I kicked the door open with my toe and then took a few steps back. If someone had been trapped in the room and wanted to escape, they could do it right past me rather than through me.
Nobody ran out.
The only sound was water dripping.
I steadied myself and looked in.
There was a man lying in the tub, staring lifelessly back at me.
Michael Sweet.
Someone had stabbed him.
Someone had stabbed him a whole bunch of times.
Chapter 13
“Stormy Day, don't talk to me like I'm a bonehead. You know a heck of a lot more than you're saying.”
Officer Peggy Wiggles gave me one of her no-nonsense looks, her cobalt-blue eyes piercing into me.
I tore my gaze away and looked out the passenger-side window. We were sitting in her police car, parked in front of the house where I'd discovered Michael Sweet's body an hour earlier. The whole team had swarmed the house. Crime scene investigators had fastened yellow crime-scene tape to the base of the home's For Sale sign and encircled the yard.
“Taping off the yard seems excessive,” I said. “Poor Samantha will never be able to sell this house.”
“She should have considered that before she killed her husband.”
I whipped my head around to face the officer. Peggy Wiggles looked as serious as her name was playful. The woman was in her early fifties, and she was a rookie cop—as new to the badge as she was to the town of Misty Falls, but she brought with her a wealth of life experience. She and I sported the same sensible short haircut, though hers had blond highlights mixed with gray. Her angular face shape was rarely softened with a smile, except when she was talking about her cat. That Monday afternoon, she was not in the mood to talk about her cat.
“Samantha wouldn't hurt a fly,” I said. “Or even a spider. I've seen her use a sheet of paper to pick up a spider and take it outside.”
“Did a spider give her that bruise on her eye?”
I answered her question with a question. “Have there been reports of domestic violence?”
“You tell me,” she returned coolly.
I glanced out the passenger window again, watching the crime scene investigators perform a grid search of the home's entryway.
“I can tell you Samantha didn't kill her husband.”
“Oh? How can you be so certain? Did you volunteer to kill him for her?”
I whipped my head back again. There was a trace of amusement in her piercing cobalt-blue eyes. She might not enjoy having another homicide in town, but she was getting a kick out of rattling my chain. It was the kind of dark-humored ribbing that police officers gave each other. I decided to take her accusation as a compliment. Back in February, I'd served as her right hand at the Flying Squirrel Resort, when the mountain pass had been blocked by a snowstorm.
“Hang on,” Officer Wiggles said. “If you're going to confess to being a hit woman, I should probably write something down.” She held her finger in the air while she pulled out a notepad and pen with her other hand. “Now, how much did she pay you?”
“Very funny,” I said. “It's good to see that working under Tony Baloney hasn't destroyed your sense of humor yet.”
“He tries,” she said plainly. “Now, what makes you so sure Samantha didn't snap and kill her husband?”
“The smell of bleach,” I said.
“I'm listening. Tell me more about the bleach.”
“I didn't notice it at first. You know how panic shuts off some of your senses. It wasn't until I heard the sirens that I smelled the bleach. I found the home's washing machine, which is in a closet on the main level, and I very carefully opened it, using the edge of the lid plus my handkerchief.”
She shook her head. “You can't go tampering with a crime scene like that.”
“Fine. Get people in this town to stop killing each other and I'll stop touching things in crime scenes.”
She waved her hand impatiently. “Go on.”
“The owners of the house are out of town, but there was a wet load of laundry in the machine. The load had finished a thirty-minute cycle before I arrived, but it was still wet. It reeked of bleach, and the only thing in the load appeared to be men's clothes. A shirt, a pair of jeans, socks, and underwear. The killer tried to destroy evidence by washing everything.”
“We don't know that,” Wiggles said. “Michael could have tossed his clothes in the wash before he took a shower.”
“Don't be sexist,” I said with a twisted smile. “Even a man as dumb as Michael would know not to put a bunch of bleach in with dark clothes. I didn't pull the jeans out, but I bet they were ruined.”
