by Liliana Hart
“No one ever uses the house?” Jack asked. “We thought we saw someone inside. That’s why we came over.”
Janet frowned and rubbed the bottom of her foot. “Only realtors know the key code for the lockbox on the door. And I’d notice any cars parked on the street or strangers walking about the yard. My office faces this house directly, so I’ve got a good view. Why are y’all here again?”
“Mrs. McGowen,” Jack said. “She was murdered. We need to ask you some questions.”
She snorted out a half laugh. “Murdered? You’re joking. She was an eighty-something year old woman. Why would anyone want to murder her?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Maybe someone finally found a way to get hold of her recipes.”
She hmmphed derisively. “You’d want to talk to JoAnn about that. She’s as relentless as a pit bull. According to her, those recipes are a gold mine. I personally think JoAnn just finally found someone that could tell her no, and she’s bound and determined to get things her way. Sure, maybe the recipes were worth something when the bakery was still open. Rosie had offers for a show on Food Network and bigger corporations wanting to buy her out. But she sold it, and the new place went out of business within the first year. There’s nothing valuable there anymore.”
“You’re part of the running club, aren’t you?” Jack asked.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s important to keep up the image.”
“You ran Monday morning?”
“We meet in the front yard here,” she said. “I arrived about five-fifteen so I could warm up. Robert and Abby were already here. Everyone else trickled a few minutes after me. We took off shortly after.”
“Did you notice any activity at Mrs. McGowen’s that morning? Anyone lurking around the house?”
She laughed and then looked at Jack with astonishment when she realized he was serious. “You’re serious? You really think she was murdered?”
“She was,” I said. “I confirmed it this afternoon. She had signs of blunt force trauma.”
“You’re saying someone broke in and whacked a little old lady over the head? Over what? Worthless recipes in that computer of hers? That makes no sense. She’s right in the middle of the block. Someone would’ve seen something.”
“I hope so. Did you notice anything when you ran by her house?”
“She’s an early bird,” Janet said. “Always up in the middle of the night. She was that morning, like usual. The woman was batty if you ask me. In bed by eight o’clock. You could set your watch by her. But then she’d just leave and prowl around town in the middle of the night. I think she was having a wild affair. There’s no other reason to sneak about like that. It’s nice to think a person can be satisfied at that age.”
Janet said that last part with just a hint of bitterness, and I wondered how satisfied she was in her marriage.
“I tried to talk her into going to one of those retirement communities,” she said. “There’s no reason for a woman her age to rattle around in a house like that by herself. Anything could’ve happened. And look, it did.” She waved her hands around to bring home the point. “Besides, real estate is prime in this area right now. “Speaking of…who inherits her house?” She slipped a card from her jacket pocket and handed it to me. “Have them give me a call once it’s all cleaned up. Though murder is never good for selling a house.”
“You mentioned a computer,” I said.
“It was a laptop. She was pretty paranoid about it—that’s why she kept it in a safe when she was gone. She mostly used her phone when she left the house. She’s was on that thing all the time, and old age didn’t slow down her thumbs. She could type faster than any teenager. If you ask me, it was more likely she was messing with the stock market or moving money from accounts than working on recipes. That’s just stupid. No recipe is worth that much.”
“What do you mean she kept it in a safe?” Jack asked. “We didn’t find a safe in her house.”
“My husband, Richard, he’s a vet, and a couple of years ago he had a real sophisticated safe installed at the clinic to keep the narcotics in. He’d had a couple of break-ins. Rosie asked him to connect her with the same company. It was special made and real expensive, but he said she didn’t balk at the price tag. He suggested she go to the back and get set up with a safety deposit box for her valuables, but she told him no. She said she needed something in her house so she could get things in and out quickly. He thought maybe it was just her being eccentric.”
“Do you know where her safe was located?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know. Richard connected her to the company, but she was hush hush when it came to the installation. She had it installed a few months ago. I remember they came on Valentine’s Day because the florist delivery van was driving up and down the street, delivering flowers left and right. JoAnn Taylor got five dozen white roses, and even little Katie Stein got tulips and one of those tacky balloons.”
It was impossible not to hear the bitterness.
“Are you sure she was murdered?” she asked.
“Positive,” Jack said. “Did she have any enemies that you knew of?”
“I don’t know if enemies is the right word,” Janet said. “Sometimes she’d complain about this guy down at the senior’s center. Hank something or other. They played dominoes and she said he cheated. Apparently they had a pretty heated discussion, and they were both put on probation from the center for a week.”
“No one in the neighborhood had problems?” he asked.
She laughed, but it wasn’t filled with humor. “Oh, plenty of people in the neighborhood have problems. But mostly everyone got along with Rosie.”
“Is your husband at home? I’d like to talk to him.”
“Richard left for a conference on Sunday afternoon. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Call me if you can think of anything else?” Jack said, handing her his card. “We’ll see ourselves out.”
“Let me know if I can help you with any real estate needs. No one in the area can get rid of property like I can. It’s a seller’s market.”
