Eggs on Ice

by Laura Childs

  “Okay.”

  Suzanne turned off her flash and started up the narrow stairway into the pitch dark. She knew the two-story town house was fairly narrow, so a short stairway would inevitably lead to a small landing where you’d turn and take another few steps up to the second-floor loft.

  Suzanne was two steps below the landing when a car bumped down the street. She turned, looked out the front windows, and hesitated. Is Hardwick coming home? The neighborhood was so quiet that she could even hear faint music coming from the car’s radio. Then the car braked and swung around in a hasty U-turn. Beams of light splashed through the front windows and against the interior walls of Hardwick’s town house. The rapid, bouncing light almost gave the impression of an old-time movie. Then the light from the headlights flickered against something pale and blue that floated just slightly above Suzanne’s head.

  What . . . ?

  A sudden sick feeling seeped into every pore of Suzanne’s body. And she instantly knew.

  Suzanne reached out and gripped the banister to steady herself. Then she turned on her flash and shone it at the body that dangled just a few feet in front of her.

  It was Hardwick all right, but it kind of wasn’t him, either. His face had collapsed into a death mask, pale blue and shriveled from lack of oxygen. His eyes were bugged out, his tongue stuck straight out of his mouth, and a rope was twisted tightly around his neck.

  Suzanne shone her wavering flash upward and saw that the rope was tied to the upstairs balcony railing. She shone her flash back down and saw that Hardwick’s feet dangled just inches above the carpeting.

  Suzanne’s mouth was so dry, it took her a few moments before she could gather some spit. “Toni.” Her cry was a hoarse croak as it came out of her constricted throat.

  “What?” Toni called, her voice faint. She’d wandered back into the kitchen.

  “Come here.” Suzanne descended two steps. She’d had an instant, intense fear that Hardwick’s cold, dead body might swing out and touch her. “Take a look at this.”

  When Toni was standing at the bottom of the stairs, Suzanne shone her light on Hardwick. It framed his puffy blue face perfectly.

  “Jiminy jeez Christopher!” Toni gasped. She stared at Hardwick for a moment, then stepped back and dropped to her knees and made the sign of the cross. “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. He might have hanged himself,” Suzanne said.

  “He committed suicide?” Toni looked up, but this time she had her fingers covering her eyes.

  “Or maybe . . .” Suzanne wasn’t all that certain about cause of death.

  “Maybe what?” Toni asked. She spread her fingers open and peeped out expectantly.

  “Maybe someone helped him along?”

  “You mean Hardwick was murdered? Oh shit. You think somebody came here and hanged him?”

  Suzanne backed all the way down the stairs now. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice still tight and scratchy. “Only a coroner or an ME could determine the exact circumstances.”

  “You mean someone like Sam?”

  “Oh jeez, Sam. He’s gonna kill me when he finds out I was here. This time he’s really gonna let me have it.”

  “Let’s put that particular issue on the back burner. What are we gonna do right now?” Toni asked. “I mean this very minute.”

  “Much as I’d like to, we can’t just boogie out the back door and pretend this didn’t happen,” Suzanne said. “That we didn’t see this.”

  “Yeah.” Toni reached up and pinched her nose closed. “The neighbors would figure it out sooner or later.”

  “We have to call Sheriff Doogie,” Suzanne said with a heavy heart.

  “Which means he’ll alert every deputy and officer in the tri-county area. We’ll be looking at a major bugout.”

  “And Doogie will most certainly call Sam.”

  “Okay,” Toni said. “Then we better go in the kitchen, turn on some lights, and make that call.”

  They did. And it went horribly.

  “Dead, you say?” Doogie shouted once Suzanne had him on the line and was able to cough out a halting explanation. “Hanged? Holy Hannah! Did you call an ambulance? Did you try and cut him down?”

  “No, it’s too late. Hardwick’s definitely not breathing,” Suzanne said. “I mean, his face is completely blue.”

