“Sure, thanks. Need me to help carry? Do you feel okay?” I asked as she fanned herself with both hands.
“Hot flashes suck,” she said. “Women sure got the short end of the hormonal stick.” She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen without waiting for me to answer and I walked into the living room, wondering what it was about hormones today. First Guinevere and her testosterone lecture, and now Kerry.
Lola, Brooke, and Maud were seated on the stiff Victorian-era furniture Kerry had inherited along with the house and couldn’t yet afford to replace. Only Brooke looked natural there, sitting cross-legged on a blue horsehair (at least that was what it felt like the only time I sat on it) sofa. The sofa’s high arms and the ornately carved wood rising in points from its back defeated Maud’s attempts to assume her usual lounging position, and its height made Lola perch on the very edge of the tufted seat so her feet would reach the floor. She greeted me with a smile. “Hey. We were just talking about the autopsy report. But now that you’re here, we can talk about your date last night.” Gentle mischief gleamed in her brown eyes.
“How did—?” Why did I even bother asking? Total lack of privacy was one of the drawbacks of living in Heaven, or any small town, I imagined. I sat on a low, tufted ottoman with feet like a lion’s paws.
“One of my customers saw the HPD Tahoe outside your house last night and mentioned it to me this morning when she came in to pick up some barberry because she knows we’re friends,” Lola said, clearly tickled by my reaction. “So—”
“So, either you were being arrested—which apparently isn’t the case—or you had a hot date with the hot Detective Hart,” Brooke finished. She leaned forward so her mink brown hair spilled over her shoulders. “Tell all.”
“We had dinner,” I said. “Not much to tell. Salmon, asparagus, and—”
“We don’t care about the menu,” Brooke laughed. “Did you—?”
“We ate, chatted, and he left,” I said, emphasizing the last word. “As the local spy might have been able to tell you if he’d cruised past around nine or so.”
“No—” Brooke made smooching noises.
“What are we—fourteen?” I asked, blushing. I flashed on Lola, Brooke, and me sitting around in my bedroom with its bean bag chairs when we were in high school, dissecting one another’s crushes.
“Aha!” she said triumphantly.
“What are you ‘ahaing’?” Kerry asked, slipping back into the room with a pitcher of tea and stacked acrylic glasses, which she passed around.
Brooke took pity on me and changed the subject. “I read up on his niece’s death,” she said. “Her name was Kinleigh Dreesen. There doesn’t seem to be anything there, really. It’s the—I hate to say ‘usual’—the not unusual tale of a girl who drank too much, partying with her college friends, and drove her car off the road into a tree. She died at the scene. Gordon was with her and he pretty much walked away from the wreck. Her friends say she was giving him a lift home because he had a ‘dizzy spell.’” Brooke put air quotes around the words, as if they were a euphemism for “drunk.” “Her parents, Gordon’s sister and her husband, made a big fuss in the paper, alleging he and his club, Moonglade, were responsible, but the girl was of legal age and . . .” She shrugged. “They—the parents—accused Gordon of being the driver, and accused the police of a cover-up when they said a blood test showed he was sober. I guess he had tried to help the girl, who was thrown from the car, and there was some question about who was driving, even though a witness definitely said Kinleigh was driving when they left the club. The stepsister and her husband tried to bring a case, and he countersued for defamation of character. It was just ugly, a case of hurt people making a tragedy so much worse. Moonglade went out of business anyway a few weeks later. Troy and I went there once. It was nice. Classy. Definitely a step above most Grand Junction nightspots.”
“What a senseless tragedy,” Lola said. “You can see why the parents were looking for someone to blame. Gordon was there, so . . .” She let the thought die out, and then said, “Maybe we should get back to the autopsy report,” she said. “Maud, you were saying?”
“Gordon was a big man with a big-time problem,” Maud said, putting on rectangular cheaters and reading from her steno pad. “Six-one, two hundred twenty pounds, and in generally good health . . . except for the brain tumor.” She peered over the glasses to see how we reacted to her bombshell.
“Brain tumor!” Kerry exclaimed.