“I’ll remember that,” Jack said.
My ears were ringing by the time we were back outside. I’d had my fill of people for the day. This was just another one of the reasons I preferred working with the dead.
“Look on the bright side,” I said as we made our way back to Mrs. McGowen’s house. “I think we can say with certainty that it’ll be a cold day in hell before we move to this neighborhood.”
“Quarter,” Jack said.
“Give me a break. Hell is a location, not a swear word.”
“Quarter,” he repeated.
Chapter Seven
I really didn’t want to go back inside Rosalyn McGowen’s place, but I knew we needed to see the scene again now that we had new information. There were days I had to take multiple showers because of the hazards of my job. It looked like this was going to be one of them.
I was always well-equipped for a death, so we suited back up and put on fresh booties and gloves. Martinez and Chen were gone, and it was just the two of us at the house. It seemed as if the neighbors had lost interest because I no longer felt eyes on us.
“I’ll head over to the senior center later and see if I can find Hank,” Jack said, unlocking the front door and letting us inside. He left it open and then immediately went to open some of the windows to let in a draft. He left the windows shut where the curtains had been closed in them. I flipped on the ceiling fan from the light switch in the entryway.
The smell was still bad, but the breeze made it a little more tolerable. Now that there wasn’t a body that needed immediate attention. I took a little more time to look around.
“We’ve got a pretty narrow timeline to work with,” Jack said. “Carl walks her back to the door around six. She watches TV for a little while, volume on full blast, and then she’s in bed by eight.”
The house wasn’t large, so it took no time at all to f
ollow her steps into the bedroom. “No one saw her leave the house that night, so we’ll assume she slept here. She’s an early riser, a habit from her days at the bakery I’m sure. She sleeps on the left side of the bed,” he said, pointing to the nightstand. “That’s where her personal belongings are. Lamp, phone charger plugged in, planner. Nothing on the other nightstand. Nothing in the drawers.
“She wakes up around four and goes straight to the kitchen,” Jack said.
I followed behind him. Seeing it as he saw it.
“It’s habit after so many years. Cats twining between her feet as she pushes through to the kitchen. She’s making cinnamon rolls so she starts the dough. Practiced moves.”
He opened the door of the subzero fridge and then let it go again. Moving around the kitchen, from counter to oven to sink.
“Dough has to rise for cinnamon rolls.”
“Seriously, Jack. You don’t have to rub it in.” I looked around the kitchen and tried to see it without the blood and other things.
I was pretty much useless in the kitchen. Or maybe the better description was that I was intimidated by the kitchen. I’d excelled in school in math and science, and there were certain things I’d pursued over the years that came easy to me. Cooking was not one of those things, so I tended to avoid it to keep from looking like a fool. Jack, on the other hand, was a miracle in the kitchen.
“Maybe I’ll take a cooking class,” I said, deciding the best way to get over the fear was to tackle it head on.
“Ummm,” Jack said, looking thoroughly confused. Considering we were in the middle of a murder investigation, my announcement probably seemed like it came out of left field.
“Sorry, just a sidebar. Keep going,” I said.
“She gets the dough ready and then it’s time to feed the cats. They’ve been waiting while she finished in the kitchen, but it’s their turn now.”
I followed Jack into the second bedroom that had belonged to the cats. He’d been right. It was ironically cleaner than the rest of the house. There were seven cages stacked against one wall and a giant playground with scratching posts and plenty of things to climb on. Food and water bowls were scattered haphazardly across the floor.
“She comes in and feeds the cats, and then she gets her laptop from the safe and takes it to the little desk in the living room. That’s where the neighbors reported seeing her using it. But where is the safe?”
We checked the closet in the cat room, but there were no hollowed out spaces in the walls. Just days’ worth of cat food and litter stacked in it.
We went to the master bedroom next and looked behind pictures on the walls, under rugs, and in the freakishly organized closet. Even with the mess the cats had left, it was easy to see where order had reigned in Mrs. McGowen’s life. She was extremely organized and efficient.
“Organized and efficient,” I said aloud.
“What’s that?” Jack asked, knocking on the walls.
“She’s organized and efficient. Say she starts every day exactly as you said. She’s got a rhythm. A system. And she’s older than she used to be, so she doesn’t waste time and energy. Bedroom to kitchen. Kitchen to cat room. Cat room to computer.”
I left the master bedroom and stood in the small hallway, contemplating the large mirror that had first caught my eye earlier that morning.
Jack saw where I was standing and rubbed his gloved fingers around the outside frame.
“Too high,” I said. “She was right at sixty-four inches in height.” I moved to the left side of the mirror and ran my fingers along the bottom corner. It didn’t take long to feel the slight bump along the metal frame.
I pushed the button and the mirror opened from the wall with a soft click.
“There we go,” Jack said, swinging it open all the way. Behind the mirror was a safe no bigger than a microwave. “Now we just need to get it open.”
“It’s got a numerical passcode,” I said. “Other than trying her birthday or something like that, I’m at a loss on how to open it. Unless you want to blow it up.”
