The blood droned in her ears, and she had trouble breathing. “Why don’t we just leave again? He’s obviously not here right now. I will call him again later tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“We didn’t drive out here for nothing. Just a short talk and then we can have that nice dinner together. Come on.”
Michael squeezed her arm a moment, then pushed on and walked to the steps that led into the living room. “Mortimer? Hello? Michael Danning here, with Vicky Simmons. Could we have a talk about your work at her store?”
He fell silent. Vicky, who had followed him quickly, came up so fast he couldn’t stop her anymore. He did turn and grab her arms, but she had already seen something past him.
Mortimer on the ground. Face down. In a very unnatural position.
“Don’t look,” Michael said urgently. “I think he is dead.”
Chapter Nine
“Dead?” Vicky echoed. “How come?”
“I think somebody hit him over the head with something heavy,” Michael said. “He has a bad wound on the left temple.”
Vicky swallowed. “Check to see if he is only unconscious. If he’s still alive, we have to call—”
“I doubt it,” Michael cut in. “But I’ll look anyway. You get back into the kitchen, all right?”
Vicky was glad to obey. Her hands were shaking, and she wanted to sit down, but didn’t dare. If Mortimer was dead, this was a crime scene. They shouldn’t touch anything.
She hoped with all of her heart Mortimer was still alive and could be saved. He might have been a pain at times, but he was also a member of their community. Someone who had been alive and working in her store but hours ago. His death would be unreal.
And terrifying. This was no accident. Someone had struck him down. Intending to hurt and possibly outright kill him. Not even twenty-four hours after the fire at Perkins’ place. What was going on here?
Michael was back with her in a minute. “He is dead. The body is already cooling. Judging by those potatoes left on the stove he was killed when he was about to have dinner. Around six.”
“You think…” Vicky cleared her throat. “Can’t it have been an accident, a fall off those steps, or something?”
“No, somebody struck him down. Somebody strong, because it has been quite a blow.” Michael inhaled slowly. “Could have been on impulse, in a flare of anger.”
He held out a hand. In it was a hundred-dollar bill. “I found this on the floor, practically underneath the body. It could suggest the argument was about money.”
“You shouldn’t have touched that,” Vicky said. She reached into her purse. “I’ll call the police. In the meantime don’t touch anything else.”
“No.” Michael grabbed her wrist. “Wait with that call.”
“Wait? Why?”
Michael held her gaze. “Who do you think did this?”
“I have no idea. Gwenda maybe? She was always harassing Mortimer about not getting enough alimony. Even last night at the fire she was jumping him first thing as he arrived. Mortimer told Marge and me that as soon as he is employed, she wants a cut of what he earns. But he wasn’t willing to give her another dime and he said so. He looked ready to go after her and run her down. And she even threatened him in front of us. Said something about Mortimer having to pay her, the easy or the hard way. What if she came out here to continue that discussion and things got out of hand?”
Michael shook his head. “Gwenda is a good deal shorter and lighter than Mortimer. I wonder if she could have administered that blow to the head. I think if she did it would have lacked impact and wouldn’t have been lethal.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe if Mortimer was squatting.”
“Squatting?”
“To pick up something, like this hundred-dollar bill.”
Vicky wriggled her wrist free. “Either way, we have to call the police. This is a crime scene.” She pulled her phone out and punched in the emergency number. “You have to put that bill where you found it. Or no, just explain you picked it up because you were in shock. They might find your fingerprints on it later and think something of it.”
Some fine mess this was. She was going to be questioned by the police, again. This time not because she happened to be in college with a girl gone missing, but because she had found a dead body! Claire would be livid.
The phone was answered, and Vicky explained about the dead body in Mortimer Gill’s home. Her voice trembled, and she hoped she didn’t sound more shook-up than would be normal under the circumstances. After all, she had hardly known Mortimer. It was her knowledge of his interest in the old police files and his suggestive remarks this morning that made her so nervous about what it all meant. The possible link with Celine’s disappearance. The thought that someone local was covering up his traces.
“Please remain on the spot,” a crisp voice said. “A police car will come out to you at once.” The line went dead.
Michael stood looking at the floor with a frown. “I don’t believe for one moment Gwenda killed Mortimer. And it’s far too coincidental we have a fire the one night and a murder the next. There has to be a relation between the two. If only Cash had been forthcoming with information on whether it was arson.”
“You can ask him when he comes out here,” Vicky said. “Considering this is a murder, he will probably not leave this to a deputy, but come out in person.”
Michael ignored her remark and walked over to the sideboard where Mortimer’s tool chest stood. He picked up two gloves from it.
“What are you doing?” Vicky asked. “I told you not to touch anything else.”
“I’m going to search the place.”
“What?” Her heart was already galloping, and this only made it worse.
Michael said, “There might be something here that can tell us why Mortimer had to die.”
Vicky stared at him. “You can’t do that. It’s breaking the law.”
“When Celine went missing, the police bungled the case and they’re not going to do any better now.” Michael’s expression was tight.
Vicky shook her head. “You can’t say the police bungled the case back then. They just didn’t have any conclusive evidence. That was not their fault.”
