Entitled to Kill Read online

  I nodded solemnly, even as I puzzled over why Pickle was at the deathbed of someone else’s grandmother. “So the treasure is by the willow then?”

  Bear rolled his eyes. “Pay attention. No, that’s where the map was.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said with gravitas. “Can I see the map?”

  Bear looked at Pickle, and Pickle gave a slight nod. A smartphone was laid in front of me, and I saw a photo of what looked like a drawing done by a third grader – or by me. I was not the finest artist and still employed the farmhouse with a long lane against a mountain backdrop with a sun in the corner technique that this artist also used.

  The “map” showed a building with four windows equally placed on the front façade and surrounding a door. A couple of waving lines that were roughly parallel ran up to that door, and in the background, some arcs that overlapped formed what I assumed were mountains. On one of the mountains, a thin line disappeared at the peak, and of course, there was a sun drawn in the upper right-hand corner.

  Pickle’s thick pointer finger drew my attention to the squiggle on the mountain. “You see that? That’s a road.”

  “Yep,” Bear added. “We’ve studied the outlines of these hills, and we know just where they are.”

  “Let me guess. On the Harris property?”

  “This girl’s smart, Pickle.” Bear grinned at his friend.

  “Sure is, but not smart enough to know when she’s been played,” Pickle said matter-of-factly.

  Both men turned and looked at me, and I just stared at them. “What?” I finally spit out.

  Their roars of laughter echoed through the store and still I stared, trying to figure out why they were laughing when I’d just been told the most ridiculous tale of treasure hunting. And that’s when it hit me, and I felt a blush run all the way from my chest to my scalp. “You are pulling my leg.”

  Bear wheezed out, “Did anyone ever tell you gullible isn’t in the dictionary?”

  That tired joke sent the two of them into another fit of laughter.

  I watched these two men roll in their chairs, and while my pride was a little dinged up, I found myself laughing, too. Soon all three of us were wiping tears from our eyes and trying to get our breath.

  “You got me, fellows. You got me good.”

  Pickle took a pair of tortoiseshell glasses in the latest style out of his pocket and put them on his nose before smoothing back his hair into a very business-like style just as Bear stood up, tucked in his shirt, and slid a sports jacket on over his button-down. Clearly these two had planned this . . . and I suddenly had a suspicion. “Sheriff Mason put you up to this, didn’t he?”

  “I cannot tell a lie,” Bear said with his hand over his heart. “So I’m not going to say anything at all.

  And speak of the devil, in came our esteemed sheriff himself. He took one look at the three of us and bent over double with amusement. “You got her, didn’t you?” he said between bursts of laughter.

  “Hook, line, and Confederate gold sinker,” Pickle said.

  “Woody told you we went to the Harris place,” I said to the sheriff as I got up from the table. “Didn’t he?”

  “Serves you right for snooping around about a murder.” He was still laughing, but I could also hear the reminder in his words.

  “You’re right, I guess. But I mean, I found the body. I have a vested—“

  “Stop right there, Harvey.” The sheriff wasn’t laughing anymore. “I know you want to know what happened. We all do. But you can’t be digging into police matters. It’s not wise, and it might be dangerous.”

  I sighed. I knew he was right, and a small part of me wanted to heed his caution. But I already knew I wouldn’t.

  The sheriff’s radio squawked, and he put it to his ear as he turned down the volume. “Gotta go, folks. Rocky, you got all that, right?”

  I looked over at my friend and saw her grin. “What’s he talking about, Rocky?”

  “Already emailed the video to you, Sheriff.”

  “Good woman,” he said as he went out the door.

  “Rocky Chevalier, you were in on this?”

  She shrugged. “If you could have seen your face . . .”

  I gave her my strongest fake glare, then smiled and sat back down.

  “You do know that the two of you owe me now, right?”

  Bear nodded as he took a napkin and scribbled on it. “Consider this our IOU.”

  “Is that what this says?” I stared down at the napkin at what looked like a toddler’s first drawing.