“I’ll have the team come in and cut it out of the wall. Once it’s back at the station, I’ll call the manufacturer and send them the warrant. They’ll have an override code we can use.”
“Huh,” I said. “I can see why they pay you the big bucks. That seems a lot simpler than blowing it up. But not near as much fun.”
“We can blow up stuff another time, baby. You do bring a whole new level of excitement to date night though. I always feel like I need to up my life insurance.”
“A little fear is healthy,” I said.
“Good call on the efficiency,” he said. “Feed the cats, open the safe, and take the computer to the desk. Maybe she’d turn the TV on while she’s working on whatever it is she does on that computer. From witness testimony you’re looking at a TOD between five-thirty when the runners took off, and around seven when they started to return. I need to talk to Harrison Taylor. He made it back before anyone else. No matter what time he returned, that’s a really small window of opportunity to kill Mrs. McGowen, close the windows, and then escape without being seen. It would’ve had to have been someone very familiar with her schedule and habits.”
“Meaning someone who lives close enough to watch her every day,” I said. “Maybe Harrison got back early enough to do the job himself. Then he just jogs home and showers.”
“Then the question is, what kind of information would someone like Roselyn McGowen have for someone as powerful as Harrison Taylor to feel threatened?”
“You really should talk to him,” I said, repeating his earlier statement.
Jack squeezed the back of my neck. “Good idea, babe.” We walked back out onto the front porch and the fresh air made my eyes sting. “I’m going to wait here for the guys so we can get this safe out of the wall and to the conference room, and then I’m going to stop by the senior center.”
“I’ll go by the funeral home and check on things there,” I said. “I need to look at the head wound and see if I can get a viable mold.”
He leaned down to kiss me hard and quick. “Don’t be too long. We’ve got a date with some steaks.”
Chapter Eight
I was probably the only person in a hundred-mile radius who actually enjoyed the solitude of the funeral home once everything had shut down. This was a place of sanctuary for the dead. It wasn’t meant for ringing phones and difficult decisions. It wasn’t meant for the problems of the living. Once we closed down for the day, the dead in residence could have their peace.
There was no viewing scheduled for the evening, so Emmy Lu had shut things down at five o’clock. I parked under the covered awning and went through the side door. But I bypassed the lab, going straight into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. I was jumpy, and I realized it was because I’d had nothing but coffee and unlimited amounts of sweet tea all day.
After I grabbed the water, I went into the main reception area. The idea of the funeral home was to make it feel like a home when people came to visit their loved ones for the last time. The entryway was warm and inviting, and the theme of soft blues and creams carried up into the upper levels, accented with the occasional hint of navy in a chair or other upholstered piece.
We didn’t have a reception desk right in front. Only a wooden stand where a sign in book would go for each family. Emmy Lu’s office was set back a little ways in a cove off to the side. That way people didn’t think “business” the second they walked in. It was glass on two sides so she could see anyone who came in.
The door was open and I walked in to see if there were any messages and to check the board. Mrs. Richardson’s husband hadn’t passed yet, and even if he did tonight or tomorrow, we were probably looking at Monday at the earliest for a viewing. Sheldon was on call to collect the body once the hospital called and let us know he’d passed.
The calendar on the wall looked healthy, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. One of my biggest fears was hiring employees an
d then having to let them go because the business wasn’t sustaining. Whether people were coming in to buy burial plans or doing like Mrs. Richardson and waiting, at least people were coming in.
I grabbed a peppermint off Emmy Lu’s desk and made my way back to the lab and Mrs. McGowen’s bones. I typed in the code and then closed the door behind me, opting for the stairs again.
Lily had done a good job of laying her out. The break in the right ulna had been clean and the two halves of the bones were lined up in place to make up the skeleton. But it was the trauma to the skull I was interested in.
I’d thought I’d be able to get a good mold of the head wound, but there was nothing I could do with it. I wasn’t a forensic anthropologist and it was far out of my depth of knowledge. The wound wasn’t a spider fracture, meaning the initial indentation where the object struck made a crater like indent and then fissures spidered outward. I was guessing she’d have pretty severe osteoporosis at her age, and when the object had struck bone, it had shattered that part of the skull. Little pieces of the parietal sat next to the skull on the table.
I tossed my gloves in the trash and hung up my apron. There was nothing more I could do there tonight. The evidence they’d collected would have to be enough to find her killer because her body was staying silent.
I loved going home. There was something about driving around that last curve, the road widening slightly and the trees opening up, and into the hidden entrance of our driveway. Graveled crunched under my tires, and I saw Jack’s unit parked in front of the closed garage doors. We kept our personal vehicles inside, but they rarely move from that space.
Jack had designed the log cabin, though calling it a log cabin didn’t do it justice. It was three stories of polished golden logs. A covered porch wrapped around the entire bottom. There were no windows in the front by design, because when you stepped inside, it was like the house was part of the cliff it was built on. The entire back of the house was nothing but glass. The towering pines and rocks could be seen from every room, and they looked as if they were part of the décor.
