A Vote for Murder (10 page)

“No, thank you. This is just lovely. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we’ve ever exchanged names. I’m Jessica Fletcher. I’m a friend of Mrs. Nebel’s.”

“Yes, madam. I know who you are. My name is Jardine.”

Unlike my first exposure to him when he was dressed in white jacket, white shirt, black trousers, and tie, this day he was considerably more casual—black T-shirt, chino pants, and deck shoes.

“Have you worked for the Nebels for a long time?” I asked, taking the chair he held for me.

“Oh, yes, madam, for more than four years now.”

“Did you know Ms. Farlow well?” I asked.

“Ms. Nikki visited the house often,” he said, his expression indicating that he weighed how much he should tell me. “She is . . . she was a very important person for Senator Nebel.”

“Yes, I understand that. Have the police been back to the house?”

“No, madam, I have not seen any policemen. Excuse me, please. I have chores to do.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you for the tea.”

I’d debated asking him whether he’d had an argument the previous night, perhaps with Jack Nebel, but decided to save it for another time.

He was almost out of the room when I called after him, “Jardine, do you know when Mrs. Nebel will finish her nap?”

“No, madam, but I will check on her and let you know.”

The tea was delicious, and I found myself relaxing in the comfortable chair. But my attention kept being drawn to the outdoors and the head of the stairs leading down to the dock. I got up, opened the door to the terrace, and stepped outside. The sky was a menacing gray punctuated with black clouds, but no rain fell. I went to the stairs and looked down; going down them at night, even with the dim light provided by the solar lamps, posed a distinct threat of accident.

I almost turned back to the house, but took the first few steps down the stairs, as though operating on automatic pilot. I held the railing tight as I navigated each section of the stairway, pausing at the various landings to look back and down before continuing my descent. A dozen steps from the dock I saw a black smear on one of them similar to what I’d seen on the terrace. And when I reached the dock, another such blemish on the gray, weathered wood caught my attention.

The Aquasport was tied to the dock. Had someone taken the boat during the party, and hastily returned it to the dock? I wondered. Two crews from one of the many universities in Washington were practicing on the river, and I enjoyed watching the smooth, synchronized movement of their sculls through the river’s dark waters. My interest in them was short-lived, however. I looked down at the telltale red stain on the dock—Nikki Farlow’s blood. It didn’t appear as though anyone had even attempted to clean it up, which I found strange, and unquestionably insensitive.

I stepped around it and did what I’d done the previous night: took in that area from a wider vantage point. It had occurred to me during the time the police were there that it was unusual that she’d landed on her back. But then I realized what a false assumption I’d made; that she had been coming
down
the stairs. It was possible that she had started up and had fallen backward.

That prompted another question. I was no expert on people falling down stairs to their death, but my assumption was that most falls occurred when people were descending, not ascending. Of course, if Patricia Nebel had been right, that Nikki Farlow was more than a casual social drinker, it was easier to accept the scenario that she’d started up the stairs, had become light-headed, and toppled back.

I returned to the stairs and examined the edges of the first three steps, as George had done last night. He was right: The edges of the steps were rounded, perhaps deliberately by whoever had built them, or naturally worn away with age. They were clean; there wasn’t a trace of blood to be found on them, although I was aware that you couldn’t always trust your eyesight to pick up minuscule droplets of blood, particularly on a surface as porous as the wood from which the steps had been made. Should Detective Moody decide to treat it as a potential crime scene, the use of various chemicals, including Luminol, would determine whether blood was present that the naked eye was incapable of seeing.

As I straightened up from the crouch I had assumed to look at the edges of the steps, my hypothesis that Nikki had fallen while beginning to go up the stairs made more sense than ever. If she hadn’t hit her head on the edge of the steps, had the laceration been caused by her head striking the flat surface of the dock?

