Leona Karr - Stoneview Estate

The hope that her grandmother would either lose interest in the project or come up short with addresses of the former occupants had been in vain. When the names and addresses arrived, Robyn had indulged herself in a brief period of childish rebellion, and ended up mailing them nearly three weeks later.

As she dropped them into the mailbox, she clung to the hope that her grandmother’s brainstorm might somehow be derailed.

Maybe nobody would come.

DETECTIVE BRIAN J. Donovan hated hospitals, especially when the innocent victim of a robbery and assault was an elderly man who had cashed his social security check, then stopped at a sleazy pool hall and bar to have a drink. A couple of druggies had waited for him, beaten him up and left him unconscious in the alley.

Police files were filled with such cases. Brian knew the chances of getting any solid leads from the victim were slight. At the age of twenty-eight, he’d seen enough selfish brutality to last a lifetime. There was an angry stiffness about him as he strode up to the hospital admittance desk.

“Evening, Detective.” The pretty nurse smiled as her appreciative glance passed over his tawny hair, brown eyes and athletic build. “You’re out late. The sun will be up in a few hours.” Her voice took on a flirtatious tone. “If you’re still around, I might offer to fix you some breakfast.”

Brian smiled, recognizing the intimacy in her invitation, but he’d learned to maneuver around such overtures, especially on the job. “I’ll take a rain check,” he answered lightly.

“Promises, promises,” she said, sighing. “What can I do for you tonight?”

Brian glanced at his notebook. “An elderly man, Joseph Keller, was brought in about eleven o’clock. Assault and battery.”

After checking her computer, she nodded. “Room 209. Condition stable.”

“That’s good. Thanks.” Brian knew the first few hours after an incident were the most productive in getting a line on criminal perpetrators. After that, imagination often took over and filled in the gaps. He reached the room just as a male nurse was coming out.

Brian flashed his badge. “Detective Donovan. Any chance I can spend a couple of minutes with Mr. Keller?”

“I just gave him a sedative, so you’d better make it fast,” the young man warned. “He’s beat up pretty bad. A tough old guy. Fought the thugs off pretty good, but they got his wallet.”

“Any other personal effects?” Brian asked. “Forensics might be able to get some fingerprints if the muggers went through his pockets.”

“He didn’t have much. There are a few things in the bedside drawer.”

“Thanks.” Brian eased inside the room and approached the bed quietly. “Mr. Keller?”

Even though the man’s prone body clearly showed his advanced age, there was a sharpness in his glare. Dark eyes in a bruised and scratched face narrowed as he stared at Brian. His voice was raspy and breathless as he croaked, “What the hell do you want?”

“We want to find the thugs who did this to you. I’m Detective Donovan.”

“You get my money back?”

“We’re going to try our best, Mr. Keller. Can you tell me what happened?”

He closed his eyes for a long moment and then looked at Brian as the words came painfully slow. “The bastards came up from behind. Dragged me into the alley. Went through my pockets. Knocked me out.”

“Can you tell me what they looked like?”

The Adam’s apple in his skinny throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Hoodlums. Young and white. Too dark to see much.”

Brian closed his notebook. Unfortunately, the old man’s description was too generic to be of value. “If you remember anything else, Mr. Keller, just call me.” He laid his card on the bedside table. “You take care of yourself.”

“If I’d been younger I’d have shown them a thing or two,” he rasped, and his slack jaw tightened a little. “Was a heavyweight boxer in my prime.”

“Really?” Brian smiled at the old man. “How about that?”

“Plenty of money and women, too.” He gave Brian a grin. “Owned the biggest estate on Lake Chataqua.”

“Lake Chataqua, Maine?” Brian’s eyes narrowed.

“Yep. Owned the Stoneview Estate, I did. You know it?”

“Yes, my father had a medical practice in Chataqua until I was almost seventeen, and we moved to Boston.”

Just the name Stoneview instantly brought a hot anger surging through Brian. His father’s professional reputation had been ruined by a kidnapping and murder that had taken place at the estate during Brian’s senior year in high school. As the family doctor for Darrel and Sybil Sheldon, his dad had attended their newly adopted baby and the ill-fated nursemaid, Heather Fox. When the missing baby showed up on Dr. Donovan’s doorstep, and the nursemaid he’d befriended was found strangled, ugly speculations had targeted Brian’s father as a likely accomplice. The police failed to turn up any leads to the ransom money or the parties responsible for the nanny’s death.

When insidious suspicions destroyed his father’s reputation and the town turned against him, Brian had felt the backlash in his own life. His father decided to uproot the family, and in the move, Brian had lost touch with all his high school friends. His boyhood had been a happy one, living in the house where he’d been born, hanging out with his buddies and growing up with a sense of belonging. He’d never recovered from the isolation of the move, and had tried to protect himself from that kind of loss ever again by becoming pretty much a loner.

“You must have heard of me,” the injured man insisted. “Heavyweight boxer? Made big money, I did.”

Joe Keller. Suddenly, the name snagged a memory. Brian remembered that a lawyer friend of his father, John Parker, had bought the Stoneview Estate cheap from a prizefighter whose career had hit the skids. Before Joe Keller had sold it, he’d rented the place out as a questionable resort until the authorities closed it down for suspected gambling. Obviously, the fighter’s good fortune had gone downhill since then. Brian found it hard to believe this wasted old man had once been a force in the boxing ring.

“What about your family, Joe?” Brian asked. “Have the authorities notified anyone about what happened to you tonight?”

“No one to notify,” he answered in a tight voice.

Brian checked the bedside drawer, which the nurse had said contained Joe’s personal effects: a pitiful pile of change, a lighter, half pack of cigarettes and a white envelope. Not much to go on.

“If anyone handled any of these things besides you, we may be able to match some fingerprints,” Brian told him hopefully.

“Just mail that envelope for me,” Joe said tiredly. “Tell ’em I’m not up to that kind of shindig. It’s an invitation. A hundred-year-old birthday party for a house. Doesn’t that beat all?”

Brian didn’t answer. He removed the invitation and bagged the envelope with everything else. After leaving the hospital, he drove to his small apartment in a modest Boston neighborhood. Since most of his time was spent on the job, or working out at a nearby gym, the apartment was hardly more than a place to sleep and eat. Occasionally he enjoyed feminine company, but never for very long.

His telephone was blinking with a couple of messages. The only personal one was from his mother, asking him to call. His parents had moved to sunny New Mexico several years earlier after his father had retired from medical practice. The dark cloud that had forced Dr. Donovan to give up his practice in Chataqua had never dissipated. The unsolved kidnapping and murder seemed to lodge in the doctor’s mind like a curse, and even moving across the country had not seemed to help.