Читать книгу Staying Home Is A Killer - Sara Rosett - Страница 15

“Mitch, I’m a suspect. Whether or not they read me my rights, I’m at the top of their list. I could see it. I could feel Thistlewait’s attitude shift as soon as I said I took the bag from Penny and brought it to the Scheduling Office. I can’t leave my future in the hands of some investigators. What if they get it wrong? What if they go with the easiest answer? That’s me. Like Thistlewait said, I’m connected to both Penny and Georgia. I got the feeling Thistlewait was cutting me a little slack, but what if someone wants a quick solution to this thing? I’m it.”

Mitch leaned against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and his legs splayed out at an angle, propping him up. He looked like a mule with his tight, set jaw. He didn’t want to budge. “Thousands, no, millions of people, do just that. They trust the police to get it right. They go on with their lives and don’t think about getting involved.”

“But millions of people only have brushes with the police, a speeding ticket or something minor. Most people are not murder suspects.”

Mitch growled and marched over to the refrigerator. He jerked open the door, which set off a clatter of clinks and thuds. My shoulders tensed as I waited for Livvy to cry. We’d just put her in bed, and any little sound could wake her up. He pulled out a Dr Pepper, shoved the door closed, and guzzled half of it. Livvy must be catching up on her sleep, because the house stayed quiet. Mitch strode to the other side of the kitchen.

I took a sip out of my water bottle and doodled circles in the margin of my notepad. I had two headings across the top, Penny on the left and Georgia on the right. Under Georgia I wrote Accidental. I said to Mitch, “If those espresso beans were poisoned, they were intended for Penny. The fact that Georgia ate them is purely coincidental. There was no way Penny knew what I’d do with them once she gave them to me. They had to be for Penny.”

“Where did they come from?”

I shrugged. “You know Thistlewait is following that trail.” I didn’t mention Rachel, my friend who just happened to be the spouse of an OSI special agent. I made a mental note to call her later. Right now, I wanted to focus on my conversation with Penny. I’d talked to her shortly before she died. I wanted to get down on paper what I remembered. I couldn’t imagine anyone being angry enough with Penny to want to kill her, but someone had murdered her and there might be a clue in our conversation or in what Penny had done during the last few days before she died. I’d start with my conversation and then try to fill in the rest of her morning.

She’d looked so happy and I’d commented on it. I wrote Happy/News.

Then she’d given me the espresso beans. I wrote Beans. Under that word I wrote Problem/Needed Help. I’d forgotten about that until now. I drew some more circles. No matter what Mitch thought, I couldn’t let this go now. Penny had asked for my help before she died. She’d even mentioned the murder last year. She must have realized she was in danger and wanted my help. If only we’d talked right then. That dark feeling descended again. I wished we could go back and live that day over again, but this time I’d insist Penny tell me what bothered her.

Mitch tossed his empty can in the recycling bin and sighed deeply. He pulled out a chair at the table. “Okay, what have you got?”

“You’ll help?” I asked guardedly, unsure if he really wanted to help or if he wanted to see my notes.

“Ellie, you are the hardest-headed person I know. I’m not about to let you get into this without knowing what you’re thinking. I’ll help, if I can.”

“Well, you were looking pretty mulish yourself over there just a minute ago.”

“Yes, but I can be flexible. I can give in. Unlike some people.” He leveled a look at me and pulled the notepad toward him.

“I’m not going to give in until I know the police don’t suspect me and aren’t going to arrest me. I have no alibi for Penny’s death. I was driving home from lunch with you.”

Mitch ignored me; well, technically he acknowledged my statement with a grunt as he read over the list, which I took to mean he gave me a little on the alibi point, but he didn’t want to concede that in words. “This is what you and Penny talked about?”

I explained my notes. Then I said, “She was about to tell me something, but then the door opened and a flight crew came in and she looked…funny.” I paused, trying to remember her exact expression. “She was afraid, but there was something else there, too. Defiance?”

I wrote, Flight crew and listed the names as I spoke. “Zeke Peters was there. Pilot?” Mitch nodded. The squadron didn’t have hard crews, so once copilots upgraded to pilot and flew in the left seat the Air Force kept them dual qualified, so they could fly as either a copilot or a pilot, depending on what the needs of the moment were. I remember Zeke’s towering figure dwarfed the others as they labored up the ramp.

“Then Aaron, our new neighbor. He didn’t say anything. Do you know his last name?”

“Reed. He’s our newest co.” Mitch meant copilot. Aaron and Bree had moved into the property left vacant when our neighbor requested a transfer after his wife died last year. A management company now rented the bungalow, and the Reeds were the first to live in it. I’d met the couple one day when I was planting ground cover in a flower bed. They seemed polar opposites; Bree had spiky tomato-red hair and was an artist, a painter. She’d chattered nonstop about the local art scene while Aaron stood mute in the background. “Is he as quiet at work as he was that day I met them?”

