The Dead of Winter (A Piper Blackwell Mystery Book 1)

by Jean Rabe

  “He quit with the patch,” another said. “My cousin quit with the patch, too. Chris, I keep saying you should try the patch—”

  “Smokes and weight.” The man in the Colts jacket raised his voice. “Darn near as pudgy as that Santa he’s—”

  “Think he killed himself?” This came from someone Oren hadn’t met before, a middle-aged man who bore a strong resemblance to Chris, maybe a relative come for the party. “Wife dead four years now, one kid a loser, the other is who-knows-where. Do you think he was depressed and—”

  “Thought I heard you say something about murder, Deputy Rosenberg.” This was from Joan Hagee. “Did I hear right?”

  Oren figured the gawkers had been chattering too loud to hear his petechial hemorrhage lecture to Piper. He let out a sigh, his breath escaping in a great misty fan. “It’s too early to tell anything, Joan. But the facts are, it’s late, or rather it’s early—too early. And it’s cold. Take ’em back over to your house and let ’em sit there until they’re sober enough to drive. Fix ’em some coffee while Chris and I—”

  “Free country, just like you said,” the defiant lookie loo in the Colts jacket cut in. He crossed his arms and watched Piper taking more pictures of the sleigh.

  “Suit yourself. Just keep out of the sheriff’s way and stay out of the yard. I’m gonna want to talk to all of you. If you go back with Joan, I’ll chat with you there and save us all some time and mileage.” Oren motioned for Chris, and they walked down the blacktop drive, which looked like a slice of just-washed coal. It had been plowed, but there were mounds pushed up against the sides and ice at the end. Southern Indiana had seen twice as much snow as usual this winter. He called over his shoulder, “And if you take off and we catch any of you weaving on the road, we’ll cite you for DUI, Happy New Year or no.” DUIs were the number one ticketed offense in Spencer County.

  “I voted for you,” Chris said as he slid into the Explorer. “Just saying, you know. Age and experience trumps youth and…well, I’d say beauty, but that little Blackwell’s pretty damn plain looking. Good figure, though.”

  Oren twisted the key and turned on the heater. The other deputies drove either older Crown Vics or a relatively recent model of Taurus. Oren’s was a 2015, newest in the small fleet, and with comfortable leather seats. He’d claimed it a year ago come February when the county caucus appointed him sheriff to fill out Paul Blackwell’s term when Paul quit because of the cancer. Oren won the primary and figured he’d take the election in November. Out of respect, no one else in the department contested him for it.

  He hadn’t counted on a challenge from Paul’s daughter, Piper, her coming home from Iraq, putting signs up everywhere, bright neon yellow and screaming red: Vote for Blackwell, Spencer County Sheriff.

  And more than that, Oren certainly hadn’t counted on her winning.

  It was a pity vote, he figured, pity for poor sick Paul Blackwell, the beloved sheriff who’d been with the department thirty years and had held four terms. Name recognition: Paul Blackwell…Piper Blackwell. P. Blackwell. Blackwell Blackwell Blackwell. Probably half the people who voted for her didn’t know they were electing a shikse…and one the same age as his granddaughter. Twenty-three. The pity vote and ignorance, likely coupled with a hint of anti-Semitism, wanting to elect a Protestant of some stripe.

  “Gornisht helfn,” he muttered.

  “Hey…you zoning out on me, Oren? Earth to Oren. Come in, Oren. I said, what do you want to talk to me ’bout? Nice car. What kind of mileage does this get?”

  Oren smelled whiskey on Chris’s breath, and when the man belched there was a burst of something sharp, maybe spiced sausage. There was a strong trace of cigarette smoke imbedded in the parka; Chris probably had to do his smoking outside.

  “You found Conrad,” Oren stated.

  “Well, yeah. Was looking out the picture window, saw him in that damned sleigh.”

  “What time did you see him?”

  “Well…let me think. It was heading toward midnight. We were waiting for the ball to drop. Not yet midnight, maybe twenty to, a quarter to, around then, you know.”

