Three Degrees of Death Read online

  Three Degrees

  of Death

  A Colby Tate Mystery

  Book 3

  Allen Kent

  Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kent. All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the cases of brief quotations imbedded in articles or reviews, with attribution shown.

  For information address AllenPearce Publishers,

  16635 Hickory Drive, Neosho, MO 64850

  AllenPearce Publishers © ©

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Allen Kent

  Three Degrees of Death

  Kent, Allen

  DEDICATION

  To my friends Jack Andris and Jack Divine

  who keep me supplied with quirky tales about Ozark life;

  and to Sam “Fits” Luney, the only semi-factual character in this book, with my appreciation and thanks for his fascinating life.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful thanks to my team of readers: my wife Holly, Diane Andris, Judy Day, Juliet Scherer, Alison Koralewski, Richard Clement, and Marilyn Jenson. You all made this a much better book.

  And special thanks to Uvi Poznansky for her wonderful cover!

  Three Degrees of

  Death

  Prologue

  Witnesses would later remember the couple as being in their mid-thirties, dressed in shorts, casual shoes and tops, and wearing oversized sunglasses. The man sat across from the woman in a booth near the front windows of The Rendezvous Café on Inverness’s Church Street, the couple doing their best to be inconspicuous. They spoke in hushed tones, their faces buried in menus with no real indication they planned to order.

  At a table beside them, a pair of teens talked quietly, so absorbed in each other that they seemed unaware of anyone else in the room. The girl sat shyly with hands folded in her lap, most of her long, black hair covered by a head scarf. The boy smiled at her affectionately, his hands fidgeting nervously on the tabletop between them as if he would like to reach across and invite her to touch them. Both were darker complected than the rest of the early morning crowd of tourists and Scottish regulars who chatted over coffee and scones or a heartier breakfast of sausage, eggs, and fried tomatoes.

  Beyond these observations, which differed slightly in detail, depending upon the memory of the witness, the police would later have to rely on statements from the casually-dressed couple.

  “I wish we had spent more time in the castle,” they remembered the girl beside them saying, her accent North American. “They really rushed us through, and I thought it was the most interesting place we went yesterday.”

  The boy had pulled a phone from his pocket and checked the time. “It should open in about half an hour,” he said. “We’d have plenty of time to go through again before we have to be back.”

  The woman in the sunglasses recounted that she had turned from her menu, leaned toward the boy, and asked hesitantly, “Excuse me, I wasn’t trying to listen, but did you say you had been to the castle?”

  The young man had looked over with a friendly smile. “Yes. We went yesterday. But we didn’t really see much. We’re with a group, and they were in a real hurry to get us out to see Loch Ness.”

  “Is it nearby?” the woman asked. “The castle, I mean? We just arrived last night and thought we would start our first morning there.”

  The boy looked back at the dark-haired girl and asked, “What would you guess? Maybe ten minutes from here?”

  She nodded. “Not more than that.”

  “And you were thinking you might go back this morning?” the man asked.

  “Yeah. We were just trying to decide,” the boy acknowledged. “We have to be back at our hotel by 11:00, but thought that would give us plenty of time.”

  The man removed his sunglasses, wiped the lenses with his napkin, and gave the pair a disarming smile. “I hate to intrude on your morning, but how would you feel about showing us the way over there? We’re parked right outside, and we’d be happy to pay your way in for your help, then leave you to wander around as you like.”

  “You don’t really need to drive,” the boy replied. “It’s not much of a walk.”

  The man nodded. “Sure. We could walk over with you. But we’d really prefer to have the car nearby when we finish. Do you think you could guide us if we drive?”

  Again the boy looked across at the girl. “What do you think, Miriam? Do you want to go over there now?”

  She tilted her head uneasily. “I guess it would be alright.”

  “Oh, thank you so much!” the woman gushed. “We are new to this whole Scotland business, and it will be such a big help.” They rose from the booth with the young couple following and guided them to a white Toyota that sat against the curb immediately across the brick-paved street.

  “Why don’t you slip in front with me so you can give directions,” the man said to the boy. “And your friend can sit with my wife.” He chuckled to himself. “And as we drive, keep reminding me to stay on the left side of the street.”

  They slid into the car and buckled their belts.

  “Point the way,” the driver said, clicking the door safety locks into place. “I think this is going to be a truly memorable day!”

  1

  Granny Durbin always insisted that bad news comes in threes. She was a superstitious old woman, a regular visitor to the Webber sisters who read the tea leaves in their mountain cabin down in the southeast corner of the county. I was never certain whether Granny was right about bad news and threes, or whether when one grim morsel of information came her way she just looked around until she found a discommoding pair to go with it. But she could always reel off the trio as if when the first happened, no matter how unrelated the other two appeared to be, they were destined by the stars to follow. The day Fits Loony disappeared would have provided Granny with proof positive that her belief in the trinity of bad news was gospel.

