“I’ll stay with Kate,” Gilda offered, her tone condolent, and I realized she was offering me my turn now. My turn for shock and horror. I was more than ready. Maybe I’d collapse. “Bit of a shock, finding the poor old thing—” she began.
“Oh, dear God,” Natalie Miner broke in. My turn was over. “Is that the doctor? This can’t be. What happened? The poor, poor man—”
“Avis is ringing up the constabulary,” Gilda put in. Natalie looked at her without comprehension. “Calling the police,” Gilda translated with a little sigh.
“The police?” Natalie murmured. “You mean—”
“He must have been murdered,” Jean Watkins broke in. Was everyone here now? “This is not right. No matter how insensitive the man was, there was no reason to kill him—”
“Someone thought there was,” Lisa Orton pointed out. Yep, the gang was all here.
“Wow, the ole dude really got it, didn’t he?” Darcie said, her voice frightened and excited at the same time. She pulled her baseball cap lower on her forehead. “Gramma, you all right?”
“Oh, honey,” Jean said. “I’m so sorry you had to see this thing.” She surveyed our group, her square jaw set with resolve. “Who did this?” she demanded.
No one answered. But the silence tingled with unspoken fear, guilt, even anger.
Jean glared.
Gilda shook her head, as if in sudden disbelief.
Lisa stared at the doctor’s body, frowning; her head jutted forward. At least she didn’t look like she was going to faint.
“Well, the ole dude probably deserved it,” Darcie commented, her voice trembling.
“No, Darcie,” Jean corrected her granddaughter. “No one deserves a death like this. It is irresponsible. The man had no chance to redeem himself, no chance to correct his actions—”
“Was it Tennyson?” Maxwell Yang began, his voice serious for the first time that night, maybe even tearful. “Yes, Tennyson, I think. He said, ‘Death closes all: but something ere the end. Some work of noble note, may yet be done. Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.’“
“Thank you,” Jean Watkins murmured. “Thank you.”
I was glad the words provided comfort to Jean. I was still trying to figure out what they meant. Maybe Gilda could translate for me.
“Do we really have to stay?” Reed asked. I looked at him in surprise. He’d been quick enough to close the gate. But now his handsome features looked seasick. And the smell of fear was even stronger on him than before. “I have things to do.”
“There’s been a death, here,” Jean reminded him reprovingly. There was no smell of fear on her.
“But still, can’t they talk to us later?” Reed asked, his voice whining.
“Evidence,” I said briefly and saw Avis approaching.
Reed looked unconvinced.
“Please stay, Reed,” Avis implored. “The police are on their way.”
Reed folded immediately. “Of course,” he sighed, taking Avis’s hand.
“I don’t feel well,” Howie objected.
“I still don’t understand why we have to stay,” Lisa put in. She curled her hands into fists. “I want to go home.”
We had a rebellion on our hands. But Wayne was back. I felt his presence without even turning around. When I did turn, he rose to his full height and glared at the membership of the Deerly Abused, putting a full gargoyle into the look. “If you leave, you will be suspect,” he pointed out.
There was a long silence. I could almost hear the neurons leaping in everyone’s brains. Were they just now realizing that they would be suspect no matter what?
And then we heard the first siren.
Avis and Reed opened the gates for the incoming, uniformed police.
“Officer Ulric,” a man with a tilted nose informed us.
“Officer Zenas,” added a woman with a sheet of dark hair and the doleful countenance of Greek tragedy.
“Where’s the body?” Ulric asked.
I pointed downward.
Officer Zenas squatted down and touched Dr. Sandstrom carefully. Her face seemed even more tragic when she stood. She nodded at Ulric.
“Did any of you see who killed this man?” he asked.
Silence was his answer. I doubt if he was expecting more.
“Do any of you have any special information pertaining to his death?”
More silence.
“Is there a place where we can all sit down?”
“Inside the building,” Avis suggested. At last, a question with an answer.
Officer Zenas nodded toward the body, indicating that she would stand guard. Good. I was tired of the job.
