Death Climbs a Tree (9 page)

Fred knew Gil had been Joan's sixth-grade classmate when her father had brought the family to Oliver for a sabbatical year. Now Gil held the wide door for them. “I'll take you back,” he said.

They followed him down a long hall, its once-elegant carpet faded, to a cold back room with white cinder block walls, a tile floor, and two tables, one white porcelain and the other stainless steel. On the white table lay a still form covered by a white sheet. Fred was grateful on her sister's behalf that Sylvia wasn't in a body bag. But not even the faint fragrance of several funeral bouquets in one corner could disguise the overwhelming strong fingernail polish remover smell—acetone for the embalming fluid they used here. Probably easier for her sister to smell than the formaldehyde he knew from other places.

Linda's hand reached out shakily toward him. When he offered her a steady arm, she held on.

“Ready?” he asked.

Lips tight, she nodded, and Gil drew the sheet back from Sylvia's face. Only a few scratches and the dark bruise on her temple suggested what had happened to her. Someone, Fred assumed the nursing staff at the hospital before she died, had washed her and braided her hair. Remembering what she'd landed on, he was glad for her sister's sake that she'd lived long enough for them to do that. Gil wouldn't be able to work on the body until Henshaw finished the autopsy.

“Poor Sylvia,” Linda said, and wiped her eyes. She looked for a long moment and then turned away. “Thank you,” she told Gil.

He escorted them out, with none of the intrusive sympathy affected by some funeral directors. Not that he needed to push his services. Snarr's was the only funeral home in Oliver.

“I wish I'd made it in time,” Linda said on the walk back to the station, where Fred's car was parked. “I know it wouldn't have mattered to her, but I wish I'd seen her alive.”

“Yes,” Fred said, glad to inhale the fresh spring air again.

“And you'll take me to where she fell?”

“It's not far,” he told her, and opened his passenger door for her.

On the way, they passed a man selling roses out of a panel truck parked at the side of the road. A rough hand-painted sign advertised
DOZEN ROSES $5
. A plastic tub outside the truck held bunches of roses in water. On this cool day, they hadn't begun to droop.

“Oh, stop, would you?” Linda begged.

Fred pulled over. She hopped out and returned with a single red rose. “I had to talk him into selling me just one.”

“We're almost there.” He turned at the gravel road, rounded the curve, and pulled into the clearing. Inside the car, the scent of her rose was overwhelming the subtler odors of spring, but when he opened the door, he inhaled the contrasts of muddy earth in the clearing and the damp leaf mold a few feet farther on.

He led her into the woods and pointed up. “There it is.” Ropes hung here and there from the platform that had been Sylvia's last home, but he couldn't see the things Andrew had said were hanging above it.

“She stayed up there?”

“For a week.”

Andrew's dark head poked over the edge. “Hey, Fred!”

The cell phone in his pocket rang. “That's Andrew Spencer, who helped Sylvia and then took her place in the tree,” Fred told Linda. He spoke into his phone. “Andrew, this is Sylvia's sister, Linda Smith.”

“How's Sylvia doing?”

“I'm sorry, son. She died this morning.”

“Oh, no.” He was silent for a moment. “Do you think I could talk to her sister?”

“I'll ask her.” He relayed Andrew's question and held out the phone.

“Of course,” she said, taking it. She listened, thanked him, and gave the phone to Fred again.

“I'm going to take her over to Sylvia's place now,” he told Andrew.

“Give her my cell phone number, would you? In case she thinks of something she wants to ask?” He rattled it off.

“Sure.” Fred wrote it down for her and in his own little notebook.

Linda laid her rose at the base of the oak, and they went back to the car.

“He seems like a nice young man,” she said.

Fred nodded. He had to tell her the rest. “There's one more thing you should know,” he told her. “We don't think Sylvia's fall was an accident.”

“I don't understand. Sylvia would never…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. “I suppose I don't know what she would do.”

“There was nothing to suggest that she took her own life.”

“You think she was murdered?” Her face crumpled. “But who would kill Sylvia? And why? And how?”

