Craig made an uncomfortable noise that sounded like someone elbowed him in the gut. “It wasn’t my favorite part of the day. I’ll tell you that.”
I patted him on the forearm in a gesture of sympathy. “It gets easier. I promise.”
My reassuring words seemed to help a little, and he nodded. “I hope so. I mean, I guess it could have been worse. She didn’t break down or fall apart, so at least there was that.”
“So what happened?” Alex asked, uncharacteristically impatient with his junior partner.
“She came to the door, and the maid told her the police had been there earlier in the day. I tried to be as gentle as possible, considering I had to tell her that her husband had been murdered that morning. She listened to everything I had to say and then cried a little. Then she said she needed to call someone, so I left.”
“Okay. Sounds pretty typical,” Alex said, jotting down a note in his tablet. “Anything else you think we should all know about that whole interaction?”
Craig looked over at me with terror in his eyes and then back at Alex. “Like what?”
Lifting his head, Alex smiled. “Like what did you feel in your gut about the entire thing? Did she look genuinely unhappy to hear her husband had been murdered? Did you get the feeling she knew before you told her? I mean, the man was dead for nearly half a day before we got to meet with her and break the news. So what did your gut tell you?”
I watched as Craig swallowed hard and thought that what his gut was telling him at that moment was that it presently planned to send his breakfast back up. He looked like everything Alex had asked terrified him.
“Uh, I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking about that kind of stuff when I was telling her,” he answered quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Hoping to rescue him and save us all from him getting sick all over the place, I squeezed his arm to calm him. “It’s okay. Just think back to what you thought at that moment, even if it wasn’t a conscious idea going through your head. For example, did her crying seem more like crocodile tears than real crying? Were there actual tears?”
Craig remained silent for a long moment before shaking his head. “I think they were real, but I do have to say I expected more. I know if someone told me that Katy was murdered, I’d be inconsolable.”
“Okay, that’s good. A cop’s instincts are invaluable,” Alex said, easing Craig’s worry. “So do you think she knew before you told her?”
“Hmmm…I’m not sure. I didn’t get a sense of complete shock from her when I broke the news.”
“Interesting. Good work, Craig. Do we know anything else about her and our victim? Were they happy? Any problems? He was a bit older than her, so anything going on?”
Craig shook his head, so Alex looked at me. “Anything the local gossips can contribute to this?”
“So you’ve had a change of heart?” I teased.
“You know the gossips in this town. Not that I put a lot of stock into what they think of people, but as they say, a clock is right at least twice a day. I did warn you I’d be asking about it before.”
I hated to confess that I had heard something about Samuel and Eliza Morrow in front of Craig. Sheepishly, I admitted, “Well, I don’t put my faith in what the gossips say, but I have heard rumors of issues, let’s say.”
“Rumors?” Alex asked, cocking an eyebrow in interest.
Both Alex and Craig stared at me as I figured out how to explain what I’d heard. The gossips always whispered about the Morrows because she was so much younger than he was and very much a flirty woman compared to her husband, who was always far more serious whenever he was seen in public.
Not that I ever thought any of it meant they were having troubles in their marriage. But the gossips did.
“Well, I’ve heard murmurings about her especially. That he was her sugar daddy, like I told you about yesterday. I have no evidence to support that, though. To me it was always a wild rumor. I’ve never met her officially. I’ve only seen her in passing. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen Samuel and his wife together.”
Alex twisted his face into a grimace, even though he’d asked for the local gossip. “Could be sour grapes. These local gossips aren’t exactly young women in the prime of their lives. Maybe they’re jealous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mrs. Morrow that I know of. Is she drop dead gorgeous?”
I tilted my head back and forth trying to decide how to describe Eliza Morrow. Tall and willowy, like many wealthy women I’d met, she had shoulder length black hair that would have looked too severe on other women but looked gorgeous next to her deep olive skin. The combination gave her a rather exotic look, and her dark brown eyes completed the effect.
But something about her always seemed off when I caught a glimpse of her on the street. I didn’t know if it was her nose, which seemed slightly too big for her face, or the sharply angular structure of her jaw. Whatever it was, I didn’t know if I’d call her gorgeous or even beautiful.
“Not drop dead gorgeous, but definitely striking,” I said, comfortable with how I’d categorized her without sounding catty.
Alex switched his focus to Craig and asked him, “What do you think?”
“She’s not my type, but I’d go with striking. She’s a little…um…” he hesitated for a moment before completing his thought. “A little severe looking for me, I think.”
“I’m intrigued,” Alex said with a chuckle. “I’m having a hard time picturing Samuel Morrow with a woman anyone would describe as striking and severe. He had a very average look going, so this is interesting. Maybe it was a sugar daddy thing for her.”
“What do we know about their background?” I asked Craig.
Opening up his notebook to the page with notes on the case, he began explaining what he’d found. “Eliza Morrow is forty-seven, and she’s fifteen years younger than her husband. Neither one of them were born in Sunset Ridge. He was a New Yorker and she was born in the Washington D.C. area. They married before they came to town in 1992. Samuel Morrow made a lot of money in diamonds in the eighties. He considered moving to Sunset Ridge as retiring. As far as I can tell, his wife has never held a job since they moved here. She doesn’t do much with local events, but she and her husband are always mentioned as donors to anything done through fundraising in town.”
