Love and Suspicion Read online

  By the time she arrived, Mariam was already there and happy to see her. “You came back.”

  “You didn’t think I would?” Tiffany changed the closed sign to open and then stuffed her purse under the counter.

  “Well, you being a stranger and all.”

  “Don’t worry, unless I get suddenly and very romantically carried off by the man of my dreams, I’ll tell you if I’m not coming back.”

  “Deal.”

  “Anything special you’d like me to do today?”

  Mariam started down an aisle, turned around and abruptly came back. “Well, I did mean to ask you, although it is hardly proper you being so new and all, but you’re so much taller than me, and...”

  “What?”

  “Will you get mad and quit if I ask you to shine up the front windows a little?”

  “You mean wash them?”

  Mariam frowned. “Wash is such a harsh word; don’t you think?”

  Tiffany pulled a bottle of window cleaner out from under the counter. “Shine them with this?” When her boss nodded, she grinned. “I was going to do that today anyway.”

  Mariam looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders. “You’re such a jewel. Remind me to thank Michael for sending you to me.” She started down the aisle. Once more, she stopped and turned around. “I might have a lead on a room for you to stay in while you’re here. I’ll have to let you know, as soon as I know, that is. Michael hasn’t fixed his billboard yet, and the anticipation is driving everyone half crazy.”

  “I notice that. It’s Sunday though, and...”

  “I doubt Sunday means much to Michael except that his employees have the day off. Maybe he couldn’t get anyone to climb that dangerous steel ladder and has to wait until tomorrow. He’d never do it himself, you know. He’s not the fix-things-himself kind of man.”

  “You like Michael?”

  Mariam took a few more steps toward the front counter, stopped, folded her arms and then unfolded one so she could push her glasses up her nose. “We go way back, Michael and I. I am disappointed to hear Jolie is divorcing him. I hoped he would find happiness with her, but how can he with Birdie still around. The best thing for Michael would be for Birdie to leave town and never come back. I don’t suppose that will ever happen, although it should have long ago. A very long time ago.”

  Tiffany knew a scandalous love triangle when she heard one and was smart enough to listen instead of ask questions. It was fascinating, however, to hear that the ex-wives went to Birdie’s Bed and Breakfast last Friday night, knowing she was Michael’s mistress – if indeed she was his mistress.

  Mariam spotted a book out of place and tapped the binding until it was lined up with the books on either side of it. “He married Pamela first, but they never really had a chance to be happy.”

  “How come?”

  “Michael got her pregnant and Earl demanded he marry her, but Michael didn’t really love Pamela. What a beautiful wedding that was. The whole town was there, and of course Michael loved all the attention. Unfortunately, a wedding only lasts one day. Then, too soon Alex came along. Having a baby before a young couple has a chance to really get to know each other is too hard on a marriage. Pamela used to come in here all the time. She’s nice enough, but I don’t think she’s ever forgiven Michael for not loving her. Well now, I wouldn’t know that for sure, would I. Pamela keeps her private life private, at least from most of us.”

  “Michael married again, right?”

  Mariam caught her breath, “Oh yes, to that...shall we say, grouch of a thing, Andrea.”

  “I take it you don’t like Andrea.”

  “Not one little bit. She’s the flighty showoff type and boy did she think she was hot stuff when she was Michael’s wife.” Mariam stopped talking when her little bells jangled and her first customer of the day walked in.

  “Anything yet?” Mariam asked.

  “Not yet,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “Maybe wife number three finally killed Michael.”

  Mariam smirked, “I doubt it. Jolie got pretty drunk again last night and crashed, as the kids say, at Birdies.”

  Mrs. Carpenter chuckled and winked at Tiffany. “If you ever want to know anything about the people in this town, just ask Mariam. If she doesn’t know something, it’s only because it hasn’t happened yet.”

  Tiffany returned the woman’s smile, watched her stroll down the nonfiction aisle and heard her ask, “Mariam, you got anything on Roman history back here?”

  “You mean like The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire?” Mariam asked as she jetted down the row to help her customer. “We had it here at one time, I’m sure.”

