The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Other Books Available by Susan Van Kirk

  Three May Keep a Secret Three May Keep a Secret

  Marry in Haste

  The Education of a Teacher

  About the Author

  THE LOCKET

  FROM THE CASEBOOK OF TJ SWEENEY

  SUSAN VAN KIRK

  Prairie Lights Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 by Susan Van Kirk for Prairie Lights Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image by Karen Phillips

  Author Photo by Lori A. Seals Photography & Boutique

  Formatting by Cypress Editing

  Editing by Comma Sense Editing, LLC

  THE LOCKET

  Susan Van Kirk—1st ed.

  The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney

  The Big Band Era—Dancing on the Rooftop—Romance in the Air—And Murder in the Shadows.

  “…the dispatcher called to tell her it was time to move the bones.”

  After solving a double homicide in the hot Midwest summer, Endurance police detective TJ Sweeney isn’t given long to rest. A construction crew has found human bones while digging a building foundation on the outskirts of town.

  Sweeney’s investigation soon concludes this was a murder victim, but from many decades earlier. Trying to identify the remains and put a name to the killer takes the detective through a maze of dead ends and openings, twists, and turns.

  And then it becomes personal…

  For Bill Underwood

  Former coroner and public servant of

  Warren County, Illinois

  Friend and expert

  I know he would have loved

  TJ Sweeney’s newest mystery.

  Acknowledgements

  When I considered writing and publishing a novella, I realized that I would need help from experts and friends. I am deeply indebted to the following people.

  Writing this book caused me to meet Ruth Pecsi, of Galesburg, Illinois, a member of the Greatest Generation in every way. She graciously gave of her time and expertise to tell me about going to the Roof Garden in Galesburg during the 1930s and 1940s. A fan of the jitterbug, she is still dancing. What an amazing woman!

  Patty Mosher, archivist at the Galesburg Public Library, led me to artifacts connected to the 1940s in Galesburg, Illinois. A big thanks to her for answering my questions about the past.

  Mark Thomas, Knox County coroner, corroborated what I thought I knew about DNA and identification of missing persons. Thank you, Mark Thomas, for making me feel smart.

  And thanks to Suzy Owens, homicide and sexually based crimes detective for the Ames Police Department in Ames, Iowa. She is a taskmaster at telling her former teacher to rewrite crime scenes until they’re right. I got off easy this time.

  Thanks go out to Dina Randolph Purcell, former student and current friend, who helped me with getting the content right, and to Jim Jacobs, fellow writer, friend, and expert on African American history in our area.

  Since this is my first time publishing an e-book, I needed the help of experts on cover design and style, and I thank them. Karen Phillips designed the book cover, Jennifer Zaczek formatted the finished book, and Lori Seals took the author photo. Amazing professionals is the best description for all of these women.

  Hallie Lemon, one of my very best friends and a retired English professor at Western Illinois University, has been my first reader for all of the Endurance stories. She ferrets out errors and miscues with great expertise. I am grateful to have her for my friend, as well as my first reader.

  Through all of the travails of putting out books, my editor, Lourdes Venard, has always been at the other end of my email. Friend and mentor in this business, she is the most expert editor a writer could ever hope to have. Thank you, Lourdes, once again.

  The small town of Monmouth, Illinois, is a place I’ve called home for almost fifty years. I want to thank all of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in this town who have encouraged me. As always, you know who you are!

  Chapter One

  Detective TJ Sweeney’s experience told her that sunny days and dead bodies rarely occur together. This was obviously a dead body day. She swore at an SUV that passed her on the two-lane country highway, hurling drenching sheets of water on the windshield of her squad car. The wipers couldn’t keep up, the heater didn’t work, and TJ could barely see the center line through the deluge. The only good break was the temperature: it hovered near the forty-degree mark, so she wasn’t concerned with ice or freezing rain. This year, weather in November had been unusually cold already, and it was only the first week of the month. The detective clenched her jaw and coughed several times as she reached for a tissue to blow her nose. It wasn’t bad enough she was called out on this wretched day, but she’d caught a cold a week earlier, and the blankets on her bed had felt so snug and cozy before the dispatcher had called to tell her it was time to move the bones.

  Another cascade of water smashed against her windshield, causing the detective to squint her eyes. Even though TJ had brought her heavy-hooded jacket to keep out the cold, she was still shivering.

  Driving past Lenox Woods, she noted the rain had lessened slightly. Maybe she would catch a break by the time she reached the dog park. Tolliver Park was a relatively new addition to the small town of Endurance, named for Vince Tolliver, a business owner and pet lover who had died six months earlier. Tolliver had wanted a place where pets could run, and the construction crew was digging the foundation of a small shelter for pet owners to use during inclement weather. The construction of the shelter had been delayed because in breaking ground a week ago, she thought with annoyance, they had made an unexpected discovery—what appeared to be human bones. Hence, I am out in this frigid, muddy mess when I could be asleep.

  She sneezed.

