by Неизвестный
“Congratulations.”
“You didn’t know about the newest one, did you?”
I could have answered honestly and said no, but I said, “Adult fleas live four to twenty-five days.”
He started the vehicle and steered toward the police station.
I crossed my arms and turned to the window, suddenly feeling younger than I had in a long time. Being around Tony did that to me. My dad started mentoring him when I was sixteen. Tony had been twenty-three, with cropped black hair and big brown eyes, always flexing those muscles he’d started building at the academy. To me, in his tight black T-shirts that showed off his powerful physique, Tony was bigger and better than every cute actor and singer rolled into one. I lived for those nights he came over to see my father because he’d always spend a few minutes chatting with me. I loved how he treated me like an adult, like an equal.
I had dreamed of dating him for ages, but when I finally had a chance at twenty-three, it was pretty much too late. I had my job offer in the city and was leaving the next week. We made the most of those five days, which were extra thrilling because we didn’t want my father to find out. When the day came for me to leave, Tony was the one who drove me to the airport. I put on a brave face, but I couldn’t wait to get out of the car and away from him, to cry in private. We promised to stay in touch, but then he got his new girlfriend pregnant and got married, and we didn’t talk after that. I’d seen him over the last ten years, whenever I came home for the holidays, but only by accident.
“How old is Tony Junior?” I asked. “He must be about nine by now.”
Tony grunted in response. After a moment, he said, “We’ll have you over for dinner soon, I promise.” He tapped the steering wheel in rhythm to a song only he could hear. Tony always drummed his fingers when he was thinking. My father used to give him a hard time over it, saying it was the outward sign of an undisciplined mind.
After a few more minutes, he said, “Why did you run from the crime scene?”
“Obviously because I’m the murderer, Detective Baloney.”
“Don’t call me that,” he barked. “We’re not kids anymore.”
“Sorry.” I crossed my arms tighter.
We drove for a few blocks in silence before he said, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have come to that party at your dad’s house when you got here. I meant to drop by, but I fell asleep on the couch.” He stifled a yawn, which drew my attention to the dark circles under his brown eyes.
“You probably needed the sleep, what with having a new baby. I’m sure you’ve got your hands full.”
“You have no idea,” he said ominously.
“How did you know I was at the vet clinic? That was some good detective work.”
He frowned and kept his eyes on the road. “I came from Warbler Street just now, where the mailman told me you were lugging a pet carrier. There are only two vets in town, so do me a favor and save the flattery for when I close this case.”
“Will that be soon? I mean, you guys have a good idea who did it, right?”
“Sure,” he said flippantly. “We’ll just round up the usual suspects, the ones who are known to kill old geezers and stuff them inside lawn decorations.”
I chewed my lip. Tony’s sarcasm was not a good sign.
We reached the town’s police station, where he pulled into a reserved parking spot. He turned off the engine and rested his forehead in his hands as though he had a terrible headache.
“Tony?” I reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his dark blue uniform shirt was damp from the snow. I wanted to say something reassuring, but what came out was, “Where’s your jacket?”
He rubbed his face and glanced back at my hand but didn’t shrug it off.
“This is bad,” I said. “I’m sorry if my running off from the scene has made things more difficult for you. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
He let out a hopeless laugh. “Tell me who killed Murray Michaels, and I’ll owe you one.”
Brightly, I said, “I’ll get right on that.” I squeezed his shoulder. “You don’t need me, Tony. You’re a brilliant detective.”
“Am I?” He shook his head and avoided my eyes. “Some citizens reported Mr. Michaels missing five days ago. It was the waitresses from his regular restaurant, concerned that he hadn’t been around in a while.”
“And you didn’t do anything?”
“I went out with a locksmith to check the property. There were no signs of forced entry at his house, and I searched inside, expecting to find the old geezer in bed, or slumped over dead. He wasn’t there, and the place appeared to be undisturbed, though it was hard to tell because he was a level one hoarder. The rooms were packed full, but pathways were clear and all the appliances were functional. I figured he must have gone on a trip, maybe a doctor appointment in the city. I told the waitresses he would turn up eventually, but I never expected anything like this.”
“He was there at his house the whole time.”
Tony let out a heavy-sounding breath. “Hidden in plain sight. In that damn snowman.”
I squeezed his shoulder again. “You couldn’t have known.”
“But you knew, Stormy. You’re a better detective than me. You’re better than your father, but don’t tell him I said that. He and I would both be the laughing stock of the whole town if they knew you were the one who cracked the Donut Heaven case. And you were only eighteen.”
“Seventeen.”
Groaning, he opened his door and got out of the car. My hand hovered in the air for a moment, where his shoulder had been.
“C’mon, kiddo,” he said. “Let’s get your statement.”
I didn’t want to get out of the car, let alone spend my afternoon in an interview room. I got out of the car slowly, closed the door, and leaned against the vehicle feigning exhaustion as I joked, “Can we hook ourselves up to the polygraph and ask each other a bunch of embarrassing questions?”
