December's Secrets (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 2)

  December’s Secrets

  A Larry Macklin Mystery–Book 2

  By

  A. E. Howe

  Still smarting from his disastrous last date with Cara Laursen, criminal investigator Larry Macklin is nevertheless thrilled to get a call from her. But when he arrives at her house, he finds the chief suspect in his latest murder case sitting in her living room—her father, Henry.

  Henry claims he is being framed and Larry wants to believe him, but evidence suggests otherwise. And when another murder occurs with direct links to Henry, Larry can’t stop him from being taken into custody.

  For Cara’s sake, Larry will do anything to prove Henry’s innocence, but will he have to sacrifice his own ethics and risk obstructing justice in order to do it?

  Books in the Larry Macklin Mystery Series:

  November’s Past (Book 1)

  December’s Secrets (Book 2)

  January’s Betrayal (Book 3)

  February’s Regrets (Book 4)

  March’s Luck (Book 5)

  April’s Desires (Book 6)

  More coming soon!

  Join the mailing list to be notified of new releases by this author.

  Dedication

  For Melanie—my friend, my partner, my muse and my wife. Thanks for making every part of my life better.

  Copyright © 2016 by A. E. Howe

  All rights reserved.

  www.aehowe.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Additional Books in the Series

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  The winds of December were bringing in frigid air. High humidity and low temperatures can deliver bone-chilling cold, even in north Florida. Shivering a bit, I watched the crime scene techs try to cut the corpse from the tree without damaging any evidence that might have been on the rope it hung from.

  Uncharitably, I was glad that the man was white. I really didn’t want to deal with all the racial connotations that would come if the victim had been black. The corpse was wearing cargo pants, cheap hiking boots and a plaid shirt over a long-sleeve undershirt. From what I could see from the ground, he looked to be in his mid-thirties. His hair was brown and uncut. His swollen facial features made it hard to tell much more about him. The body had been discovered earlier this morning after dispatch received an anonymous tip.

  Shantel Williams and Marcus Brown, two of our Adams County crime techs, were being assisted by three more from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Since we’re a small county of less than thirty thousand, we often call on FDLE to assist us with major crimes. Having Tallahassee in the next county over had its advantages.

  They had rigged up a second rope so they could cut the rope used for the hanging, but still be able to lower the body gently to the ground. A van from the coroner’s office was waiting to take it to the morgue in Tallahassee.

  “Be careful now. No need breaking any bones that aren’t already broken,” Shantel told the guys who were lowering the body. The mocha-skinned middle-aged woman took charge of any situation she found herself in. And when things went wrong, even when it was no fault of her own, she was the first one to take the blame.

  A few minutes after the body was placed on the ground, she came over to me holding the dead man’s wallet open in her gloved hand so that I could read the information on his driver’s license. “At least you won’t have to waste time trying to figure out who he is,” she said.

  “Very considerate of him to keep his wallet with him during his brutal execution,” I told her.

  “Don’t be a smartass. It’s too cold for that. You know I’m supposed to be Christmas shopping this morning? I had the day off. Esther and I had the whole day planned… Going to go to Tallahassee and shop until we dropped. But you all just had to find a dead body. Out in these woods, it could have hung here for another day without someone finding it,” Shantel said, shaking her head. “You think Marcus is going to be happy? Esther is not going to be in a good mood.”

  Marcus and Shantel worked together almost every day and Marcus’s wife, Esther, was Shantel’s best friend. Hey, it was a small town and an even smaller sheriff’s department. Though I knew she didn’t want to hear it now, I was glad they had called her in. Marcus and Shantel were the best crime scene techs in the department.

  While Shantel ranted on about having to come in to work, I wrote down the man’s name and vitals: 5’10”, 200 pounds, brown eyes, brown hair. Doug Timberlane. The name didn’t ring any bells with me.

  Looking over at our unmarked car, I could see my partner, Pete Henley, texting furiously on his phone. Considering the size of the big man’s chubby fingers, he always impressed me with his dexterity. “Pete!” I yelled. He continued texting. “Pete, put your damn phone away and come over here.”

  He typed for another second, apparently hit “send” and looked up. “You don’t have teenage daughters.” He brought his three-hundred-plus pounds to an upright position and came lumbering over to me.

  “Ever hear of a Doug Timberlane?” I asked.

  “That him?” He pointed to the body.

  “No, I’m pulling random names out of my ass to ask you about.”

  “He’s in one of his smartass moods,” Shantel said while she bagged and tagged the wallet.

  “No. There are some Timberlys that live north of town, but I can’t say I know any Timberlanes,” Pete said. I made fun of him, but Pete had an encyclopedic knowledge of the people and the history of Adams County. I had seen him solve more than one case simply by making connections between people, their families and their friends.

  “According to his wallet, he lives on Sawgrass Road in the north end of the county,” I told him.

  “There are quite a few trailers and old houses for rent out that way.”

