Dead in the Doorway

by Diane Kelly

  But had Mary Sue been telling the truth about her alarm? Or could she have set it off accidentally after sneaking back into this house to pull something out from under Nelda? As the thought popped into my mind, my mouth popped open, silently gaping. Did Mary Sue kill Nelda?

  My skin thrummed with a nervous energy. The thought was incredibly preposterous, yet at the same time it made my knees fold of their own accord. I sat down on the side of the bathtub and forced my quick breathing to slow down so I could think clearly. Breathe in, two, three. Breathe out, two, three.

  Assuming, for the sake of argument only, that Mary Sue had pushed Nelda down the stairs, what would she have taken out from under Nelda? What would have been of such high value to either of them, or been so condemning, so clearly pointing to Mary Sue as the killer, that she would have felt the need to risk a return to the house later to remove it?

  The only thing of Lillian’s that seemed of any importance to Mary Sue was the peach-pie recipe. Of course, the recipe was important to the other neighbors as well. But Mary Sue had been Lillian’s best friend, had been right there by Lillian’s side when she’d won the blue ribbons. The pictures in the photo albums proved it. Maybe I should have hung on to those …

  Could Nelda have known about the secret compartment under the stairs? Had she come into the house to get the hidden recipe box? Had Mary Sue spotted Nelda entering her friend’s home and come over to chastise or question her for it? Was there any chance this seemingly wild speculation could, in fact, explain how Nelda Dolan had ended up facedown and dead in the doorway of this house?

  Once I could get my knees to work again, I left the bathroom and went outside to my car where I could make a private call to Detective Flynn. He answered on the first ring.

  “I’ve got a new theory,” I said. “What if Mary Sue killed Nelda?”

  He paused only a second before saying, “Go on.”

  “It’s recycling day in our neighborhood,” I said. “Mary Sue’s bin is always full of newspapers. She puts a red brick on top to hold them down so they won’t blow out of the bin. Anyway, when I saw them this morning, something about them jarred a memory loose.” I told him about the thoughts that had crossed my mind, how I believed, but couldn’t be certain, that Mary Sue’s newspaper hadn’t been picked up the morning Nelda’s body was found. That she might have set off her security alarm when she’d been returning from removing a recipe box out from under Nelda.

  “There were two recipe boxes, right?” he said. “The one Colette took, and the one you found under the step?”

  “Yes. They were identical.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They’re both at my house.”

  “I’ll have the lab check them for prints. When can I swing by and pick them up?”

  We arranged to meet at my place during his lunch hour.

  I thought aloud. “Mary Sue is purportedly the peacemaker of the group, but when I think back to our conversations, she sometimes seemed to subtly goad people into saying incriminating things about themselves or others.” She’d led Roxanne to tell me and Buck about all the names Nelda had called everyone, she’d gotten Becky to admit that neither she nor her mother had much respect for Dakota or Wayne, and she had nonchalantly dropped the information about Nelda’s life-insurance policy being on the brink of expiring, implicitly implicating both Carl and Becky.

  “It could have been unintentional,” Collin said with his usual healthy share of professional skepticism. “But she might have been stirring the pot, trying to throw suspicion off herself. Hard to say.”

  “What about her broken window, though? Doesn’t that point to her being innocent?”

  “It could,” he said. “But she could have broken it herself.”

  If she’d been the one to smash it, it would explain why the point of impact was at the lower part of the window. With her diminutive stature, she would have trouble reaching much higher. Still, the woman hardly seemed like a killer. She simply seemed like a nice neighbor who wanted everyone to get along. I felt a little ashamed of suspecting her.

  Before we ended the call, I asked, “You think I might be onto something? Or do you think I’m nuts?”

  “I think you’re nuts, regardless,” he said. “You don’t know when to back down from danger.”

  He had a point. I’d taken some risks in the interests of getting to the truth and protecting my property value. But I couldn’t just sit back and wait. It wasn’t my style.

