Dead in the Doorway Read online

  I transferred the umbrella to my left hand, dug my cell phone out of my purse, and placed a 911 call, not taking my eyes off Dakota Walsh again. He might be short and scrawny, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a threat. Call me overly cautious, but I wasn’t about to take a chance with my life or Sawdust’s. “I just found a body,” I told the male dispatcher. “In the front doorway of my house.”

  “Is the person deceased?” he asked.

  “I believe so. I couldn’t find a pulse and her skin is cold and stiff.”

  “Victim’s age?”

  “Her age?” I repeated, glancing at Dakota and arching my brows in question. He shrugged. “I’m not sure,” I told the dispatcher. “She’s elderly.”

  “You don’t know her?”

  “No. There’s a young man here who called her Mrs. Dolan, but I don’t know him, either. He’s slept in the house the past few nights without my knowledge or permission.”

  The dispatcher asked for the address and said he’d get an ambulance en route right away. “We’ll send police, too.”

  “Thanks.” The call concluded, I slid my phone back into my pocket and returned my attention to Dakota. “How do you know Mrs. Dolan?”

  “She lives in the house next door.”

  When he began to lower his arms, I jerked the umbrella in a keep-’em-up motion. “Any idea why she was here?”

  “Granny’d sometimes have the neighbor ladies over to sew or play cards or talk about books. My dad called them her hen parties. But now?” He lifted his skinny shoulders again to indicate he didn’t know why Mrs. Dolan would have been in the house given that his grandmother was no longer alive. Dakota’s eyes narrowed as he apparently decided it was his turn to ask questions. “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

  “I bought the place. You didn’t know?”

  “No,” he said. “I knew Granny’s house had been put up for sale, but my dad and uncle thought it would be hard to find a buyer since the place needs a lot of work. I didn’t know they’d sold it yet. I haven’t talked to my parents in a few days.”

  The fact that the FOR SALE sign had been taken out of the yard might have clued him in that the house had sold, but then again, maybe he hadn’t seen the sign in the first place. The FOR SALE sign had been up only a matter of days while I took care of the paperwork. Because I’d paid for the place with cash, no appraisal had been necessary and the process had moved at warp speed.

  “How’d you get inside?” I asked.

  “Granny gave me a key. I keep it in the frog’s mouth so I can come and go whenever I want to.”

  “The frog’s mouth?” I repeated. “You mean the ceramic frog on the front porch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you keep the key with you?”

  He had the sense to look sheepish, ducking his head and blushing slightly as he averted his eyes. “I tend to misplace things.”

  Though the guy’s explanation of his presence here made sense, there was still the matter of the dead woman in the doorway behind me. I wasn’t ready to put down the umbrella just yet.

  Dakota leaned slightly to the side again to take another look at Mrs. Dolan. He grimaced, closed his eyes, and shook his head, as if his mind were an Etch A Sketch screen and he was trying to clear away the image. “What do you think happened to her?” he squeaked. “Did she fall down the stairs and break her neck?”

  “Looks that way to me. The police and paramedics will figure it out.”

  A siren sounded off in the distance, drawing closer. Within the next minute, both an ambulance crew and the police arrived. Through the frosted glass, I could see the blurry images of the medical crew at the curb and a single police officer in a dark uniform coming up onto the porch. Another officer waited in the yard. A rap sounded on the door. Rap-rap-rap.

  “Metro police,” came the no-nonsense woman’s voice. “Officer Hogarty here.”

  “The body is blocking the door!” I called through the glass. “You’ll have to come in through the garage.” Fortunately, I still had the remote on me and hadn’t locked the door that led from the garage into the house. I aimed the remote down the lower staircase and pressed the button to raise the garage door. The house vibrated as the door rolled up.

  “That’s what woke me up earlier,” Dakota said. “The shaking from the garage door.”

  “You didn’t hear me come in? Talking to my cat?”

  He shook his head. “No. I sleep with earbuds in. I guess that’s why I didn’t hear Mrs. Dolan fall, either.” His face clouded and he swallowed hard. “Do you think I might have been able to save her if I’d heard?”