  Tiffany only half listened as the two women talked about everything from the national news to wondering if women would start wearing hats again. Her thoughts were on Ben and whether or not she should ask Mariam about him. She decided against it, however, for fear of giving Mariam something new to spread around town. She didn’t get the chance to anyway. Mrs. Carpenter bought a book, invited Mariam to a late lunch and the two of them left Tiffany in charge of the store.

  Mariam came back around five, approved of the sparkling clean windows, and promptly left for the day. Tiffany thought nothing of it and when Mariam told her to read a book when she got bored, it was something she had already thought of. As soon as Mariam was out of sight, Tiffany pulled her open book out from under the counter and continued reading.

  NOT MUCH HAPPENED ON Rod’s rounds after he checked on the widow that afternoon. He sat on the service road near an on-ramp, clocked cars on the Interstate, and wrote a few speeding tickets. He drove the back roads for a time, spotted a stray dog and tried to catch it. The dog was far too skittish to come to him.

  His shift was half over when he drove back to town, parked on Main Street and ate his sack lunch. After his shift, the bars would close and there was always something to do then, even if it was only to make sure everyone got home safe. That shift always had been and still was Wayne Griffin’s.

  Finished with his lunch, he headed out of town to patrol the back roads again. It was beautiful country and he could swear the corn stocks had grown a foot just since he came to town. The lonely roads had few streetlights and except for lights in yards or in farmhouse windows, some stretches of road offered no light at all. As evening turned to night, Rod stopped the cruiser, got out, and looked up at the billions of stars. That was something he didn’t see much of living in the city.

  Soon, however, his thoughts returned to the Woodbury case. Thousands of acres surrounded the town and the baby could have been buried anywhere. Naturally, the answer was in finding the right suspect and then searching his or her property. More often than not, one or both parents were responsible and that was still a possibility, no matter how well liked the Woodburys were. Three people in the house, two wide awake, and none of them heard someone enter, take the sleeping baby, and then exit? The answer was probably inside the house, but he could hardly walk right up and ask to have a look around, not after falsely arresting Earl.

  Near the time for his shift to end, Rod went to do what he’d been wanting to do all day. He drove down Main Street, made sure Earl was not still sitting on the bench needing a ride home, and then drove to the Woodbury mansion. He wanted to see how the place might have looked the night of the kidnapping, and at first, he just slowly drove past the house.

  With the garage in the back of the house, the driveway ran up the hill beside the house with a sidewalk to the front door. The street offered plenty of places a kidnapper could have easily parked nearby. Just now, nearly all the lights were off inside the mansion, so he could see several routes of escape the kidnapper might have taken. They included walking across the lawn and around to the back. That was possible. The bushes lining the front of the house appeared to be well trimmed and probably had been then too. However, since they found no damp shoeprints in the back, he suspected the kidnapper simply walked down the driveway and got in a car on the street
.

  How he or she got in the house was another matter.

  Several new homes had been built nearby since then and when Rod drove down the alley, vines covered the fence and prevented him from getting much of a view of the Woodbury’s backyard even with the back porch light on. According to the file, the backyard had been turned into a beautiful garden with stone pathways and a large birdbath in the center, all of which was not fenced in at the time. It was in the garden near the birdbath that Earl found the body of his wife.

  Rod made a mental note to come by in the daytime and then drove around to the front of the house a second time. Two o’clock in the morning, even in July, would have made the night sky pitch black. Mrs. Woodbury said she put the baby to sleep around ten and didn’t check on her again until she was heading to bed herself around two am. That’s when she discovered the baby was gone. At least that gave the investigators a time frame between ten and two to work with. Apparently, it didn’t help much.

  With nothing more to see, he went back on patrol to finish his shift.

  Sunday nights in the big city meant dozens of calls, but in Blue Falls Rod wasn’t expecting many and he was right. A report claimed Crazy Eddie was racing through town again – whoever Crazy Eddie was. The caller didn’t say which direction Crazy Eddie was going, so all Rod could do was sit at the end of Main Street and wait to see if he could catch sight of the blue pickup.

