Murder in the Dog Days (Maggie Ryan)

by P. M. Carlson

  “Yeah?” Gabe glanced over his shoulder.

  “Well, could be God temporarily repealed the law of gravity.” She touched the taut neck gently; it was rigid. But when she lifted his forearm a couple of inches, the hand dangled limply. Rigor just starting. Well, she already knew it hadn’t happened in the last half hour. Wait for the ME to give her the official guess.

  Gabe was peering at the oak desk. “Looks like some violence here.” He pointed at the edge of the table, where a gash showed in the wood. “Hard to date it, though.”

  “Yeah. Still—” Holly’s eyes traveled to the recliner. “Damage on the arm of the chair there too. Stuffing looks clean. Let’s keep it in mind.”

  Gabe leaned across the desk, his paunch dented by the edge, and peered at a plate with interest. “Looks like he ate lunch here. Tuna sandwich, potato chips, I’d guess.”

  “You can’t think of anything but food, Gabe. Only one person?”

  “Only one coffee mug. Mm, lemon drops.”

  “Don’t eat the evidence, Boy Wonder.”

  “I won’t. Yet,” he promised. “Guy’s got a tape recorder here. Some messages by the phone. Priscilla Lewis. Mitch Mitchell. Mrs. Resler. Leon Moffatt.”

  “Good.” Holly was checking Colby’s pockets and making notes. Not much there; some loose change, house keys, penknife neatly folded. No handkerchief, no billfold, no cards. Maybe in the back pockets; she’d leave it for the technicians.

  Gabe, peering into the top desk drawer, whistled. Holly straightened and joined him.

  “Looks like he expected trouble,” said Gabe.

  A pair of Colt .38s gleamed in the drawer, extra cartridges next to them. Holly shook her head. “Kids in the house, and the drawer doesn’t lock.” She looked back at the door, wondering if the weapons were the reason for that bolt.

  “S’pose this is important?” asked Gabe.

  He indicated a newspaper. Today’s Sun-Dispatch. His stubby finger pointed at a byline: Dale Colby. Holly skimmed the story, an update about that plane crash back in January. Congressman Knox. The story made it sound as though most of the families were better off now. Names: Moffatt, Resler, Lewis, some others. “Yeah. Let’s start with these names,” said Holly.

  She pulled a pad of graph paper from her shoulder bag and sketched the room quickly, the position of the windows, the furniture, the body. Someone else would do a measured map, there would be countless photographs, and if she was lucky she’d never have to try to explain her crude sketch in a courtroom. But she needed it to help organize her own mind. God help her, it needed organizing. Okay, lamp there, outlets there and there, air-conditioning vent there, bulletin board there. She gave a last look around the room but saw nothing that she should add. “Gabe, launch the Crime Scene boys when they come moseying in. I’m going to go tackle the witnesses.”

  From the den end of the hall, she walked along the polished floor to the dining room, gold-carpeted like the living room. A pair of big windows gave a dusky view of the only tree in the backyard. Pineapple-patterned wallpaper, a top-of-the-line thermostat near the door to the kitchen, Audubon bird prints lined up on the walls. She paused at the kitchen door.

  The kitchen was large, with maple cabinets and yellow countertops. Towels, pails and a pink swim ring were heaped next to the door to the garage. Holly thought of her own swim ring, a patched inner tube. On the counter, pizza boxes and a pitcher of copper-colored liquid sat next to an incongruous crowbar by the sink.

  Her eyes skimmed the group clustered around the maple breakfast table. There were three women, one red-haired, one blonde and that tall one with black curls she’d glimpsed earlier. Two men, one a rangy fellow, also with black curly hair, the other burly and balding. There were also three little girls. The smallest was bouncing vigorously on the knee of the big bald man, singing an enthusiastic off-key version of “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Wonderful. Holly’s hand clenched on her notebook. “I’m Detective Schreiner. Which of you is Mrs. Colby?”

  “I—I am.” The speaker was the woman with blonde hair pulled back, gentle mouth, a kicked-puppy look in her brown eyes. Holly knew that look: shock, bewilderment, disbelief. The older child, the one she’d glimpsed earlier at the kitchen door, had the look too. She was still chewing on her knuckle. Holly’s heart went out to her. Her suffering had already begun. But the middle-sized girl was sneaking an amused glance at the youngest, who hadn’t paused in her high-pitched song.