  Doogie asked a few more rapid-fire questions and then said, “Do not touch the body or move an inch, Suzanne, until I get there. Do not allow anyone onto the premises until I get there. Do you understand?”

  Suzanne moved the phone away from her ear because Doogie was screaming so loudly. “I understand.”

  “I can’t tell you how important it is that you follow my instructions to the letter.”

  “I will,” Suzanne said. She gazed at Toni. “We will.”

  She hung up her phone and said, “Doogie says we’re not supposed to leave the premises.”

  “I could hear him shouting. People living ten miles away could probably hear him shouting. People in the next state . . .” Toni swallowed hard and said, “Are we in deep doo-doo?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too early to tell.”

  “On the one hand, we’re guilty of breaking and entering. On the other hand, we discovered a murder. If Hardwick’s body had gone undetected until tomorrow, then his killer’s trail would be ice-cold and that much more difficult to follow.” Toni stopped abruptly, cupped a hand to her mouth, and whispered, “Wait a minute, you don’t think the killer is still here, do you? I mean, he could be hiding in an upstairs closet or something.”

  “Don’t even go there, Toni.”

  Toni sagged against the refrigerator. “You don’t really think Hardwick killed himself, do you? I mean, suicide is a mortal sin.”

  “Even though I’ve had all of two minutes to process this whole thing, I don’t think Hardwick killed himself. You saw him hanging there, Toni. Do you think he strung himself up there like a piece of meat on a factory farm?”

  Toni shook her head. “I don’t know. I just kind of glanced at him.” She wrinkled her nose. “Still, when his play was cancelled, he took it awfully hard.”

  “Let me tell you something, Toni. Nobody, but nobody, takes cancelling an amateur play that hard.”

  * * *

  • • •

  SHERIFF Doogie was quick to agree with Suzanne when he showed up five minutes later wearing jeans, a rumpled sweatshirt, and a dark blue parka. He took one look at Hardwick’s body, examined the noose and rope, and said, “Murder. Plain and simple.”

  “Not that simple,” Deputy Driscoll said, studying Hardwick’s still-suspended body. “It could have been self-inflicted.”

  “Trust me, it wasn’t,” Doogie said. Three more deputies had just arrived and were milling about in the tiled entry along with Suzanne and Toni.

  “What do you want to do?” Driscoll asked.

  “You and Robertson get the crime scene kit from the car,” Doogie said. “We’ll take photos, bag his head and hands, take fingerprints from whatever surfaces we can, as well as front and back doors.” He glanced at his other deputies. “Deputy Reed, you go out and start knocking on doors. Talk to the neighbors, ask them if they’ve seen anybody around, any strange cars, in the neighborhood. Deputy Orson, you go set up a roadblock. I don’t want anybody driving in here unless it’s the meat wagon.” He cocked a sharp eye at Suzanne and Toni. “You two ladies, I want you in the kitchen right now.”

  Suzanne and Toni marched into the kitchen, where Doogie turned and unleashed on them.

  “What the hell were you doing here?” Doogie demanded. “I know Hardwick didn’t invite you in because he was busy dangling from the business end of a rope.”

  “You’re right,” Suzanne said. “We weren’t invited in.”

  “Was the door open or did you bu
st a window?” Doogie asked.

  “Neither,” Suzanne said.

  Doogie put his hands on his ample hips. “Well?”

  “Show him, Toni,” Suzanne said.

  “Do I have to?” Toni asked.

  “Yes!” Doogie shouted. He frowned at Suzanne. “Show me what?”

  Toni held up the bump key.

  “What’ve you got there?” Doogie asked.

  “Bump key,” Toni said.

  “Sweet holy croakers,” Doogie said. “Are you freaking serious? Don’t you know those things are illegal?”

  Toni shook her head as Doogie deftly plucked the key from her hand.

  “Where’d you get this?” Doogie asked.

  Toni shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  “Why do I think that dimwit Junior might have a hand in this?” Doogie fumed. His mouth worked furiously for a few moments even though no words came out.