  I was no medical specialist, but judging from the odd angle of her head, I assumed she’d died immediately from a broken neck. “I doubt it.”

  Officer Hogarty’s voice came from out of sight downstairs. “Hands up, everyone! We were told there’s an intruder and a body. If you’re holding a weapon, put it down.”

  Sawdust cocked his head, as if trying to comprehend what the disembodied voice from downstairs was saying. But when I bent down and laid the umbrella on the floor at my feet, he decided the umbrella was more interesting and promptly set about sniffing it. Looked like he’d forgiven me for scolding him. I supposed he couldn’t be blamed for poking the body. Cats were naturally curious creatures, after all.

  I raised my arms over my head and called out, “My cat’s in here! He runs when he’s scared! Please don’t hurt him!” The last thing I wanted was my precious baby startling the officer and taking a reactionary whack from the business end of her police baton.

  “Thanks for the warning.” A head of brown hair worn in a pixie cut appeared as Officer Hogarty peeked around the corner downstairs. Her gaze took in Dakota before it ventured up the staircase and met mine. She stepped into the open in the ground-floor hallway, her gun held at the ready at her side. “Both of you turn around. We need to frisk you. No sudden moves.”

  The “we” was Officer Hogarty and her younger female partner, who stepped into sight now, too. Sawdust darted up the upper staircase as I turned to face the front door, raising my head so I wouldn’t see Mrs. Dolan’s body in my peripheral vision. Another creak sounded as Officer Hogarty began her ascent up the stairs. Her firm hands made their way up and down my body, patting me down. Satisfied I had no weapons hidden on my person, she stepped back and motioned for me to come downstairs.

  “May I get my cat?” I asked.

  “Make it quick.”

  I walked up the steps to where Sawdust stood at the top of the staircase. I scooped him up in my arms, attached his leash to his collar, and carried him down to the bottom floor, where the officers stood watch over Dakota.

  Hogarty stepped to the open door that led into the garage and motioned to a trio of paramedics waiting on the driveway. “Come on in,” Hogarty told them. “But watch your step. We don’t know yet whether we’re dealing with a crime scene.”

  After they came inside, she led me out to the garage, leaving her partner in charge of Dakota. She closed the door behind us, probably so Dakota wouldn’t be able to hear our conversation.

  Her intent gaze locked on my face. “What happened here?”

  Following her lead, I kept my voice low, giving her a quick rundown. I recently bought the house to fix up for resale. I’d arrived a few minutes earlier to start working on the house. I’d been unable to get in the front door because something was blocking it. I used my remote control to access the garage and my key to enter the house from the garage. I was on my way upstairs when I found the body on the landing. I checked the woman’s neck for a pulse but found none. Dakota suddenly appeared downstairs. I didn’t know him, and I’d had no idea he’d been squatting in the house, which used to belong to his grandmother. I’d grabbed an umbrella to improvise a weapon but, fortunately, hadn’t had to use it. I called 911 and, I concluded, “Here we are.”

  “So the front door was locked when you arrived?”

  “Yes.”


  She gestured to the door that led from the garage into the house. “That one, too?”

  I nodded.

  “What about the other doors and windows?”

  I raised my shoulders. “I haven’t checked.”

  “We’ll have the team take a look.” She narrowed her eyes. “Any idea how the kid got into the house? Did he jimmy a door? Break a window?”

  “His grandmother gave him a key that he kept in the frog’s mouth on the front porch.”

  “So you haven’t changed the locks since you bought the place?” Her lips pursed in judgment.

  “No.” Next time I buy a property, it’ll be the first thing I do. “Dakota said the woman on the stairs is the next-door neighbor. He called her Mrs. Dolan.”

  “You don’t know her?”

  “No. I haven’t met the neighbors.” As cold as it had been lately, few people wanted to venture outside unless it was absolutely necessary. I couldn’t blame them for not coming by to introduce themselves. Besides, my visits to the house had not been lengthy.

