The Murder Pit (3 page)

Jake nodded. The kids stared at him, wide-eyed, their mouths open. I was pretty sure the two youngest were expecting him to say he’d found Santa.

“I was able to get my ladder down with me and got down into the chute,” he said, then nodded. “That’s a dead body down there, alright.”

He may have said something after that, but I couldn’t hear.

Because the kids were all screaming at the top of their lungs.

FOUR

We’d had plenty of cars and vans parked in our driveway since we’d bought the house – plumbers, electricians, carpenters, inspectors – but this was the first time we’d had multiple police cars.

Two parka-clad officers were unspooling crime tape around the house. The tape fluttered in the brisk breeze, the yellow practically glowing against the stark white of the house’s stucco and the surrounding snow.

“The entire house?” I said, watching through the kitchen window. “They’re going to wrap the entire house in crime scene tape?”

Jake poured coffee into a mug. “Like a giant Christmas present. That no one wants.”

Ted had made a few phone calls after inspecting the chute and, within twenty minutes, it looked like every law officer in Moose River was on our property. Ted explained that the town didn’t actually employ an investigator, so he’d called in for the county investigator and that he would be arriving shortly.

“But everyone will know,” I said, shaking my head.

“Uh, pretty sure everyone knows now that our driveway is a satellite parking lot for the police department.”

He was right, of course. Our house was on the busiest street in town – we actually lived ON Main Street – and there was no hiding that something was going on at our home.

I sighed. “This is not what I envisioned in our new old home.”

He put his arm around me. “I know.”

I leaned into him. His arms felt good. Solid. Reassuring. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? Did you put the body down there?”

I pulled back and whacked him in the stomach. “No, you dork. I mean I’m sorry that this house has been a constant source of…
work
…ever since we moved in.”

“Yeah, but I’m not having to do any work on this particular problem,” he said, smiling. “I get to gawk like the kids.”

The kids. After we’d assured Sophie and Grace that the dead body was not, in fact, Santa Claus, the hysteria had died down a little. There were still nervous whispers and anxious looks but the screaming had stopped. All four of them were in the living room, their noses plastered to the windows, watching the police outside our home.

I watched them for a minute, then dug the mop out of the broom closet and stuck it in the sink. The entire tile floor was flecked with  mud and snow.

“You know what I mean,” I said, returning to our conversation.

“Yeah, I do and it’s fine,” he said. He leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee. “Just think of this as a little more…cleaning.”

I glared at him. “Not.”

I attacked the floor, gliding the mop across the tiled surface. Muffled voices echoed beneath the kitchen, but I couldn’t make out any of the words. I assumed someone besides Ted had made their way inside the coal chute. A shudder rippled through me. I wondered how long the body had been in there. I wondered what condition it was in. I wondered who the hell it was. And who’d put it there. I wondered a lot of things.

A sharp knock on the kitchen door snapped me out of my thoughts. Jake pushed off the counter and reached for the doorknob.

A short, wide woman with a snowy white crew cut wiped her boots hard on the mat outside the door. Her cheeks were pink and her hard blue eyes looked first at Jake, then me. She looked like an aging Susan Powter.

“I’m Detective Priscilla Hanborn,” she said, her voice thick and raspy, as if the collected smoke of years of smoking cigarettes had settled permanently in her throat. I couldn’t imagine anyone looking and sounding less like a Priscilla. “From the county offices.”

Jake smiled and motioned her inside. 

Her eyes darted between the two of us, a sour expression on her face. “You’re the homeowners.”

“We are,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Gardener. This is my wife, Daisy.”

She didn’t offer her hand, just dipped her chin as a curt hello to each of us. She adjusted her belt, hitching up her pants beneath a khaki jacket that looked two sizes too big for her. “Hear we got a body?”

“Uh, yes,” Jake said, clearing his throat. “We were in the crawlspace downstairs…”

“Who found it?” Detective Hanborn asked sharply.

Jake and I looked at each other.

“I guess I did,” I said. I stowed the mop back in the closet and wiped my hands down the front of my jeans. They came away covered in wet dust and I bit back a sigh. “I lifted up the door to the chute and…”

“Why?” she asked, fixing me with a hard stare. “Why did you open the door?”

“Because we didn’t…we didn’t know there was a door,” I explained. I didn’t want to say that I’d heard the house had been built by the owners of the first bank of Moose River and that part of me had thought maybe, just maybe, we might find a secret tunnel leading to some long-forgotten vault. “The pipe was frozen and it was the first time we’d ever gone into the space. So we hadn’t seen it before.”

She started to say something, but something caught her eye in the living room. The kids. She stared again for a long moment, as if each one of them were a suspect. “Those your kids?”

