by Sara Rosett
I gave Mitch a quick kiss and turned to find Waraday lingering in a group of people behind us. I wondered what he had hoped to overhear. I bet he was disappointed to hear me talking about something as mundane as keeping appointments. He was talking on his cell phone as I left, watching my every movement, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was the subject of his call. I really hoped something would come up to move his attention away from me.
“Okay,” I said in a hearty voice, feeling completely out of my depth. Marie and I were standing in the small cleared trail of her entryway, stacks of stuff rising on either side of us. It reminded me of the snow that the plows would pile up along the sides of the road, which I was so amazed to see when we lived in Washington State. There had only been a slight hesitation when Marie opened the door today, which I thought was a good sign, but as soon as I entered her cluttered house, I felt overwhelmed. I took a deep breath and mentally went over the phone conversation I’d had with Dr. Harper before I’d arrived. Be supportive. Go slowly. Don’t take over. “Okay,” I repeated, and said, “Where would you like to start?”
“Here, I guess,” Marie said with a bit of a shrug.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said as I put down my tote bag, which contained trash bags, labels, markers, and other essentials. After the funeral, I’d changed out of my black dress and into a sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. I tried to put all thoughts of the funeral and Jean’s death out of my mind. I had a job to do and it was going to be a doozy.
I’d considered beginning in the kitchen, but it wasn’t in as bad a shape as the other main living areas and if there was one thing I knew about organizing, it was that it helped if you had a feeling of accomplishment. If we could get the small entry hallway cleared, then Marie would have something to inspire her to keep organizing.
There was a miniscule nod of agreement from Marie as she pushed a strand of her fiery hair behind her ear. Her face looked tight and worried.
“So, here’s what we’ll do,” I said. “We’ll start here in this corner and go through each thing in this pile and you’ll decide if you want to keep it, give it away, sell it, or throw it away.”
“All right,” Marie said, ducking her head slightly.
I’d also brought three large plastic bins. I propped them up on the teetering stacks, hoping I wouldn’t cause an avalanche, but there was nowhere on the floor to put them. I pulled the first thing off the stack beside me, a long green-and-white golf umbrella. “What about this? Keep, donate, or throw away?”
“I use that,” Marie said, almost eagerly. “Keep.”
“Okay. Do you have any other umbrellas?”
“Um . . . they’re around,” she said vaguely. “Maybe the hall closet?”
“That’s a good place,” I said, and Marie’s face relaxed as I put the umbrella in the “Keep” bin. “We’ll put that away later. Next,” I said, holding up a single blue glove with a hole in the index finger.
“Umm . . . well, I don’t know where the mate to that is, but I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But since it has a hole, why don’t we put it in the throw away?” I watched her carefully for her reaction.
She frowned. “But that could be mended.”
“Do you knit? Do you know how to fix it?”
“No,” she said reluctantly. “But I could still use it. It’s just a tiny hole.”
I almost relented, but then I looked at the pile of items that were up next: a lidless teapot, several coats, a couple of mateless shoes, and three-ring binders—and that was just the stuff I could see on the top. Who knew what lurked lower down in the stack? “Marie,” I said as gently as I could. “You’re going to have to make some decisions. You’re going to have to let go of some of these things. You have quite a bit to deal with here. Do you think you’re going to use one glove with a hole in it?”
“No,” she said in a low voice. I handed her the glove. She looked at it for a long moment and I thought, this job might end right now if she can’t throw away a useless glove . . . But she nodded decisively and put it in the “Throw Away” bin.
“Great!” I said, trying to be enthusiastic but not go overboard. I quickly picked up one of the coats, trying to draw her attention away from the glove. I shook out the coat, a nice caramel-colored double-breasted wool coat. “So, about this coat . . . what do you think?”
Two hours later, we’d worked our way through a pitifully small amount of stuff. At least, in my mind, it was only a tiny sliver of the job, but it was a start. And Dr. Harper had said not to focus on the amount of material we moved through, but instead to concentrate on encouraging Marie to develop the skills she’d need to sort and organize on her own. One pile in the entryway was gone and we’d uncovered the edge of a hall closet. In a few more sessions, she’d be able to open the closet door. For a second, I wondered what shape the hall closet was in, but I forced my thoughts away from that potentially scary thought. That was a battle for another day.
I set up our next appointment before I left and encouraged Marie to start on the next pile of stuff on her own. I thought it was important for her to try it on her own. I just hoped I wasn’t turning her loose too soon. I pressed my card into her hand before I left and told her to call me with any questions. She gave me a quick wave from the doorstep and ducked her head back inside. I had the feeling she was glad to be rid of me. It had been a challenging day, but I thought we’d accomplished something and I admired Marie. It had to be hard to admit she needed help and then have someone go through her things.
Her neighbor was outside again. Long strands of Christmas lights wreathed his house and extension cords snaked down from the huge trees, then crisscrossed the lawn in a complicated pattern. He nodded at me again as I drove by. This time he was maneuvering several large reindeer out of the garage. I waved back and reached to answer my ringing phone.
It was Dorthea, our neighbor who lives across the street from us. “Hi, Dorthea,” I said, always glad to hear from her.
