Barbara Graham - Quilted 05 - Murder by Sunlight

by Barbara Graham

  “The Civil War quilt has scads of blocks, and they’re each only six inches square and some have over fifty pieces.” Dottie flapped the work in progress in front of the other women. “Can you imagine sewing all those teensy pieces together?”

  “That’s more ridiculous than using silverware.” Betty shoved her needle in Dottie’s face, needing thread, and almost blinded her friend.

  “Did you see there’s a new man coming to the center for lunch?” India whispered. The softly spoken words stopped all conversation. “He’s pretty young, maybe only seventy.”

  “Does he have a wife?” All heads swiveled in India’s direction. India stood up. It didn’t actually make her head any higher than it had been. She was about as wide as she was tall, with silver hair cropped close to the scalp and rather elegant-looking glasses with mother-of-pearl frames. Silence reigned.

  India shook her head. “No. He’s a bachelor.”

  After a wave of interested oohs and ahs, Betty said, “Does he have his own teeth?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly the workroom was filled with chatter. “Who is he? Where does he live? Who are his people?” India was surrounded by a cluster of excited interrogators.

  Knowing the prospect of having a new male in the area, one possessing his teeth and his faculties, could entertain the women for the rest of the day, Theo made another pot of coffee for them and headed upstairs to get some of her own work done.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  “Sheriff, we’ve got a suspicious death.” Wade called on his cell phone, bypassing the radio.

  Tony felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Not at all what he wanted to hear. “Who and where?”

  “Candy Tibbles. I’m out at her place. In the back there’s a sort of homemade greenhouse.” Wade’s voice faded and came back. “She’s inside it. It looks like she’s been dead a while.”

  “I’ve seen the greenhouse. Alvin showed it to me one time.” Tony couldn’t believe the boy’s bad luck. “He’s off at some botany camp. Is there anything obvious that might have killed her? You know, a bullet hole or an arrow?”

  “No. But I’d say she didn’t just drop dead.”

  Tony heard the sound of Wade being sick, and then he was back on the phone.

  “She looks like she might have been pushed or hit with something, but I’m not going to do more than take pictures until you get here. Should I call Grace?”

  “Yes. Tell your wife I’m on my way.” Tony told Ruth Ann what little he knew and headed out. He wanted to see the scene, and then he’d determine if he needed to call in the TBI. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had wonderful forensic experts and would come help his tiny department if he thought it necessary. He didn’t want to waste their time and effort on a whim.

  Tony turned left at Kwik Kirk’s convenience store on the highway about four miles from town. As usual, a few cars were parked there: people getting gas, buying snacks and bait. Across the road, there were four houses, widely spaced, on the little turnout, not quite a cul-de-sac. Alvin’s home was the first on the left. Large old trees shaded the houses. Alvin’s grandparents had lived there, and he assumed, their daughter, Alvin’s mom, had inherited it.

  Tony parked on the road, leaving the short driveway—two strips of dirt where the grass and weeds didn’t even grow—for Grace to park her vehicle. As he walked up the driveway and then around the side of the house, he looked for anything that could be considered suspicious or out of place. There was nothing immediately noticeable. No sign with an arrow pointing to something, saying, “Look here.”

  Candy’s brown sedan sat in the detached garage. It looked like it had when Alvin had returned it before going to camp. A cursory examination showed no blood, no sign of a struggle. Just a dirty car parked where it should be. Tony looked up at the garage’s big overhead door. One of the springs to help raise it was broken. He made a note to remind himself to ask Alvin when it had stopped working.

  Maple trees formed a backdrop for a hedge of japonica bushes with their fiendish thorns. He walked around them and entered Alvin’s garden. The sound of buzzing insects seemed unusually loud. Above the fresh warm scent of trees and grass and freshly dug dirt was the rancid smell of rotting flesh. Candy Tibbles had been dead for a while.

  Alvin’s greenhouse was constructed of old storm doors, windows pulled from houses being remodeled, and all sorts of “rescued” materials. It sat next to Alvin’s well-tended garden. In the garden, rows of brilliant green plants grew in raised beds made of sturdy, weathered-to-gray lumber. Clean straw filled the space between the beds. If there were weeds, they were young and small.

