Dead in the Doorway Read online

My cousin was being much too humble. He’d actually excelled in math in high school. Ditto for his class in computer-aided design. He could’ve gone on to be an engineer if he’d wanted to. But, like me, he preferred hands-on work.

  Wayne turned the conversation back to dessert. “Mom never gave me her peach pie recipe, either. She said that pie was the only thing that brought her boys home. Of course she said she’d pass the recipe along on her deathbed so it wouldn’t die with her.”

  Given that there was no peach pie on the table, I asked the obvious question. “I take it that didn’t happen?”

  Wayne shook his head. “Mom didn’t keep her peach pie recipe in her recipe box in the kitchen. She had a stroke before she could tell us where she’d hidden it. She spent several days in the hospital before she passed, but she wasn’t able to speak during that time. We looked all over the house when we were cleaning things out, but it never turned up.”

  Carl cut a look to me and Buck. “Maybe you’ll come across the recipe during the renovations.”

  “I’d be surprised if they do.” Mary Sue tapped her forehead. “Lillian kept that recipe up here. She could bake that pie in her sleep.”

  Could be. Colette had her favorite recipes memorized and could prepare them without consulting her notes. Nonetheless, she’d immortalized them in writing in her personal cookbook. After all, she’d had to keep detailed notes as she’d developed and taste-tested the various versions of the recipes, tracking the measurements of the respective ingredients, temperatures, and cook times until she’d perfected the particular palate pleaser. The painstaking process consumed quite a bit of time and effort. She wouldn’t risk her work being lost in her busy brain. While I’d never met Lillian and didn’t want to discredit Mary Sue, I had a sneaky suspicion the pie recipe might still be in the house somewhere. I’d keep an eye out for it. While Nelda seemed to have been a thorn in their sides, Lillian and her peach pie had clearly meant a lot to those gathered here. I couldn’t bring Lillian back, of course, but maybe I could resurrect her beloved, award-winning dessert.

  Andy caught Carl’s eye across the table. “No rush, Carl. But I’ve got the necessary forms at my office for you to sign whenever you’re ready.”

  Forms? What forms is he talking about?

  Carl lifted his chin in acknowledgement. “I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

  I supposed it was none of my business. Even so, I was curious. I told myself I wasn’t nosy, that I was only trying to get to know my new neighbors. But, really, it was pure nosiness. I addressed my question to Andy, hoping to appear more interested in his work than in Carl’s forms. “What line of business are you in, Andy?”

  “Insurance.”

  That explained things. Probably Carl had some sort of life insurance or burial policy to cash in, or maybe a supplemental Medicare policy that covered his healthcare expenses.

  Dakota turned to Daisy. “Why don’t you sing some more? Give us a show while everyone has dessert?”

  Encouraging murmurs came from all corners of the table.

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” Daisy said with a grin before retrieving her instrument. She spent the next quarter hour strumming her mandolin and treating the group to a variety of tunes, ranging from country classics to bluegrass to female pop ballads. I was stunned by how beautiful her voice was. Adele’s got nothing on this girl.

  After enjoying generous slices of Gayle’s butter-pecan cake and Daisy’s melodic voice, Buck and I stood to go, saying good night to the group. Gayle and Bertram walked us to the door.

  I followed Buck out onto the porch and turned back to address the couple. “Thanks for including us.”

  “Of course, hon.” Gayle took both of my hands in hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. “You’re one of us now. The ladies of Songbird Circle. At least until you sell the house.” She pointed a finger at me. “That means you’re on the hook for a side dish for Friday night’s poker game. Lillian always used to host, but Mary Sue has offered to take over. Be there at seven.” With that and a coy grin, she closed the door on us.

  CHAPTER 9

  CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

  SAWDUST

  Sawdust had the house to himself tonight. It had been fun for a while. Whitney’s roommate Emmalee had left her door ajar, and he’d pushed it open to explore her room. He’d found a balled-up sock under her bed and batted that around for a while. He’d kneaded her pillows and taken a catnap in her clean laundry in the basket on the floor. He’d also taken advantage of the alone time to sharpen his claws on the wood trim around the bathroom door. Whitney always scolded him when she caught him doing that, but she always forgave him, too. Being adorable has its benefits.