“I’d’ve thought lung cancer, as much as he smoked,” I said.
“Maybe he really was dizzy when Kinleigh drove him home,” Brooke said, eyes widening.
“Poor man,” said Lola. “Did he know?”
“Good question,” Maud said, pointing at Lola. “I haven’t been able to find that out yet. I talked to a friend of Joe’s, though, an oncologist, and showed her the X-rays I got from the coroner’s office. She said the tumor, a glioblastoma, was inoperable, terminal, and might have been affecting his speech, balance, and even personality.”
“How so?” Kerry asked, seating herself in a rocking chair.
“Less executive function,” Maud answered, referring to her notes again. “Unusual fits of anger or acting out. Not the way I want to go,” she added, trying to lean back against the sofa and frowning at it when her head hit part of the wood carving. “Kerry, damn this couch. You should break it up for kindling.”
“That explains a lot,” I said, telling them about Gordon heaving a beer mug at his ex-wife and exploding at the least little thing. “I don’t think Derek knew Gordon was ill.”
“I’ll bet the murderer didn’t know Gordon was ill, either,” Kerry said. “Why bother murdering someone who’s already up against his expiration date?” Her flush had subsided and she was rocking gently back and forth.
“Maybe the tumor made him lose his balance and just fall off the roof,” Lola suggested.
I wished that were possible, but I shook my head. “You haven’t been up there, Lo. No way could anyone fall over accidentally—the wall is too high.”
“Let me read you the rest of this,” Maud said, abandoning the sofa to lean against the fireplace, cold and only faintly ashy smelling at this time of year. “And for heaven’s sake don’t mention this to anyone until you see it in the paper. We’re not supposed to know this. I don’t want my source getting in trouble, or refusing to help me out in the future.” She cleared her throat. “The gist of it is that he was conked with the proverbial blunt object, got a fractured skull that was probably fatal, and was then tossed over the wall. There’s lots of data about mortar that matches samples from the wall in the scrapes on his arms and face, antemortem bruising, blah-blah, and then a cracked cervical vertebra, supposedly suffered postmortem, that probably happened when his body hit the metal lip of the Dumpster.”
Lola put a hand to her mouth. “That’s just awful.” She closed her eyes and I wondered if she was saying a prayer.
“At least he didn’t suffer long,” Kerry said practically. “He was dead before he landed in the Dumpster, it sounds like.”
We sat in silence for a moment, chastened by the reality of violent death. I cleared my throat and said, “Let me tell you what I found out about Women Outing Serial Cheaters.” It took me fifteen minutes, but I gave them a blow-by-blow account of my discussion with Guinevere Dalrymple.
“She was married to Gordon?” Kerry exclaimed. “How many ex-wives does he have?”
“More important,” Maud put in, “do the police know? Maybe this Guinevere was madder at Gordon than she let on, or maybe she’s in his will.” She made a note and I knew she was going to do her damnedest to get hold of Gordon’s will. “They can also get her to cough up the names of the other participants in the ‘outing,’” she said. “What did Chief Uggams have to say about the investigation, Kerry?” she asked.
Kerry planted her feet and quit rockin
g. “That man! He’s on a fishing trip until tomorrow. With a homicide case on his plate, he goes off after trout and takes the DA with him! Mabel put me through to Detective Hart, and he wouldn’t say more than that the investigation was going well, they were collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses—a lot of them, since there were so many folks at the grand opening—and he hoped to make an arrest by the end of the week. Sorry, Amy-Faye.” She shot me a look that said she assumed Derek would be the arrestee.
My stomach clenched, but I said, “He might have been talking about Foster.” I told them about my run-in with the ex-janitor and his obsession with revenge on Gordon.
“What we need,” I said when I finished, “is Hercule Poirot to march all the players in one by one and grill them about what they saw and where they were when, and then draw up a timeline.”
Lola smiled faintly. “I don’t think it’s ever quite that easy for the police in real life.”
“Maybe they were all in on it,” Maud said, her eyes lighting up.
“All who?” Brooke asked. “In on what?”