Officer Ulric shepherded us back into the building, where we all sat in our semicircle, an extra chair added for Reed, who didn’t seem inclined to lecture anymore. Then Officer Ulric stationed himself at the door.
“When can we go?” Lisa Orton demanded.
“After you have each been questioned,” Ulric answered, his voice as cool as my limbs were now. Funny, now that we were inside where it should have been warmer, I was freezing.
“So ask,” Lisa ordered. “You’re the Gestapo.”
“We need to wait for the chief,” Ulric answered without blinking.
It seemed an eternity that we sat and waited. No one joked. No one even talked. The enormity of the situation seemed to be sinking in. I was just glad that I didn’t have to call home. Wayne knew where I was, for once. Though I would have bet that my cat, C.C., was spitting mad.
“Wayne,” I began, remembering suddenly. “I saw a bunch of deer peeking in the—”
“No talking, please,” Ulric commanded.
After another eternity, two men in suits finally arrived. The first man in the door was seriously handsome, with olive skin, curly black hair, and dark eyes. But something about him didn’t carry off the look. He seemed nervous. I wondered how many murders they had in Abierto.
The second man in was wrinkled all over, from his clothes to his face. There were deep pockets under his wide eyes. His eyebrows were raised in a look of perpetual surprise. And he walked with the gait of an awkward teenager, though he looked as old as you could get without falling over. But he had a big smile. A big, goofy smile.
The handsome, younger man introduced himself as Lieutenant Perez and the rumpled man as Captain Thorton, and began to fill us in on the procedures we would be following for the next few hours. First, he told us, we would all be interviewed separately. We were not to discuss the case among ourselves. We were not to—
The captain began to hum a show tune. I took a closer look at him. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
I did place the show tune, though. It was “Hello, Dolly!”
Perez started in on his litany again. “You will all be fingerprinted. Is there anything important any of you have to tell us?” He surveyed our crowd. I psychicly urged the murderer to confess. “Then we will—” he began Captain Thorton cleared his throat, smiled, and spoke for the first time.
“Well, it seems we’ve had a little accident here,” he offered cheerfully.
- Four -
Accident? Did Captain Thorton really think Dr. Sandstrom’s death was an accident? I tried to make sense of this explanation. Could Dr. Sandstrom have tripped and hit his head on the deer statuette, maybe twenty times or so? Or maybe an actual deer really had sneaked into the parking lot and trampled him. Or—
Abruptly, I realized who Captain Thorton reminded me of: Bobby McSweeny, a mental patient who’d been under my care when I’d worked at a psychiatric facility some twenty-five years before. And it wasn’t just the physical resemblance between the two men, the similarity of their awkward gaits, or the show tunes. Bobby had hummed show tunes too. It was the expression, that goofy, cheerful expression both men shared. Now, Bobby had definitely been a few rosebushes short of a garden. The question was whether Captain Thorton’s likeness to my ex-patient stretched that far.
The captain began hum
ming “Tonight,” and simulating dancers with his hands. The likeness seemed to be stretching and holding.
“And why would you think Dr. Sandstrom’s death was an accident?” I asked the captain in my best humor-the-patient voice.
“Accident?” he questioned, tilting his face and giving his hands a dance break.
“The dead man in the parking lot,” I reminded him.
“Oh, right,” he answered, beaming. “Very simple, young lady. The victim must have fallen from his apartment window.”
Well, I hadn’t thought of that explanation. The fact that there were no apartment buildings near to the Eldora Nurseries parking lot didn’t preclude this explanation, of course. At least not for Captain Thorton. The building could have hippity-hopped over to dump Dr. Sandstrom—
“Is this some kind of joke?” Howie Damon demanded.
“It’s probably a trick,” Lisa Orton offered. “Cops try to trick suspects all the time—”
“Lord, can’t you see the poor man is…is…distressed,” Natalie Miner cut in.
Captain Thorton winked at me as if to share a little joke, and then his hands began to dance to “I Feel Pretty.”
“Captain,” I tried again, “did you take a look at the dead man?”
“No,” he answered succinctly. “Wanna see something really neat?” He pulled some string from his pocket.
