If She Should Die

by Carlene Thompson

  “Those letters,” Winter muttered. “I don’t think Mr. Prince can keep them to himself much longer. They need to go to the police lab.”

  “Good luck with prying them away from him.” Christine led Winter into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. “The hydrator drawer on the right contains Ricky the Rat. I don’t think I can look at him again without getting too queasy for coffee and a doughnut.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had doughnuts,” Winter said.

  “My friend Bethany brought them. I’m going to wait in the living room.”

  She listened to the deputy pull out the drawer, then mutter, “You’re one hell of a big, rank rat.” Then he called out to her, “This one’s bigger than most I’ve seen. Someone went to a lot of trouble to find you a prizewinner!”

  “I’m complimented beyond belief,” Christine said. “He’s probably infested with plague-carrying fleas, too.”

  “We don’t want to get excited over plague on top of everything else. The state lab will let us know if he’s sick.”

  “You’re going to send that thing to the lab?”

  Winter answered gravely, “We have to make certain this wasn’t a homicide, ma’am.”

  Christine smiled. He was still trying to take the edge off her nerves. It was working. Slightly.

  “I have our friend in a plastic bag and I have to pass through the living room to get out to my car,” he warned her. “Close your eyes or turn your back. Please don’t scream and faint.”

  “If I scream, Mrs. Flint will be over here in a heartbeat. She can’t pass up that kind of excitement.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns up even if you don’t scream. Not out of curiosity, mind you. Just to make sure you’re all right.” He walked past her, holding the plastic bag to his side. “I’ll be back to look around and see how the intruder entered.”

  After he’d gone outside, Christine went into the kitchen and pulled the hydrator drawer out of the refrigerator. She’d pour some strong disinfectant in it, then give it a good scrubbing before it went back into the refrigerator. She looked at the refrigerator and for a moment thought recklessly, I’ll get a new one that’s never been befouled by a rat. Then reason took over. This refrigerator was one year old. She was being silly.

  In a minute, Winter returned. “I assume you’ve searched the house.”

  “Yes. My friends Bethany and Tess were here when we discovered the rat. They went all over the house with me.”

  “Would you mind going again? I’d like to do my own search, and I’d be more comfortable if you accompanied me.”

  “To protect you in case we run across a live rat?”

  “Well, that of course,” he replied in mock seriousness, “but mostly so you’ll be certain I’m not taking anything or rifling through underwear drawers.”

  Christine laughed. “I never for a moment mistook you for a pervert who’d check out my underwear.”

  “You’d be surprised how many women think that’s exactly what I have in mind if a bedroom search is necessary.”

  “Maybe they’re just hoping,” she returned, then turned bright red at the inappropriateness of her comment. Michael Winter cocked an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “It sounded flattering, but flattery won’t get you out of searching the house with me,” he said easily. “Let’s start upstairs.”

  “There are three bedrooms upstairs, one of which I’ve turned into a kind of office, although Rhiannon seems to think it’s hers. She’ll probably try to glare you to death if you enter. She’s extremely territorial.”

  “My daughter had a cat,” Winter said. Abruptly a shadow seemed to fall over his face. Christine knew he was divorced. The daughter probably lived with his ex-wife, but something told her not to ask any questions about the child.

  “Pets teach children responsibility,” she said lamely. “When Jeremy and I were children, we always had pets. Usually dogs.” As they neared the top of the stairs, Rhiannon dashed into Christine’s bedroom and hid under the bed. “So much for cats protecting you.”

  “Once in a while one comes through. I knew a couple who were awakened by their cat sitting on their bed yowling its head off. Turned out their four-year-old child was having a seizure in the next room.”

  “Good heavens!” Christine was genuinely surprised. “I thought only dogs did that kind of thing.”

  “Don’t let Rhiannon hear you say that. Let’s start in this room.”

  Twenty minutes later, they had worked their way to Jeremy’s basement apartment. “This place is great!” Winter exclaimed.

  “Do you think so?” Christine asked, pleased. “It sounds awful to say I’m making my brother live in the basement. But I wanted him to have privacy.”

  “This isn’t like any basement I’ve ever seen,” Winter said.

  “It was the basement that convinced me to buy this particular house. The land behind it slopes down and the basement opens onto that big, flat expanse with the patio. Jeremy can come and go without having to enter through the upstairs. That will make him feel more independent.”

  “And so much light comes in through those sliding glass doors, even on a drab day like this. I’ll bet he loves it.”

  “I think he does. I wanted him to move in several months ago, but Ames asked if he could stay through the holidays. I don’t know why, though. I don’t believe he really pays that much attention to Jeremy, and he annoys Patricia. With everything that’s going on now, I’m going to insist Jeremy move in here as soon as possible. The atmosphere at Ames’s can’t be good for him.”

  “I agree. But it was good of Jeremy to stay for so long. I’m sure he’d rather be with you.” Winter ambled around the big carpeted space, then did a double take when he saw the quilted silver mesh satin bedspread, the huge model of the starship Enterprise beside the bed, and a framed poster of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock looming over the double bed. “Wow,” he said simply.