  Twenty minutes later and with nothing to report, he simply called the night dispatcher to say he was clear if she needed him.

  “We get a complaint about Eddie quite often,” she said. “We know it’s his ex-wife calling, but we have to take the call anyway. Eddie lives out on Lonely Lane and you could see if he went home. He’s hardly ever there. Crazy Eddie is harmless; he just gets a little rowdy sometimes.”

  “Thanks, I’ll head over to the Interstate instead.”

  “Ten-four.”

  HAPPY TO HAVE THE NEXT day off, Rod was eager to learn all he could about the kidnapping. He began by combing through the three main witness statements – Earl’s, Shelley’s, and the one given by Mariam Eggleston. Four days after the kidnapping, the housekeeper openly wept throughout the entire, and sometimes intense, questioning by the sheriff. By then, Earl’s wife was already dead and Mariam swore she knew nothing about any pills Shelley might have taken. In effect, Mariam knew nothing about anything. She claimed she just did her job and stayed out of her employer’s affairs.

  Next, Rod read the statements from town cops, deputies, and FBI investigators. The fingerprint report listed those they could identify and several partials they could not. A notation stated that Earl’s wife did not have many friends. Rod recognized few of the investigator’s names. Either the cops on the case had moved on, or he had not yet met them. The next list included three names – the two men and one woman whom Earl fired at the Woodbury Tile Company the week before. It did not detail why he fired them.

  The next section outlined everything that occurred the next day. The widening of the search, a second canvas of the neighbors, and another search of the house, garage and garden. While the distraught mother took a sedative and went to bed, a careful walkthrough with Earl and Mariam yielded little that looked out of place. It noted only a dirty plate and two forks left in the kitchen sink. Mariam had no idea who ate or what had been eaten, and even checked the refrigerator trying to guess. Either two people ate from the same plate, or one fork was dropped and then replaced.

  Investigators looked for loose boards in floors and walls, behind which someone might have hidden the body. They found nothing. No toys were missing, a blanket was left in the crib and so was the baby’s bottle. The fingerprints on the bottle had been smudged.

  The ransom call came early the next morning and Earl was the first to grab the phone. The caller said – For a million dollars in unmarked bills, I’ll give your daughter back. Take it to the junkyard at midnight, drop it in front of the tree and leave. And Woodbury – come alone!

  To raise the money, Earl put up the company, all other properties he owned, and his house. Since he was the bank’s best customer, an armored truck was immediately dispatched from Des Moines to Blue Falls, and arrived by five o’clock that same afternoon. The sheriff noted that Michael was against paying the ransom. As soon as it was dark, the FBI staked out the junkyard. The only outside light in the junkyard had been shot out, and although it barked incessantly, the dog was chained up. Earl came, walked down the dirt road, made the drop, and walked back out. Hour after hour passed with no sign of an intruder. Near sunrise when the FBI finally checked, the money was gone.

  The owner of the junkyard was questioned the next day, but he had a solid alibi for the night before. He was on a plane with his wife and son, flying home after a vacation in Canada.

  Neither the ransom nor little Tiffany was ever seen again.

  The Fourth of July celebration seriously hampered the search. Earl insisted the celebration go on as scheduled. Not only had the town spent months in preparation, people came from miles around to buy bushels of fruit and vegetables, which was vital to the income of the farmers. The sheriff estimated over four thousand came, many who brought campers and parked out at the lake where electric, gas, and water facilities were available. Others just parked their campers anywhere they could for the night. There was a list of those required to register at the campgrounds, complete with names and addresses, but those parking in other areas were not canvased.

  While the town held its collective breath waiting to hear if baby Tiffany had been found, the fireworks display on the hill outside of town went off as scheduled.

  The next morning, Deputy Mercer went from place to place and collected hotel registration records and even had a copy of Birdie’s register. He asked and received without any argument, bank records showing out-of-town checks that were cashed in town beginning the week before.

  On the morning of the fifth of July, the other shoe dropped. Earl found his wife’s lifeless body in the backyard. She oddly left a blank check on top of her dresser, which was drawn on her personal account. Shelley signed it but did not fill in the amount or the name of the person she intended to pay.