I remembered George making a comment that the laceration of the back of her head was vertical. I accepted that his observation was important, although I wasn’t versed enough in forensic medicine to question what sort of laceration would occur when the back of a head hits a solid object. But it did strike me as strange that a laceration of any kind, vertical or horizontal, would have resulted from that fall. I could certainly understand it if the impact of Nikki’s head on the wood had fractured her skull and produced internal bleeding. But a gash like the one we saw just didn’t make sense.

I positioned myself at the foot of the stairs, careful to not step on the bloodstain, narrowed my eyes, and tried to envision what had happened.

Nikki had come down to the dock for some unknown reason. When she started back up the stairs, she lost her balance because of alcohol or drugs, couldn’t catch the railing with her hand in time, and fell backward, landing on the dock. But the idea that had propelled me down the stairs in the first place that afternoon took hold once again, and my arm involuntarily rose above my head. If someone had used a weapon and struck Nikki in the back of the head as she was going up, she might have toppled backward. But it was more likely she would have pitched forward. Then again, if she were struck while still standing on the dock and tried to escape up the stairs, that, too, could explain both her falling on her back as well as the vertical gash in her head. If that scenario held true, her death was no accident.

Nikki Farlow had been murdered.

I backed away and looked down at the dock beneath my feet. Small spots of discoloration on the dock’s weathered wood, decidedly different from the larger black stains caused by a shoe, caught my attention. I backed away a few paces more, went to my knees, and lowered my face to within inches of what I’d seen. I’d once attended a forensic seminar on blood spatter with Dr. Seth Hazlitt, my dear friend from Cabot Cove. He’d spent two years as the town’s medical examiner, and had invited me to attend the seminar with him. I tried to remember what I’d learned at the time. The tiny discolorations could have been anything—gasoline, oil, coffee, a soft drink. It could also have been blood. If a weapon of some sort had been used to hit someone in the head, its backward motion after the blow had been struck would usually result in what was called cast-off spatter, blood from the victim’s head flying off the end of the weapon. The spots I was examining were pretty much where such cast-off spatters would have occurred, assuming, of course, that my thesis was correct.

I again leaned close to the spots, and was in that position when the sound of footsteps on the stairs caused me to look up. Approaching me was Jack Nebel, the senator’s son.

“Mrs. Fletcher?” he said, pausing at the landing just above me.

“Hello,” I said, feeling foolish and getting to my feet.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Just looking around, I guess.”

He joined me on the dock. “Mother is looking for you,” he said.

“She was taking a nap when I arrived,” I said. “If she’s awake, I’ll go right up.”

He didn’t move from his position at the foot of the stairs, which blocked my access to them.

“Why were you down on your knees like that?” he asked.

He appeared larger than I’d remembered him from the party. He wore jeans, white sneakers, and a blue T-shirt on which was what I assumed was a picture of a rock band.

“Just my natural curiosity,” I replied, adding a chuckle.

“Why would you be curious about where an accident took place?” he said.

“I really can’t explain it,” I said, also thinking that I didn’t have any need to. “I suppose because it was me and my friend who discovered the body, I have a need to revisit the scene.”

“To make more of it than it really is?”

“What do you mean?”

“It was an accident, Mrs. Fletcher. The police said it was an accident, and my dad agrees. He says that maybe because you write murder mysteries, you view everything as something sinister.”

“I assure you—and your father—that’s not the case,” I said, hoping I wasn’t sounding too defensive. “I think I’d better get up and see your mother. I know she hasn’t been feeling well, and—”

He stepped aside to allow me to move past him.

I stayed where I was and said, “I think you have a skewed notion of me and why I’m here,” I said. “I know that the initial finding was that she died accidentally, but I’m not sure that will hold up. And I assure you it’s not because I write murder mysteries that I’m thinking that.”

Before he could respond I said, “Is the boat yours, Jack?”

“It’s a family boat. I use it most.”

“I noticed that it might have been used while the party was going on. Did you take it out for a spin?”

“No” was accompanied by a shrug.

