by Rick Polad
“Yeah. Looks like she was stabbed. It’s not pretty. Face is all bloody.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
He nodded.
Rosie started toward the house with Steele dragging a few yards behind. A female officer Rosie didn’t recognize opened the door from the inside. Steele gave her more of an inspection than he had the crime scene. Rosie introduced herself and Detective Steele to Officer Lee while they were led into the kitchen where a woman and another female officer sat side-by-side at the kitchen table. A quick glance showed the kitchen to be in the middle of a remodeling project. Half the wall was covered by new cabinets. An empty tea cup sat on the edge of the sink. Officer Lee introduced her partner, Officer Martin, and the housekeeper, telling Rosie that two more officers were upstairs in the study with the body.
Rosie noticed a wedding ring on Margaret’s finger. “Hello, Mrs. Rivera. Can you answer a few questions?”
She nodded and sniffed. Her face was streaked with tears, and she was trembling. Officer Martin had one hand on her shoulder.
“Can you tell us what happened this morning?” Rosie asked gently.
Margaret nodded again but took almost a minute before she started.
“I came here about quarter to seven. I like to come early and have a cup of tea before working.”
Rosie nodded and smiled. Steele chewed on his cigar and spat part of a leaf onto the floor. Rosie gave him a look that could have melted lead. He shrugged and looked around for a paper towel.
“Detective Steele, why don’t you go see to the upstairs,” Rosie suggested in a firm voice. He picked up the leaf, threw the paper towel in the garbage, and left with a sigh of relief.
Turning back to Margaret, Rosie asked, “How long have you worked for Mrs. Brock?”
Margaret vigorously shook her head. “Oh, no. It is not Mrs. Brock. It is Miss Brock. She has never been married. I have been here for two years in July.” She looked proud.
“And what type of work do you do?”
“Oh, just the normal housework. Cleaning mostly. But it is a very clean house. Miss Brock is a very clean woman.”
Rosie felt she was defending her employer. “I’m sure. So what happened this morning?”
“Well, I had my tea and went upstairs to work.”
“When you got here did you know if Miss Brock was home?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you call out hello or something to let her know you were here?”
“Oh no. I do not do that. Miss Brock is out late on the weekends and sleeps late. So I just start with quiet cleaning so I do not wake her. I always start in the study upstairs and clean up the dishes.”
“Dishes?”
“Yes, when Miss Brock comes home late she has tea and some snack in the study and leaves the tray for me to pick up. She is very tired.”
Margaret obviously felt sorry for Miss Brock. But, other than the fact that she was dead, Rosie had trouble feeling sorry for someone who had the resources to party into the late hours.
“So normally Miss Brock is sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“And this morning what did you find?”
Margaret started to tremble again and her eyes welled up with tears. Slowly shaking her head and looking off into the distance, Margaret painfully said, “I see Miss Brock lying back over the arm of the chair. Her face was...”
“That’s okay,” said Rosie softly as she patted her arm. Rosie took a Kleenex from the box on the table and handed it to Margaret, who dabbed at her eyes. “Would you like to rest a bit?” asked Rosie.
Margaret nodded.
“Okay. I’ll be back. Martin, would you stay with Margaret please? Maybe fix some more tea. Lee, show me the way.”
Rosie had not been able to shed the feeling of despair that overwhelmed her as she approached a murder scene. She much preferred to do the interviews and let Steele handle the bodies. Some of the older detectives—Ronny Steele was a good example—had no problem at all looking at dead bodies, no matter what their state; it was just another part of their day. They had told her not to think about it; just treat it like a stolen car or a broken window. A dead body was just another entry in a report. She thought she did a pretty good job of hiding the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach while she was on the scene, but it was there nevertheless. And the first four or five had come back to haunt her in the middle of the night and resulted in quick dashes to the bathroom. As time went by and cases added up, Rosie got somewhat used to the blood, but she decided she would never get used to the pain one person was willing to inflict on another, and the glaring lack of respect for another human life.
* * *
As she followed Officer Lee up the stairs, Rosie tried to concentrate on the wood paneling and the fine molding. The house was in good shape, but had lost the grandiosity it must have had when it was first built. Their footsteps sank noiselessly into a thick, plush carpet that continued into the upstairs hall. Officer Lee turned to the left and Rosie followed. Her stomach tightened and so did her jaw muscles. She reminded herself not to think about it.
Officer Lee motioned Rosie into a large, sunny room with a sweeping view of the lake that would have been a wonderful place to spend a few hours if it wasn’t the site of a murder investigation. Lee asked if she could go back downstairs. Rosie nodded.
Steele and two male officers were chatting in the middle of the room. Hobbs and Jackson were in their thirties and both said hello as she came in. Hobbs politely asked how she was doing. She lied and said fine.
“So, whadda we got?” she asked with more matter-of-factness than she felt. She could see the top of a head and an arm hanging from the left side of the swivel chair at the desk that faced a picture window.
The top of the desk was almost bare. A tray with an empty cup was next to a closed ledger book with a dark green cover. A silver pen was on top of the book. Two piles of papers were near the book and a phone was at the back right corner.
