Murder Among Neighbors (The Kate Austen Mystery Series)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  Chapter 18

  The doorbell rang the next morning just as I was sitting down to coffee and blueberry muffins spread with real butter, an indulgence I did not usually allow myself. Daria had insisted I take the day off, and although I’d argued with her at the time, now I was glad. Not because I was feeling ill—except for some mild cramps and a gray, shadowy sorrow, I felt pretty good—but because there is something wonderful, almost magical, about playing hooky, kind of like the extra hour when we turn the clocks back at the end of October. A stretch of time outside of time.

  But not, apparently, outside the mundane trappings of everyday living. Anna, Max and I arrived at the door simultaneously. One of us barked, one of us pressed her nose against the glass, and one of us adjusted her robe, then opened the door warily.

  “What a reception,” Michael said, and kissed me on the forehead.

  I’d finally returned his call when I stumbled home from Daria’s the night before, but seeing him sent an unexpected spark of pleasure through my body.

  “Is that the best you can do?” I chided, lifting my face to his.

  He grinned, then kissed me again, on the mouth this time and not as hastily, but it was still a sweet kiss rather than a seductive one. “These are for you,” he said, handing me a bouquet of yellow roses tied with a shiny white ribbon. “It’s kind of sappy, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “They’re lovely,” I said, touched as much by his shyness as the gift itself. “And flowers are never sappy.” I lifted the bouquet from Max’s prying nose. “Can you stay for coffee?”

  “A mind reader as well.”

  Anna and Max followed us into the kitchen, setting themselves down, one on each side of Michael. With equally large eyes, they watched him, Anna somewhat suspiciously, Max with studied anticipation.

  “Can policemen do whatever they want?” Anna asked after a moment.

  “They have to obey the laws, just like everyone else.”

  “But if you did something bad, who’d catch you?”

  Michael leaned back in his chair and launched into an explanation, but I interrupted, shooing Anna away. “This is grownup time,” I told her. “Go watch television.”

  I could see her weighing the options. That I’d actually encouraged her to watch television meant I really wanted her out of the way, and those were precisely the times she found my activities most interesting.

  “Go on,” I prodded, “you can take a muffin with you.”

  Reluctantly, she grabbed a muffin and ambled off. While Michael gazed out the window, his eyes dark and unreadable, I set a plate of muffins on the table and handed him a cup of coffee. Then, standing behind him, I draped my arms around his neck and kissed top of his head. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No need to be.” I sat down next to him in the chair Anna had vacated, and smiled. “How was your weekend?”

  “Lousy. I spent most of it working and the rest of it arguing with Barbara.”

  “About?”

  He shrugged. “Money mostly, I guess. At least that’s what we started on.”

  I took a long, slow, sip of coffee and then studied the rim of the cup. “Did you fight a lot during your marriage?”

  “Not really.” Michael’s fingers picked at the nicked edge of the table. “Do you and Andy fight?”

  “No, hardly ever.”

  There was a long silence during which we looked at one another uncertainly. Finally Michael spoke. “Kate, maybe this isn’t the right time, but we need to talk about things.”

  I nodded. “But not just yet.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  A weak smile flickered across his face. “You do care for me though, don’t you?”

  “A great deal,” I said softly, running my hand along the bare skin above his wrist. Then I took a muffin from the plate and handed it to him. “Now, about the work part of your weekend. Tell me what’s happening with the case.”

  He frowned. “I only wish there were something to tell.”

  “You followed up on Tony’s story?”

  Michael nodded glumly. “It appears he’s telling the truth.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means we’re back at the beginning, with virtually nothing. Yesterday I sat down and went over things once more, but I came up empty-handed.” He paused for a moment, pressing his lips together tightly. “We know Pepper was strangled. We know there was a brief struggle first, during which she was hit on the head with some kind of heavy, sharp object. But we haven’t been able to locate it or come up with any leads based on physical evidence. The only thing we have is that swatch of silk fabric that got caught in the bedpost.”