“Quieter. We call him ‘the Stealth Co.’”

“Oh. I almost forgot. Rory was there.” Barrel-chested and with a thatch of blond hair over his owlish round glasses, he’d powered up the ramp.

“Rory Tyler? Yeah, he was on it and someone else hopped on that flight.” Mitch left the kitchen and then returned with a small packet of paper, the week’s flying schedule. Now that everything’s computerized, the hard copy should have faded away, but the wing commander liked to see it on paper, so a hard copy went out every Friday for the next week.

Mitch scanned the blocks filled with data. “No one else is on here, but I remember someone came in that morning, wanting to fly.”

I wrote a question mark as Mitch said, “Willy. It was Willy. But it wasn’t this flight. The same crew flew the week before, Friday, I think. He hopped on the Friday flight with Zeke, Rory, and Aaron the week before.”

“Will Follette? Wasn’t he just back from the deployment? Penny said something about being glad he’d be home for a few days.”

Was it only last week? Things had changed so quickly. Will had been gone on the first rotation to the “sandbox,” or “SWA,” pronounced “sa-wah,” an abbreviation for Southwest Asia. Mitch was scheduled to leave in three weeks for his turn. Usually, you had some time off when you returned from a deployment. Sometimes it took a while to get readjusted to the time zone after being halfway around the world for months.

“What was Will doing hopping on another flight right after he got back from a deployment?”

“Don’t you know why we call him Willy? Because he always wants to be on the road.” Mitch tossed the schedule in the recycling bin and sat back down. “No matter how much he’s flown, he always wants on another flight.”

“But doesn’t everyone? You always want to fly. There’s not enough hours to go around, is there?”

“Well, no. We’d all rather be flying. But Willy takes it to an extreme. He never has any conflicts. Most people have some time they don’t want to fly, you know, a kid’s basketball game or family reunions or something. I can’t remember Willy ever blocking out any of his schedule. He even requested a trip during the weekend of that Frost thing. Penny put up flyers around the base, so I asked him if he wanted to be off and he said, ‘No, it’s not a problem. Penny won’t mind.’”

I tossed down my pen. “And all this time Penny thought it was the schedulers who were working him to death, but he was requesting it.” I picked my pen up again and scribbled Will’s name, but anger distorted my handwriting so that I could hardly read it. “How could he do that to Penny?”

“There’s three reasons to go TDY,” he said, referring to the acronym for Temporary Duty. I’d never understood the acronym. Why not just TD? Too easily confused with a touchdown in football? Did some committee tack on the y to baffle spouses and friends of military members? Mitch ticked the reasons off on his fingers, “To travel. You know, ‘join the military, see the world.’ Of course, the only problem with that idea is that military bases are the only part of ‘the world’ we usually get to see. Number two, to party. That’s Willy. For him, a few beers and everything’s a party. And number three, to make money, the per diem. That’s me, by the way, I go for the per diem.”

“You’d better either be in the money category or the travel category,” I said and refocused on the list. “Okay. After the crew passed us, we talked about the exhibit and she mentioned Clarissa Bedford was in her art appreciation class.” I summarized those two items.

I skipped down a few lines and wrote AM meeting at the Mansion. Bedford—10:30? Under that question I listed 11:00—Conversation at the squadron. 12:00—Called Marsali. Around noon—Mabel saw Penny on my porch. 12:34—Called and left a message for me. 1:00—Will finds Penny. A fresh wave of grief washed over me as I read over the list, a picture of the end of a life.

Mitch glanced at the clock. “Wow. Seven already. I’ve got to read. I’m flying tomorrow with Tommy.”

“Oh, Hetty Sullivan!” I tossed the pen down. “I forgot. I’ve got to meet her at Penny and Will’s house at seven-thirty.”

“Who?” Mitch asked. He pulled a three-inch-thick notebook from his pubs case and sat down at the table.

“She’s working on the exhibit and needs to pick up some drawings and photographs from Penny’s house. I said I’d let her in. I’d better run down there and make sure I can find everything. And that reminds me. Victor Roth never returned my call.” I shifted through the papers in the cubbyholes on my small secretary until I found the note with Hetty’s and Victor’s numbers. I dialed Victor’s number as I walked to the closet. He answered and I explained I was following up on Penny’s messages.

“That issue is taken care of,” he said and hung up.

“Well, you’re welcome,” I said as I stabbed the OFF button. “Not even a thank-you!” Victor Roth’s accent sounded a lot less appealing when he snapped at you.

Mitch hadn’t heard me. He hunched over the tiny text titled Engine Ground Operation.

I pulled on my coat and gloves. “Don’t fall asleep!” I called on my way out the door. If I had to read those monotonous pages of technical data, I’d be out in a few seconds.

Mitch looked up, waggled his eyebrows, and said, “Not without you.”