Craig’s report that Eliza was only forty-seven surprised me. I would have put her at a few years older, to be honest.
“Well, her disinterest in attending all those local events is probably another reason the gossips who speak with forked tongues don’t like her,” Alex said with a huff of disgust. “Okay, so what do we all think about her as a suspect?”
His question surprised both Craig and me, and we looked at each other, our shocked expressions matching one another. It wasn’t like Alex to jump to conclusions like that. Nothing we’d learned so far had indicated Eliza Morrow should be considered a suspect in her husband’s death.
So I asked the obvious question.
“What makes you think she’s a suspect, Alex?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s customary to look at the spouse first in cases like this. That’s all.”
That may have been all, but there still seemed to be something strange beneath his words.
“So Eliza Morrow is our first suspect?” Craig asked in a confused voice.
Alex nodded. “For now. Let’s say she’s someone to keep in mind. What else do we know about Samuel?”
Craig opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Finally, he said, “I don’t have much. He owned that jewelry store of his since 1992. Although other stores have gone out of business in the last decade or so, his is one of the few that have remained and continues to do well. As far as the man himself, I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about him around town.”
I chimed in to add, “Me neither. Everyone loved Samuel Morrow. He wasn’t just a jeweler, though. He was a jewelry designer, and a good one. Just the other day Mrs. Jacobs showed m
e her pendant he created for her using the diamond from her engagement ring to her second husband. It’s beautiful.”
“Mrs. Jacobs? The lady who has had two husbands in the past three years?” Craig asked with a chuckle. “I’m going on the record right here and now that we’re going to have a case involving her at some point in the future. I don’t know if it will be her or one of her husbands, but I’m betting on her.”
I nudged his arm and laughed. “I think the saying is hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It says nothing about men.”
“Trust me. Men don’t need a saying. I’ve been doing this job long enough to know anyone scorned is a dangerous person,” Alex said in a serious voice, bringing down the mood of the room.
The three of us sat there in silence as the horrible truth of what he said hung in the air. Love made people do crazy things, and losing love made them do even crazier things.
Quietly, Craig asked, “Do you think the whole scorned woman thing is important to this case?”
I had a feeling he had gotten lost in our riffing back and forth, so I shook my head and smiled. “No way. Why would Eliza Morrow be scorned? Samuel was a loyal husband.”
Completely sidestepping our detour into our killer being a scorned woman out to get Samuel for some slight in romance, Alex asked Craig, “What did the fingerprint guys find at the scene?”
“Not a thing. Nothing but our victim’s fingerprints on a few jewelry boxes in the back. Not a single print on any of the glass cases, the register, or any of the other nearly five hundred boxes of things he had in the storeroom. It’s as if only Samuel had ever been in that store.”
Pursing his lips, Alex nodded. “Hmmm. Our killer wiped the place down before he or she left. What about the other store owners on that street? Did they see anything or anyone suspicious around the time Samuel was killed? A gunshot isn’t something that goes unnoticed.”
“Unless a silencer was used,” I added, garnering a frown in return for my contribution to the conversation.
“I spoke to all the store owners on that part of Main Street, and none of them heard anything,” Craig said. “They were surprised down to the last man that anything like this had happened basically right under their noses. Maybe Poppy’s right and a silencer was used.”
“We’ll get to that if and when we find out that no one really heard a thing. For now, I’m keeping my skeptical mind open. What else do we know?”
Craig and I sat there silently looking at Alex and likely thinking the same thing but not wanting to say anything about it. At least I knew I was thinking about it.
My ring.
But maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe there was another explanation for what happened to my ring.
I cleared my voice and said, “I know no one wants to talk about what happened with my ring, but I was thinking that maybe it wasn’t as simple as the killer had stolen it or had even killed Samuel to get it. Maybe he had to send it somewhere to get the design just right. Or maybe it’s in one of those hundreds of boxes. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same box as your ring or even anywhere close to it.”
Neither man uttered a word after I finished, and the longer the silence continued, the more I felt like I was the only one who believed the theft of my ring and Samuel’s death could be unconnected. I knew it didn’t sound plausible to them, but I needed to believe there was some other reason than my wedding band for Samuel’s murder.
Finally, Alex gave me what I knew was a forced smile and said, “That’s a good point, Poppy. Craig, I’m going to need you to check all those boxes and all of Samuel’s files to see if he had sent any pieces of jewelry out to another store in the past two weeks. Let’s see what we can find out about where that ring could be.”
“Okay. I’ll get on that right now,” Craig said, quickly standing up as if he now couldn’t wait to leave.
Alex’s office phone rang, so he held up his hand to stop Craig for the moment and answered it. “Hello?”
Pressing his lips together, he hummed for a second or two as he listened to the caller before saying, “Let me put you on speaker, Donny. I think Craig and Poppy should hear this.”