“No?” Michael’s eyes flashed. “People said Perkins knew something and covered it up. He was only busy accusing me.”
“I can understand you’re angry about that, but try to see this with an objective mind. ‘People said’—yes, that’s what it was. Just talk. Rumors. You can’t act on those. You can’t break the law because of an idea!”
She saw in his expression that her words barely reached him and tried a different tack. “Besides, just take a look at this place. There’s junk everywhere. It’s a nightmare to search. Where can you even start looking?”
“Mortimer’s desk of course.”
“Even if he had some kind of paperwork, he need not have kept it in his desk. He could have taped it under his nightstand, or any other unlikely place. There could be an attic, a basement. If he wanted to ensure the safety of whatever he held…”
Vicky clenched her hands. “If you disturb things, anything, you could be committing a crime. They can arrest you for that. I can’t let you do it.”
Michael was pale and agitated. “Perkins failed back then, and maybe Cash knows about it. Maybe he is covering for the old man. He also lied about his whereabouts at the time of the fire, so he could be involved much deeper than we even suspect now.”
Vicky wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Half of her denied it was even possible; the other half was not so sure. She had not seen Cash in many years and maybe he had changed. Still he was the law around here and they had no choice but to work with him.
Vicky’s voice was hoarse. “Yesterday a barn burned down, now a man is dead. It has to stop here. This is police business. Just leave it alone. Please.”
Michael held her gaze. His eyes flickered with empathy, but still he straightened up as if he had taken a final decision.
“Vicky, I left this place in bits and pieces. I traveled the world for stories, yes, but also to stay one step ahead of the hurting. Now I’m back here and I have to face it. I can’t keep on running. There has got to be something that can prove who took Celine back then. Mortimer was onto it and that’s why he was killed.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“No. But if there is only a one-percent chance it was so, I have to look into it. I need the truth now. I can’t let it elude me again. You don’t have to be a part of this. Just pretend you didn’t see me searching.”
Vicky scoffed. “How?”
Michael dived back into the living room, apparently intending to search until the police showed up.
“Mortimer can’t tell me anymore,” he called back to her. “If I want to find anything, I have to find it myself.”
As Vicky nervously listened for sirens in the distance, she glanced over Mortimer’s toolbox and saw a note sticking out of it. It was the sketch of her fireplace Mortimer had been using that day, a drawing with some measurements and a calculation beside it in black ink. It was rather morbid to realize he had held it in his hands hours before when he had still been very much alive, while he was now dead. Murdered.
Under the left hand side of the fireplace picture there were a separate 5 and 3, written in blue.
Like an afterthought.
“I got something,” Michael called out to her.
“What?” Vicky walked into the den, avoiding a look at the dead body. “Please don’t take it.”
“I’m not taking anything. It’s just a list with three phone numbers.” Michael looked at her, eyes wide. “The third of them is mine.”
Vicky frowned. “Yours? Why would Mortimer want to call you?”
“Good question. Especially as the second number on the list is familiar to me too.” Michael held her gaze. “It’s Diane’s number. I mean, it’s the number of the cottage of old Captain Black where Diane is now staying. I know it, because I looked it up myself the other day to call her about the anonymous threat I had received.”
Vicky’s mind raced. Mortimer Gill had intended to call both Diane and Michael about something. That made it more likely he had known something about Celine’s disappearance.
“And something else that’s significant,” Michael continued. “Mortimer’s cell phone is nowhere in sight. I wanted to see if he had actually used it to call either of these numbers before he died, but it’s not on him or near him. Maybe the killer took it, because the number in the outgoing calls list could incriminate him? He must have missed this note on the desk.”
He perked up. There were sirens in the distance. “Quickly.” He gestured at her. “Have you got a pen and a scrap of paper in your purse? Write down these numbers for me, will you? I would like to check later on the first one. I don’t know it and I’m really curious to whom that belongs.”
She obeyed, copying off all three numbers and slipping the sheet into her purse. Michael was still pulling open drawers and even crawling under the desk to see if anything was taped underneath it.
The sirens burst into the yard, and Michael popped up quickly, stripped off the gloves and put them back beside the toolbox. “Not a thing related to Celine’s disappearance. Just those phone numbers, and I’m not sure what they mean.”
Vicky bit her lip knowing how painful this was for Michael. At the same time she was glad he hadn’t found anything and put it in his pocket. If he took something away from a crime scene, it could have gotten tricky.
Still as she heard car doors slam, her mouth was dry and her knees jittery. She was sure Cash would read a guilty expression on her face and zero in on it at once.
The cowbell on the screen door jangled, and Cash barged in, his hat in his hand. Looking from Vicky to Michael, he said, “So what are you doing here?”
“We came to see Mortimer,” Michael answered calmly. “We expected he’d be having dinner or washing up, so we came in through the back door. I noticed a strong scent, as if something was burning, and took that frying pan off the stove and put it in the sink.”
He pointed at it where it still lay dripping water. “I was under the impression Mortimer had just forgotten about his dinner. Maybe he had gone out back to feed the birds? But then I went into the living room and found him lying face down on the floor. I checked whether he was dead, then Vicky called the police at once. If I had known that he was dead when we came in, I would not have bothered with the pan.”