I watched his dour expression change to amusement. Victory. I could still put a smile on Tony’s face, even if it was only a small one.
Two other uniformed officers, a man and a woman, walked slowly past, all eyes on me. The man, who had a thick mustache covering his upper lip, said something to the woman. She studied me with interest. He spoke quietly, but I heard him say, “That’s her, Wiggles. I told you so. Don’t skimp on the sugar when you make my cookies.”
Tony followed my gaze and barked at the two officers, “You two see something amusing?”
In unison, they said, “No, sir.”
“How about my jacket? Did one of you think to bring that back?”
The woman answered, “I’ll drive over and get it now.”
Tony shook his head and pointed at the man. “Gomez, you go. Wiggles, I want you on this interrogation.” He pointed right at me, caught the look of shock on my face, and corrected, “Interview, I mean. Wiggles, you’re in charge of Stormy.”
Then he barked at me to quit stalling and get my butt into the station.
Chapter 7
The red brick exterior of the police station hadn’t changed since its construction, seventy years earlier. The inside, however, had bravely withstood many rounds of upgrades, including a few since the days I used to come in after school and help my father type reports. I had no clerical training at the time, but could type ninety words a minute without errors. I signed the same privacy agreements as the other secretaries, and my work was good enough that the captain offered to hire me straight out of high school if I chose not to follow through on my college plans. I didn’t realize it at the time, but typing those reports and finding out what people were really like was the best education about life I could have gotten. My friends weren’t impressed when I warned them away from activities I’d learned were dangerous, such as cramming too many people into a car, but at least we all lived to see graduation.
Tony walked me through the station, glancing around and frowning, as t
hough seeing the interior through judging eyes.
“This old carpet’s got to go,” he said, referring to the swirling floor covering with the pattern that hid a multitude of sins. “Lots of old things around here have got to go.”
The other officer lagged behind us, stopping to say something to a secretary. Tony snapped his fingers impatiently. “Rookie! Look lively.”
She jerked to attention and brought up the rear so fast, the toes of her boots kicked the heels of mine. I felt her breath on the back of my neck as we reached an interview room. Tony flicked on the lights and waved us in ahead of him.
He caught the elbow of my coat as I walked by, and slipped me a business card as though he was giving me something secret. It was just his standard card, with a cell phone number written in blue pen. He’d crossed out the line reading In Case of Emergency, Always Call 9-1-1.
And then he was gone.
The woman stood by the door, awaiting his return. The fluorescent tube lights reached their full brightness, draping the windowless room in a sickly gray light.
“He’s not coming back,” I said. “You’re stuck dealing with me.”
She gave me a wary look as she made her way to one of the utilitarian plastic and metal chairs next to the equally plain interview room table. Like Tony, she wore a dark blue uniform under the matching winter jacket she shrugged off onto the back of the chair. She looked around fifty, or maybe older, but very fit, with angular facial features that made her cheeks appear hollow and gave the impression of her being thinner than she was. Her movements communicated strength and resiliency. Her eyelids, creped with delicate gathers at the edges, were the only feature that gave away her age. As I took my seat, her wide-set cobalt blue eyes made me feel watched and ignored at the same time.
She hadn’t introduced herself but wore a brass nametag: Peggy Wiggles. The four lower-case g’s created a distinctive, eye-catching pattern, mimicking the effect of seeing double. The name sounded as cartoonish in my head as it looked on the tag. Was it her real name, or a nametag one of the other officers had gotten her to wear as a prank? They did that sometimes, to initiate people. The brass tag looked new, with a single faint scratch on the diagonal, and not at all like an object kept around for games. It had to be her actual name.
Like I had with the nameless cat, I felt a surge of solidarity with Peggy Wiggles. We oddly-named people had to stick together. I was tempted to point out our commonality but held my tongue. I’d learned the hard way that some people with unusual names don’t appreciate having that fact pointed out, and yet others are in complete denial, having never experienced their name through the ears of a stranger.
Her dark, cool blue eyes looked at me, through me, and then past me. The silence in the small room was intruded upon by male laughter coming from elsewhere in the building. “Gomez,” she muttered under her breath, rising to close the door to the interview room.
As she returned to her seat, I asked, “Did I hear Tony say you’re a rookie?”
She volleyed back, “Were you expecting someone younger?”
I was pretty sure that question didn’t have a right answer. “I like your haircut,” I said.
Her white-flecked brown hair was cut in the same short style as mine. At my compliment, she reached up and fluffed the back. “I used to wear it long. Only got it cut maybe once a year.” She spoke as though answering questions about a case, her voice flat and her face betraying no emotion. She concluded, “Then I went for the buzz at the Academy and decided I like short hair.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Not the Police Academy part, but I recently went through some major life changes as well.”
“Interesting,” she said, her passive tone one degree shy of sarcasm. Apparently, the fifty-year-old rookie wasn’t as interested as I was in finding points of commonality. She picked up a pen and clicked out the nib. “What led you to believe the body was inside the snowman?”
