don’t know what she hit it with.”
“But she hoped that smashing it would destroy the computer file for the manuscript? That’s stupid. Even if she’d somehow ruined the hard drive, didn’t she figure that Frank would have saved a backup copy of his work someplace else?”
“I don’t know nothing about computers and I didn’t have to ask Marie why she done it. That was obvious. She was madder than hell.”
“And you agreed to dispose of the computer.”
“Yeah, she asked me to get rid of it.”
“Which wasn’t bright, and not only because it was a county computer. Besides, Marie probably would’ve been entitled to half of whatever Frank made if he sold the book.”
Sheldon tossed the cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot heel. “Maybe so, but all my sister was thinking about was how bad Frank would feel when he found out that his book was gone for good.”
“So, why didn’t
she
take it to the dump?”
“She was worried that someone would get the license number of her truck.”
“Yet you ran the risk of being identified as an accessory to felony vandalism by taking it to the trash station. That doesn’t make any sense. Why not just dump it by the side of the road or bring it up here?”
Sheldon gave me an aggrieved look. “I’d never do that. There’s all sorts of stuff in those computers that’ll ruin the land and get into the water. Ain’t there already enough rubbish been dumped in the Valley?”
“I agree,” I said, wondering if Sheldon was even marginally aware that he’d littered only a few seconds earlier, when he’d thrown his cigarette on the ground.
“And besides, I really didn’t know how the computer got broken, so I wasn’t breaking any laws.” Sheldon might have been the quintessential uneducated country boy, but he wasn’t a fool.
“Did Marie ask you to go to the museum and talk to Frank?”
“Not directly, but I think she knew what I was going to do.”
“And what were you going to do?”
“Like I said before, I was going to give Frank a righteous ass-whipping. So, I drove over to the museum, but there was cars and people there.”
“Do you remember what kind of vehicles?”
Sheldon stuck another cigarette in his mouth and looked skyward. “I saw a white van—it was on the road—Frank’s Toyota, and an orange Hummer in the lot. Frank was out in front talking to the three Oriental guys.”
“So, what did you do?”
“You already know what I did. I turned around in the driveway and left. Usually there ain’t a damn soul at that museum.”
“Did you go back later?”
“Yeah, but you already knew that too.” He lit the cigarette.
I nodded sagely, deciding it wouldn’t be wise to tell Sheldon that this was news, and that nobody had seen him the second time. I said, “Obviously, the FBI saw you, but I’d like to hear your version of what happened.”
“Okay, but there ain’t much to tell. When I got to the museum, this time there was a couple of SUVs there: a blue one and a black one.”
“Could the blue one have been a Isuzu Trooper?”
“Maybe. But to tell the truth, all them import trucks look alike to me.”
“How about the black one?”
Sheldon looked thoughtful as he let some smoke leak from his nostrils. “A Ford Explorer, I think. Not a new one, though.”
“Did you see anybody outside?”
“No, and that was when I said, ‘Shel, you’ve got things to do. Give it up for another day.’”
“Where’d you go after that?”
“Back home to wrap hay bales.”
“And home is?”
“Over near Furnace.” He pointed downhill, presumably in the direction of the tiny community.
“So, if you didn’t do anything wrong, why in the hell were you so paranoid about me following you?”
“Mister, I’m sorry about your headlight, but the mountains here are changing.” He made a sour face. “We’ve got crank cookers using abandoned houses and other riffraff up here now. You weren’t in a police car, so I thought you were one of them.”
“If it’s that bad, why haven’t you spoken to the sheriff?”
“Because it’s our way to take care of things ourselves. And if you’re married to a Remmelkemp, I reckon you know what I’m trying to say. Nobody pushes mountain folk.”
For a moment we were silent and listened to the rustling leaves. Then I said, “We don’t know where Marie was when Frank was killed. She told us that she was at yard sales in Elkton, but I don’t believe her.”
“Mister, even if my sister did set me up, I won’t turn on family.” Sheldon turned and went to the Ford. Tossing the bat inside, he said, “I’ll move my truck, so that you can turn around. Oh, and don’t call your insurance about the headlight. I’ll mail the money to Lolly.”
Eighteen
“I can explain” is one of the most unnecessary phrases in the English language. Inevitably, the situation is such that the person being offered the explanation already has a pretty clear picture of what happened and isn’t going to be soothed by verbal damage control, no matter how skillfully or penitently it’s delivered. So, as I drove down the mountain, I tried to figure out how I was going to tell Ash that, despite her all but begging me to be careful, I’d nearly gotten myself killed for the second time in less than four hours.
I turned into our driveway and saw that Tina had returned from the autopsy in Roanoke. Her patrol car was parked in front of the house and she and Ash were sitting on the porch drinking lemonade. Ash’s warm smile turned into an expression of distress when she saw the smashed headlight. The women rushed from the porch, followed by Kitch.
Ash was standing at the driver’s door as I pushed it open. “My God, what happened?”
“I can explain.”
“Oh, Brad honey, you promised me you’d be careful.”
“I was. I’m sorry. I can explain.”
Tina bent to look at the damage. “This wasn’t caused by a traffic collision.”
