Murder in the Dog Days

by P. M. Carlson

  “Lady here wants to see you. Name of Ryan.”

  Wonderful. One-thirty in the a.m. and she still wasn’t rid of that one. Holly lurched to her feet and said, “Thanks, Pollard,” in dismissal. She pushed her hair back from her face, noticed unhappily that her feet were still bare, and finally raised her eyes to meet Maggie’s. “Yeah? What is it, Ms. Ryan?”

  Maggie’s expression was compassionate. “I know you’re beat. I’m sorry to come butting in again, but—”

  “Yeah, I know, you thought of something important,” Holly broke in, cutting off the friendly voice. She reached back down to the sofa to retrieve her notebook, struggling to raise her defences again. She pulled out her pencil, stared at the peace sign woodenly, and said, “What is it?”

  Maggie read the signals correctly and became more businesslike. “Well, it’s only important to little Tina. She really misses her Barbie dolls. If you don’t need them here, it would be a comfort to her if you’d let me take them to her.”

  Poor kid. The irony of it hit Holly hard. “Having trouble sleeping, is she?” She was still too shaky to hide her bitterness. She’d known kids who couldn’t sleep, nor eat, nor walk. She muttered, “Well, kid, join the club.”

  Maggie’s blue eyes flamed with anger. “Jesus, what is this? I come here to ask you to help out a little grieving girl, and that’s the answer I get? Look, I’m sorry you don’t like me. But don’t take it out on the kids!”

  Civilians didn’t understand. Holly tossed her notebook despairingly onto the sofa. Don’t cry, Schreiner. Be strong.

  Maggie pushed her fingers back through her curls. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said in a softer voice. “But I just don’t understand the problem. Is it something I said? Or—maybe you don’t like kids at all. I’m pregnant, is that it?”

  “Of course not! Why don’t—”

  Maggie glanced down at her T-shirt. “My politics, then. You were pro-war?”

  Holly jerked her traitorous gaze away from the peace sign. “Don’t talk bullshit!” she said roughly.

  But Maggie realized she was on the right track. The compassion was back in her voice now but the questions continued relentlessly. “I’m sorry, I know no one was in favor of it, exactly. But you had a connection, didn’t you?”

  Holly’s fists were clenched, wanting to smack her into silence. “A brother, maybe? Wounded?” Maggie’s soft voice was insistent. “Or a boyfriend killed?”

  Holly’s control snapped at last. “Yeah, smartass, you think you’re so clever! But you’re as dumb as everyone else in this goddamn counterfeit country! You think every Vietnam vet is male!”

  For a fierce triumphant instant, Holly saw shock and disbelief reeling in the blue eyes. Then, comprehension dawning, Maggie murmured, “Jesus! Jesus, of course, an Army nurse! No wonder—look, I’m sorry, I didn’t think!” She reached out sympathetically to touch Holly on the arm. “What was it—”

  “What was it like? It sucked.” Don’t cry, Schreiner, if you start you’ll never stop. She snatched up Barbie and Ken from the hearth and jabbed them into Maggie’s hands. “Here, I hope the kid will be okay. And now if you goddamn peaceniks can restrain yourselves from spitting on me, I’ve got a murder to solve!”

  Mosby, Virginia

  TUESDAY

  MORNING

  AUGUST 5, 1975

  8

  “Oh, Christ,” moaned Olivia.

  She had just closed her eyes, and someone was already nudging her awake.

  “Liv, I thought you might want to go see Felicia.”

  Olivia pried her eyes open. The world was blurry, full of loathsome gray early light. A small figure swam into view. Little Sarah, industriously sorting through the drawers in Olivia’s dresser. Another figure next to the bed. It was Maggie, dressed today in a sky-blue sundress. Olivia turned her head away and scowled bleary-eyed at the empty pillow beside her.

  “Jerry just left for his hospital rounds,” Maggie informed her cheerfully.

  Hospital. So it was six o’clock. Hateful early-bird Ryans. Olivia peeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth and mumbled thickly, “Who’s Felicia?”

  “Felicia Colby. Dale’s first wife.”