Steele puffed out his chest and said, “Looks dead to me, but I’ll wait for the coroner to make the call.” Hobbs and Jackson laughed, stroking the ego of Ronny Steele.
Forcing her legs to move, Rosie walked around the left side of the chair and stood next to the desk. Feeling both revulsion and anger, Rosie looked down at the face of what once must have been a pretty young woman. Rosie guessed early thirties. The skin on the right side of her face was perfectly smooth. Her right eye was open and colored brown. Her left eye was gone, or at least was no longer recognizable. The eye socket was a messy hole, and a gash laid open the skin from the socket to the jaw. The left side of her face was covered in dried blood and her hair was stuck together and crusty. Her left arm, spattered with blood, dangled over the side of the chair and pointed to a dark spot on the green carpet.
Moving her eyes down from the head, Rosie saw that Miss Brock wore a yellow cotton pullover with matching jogging shorts. Looked like an outfit just as good for sleeping as jogging. Margaret had said Miss Brock liked to come in late, have some tea, and then go to bed. So this must have happened in the early morning. Rosie guessed at Saturday morning. The yellow top was torn and stained with blood a little below the left breast. Forcing herself to breathe, Rosie felt better thinking about the details and mentally making notes.
She turned to Steele. “Which do you think killed her?”
Steele shrugged with indifference. “Not what I get paid for. Doc’ll tell us.”
Rosie bristled with frustration at Steele. “I know. Just asking. I thought maybe you might want to take your brain out for a walk and give it some exercise.” That got a chuckle from Hobbs and Jackson.
“Nope. It gets all the exercise it needs thinking about smokin’ a cigar,” he said with a glare. More chuckles.
“Okay. Have some respect. Any word on the doc?”
Hobbs answered. “Should be here within a half. Tech is on the way too.”
“Right. Thanks. How about if you two go out and help secure the beach. I don
’t want any visitors.”
Showing that he did put some effort into thinking, Steele said, “This happened at least twenty-four hours ago. If there were any footprints on that beach, they’d be trampled on by now, or washed away.”
Rosie walked to the window. “Probably.”
Hobbs nodded and he and Jackson left.
Standing with her arms folded, Rosie considered how the world could be totally different depending on what you chose to look at. Trying to ignore what was behind her, she looked out at the lake sparkling in the early morning sun. Fresh and cleanly washed by the waves, the sand glistened as the sun caught the millions of grains of quartz. When she turned around, Steele was bent down on the left side of the body. She hadn’t heard him move to the desk. She had noticed an open safe and walked around the other side of the desk and behind the chair so she didn’t have to look at the face again.
“Empty,” Steele offered.
The safe was built into the desk and it was indeed empty.
“Wonder if the murderer got what was in it, or if it was empty all along?” he asked of no one in particular.
“I thought you avoided thinking,” Rosie said with sarcasm.
Standing, Steele said, “Sometimes it just happens all by itself. You know, like hitting your knee with a hammer.”
Rosie had never hit her knee with a hammer, but she knew what he meant.
“I wonder what she did to afford a joint like this. Must be worth a bundle with this view.”
Steele was doing far more than his share of thinking. “Must be,” Rosie agreed. “Margaret may have the answer to that.”
“Margaret?” asked Steele.
“Yeah, Margaret, the housekeeper.”
“Oh yeah. Margaret.”
Rosie was constantly frustrated at Steele’s habit of forgetting details and often wondered how he got to be a detective. But he was, and he seemed to do enough to keep his job and not make waves. And sometimes not making waves was more important than doing the job.
Rosie scanned the top of the desk, stopping at the phone with a built-in answering machine. The red light was flashing in bursts of four. Four messages.
Steele saw her looking at the phone. “Sure like to know what’s on that tape.”
“Yeah, me too.” Rosie took a pocket-sized recorder that she used for verbal notes out of her jacket pocket, turned it on, and placed it next to the phone. Using the end of her pen, she pushed play on the answering machine. The machine rewound and then started automatically.
There were no dates or times on the tape, but one of the messages helped. The first message was from a male with a deep voice asking her to call. He had some information about a friend from London. The second and third were confirming dates for next weekend. The last was a very formal male voice explaining that Mr. Smith had asked him to call due to the fact that they had a date at eight and it was now ten.
Busy girl, Rosie thought. Miss Brock had missed a date, but was it Saturday or Sunday night, or Saturday or Sunday morning?
Rosie pushed the save message button with her pen, switched off her recorder, and sighed. Already knowing the answer, Rosie asked, “You wanna stay with the scene? I’m going to look around up here.”
“Sure. I’ll holler when we get company.”
She nodded and gratefully left the room, wondering how someone got so callous that they didn’t mind staying in the same room with a dead person, especially one so brutally disfigured. She had also wondered what Miss Brock did for a living. But, after listening to the messages, she thought she could make a good guess.
Chapter 60
Charles Lamb approached Glenlake a little after 8:30. He planned to sit on the beach again before starting work and wondered if the old man would still be sleeping behind the rocks. But he soon forgot about the beach when he saw the street crowded with people. They were standing on the grass and in the middle of the street, and Charles couldn’t see to the end of the road. Wondering what had happened, he figured someone had drowned.
