Firesetter in Blackwood Township, a Winnebago County Mystery Page 10

  I turned around to head home when something caught my eye. The sun’s rays were reflecting off a small object in the weeds between two trees. I went down on one knee to see what it was: a vintage silver flint lighter, the kind Gramps used when he’d puff on a pipe in his younger years. It looked old and had shallow scratches and a raised symbol of an anchor with the initials USN on it. United States Navy.

  Had my uninvited visitor left it behind? If so, was it forgotten or did it fall out of a pocket when the person was on the move? I worried about him or her smoking there. With the dry conditions and the recent barn fires, that posed a major hazard. I picked up a stick and separated weed stalks from other brush, but didn’t find any discarded butts in the area. Thankfully.

  Another possibility occurred to me. Was it deliberately left there as a message or a warning? I pulled my cell phone from its case and snapped shots of the disturbed earth from the footfalls, and then honed in on the lighter. Chills ran up my spine then down my arms, alerting me. Had the slight breeze stirred a reaction on my damp skin, or was it something more sinister? I didn’t have gloves or an evidence bag or even a tissue with me. After I’d captured a couple of photos of the lighter, I called to Queenie. “Race you home.”

  But I was no threat to her ongoing first-place champion status. The farther we ran, the more distance she gained. She was waiting by the front door, her pants rivaling the wags of her tail in counts per second. I opened the front door and followed her inside. “You be good, and I’ll be back in a bit.” I grabbed my car keys from a drawer in the kitchen then went into the garage and popped open my squad car trunk. My case of goodies was tucked in on the right side. I grabbed a pair of latex gloves and a small evidence bag then closed the case and the trunk and went out via the service door in the back, pausing for a moment to listen for anything unusual and look for anything out of place. Like a person retracing his steps looking for a lost lighter, for instance.

  Aside from faint sounds in the distance—a train whistle blowing, a dog barking, and some type of farm machinery motoring along—it was an otherwise fairly quiet evening. I broke into a run across the hayfield to my destination. My hands were damp, so I dried them on my shorts then pulled on the gloves and picked the lighter from its resting spot. I looked at the bottom. It was a Zippo.

  I turned it to the other side and read the name Buzz engraved into the surface. My heart speeded its tempo. I didn’t know anyone with the nickname Buzz, but it was something to hang onto, a clue to investigate. I dropped it into the evidence bag and jogged back to my house. The sun was about to set, and a large cloud drifted in front of it making the yellow, orange, and pink streaks look like they were shooting out from behind it.

  Twilight. The hot sun of summer was dropping below the horizon, giving our parched earth a reprieve from its baking rays. I put the lighter-filled evidence bag in my squad car then joined Queenie inside. As I replenished her water bowl, I thought about the strange happenings of the last few days. Had stars and planets collided somewhere, causing extra chaos in our Winnebago County world? My mother and Denny Twardy, Vince and his troubles, gifts of blood and dead rabbits, barn fires, a prowler on my property who had probably left an engraved lighter behind. Was a former United States Navy man who called himself Buzz involved in setting barns on fire in Blackwood Township?

  15

  Belle and Birdie

  “Birdie, where is it?” Belle implored gently, hearing that impatience had inveigled itself into her words.

  Birdie lifted her nose toward the night sky, avoiding both Belle’s eyes and her question.

  Belle laid her hand on Birdie’s. “I’m sorry. I’m not accusing you of taking it. It’s just that you always seem to know where things are, don’t you? You have helped me find a long list of things I’ve misplaced over the years.”

  Belle secretly suspected Birdie had hid things from her at times so Belle would reward her when she told her where they were. Whatever. That wasn’t the important thing to Belle. Finding her lost property was.