  “As for Mary Sue?” he said. “Everyone who knew Nelda Dolan gave me the impression they’d wanted to shove her down a staircase at one time or another. Mary Sue knew Nelda, ergo…”

  He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. While his words weren’t exactly an endorsement of my theory, he apparently thought it plausible enough to pursue. Then again, he’d run out of other leads by this point. What would he do without help from me and my cat?

  CHAPTER 30

  EVIDENCE COLLECTION

  WHITNEY

  When lunchtime rolled around, I begged off for a couple of hours, telling Buck and Dakota that I had a property management issue to take care of for Home & Hearth. I’d tell Buck the truth later, but I didn’t want to risk Dakota overhearing. Sure, I’d given him a job and he appreciated me for it. But he’d known the women on Songbird Circle since he’d been born. If he knew what I was doing, he might let it slip that I’d accused Mary Sue of murder. Heck, he might go to her and tell her outright. If she was innocent, she’d surely be upset by the slander, maybe even sue me. A jury would probably take one look at me, in my physical prime and towering over the frail and fragile Mary Sue, and award her a million-dollar verdict.

  Collin was already at my house when I arrived. Sawdust perched at the top of his cat tree, watching us out the front window as we came up the walk. As always, he met me at the door when I opened it. Mew?

  I picked him up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, boy. Did you miss me?”

  He rubbed the side of his face against mine, telling me that yes, he’d missed me very much.

  Emmalee was curled up in her Papasan chair. When she saw the detective behind me, she sat up straight. “What’s going on?”

  Unsure what I was permitted to share with my roommate, I looked to Collin.

  “Evidence collection,” he said, which was both true and vague.

  Still carrying my cat, I led Collin to the kitchen, where Colette was cutting nectarines into slices. “Figured I’d get a head start on tomorrow’s baking.” She pointed her knife at the detective. “What are you doing here?”

  “Evidence collection,” he repeated.

  I pointed to the glass-front cabinet where we’d stored the recipe boxes. “There they are.”

  He donned latex gloves and pulled the cabinet open. Before removing them, he turned to me. “Who all has touched these boxes?”

  “Just me and Colette,” I said. “Maybe Emmalee, if she needed to get to something behind them. Colette does most of the cooking.”

  “It’s true,” Colette concurred. “All Whitney and Emmalee do is reheat leftovers in the microwave.”

  Emmalee leaned against the doorjamb, her arms crossed over her chest, one orange brow raised in amiable accusation. “You love cooking for us, Colette, and you know it.”

  “That’s true, too,” Colette said. She turned back to the detective. “They’re my guinea pigs for new recipes. Those two will eat anything I set in front of them.”

  “Hey!” I said. “We burn a lot of calories renovating houses and waiting tables. We can’t help it if we’re hungry.”

  Collin carefully removed each of the recipe boxes from the cabinet and placed them in separate evidence bags.

  Colette pointed her knife at the recipe card lying on the counter. The card bore bent edges, smudges of flour, and brown spots where drops of vanilla had spilled on it over the years. “Do you need the recipe card for the peach pie, too?”

  “No,” he said. “Just the boxes.”
He looked from Colette to Emmalee. “Are you two willing to give me your prints so I can identify them if they show up on the boxes?”

  “No problem,” Colette said.

  “Happy to,” Emmalee added.

  Collin eyed Colette and cocked his head. “Am I pushing my luck if I ask you to bake me a pie, too?”

  “How can I say no to a man with a gun and a nightstick on his belt?” Colette tossed him a smile and a chuckle to let him know she was only teasing. She’d be more than happy to bake him a pie, too. Feeding people was her purpose in life. Mine was housing them. Collin’s was to keep them from killing each other, or at least to bring them to justice when they did.

  The detective directed my roommates to wash and dry their hands. Once they’d cleaned up, he rolled their fingers in ink and transferred the prints to fingerprint cards. He already had my fingerprints on file, so there was no need for me to repeat the process. He thanked them and I bade them goodbye. I gave Sawdust a smooch on the head, and Collin and I went back out front to our vehicles.