“Ellie, where are you?”
“Only a few minutes away. Is something wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but you better come home. I just came in from my walk and there’s a car from the sheriff’s department in your driveway and a large van. They’re standing on your doorstep and they look very impatient—like they want to use a crowbar to get in. I asked what was happening and one of the officers said they had a search warrant.”
“A search warrant?” I said, feeling as if I were coming out of a cocoon. I’d been so focused on Marie that I hadn’t even thought of the murder investigation for the last couple of hours. I felt almost disoriented. What could they . . . ? Oh, my clothes, I realized, remembering what Paige had said about the specific questions Waraday had asked her about what I’d worn the day Jean died. Could they go in my house while I wasn’t there? I wasn’t sure of the finer points of the law, but I thought they probably could. “Well, don’t let them break down the door. And Rex! If they go inside, he’ll go crazy. He’s in his kennel, but they won’t know that.”
“I’ll take care of it, dear. Don’t worry,” Dorthea said, then the phone hit a hard surface with a resounding smack.
“Dorthea . . . are you there?”
No reply. The traffic light turned green and I hit the accelerator. I stayed on the phone line and in less than a minute Dorthea was back.
“They found the spare key you keep taped to the bottom of that decorative bench on your porch,” Dorthea said. “I told them Rex was in his kennel. Good thing, too, because he was making a racket. I hate to think what might have happened. They are dead set on getting in there quickly. Does this have something to do with that poor woman you found the other day?”
“I’m afraid it does,” I said as I pressed harder on the accelerator. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
When I arrived in our neighborhood a few minutes later, I’d already called T. Randall Hitchens’s office. I knew M
itch had a late afternoon flight and he was already in the air, so I didn’t even try and call him. I kept repeating to myself that I had nothing to hide. It didn’t matter if they searched my house, because there was nothing incriminating there. But no matter what I told myself, I couldn’t stop the jittery feeling that made my hands tremble. They were in my house.
I forced myself to slow down on our neighborhood streets, then stopped the minivan with a jerk in our driveway. I saw Dorthea framed in the big picture window at the front of her house, her face looking worried. I could hear Rex, his deep, steady barks unrelenting. I jogged up the steps and entered through the front door, which was standing open, letting in a cold draft. I automatically shut it, then headed down the short hallway to the master bedroom where I could hear voices. I fell into step behind a short man with a crew cut who wore a tan, long-sleeved shirt and brown pants. I followed him into my bedroom and felt as if I were in some sort of surreal dream. Waraday was standing in the closet and I could see there was at least one more person inside the closet, sliding hangers along the rod with a fingernails-on-chalkboard screech. As soon as the man in brown entered the room, he called out to Waraday, “I got nothing from the washer or dryer—no trace of blood.”
Waraday turned toward the man, saw me over his shoulder, and shot a look at him that even I could interpret as keep quiet.
“You think I tried to wash blood out of my clothes?” I asked. “How could I have done that? You saw me yourself at Jean’s house—I didn’t have blood on my clothes.”
Waraday didn’t reply, just nodded to a female officer, who handed me a piece of paper. It was the search warrant. I tried to scan it quickly, but she motioned me back to the hallway and said, “Ma’am, would you come with me, please?” I wasn’t sure if they had the right to keep me from watching them. I was about to protest when the person inside the closet said, “That’s it. Nothing else here.”
Nothing else? What did they have? I stood rooted to the floor, despite the female officer’s tug on my arm. Waraday stepped away from the closet and a man followed him out. He held the crumpled sweater and slacks that I had worn the day Jean died, in his gloved hands. They had pulled them out of the clothes hamper. He transferred the clothes to an evidence bag and as he opened it wide, I caught a glimpse of the kelly green raincoat I’d also worn that day.
“Why are you taking those? Even I can see there’s no blood on them. And they haven’t been washed—they were in the clothes hamper.”
“They’ll be analyzed. If they’re not entered as evidence, they will be returned to you,” Waraday said in a formal, measured tone as he gave me a receipt for the items.
“But you’d be able to see if there was anything on them. For heaven’s sake, the sweater is white!”
Waraday ignored me and left the room. The man with the evidence bag, the female officer, and the man in brown all followed him out. I stood there, stunned. I heard the front door close and the sudden silence of the house enveloped me. He wasn’t about to give up on me as a suspect, I realized, dropping down onto the corner of the bed. Rex’s insistent barks were still sounding, steady as a metronome. The doorbell rang, sending him into a new crescendo of staccato barking.
Wearily, I stood up and went to the door. Had they forgotten something? They already had my clothes, boots, and coat. What else could they want? My purse? My underwear? I thought sarcastically. Clothes they could have, but my purses weren’t going anywhere. I’d been carrying a canvas and leather Prada purse that I’d snapped up at a garage sale for twenty dollars. If it went into evidence, I might not see it for years. And I hadn’t even taken it out of the van when I went in to Jean’s garage.
