Murder by Kindness

by Barbara Graham

  “Okay, we’ll start removing the water from it. It looks like that’s where most of it headed once it got outside. Only after it was full did water overflow and head downhill.”

  Theo nodded, agreeing that was her thought, and then was distracted by the big blue dehumidifier machine on wheels that was being set up in the living room. There was another one in the kitchen. An array of heavy duty fans had already been turned on. The sound level was intense with all of the machines running at once. Theo was tempted to look at the electricity dial on the outside of the house to see if it was spinning like something in a cartoon.

  Kathy, the crew’s supervisor, was busy drawing diagrams of the rooms and making detailed notes, writing down the identification number and location of each piece of equipment. Also on the notes were notations of the moisture level in baseboards and walls. One of the tools Kathy used looked like an odd-shaped barbecue fork, but it was not for food or fun. As the technician punched it into the wall to check the moisture level, she wrote down the location and a number.

  Theo was fascinated by the process and looked to see what Kathy was writing. Most of the numbers ranged from forty to eighty. “What’s normal?”

  “Ten.”

  “Oh, no, that sounds terrible.” From the little spot where Theo sat, picked because it appeared to be out of the way of the workers and yet near enough to allow her to answer their questions, Theo could see the light fixtures and parts of the ceiling being taken down in the kitchen and family room. The soggy drywall crumbled as they handled it. In seconds there was a pile of wet rubble on a plastic sheet spread over Nina’s beautiful wooden floor. Trying to remind herself that these were only things and Nina and her children were safe, Theo carefully peeled another wet photograph off the glass in a frame and found it a place where she could leave it to dry. She tried to contact Nina for maybe the nine hundredth time. Still nothing.

  A couple of minutes later, the technician working outside in the storm shelter trotted back into the house, looking pale beneath his beard. “We’ve got a real problem. There’s something terrible down there.”

  Theo didn’t doubt that. She would be surprised if a storm shelter filled with water wasn’t terrible, especially the way it had smelled. Her thoughts were confused and disorganized and she was momentarily distracted by seeing Nina’s carpet and rugs being pulled off the floors and hauled outside and placed on the lawn. Water ran from them, headed downhill, crossing the driveway. She couldn’t imagine how many gallons of water cascaded away. Even the dog’s bed was a soggy mess.

  Kathy was fussing about what they were going to have to do to save the hardwood floors. Evidently it required a different treatment than the carpeted areas.

  “A real problem?” Theo’s question was for the bearded technician. She was getting a headache, probably from having her teeth clenched for so long. Like the rest of this mess was not a real problem? In whose world? “Okay, what’s the real problem? Is more water coming in from somewhere else? I thought it was all shut off.”

  “No, ma’am.” The technician swallowed hard and waved his long-fingered hands as if he were warding off something terrible. “There’s a dead man down there.”

  “Like a burglar?” Theo’s brain wasn’t taking in the whole scenario. Maybe if she could turn off a couple of the fans, she’d be able to think.

  The technician looked at Theo. His expression said that she was the nuttiest person he had ever talked to, and he wasn’t sure if she was crazier than she was stupid. “What do they look like?”

  “Who?” Theo couldn’t seem to follow the conversation. She was still thinking about the disaster inside the house. “Who looks like what?”

  “Burglars.” The technician snapped.

  Something clicked in her head. “Uh, oh. I think you better show me.” Now Theo’s brain was paying complete attention. She followed him outside and reached for her cell phone even as the technician pointed down into the water exposed by the lifted hatch. Sunlight illuminated the interior. Theo was impressed. The powerful pumps had already removed at least a foot of water from the hole since the first time she’d looked in there. Now she could clearly see the body of a man, face up in muddy water. Very dead.

  Worse than just dead. She knew this man, and hadn’t liked him. Nina’s ex-husband, Daniel.

  Theo called Tony.

