It had to be You

hung up, he stomped out of the office, hoping he could keep away from phones for the rest of the day.

Chapter 22
    Friday, March 17

    Howard was wide awake at five the next morning. He’d had a nightmare that woke him up sweating and breathless. In the dream, he was on a bus that was on fire and floating down the Hudson River. The whole Connor family was on it with him—including dozens of relatives he’d never met or seen or even known about. They didn’t seem to notice the fire or that they were probably going to drown.
    Since he was already wide awake, he went to his office at the jail to go over his notes again. He’d have breakfast as soon as Mabel opened for business.
    Howard felt as if he were surrounded by Connors. Whether working or eating or sleeping, he was constantly thinking about them. One murdered, one possibly missing, a third threatened by fire. And there was Mrs. Connor, a woman he hoped he’d never see again. But only one of them was his problem—Sean Connor, the old, sick, nasty man who’d been murdered on the same day he was fully expected to expire of natural causes.
    It still made no sense at all. Why not just wait for him to die? Why would someone need to risk being arrested for smothering him? Why not sit it out at his bedside?
    At least two other members of the Connor family might have been responsible for his death. His wife and his grandson Kelly. Mrs. Connor could have simply become sick and tired of visiting her husband and being ignored. Or she could well be telling the truth about needing him back to get the crops in. For a family that lived by what they grew and sold, this was vital.
    Then there was Kelly Connor. He’d been threatened himself by someone who’d tried to blow up his bus. That vehicle was just as vital to the way Kelly made his own living. What’s more, might that someone have had reason to believe he was in the bus, and been trying to kill him? Kelly appeared to be an ambitious young man. But he’d been the next to last person to see Sean Connor. He could have smothered his grandfather. But again, why? He had no reason, as far as Howard knew, to kill Sean. But Howard had only Kelly’s word that his grandfather had been snoring. Nobody else had reported him snoring.
    But what if Kelly had heard about the will leaving him and his older brother the Connor farm? This was unlikely, though, since the only way he could have come by this information was through the lawyer or the lawyer’s secretary. Neither of them would have a clear motive to tell him. Or would they? What if the lawyer had wanted to keep the Connor family in his stable of clients? He’d never admit it, no matter how much pressure Howard exerted.
    There were still other suspects. Betty had borne the brunt of taking care of Sean Connor for his final days. It could be that the old man attacked her with his last bit of strength and she retaliated. Or he said something so nasty to her that she couldn’t bear to ever go in his room again. Except to smother him.
    The shell-shocked Mark Farleigh was still on his list as well. He seemed a thoroughly nice person. But other soldiers who’d suffered in the Great War had brooded for years over the experience and then suddenly snapped into murderous rages. It was highly unlikely Howard could even interview Farleigh. It seemed the only person he ever spoke to since the war was Miss Twibell. And then seldom and only to reply to her, never to start a conversation on his own. The rest of the patients and staff believed he was truly mute.
    Practically anyone else, except Miss Jones and Miss Smith, could have done it if they’d been fit enough. Miss Jones would have run out of breath.
    Miss Smith wouldn’t be able to let go of her sticks.
    It was possible, as well, that someone nobody even knew about had been in the nursing home and held a deep grudge against Sean Connor. There were brief times, Howard supposed, when no one was in the main room and someone could have sneaked in between the other visitors. Miss Twibell, for all her good intentions, wasn’t very good about making sure all the doors were always locked.
    Supposing one of his neighboring farmers had been negotiating with Sean Connor to buy out his farm and was tired of waiting for the old man to die? It was the time to be preparing the soil for crops. If such a person wanted to farm it this year, he wouldn’t be able to if Mr. Connor hung on much longer.
    Miss Twibell had said that some of his