Death by Shock, page 14
“I bet Trimble had something to do with that. She can’t afford to share the credit if she wants to make lieutenant.”
“Do you think Ellison would have really gone through with killing Dr. Reese?”
“I think Becky would have egged Ellison on. Nasty little bugger she is.”
“I have another name for her that starts with a ‘B.’”
I laughed. “Hey, next time, you get a burr up your fanny about volunteering for an archaeological excavation, leave me out. Okay?”
A phone rang.
“That’s you,” I said.
Shaneika put down the suitcase and reached into her pocket. “Hello.” She listened intently. “Yes, I understand. I’ll make sure she knows.”
“Who is it?” I asked, after seeing Shaneika’s face fall.
She motioned for me to be quiet.
I waited patiently for Shaneika to end the call, and when she did, I pounced.
“You should see your face. Bad news?”
“That was Trimble. Ellison was found dead floating in the Kentucky River at Fort Boonesborough this afternoon. Had been shot. Trimble thinks it was suicide, but they are doing a complete autopsy workup.”
“Has Becky been released on bail?”
“Seems so.”
“Well, there’s your answer of how Ellison was shot.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Jumping Jehoshaphat! That damned fort.”
Shaneika said, “Tell me about it.”
“Do you think Ellison committed suicide?”
“Really? No. We are on the same page thinking Becky killed him out of spite. They’re looking for her now. Good thing we’ve hidden Dr. Reese. This news is going to be a shock for sure.”
“Yeah, but what about us?” I asked. “We’re sitting ducks for that loon.”
Shaneika and I turned to look at Tates Creek Road. From our high vantage point on the portico, we could see cars through the trees speeding on the road.
I suddenly felt vulnerable and picked up Dr. Reese’s suitcase. “Let’s go inside.”
“Agree,” Shaneika said.
As soon as we were over the threshold, I slammed the double door shut and locked it. I looked at my watch. “It’s tea time. June and Dr. Reese will be in the library.”
I followed Shaneika into the walnut paneled library where the two ladies were chatting amiably.
Shaneika said, “Dr. Reese, I’ve got something to tell you. I’m afraid it’s bad.”
Dr. Reese looked up expectantly. Fear grew in her face as Shaneika strode over to her.
I closed the door to the library and prepared myself for the outpouring of grief from Dr. Reese that was to come, all the while thinking Chief Dragging Canoe was right—Kentucky is truly a “dark and bloody ground.”
Keep on reading!
A Little Bit of History
After the end of the French and Indian Wars (1754-1763), King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 stating that Euro-Americans could not cross westward over the Appalachian Mountains into what was considered Native American territory. Negotiating with Native Americans for land rights or settling in their territory was forbidden and illegal. This was due partly to the unrest the British were experiencing with coastal Americans over taxation and the expense of providing protection for settlers.
Long hunter Daniel Boone was among a handful of men who defied the Proclamation and visited “Ken-tah-ten” which means “land of tomorrow” on several occasions. Due to his prowess in the woods and his familiarity with Kentucky, Boone was hired by Richard Henderson and eight other men, who had formed the Transylvania Company, to cut a road using the Athiamiowee or Warrior’s Path through the Appalachian Mountains to the south side of the Kentucky River. This road was little more than a cleared pathway. The Transylvania Company’s purpose was to establish a new colony.
Relying on mounting unrest in the East and intent upon beating other land speculators to the punch, Henderson met with Cherokee Indians at Sycamore Shoals and purchased 16 million acres south of the Kentucky River to the northern boundary of the Cumberland River for the cost of two thousand pounds in trading goods.
It was at Sycamore Shoals that Dragging Canoe warned Daniel Boone that a dark and bloody cloud hung over “Ken-tah-ten.” Although Dragging Canoe’s father, Attakullakulla, signed the treaty, Dragging Canoe broke away and became known as a war chief attacking Euro-settlers.
