Dead in the Doorway

by Diane Kelly

  Looked like we could dismiss the theory that the intruder had been after a recipe card hidden among the pages of a cookbook.

  Collin swiped through several photos as his gaze traveled the countertop, starting at the fridge and making his way to the other end. “Nothing else seems to be missing.”

  I hadn’t photographed the insides of cabinets or drawers, so we had nothing to compare the contents to. It was possible whatever Nelda had been holding as she lay on the landing had been kept in a cabinet or drawer.

  The instant we stepped into the living room, my gaze landed on the glass-top coffee table. “Aha!” While the smudges and fingerprints remained, the wooden box containing the two decks of yellowed playing cards was gone. I pointed. “The playing cards. They were on that table before, but now they’re not.”

  Collin looked down again at my phone and pulled up the photo showing the cards on the table. “They’re face up in the box,” he noted. “There’s no way of telling if the backs were marked.”

  An uneasy feeling slithered into my stomach as I read between the lines. “Do you think Gayle might have actually cheated at poker, like Nelda claimed?”

  “It’s possible. Maybe Nelda came to get the cards, to give them a thorough once-over. Maybe Gayle came with her, and Nelda accused her of cheating again. Maybe the two got into an argument about it.”

  “That’s the type of thing that might push someone over the edge.”

  “It could. Maybe Gayle took the cards to hide her guilt. Or maybe there was something valuable hidden under the playing cards. Maybe Lillian Walsh hid her prize-winning recipe cards among them. Or maybe she’d found Nelda’s pendant and put it in the box to give to her the next time the ladies got together for poker.”

  “That’s an awful lot of maybes.” I supposed Gayle could have killed Nelda, but I had a hard time seeing Gayle as a cold-blooded killer. She’d seemed warm, down-to-earth, and composed. Then again, I was basing my impression on one evening’s interactions. I hardly knew the woman.

  “I deal in maybes,” Collin said. “Sometimes I trade them for certainties. Sometimes maybe is the best I can get.”

  “It must be frustrating when you can’t find solid answers.”

  “It is. That’s when I go for a long run around Radnor Lake. Pounding the trail helps.”

  “I pound nails when I’m frustrated.” Nothing relieved stress like repeatedly whacking a hammer, and you might even end up with a nice new bookcase or shoe rack when you were done.

  “Which house does Gayle live in?” he asked.

  “The green one.”

  “I’m going to send these photos to myself.” Collin tapped my screen to share the photos with his device. “They might be needed later as evidence.”

  My pics could become exhibits in a murder trial? Eek.

  We made our way downstairs, the bottom step creaking as we put our weight on it. Based on both my camera pics and the photos taken by the police-department crime-scene tech, nothing downstairs appeared changed. The stair creaked again on our way back up, as if to remind me it needed fixing. The squeaky wheel might get the grease, but for now, the creaky stair was getting nothing but on my nerves.

  After looking through the main house, we went up to the attic. Unlike the rest of the house, which was heated, the attic had no vents and the air was cold. It felt as if we’d stepped into a refrigerator. The attic smelled musty and dusty, too, causing my nose to crinkle of its own accord.

  Several cardboard boxes of varying sizes were scattered around the space. I had no way of helping the detective determine if something had been removed from one of them. Fingerprints in the dust indicated that each of them had been opened recently, most likely when Wayne and Andy were going through their mother’s things and rounding up the valuables.

  A photo album had been left open atop one of the boxes. The album was open to a page of faded photographs with white borders around the edges. Though the ladies of Songbird Circle no longer wore beehive and bouffant hairstyles, there was no doubt the smiling faces in the snapshots belonged to Lillian, Gayle, Mary Sue, and Roxanne. Nelda Dolan appeared in many of the photos, too, though she was almost always off to the side, the odd woman out, and unsmiling.