  Dale. Oh God. With a crash, reality broke over Olivia, swamping her with regrets and questions. She jerked upright, rubbing her eyes, her mind churning with images. Dale sprawled in his den. His family, Donna and the kids. The story about Representative Knox’s plane. And the bar last night, hearing about Ernie Grant, the pilot’s friend. And there was Leon Moffatt. And Mrs. Resler. And Felicia Colby, yes.

  “Yes,” said Olivia. “I want to see her. But why so goddamn early?”

  “I don’t know where she’ll be later.”

  “You do know now?”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  Olivia clambered from the bed, grabbed her fresh undies out of Sarah’s small hands, and whisked into the bathroom. “Be with you in a sec,” she called over her shoulder.

  A splash of cold water on the face, a quick rinse of the teeth, a grimace at the straggly-haired creature in the mirror. Looked like she’d only had two hours’ sleep. Not far from the truth, really. Last night when she’d returned from the bar with Nick, Jerry had still been wide awake, demanding a blow by blow account. And even when they got to bed they were both still alert, as though Dale’s fate underlined their own pulsing life, their own warm tingling senses. Maybe they should have lain sober and depressed in his honor. But sex framed by death seemed somehow doubly precious, a tiny affirmation that despite the waiting void, at that moment life was still triumphant.

  At this moment, though, she didn’t feel triumphant at all. Olivia picked up her hairbrush and returned to the bedroom, brushing. “How do you know where she is?”

  “She pulled out her Holiday Inn key when she first arrived at Dale’s yesterday. I happened to notice the room number.”

  “So this isn’t a sure thing.”

  “No appointment, no.” Maggie was helping Sarah count Jerry’s socks. “How many of your leads are sure things?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Olivia finished pinning up her hair and pulled a yellow blouse and flowered skirt from her closet. “It’s just that at six a.m. after a late night, sure things are a lot more attractive than maybes. Is anyone else up?”

  “The Colbys are still sleeping. Donna had sedatives in her purse, I noticed.”

  “You’re sure a noticing kind of person,” grumped Olivia. “How about Nick?”

  “He’s downstairs reading. Said he’d mind the store in case Donna wasn’t quite coping.”

  “Good. Do I have time for a cup of coffee?”

  “Why don’t you have one with Felicia?”

  “Eleven!” caroled Sarah triumphantly, holding up a sock.

  Olivia gave her little niece a sour look. “Rotten number for socks.” She looked out the window. Her van was blocking Maggie’s Camaro in the driveway so she might as well drive. She found her car keys and slouched down the stairs.

  Sarah elected to come with them and Olivia drove through damp streets and highways gloomy in the clouded dawn. Rumbles of thunder threatened from beyond the hills. They passed the old farmhouse, now the John Singleton Mosby Museum, as they turned onto the highway.

  “They hid in the woods,” Sarah announced.

  “Right,” Maggie agreed.

  “You see them hiding, Aunt Liv?”

  “Huh?” Olivia was concentrating on keeping her eyes unshut.

  “No, Sarah,” Maggie smiled. “It was Mr. Taynton’s grandpa, and the police chief’s grandpa. They were hiding in the woods a long time ago. Before Aunt Liv was here.”

  “Who are you babbling about?” Olivia asked peevishly.

  “Mosby’s guerrilla fighters. Nice old fellow at the museum showed Sarah the paintings and uniforms and explained how they ambushed Union soldiers.”

  Sarah bounced up and down in the backseat. “They jumped out, and blam! blam! blam!”

  “God, I’m raising a hawk,” lamente
d Maggie.

  At the Holiday Inn, Olivia followed directions and pulled into a parking slot. Maggie walked confidently up to Room 84, peeked brazenly through a crack in the curtain, then banged on the door.

  A shirtless young man in jeans, with unkempt brown hair, opened it. Oh God, wrong room. Olivia stepped back.

  But Maggie was more awake. “Mark Colby?” she asked.

  “Yeah?” The young man raised his eyebrows in inquiry. Olivia’s heart contracted. It was one of Dale’s expressions.

  “I’m Maggie and this is Olivia. Friends of your dad’s.”

  His mouth twitched. He said, “Yeah?”

  Olivia said, “We wondered if we could talk to you and your mother a minute before you go back to Harrisburg.”

  “Who is it?” Felicia Colby’s blonde head appeared next to her son’s. She was dressed in a pink ruffled robe. She stared at Maggie a second, then said accusingly, “You were at Dale’s yesterday!”

