said, “That’s a pity. One does hate to see a good sexy vampire costume go to waste. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I dressed for Halloween.”
“That’s sad,” the investigator said, and Maggie agreed that, yes, it was. But her life had changed that year, and perhaps such frivolity was no longer in good taste. Either that or she no longer had the taste for it.
She went to photograph the interior of the house with Jack and Riley.
Uniformed officers, armed with guns and the usual strict instructions not to touch anything (except doorknobs, as needed), had used the dead woman’s keys to go inside and “clear” the house. The knob and keyed deadbolt had been securely latched. No one waited there, not family members, pets, or the killer. So the detectives walked behind Maggie as she entered, camera at the ready, hoping that Senator Cragin had left them some clue as to who had wanted her dead.
The bird started up again.
Chapter 2
The house had been built one hundred years before but lovingly preserved, and kept clean if not neat. The wool carpets were barely worn, the heavy windows sparkled, and the hardwood floors gleamed despite minor scars. It smelled of dust and ammonia and stale takeout. The entryway presented them with a staircase, a pristine living or sitting room on the right, and a cluttered office/dining room/reception area on the left. Maggie clicked a few overall shots of the pristine side, then ignored it to turn to the messy office. Cardboard boxes held printed brochures with Diane Cragin’s face prominently displayed above the phrase BRINGING JOBS BACK TO OHIO, and Maggie took a moment to study what her victim had looked like when alive. Not really much different than she did when dead, it seemed, though happier, with blond hair and blue eyes and the figure of a middle-aged woman who watched her weight. She formed the perfect, neutral picture of a strong and competent woman. Only her smile kept her from appearing generic: a wide, almost impish grin, as if she knew something that no one else did and had every intention of keeping it that way.
The dining table, which served as a desk or perhaps merely a staging area, also held myriad papers, newspapers, and a list of voting precincts and their captains. Maggie said, “There’s a lot here about polls.”
Riley poked one with a finger. “‘Getting out the likes campaign.’ What does that mean?”
“Facebook,” she told him.
“Ye gods. Hydrocarbon forecast?”
Jack said, “EPA business.”
Riley continued. “Here’s ‘Green hammer points.’ Not green as in environmental, green as in Joe Green. If they’re running against each other, that makes him suspect number one, but isn’t that too . . . what’s the word?”
“Cliché?” Maggie said.
“Easy,” Jack suggested.
“Yeah. Besides, I don’t think politicians assassinate each other as often as they would like. Hell, if they ever shot anything more than rhetoric at each other, the streets would run red and we’d have all the overtime we could handle.”
Just then, one of Maggie’s paper bags started ringing. She had put Diane Cragin’s purse and briefcase into paper bags and left them in the foyer to get them out of the elements, and now the victim’s cell phone rang. No song or cutesy voice, only an insistent beep beep beep like a kitchen timer.
It stopped by the time Maggie pulled on latex gloves and retrieved it from the purse, holding it up for the detectives to see. The screen read “Kelly” with a thumbnail of a young woman with chopped black hair. Automatic screen alerts told them that she had already called twice that morning, at 7:15 and 8:10. It was now coming up on nine a.m. and Kelly had grown impatient, hanging up and then immediately calling a fourth time.
They let this call go to voice mail as well and kept moving through the house. The kitchen had butcher block counters, antique linoleum flooring, and not much food in the fridge among the cans of Red Bull and Mountain Dew. “She likes caffeine,” Maggie commented.
Riley peeked at the shelves. “That stuff will kill you even without two-twenty.”
A modern laundry room at the back of the house had no clothes in the washer or dryer and a door leading to a sort of alley without a yard or a parking space. The back door had both a chain and a deadbolt, both fastened from the inside. Nearby steps led to a cellar with a dirt floor and a set of folding chairs, covered in dust. Aside from that and a number of cardboard boxes of Christmas decorations, it did not appear to be used for anything. Maggie did not think the killer had found the metal grate in the victim’s cellar. Nothing similar to it seemed to be around, nor were there any rectangular-shaped gaps in the dust.
They made their way to the second floor.
“I’m guessing she’s not married,” Maggie said. No one had mentioned family, and she saw no sign of male clothing in the small bedroom.
“Don’t know, actually,” Riley said. “She has two kids, grown now. I only know that because according to Green, they’re both the big corporate types who walk over the little guys she’s supposed to be working for.”
Her paperwork might be messy, but the woman took good care of her clothes. Each item either hung in the closet or sat folded in a drawer, with a few pieces resting in a plastic laundry basket. Cosmetics and creams covered half of the bathroom counter, with two empty coffee cups and a box of tissues on the other side. Maggie had the impression that Diane Cragin spent most of her time in Washington; her local possessions seemed sparse and impersonal. Drawers and cabinets held only aspirin, decongestant, and an expired bottle of lisinopril, 10 mg.
“What’s that for?” Jack asked, crowding into the tiny bathroom with her. His proximity didn’t unsettle her as much as it used to, despite knowing how many criminals he had murdered without benefit of due process.
Perhaps how many, she corrected herself. She probably didn’t know about them all. Jack had been a little fuzzy on details, but then, she hadn’t pressed. The more she knew, the less she could justify her complicity in her own mind.
Best not to ask. Best to focus on the task at hand. And he had abandoned that habit now . . . or so he said.
She told him, “High blood pressure. A mild dose, and high blood pressure doesn’t mean you have a weak heart. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think it would make her any easier to kill—with electricity, I mean.”
Riley poked his head into the small bathroom. “Anything interesting?”
“BP meds and aspirin,” she said.
“No cocaine? What kind of a senator was she?”
“This whole house feels empty to me. Of course, it’s not that big.”
“She played that up—not living high on the taxpayer’s hogs—but Green says it’s because she spent as little time here as possible,” Riley said. “I guess they rank our representatives every year for how much time they spend with their own constituents, and she’d always be near the bottom.”
“You pay pretty close attention—” Maggie began as she opened a tall, narrow cabinet and promptly forgot what she’d been about to say. Because instead of bath towels and shampoo, she now stared at a tall, narrow safe. “Okay, now
