by Lucy Ness
She was wearing light-colored shoes that tied with a showy satin bow at the instep and had short chunky heels. Her stockings were rolled below her knees, just inches from the hem of a dropped-waist, tube-shaped dress covered with beads.
Her dark hair was cut in a short sleek bob, and she wore a headband decorated with beads and feathers.
I tallied the details in a flash. Right before she moved and I realized she wasn’t a picture at all. The surprise of seeing the woman standing there kicked me in the gut.
I was up on my feet in a flash just as she stepped closer. “Hey, sister, that was quite a tumble. Everything jake?” she asked.
I didn’t know who this Jake guy was, or what he had to do with any of this; I only knew that a sudden burst of outrage overwhelmed even my fear.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “What are you doing here?”
The woman flinched. Right before she smiled. “If that ain’t the cat’s particulars! You mean you can see me? You can hear me?”
“Of course I can.” Sure not to take my eyes off her, I sidestepped over to where the flashlight lay and made a grab for it. I wasn’t sure who I was dealing with and I felt better with a weapon—a lame weapon, but a weapon nonetheless—in my hands. “What, you thought you could hide down here and no one would be any wiser? You should have known I’d find you sooner or later. What were you doing up in my rooms?”
“You’re all wet!” She waved a hand in my direction and now that she was standing closer and I was able to shine the flashlight directly at her, I saw that she was younger than I first thought. Not a woman. More like a girl. Twenty if she was a day and trying her darnedest to look older thanks to bright red lipstick on Cupid’s bow lips and smoky eyes outlined all around with kohl.
I watched her glance around the basement. “I ain’t left here. Not for a long time.”
“Oh yeah?” Not the best comeback, I admit that, but the only thing I could think to say. That is, right before logic kicked in. “The door is locked. I know because I had to unlock it when I got back this evening. If you’ve been here a long time, how did you get in?”
“I was invited.” She had a dainty nose and she lifted it in the air. “By none other than old man Dennison himself.”
“Dennison? Well, he’s not a member of the club—I know that for sure, since the club is only open to women. And there’s no Mrs. Dennison on the roster.” Still, the name tickled a memory in the back of my mind and when it did, my mouth dropped open. “Cut the bull! Dennison? Chauncey Dennison built this house more than one hundred years ago so I’m pretty sure he’s not hanging around inviting people over. You’re going to need to come up with a better story than that once the cops get here and ask what you were doing in my rooms and what you took.”
“Poor little bunny, you don’t know the worst of it.” She pursed her lips. “You got bigger things to worry about than me, don’t you think?”
I tightened my grip on the flashlight and did my best to sound braver than I felt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dumb Dora,” she mumbled, and she pointed to the stairs behind me.
I turned that way.
Pink.
Even in the odd half darkness, the color was unmistakable. Pink sheath dress. Pink jacket. If Muriel Sadler wasn’t crumpled facedown on the stairs, I bet I would have seen her pink lipstick and blusher, too.
Even without getting closer, I knew something was terribly wrong. Muriel’s body was bent into impossible angles. Her left leg was out, her right leg was tucked up under her. Her arms hung limp at her sides. When I inched nearer, I saw the back of her skull was bashed in and bloody.
Maybe to stifle a scream, maybe to keep the sourness that filled my throat from escaping, I clamped a hand over my mouth and stared for I don’t know how long. At least until I told myself that was no way to handle an emergency.
With one breath for courage and another to settle the wild beating of my heart, I closed in on Muriel and when I touched her neck to check for a pulse, my hand shook.
No pulse. No movement. She was already a little cold.
My brain spun and I scrambled for something that evenly vaguely resembled a plan. It was that or give in to the terror that gripped me. First I’d tell the girl in the strange clothes to stay put and not to touch anything. That’s what I’d do. Then I’d go upstairs and call the cops.
My mind made up, I spun to face her.
The girl was gone.
“You can’t hide down here forever,” I called and hoped she’d hear me wherever she’d scampered off to. “This is the only door in or out of the basement.” I did not know this to be true, but it sure sounded good. “You stay right . . .” I skimmed my flashlight over the area. The basement steps ended in a wide hallway that dissolved into the darkness both to the left and to the right of me. From the looks of the deeper blotches pressed into the shadow to my left, there were a number of rooms down that way. One of them was probably the electrical room, where I would have found the fuse box. To my right, the hallway opened into a room big enough that it was impossible for my light to penetrate the gloom.
“You stay right where you are!” I finished the order with as much gumption as a woman scared out of her wits could and, careful not to disturb Muriel, I hopped over her body and raced up the stairs.
The front door of the club, just feet from my desk, was flanked by wide windows, and here the glow of the security lights out in the parking lot seeped in, cold and pale. I grabbed the phone on my desk, dialed 911, and told them about the emergency, about the body.
The dispatcher who answered ordered me to stay put and wait, and said the cops would be there soon and I should keep calm, but really, I wondered if she’d ever had to deal with a pitch-dark mansion, an odd intruder, and the body of a little-loved club president.