  Belle’s assurance brought Birdie out of her sulking withdrawal, and she turned to her with the pure expression that always had a calming effect on Belle, especially in the worst of circumstances. Belle thought the angels themselves must look just like that when they were helping someone in great need, or in times of trouble. Birdie’s face was serene, like she was floating on a sea of perfect peace. Her frown line smoothed. Her lips turned up at the corners, and she beamed from the inside out. Her eyes were sparkling clear with a hint of moisture in them.

  Belle had asked Birdie more times than she could remember how she did it. How she was able to exude ethereal beauty in times of distress. It was a secret she hadn’t shared, and Belle finally decided it had been intrinsically knitted into her nature even before she was born. Belle was often the instigator and deserved the discipline, but it was Birdie who got the brunt of it. The ‘why’ was a huge puzzle Belle often pondered about. Until she was older, that is, and finally figured it out. Disciplining Birdie was much harder on Belle than if she had gotten it herself. Their caregivers hadn’t given care, not by a long shot.

  “Well, Birdie?” she implored softly. Birdie raised her eyebrows, and Belle knew in an instant where it must be.

  16

  I went on duty at 6:53 the next morning and sent Smoke a text message asking him to call me when he was clear. My phone rang seconds later. “Morning.”

  “Morning. What’s up?” he said.

  I dove right into it. “Here’s the skinny. Somebody I couldn’t ID was back by the tree line on my property last night, acting strange—”

  He interrupted, “Whoa, say what?”

  “Sneaking around, hiding behind trees—”

  “Teenager, adult, male, female?”

  “I didn’t get a good enough look to be able to say for sure. My impression was female, average size, and someone who moved easily, who was spry.”

  “Not dressed in beekeeper’s garb, I take it?”

  “Ha.”

  “Makes me wonder if this incident is related to the dead bunnies you and Weber had dropped off on your doorsteps. No doubt the beekeeper left both of them.”

  “Must’ve. It’s really rare to see anyone on my back property. It was just days after I got the rabbit, so who knows. Are the two things related, or not? I found something curious back there.”

  “What was that?” Smoke’s voice lowered.

  “Queenie and I checked out the area—mostly to try to figure out what that person was doing there—and I found an old Zippo lighter, the kind with a flint, lying in the weeds.”

  “We got barns burning and someone gifts you with a Zippo on your back forty?”

  “It had a U.S. Navy emblem on one side and the name Buzz on the other side.”

  “Damn.”

  “You know anyone named Buzz?”

  “No one comes to mind at the moment. That confuses things, doesn’t it? I’m having trouble connecting the dots of how that could be related to the bunnies on the steps,” he said.

  “Same here. The incidents might have nothing to do with each other, but given how strange they are it made me wonder if it is Darcie, Weber’s sister-in-law, after all. She’d be the common denominator.”

  “Maybe. Let’s look at this from another angle. Say the two incidents are not connected. We know we must have a firesetter or two out there, and they’ve been clever. Hiding in plain sight. They could have been traveling the tree lines to avoid detection. We got tree lines on about every farm in the county.”

  “That dawned on me, too. And the lighter could have accidentally fallen out of his or her pocket as they were jumping around back there.”

  “And we might’ve just caught a break and gotten a lead. Any idea how old the lighter is, what era?” he said.

  “It’s been around a while, but I have no idea.”

  “I’ll take a look at it.”

  “I’m on my way to the office with it.” My phoned beeped. “
Smoke, I’m getting a call.”

  “Meet me at my desk.”

  I found Smoke in his cubicle reviewing the reports on the fires. He looked up when I set the bag-enclosed lighter on his desk. He nodded, picked up the bag, examined all four sides of it through the plastic then pulled a magnifying glass from his desk drawer. He partially turned the lighter to a different angle and smiled. “We got a print next to the name.”

  “Really?” I moved behind him and leaned in over his shoulder for the same view. “Wow.”

  Smoke handed me the bag of evidence. “Did you do a search on this model?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’d say it’s either Korean War or Vietnam War era, but I’m not an expert on all the Zippos out there. They’re collectibles; that much I do know. I’ll check with Angela Simmonds, see if she knows anyone named Buzz.”