  Bear grinned. “I do have another favor to ask, though.” I gave him a skeptical look as he continued. “Henry sent over a list of books that I’m supposed to bring her when I leave. I have explicit instructions to ask you to order them if you don’t have them in stock.” He handed me a sheet of notebook paper with about twenty titles on it.

  “Wow. She’s quite the reader.” I gave the list a scan. “I think we have most of these, but it’ll take me a while to pull them. Why don’t I bring them to Henry later this afternoon?”

  “Well, that’s what I call service . . .” Bear squinted, “But I suspect that this generosity may come with a price tag. How may we help?”

  “You mentioned that Miranda Harris-Lewis had problems. I take it that this wasn’t just part of your ruse.”

  Pickle looked at me askance. “You haven’t heard?” When I shook my head, he said, “Oh. Her husband is, well, what we might call in my line of work, a repeat offender.”

  “He’s got a criminal record?”

  Bear almost shouted, “No, and that’s the problem. That woman has more bruises and bumps to the head than any person I’ve ever known, and I’ve been an ER doctor for three decades.”

  “He beats her?” I whispered, imagining the perfectly put-together woman who was here the day before.

  “No doubt about it in anyone’s mind, but she won’t press charges or leave him. She’s too scared,” Pickle said quietly. “And honestly, she has reason to be. Rafe Lewis is a dangerous man.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible.” I sighed. “I had a friend back in California who was in a similar situation. It took her years to leave, but when she did, she never looked back.”

  “May it be so for that poor woman.” Bear’s voice was somber.

  “That’s the reason for the falling out with her dad, I imagine. I mean neither of them seems like the most warm and fuzzy of personalities, but it takes a special kind of damage to make a child give up on a parent.”

  “I expect so,” Pickle said as he stood. “Now, I need to get back to the office. I’ve got depositions starting in an hour.

  Bear rose on the other side of me. “And my shift starts at the hospital in thirty minutes. Thank you for a great laugh, Harvey. That’s one of our finest pieces of work.”

  I smiled and walked with them to the door. They had already swung it open when I realized something. “Guys, wait? What did my mother overhear you talking about then? What’s the treasure?”

  “Oil, my dear. Black gold,” Pickle said.

  Bear nodded. “We’re buying the mineral rights to the land from Miranda. Giving her a great return with the hopes she can put it to good use.”

  My throat got a little tight. “That seems like an incredibly kind thing to do, gentlemen.”

  “We try, my lady, we try,” Bear said as he slid a flat top hat on his head and walked out the door with his friend.

  That night, everyone gathered at my house for pizza night. Lucas and Cate brought homemade dough, Elle brought a salad fresh from her garden, Mart and I contributed the cheese, meat and sauce, and Daniel and Marcus got the beverages. I’d suggested the idea of a get-together – with food, always with food – when I’d texted everyone to say I had to catch them up on things, and everyone was game, except Rocky who had to study for her exams. I’d offered to quiz her over pizza, but she wisely pointed out that wine and nineteenth century British literature probably weren’t a good combo.

  Wh
ile we stretched the dough, spread the sauce, and chose our toppings, I told the tale of Pickle and Bear’s prank. Mart was a little defensive on my behalf – “Oh, Harvey, that must have been so embarrassing.”

  I laughed. “It was, but then it wouldn’t have been a good joke if it wasn’t, right? Besides, unless Rocky puts the video on YouTube, I feel pretty safe knowing it’ll just be St. Marin’s folks who hear about it.”

  “Oh no. You don’t think she’d put that up do you?” Mart looked genuinely alarmed.

  I put an arm around her shoulders. “You are so sweet. No, she would never do that. Don’t worry.” Mart had been working nonstop for two days and had raced home after her last meeting for dinner. She was exhausted, and like me, when she was tired, her emotions got bigger and came right to the surface. “Besides, if it did go live, people would just laugh.”

  “Or go hunting for that Confederate gold because their attention spans didn’t last through the punchline,” Cate said as she spread a glorious amount of mozzarella on her pizza.

