The Winter Widow (16 page)

On her way out, she picked up the notebook from the table. Nothing but blank paper with thin strips twisted in the spiral where pages had been ripped out. She tossed down the notebook and noticed a small white triangle of paper stuck between the edge of the carpet and the wall behind the table. She bent to retrieve it; a corner of lined paper with two penciled words, “like sleet.”

As she straightened, her eye caught a quick glint of something small and shiny beneath the bed. She went to the bed, leaned down to lift back the spread and stared into a blue, mottled face.

Blood roared in her ears, air got trapped in her lungs, an acid taste filled her mouth.

Lucille lay on her back, head twisted to the right. A blue scarf cut into her neck; her eyes bulged; her tongue protruded. The light sparkled on one silver earring.

Susan dropped to her knees and braced herself on both hands. Oh Jesus.

Blowing out air with a long breath, she stood up.

There was a loud pounding on the door.

“Police! Open up!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SHE froze.

More pounding. “Police! Open up.”

When she opened the door, the two uniformed policemen eyed her with carefully bland faces. One was tall, with sandy hair, the other slightly shorter and stocky, with short black hair.

“Would you mind telling us what you're doing here?” The taller man spoke to her.

“Don't get excited. I'm a cop.”

He raised skeptical eyebrows. She started to get identification from her shoulder bag and the stocky man took a step closer. “Don't move.”

“What's your name?” the taller man asked.

“Susan Wren. Yours?”

“Riley.” He inclined his head at the other officer. “Brandelli.”

“Well, Officer Riley, the young woman who rented this room has been strangled.” She paused. “Her body's under the bed.”

Riley tensed, looked at Brandelli and gave a short nod. Brandelli squatted by the bed, lifted the bedspread, looked up at Riley and nodded in return.

“Have you any identification, Miss Wren?”

She patted her bag. Brandelli held out a hand. “If you don't mind.”

He took the bag and dumped the contents on the table, then grinned at her, a flash of white teeth in a dark face. “Got a permit for this?” Taking a pen from his shirt pocket, he isolated Daniel's .38.

Funny man. She glared at him and pointed out her identification.

“Hampstead,” he said with not quite a sneer, and handed it to Riley. “What we have here is a chief of police.”

Riley glanced at her identification, then said to Brandelli, “Call it in.”

*   *   *

AN hour later, she was perched on a hard wooden chair in Captain Dayton's office. She was alone. He'd left her to stew, a trick she'd used many times herself, and now she was realizing just how effective it was. The professional part of her mind pointed out she'd been very stupid and just might see her career as a cop swirl and disappear down the drain with a glug.

The door opened behind her and she jumped. Captain Dayton strode to the desk, stood there and regarded her with cynic's eyes. She sat up straighter; she was in the presence of authentic authority. He was a large, square man in a rumpled brown sport coat, with a heavy jaw and a dark stubble of beard, thick dark eyebrows and a receding hairline. He tossed her ID on the desk. It landed with a slap. They both stared at it.

“Says here”—he leaned forward and obliterated her picture with a blunt thumb—“you're Susan Wren.” He had a deep gravelly voice.

She nodded.

“Says you're chief of police of Hampstead, Kansas.”

She looked up at him.

“That right, young lady? You really Hampstead's police chief?”

“Yes, sir.”

He grunted and threw down her driver's license, tapped her picture with his thumb. “Says here you're Susan Donovan.”

“Maiden name. I … uh, I've not been married long.”

“Says here San Francisco. San Francisco, California. That right?” He glared at her, then hooked an ankle around the chair leg, pulled it out and dropped into it. “So, Susan Wren or Susan Donovan or whatever your name is, what were you doing in that hotel room?”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Lucille Guthman's been missing for three days. I've been looking for her, to question in connection with a murder.” She gave him a succinct and coherent report of the investigation into Daniel's death.

