Read Online Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) by Archer Mayor - Free Book Online

Street in Brattleboro. This was in large part to accommodate his late father’s tool collection, but also to give himself something to do outside work. He’d been married only once, briefly as a young man, and never had children. Now, a widower for decades, he had Beverly as a romantic partner, his squad as a surrogate family, his love of reading, and this shop to balance out the rest.
    All in all, especially given some of the lumps he’d encountered reaching this stage, life could have been far worse. The only problem recently was that he’d run out of recipients for birdhouses and jewelry boxes, which had forced him to move on to picnic tables and lawn benches.
    “That one ours?” a woman asked from the door between the house and the shop. Most people knew to simply enter his place and seek him out. Joe lacked the distrust of most cops, and usually left his door unlocked.
    Joe glanced over to see Sammie Martens leaning against the doorjamb. The squad’s sole woman, and, like Willy, a cop who dated back to before the VBI’s existence—to when the three of them had worked as detectives for the Brattleboro PD—Sammie occupied a special place in Joe’s heart. Small, spare, and intense, she’d survived a dysfunctional childhood, fled to the military, joined law enforcement, and become a bull terrier on the job. She’d made of her boss a mentor, to the point where he’d once sensed that, if the cards were down, she would’ve taken any bullet heading his way.
    But that field was now more crowded. She had fallen in love with Willy Kunkle—of all unlikely people—and had a daughter with him named Emma. To everyone’s surprise, most of all Sam’s, she and Willy had moved in together and begun to approach normalcy, albeit one fitting their own quirky needs. For Joe, that development had demanded tricky navigating. He’d come to see her as a surrogate daughter, almost. Much as he championed Willy to most detractors, Joe was still struggling with seeing him as a virtual son-in-law.
    Joe held up the board. “Yup—one picnic table, in the making.”
    “You know there’s no rush,” she said. “I heard there might be snow coming next week.”
    “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. “But you won’t be getting this too soon anyhow. In the spring, guaranteed.” He propped the board against the table saw. “What brings you to the neighborhood? You want some coffee?”
    She shook her head. “I’m on my way to pick up Emma at day care, but I’m early. I wanted to drop by and ask about the hoarder case. Willy said you had something cooking.”
    “Not really. It’s a favor for Hillstrom. The guy was her cousin, and there’re a couple of odd details about it. I said I’d look into it.”
    “Sounded like more than that.”
    Joe laughed. “Got Willy’s nose twitching, did I? That’s cool. Drive him crazy.”
    “Thanks a bunch,” she said. “I have to live with it. He thinks you’re pulling a fast one—working under the radar.”
    “He would. No,” Joe reassured her. “In fact, crack of dawn tomorrow, a crew is coming to clean out the property. Backhoes, Cats, Dumpsters, the works. Might take a couple of weeks or more.”
    “Wow,” she said. “What’re you hoping to find?”
    “Nothing,” he replied. “Although you always wonder. I’ll just be there for a while, keeping Hillstrom’s daughter company. She’s videotaping the whole thing for a thesis or something. Turns out Hillstrom’s the homeowner, so she just wants it back to sell.”
    Ever the investigator, Sam referred to his earlier comment: “A couple of odd details?”
    Joe came clean. “There’s something about how he was found that doesn’t quite fit—the position he was in, some of the marks on his body. It’s not enough to punch a case number, and the autopsy gave us nothing except accidental death, but I don’t see the harm in poking at it a bit.”
    She nodded and half turned to go. “Okay. I was just curious. You