“Yes,” I said, a little defensively. “All four of them.”

“Four?” she asked incredulously. “You lose a bet or something?”

Jake shot me a warning look and I took a deep breath. “No. We…we like kids.”

“Well, I like cats, too. But I’ve got three of ‘em and that’s one too many,” she said, shaking her head. “Can’t imagine feeding and taking care of four.”

I wasn’t clear on whether or not she thought our kids actually were cats or what she was getting at.

She refocused. “Did you know the deceased?”

“We haven’t even seen the…deceased,” I said. “Other than his shoes.”

“So you did not put the body down there?”

“No,” I said, bristling at the idea. “We did not.”

“I was asking just you, ma’am,” Hanborn said, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” I repeated. I folded my arms across my chest. “I did not.”

“Hmm. Okay. We’ll see about that, then.” Her voice told me everything I needed to know. She didn’t believe a word I’d said. “Gonna go outside now and help them pull the body out,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“It’s our house,” Jake pointed out. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Right,” the detective said. She glanced into the living room again. “Four. Wow. Just…wow.”

She turned on her heel and headed back outside, pulling the door closed behind her.

“I’m gonna buy a massive litter box,” Jake said. “Should cut down on the need for the toilet for them. Since we only have one.”

“Pretty sure litter is more expensive than toilet paper.”

He chuckled. “Maybe. But we could always try.”

I peered out the kitchen window. Priscilla Hanborn joined the group of officers who’d gathered in our backyard. She said something to them, then stomped toward the back door, the officers trailing behind her.

“She was…interesting.” I chose my words carefully, trying to be diplomatic.

“She seems…intense. And slightly insane,” Jake said, standing behind me to get a look outside, as well. “I’m glad you did not put that body down there.”

“Be careful or they’ll come back and find yours.”

He chuckled and I slipped away. I opened one of the whitewashed cupboards, pulling a mug out for myself. I poured coffee and added a generous splash of creamer and brought the steaming cup to my lips.

“Please,” Jake said. “Who would unfreeze your pipes if you killed me?”

“According to you, no one.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Damn right. We’ve had this conversation. But I was talking about your other pipes. The ones under the sink.”

I glanced at the offending appliance. It was decidedly newer than the house but the stainless steel sink and cupboard combination still dated from the 1950s. It was a little rusted and one of the doors didn’t latch properly but I didn’t care. Like so many of the the other quirky features in the house, I loved it completely.

“Ohhhh.” I grinned. “Good point. You do have some value.”

He shot me a look and I bit back a smile. He was pretty good at unfreezing all my pipes and he knew it.

I cradled my cup of coffee and we both watched as Detective Hanborn pointed fingers and barked instructions to the crowd gathered in our snow-filled backyard. There was a team of police officers as well as a small group of people in plain clothes—I couldn’t tell if they were detectives or people from the coroner’s office or what. A couple of them bounced on their heels, their arms wrapped around themselves, trying to stay warm in the subzero temperatures. After about ten minutes, the entire herd of them backed up. I looked away just as I saw several men come around the side of the house carrying a long, sheet-covered board with tennis shoes sticking out of it.

“I don’t want to see,” I said, whirling around and staring at the doorway that led into the dining room. The kids had scattered; from their vantage point, they couldn’t see much of anything and had probably gotten bored. Or scared.

Jake smiled. “Well, he’s mostly covered by a sheet, so you’re in luck. You won’t really see anything.”

“You’re morbid.”

“Yep.” He turned back around so he was facing the window.

I craned my neck just a little. “Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“See anything?”

“I see the body under the sheet.”

“You’re not very helpful.”

“Unless I’m unfreezing a pipe,” he reminded me.

Another knock on the door caused me to jump. Jake chuckled and opened it to find another officer asking us if we’d mind stepping outside for a moment, per Detective Hanborn’s request. We pulled on our jackets and boots and waded out into the cold.

Hanborn stood in ankle-deep snow, her arms folded across her chest and a frown on her wide face.

“I’d like you both to take a look here,” she said, her eyes flitting between each of us. “Just let us know if you might recognize or know the deceased.”

My stomach lurched at the idea of looking at a dead body but I didn’t think we had a choice.

We followed Hanborn to what looked like an ambulance. She gestured at the two guys in the ambulance near the opposite end of the sheet. They pulled it back gently.

It was definitely a man. Brown eyes, early forties, a well-trimmed beard. His skin was close to white around the beard and his mouth was half open, like he’d been caught by surprise.

I leaned in closer and my mouth dropped open, mirroring the dead man’s expression.

