“Harry, don’t touch her.” Sue was aghast.
“I won’t. I don’t want to destroy evidence, but as we’re the first ones here, I should look.”
Sue tried to avoid looking at the macabre sight of a woman in her early forties, hands straight up, jaw wide open, eyes bulging. She couldn’t see Thadia’s legs under the steering wheel, which prevented them from becoming as bent as the arms. A body in rigor mortis is difficult to remove. That would be the ambulance team’s problem.
Sue marveled at Harry’s matter-of-fact approach. She did not marvel that Harry knew the deceased. Harry knew everybody.
Harry touched nothing. She carefully looked for a sign of struggle.
No struggle, but Thadia’s throat had been neatly slashed. Blood had spilled on her blouse; some had spurted on the windshield. Startling though this sight was, Harry’s curiosity kicked into high gear. She walked to the passenger door, did not open it—again, for fear of destroying fragile evidence. She peered in the window to see if she could get a view of Thadia’s right side.
A small carton, which she reckoned to be six inches square, rested on the passenger seat. Thadia’s purse was in the passenger-side footwell.
Harry walked close to the hood and peered in.
Thadia wore a short-sleeved buttoned blouse, her sweater thrown in the backseat. Harry noticed her bracelet. She returned to the driver’s side. The bracelet had slipped down to her elbow. Harry could clearly see it was a scarab bracelet and one scarab was missing. She’d not noticed the bracelet on Thadia before, but then one doesn’t wear the same jewelry every day.
“Harry,” Sue called.
“Coming.” Under her breath, Harry muttered, “Shit.”
Tucker, hard by Harry’s leg, looked up and stated, “She never had a chance.”
The chill dissipated while Harry and Sue waited for the sheriff’s department. Given that there was a nasty accident on Garth Road, it took Rick and Coop a half hour to reach Pheasant Lane.
Rick slammed the squad car door. Furious at the delay, he merely nodded at Harry and Sue while walking to the corpse. Upset herself, Coop first questioned her neighbor, then Sue.
“Look at her throat, Coop,” Harry instructed after telling Coop all she observed on first finding Thadia. “Neat work.”
Sue had less to tell, although she had taken note of the time they’d found Thadia: 10:13 A.M.
“You two can leave now. I know where to find you.” Coop waved them off.
“One more thing, she’s wearing a scarab bracelet. One is missing. I still have the one I found in Paula’s driveway, if you want it,” Harry said.
Tucker wished she could communicate with the humans. Fear, a powerful perfume, lingers. A dog can detect such an odor even after dogs pass. There was no fear odor on Thadia. That meant either she wasn’t afraid of her killer or the killer struck in a nanosecond.
Coop joined Rick, leaving light footprints in the dirt, for the dampness still clung to the road, the dew just melting on those fields and roads now touched by the sun.
He looked up at his partner. “Given the rigor, I’d say she was killed last night. It was forty-eight degrees at my house, cooler here. That factors in.”
“No sign of struggle.” Coop exhaled.
“No stranglehold or someone reaching out, face-to-face, to throttle her.” Rick stood back. That would leave small bruise marks. There were none. He again put his head into the driver’s side. “Just one clean cut.”
“Wish the photographer would get here.”
“Me, too. I’d like to get her body into the cooler. And I want the fingerprint team here pronto.”
A fly buzzed near Coop’s head. She shooed it away. “Nothing touched her. No nibbles. For a night hunter, this was a free lunch.”
“True, but there’s so much game out there now. The flies are discovering the body.”
“Rick, I read somewhere that a fly knows you’re dead two seconds after you breathe your last.”
“Luckily, she breathed her last at night. I’m hardly a fly expert, but I think they’re daytime insects. Ever think about it, the stages of death, I mean?”
“Sure,” Coop replied. “As law enforcement officers, we have to. The condition of a corpse, the time of exposure, all that stuff.”