  “I’d like to talk to you a moment, Mrs. Colby. I’ll see the rest of you too in a few minutes. Are the children okay?”

  “We’ll manage.” The woman with black curly hair answered. She was lean but roundly pregnant, a red maternity T-shirt over navy shorts showing off long rawboned arms and legs. There was a peace sign printed on the shirt. “Go on now, Donna,” she added gently, touching Mrs. Colby on the elbow. Still stunned, the blonde woman lurched to her feet. She was dressed in a flowered yellow shirt and blue shorts. Holly led her to the living room sofa.

  “Sorry we have to bother you now, Mrs. Colby,” she began. “I know this is a terrible shock for you. Just a few questions. For the record, your name is Donna Colby, is that right?”

  “Yes.” The word was murmured. She wasn’t looking at Holly. Her head was turned toward the back of the sofa where a printed rose seemed to engross her.

  “Your husband’s name?” Holly started gently, with the straightforward questions, easing Donna Colby into the interrogation.

  “Dale. Dale Colby.”

  “And you have three children?” She was thinking of the little girls in the kitchen.

  “No, two. Josie and Tina. Mark is Felicia’s son.”

  Holly paused. “Mark?’’

  Donna Colby’s soft bruised eyes returned to Holly’s face, puzzled. “Yes. Felicia’s son. Oh, I’m sorry. Felicia was Dale’s first wife.”

  “I see. Dale had three children. Your two girls, and before that Mark? Back when he was married to Felicia?”

  “Yes.”

  Holly noted it down. Time enough to place the third child later. Probably belonged to that fertile peacenik. She asked, “Where do Mark and Felicia live?”

  “They live in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg. That’s where Dale came from.” Donna Colby herself came from around here, Holly decided. Her educated voice had a soft Virginia blur.

  “Okay. Do you work, Mrs. Colby?”

  “Yes, I’m a teacher at Honey Creek.”

  “And your husband?”

  “A reporter. For the Sun-Dispatch.”

  “What kind of reporter?”

  “City news.”

  “Had he worked there long?”

  “Yes. He was working there when I met him. He came here when he divorced Felicia, and I think he started with the Sun right away.” The puzzlement returned for a moment, the gentle mouth twitching. “I don’t understand. Somebody beat him. He was all bloody. But how? Somebody went in there and beat him!”

  “We’ll try to find out, Mrs. Colby.” Holly’s attention was caught by the door chime. Gabe hurried past the arch to admit a crew of men with valises. “Excuse me a second.” Holly walked over to them. Howie Winks was there too, paunchy and grizzled, an old-style detective marking time till retirement. He was big enough to be nicknamed Wee Willie Winkie, and resentful that Holly was likely to make detective sergeant soon while he never would.

  “Well, if it ain’t the Frost Queen,” he said, beaming. “How ya doing, sweetheart?”

  Holly ignored him. “Gabe Mercer here will get you started,” she said to the others. “Two general things. Figure out how the perp got out of the room. Also, the body’s not in the original position.”

  Winks snapped a quick salute. “Yes ma’am, Ice Maiden!”

  What a boring old hairbag Winks was. She gave him a big bared-teeth smile. “That’s the right attitude, Wee Weenie!”

  Winks turned an interesting shade of purple while the others tried not to smirk. Holly said, “See you in a few minutes,” and
went back to her witness.

  Donna Colby looked at her blankly. The shock of what had happened still blockaded her senses. Soon hideous reality would come crashing into her world. But at the moment blessed numbness dammed the pain, and Holly must make what use of it she could. She flipped over a page of her notebook. “All right, Mrs. Colby, tell me what happened when you came home.”

  “Well—” She paused, examined her hands, tried to gather her thoughts. She spoke in a monotone. “We were away all afternoon. At the beach. Then the storm came, and we drove back. I called to Dale that we were back, then went out to help the children get their things out of the van. The men went to the shopping center to get pizzas and the rest of us came inside to fix some iced tea. I called to him again.” Her voice broke suddenly. “Oh, God! I can’t—I always thought I would die first! I thought—”

  “Yes, Mrs. Colby,” said Holly soothingly. “What happened after you called to him again?”