  I knew the area because of frequent calls for service when I was on the road. There were plenty of domestic abuse and overdose calls and all the other crimes that went with unemployment, poverty and substance abuse.

  “If you’ll keep an eye on things here I’ll ride up there. Maybe I can find some family or friends,” I said to Pete, who was checking his phone again. “Only if you can tear yourself away from your messages.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Go, I got this,” Pete said good-naturedly.

  I turned the heat up as I drove out on the dirt road that led back to the main highway. The murder site appeared more secluded than it actually was. Go a hundred yards any direction, you’d run into a neighborhood. We were just south of Calhoun, the county seat. I knew a woman who lived not too far away. We had dated a couple times and I still had hopes that it might become a real relationship. Unfortunately, she wasn’t comfortable getting involved with a sheriff’s deputy.

  I thought about driving by Cara’s duplex, but decided that would be too stalkerish. I headed on into town, going through a dozen or so stoplights and passing the large courthouse in the square. The car bounced over the railroad tracks that sti
ll divided Calhoun into the haves and the have-nots. I drove past the warehouse parking lot where a murder had recently taken place. I’d gotten lucky solving the case. I’d gotten lucky surviving the case.

  Fifteen minutes later I turned onto Sawgrass Road and began checking numbers on houses and mailboxes. It was a challenge in this rundown area. Many of the numbers were missing or impossible to read. When I finally found Timberlane’s address, I was looking at a mobile home that was at least twenty years old, faded and neglected. Pulling up in the driveway, it was obvious that this guy was not a high roller. The grass in the yard hadn’t been cut for months and was brown and dry from the recent frosts.

  There was an old pickup in the driveway. When I called in the tag, it came back registered to a David Tyler. We hadn’t found any vehicles close to the site of the hanging, so I didn’t know if Timberlane had a car or not. This could have certainly been his truck—he wouldn’t be the first poor guy who didn’t have the money to get all the paperwork right on his vehicle. I looked in the windows and saw the front seat was covered in fast food bags and cups, discarded cigarette packs and other trash. Nothing unusual or helpful—no bloodstains or the other half of the rope he was hung with.

  I climbed the trailer’s rickety wooden stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. I walked around to the back door. No luck there either. But I spotted an old man sitting on the screened porch of the equally dilapidated home next door. I waved and he took a hand out from underneath a pile of blankets to wave back.

  “Kind of cold to be sitting outside,” I shouted to him.

  “Fresh air. Gotta have my air,” he answered in a voice gravelly from too much smoking and drinking.

  I walked next door. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “You a repo man?”

  I took out my bi-fold and held up my star. “Deputy.”

  “Sure, come on up.”

  It was always refreshing to meet a member of the public that was willing to talk to law enforcement. His porch looked like it had been built with scavenged wood. I walked up the stairs and opened the door very carefully, afraid that it might just fall off. The old man was seated in a rocker. Up close, I decided that he probably wasn’t much over fifty, but a life lived rough had taken its toll.

  “Have a seat. I’d stand up, but I just got warm.” He smiled at me. The man had fewer teeth than I had fingers.

  “I’m Deputy Larry Macklin.” Since his hands were under the blankets, I didn’t offer to shake.

  “Macklin? I thought you was the sheriff.”

  “That’s my father, Ted Macklin,” I said. I’d had to explain the relationship between my father and me at least a million times over the years.

  “Oh, gotcha, I’m Jeremy Wright. Nice to meet cha’.”

  “Do you know your neighbor?” I nodded toward the house next door.

  “Oh, yeah. That rascal moved in about two months ago. Can’t say I’m surprised that a cop is interested in him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Mean as a snake, a thief, most likely a rapist and an ex-con.” He said all of this with great conviction.

  “You seem pretty sure.”

  “I know his type. I’ve been in prison a couple times myself. Not for nothin’ but drugs and drunk fighting. It’s not hard to tell the bad ones. And he’s a bad one. Had run-ins with a couple of the folks around here.”

  “About what?” I took out my pad and pen.

  “Tom up the street had a chainsaw go missing. And the Alarcons, they ain’t from here, the mister got in a fight with Timberlane about him making comments to his daughter. And she’s only fourteen.”

  “When was this?”

  “Not long after Timberlane moved in.”

  “Any problems since then?”

  “What’s this all about? He hurt someone?”

  “Just the opposite. Someone killed him.”

  “Good! If I was younger, I’d have roughed him up myself. Never killed no one, but I’d have liked to beat the snot out of that SOB.”

  “Did he have trouble with anyone else?”

  “Now I don’t know if I want to help no more. I thought I’d be getting him in trouble and that was all right. Someone killed Timberlane, and he needed killing, well, I don’t know if I want to put the heat on them or not.”

  I thought for a moment what the best approach would be. “What I’ve learned is that, if a bad guy gets killed, it’s most often another bad guy that did it.”

