Murder in the Dog Days (Maggie Ryan) (6 page)

“And the rest I’ve told you. Donna got worried and went to help Olivia, and I popped outside to look in the window.” She straightened her leg and waggled a sandal toward Holly. “You’ll find my footprints out back too. I stood right outside the window.”

“I see.” Holly noted it down.

“Do you have any idea whether he was killed before or after the rainstorm?”

“The ME will tell us. Any special reason you ask?”

“Just curious. If it was before the storm, any traces of a person out there might have been wiped out by the rain, right? Not by us?”

“Maybe,” said Holly noncommittally. “Now, you all used the kitchen door when you came in?”

“Kitchen door. Every one of us.”

“Every time? There was a lot of running in and out, wasn’t there?”

“Not as much as you’d think. We came through the garage as far as the kitchen door and tossed things in from out there. But when we did finally go in, there were a lot of us.”

“No one used the front door, then?”

“
W
e
didn’t.” A ghost of a smile.

Holly took the point and nodded resignedly. She and all the other cops had trooped in that way. Colby might as well have got himself killed in the middle of a busy intersection. However the perp had entered, the traces were mostly covered over. Well, let the Crime Scene boys sweat that problem. Holly said, “Okay, let’s go back to the discovery of the body. You turned him over to try to help, and found out he was dead. What happened next?”

“Well, while I was turning him over I was yelling for Olivia to call an ambulance and the police. After I’d figured out I couldn’t help him I looked back at the door. Little Josie was there, and Donna, gaping. Donna was trembling. I was afraid she’d get hysterical or faint or something. So I told her to get Josie the hell out of there, to take her to the kitchen. And I asked her to check on my daughter because I’d just dumped her in the kitchen on my way in with the crowbar. That sort of brought Donna to her senses. She rallied around pretty well. I stayed in the room with the body. By the door.”

“Did you move anything?” Holly demanded. She caught the glimmer of incipient anger and added hastily, “I have to ask. There are a lot of questions I have to ask.”

“Yeah, okay, I know.” Maggie sprawled back into the corner of the sofa and pushed her fingers through her curls. “I keep thinking we’re on the same team, but you can’t assume that yet, can you?”

“I try not to assume much.” Holly made herself meet Maggie’s eyes. Appraising eyes, skeptical yet friendly.

Still sprawled, Maggie dropped her hands to rest on her round belly and shifted her gaze to the big blank TV. “Okay, I’ll play your rules. The answer is no. I didn’t move anything or touch anything except poor Dale. I didn’t step anywhere except on the carpet between Dale and the door. The only reason I stayed in that room at all was to keep other people from running in and touching things. Kids especially.”

“So you were the only person in the room after the door was pried open?”

“Well, no. Jerry came in.”

“Your brother.” Wonderful. Whole platoons of Ryans tramping across the crime scene.

“Right. He and Nick and Tina arrived with the pizzas. I hollered down the hall for him to come.”

“Why did—” Steady, Schreiner. No need to squawk at her.

But Maggie was already defending herself, straightening up, gesturing with those lean, graceful hands. “Look, I wanted to be absolutely sure! He’s a doctor, damn it! We stupid laymen aren’t all that confident about our medical judgments. A guy is lying there, bloody, he’s been attacked—but we don’t want to believe he’s dead. We cling to hope too long. Can you understand that?”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Ryan. I just—”

The front door opened. Holly turned to look at it, almost grateful for the interruption.

It was Higgins’ partner that she’d seen outside. Patterson, said the nameplate under his shield. He was escorting a blonde woman, trim, a carefully made up forty. Red flare-leg slacks, a sleeveless white blouse, wavy hair sprayed stiff. She was gesturing indignantly at the policeman.

“Look, what is this? What’s going on?” she demanded. She spotted Maggie and Holly, and appealed to them. “Can you tell me what’s happening? I just want to talk to Dale. Is this some new trick of his?”

“You want to talk to Dale?” Holly asked, standing up. “About what?”

“He knows about what! I’ve been phoning him about it for days!” She paused to eye Holly’s unpowdered face and plain twill skirt belligerently. “Listen, who are you? Why should I talk to you?”