  Mariam Eggleston claimed to know nothing about the blank check either.

  Rod was about to go to the kitchen to get his third cup of coffee, when he turned the page and wrinkled his brow. He turned another page and then another trying to figure out why the information concerning Shelley’s death was so incomplete. Missing was a death certificate, a forensics report and more importantly the coroner’s report. Furthermore, there was no mention of the name of the drug that killed her. The only picture was of her lifeless body, lying in the same position Earl claimed he found her. Rod turned several more pages thinking the material had been misplaced, but found nothing.

  He frowned, went to get more coffee and came back to the table. Shelley Woodbury was a pleasant looking woman, but not outstandingly beautiful in his opinion. She was wearing a pale orange nightgown and her feet were bare, which was not unusual in July. Her finger and toenails displayed matching white pearl polish, and her long blonde hair was spilled to the side of her head, suggesting she had fallen to one side instead of straight back.

  Rod picked up his magnifying glass and slowly examined the photograph. She was still wearing makeup, which may or may not imply she died earlier in the night rather than later. Rod found no blood, either from hitting her head on the stone walkway or having been hit with something. Except for the empty unbroken glass sitting upright next to her, the picture didn’t have much of a story to tell.

  The next section detailed a thorough search of the campground and divers who looked for the baby’s body in the lake. They found no body or anything else that could be linked to the kidnapping.

  A flood of tips from town’s people were carefully categorized as silly to mildly interesting. Then came copies of newspaper articles. Verified alibis included one for Michael and his brother Jason.

  The last s
ection included letters from inmates who claimed to know something about the case. That was normal. There were always convicts who thought they could wrangle some sort of deal out of law enforcement by claiming they heard from one guy, who heard from another guy, that... Of course, that’s why the officials always held back key evidence only the real kidnapper would know.

  Rod closed the file, rubbed his tired eyes and decided to go to bed. There were more details to comb through, but he had an outline of the case and it was enough for now.

  Besides, he had a date with a pretty widow the next day.

  ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Michael fixed his billboard, or rather one of his men did, and the town was a buzz about it for hours.

  After only two days of employment, Tiffany was getting used to the constant phone calls and ladies dropping by the store just to gossip. Gossip was a bad thing, she’d always been taught, but she also heard truth was better than fiction. In Blue Falls, that was certainly accurate and even if she didn’t want to hear every juicy detail, she couldn’t have avoided it.

  “Now we wait to see what he does to Jerry,” Mariam often told her friends. “It’s excruciating, but soooo very exciting.” When she and Tiffany were finally alone, Mariam was still not tired of talking about it. “I don’t know how these boys think this stuff up.”

  “I can’t imagine either,” said Tiffany “I understand Jerry doesn’t have a billboard Michael can mess with, and the town asked them not to do flyers anymore. Doesn’t that make is harder for Michael to do anything to get even?”

  “Much harder, I would say, wouldn’t you?”

  Tiffany nodded.

  “I’ve been thinking of putting some children’s books in the window. What do you think?”

  “I agree. Want me to take care of that?”

  “Yes I do. You’re so talented in that regard. I’ll go choose some books.” She came back to the subject of Michael’s second wife, Andrea, as if it hadn’t been a whole day since she last mentioned it. “Like I said, Andrea thought she was hot stuff after Michael married her. She had to have the best of everything and at first Michael didn’t mind. Then his credit cards kept growing and he put his foot down, or so I am told. He would have left Andrea then, I think, if her daughter, Gloria, hadn’t come along. Andrea didn’t care about the tile business either especially after she found out Michael didn’t own it. And then - things really blew up when she found out she was living in Earl Woodbury’s house. See, everyone knew that but her, and all the while she thought she was impressing someone. Well, that marriage didn’t last long and Michael should have stayed single and messed around with Birdie the way he always had before. But no, last year he married Jolie, that sweet young thing. Now that’s over and...well,” Mariam abruptly stopped choosing books and stared at Tiffany.