A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery 2)

“Did Janet and Carl divorce?” Kate asked.

Chet gave a smile, letting her know that he had no intention of answering that question. “I’ll get a box or two. Just a few of them.” He quickly went out the front door, closing it behind him.

“I think we hurt his feelings,” Kate said.

Sara let out a laugh. “Ha! He’s playing us—and giving us time to decide what to tell.”

“You sound like you know him well,” Jack said.

“Kindred souls. Now! What’s our vote? Tell or not tell?”

But Jack wasn’t through with his bashing. “Are you sure we are the ones to ask? You and he seem to—”

“Tell!” Kate said loudly. “I vote we tell him everything. My hunch is that he won’t go to the sheriff and blab.”

“I agree,” Sara said, then she and Kate looked at Jack.

Reluctantly, he nodded. “He seems to be set on show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine. If we want to find out anything, I think we have to tell what we know.”

“I agree,” Sara said. “However, he might be persuaded to show you photos of his tall blonde daughter.” She went to the front door.

“What is it with you and blondes?” Kate asked as they followed. “Cheryl, then that newspaperwoman, and now the lawman’s daughter.”

“I’ve never even met her! She’s probably built like him and plays rugby.”

“He said she was like his wife, not him. She’s probably a pro volleyball player and built.”

“In that case, yeah, I’d like to meet her.”

In front of them, Sara was grinning broadly.

Twelve

JACK AND KATE went outside to help bring the boxes in. When Chet lifted the back door of the van, they gasped. It was jammed with file boxes, all labeled with a date and subject matter.

It took a while to get them out, carry them inside, and pile them up in Sara’s formal dining room. They filled the one wall that wasn’t all glass.

Once they were in place, Chet stood there, waiting. To open or not? seemed to be his question.

“We decided to tell you everything we know,” Sara said. “But you first.”

He nodded, pleased that a deal had been struck.

Chet looked at Kate. “You asked about a divorce. Yes, they did. He filed, and Janet took nothing from him. Appears to have been as friendly as those things can be. But...” He paused. “After the divorce, Carl Olsen moved a lot. I had a hard time tracking him. My guess is he’s a bit of a squirrely character. She did well to get away from him.”

Kate nodded. It fit with everything they’d heard about Janet Beeson.

Chet pulled three boxes off the top of the stack, put them on the table, and opened them. Inside were thick file pockets, some of them tied together with string. Some were old and worn, a few were new and plastic. He was showing them twenty-plus years of collected data. The first box contained printouts of the original interviews with each of the customers and the sales staff of the store. The hundreds of pages had notes in different colors of ink.

“I use colored pens too,” Sara said and she and Chet looked at each other as though they’d discovered yet another cosmic coincidence.

Jack and Kate rolled their eyes.

Chet began talking about the contents. There were many boxes of data from the first year after the case. Two boxes held ledgers with records of every call that had come in, crank and otherwise. It seemed that many people had seen Mrs. Crawford go into the store. They had noticed the pretty baby in her pink-and-white outfit.

When the alarm went off and half a dozen police cars arrived, people outside the store had stopped to see what was going on. Within minutes, there was a crowd. Many of those people had also been interviewed.

Chet picked up a handful of papers. “Everyone said the same thing. They saw the baby in the stroller go in but no one came out carrying a baby. Right after the kidnapping, the whole city seemed to shut down. Everyone was involved. I arrested two drunks who got into a knife fight. One said the baby was dead, the other said she was alive. They were willing to kill each other over it.”