  “And I’ll ask Sybil Harding.”

  Smoke nodded. “And it wouldn’t hurt to check with the local Legion and VFW clubs. I’ll make some calls.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Did you hear Twardy is in this morning?”

  My heart pounded out a little boom-boom at the thought of facing the man who had wronged my mother. “No. Have you talked to him?”

  “I said ‘hi, good to see you’ on the way by.”

  “Hmm. Well, I’ll get a case number for this and get it into evidence,” I said.

  “A service branch, a nickname, and a fingerprint should lead you somewhere.”

  As it turned out, that somewhere was at the end of a long and winding road that was difficult to navigate.

  I got a case number from Communications and wrote a short report detailing the incident on my back property and the resulting find. Then I filled in the information on the evidence bag, attached a copy of the report to it, and submitted it to the evidence technician. She glanced over the report and gave me a nod and a smile before shifting her focus back to her work at hand.

  I was tempted to slip out of the building and get back on patrol but decided to stop by Denny’s office first. I couldn’t avoid my boss forever.

  I knocked on his doorframe and stuck my head in his office. “Den . . . er . . . Sheriff?”

  He was standing behind his desk putting a stack of papers into a cardboard box. It took him a few seconds to look up. “Come in, Corinne.” Before he started dating my mother he’d always called me Corky, but now he used my given name. “I’m cleaning old stuff out of my file cabinets and drawers. I wonder why I kept most of it in the first place.” My mind honed in on a clue we’d found in his massive file collection that helped us locate him after he’d gone missing some months before.

  “A lot of history, I guess,” I said.

  “I guess. What brings you here?”

  I joined him by his desk. “I don’t like to get into personal things on the job, but it seems like the sooner we clear the air, the better.”

  “Your mother, our plans to get married?”

  I was surprised when my eyes got misty. “Yes.”

  “There are too many unknowns with my health being what it is. Things changed after my stroke,” he said.

  No good response came to mind so I nodded. He picked up the framed picture of his wife. It had sat on the shelf behind his desk for years. He must have moved it after he’d gotten serious about my mother because I hadn’t seen it for a while. Now it was back. “I’m not proud to admit this, but there were a lot of years I was married more to my job than my wife. I don’t know how she put up with me.” Denny was devastated when she’d died several years before.

  He held the photo up in front of me. I touched the edge of the frame with one hand and Denny’s shoulder with the other. “She was very lovely.” And then I noticed it, the jeweled ring on her left hand. Damn. I needed to make a quick escape and Communications picked the perfect moment to page me on the radio. I released a breath then responded, “Go ahead, Winnebago County.” I nodded at Sheriff Dennis Twardy and bolted out of his office and off to a theft complaint.

  Smoke sent me a text mid-morning saying that he’d spoken with Angela Simmonds and she didn’t know anyone named Buzz. Early afternoon, there was finally a break in the calls for service action so I phoned Sybil to ask her the same question. She didn’t answer and hadn’t returned the call by the end of my shift. I sat in my squad car debating whether to try her again then decided to wait for her to get back to me instead. She might have been at work or taking care of family business, and my question was not time-sensitive. Not yet, anyway.

  When I got home, I changed into summer clothes and was playing with Queenie in the front yard wondering what to do with the new information I’d gotten about Denny’s wife’s ring. Vince Weber pulled into the driveway in his truck. “Sorry I didn’t call first,” he said as he slammed his door behind him. He looked relieved to be out of uniform, dressed in khaki shorts and a tan t-shirt.

  “What’s up?” I was holding a rubber ball and gave it another toss for Queenie to fetch.

  “A couple of things. I scheduled a place, day, and time to meet Darcie.” He said place, day, and time with special emphasis then cracked a little smile.

  “Good going, when is it?” Queenie brought back the ball and dropped it at my feet. When I told her, “That’s all for now, girl,” she closed in on Vince and stuck her head in his hand.