Too antsy to keep still, I paced from my desk back over to the basement door.
“I’ve called the cops,” I yelled down into the darkness because if nothing else, it made me feel like I had control. Over something. “There’s no use hiding. They’re on their way.”
And I knew they were. And that they’d be there soon.
But hey, they say discretion is the better part of valor. And this girl is no Dumb Dora, in spite of what some people might say.
Rather than sit there in the dark and think about Muriel and the girl who was probably a burglar and who might be a killer, I raced to the front door, unlocked it, and waited outside for the police.
* * *
* * *
I should have known it wouldn’t take long. On the whole, Portage Path is a safe community, at least if what I’d heard that evening at the chamber of commerce meeting was true. The cops didn’t have a lot to keep them busy and, of course, I’d used the magic words, dead body.
Two black-and-white patrol cars raced into the parking lot, sirens blaring and lights flashing. They were followed by an unmarked car with a pulsing blue light in the front window. The unmarked car stopped closest to the building and a young man in a raincoat jumped out.
“You the one who called?” he wanted to know. “Where’s the victim?”
As anxious as I was to get out of the building, the fresh air hadn’t revived me the way I’d hoped. My movements were stiff, my brain was foggy. It took some effort, but I managed to nod and point to the front door.
The guy in the raincoat stepped aside and let three of the uniformed officers go into the club ahead of him. The fourth guy—fresh-faced and looking a little worried—was ordered to stay outside and keep an eye on me.
“Where?” was all the guy in the raincoat asked.
I swallowed the sand in my throat. “Basement steps.”
Naturally, the cops tried to turn on the lights inside the door and when that didn’t work, they flipped on flashlights. I had never had flashlight envy before, but one
look at the powerful beams and the pure white light, and I sighed.
But then, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t thinking straight.
“You all right, miss?” the cop who stayed with me asked.
If only I knew the answer! And, really, it hardly seemed to matter, not right then and there. What did matter . . .
I snapped to and shook my head. “There’s an intruder in the basement,” I told the cop and I guess I sounded convincing enough because he radioed the other cops and told them what I’d said.
There was a pretty wooden bench nearby with an elaborately carved back, and without asking the cop’s permission, I went over to it and sat down. It was that or collapse into a puddle of mush right there at the front entrance of the Portage Path Women’s Club. The very thought made me wonder, “What would Muriel think about that?”
My second thought was to close my eyes and try to make the image of her, bloodied and crumpled, vanish. I lost track of time and before I knew it, there was more commotion—a crime scene team arrived; another two patrol cars showed up; the neighbors, alerted by the lights and noise, gathered around the perimeter of the parking lot; and one of the newly arrived cops was sent to keep things under control.
Eventually, the lights inside the club snapped on, and automatically I breathed a sigh of relief. At that moment, there was something about dispelling shadows that seemed to matter. It wasn’t too long after that the cop in the raincoat came back outside. He sat down next to me and flashed a badge.
“Sergeant Alterman,” he said. “And you are . . . ?”
Honestly, I had to think about it, and I guess that didn’t make a good impression, because Alterman leaned forward, face squinched with the sort of expectant look that said he wasn’t holding his breath and waiting for my answer so much as he was thinking I’d better hop to. He had dark hair and dark eyes and even though he was no more than thirty-five, he was obviously in charge. I wondered if the older, more experienced cops resented him.
And told myself to get my act together.
I cleared my throat. “Avery Morgan. I’m the club manager.”
“You’re managing the club awfully late tonight, aren’t you?”
It took a couple seconds for me to get his drift. “I live here. Up on the third floor.”
“Do you know why the victim was in the building?”
The victim.
The words had a funny sound to them, like metal scraping metal.
“Her name is Muriel Sadler,” I told him. “She is . . .” I swallowed hard. “She was the president of the club.”
“What was she doing here this evening?”
I don’t suppose shrugging counts as an answer, but it was all I could think to do. “As president, she has . . . er, had . . . an office on the second floor. I guess she could have been working. But I don’t know, I was out,” I explained. “At a chamber of commerce meeting. I didn’t get back until just a little while ago.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
It took a second for me to realize what he was getting at. Was I a suspect? As crazy as it seemed, it was only natural for him to wonder, and hey, the man was just doing his job.
I weighed my words carefully. Sergeant Alterman needed the truth and he needed it fast. Wasting his time with me when the real killer was out there somewhere would get him nowhere. “Anyone at the chamber of commerce meeting will tell you I was there,” I said. “It was a dinner. And there was a speaker. You know, the usual networking sort of thing. After I left there, I went to the grocery store and . . .” Luckily, I’d stuck the receipt for my groceries in the pocket of my jacket, and I fished it out and handed it to him. “You can see the time there. I came back here straight from the grocery store.”
“And that’s when you found Ms. Sadler.”
I shook my head. “That’s when the lights went out. It’s an old building; they do that all the time. I went downstairs to replace the fuse and . . .” Just like that, the image of Muriel on the stairs came screaming back at me and I choked over my words. “That’s when I found Muriel. But that was after I was upstairs and saw that my room was trashed.”