  Tony glanced into the greenhouse. The makeshift tables were bare. No plants were inside the building; only the pitiful body of an unhappy woman, gazing sightlessly at the sky. It looked like someone had pulled a tarp off one half of the glass roof and left it in a heap on the ground. A second tarp covered part of the back of the roof, anchored with ropes and stakes, but it exposed more glass than it covered.

  Wade waited nearby and upwind. “Grace said she will be here in a few minutes. She has a couple of patients who need her care.”

  “We can wait. Candy can’t be saved.” Tony stared into the greenhouse. “A few more minutes is not going to change anything.”

  “True. So true.” Wade took a few more photographs. Placing his markers and making careful notes about each one. “You think she could have come out here alone? Maybe to water Alvin’s garden.”

  “Nope.” Tony couldn’t imagine Candy being that helpful. “For one thing, there aren’t any plants in there, and I heard Alvin talking to her about watering. The greenhouse was not mentioned.”

  “It’s almost a hundred degrees out here. I can’t begin to guess how hot it is inside there with all the glass and sunshine and nothing to circulate the air, you know, like an exhaust fan.”

  Tony felt a bead of sweat, not the first by any means but larger than the others, slip down the center of his back. “We need to know. Don’t you have a thermometer in your case?”

  Wade fished it out and handed it to Tony, continuing his photography.

  Holding his breath, Tony pushed the thermometer through a space left between a former door with six small panes of glass at the top and an old aluminum storm door with no screen and watched the temperature rise. “Holy smoke, it’s about a hundred and twenty degrees near the ground. It must be quite a bit hotter near the top. I wonder why there isn’t a ventilation system in there. I’ll measure the temperature again up higher after Grace arrives. I’d hate to disturb the ambiance.” He stepped back and talked into his radio. Rex was on duty. Tony gave Rex a thumbnail sketch of their situation. “What’s Sheila involved with?”

  “She’s got a school zone speeder.” Rex’s voice dropped into its disaster-calm cadence.

  “Okay. Send her out here when she’s done. Let’s try to keep as much of this off the scanner as possible.” Tony guessed a circus caravan of cars driven by the curious out on the highway would arrive in minutes. The citizens of Park County didn’t seem to believe they wouldn’t be able to see something fascinating if they drove past the scene of an accident or anything involving an official vehicle. “We’ll need traffic control. You can send out Mike as well.”

  Wade’s phone rang. After a brief conversation, he disconnected. “Grace is on her way.”

  Tony studied the body. Candy lay on her back, arms spread, almost like she’d been stargazing, except the position of her body would have been uncomfortable, if alive. One leg was twisted awkwardly underneath her. She wore pink shorts, a pink and yellow tank top more appropriate to an eight-year-old, and purple flip-flops with a flower on top. Actually, he could only see one shoe. He wondered if Candy had lost the mate, was lying on it, or if a killer had taken a souvenir. Until they knew the cause of death, speculation would be just that. Candy could have passed out. Had a heart attack. Eaten a poisonous plant. Been knocked out by the hammer and wrench
attacker. Just because they couldn’t see a wound from here didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

  “First, let’s check the house and make sure no one’s in there. We kind of bypassed it,” Tony said. “And now I think I’d like to hear how and why you found her body?”

  “Kirk, over at the convenience store, complained about her radio playing day and night, loud, heavy metal stuff.” Wade paused, as if just noticing the silence. Only a few birds chattering overhead and the sound of cars moving on the highway disturbed the peace.

  Tony felt his eyebrows rise.

  Wade stood still, looking at the ground, obviously deep in thought. Finally, he let out a deep sigh. “Wow, I forgot. When I got here I followed the screeching music and found an orange extension cord plugged into the exterior outlet on the side of the house.” He gestured to the spot. “I pulled the plug and the music stopped. I followed the cord to the greenhouse because I wanted to tell Candy to hold it down. I never saw the radio.”