  “Hey, Queenie. River’s Edge tomorrow night at six, before the place gets too crowded. They got a nice bar where we can talk. Cross your fingers I don’t get tagged for overtime.”

  I nodded. “If Darcie knows who I am it’d seem awfully suspicious if I just happen to be there at the same place, day, and time.”

  Weber grinned again. “Right. I was thinking either you get there ahead of time—borrow somebody else’s car—so you’ll spot her when she gets there. Or bring a date for dinner.”

  There were a number of friends I could ask, but keeping it simple seemed the better choice. “I will drive something other than my GTO and sit as inconspicuously as possible in the parking lot until she shows up.”

  Weber ran the back of his hand under his chin to catch the sweat beads that had gathered before they fell. “This means a lot to me. Thanks.”

  “I’m the one who asked you to do it in the first place.”

  “Yeah well, it’s a team effort. And the other thing I was wondering about is your trespasser from last night. Figure anything out?”

  “Not exactly. I ended up hiking back there and found something that made me pretty curious.”

  “Yeah?”

  I filled him in on the details then said, “Is there anyone in Darcie’s family named Buzz who was in the Navy, possibly Korea or Vietnam?”

  “Nah, can’t think of anyone. Not my father-in-law or his brothers, for sure.”

  “And that lighter could have been there for a while. The good news is there was a fingerprint on it. Probably a thumbprint.”

  “Nice. Hey, here’s hopin’ you find a match. If you ask me, with all the weirdness that’s been happening lately, my bet is that lighter belongs to the guy or gal that was back there last night.” He raised his hand and used his thumb to point that direction. “That’d rule out Darcie on the one nutso activity, anyway.”

  “I have a feeling it belongs to the trespasser, too. Now the question is was it left there accidentally or on purpose?”

  “Yeah well, depending on what that answer turns out to be, things could swing in the right direction.”

  I nodded and crossed my fingers. “I had a couple of thoughts on that. I only saw one person, but there could’ve been more. One of the Simmonds’ neighbors mentioned those teens that were setting old outhouses on fire back when. It must have been five years ago now.”

  “I remember. Kids you wouldn’t have pegged as criminals following that hooligan, Patterson.”

  “Whatever happened to Patterson after he got out of detention?” I said.

  “I guess he musta got scared straight.”

  “You’re pr
obably right. We haven’t had a call on him since.”

  Weber bobbed his head up and down a couple of times. “You were saying?”

  “If a gang is casing the neighborhood looking for trouble, the barns they lit on fire would have been ones they considered easy pickings. Crimes of opportunity.”

  “Ya got a point there. They don’t see the owners around, or maybe they saw one drive off in a vehicle packed with camping gear.”

  Like the Simmonds. “That’s a possibility, all right. Smoke and I were talking about how they might be traveling by foot through the tree lines on farms. And one of them just happened to lose his lighter passing through mine.”

  Weber shrugged. “So that’s your ‘accidentally’ theory. What’s the ‘on purpose’ one?”

  “Somebody was planting false evidence,” I said.

  “How do you figure that one?”

  “This is a bit of a stretch, but say the firesetter is someone who knows me, knows I’ve been at both fires, and decides to do something to get my attention, send me chasing after a false lead that eventually comes to a dead end?”

  “By pretending to hide by your trees? I don’t get it.”

  “He or she could have been waiting for me to notice them and saw me when I went out to my deck. Then acted suspiciously so I’d have to check it out. And lo and behold, I find a lighter with Buzz engraved in it.”

  “No offense, that sounds kinda wacky. But some criminals are smart and like to play with us, throw us off track. They might think of something like that. It’d be nice and neat if we’d turn the tables on them, find a connection between that particular lighter and those particular barn fires.”

  “That would be nice and neat. But theories are one thing. What we need is the truth and the evidence to back that up,” I said.