I clutched the collar of my coat together and scurried down the deserted street. With darkness descending around five-thirty, most people hurried home from work and holed up in their warm houses, a mini-hibernation until dawn and work forced them outside to unplug the extension cord transferring heat to their engine block and scrape the ice off their car windows. Besides the weak streetlights, the only light came from gold squares radiating out from the edges of closed curtains. There was no wind tonight, and my steps crunching through snowmelt crystals seemed to echo in the still street.

I turned where I estimated the Follettes’ narrow sidewalk would be and sank into the snow. Will hadn’t shoveled snow for a while. In the darkness on the porch, I fumbled with the keys and tried several times before I got the right one in the lock. I needed to leave the porch light on when I left.

After I clicked on a table lamp, I locked the front door and swished the curtains closed. I stood in the living room, shivering, reluctant to go into the rest of the house. The living room opened to the dining room and kitchen behind it. To the right of the dining room, a tiny hall connected two bedrooms with a bathroom between them. The house was cold and I wondered if Will had turned the thermostat down too low before he left. It was probably in the narrow hall. I took a tentative step.

A wheeze rattled through the house. I jumped as the floor vent jangled and the furnace heaved out a spurt of warm air. I paused to click on the dining room light, then worked my way around the house with floorboards screeching under my feet, turning on the rest of the lights. The bare white walls and stark lighting put an end to my uneasy feeling. In the hall, I cranked the red line on the thermostat from sixty-two degrees up to seventy-five.

I reached into the bath to turn off the light. There was no need to leave it on. I’d flicked it on during my quick circuit of the house when I turned all the lights. Now I stopped. This was where Penny was found.

My wet boots squished on the small one-inch pink tiles that covered the floor and lower two-thirds of the walls. I took in the white muslin curtain at the window and the sink with exposed leg supports. Then I sucked in a gulp of air as I looked past the clear plastic shower curtain into the pink bathtub and saw a dark red, almost brown, color in the tub. I pushed the curtain back. My stomach seemed to clench and roll at the same time. I let out a breath. It was rust. A line of it trailed from the overflow cover down to the drain.

I glanced in the bedroom and then turned the light off in there, too. A mattress and box spring covered with a mustard blanket pushed up against a wall. A pressboard nightstand and dresser crowded the room.

I turned to the second bedroom that Will had described as their study. A computer and portable CD player sat on a pressboard desk combo that dominated most of the room. A sleek swivel office chair with rollers rested on a grid of plastic over a Turkish rug. In contrast to the rest of the house, which had all the charm of a storage unit, the study felt lived in. Stacks of books covered the desk and teetered in a pile beside a soft brown leather chair. A battered floor lamp angled over the shoulder of the chair. I examined the books and magazines. Flight manuals in black binders intermingled with books on archaeology, a catalogue from Harris Museum, a book about hand-woven rugs, and American Archaeology magazines.

A yellow sticky note on the monitor read Call Oscar. Marsali? My gaze swept over the rest of the room. The far wall dominated the room. Three rows of shelves held a variety of dolls dressed in brilliant colors. They were displayed with the same precision that Penny would have used in a museum display. Evenly spaced, a card in front of each doll noted names and either purchase dates or who had given the doll to Penny. Their bright clothes gave the room a cheerful air, but their sparkling, fixed eyes and perfectly arranged shiny hair seemed a little creepy in the empty house.

The doorbell rang and I went to let Hetty inside. She stamped her high-heeled boots on the Astroturf mat and stepped inside. “Hetty Sullivan,” she said as she gave me a firm, quick handshake. She had a long nose and thin lips bright with red lipstick that matched her nail polish.

“Ellie Avery.” I shut the door.

“It’s freezing out there. Thanks for doing this.” She tossed her purse down by the door and ran her fingers through the dark cap of hair threaded with gray and said, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time, so show me where everything is and I’ll take care of it.” She quickly scanned the room.

“Will said they were in the study, back here.” I led the way. “But I haven’t found anything yet.” I found myself walking and talking quickly. She had an air of busy efficiency and competence.

She did another quick visual survey. When she didn’t spot the photos right away, Hetty’s forehead wrinkled. “They shouldn’t be that hard to find.” She stooped and began burrowing through a box beside the desk.

“Maybe the closet.” I opened that door. “Oh. I bet this is it.” I saw a box with bundles encased in bubble wrap. At the same moment I spoke, I felt a sick sensation sweep over me as I had so many times in the last few days when I realized Penny was dead. Stacks of baby toys crowded the rest of the closet. Bright boxes reached up to almost touch a row of baby clothes on miniature hangers. Clothes in pastel pink, blue, yellow, and green hung down from the rod. I touched the toe of a small, footed sleeper. I’d been shopping with Penny when she found the sleeper on sale. She bought it, saying, “I’ll save it. I know we’ll have a baby someday.”

I jerked the box out of the closet and closed the door quickly to shelter Penny’s dreams from Hetty’s gaze.