“Mainly the frozen head sticking out of the top.”
She clicked the pen again and set it down on her blank notepad.
I added, “Really, you should ask the cat. He’s the one who found it.”
I saw her eyebrows move for the first time. “You have a cat?”
“No, it’s not my cat. I was running an errand for my father’s girlfriend.”
Her eyebrows fell, along with her face. She seemed disappointed. I looked more closely at her uniform, spotting what appeared to be pet fur visible on her dark blue collar.
“His name is Jeffrey,” I offered.
“Who?”
“The cat,” I said. “He didn’t have a name until today, but it’s Jeffrey Blue.”
She wrote the first two letters of his name on her notepad then stopped. She shifted her body, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, as though we were two friends meeting for coffee in a restaurant with a weirdly institutional decor.
“Stormy,” she said calmly. “May I call you Stormy? There’s no need to be nervous, but if you are feeling upset, I want you to know it’s all right. You’ve had a troubling experience. My name is Peggy Wiggles, and I’ve been with the Misty Falls Police Department only a short time, but I can assure you, I’ve come to appreciate this town. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the person who hurt your neighbor is apprehended and put away forever. Were you very close to Mr. Michaels?”
“What do you mean by close? He was right next door the whole time I was growing up, but he was kind of a misanthrope and not the lovable kind with the witty put-downs. He was the type who would confiscate your toys if they flew over the fence into his backyard.”
“My ex was that type. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he winds up in a snowman.”
“Really?” I leaned in, eager to hear more about the man I assumed was named Mr. Wiggles. How could you remain humorless with a name like that?
Officer Peggy Wiggles cleared her throat and straightened up, breaking the illusion we were friends at coffee. “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Your address.”
I gave her my address, which led into explaining how my father was the one who lived next door to Murray Michaels. Her expression changed when she learned my father was Finnegan Day, as though that fact was a key piece of information she’d been seeking. She’d been hired after his retirement, so she hadn’t worked with him, but was well aware of his reputation for being a hardworking officer who could have been captain, or even chief, but preferred to keep the exact same job he’d been hired for.
As we talked, I regretted giving her a hard time with my flippant answers at the start of our session. She was only trying to do her job, and couldn’t have known how Tony’s treatment had put me in a defensive, quippy mood. I meant to say something, to apologize, but she led me through her questions with ruthless efficiency.
She drilled out of me the exact time I’d woken up that morning and then all the events of my day, including my meeting with the real estate agent, picking up takeout coffee, working at my store, the visit from Pam and the resulting cat errand, plus the minute-by-minute details of the cat leading me to the snowman, me taking my picture next to it, and finally my attempts to straighten the snowman’s face.
She paused and tapped her pen, flicking her cobalt blue eyes up to meet mine. “You have a photo?”
I pulled out my phone and showed her the picture I’d taken of my face next to the snowman’s. “See how his face is a bit crooked? That’s unusual, don’t you think?”
She agreed the face was crooked and asked me to send a copy to her for the file. She excused herself from the room to get her laptop, leaving me alone long enough to consider going in search of a vending machine. I was rifling through my purse for coins when she returned. I dropped the bag guiltily. A man I’d known for years had been killed, and here I was, thinking about buying a Twix.
She set the laptop between us and brought up the enlarged picture. The goofy grin on my face made me groan and look away. She must have interpreted my horror a
s being about the case because she gave me a pat on the shoulder and said soothingly, “We’re almost done, and you’re doing a great job.”
“Will the photo help?” I asked. “If there are other snowmen around town with the same face, they could lead you to the killer.”
“I’m not sure a snowman’s face is as useful as a fingerprint or handwriting sample, but we’ll do our best. What’s unusual about this snowman is how good it looks, despite being crooked. Almost as if a professional snowman-builder made it.”
“If such a thing existed, we’d have this case cracked wide open.”
She consulted her notes. “Did you see any other footprints in the snow when you approached the crime scene?”
“I don’t remember seeing any, but then again I was focused on chasing the cat.”
“How much force did you have to apply to break apart the head?”
“A fair amount. The snowman was constructed to be secure. I had to karate chop the neck to loosen it. Pretty hard.”
“One chop?”
“Multiple chops.”
“Right hand?”
“Yes. I’m right-handed.”
“Amateur karate chop or professional?”
“I’ve taken some self-defense classes over the years, but I’m no black belt.”
“Did the snowman have any scent? Any odor?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did it have one of those corn cob pipes? Or a pipe of any kind?” We consulted the photo on the laptop screen, and she answered her own question. “No pipe.”
She continued the interview, asking about my last encounter with the decedent, Murray Michaels. I had little to offer besides rumors. He’d shown up at my father’s party to complain about the noise, coming in from the porch but not leaving the entryway. He’d not been a topic of conversation at the party before, but after the disruption, the gossip came out as though uncorked from a bottle by his visit. People mentioned how Michaels had become a nuisance to the local retail business owners and how they wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up on one of those programs about hoarders, as well as how there was a slim possibility he was involved with a young waitress.