  Relieved that his deputy recalled the incident, Tony studied the outlet. “The radio might be inside the greenhouse. I didn’t notice it. We can solve one mystery anyway.” Tony and Wade followed the cord and quickly located the radio, on a stump, hidden by a shrub. “I’d like you to check for fingerprints on this too.”

  Wade nodded and wrote himself a note.

  They walked to the front of the house and found the door was locked. Everything looked normal. Tony had hoped the killer, if Candy’s death wasn’t an accident, had left the weapon on the porch with a note of confession. A man could dream. The porch needed sweeping. Months, if not years, of mud tracked onto the porch had dried. There was a mixture of red clay and brown garden soil. Signs of frequent use, but no obviously new footprints stood out from the others. There could be some nevertheless. “Let’s look in the windows.”

  So they went from window to window, looking inside. Nothing moved. No footprints were pressed into the ground under the windows. When they reached the back porch, they immediately saw the screen door was ajar and so was the interior door.

  “What do you think?” Wade released his sidearm from its holster.

  Tony did the same. “I don’t think anyone’s in there, but I’m not taking any chances either. Getting shot for being stupid is not a good plan.”

  As carefully as they could, trying not to smudge any possible fingerprints, they eased into Candy’s kitchen. The smell of rotting meat hit them. A glance at the countertop showed them an open package of ground meat. And maggots. Another sign this was not a crime committed in the past few minutes.

  “Gross,” Wade whispered. “I hate maggots.”

  Tony nodded. “It looks like she was preparing to cook something and then died. Why did she go outside?” He was murmuring to himself as they studied their options. The pantry door hung open, exposing bags of potato chips, corn chips, all kinds of chips; if they could be sliced and fried, Candy had owned a bag of it. Chips seemed to be the only food stored in the pantry besides toaster pastries. Next to the pantry was a wide opening into the dining room. There was no door. It was go ahead or back out. They eased forward. No one. Clearing room after room, they checked them all. They climbed the stairs. The rooms were messy and dirty, but void of people.

  On up to the attic. Unlike the chaos and clutter in the rest of the house, Tony guessed no one had been up here since Candy’s parents died. There were a few items—a stack of things from Alvin’s childhood, an old bassinet, a few boxes, a pitiful artificial Christmas tree, and a stereo system from another era. No people. No signs there had been anyone up here recently. The only footprints in the dust belonged to a mouse, and they were not fresh. Tony checked the temperature and said, “Let’s go outside.”

  Wade did not argue.

  Grace arrived minutes later, looking cool and well groomed. Her glossy brown hair with its gleaming red and gold highlights was pulled up into a knot, and her khaki slacks and white blouse were neatly ironed. Her crisp appearance lasted about thirteen seconds. Once she was inside the greenhouse, her clothes became sweat soaked, and her latex gloves filled with enough saltwater to make a barnacle happy.

  Tony thought he should have used a stopwatch to see how fast she wilted, although he probably wouldn’t have been able to push the buttons fast enough. He held the thermometer near the upper reaches of the greenhouse. One hundred and forty-eight. “Damn.” He was soaked from the skin out himself.

  Grace was a trooper though. While Wade’s camera clicked incessantly, she measured the liver temperature and made a cursory examination of the body. “The back of her skull feels soft, like it’s cracked.”

  “From the fall?”

  “No way.” Grace wiped the sweat pouring off her face with the side of her arm. “I can feel an indentation with my finger. It had to be something like a pipe or a tire iron. Wielded with a great deal of force.” She leaned closer, shining her flashlight on the dirt under Candy’s head. “It looks like blood might have seeped into the dirt. I’d say a lot of blood. You know how head wounds bleed. It’s so much darker than the dirt farther away from her body. I don’t think she died immediately.”

  Tony leaned over to look at what Grace was seeing. “I’ll be interested to learn if she could have been saved with prompt medical attention.”

  Grace agreed. “Do you see anything she might have been hit with?”

  The three of them studied the ground in the greenhouse, the garden area, and looked for something obvious they could see without trampling the evidence more than they already had. Nothing. Not even a trowel.

