Murder in the Smokies

chapter Ten



“It’s been so surreal. I knew all four of the victims really well. How often does that happen?”

Her name was Rachel Davenport. Sutton supposed that, in less grief-stricken days, she’d be considered a pretty girl. She had cool blue eyes, fair skin dusted with freckles and long, straight hair the color of honey in sunlight. She was tall, towering over Ivy, but there was a fragility to her that made Sutton want to find her a chair before she collapsed.

“Not often,” Ivy answered, her tone gentle, as if she, too, realized Rachel Davenport was someone with whom she had to tread lightly. “Did you know the other women through their work at your father’s company?”

She nodded, her gaze lengthening, as if to take in the rest of the cemetery. “They’re all here. I guess that’s to be expected in a town this small, huh?”

She really did look as if she was going to fall down any moment, Sutton thought with alarm. He exchanged a look with Ivy, and she stepped forward, laying her hand on Rachel’s arm. “Do you have a ride home?”

Rachel looked at Ivy as if she’d asked a strange question. “I have my car here.”

Ivy glanced at Sutton again.

“I’m not going to break,” Rachel said, fire in her voice. Color rose in her cheeks, driving out the paleness. “I’m fine.”

Her irritation seemed to have strengthened the steel in her spine, for she looked stronger already. Ivy took her hand away from the woman’s arm and gave Sutton a shrugging look.

“I could use a cup of coffee before I get back to my normal day,” he said. “Would you ladies like to join me?”

Rachel and Ivy both gave him similarly disbelieving looks, as if to ask, Is that the best you can do?

“Look, if you want to interrogate me or something,” Rachel said, directing her words to Ivy, “just say so. I’ll happily cooperate, though I’m not sure what I can add.”

“I really could use a cup of coffee,” Sutton said. “How about we grab a cup at Ledbetter’s and you can tell us all about your friends?”

A murmured request from Ivy to Maisey Ledbetter got them a corner booth at the diner, well away from the other afternoon patrons. Ivy slid onto the booth bench next to Sutton, the heat of her body against his generating a pleasant but bearable buzz of sexual awareness. Rachel Davenport sat opposite them, her slim hands worrying the small plastic container of sugar and sweetener packets.

“I feel like a jinx,” she murmured, her gaze focused on the movement of her fingers. “Everyone around me dies.”

“Your father’s sick, isn’t he?” Ivy asked.

Sutton looked at her. She slanted a glance his way as if to ask him to back her up with whatever she said. He settled back, letting her take the lead.

“Liver cancer. Inoperable. They’re hoping the chemo might give him more time, but I think he’s given up hope.” Rachel’s lower lip trembled, but she brought it under control. Sutton realized he’d underestimated her. She looked fragile, and clearly she was struggling with a hellish amount of personal stress and grief, but she was stronger than she looked.

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was fifteen.”

Damn, Sutton thought. No wonder she felt like a jinx.

“I bet Marjorie Kenner stepped in for you then. A maternal figure in your life.”

Rachel’s gaze flicked upward, meeting Ivy’s. “I’d never really thought of it that way, but, yeah. I guess she did.”

“Amelia and Coral were around your age,” Ivy said. “Did you socialize with them?”

“Amelia was my best friend from college. We bonded over our love of old movies,” Rachel said with a faint smile. “We used to go to that revival theater in Knoxville on weekends when they were showing the old romantic comedies. Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunn, Myrna Loy—” She looked back at her hands. “We were supposed to go the weekend she died.”

“What about Coral?” Sutton asked.

“Coral was a mess.” Rachel’s voice darkened with regret. “She just couldn’t get past losing Derek. I tried to make sure she had something to eat and that she didn’t drink herself to death. I was so afraid she’d give up and do something terrible to herself. I just never thought she’d go the way she did.”

Four victims, Sutton thought. They’d thought Davenport Trucking might be the connection. But that was only half the answer.

The real connection seemed to be Rachel Davenport herself.

“Do you have any enemies?” he asked aloud.

Two sets of eyes snapped up to look at him. “Enemies?” Rachel asked, sounding confused.

Beside him, Ivy closed her hand over his knee, her grip strong. “Of your family,” she said. “Since three of the victims worked for your father.”

Sutton took advantage of the situation to close his fingers over Ivy’s below the table. She shot him a questioning look and he returned it with a wicked half smile.

“You think someone is killing these people because of my family?” Rachel looked horrified by the thought. “But I thought it was a serial killer or something. You think it’s not?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ivy said quickly. “We’re just trying to figure out if there could be some sort of connection in the way the killer chooses his victims. Maybe he lives close to the business, for instance. Or rents a truck from you now and then.”

