Suddenly I was aware I’d let my phone drop to my side, and it was squeaking like a tape recording played on fast-forward.
“Sorry,” I said. “I have to check something.” I unlatched one of the lower cabinet doors. Dread clutched at my stomach, and I tasted something bitter in my mouth as I eased the door open. The cabinet held a couple of paint cans, a quart of turpentine, and a folded canvas drop cloth, nothing more.
“Sam? Is everything okay?”
“Hold on.” With a hand that trembled only a little, I said a little prayer, then yanked open the second cabinet.
Mr. Williams from next door was curled into the small space, his knees pulled against his chest. His head was turned toward me, his expression as cranky as before. There was a dark hole between his eyes.
Chapter 10
I called 911. After I’d been assured that the police were on their way, I ran to the bathroom and hung over the toilet until I was sure I wasn’t going to throw up. I splashed a little cool water on my face, trying to wash away the image of that terrible mark.
When my stomach had settled down to an uneasy ferment, I called Wanda and canceled our showing. I didn’t say why.
She seemed relieved. “Doesn’t look like I can get away anyway. I’ll call you later in the week.”
“Fine.” If my voice lacked a degree of professional enthusiasm, she didn’t pick up on it. I hung up and tried Gail, who’d been lighting up my voicemail. I told her I’d talk to her later.
Two Arlinda PD cars arrived in a blaze of lights, sirens blaring. I recognized Mike Decker from where I sat in the VW, trying to keep my hands from shaking. I knew the sergeant would have questions. I wondered if he’d also provide any answers.
“Ms. Turner?” There he was, notepad in hand.
“Call me Sam,” I said automatically.
“We need you to move your car.”
“Gladly.” I fastened my seat belt, law-abiding citizen that I am.
“Don’t go far. I’ll be waiting for you inside.”
I parked two houses down. People were starting to gather on the sidewalk; a second police incident in two days had them clustered in uneasy herds, talking in low voices as the crime-scene investigation unfolded with grim familiarity.
I waited in the bus, wondering what would happen if I hit the gas and peeled out for home. Probably a jail cell for one. So I hopped out and returned to the house, avoiding any direct eye contact.
Decker was watching for me by the door, and motioned me inside. I stumbled through a statement, pausing a few times to refill my lungs, which didn’t seem to be working to full capacity.
“Take your time,” he said.
“That’s it. I saw—” I had to stop again.
“You know the deceased?”
“No. I mean, yes.”
“So which is it?” He watched me, eyes unfriendly.
“He stopped by my open house yesterday. Mr. Williams. My first customer.”
“Oh?”
The silence that followed was as effective as hot lights. I wiped a sheen of sweat from my forehead and took a deep breath. “He was concerned about the trees growing along the fence line, that’s all.”
“Concerned?”
“Yeah. Because they shaded his yard. You know, mold and all that. He wanted the homeowners to cut them back before the house sold.”
“You have any offers?”
The non sequitur threw me for a second. “No. Not yet.”
“Keys to the house?”
I fished them out of my pocket and dropped them in his hand. The coroner’s wagon came rolling down the street for the second time in as many days and pulled into the driveway. The crowd of curious neighbors had moved closer, and a patrolman herded them back.
Decker took my elbow. “I need you to walk through your movements. From when you got here to when you opened the cabinet door.”
“Oh, shit. Do I have to?”
He steered me back toward the house. “While it’s fresh in your memory, yes.”
I retraced my steps from my arrival, describing the open drawers and cabinets. When we got to the garage, I averted my eyes from the activity around the bank of cabinets. A spotlight had been set up and everything stood out in garish relief. My words trickled to a halt.
Decker took a look around the garage. “Lots of cabinet space.”
“I’m sure buyers will be lined up around the block after…this,” I said. “Look, I have to go. I mean, we’re done, right?”
He turned his appraising look on me, and I couldn’t help squirming uncomfortably.
“We’ll be in touch,” he said.
—
When I got home, I wasn’t altogether surprised to find Stacy in my living room.
“Max let me in,” she said. “But he’s gone out with some friends. Should I have given him the third degree?”
“That’s okay. I got it covered.” I dumped my stuff on the counter and grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge. “Want one?”
“You got any white wine?”
“Nope. I might have some cooking sherry somewhere.”
“Beer’s fine.”
I popped the caps off the bottles and handed her one before sinking into my cushy chair with a sigh.
“Tough day at the office?”
“You could say that.” I was on the verge of telling her about my failed showing when she shifted gears.
“How much do you know about your neighbor?”
I raised my brows. “Sunshine and Fred? They seem like a nice young couple. Maybe not very handy, but—”
“Not those neighbors. The other side. Green house, beige trim.”
“Oh, Mr. Bradshaw. I see him in his yard and that’s about it. He’s not too talkative. Why do you ask?”
She took a sip of beer. “Saw him out in his backyard last night. Digging. I got a weird vibe.”
“Why shouldn’t he dig in his own yard?”
“At ten o’clock at night? It was like he was waiting till it was dark.”
“Nuts,” I said.
“You don’t find it strange? Okay, get this: I was talking to the two gals across the street—Josie and whatshername—”
“Phyll.”