  Fits Loony has been raising and training squirrels in that chicken wire teepee he calls home for as long as I can remember. Fits isn’t his given name. Someone once told me it is Sam. And his last name isn’t Loony. It’s Luney. But over time he’s become Fits Loony, and he hasn’t ever seen reason to argue the point.

  For years, Fits had a little cabin on six acres of wooded hillside just north of Crayton where he made bows and arrows out of the wood of Osage orange trees, what most people around here call hedge apple. Fits sold his weapons to hunters who thought it more sporting to use bent wood bows instead of the pullies, cams, cables, and laminations that make up the modern compound contraption. His work was so good that, though he refused to take orders, he was able to sell anything he made the day he finished, just by heading into town with them strapped across his back. At $150 for a bow and $20 apiece for arrows, he eked out what he considered a passable living. Then he got into squirrels.

  According to local lore, which has never been substantiated by the man himself, Fits first trained a big red squirrel to eat out of his hand. He then decided to coach a smaller gray to stay in his inside jacket pocket while he walked around the county peddling his bows. The next thing folks knew, Fits had moved out of his cabin into one of those garden sheds you see for sale in lumberyard parking lots. He then surrounded the hut with a cone-shaped cage of half-inch wire mesh, supported by bent hickory saplings lashed at the top like a teepee. The cage was about twenty feet in diameter, close to as many feet high, and sat next to the old cabin under a giant red oak.

  The last time I was by there, there must have been thirty squirrels living in the cage with him. He fattened them up on sunflower seeds he bought in 40-p
ound sacks from a farmer over by Newtonia and acorns he gathered in the fall and stored in what used to be the bedroom of his old cabin. Though he smelled like he’d been living in a squirrel’s nest, folks generally liked the odd little man and treated him with cautious respect or amused indifference. At least, they did until yesterday.

  My name is Colby Tate, and I’ve been sheriff in the county for going on two and a half years. So when something happens outside of the city of Crayton, our county seat, it’s my office that gets the call. Or, more often than not, it’s me personally. Most people know my cell number and don’t see any reason to trouble 911 or my assistant Marti when they can just contact me directly. That way they make sure the message gets to me with all the necessary details and with the proper sense of urgency.

  In the case of Fits Loony’s trouble, the call came from Jerry Covell who runs Family Market over on Adams Street and serves as Information Central for Crayton and most of the county. Jerry’s market is about the only place everyone visits at least weekly, picking up a gallon of milk or some of Jerry’s famous pork loin chops, leaving behind the juiciest morsels of gossip they’ve been able to glean since their last visit. The irony is that Jerry’s pretty discreet about what he passes on, making him the perfect confidant. But there are always four or five less circumspect citizens gathered at the meat counter, so people can share confidences with Jerry with every assurance they will spread about town like a brushfire. Jerry does, however, know when it’s a good idea to bring me into the loop, knowing that brushfires often reach the sheriff last.

  “Tate,” he said, as soon as I answered, “the guy from Newtonia who brings my sunflower seeds just left the store. He stopped at Fits Loony’s on his way down to leave a sack and said it looked like someone had tore the place up. There was no sign of Fits, and it looked like most of the squirrels had run off through big holes in the wire.”

  “I’ll drive up and check it out,” I told Jerry, glancing down at a list Marti had compiled from messages left overnight on the answering machine and from reports of the night officers. Marti is always in the office by 7:45 and makes a habit of leaving the bulleted sheet planted in the middle of my desk.

  “We had a call from the junior high saying one of the Wilkins kids who gets dropped off early by his dad thought it would be clever to see if he could pull himself up the flag pole. He clipped his belt and a shirt buttonhole to the rope and was about two feet off the ground when the wheel at the top gave out on him. The chain and pulley just missed his brother who was adding a little muscle to the experiment. The principal asked if I could swing by and let the boys know they were one screw-up away from doing jail time. I’ll go on up to Fits’ place after I do my ‘scared straight’ routine.”

  Jerry chuckled cynically into the phone. “It won’t work unless you mention their dad. Good thing the school didn’t bring him in on this instead of calling you. He’d have beat the kids into next week.”

  I sniffed my agreement. “That’s why they didn’t—and why the boys act up the way they do. I’ve never seen kids who crave attention like those Wilkins boys. Anyway, thanks for letting me know about the trouble at Fits’.”

  “I imagine you heard about LJ,” Jerry said hastily before I could end the call.

  And there it was. I knew instantly that I was headed toward Granny Durbin’s bad news trifecta. Nothing involving LJ Greaves is ever good news. The old man and his good-for-nothing son Verl live in a hoarder-packed metal building along Mill Creek in what the locals call Blackjack Holler. For as long as I’ve been sheriff, they’ve been fighting the county and a company called Mid-Missouri Water over construction of a dam on the creek. When the thing’s completed, it will flood their land and create a 2500-acre lake to replace Crayton’s water wells. All the other landowners have signed eminent domain agreements, albeit with a lot of fuss and complaint. But the Greaves have refused, insisting their property is sovereign land and not subject to the unjust laws of an oppressive socialist state.