“Gordon’s murder,” Maud said impatiently. “Maybe his exes and his son, and his sister, and the WOSC women, and the janitor, and everyone were in on it together. Like in Orient.”
“Everyone except Derek,” I quickly put in.
Kerry hooted derisively. “You have finally lost it, Maud. You left out the CIA and Sirhan Sirhan. These people don’t know each other, and even if they did, how many people does it take to toss one man—even if he weighed two hundred plus—off a roof? You don’t think someone would have noticed if half the party trooped upstairs to the roof and came back soaking wet?”
Maud made a disgruntled face, unhappy at having her conspiracy theory debunked so quickly. “I’m just saying it’s possible.”
Kerry, never one to let well enough alone, added, “Yeah, well, it’s possible that the town’s new ad campaign will triple our tourist business, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Part of her earlier question had caught my attention. “Does the autopsy report have a time of death, Maud?” I asked.
She scanned her notes. “Somewhere between seven and seven thirty. Seems to be based on stomach content analysis.”
We all grimaced, and Brooke said, “Eww.”
“Anyone remember when it started raining?”
They all shook their heads, but Maud said, “I see where you’re going with this. I’ll check with the weather service.”
“It started raining before the fire alarm went off,” Kerry remembered. “Everyone got wet from standing in the parking lot. I had to wring out my bra when I got home. I’ll try the chief again when he gets back tomorrow afternoon. Better yet, maybe I’ll set Chester on him.” Chester was both the former police chief and Kerry’s former husband. She looked at her big-faced watch. “I have to shoo you out of here. Can’t be tardy for the Girl Scouts.”
We thanked Kerry and left. I waved at Roman, still up on his ladder, trying to dab paint on the row of gingerbread shingles just under the eaves. His ladder rocked and he dribbled paint onto a windowpane. That would be fun to clean up. The Readaholics seemed more subdued than usual, I thought, saying good nights as Kerry pulled out of the driveway, tooting the Subaru’s horn, and zipped down the street. If the others were feeling like me, it was because finding Gordon’s murderer seemed hopeless. There were too many people we knew about who had grudges against him—motive—and too many people at the grand opening who might have had the opportunity to kill him. And the means of death was readily available to anyone who took the time to climb to the roof. Wait . . . maybe not. Maud had said Gordon was hit with something. I wondered if the police had the weapon in hand, and what it might have been. Something available on the roof, or something the killer would have had to bring along?
I let go of my train of thought for a moment, catching up to Brooke before she got in her Mercedes. “How did it go with the home inspection today?” I asked.
She smiled. “Great, just great. The woman, Elaine, was very nice, and she seemed happy—impressed even—with the house, how clean it was and everything.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” There were operating rooms that weren’t as clean as Brooke’s house.
“Troy even came home from work to be with me when she came,” Brooke added. “He’s as committed to this as I am,” she assured me.
“Of course he is.” It was her parents-in-law that couldn’t stomach the thought of their son adopting a child that didn’t have Widefield blue blood trickling through his or her veins. “What happens next?”
“We do an interview, and then—keep your fingers crossed—we’re in The Book. This agency gives The Book to expectant mothers so they can choose who they want to adopt their baby. They’ve got two new pregnant girls coming in next week to go through The Book.”
“That’s wonderful. Keep me posted.”
“You bet,” Brooke said with a grin. “And you keep me posted on progress with Detective Hot—I mean Hart.”
I blew a raspberry and headed to my van as Brooke drove off. From behind me came a scraping sound, and a strangled yelp. I pivoted in time to see Roman’s ladder list to the right, bang against the side of the house, and crash into the juniper shrubs. Roman flung his paint can, which tumbled end over end, spewing salmon-colored latex that spattered me from head to toe as I raced toward him, and tried to jump off the ladder, but it looked as though he’d caught his shirt in the ladder somehow and couldn’t pull free in time. He tumbled headfirst into the shrubs. The branches quivered as he thrashed.
“Roman!” I called, skidding to a stop in front of the junipers. A rich evergreen scent arose from the crushed limbs.