  It wasn’t hard to find the site because she’d been out here every day, checking on their progress. Why she was so anxious about this, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was because the discovery of buried bones was a unique situation, something she’d not seen in all her years on the job. She was curious to know what the archaeologists had found in this spot she had passed many, many times, not realizing a crime had been committed and the evidence concealed here.

  Fortunately, the lighter rain allowed her to see up ahead, where heavy equipment, parked just off the road, had sat idle for a week while experts from Chicago worked the site. The bones originally had been covered with a tarp as soon as the construction foreman was informed. Then they placed an awning above the dig, courtesy of Homestretch Funer
al Home. That had been a week ago, and it had taken some time to get experts down to help, since Endurance was much too small to have forensic people on staff. Dispatch had called her this morning because it was time to bring up the bones, and a detective on the site was protocol. She pulled her car off the road, parked in the mud, and watched the job foreman, Gil Thomas, walk up. Reaching into her glove compartment, she grabbed more tissues, zipped up her jacket, and rolled down her window.

  “Detective Sweeney,” Thomas said.

  “Hi, Gil. Your day going well?” TJ blew her nose twice, then smiled.

  He glared up at the gray sky. “Not bad if we can get on this job soon. Rain’s about to stop. That Chicago guy says they’ll be done with the digging, brushing, drawing, and photographing today. I have to admit it’s been interesting to see what they do. Guess that’s why you’re here—because they’re done?” He stepped back, crossed his arms, and planted his feet solidly in the muddy grass.

  “You got it. I suppose this kinda crimped your style, huh?”

  Thomas shook his head. “Never imagined we might dig up bodies. Well, bones at least. Hard to tell. I know this was never a cemetery.” He glanced back at the awning, shook his head, and frowned. “I always thought from those crime scene shows that buried dead bodies looked like skeletons. But this was a pile of bones.”

  TJ laughed despite her cold. “I used to think that too, Gil, before I took this job. Unlike those shows, you won’t find a submerged car with a skeleton behind the wheel or a buried skeleton that’s been in the ground for a while. The tendons and ligaments in the human body decay, and once that happens the bones just become a pile. They have nothing to hold them together.” TJ’s phone, lying on her passenger seat, lit up and she quickly hit the “decline” button, but not before she saw the photo of her latest boyfriend. She turned back to Thomas. “We should be done today. I’m here to make sure it all gets transported to Woodbury, where the coroner has the space and equipment to deal with it.”

  “You got it, TJ. Any idea when we can get underway again?”

  The detective nodded her head. “Yeah. Shouldn’t take long. We’ll be out of here by the end of the afternoon. My guess is you’ll be good to go tomorrow. Department will give you a call. Here’s my card with the number, just in case.”

  “Thanks, TJ.” He stuck her card in his jacket pocket and smiled for the first time. “That isn’t as bad as I figured.” He looked over at the site again, the tarp thrown off to the side and lights set up to illuminate the six-by-six-foot hole.

  She rolled her window up as he turned and walked back to his truck. Picking up her phone, TJ saw Rick had left a message. She erased it without listening and stared out the window, a frown on her face. He had made the mistake of telling her he loved her—the kiss of death for anyone who shared her bed. Her friends, like Grace Kimball, called him “Mr. Construction Guy with Chiseled Abs.” They were right about his endowments, sculpted during his off-hours as a gym rat. She sighed and pressed her lips together. If only life were spent exclusively in the bedroom…but he didn’t know of Eudora Welty or Richard Wright or Bessie Smith or pinot grigio or Miles Davis or Fibonacci numbers or “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” Guess you can’t have it all. She coughed again and reached for her bottle of water.

  Ron Martinez, the Endurance pediatrician who doubled for the coroner when necessary, climbed up from the hole and walked over to her car. “I can accompany the remains.” He looked at TJ’s red nose and said, “You really shouldn’t be out in this cold, damp weather, you know.”

  “I’ll be glad to let you do that. What are these guys saying so far?”

  “The forensic anthropologist thinks they are pretty old—could be eighty years or more.” He glanced around and rubbed his jaw. “It’s on high ground here. At least it should be preserved enough to get DNA and possibly identify whoever it was. Atkins, in Woodbury, can do that. He just called these guys to make sure the bones were handled according to procedure. One’s a forensic anthropologist and the other a forensic ondontologist. They found a few objects, artifacts I guess they called them, with the bones. You’ll want to bag them and maybe take them with you. The artifacts don’t have to go to Woodbury with the bones. Oh, and the skull has a large dent in it, probably cause of death. You were right.” He looked past TJ at the western sky. “Too bad they had to call you for this.”

  TJ let out a barrage of coughing. Once she got her breath back, she said, “One of the perks of the job, being called out in Illinois in November.”

  They both saw movement near the excavation, and TJ got out of her car and walked over to the funeral home awning. Ted Collier, one of the police officers, was standing near the hole, and he reached over and helped the forensic people out. They brought evidence packages containing the bones, photographs, cameras, and drawings of the location of each bone and piece of evidence. Martinez signaled to an older man, and he handed a small package to TJ. Then the men walked past them to place the rest of the evidence in the coroner’s van.