  Eventually, Sawdust had done all the exploring he cared to. He was in the mood to have his ears rubbed and chest scratched before settling down for the night.

  Where did Whitney go? He liked the evenings when she stayed home with him. It was their special time to play and cuddle. When will she come home?

  He hopped up onto his cat tree by the front window and climbed to the tallest perch to watch for her. He waited, and waited, and waited, for what felt like forever. As he watched for Whitney, a raccoon sauntered across the front yard. The creature stood on his hind legs and stretched his nose up to sniff a garbage can hidden in the bushes next door. He must not have smelled anything appetizing, so he fell back to all fours and ambled off.

  A moment later, a car pulled to a stop at the curb across the street. With his superior feline night vision, Sawdust could see a man sitting in the driver’s seat. The man turned off the car’s lights and motor. He didn’t climb out of the car, though. He seemed to be waiting and watching, too. But for what? Or who?

  Finally, Whitney’s SUV turned in to the driveway, her headlights sweeping across the window. Hooray! Sawdust stood and arched his back, giving it a good stretch to get his blood flowing and his muscles moving. Whitney slid out of her car, bleeped the locks closed, and headed to the porch.

  Sawdust leapt down from his cat tree and ran to the front door. He expected to hear Whitney’s keys in the lock, for Whitney to open the door and come through at any second. What he didn’t expect was to hear her scream.

  CHAPTER 10

  A BLOODY MESS

  WHITNEY

  My scream rang in my ears as I rounded on my pursuer, my key-chain pepper spray at the ready.

  “Sorry!” Detective Flynn raised his hands to protect his face. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Sheesh. What is it with men sneaking up behind me the last few days? “You nearly got a face full, mister.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said. “Got showered in the stuff once at the mall when I was still a beat cop and tried to arrest a shoplifter.”

  “My gosh!” I said. “What did you do?”

  “Sprayed the woman right back,” he said. “Then neither of us could see the other. We got into a blind slapping match. Took me a minute or two, but I finally caught her arms and managed to get her cuffed. Had to dunk my head in the outdoor fountain to wash off the spray.”

  I fought a grin, imagining the straitlaced detective engaged in such antics. Maybe he’s not as straitlaced as I think. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been trying to call you all night but you didn’t answer.”

  I reached into my purse again, this time to retrieve my phone. Sure enough, the screen noted three missed calls from Detective Flynn. I’d forgotten to turn the ringer back on after the memorial service. Oops. “What were you calling about?”

  “I heard from the medical examiner. He found something interesting when he was performing Nelda Dolan’s autopsy.”

  “Uh-oh.” Collin would have tried to contact me only if the “something interesting” meant Nelda’s death hadn’t been an accident, right? Otherwise, the information could have waited until tomorrow. A sick feeling spread through my gut.

  “I should’ve known it wouldn’t be a cut-and-dried case,” he added. “The
re was a full moon Friday night. Full moons bring out the crazy in people.”

  I waved for him to follow me into the house. It was too frigid to stand outside and chitchat. I shut the door behind him and tucked the canister of pepper spray into my purse. Emmalee and Colette were both at work, so the house was quiet. Sawdust mewed and weaved around my ankles in greeting. I picked up the cat, giving my little boy a big kiss on the head before putting him down again. I pulled off my coat and scarf and hung them on the hooks by the front door. The detective eased a large manila envelope from inside his coat, then hung his coat on the hook next to mine.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and skewered the detective with a pointed look. “If you’re going to tell me Nelda Dolan was murdered on my property, I’m going to need a hot toddy.”

  “Round up a mug, then. In fact, make it two.”

  “You’re joining me? Aren’t you on duty?”

  “Only until I fill you in. Then it’s bottom’s up.”