After the treaty was signed, Boone established Fort Boonesborough as the headquarters for the Transylvania Company. Richard Henderson’s land purchase was considered illegal, and eventually the Transylvania Company lost all claims to the land. However, Euro-Americans, in their lust for land, flooded Kentucky walking the Wilderness Road or floating down the Ohio River on flatboats.
Other Native American tribes refused to give up their claims to Kentucky, thus creating a crisis when European frontiersmen began arriving with their families. This resulted in years of warfare and bloodshed.
Native American resistance to European settlers in Kentucky and the Ohio Valley regions basically ended with the death of the great Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, at the Battle of the Thames in 1813.
I don’t need to tell you the rest of the story. You know the ending.
You’re not done yet!
Read on for a bonus chapter
DEATH BY CHANCE
Turn the page.
Prologue
“You’re arresting me?”
“Josiah, please don’t make this any harder. Detective Drake is hoping you will resist, so he can pile on more charges.”
I was stunned. Of all the people they could have sent to arrest me, it would be Detective Kelly, the high school boyfriend of my daughter, Asa. He practically lived at my house when he was a boy. “What’s the charge?”
“Accessory to second-degree murder,” an embarrassed Kelly answered, sweat trickling down his temple.
“MURDER!” I shouted. “No way!”
“I’m sorry, Josiah, but I’ve got to take you in. Please turn around so I can cuff you.”
“You’re cuffing me? I am sorry that I ever befriended you, Kelly. You’re a snake.” I was so indignant I could have spit nickels. Suddenly I got an idea and clasped my chest. “I feel funny. I think I’m having a heart attack.” Having said that, I tumbled to the ground.
“Josiah! Josiah!” Kelly yelled at the officer hanging back by the police cruiser. “Call for an ambulance! Hurry!” He knelt beside me to feel for a pulse. “You better not die on me. Asa will kill me. You hear me. Oh, gawd! You better be faking.” Kelly shook me. “Are you faking, Josiah?”
I stifled a smile. You better believe I was faking it. There was no way I was going to let Kelly cart me off in a police car to jail. This entire mess started when I helped a farmers’ market friend get some bullies off his back. You know how much I hate bullies. Now, I’m being arrested for murder! How did that happen?
Let me introduce myself for those of you who don’t know me. My name is Josiah Reynolds. I’m in my fifties, had a terrible accident some years back and now walk with a slight limp and wear a hearing aid. I’ll tell you about my accident later. I live in the Butterfly, a mid-century marvel, that hovers on a precipice above the Kentucky River. I used to be an art history professor, but now I make my living as a beekeeper. I also board horses on my farm and own a catering firm, renting out the Butterfly for events.
I say that I’m a widow, but the truth of the matter is my husband and I were in the midst of a nasty divorce when he up and died on me. He had run off with a socialite our daughter’s age and fathered a love child with her. That didn’t hurt as much as the fact he stole our entire savings and hid it. I almost went bankrupt and nearly lost the farm. I never did recover our savings. It took years to climb out of debt, but I did it. I guess I could sell the Butterfly and the farm, but I worry about developers. They are swallowing up one precious horse farm after another, and with it, our culture. Do we really need another mall?
The problem is compounded by people moving to the Bluegrass with no knowledge of our fragile ecosystem and history. They don’t give a hoot about these farms, the workers they employ, how much money these farms pump into the local economy, or the tourists they draw. I bet two out of three people don’t even know the Bluegrass is bordered on the south by the Kentucky River and a cliff system called the Palisades.
I digress. I could go on and on about this subject, but I won’t bore you with it further.
Let’s get back to why I’m being arrested. I told you that I was helping a friend. What do I get for my trouble—thrown into the back of a police car.
Well, you know what they say—no good deed goes unpunished!