  “I’m sorry.” Donna Colby pressed her hands to her temples and took a deep breath. “Olivia—she’s a reporter too, she knows Dale from work—she knocked on the door but he didn’t answer. Then I went too, and we knocked and called. And we were getting worried. So I tried the door but it was bolted.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t understand!” Donna Colby cried out. Her self-control cracked. She reached toward Holly in appeal, tears starting. “It was bolted! How could anyone—even if Dale let them in, they couldn’t bolt it again after they—”

  “Yes, Mrs. Colby.” Holly broke in, firm and reassuring, to deflect the outburst. “We’ll check into it. You can depend on it.”

  “Thank you,” said Donna with a little choking sound.

  “Now, what did you do when you realized the door was bolted?”

  “Well, he usually takes a nap. I thought maybe he was asleep.” Donna Colby was trying to revert to her numbed monotone again, but a tremor underlay her words. “Then Maggie went to look in the window and came running back in and said hurry up, we had to get the door open. So she did, and—” She stopped. The next part was the unspeakable. Holly knew. Donna Colby turned her face back to the pink flower on the back of the sofa, tracing the outline with a forefinger. “All that blood,” she murmured. “I just don’t… Why?”

  “I know, Mrs. Colby.” Holly tried to keep her voice soothing in the face of the incomprehensible. A husband and father lay twisted in the den. Why?Tell me why.And the others, so many others. A flash of reds at the back of her eyes. A blue-green stench. A tiny whispered beat,ten, eleven. Twelve.No more. Hey, cut the bullshit, Schreiner. Just get the details.Ain’t no time to wonder why, whoopee we’re all gonna die.Holly flipped to a new page, keeping her voice colorless. “What did you do when you got the door open?”

  “We all ran in—I don’t remember, it was so—I couldn’t—the blood. Maggie went to him. Sent Olivia to call an ambulance. Told me to keep the kids out, take them to the kitchen.”

  Holly noted it down. This Maggie sounded like a real take-charge type. “Okay. And then what?”

  “I don’t remember much. She made me leave, take care of the kids.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “I don’t know. There was so much…” The word escaped Donna and she stared at Holly in mute terror before finding it again, with an almost pitiful triumph. “Confusion. The men came back. Maggie will tell you,” she added hopefully, trying to be helpful. All her life, probably, being nice had kept her out of trouble. But now she’d hit the big trouble, and Holly knew that no weapons, even niceness, could help now.

  “I’ll ask her,” Holly said. “Was your husband lying on his back?”

  “No—yes—I don’t remember. It’s so confusing. Maybe …”

  “I’ll ask the others.” Holly skimmed over her notes and clarified a few so she would remember later exactly what Donna Colby had told her. Not that it was much. Still, she tried to be patient. Civilians were rotten witnesses, by and large. The sight of blood knocked their brains out of commission. Often their stomachs too.

  Maybe Donna Colby would be more useful on background. Holly scribbled a new heading as she asked, “Mrs. Colby, did your husband have any enemies?”

  “Enemies?”

  “People he disagreed with? Maybe from work, from somewhere else?”

  “No, not that I—well, he was always saying that someone was going to be mad about something or other he wrote. But except for a few letters no one ever did anything.”

  “Do you know of anyone recently who might be mad?”

  “I don’t remember.” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  Holly looked at her closely and waited. Donna Colby had twined her fingers together in her lap and was frowning at them, as though they held some association that could not break through her numbness. But no words came. Finally Holly prompted, “He was working on a story about a plane crash.”

  “Yes, he thought he’d found something about that explosion.” Almost gratefully, Donna looked up at Holly again. “He was talking to the families. But I don’t know what he’d found, he didn’t tell me about things very much.”

  “Was he working on other stories too?”

  “Yes, he usually was. But I think that was his main one this past week.”

  “Did he seem nervous or excited recently? Any unusual behavior?”

  “No, not really.” Donna’s voice was steadier now that she didn’t have to focus on the horror of the scene in the den. “Except he was in a terrible mood because of the new drug making him so queasy. Didn’t talk about much else the last three weeks.”