But it wasn’t Waraday back to harass me—Dorthea was standing on my porch. She’d come over to check on me. Cooing and clucking like a mother hen, she shooed me into the kitchen, made me a cup of tea, let Rex outside, and then sat down across from me with her own cup of tea. I called the attorney’s office with the news that the search was over. A secretary who was too chipper for my black mood took down all the details of what had happened and asked me to fax over the search warrant.
“So much for Christmas cheer,” I said, hanging up the phone and climbing onto a bar stool. The tea burned my tongue, so I put the cup down. “I thought I was in the clear—that the investigation would focus on someone else besides me, but now it looks like Waraday is more determined than ever to pursue me.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much, dear,” Dorthea said. “He can’t manufacture evidence. You didn’t do it, after all.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said with a small smile.
Dorthea finished her tea, then said, “Call me if you need anything—anything at all.”
“Hopefully it won’t be bail,” I’d muttered as I closed the front door behind her.
I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and grabbed the bin of cleaning supplies. I didn’t like the thought of strangers in my house, handling my belongings. It made me want to scrub the house from top to bottom. I moved through the rooms, vacuuming and dusting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of vulnerability. Dorthea’s words about manufacturing evidence kept going around in my mind. I knew she’d intended to calm me down, but I couldn’t help but think that if the murderer realized how tightly the investigation was focused on me, I was a ready-made scapegoat. One carefully planted piece of physical evidence—say, a blood-spattered piece of clothing left in the house or my van—would link me to the crime. And it wouldn’t matter how much I protested that I’d never seen that item . . . I shook my head to stop that train of thought. Those ideas wouldn’t do me any good. Unless . . . I could find someone who was a better suspect than me.
Tips for a Sane and Happy Holiday Season
Keeping Track of Gifts
Can’t remember what you gave your nieces and nephews last year, much less which gifts are age appropriate? You can solve this problem with a small spiral notebook. Jot down everyone on your holiday gift-buying list and what present you give them. Add birth dates of children so you’ll always know how old they are. A good place to store the notebook is with your holiday gift wrap.
Chapter Ten
An hour later, I was vigorously scrubbing the soap scum on the shower wall, still contemplating how in the world I could turn up viable suspects in Jean’s murder. I didn’t like the exposed feeling of knowing that Waraday was watching me, examining my life so closely. Any hint of a connection to the murder and I knew I’d be in big trouble. Rex, who had been sprawled across the threshold of the bathroom, sprang up and sprinted down the hallway. Faintly, I heard the rumble of the garage door. Abby was here with the kids. Livvy and Nathan both knew the code to open the garage with the exterior keypad. Abby had been parking at the end of our driveway to keep her car off the street, something the home owner’s association frowned on. I gave the shower a quick rinse and dried my hands.
The door from the garage to the house flew open and footsteps thudded through the house. It sounded like a miniature army was invading. “Mom, we’re home!” Livvy announced unnecessarily.
“Never would have guessed,” I said as I patted her on the shoulder. I grabbed Nathan for a quick hug as he dropped his backpack on the peg by the door and shed his coat, all in one swift movement. Livvy hadn’t even hung up her coat yet and I could already hear Nathan rummaging in the pantry for a snack. “How was your day?”
She shrugged. “Fine.”
I always wanted more details, but I didn’t push it. The kids seemed to be the least talkative when they walked in the door from school. I’d get more out of them at dinner tonight. I opened the door to the garage to wave to Abby—Monday afternoon was her carpool day—but she was walking up the driveway, holding Charlie’s hand.
“You didn’t think I was going to just wave and drive off, did you?” she asked. “Couldn’t do that after the day you’ve had. And I never did get to answer your question. The answer, by the way, is no, you’re not crazy paranoid.”
“What’s party-noid?” Charlie asked.
“Paranoid, honey,” Abby said. “It means to feel scared.”
I handed him a package of cheese crackers and a juice box. “Do you want to watch TV with Livvy and Nathan?”
He didn’t even answer, just scooted into the living room where he joined Livvy and Nathan for their allotted thirty minutes of wind-down time.
Abby followed me into the kitchen where I poured us two tall glasses of Diet Coke. I opened a bag of tortilla chips. I’d worked up an appetite cleaning. “The thing is . . . I can’t think of anyone who’d make a better suspect than me.”
“How can you say that?”
“The problem is that Jean was nice. No one hated her. She didn’t have enemies.”
“Or get into arguments with people at parties,” Abby said, raising her eyebrows at me. I grimaced. “I do see what you mean,” she continued. “Jean didn’t rile people.”
“No,” I said with a sigh. “Apparently, she and Simon had a good marriage. Unless you’ve heard something different . . .” Abby shook her head. “I could ask Mitch if he’s heard anything about Simon being unhappy or fooling around,” I said uncertainly. Mitch had never been a big fan of my getting involved in criminal investigations. His “live and let live” philosophy was the exact opposite of my “take life by the horns and wrestle it into place” philosophy. Of course, he’d felt differently when he was in danger a few years ago. He’d sure been active then in trying to figure things out, but that was no guarantee that he’d be fine with me snooping around on my own. But if this was as far as I could get with ideas for suspects, he might not have much to worry about, anyway, I thought dismally.