  As he opened his trunk, I noticed something else inside, also enclosed in a clear plastic evidence bag. A red brick, just like the one Mary Sue always placed on top of the newspapers in her recycle bin so they wouldn’t blow away.

  I gestured to the bag. “Is that the brick from Mary Sue’s recycling bin?”

  He raised a finger to his lips to let me know it was a secret before leaning toward me and whispering. “I snagged it after you and I spoke earlier. I’m going to have the lab take a look at it, too.”

  “Why?”

  “It might have been used to smash her window.”

  “But she keeps the bin and the brick out of sight somewhere,” I said. “Her garage, probably. She only brings them out on recycling day. How would someone else have gotten to it?”

  His lip curled up in a sly smile. “Who says it was someone else?”

  A-ha! Maybe I wasn’t so crazy to suspect Mary Sue, after all. “You really think it could have been her?”

  His sly smile slipped away, replaced by a frustrated frown. “Honestly? I’m just trying to eliminate the possibility that it was an inside job. The crime-scene techs examined the glass and found tiny bits of red dust on the edges of the shards. The dust could have been from this brick, or one like it.”

  “Did you have to get a search warrant?” I asked. “Does Mary Sue know you seized the brick?”

  “No,” he said. “I was discreet. Posed as a jogger, stopped to tie my shoe when I reached her bin, and grabbed the brick.”

  “Clever ruse.”

  “Eh.” He lifted a shoulder. “I needed a workout. Killed two birds with one stone. No warrant was needed. Law enforcement has the right to search trash and recycling that’s been put out for pickup. It’s considered discarded at that point.”

  “I guess criminals have to be careful what they throw away.”

  “True. Lots of DNA evidence has been collected from disposable cups that have been tossed in the trash. Envelopes, too, if the suspect licked the seal.” The detective slid his toolbox back into the trunk of his car and slammed the trunk closed. “I’ll let you know once I hear from the lab about the recipe boxes.”

  With that, we both returned to work.

  As I turned into the cul-de-sac, I spotted Mary Sue’s newspapers strewn about her yard. Without the brick holding them down, the wind had picked them up and tossed them about willy-nilly. After retrieving a heavy piece of scrap tile from inside the flip house, I gathered up the loose newspapers and returned them to Mary Sue’s bin, topping them with the tile to weight them down.

  I went back inside and returned to the guest bath. While my hands might have been installing tile in my flip house, my mind was on Mary Sue next door. I’d been suspicious of her earlier, especially after learning the detective had seized the brick, but my suspicions gave way to increasing skepticism as the day wore on. Mary Sue was the pacifist of the group, smoothing things over between the others. She was also small and lightweight. Nelda had been a stout, sturdy woman, even into her later years. Would Mary Sue even be strong enough to push Nelda down the stairs? I supposed it was possible, especially if Nelda wasn’t expecting to be shoved and wasn’t hanging on to a railing.

  On the flipside, someone had broken Mary Sue’s window. Had Buck, Dakota, and I not fixed it for free, she would’ve been out several hundred dollars to have it replaced. Mary Sue didn’t seem to be struggling, but she didn’t seem excessively wealthy, either. She’d certainly realize, too, that breaking her own window could backfire. The investigators might realize she’d faked the break-in. If she had used the brick to smash her own window, she would have gotten rid of it, wouldn’t she? These facts pointed to another person being the killer, didn’t it? The newspaper was a flimsy clue, at best. I might have merely sent the detective down a rabbit trail.

  Unfortunately, at this point, rabbit trails seemed to be the only trails we had.

  CHAPTER 31

  HOUSE CALL

  WHITNEY

  I was on my way to the flip house Friday morning when the detective called with the lab results. I pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant to take his call.