“We rent out a lot of trucks,” Rachel said doubtfully. “Most of our customers are business owners who don’t need a truck enough to warrant buying a company vehicle, though. Normal people.”

Seemingly normal people could commit heinous crimes, Sutton knew. Some of the most notorious serial killers in history had struck their neighbors as perfectly normal people.

“I asked your father to let us see the rental records for the past month or so,” Ivy said. “He didn’t want to—privacy concerns, he said. I totally respect that, but if we knew who the renters were—”

“You think the killer could be one of our renters?”

“We think it might be,” Ivy said, apparently unwilling to elaborate on their suspicions about how the rental trucks were really being used. Sutton didn’t blame her. That was a lot of nightmarish speculation to lay on a civilian.

“I guess it makes sense. If he rents from us, he could have seen all of his victims there at the office,” Rachel conceded. “Three of them worked there, and Marjorie often dropped by to take me to lunch when she was in town.”

Sutton didn’t say it aloud, but there was still something about Marjorie Kenner’s murder that didn’t fit. Even if she dropped by now and then to take Rachel to lunch, what were the odds that she happened to be there at the same time as a truck renter? Or that she’d catch his eye when he seemed to be more focused on women in their late twenties and early thirties?

“I’ll talk to my father,” Rachel said. “Make him see that we need to give you those names.”

“We’ll be very discreet about interviewing them,” Ivy promised, a tremor of excitement underlying her calm tone.

Rachel pushed aside her coffee cup. “I’d like to go back to the cemetery now.”

“Okay,” Ivy agreed, glancing quickly at Sutton. He could tell she was worried she’d pushed too hard, but with Rachel’s next words, she visibly relaxed.

“I’ll talk to my father as soon as I get back to the office. If I can get him to agree, I’ll call you to pick up the list of renters.”

Rachel rode with Ivy back to the cemetery, while Sutton followed in his truck, keeping an eye out for any signs of outside surveillance. If there was anyone stalking him or Ivy, he didn’t spot them during the drive, and they returned to the cemetery without incident.

Rachel’s car was still parked just off the access road near Marjorie Kenner’s new grave. Hers was the only car left when Ivy pulled up and parked behind the Honda Accord; all of the other mourners had left already.

Ivy got out with Rachel and exchanged a few words that Sutton couldn’t hear. She waited outside the Jeep until Rachel was safely inside her car and driving away. But as she turned to get back into her Jeep, she stopped suddenly, her gaze directed toward the newly dug grave. Moving slowly at first, then gaining speed, she started walking up the modest incline toward the grave.

Sutton got out of the truck and followed, catching up at the grave. “What is it?”

Ivy crouched beside the grave and pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket. As he watched with confusion, she reached out and examined a small flowering green plant that seemed to have been planted at the head of the grave, close to where the small granite nameplate lay, a placeholder until the family could arrange for a proper grave marker.

“I saw this same plant at Coral Vines’s grave,” she told Sutton, pushing to her feet. She started walking across the graveyard, leaving him to keep up, and stopped a few plots away at a second grave. “See?”

He bent to examine the plant growing next to the simple gravestone. “I think I know what this is,” he told her, feeling a strange quiver in the middle of his gut. “It’s belladonna.”

“That’s—”

“Deadly nightshade,” he finished for her.

“I don’t see any of those plants on the other graves around here.”

“Could be a coincidence,” he suggested, not sounding convincing even to his own ears.

She started walking again, moving at a determined clip. He caught up and followed her to a third grave. The headstone read “Amelia Sanderson.”

With her foot, Ivy nudged a leafy plant growing by the grave, making the leaves and star-shaped purple flowers gently shake. The flowers alternated with darkening purple berries—belladonna again, Sutton recognized. “Same plant, right?” Ivy asked.

He nodded. “The whole plant is poisonous.”

She scanned the graveyard, then started walking again. By the time they stopped at a fourth grave, Sutton wasn’t surprised to find a fourth belladonna plant growing near the headstone of April Billings’s grave.

“It’s his calling card,” he said.

Ivy looked up at him. “What does that do to the idea that these murders are professional hits?”

He rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know.”

“Could these plants have gotten here by natural means? Birds scattering seeds or something like that?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t think so—it’s not a native plant in this area.”

She bent and grabbed leaves, flowers and berries from the plant, stripping off her latex glove inside out and tying the end to create a makeshift evidence bag. Pulling more gloves from her pocket, she repeated the process at each of the other three grave sites until she had samples from each. “I’ll get these tested to be sure we’re right about what they are.”