  He leaned back and thought about it. Finally he said, “True. Well, there was a guy yesterday got in a big fight with Timberlane right in the front yard.”

  My heart beat a little faster. Maybe this was going to be one of the easy ones. “What did the man look like? Did you know him?”

  “Nah, never seen him before. I’d remember if I did. Big old horse of a man. More ’an six feet, maybe six and a half, and no bean pole neither.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Mid-fifties, maybe? Had a ponytail hanging down his back.”

  “What color was his hair?”

  “Light, blondish, think there was some grey in it.”

  “What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

  “What I’d call working man’s. Flannel shirt and jean overalls. Nothing new. They were kinda dirty. Oh, yeah, big old work boots.”

  “Did he come in a car?”

  “Older crew cab pickup, think it was a Chevy. Grey. Kind of beat up.”

  “Didn’t happen to see the tag, did you?”

  “Nope.” Of course I couldn’t be that lucky.

  “Any other markings on the truck?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “What did they argue about?”

  “Funny about that. They were having like two arguments. On the one hand, Timberlane was all mad about not getting a check or something about being paid, and the big man was mad about some girl.”

  We needed to backtrack. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Where were you, and how did this fight start?”

  “I was sitting out here. Little warmer yesterday. Anyway, this man, the big one, pulled up in Timberlane’s driveway. He got out, went up and knocked on the door. Just like you. Only Timberlane was home. Door opens and the big man stepped back into the yard like he didn’t want to go in the house. Timberlane come down and asked something about his money that was owed him. The big man, he pulled out an envelope and tossed it on the ground. Timberlane didn’t take too kindly to that. He told him to pick it up. Big man said ‘eff you.’ Told Timberlane that if he ever saw him again it’d mean a trip to the hospital for Timberlane. Timberlane asked him what his problem was. Big guy says he ought to have Timberlane charged with rape.

  “You could see that the big guy was getting more worked up. I thought I was going to see Timberlane get his ass whipped for sure. But I guess he saw the same thing I did. Timberlane said ‘screw you’ and picked up the envelope, tore it open and looked at what was inside. He shot the big man a bird, but he was backing up toward the house at the same time. Big man just stood there. Then said that if he ever saw Timberlane again he’d do some permanent damage to him. That’s the words he used, permanent damage.”

  “Then the big guy left?”

  “Yeah. But he stood outside watching the house for a couple more minutes after Timberlane went inside. Like he was thinking about doing more. But, yeah, he went back to his truck and drove off real fast.”

  “Nothing else you can remember?”

  “No, don’t think so.”

  I got the names and addresses of the other neighbors who’d had encounters with Timberlane, gave Mr. Wright my card and thanked him for his help.

  “Don’t mind at all. I’m just glad someone got rid of that asshole. Honestly, part of me hopes you don’t catch him.”

  I talked to a couple of the other neighbors and got the same impression of Doug Timberlane. The consensus was that the world was a better place for him being strung up in a tree. I wondered if he had
family that might feel differently. I called Pete and got him working on tracking down the owner of the trailer. I needed to get inside and search it. But that could wait. I headed back to the crime scene.

  The body had been hauled off by the time I got back. Pete had called in some off-duty deputies and some of our civilian employees to help our crime scene techs search the area for any other evidence.

  I caught up with Shantel and she took me to the dead man’s effects. I asked her to go ahead and dust his cell phone. After she’d lifted several prints, she handed it to me. Checking it, I saw a number for “Mom.” I pressed it.

  “David?”

  That was weird, but then I remembered the registration of the truck in Timberlane’s driveway. I impressed myself by thinking on my feet for a change. “No, I found this phone. I saw the ‘Mom’ number and thought I might be able to get it back to its rightful owner. Is this David’s phone?”

  No answer. “Hello?”

  There was more dead air and then the connection was broken. Apparently I wasn’t fooling anybody. I pushed the button again. She answered but didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I’m a deputy with the Adams County, Florida Sheriff’s Office. You may as well talk to me because if you don’t, I’m simply going to use this number to find you.”

  She said nothing for half a minute, but she didn’t disconnect either. Finally, “How’d you get this phone?” The voice was soft and downcast. This was a person who was used to getting bad news.

  “I was telling the truth. I found it. Could you give me your name, please?” I had my pad and pen out and leaned on the hood of my car to write.

  “Tammy Page. Where did you find it?” A tremor came into her voice.

  “Do you have a son, Ms. Page?”

  “Yes. Is David all right? Please, is he okay?” Desperation and something else. I think she had been expecting this call for a long time.

  “I don’t know. We found the phone, but it was in the possession of someone by the name of Doug Timberlane.”

  “Is he okay?” She was almost yelling now. She hadn’t asked who Doug Timberlane was, which led me to one conclusion. I’m not always very good at this detection thing so maybe I was wrong, but it was worth a shot.