  “The only prints on the recipe boxes are yours and Colette’s. There’s no other prints on the boxes.”

  My heart pounded triple time in my chest. “That means they were wiped clean, just like the key and the front doorknob. That means whoever killed Nelda was after the recipe, right?”

  “Not so fast,” he said. “Just because they were wiped clean doesn’t mean the same person who cleaned the knob and key cleaned the boxes. Cooking is messy. Lillian might have gotten flour or sugar or some other ingredient on the boxes when she was preparing the recipes. She might have wiped them down herself before she passed away.”

  “But her family and friends were actively searching for her peach-pie recipe,” I insisted. “They might not have known about the recipe box hidden under the stair, but they would have noticed the one in the kitchen and looked inside.”

  “They might have also noticed it was dirty and wiped it down with a kitchen towel.”

  Argh! “You’re infuriating.”

  “You’re not the first person to call me that.”

  “Who else called you infuriating?”

  “My mother. Officer Hogarty. My ex-girlfriend.”

  Everyone infuriated their mother and coworkers on occasion, but I had to admit I was curious about his relationship with his ex. I knew what Collin was like professionally. Determined. Smart. Perceptive. But I’d only gotten glimpses into who he was on a personal level. I’d like to know more. “What did your ex-girlfriend find so infuriating about you?”

  “That’s not really any of your business, is it?”

  Of course it wasn’t. But that wasn’t about to stop me. “Aw, c’mon,” I cajoled him. “I’ve been doing free investigative work for you. The least you could do is share something with me.”

  He heaved a dramatic sigh. “All right. My ex got tired of my erratic work schedule, of me having to break dates, of my mind being on my cases when we were together.”

  My schedule was erratic, too. I never knew when a tenant would call with a problem at a rental property, and home renovation could be unpredictable. Unforeseen snags or delays were common. “You can’t control your work schedule,” I said, finding myself coming to his defense. “It’s not like criminals work only nine to five Monday through Friday.”

  “That’s what I told her, in so many words.”

  I flipped, coming to the defense of his ex now. “As for your mind being on other things when you were together, I can see how that would be hurtful to her.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “I’m not good at compartmentalizing. My mind is constantly working my cases.”

  “I can relate,” I told him. “My mind is constantly rehabbing houses. It’s the curse of having a job that means something to you, that you love.”

  “Finally! Somebody get
s it.”

  Flip-flopping once again, I thought that maybe Collin wouldn’t have been so distracted by his work when he was with his girlfriend if he’d been more interested in her. Turning the conversation back to the matter at hand, I said, “Tell me about Mary Sue’s brick.”

  “The lab found tiny remnants of glass in a couple of the holes. Basically glass dust.”

  “That means the brick was used to smash the powder room window, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly looks that way.”

  My heart shook like a gallon can of latex paint in an electronic shaker. “Are you going to arrest her?”

  “I’m going to talk to her,” he said. “Unfortunately, there were a lot of prints on the brick. Some were Mary Sue’s. We were able to match them to prints on a small bottle of juice I also snatched from the bin. We don’t know who the others belong to. It could be sanitation workers, family members, even the landscapers who installed her flower bed. But some of them could have belonged to whoever broke her window. There’s also a possibility that she’d had some glass in her recycle bin that broke, and that small fragments ended up on the brick.”

  “So you can’t be certain the brick was used to break the window?”

  “No, but we saw no glass fragments in the bottom of the bin like we’d expect if a glass bottle or jar had broken inside it.”

  “Maybe she cleaned the bin out.”

  “It’s possible. But Mary Sue is going to have to come up with a good explanation as to how someone could have accessed her bin and obtained the brick to break her window. Otherwise, I’m going to take her down to the station and give her a grilling.”

  We ended our call and I continued on to the flip house. Buck was already there, starting the installation of the hardwood flooring. Once it was laid, it would need to be sanded and stained. We were in for several weeks’ work on the wood floors alone. Good thing we now had Dakota to help.