He nodded. “Good idea.”

“Meanwhile, I’m going to go talk to our surveillance teams. We’ve had the cemetery under surveillance since the third murder.”

In case the killer wanted to spend some quality time with his kills, Sutton thought with approval. It made sense. “Nobody’s reported anything unusual?”

“No.” Her dark eyebrows flicked upward. “But maybe I haven’t been asking the right questions.”

* * *

IT WAS LATE IN THE afternoon before Ivy heard back from the Knoxville botanist with whom she’d left the plant cuttings. While waiting for word, she’d spent most of her time sifting through the stacks of surveillance notes and photos from the shifts of two-man teams who’d kept the cemetery under watch for the past three weeks.

Nothing jumped out at her as significant in the surveillance files. Photos showed exactly what she’d have expected to see at a graveyard—mourners, grounds crews, regular weekly visitors to specific graves. She saw nothing that struck her as significant.

The call from Dr. Phelps at the University of Tennessee proved more interesting. “It’s definitely Atropa belladonna,” Dr. Phelps told her. “Deadly nightshade, in the vernacular.”

“And it’s not a native species here in eastern Tennessee?”

“It’s not a native plant, but it’s a cultivated plant species here in the States, so it’s not that strange to find it growing. It has weedlike characteristics such as self-cultivation.”

“So it could have gotten into the cemetery naturally?”

“Theoretically,” Dr. Phelps agreed. “But from your description of where you found the plants, I’d say they were deliberately planted there. The sheer odds against the plants all self-cultivating in the same general area of the grave, near the headstone? It just defies belief.”

“Is there any way to trace where the plant originated?”

“Possibly. But any tests we could run would, at the very least, require that you find the original rootstock.”

“Are there legitimate reasons to cultivate the plant?”

“Oh, absolutely. Atropine, which derives from Atropa belladonna, is an anticholinergic agent. It’s a common treatment for organophosphate poisoning.”

“It’s a poison but it’s also a poison antidote?” Ivy asked, confused.

“Not an antidote per se. In the right dosage, it blocks acetylcholine—” Dr. Phelps cut off the explanation, as if he sensed he was only making things less clear for Ivy. “Basically, it limits the effectiveness of poisons attacking the nervous system. Soldiers in battle who might encounter chemical weapons generally carry atropine injectors with them as an antidote.”

“Do you know of any growers here in Tennessee who cultivate belladonna?”

“Not off the top of my head. I could look into it for you.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

“You’ve got a lead?” Antoine Parsons had come into the bull pen while she was talking to Dr. Phelps. He’d perched on her desk until she’d finished the call.

“I’m not sure I’d call it a lead exactly. It’s more like a whole new set of questions.” She caught him up on the plants she’d found in the cemetery. “What about you? Anything new?” Antoine had gone out to recanvass the neighborhoods around the previous victims’ homes, with the potential truck angle in mind.

“People apparently don’t pay that much attention to trucks driving through their neighborhoods,” Antoine answered with a grimace. “They’re not uncommon sights, and unless the damned thing’s painted pink with yellow polka dots or something, a truck driving through the neighborhood barely pings the radar.”

She’d known it was a long shot. “It was worth a try.”

“How about Davenport Trucking? Anything from them yet?”

She shook her head. “I’m trying not to be impatient. Her father seemed really adamant about protecting his clients’ privacy. I don’t blame him. They do have a certain expectation that their private information stays that way.”

“But one of those people could be a serial killer.”

Or a hit man, she added silently, thinking about what Sutton had shared with her the night before.

The call she’d been hoping for came around three that afternoon. Rachel Davenport’s voice, harried and soft, greeted her with, “I talked my father into giving you the rental records.”

“Rachel, thank you so much!” She waved at Antoine, covering the receiver. “We’re getting the rental records.”

“He only agreed to give you the records from the past month and a half,” Rachel added, “but if you think the killer chose his victims during that time period, that should be enough, shouldn’t it?”

Ivy hoped so. “When can I pick them up?”

“I’m going to pull the records tonight after work. I can get them to you either later tonight or in the morning.”

“I can come by the place tonight to pick them up,” Ivy offered, eager to get to work on the list. She wouldn’t be able to call or question any of the people on the rental roster until morning, but maybe the list itself would supply a vital clue to the identity of the killer.

“I may not get it done until late.”

“That’s okay. I can come by and give you company so you won’t have to be alone there so late.”