But before the captain could show me his string trick, Lieutenant Perez had cautioned the members of the Deerly Abused to silence and pulled his superior aside. But not far enough. I could still hear his whisper.
“Sir?” he asked, his tone respectful. “Have you taken your evening medication?”
Yep, another Bobby McSweeny. And head of the Abierto Police Department. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
I looked at Wayne. Nuts? I mouthed.
Alzheimer’s? he mouthed back.
And we weren’t the only ones. All around us, people were looking at each other with raised eyebrows. Darcie sketched the age-old circle-around-the-ear that represented the reality-challenged. It was nice to see that some things don’t change from generation to generation.
“Holy socks, this’ll make a whiz-bang lead story,” I heard Felix tell Maxwell Yang. He tittered. “Scotty, the captain is not logged on—”
Unfortunately for Felix, Lieutenant Perez heard him too. The lieutenant whirled around and found the source of the voice.
“You!” he boomed, pointing. “Who are you?”
“Hey, man—” Felix began, then seemed to reconsider. “Felix Byrne,” he said sullenly.
“He’s a reporter,” I added. It was petty, but then so was Felix. Anyway, I was beginning to feel a little protective of Captain Thorton. He was a sweet man, even if his elevator didn’t go all the way up.
Felix turned to scream at me, but Perez didn’t give him a chance.
“You’re the one that found the body,” Perez told Felix. I wondered how he’d found out. Had someone spilled the beans to one of his officers? Avis, maybe? “Primary suspect material.”
“Hey, man—” Felix started up again. “You can’t pull this gonzo cop trip on me—”
“You did find the body?” Perez interrupted.
“Well, yeah, I suppose so. But, my amigos Kate and Wayne were with—”
“I’d be careful what kind of stories I thought of writing if I were a top suspect for murder,” Perez suggested, coldly courteous.
“Hey!” Felix objected, his voice still loud but his face losing color. “This is friggin’ America, man, not some third-world tsardom. I can say what I like.”
“Fine,” the lieutenant agreed. “Then we’ll question you first.”
“Look, I’m not going to write anything about your nutso—”
“Ms. Eldora,” Lieutenant Perez interrupted, nodding toward Avis, and grabbing a couple of extra chairs, “if I may?”
“Oh, of course,” Avis murmured. Avis had to be the lieutenant’s source of information. She’d called the incident into the police.
“Ulric, call the coroner and the crime-scene techs,” Perez ordered and started dragging chairs down an aisle in the back of the building, the furthest one from our group. A couple of clattering trips and he had arranged Interrogation Central, somewhere behind the snail pellets and bug sprays and other pesticides, the organic and the politically incorrect. Captain Thorton, Lieutenant Perez, and Felix all took their seats. I could hear their descent into the metal folding chairs. And I could swear I flashed on Felix’s panic at the same time. But as hard as I strained my ears, I couldn’t hear anything but a general buzz once they began to talk. A buzz and a humming. A loud humming. “Some Enchanted Evening” maybe. If Captain Thorton was trying to blot out the words being exchanged, he was doing a good job. That was nice. He had a role in the interrogation. Because even if I couldn’t hear the words, I could hear the speakers: Felix and Lieutenant Perez. No Captain Thorton. And from the lieutenant’s tone, I was fairly certain that he wasn’t just taunting Felix with the word “murder”—almost sure, in fact, that the lieutenant didn’t consider Dr. Sandstrom’s death an accident, unlike his superior officer.
I tried not to think of time, and immediately I could hear a clock ticking away in the relative silence. Then traffic noises, and the sounds of people uncomfortable in their chairs: squeaking, rattling, shifting. In fact, I was uncomfortable in my metal folding chair, too. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but I did now. It was hard and not shaped to the contours of my short, dark, A-line body. Not anywhere near.
“I didn’t friggin’ faint!” burst out behind the bug spray as I slid forward to make myself more comfortable in my chair. But that’s all I could make out for the next twenty minutes.