“I’m okay,” he mumbled, sitting up and spitting out the tip of a juniper branch. His moplike hair was messier than usual, and salmon paint streaked it and his face. He tried to push himself up, but cried out, “My wrist!”
“Let me see.”
He held out his right hand. Even without an MD, I could see it was broken, already swollen and with a strange bulge that made me wince in sympathy. “I’m taking you to the doctor,” I said, thinking quickly. At this hour, the only option was the urgent-care clinic on Paradise and Fourth Street. “Give me your other hand.”
I helped pull him up, my hand lost in his bigger one. He cradled his injured wrist in his left hand as I urged him toward the van. “How about you call your mom while I drive, okay? Do you think you can do that? She can meet us at the clinic.”
Roman nodded, hair flopping. I helped him into the van and tried to drive smoothly so I didn’t jar his wrist while he dialed one-handed. “Voice mail,” he said after a moment. “She turns her phone off when she does speeches.”
That might have been the longest phrase I’d ever heard him utter. “Do you know where she is, where the Girl Scout meeting is?”
Roman shrugged in the teenage boy way that could mean anything from a simple “No” to “Why are you bothering me with this?” to “I heard blah-blah-blah and thought I should act like I’m listening.”
We were at Alliance Urgent Care now, and I turned into the nearly empty parking lot. I hoped that boded well for our wait time. Thank goodness it was Monday night, and not a weekend. I helped Roman out of the van, noticing his face was distinctly paler, and held the door for him. The space was brightly lit, linoleum-floored, and virtually empty. An elderly man sat at the farthest end of the waiting room, listlessly flipping the pages of a magazine. Some inane reality show played on the TV mounted in a corner. The middle-aged black receptionist greeted us with a smile and “Can I help you?”
I explained why we were there and Roman held out his wrist. The receptionist handed me a clipboard. “Mom, if you could fill out these forms, we’ll get—”
“She’s not my mom,” Roman said at the same time I said, “I’m not his mother.” At her confused and now suspicious l
ook, I explained. The receptionist asked for Kerry’s cell phone number, called it, and left a message summarizing the situation. “Dr. Dreesen will be right with you,” she promised us.
Before I had time to figure out where I knew that name from, a door to the right of the reception desk opened and a petite woman in a snowy lab coat appeared. She had a stethoscope draped around her neck and her sandy blond hair in a low ponytail. I recognized Gordon’s sister immediately. “Roman Sanderson?” she called crisply, looking right at us.
Sweat beaded Roman’s forehead, which I took as a sign of increasing pain. “Do you want me to come back with you?” I asked, not sure of the protocol.
“Nah.” He shambled toward where Dr. Dreesen waited and they disappeared through the door.
“The washroom’s through there,” the receptionist called to me, pointing.
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but when I pushed into the restroom and saw the salmon speckles all over my face and clothes, I understood. Using paper towels and warm water, I scrubbed off most of the paint on my face and hands; my clothes and hair would have to wait until I got home.
The magazines on offer—American Baby, Highlights, and Rider Magazine (perhaps because motorcycle riders spend a lot of time in ERs?)—held no allure, so I occupied myself for the next forty minutes by alternately watching the reality show, which featured precocious brats being forced into beauty pageant slavery by their tyrannical mothers, and calling Kerry. She still hadn’t answered when Roman and Dr. Dreesen reappeared. Roman sported a cast wrapped in traffic-cone-orange tape, and a woozy look that suggested they’d given him some effective painkillers. Dr. Dreesen beckoned to me.
When I approached, she gave me a sharp look. “I know you.”
“Amy-Faye Johnson. I’m Derek Johnson’s sister. We met at Elysium Brewing.” Where your brother died. Up close, I towered over her, which doesn’t happen often, since five-four doesn’t often qualify as “towering.” She couldn’t have been more than five-one, and I’d bet she didn’t weigh a hundred and five, dripping wet. She had pretty, delicate features, pinched with worry or exhaustion, and I put her at forty-five or – six. I wasn’t sure whether or not to offer my condolences, given the circumstances, but I finally said, “I’m very sorry about your brother.”
The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle Page 12