  We made our way to the kitchen, Sawdust skittering ahead of us. The detective took a seat on a barstool at the narrow island while I quickly whipped up a batch of spiked spiced cider and poured the steaming amber liquid into two mugs. I took a generous gulp from one of them to steel myself and set the other on the countertop in front of him. Plunking myself down on the adjacent stool, I turned to face him. “I’m ready now. Shoot.”

  He loosened the metal brad on the envelope as he spoke. “When we left the house Saturday, the assistant ME, Officer Hogarty, and I all thought Nelda Dolan’s death looked accidental. At first it seemed odd that Nelda was found in your house, but her husband told me Nelda had spotted Dakota entering the place when she went to close their bedroom curtains Friday night. She said she was going to run over to let Dakota know that the house had sold and that he was trespassing. It appeared she’d gone upstairs to look for Dakota, didn’t find him there, and was on her way downstairs when she tripped and fell. Dakota told me he had earbuds in his ears and music playing, so it would explain why he didn’t hear her knock or ring the bell, or fall down the stairs.”

  I wrapped my hands around my mug to savor its warmth. “The story makes sense so far, but why did it take Carl Dolan so long to realize his wife was missing? She’d been gone more than twelve hours before you went over to tell him what happened.”

  “Carl said he climbed into bed and fell asleep while Nelda was next door. He claimed he’s a heavy sleeper and didn’t realize Nelda hadn’t come to bed all night. When he and Becky woke in the morning and Nelda wasn’t around, they figured she’d gotten up early to make her weekly run to the grocery store.”

  I raised my mug for another sip. “They didn’t check to see if the car was gone from the driveway?”

  “They hadn’t looked outside, and they didn’t know anything was wrong until I showed up. Or so they say.”

  “You have reason to believe they might be lying?”

  “Possibly.” He pulled some pictures from the envelope before gesturing to my mug. “You might want to drink up. I need you to take a look at these autopsy photos.”

  Autopsy photos? Yikes.

  I took a huge gulp to prepare myself as he spread three photos on the countertop. Sawdust jumped up onto the counter and sniffed the photos, flopping down on his side when they failed to interest him. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to look down. All three photos showed Nelda Dolan’s exposed torso. To respect her privacy, sheets had been draped over her chest and hips, leaving only her belly exposed. Most of her skin had turned a dark red, as if she were sunburned from a long day at the beach. However, there was an odd, light-colored band that started on the right side of her body and made its way across her rib cage to the other side, where it ended in what appeared to be a triangle shape, though only two edges were visible.

  Fortunately, my curiosity replaced my aversion. “What am I looking it?” The odd shape couldn’t be a birthmark or the colors would be reversed, with the mark being darker than the surrounding skin.

  “The coloring? That’s what happens when livor mortis sets in.”

  “Livor mortis?” I’d heard of rigor mortis, when a body stiffens after death. But livor mortis was new to me.

  Collin gave me a quick lesson in livor mortis, which he said was also known as lividity or hypostasis. “Ever sat on a slatted lawn chair or bench and noticed the stripes on the back of your legs when you stood up?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s gravity pulling blood to the lower points in your body. The same thing happens after a person passes away, but because the heart has stopped circulating the blood and the body doesn’t move, the blood remains pooled and turns the skin permanently red or bluish-purple. The stain on the skin tells us how the body was lying.”

  I wasn’t exactly a science wiz, but gravity was a concept I could easily comprehend. “I’m with you so far.”

  He pointed at the narrow part of the image that ran from the edge of her torso across her ribs. “That’s Nelda’s forearm.”

  I recalled the woman’s right arm being tucked under her when she lay in the doorway. I pointed to the triangle. “Is that her hand? Was it lying flat under her?” Even as I asked the question, something told me the triangle couldn’t be her hand. The ninety-degree angle was too perfectly shaped, with well-defined edges that in no way resembled fingers.

  “No,” the detective said.

  “What was it, then?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. She appears to have been holding something. Whatever it was remained in place under her body for several hours after she died. If it had been removed right away, it wouldn’t have left the pattern on her skin. But the object was gone when the medical examiner arrived.”

  “Somebody removed it between the time she died and the time I called 911?”

