A.L. Jambor - Where's Audrey? by A.L. Jambor Page A

Christmas shoppers. Mel’s shoulders dropped. Christmas was in three days. She was supposed to leave tomorrow, Friday. There was no way she could go until she knew what had happened to Audrey.
    She rode around until she found an empty spot near Target and parked. She hoped Lisa would call her back soon and left her phone on.
     

     
    As Mel shopped at Target, Conner was sitting in the Clearwater Police Department reading the case file for Jason Frye Sr. The detective had concluded that the death was an accident and the case was closed. Conner was disappointed. He’d hoped they had looked into Jason Jr.
    When he got back to his car, he looked at his computer and found a message. The dispatcher was asking for an officer to go to Holiday Oaks mobile home park to respond to a 911 call from a resident. He saw that another officer had responded, but he wanted to see what was going on and headed that way.
    He saw the patrol car sitting in front of Jason Jr.’s home and parked behind it. He walked to the door and was about to knock when he saw Ben Kiernan, another deputy, coming around from the back of the home.
    “Hey,” Conner said.
    Ben nodded. “Maurice is dead.”
    “What?” Conner asked.
    “Maurice, the dog, is dead. He was buried behind this place. A neighbor called it in.”
    “When did this happen?”
    “Right after you spoke to the woman across the street.”
    “When?” Conner asked.
    “Today,” Ben said.
    “I didn’t talk to her today.”
    “Oh, I thought you were the one who took the report. The lady across the street called in a dognapping. Then this guy,” the deputy pointed at the old man’s house with his thumb, “called in and said he thought Maurice was dead. Well, he was right.”
    “Someone killed the dog.”
    “That’s what it looks like.”
    The Mercury wasn’t parked in the driveway. “This guy did it.”
    “You know who lives here?” the deputy asked.
    “Yup. I was here two days ago.”
    “I called animal control. They’re gonna pick Maurice up and find the cause of death. If he killed the dog, we may be looking at animal cruelty.”
    “Why would he kill the dog?” Conner asked.
    “Who knows? Some whack job who doesn’t like animals. Or he had it in for the lady across the street.”
    The deputy left Conner and went back to his cruiser. Conner walked around to the back of the house and looked at Maurice. The dog was covered in dirt. There was no way to tell what he had been doing before he met his demise.
    Conner walked around the house and looked at the ground. Maybe the dog was digging and Jason caught him. Conner didn’t see any signs of digging on the left side of the home. He went to the front. There was a planter made of stacked stones cemented in place. It went the length of the front of the house. Conner looked at the stones. Toward the middle, he saw white marks on one of the stones. They looked like scratch marks.
    Conner went to the shed. He took the same trowel that Mel had used and came back to the front of the house. He began to dig the dirt out of the planter. He dug all the way to the bottom and didn’t find anything. If a body had been buried there, he would have found it.
    He moved the dirt around to cover the hole. He didn’t want Jason to know what he had seen. He put the trowel back. His hands were muddy. He tried turning on the sink in the shed, but it was dry.
    He went back to his cruiser and took out a container of wipes from the glove box. He cleaned his hands as best he could. He was frustrated. The dog had been killed, but why? It had known something. It had smelled something, but the planter was empty. It was time to talk to his supervisor about investigating Jason Frye Jr.

Chapter 13
    Mark Allen, Conner’s supervisor, sat behind a big, gray metal desk. Files filled one side. He kept rubbing his face. Conner was pressing him hard for a warrant, and Mark was trying to find some way to dissuade him. There just wasn’t enough proof that Jason