Vicky noticed that Michael didn’t say he hadn’t touched anything else in the house. She hoped Cash would take it for granted that as good law-abiding citizens they had not.
Cash grunted. “And why did you want to see Mortimer in the first place? You don’t know him socially, do you?”
Vicky cleared her throat. She tried to sound normal and innocent. “He is working on a fireplace in my store. The one that Gwenda had bricked up? He started this morning and was making great progress. Everything seemed fine until he left to buy something at the hardware store and never came back. I wanted to ask him why. He knows I’m on a tight schedule to finish renovations as soon as possible, so his disappearance made no sense at all.”
“And you just took Michael for company.” Cash hitched a brow. “A simple phone call would have sufficed, to set a new date for finishing the work.”
Vicky felt her cheeks grow hot. “Mortimer was not answering his cell phone. Mr. Jones told me he had no regular connection as he had failed to pay his bills. I needed to convince him to come back tomorrow, so Michael offered to drive me out here. Then I didn’t have to cycle.”
“Besides,” Michael said, “we were going out to dinner anyway, and only wanted to stop here first to solve the fireplace matter, before sitting down and enjoying a nice quiet evening together.”
Cash seemed not amused at the idea of her enjoying an evening together with Michael, but he ignored the point, turning to his deputies. “Go see to that body. The photographer should be here soon.” He snapped back to them. “Did you touch or disturb anything?”
There it was.
Michael said nothing.
Vicky searched her purse for a hanky.
“You did touch something,” Cash exclaimed. “Great, you could have disturbed all possible leads to the killer. What on earth did you do that for?”
“I picked up a hundred-dollar bill that was lying on the floor beside him. I put it there.” Michael pointed at the sink where the bill rested between a blue thermos and a stack of dirty washrags. “It was a natural thing to do. I didn’t think about it at the time.”
Cash fumed. “You should never ever disturb a thing until the police are there. Even a kid knows that. And you’re a trained reporter who has handled crime before.”
To distract him, Vicky said quickly, “There was a note on Mortimer’s desk with three phone numbers on it. We only looked at it; we didn’t touch it. It could be significant. Maybe Mortimer managed to call the first person on it before he was killed? That could help to fix the time of his death.”
Michael pointed Cash to where the note lay. Cash put on thin plastic gloves and put the note in a see-through evidence bag, marking it. As he glanced down at the note, Vicky saw shock passing through him. Like he recognized one of the phone numbers.
Diane’s? Did he also realize that there could be a connection between this murder, the fire in the barn the other night and the old disappearance case?
Cash snapped his head up, his eyes hard. “I’m taking both of you in for questioning. Separately. To see if your stories check out. And if they don’t, I’m holding you overnight.”
Vicky’s jaw sagged at the prospect of spending the night in jail, but Michael shrugged as if to say, Whatever. He probably felt so cheated by Mortimer’s death and the information that had possibly eluded him forever that he didn’t care about anything else.
But Vicky did care. She didn’t want to lie to Cash. He was the sheriff. She had to tell him the truth, or risk big tr
ouble later on.
On the other hand Michael was her friend. And she’d do anything to keep him out of trouble with the law. He had to stay free and help them find out who had killed Mortimer Gill.
And possibly also Celine.
Upon arrival at the police station Vicky felt pretty positive about her mission. Cash was nice enough, bringing her coffee and talking to her in a friendly tone. She actually began to believe she could convince him that Mortimer’s death might have something to do with the old disappearance case and he had to give it top priority—also for Diane’s sake. She’d rather sort this out with police cooperation than without.
But she soon found out Cash only wanted her to incriminate Michael, blame him for the whole thing. Every question he asked was meant to trick her into stating Michael had suggested they had to go to Mortimer to have a talk, that Michael had gone into the house first, without her, and he could actually have killed Mortimer while she was still outside.
“The body was already getting cold, Michael said,” she protested. “Mortimer died before we arrived!”
“That’s what he says, yeah.” Cash waved a dismissive hand. “But he is no expert. I only trust the medical examiner’s verdict.”
“What possible reason could Michael have for killing Mortimer Gill?”
Cash exhaled. “There were rumors Diane was being threatened by someone who wanted her to leave town again. I also got a call informing me a dark figure was watching Diane as she exercised on the beach at night or in the morning. The caller said it was a stalker. I have established that stalker could be Michael Danning.”
Vicky’s throat was tight. If Cash outright asked her if Michael had been watching Diane, she could not deny that. She had seen it herself the other night. But Michael had only meant well. He had wanted to protect Diane, not harm her. “I don’t understand. Why would that suspicion make him a suspect in Mortimer Gill’s murder?”
Cash rearranged the notes in front of him. “Earlier Mortimer Gill was accused of having written the poison pen letters slandering his ex-wife Gwenda’s beauty parlor. When I got the call about the stalker, I wondered if it was Mortimer calling me to slander people again. But if Michael Danning was indeed stalking Diane and he knew someone was on to him, even reporting him to the police…”
Dead to Begin With (A Country Gift Shop Cozy Mystery series, Book 1) Page 10