“I don't know.”

“Yesterday you called it an accident!”

“We didn't know yesterday. We're not absolutely sure now, but we're treating her death as a homicide. That's why I asked you about her friends. We need to learn all we can about your sister.”

Her grief turned to anger, but she wasn't much help. “I thought I knew her,” she kept saying. “I wish I could help you catch the person who did this to her. Promise me you'll catch him.”

Or her, Fred thought. Could some woman have been jealous of Sylvia?

9

Detective Chuck Terry and Officer Jill Root were in the station house when they returned. Chuck was taking down a new complaint from a man who showed up regularly. He'd been carrying on a feud with his neighbors for years. Nodding as he filled out a form, Chuck let the man air his grievances as if he'd never heard them before. Fred knew that in the end the man would back down. He was glad Chuck had the patience to hear him out.

Ketcham approached them, a folded paper in his hand. His face looked grim. “Lieutenant, can you spare a moment?”

“Is it urgent?”

“Yes, sir.” The formality was a tip-off.

Fred nodded. “I'll be in my office in a moment.”

“I've taken up enough of your time,” Linda said, as he meant her to. “You've been very kind.”

He called Jill over and introduced them.

“Officer Root will take you to Sylvia's apartment now,” he said. “If you see anything that strikes you as wrong, or if you can suggest anyone else we might talk to about your sister, she'll want to know.”

“Ms. Smith, we're all so very sorry,” Jill said.

“Did you know her, too?”

“No, ma'am, not personally, but we were all concerned about her, way up there by herself.”

They left together, and Ketcham followed Fred into his office.

“What's up?” Fred asked.

Ketcham, standing in front of the desk, dropped the formality. “Altschuler heard it on the radio and split a gut.”

“Already?” Fred rounded the desk and sat down heavily. He had counted on telling Captain Warren Altschuler, their chief of detectives, himself. “How did it get out so soon?”

“The hospital told the media once her sister arrived.”

“That she was murdered?”

“No, that she'd died. But someone must have leaked it.” His jaw tightened. “I'm gonna find out who—maybe someone eavesdropping at Snarr's, maybe someone on Gil Snarr's staff—but it damn well better not have been one of ours. And now they're speculating about all the people who would have had it in for Sylvia. They've already asked him for a comment.”

Fred groaned. “I'd better go see him.” But it was too late. Through his office window, he saw Altschuler heading toward him, his homely face distorted. Fred managed to get to his feet before the door crashed open.

“What the hell do you think you're doing, hanging me out to dry like that?”

Nothing to do but take it. “It shouldn't have happened.”

“It didn't
happen!
You held her sister's hand and left me to take the flak. Where was your head, man? Where was your sense of duty?”

Fred stood silent, waiting until his chief wound down. It wouldn't take long. Warren Altschuler was a reasonable man, supportive of his force, and a friend. He'd stood up with Fred at his wedding. But that didn't mean he'd stand for arguments. So Fred waited.

“Oh, all right,” Altschuler said at last. “Tell me now.” He sank down in the old leather chair he usually chose.

Fred leaned back carefully on his old swivel chair. “You know anything more?” he asked Ketcham, still standing near the door.

“Not yet. Nothing yet from Henshaw.”

“Let me know.”

“Yes, sir.” Ketcham looked grateful to leave. He closed the door behind him.

Fred turned to Altschuler. “You probably know by now that my wife and her son witnessed the fall.”

Altschuler raised his bushy eyebrows. “The news didn't mention that.”

“Maybe they didn't know—Joan doesn't use my name. When I arrived, I met the ambulance on its way to the hospital. From the scene and what she and Andrew could tell me about what they saw and the conversation they'd had with Sylvia Purcell, there was nothing to indicate anything but an accidental fall. But this morning Joan was back out there, because Andrew took Sylvia's place in the tree.”

“The kid who gave his mother away at your wedding.”

“Yeah.” More or less.

“She was poking in the leaves, looking for morels, and she found a rock she knew wasn't from around here.”