“And the bleach did a good job of removing evidence,” she said with a sigh.
“We're looking for a scary, cool-headed killer.”
“Cool as a cucumber.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Which completely rules out poor Samantha. She's a blubbering mess. She wouldn't have had the presence of mind to put in a load of laundry and then get blood all over her hands and call me. Not unless she was a devious criminal mastermind. She's a hard worker, but she's no mastermind.”
“They never are,” she said flatly. “I'm sure your thoughtful testimony of Mrs. Sweet's innocence has nothing to do with her being a friend of yours. I'll just make a note in my book here that we shouldn't bother looking into her alibi or motives, since you vouch for her.”
“I'm just trying to help.”
“If you really wanted to help, you'd tell me who killed the guy. Who hated Michael Sweet enough to stab him in the chest and neck twenty-three times?”
“Twenty-three stabs?”
“Plus a few slashes.” She paused to wave at Captain Tony Milano, who was staring at us through the windshield. He nodded back, pointed his finger at me accusingly, and walked away.
Officer Wiggles shifted in the driver's seat, her utility belt and equipment squeaking with her movements. She watched and waited for Tony to disappear into the house before she spoke again.
“Stormy, I do have your discretion, right? This information I'm providing is not for public consumption. We'll keep these details out of the news.”
“I counted twenty-five stabs.”
“Of course you did.” She sighed. “Well, we're done here. I trust you'll give me a call when you're ready to ambush the killer with one of your devious little whodunit schemes. You can take all the glory and leave us dumb cops scrambling to get some real evidence that the district attorney won't throw out while laughing hysterically.”
“Nope,” I said. “This has nothing to do with me.” I summoned up a phrase I'd been repeating to myself recently as a mantra. “If I'm not getting paid, it's not my case, and if it's not my case, it's not my business.”
“How much do you charge for five minutes? I'll hire you now, and you can cough up whatever it is you're not telling me.”
That again. She was a good cop, and she wasn't wrong. I did know something I hadn't shared. Namely that the most obvious suspect was Colt Canuso.
“I would never obstruct justice,” I said. “If I knew who killed Michael Sweet, I'd tell you.”
“You have a theory, don't you?”
True, I had some suspicions, but the killer hadn't exactly left a calling card. “Officer Wiggles, I was in the house maybe twenty minutes before you showed up. I looked over the body, and I peeked into the washing machine downstairs. That's it.”
“That's it?” Her cobalt-blue eyes remained steady. “If you know more, spit it out now so I don't have to haul your hiney down to the station.”
“Don't waste your time with me. I don't know anything.” I tried to relax my throat so my voice wasn't squeaky. I also tried not to think about Colt Canuso, and where he might have been between the time when I'd seen him at Glorious Gifts and the time Michael Sweet got himself stabbed between twenty-three and twenty-five times.
Wiggles narrowed her eyes and clenched her angular jaw. “No, I suppose twenty minutes
wasn't enough time to do much investigating. But it's a good thing we got here as quickly as we did, before you could start your autopsy on the victim.”
I had to laugh. “A visual inspection of a body is not the same as an autopsy.”
With a casual tone, she asked, “How long had the victim been dead when you arrived on the scene?”
I cleared my throat. “How would I know?”
“Stormy.”
She had me. “Based on temperature, I'd say about two hours.”
“Do I want to know how you took his temperature?”
“Probably not.” I fidgeted with the strap of my purse.
She eyed my purse. “You keep a meat thermometer in that bag of yours?”
“No.” I shook my head. “But the homeowners, like most people, keep a thermometer in their bathroom vanity.”
“Please tell me you didn't stick the thermometer into one of the stab wounds.”
I blinked innocently.
She shook her head.
I asked, “Was it fast? Did he die quickly?”
“What do you think?”
“I didn't see very much blood on the walls of that tiny bathroom. Some spray from the blade, but it seemed he went down without much of a fight.”
