Death Climbs a Tree
Page 24
“And?”
“He’s our man, without a doubt. His prints match, and they match the ones we already had for Ward Utterback.”
“Huh?” Andrew said.
“When we told him that, he demanded his lawyer, and he hasn’t said a word since.”
“Who’s this other guy?” Andrew said.
“Good question,” Fred told him between bites. “Chandler was arrested in Michigan years ago under that name.”
“What’d he do?”
“We don’t know what he’s done in the past fifteen years, though you can bet we’ll investigate. Back then he was accused of assaulting a woman. Those charges were dismissed.”
“They better not be this time.”
“This time, thanks to your mom, we’re going to nail him for Sylvia’s murder.”
“Because Mom went out there tonight?”
“No, that was a damn fool thing to do. I should have sent an officer to the house to keep you safe there.”
“That’s how you caught him,” Joan pointed out in her own defense.
“We would have caught him anyhow, once we knew he was out there shooting at Andrew. We had the Tell City police talk to his mother, by the way. She says she hasn’t seen him for months, but she wasn’t surprised that he’d lie about it. Says he’s pulled stunts like that ever since he was a boy, and she’ll say so in court if we need her to. I already had a search warrant for his house. We didn’t need you to get yourself half-killed.”
“Only Andrew?”
“I was fine, Mom. Lying down in my sleeping bag. There was no way he could hurt me.”
“No? You used your Wrist-Rocket to get up there, didn’t you?”
“Sure.”
“He had one, too, and muscles you wouldn’t believe.”
“Which you were protecting me from?”
“Well…” She knew better. “I didn’t expect him to see me.”
Andrew rolled his eyes at Fred. Just like old times, with the two of them ganging up on her.
“All right for me to tell Birdie?” she asked.
“She knows. Ketcham called off her police protection. But she’s going to need all the support you can give her. We’ll need her to testify, and that’s never easy in a rape case.”
“She has to go through that? Wouldn’t it be hard to prove now? Isn’t it enough to go after him for murder?”
“Motive.”
“Oh.”
“We’ll need your testimony as well.”
“Of course.” She’d redeem herself on the witness stand. But she had a new worry. “That won’t be anytime soon, will it?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say. We still have a concert to play. Alex will be impossible when she hears, and I need a new narrator!”
Also by Sara Hoskinson Frommer
Witness in Bishop Hill
The Vanishing Violinist
Murder & Sullivan
Buried in Quilts
Murder in C Major
DEATH CLIMBS A TREE. Copyright © 2005 by Sara Hoskinson Frommer. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frommer, Sara Hoskinson.
Death climbs a tree / Sara Hoskinson Frommer.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-32921-0
EAN 978-0-312-32921-1
1. Spencer, Joan (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women environmentalists—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Symphony orchestras—Management—Fiction. 4. Women musicians—Crimes against—Fiction. 5. Women detectives—Indiana—Fiction. 6. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 7. Indiana—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.R5944D43 2005
813'.6—dc22
2004066443
First Edition: August 2005
eISBN 9781466835580
First eBook edition: December 2012