  “Go on…the Delaney place was dark—”

  “Except for the spotlight. Yeah, well, I wouldn’t’ve noticed him but for that damned spotlight aimed at that damned sleigh. Actually, Joan saw him first, pointed him out to me, told me I should invite him over, that Conrad shouldn’t sit out there in the cold all by his lonesome.”

  “So you walked over to invite him?”

  “Well, I opened a window first and hollered. But then I realized he couldn’t hear me over the music. We’d cranked it pretty loud, you know, it being New Year’s Eve and a party and all. So yeah, I went over.”

  “Right away when Joan saw him? Twenty to midnight?”

  “Yeah, thereabouts. I wanted to make sure I could go over and back and not miss the ball dropping, time for a cigarette in there, too. So I threw on my coat and walked across the road, lit up on the end of his driveway, you know.”

  A silence settled, the heater gently purring. Oren glanced out the windshield. Piper had put her camera away and was squatted next to the sleigh, looking at something underneath it. He hoped she had the presence not to pick up anything without properly bagging it.

  Oren could have retired after the failed election. He had twenty years with the sheriff’s department and twenty before that with the Rockport police. There was a fine second pension ahead of him. But he had helped two of his kids with their money woes, and helped his granddaughter pay for college. Four years ago he and his wife moved into a new, but modest, beachfront house on Lake Noel in Santa Claus, bought a nice boat that he didn’t get out on often enough, and had a double-wide second garage built to store it in. He figured he needed the chief deputy salary and wouldn’t know what to do with all that retirement time on his hands.

  Besides, Piper would have to attend—and pass—the Plainfield Sheriff’s Academy this April. If she failed, and he considered that a distinct possibility, Oren was certain the caucus would put him back in charge.

  “Slipped on some ice right at the bottom of Conrad’s drive, you know,” Chris said. “Dropped my cigarette and damn near fell on my bony ass. I called out to him, Conrad, but he didn’t answer, just sitting there like a lump in that damned sleigh, and so I went up his blacktop and cut through the yard. I had a bad feeling when he didn’t answer me, you know. I knew right then he was dead. I just did, you know.” Chris shuddered and reached inside his coat, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Dead. Dead.”

  “Not in here.”

  “Christ. Bad as my wife.”

  “So go on. You went over to Conrad, even though you knew he was dead.”

  He ruefully replaced the cigarettes. “Well, yeah, I thought that he’d climbed up in that damned garish sleigh of his and had the big one. But I figured I should be sure. So I got up close and saw that his lips were blue. Anyway, I went in the house, his front door wasn’t locked. Turned on some lights and hollered ’til I was hoarse, but wasn’t no one else around. So I called 9-1-1 from the phone in Conrad’s living room and the lady on the other end told me not to touch anything and to wait outside for the sheriff.” A pause. “Well, I called Joan, told her Conrad was dead, then I went back out. Christ, I could hear our music all the way over here. I’d forgotten to close the window. Probably still open. Anyway, Joan, she said heart attack right away. Conrad had a heart attack six or seven years ago, you know, that’s when he quit smoking. Missed the ball dropping.” Another pause. “So you think that’s what it was, a heart attack?”

  “Nope.” Oren was an honest soul. “You didn’t see Conrad sitting outside before your party? In the sleigh?”

  “No, but I was busy with my guests.”

  “See anybody visiting Conrad’s during the day?”

  “No. But I wasn’t paying attention, you know. I had a party to get ready for.” Chris’s brow furrowed and he drew his lips forward until his face looked pinched. He let out a lo
w whistle. “Someone killed him? Nobody should be murdered on New Year’s Eve. Wait ’til I tell—”

  “Did you see—”

  “—anybody at Conrad’s? No. You need a hearing aid, Oren? No, I didn’t see anybody. But like I said, I had company coming, you know, appetizers to put out, lit’l smokies to watch in the crock pot. I make these little cocktail wieners every year, you know. This time I used extra-hot barbecue sauce and doubled the brown sugar.”

  “When was the last time you saw Conrad?”

  “Like I said, just before midnight and—”

  “When he was alive, Chris. When’s the last time you saw Conrad, talked to him?”