  We got the pizza onto trays and into the oven and then all took our beverages to the living room to chat. “But I haven’t told you the really interesting part yet.” I felt a little bad for talking about Miranda’s abuse this way, but I knew my friends would be more concerned than lurid in their listening. And I really wanted their thoughts on whether Rafe Lewis could have killed Miranda’s dad.

  I shared what Pickle and Bear had told me, and no one but Mart was surprised. Even Daniel, who was notoriously out of the loop about town tales, nodded when I shared what I’d learned. “You knew?” I asked him when I was done.

  “Of course I knew. Everyone in town knows.”

  “But you didn’t think to tell me?”

  He shrugged. “I try not to gossip, Harvey. I didn’t know how it would be relevant, and to be truthful, the abuse has been going on so long that I kind of forgot about it.” He winced. “I know that sounds awful.”

  “No, I know what you mean,” Lucas added. “I think everyone in town has tried to help her. Cate here even offered to let her and the girls live with us. But she’s never accepted help. In fact, she gets defensive and sort of mean when someone offers. Eventually, everyone stopped asking.”

  “She’s terrified. It’s not rational, but it seems like she thinks if she accepts help, then Rafe will find out, and it’ll get worse for her. She may well be right.” Cate’s voice was tender.

  “Are the girls okay?” I asked. “I mean, child protective services?”

  Marcus shook his head violently. “That would only make things worse. I don’t think the girls are getting hurt. At least, when I see them, they’re quiet and almost too obedient, but I’ve never seen sign of a physical injury.”

  Cate nodded. “I agree. That doesn’t mean they aren’t being traumatized of course, poor things, but Marcus is right. If we call CPS and they come and do a wellness check and don’t find cause to remove the girls, then they could be Rafe’s next victims.”

  I curled my legs up under me and took a big swig of my chardonnay. “I guess, too, then Miranda would get it even worse.” I put my head against Daniel’s shoulder.

  Mart sniffled. “So there’s nothing we can do?”

  We all sat quietly for a few moments until the oven timer went off and startled us all.

  “Well, time to eat.” Lucas stood and helped Cate up from the floor. It felt a little callous to just move on after a conversation like that, but we had other business to attend to . . . namely trying to figure out if Miranda killed her father as her escape.

  “So she could have done it, I guess,” Elle said between bites, “but she was going to inherit all that wealth anyway, right? Plus, don’t we think her dad would have given her anything she asked for?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m finding it hard to imagine Huckabee Harris as a doting father,” an image of my dad standing at the cash register in the shop came to mind, “but I suspect every father is protective of his baby girl.”

  “Exactly. But maybe Huckabee put conditions on his generosity. Maybe he said Miranda had to leave Rafe, and she just wouldn’t – or couldn’t – do that.” Cate’s voice was strident. “Terror can make a person very irrational.”

  I peeled the cheese off my slice of pizza and ate it before saying, “Okay, so maybe she’s still a possible suspect. But it sounds like we need to consider other options, too.”

  “Like Rafe,” Daniel said. “I mean if Huckabee was trying to get Miranda to leave him . . .”

  “That’s a good point,” Marcus said. “Maybe he took care of the one escape route Miranda had.

  I put my pizza down and pulled my sweater tighter around me. “This guy. I hope I don’t meet him in a dark alley.”

  Cate looked at me intently, “I’d suggest trying not to meet him at all. He’s pretty scary.”

  Mart nodded then said. “But something is bothering me. It’s the oil. I mean, I don’t know how oil wells work, but no one is living out there now. Couldn’t someone just be stealing the oil?”

  “Well, Homer is out there. I expect he’s keeping an eye on things.”

  From the blank expressions on most of the faces in the room, I realized that I hadn’t yet mentioned Homer. “Ah, he’s the caretaker. The farm manager, I think he said his title was. Nice guy. Friend of Woody’s.”

  Mart nodded. “So the oil is safe, and that means whoever killed Huckabee still doesn’t have access to the oil.” Her eyes got very wide. “Oh no, what if Homer is in danger?”