This was not something Sergeant Alterman was expecting. He ran a hand through his hair and sat back. “Who did that?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? And I was all set to call the police about it, but that’s when the lights went out and then I went into the basement and . . .” Another memory washed over me. “And there was a woman down there.”
Alterman sat up straighter. “So I heard. Did you know her? A member of the club?”
Another shake of my head.
“Can you describe her?”
“Young,” I told him. “Dressed weird. Like in a costume.” I swung toward the building, ready to stand. “She’s got to still be in there.”
He put a hand on my arm. “We’ll look.”
“She could be the one who . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word murder. It burned my lips. It cracked my heart. “Maybe she hurt Muriel.”
“Maybe.” Something told me it was as much of a definitive statement as I’d get out of him. “You can be sure we’ll look into it. For now . . .” When a man in coveralls came out of the building, Alterman stood and stepped back. “This is Jason Starks,” he said. “Jason is from our crime scene investigation unit. He’s going to look you over and take some samples.”
“It will only take a minute,” Jason told me. He checked my hands and had me stand so he could check out my clothes. When he was all done, he told Alterman, “There’s a little bit of blood on her hand.”
“I checked for a pulse,” I explained. “When I found Muriel, I checked to see if she was still . . .” I hiccupped over the word. “Alive.”
“She could have changed after she killed Ms. Sadler.” Alterman said this to Jason Starks, but the message was clearly meant for me, and it had its intended affect. My knees shook like jelly.
“She could have,” Jason agreed. “And if she did, we’ll find the clothes here somewhere. The victim’s been dead between three and four hours.”
When he walked away, I told Alterman, “You won’t find bloody clothes that belong to me. I didn’t kill her.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“But you have to check.”
“Ducks in a row.” He gave me a careful look. “You need some coffee or something?”
“I just bought of bottle of wine at the grocery store. That’s what I really need.”
He smiled as if he understood, but unfortunately, he didn’t agree. He got out his wallet, handed the cop who’d been watching me earlier a wad of cash, and told him to find the nearest take-out place.
“You don’t need to do that. I can make coffee.” I stood. “That is, if I can use the club kitchen.”
“Any chance of sandwiches?” Alterman wanted to know.
I was about to tell him that I couldn’t eat a bite, not after everything I’d seen that night, when I realized he wasn’t talking about sandwiches for me. He and the other cops were hard at work, and who knew how long they’d have to be there at PPWC.
“I’ll check,” I told him.
The same young cop who’d been told to keep an eye on me earlier—his name was Danny—accompanied me to the kitchen, and together, we rooted through the fridge and came up with enough turkey and roast beef to make up a sandwich platter. There was a loaf of pretty-fresh bread to go with the meat, and I found a jar of pickles in the pantry. When I had it all assembled and a pot of coffee brewing, Danny radioed Alterman and he came to the kitchen. He looked over the tray where I’d arranged everything and nodded with appreciation. “You going to eat?” he asked.
I looked at the roast beef, dripping with juices, and my stomach soured. “I think I’ll stick to coffee. When can I get back into my room?”
He wrinkled his nose by way of telli
ng me he had no idea, and once he left to put the food out in the dining room and to put the word out to the other cops that there were sandwiches available anytime they were ready for a break, I plunked down on the chair where only that morning, I’d had breakfast with Quentin and Geneva.
“Long night, huh?” Danny the cop had made a sandwich for himself while we were setting out the food and he brought it over to the table and sat down. “What are you going to do now?”
I knew the answer.
I just didn’t want to face it.
“Now . . .” I finished the coffee in my cup for courage. “Now I have no choice. I’ve got to call the board.”
CHAPTER 6
The members of the board were appropriately shocked by the news.
But this was, after all, the Portage Path Women’s Club, and even word of its president’s death was not enough to keep these women from their duty. They’d been raised right. With plenty of money. Each of them knew in her heart of hearts that she had obligations—to country, to family, to the city of Portage Path. Most of all, they believed they had an obligation to PPWC, and far be it from any of them to shirk it.
It was the middle of the night.
They showed up at the club anyway, and in record time.
Patricia bustled in first, a little out of breath, a little disheveled, and wearing jeans and a navy-blue sweatshirt. The color matched the bruise on her cheek, which hadn’t been there when I saw her earlier in the day.
Of course I asked, “What happened?”
Patricia plunked down at a table in the dining room with its dainty tables, its wallpaper of pink and white roses, and pictures of old-time Portage Path in elaborate frames on all the walls. The kitchen, this one table in the dining room, and everything else in the club was off limits to us at the moment, including my rooms. Sergeant Alterman’s orders. He made sure of it by leaving us under the watchful gaze of Danny, who for the record, was now on his third sandwich and had a plate of chocolate chip cookies in front of him. At the same time I wondered where he’d found the cookies, my stomach heaved to remind me eating was a very bad idea.