  “Whoever hit her took the weapon, whatever it was, away.” Wade stated the obvious and Tony and Grace nodded.

  “Premeditated?” Tony wondered aloud. “Or calm enough to think afterwards? I wonder where Alvin keeps his garden tools. Did anyone see a shed or a box?”

  None one had.

  The recent assaults on others bore a striking similarity to this scene. Tony grimaced at his mental pun. He looked at Wade. “This remind you of anything?”

  “You mean our citizen wounded by an unknown attacker and then the hitchhiker knocked out on the highway and left there? Absolutely.” Wade made a pounding gesture. “If Not Bob had been as small as Candy, he’d probably be dead too.”

  “I don’t think we should assume Not Bob’s attacker killed Candy. There’re too many obvious differences.”

  “Besides her being a female, and therefore unlikely to be named Bob?” Grace threw in her comment.

  “Yes.” Tony flashed Grace a smile, even as he looked carefully about, searching for anything that might catch his eye. “Plus, it’s probably five miles to Ruby’s from here. What are the odds our tool guy would drastically change his hunting ground?”

  “Probably not good. It could be a copycat though,” Wade said. “Are we calling in the TBI?”

  Tony considered the question. There would be evidence on the body. Maybe the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation could find some footprints in the area, if he and Wade hadn’t already destroyed them. He had a small department. He hated to call for help if he didn’t really need it.

  “No offense, Grace, but I think I’ll have someone else do the autopsy.” Tony called for the ambulance to come fetch Candy and deliver her to a pathologist in Knoxville.

  Grace exhaled sharply. “I was about to insist the same thing. Just like with the surfer, you need someone trained to measure the skull depression and do a toxicology screen. I’m a physician, so I can declare someone deceased, but Doc Nash can’t make me the coroner. Plus, even if I could, I’d hate to screw it up and let someone get away with murder.”

  “Wade?” Hearing the “M” word spoken out loud gave Tony a jolt.

  “I agree,” Wade said. “I can certainly do the camera work and fingerprints. I’ve had the training for those, but you might want someone else to do tire tracks and footprints.”

  “Okay, it’s nice we’re all in agreement. Let’s get some help.” Tony punched a single number into his cell phone. Af
ter a brief conversation, Tony disconnected. “The TBI will be here in about three hours. Grace, you can leave now instead of waiting until Candy’s been collected. The less we disturb the scene, the better our associates will like it.”

  “Well, I’m guess I’m off now.” Scarlet-faced and perspiring, Grace managed a smile. “Y’all have fun. I’ll think of you while I’m taking a nice cool shower and having a nice glass of sweet tea before returning to my patients.”

  Wade gave his wife an almost-amused smile. “You are a cruel, cruel woman.”

  She laughed and kissed his cheek. “The truth is closer to a quick shower and endless apologies to my patients for making them wait for an extended time.”

  Following Grace into the sweltering, but unpolluted, air, Tony and Wade paused, sucking deep breaths of fresh air into their lungs. Tony heard Wade continuing to give a running commentary into his radio. It sounded like he was trying to convince Rex to come out and smell it for himself. Tony handed his deputy the roll of crime scene tape, and they headed away from the house and back to work.

  At first Tony thought the little building encased in a honeysuckle vine might be an old privy. It was so well covered, draped with the tenacious and heavily scented flowers, that he and Wade had walked past it without seeing there was a door. At least twice. The wood might be antique, but the padlock was modern. It dangled through the hasp. The key was in the lock. Tony eased the door open. It was cool inside and smelled like good clean dirt. A wheelbarrow leaned against one wall. Clean and neatly arranged garden tools, small and large, hung on hooks. Three of the larger hooks were empty. Tony really wanted to know what kinds of tools were supposed to be there.

  And where they had gone.

  Tony thought he could predict what the TBI unit would have to say when they arrived. He was right on every count.

  “Hey, Wade,” Vince, supervisor and lead investigator, called out as he climbed from the specially configured vehicle, a combination storage locker and laboratory. Two more men and a woman joined him. “Why do you stay in the crime capital of the state? Can’t you get a job in a safer county?”