Fatal Deduction (5 page)

But what bothered me most was the man I tripped over when I went out the front door a half hour later.

I
FROZE
,
HORRIFIED
. Was the man dead or just unconscious? Gritting my teeth, I made myself bend over him and feel for a pulse. I had never done anything so creepy in my life.

You’re a cop’s kid. You can do this
.

And just how many cop’s kids find dead men on their doorsteps?

There was no pulse, but the body was still warm. My head began to buzz, and my vision blurred a little. I had to lean against the flower box and swallow several times. Dead bodies on TV were very different from dead bodies at your front door. For one thing, there weren’t flies flocking on TV.

Then, just as I felt fairly confident I wasn’t going to pass out or throw up, I saw the folded paper resting on his shirt. T
ORI
was written on it in square black letters. Coincidences happened, sure, but I doubted this was one of those times.

So what did the dead man have to do with my twin?

I looked right and left to see if anyone was watching, but I was the only one about in the gray, suddenly eerie dawn. I grabbed the folded paper, hunching my shoulders, as if that would keep anyone from seeing me snitch what was undoubtedly a major clue in the coming investigation. Even if the man had died of a heart attack, which he clearly had not, he had died by himself, and that fact alone demanded a police presence. I did know that much.

I opened the note, braced for I didn’t know what. Something ugly. Something threatening. Something perverted. Instead I stared in surprise at a crossword puzzle, the free-form kind you can create with online programs. The tidy little squares sat above a list of clues, across and down. Frowning, with unsteady hands I refolded the paper. Who would be sending crossword fanatic Tori a puzzle, and more to the point, why was it lying on a dead man?

I was just stuffing the paper surreptitiously into my shorts pocket when a tall brown-haired man in jogging shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off stepped from the house with the red door. It had to be Jenna’s father. Drew Canfield. He saw me and nodded.

I just stared at him. I have no doubt that my eyes were wide with shock and fear, and I probably didn’t look much better than the poor man at my feet. I felt like a great, red neon arrow was suspended in space right over me, blinking on and off, on and off, pointing to my pocket.

Drew frowned. “Is something wrong?” He walked quickly toward me.

Was something wrong? I had an insane desire to laugh as I tried to look less wild-eyed and unnerved than I felt. How could I answer his question without sounding like a heroine in a badly written melodrama?
Yes, something’s wrong. There’s a dead man on our doorstep
sounded too weird, no matter how true.
My sister is involved somehow in the death, and I’m scared for her
sounded even worse.

So I said rather stupidly, “I tripped and fell.” I pointed to my bleeding leg.

By now he was close enough to see what I’d tripped over. He stilled and stared. “Is he—”

I looked back at the dead man in his gray shirt and black shorts. “He is. No pulse, at least that I could find.”

But Drew bent to check anyway. I stuffed my hand in my shorts pockets and felt the paper, heard it crackle as my fingers brushed it. I froze, half expecting him to stand and demand, “What was that strange noise? Are you hiding a clue?”

He did stand, but he said, “‘Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.’”

I stared at him. “What?”

He seemed embarrassed. “Just a Bible verse.”

I nodded. I knew that. I just wasn’t used to people quoting the Bible quite so freely.

Drew cleared his throat. “Who is he?”

I shook my head. “I never saw him before.” My voice sounded thin and shocky.

“Have you called the police? That’s what you do when you find someone dead of unknown origins.”

“I know. I was just going to when you came out.”

He glanced around. “I wonder how he died. I don’t see any blood. But he’s lying here too neatly to have just keeled over.”

He did look neat, now that Drew mentioned it. Legs straight. Arms bent. Hands together. All that was missing was a white lily in his grasp for him to be laid out for viewing. The only mark on his
person, and granted I couldn’t see much of him, was a bright red welt on the back side of his neck. Either he’d met a giant mosquito, or something I couldn’t imagine had bitten him.

I shuddered and remembered every bad thing I’d heard about the city and random violence. I took a step closer to Drew.

He pulled a cell phone from its clip on his waistband and hit 911. He reported the death—murder?—and very quickly a black-and-white pulled up to the stanchions at the lane’s end. A pair of uniformed cops walked over and studied the body for a minute as if they doubted Drew’s word. One pointed to the mark on the man’s neck. The other bent to examine the area in question, then called for homicide.

Since Dad and Pop’s fall from grace—cops gone bad—I had an uneasy feeling around the police. Once, Pop had been the chief in our small town and Dad had been his lieutenant. We were a family of some standing in our little world. Then came the day the state troopers took Dad and Pop away amid flashes of cameras from print news and not-a-hair-out-of-place reporters from TV.

They were guilty of suppressing evidence, demanding protection money, and selling confiscated drugs and guns, among other things. Their flagrant disregard for the law they had sworn to uphold was inescapable, though Mom and Nan acted as if they had been set up. I was never sure whether their declared faith in their men’s innocence was for Tori and me to help us cope or whether it was a case of if you say it enough, it becomes true. Or maybe they actually believed Dad’s and Pop’s protestations of innocence.

I didn’t, and neither did Tori. The evidence was too overwhelming. I handled the whole tragic mess by turning to Eddie Mancini for comfort. Tori chose to brazen it out, telling everyone who would listen that she believed in our father’s and grandfather’s guilt.

“I’m glad they were caught, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”

Even though it was fourteen years ago, I still expected officers I dealt with today to say with an expression of disgust,
“So you’re Jack Keating’s daughter, Mike Keating’s granddaughter. Huh. They sure disgraced the uniform.”
And unspoken would be the sentiment,
“Don’t expect any help from us.”

When the homicide detectives arrived, there was, of course, no recognition when I gave my name. Jack and Mike were old news. The detectives behaved very professionally as they surveyed the scene and questioned Drew and me.