“Yeah. And they told me he was married. Did you know he had a wife?”
I tried not to act surprised, but I was. “I’ve never seen her.”
“Exactly.” She pointed her bottle at me. “Nobody has. Not for the last couple of weeks, anyway. And now her husband’s digging a hole in the backyard. After dark.”
“For God’s sake,” I said. “This is Rear Window and you’re Jimmy Stewart. Laid up in a cast. Nothing to do all day but spy on the neighbors. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”
“Of course there is. He murdered his wife, and now he’s going to bury her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Or he’s putting in a garden.”
“At night?”
“Maybe it’s a mushroom garden.”
“Open your eyes. It’s a grave. I wonder how he did it.”
“Did what?”
“Killed her. Blunt instrument? No, that might leave a dent in her skull. Maybe strangulation. Or poison. Not arsenic. That’d be detectable for years. Cyanide would work. After a few weeks, there wouldn’t be any traces left.”
“Nonsense. Why would he wait so long to bury her?”
“For the lime to do its thing. I looked it up online. You dump a bag of quicklime on the body, and it kills any odor and eats away the soft tissue—”
My insides gave a lurch.
“—then after a couple of weeks all that’s left is the bare bones. Disposal is a cinch. You bury them in a shallow grave and no one’s the wiser.”
“You believe everything you read online?”
“You can scoff all you want,” she said. “I think you’re living next door to a murderer.”
My phone rang. It was Bernie.
“Can I call you right back?” I asked him.
&n
bsp; “I’ll be waiting.”
I disconnected, considering. Now didn’t seem to be the right time for a heart-to-heart with my sister. But I’d take care of that. Soon.
“Well, this has been fun,” I said.
She drained her bottle and maneuvered her feet to the floor, grabbing her crutches. “I can take a hint. But remember what I told you. You might want to lock your doors.”
“Believe me, I will.” I watched her limp her way down the stairs and turn the corner toward her place, then called Bernie back. “Hey.”
“Are you okay?”
I wasn’t used to having someone worry about me, so I answered with my usual flippancy. “Peachy. Never better. I love my job.”
“Sam.”
I gripped the phone a little tighter. “Is this a personal call? Or professional?”
“A little of both.”
“I’m fine, so let’s go straight to the professional stuff. What’s the deal with Mr. Williams?”
“Shot from fairly close range with a small-caliber handgun, probably a twenty-two. Death estimated to have occurred late Sunday or very early Monday.”
“I thought the house was sealed up.”
“We’d completed our investigation. Based on your statement of drawers being open and so on, it looks like Williams surprised an intruder and was killed. From what the neighbors tell us, he kept a close eye on comings and goings on the block.”
I remembered how quickly he’d arrived on the doorstep at the start of my open house. “He was nosy as hell. What about yesterday? You make an ID?”
“We’re not ready to release that information yet.”
“Don’t hedge. Marian Woods? Just tell me if I’m right.”
“You might be…not wrong. What made you think it was Marian?”
“Just a hunch.” I didn’t want to talk about the ring and the possible connection to Everett Sweet. “How—how was she killed?”
“She was drugged, then strangled with a length of fabric.”
Did that ring a bell? I remembered the strip of pale-yellow cloth around the dead woman’s neck. “Anything else you can tell me?”
He sighed. “Only that you’re keeping me really busy.”
I heard voices outside. “Max is home. I guess I’d better go.”
There was a pause. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Why? So you can grill me?”
“There might be some of that.” I could tell he was smiling, and I got a little warm.
“Gotta go,” I said, and hung up.
—
I couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning until my covers were in a tangled knot. The shock of my discoveries at McMillan kept my eyes from closing. So did the call from Bernie. It didn’t seem possible to be horror stricken and lustful at the same time, but there it was. I tried to blot out both feelings by counting backward from a hundred, then walking my brain through the liquidated-damages clause in the California real estate purchase contract, which never failed to leave me comatose. But sleep evaded me.
I gave in and let my mind wander back to the garage, to the point in time when I opened the cabinet. My nose wrinkled, remembering the smell, as sour as two-day-old fish heads piled in the alley behind Coastal Seafood on Salmon Bay Boulevard. Finally I closed my eyes and fell into an uneasy slumber.
At some point during the night, an unfamiliar sound woke me. I stared at the ceiling, listening, then decided I’d been dreaming and drifted back to sleep.
Chapter 11
“I heard a rooster crowing last night,” Max said before I’d even had my coffee. He was polishing off a plate of scrambled eggs.
“Maybe you dreamt it.” What were the chances we’d both had the same dream?
“I don’t think so.”
Somehow, I didn’t either. I stuck my cup directly under the trickle of caffeine from the filter. “What’s on your agenda today?”
“I’m meeting some friends at the skate park. I might head over to Arlinda Fitness later and hang out.” The tips of his ears turned pink, and my mom radar went off the charts. I debated applying a little third degree but let it pass.
“Sounds delirious,” I said instead. “I’ll be in Grovedale for a bit, then back at the office if you need a ride anyplace.”