  There was a loud clumping sound and then Deputy Robertson came into the kitchen. “We’re processing the body,” he said. “Anything else we should be looking at?”

  “We’re going to have to go through all these kitchen cupboards,” Doogie said. “And look at all his computer stuff.”

  “Looking for a suicide note?” Robertson asked.

  “I don’t believe it was suicide,” Doogie said. “Still, we gotta examine all the angles.” When Robertson left, he spun around in the kitchen and then faced Suzanne and Toni again. “You realize what we’ve got here, don’t you?”

  Both Suzanne and Toni held their breath, not sure what Doogie was about to say.

  “It’s a double murder,” Doogie said. “A double homicide.”

  “You think Allan Sharp’s murder is connected to Hardwick’s?” Suzanne asked.

  Doogie touched a hand to his forehead, as though feigning deep thought. “Let me see now, Allan Sharp was murdered in a play that Teddy Hardwick was directing.” He exhaled hard. “If that’s not connected I’ll eat my hat.”

  “You know,” Suzanne said, “Hardwick wasn’t supposed to be here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Doogie asked.

  So Suzanne told him about dropping the ghost costume off at the theater and how Hardwick had told her he’d be working there late.

  “Something caused him to come home, then,” Doogie said. “Or someone. And then they snuck in here like a greased weasel and hung him.”

  “Hanged him,” Suzanne said.

  “Huh?” Doogie’s brows beetled together.

  “Never mind.”

  “Don’t get technical,” Doogie said. “Dead is dead.”

  They stood in the kitchen, pondering Doogie’s words for a few moments. Suzanne glanced through the dining room and out a front window. Red and blue lights strobed and flickered off frosted car windshields and snow-covered trees. It looked as if Santa had arrived early—only with a police contingent.

  “There could be a small upside to this,” Toni said.

  “What might that be?” Doogie laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.

  “Hardwick was kind of a suspect, but now he’s been eliminated.”

  “Yeah, permanently eliminated,” Doogie said. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Heaven help me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THERE was no celestial intercession, but Sam did arrive a few minutes later in full-on doctor-coroner mode.

  “Now what have you gotten yourself into?” was Sam’s first question to Suzanne. But before she could come up with a decent answer, he brushed past her to take a look at Hardwick.

  “Sam doesn’t look too upset,” Toni observed.

  “No, he’s plenty upset,” Suzanne said. “The vein in his temple was throbbing like crazy. He’s already hit DEFCON 2.”

  Doogie walked back into the kitchen. “I got more questions for you two.”

  “Sure,” Suzanne said.

  “Plus we’re going to have to fingerprint you as a matter of elimination.”

  “Yuck,” Toni said.

  So Driscoll did his fingerprinting and Doogie asked a ton more questions. Suzanne and Toni answered as best they could, with Doogie sometimes asking the same question over and over, but coming at it from different angles.

  “Okay, I’m satisfied,” Doogie said finally.

  “That we’re not criminals?” Suzanne asked.

  “Killers?” Toni asked.

  “No, I’m satisfied knowing that you’re both foolhardy, obtuse, and blockheaded.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Toni said.

  There was a knock on the back door and then Gene Gandle stuck his head in. “Sheriff? Can I come in and look around? Looks like we got ourselves another front-page news story.”

  “Did Orson let you through the barricade?” Doogie asked.

  Gandle nodded. He was a pencil-necked string bean of a middle-aged man who was dressed in a brown JCPenney suit. He was normally in charge of ad sales for the Bugle and wrote the occasional high school sports report. But Gandle had always fancied himself a newspaperman in the fashion of Carl Bernstein, one of the Washington Post reporters who broke the story on Watergate.

  “I’m gonna kill that dimwit Orson,” Doogie said as he wandered off.

  Gandle looked at Suzanne and Toni. “You saw Hardwick’s body?”

  “Yes,” Suzanne said. “Though I sincerely wish I hadn’t.”

  “He still hanging in there?” Gandle gazed in the direction of the living room.

