Chapter 37
“I hear you people work on Sundays.” Those were the first words out of Jonas Yoder’s mouth as he reached out, stony-faced, to shake Conor McCaffrey’s hand.
Conor merely nodded.
“I don’t hold with working on the Lord’s Day.”
Jojo smiled. Well played!
Though stiff and formal, Uncle Jonas was polite to a fault, offered to make coffee for Conor—black. There was no creamer in the house. Even said his daughter had left some chocolate chip cookies, had pecans in them, too, and Conor’s “mouth’d be blessed by tasting one of them.”
“I’m sure they’re delicious, but I need to?—”
The back door burst open then and Rascal bounded through it. The little brown dog was somehow larger than life, and he never just entered a room. He exploded into it, sucking up all the oxygen and spinning it in whirlwinds with his wagging tail.
Trident lay in front of the fireplace watching in profound disinterest.
The puppy trailed behind Uncle Levi like the tail on a kite, calling ineffectually, “Mephibosheth … don’t you be jumping on people … down, boy. Sit, Mephibosheth. Sit.”
It was never a good sign when her uncle forgot his dog’s name.
“Uncle Levi, I’d like you to meet Conor McCaffrey, the Pennsylvania State Police lieutenant I’ve been working with.”
A warm smile spread across Uncle Levi’s face, but his eyes never quite focused.
“You didn’t happen to come across three young men out on the road, did you?” Uncle Levi asked him.
Jojo and Conor exchanged a look. “No, sir. I didn’t. Sorry.”
Rascal danced around Conor’s feet as he spoke, then sprawled out on his back determined to charm the stranger into a belly rub. Conor leaned over and complied, rubbing the wiggling puppy’s belly as Rascal’s eyes rolled back into his head in delight.
“Probably just two—Pete and Jimmy. They’re bringing me fish, said I could have all I wanted.
” Uncle Levi laughed merrily. “Johnny said they caught so many their boat dang near sank. Say, why don’t you stay for supper!
I mean, if you’ve a mind to. They’ll be here directly with them fish.
Won’t take long to clean ’em. You like fish, do you? ”
“I do, but I’m afraid I don’t have time tonight. Can I have a rain check?”
“Why sure you can,” Uncle Levi beamed. “We love to have company, don’t we Jonas.”
Uncle Jonas uttered a grunting sound that could have been either a yes or a no.
Jojo leaned over to pet the puppy and said into Conor’s ear, “Johnny, Pete, and Jimmy … think New Testament.”
Conor’s brow wrinkled, then understanding dawned.
Peter, James, and John … the fishermen.
She nodded, then stood, still speaking so softly only Conor could hear. “You really ought to stay. Fish fresh caught in the Sea of Galilee are hard to come by in western Pennsylvania this time of year.”
Conor again thanked the uncles for their hospitality and started for the front door, and Jojo cherished the wild hope that maybe he’d actually get out of here before anything crazy …
Then he turned to say goodbye to her, got a strange look on his face, and glanced down. Rascal had followed him to the door, was gazing up at him adoringly with his big green eyes as he lifted his leg and peed on Conor’s shoe.
The next morning, Jojo swung by her sister Mattie’s house on her way into town to check on Miriam. It had been almost a week since she’d seen the little girl. She’d have called her every day if she could have but … Amish.
“She’s coming around,” Mattie told her as she swept up the crumbs from breakfast off the kitchen floor.
Jojo figured that if you kept for a week all the food that landed on the floor in a house with six children, you could put it in a pot and make soup out of it.
Miriam appeared then standing in the doorway.
For an instant, Jojo thought it was positively creepy how much the child was her mini-me, even down to the shadows that had appeared under her eyes … to match the shadows under Jojo’s.
She was better, though. Jojo coaxed a genuine belly laugh out of her by telling her what Rascal had done the night before.
“Conor had to borrow a pair of dry socks to wear home,” Jojo said and as the child giggled, Jojo marveled at the resiliency of children.
The widow of Charles Whitman, the next person on Conor and Jojo’s interview list, lived in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Somerset. Grand homes that cost upwards of three to five million dollars lined the wide streets.