  “Right. So was Olivia here. I thought maybe you’d be interested in comparing notes, while the police aren’t around.”

  Felicia chewed at her lower lip a moment. She was already carefully made up, Olivia saw. Full fifties war paint.

  Sarah tugged at Maggie’s hand. “Wanna pee!”

  “Oh, dear.” Maggie looked apologetically at Felicia, who was smirking down at the little girl. “I’m sorry. Mrs. Colby, could Sarah use your restroom?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.” Felicia stepped back from the door. “God, I remember Mark once at that age, screaming in the middle of the supermarket.”

  Mark stalked to the window, whisked back the curtain, and stared out at the unlovely parking lot. Olivia, sliding into the room in Maggie’s wake, said to Felicia, “Listen, we don’t want to bother you now if it’ll be more convenient later. We just wanted to make sure to catch you before you left.”

  “Well, I’m leaving as soon as I can,” Felicia said. She was lighting a cigarette. “I’ve got to stop by the police station this morning. Thought I’d go right after breakfast. Are you a friend of Dale and Donna’s?”

  “Not a close friend, if that’s what you mean. I worked with Dale at the Sun-Dispatch. I’m a reporter too. I hardly ever see Donna.”

  “What about what’s-her-name in there? Maggie?”

  “She met him for the first time yesterday.”

  “How’d you both get mixed up in this?”

  Olivia leaned against the wall. She needed coffee. “Chance, really,” she explained. “I impulsively asked Dale and his family to go to the beach with us, since it was so hot. But when we picked them up, Dale was working on a story and decided to stay home. We got back eight or nine hours later and he was dead.”

  At the window, Mark’s back was rigid. Felicia bowed her head, the heel of her hand against her forehead, smoke pluming from the cigarette between her fingers. “God, I still can’t believe it. I just talked with him last week!” She raised her eyes with a bitter smile. “No, that’s wrong. Talked at him. He was in one of his snits.”

  “Mother,” said Mark, glancing at her from his position at the window.

  “Hey, look, don’t get uptight,” Felicia told her son. “Nobody expects the ex to feel chummy toward a documented deadbeat. I’ve got proof,” she explained, turning to Olivia. “Court papers telling him to pay up.”

  Maggie emerged from the bathroom with Sarah. “Why don’t we all go have breakfast? Give ourselves a few minutes to talk things over.”

  “Yeah. Get your shirt on, Mark.” Felicia stubbed out her cigarette and disappeared into the bathroom to change.

  A few minutes later they were settled into a corner booth in the motel restaurant, the four adults on the semicircular banquette upholstered in antique-silk patterned plastic, Sarah queening it over them all from a high chair on the open side of the table. They ordered and to Olivia’s relief the coffee came immediately. As soon as the waiter left, Maggie handed Sarah a picture book from her bag, then looked across the table at Felicia and said, “Okay. What do we all want to know?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to know anything.” Today Felicia’s blouse was a vibrant turquoise. She fumbled in her bag and drew out a fresh cigarette.

  “No. But you came along instead of throwing us out. And you’re in an odd position, just like us. We found the body, so the cops are interested in us. You turn up, same day, mad at Dale. So the cops will at least be interested in your alibi.”

  “I wasn’t even here! I was on the road three hours.”

  “And in Harrisburg before that?” asked Olivia.

  “Yeah, where else?” Felicia looked at them narrowly. “It happened earlier? Is that it?”

  Maggie shrugged. “It’s possible. I’m no expert, though. So you were in Harrisburg until six or seven?”

  “Yeah. I left after work.”

  “And people saw you up until five or so?”

  Felicia blew out a cloud of smoke. “God, you’re as bad as that policewoman last night! No, yesterday afternoon I had to check inventory. Guy that usually does it for me was on vacation. So after lunch I was mostly alone in the supply room. Nan saw me in the ladies’ once, and that’s it.”

  “Okay. And the detective probably also asked you why you drove down yesterday. Why not call or write? You often did, right?”

  “No more often than I had to.” Felicia tipped her head back, smoke streaming from her nose.

  Olivia leaned forward. “Well, why did you come then?”

  Mark broke in. “It’s just that I have to mail in deposits for college. It’s not so amazing to get worried about college fees in August!”