  I flipped a few pages and traveled forward in time to the 1970s. While Mary Sue and Lillian wore their hair long and straight then, Nelda had opted for a layered Peter Pan–style and Gayle had gone for a cute, curly Afro. Roxanne’s feathered blond hair rivaled that of the famous Farrah Fawcett. A couple of pages later, we entered the eighties, and the women’s hair expanded upward and outward once again, held in place, no doubt, by cans of extra-hold hairspray. By the nineties, all of the ladies but Roxanne had adopted the more conservative, less time-consuming hairstyles sported by women who had shifted their focus from themselves to their children and grandchildren. Not Roxanne, however. On trend, she’d adopted the shaggy tresses à la Rachel and Monica from the TV show Friends. In her next incarnation, she’d ditched her bangs and flat-ironed her hair into straight, shiny sheets. Finally, the photo album took us into the current era, where Roxanne had opted for her shorter, sophisticated style.

  Several of the photos from more recent years depicted Lillian being awarded her blue ribbons at various county fairs and events. In several of them, while Lillian held up her prize-winning pie, puffs, or tart, Mary Sue stood by her side, smiling in support of her best friend’s success. My heart became soft and gooey, like pie filling. Colette and I had shared many moments like this, and we’d surely share more in the years to come. It was nice to have a close friend to take life’s wild ride with you. Lillian and Mary Sue had already discovered where life would take them. I could only wonder where life might take me and Colette, and where it might take Buck, too.

  Given that Lillian seemed to have dedicated this particular album to photos of her friends rather than family, it was understandable why her sons had left it behind. Even so, Lillian must have valued her friendships to have taken so many photos and maintained the album through the years. It would be a shame to toss it out, wouldn’t it? I decided I’d share the album with the others, see if the ladies might want the photos themselves. After getting the go-ahead from the detective, I picked it up and carried it downstairs with me, leaving it on the couch for now.

  Our tour of the house complete, Collin and I returned to the garage, where I posed a possibility that had crossed my mind. “Could whatever had been under Nelda be something she brought with her from her own house? Or something Dakota had brought in with him after I snapped the pictures?”

  “Possibly,” Flynn said. “At this point, all theories remain viable.”

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked.

  “I’ll speak with Gayle Garner, see if she knows anything about the missing cards. I’ll pay a visit to Roxanne, too.”

  “Roxanne? Why?”

  “She’s the one who mentioned to you that Nelda called Gayle a cheat. She might have brought the matter up to intentionally implicate Gayle, to throw everyone off and provide herself a cover. I’ll speak to Mary Sue, too, to cover my bases. I need to find out if any of them spotted unusual activity in the neighborhood in the days prior to Nelda’s death. If Nelda Dolan was killed by a random burglar, chances are the guy cased the neighborhood beforehand. Maybe he realized the house was unoccupied but still contained some property. Burglars often go door-to-door pretending to be salesmen so they can figure out who lives in a house, or they’ll keep an eye out for advertising flyers in the doors. Flyers that stack up tell them nobody’s home. Sometimes the burglars leave flyers themselves. Other times, they sit in their cars and watch everyone coming and going, or they cruise up and down the street multiple times throughout the day, trying to figure out everyone’s schedules.”

  An involuntary shiver shook my body. The thought of some creep lurking about, spying on innocent people and planning to invade their homes, turned my blood to slush. “There was a flyer on the front door of the house Friday,”
I told him. “A door-hanger type made of heavy yellow card stock. My hands were full when I left, so I didn’t remove it. It was gone when I arrived Saturday morning.” The thought that my failure to remove the ad could have attracted a burglar to the house made me feel sick. Then again, the ad was gone when I arrived Saturday morning. If Dakota had removed it when he came in, an intruder would have been put on notice that the house was occupied.

  “I’m going to have another talk with Dakota Walsh,” Collin said. “He seemed like a harmless kid, and I was willing to believe he hadn’t heard Nelda fall, despite being in the house. But knowing what I know now, that someone would have had to come into the house a second time to remove something from under Nelda’s body, I’m less convinced. I’m also going to speak with Hitch-a-Ride, see if the driver who brought Dakota here noticed anything suspicious about him or the house. But first, I’ll check in with Carl and Becky Dolan, see if they’re aware of anything Nelda might have been carrying.”