Holly held up her ID. “Detective Schreiner,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Jesus, what next?” The blonde rolled her eyes at the ceiling in exasperation. “I come to talk to Dale and he sics the cops on me! He’s the one you should be after! Don’t you know that? Look, I’ve got papers!” She fumbled in her big white handbag, pulled out a red chiffon scarf, a Holiday Inn motel key, a romance paperback, finally an official-looking document that she waved under Patterson’s nose. “See? Right there! Judge says he’s supposed to pay Mark’s tuition! Well, he hasn’t! Won’t answer my letters, won’t even pick up the phone any more! And then I come and the cops won’t even let me see him!”

“You’re Felicia Colby, then,” said Holly.

“Damn right! That’s my name right on the paper here!” She jabbed at the document with a shiny red nail.

“Okay, we’d better discuss it.” She was surprised at the depth of her own relief. Tomorrow, she told herself, she wouldn’t feel so raw, she could cope with Maggie Ryan better. Maybe she’d be tired enough to sleep tonight. Glancing down at her notes, she was astonished to see that pages of information had resulted from this tense, half-bungled interview. Meanwhile Felicia Colby’s story might be very interesting. Without looking up she said, “Patterson, take Mrs. Ryan here next door, all right? We’ll get an official statement tomorrow.”

Maggie had been observing the angry Felicia Colby with frank curiosity. Now she looked sharply at Holly. “God, you’re exhausted!” she said sympathetically. “Bummer of a job some days, isn’t it?”

Her unquenchable friendliness tugged at Holly, challenging her to confidence, connection, friendship. Damn Maggot. Holly’s hand clenched defensively on her notebook. “See you tomorrow,” she said tightly.

“Okay. We ought to talk about how it was done.” Maggie’s glance lingered a moment as she stood, heron-like with her rounded torso poised over those long legs. Then she turned to the blonde. “Felicia, sorry we met this way. I’m Maggie. See you later.” She waved at them both and started for the door. Patterson quirked a dubious eyebrow at Holly and followed her out.

“What was all that about?” demanded Felicia Colby. “And where’s Dale?”

Holly was scribbling in her notebook. The peacenik was right, of course; how Colby was killed was the first problem, and she’d better check soon to see what Crime Scene was finding.

But for now she turned with relief to the angry and bewildered Felicia Colby. “Mrs. Colby, please sit down,” she said gently, gesturing to the sofa. “I’m afraid you can’t talk to Dale Colby. You see, a little earlier today he was killed.”

“Killed? Dale?” Felicia sank suddenly into the sofa cushions, her eyes darting wildly about the room and finally settling on Holly. “And you’re a cop—”

“Yes, Mrs. Colby. And I have a few questions for you.”

But Felicia Colby’s bright red lips had clamped shut. Another tough interview coming up. Yet Holly knew that this one would be easier, because this time she’d be contending only with the witness. Not with that black drowned part of herself.

4

For the sixteenth time, Olivia twitched back the mist-green satin drape of Betty Morgan’s front window to peer toward the Colby house next door. The night was black now, but the glow from a streetlight reached as far as the Colby walk and light from the living room windows splashed onto the still-glistening lawn. Two policemen stood in the driveway, shadows against the light, talking. Their rumpled regulation summer shirts together with nightsticks, holsters, and notebooks made their silhouettes look lumpy, barnacled. Two more men, in plainclothes, were moving around the periphery of the house, studying the shrubbery with flashlights.

“Hey, Maggie’s coming!” Olivia exclaimed as the Colby front door opened at last. Instantly Nick and Jerry were at her side, peering out too. Nick held a drowsy Sarah against his beefy shoulder, and the little girl whimpered resentfully at her father’s sudden movement. He patted her back and murmured, “Let’s not be tetchy and wayward, now.”

“Look at Maggie,” said Jerry. “Quizzing the police.”