  Chris scratched at his chin. “Oh, I dunno. I…Thursday? Yeah, last Thursday. I remember. I saw Conrad Thursday, ran into him at the grocery store in Rockport bright and early. I was buying stuff for my party, to make my smokies, getting chips, dips, a couple of bags of them itty bitty carrots. I had a cart heaped full. Conrad had one of them little carry baskets, you know, just a few things in it. Cat food and coffee. I noticed that ’cause we drink the same brand of coffee. Folgers, you know.” He shook his head, his chin drooping to his chest. “Oren, can’t imagine why anyone would kill him. Not an enemy in the world, Conrad. Who’d want to kill a nice man like that?”

  That was the question burning in Oren’s thoughts: who would kill Conrad Delaney? Oren liked to work jigsaw puzzles in his den at home, and an investigation was a lot like that, sorting through the pieces, matching the colors, and fitting everything together, building probable cause and finding a suspect.

  “So when you cut through the yard to see Conrad, did you notice tracks in the snow?”

  Chris scratched his head and leaned forward so he could better look out the windshield. “Well, yeah, now that you mention it, I did see some tracks.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Like tracks, you know. Footprints. Well, not bare footprints. Big ones with tread, like from hunting boots, you know. Going from the driveway to the sleigh, and then from the sleigh to the house. I walked through them, the tracks, stepped right in them ’cause I didn’t have boots on and didn’t want to get snow in these loafers. I’m wearing dress socks, they’re thin and—”

  “So you stepped in the tracks you noticed.”

  “Yeah. Followed the footprints, you know what I mean. Where the snow was already mashed down. I was trying not to get snow inside my shoes.”

  “Sure, I get it. How many sets of tracks did you see? Before you walked in them? Like, were they from one person, or two?”

  “Well, the ones I walked in. One set of tracks. One person. A man. I wear a size ten, and they were a bit bigger than mine.” He smiled as if proud of himself for providing that tidbit. Then he leaned even farther forward and pointed. “Can’t really see them now, those tracks I walked in. The yard’s all messed up. ”

  “Because of your company.”

  “My company?”

  “The people from your party.”

  “Well, yeah. Like I told you, after I called 9-1-1, I called Joan and everyone came across to see the body. Didn’t none of us get to see the ball drop. I guess we all sort of covered up those tracks I walked in, looking around the sleigh and such, slopped some snow up on that little sidewalk.”

  “Your guests tromped all over my crime scene,” Oren said softly.

  Chris leaned back in the seat. “I voted for you, just saying, you know.”

  Oren saw most of the lookie loos shuffling across the road, back to the Hagee farmhouse, Joan leading them. Two stayed, though, fidgeting to ward off the chill, the one in the Indianapolis Colts jacket occasionally pointing at the sleigh. By the way their breath puffed away it looked like they were engrossed in conversation. So far no one had gotten in their cars and driven away from the Hagee’s.

  Oren unbuttoned his coat because the heater was a little too efficient.

  Twenty-three years old.

  He cranked the defroster to take care of the glaze forming on the windshield. The New Year was getting off to a cold and bitter start.

  Three

  Piper wrapped her fingers around the cup and cringed, the image of Conrad Delaney holding a bright red Merry Christmas mug in his hands burned in her mind. She set the coffee aside, pulled back from the table, and crossed her arms. She was in her dad’s kitchen, right where she’d been when the dispatcher’s call came.

  “I thought you wanted coffee, Punkin.”

  “I do, Dad. I’m just—”

  “Exhausted?”

  “Yeah, that word comes in my size.” She offered him a small smile. “Been up thirty-six. Straight. But who’s counting?”

  “You, apparently.”

  She laughed. “Listen, sorry I didn’t get over here earlier. I’d intended to help you take down the tree, but this murder investigation—”

  “I don’t need any help. I put it up by myself, didn’t I? You really need to—”

  “Sorry, I’d just planned on it. I like to look at the ornaments, each one a memory, you know.” Her father’s tree was an eight-foot tall artificial flocked pine with hundreds of lights and a plethora of Hallmark ornaments. Christmas was a big deal for Paul Blackwell.