  “He must have finally died,” I guessed, remembering that the last time I saw LJ stretched out in a battered recliner in their junk-filled barn of a house he looked like he already had one foot in the grave.

  “Yup. Last night,” Jerry confirmed. “But that’s not the reason I mentioned it. Able Pendergraft was in here this morning. He always comes in early Tuesday morning ‘cause he knows I cut the ribeyes Monday night. I guess Verl was waiting at his office when Able showed up this morning. The old man’s not even cold, and Verl’s looking to file a wrongful death lawsuit against your State Patrol friend.”

  I felt myself stiffen in the chair and unconsciously turned my back on the outer office where Marti and my chief deputy, Grace Torres, had both looked my way at mention that someone had died.

  “Hang on a minute, Jerry,” I said, rising from my desk as I spoke. “I need to close the door.”

  My office is a glass cubicle we call the fishbowl that sits in the front corner of what was once the Bank of Crayton. When a branch of First Ozark opened out on the highway with its handy drive-up window, ATM, and regional reputation, our local bank was shuttered, leaving a two-story brick building on the square we now affectionately refer to as the Blockhouse.

  In its infinite wisdom, the county refurbished the building to house the sheriff’s department. The sheriff inherited the old loan officer’s see-through office where my predecessor installed roll-down blinds he could drop when he wanted privacy. But for now, a closed door was sufficient. I pulled it shut under the curious gaze of the two women and continued to stand with my back to the outer office.

  “He’s filed a suit against Officer Joseph?” I asked quietly enough that it didn’t carry through the transparent walls.

  “Yup. At least that’s what he wants to do. Against your pretty little trooper friend—and against you, Tate. Verl’s claiming LJ died because of that gunshot wound and that they had their property posted. He claims he lawfully ordered you out of the holler before the woman shot LJ.”

  “Did Able agree to represent him?”

  Jerry snorted into the phone. “You know better than that. Able’s got no room for the Greaves, even if he thought there was a case. Verl said he’d find someone in Springfield, and Able thinks he will.”

  “I’m surprised Able didn’t call me.”

  “You know Able. My guess is he’s trying to be as ethical as he can. Even if he’s not representing the Greaves, he isn’t willing to say anything about something Verl came to talk to him about in confidence.”

  “He told you about it.”

  Jerry chuckled. “Yeah. He sort of had to after he said he knew that LJ had died. Plus, I’m not the one going to be sued.”

  But I was, and Granny Durbin’s second piece of misfortune arrived before I even had a chance to read all the way though Marti’s list.

  Mara Joseph, the state patrol investigator Jerry mentioned, had been with me when we had gone into the holler to question the Greaves about the death of an old woman who lived on the next section of property along the creek. Before we were even down the dirt track that descended the hill to their homestead, a shot from Verl’s Marlin had shattered a tree beside my sideview mirror and stopped us cold. While I had been shouting down at the pair of old codgers about their choice to either talk to me that morning or have me return with an army of troopers, Joseph circled behind the metal building. They had finally agreed to talk, but became threatening when I mentioned their neighbor’s death and told them we had information they had been poaching timber from the back of her property.

  Mara, who I generally call Joseph, had come around the building from the rear to find a shotgun pointed at my chest and the Marlin zeroed in on my crotch. When she’d ordered the men to drop their weapons, LJ had swung the 12-gauge in her direction and she’d brought him down with a shot to the left side of his ribcage. That had been nearly a year ago. I had only seen the old man once since and knew he was in bad shape. But still, the death caught me off guard. So did a s
uit against me and Mara Joseph.

  “Damn,” I muttered into the phone. “She doesn’t deserve this. She was just protecting us both.”

  Jerry tried to be reassuring. “Verl may not be able to get anyone to take the case.”

  “In today’s climate? I wouldn’t bet on it. But thanks, Jerry. Good to have a heads-up.” This time he let me sign off.

  I stepped into the outer office with both women watching me expectantly. “LJ died last night,” I said simply.

  Marti tilted her head. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but no loss there. And I would think you’d agree. Those two have been a curse on the county, and he’s been in bad shape for a long time. But you look more troubled than just hearing about LJ.”

  I’d been thinking about Granny Durbin’s Rule of Three. Was LJ’s death number two, and Jerry’s revelation about the lawsuit the third? Marti’s comment convinced me we still hadn’t been hit with our third bit of misfortune. If there was a single person in the county people wouldn’t miss, it was LJ Greaves. Nobody would count his passing as bad news.

  “Verl’s already been in to talk to Able Pendergraft about a wrongful death suit against me and Joseph,” I told them.

  Marti looked quickly over at Grace Torres who sat back in her rolling desk chair with a tight frown.

  “When he only died last night?” the deputy asked grimly. “That’s Verl for you. But nobody will accept a lawsuit against two officers who went down there to question suspects about a murder.”

  “You have to remember it turned out the Greaves weren’t involved,” I reminded her.

  “Not directly. But they had been cutting timber on her property. None of us had any way to know some long-lost brother of Nettie Suskey’s had given them permission.”