  “Hanging from the upstairs balcony. The loft,” Toni said.

  “You think he offed himself?” Gandle asked.

  “Doubtful,” Suzanne said. She could hear the officers moving about in the other room. Catching an occasional strobe of light and Sam’s flat, almost clinical tone, she surmised that one officer was taking photos while Sam was dictating into an audio recorder.

  “Did you see any sign of a struggle?” Gandle asked. He was starting to take notes.

  “Like what?” Toni asked.

  “Was he shot?” Gandle asked.

  Suzanne and Toni exchanged glances. Then Suzanne said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Somebody got the best of him,” Gandle said. “Come on, what more can you tell me?”

  “Not a thing,” Suzanne said. “Doogie pretty much swore us to secrecy.”

  “But this is a major news story,” Gandle said. “Haven’t you ever heard of freedom of the press?”

  “Not when Sheriff Doogie’s in charge,” Toni said.

  * * *

  • • •

  FINALLY, it was all over. Hardwick had been bagged, tagged, cut down, and hauled away. Doogie had asked a myriad of questions. The deputies (well, most of them) had done their jobs fairly well.

  Sam walked into the kitchen and found a half-asleep Suzanne propped up against a counter. Toni was poking around inside the refrigerator, wondering if she could help herself to an orange.

  “Another dead body,” Sam said to Suzanne. “You’re not just the town jinx; you’re the Bermuda Triangle of murder.” He gave a faint but tired smile. “Suzanne, what am I going to do with you?”

  Suzanne could think of any number of exciting, romantic diversions, but Sam looked like he was going to be a tough customer tonight. No sweet words would melt his heart. No triple chocolate brownie would put him in a soporific mood. “For now, could you just take me home?”

  Sam put an arm around her. “I can do that.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THAT night, Suzanne lay in bed next to a lightly snoring Sam and did something she hadn’t done in a long time. She counted her lucky stars. She thought about her friends, the Cackleberry Club, her first husband, Walter, and now Sam. And she thanked the Lord for all he’d given her. A
ll these gifts and then some. Her good health, her curiosity, her ability to mostly see the good in people, her profound sense of justice.

  Suzanne knew she had no business pursuing either of these murder investigations. It would be foolhardy and dangerous. And yet, her behind-the-scenes snooping had added a certain frisson to her life.

  She closed her eyes and smiled as she drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 20

  WITH the murder of Teddy Hardwick literally hanging over her head, Suzanne still had to honor her commitment to WLGN radio this Friday morning. After all, she was scheduled as a guest on Paula Patterson’s Friends and Neighbors show in order to promote the Cackleberry Club’s toy drive.

  Walking down the hallway of WLGN, headed for Paula’s studio, Suzanne was immediately buttonholed by Norm Steed, the station’s news manager, who was also known (behind his back, of course) as Stormin’ Norman. Steed was stocky with a practically square head, walked with a rolling gait, and wore black-frame glasses that were as large as pie plates.

  “Just the person I wanted to see,” Steed wheezed out to her. “Tell me everything you know about Teddy Hardwick’s murder last night.” He took a gulp of air and said, “It was cold-blooded murder, am I right?”

  Suzanne tried to severely downplay her role in last night’s fiasco. “I really don’t know much of anything, Norman.”

  “That’s not gonna work for me,” Steed said. “Because I have it on good authority that you were there. That you and Toni were the ones who found Hardwick’s body.”

  “Um, does everybody know about that?”

  Steed’s head bobbled. “Oh yeah. Sure. It’s the red-hot news of the day. In fact, we’re leading all our broadcasts with Hardwick’s murder. Our listeners want to know what’s going on out there. They want to know if there’s a serial killer prowling around Kindred and maybe over into Jessup. Everybody’s terrified that they’re the next victim,” he said gleefully.

  “That’s just awful,” Suzanne said.

  “Of course it is,” Steed said. “But it’s kind of great, too. When it comes to ratings, I mean.” His eyes grew beady behind his glasses. “And ratings translate into revenue.”