The very thought of it was a wonderful motivator and she hopped to it, nailing down shingle after shingle until it was time to draw another chalk line.
Her lower back was starting to ache from being crouched for so long so she stood up and braced her hands on her butt, leaning backwards and stretching out her spine. She could barely look up the sky was so bright. To stretch her legs she paced and gazed out at the row of houses. She spotted more than a few roofs that could use re-shingling, and made a mental note to go door-to-door offering her services after she got a number of days with Josie.
As she turned to pace in the opposite direction, she noticed a man standing on one of the roofs about four houses down.
His fists were planted firmly on his hips and from this distance she could only guess his age. Judging from his sandy-blond hair and the style of t-shirt he wore, she pegged him for his mid or late twenties. He wore Converse sneakers as well and nothing about his appearance told her he belonged on a roof. Not to mention that he wasn’t chatting on his cellphone, he wasn’t drinking a beer, he wasn’t sunning himself, and he didn’t have any company.
When she reached the edge of her own roof, she knelt, observing him.
He was just standing there, and the longer she stared, the more she realized he looked distraught and so lost in thought that he hadn’t noticed her even though they were facing one another.
A red Ford Thunderbird rumbled its way up the street and pulled along the curb in front of the house where the man was. He startled, rushing toward the edge of the roof and peering down and when he paced back, he plowed his fingers through his hair in such a way that seemed to indicate he knew he was in deep trouble.
Kate drew in a deep breath and told herself not to be nosy, but she couldn’t seem to tear herself away.
A moment later a second man appeared on the roof and the blond guy whipped around.
At least Kate thought it was a man.
She realized she had stopped breathing at the sight of him. He was dressed all in black despite the stifling weather, but that wasn’t what took her breath away.
He was wearing a black ski mask.
Without warning, the masked man charged at the young guy and a struggle ensued. As they fought—the masked man attempting to choke the young guy, and the guy throwing desperate punches to get him off—they fell together out of view.
Kate sprung to her feet, panic surging through her. She was momentarily dumbfounded, registering what she’d seen, and it took her a great deal of effort to snap out of it and find her cellphone in the pocket of her jean shorts.
Just as she was dialing 911, the young guy sprung out into view again, but the masked man rushed after him, slipped a wire around the young guy’s neck, and began strangling him with expert precision.
“Oh God!” Kate breathed. Her hands were shaking, but she sent the call through. When she lifted her eyes, both men had fallen out of view again. “Hello?” she exclaimed as soon as she heard the 911 operator’s voice. She spat out the address and then yelled, “I think I just witnessed a murder!”
Chapter Two
Kate stood on the sidewalk and nervously waited for the police to arrive. She folded her arms, staring in the direction she had seen the red Ford Thunderbird pull a U-turn and tear down the street. She hadn’t had a prayer of reading the license plate.
What was taking the cops so long? Anxiety was skewing her sense of time. She couldn’t tell if she’d been waiting seconds or hours.
Whose house was that? Did the young man live there? Was no one else home? And why had he been waiting there on the roof like a sitting duck? Had he known he was about to be murdered? And if so, why on earth hadn’t he gone to the police?
Without realizing it, she started down the sidewalk and it wasn’t until she came in front of the house that it dawned on her she was acting reckless and downright crazy. What was she going to do, knock on the door? Climb up to the roof? Examine the body?
She glanced at her watch, but the time didn’t help her to know how long she’d been waiting. She suddenly understood that she didn’t just feel anxious. She felt guilty. She should’ve shouted, jumped up and down and waved her arms. She should’ve made herself known, gotten the killer’s attention. Maybe her being a witness could’ve scared him off. She should’ve done everything in her power to prevent him from killing, but instead she had been petrified. She hadn’t thought straight and she hadn’t done a thing worthwhile.
Realizing this compelled her to cross up the walkway and knock on the front door. She wasn’t exactly thinking this through, but she had to do something.
To her surprise, the front door popped open almost immediately, and Kate found herself staring down at a young boy who looked about ten years old. His hair was a mess of brown cowlicks and he was squeezing a raggedy teddy bear under his arm, which struck her as odd. He seemed too old for stuffed bears.
“Hi,” she said cautiously. “Are your parents at home? Any adults?”
The child just stared at her.
“You’re not home alone, are you?”
He squeezed his bear tighter.
“I was working on a roof a few houses down and I saw some commotion on your roof. I’m Kate. I’m the police chief’s wife. You know that the police are safe people, right? You can trust me.”
He blinked.
“Can I go onto your roof?”
When he again said nothing and didn’t react, she wondered if he was developmentally stunted in some way. He didn’t seem to comprehend her, but to make sure, she asked, “I like your teddy bear. What’s his name?”
“Mr. Bear,” he said in a small voice.
“Mr. Bear,” she echoed. “I like that name. What’s your name?”
He only shrunk into a shy hunch.
“Okay, I’m going to have to get onto your roof. The police will be here soon and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Can you tell me how to get up to the roof?”