Waiting is always hard. Waiting in a grocery line is bad. Waiting for a dentist is even worse, but at least they have magazines. Waiting in a nursery near the indoor-plants-and-smaller-gardening-implements section might have been all right. But we had Officer Ulric keeping an eye on all of us. And there were no magazines within reach. And I wanted to talk to Wayne. Actually, I wanted to talk to anyone. I would have even talked to Felix. Instead, I looked at an orchid and tried to guess what it cost. That took a few minutes. Then I looked at the newest and greatest in hand-spade technology. A few more minutes. Finally, I began to focus on the members of the Deerly Beloved.
Avis sat as unmoving as a mummy. Though it was dark now, she still wore her trademark wide-brimmed hat, scarves, and gloves. I wondered about her skin cancer obsession. I’d never questioned the eccentricity of her dress before. It hadn’t seemed important. But with nothing else to do, I questioned it now. Maybe she was making up for her years of acting, the years in which she’d been forced to wear…what? Silk sheaths and rhinestone earrings? Feather boas and high heels? Her elegant profile, beautiful then, remained so to this day. I’d only seen Avis Eldora on screen a few times, but she’d always been cast as an alluring vamp. Never as a good girl.
Avis’s green eyes moved ever so slightly, looking at Reed Killian. Dr. Reed Killian, I corrected myself. He was a plastic surgeon, an M.D. by any other name. Had he known Dr. Sandstrom professionally? Both men were medical doctors and interested in gardening. Were there any more similarities?
Reed returned Avis’s glance even as he fidgeted in his chair. He rolled his eyes at her. Somehow, they were looking like a couple. Avis may have been Reed’s senior by a few decades, but still…Was that why Reed was teaching us about deer in the first place? Reed tapped his fingers on his chair. I remembered Avis’s plea to him. Friendship…or more?
“I gotta pee,” Darcie Watkins announced. My bottom jumped in my chair. Ow. “Gramma—”
“Officer?” Jean Watkins said, addressing Ulric. “Perhaps I might accompany my grandchild to the restroom?”
Officer Ulric looked as if he could use some urinary respite himself. And as a matter of fact, I was feeling fairly squirmy too. But Darcie had beat me to the request.
“Ulric, you may escor
t the girl to the bathroom,” came Lieutenant Perez’s voice from beyond the wall of pesticides. He sounded irritated. But then, he was interrogating Felix.
“Me next,” put in Lisa Orton. She pulled on her fingers and looked around as if daring someone to challenge her.
‘Then me,” I threw in my order. I only wished I had been as fast as Lisa.
And I wished Darcie hadn’t spoken up. My bladder began to take on a weightier significance in the balance of the universe as Officer Ulric led Darcie around back to the shed that housed the restrooms. I looked over at Gilda, hoping her face would keep my mind off the subject of ever-expanding liquids. She smiled at me, as if reading my mind. I couldn’t decide if there was something evil in that smile, or something genuinely friendly. Genuine didn’t seem the right word for Gilda, with her phony British accent. Or was it necessarily phony? And even if it was, she had helped me with Howie, I remembered. There was something to be said for that. I stared at her. She did have rather patrician features. Was there British aristocracy lurking beneath her lovely, maple-colored skin? Yes, I thought. It was there in the long nose and slightly buck teeth. And in her attitude. Maybe I could take lessons. Gilda looked at Howie, her face concerned. Noblesse oblige?
Howie looked better than he had earlier, which was pretty much a slam dunk since he’d been in a dead faint before. Still, his color was good. He held his precious manuscript to his chest, his eyes half closed. He seemed to have this waiting routine down. Maybe being a high-school administrator had something to do with it. All those bad teenagers waiting to see him may have set him a good example. Or maybe just taught him to fake a good example.
Natalie Miner, on the other hand, did not look good. Her nose was red from repeated blowing, her blond pasta curls bunched to one side, and her makeup a wreck. Every few minutes she sniffled. Had she had a relationship with Dr. Sandstrom? Or maybe just hoped for one? Or was she merely sensitive? It was too painful to look at her. I let my eyes travel on to Maxwell Yang.
Murder, My Deer (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Page 4