  In some previous episodes, Tony had congratulated himself on being able to find some amusement, although not much, in situations involving his wife. This was not one of them. As he approached Nina’s house, his breath was not taken away by the magnificent view, as it normally was. Instead, he was struck by Theo’s strained expression and great rolling tears dripping from her chin. His wife rarely cried. He wasn’t even sure she realized she was crying now. Jaw clenched, he parked the Blazer.

  Wade parked his vehicle right next to his. It was unlikely any evidence that might exist on the lawn had not already been trampled by the cleanup crew. But they carefully watched the ground they traveled anyway.

  He could hear the cleanup crew fussing at Theo because she had told them to stop what they were doing and to wait for him. Easily the smallest of the five people standing on the front porch, Theo held her ground.

  Tony called out. “Leave her alone. She’s right.” Five heads turned in his direction, surprised expressions on four of them.

  Theo started trotting toward him, wiping her streaming eyes with her bare hand. She held her glasses in her left hand and mopped with the right. Before she reached him, she veered and went back toward the open hatch, clearly expecting him to follow her. She did not look down into the hole.

  Quickly reaching her side, Tony did look down. Even more unpleasant dead than he had been alive, there was no question of the man’s identity. Daniel had been a handsome man. He was not now. “Wade, call Doc Nash.”

  A few seconds later he heard Wade begin talking to the doctor, and then Wade’s normal reaction to a dead body, the sound of his lunch coming up and landing in a shrub. From Wade’s small phone, Tony could also hear sounds indicating their coroner was not a happy man.

  Tony led his wife away from the site and handed her his handkerchief. He stood facing the house, forcing her to stand with her back to it. “Have you been able to reach Nina?”

  “No. I’ve called about a hundred thousand times.” Theo’s curls bounced as she shook her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Just a few minutes ago I finally left a message for her to call me right away. And that was seconds before the technician found him.”

  Tony needed to know if Nina had expected her ex-husband to be at the house or not. Since abandoning his family for an Internet cutie, the man had shown up from time to time, mostly to visit his children. The cutie had been replaced several times. Tony knew the children were with Nina. He looked away from the bobbing corpse and back to his wife. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “You mean alive?” Theo returned the handkerchief.

  Knowing that Theo’s sassy attitude was a shield to cover her distress, he nodded and shoved the soggy piece of fabric into his pocket.

  Theo took a deep breath and held it for a moment. She exhaled sharply. “Last week. From my office window, I saw him parked in front of the Coffee Bean. There was a curvy blond woman with him. She seemed overly affectionate and under-dressed for the weather. It was snowing.”

  Tony didn’t ask if she knew the woman. He could tell from her expression that she did not. “Did he see you?”

  “Oh, yes.” Theo’s eyes flashed. “He waved up at me and leaned over to kiss his new girlfriend, almost like he’d been waiting for me to look out the window. I didn’t mention it to Nina.”

  “Do you know where he’s living now?” As soon as the words were out, Tony realized the stupidity of the question. “I mean until now.”

  Theo did smile at his statement. “Well, the last I knew, and believe me, it’s not a subject Nina and I discuss very often, he was living somewhere in the Chattanooga area.”


  “Doing what?” Tony stared over Theo’s shoulder at the corpse’s exposed head. Not a pretty sight.

  “I think he was selling television satellite dishes or something like that.” Theo shrugged.

  Tony had not liked Nina’s ex-husband any more than Theo had. The man was a classic snake-oil salesman. He could sell ice in Antarctica. Mostly, though, Tony didn’t like him because of Theo’s descriptions of his bad behavior and treatment of Nina.

  Their conversation was curtailed by the arrival of Doc Nash. The unhappy physician, also the county coroner, trudged across the lawn carrying his case. He’d arrived in record time. Tony was relieved they at least hadn’t rushed him away from a patient. The doctor’s eyes narrowed as he glanced from face to face, settling on Tony’s. “Where is he?”

  Tony tipped his head toward the open hatch. Wade stood above it, his camera clicking steadily.

  “Tell me you’re kidding.” The doctor started complaining the moment his shoes got wet on the soggy, dead winter grass. His diatribe got worse as he got closer to the hatch and encountered some slippery mud. “Someone could have told me I would need hip waders.”