  “Jeremy is a die-hard Trekkie,” Christine explained.

  “I guessed. Where in the world did you find that bedspread?”

  “Wilma Archer made it for him. She ordered the material from some place she found on the Internet. Or rather, her son found it.”

  “Streak Archer?”

  “Yes.”

  “The computer genius.”

  Christine stiffened. She knew Winter thought Streak might be the Brain to whom Dara referred in her diary. “Streak has always been very kind and patient with Jeremy. He even lets Jeremy come over and mess with his computers. He’s a good man.”

  “He must relate to Jeremy on some level.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean that people see them both as being different, and not different in a good way.”

  “You’ve heard bad things about my brother?”

  “The usual,” he said vaguely, clearly wanting to change the subject.

  “And you’ve heard bad things about Streak,” Christine pursued.

  Winter looked at her with a somber but kind expression. “Miss Ireland, Streak Archer is a recluse who gets hysterical in public places. What do you think a lot of people say about him?”

  “Terrible things, especially because he was perfectly normal, as they would say, before he went off to serve his country.”

  “Fighting an unpopular war. I didn’t mean to insult you or him. I’m just telling you what I’m sure you already know. People think he’s strange.”

  And he was strange, Christine admitted silently. She didn’t really know Streak. She had no reason to be so protective. Besides, her defensiveness was probably doing him more harm than good.

  “Well, I sure do like that bedspread,” Winter said, as if wanting to regain their earlier light tone but not quite knowing how.

  “Maybe I can find out where Wilma got the fabric. You might have to quilt it yourself, though.”

  “Fine. Quilting was on my list of things to learn this summer. That and
learning to make my own lye soap.”

  Winter smiled at her and she relaxed. “I guess this concludes our tour of the house,” Christine said.

  “And we found no broken or unlocked windows.”

  “I’ve only been back a couple of hours. I haven’t opened any windows and then relocked them. And the locks on the sliding glass doors are intact. All the other doors were locked when I got home,” Christine said as they went upstairs to the kitchen. “I assume whoever put the rat in the refrigerator did so at night. Otherwise Mrs. Flint would have noticed someone strange hanging around the house.”

  “How do you know she didn’t?”

  “Did the police get a report of any prowlers around my house?”

  “No.”

  “Then she didn’t see anyone. It’s Mrs. Flint’s dream to be on one of those shows like Unsolved Mysteries. She would have been on the horn to police headquarters if she’d noticed anything the least bit peculiar or suspicious.”

  Winter grinned. “Sometimes that type can be very helpful. Other times they can be a pain. Mostly the problem is that they lose credibility by crying wolf. If she’s a habitual caller to headquarters, they might not have taken a report she made too seriously. I’ll have to talk to her. Right now, though, I’m going to take a look outside. You don’t need to go with me. It’s starting to drizzle.”

  “Fabulous. I’d rather have a regular old steady rain than drizzle. If you come upon any stunning clues, though, will you call me out to see?”

  “Certainly,” Winter said firmly. “But unlike in books, criminals rarely leave a convenient footprint or matchbook or, best of all, a photo of themselves. They’re downright impolite in real life. Never give us cops a chance to show off.”

  “Let’s hope this was an amateur who touched every surface with bare fingers and maybe even dropped his business card.”

  “That would be a blessing. I’ll be ready for some of that coffee when I get back.”

  “I’ll have it ready.”

  While he was outside checking for any sign of the intruder’s entrance, Michael thought about his earlier conversation with Christine. Most of it had been serious, but there had been some joking, too. He almost never made jokes on the job, particularly with young, attractive women. Sometimes they took things wrong, thought you were flirting, reported you for sexual harassment. This had never happened to him, though it had happened to some of his friends in LA. But somehow he wasn’t worried about Christine Ireland. She didn’t seem like the type of person who exaggerated, made something out of nothing, put significant or even malicious spins on casual or innocent statements.

  And what makes you think you know her so well? he asked himself as he parted box hedges, looking for depressions in the damp mulch. You’ve barely met her. And you’re acting entirely too lighthearted about all of this. She’s scared silly and with good reason, and here you are making jokes about rats and quilting and—

  Michael saw a piece of shiny metal lodged in the mulch. He pulled on a latex glove and carefully lifted it, blowing off the dirt to reveal a circular piece of silver with engraving. Jackpot! he thought. Then he read:

  Rhiannon

  442 Cardinal Way

  Winston, WV

  304-555-5095

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered. Miraculous find! The cat’s lost tag.

  He went back to searching and thinking about Christine. Yes, he was being too casual with her. She probably thought he wasn’t taking her case seriously. Besides, he thought with a stab of guilt, he hadn’t acted this way around a woman since the death of his daughter and his divorce from Lisa less than a year later. Stacy was dead, his wife still a painful memory. He had no right to feel any happiness, especially with a woman who was going through what Christine Ireland was going through right now. What was wrong with him? Was he going crazy? He was thinking more about making Christine feel calmer than working the case. Well, maybe not more, but too much.

