In Plain Sight

by Lorena McCourtney

  “I see.”

  At this point, I reluctantly realized, I couldn’t not mention the skulker. As much as I’d prefer Leslie’s death to be a simple accident, if there was a murderer out there I couldn’t let my silence help him escape justice. “There’s something else,” I began. “Yesterday wasn’t the first time I’d been over to Leslie’s place trying to retrieve my whistle.”

  Sgt. Yates’s eyebrows, scar and all, lifted, but he listened attentively while I told him what I could about the person I’d encountered crashing through the brush at Leslie’s that day.

  “You’re sure this wasn’t an animal? A deer? Maybe even someone’s big dog? The Martinsens down the road have a big German shepherd.”

  “No, it was a person. I saw enough to tell that. But for only an instant, so I can’t give you a description,” I added hastily before he tried to pin me down. “I tried to call you shortly afterwards, but you were off duty and it didn’t seem important enough to disturb you at home. Then some things came up, and I just forgot to do it later.” Guilt still gnawed on me about that. Would it have changed anything if I’d called him at home immediately?

  He didn’t chastise me, but he said, “If anything else happens, you get in touch right away, okay?”

  “Like what would happen?” I asked, puzzled. I certainly wasn’t going to be over there prowling around Leslie’s property again.

  “Do you think this person you saw could identify you or your car?”

  For a moment the question seemed irrelevant. I hadn’t seen the skulker for more than a split second, couldn’t say if he was tall or short, white or black or green. Then I got the ominous connection.

  The skulker, if he’d had something to do with Leslie’s death, might think I’d gotten a better look at him than I had, that I knew more than I did. And it was possible he’d gotten a much better look at me and the T-bird than I had at him. A man who’d murdered once probably wouldn’t be reluctant to do it again.

  But I didn’t say any of that. I just tossed Sgt. Yates’s all-purpose question back at him. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just trying to cover all bases.” He stood up and closed the notebook. “Probably no need for concern. We’ll see what the autopsy shows.”

  Actually, Sgt. Yates didn’t inform me what the autopsy showed. It was on the local news, Brad Ridenour reporting.

  20

  It was the top story on his early news program a day later. I’d already seen considerable activity over at Tara of the Ozarks that day, with two cars in the driveway identifiable through binoculars as police vehicles, one of them possibly state police. It looked as if a couple of officers were working around the perimeters of the property, although from this distance I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Two other men crawled around on their hands and knees on the dock for a long time. It appeared they were making an inch-by-inch examination of every board. Another officer took dozens of photographs. I also saw people coming and going in the house, although I couldn’t tell how many or what they were doing.

  I might be an amateur, but I could tell what this was: a crime scene investigation.

  Sandy and I were eating dinner when Brad Ridenour’s smooth voice came on the local news. We stopped eating and turned to look at his husky shoulders and blond-haired, square face filling the TV screen. His voice and expression always matched the tone of the news story he was covering, and now both were grave.

  “After an autopsy this morning, authorities have released new information regarding the body recovered two days ago near a dock in Little Tom Lake. The body was earlier identified as that of Leslie Marcone, owner of the lakeside property in the exclusive Vintage Estates area where the body was found. First indications were that the victim had drowned, but this morning’s autopsy revealed that she was already dead before her body entered the water. At this time, local authorities have changed classification of the death from accidental to probable homicide, although actual cause of death has not been released.

  “This news has hit this small, closely knit community hard—”

  Sandy suddenly jumped up and flicked the remote control to turn off the set, cutting off any further details. She sat down again and picked up her fork.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. She stabbed a slice of cucumber as if she had a grudge against it. “I just didn’t want to hear any more.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “How do they know she didn’t drown and was already dead?” Sandy asked in a tone that suggested she wanted to challenge this decision.

  “I think it has to do with whether or not there was water in her lungs. No water means she wasn’t breathing, so she didn’t inhale any water when she was in the lake. Which she would have done if she were alive.” Another of the charming facts I’d gleaned in my many hours immersed in mystery books. “Although there may be more to it than that.”

  “Homicide means somebody killed her. And then dumped her body in the water,” Sandy said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I’ve never known anyone before who … got murdered.” Sandy suddenly sounded even younger than her fourteen years, like a small, wounded child who’s made a discovery that alters her view of the world. Now it was a new and frightening place where people we actually knew could be murdered.

  I’d known another young woman back on Madison Street who was murdered. That didn’t make this any easier. Maybe it was a reason I’d so strongly wanted to keep this in the “accident” category.

  “But who could have done it?” Sandy asked.

  A number of possibilities instantly crowded my mind, but all I said was, “The authorities will find out. They’re already working on it. I saw a whole herd of police officers over at Leslie’s place today.”

  Sandy now battered the slice of cucumber into mushy slivers. “She wasn’t a very nice person,” she said. “She was rude and snobbish and bad-tempered and stingy and mean. Look how she fired you.”

  I knew what Sandy was trying to do: make this not quite so awful by reminding us both that this wasn’t a kind and good and loving person who had died. It wasn’t working, I could tell from her scrunched-up eyes and compressed lips. Sandy was too good and sweet a person herself not to be stricken about this no matter what kind of person Leslie had been. I patted her hand sympathetically.

