My scalp began to prickle.
I stepped through the narrow passage between the end of the breakfast bar and the refrigerator and looked to my right. Poppy was lying on the floor just inside the open sliding glass door. One of her brown pumps had fallen off her narrow foot. Her sweater and skirt were covered in blotches.
A spray of blood had dried on the glass of the doors.
I could hear a radio playing from the house behind Poppy’s.
The tune wafted over the high privacy fence. I could hear someone splashing through the water of a pooclass="underline" Cara Embler, doing her laps, as she did every day, unless her pool was actually frozen. Poppy, who had laughed about Cara’s adherence to such an uncomfortable regimen, would never laugh again. The processes of life and living, continuing in the houses all around us, had come to dead stop here in this house on Swan-son Lane.
Moosie sat by Poppy’s pathetic, horrible body. He said, “Reow.” He pressed against her side. His food bowl, on a mat by the breakfast bar, was empty.
Now I knew how Moosie’s fur had gotten stained. He’d been trying to rouse Poppy, maybe so she would feed him.
Suddenly, I had to escape from that suburban kitchen with its horrible secret. I flew out of the house, slamming the front door behind me. I had a fleeting impulse to scoop up Moosie, but taking charge of him was too much for me at that second. I dashed down the sidewalk to the curb, where Melinda was waiting. I was making the “phone” signal as I hurried, little finger and thumb pointing to mouth and ear, respectively. Melinda had turned on the cell phone by the time I got to her car.
“Nine one one,” I said, gasping for breath. Melinda gave me a sharp look, but she punched in the number as I’d asked and then passed the phone to me. Did I mention that Melinda has a ton of good sense?
“The nature of your emergency?” said a distant voice.
“I’m at Eight-oh-eight Swanson Lane,” I said. “This is Aurora Teagarden. My sister-in-law has been killed.”
I never did remember the rest of that conversation. When I was sure they were coming, I pressed the button that ended the conversation, and I began to try to explain to Melinda.
But instead, I flashed on the deep wounds on Poppy’s hands, wounds incurred when she was defending her life, and I leaned over to avoid the car, my dress, and the phone while I threw up.
For the sixth or seventh time, I explained very carefully why Melinda and I had gone to Poppy’s house. Because the city police made the house off-limits instantly, Melinda and I drove right down to the police station, and from there I called my mother at Select Realty, her agency. It was a difficult conversation, over my cell phone in a public place, but one that had to be completed. Her husband, John, had had one heart attack already. Mother was terrified of another, and the news about his favorite daughter-in-law might trigger one. Mother was right to worry about that, and she thought of a few more things to worry her before we’d finished our conversation.
“Who’ll tell John David?” Mother asked. “Tell me it doesn’t have to be John.” John David was John’s second son, and the husband of the late Poppy.
“Where is he, Mother? Do you know?” The police had been asking me that quite persistently. If John David wasn’t at his company headquarters in Atlanta, I didn’t know where he’d be. He’d been a pharmaceuticals salesman for the first few years of his marriage, but recently he’d gotten a job at company headquarters in the Public Relations division. John David had always been good at turning an attractive face to the world.
“John David? He’s at work, I guess. Two o’clock on a Monday afternoon, where else would he be?”
“Do you have that phone number and address handy?”
I could hear little efficient sounds as Mother wheeled through her Rolodex. She rattled off a number, and I wrote it on a scrap of paper and handed it to the policewoman sitting across the desk. “That’s the same number,” the detective said, and I nodded.
“Will they let you go tell him?” Mother asked.
“I think the police will tell John David,” I said. “If they can find him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I already gave them that number. The police called, and the people there told the police that John David left work early today. Before noon.”
“Then where could he be?”
“I guess they’d like to know that, too,” I said, figuring a number of other shoes were about to drop.
After an appreciable pause, my mother said, “That would kill John.” Another pause: I could practically hear her thinking. “Aurora, I’ve got to go, before he hears about this some other way. You know someone’s bound to call the house and tell him there are a lot of police cars around John David’s house. Wait! Roe, where’s the baby?”
My face must have changed dramatically, because the detective stood up abruptly, sending her chair skidding a couple of feet.
“I don’t know where the baby is,” I said numbly. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about Chase, who was only eleven months old. “I don’t know. Maybe Melinda…” I swiveled on the hard chair, looking for my remaining sister-in-law. The next instant, I was on my feet. The detective said something, but I didn’t listen as I searched for Melinda, my heels click-clacking on the linoleum floor.
She was in a cubicle with Detective Arthur Smith, whom I knew all too well. I stuck my head in. “Roe?” she said, already apprehensive.
“Where’s the baby? Where’s Chase?”
She looked at me blankly. “Why, John David dropped him off at my house this morning. My sitter is keeping my two and Chase, so Poppy and I…” And then her face crumpled all over again.
I hotfooted it back to the telephone, which I’d stupidly left on the desk. “Chase is at Melinda’s,” I told my mother. I was limp with relief. “Evidently, John David took him over there this morning.”
“So John David was in town this morning. At least we know that.” My mother had already absorbed Chase’s safety and was moving on to other ramifications. “Listen, Roe, you’ve got my cell-phone number.” I had it all right, tattooed on my brain. “Call me the minute you know where John David is. I’ve got to get to your stepfather.”
I thought my mother was a wee bit affected in calling John my stepfather, and she did on every possible occasion. After all, I’d been in my early thirties when John, a widower, had married Mother. He’d been a friend of mine before he’d dated my mother, and I felt a mixture of different obligations and attitudes toward John. I certainly never addressed him as “Step-dad.”
I hung up and faced the woman who’d been taking my statement. Her name was Cathy Trumble, and I’d never met her before. Detective Trumble was stocky and graying, with an easy-care curly hairdo and sharp, pale eyes behind rimless glasses. She was a real professional, I guess; I had no clue as to how she felt about the information I was giving her-the death of Poppy Queensland, my brother-in-law’s absence-or anything at all. It was like talking to a piece of stainless steel.
“How come you don’t have a cubicle?” I asked. I had been wandering off in my own mental world while Detective Trumble was typing into a computer, and she was a little nonplussed by my question. The Sparling County Law Enforcement Center housed the sheriff’s office, the town police, and the jail. In the world of SPACOLEC, detectives got their own little space with head-high carpeted dividers.
“I just got hired,” she explained. She seemed startled into answering the question.
I recalled Sally Allison’s story in the paper about the county having to increase its law-enforcement budget because of increased population, which had led directly to increased crime. Okay, Detective Cathy Trumble was the result. “Where do you live?” I asked, trying to be sociable. With a mother who made a living in real estate, it was a question that was second nature.