  “Yes. We believe that person also pushed her down the stairs. There are some scratch marks on the back of her hands and neck. We initially thought they’d resulted from the fall. You may have noticed that the carpet wasn’t tacked down well at the top of the stairs and some of the small nails stuck out.”

  I had indeed noticed this fact. Like the banister over the stairs, the carpet, too, seemed intent on pulling free. Maybe the railing and the carpet planned to run off together, like the dish that ran away with the spoon in the old nursery rhyme.

  “We’re thinking the scratches on her hands were incurred in a struggle over the unknown thing she was carrying. The ones on the back of her neck could be the result of someone reaching out from behind to shove her down the stairs.”

  I cut the guy some serious side eye. “You’re not accusing me, are you?”

  “If I thought you had anything to do with Nelda’s death,” Collin replied, “I wouldn’t have shared this information with you. But I thought you might know if there was something of value left in the home that a burglar, or Nelda herself, would have been tempted to take. Something someone else would have wanted bad enough to come back for.”

  “And it would have been triangle shaped?” Knowing the shape would certainly help us narrow things down.

  “Possibly,” he said. “But it’s also possible that the right angle that’s visible on her skin is the corner of something square or rectangular.”

  “Oh.” So much for narrowing down the list of potential items.

  “It’s also possible the item of value was inside something with a right angle.”

  “Some type of box or container, you mean?”

  “Right. There’s no way to tell from the pattern on Nelda’s skin whether the shape was solid or hollow.”

  My mind went back to the many items Lillian Walsh and her sons had left behind in the house. A cake server I’d found in a kitchen drawer was triangular, but it had no right angles. Same for the plastic hangers hanging in the closets. Besides, the hangers weren’t solid. Did Lillian own a speed square? The triangular tool, also known as a Swanson tool, was commonly used by carpenters like me for framing and as a saw guide for
cutting wood. But even if there had been a speed square in the house, it seemed highly unlikely Nelda would take it and that someone else would then steal it out from under her. That left me with squares and rectangles to consider. The list of such items was endless. The collectors’ tins Colette had pointed out in the kitchen. The playing cards. The small jewelry box full of costume jewelry. The rose-shaped soaps in the box in the bathroom. There’d been several rectangular boxes of buttons and other items in the sewing room. Still, none of these seemed especially important or valuable. Then again …

  “When I was at the wake at the Garners’ house tonight, one of the neighbors mentioned that Nelda had accused Lillian of stealing a pendant from her. It was in the shape of a peacock and made of sapphires. Carl bought it for Nelda years ago, when he was a soldier in Vietnam.”

  Flynn’s brows rose. “The angle could have been the corner of a jewelry box.”

  “There was a small one on top of Lillian’s bed last Friday. I took a quick peek inside. It was filled with jewelry, but I didn’t pay much attention to the contents. Her sons had left it behind so I assumed everything inside was costume pieces that weren’t worth much.” Could Nelda’s peacock pendant have been inside? Had Nelda’s accusation against Lillian been valid? “I used my phone to take photos at the house last Friday, but I didn’t take any pictures of the inside of the jewelry box. I was taking the photos to document the work we needed to do.”

  “They could prove helpful, though. They might show what’s missing.” The detective jotted a note in his notebook. “Anything else you can think of? Anything at all?”

  As I looked up in thought, my eyes spotted the recipe box and cookbooks Colette had taken from the flip house and stashed in our glass-front cabinet. Could a cookbook have left the imprint on Nelda’s belly? I turned to the detective. “Carl Dolan mentioned Lillian’s prize-winning peach pie at the wake tonight. Lillian used to make it for their get-togethers, and from the way everyone talked, they all loved it. She’d told her sons she’d give them the recipe before she died, but she didn’t get around to it. The recipe wasn’t in her recipe box. I know because my roommate looked through the box.” I pointed at the cabinet. “That’s the box right there. Colette saw some other recipes in the box she was interested in, so she brought it home, along with those cookbooks. Do you think the recipe card could have been hidden between the pages of a cookbook? Maybe that’s what was under Nelda.”