  Hogarty nodded, her head bobbing as she seemed to be mentally sorting through the details I’d provided. “Did Mrs. Dolan have a key to the house?”

  “I don’t know.” It was certainly possible. Neighbors often exchanged keys in case of emergency, or so they could tend to each other’s plants, pets, and packages while one or another of them was away on vacation. “Dakota said he didn’t hear me come in because he sleeps with headphones in his ears. He told me the vibration from the garage door woke him. He said he didn’t hear the woman fall, either.”

  Hogarty issued a noncommittal grunt and angled her head to indicate the door. “Let’s get you back inside and the kid out here.”

  Dakota and I swapped places, with me now waiting inside while he talked with Officer Hogarty in the garage. As the two of them reentered the house a few minutes later, the paramedics came down the stairs. The one in the lead exchanged a glance with Officer Hogarty and shook his head. In other words, there was no hope for the woman in the doorway.

  Hogarty turned to address Dakota and me. “Remain in the laundry room for the time being. This situation looks like an accident to me, but it’s not my call. The medical examiner’s office has to investigate all deaths that aren’t from natural causes. The pathologist might have some questions for you. I’m going to call homicide, too, see if they want to send someone out to take a look.” She turned to her partner. “Cordon off the yard. We don’t need a bunch of lookie-loos getting in the way.”

  The younger officer nodded and headed out through the garage.

  Officer Hogarty turned back to Dakota. “Is there a Mr. Dolan?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said. “His name’s Carl.”

  Odd. Why isn’t Carl Dolan over here looking for his missing wife? A dark cloud seemed to cross Hogarty’s face as she apparently had the same thought. The dead woman had been here long enough to grow stiff, but her husband hadn’t yet realized she was missing? Then again, I supposed he could be sleeping in.

  Over the next hour, as Dakota lounged against the wall and I sat atop the washing machine with Sawdust curled up in my lap, a number of people arrived on the scene. A two-person crime-scene team. An assistant medical examiner. And Detective Collin Flynn, the investigator who’d handled a murder investigation I’d been unwittingly sucked into. Flynn was green-eyed and dark-haired. While he was by no means tall or brawny, the detective nonetheless appeared formidable, with a wiry, athletic build and an intelligent intensity. He wore navy-blue pants and a starched button-down shirt under a police-issue windbreaker.

  His eyes met mine as he stepped into the small room. “You again?” When Sawdust raised his head, the detective’s gaze shifted to my cat. “Hey, kitty.”

  I let out a long sigh. “Me again. I had nothing to do with this death, either.”

  A wry grin played about his mouth. “That’s what you always say.” He looked down at Sawdust and gave him a pat on the head.

  Sawdust replied with a polite mew.

  Flynn went up the stairs and engaged in a brief powwow with the others before returning to the laundry room where Dakota and I waited. While the forensics team took photographs on the stairs and the ME examined the body on the landing above us, the detective performed a repeat interrogation, taking me into the garage alone and questioning me. I told Flynn everything I’d told Officer Hogarty, but added the fact that the dead woman on the stairs was married.

  His brows formed a V. “Has the husband come by looking for her?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Quarter past ten,” he mused aloud. “Hmm.”

  The door opened and the medical examiner joined us in the garage. He was a fiftyish Asian American man with salt-and-pepper hair and plastic-rimmed glasses. While Flynn’s questions were broader, the medical examiner’s questions specifically addressed the corpse. “Where did you touch the body?” As his glasses began to slide downward, he quirked his nose to force them back into place.

  “On the side of her neck.” I put a hand on my own neck to indicate the spot. “I felt for a pulse.”

  “Did you move the body in any way?”

  The mere thought of touching the dead woman made me shudder involuntarily. “Not intentionally. The front door bumped against her when I tried to push it open, but it barely budged. I left her exactly as I found her after I came inside.”

  When the two were done questioning me, Dakota and I again traded places. The men took much longer interrogating Dakota than they had taken with me. I wonder what that means.