  She had a point, but I’d seen him packing a pretty big pistol on his hip. I figured he could handle himself, and my friends agreed when I told them about the gun.

  We tossed around theories about who could have killed Huckabee – an angry shop owner who had been at the brunt of his forceful attitude, a disgruntled employee, etc. – but when we our conversation devolved into a Criminal Minds-like theory on serial killers, Daniel suggested that perhaps our conversation had gone as far as it could . . . and also that maybe we should all watch a little less TV.

  As Mart, Daniel, and I cleaned up, my mind kept returning to Miranda and to the girls. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I also knew my friends would not approve so I kept my mouth shut and loaded the dishwasher.

  I walked Daniel and Marcus to the door. Marcus said goodnight and went on ahead to wait for Daniel in his truck.

  “Thank you for being here,” I said as I looked up into his face.

  “Always, Harvey. Always.” He leaned down and gave me a tender kiss and then led Taco down the walk. I closed the door and leaned against it, feeling peaceful. That man always made me feel peaceful.

  But then Mart rounded the corner, stood in front of me with her hands on her hips, and said, “You have that look, Harvey.”

  “Look? What look?” I asked, not meeting her eyes.

  “The one where your jaw tightens just a bit, and your brow furrows. The look that says you have a plan.”

  Gracious, there were downsides to having a best friend. I poured us another glass of wine and told Mart what I thought I’d do the next day. She didn’t like it, but “I’m in,” she said. “You need a wing woman for this kind of venture.”

  There were upsides to having a best friend, too.

  6

  The next morning, we stopped at the shop and saw that Marcus had things well in hand before we headed to Miranda’s house. I’d checked in with Cate who had told me what car Rafe drove – a black Audi A8 with dark tinted windows. I had no idea what that looked like, so I texted Daniel, who sent me a picture. Pretty much what I’d imagined a man like him might drive – super expensive (like $85,000 expensive), super sleek, super pretentious.

  She also said that he worked at an accounting firm over in Annapolis so would likely be gone most of the day. “But be careful, Harvey. We’ve all seen the movie where the husband comes home early and finds the person snooping. Don’t get caught.”

  The fact that I hadn’t told her what I was doi
ng was not lost on me. I clearly was not as sneaky as I thought I was with my casual fact-finding queries.

  The Harris-Lewis’s lived in a gated community just south of St. Marin’s. It had only taken a quick GIS search to find their address.

  I’d driven past the neighborhood a few times on my trips up and down Route 13 when I’d first moved here, and every time I was shocked at the size of these homes. “Why would anyone want that much square footage inside their house when they can practically look in the windows of their neighbor’s houses AND still have to drive to go do anything?” I’d asked that question so many times that Mart had finally stopped trying to answer me.

  Now, she and I sat at the gate flummoxed by how to get in. There was no gatehouse, so we couldn’t do the “surprise visit to our sister” ruse we’d come up with. The giant metal gate made ramming out of the question. (Also, Mart was disinclined to damage her Prius.) Finally, we settled for the old “fake that we’ve lost our key fob” ploy by parking at the gate and then waiting until a car approached so we could rummage around looking for it.

  For the record, people in the South are fairly trusting folks. We want to believe people mean well. So I wasn’t surprised at all when the first car that approached from the inside of the gate – a mini-van simply stuffed with car seats – stopped. A woman who looked to be about thirty and perfect – immaculate hair, pristine make-up, a tiny scarf tied around her neck – leaned out the driver’s side window and said, “You okay?”

  In the back seats of the van, I could see small heads bobbing around, but there was no sound. Only on closer inspection did I notice that they each had a screen and headphones. I wanted to give her a hug and praise her for her wisdom. With that many kids – heck, even with one kid – I could totally see how screens had become ubiquitous with children.

  Mart brushed her hair up off her forehead. “Oh yeah, we’re fine. I mean, mostly. I can’t find my keychain thingy to get us in. I thought I’d left it in the cup holder, but my toddler climbs around in here like it’s his jungle gym, and now, well . . .”