Again, he fell silent and she took a deep breath, lifting her eyes. Her gaze happened to land past him to the living room where a large window revealed a ladder at the back of the house. She smiled at him and said, “I’ll be back soon.”
Quickly, she made her way around to the back of the house and started up the ladder as soon as she’d reached it.
The roof shingles were weathered and peeling up, and Kate saw where the two men had scuffled and fought—the shingles were completely loose. She followed the path of stripped shingles and gasped when she found the body of the young guy. He was lying on his back. There was a wire around his neck and his fingers were hooked under it as if he had died attempting to breathe. As she kneeled down beside him, she guessed that the wire was some kind of piano cord, because she didn’t recognize it as a building material.
Strangled on a roof in broad daylight, she thought.
Why?
Kate knew that Scott wouldn’t appreciate her tampering with a crime scene, but it didn’t stop her from reaching into the guy’s pants pocket and pulling out his wallet.
Searching through it, she found a photo of the dead guy with the strange ten-year-old boy. There was little resemblance between them, but they seemed close enough in age that they could be brothers. She found his driver’s license next and read his name: Nathan Robillard. According to his birth date, he was twenty-eight and wore corrective lenses. He had four credit cards and banked at Wells Fargo, and she found a number of punch-cards for various fast-food joints outside of town—Subway, Tasti D-Lite, Domino’s Pizza—plus one for a store she hadn’t heard of, Vape Mods, where he appeared to be due a free...something.
Sirens wailed up the street so she tucked his wallet back into his jeans and made her fast way to the ladder, which she descended quickly and carefully. As she rounded the house, a police cruiser pulled up to the curb and two officers jumped out.
“Where is he?” one of them demanded.
“The body is on the roof,” she said regretfully. “And the killer drove off.”
As they rushed toward the front door, Kate shouted, “There’s a ladder around back and a kid inside.”
The officers divided, one knocking on the door while the other jogged around to the back of the house.
A moment later, Scott’s truck pulled up behind the cruiser and he jumped out. They locked eyes as he walked briskly and met her on the front yard.
“What happened?”
“I was working on Sandra Conway’s roof and saw a masked man attack this blond guy on the roof of this house. Scott, he strangled him to death.”
He clenched his jaw, eyeing the roof. “Okay,” he said, contemplatively. “I’ll send an officer down to get your full statement.”
After touching eyes with her briefly, he started around the back of the house just as the police officer that had entered through the front door came out.
Kate rushed to him and asked, “Is the little boy okay? I spoke with him briefly, but he didn’t seem to understand.”
“I have no idea,” said the officer, whose nameplate read, Chesterfield. He was new to the force but not young, and as far as Kate had heard, he’d made a career switch to law enforcement after two decades of working as a paralegal. “But I called his parents.”
Kate glanced over Officer Chesterfield’s shoulder where the little boy had opened the front door and was peering out at them.
“Robillard?” she asked him.
“Huh?”
“Is that the family name?”
“Yeah, how did you know?” he asked.
She wasn’t about to tell him she had rifled through a dead man’s wallet, so she shrugged, saying, “It’s a small town.”
The other officer returned. “Scott told me to collect your statement, Kate.”
“Sure,” she said, shoving her hands into her shorts pockets. “All I can say is that the killer wore all black including a black ski mask. I didn’t see his face.”
“But you’re sure it was a man?” he questioned.
She thought about it then explained, “He had the height and build, but no, I guess I can’t be sure.”
Officer Taite, who was also new to the force but much younger than Chesterfield, began jotting her account down on a form.
She watched until his pen slowed then added, “I saw a red Ford Thunderbird pull up to the house. I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I think it was the killer’s car. It sped off pretty fast after the murder.”
“Okay, good,” he said, scrawling the detail quickly onto the form.
“But that’s all I know.”
As Kate waited to be excused, she glanced at the child who hadn’t stopped staring. And it occurred to her that even if the police didn’t need her anymore, she’d rather not leave the little boy until his parents arrived.
“Okay, Kate,” said Taite. “That’s all we need from you.”
She shot him a knowing look and said, “I hope you catch the guy. He seemed to know what he was doing. If you ask me, this was premeditated.”
“You might be right about that,” said Chesterfield. “But we’ll handle it.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Kate walked off, but even when she reached the front step where the little boy was wavering, she felt the officers’ eyes on her. They didn’t know her personally, but it was safe to assume her reputation had preceded her. The residents around Rock Ridge were all too familiar with her penchant for solving crimes, and while that afforded her accolades around town, the cops had a much different attitude about it. Nobody at the precinct wanted their toes stepped on and many were on guard that Kate would do just that even when there wasn’t an active investigation taking place.
Softly, she said, “Hey, Kiddo,” as she gazed down at the boy. “This is pretty nutty, right? All these police officers at your house?”
He blinked and began thumbing one of his teddy bear’s ears. She kneeled down and looked up at him.
