Fatal Mercy by Dan Padavona (freenovel24 .TXT) 📗

a look around the house. Then we’ll get out of your way.”

“No rush.” Kay waved a hand through the air. “I don’t get visitors these days.” She tugged the curtain. Ambrose, standing beside the recliner, helped her mother open the drapes. As Kay craned her neck to look outside, she said, “That nice Mrs. Tillery used to visit. Haven’t heard a peep from her since Lincoln passed. Everyone else brought casseroles and pies and soups and…you get the picture. I appreciate their kindness. But what will I do with all that food?”

“Mrs. Ramsey, the night your husband died, you mentioned a shadow moving through your neighbor’s yard.”

“That’s right, Mom,” Ambrose said, setting a hand on her mother’s.

“That could have been anyone. The kids run amok after dark, playing hide-and-go-seek, racing around on their bicycles. None of them have lights. I worry someone will speed through the neighborhood and hit them.”

“Did you hear the kids in the yard?” Aguilar asked.

“No. But if they were playing their game, they’d have kept quiet, right?”

“Over the last few months, did you receive threatening phone calls or notice strange vehicles in the neighborhood?”

“Nobody ever calls. Our family moved away or passed on. Only Ambrose stayed.”

Ambrose patted her mother’s hand and smiled down at her.

“Mom, what about the brick?”

Kay scoffed.

“That was two winters ago. A deputy took pictures and asked us questions. But we never found out who did it. We replaced the window and installed a security system. Problem solved.”

Thomas sat forward.

“What’s this about a brick?”

Ambrose leveled Thomas with a glare.

“Someone threw a brick through the living room window. For some reason, my mother doesn’t consider it a big deal. While my father had friends in Wolf Lake, he made a few enemies over the years.”

“Enemies. Anyone in particular?”

Thomas turned his attention to Kay. She pressed her lips together and glanced outside. Across the street, a young couple lifted an antique dresser on to their pickup. Ambrose touched her mother’s shoulder.

“Mom?”

“Lincoln had an issue with some man at the bank,” said Kay, wiping a tear off her eyelid.

Thomas clicked his pen.

“An employee?”

“No, a customer. Something about a loan. I don’t know the specifics because Lincoln never spoke about work. When the clock struck five, his workday ended. The rest of the day belonged to his family.”

“Did this customer threaten your husband?”

Kay shrugged.

“If he did, Lincoln didn’t say.”

“The incident with the brick,” Aguilar said. “This occurred two years ago this February?”

“That’s correct.”

“What about the problem at the bank?”

“Maybe a year earlier. It happened too long ago to say for certain.”

Thomas noted the approximate dates. He set down the pad and asked, “Is there anyone at the bank who would remember the argument?”

Kay glanced up at her daughter, then back to Thomas and Aguilar.

“Lincoln was close with Earl Horton. Earl joined the First National Bank of Harmon a few years after Lincoln arrived. They were tellers when they started, and both shot up the ranks. Earl handled small business loans.”

“Mark my words,” Ambrose said. “The man who caused trouble at the bank is the same man who broke the window. And if he was crazy enough to throw a brick through a window in broad daylight…”

Thomas tucked the pad into his pocket.

“Is there anything else you can think of? Anything strange that happened in the neighborhood in recent weeks?”

Kay crossed one leg over the other and shook her head.

“It’s so quiet here, it’s almost boring. Our neighbors are good people, Deputy. Nobody here would harm Lincoln.”

But Thomas caught trouble in Kay’s eyes when she glanced down the road.

“You mentioned a security system,” Aguilar said. “Do you keep it armed when you’re home.”

“If I didn’t,” Kay said, glaring at Ambrose. “My daughter would have my hide. Two years we’ve paid a monthly fee for this service, and we haven’t needed it once.”

After Ambrose repeated her version of what happened Sunday night, the daughter insistent someone broke into the house, the deputies wrapped up the interview. Kay Ramsey begged Thomas and Aguilar to take an apple pie or a fruit cake. They refused, but somehow Aguilar ended up with a mason jar of chicken soup.

“What?” Aguilar asked as Thomas laughed at her with his eyes. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer.” After Aguilar set the soup inside the cruiser, she stood beside Thomas on the sidewalk, one hand on her hip, the other rubbing her chin. “Did you notice Mrs. Ramsey staring at Garrick Tillery’s house after she claimed no one would hurt her husband?”

“Sure did.”

“The guy got a drunk and disorderly over the winter, and he has a sexual assault on his record.”

“And an eyewitness put him inside the park moments before Cecilia Bond ended up dead in the river.”

Aguilar strolled through the grass.

“So Kay and Lincoln Ramsey have a security system, and Ambrose claims someone sneaked into the house and murdered her father. Yet the alarm never went off.”

Thomas pointed at the master bedroom window along the side of the house. A porch roof hung below the window, shielding a side entrance.

“Security companies don’t connect second-floor windows unless they’re over a roofed porch. And the cheaper companies skip the second-floor, even if a lower roof exists. Do we know which company they hired?”

“Lake Tech,” Aguilar said, twisting her mouth.

“That bad?”

“They’re the worst. A child with a slingshot could rob a family without triggering a Lake Tech alarm.”

They stopped below the master bedroom and glanced up.

“Lambert couldn’t find a print on the window. But he noted the screen was out of its tracks.”

“So Garrick Tillery scaled the porch, stood on the roof, and jostled the screen open,” said Thomas, the doubt reflected in his voice.

“You saw this guy. Is he capable of climbing up to the roof and breaking through a window? I wouldn’t describe Tillery as agile. Given his constant level of inebriation, he’d tumble off the roof before he hurt anyone.”

“He’s a violent offender. That puts him at the top of my suspect list.”

Aguilar’s radio squawked. The sheriff’s department got a lead on the Ellie