They punched the button to ring the doorbell, heard the chimes inside, and waited. Nothing. Conor tried again.
“People who live in normal houses, you can tell if they’re home by the car in the driveway,” Jojo said. The Whitman home had four garages but no visible vehicles.
A disembodied voice greeted them from the speaker beside the door, and Conor introduced himself and explained, “We’d like a few minutes of your time, Mrs. Whitman, to talk to you about your late husband.”
They heard a sharp intake of breath that might have been accompanied by a sob. “Now?”
“Yes, please. Now.”
There was a hesitation, and then the locks on the door were thrown, and a woman opened it.
She looked to be in her mid-seventies but obviously had “had work done” on her face.
Her forehead was flat and smooth, no crow’s feet around her eyes and not even the beginnings of a turkey neck under her chin.
The giveaway was, as always, the mouth. That was the one thing plastic surgeons couldn’t ever seem to fix on older women, and she probably hid the wrinkles there with makeup, but she wore no makeup now.
Her hair was gray and cut in a stylish bob, but it didn’t look like she’d brushed it yet this morning.
She was wearing a long, fluffy robe and slippers.
“I wasn’t expecting to have company,” she said.
“We only have a few questions.”
She guided them to “the sunroom,”—lots of windows, but no sun because the day was overcast, threatening yet again to snow.
“What do you want to know about Charlie?” But before they could answer, she started to talk.
“We got married a week after we met on a blind date. Can you believe that? Charlie came to my house the next day unannounced and said, ‘Do you want to go horseback riding?’” She smiled then.
“I didn’t know how to ride a horse, but as it turns out, neither did he.
It was just a ploy. We went to Kennywood and sat on the merry-go-round horses talking for hours. ”
She said nothing else, and Conor spoke kindly. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Whitman, and we’ll be brief. The most obvious question we have is—can you think of anyone who would have wanted to kill your husband?”
Her head snapped up as if he’d slapped her. “Who would want to kill Charlie?”
“That’s what we’re asking you.”
“But I thought some guy just shot … people. Anybody. Why are you looking for somebody who might want to kill Charlie?”
When they explained, her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, dear God, you mean my Charlie was … just collateral damage?”
“Ma’am, we don’t know anything for sure right now,” Conor said soothingly. “Could you tell us—did anyone ever threaten your husband?”
“Threaten Charlie? You didn’t know my husband.” She got up and walked to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, appearing to look at it, but actually seeing nothing at all, except maybe her own reflection because she instinctively smoothed down the back of her hair.
“He was the kindest, sweetest, dearest man anybody knew. He was generous to a fault. He gave his best friend a set of golf clubs, a whole set, just because the guy said he liked them.”
“So you didn’t have any financial problems?” Conor prompted.
She whirled around. “How do you know about that?”
They didn’t know about that.
“Why don’t you tell us,” Conor said.
“Charlie’s been going to Gamblers Anonymous for three years. He hasn’t placed a bet on anything—not so much as a flip of a coin at a baseball game in three years. All that’s behind us.”
“Did your husband owe any money, any gambling debts?”
“No, not now, not after …” She let out a sigh. “We were going to lose the house.” She looked around. “We had our first child when we lived in a little cracker box house in Carnegie and Charlie was scraping together the money to start the business.”
“So your husband started Somerset Builders’ Supply?” Jojo asked. The company had at least three locations in neighboring counties—that she knew of.
“The business was his idea. He was the visionary. But we got the starting capital from his father. He had the money, and we didn’t. And over the years, there were …” she took a breath, “financial difficulties now and then and Charlie’s father wound up owning most of the stock in the company.”
She turned from the window again and looked at them.
“Charlie started going to Gamblers Anonymous after he ran up some very large gambling debts. He’d gone to Las Vegas.
” She sat down on the arm of a sofa and spoke softly.
“It was … ugly. Really ugly and scary. Even if we sold the house and everything we owned, it wasn’t enough and … we were at our wits’ end.”
