Thirty-Six and a Half Motives
Page 70

“The Fenton County chief deputy sheriff took the other journal, and no one knows where it went,” he said. “You really think handing this one over is a good idea?”
He had a good point.
He leaned down into the hole, rooting around. “If this won’t help us, then we find something that does. Leverage.”
“Oh, my stars and garters,” Neely Kate moaned. “Are you touching that dead body?”
“Gotta find out who he was.” He rose to a squat with a wallet in his dirty hand. “Whoever buried him did a piss-poor job. They must have been in a hurry. Looks like they dug just deep enough to stuff him under the trough, then filled the cracks with dirt. But the body’s decomposed, so some of the dirt on the sides has fallen in on him.”
I cringed and swallowed my nausea.
“How do you know it’s a man?” Neely Kate asked, inching closer.
“His clothes. His hair.”
“Hair?” she screeched, moving next to the grave.
Skeeter shined the light into the hole. “See his hair? It’s short but dark, so he was probably young. He’s wearing men’s jeans and work boots. Look, see the blood on his shirt? I think he was shot.”
Neely Kate looked over his shoulder. “How do you know he wasn’t stabbed?”
“Because of the small holes in the cloth.”
“So he died from gunshot wounds to the gut?”
“No. I suspect he died from a bullet to the head. See the hole in his forehead?”
I shuddered. “How can you be discussing a man’s death so coldly?”
He glanced over at me. “He’s been dead for quite some time, Lady. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence he’s here next to the safe.” He opened the wallet. “Thaddeus Brooke. His license expired a year after the factory fire and Dora’s death, so if he died in that period of time, he was thirty-five. He lived in Henryetta, and based on his photo, he was plenty rough around the edges.”
“You think he was here in the barn looking for the book?” I asked.
“There’s a good chance. I think we need to do some diggin’ into poor Thaddeus while you skim the journal.”
He leaned over again and dug into the grave, pulling out a set of keys and a money clip. “You girls head into the house. I’ll be inside in a minute.”
“What are you gonna do?” Neely Kate asked.
“See if there’s anything underneath him. It’s bound to get messy.”
Neely Kate made a beeline for the door, and Muffy, who’d been so quiet at my feet that I’d nearly forgotten her, took off in a sprint after her.
I paused at the edge of the stall, suddenly feeling the weight of Skeeter’s discovery. “We’re gonna have to kill J.R., aren’t we?”
Skeeter had jumped into the shallow grave, but he looked up at me with a serious expression. “You won’t be killin’ anyone. I’ll take care of it.”
That should have made me feel better, but it only terrified me.
“What’s our endgame, James? We know J.R.’s plan is to torture and kill us. We’ve been on the defensive, trying to outwit him, but what’s our goal? It can’t just be survival. We have to best him, and the only way I know how to do that is to kill him, because as long as J.R. Simmons is drawing a breath, he’s a threat to everyone. So what’s our plan?” My voice broke, frustrating the hell out of me. This wasn’t the time to fall apart, but I couldn’t believe what I was suggesting. When had I crossed the line to condoning murder?
“You’re right. I have an endgame in mind, but I haven’t shared it because I’m sure you would never approve. I plan to show the bastard no mercy.”
“That’s murder.”
“Not if it’s in self-defense.”
“I suppose that’s how it’s goin’ to end anyway. The two of us starin’ down the barrel of his gun.”
He held my gaze for several seconds, then turned his attention to the grave. “Not if I can help it.”
I headed into the house to find that Neely Kate had started a pot of coffee and set the remains of one of Maeve’s lemon pound cakes on the table. I grabbed one of Mason’s empty legal pads, a pen, and my laptop, and sat down at the table with the journal.
“I think we should write down anything that looks important, then figure out how it might fit in.”
Neely Kate nodded. “How about you read and I’ll take notes?”
“Actually,” I said, opening the book, “why don’t you search the Internet for anything you can find about Thaddeus Brooke?”
We’d been at it for ten minutes before Skeeter walked in the back door, covered in dirt.
“You find anything?” Neely Kate asked.
“No.” He glanced at the book. “What about you?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’ve found a host of things that will interest the state police, like the dates and times J.R. and Henry Buchanan met, but nothing that will help us tonight.”
Neely Kate looked up from the computer screen. “And I’ve been searching for anything I can find about Thaddeus Brooke, which isn’t much, so I’ve sent texts to a few friends at the courthouse to see what they can find.”
“Keep diggin’,” he said as he walked across the room. “I’m gonna take a shower. Jed should be here in a bit with a change of clothes.”
“He struck out at the barn, too?” Neely Kate asked.
“It doesn’t look too promising. He’ll tell us when he gets here. Is your shower upstairs?”
“Second door on the right,” Neely Kate said, giving me a worried look. Once we heard his footsteps on the stairs, she said, “So far we have a fat lot of nothing to help us for tonight. I think we need to try tracking down Anna and Bruce Wayne. If we can find Anna, we’ll find Bruce Wayne.”
I sighed. “You might be right, but it seems a little late for us to try findin’ her now. I wouldn’t even know where to look. That’s the reason we went this direction.”
“I think Hilary knows more. I texted Jonah, but apparently she wasn’t home when he stopped by her house. The question is what’s the connection between Anna and Hilary? You said Anna acted strange when Hilary walked into the shop.”