Tinksie came outside to see what the commotion was all about and was appalled and fascinated by turns. She had James bring me a folding beach chair to sit on, since I wasn’t allowed to go inside because it meant stepping over the dead man. The police were unhappy enough that I’d tripped over him and thus disturbed their crime scene.

Tinksie also brought both Drew and me cups of coffee. Mark and Tim, the men who lived next door to Tinksie, brought us some fresh-baked coffeecake.

“What a terrible way to be welcomed to Philadelphia.” Tim looked as distressed as if it were his doing.

I indicated the delicious coffeecake. “This is a very gracious way to be welcomed to the lane.”

He relaxed and smiled.

Doors continued to open up and down the lane, and the residents all came to see what was happening, many obviously detouring for a look on their way to work. I met three professional couples, a bachelor, a set of elderly sisters, and a glitzy, well-endowed woman of a certain age named Maxi who, Tinksie whispered, used to be “on the stage.” Somehow I didn’t think she meant legitimate theater.

A cab pulled up to the far end of the lane as the neighbors all faded away except for Tinksie, James, and Maxi. And Drew, who hadn’t yet been released by the police either. Tori climbed out of the cab and sashayed down the lane as if she’d just been out for a stroll instead of finally returning from a night on the town.

“What is going on, Libby?” she called before she got close enough to see. “Did you have such a wild party that the cops had to break it up?” She laughed merrily at such an outlandish idea.

Then she saw past the flashing lights and the crime-scene tape to the dead man. She went ashen.

And I knew exactly when the body’d been delivered to our door. Four thirty this morning. It wasn’t Tori’s returning that I’d heard. It was the man being dumped. He’d been left to die—or already dead—on our stoop with a note for Tori lying on his chest while I’d gone calmly to take a shower in the clawfoot tub.

As I stood to go tell the homicide cop, a Patrick Dempsey look-alike named Holloran, about my time deductions, our front door popped open and Chloe stuck her head out. Princess was in her arms, squirming to get free.

“What’s going on, Mom? Why are the cops here?” Then she saw the man lying at her feet and screamed. Few can scream as well as thirteen-year-old girls.

Princess gave a frightened squeak, jumped to the floor, and headed for the kitchen and safety.

I raced for Chloe, but Holloran stepped in my way. “Use the back door.”

I stared at him blankly. How did I get to it from here? The houses were attached.

“Right down that little walkway between your house and Maxi’s.” James who knew everything pointed.

I hadn’t even seen the opening, it was so narrow.

“Meet me at the back door and let me in,” I told Chloe, who was now torn between sobbing and staring in fascination. “Chloe! Did you hear me?”

She gave a vague wave of her hand. I took off down the narrow walkway, my shoulders almost brushing the walls of the two houses, Tori on my heels. There was a gate in the privacy fence that decanted us into our yard next to the patio. Chloe opened the french doors, and Princess raced out, her bark sharp and shrill. She jumped against my shins, and I picked her up, absently patting her. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew something was wrong.

Chloe raced to me, and I grabbed her in a great hug, squashing Princess. The dog squirmed until she broke free, then gave us a good piece of her mind. Chloe clung for just long enough that I knew she was truly upset.

“My heart’s pounding, Mom! I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“You’ll be okay, honey. You’ll be okay.” I stroked her night-tousled hair.

“His eyes were all open and staring! At me! I mean, how scary is that!”

I patted her back and made soothing mother sounds. Tori picked up Princess and calmed her, her face almost as white as the dog’s.

When Chloe pulled away, she swiped at the tears that ran down her cheeks. “Who is he—was he, Mom?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“How did he get here, at our house?” She took Princess from Tori and cuddled the animal in her arms, a reassuring presence that comforted her without making her seem like a clingy kid.

“I mean, who killed him? Was he shot? Knifed? But there wasn’t any blood. Maybe he OD’d? Are we in trouble? Did Aunt Stella
know bad guys or something?” As she talked nonstop, we went inside where Tori and I collapsed at the kitchen table.

“Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know,” I mumbled. I felt both numb and jumpy, something I would have said was impossible a mere day prior. My limbs were leaden, but my nerves were twitching under my skin, and I imagined tiny fight-or-flight guys inside me, poking at me with little pointy sticks.

Before I started trembling, I pushed to my feet and filled the tea kettle with cold water. My hands shook as I put the kettle on the stove. I clasped them together and took several deep breaths. All the activity and company outside had delayed my reaction, but the horror and distress now had me swallowing frantically to keep from gagging.

Chloe turned abruptly to Tori, slouched in one of the kitchen chairs. “Aunt Tori, we can still go for my laptop, can’t we?”

“Chloe!” I was appalled at her callousness.

“Well, why not? We don’t know the man, and we can’t do anything to solve the crime.”

“That’s my girl,” Tori said with a look of approval on her still-pale face. “Don’t get distracted by nonessentials.”

Like dead men.

When the water boiled, I made tea in a lovely blue Wedgwood teapot I found in Aunt Stella’s china cabinet. I toasted a couple of English muffins and put them on the table on Wedgwood blue plates rimmed in white raised flowers. I poured Tori and me tea in Wedgwood cups, thinking I’d never had breakfast on such fine china in my life. She and I settled into our chairs as if we were good friends. I looked at the muffins and knew I couldn’t eat any.

“One thing you’ve got to say for Nan.” Tori placed her cup back on its saucer. “She taught us how to make a great cuppa.”

I shrugged. “English girl come to the U.S. to be a nanny. How could it be otherwise?”

“I like that old picture you have of her and Great-Pop, Mom,” Chloe said around a mouthful of muffin. Her appetite clearly wasn’t affected by the excitement. “He looks so handsome in his uniform, and she was so pretty.”