Marry in Haste

by Susan Van Kirk

  “Who’s with Emily now? We’ll need to get a warrant for her clothes.”

  “I sent Collier with her, and a policewoman, Eileen Randall, is meeting them at the ER. I also sent strong admonitions with Collier to have the ER doc be careful about checking for evidence, especially DNA, defensive wounds, and all. The housekeeper went with her too. Ms. Folger’s in really bad shape. Shock. I couldn’t get much coherent out of her except for one thing.”

  “What was that?”

  “She repeated over and over, ‘I killed him.’ ”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Before TJ could reply, the crime scene tech arrived to check for fingerprints with his suitcase of powders and brushes. He was followed upstairs by another tech, carrying a camera and other equipment to film the scene. Alex Durdle brought up the rear with the warrant for the house.

  “Hey,” said TJ, suddenly remembering something. “Don’t the Folgers have a couple of kids? Where are they?”

  “Housekeeper said they’d been off at some friend’s house for a sleepover while the big kids played,” said Jake. “Don’t worry. I checked their bedrooms and the downstairs just in case.”

  “Call dispatch and have them talk with Will Folger and his wife. Maybe they know where the kids are, and they need to be notified anyway. Probably will want to go to the hospital to see Emily, so tell the dispatcher to mention, also, the Folgers can’t see her until we can question her.”

  “Where’re Sweeney and Williams?” A booming voice could be heard out on the stairway.

  “In here, Chief,” TJ answered. She glanced at Williams. It was Chief Stephen Lomax, their boss, and Endurance police chief for the past fifteen years. He didn’t always come to a crime scene, and Jake and TJ looked at each other and waited for him to round the corner. The chief’s usually jovial mouth looked grim, and he hadn’t even stopped to put on his uniform. His winter coat was open, revealing a sweatshirt with EPD on it.

  “What do we have?” he asked them, and then glanced at the bed. “Jesus!” he sputtered, as he noted the body and the blood that marked the remains of Conrad Folger. “What the hell is going on? Robbery gone wrong? Was anything missing?”

  “Not sure yet, Chief. But I can take you through the scene and make some rash conclusions if you’d like,” TJ said. “Usually robbers don’t cut throats.”

  “All right, Sweeney. I give up. Tell me what you think happened.”

  “Housekeeper came at 0830 this morning. The door was locked and the alarm on. That leaves the wife, Emily Folger, as the lone person in the house with the victim. She told Williams she killed him, but she was also hysterical and definitely in shock. I’ll see what she says once the doctor has stabilized her. She was pretty beaten up, too. We’ll have to find out about that.”

  “S’pose he hit her?”

  “Most likely. At this point that’s the theory. We’ll see. If you follow me over here—” TJ indicated safe places to walk. “Looks like the perp came into the bedroom. Folger was asleep. From the looks of the downstairs, they had quite a party last night so he was really out. Whoever came in probably used the piece of glass next to him on the bed to slash his throat. The killer must have hated him, and you can see cast-off splatter from the glass, and more blood spatter, which must have been a fine spray from his throat. It’s a pretty ugly way to do it, and not something a woman usually does. Curious, Chief. Some grains of dirt are on the bed and no place where they might have originated. No plants knocked over. Broken glass everywhere. For sure, the murderer would be covered in his blood, and Ms. Folger was covered in blood. Not sure I can see her doing that, but who knows what goes on in a house? In fact, I’ll get a warrant for the hospital records and see if he’s put her in the ER before. The glass on the floor appears to be from a vase or an ashtray. It was probably over here on this table from the looks of the arrangement of various photos and glass ornaments. So whoever killed him didn’t actually bring a weapon. The blood trail leads to Ms. Folger’s room and goes in both directions.”

  “Her cell phone is in there, and it’s covered in blood,” added Jake. “Probably that’s what she used to dial 9-1-1.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Chief Lomax said. “It looks like she came in here, slashed his throat, went back to her room, and called 9-1-1.”

  “Yes,” said TJ. “But the housekeeper found her in here on the floor next to the bed, her back against the wall, incoherent, rocking back and forth, a few minutes later. So I assume Ms. Folger came back here after she killed him, assuming she killed him. She did, in fact, confess to Williams in front of Ms. Simmons.”