  Like sawdust off a whirring blade, this investigation seemed to be going all over the place. Ugh. I realized Collin had a murder to investigate, but I had a house to renovate. I couldn’t do it if the remaining furniture, boxes, and junk weren’t removed. “What about the stuff in the house? Do Buck and I need to leave everything as is, or can we get rid of it?”

  Much to my relied, he said, “You can clear out the house. Whatever was under Nelda is likely elsewhere, maybe even disposed of or destroyed. We don’t have space in the department’s evidence room to store a bunch of household items that are most likely irrelevant. It would be unreasonable to ask you to store it all. That said, if you come across anything suspicious while you’re moving things out, let me know.” A small smile played about his lips. “Let me know if you smell a peach pie baking, too.”

  “Will do.”

  Buck arrived as Flynn was leaving. He looked from Collin to me and his face fell into a frown. “Uh-oh. Something’s up, isn’t it?”

  I motioned for Buck to follow me to my SUV. “We need to buy a security system for the house. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  “We didn’t budget for a security system.”

  “I know, I know.”

  He sighed. “I’m beginning to regret going into business with you.”

  “Really?” I replied. “If I were you, my regret would have started way before now.”

  CHAPTER 12

  BACKGROUND CHECK

  WHITNEY

  While the detective headed next door to speak to Carl and Becky, Buck and I climbed into my car and set out for the home improvement store. By the time we’d selected a security system, paid for it, and driven back to the flip house, Collin was gone, leaving me to wonder what, if anything, he had learned from his visits to Carl, Becky, Roxanne, Gayle, and Mary Sue.

  Buck and I spent the better part of Wednesday installing the security system at the house. He installed devices upstairs, while I did the same downstairs. If anyone opened a window or door, a sensor would activate and not only sound an audible alarm, but also send an alert to our phones. The motion detectors would let us know if any movement occurred inside the house, and the cameras mounted over the front door and in the main hallways upstairs and downstairs would record any activity inside. Although the system was both extensive and expensive, we could tout the high-tech feature when we put the house on the market. A potential buyer would appreciate the fact that the house came with a security system already in place.

  After I installed the last of the devices on the laundry room window, I headed up the stairs, the bottom one giving off its usual creak. Quit your complaining, stair. I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

  Buck had finished, too, and met me on the landing. Using my phone, I set up online access, establishing a user ID and a password, Sawdust123. Now that access was established, we’d be able to view the camera feeds from our computers and phones. I texted the login information to Detective Flynn so that he could access the video stream on his devices, too.

  Buck tucked his phone into his tool belt. “I’ll rent a truck tomorrow so we can clear out the house. I’ll check with Owen, too, and see if he can help us move all the junk out.”

  We were already several days behind schedule. I’d have been much happier if Wayne and Andy Walsh had emptied the house before putting it on the market. But at least Buck and I could deduct the cost of the rental truck as a business expense, and we’d get a tax deduction for donating the furniture and other belongings to the charity thrift store. After all, we’d bought them along with the house. They belonged to us now.

  My cousin and I called it a day, activated the security system, and went our separate ways. With any luck, Detective Flynn would call me soon and tell me he’d found prints on the jewelry box and solved the case.

  * * *

  Temperatures dove into the teens Wednesday night, and Sawdust curled up under the bedspread with me, burrowing his way down to my belly. Since my roommates and I were trying to keep our bills manageable, we’d set the thermostat to only sixty-two degrees. The extra warmth my cat provided was more than welcome.

