Murder on the Road Less Traveled. Robert W. Gregg
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got back to the cottage at day’s end, she’d ask Kevin what he thought. She was confident that he would tell her to forget about it. Unless, of course, he thought he smelled another Crooked Lake murder. That thought produced a smile. She grabbed a file and headed for Sam’s office.
Kevin, much to her surprise, was busily typing away at his computer when she arrived home.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Writing my article on Brahms’ operas,” he replied.
“My memory’s better than that. You’ve told me several times that Brahms never wrote an opera. So what are you doing?”
“Writing about why Brahms never wrote an opera. It may go nowhere, but I thought I’d give it a try.”
“Why don’t you give it a rest and pour some wine while I get out of this uniform. I think I have a non-starter that will make Brahms look like Verdi.”
“Meaning you had a dull day,” Kevin said as he hit the save key.
“I thought I’d let you decide that.”
Ten minutes later they repaired to the deck and Carol gave Kevin a quick summary of the annual Gravel Grinder, including its confusing conclusion.
“What am I supposed to make of all that? I last rode a bicycle when I was a paper boy, and that was a lifetime ago. If it had been me who never got back to the town square, I’d chalk it up to the fact that anything more than a mile would have worn me out. I’d be asleep on the roadside at the outskirts of Southport.”
“Oh, come on. You can swim a mile without working up a sweat. That’s not the point. The question is whether Mrs. Eakins has reason to be anxious about what happened to her husband. I take it she didn’t call here this afternoon. She didn’t, did she?”
“No, nor did anyone else, about the Gravel Grinder or anything else. It’s been a quiet day.”
“That’s what I figured. I won’t learn anything new, but if you’ll excuse me I’m going to give Mrs. Eakins a call. She’ll either be a nervous wreck or she won’t answer the phone. She’ll be out, driving the county highways and byways, looking for her husband.”
Two minutes later Carol resumed her seat on the deck.
“No answer, and I doubt that it’s because Ernie finally arrived and they’ve gone out to dinner.”
“Well, I’m afraid I haven’t anything resembling a eureka moment," Kevin said. “But the Gazette reported that well over one hundred - I think it was 150 something - were going to participate in the Gravel Grinder. Which means that if something happened to Eakins along the way one or more of the other riders would surely have been aware of it and helped him or called for help. It would be pretty hard to disappear with that many fellow bikers on the course with you. But you’ve already told me that no one reported that he had had an accident. Ergo, the odds that he did have one would be pretty small.”
“That’s what it looks like to me,” Carol agreed. “None of the area hospitals and emergency care centers admit to seeing Eakins. And none of the other cyclists have had anything to say about why he might be missing.”
“But you’re assuming that there were always other riders around Eakins. What if he broke away from the crowd, either going hell bent for election, leaving the others in his dust, or slowing down until the rest of the riders were out of sight ahead of him. Either way something could have happened to him that none of the other riders saw. Oh, and here’s another possibility. What if Eakins and another rider had a bad relationship, were arguing as they rode along, and then got into a fight which left him dead on the roadside?”
Carol wasn’t having it.
“That’s absolutely crazy. Cyclists who participate in events like this are a pretty close knit group. The odds that a fellow rider despised Eakins and used a road race to kill him have to be less than nil. We’re talking about Crooked Lake, for God’s sake, not the Tour de France where an international reputation may be on the line. I have no intention of turning the Gravel Grinder into a murder case.”
“I know, we’ve had enough murders up here to last for a generation. Maybe two. So I’m not making a case for another one. All I’m doing is suggesting that our many cyclists aren’t necessarily part of the tight knit group you think they are. We don’t know the great majority of riders who were on the course today. For all we know, Eakins was screwing another rider’s wife or something equally heinous. If I were you, I’d start interviewing the lot of them, finding out who didn’t like Eakins.”
“The lot of them?” Carol asked. “One hundred fifty, maybe more? Good way to alienate the local population, don’t you think? No thank you.”
“You’re almost certainly right, but you wanted my input - for what it’s worth. So we leave it up to Mrs. Eakins, let her handle a routine case of misunderstanding. If you need more help, I’ll be at my computer, doing myself some professional good.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER 4
When the sheriff reached her office the next morning, she had resolved to leave the Eakins matter to the Eakins. She had fallen into the bad habit of letting issues like this deprive her of sleep. Ironically, her discussion of the matter with Kevin the previous evening had had the opposite effect. There was no persuasive reason to treat Ernie’s disappearance as a matter of law and order. Although Kevin had suggested the possibility that Ernie was the victim of a fellow rider’s hostility, she had not been persuaded that he was really serious. More likely that he had simply become addicted to the view that Crooked Lake was due for a murder every year. Well, she had decided before falling asleep, not this year.
The squad meeting went off without any reference to the Gravel Grinder. In all probability, she thought, her officers - or most of them - knew nothing about Ernie Eakins’ failure to finish what she still thought of as the big race. In any event, it had not been a race, which made it even less likely that his disappearance was a matter of any great consequence. When Carol returned to her office, she was prepared to turn her attention to more prosaic questions.
“Hi, Carol.” JoAnne was at her door. “You’ve already had a phone call. We ought to have a policy that tells the citizenry we don’t answer the phone before ten unless it’s an emergency.”
“I take it that this isn’t an emergency.”
“It doesn’t sound like one, but people have a way of thinking that a routine is a crisis.”
“So I should call back,” Carol said. “Okay, who is it?”
“Says her name is Connie Eakins,” JoAnne said, unaware that she had just spoiled her boss’s day.
Carol sighed, took the note with the number on it, and tried to adopt a positive attitude. The wayward husband had reappeared.
“Good morning, Mrs. Eakins. I hope you’re calling with good news.”
The voice on the other end of the line made it clear the minute her caller started speaking that the news was not good.
“It’s bad news, worse than yesterday,” Connie said. “Still no word from Ernie, nothing from Joe Reiger, nothing from anyone.”
“You say the situation is worse than yesterday. What do you mean?”
“Just that I was sure - or tried to be - that somebody would tell me something that was promising. But no one called, and everyone I called was sorry for me but knew nothing that was helpful. Most everyone didn’t even know Ernie wasn’t home.”
“I’m so sorry. I suppose I had expected that by this time your husband had returned or you’d have heard something from him.”
“Nothing