1
This whole thing started some months previously when I followed the curious crowd to a melee on the south side of the farmers’ market upon hearing a ruckus near the street. You can’t imagine my surprise when I see two men pummeling my buddy, Rodney Hiller, who has a booth next to mine. I thought he had left his booth to use the Gents, and here he was brawling with two men half his age.
Instead of intervening to stop the fight, people were standing around and recording it on their phones. And you wonder why I can’t stand people.
Irene Meckler, the flower lady, and I pushed through the crowd to stop the fight. I grabbed the younger guy’s arm as he was about to swing at Rodney again. “Break it up! Break it up!”
The man swirled around and was about to punch me when Baby, my English Mastiff, rushed between us. My two hundred pound dog gave the man pause, especially when Baby flashed his fangs. Thank goodness the man backed off because I have a glass jaw.
By this time, the market manager pressed through the crowd and called the police for help. The other farmers left their booths, creating a little circle around us. The two young men, knowing they were outnumbered, stopped pounding poor Rodney.
Here’s the truth about farmers in farmers’ markets. We fight and cuss at each other all the time, usually at board meetings. However, we draw the line with outsiders beating us up. The market manager photographed the two men as they tried unsuccessfully to grab his phone. Fearing the police, the young men ran to their little table and furiously tried to pack up. Rodney and the manager followed, so another fisticuffs broke out as sirens wailed in the distance.
To add to the confusion, there was a man circling the men while recording the whole shebang.
Well, I love a good fight as well as the next person, but this was too much even for me. I watched from the sideline as the police pushed everyone apart. The market manager and Rodney talked to one officer and the two young men talked to another. The two young men must not have been convincing because they were handcuffed and led away.
Everyone clapped.
The police confiscated the expensive Kentucky agate on the men’s table. One beautiful cut slab fell off the table and broke apart. I grimaced, knowing that the broken shards were not worth as much as when they had been one whole slab of agate.
The police asked the farmers to go back to their booths. They didn’t have to ask twice as the farmers were losing sales not being at their stalls.
Irene and I drifted back to our booths as the police talked to Rod. I took it upon myself to watch Rod’s booth as well, but there was one problem. I didn’t know how to correctly weigh tomatoes on his new digital scales, but I gave it my best shot.
Finally, Rod straggled back to his booth.
“You look like hell, Rod.”
He pulled a comb out of his shirt pocket and pulled it through his salt and pepper hair. A button was missing from his thin striped maroon shirt and his good work boots were scuffed up.
“Who pulled the first punch?”
“The older one with the Pittsburg Pirates baseball cap.” Rodney twisted his mouth and felt his jaw. “I think a tooth is loose.” He looked despondent. “I just had my teeth fixed, too.”
“Those goons looked pretty ragged, so you must have gotten in some punches, too.”
Rod smirked. “Punks, both of them. If I see either one of them again, I’ll kill ’em.”
“Don’t say stuff like that. Bad karma.”
“You never wanted someone killed? I seem to remember there were two men you wanted dead and buried.”
I snickered, “And look where it got me.”
“Yeah, they’re both six feet under now.”
“Sometimes the universe smiles upon me.”
We both guffawed.
We were not laughing because we thought death is funny. We were laughing at the irony of it. Some folks are rotten to the core. I should know. I’ve run into a few of them. And yes, I confess I wanted them dead, but I didn’t cause them to be dead. There’s a difference in “wanting” and “causing.”
Rodney winced, feeling his jaw again. “I’m too old for this kind of baloney.”
“What was it about?”
“First of all, those boys had no right to set up a table and sell. They are not a part of the market.”
“I know, but why not let the manager handle it?”
“Did you see what they were selling?”
“Kentucky agate.”
“Not just any agate. They were selling my agate.”
“What!” I said.
“Last week someone broke into my workshop and stole over five thousand dollars worth of my best agate.”
“I didn’t know. You never said. That’s terrible, Rod.”
Rod is the most famous agate hunter in the state. I would say even in the United States. He regularly sells to jewelry designers across the country, has written books, and even appeared on TV shows discussing rare Kentucky agate.