“I’ll have my bike.” He studied the magazine he was reading, something to do with animatronics. He’d been on the same page for a long time. Relieved by my apparent lack of interest, he actually parted with more information. “And I’m having lunch with Wayne.”
“Oh. He called?”
“Yeah.” He retreated to the bathroom, where the sound of water running into the sink made me think he might be scraping at his six chin hairs with my Lady Bic. Curiouser and curiouser.
As I inhaled my coffee, it occurred to me that Max always called his father by his proper name. Never “Dad,” Pops,” or even “my father.” I chewed on that for a minute, then shrugged. Let the two of them forge their own relationship, if that was even possible after so many years and so much hurt.
Minutes later, Max shouldered his backpack and was out the door. I downed a bowl of cereal that looked and tasted like tree bark, just to prove I could eat right once in a while. Then I showered and styled my hair with my usual lack of finesse. No sense letting two murders upset my routine.
Mr. Bradshaw was tending his plants again, looking like a terry-cloth-clad statue among his perennials. I called out “Good morning!” and he didn’t respond. But that didn’t mean he was a wife killer. Maybe he was preoccupied with a nasty case of powdery mildew.
Fred and Sunshine were out, too, standing by their coop. I veered across the yard. “How goes the chicken business?”
Sunshine looked at me through eyes that shimmered with tears. “Buffy is missing.”
Sure enough, I counted only five birds. It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that maybe Buffy had flown the coop, but I couldn’t be flippant in the face of Sunshine’s obvious grief. So I said, “You want some help with a search? Maybe she’s hiding out somewhere in the yard.”
“We found f-f-feathers.” A tear rolled down Sunshine’s face, and Fred put his arm around her.
“It’s okay, baby,” he said. But his own eyes were rimmed with red.
“I’m so sorry. Dog?”
“We found raccoon tracks by the—the feathers.” Sunshine dabbed at her eyes. “It must have happened during the night.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “I could have sworn I heard a rooster crowing last night.”
There was a funny little silence. The chickens stepped around their square of grass, pecking away. Except for one. She didn’t cluck softly or scratch at the earth, looking for goodies. She kept her eye on us instead.
“They’re all females,” Fred said finally.
“You can tell the sex at ten weeks. These are twelve weeks.” Sunshine sounded as if she was trying to convince both of us.
I didn’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of how chickens were sexed. Maybe the girl chickens played dress-up and the boys hid copies of Bodacious Breasts under their straw mattresses. “You’ve named them all?”
“Sure.” Sunshine pointed from bird to bird. “Beulah, Beatrice, Brenda, Britney, and Belle. It’s easy to tell them apart. They have really distinct personalities.”
None as distinct as Belle’s, I thought. She locked eyes with me from her perch on the ramp, daring me to mess with her peeps. What I knew about animal husbandry was zilch, but I was willing to bet the farm there was a penis—or the poultry equivalent—hidden somewhere under those fluffy tail feathers.
“Well, good luck,” I said.
“Before you go,” Fred said. “Maybe, uh, you have a minute for a real estate question?”
“We don’t want to impose,” Sunshine said.
“Of course you’re not imposing. Shoot.”
Fred shifted his feet. “Our landlady told us a couple of months ago that she was planning to put the house on the market. We asked her if she
might sell the place to us. We love the location, and we have some money saved up. She said if we could get a loan we could work something out.”
“That’s terrific.”
“It would be,” Sunshine said. “But we’ve been to three banks and six mortgage companies, and they all say the same thing: we need another year of tax returns to qualify.”
“Did you tell that to your landlady? Maybe she’ll give you more time. Or carry the loan for you.”
“Yes and no. And no. She still has a mortgage, so she won’t consider carrying the loan. And she doesn’t want to wait a year. She thinks the market’s declining, and she says she’ll lose thousands by waiting. You think that’s true?”
I considered. “Maybe. Maybe not. But it sounds like she’s ready to get out of the landlady business. I don’t want to be nosy, but if you’ve been able to save enough for a down payment you must have a decent income. So what’s the issue?”
“Self-employment,” Sunshine said. “Fred has had a steady job with Blissful Chocolatiers for almost four years now. He started out in delivery, then he got promoted to packaging. Now he’s training to go on the production line, which is a big step up salarywise.”
“Level I truffle dipper,” Fred said.
My stomach growled. “So—”
“So it’s still not enough. A few months ago, I quit my job as a kindergarten classroom aide so I could freelance as a writer.” She blushed. “We were kind of talking about starting a family soon, so I wanted to be set up to work from home.”
“Good plan. Can’t beat setting your own hours. What kind of writing do you do?”
“It’s—you could call it fiction.”
“No kidding. Sci-fi? Romance?”
“More like adult fiction.”
“Erotica,” Fred put in. “Sunshine has a massive online following.”
I tried to reconcile my neighbor’s wholesome earth-girl vibe with tales of sweaty torsos and throbbing manhood. “And there’s money in that?”
“I cleared fifteen thousand last year,” she said simply.
I had to lock my jaw to keep it from dropping. Was I ever in the wrong line of work.
“But I don’t have a full year of Schedule Cs. So we were hoping you knew of a lender who might work with us, get us qualified.”
A Killer Location Page 8