  “Are there any other suspects?” the chief asked.

  “Don’t know yet. Conrad Folger was not exactly a loved guy. Man like that makes lots of enemies,” Jake said. “We’ve had his brother informed, and Conrad has two kids, so we’re hoping Will knows where the kids might be.”

  “Come out here in the hallway for a moment,” Chief Lomax motioned to the detectives. TJ and Jake left the techs working on the scene and followed him into the hallway.

  “I don’t need to tell you,” the chief said quietly, “we’ll be getting a crap load of pressure over this murder. Folger is a huge presence in the town. So we need to get this solved, wrapped up with a bow, and put on the shelf as soon as possible. Is this clear to both of you?”

  “Perfectly,” TJ said, glancing at Jake.

  “I was planning to drive to Woodbury for the day. The wife has a hen group coming over to work on something. Guess I’ll have to go home, get cleaned up, and head back to the office with this situation. Keep me up to date. I’ll have my cell on.”

  “Sure, Chief,” said Williams.

  After he left, TJ and Jake went back to the crime scene, thinking grimly about the chief’s admonition. The crime techs were working, and Ron Martinez, the part-time coroner, stuck his head in the doorway. Martinez was the local pediatrician, but he also doubled as a coroner when the EPD needed one. The body, however, would be taken to Woodbury for an autopsy.

  “Jake, TJ,” Martinez said, as he set down his medical bag and looked in the door. “Geez. I think I need to find someone else to do this coroner’s job. I’m much happier working with my little people. Mostly they need Band-Aids and vaccinations. So what’s the story?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the crime scene.

  “Conrad Folger. Throat slit. We’ll let you tell us the rest, Doc.”

  “The banker?” Martinez turned, a shocked look on his face. “You have to be kidding!”

  “None other.”

  Jake was busy making a diagram of the room and noting the closed windows and the temperature on the thermostat. Martinez grabbed his bag, walked purposefully over to the bed, gloves on, and scrutinized the body carefully before he did any hands-on work. TJ and Jake waited until Martinez had studied several areas on the corpse and checked for body temperature. Then he stood up and walked back over to the detectives. “Manner of death is exsanguination, and time is probably between midnight and four a.m. Stomach contents should narrow it down, and the ME will do a tox screen and autopsy. I’ll call him now and see when he can schedule it.”

  “Try to push him a bit, Doc, because the chief is chomping at the bit. Lots of pressure on this.” Martinez walked out of the bedroom, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.

  Jake and TJ spent more time examining the room. “Jake!” TJ held up a handgun she had taken from the drawer in the bedside table. “Looks like a Glock.” She smelled it. “Not fired. Probably Folger’s for protection. They do live in an isolated area. I’ll bag it anyway.”

  Martinez walked back in and said, “Tomorrow morning, TJ. Autopsy will be then. I’ll take the body over there today.”

  “Right. I’ll be there,” said TJ.

  In the hours that followed, the body was removed, and the crime techs finished their photographs and examination of prints. They were working on trace evidence when TJ and Jake went to Emily’s room and then downstairs to examine the rest of
the house. Passing Collier at the back door, they checked the tire tracks in the driveway.

  “This is going to do us no good,” Jake said. “Those could have been there last night. Lots of people here. From the looks of the living room, lots of people in and out.”

  “No blood spatters down the stairs or at the kitchen exit. They’ll check the doorknob and the security keypads for prints, but as cold as it is, if someone did get in, he or she was probably wearing gloves.”

  “Right now it sure doesn’t look good for the wife,” Jake replied.

  “We’ll have to get warrants to check his finances, talk to people at the bank, check his bank files, and see who might have had a reason to kill him. You know, sometimes a banker isn’t the most loved person in town. He probably says ‘no’ a lot. We need to get to the hospital, and we’ll question the people at the shindig last night too,” said TJ. “Plenty to do, ole Jakie. No rest for the wicked. My day off is changing to ‘on.’ I’m going to stick around and check Emily’s bedroom and both the bathrooms, and then I’ll meet you down at the station. We’ll let the techs see what they come up with. Then we need to check on Emily Folger at the hospital. She might be lucid enough to talk.”