  “The tie she was strangled with.”

  “At this point that’s just a theory.” Michael shifted his weight, leaning forward with both elbows on the table, and continued his analysis. “We’re pretty certain it wasn’t some psychopath, killing just for the fun of it. Somebody was out to get Pepper, but we’re having a devil of a time coming up with a list of possible suspects. And every time we think we’re on to something, it turns out to be a dead end.”

  I got up and poured him a second cup of coffee, which he accepted with a distracted nod of his head.

  “It’s crazy,” he said, “there’s more we don’t know about this case than we do know. Hell, we can’t even pinpoint the means of entry, although I’m betting the killer was someone with a key, and possibly the alarm code.”

  “That limits it, doesn’t it?”

  “You’d think so.” His words were weighted with defeat, and I felt his frustration. Like women throughout time, I wanted to make things right.

  “What about Robert?” I asked. “Isn’t he a possibility?” Michael picked at his muffin, which he’d barely touched. “The guy’s peculiar, no getting around that, but there’s not one shred of evidence which suggests he killed her. And you can’t arrest a guy just because something about him strikes you as odd. Not in this country anyway.”

  “But he’s still a suspect?”

  “Yeah, most definitely.”

  During the last few days I’d done my best to avoid Robert, but try as I might, I hadn’t been able to avoid thinking about him. How could a man I knew, a man I was truly fond of, be a murderer? Sometimes the absurdity of the notion made me laugh. But deep down in my heart, I wasn’t convinced he was innocent.

  “Right now,” Michael continued, “he’s the only name we’ve got.”

  “Besides McGregory.”

  “Right, and we’ll know more about that when we finish analyzing the note Connie found.”

  “Well,” I said philosophically, “something’s bound to turn up sooner or later.”

  He shook his head. “Not necessarily. And the longer it takes, the worse the odds.” Pushing back his chair, Michael stood and stretched. “One thing’s for certain, we’re never going to make any progress if I sit here feeling sorry for myself.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to go just yet,” I said, standing also and moving close.

  “Me too.” His eyes fixed on mine and lingered there while he brushed my cheek with his fingertips. “You sure you’re okay about ... about what happened?”

  Most of our conversation the previous evening had focused on my miscarriage, and I’d been acutely aware of both the concern in Michael’s voice and the guilt, though I’d done my best to allay both.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Stop worrying.”

  He leaned over, kissed me, and then, arms entwined, we walked to the door.

  Sharon was wandering up the walkway just as Michael was leaving. Her eyes followed him to his car and she waited until he’d started the engine before speaking. “I thought I’d drop off that price list for playground equipment. Give you a chance to look it over before the next board meeting.”

  Replacing the old swing set and slide was the board’s final project for the year, and I had agreed to study the issue,
but Sharon’s timing was bad nonetheless. It was quite a picture—me in a bathrobe waving good-bye to a strange man at nine in morning. That was enough to cause even Sharon to raise an eyebrow.

  “Well, well,” she said after Michael had driven off, “I see the benefits of having a husband who’s away. Myself, I’m always stuck with those dreary motels.”

  “It’s not the way it looks,” I told her firmly.

  She laughed and handed me a thick manila folder. “Too bad. It looks kind of nice.”

  <><><>

  A little after five that afternoon Mrs. Marsh called to ask if I would watch her pie while she took Kimberly to some magic show at the club. Since she offered to take Anna too, I could hardly refuse. Besides, I could sit and stare mindlessly out a window from the Livingstons’ house as easily as I could from my own.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking of, waiting so long to make that pie,” Mrs. Marsh said, as she ushered me into the kitchen. “Some days my mind’s like that. You sure this isn’t a bother?”

  “Not at all. And Anna is excited about going to the show. It’s kind of you to take her.”

  After the three of them had gone, I sat down on the couch and began leafing through the stack of magazines on the coffee table, but they failed to hold my interest. Finally I gave up and went to check the pie. On the counter by the oven, next to a basket of pens and paper clips, I found a recent newspaper article about Robert and his amazing investment acumen. The article had run several weeks earlier. I remembered saving my copy for Pepper to send to Claudia. Some other friend had obviously clipped this one and just now sent it on.