“Is Nathan your brother?”
“Nate,” he corrected her. “He used to live here.”
“Right,” she said, encouragingly. “He doesn’t anymore because he’s an adult now. Do you know where he works?”
The child screwed his face up. Clearly he had no concept of where his brother worked.
“There was a red car here earlier. Do you know what car I’m talking about?”
His eyes widened, but only for a flashing moment, and then he seemed to cower in fear.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “But I’d like to know who drives that car.”
He stared at her, but she was patient, giving him a chance to respond.
When he didn’t, she pressed, “Do you know who drives that car?”
Finally, he nodded and in a very small voice he said, “Nate,” without looking at her.
She took a deep breath and straightened up since her legs were cramping. It was Nathan’s car, yet someone else was driving it. His killer. It told her that Nathan knew his killer very well, which meant that the masked man had concealed his face not to shield his identity from his victim, but from anyone who might happen to see him on that roof.
Again, she kneeled down in front of the child. “Does Nate have any very close friends he liked to lend his car to?”
Without warning, the child darted out across the yard and when Kate turned, she saw two very concerned looking parents jump out of a silver SUV and rush to him.
The mother exclaimed, “What in God’s name is going on?”
While the father scooped his strange son into his arms and began walking over to the police officers to demand an answer to the same question.
After watching them for a beat, Kate started off down the sidewalk toward Sandra Conway’s house where she spent the rest of the morning nailing down shingles on the roof. At times she glanced up the street at the Robillards’ house and spied the police working the crime scene on the roof.
Sandra wasn’t thrilled about all the noise Kate was making, as she hammered row after row of shingles, and the writer was even less pleased when at five-thirty Kate called it a day even though the roof still wasn’t finished.
“Will it be finished tomorrow?” Sandra asked angrily from the doorway as she glared at Kate.
She took a deep breath and gripped her tool kit tightly as a means to direct her frustration anywhere but at the writer. “I should hope so. I’m sorry about today, but things got delayed when I called the police.”
Sandra couldn’t argue with that, but the look on her face told Kate she very much wanted to. “Figures,” she complained.
“That I would’ve called the police?” Kate challenged, trying to hold back how appalled she was that Sandra would have a problem with this.
“No, of course not,” she said. “Anyone would’ve called the police. I’m saying it figures that the Robillards would eat into my day like this.”
“With their inconvenient murder?”
Sandra caught her point but still fired back. “I’ve made several noise complaints about their house. All the loud music late at night. And you know those parents aren’t home. They have a weekend cottage over in Upstate New York. They leave their kids unattended and all hell breaks loose. If you ask me, this is just another example.”
“They play music so loud that you can hear it four houses away?”
“That’s right,” she said indignantly. “It’s those friends of his.”
“Nathan’s friends?”
“Yeah. Troublemakers if you ask me, and they’re all in their late twenties for God’s sake! They should’ve outgrown that terrible college behavior by now. No wonder one of them ended up dead.”
Kate was taken aback. “Sandra, loud music doesn’t usually kill people.”
“Well loud music wasn’t all they were up to over there.”
“What else were they up to?”
Sandra leaned in as if what she had to say next was highly confidential and stated, “Drag
racing.”
“They were racing cars?”
“Can you believe it…in this quiet, family-oriented neighborhood? Oh, they would wait until four in the morning when everyone was asleep and the roads were clear. But it woke the whole neighborhood up! Their cars don’t have mufflers, not all of them anyway. All the revving engines and screeching tires. It was awful.”
“Did you call the police to make noise complaints?”
“Of course! But Nathan and his friends would just drive off before the cops came, and then they’d return once the coast was clear. Quite frankly, if there were no consequences, I would’ve killed every last one of them myself.”
It was a very strong statement to make, and the fact of the matter was that Sandra Conway had just left the house at the time Nathan Robillard was about to be murdered.
Chapter Three
Kate didn’t so much walk into the foyer of her house as spill through the door. Her legs felt like rubber and her arms were sore from working on Sandra Conway’s roof all day. The squatting, the constant hammering and sweating had left her feeling drained. She was craving a bath and a glass of wine, but knew she couldn’t have both.
As she moved into the living room, Maxwell said, “Hi Honey, how was your day?”
“Knock it off, Max,” she groused.
He was seated on the couch, Josie in her high chair beside him. He had outfitted her in a bib and was spoon-feeding her applesauce, which appeared to get on her face more than in her mouth.
As he worked a soft lump of sauce onto a small plastic spoon, he commented, “So, not the best day?”
“I’m just tired. Are you rushing off?”
He lifted his eyes to her after coaxing the baby to swallow the morsel. “I don’t have to, why?”
“I’m not sure when Scott’s getting home and I could use a bath, but I’ll settle for a quick shower.”
Nodding that he had no problem hanging out, he mentioned, “There’s still a bottle and a half of breast milk in the fridge...and a bottle of Chardonnay chilling beside them.”
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 123