“The killer got lucky and nicked some major arteries. There would have been a hell of a lot more blood on the scene if he hadn't been stabbed in the tub.”
“He was killed in the tub? Not transferred there?”
She looked away from me and started rubbing her temples. She muttered, “Why am I telling all this stuff to you? Milano's going to bite me on the hiney.”
“Peggy,” I said softly. “Am I still allowed to call you Peggy?”
She kept rubbing her temples. “I don't know. Are you going to tell me who stabbed Michael Sweet?”
“I want to cooperate with the investigation, I really do. But I don't want to be responsible for ruining the lives of innocent people who may or may not be involved.”
“One name,” she said. “Give me one person to look into.”
“Start with Samantha. Rule her out first and see if she has any ideas.”
Wiggles leaned to the side with a squeak and pulled her phone from her pocket. “Want to see something cute?”
“Is it cute enough to wash away the image of Michael Sweet dead in a bathtub?”
“Temporarily, yes. This is what Peekaboo has gotten into.”
She set a slideshow of cat pictures running and handed me the phone.
Peekaboo was a well-fed orange tabby with hypnotic orange eyes. He'd been a scrawny rescue kitten when Officer Peggy Wiggles had adopted him, before she moved to Oregon and joined the Misty Falls Police Department. The little guy had been skittish, almost feral, and spent the first few weeks hiding in tiny spaces and burrowing into piles of laundry.
Peekaboo was no longer the tiny orange bit of fluff that Peggy had to be careful not to dump into the washing machine. But his cat brain hadn't gotten the memo that he now weighed close to twenty pounds and didn't fit into small shoeboxes.
I giggled at the images of chubby Peekaboo trying to fit himself into a series of smaller containers. The final three photos were Peekaboo sitting on a kitchen table wearing a square Chinese-food takeout container as a helmet.
“That cat is a superstar,” I said. “I'd suggest a play date between him and Jeffrey, but with all that cuteness in one place at the same time, it might cause a rift in the space-time continuum.”
“Plus they'd just hiss at each other.”
“True,” I said. “Jeffrey is not very fond of other creatures encroaching on his kingdom, unless they have two hands for petting.”
“Pictures?”
“I thought you'd never ask.” I pulled out my phone and showed her pictures of Jeffrey Blue's recent antics. “He's stopped drinking out of the toilet,” I said. “We put a big bowl of water on the edge of the tub, and he prefers that, as long as it's fresh. Really fresh. You have to fill his bowl with cold water while he's watching you, so he knows it's fresh. And it has to be right up to the brim.”
“Peekaboo has a fountain. It's actually nice to have a running water feature inside the house.” She turned her head and looked up at the house.
Officer Kyle Dempsey, also known as Dimples, was adjusting the yellow crime-scene tape strung across the front porch. He saw us looking and gave us a wave. The expression on his face was so serious that none of his infamous dimples were showing.
“So?” Officer Peggy Wiggles turned to face me again. “Are you going to give me a name or two?”
“Have a look at the visitor log from Saturday's open house,” I said. “Samantha found a strange man in the kitchen, holding a big knife. He claimed to be cutting a tiny cupcake in half, but it sounded fishy to me.”
She grinned. “There. Was that so difficult?”
I smiled back at her. Actually, it had been difficult. Since the moment I'd seen Michael Sweet's lifeless body, I'd been thinking about my friend Colt, and how bad the situation looked for him. A lot of people had witnessed him punching Michael Sweet on Saturday and threatening him. It was a small miracle that Officer Wiggles hadn't yet learned of that altercation.
Or did she already know? Had she invited me to sit in the car with her as a means of softly breaking me?
Had I accidentally incriminated my friend? By not mentioning him as a name for her to look into, had I all but driven the investigation straight at him?
“You've really been a big help,” Wiggles said, still grinning.
