A Stone's Throw, James Ziskin [best books to read for students .TXT] 📗

whoever left that stuff there has had plenty of time to get rid of it by now.”

“Time, yes. Stuff, no,” I said. “I have both the newspaper and the gun in a safe place.”

“How did you manage that?” asked Frank. “That house has been boarded up since Chuck Lenoir died.”

“The storm cellar door was unlocked.”

“That might be construed as trespassing,” said Pryor.

“Are you going to arrest her?” asked Frank. “She’s giving you a gift, here. Is that how you thank her?”

Pryor removed his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He nodded at length and said we had a deal. I would be given access to Bruce Robertson in the morning, and he would investigate the caretaker’s house right away.

“May I come with you?” I asked.

“Dressed like that?”

I prevailed upon the sheriff to wait until I’d had a chance to speak to Fred Peruso, the Montgomery County coroner, before driving all of six hundred yards to Tempesta Farm. I’d known Fred for several years, but he became one of my favorite guys during the Jordan Shaw murder case. Since then, the cigar- and pipe-smoking doctor and I were old chums. He agreed to call me Ellie as long as I called him Fred. For a sixty-year-old man, he was in good shape and remarkably vain. His head of closely cropped white hair gave him the look of a fallen angel. Or a defrocked priest.

“Junior prom?” he asked when he spotted me.

“No. Skydiving,” I said.

He smirked and asked what I was doing on a lonely road at 2:00 a.m. in an evening gown.

“Looking for a handsome doctor to tell me about Micheline Charbonneau.”

“I’m your man. But we haven’t formally identified the body yet.”

“Can you tell me more or less how long she’s been dead? I won’t quote you on it until you’re sure.”

He produced his pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his vest pocket. He packed the bowl and lit up.

“Come take a walk with me,” he said, and we set off toward a tree stump not far away.

Once we were out of earshot of the lawmen he asked if I really wanted to hear this. “Not all corpses are going to be as beautiful and as well preserved as Marilyn Monroe.”

“Are you forgetting Darleen Hicks?” I replied. “If I could stomach that, I can take what you have to say now.”

He puffed on his pipe. “Fair enough. The body has already putrefied. Smells worse than anything you can imagine. Made even worse because it was shut inside a locked car. And the skin was black and blistering.”

“So how long?”

“And the maggots were having a feast and lots of them in the pupa stage,” he continued, ignoring my question. “The body is bloating, and excreting fluids from all the orifices and ruptures in the skin. No one’s going to want to buy that used car, I can tell you that.”

I felt green. “Okay, so what does all that tell you about how long she’s been dead?”

“Best guess is at least a week. Maybe seven or eight days. No flies yet. A lot depends on the temperature and moisture. But she’s been in that car more than five days and fewer than ten. Unless she was refrigerated before being dumped here.”

“Cause of death?”

“Neck appears to be broken. An x-ray will confirm that in an instant.”

“Any other possible causes?”

“When the decomposition of a body is so far along, it’s not easy to determine from a cursory physical examination. The skin’s so black you can’t see bruises or lacerations. Even stab wounds or bullet holes are hard to distinguish from the natural ruptures in the skin caused by the decomposition and the buildup of gases. Of course I’ll know a lot more after I finish the postmortem tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll stop by to get the verdict, if that’s all right.”

“Eight a.m. at City Hospital. I’ve got a tee time at ten. Don’t be late.”

“Some of us want to get to bed before the sun comes up,” said Pryor when I told him I was ready. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know why I’m letting you come along. This is police business.”

“I’m a witness,” I reminded him. “Plus, I know where to look inside the house. It’ll save time, and you’ll be able to get to bed before the sun comes up.”

“Cool your jets. You can come along. Let’s go.”

I led the sheriff and two of his deputies—Bell and Sinclair—to the window I’d tumbled through while making good my escape Thursday afternoon. It was shut now, and I must have turned white.

“Did you close it?” Pryor asked.

“No. I just ran for my life.”

He motioned to one of the deputies to try the window. It took a couple of tugs, but it opened. Whoever had shut it hadn’t locked it again. Pryor thought it had fallen shut by itself.

“The sash cord is probably rotted through,” he said.

Convinced that my second tour of the Tempesta caretaker’s house would be less terrifying, given my armed escort, I learned nevertheless that the expected outcome isn’t always the true one. My protectors inspired little confidence, particularly when Pryor asked me to lead the way.

“After you.”

“I’m not going in there first,” I huffed in a low voice. “It’s someone else’s turn. Send one of your boys in there with a flashlight.”

“All right, we’re going to search the place in two teams,” said Pryor to his deputies once we had all climbed through the window. He coughed, frowned, and clarified. “Bell and Sinclair, you two check out the upstairs. Miss Stone and I will—” Another cough. “We’ll take the rooms down here.”

“I think we should abort the mission,” I said in full voice.

They all gawked at me as if I’d just yelled fire in a crowded theater.

“Fire,” I said calmly. “This place is on fire.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The caretaker’s house was indeed burning, and fast. Deputies Bell and Sinclair led the charge through the window,