  The article was flattering, but the accompanying picture was not. Although Robert was smiling, his face was unnaturally tight and his eyes stared out blankly from the page. When I’d first seen it, I’d made some cynical remark about newspaper photographers training at the DMV. You almost had to go out of your way to take an attractive, polished, deliberately postured guy like Robert and fail to capture any of that on film.

  Now, as I studied the photo again, I was struck by something about his expression. Maybe it was the aftermath of Daria’s repeated hints about Robert’s temper. Or maybe it was simply the oddness of the picture, or the fact that I was alone in the house where Pepper had been murdered. Maybe the timing, all these things coming together at once. For whatever reason, I was no longer able to brush aside the doubt that had been hovering, like an elusive gnat, at the edges of my mind.

  Robert could be charming, for sure, and I’d been touched by his helplessness in the wake of Pepper’s death. Yet there was something about him, not dishonest exactly, but ... well, something almost Machiavellian. Michael had noticed it, although he’d put it a little differently. And with all honesty, I’d noticed it, despite my reluctance to admit the fact, even to myself.

  And then there was the thing with the Cherokee. There may have been a perfectly innocent explanation, but if that was the case, why had Robert lied to me? And I was sure he had. Besides, he’d been decidedly cool to me since the police had talked to him. If the car didn’t mean anything, why was he acting like a man who had something to hide?

  Reluctantly, I began to sort through the details of Pepper’s death. Robert certainly could have killed her. There was no one to verify his whereabouts the night she was killed. It would explain how the killer gained entry to the house and why there were no unusual fingerprints or other bits of physical evidence in the room. I remembered, too, that Robert hadn’t thought the open downstairs window odd in the least, even when I’d asked him about it specifically. In fact, he’d been careful to point out that the window wasn’t connected to the alarm system. As though he wanted the police to believe the killer gained entry in that way.

  But why? While I was pondering the reasons a successful, reasonably happy man might kill his beautiful, reasonably nice wife, the oven buzzer sounded. Grabbing a potholder, I opened the oven door and turned the pie, then adjusted the temperature, just as Mrs. Marsh had instructed. Pepper might have been a bit self-centered, bitchy even, to use Daria’s words, but that was hardly grounds for murder. Besides, he’d married her in the first place, and it was unlikely her personality had made a complete flip-flop following their wedding.

  Then I remembered the letter from McGregory. It was addressed to Pepper, but Connie had found it tucked into Robert’s datebook. Had he somehow stumbled across the letter and so learned the sordid details of her past? What would he feel, a meticulous, proper man like Robert, a man who put great store in “keeping up appearances,” when he discovered that his wife had deceived him, maybe even used him for her own purposes?

  It was only a theory, but it was plausible.

  I checked the clock above the oven. The pie had another thirty minutes. It wouldn’t hurt to look around, I told myself. Michael had asked me to do that very thing not so long ago, and Claudia had readily assented. The feeble voice of my conscience tried to convince me that this wasn’t quite the same, but I wasn’t persuaded. This was murder, I argued back. You do what you have to do.

  Robert’s den was at the back of the house and I went there first. The room, like the man himself, was neat and orderly. His papers were stacked efficiently on one corner of the desk; his books, dull gray and green volumes on taxation and investment strategy, lined the shelves with military-like precision. There were no pictures or personal mementos of any kind. Boldly, I checked his drawers and files, then leafed through his datebook, which was filled with meetings and appointments. But nothing struck me as unusual. Of course, he was hardly going to write “kill Pepper,” under his list of things to do for the day. I had hoped there might be something out of the ordinary, though, some small, telltale scribble or scrap of paper. There wasn’t a thing.

  Carefully, I backed out of the room and shut the door, which clicked loudly in the heavy, afternoon stillness.