Dayton listened without comment except for an occasional grunt or lift of his dark eyebrows. It might have been her former boss she was facing with queasy apprehension. Chase Reardon was smoother and slicker, soft-voiced, and communicated with words rather than grunts, but the atmosphere and its effect on her were the same. She'd been called in to get her ass chewed, and the awful part was she knew she deserved it.

When she was finished, Dayton crossed his arms over his broad chest and glowered from under his dark eyebrows. “Why did you go in that room?”

“I don't—”

“You ever hear of a goddamn search warrant? You ever hear of probable cause? I don't know how you do things in your area, but around here we don't illegally enter hotel rooms. Citizens have rights.” His voice held no sarcasm; captains didn't need to be sarcastic.

“She was dead.”

“So she was. You claim you didn't know that when you went in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You left Hampstead at what time?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“Uh-huh.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Coffee?” he asked.

She took a breath, then nodded.

He leaned forward with a jerk of the chair, picked up the phone and growled at somebody. Replacing the receiver, he leaned back again.

An officer brought in two Styrofoam cups and put them on the desk. Dayton leaned forward, removed a plastic lid, sailed it toward the wastebasket and offered her the cup.

She took a sip. “I'm out of cigarettes.”

He fished a crumpled pack from his shirt pocket and tossed it on the desk. She shook one out and lit it. It wasn't her brand, and the smoke was harsh against her dry throat. She coughed. Well, Daniel, what do you think? Presumptuous of me to assume I could handle your job, and serves me right?

Dayton raised his cup and eyed her over the rim. “How did you know Miss Guthman had been strangled?”

“What?”

“You told Riley she was strangled. How'd you know?”

“I saw her. I lifted the bedspread and there she was with the scarf around her throat and her face blue. Strangled is strangled, Captain, whether it's my area or around here.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm and she regretted it immediately. His expression told her if she worked for him she'd be back on patrol in a minute. Reardon would have reacted the same, if she were lucky.

“You entered the room shortly after five. Riley got there at five-ten. You were in there with the body for about ten minutes. What did you do?”

“I didn't know
the body
was there. I went in and I looked around. I only found her just when Riley got there.”

“You searched the room.”

She hesitated, nodded.

“Find anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Destroy anything?”

“No, sir. How long has she been dead?”

Silence. Then he said, “A while. We won't know until after the autopsy. Probably dead somewhere around twelve to sixteen hours.”

Lucille had been killed then, Susan thought, Wednesday night or early this morning.

“You ought to be charged,” he said.

“With what?”

Shark's smile. “How about impersonating a police officer?”

Ha ha. “How did you know I was in there?”

“The maid. Who got to worrying about her job. Who told the receptionist, who told the manager, who called us.”

He stared at her, black eyes pinning her stiffly to the chair. “There are a number of legal possibilities here,” he said. “Like accessory after the fact. Obstructing—”

“I'm not an accessory to anything. I've obstructed nothing. Are you going to charge me?”

He grunted and shoved the phone toward her. She raised an eyebrow.

“Get somebody down here with proper credentials to vouch for you.”

She picked up the receiver and punched a number. Parkhurst answered. Damn, damn. She'd hoped for George.

“This is Susan,” she said crisply and explained where she was. “I'd appreciate it if you'd come here.”

When she hung up she said to Dayton, “A man named Parkhurst will be here as soon as he can. He will tell you I am who I am.”

“Ben Parkhurst?”

“You know him?”

Dayton gave a bark of laughter. “I've worked with him.”

Bloody hell, of course he had. She might have known.

Again, Dayton left her alone in his office. The same officer brought her more coffee and her own brand of cigarettes. She asked him if he could find her some Kleenex and he brought those too. It was almost nine when Dayton returned; Parkhurst, darkly angry, was with him. She stood up. Parkhurst, dressed in black pants, gray sweater and a black jacket with the collar turned up, looked at her with a hard, flat expression. Dayton's fleshy face held an expression of amused malice; he had, no doubt, been enjoying jokes at Parkhurst's expense.

“The hotel manager,” Dayton said, “is more bothered by a guest murdered than a room entered illegally.” He glowered at her, then finally said, “Get out of here.”