  Jake left, and the crime techs were working on photos and fingerprints when TJ went back upstairs. Examining Emily Folger’s room, she found the bloody cell phone, which she put in a plastic bag and marked for evidence. Then she poked around the room, finding little else except blood on the sheets and the floor. Walking into Emily’s bathroom, she saw a nightgown on the floor and a half-full glass of water with a bottle of sedatives next to it on the counter. Picking up the nightgown carefully, she shook her head as it practically came apart in her gloved hands. It was wet—semen maybe—but also it had been torn open down the front. It didn’t take much for TJ to figure out how that happened. She bagged the nightgown and carefully dumped the water from the glass. Wrapping both the glass and sedatives in an evidence bag, she checked the medicine cabinet. Seeing nothing unusual, she signed the evidence bags. Then she went down the hall, pulled a tech out and down to Emily’s room, and pointed out the evidence bags to them and the bed sheets.

  “Also, don’t forget to photograph the blood trail from here into the other bedroom—”

  “Will do, TJ.”

  “Oh, and photograph the contents of both medicine cabinets. I’ll walk around and point out what else needs to be bagged.”

  An hour later, TJ was back in her car driving toward the Endurance police station. A glance at her dashboard told her it was almost two in the afternoon. She felt ravenous. She radioed Jake, telling him she’d pick up some sandwiches and coffee on the way. Then she settled in to drive across the small town of Endurance. As she drove, the evidence from the scene played through her mind. The alarm was on, the door locked, blood spatter verified the trips back and forth to Conrad’s room, manner of death obvious but kind of rash for a female perp, and blood all over Emily Folger. Doesn’t look good.

  But then there was the torn nightgown in the bathroom and the sedatives. How did those fit in the timeline and increase her motivation to kill her abusive husband?

  CHAPTER TEN

  “. . . and the high today will be twenty degrees with light periods of snow. Tomorrow’s looking better with a high of twenty-five, but then the wind will come in, and it will feel more like ten degrees.” Grace snapped the radio off in her car and killed the engine. More of the same. Gray skies, bone-chilling cold, and “light periods of snow” probably mean two to four inches. How many times can I dig out my driveway? She grabbed her purse, locked her car, and trudged through the parking lot and into the Endurance Register office.

  Looking back at the parking lot, she was relieved it had been repaved and was no longer full of holes the way she remembered it last July. A plow had scraped the snow off the surface and salt had done the rest. Last summer she had taken on a part-time job reviewing books and then writing historical articles for Endurance’s centennial celebration. The town had thrown quite a party for its one hundred seventy-fifth anniversary. But now she worked almost full time, and besides book reviews, she also wrote Grace Notes—articles about the history of the town. She had her own office at the Register, but often worked from home. When Jeff came to Endurance last summer, the circulation of the newspaper was only 4,000. It was on its last legs and sinking into oblivion. But with his innovations and changes in content, the circulation was up to 6,000 and rising. He had moved from his newspaper job in New York City to take a part-time job as editor in their small town. To hear him talk about it, he wanted a change from the big city and a less stressful job during his last years before retirement. He was sixty-two—time to slow down a bit. And—bonus—he and Grace had started dating recently.

  Grace walked into the main room and saw Jeff’s open office door. He sat at his desk, his head bent over some reports. Then he reached for a bottle of water, saw Grace, and motioned her back. She spoke briefly to Rick Enslow, the sales manager, and then walked behind the front counter toward Jeff’s door.

  “Something’s happening out at the Folger house. Lots of police cars, crime tape, an ambulance. They have everyone blocked off at the end of the driveway, and it’s a long driveway. Ever been out there?” he asked.

  “Not really. I know he built that house out in the country and even put in a lake. But I’ve never been inside. What could be going on?” Then she remembered. “Oh, how did the poker game go?”

  He motioned her to sit down, and she walked in and sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “It was quite an evening.”

  “How so? Did you win?”

  “Ha, ha. Not hardly. When I got there, Emily Folger was clearing off the dishes and they were setting up for poker.”

  “Who was at Conrad’s besides the two Folger couples?”

  “A bunch of bank people. They set up the poker table in the living room, and most of the ladies left. Emily was still around and so was her sister-in-law, Darlene.”

  “Darlene stayed?”