  At half past six Thursday morning, my phone yanked me from my sleep when it played Dolly Parton’s classic “9 to 5” at what sounded like ten thousand decibels in the quiet room. The song choice was intentionally ironic, because my job as a property manager meant I was on duty not just nine to five on weekdays, but twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Proving my point, the call was an emergency plea from a Home & Hearth tenant whose pipes had frozen and burst overnight. Not exactly a fun way to start the day.

  Foregoing a shower and slipping into my coveralls and work boots, I raced over to the rental house and turned off the water. While I could handle minor plumbing repairs on my own, the size of the impromptu ice rink on the lawn told me this job was well above my pay grade. I called a plumber first and the property owner second. Not surprisingly, the owner was none too happy about the unexpected emergency plumbing bill.

  Before the plumber left, he admonished the tenants to keep a faucet dripping anytime the temperatures dipped near freezing. “That’ll prevent the pipes from freezing again.”

  The ice crisis dealt with, I climbed back into my car and dialed Detective Flynn. I might be a buttinski, but Nelda Dolan’s death had taken place on my property. Besides, he’d dragged me into this case by asking me to serve as a mole. I had a right to know what he’d found out, right?

  He answered on the fourth ring.

  “Any luck?” I asked without preamble.

  “There were no matches for any of the fingerprints on the jewelry box,” he said, “but I’ve got some new leads.”

  “You do? What are they?”

  “The pinky swear applies to what I’m about to tell you. Got it?”

  Though he couldn’t see me, I instinctively raised my little finger in accord. “Got it.”

  He went on to tell me that Becky and Carl indicated they knew of nothing missing from their home. Neither had an inkling whether Nelda had taken something with her to the flip house, or what in the house she might have attempted to remove.

  “Did they wonder why you were asking?”

  “Yes,” Collin said. “Everyone I spoke to was curious. I told them the medical examiner assumed Nelda must have been holding something since it appeared she made no attempt to grab the handrail. I fibbed and said that whatever it was must have been set aside by the first responders, that I was only following up in order to finalize my report and make sure any property was returned to its rightful owner.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  “Hard to tell,” the detective replied. “Carl, Becky, and Dakota seemed to accept my explanation, but there’s no telling what was going on in their heads. Roxanne wasn’t home when I went by. I left my card with a note asking her to call me, but I haven’t heard from her yet. Bertram asked a lot of questions. He seemed to realize my explanation was flimsy. I asked all of them whether they’d been in the house recently. Gayle admitted she
’d gone into the house on Friday and taken the box of playing cards. She said she’d given the cards to Lillian Walsh and her husband as a housewarming gift when they’d moved in decades ago, and that Lillian’s son Andy had told her awhile back that she was welcome to them. She said with all the holiday hubbub, she’d forgotten about the cards until she and the other ladies talked about getting their poker games going again. She said Lillian had given her a key to the house many years back, and she used that to get in and retrieve the cards.”

  “Why wouldn’t Gayle wait until I was at the house and ask me for the cards then?” After all, she’d trespassed on my property. Trespassing was a crime. A small one, maybe, but a crime nonetheless.

  “She kept referring to the place as ‘Lillian’s house.’ Seems to me she felt comfortable going inside because she’s spent a lot of time there over the years and still thinks of the house as her friend’s place.”

  While I could understand that old habits might be hard to break, I didn’t much appreciate Dakota and Gayle traipsing all over my property without permission. Nelda, either, for that matter. I wondered if she might still be alive now if she’d stayed out of my house. Had the killer come for her? Or had the killer come for whatever had been in Nelda’s hands?

  “The interesting part,” the detective continued, “is that Gayle claimed she went into the house for the cards on Friday morning.”

  “That can’t be true,” I said. “The cards were still there when Buck and I went through the place Friday afternoon. My photos prove it.”

  “Exactly,” Flynn agreed. “Her timing was off. I noticed Bertram cut a glance her way when she said she’d gone to the house in the morning.”

  “So she lied. I wonder why.”

  “I wonder why, too.”

  “You didn’t point out to her that she couldn’t have taken the cards in the morning?”