  After the anthropologists left, TJ peered in at the contents of the bag.

  Martinez pointed at an object. “We think that silver piece is an opener to a woman’s handbag, probably a clutch purse. It’s badly tarnished and the rest of the material, of course, is gone. Silver holds up pretty well when it’s underground, especially in a dry location like this.”

  TJ donned a pair of gloves, opened the bag, and pulled out an object.

  “That appears to be a compact, you know, for a lady’s face powder.”

  “Looks really old,” TJ said, turning it over in her hands. She glanced up at Martinez and saw the curious look on his face. She felt her blood begin to pump and forgot how miserable she was. When she glanced out and realized the rain had stopped, TJ also noted that the awning over their heads gave plenty of rain cover, and the tripod lights provided ample light to see the objects they had dug up. Like Martinez, she couldn’t wait to figure out what these objects were. “Let’s see if this compact holds any treasures which might help identify what is evidently a woman.” She pulled a small knife out of her jacket pocket and pried open the compact. They both peered inside.

  “Maybe a ticket of some sort?”

  “A lot of it’s gone or faded, but it might still be possible that a few words would show up under a magnifying glass. I’ll check it at the office. Enlarging should help.” She stared at it for a moment.

  “What else did they find?” Martinez asked.

  She slipped the paper back into the compact, carefully placing it in the bag. Then she pulled out something shiny, the mud cleaned off by the anthropologists. Turning it over in her gloved hand, she added, “Man, this is an antique. A locket.” She slid her gloved fingernail into the groove on the edge of the gold face. “R.L from J.L. Love You Forever.” TJ closed the locket, looked at Martinez, and they were both silent.

  Later, driving back to her office, TJ glanced at the evidence bag on the seat next to her. She thought about the lonely spot on the hill and wondered how many years this woman had waited to be found. Who are you? Better yet, who gave you this locket and promised to love you forever? Your lover? Your husband? Your killer? Or all of the above?

  She placed her hand on the evidence bag and touched it with her index finger. “I don’t care who you were in this life,” TJ said out loud. “Saint or sinner, you deserve a decent burial with words read over you.” She lightly tapped the evidence bag and thought about a verse she remembered, words she’d memorized back in Grace Kimball’s class in high school. “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me…”

  Well, Death, you had help on this one, she thought. And I don’t think ‘kindly’ covers it. It’s time to find out the name of your assistant.

  Chapter Two

  TJ sat at her desk the following Monday morning, absentmindedly twirling her magnifying glass around in her hands. Between her miserable cold and her thoughts about Rick, she hadn’t slept well the previous night. He’d
stopped calling by Saturday evening, and now she wondered if she’d made a mistake. Then the detective considered her situation at age thirty-nine: living on her own with a dependable job that had odd hours, spending or saving money as she alone determined, and not having the risk of someone she deeply loved dying on her like Grace Kimball’s husband, Roger. TJ set the magnifying glass down on the desk with a sigh. No, I’m right, she thought. I don’t ever want to love anyone so much that I’m devastated when he leaves me, like my father did to my mother, or when he dies, like Roger, leaving Grace to raise three little kids by herself. She glanced at her silent phone. No, it’s just as well. Somebody else will come along.

  She picked up and examined the tiny piece of paper on her desk, a piece of a ticket that came from the Roof Garden in the 1940s. By now she had researched enough to know it was a dance venue from the thirties and forties on the roof of the Gaffney Building. Who might be able to tell her about the Roof Garden? TJ had a vague memory of her mother mentioning it sometime in the past. Tapping her pencil on the desk, she thought about the age a person would have to be to go to such a place in the 1940s. This was 2011, so the person she’d interview would be somewhere around seventy now. He would have to be old enough to have gone there, which pushed it up to someone in his eighties. Is the body “RL”? And could an elderly “JL” still be alive?

  I’ve got it, TJ thought, and a slow grin spread across her face. She looked up the number and called Charlie Sims, a retired farmer who knew everyone. Ten minutes later, their conversation finally got around to the Roof Garden. Charlie paused and pondered. He said he’d have to consider it some more and call her back.

  With that small scrap of hope, TJ left her office and drove the fifteen miles to Woodbury. Perhaps she would make some progress here. Small towns spread throughout west central Illinois depended on the Woodbury coroner to do autopsies when they were needed. The coroner’s building was attached to the police station on the west side of town in an area that used to contain three or four factories. But the factories had closed and moved abroad because people there were eager to work for meager wages, leaving thousands of workers in Woodbury and the surrounding area out of jobs. It was a sad and neglected side of town, with rusting sheds and deteriorating buildings. Huge parking lots sat empty, and TJ remembered, as a teenager, driving past those lots and seeing row after row of cars. Nestled in the middle of this reminder of better days was the Woodbury coroner’s office.