“Never seen him,” Jake said, shaking his head.

Hanborn nodded slowly, then looked at me. “And you, ma’am?”

I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I took a deep breath and swallowed, trying as much to find my voice as to steady my nerves. My heart hammered out of control and my stomach tightened into a coil of knots.

“Mrs. Gardner?” Detective’s Hanborn was like razors.

“Savage,” Jake corrected. “Daisy Savage. She didn’t take my last name.”

I blinked a couple of times and looked at both of them like I was seeing them for the first time.

“Do you recognize him?” Hanborn asked again, her tone cold and deliberate.

“Yes,” I croaked, forcing the words out. “I recognize him.”

FIVE

“Around The Corner,” I said. “We met through Around The Corner.”

I was sitting at the dining room table with Jake and Detective Hanborn. The kids had come back downstairs once they’d heard her booming voice but I’d shooed them back up. I knew our kids, however. They’d be parked on the winding staircase, far up enough so their feet weren’t visible from my spot at the table, but close enough to eavesdrop on our conversation. I could picture them, lined up in chronological order, their eyes wide and their ears perked as they strained their necks to hear how I was going to explain to Detective Hanborn—and Jake—how I knew Olaf Stunderson.

“What is that exactly?” Detective Hanborn asked, scribbling on the yellow legal pad in front of her.

I swallowed. “It’s a…dating service. Or website. Whatever you call it.”

“A dating service?” Jake asked, his eyes wide. He was parked next to me, his hands gripping the edge of the table.

“
Before
you,” I said. I reached my hand out to touch his. “After Thornton and I separated. It was way before you and I even started talking again.”

“Who is Thornton?” Hanborn asked, her eagle eyes darting back and forth between us.

“My ex-husband,” I said, still looking at Jake. “It was before you came to visit me. Way before. I went on one date. With Olaf.”

His left eyebrow arched up the way it always did when I said or did something that irritated him. Most of the time, it was charming. Sitting there now, trying to explain that I’d gone on a date with the dead man in our coal chute, it was anything but. Because I was pretty sure Jake wasn’t just irritated. He was pissed.

“You two are married, correct?” Hanborn asked, looking at each of us.

“For now,” Jake muttered.

I tightened my hand on his and looked at her. “Yes. We are married.”

“Alright,” Hanborn said, scribbling on the pad. “Around The Corner.”

“Yes,” I said. I rubbed my thumb across his ring—the ring I’d given him. “Around The Corner. A friend recommended it as a place to meet people. My ex-husband and I had separated and I was…just looking to get out and meet new people.”

Hanborn stared at me impassively and Jake raised his eyebrow higher.

“I was!” I insisted. “Thornton and I divorced and I was looking to meet some people. Not for a relationship,” I said quickly as I glanced at Jake. “I’d been a wife and a mother for almost twenty years. That was all I’d been. And I just felt…alone.”

Detective Hanborn concentrated on her notepad, her white head bobbing up and down as she listened. I didn’t want to go into all of the sordid details about why my marriage had ended or why I’d felt alone. If I’d needed a therapist, the steely-eyed detective sitting in front of me was the last person I’d pour my heart out to. I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to do it in another setting. Like a witness stand.

“So a friend told me about Around The Corner, which was called Around The Corner because
Love Is Always Just Around The
Corner. That’s their slogan. Anyway, i
t was easy to use and search profiles and all I wanted was to go on a date and have a normal conversation with another nice, normal adult male.”

A normal adult male. Someone who didn’t spend all of their free hours playing online slots and watching professional wrestling. Someone who recognized I was a woman with thoughts and opinions, not just someone who took care of the house and made meals. Someone who wanted to be an adult and not the fourth child in our household.

“Enter Olaf?” Hanborn asked, her pen poised in mid-air.

“Yes.”

“So you just met the one time?” Hanborn asked.

I nodded, then cleared my throat. “The one time, yes. It would’ve been about two years ago.”

“You sure?” Jake asked. “I mean, if you forgot to tell me you went on a date with him, maybe there were more. Or more guys.”

I frowned at him. “Stop.”

He made a face that looked very much like Grace’s face when she was on the verge of a melt down. My frown deepened and his pout intensified.

“And was that here?” Hanborn asked. “That you met?”

“No, because we’ve only owned this house six months and I was with Jake when we bought it. As I said, the date was about two years ago.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to recount the entire date in front of Jake, especially when he was acting like he might throw a temper tantrum at any moment. “We went to Lotto’s.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Never going there again.”

“Stop,” I said, my voice tight. “It was
before
you.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

I turned back to Hanborn. “We went for pizza. We had dinner. That was it.”