  Upstairs, I headed straight for the bedroom, where I stood for a moment, taking it all in, waiting for a revelation. When none appeared, I began methodically opening drawers. Robert’s were filled with neatly folded socks, sweaters, underwear; Pepper’s, newly empty. Equally unenlightening was the large walk-in closet, where at least fifteen suits hung neatly along one wall.

  What was I expecting to find anyway? A yellow and black silk tie, complete with revealing tear at the edge? Or maybe the heavy, sharp object used to bash Pepper’s skull? If Robert was a killer, he certainly wouldn’t be the sort to leave evidence lying about in open view. And besides, the police had been through everything already.

  Feeling both foolish and guilty, I was turning to go when my foot kicked against a wadded-up shirt lying on the closet floor. Only there was something solid at the center of the wad. Out of curiosity, I picked up the shirt and unfolded it. Inside was a heavy, bronze rabbit, its peaked left ear coated with dried blood.

  My first inclination was to drop the thing as quickly as I could and run. Then I thought perhaps I should carefully rewrap it, tuck it back in the comer, and simply forget I’d ever seen it. Instead, I stood motionless, staring at the bloodied creature and listening to the heavy pounding of my heart against my ribs.

  So it was Robert, after all. This man I’d sat and talked with—Kimberly’s father, my friend’s husband—was a murderer. Behind that cool, reserved veneer lurked a monster, a crazed maniac with so little emotional depth that he could kill his wife in cold blood and then feign innocence. So lost was I in these thoughts that I didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until they were right behind me. When I turned, I was standing face to face with Robert, who glared at me the way the school bully glares at the teacher’s pet.

  “What’s going on here?” His voice was low, tighter than usual.

  “I, uh ...”

  Then, as simple astonishment gave way to outrage, Robert stepped closer. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing snooping around in my closet?”

  Again I opened my mouth and closed it, without uttering a word. His face, darkened and tense
, pressed closer, and I could smell the alcohol on his breath. There was none of Robert’s customary reserve or gentlemanly good humor in the face before me.

  “Well?”

  They say that in moments like this you get a rush of adrenaline which empowers you in ways that stretch the imagination. A frail man is able to lift the weight of a car single-handedly; a bedridden invalid is somehow able to crawl through a darkened house to safety; a young child sees suddenly and clearly what must be done to save her younger brother.

  But it didn’t work that way for me. My mind went utterly blank and my body froze. I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to speak, had I had anything to say. Somewhere from deep within, a little voice urged me to think—there had to be some reasonable excuse that would explain my presence and allow me to escape. But my brain refused to cooperate. Like a frightened animal, I cowered in the threatening silence while Robert watched and waited.

  Then he saw the bundle in my hands and his mouth began to twitch. “You bitch,” he hissed. “You sneaky, underhanded bitch.” He stepped into the doorway, blocking the closet entrance—and my only way out. “What are you doing with that?”

  “Look,” I squeaked, lifting the rabbit to the light, “Pepper’s blood is still there.”

  “You don’t really think I’m going to let you get away with this, do you?”

  Robert made a grab for the figurine, but I turned and he gripped my arm instead. His fingers pressed into my flesh, their strength surprising me. I remembered Pepper’s bruises and Michael’s description of her lifeless body. Suddenly my mind started working again. Twisting free of his grip, I shoved him hard against the back of the closet and took a step closer to the doorway.

  “Lieutenant Stone knows everything,” I said, wishing I spoke the truth. “And he knows I’m here right now. If anything happens to me it will only make matters worse.”

  “Lieutenant Stone knows what you’re doing here? Surely you don’t expect me to believe that.”

  “Oh, but he does,” I insisted, amazed at my bravado. Robert’s grip on my arm tightened and without thinking I twisted toward him, bringing the bronze rabbit down hard on his knuckles. Cursing, he released my arm. I darted for the bedroom door, but again Robert blocked my path. His steely blue eyes glared at me, and my own eyes, which I feared were not nearly as steely, glared right back.