  She pushed her plate back. “I guess I’m not hungry.”

  I didn’t try to encourage her to eat. I wasn’t particularly hungry myself.

  I wasn’t surprised when I got a call from a crisp-voiced woman at the county sheriff’s office the following morning. She said Sgt. Yates would like to talk to me about the Marcone case. Could I come in at 2:00? I said yes, and she gave me directions to the station on the other side of town. I knew this would be a more formal, official interrogation than the relatively casual interviews Sgt. Yates had conducted with me before. We weren’t into missing books or accidental drowning now; this was murder.

  At 2:03 Sgt. Yates came out to usher me through a side door after the woman at the barred front window used an intercom system to announce my presence. He led me to a room where the only window was a small square in the door with metal mesh crisscrossing the glass.

  “This room will be quieter, with less chance for interruptions, than my office,” he said as he stepped aside to let me enter.

  “Am I a suspect?” I gasped when I saw the room’s sparse furnishings. A scuffed table, two wooden chairs, and a tape recorder. This was obviously where they interrogated suspects or prisoners. “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “You can have one present, of course, if you’d prefer. But no, you’re not a suspect.”

  “Thank you.”

  “At least not at this time,” he amended smoothly. “Until we have the perpetrator, no one is ruled out.”

  Fair enough. Although it didn’t exactly raise my self-confidence or calm the nerves that felt like ants playing hockey under my skin. There was something about the stark room that brought up unfocused shiv
ers of guilt, a feeling that I had surely done something reprehensible and Sgt. Yates was going to pry it out of me. I was still feeling guilty for not contacting him immediately about the skulker.

  It’s also difficult to exude a no-fear confidence when a chair is man-sized and your feet don’t quite reach the floor. I tried scooching down in the chair until they did touch, but that left my chin uncomfortably close to the top of the table. I scooched back up. The feet would just have to dangle.

  Sgt. Yates checked the tape recorder to make sure it was working. He also had a pad for notes.

  “I’m … uh … sorry about the body,” I said, recalling his earlier admonition about “no dead bodies.”

  “Someone had to find it.”

  A noncommittal comment, but I couldn’t help wondering if beneath it he was thinking, But isn’t it strange that it was you? I was reminded that even though I was not an official suspect, I could become one.

  The interview started with mundane questions about my identification—name, address, date of birth, occupation, my relationship to the deceased, etc.—and then went into more detailed questions on everything we’d talked about before Leslie’s death turned into a homicide. He asked minuscule specifics about my finding the body and why I was on the property. He even asked how I’d broken the cord attached to my whistle, a question he hadn’t asked before.

  I was tempted to give a dignified explanation. I was dusting the banister, you see, and the whistle accidentally snagged on the newel post, and the cord broke. That would sound logical and sensible, wouldn’t it? But my squeamishness with not-quite-truths got in the way, as it usually does, and so I wound up telling a considerably less dignified story about scooting down the banister on my bottom.

  “Did Ms. Marcone make any comments about such unorthodox dusting methods?” Sgt. Yates inquired.

  “I don’t believe she was aware of this particular incident. At least she didn’t mention it when she fired me.”

  “I see.”

  From the seriousness of his expression, I thought perhaps he was accustomed to murder cases involving LOLs breezing down banisters.

  Today there were also questions about the gate-ramming neighbor, and I suggested Cass Diedrich’s name for further information about him. I didn’t want to tell Sgt. Yates that Cass’s husband still had a grudge against Leslie. For Cass and the kids’ sakes I deeply hoped Al Diedrich hadn’t had anything to do with Leslie’s death.

  Yet, even though I didn’t know him, I could uneasily picture an unpleasant scenario. Al (I saw him as big and burly) goes to confront Leslie about Cass’s unpaid wages. Leslie happens to be down on the dock. They argue. He gives her an angry shove. She hits her head when she falls. He is horrified but scared when he realizes she is dead. He shoves her body into the water and leaves town on his next truck run.

  I blinked. It was, momentarily, so real …

  As it turned out, however, I didn’t have to mention Al Diedrich after all. Without any help from me, Sgt. Yates wrote the name Al in parentheses after Cass’s name. He apparently was not unfamiliar with Leslie’s former housekeeper and her husband.

  I did, however, volunteer information about the man with binoculars down on the dock, whom Leslie had identified as “Michael” and whom I now thought was probably the CyberPowerAds’s head man, Michael Flattery. I detailed the ex-husband’s appearance at the house, his hostile attitude about Leslie selling out her share of the company, and his veiled threat. I also offered what I’d gleaned about CyberPowerAds from the Internet. I handed him a page I’d prepared listing some of the more informative websites.

  “Well, you’ve been busy, haven’t you, Mrs. Malone?” Sgt. Yates raised the scarred eyebrow as he glanced at the page. I tried to tell myself that in spite of the deprecating tone, busy could be a compliment. “We’ll be doing a complete background check, of course, on all the persons involved.” He set the paper on the table and continued with the questions.