He found a place to park on the other side of Sheridan Road. It only took a minute to walk back to where the crowd was. There must have been a hundred people. Slowly inching his way between people, Charles finally made it to where a yellow tape was stretched across the street and the front of Miss Brock’s house.
He quietly asked if anyone knew what had happened. No one did. Everyone was whispering and wondering. Charles counted three squad cars, one with its lights still flashing. Three policemen were standing behind the tape looking very serious. Charles considered asking one of them what the problem was, but he had never been one to approach a policeman. He thought every policeman knew about every person who was arrested in the city and that they would remember his face. Even though he had done nothing wrong, it didn’t pay to go looking for trouble. So Charles stood and waited like everyone else. Except no one else was worried about Amanda.
Chapter 61
Rosie didn’t find anything of importance in the rest of the upstairs rooms. She told Steele she was going back down to talk to Margaret again. Steele nodded. Halfway down, she met Officer Lee leading Doc Naggy up the stairs. Half a flight behind them was Jim Head, the evidence tech.
“Well, glad you all could make it,” she said with a smile.
“Mornin’ to you too, Detective,” sputtered the doc as he caught his breath between each word. Between his weight and the cigarettes, he didn’t handle stairs too well. He rested on the landing.
Taking up the doc’s rear, Jim Head smiled at Rosie and rolled his eyes.
Rosie smiled back, shook her head, and made her way back to the kitchen where Margaret was sipping tea and telling Officer Martin about her grandchildren.
Rosie winked at Martin and sat down across from Margaret. “Sounds like you have a nice family, Mrs. Rivera.”
“Yes. I have three grandchildren,” she said proudly.
Rosie shook her head. “I’d better get started if I’m going to catch up to you.”
They all laughed.
“Mrs. Rivera, would you mind if I ask a few more questions?”
She straightened in her chair. “No. I am much better now. And please, just call me Margaret.”
“Okay. Thank you, Margaret. I won’t be long, and then you can get back to your family. When was the last time you saw Miss Brock?”
“That was on Friday, when I worked.”
Nodding, Rosie continued, “Did anything strange happen?”
Margaret shook her head slowly.
“What time did you last see her?”
“I left at quarter to six so I could catch the six o’clock bus.”
“Did Miss Brock seem normal?”
“What do you mean?” asked Margaret with a puzzled look.
Rosie spread her hands, palms up. “Was she the same as usual? Or did she seem like there was a problem with anything?”
Margaret thought for a few seconds. “No. No, she was just the same. She told me to have a nice weekend and she would see me Monday—today.” A look of sadness came over her face.
Rosie quickly asked if the door was locked when she arrived this morning.
Margaret took a deep breath and pulled back her shoulders. “Yes, it was, just like always. I opened the door with my key.”
Ronny Steele walked into the kitchen. Rosie didn’t want him to disturb Margaret, and his presence alone was usually disturbing.
“Detective Steele, Margaret tells us the door was locked when she got here this morning. Would you mind checking the front door and the windows and see if there might have been some other point of entry?” She was explaining not for Ronny’s benefit, but for Margaret’s.
Steele nodded. As he turned to leave, he pulled the half-smoked cigar out of his suit coat pocket. Rosie knew it would be lit before he stepped onto the driveway. And she wondered how he avoided catching on fire.
She turned back to Margaret, who seemed very calm and collected. “Margaret, did Miss Brock tell you anything about he
r plans for the weekend?”
“No,” she stated firmly. “She does not discuss her plans.”
Rosie watched Margaret involuntarily fingering her cup. “There were four messages on her answering machine. One was from a man who had a date with her and she didn’t show up.”
Margaret’s face lost all emotion. “I do not know about that,” she said sternly.
“You say she was usually out late on the weekends. She must have been very popular.”
Margaret said nothing.
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“No,” Margaret said slowly. “I do not think so.”
Rosie softened. “She must have been very pretty.”
Margaret’s lip quivered. “Yes, she was. Very pretty.”
Rosie switched topics. “Did you know about the safe in her desk?”
Margaret nodded.
“It’s open and empty. Did she keep much money in there?”
“Sometimes. There were many times when I came to work and the safe was open with much money in it. Miss Brock would forget and leave it open. She would be very tired and need to go to bed.”
Rosie cocked her head to the right. “How much is much money, Margaret?”
“Oh, I do not know. Many bills.”
“Cash?”
“Yes.”
Pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, Rosie crossed her legs under the table. “This is a beautiful house.”
“Yes, it is very nice.”
“Do you have any idea how much it’s worth?”
“Oh no, I do not know that. It is not my business.”
“I’m wondering what Miss Brock did for a living to own a house like this.”
Margaret again said nothing. She was a very careful woman. And, because she was so careful, and because her mood had changed from sadness to hardness, Rosie felt there was something Margaret wasn’t talking about.
“Margaret, do you know anyone who might do this to Miss Brock?”
Margaret’s eyes welled up and she shook her head.
“Do you know if there is family? Anyone who might have a key to the house?”