“No, I mean, who discovered the body first? It’s usually not a human. It really is a fly or an insect. Then, if the body’s left out, the buzzards find it. The other carrion eaters come round. And then there are the bugs that burrow under the body so it will eventually collapse into the earth.”
“Pretty revolting.”
“To us. If you and I were vultures, this would be a beautiful sight. And you know, if those carrion eaters didn’t exist, the earth would be choking with dead. There’d be Alexander the Great and piles of humans on him. There’d be old bears from the 1400s and mountains of little grasshopper exoskeletons.” He shrugged. “Be a goddamned mess.”
“You’re right.”
They waited, silent. A crunch in the distance announced someone’s arrival. Turned out to be photographer Charlotte Lunden driving up.
Rick waved as she parked behind them.
“Be a minute,” she called out as she stepped onto the road.
Leaning back in, she plucked out her camera.
“Come on. You’ve seen a lot worse.” Coop led her to the body.
As Charlotte took photographs from every angle, also paying attention to the vehicle in case any evidence at all might be there, she coolly commented, “Good shape. That’s a plus.”
“Yep,” Coop replied.
“Two deaths in less than two months of women who both worked at Central Virginia Medical Complex.” Charlotte kept snapping.
Coop nodded. “That had crossed my mind.”
“People have heart attacks in their twenties. Paula’s death appeared natural.” Charlotte adjusted the lens.
“Yeah. And her autopsy didn’t show a thing.”
“Curious.” Charlotte, who’d been leaning over the old car’s hood, stood up and checked her camera. “Bet you when this one’s opened up, her heart will have scar tissue.”
“How do you know her?”
“Class behind me at Saint Anne’s. She’d played lacrosse and field hockey. I ran track. Just couldn’t get into anything where you swung sticks.” Charlotte laughed. “Thaddy ran with the rich kids, the drug crowd. Every school has one. Scared me then, and scares me now.”
“A pity. What kids have to deal with. All I worried about was trigonometry.”
Charlotte took photos through the passenger window, then moved to shoot a few at an angle from the back window on that same right side. “Coop, it’s like everything else in this life. You make choices. She made those choices with her eyes wide open. Thadia and the coke crowd mocked the rest of us. We ranged from uncool to no cool to clueless.”
“I reckon she paid for it. Maybe the ultimate price. Right now, I’m clueless.”
“Hey, Coop, how many times have I seen you and Rick figure it out, finger the killer? You will this time, too.”
“Damn well better.” Coop made a note to remember that Charlotte was uncommonly observant.
• • •
Two other uncommonly observant creatures, Harry and Tucker, along with Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, headed back to their farm. As it was the first day after her first treatment, Harry had wanted to do something out of her normal routine and to ride the horses Sue Rowdon so loved. Harry had seen them in the show ring, in the hunt field. They could all jump. She had looked forward to the morning. She’d promised herself, along with a new workout program at Heavy Metal, to do something new every day. Grateful that this something new hadn’t occurred when she was farther along in her treatments, she couldn’t get the cut throat—a clearly visible bifurcated windpipe—out of her mind.
Tucker had filled in the cats as the humans untacked and washed the horses. They were furious to have missed such an adventure. For Pewter, this was twice she
’d missed out on something big. She pouted at Sue’s barn, pouted in the truck, and pouted at her own barn.
Harry called Noddy Cespedes at Heavy Metal even before calling Susan.
“Noddy, it’s Harry Haristeen.”
“Oh, Harry, I’m looking forward to working with you tomorrow.”
“Me, too. Is Thadia Martin a member of the gym? Forgive me for asking about another person.” Harry carefully did not spill the beans.
“No.”
“You know who she is, though?”
“Only because she sometimes comes in to watch Cory Schaeffer box. It embarrassed him. I stayed out of it. I think he told her he’d like to keep his training matches private. I never asked.”
“Don’t much care, either,” said Harry. “But isn’t it odd that a surgeon would take such risks with his hands?”
Noddy thought a moment. “I guess. I just figure whoever comes in here knows what they want and the bodily risk. He was on his college team. I guess he figured the workout, the concentration needed for boxing, rejuvenated him.”
