find out what happened and why,” Mom said, chin set and gaze steady. It wasn’t a question. This was what counted. She’d raised her sons to believe that any one man could make the world a safer place and now she was expecting him to get on with it.
She hadn’t said, Make an arrest tonight, but she might as well have.
A frown stayed on his brow until he reached Natalie Reed’s tri-level house. The crime scene techs were here, he was glad to see. A flash popped upstairs. The coroner hadn’t yet arrived. She was probably stuck in ferry traffic. Every time one of the giant ferries docked, hundreds of cars poured out, clogging Port Dare’s narrow streets.
After parking behind the Investigations unit van, John got out of his car and stood on the sidewalk, making no move to go up to the door. He tried to put himself in the shoes of a stranger and see her house and this neighborhood with fresh eyes.
The paint job—forest-green with cream trim, his doing—didn’t look half-bad. All the same, 2308 Meadow Drive was not a showplace. It was an average house in an average neighborhood, one of many developments that had sprung up around the nineteenth-century port town. In this middle-income neighborhood, yards were generally well cared for but standard issue. Most of these were single family homes, owner occupied, not rentals. Bikes with pink tassels on the handlebars lay on their sides in driveways. Gardening was carried out in traditional flower beds mulched with bark, edging lawns that varied from the Porters’ velvet green to the shaggy, brown-spotted grass surrounding the corner house. The Porters, John was willing to bet, wouldn’t like those fluffy dandelion heads. Or the neighborhood eyesore that sat out in front of the same house, a rusting junker resting on blocks instead of wheels. Nonetheless, even at that house, a tricycle listed half off the driveway, and in the backyard a swing set shared pride of place with a barbecue grill. The lawn got mowed, just not often enough.
Ordinary people.
A neighborhood like this wouldn’t have crack houses or marijuana-growing operations in the spare bedroom. Nor did these houses suggest real wealth. The cops would get called here when a mountain bike was stolen out of an open garage. Teenagers committed the few break-ins. Maybe a car prowl from time to time. Serious burglaries would be few and far between. Murder? Never.
So why was there a dead man in Stuart’s den? Why had two people broken in, and why had one of them been killed? A quarrel mid-crime was the obvious answer, but then again, why Natalie’s house? Why hadn’t two burglars carried the obviously expensive electronic equipment out before they risked taking the time to check out the upstairs? Had they parked right in the driveway, a truck backed up to receive stolen goods?
Or were they after something else? Something small?
What? he wondered in frustration. He’d have to ask Natalie whether Stuart had any collections that might be valuable. Coins? Stamps? Hell, he’d collected enough junk to have lucked out and hit on something worth taking. Or did Natalie have jewelry? She hadn’t said, and John thought she would have. He remembered seeing her at the Policeman’s Ball, drop-dead gorgeous in a simple green velvet sheath, but the only jewelry he could picture were sparkly earrings. Diamond, maybe, but tiny, not ones worth killing over.
Figure out why murderer and victim were in this house and not the neighbor’s, and he could as good as snap those handcuffs on. Unfortunately, the why was the true mystery here. Murders happened all the time, even in Port Dare. Just not this kind.
He sighed. Better find out what the neighborhood canvass had turned up. Too bad the Porters hadn’t seen anything. According to Natalie, they were the only near neighbors who were stay-at-homes and nosy to boot.
Geoff shook his head when John tracked him down a block away.
“Nada. Zip. Nobody was home. Not even latchkey kids.”
“Why am I not surprised?” John rocked on his heels and looked back. Meadow Drive curved, and this was the last house from which anyone could have seen Natalie’s. “You get everybody?”
“A few haven’t come home yet.” Geoff glanced down at his notebook. “Four. No, three. The place down there is for sale, and empty right now.”
“What about the houses behind hers?”
“I sent Jackson. But what are the odds?”
Nada. Zip. Of course. But they had to try.
“Looks like the coroner is here. Shall we go hear what she thinks?”
Elected in this rural county, Dr. Jennifer Koltes was a pathologist at St. Mary’s, serving in addition as part-time public servant. Hereabouts they didn’t need a full-time coroner yet. John was counting on it staying that way.
A tall skinny redhead, Dr. Koltes was in her mid-thirties, married to a cardiologist. Currently, she was pregnant, easily six or seven months along. Maybe John was old-fashioned—okay, he undoubtedly was—but the sight of a pregnant woman checking the body temp of a corpse with a smashed skull struck him as jarring.
Hearing their arrival, she glanced up with a pleasant smile also at odds with the scene. “Detectives. Haven’t seen either of you for a whole day or two.”
The last body had been the result of a bar shoot-out. Neither victim nor shooter, both tattooed, black-leather-garbed motorcyclists, had been locals.
“Busy days,” John said laconically.
“Well.” She was already closing her bag. “Cause of death looks obvious from here, although you never know. We might be surprised when we get him on the table.”
“Weapon?”
“Something darned heavy. Probably smooth and rounded.” She pursed her lips. “A metal pipe, maybe. There are a few flakes caught in his hair that might be rust.”
“Time of death?”
“I’m guessing morning.” She groaned and pressed a hand to her lower back as she straightened from her crouch over the body. “Say, ten, eleven o’clock.”
Both men had both taken involuntary steps forward when she began to heave herself to her feet. Now they exchanged a glance.
“That’s consistent with what the home owner says.”
“Which is?”
Geoff told her about the cat that had napped on the fabric. “And the old couple down the street, the neighborhood snoops, would have been grocery shopping about then.”
“I wonder,” John said thoughtfully, “whether the Porters go grocery shopping every morning. Or the same morning every week.”
Geoff made a note. “Easy to ask.”
Dr. Koltes left after conferring with the uniforms who had been delegated to bag the body. “I can do the autopsy tonight,” she said, promising. “You’ll have my report tomorrow.”
Gazing with distaste at the corpse, John said, “Time to have a look.”
He checked back pockets—no wallet. Ditto for the pockets of the crumpled linen jacket. The jacket interested him. Men in Port Dare leaned more to denim or heavy flannel, maybe a dark suit if you worked in a bank or law office. This looked…hell, like Miami Vice.
He