  “No, it’s sensible,” Maggie agreed soothingly. “But it’s a bad coincidence that you turned up here on that particular day. The detectives are probably looking askance at you.”

  “Askance,” said Felicia. “Good word. That’s what that policewoman does, all right. Looks askance.”

  “At us too,” agreed Olivia. “We know it happened while we were gone. But she has to be suspicious of all of us.”

  “How did he die, anyway?” Felicia tapped her cigarette into the thick glass ashtray.

  Olivia hesitated and said, “They don’t seem to know.” It was all very well to learn things from Felicia and her son, but Olivia’s instinct was to protect information not yet published.

  Maggie seemed to have no such qualms. “Best guess is that he got hit with a brass lamp base,’’ she said. Her eyes were on Mark and she ignored Olivia’s warning kick under the table.

  “Who would do that? Why?” Mark asked urgently. He had that intense, quizzical Dale look again. But the waiter arrived with eggs and pancakes, and there was a flurry of sorting out juice and toast, and getting Sarah’s French toast properly syruped.

  When things settled down Olivia said, “There are a whole lot of questions. The police have to do tests, fingerprints and so forth, and find out if it really was the brass lamp. Nobody seems to know why it happened either. I’m wondering—well, he was working on a story about an unsolved crime. Maybe he got too close to an answer.”

  “Oh, he always said that!” Felicia exclaimed. “He always said, ‘They’re really going to be gunning for me now!’ Every time he had a story more exciting than a zoning meeting.” She snorted. “Sometimes even then.”

  “Yeah, we all feel like that,” Olivia admitted, wondering uneasily if Kunstler would sue about anything in her Joanne Little story.

  “But it never happens, does it?” Felicia demanded.

  “Hardly ever. But there was this reporter in—”

  Maggie broke in. “Well, who did you think did it?”

  “That woman!” said Felicia. Mark shot her an exasperated glance.

  Maggie nodded. “Donna. Well, it’s true a lot of murders are domestic.”

  “Yeah, it’s not so unusual, is it? Wife wants his money but not him. Especially if—” Felicia stopped, poked at her egg with a fork. “But of course, maybe it really was a story. Anything’s possible. What was he worki
ng on?”

  “Plane crash story,” said Maggie. “Olivia’s going to check into it, find out about what Dale might have discovered. Did he mention it to you?”

  “Are you kidding? I was lucky to get anything more than hello-goodbye. That man’s cold shoulder was a full-fledged iceberg.”

  “Mm. Maybe he felt guilty about owing you money.”

  “Guilty? Not him. He was just irresponsible!” Felicia’s turquoise-lidded eyes sparked with indignation. “And spiteful. He couldn’t believe I’d really divorce him. Went into his usual stony silence, trying to control things. When it finally sank in that I’d left for good, he skipped town himself. No forwarding address. It took me a year to get the divorce final.”

  Maggie was looking thoughtfully at the boy. “He ran out on Mark too?”

  “No!” said Mark hotly. “He was avoiding Mother. You know it’s true,” he said, turning to Felicia. “He sent me cards. Christmas, birthday. I was just a little kid but he sent money too.”

  “Who told you that?” his mother demanded.

  “Nan Evans. She said he sent money back then.”

  “Yeah, instead of the child support he owed, he’d send five bucks for your birthday,” snapped Felicia. “But he did send cards. That’s how I tracked him down finally. The postmarks on Mark’s cards were all different. I figured he had to be working somewhere in the middle of the postmarked towns. So I got a map and looked at all the newspapers from places in the area. And sure enough, there he was, writing for the Sun-Dispatch. I knew he’d never give up his byline.”

  “God, you know reporters, all right!” Olivia had to respect this bit of investigation.

  Maggie nodded approvingly at Felicia. “Must have been especially tough, with a little kid to take care of.”

  “Oh, I learned how to cope, all right,” said Felicia proudly. “Raising a kid alone, you have to be a juggler. Breadwinner, nurse, PTA, and still find time to buy an ice cream cone. But Dale didn’t have to pay me a thing. I mean, he was supposed to send child support but he hardly ever did. I went back to work as a secretary and pretty soon noticed that the big employers were using computers. Back to night school, data entry and even programming. I’m in the state finance department now. I supervise a hundred and fifty people.”