“No, a baseball bat.”
“You were attacked with a baseball bat? Are you all right?” Ash began scanning me for injuries.
“I’m fine. The only thing he hit was the Xterra.”
“Why?”
“Because he thought I was a crook.”
“Do you think you could identify him if you saw him again?” Tina asked.
“ID’ing him isn’t a problem. His name is Sheldon Shaw and it might interest you to know that he’s Marie Merrit’s brother and also the owner of that green Ford pickup truck we’ve been looking for.”
“The one seen at the museum and the trash station?” Ash asked.
“Yep. I was driving home and had just come over the mountain when I saw the truck going in the opposite direction. I tried to call for backup, but couldn’t get a signal. He turned on to Callison Road and I decided to take a calculated risk and follow him.”
Tina squinted at me as if I’d just announced that I thought I looked like Leonardo DiCaprio. “A calculated risk? You went up into the mountains after a possible murder suspect by yourself, unarmed, and without communications? Are you nuts?”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t have done it?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Tina looked away, unwilling to meet my gaze.
“Give me a break. As long you’re telling fairy tales, can I have
Little Red Riding Hood
next?”
Ash said, “But honey, what you did was reckless.”
I touched her cheek. “Look, I’m not going to pretend it worked out perfectly, but it was worth a broken headlight. Once we started talking, and Sheldon found out I was married to Ashleigh Remmelkemp, he gave me some very valuable information.”
“Such as?”
“For starters, Marie knew that Frank was having an affair, and on Saturday morning he’d broken the news to her that he was leaving.”
Tina arched her eyebrows. “Funny, she didn’t mention that.”
“And Sheldon also told me that she smashed the county computer with a hammer or something and then asked him to get rid of it.”
“And she flat out lied about that. Why’d she destroy the computer?”
“Frank was writing a book about the Civil War and Marie was in scorched-earth mode.” Kitch shoved his head under my right hand and I began to scratch him.
“Did Sheldon tell you whether he thought his sister was involved in the murder?” Ash said.
I said, “He refused to say anything about that. But at the same time, he didn’t offer to be her alibi when I mentioned we didn’t know where she was when Frank was killed.”
“So, is she our primary suspect?” Tina asked.
“One of them; maybe the best one. The way she wrecked the computer tells us that she has a capacity to become unhinged.”
“True.”
“However, we can’t overlook something else Sheldon said about going to the museum. By the way, his mission was to PR Frank.”
“Public Relations?” Tina was clearly puzzled.
“Nope. Pound and Release. When Marie called and told him that Frank was leaving, Shel was determined to defend his sister’s honor.” I switched to a Groucho Marx voice and waggled an invisible cigar. “Which is more than she ever did.”
“But he didn’t go into the museum when he saw there would be witnesses,” said Ash.
“Exactly, but what we didn’t know was that Sheldon went back a second time and had to postpone Frank’s ass-whipping again, because now there were two SUVs in the museum lot. He thought that one may have been a black Explorer and the other was a blue import SUV.”
“Gage’s Trooper?” asked Tina.
“There’s no proof of it. But if so, then he lied to us about Merrit leaving him a phone message as well as leaving out the little detail that he’d already been there that morning.”
“But if Gage was at the museum when Merrit was killed, why would he come back?”
“Maybe to pretend he’d discovered the murder. Possibly trying to throw suspicion elsewhere. Maybe he thought that if he raised the hue and cry, nobody would suspect him.”
“Ash told me what happened in Charlottesville. Are you absolutely convinced it wasn’t Ingersoll’s husband?”
“Unfortunately, yes. His girlfriend confirms that he was at her place in Burnley until eleven-thirty or so and she didn’t impress me as being bright enough to lie. Then another witness places them at the Barboursville Winery about fifteen minutes later.”
Ash said, “Well, we have some other news, so why don’t we get in out of the heat and I’ll pour you some lemonade?”
A minute later, we were seated in the living room. Kitch lay sprawled at my feet and I was in the process of giving myself a headache from drinking the iced lemonade too quickly.
Tina said, “There were no big surprises at the autopsy. Dr. Grice did some measurements and confirmed that the hammer is the murder weapon.”
Massaging my brow, I replied, “A weapon of opportunity. That might signify that whoever went there didn’t intend to kill him.”
“And then there’s this.” Ash held up the limp mohair body of the fake Bruin Manufacturing bear. “Once I removed the excelsior, I went over to the sheriff’s department to compare it with the quilt we seized from the museum. Then I drove over to the fabric store in Dayton, just to be sure.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“The style of hand-stitching on the bear is almost identical to that on the quilt and I was certain I’d seen it before. I didn’t want to believe it, but I was almost one-hundred percent certain it was Holly Reuss’s work.”
“Holly? The same woman who’s a member of the teddy bear guild?”
“Yes, and also a quilter. The last time we were at the fabric shop, I noticed that one of her quilts was for sale and hanging from the wall. I didn’t have any other samples of Holly’s work, so I went over to compare it with the sewing inside the bear.” Ash looked both incensed and sad. “And I’d be willing to testify in a court of law that all three items were made by the same person…that is, if I don’t break Holly’s neck first.”