  No one made a comment.

  Doc Nash finally stopped and stared down into the water. “Well there’s certainly no question about his being dead.” After putting on his gloves, he reached down and touched the body, moving it slightly. He ignored the sound of cameras. It wasn’t the first time he’d been called out to examine a suspiciously located dead body. “I can’t tell you anything else until we fish him out of here.”

  Tony glanced at the faces surrounding the hatch. No one was making eye contact with him. No one, himself included, wanted anything to do with this. Wrestling a lifeless body out of a fairly narrow, water-filled hole was not going to be easy. “Maybe we could have more water sucked out before we try to move him.”

  Wade studied the business end of the vacuum tubing. “Maybe we could fasten a screen of some kind over the nozzle so only water would travel down the tube.”

  “A brilliant idea.” Tony thought the plan would allow them to lower the water level and perhaps keep any potential evidence from vanishing into the tank. Without the water, they would be able to simply lift the body out. As it turned out, the vacuum’s operator had the perfect attachment. It was already in use.

  The powerful vacuum lowered the water level amazingly fast. The storm cellar itself was maybe six feet deep and the corners were roundish like it was shaped by the curve of a shovel. The hole was wider than the opening, beginning up against the house’s foundation and extending out about six feet. As the water level lowered, Tony could see that, other than the body and a wooden ladder, there was not much inside. It was crudely constructed, as was the wooden frame that supported it. Above the hole, the flowerbed was shallow and muddy water dripped through the spaces between boards in the wooden ceiling. A narrow bench ran along the longest wall. It was not designed to be the party room. Safety in a storm.

  The door, really more of a hatch cover, was a solid wooden square. The outside surface was made of six-inch-wide boards. They were at least two inches thick. The interior cross boards were two-by-fours. The cover was heavy for its size. A large iron ring on top was for lifting it open. Inside, there was a heavy iron bolt so it could be latched from the inside only. The heavy-duty hinges were oiled, and appeared fairly new. Although awkward, he knew from Theo’s description how easy it was to open.

  If Daniel had been alive when the hatch closed, there should have been no problem with his opening it, or climbing out.

  The restoration crew was busy complaining about the door’s construction and the probability of wood swelling because of the dampness. Salvaging it might be difficult. Eventually the water level dropped far enough so Tony and Wade decided they’d be able to lift the remains out of the hole. The corpse smelled worse than vile and Wade threw up again. Tony fought hard not to join in.

  By the time Tony and Wade managed to pull Nina’s ex-husband from his watery location, Tony was not only soaked to the skin but thoroughly confused. He had no idea if the man had been dead or alive when he hit the water, or if indeed there had been water in the hole at that time. Doc Nash, however, had seemed confident that he would be able to perform the autopsy. Tony considered this good news. It would mean a shorter wait before they leaned about the cause of death. The doctor was a busy man, but now with Dr. Grace Claybough involved in his practice, at least he was less frazzled.

  According to Theo, one time when the subject of her friend’s ex-husband had come up in a conversation with Nina, she had confided that Daniel had always believed that Nina and her family had a cache of money hidden from him. There was none. Or, if there was one, it was hidden from her as well. Tony wondered if Daniel had been searching for imaginary money down in the shelter.

  Not only was Nina Ledbetter Crisp his wife’s dearest friend, but Tony knew the two women and Daniel from high school. Nina had married her high-school sweetheart. Daniel Crisp had been in Tony’s graduating class, two years ahead of their wives. The problem was that Daniel had never been a good man. He was what Tony thought of as a “sort of” guy. Not vicious. Not stupid. Not smart. Sort of pleasant and more than sort of lazy. Tony guessed the marriage had failed, several years and two children into it, because Daniel just “sort of” lost interest in Nina. And about the same time, he sort of discovered other women more appealing.

  Daniel’s job history was sprinkled with a variety of fairly short-term employments. He’d worked in retail at both the Food City and at the hardware store. He’d gotten his insurance license, but hadn’t put enough effort into it to earn a living wage. Daniel didn’t like jobs where his hands might get dirty, which ruled out farming, construction, mechanics and a host of other job opportunities, especially in Silersville. Shiftless, but charming. If he applied himself, Tony guessed the recent job resume of selling television dishes to farmers might be right up the dead man’s alley. So to speak.