“Painful sport.”
“Harry, it’s the most complete sport there is. Think about it, you’re out there all alone, pitted against another human being in your weight class but with different skills. You have to figure out your opponent as he’s trying to figure you out. You have to be in fantastic, unbelievable condition to go fifteen rounds, even ten. Here they stick to three. Cory is good, a very balanced fighter. Younger men all want to spar with him.”
“Hmm. You have any women boxers?”
“A few. Slowly but surely, women will pick it up. Like I said, to box you have to be in splendid condition, and it’s the best, and I mean the best, thing you can do for your hand-eye coordination.”
“Really.”
“Trust me. The best. If you’re a serious baseball player or tennis player, even if you don’t want to take a punch or throw one, you work the speed bag, then the big old heavy bag, run like a boxer runs to get in condition, you’ll be doing yourself a big favor.”
“I never thought about that.”
“No one does. Oops, gotta go. My noon client just came. A real success story. Overweight at seventy-two. Made a commitment to be healthy. He’s already lost thirty pounds in five months. No pills or crank diets, either.”
“You’re a miracle worker.”
“Well, thanks. I’m not. I just unlock the potential in everyone’s body.”
After hanging up with Noddy, Harry sat at the kitchen table, drank a Coca-Cola, and thought about the situation.
She called Susan and discussed it with her. Susan predictably told her she was engaging in her favorite sport: meddling, then jumping to conclusions.
Irritated as one can only be irritated by a spouse or best friend, Harry thumped to the barn followed by her other three best friends.
Even Pewter kept her mouth shut. She knew Harry was one step ahead of a running fit.
All the horses were out in the perfect spring day. Harry vented her thwarted energies on cleaning the barn. That took just one hour, because it was pretty clean to begin with.
Dusty, she stomped her boots, shook herself, then walked outside, lifted the back of the Volvo, whistled for the kids to jump in. She set off for Central Virginia Medical Complex.
“On a mission,” Mrs. Murphy said and sighed.
“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to be on it with her,” Pewter said, nodding.
“You jumped in the wagon,” Tucker said.
“Only because I couldn’t bear to be parted from you, Bubble butt,” the gray sassed.
Mrs. Murphy laughed, and Tucker, who hated being called Bubble butt, couldn’t help it. She laughed, too.
“All right. What’s going on back there?”
“Nothing,” all three replied in unison.
Confused but motivated, Harry wanted to talk to Toni Enright before news of Thadia’s murder reached the medical complex. What nagged at her was the scarab. Did Thadia kill Paula? How? Did someone who loved Paula figure it out and kill Thadia? Harry was making herself crazy.
“Stick to facts,” she said under her breath.
Harry didn’t know Toni Enright’s work schedule, but she knew where her small office was, shared with other nurses. Toni wasn’t there, but two nurses mentioned she was in the operating room. Harry left her cell number and asked if they’d give it to Toni.
On her way to her husband’s clinic, the phone rang. She pulled to the side of the road, a two-lane paved one, not heavily traveled. It was Toni. Harry told her Thadia was dead. Neither the sheriff nor Coop had told her she couldn’t.
Toni, voice rising, asked, “Did you see any evidence of drugs?”
“There was a small carton on the passenger seat. Don’t know what it contained.”
“Nothing in the backseat?”
“Her old sweater.”
“God, I hope she’s not full of drugs.”
“Why?” Harry naïvely asked.
“It will just kill the people in her recovery groups. Say your prayers, Harry. Say your prayers that she was drug- and alcohol-free. This is just terrible!”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You did exactly the right thing. I’ve been in the operating room, so Thadia missed her morning groups and I didn’t know. I’ll get a few other nurses; we will inform all her groups and call the people who are in the morning groups. Harry, some of these people are very fragile. They need to be informed in as supportive a way as possible.”
“I understand.” She was beginning to, at any rate.
“Why was she murdered?”