  His brow creased, the wrinkles reminding her of old bark. “I’ll take the tree down when I want it down. In fact, I think I’ll keep it up a few more days. Maybe another week. It’s pretty and it’s not hurting anything. You know how much I like—”

  “—a Deck the Halls kind of tree,” she finished. “I know. I do, too.” What went unsaid was this might be his last Christmas tree, this being his second round of chemo, the first having basically no effect. If this round didn’t work, there were a few clinical trials he could pursue, but those amounted to a Hail Mary pass. Uncomfortable, she changed the subject. “I hadn’t expected a murder the first day on the job.”

  “So tell me about it.”

  Piper took up the cup again, the warmth welcome against her hands. She held it up to her nose and stared across the rim at her father. He looked worn to her, a man of fifty-five who could pass for seventy-five. The Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the second round of chemo were responsible for turning a handsome, hale man into this pale, haggard shadow. He had a long, careworn face and a narrow nose, wide-set eyes the color of her coffee. He used to have wavy brown hair like hers, but now he wore a ball cap—even indoors—to cover up the few wisps he had remaining.

  “I’ll walk you through it,” she said.

  Piper’s first impression: Conrad Delaney’s house should be featured in Better Homes & Gardens. The exterior was pristine; a white aluminum-sided saltbox with navy blue shutters, pine garland stretched across the eaves and looping down to brush the midpoints between the upstairs windows, pine wreath on the door, a big red bow dangling beneath the mailbox, the sleigh the centerpiece in the front yard.

  Piper had set her shoes just inside the front door and treaded lightly through the house. Oren had an evidence kit in his Explorer, and she brought it in with her and bagged the nitroglycerin prescription first, which looked to be about a dozen tiny pills in the bottle. No overturned furniture, didn’t look like anything was out of place, no obvious signs of a struggle. Maybe Randy would notice something.

  The living room was tidy and seemed to have a feminine feel. She guessed that Conrad’s wife had been responsible for the decor. The fireplace mantel was crowded with framed photographs, the largest in the center showed Conrad and Sara in their younger days. A couple of pictures of two boys, grade school aged with a puppy between them; and one of the same boys as teenagers posed by an old car. It appeared that the Delaneys were in their late-thirties when they started having children.

  Two socks hung from the fireplace: “Cipin” and “Buttons” were embroidered on the cuffs. Cats? She’d encountered a black and white Hemingway hiding in a corner of the kitchen, and a gray tabby introduced himself by rubbing against Piper’s ankles as she explored the house.

  The Christmas tree�
��a real one—was in the den, a wide spruce that scented the air. It was covered with blinking lights and round and pear-shaped frosted glass ornaments. The lights were hot to the touch—they’d been on for quite some time—and the bowl the trunk nested inside was dry. The red velvet skirt had white tassel trim, and silver and green sequins spelled out Nollaig Shona Duit, which she Googled on her phone to discover was Irish for Happy Christmas. The many cards Conrad had received were strung across a wall, affixed to a metallic length of yarn by miniature plastic clothespins. She took pictures of everything.

  “Mr. Delaney was neat,” Piper told her dad. “The place was tidy. He would have put Felix Unger to shame. No sign of forced entry and nothing appeared disturbed. We sealed the scene, couldn’t risk someone coming in and corrupting evidence.”

  “And outside? Around the sleigh?”

  “The snow in the front yard looked like a herd of elephants danced a rumba.” She took a swallow; the coffee was just the right temperature now, and seriously good. “More than a dozen people were partying at Chris Hagee’s across the road, and they traipsed all the hell across the crime scene before I got there.”

  She’d taken roughly three hundred photographs, downloaded all of them into the department-issue laptop, and had started going through them, printing out two dozen before she called it a day. The coroner also took pictures, and then directed an ambulance crew to whisk Conrad away to the bowels of a hospital in nearby Vanderburgh County for an autopsy that was scheduled for tomorrow morning—if he thawed out enough. The coroner had pulled some strings to move Conrad ahead of the fatalities caused by Evansville’s drunk-driving New Year’s Eve revelers.

  “I had to scour phone directories on the Internet and call around to police departments in Kentucky to find Conrad’s youngest son, Zachary, who lives in a rent-by-the-week in Owensboro. That was my first death notification, me calling him.”

  No luck yet finding the other son, Anthony, who’d left home after high school and moved to someplace in the Orient.