“Well,” I said, “whoever did didn’t know a lot about boats.”

“Why do you say that?”

“This person, whoever it was, left the outboard engine in the water, and didn’t even bother to tie the line to the cleat.”

“That wouldn’t be me,” he said. “I’ve taken courses from the coast guard. I know lots about boats.”

“The Aquasport is a lovely boat, very popular in Cabot Cove.”

“I like it,” he said.

It occurred to me as I stood there that the boat must have been taken during dinner, and before the guests went to the patio, where its engine noise could have been heard. I tried to remember whether I’d seen Jack during dinner but had no specific memory one way or the other.

“Mind if I go aboard?” I asked.

“Be my guest.”

I didn’t miss the irony in his voice.

A motorboat had just passed at excessive speed, causing the Aquasport to bob wildly. I waited until its movement had subsided before carefully stepping onto the boat and going to the center console, where the controls were located. Jack came aboard behind me. I drew a deep breath and sighed. “There’s something uplifting just being on a boat in the water,” I said. I turned to him. “Do you feel that way, Jack?”

“I like it,” he said.

I looked down and saw the key in the ignition.

“Someone forgot the key,” I said.

“I left it there,” he said. “I always do.”

“You’re not concerned about someone stealing it?”

“Nah. Nobody comes down here except me and some of the others in the house.”

The practice of leaving a key in the ignition didn’t seem especially prudent to me, but I didn’t press it. We leave keys in ignitions and doors all the time in Cabot Cove, although a recent series of house burglaries had made that habit less frequent.

“I barely got to meet your sister,” I said, keeping things casual. “I did have a chance to speak with her fiancé. Joe Radisch, is it?”

“Him!”

“What does he do for a living?” I asked.

“Nobody really knows.”

“Oh? Sort of a mystery man?”

“He claims he’s in real estate, but that doesn’t check out.”

“Ah,” I said. “Your dad had him checked out.”

“Nikki did.”

“Nikki? Why would she do that?”

He hesitated before answering. “Nikki ran things, including my father. Joe’s okay, but Nikki didn’t like him.” He guffawed. “That’s an understatement. She hated him, and convinced my father Joe wasn’t good for Christine. She should have minded her own business.”

I digested what he’d said before replying, “She did seem very much like a take-charge woman.”

“That’s an understatement. Look, I have to leave, and Mom’s waiting for you.”

“Of course. Thanks for letting me spend a few minutes at the wheel.” I laughed. “Maybe you’ll take me for a spin before I leave Washington.”

“Sure.”

I allowed him to step from the boat onto the dock before I did. During those few seconds, my attention went to his shoes. He wore white sneakers. Judging from the pattern of the sole that was discernible, the partial shoe prints I’d seen on the terrace and on the stairs had been made by a shoe with a smooth sole. As I took steps to leave the Aquasport, my eye went to where the outboard Evinrude engine was mounted to the transom. It had an obvious slight oil leak; a puddle of oil had formed beneath it in the boat and had spread slightly beyond.

“Jack,” I said.

He’d started up the steps and turned at my voice.

“Do you know you have an oil leak in the engine?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll take a look later.”

When I reached the top of the stairs, Pat Nebel stood in the expanse of downstairs windows overlooking the terrace. She waved, and I returned it. She looked considerably better than she had the night before. She’d applied makeup and had dressed in a pastel pantsuit. She crossed the room when I entered and gave me a hug. “Jessica, how good to see you again.”

“You look rested, Pat,” I said, standing back and taking her in. “Feeling better?”

She nodded, but the smile that had been there when I entered the house quickly disappeared.

“I see Jardine served you tea,” she said, indicating the tray on the table with its empty cup.

“Yes. It hit the spot.”

She looked out the window at the wooden stairs leading to the dock, closed her eyes tightly, opened them, slowly shook her head and said, “I still can’t believe what happened to Nikki. Let’s go to another room, Jess. Being here reminds me of what happened.”