We leaned forward toward the black phone on the desk in front of us and waited for the coroner to repeat what had made Alex sound so serious just moments before. Had he found something other than the gunshot wound that we needed to know about?
Donny’s voice intoned through the speaker, booming out at us. “So the gang’s all there, huh? Good. Let’s me kill a bunch of birds with one stone.”
At times, his sense of humor just felt wrong. While the vision of all those dead birds lying on the ground around him in a pool of their own blood marched through my mind, I decided now was one of those times.
“Well, I have news for you all. That gunshot wound to Samuel Morrow’s head wasn’t the cause of death.”
Donny paused for effect and to let his stunning announcement sink in and then continued. “Now that I have your attention, I can tell you that I have the actual cause of death. Samuel Morrow died from a fractured larynx.”
All three of us looked at the phone wide-eyed as his last words resonated in our heads. He died from what?
“Can you say that again, Donny?” Alex asked, his voice full of shock at this news.
The coroner chuckled, as if any of this was funny in the least. “I said he died from a fractured larynx. The gunshot to the center of his forehead didn’t kill him. My guess is that your killer thought they’d throw us off the real reason he died.”
“Someone can actually die from an injury to the larynx? Was Samuel strangled then?” I asked, vaguely recollecting something I saw on a TV show once.
“Nope. Not strangled. His hyoid bone wasn’t broken.”
“Then how did he die, Donny?” Alex asked, his voice full of frustration from the coroner’s need to present his findings like this was some reality murder mystery show.
“So impatient. Okay, here goes. My best guess after my initial examination is that a single swift blow to your victim’s neck fractured his larynx. Usually, I’d say this is pretty rare because the whole larynx is one big area of cartilage, joints, and muscle, so it’s pretty flexible. But as we get older, like the rest of the body, that area gets less flexible. A sharp, hard hit to the front of the neck and bam! It’s game over then, unless you get medical help immediately.”
I looked across the desk at Alex, who looked like he had no idea what to make of this. Rarely had I seen him look so perplexed.
“I’ve seen people get hit in the neck dozens of times, Donny. Why did this kill Samuel? Isn’t the larynx just the voice box?”
“It is, but your larynx can fracture, and once that happens, it’s only a matter of time before you die because you can’t get air in. It’s really that simple. The human body is an amazing machine that can handle a lot of stress, but in this case, that one stressor on the larynx was too much and he died from it.”
“So he died from lack of oxygen?”
“Yes. And he wouldn’t have been able to cry out because his voice box wouldn’t have been working. Why someone then felt the need to shoot him in the head seems strange, but I’ll leave that up to you to figure out why,” Donny said.
Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Oh, and the gun used was a .45, although it seems like overkill to shoot a man you just killed. I’ll let you know if I find anything else interesting.”
Donny hung up, and Alex pressed the speaker button to end the call before looking across the desk at Craig and me. It felt like everything we’d been thinking about this case had just been upended.
Who would have wanted to kill Samuel so violently, and then shoot him afterward?
“Well, that was interesting, to say the least. Any ideas?”
The two of us sat there and shook our heads. I had no idea where to begin with this case. Then, one idea popped into my head.
“I think we might be able to safely rule out Eliza Morrow. From what Donny s
aid, the blow to Samuel’s neck had to be pretty strong. I don’t think she has the kind of strength necessary for that.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Craig nod, but Alex didn’t seem so convinced. Shaking his head, he frowned. “I’m not ruling anyone out as of now. I’ve been doing this for years, and this is the first time I’ve run into death by broken larynx. If that can happen, then I’m thinking anything can happen, including a forty-seven year old woman killing her sixty-two year old husband with one swift blow to his neck.”
I didn’t know why Alex suddenly seemed so intent on believing that a woman who had been married to a man for twenty-five years would kill her husband in such a way. In fact, he seemed strangely fascinated by the idea that their marriage wasn’t what it seemed to be on the outside, even though nothing either of them ever showed the world indicated any trouble whatsoever.
“Okay, well, I’m going to get on those boxes and files and leave you guys to it,” Craig said before hurrying out and leaving us alone.
“So what’s our first move?” I asked, silently suspecting I already knew the first person he wanted to speak to.
“Let’s go see this striking widow and see what we can find out from her. I also want to talk to the local gossips on this one.”
Surprised to hear he once again had a use for them, I asked, “Why?”
He winked at me and stood from behind his desk. “In matters of love in this town, I’ve seen that those ladies seem to have a pretty good track record. In fact, the only person they’ve ever been wrong about is you, Poppy. I can’t hold that against them forever, especially when what they have to say might help us solve a case, can I?”
As I followed him out of his office, I thought to myself that he was right. That didn’t mean I took what they had to say with anything more than a grain of salt, though.
Chapter Six
We pulled up to the grey and blue Victorian known around town as the Morrow Home, and Alex turned off the car but didn’t make a move to get out. I sat there in the passenger seat silently wondering what was holding him up since he seemed to be just staring blankly out the front window. When he didn’t move for a full minute, I figured it was time to say something.
The Finest Hour Page 5