  As the medical examiner went up the lower staircase a second time, the detective slid paper booties over his loafers and handed another pair to Dakota, instructing him to slide them over his bare feet. “Show me where you slept last night,” he told the young man. “But keep your hands at your sides. Don’t touch anything.”

  Was Flynn having trouble believing that Dakota hadn’t heard the woman fall? I had to admit I had trouble believing it myself. There would have been several thumps as she rolled down the steps, and a loud thud when she came to rest on the landing. If she’d been alive as she’d fallen, she probably would have screamed, too. Who wouldn’t cry out when losing their footing and finding themselves plummeting tail over teakettle down a staircase?

  As I continued to wait, my mind pondered what the dead woman could have been doing here in the house. Why would a person enter a deceased neighbor’s residence several weeks after the neighbor had passed away? Had she left something here and come to reclaim it? Had she come to borrow something?

  The detective summoned one of the crime-scene techs and the two looked about the room Dakota had slept in. The tech snapped several photos before closely examining Dakota’s shoes and the clothing strewn about. The tech also shined a flashlight around the room, photographed the remaining contents of the dresser drawers and closet, and bent down to look under the bed and other furniture. A few minutes later, Flynn emerged and returned to the laundry room with Dakota in tow.

  The detective looked from me to Dakota. “Both of you are free to go for now. If I have follow-up questions once the autopsy is complete, I’ll get in touch with you.”

  Dakota glanced down at his feet, which sported only the thin booties. “Can I get my shoes and my jacket?”

  “Sorry,” Flynn said. “We need to keep the house as is until the forensics team completes their inspection.”

  I gestured to the front of the house. “You can wait in my SUV until your ride gets here.” While I’d initially thought the kid might have something to do with Mrs. Dolan’s demise, the fact that the detective had released him told me my suspicions had likely been unjustified.

  The three of us made our way out onto the driveway. Yellow cordon tape stretched from the fence, to a tree, to the mailbox, and on, delineating the perimeter of the lawn. Officer Hogarty’s police cruiser was parked at the curb, Flynn’s unmarked sedan behind it. At the end of the drive sat the medica
l examiner’s vehicle, a white, windowless van long enough to transport human cargo. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out there’d been a death here.

  While it was only a few degrees above freezing outside, several neighbors had nevertheless come outside to gawk, no doubt wondering what was happening at the house. They were so bundled up I could tell little about them. Their breath left steamy conversation bubbles in the air as they spoke to each other, probably speculating on what had taken place. Other residents opted to avoid the cold, and instead had pulled back their curtains to watch the goings-on from their windows. One of those residents was a silver-haired woman in the house on the immediate right. She hadn’t yet ventured out to pick up her newspaper, which lay under the holly bushes next to her front walk. Couldn’t say that I blamed her. With Jack Frost nipping at noses and earlobes, today would be a good day to stay inside and get your news from the television or gossip mill instead.

  Flynn turned to Dakota. “Which house belongs to the Dolans?”

  “That one.” Dakota had wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to stay warm, and merely lifted an index finger to point to the house that sat to the left.

  Like the others on the cul-de-sac, the Dolan home was a two-story colonial. But while the others sported traditional, cheerful shades of paint in yellows, blues, and greens with nicely contrasting shutters, the Dolan home was a monochromatic and unattractive orangey pink, like undercooked salmon. The color might work on a Mediterranean-style stucco home or a beachside snow-cone stand, but on a colonial? Not so much.

  No one stood outside the Dolan home, and the curtains were closed on every visible window. While these signs might indicate nobody was home, the two cars in the driveway seemed to say otherwise. One of the vehicles was a white Chevrolet Impala that was neither new nor old, neither fancy nor plain. The other was a turquoise-blue Mercury Tracer station wagon that had rolled off the assembly line in the last century. One of the neighbor moms had driven one like it in my elementary school carpool years ago. Not many of those still on the road. The back right fender bore a sizable dent, and the front right wheel was missing its hubcap.