“Did you meet him there at the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“And did he…accompany you home?” The question hung over the table like a thick, heavy cloud.

My face flushed. “No. NO. That was the only time I ever saw him. I never even spoke to him again. He didn’t come to my old house and he certainly was never here.”

Hanborn’s mouth twisted into a weird smile. “Well, I don’t know if that statement is accurate since we just pulled him out of your basement.”

My heart beat a little faster. I didn’t like Detective Hanborn and I didn’t like having the conversation in front of Jake. It was like I was suddenly suspect number one because I’d gone on a single date with the stiff in my basement a lifetime ago.

“I didn’t even know about this house back then,” I pointed out. “Anyway, he didn’t come home with me that night and he was never here that I knew about.”

Jake was still frowning and I felt the sudden urge to ask him if he’d like to be deputized. Because it seemed like he was siding with the shrewd detective sitting across from me.

A loud crash sounded from upstairs.

“We’re fine,” Will called. “Everything’s fine!”

I glanced at Jake and he stood up. “I’ll go make sure we still have four kids,” he said. He stood up and placed his hand on my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze before he crossed the living room and made his way up the stairs.

Hanborn turned her attention back to me. “The dinner was fine?”

“Sure.” Dinner at Lotto’s was always fine. They served the best pizza in town.

“What did you talk about?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. It was a very unmemorable dinner. Movies. Music. Where we’d lived. The kinds of things you talk about on an awkward first date.”

Hanborn tapped her pen against the legal pad. “Try to remember.”

“Look, there’s nothing else to tell you,” I said, exasperated. “It was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” She perked up. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said. “We ate pizza and we talked about boring stuff. He was nice. And completely uninteresting.”

“Were you angry about that?” she asked. “Maybe upset because you’d wasted your time on a date that didn’t amount to anything?”

I almost laughed at her insinuation. “No. He was nice. We had a fine time. But that was it. We shook hands when we said goodbye.”

“Did he call you after?”

“Never called, never emailed, never anything.”

She tapped her pen some more, then shrugged. “Alright. We’ll see what we can find and confirm.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” I said, my voice shaking a little.

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” she said. She ran a hand over her short white hair. “I’ll just need to confirm some things. Routine procedure. You weren’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon, were you?”

“Well, I need to go to the grocery store…”

“No, ma’am. I meant like out of state or out of the country.”

“What? You think I’m going to disappear or something? Because there was a body found in my house? A body that I have nothing to do with?”

Jake reappeared and he hustled back to the table. This time, he was the one who covered my hand with his. Probably to keep me from punching the woman sitting across from me.

Hanborn just stared at me, waiting for me to answer my own questions.

“No,” I said. I folded my arms across my chest and stared her down. “I am not planning on going on the lam.”

She nodded. “Good to hear.” She stood up and tucked the legal pad under her arm. “We’ll be doing some work out here the rest of the day. Probably tomorrow, too. We’ll try to be done as quickly as we can, but it may take some time.”

Jake and I both stood, too, the chairs scraping against the hardwood floors. We followed her into the kitchen and she slipped back into her boots, bracing herself against the door as she wrestled them on. Jake said goodbye to her and closed the door behind her.

“Don’t even start,” I said as soon as the door latched back into place.

He held his hands up. “About what? About you not telling me you dated before we got together? Okay.”

“I didn’t date,” I said stubbornly. “And there was nothing to tell.”

He bit back a response and just nodded.

I grabbed his shirt and pulled him to me, kissing him hard on the mouth. He stood still for a minute, then finally relented and kissed me back, his hands settling on my waist. I melted into him, like I always did, and wondered for the millionth time why I’d let two decades of my life go by without him in it. Even when he acted like a baby over one stupid date I’d gone on two years earlier.

“I love you,” I whispered, tearing my mouth away from his. “Only you. I was lonely and sad and dumb and didn’t know you were still around.”

“You thought I was dead?” he asked.

“No, silly.” I put my head on his chest. “Available.”

He rested his chin on the top of my head. “I love you, too. But I don’t like that you’ve dated other men.”

“Then you shouldn’t have broken up with me in high school.”

“Trust me,” he said, moving his lips from my hair to my forehead. “I know. I was an idiot. And I’m still sorry I did it.”

Before I could say anything else, footsteps echoed down the stairs and all four kids came racing into the kitchen, their socks sliding across the wood. They piled up in the doorway, smallest to tallest, panting and out of breath. For one horrified moment, I thought they’d found another dead body hidden upstairs.

“Is it true?” Will asked, his eyes huge.

“Is what true?” I asked.

He looked at Jake first, then me. “That the dead guy was your boyfriend?”