  “I think she had a feeling ole Will would need a designated driver, and, sure enough, he did. It wouldn’t be wise to have the VP at the bank hit with a DUI. Besides, here in small town, USA, it would end up in the newspaper.”

  Grace laughed. “Oooooh. That would not be a proud moment for Conrad or Will.”

  “No. So Emily disappeared shortly after the game got started. You’re right about her, by the way. She seems troubled, has dark circles under her eyes, and generally looks like a little mouse. She hardly said anything all evening. I had a tough time connecting this Emily to the one you talk about.”

  “Maybe she was worried about the dinner. I know when I have a lot of people over for a meal I worry about how everything will work out.” And whether my food will be edible, Grace thought, or whether I might poison someone accidently.

  “Perhaps. I assume they’ve had these parties before, and that’s why the ladies leave. They go into the wee hours of the night. I stayed till the bitter end, however. You were right. No love lost between the Folger boys. Highly competitive. Several times Conrad made some nasty, ugly comments, and Will just shook them off. I was a little embarrassed, but the other players acted like it was normal.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. Conrad was all smiles and charm when we saw him at the bank. I always liked Will better. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but Will was gone from Endurance for a long time, and when he showed up again—around 2000—he had a wife, Darlene, in tow. Next thing anyone knew, he was working at the bank. Of course, I knew much of this via Lettie, but I’ve also had dealings at the bank.”

  “They are an interesting pair of siblings. I remember a sister, too, in those photographs. Wonder what she’s like.”

  “Jessalynn? She was always a little kinder, a bit more patient than either of the boys—at least from what I knew of them. She was a good student—not spectacular, but good—and I thought her personality lacked their aggression and competition. She w
as the only Folger child I had in school. The others were already out when I began teaching. I haven’t seen her in years either. I have no idea where she is now.” She paused a moment. “What time did it all break up?”

  Jeff scratched his head. “I think it must have been one o’clock. I got home around one-fifteen, so it sounds about right. We all headed out at once. No one had drunk much except Conrad and Will, and Conrad wasn’t driving anywhere. Will’s wife stuck around and knitted or crocheted or something in the den or family room, and watched some late-night show on television. As I mentioned, she drove Will home.”

  “Is someone from the paper out at the Folger house?”

  “Yes. Jack Gillenhall, the college intern. He’s supposed to call.” Jeff glanced at his silent cell phone.

  Grace started to get up and then remembered she was going to ask Jeff about his house.

  “Well,” he answered, “the property transfer of my house in the newspaper listings has certainly made me popular. Everyone is curious and everyone has advice. They’re dying to get inside.”

  Grace laughed. “In Endurance, people watch workers paint houses in the summer. It passes for entertainment. Oh, and I brought the latest notes from Lettie, speaking of entertainment.” She reached in her purse and pulled them out. Then, arranging them in order, she read them out loud. “ ‘Gracie, that man’—she never calls him Del—‘told me everything has to be boxed and moved to the dining room so he can remove the counters. I can’t cook in the dining room. It’s time to fire him. Besides, we still don’t know if he’s hiding something. Lettie.’ Second one: ‘Gracie, Doesn’t he ever clean up after himself? There’s sawdust all over the floor whenever I come into the house. It could catch on fire with autonominous combustion. This has to stop. He could be a convicted felon, you know. Have you done a background check? Lettie.’ ”

  “I can hear World War III in progress.”

  “That’s not the end of it. Besides the notes, she’s proven herself impervious to Del’s charms. She told me she was in the kitchen and the front doorbell rang. So she checked the door and no one was there, but a bag was hanging on the doorknob. She carefully opened the bag and saw a box with white powder on it. Panicking, because she figured it was anthrax or ricin or who knows what she’s read about in the tabloids, she dropped it in the garbage bin in back of the house. While she frantically looked for the number of Homeland Security, Del called and asked her if she’d gotten his present. So she had to play along with him and not tell him she’d thrown it in the garbage. Then she went back out and trolled through the bin. It was powdered donuts from Abbey’s bakery shop at The Depot.” Grace shook her head. “I keep thinking I’ll come home someday and find Del on the floor, unconscious, blood everywhere, and an iron skillet nearby. However, knowing Lettie, she loves that skillet. It’s more likely she’d grab something heavy, but expendable, like ceramic.”