  “Not the freshest body you’ve invited me to examine.” The statement might have sounded as if the doctor intended to insert a little levity into the grim proceeding. It wasn’t. Doc Nash wasn’t smiling, and he was busy dictating notes into his phone.

  They finally wrestled Daniel onto an open body bag and zipped him in. “Whew,” Tony exhaled sharply. “I wonder how long he’s been down there.”

  No one said anything. The ambulance had arrived during the extraction, and the paramedics had wheeled a stretcher close to them.

  “Okay, Doctor, do you still want to do the autopsy?” Tony studied the man’s face and guessed he knew the answer.

  “Hell, no.” Doc Nash peeled the latex gloves from his hands. “I changed my mind. Send him to Knoxville. I’ll let the more professional professionals determine the cause and time of death. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the necessary equipment to delve into the truth of this matter.”

  “Fair enough.” Tony made a couple of calls. Then he placed a seal on the body bag. After he signed for it, the ambulance crew carted Daniel away. “The TBI will be here as soon as they can. I should have called before we removed the body, but my first thought was it had to be an accident. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  Soaked from the extraction and wallowing in icy mud, Tony stayed outside. He stank to high heaven and didn’t feel like adding more dirt to the mess in Nina’s home, much less add in the smell of rotting flesh. Seeing Theo shiver outside near the porch even though it was much warmer in the house, he frowned. Her big, green-gold hazel eyes looked empty staring at the hole. “Go home, sweetheart.”

  Theo looked up, meeting his eyes. “No.”

  Tony would have guessed she would jump at the chance to leave. This was not a good place to be. “Why not?”

  “I have to stay here.” Theo flapped her hands indicating the restoration team. “Either until Nina gets here or until these people go home. I’m responsible.”

  Tony recognized her implacable expression and nodded. “Will yo
u at least go inside where the heat’s turned up to bake? Your shivering is making me cold.”

  She did smile then. “Good advice.” She left him, and trotted around the side of the house, clearly headed back to the kitchen.

  With Theo and the body gone, Tony couldn’t help but notice some of the things that weren’t nearby that he would expect to see. Most outstanding was the lack of any kind of vehicle. How had Daniel gotten out here? It wouldn’t be impossible to walk out to Nina’s house from town, but why would he? And if he came out with his girlfriend or another driver, where was this person now? Was the girlfriend involved with Daniel’s death? Tony was anxious to know the cause of death. Did he drown? Was he already dead when the hatch was closed?

  “Sheriff?” said Wade. “What do you think could have happened?”

  Tony shook his head and tried to push away his thoughts but failed. Most importantly, Tony needed to know if Daniel was already dead when Nina left for Washington, D.C. He called Ruth Ann. “I need the phone number for the school principal.”

  Tony contacted the school principal. “Sheriff Abernathy here. I’m calling to see if you have a contact number for Nina Crisp?”

  “Just her cell phone.” Surprise and curiosity threaded through the answer.

  “I’ve tried that. It’s been turned off.”

  “Well, I expect them to be getting back to the school at any time now. She called earlier to let us know she, Mrs. Clubb, and the field trip kids were on their way back. They’re supposed to be here in time for dinner with their families, and no one has called to change that.” A tinge of distress crept into the man’s voice, replacing the curiosity. “Is there something I should know? Should I have her call you?”

  “Thank you, but I’d appreciate it if you would call me. It has nothing to do with your students, but I have some news best given in person. Call the main number, not nine-one-one, and give them the message.”

  When Tony finished his call, he saw Doc Nash still standing at the front of the house, staring down into the storm shelter. The man looked like he was working on a puzzle. “Do we know when the water filled the hole?” Doc looked at Tony. “Until the autopsy, we have no way of knowing if he drowned or fell in and broke his neck, or if he was dead before he got wet.”