She took a breath, removed her trench coat from the back of the chair and slipped it on.

“Been interesting running into you,” Dayton said to her, then gave Parkhurst a wolfish grin. “Good to see you again, Ben.”

A muscle twitched in Parkhurst's jaw. “I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what surfaces in the investigation, and I'd like a copy of the autopsy report.”

Right.
I'd
appreciate that too.

Dayton nodded. “You'll get it.”

She could feel Parkhurst seething as he followed her down the stairs. She had committed an unforgivable sin, embarrassed him in front of his colleagues.

At the front desk, a man stood talking to two uniformed officers; a tall man with blond hair, straight eyebrows and a square jaw. His gaze caught hers and held it for a moment; then one of the officers spoke to him and he turned away. She didn't know him, but there was something intense about his scrutiny of her. Had he been brought in for questioning in Lucille's death? She started toward him.

Parkhurst caught her arm. “Where're you going?”

“To find out who that is.”

“Come on.”

“I just want to—”

He hustled her out the door. She went along with him, furious with herself for doing so. When they reached his Bronco, she felt the effort it took for him to refrain from shoving her inside. Her chest was tight with her own anger: anger at herself for letting him drag her away, anger at him for rescuing her and anger at Lucille for getting killed.

“Why the hell did you do a stupid thing like that?” he said as he started the Bronco and sped out.

“Like what?” The dark streets were empty and glistened under the headlights, trash fluttered around the frozen slush along the curbs.

“Don't be obtuse. If you're going to play at being chief, you'd better stick to the rules.”

Rules. Rules of the game. Games and rules. She knew the game and she knew the rules just as well as he did, but Daniel was dead and now Lucille. “I didn't plan on getting caught.”

“Every dumb shit who holds up a gas station thinks like that.”

She took short, fast breaths; the tension in the car seemed to burn up all the oxygen. It was too warm and the thrum of the heater resonated through her head.

“You're getting yourself in trouble and making Hampstead look like a joke.” Streetlights threw flickering shadows across his dark face, briefly highlighting his cheekbones and upper lip.

Not Hampstead, him. Making
him
look like a joke. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but he was right. In the line of duty, he could inform the mayor, and Bakover could justifiably dismiss her. She'd behaved like a civilian and had no right to be angry. “I found Lucille.”

His upper lip pulled flat, giving her a glimpse of white teeth. “Yeah, you did that.”

“I'll have to tell the family.”

Parkhurst pulled into the hotel parking lot where she'd left the pickup. “I'll go with you,” he said as she got out of the Bronco.

She slammed the door; cold air hit her like a fist. Shaking, she climbed into the pickup and drove too fast, came into a curve with the tires screaming and a slow motorist just ahead. She swerved around and dropped back to a much safer speed. Parkhurst stayed three car-lengths behind and once they reached Hampstead, he followed all the way to the Guthmans'.

*   *   *

FRIDAY morning in Daniel's office, her eyes felt gritty, and even coffee hadn't much affected her sluggish brain. The only good news, her cold was getting better. It had been late by the time she'd gotten home after telling the Guthmans of Lucille's death. When she finally went to sleep she dreamed. Over and over, she bent to lift the bedspread and stare into the dead blue face.

She glanced through the reports Osey had left on the desk. Perfectly typed, no errors or strikeovers, but that's all she could say for them. Floyd Kimmell claimed he hadn't gone to Kansas City Wednesday night. He'd been at home, in bed, asleep. He hadn't strangled Lucille. Vic Pollock, with a great deal of bluster, claimed much the same.

She rubbed her eyes. Inconclusive. Either could be lying. Floyd lived alone and, with his wife gone, so did Vic. Either could have driven to Kansas City, strangled Lucille and driven home. Why had Lucille gone to Kansas City?

She tried to reach Doug McClay, with no luck. Even though the Kansas City police were investigating Lucille's murder, her death was connected with Daniel's, and Susan intended to question McClay.