“She a rock hound?”

“No. But she knew it came from Lake Michigan. Some kind of fossil, but nothing like a trilobite or crinoid that you might find in this area.” Fred, having grown up in northern Illinois, gave himself points for that bit of local lore. “Ketcham recognized it, too, when I brought it back here. The partial prints on it aren't the deceased's. And Henshaw said it matches the bruise on the side of her head.”

“Henshaw thinks this rock killed her?”

“He hadn't done the autopsy yet. But he guessed it probably triggered her fall, and the fall killed her.”

“Not much to go on.”

“I was waiting for more. But I should have informed you.”

Altschuler was past worrying about it. “You learn anything from the sister?”

“Not really. She ID'd the body. But she didn't even know Sylvia was up in the tree, and we'd already spoken to the only friend Sylvia had mentioned to her. At that point we were only helping the hospital locate her family while she was still alive.”

“You'll have to interview them both again.”

“Yes. And look for someone with a powerful slingshot.”

“Could be a kid,” Altschuler said.

“Yeah.” A possibility Fred hated to think about.

“Or someone who hates tree huggers.”

“The construction boss, for one.” Tom Walcher had to be a suspect.

“You didn't talk to her after she fell?”

“She never came out of the coma.”

“You're going to have to lean on Andrew.”

“I know.” Maybe Sylvia's death would be enough to make him open up about the others who supported her cause.

“Or get him down.”

“Yeah.” Nothing like a murder to destroy family harmony.

“It's going to polarize public opinion in this town, with everybody blaming whatever group they already hate. Keep me informed.” He stood.

“Yes, sir.” Fred stood, too.

“Don't click your heels at me, Fred. You know me too well.”

“Thanks, Warren.”

Relieved, he called Ketcham into his office.

“You said your son had a Wrist-Rocket. Where'd he get it?”

“Mail order. These days he could buy it off the Internet. Or right here in Oliver.”

“Where?”

“Over by the campus. That store with all kinds of gadgets. Caters to students, of course, but doesn't turn down anyone's money. Owned by Matt Skirvin. Grew up around here, but left town for about ten years. Came back a couple of years ago, lives out in the woods somewhere, over toward Brown County. I've been keeping my eye on Matt.”

“Any particular reason?”

Ketcham scratched his head. “Not exactly. He got in enough scrapes as a kid, but nothing all that serious. Just a kind of general recklessness about him. Skates on the edge of the law, but not so's you could haul him in. We could probably get him on pot, but I don't know that he distributes it.”

Fred nodded thoughtfully. “Andrew called the man who collected Sylvia's clothes ‘Skirv.'”

“That's Matt. Skirv's Stuff is his shop.”

“Of course. Looks like junk.”

“Some of it is. But there's new stuff, too. And probably some drug paraphernalia, though he doesn't have that out for general inspection. So far we don't have any hard evidence that he's done worse than smoke a few joints.”

10

The news spread through Oliver like a bad case of poison ivy.

Someone brought it through the front door of the Oliver Senior Citizens' Center before lunchtime.

“And they're saying it
wasn't
an accident,” Annie Jordan told Joan as they stuck address labels on a mass fund-raising mailing for the adult day care.

“Who's saying?” Joan slapped the next label on crooked. How had that gotten out?

Annie shrugged. “I don't know. Radio, I suppose.”

“Not the police?”

“Wouldn't Fred tell you if someone killed her, with your boy up there and all?”

Joan had told Annie that much. She made herself stick the next label on straight. Eventually, she thought. Depends on how busy he is. And how mad he still is at Andrew. Or maybe on how trapped he feels about talking to me when Andrew's tree sitting. Can he even talk to me? If it really is murder and Andrew's right there in the middle of it, involved who knows how with Sylvia and her group, how much can Fred take me into his confidence? Andrew changes everything, that's for sure.

“I'm sorry,” Annie said. “I shouldn't have worried you.”

Joan sighed. “I worry all the time these days, Annie. Not much you can say to make it worse.”