Agate is a crystalline variety of mineral quartz with varying colors arranged in layers. Agate with red is the most prized and is caused by iron while blue is caused by manganese. It is used for jewelry and other ornamental uses.
“Yeah, Josiah, and guess who the dirty skunks were? Those boys took my agate. I saw my mark on the pieces they were selling.”
“Can you prove they stole it?”
Rod looked at me as though I were daft. “How else would they have my agate in their possession? You didn’t see them pull out a bill of sale, did you?”
I was thrown for a loop. It was pretty brazen for thieves to unload their loot in such close proximity to their victim. Perhaps they didn’t know Rod sold at the farmers’ market. How stupid can one be? “True. Very true. Do you know them?”
“They’re the Statler brothers from down my way, and they’ve been nothing but trouble since the day they were born. Born bad, pure and simple.”
“I see, but I don’t understand why they would set up selling agate where you work on Saturdays.”
“To intimidate and rile me up. Did you see that man with the fancy camera filming the fight?”
“Yeah, I did notice him.”
“These boys are newbie rock hounds. They made their name by salting streams and then claiming to be genius rock hunters. They paid someone to film them discovering gold and precious minerals in Kentucky and became a huge hit on YouTube and something called TikTok.”
I laughed. “There’s no gold in Kentucky.”
“Exactly! They got called out on that, so now they’ve moved on to agate, which Kentucky is known for. It’s even the official state rock. Look, Josiah, rock hunting is becoming the new ‘thing.’ Kentucky contains fluorspar, quartz veins, and large quantities of fresh water pearls, fossils, and agate. These bozos are just trying to get ahead of the curve on this latest hobby wave.”
“But what has that got to do with you?”
“I swear those brothers have been stalking me. I just saw one of their videos where they were hunting in my favorite stream for agate. Now, I’ve kept that stream site a secret for over twenty years and they just stumble upon it? No, ma’am. They followed me and stole my site.”
I could see the problem. Prices for agate were going through the roof. My own kitchen back splash was made from the mineral which Rod provided, and I had huge chunky agate necklaces which were now quite valuable. It seemed a shame that years after Rod had invested in making agate popular, he was going to be shortchanged when he could finally make some real money off the mineral.
I had gone with Rod on several hunting expeditions, and the man had a keen eye for hunting geodes. I liked the sport—strolling through shallow creeks filled with cold water. I must admit though, I found more pleasure in spotting the fish, tadpoles, and other life in the water rather than seeking rocks, but the entire experience was fun.
“I guarantee you, Josiah, there will be a video up this very day of the fight, making these boys more popular than ever. You wait and see!”
It turned out Rod was right.
Some people have no shame.
2
When I got home to the Butterfly, my mid-century marvel, I emptied my VW van, which had been recently renovated. I had a few bottles of honey left, and I wanted to get them out of the hot vehicle into a cooler space. After that I checked on my bees.
One hive looked to be struggling. There were only a few guard bees around the entrance, so I pushed the hive forward with my knee. The hive tilted forward, feeling light. That meant trouble. Hives should not move with the knee test. I needed to get inside and see what the matter was, but I would do it later when I was fresh. Putting on a suit and lighting a smoker seemed too much at the moment. I was too tired to fool with them.
I went to check on the pastures. Since it was getting dark, I brought in the boarded horses. I don’t like to leave them outside overnight because of the coyotes, especially mares with foals. I opened the gates from the pastures to the barn, calling for them while pounding on a feed bucket. They came helter skelter knowing the sound of the bucket meant a sweet treat of a honey and oat mixture. They gave me no problem.
The other pastoral animals I don’t worry about being outside because donkeys are with them in the fields. Donkeys are very brave when it comes to coyotes, but they don’t get along with the horses—at least, not with the high-strung Thoroughbred horses. Thoroughbreds are partial to goats.