“Oh, I wouldn't say that,” I said. “You aren't looking for a cupcake killer, and that's all I've given you.”
“Actually, it's more about what you haven't given me,” she said. “I know all about what happened at the casino on the weekend.”
A thousand swear words went off in my head at the same time. She did have Colt as a suspect.
I gave her a weak smile. “Everyone loves frolicking in a water fountain.”
“One more thing,” she said. “An alarm reminder came up on Mrs. Sweet's phone. Somebody needs to pick her daughter up from school and the baby from daycare.”
I stammered, “A-a-and you think that somebody should be me?”
“Just until other arrangements have been made.”
I felt a heavy thud in my guts, like I'd been punched. “Poor Sadie.”
“Her name is Sophie.”
“Poor Sophie. Someone needs to tell that girl her father's dead.”
“Can you keep her calm and entertained until her mother can tell her?”
“I'm not great with kids.”
“You're great with people. Kids are just people,” she said, and she gave me the address of Sophie's school.
Chapter 14
I had only met Samantha and Michael's daughter, Sophie, a handful of times. I'd accidentally called her Sadie or Sofia or even Sammy Junior on a few occasions. The last one had been intentional, but she'd acted mortally wounded. I wondered, would she even recognize me, let alone get into my car?
This was exactly the kind of Stranger Danger scenario that we, as a society, educate our children about. I'd never expected to be on this side of a potential learning lesson. Normally, if a stranger, or even a vaguely familiar acquaintance, gets sent to pick a kid up after school, saying there's been an emergency involving the child's parent, there's supposed to be a password. But I didn't know Samantha and Michael's password, assuming they had one.
If little Sophie Sweet had good sense, she'd turn right around as soon as I approached, and go straight to the principal's office to report me for attempted child abduction. Then the police would be called in, except they wouldn't be available, due to the small matter of the town's latest homicide.
What I wanted to avoid was another phone call to the Misty Falls Police Department, not to mention further traumatizing the poor child who didn't yet know she'd lost her father.
I approached the girl's school and followed the signs directing parents to t
he pickup area.
I parked my car and quickly checked myself for blood. I'd been cautious around the body, but Samantha had already gotten Michael's blood smeared all over herself before I'd shown up, and she had grasped my hand and arm a few times.
It turned out I did have blood on me, on the edge of my shirt sleeve. I swallowed down my revulsion and quickly rolled up both my sleeves. Is this just normal for me now? Seeing corpses and casually checking myself for transfer stains?
Other than the wave of queasiness I'd felt upon seeing the blood on my sleeve, I'd been feeling okay, considering. I hadn't even been sick at the crime scene. It certainly helped that I'd skipped lunch and didn't have any stomach contents to throw up. But I did wonder, was this part of the change other people saw in me?
I pushed open my car door and stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. It was the first week of October now. We'd been having such a mild autumn, it felt as though summer had been extended indefinitely. A cool breeze made the trees next to the school rustle peacefully.
What a perfect day to abduct a small child, I thought darkly.
I scanned the playground for Sophie and spotted a familiar face by the swings. It wasn't until I reached the swing set that I realized the little girl wasn't Sophie. She was Quinby, the daughter of Chip and Quinn. On the plus side, at least she knew who I was and could vouch for me to her best friend.
“Hi, Q,” I said, waving. “Sophie's mother sent me to pick her up.”
“You're late,” Quinby said, her expression serious. “Sophie decided to walk home.” She jumped off the swing and twirled around the support post.
“Oh?” I turned and looked around for signs of Sophie.
With a tattletale tone, Quinby said, “It's not the first time her mom has forgotten her, you know.”
“Is that so? How often does Mrs. Sweet forget?”
Quinby rolled her eyes. “All the time. My mom says she's not the sharpest knife in the pack. Or is it the roundest marble?” Quinby wrinkled her small brow. “I can't remember, but what I'm trying to tell you is my mom says she's stupid.”
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