  “What new drug?”

  “L-dopa. It still made him sick. So—”

  Parkinson’s, then. “Was his disease advanced?”

  “No, no. Very mild. It’s been under control with other drugs, it’s just that the doctor wanted to phase in this new one. But it’s hard to get the dosage right and Dale felt really sick sometimes.”

  “Nausea is the main side effect, though. The drug isn’t dangerous,” said Holly thoughtfully.

  “I know. People with Parkinson’s live a long time, the doctor said.”

  Well, Doc, somebody with a brass lamp just wiped out that theory. Holly asked, “Can you think of anyone who might have done this? Who maybe had a grudge against him?”

  “No, not really. I mean, the blood—who would break in and do something like that? But they didn’t break in, did they? The door was bolted! I just don’t understand!” An edge of hysteria was creeping into Donna Colby’s voice again.

  “We’ll try to find out, Mrs. Colby,” Holly soothed. She shifted to a calmer subject. “Right now let’s just go over the time. You said you were away at the beach. When did you leave?”

  “Right after lunch.”

  “Twelve? One?”

  Donna Colby nodded. “Yes. A little after twelve, I guess. We were going over to Bethany Beach so we had to drive a ways.”

  “Right. Who went with you?”

  “Everybody. Except Dale, of course.”

  “Everybody in the kitchen now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Anyone else?” Holly pursued patiently.

  “No.”

  “Okay. You were all there all afternoon?”

  “Yes. We took a picnic.”

  “What time did you come back?”

  “Well, the storm hit after we ate and we started back then. We got here about nine o’clock.”

  The call had come at nine thirty-eight. Sounded about right; they hadn’t found him immediately. Holly closed her notebook. “Thank you, Mrs. Colby. I’ll talk to you again later, but this has been very helpful for now.” She stood, and Donna Colby stumbled to her feet too. “Let’s go on back to the kitchen.”

  “Detective Schreiner?” Donna Colby’s hand on her arm was hesitant, pleading.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think the children are safe? I mean, from whoever broke in?”

  “Try not to worry, Mrs. Colby. We’
ll be keeping an eye on things.” The mighty arm of the law, safeguarding the trusting public. Except for occasional fuck-ups, of course: a murder here, a rape there, muggings, assaults, terrorist attacks. So hey, what do you expect, Schreiner, perfection? You like it any better when the mighty arm of the law doesn’t count at all?

  Holly led Donna Colby back to the kitchen. The two younger girls, and Higgins, were listening raptly to a story the bald man was telling them. From the crime scene at the far end of the hall came the murmur of voices, suddenly punctuated by a burst of laughter. The older girl jerked upright, pulling away from the comforting arm of the pregnant woman in the peace shirt. They should have moved them out of here.

  The pregnant woman anticipated her. “Do you suppose we could take the kids to a neighbor’s, until those guys are finished?”

  “I was just going to suggest that.” Holly kept the annoyance from her voice. “Do you have relatives nearby who could help, Mrs. Colby?”

  Donna Colby’s brow contracted in confusion. “Dale’s parents—no—”

  “Or a friend?”

  “Maybe the woman next door?” prompted the pregnant woman.

  “Next door. Oh, Mrs. Morgan. Betty. Yes, maybe.”

  “Okay. You can go with Officer Higgins. And you can give your husband’s parents a call.” Holly glanced at the freckled, russet-haired woman, then back to the pregnant one. “Are you Maggie?”

  The pregnant woman bounced to her feet. “Right. Am I on next?” Intensely curious blue eyes, a gawky boniness made ludicrous by the distended belly under the peace sign. “I want to tell you something about—” Her eyes slid to the twelve-year-old, then back to Holly. “About the room in there.”

  Yes, this was the take-charge hotshot. Holly hoped she was observant as well as bossy. She nodded. “Yeah. You’re on next. Let’s go.”

  3

  “We’ll sit in the living room,” said Holly.

  “Okay.” The pregnant woman kissed the smallest girl and squeezed the bald man’s hand before turning toward the door. The curly-haired man put a hand on her shoulder as he too stood to go next door with Higgins and the others. “See you soon, Maggot,” he said seriously. Holly’s fist tightened on her pen.