She sighed. “Then Charlie’s father died, and he left everything to Charlie.”
“You say that as if it was an odd thing to do,” Conor said.
“Charlie has two brothers. Their mother spoiled and coddled them their whole lives, and they never amounted to anything. They lived on their father’s dime.
They weren’t ‘cut out of the will’ or anything like that.
They were to get a percentage of the profits from the business for life.
” She let out a breath. “And they weren’t happy when they found out Charlie was going to sell it. ”
“To pay off the gambling debts?”
“To pay off the bank! He took out a loan to pay those … men in Las Vegas, used the business as collateral to get the money. And he never, never gambled again. Not once. He never fell off the wagon. The people in Gamblers Anonymous talk about all the times they bet on a football game or … but Charlie never did!”
Conor steered her back to the story. “So the debts were paid, but the bank?—”
“He had it all worked out. I don’t know the numbers.
You can talk to our accountant. He can explain.
If Charlie sold the business, we could walk away with the house and the cars and our retirement money.
As of January 1, Somerset Builders’ Supply will belong to Westwood Securities, Inc.
I suppose they’re going to sell it all off piecemeal. ”
“How did Charlie feel about that?”
“He hated it. He didn’t want to lose the business.
Of course he didn’t. But … he was seventy-one years old and the work it would take to pay off that loan …
it wasn’t worth it. We were going to retire …
and travel.” She sucked in a gasp and a sob, reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue and wiped away the tears that were streaming down her cheeks.
“There were so many things Charlie and I were going to do.”
“But when Charlie sold the business, there was no continuing income for his brothers, right?” Conor asked.
“Neither one of them has ever had to support himself, never held a job for more than six months … It was about time they pulled their own weight!”
“Did they see it that way?” Jojo asked.
Mrs. Whitman barked out a bitter laugh. “When they found out … they were furious. Ed came over here, yelling … punched his fist through the wall.”
She pointed to a large painting, an impressionist rendering of a vase of flowers … or maybe an explosion in a paint factory.
“I never got it fixed, just hid it. We were going to sell the house so why bother. And Jimmy … what is it they say, it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch.
He has had all kinda mental health issues, learning disabled as a child …
maybe autistic … maybe bipolar … in and out of mental institutions.
He had a psychotic episode when he was a kid and broke every dish in his mother’s kitchen.
When Charlie gave him the news, he never said a word, just got up and walked out. But … after that …”
Her voice trailed off.
“After that, what?”
“It’s nothing … just, it creeped me out.
Strange things. Somebody tore up Charlie’s garden.
He grew the most beautiful roses. Must have used a chain saw to cut the flowers to pieces.
Charlie found a dead rat on the front seat of his car, and we woke up one morning and there was a dead deer carcass on the porch—road kill.
It’d been dead for a long time and the smell … ”
“Did Charlie think his brother Jimmy was responsible for all that?”
“Oh, no. He was sure it was neighborhood teenagers. They take drugs and they’re always in trouble.”
“But you never found out for sure?”
“No. That was one reason Charlie didn’t mind about the house, he was glad to move somewhere else … or buy a travel trailer … we were going to talk about what was next for us …”
Her shoulders slumped. “There is no us. Not anymore. There’s just me.” She put her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. But she made no sound.
Jojo crossed to where the woman sat and put her arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Whitman.”
“How do you start over at my age? What is there left if all the dreams you had for all those years are gone? We were going to Australia. We’d always talked about it and that was to be the first place we’d travel to as soon as we were out from under everything.
” She paused and took another breath. “What am I supposed to do now? Go to Australia alone? Look at the kangaroos and the wallabies by myself?” Then she broke down and sobbed.
They waited until Mrs. Whitman had calmed down before they got the contact information on Charlie’s two brothers, then went back out to the car.
Jojo opened the door and let Trident out to do his business—on the perfect lawn of the Whitman house. She put him back in the back seat and sat down beside Conor. “What do you think about the brothers?”
“Charles Whitman took away his brothers’ free-lunch-for-life. People have committed murder for less.”