“Wish I could!” Olivia muttered to him, enviously watching Maggie’s conversation with the officer escorting her toward them. This was the height of frustration. Her friend and coworker had been killed, and Olivia was simultaneously horrified and eager to discover anything she could to help. And more than that: she was the first reporter on the scene, she had inside information, she knew the victim, the witnesses, the first doctor to examine the body. But here she was, cooped up in the house next door, and every time she’d try to compare notes with Jerry or asked the dazed Donna a question, a discouraging word from the cop Higgins in the corner shut her up again. She hadn’t even had a chance to call the paper yet. She’d tried to get information from Higgins, but he’d brushed off most of her questions, explaining that a statement for the media would be issued in good time. Off the pigs. Though Olivia had to admit that she was also inhibited by Donna’s shock; she couldn’t ask Jerry anything too graphic in front of her even if Higgins would let her.

“I feel bottled up,” she grumbled quietly to her husband.

“Yeah, I can tell.” His fingers touched the nape of her neck lightly, a strangely comforting sensation. “The minute they uncork you, you’ll be fizzing all over the place with questions.”

“You make me sound like Alka-Seltzer.”

“No, no. Champagne,” Jerry corrected her gallantly. But he was distracted too, glancing from window to front hall.

Maggie and the other officer appeared in the archway. Maggie’s eyes and smile first sought out Nick, who nodded at her across the blue cotton of their slumbering daughter’s back. Then she turned to Donna and her children, a flicker of concern crossing her face. The three were huddled together on the sofa, a picture book sitting unopened on Donna’s lap. Maggie crossed to her. “How’s it going, Donna?”

Slowly, Donna’s brown eyes focused on her. “ Fine,” she said without inflection.

“Josie? Tina? You okay?”

Josie was staring stonily at her own toes, but Tina wriggled impatiently on the sofa next to her mother and whined, “I want to go home.”

“We can’t just yet,” Maggie said gently. “Do you want to take a nap? Like Sarah?”

Tina twisted her head around to look at the small girl. “Sarah’s a baby,” she pouted.

“Well, I know how to pretend to be a baby,” Maggie declared. She lay down on the shag carpet on her back and bicycled at the ceiling. God, thought Olivia, what kind of family have I got myself into? But Tina was distracted from her complaint. She laid her head back in her mother’s lap and imitated Maggie from the sofa before an enormous yawn slowed her circling legs again, testimony that Maggie’s reading of her problem was correct.

Plump Betty Morgan, making the best of her enforced role as hostess, bustled in from the kitchen laden with a tray of cups of hot chocolate. “Oh, goodness!” she exclaimed, halting in surprise.

Maggie looked up sheepishly from the floor. “Oh, hi. You must be Mrs. Morgan.” She stood up, surprisingly nimble, and explained, “Tina and I were just pretending. I’m Maggie Ryan. Thanks for helping us out.”

Olivia could bear it no longer. “Maggie, what’s going on?”

“Police investigation. Tedious but necessary.”

“Who was the woman in the red Vega? Blonde, red pants?”

“Felicia Colby.” Maggie was looking at Donna as she answered.

Donna blinked. “Felicia’s here?”

“She said something about Mark.”

“Her son,” said Donna. “She’s been after Dale for—”

From his straight chair next to the arch, the cop Higgins cleared his throat. “It’s better if you don’t discuss it.”

Jeez. Olivia steamed ahead with a different question. “What were you and the other policeman talking about on the way over?”

Maggie glanced at Higgins. “Not about the case! About the county detective in charge of this investigation. Detective Schreiner.”

“What about her?”

“He says she’s good. Started undercover in Narcotics, got promoted fast when they let women in the regular force. One of the first women to make detective. She’s earned a fistful of commendations. Do you agree, Officer Higgins?”

“That’s the word,” said Higgins, looking at her suspiciously from under gray brows.

“You’ve worked with her before?”

“No. She’s new. Anyway we don’t get a lot of homicides around here.” He shifted in his chair, as though startled by his own loquaciousness.

“But what did you think?” Olivia asked Maggie.

“Me? Oh, I agree. She’s good. Totally professional. Oh, thanks, Mrs. Morgan!” She accepted a cup of cocoa with a smile. “You know, nothing’s as comforting as chocolate.”