Harry told her what she’d seen.
“I just hope one of her old associates”—Toni said “associates” with dripping contempt—“didn’t reappear. She was in jail, remember?” Then Toni sighed. “She cleaned up. She tried to make amends. It was a bad end. I’d be a liar if I pretended to like her. I tolerated her. But she really did a good job with her groups. Too much drama for me, but that’s me.”
“Toni, that’s all of us except another ex-addict. I think most of those people feed on drama.”
“They certainly create enough of it.”
“Like politicians,” Harry crabbed.
“I’ve noticed lately that you’re spewing venom in that direction.”
“I am. I feel betrayed by elected officials. They’re officials, not leaders. Hell, I feel betrayed by my own body.”
Toni waited a moment. “Look to yourself first.”
“I’m sorry. I’m upset. First, I found Paula, and now Thadia. I need to keep my mouth shut.”
Toni replied, more kindly now, “It’s been two nasty shocks. You did the right thing in calling me. I need to contact her groups.”
“Toni, before I let you go. You said Cory Schaeffer was having an affair. Thadia was on him like a tick. Do you think his mistress could have killed her?”
A long pause followed this. “No. She’s not that stupid, and I don’t think she loves him. He’s her boy toy.”
After disconnecting, Harry drove to the clinic, where she told Fair everything.
Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker always enjoyed visiting the horses who were recovering from surgery in their special stalls.
As Harry’s husband advised her to relax and try to put this unpleasantness out of her mind, the cats and dog walked outside in the sunshine.
“She’s got the wind in her sails,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“It’s her nature, just like it’s your nature to chase mice and my nature to herd cows, horses, humans.” Tucker sighed. “What worries me is that with each of her treatments, she’ll become weaker. In the past when she’s made a mess of it, her strength and her quickness helped.”
“And we saved her ass,” Pewter bluntly put it.
“What do we do now? She’s going to get into it. Two young women dead from the same workplace. Something’s not right. It’s no coincidence,” the corgi posited.
“Double mu
rder.” Pewter tossed this off.
The two women’s deaths meant nothing to Pewter. As far as she was concerned, there were way too many humans on the earth anyhow. But she did love her human, and, although loath to admit it, she was worried, too.
They sat watching the beautiful deep blue barn swallows, with their russet breasts, flash in and out of the barn. Purple martins, tree swallows, and barn swallows, all of the same family, could zoom about at such speeds, and they could execute turns almost at a right angle.
“Well?” Pewter asked.
“Well what?” Tucker replied.
“What are we going to do?” For once, Pewter had dropped the blasé act.
“We’ll do the best we can,” Mrs. Murphy quietly said, then ducked as a barn swallow flew right for her.
“Banzai!” the beautiful bird shouted.
“We have to survive these barn swallows first.” Tucker laughed as she moved out into the small paddock, followed by the cats.
When Harry arrived at Heavy Metal Gym the next morning at 5:30, the weight room teemed with people. A smaller room off the weight room had mats on the floor for stretching. In the boxing area, two young men did rope work; another hit the speed bag.
Dr. Annalise Veronese and Toni Enright were already there. Harry flopped down and took her orders from Noddy. Chitchatting was at a minimum, because everyone here attacked their exercises seriously. Two bodybuilders arrived at 5:45 A.M. They, too, stretched. Easy as stretching appears compared to a three-hundred-pound bench press, it took concentration. It bored Harry, but she trusted Noddy’s wisdom.
“Hold that for one minute,” Noddy commanded.
On her back, left knee to the ground over her right side, Harry started to sweat. By the time she finished twenty minutes of stretching, she knew why the bodybuilders carried towels with them. She wiped her sweat off the mat.
“We’ll concentrate on your core. I’ll give you isolated exercises for your arms, back, legs, but today it’s your abs and obliques. We’ll work on strength, twisting for flexibility. Given your riding, there are times when you need to swivel in the saddle. Well, I’ve put together a program for you.”
Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery Page 14