“That would be nice.” There was a faintly wistful tone to Rachel’s voice, a reminder that the woman had just lost four people close to her in the past month and a half. Her mother had died when Rachel was young, and now her father was dying of cancer.

Ivy wasn’t sure how the woman was even standing upright these days.

She ran home after work to change into more casual clothes and grab a bite to eat before she headed over to Maryville. To her surprise, she found Sutton Calhoun sitting on her front porch steps again. No beer this time, but the look in his eyes was just as dangerous as it had been the day before.

“You done playing cop for the day?” He rose to his feet when she got out of the Jeep and started walking toward him.

“Playing cop?” She arched her eyebrows at his choice of words.

“Being. Excelling at. Whatever.” He walked toward her, meeting her halfway. He smelled clean and crisp, as if he’d grabbed a shower after the funeral. He looked good, too, clean-shaven and clear-eyed.

She’d thought her vulnerability to him the day before had been greatly magnified by his emotional turmoil. After all, she’d always been a sucker for a sob story, a weakness she’d had to fight on the job.

But a confident, strong-willed Sutton Calhoun seemed to have no trouble appealing to her libido, either. Which meant she had no immunity to Sutton at all. He appealed to her no matter what he had going on in his life.

“I’m hungry,” he said with a slow, simmering smile. “You hungry?”

“I could eat,” she answered, trying hard not to make her response sound like an innuendo. The slow burn in Sutton’s hazel eyes suggested she hadn’t succeeded. Nor did she do herself any favors by adding, “What do you have in mind?”

His lips curved. “Something hot. Tasty.”

He wasn’t even pretending to be coy anymore. “You’re in an interesting mood this afternoon.”

He’d moved close enough that the slightest move forward would put her in contact with him. “Interesting in a good way?” he asked.

She felt as if her whole body was straining toward him, and it took all the willpower she had not to give in. There was too much at stake to jump back into anything with Sutton Calhoun. Too damned much to lose.

“Do you really want to get dinner somewhere? Or do you just want to drive me crazy?”

He lifted his hand, sliding his finger along the curve of her collarbone where it lay exposed in the scoop neckline of her blouse. “Am I driving you crazy?”

“Wasn’t that your intention?” She tried to keep her answer cool and composed, but it was nearly impossible to maintain her cool when Sutton was tracing fire across her skin with his touch.

“I like the way your skin flushes when I touch you.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “It lets me know I’m not the only one feeling things between us.”

“Sutton, what are we doing here?” She tried to walk away from his touch, but her legs refused to cooperate.

His brows notched upward. “Flirting, I thought.”

“But what do you want from me?” So much for keeping her cool. Desperation painted every word that spilled from her lips.

He laughed. “You want me to describe it in detail?”

She did. She wanted him to paint word pictures of everything he wanted to do to her and wanted her to do to him. Then she wanted to go inside her house and play out the images in her head for real, leaving out nothing, not a touch, not a taste, not a stroke.

But giving up that last vestige of control to Sutton would be a grave mistake. She’d given him her heart years ago. Her soul was probably his, too. All she had left that belonged to her was her body, and if she gave Sutton control over that part of her as well, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it this time when he left.

And he would leave. He had leaving etched on every inch of his body. Sooner or later, he’d dust off the Tennessee clay and head back to wherever he called home today.

And she’d be all alone here in Bitterwood, just as before, with twice as many grievous wounds.

She made herself step out of his reach. “I have plans tonight.”

“Dinner plans?” His eyes narrowed slightly, as if it occurred to him for the first time that she might have a romantic life of her own. She supposed she could pretend she had a date. Save a little face, at least.

But she’d never been much good at game playing. “Rachel Davenport is putting together the truck rental files for us after work this evening. I told her I’d come pick them up.”

“So we’ll grab something to eat on the way,” Sutton said. “Call and see if she wants us to get something for her. We’ll feed her for her trouble.”

Damn it, she thought. Just when she thought she had it in her to resist his charms, he went and came up with a thoughtful idea that she hadn’t even considered. “I’ll call her and ask if I can bring her something. No need for you to bother.”

“I’m hungry, you’re hungry—”

“What do you want from me?” she snapped, regretting the words instantly. His expression went from an easy smile to uneasy wariness. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid, uncalled-for question.”

“Right now,” he said carefully, “I just want dinner with someone whose company I enjoy. Can we just go with that?”

She felt like an idiot, especially since he was being so reasonable. “We can go with that.” Nice and casual.

Except she didn’t think she could ever be just casual where Sutton Calhoun was concerned.