frowned and glanced at me.
I smiled at the look of utter confusion on his face. “It’s a quote from Romeo and Juliet.” I inclined my head in Dixie’s direction. “She quotes literature when she’s nervous.”
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
As much as I tried, I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Archibald’s rear. “It seems so undignified. Can you at least pull down his kilt, so he isn’t so…exposed?” I whispered.
Red shook his head. “Sorry, but we can’t touch anything. This is a crime scene, and everything must be left exactly as it’s found.”
In my head, I knew the red pool of blood I saw seeping under the body meant Archibald Lowry’s death couldn’t have been due to natural causes. However, my mind refused to grasp the fact that someone I was acquainted with, no matter how slightly, had just been violently murdered. “Are you sure it was murder?”
He nodded and walked over to the screamer.
I followed in time to hear him ask, “Can you tell me what happened?”
She looked up at Red and shook her head. “I came from the bathroom.” She pointed a shaking finger in the direction of the ladies’ room. “I saw him lying on the ground with all that blood.” She turned even paler than she was before, a feat I wouldn’t have thought physically possible. She clutched her hand to her mouth and ran to the ladies’ room. She was thin and fit and made the sprint in four-inch heels, which elevated her athletic status considerably in my opinion.
Red looked like he was going to follow her, but that’s when Dr. Morgan arrived. Red gave me a pleading look and inclined his head toward the ladies’ room.
I nodded. Still clutching the poodle to my chest, I hurried to the restroom to check on the high heeled sprinter.
I halted inside the door. I could tell by the retching sound coming from one of the stalls that she’d made it in time. Motherhood had numbed me to practically every type of sickness involving bodily fluids. However, there was something about the sound of someone puking which caused me to shudder and want to plug my ears. I was ashamed to admit I stood as far away from that stall as the cramped confines of the restroom allowed. I turned on the water in the sink and pushed the button for the hand dryer, all in an attempt to blot out the noise. It didn’t work.
She flushed the toilet and I pretended I was washing my hands. I stood at the sink with a toy poodle cupped between my chin and my neck. His claws gripped the top of my dress and he clung to my shoulder like a parrot. He was frightened and I could feel his little body shivering. I felt sorry for the poor little guy, but this dress had been a splurge. Dixie had driven me to Atlanta to a designer shop where there were belts that cost more than my monthly rent payment. However, when the clerk held up this dress, the heavens parted, angels sang, and I wept. When I saw the tag I wept more, but I still handed over my credit card. It had cost a small fortune, but it fit like a glove. The fabric felt like butter and floated on my hips like some type of fairy fabric. It was perfect and I knew if I hadn’t gotten it, I’d regret it. I fully intended I’d someday be buried in this dress, so, while I was sad this cute little guy had lost his owner, he was going to need to come off. I didn’t want to ruin a dress I paid a king’s ransom for the very first time I’d worn it. I reached up and extracted him, taking care to avoid snags.
The sprinting screamer stumbled to the sink, turned on the tap and put her head down as close to the bowl as possible. She drank from the stream of water, then swished it around and spit. When she was done, she gripped the counter and stared at her reflection. “That was awful.” She had a slight accent.
“I’m so sorry. Were you close to Archibald Lowry?”
A look of fright crossed her face but was quickly replaced with a smile that was more like a grimace. “What makes you ask that?” She forced a fake laugh.
“You found him and you seem really upset…” I tried to make my tone sound concerned rather than accusatory.
“Well, I didn’t know him at all. I just happened upon a dead body.” She fidgeted to turn off the faucets and remove all traces of her discomposure. “Stumbling across someone who’s just been brutally beaten and stabbed would upset any normal person.”
She emphasized normal as though to indicate that I wasn’t. Previously, I felt compassion for her. However, that dried up quickly, especially as she glanced at me as though I was the hired help, which technically I was, but that wasn’t the point.
“How did you know he’d been brutally beaten and stabbed?”
She took a tissue and patted at her face, but then glanced at my reflection in the mirror. “What?”
“He was lying on his stomach, face down. It was impossible to see his face, and you certainly couldn’t have seen the wound.” I wet a tissue and casually wiped the poodle’s paws. “If you just stumbled across his dead body, how did you know he’d been brutally beaten and stabbed.”
“In case you missed it, Nancy Drew, there was a rather large pool of blood beneath him. Anyone with common sense could see that he must have been stabbed.”
Oh, it was on, now. “Nancy Drew was a teenager with a college boyfriend who played varsity sports. My boyfriend is that Tennessee Bureau of Investigations Officer out there and you’ll have to work on your acting skills before you try that routine on him.” If I hadn’t been holding a poodle, I might have given her a neck roll and two finger snaps. Thankfully, Indulf prevented me from being more obnoxious.
After a long pause, she gave a nervous giggle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just, well, I barely knew the man and I certainly don’t want to get dragged into this nasty business simply because I stumbled across his body after he was murdered.”
I lowered the eyebrow I’d raised and tried to look as neutral as possible.
She sighed. “I’m just scared. I mean, someone killed that man. If the killer thought I might have seen something, I could be in danger too.”
The fact that it was the truth made this story much more powerful than the last performance she’d tried. She wasn’t covered in blood and despite the four-inch heels, I doubted she could have plunged a knife or sword into Archibald Lowry’s chest. He may not have been a young man, but he looked burly and was probably strong enough to have at least put up a fight. I didn’t believe she killed him, but I still didn’t like her. “Understandable, but what did you see?”
“Not much. I saw the man in the kilt arguing with someone. I couldn’t tell who, because he was behind the pillar. The next thing I know, the other guy takes one of those weapons, bashes the old guy in the face and then plunges…” She took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “That’s when I screamed and ran.”
“Well, you didn’t get far.”
“No, I started to feel sick, so I looked around for a place to…well, you know.” She waved her hand in a manner that made me ask.
“Where’d you get sick?”
“Large planter outside.”
I’d have to remember to tell the cleaning crew.
“I’d just finished when I saw you two coming around the corner.”