  Did I know if ex-husband Shane Wagner had stayed at a motel here in town? (I had no idea.)

  Did any other guests come to the house while I was employed there? (Nary a guest that I ever saw.)

  Did Leslie have any pets? (Not unless she acquired one after she fired me.)

  Did I know the name of the man who took care of the mowing and yard work? (Sorry, no.)

  Did I ever overhear phone conversations suggesting conflict between Leslie and any of her former partners in the company or anyone else? (I never overheard phone conversations on any subject. Leslie was a fanatic about that. Although I did mention her peculiarity about often letting the phone ring.)

  I couldn’t tell from his unrevealing demeanor if Sgt. Yates thought I was supplying valuable information or babbling irrelevant nonsense. I also didn’t know if interviewees were allowed questions of their own, but I tossed some into the mix anyway.

  “Do they know yet how long Leslie had been dead when I found her?”

  “The fact that the body was in the water makes precise determination difficult. The estimate is from five to seven days.”

  “But that would make her dead since before I went over there the first time! Before I almost ran into that guy skulking around.”

  He gave me a speculative look. “Actually, although we’re still in the preliminary stages of investigation, we’ve talked to a number of people. So far we haven’t been able to locate anyone who saw her after the morning you were fired.”

  I was the last one to see her alive? My spine prickled. I looked at Sgt. Yates out of the corner of my eye. Did he attach any significance to that timing?

  “Did the autopsy show a head injury?”

  Sgt. Yates riffled his notebook papers, apparently using the time to consider whether or not I was entitled to that information. Finally he said, “No. No apparent head injury.”

  “I don’t understand. What caused her death, then, if she didn’t drown and wasn’t hit on the head?”

  “The medical examiner says cause of death was asphyxia.”

  “Asphyxia?” I paused to run that through my mystery-novel expertise, remembering that there was a differentiation between cause of death and manner of death. They’d already established that manner of death was homicide, now we were into what actually caused her death. “You mean as in strangled, with a rope?”

  Another of Sgt. Yates’s considered pauses. “No. Suffocated. Smothered.”

  “Like with a pillow held over her face?” It was the only means of suffocation I could think of. Yet this didn’t really sound logical. “I can’t imagine Leslie just letting someone hold a pillow over her face until she suffocated.”

  “Information about a possible murder weapon is not being released at this point in time.”

  “Perhaps you should be looking for someone with scratches or bruises. Because she’d surely have fought back.”

  “If you see anyone who meets that description, be sure to let us know right away.” It was too politely spoken to qualify as outright sarcasm, so I was also polite when I said, “I’ll do that.”

  Then another appalling thought occurred to me. “Is there any indication that this crime was of a sexual nature?”

  “No.”

  I thought back to Brad Ridenour’s TV report about the changed status of Leslie’s death from accidental drowning to homicide. “The information about suffocation wasn’t on the news.”

  “We don’t tell the media everything, Mrs. Malone,” he said smoothly, with what I thought was a controlled satisfaction. “Although they’ll have that particular bit of information shortly.” Which was why he’d so readily given it to me, of course. I saw annoyance or frustration here, as if he’d prefer the media got freeze-dried crumbs.

  Which made me wonder. Was there something more the authorities weren’t telling the media? I went fishing again. “I suppose there are various laboratory tests on tissue and fluid samples that take time to process?”

  Sgt. Yates’s smile held a glimmer of frosty satisfaction that ma
de me suspect I was right. The authorities were holding something back. But all he said was, “Nothing gets by you, does it, Mrs. Malone?” Unspoken were the words, Deliver me from little old ladies who read mystery novels.

  He stood up. Interview, and my questions, over. I also noted that today there were no hints about me and the older-but-still-active Pa Yates getting to know each other better.

  Not one to give up easily, however, I said, “Has the uncle’s wife made arrangements concerning the body?”

  “Cremation, I believe. No formal services. At least not here.”

  “I wonder if the uncle inherits everything?”

  A tap of notebook on table and a speculative look. “Why do you ask?”

  I murmured, “Just wondering,” but I’m sure he knew what I was thinking. I also suspected he may have given this question some thought himself.

  Because murder has been done for considerably less than a plantation-style estate, a portfolio of stocks, and who-knew-how-much cash and other assets. And even if the uncle wasn’t capable of this, maybe his wife was.

  Sgt. Yates glanced at his watch, which might mean he had an important conference with his superiors. Or maybe it was time for his coffee break. However, considering that the glance came at mention of the uncle’s wife, I wondered if it meant something else.

  21

  Three people were in the reception area when I came out of the hallway leading to the interrogation room. An older man with gold-rimmed glasses sitting with his ankles crossed. A blue-suited businessman pacing the floor and eying his watch. A young guy in baggy camouflage pants and combat boots, a staple in his ear, and a smoldering mess-with-me-and-you’ll-be-sorry attitude.

  Camouflage Guy didn’t look at me, but I uneasily wondered if I’d encountered him before. Maybe skulking in that wooded jungle on Leslie’s place, before or after murdering her? The outfit looked appropriate, and he was muscular enough to toss her in the lake with one hand. Was he here for questioning by Sgt. Yates?