  He’d pull himself together, he decided sternly. He would be solemn. He would be earnest. No joking. He’d barely crack a smile until he left.

  When he went back inside, Christine looked at him expectantly. “Just as I thought,” he said. “No footprints, no signs of anyone having pried at windows with a penknife, not a scratch on a door lock.”

  “Then obviously it was a ghost,” she returned grimly.

  He looked at her. She returned his gaze with complete sincerity. Then her aqua eyes seemed to dance and a smile tugged at the right corner of her mouth. He couldn’t help himself. Grinning, he said, “You had me worried there for a minute.”

  “Your face looked like it had turned to granite. You didn’t find anything?”

  He held out Rhiannon’s tag. “Just this.”

  “She lost it about a month ago. I’ve already had a new one made.” She smiled. “Mrs. Flint was watching you the whole time you were in the front yard. I thought she was going to crash through her picture window when you picked up something. She must have thought it was something devastatingly important. How disappointed she’d be to know it was Rhi’s tag. Unless she saw for herself.”

  “How could she have seen something that small?”

  “Opera glasses.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I’m not. I swear as a former Girl Scout.”

  Winter laughed. “Then I definitely need to ask her a few questions about what she saw going on around here yesterday. She seems fairly observant.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Ready for some coffee now that the dirty work is done?”

  Winter followed Christine into the kitchen, where she set out coffee mugs. She poured cream into a creamer she never bothered with for herself and searched until she found the dainty sugar holder before she remembered that Deputy Winter took his coffee black, just as she did. She left the cream and sugar on the counter and placed doughnuts on a china plate.

  “I didn’t expect breakfast,” he said.

  “You don’t have to eat. I just thought you might be hungry.”

  “I am.” Winter went to the sink and lathered his hands with antibacterial soap. “And what kind of cop would I be if I turned down doughnuts?”

  “Actually, I’m a doughnut junkie. My friend Bethany bought some for me at the bakery this morning. She was here waiting when I got home from the hospital.”

  Winter looked at her. “Here? In the house?”

  “No. She hadn’t come in yet, but she does have a key.”

  “Anyone else have a key?”

  “My friend Tess. You met her at the hospital yesterday.”

  “You mentioned then that she had a key. She’s married to that guy who works for you,” he said, drying his hands on a paper towel.

  “Reynaldo Cimino. He’s a jewelry designer. I met Tess the first week I moved to Winston when I went into her bookstore, Calliope.”

  “I suppose Ames Prince has a key.”

  “Well, no,” Christine said reluctantly as they sat down at the table. “If he had a key, that would give his wife access to the house, and I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of Patricia nosing around in here under some imaginary pretext.”

  “You think she’d do that?”

  “I don’t really know what she’d do. In spite of our having lived in the same house for years, I don’t feel I know her very well.”

  “But you know her well enough to distrust her.”

  “To be fair, I’m not sure that distrust is warranted. Patricia and I just never hit it off. I could be suspecting her of doing things she’d never do. I trust Beth and Tess completely, though.”

  Winter nodded. “I think you should have your locks changed. Just to be safe.”

  “But I told you I trust the only two people who have keys.”

  “Did you have the locks changed when you moved in here?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know who the former owners gave keys to. You don’t even know how many keys might be floating around out there.”
<
br />   “Oh. I should have thought of that when I bought the house. It never occurred to me.”

  “It doesn’t to a lot of people. But now seems like a good time to correct the oversight.”

  “A very good time. I don’t care to have any more wildlife deposited in my refrigerator.” She picked up the coffeepot. “You take it black, don’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m psychic. I also served you coffee in the store day before yesterday.”

  He closed his eyes. “God, I was so tired that day I forgot all about the coffee, although it sure hit the spot at the time.” He watched as she poured, then said, “Back to the people who have keys to this house. How about your brother?”

  “No. Unfortunately, Jeremy has a penchant for losing keys. He tries to hang on to them, but unless you put one on a chain around his neck, which makes him feel dumb . . .” She trailed off, feeling disloyal to say she couldn’t even trust her brother with a house key.

  Winter smiled. “I understand.”

  “Most people don’t. They think he is dumb. And his IQ is a bit low. Around seventy. But he’s sweet and so talented in other areas. Jewelry design, for instance—”

  “Miss Ireland, you don’t have to explain,” Winter said gently. “I have a cousin just like Jeremy. We’re exactly the same age and were best friends growing up.”

  “A cousin like Jeremy? Your best friend?” He nodded and she felt surprisingly relieved. Rarely since she’d moved to Winston had she met anyone who really understood Jeremy—his strengths as well as his weaknesses. Many people either avoided him or patronized him. “Are you still close to your cousin?”

  “As close as we can be with him in Los Angeles and me in West Virginia. He got married last year.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes. A sweet girl he met in a special school. They both work in a nursery. They love flowers, shrubs, all that stuff that dies if I just look at it, while they make it flourish. They live next door to his parents, who help them out some, but they’re really fairly self-sufficient.”

  “For some reason I’m stunned.”

  “I can tell. You look like you could use a doughnut to steady your nerves.”