Love You to Death, D.J. Reid [books to read this summer txt] 📗

envelope. She managed not to roll her eyes. Maybe she was getting used to law enforcement types showing up in the History Department.

I closed the door behind her before opening the envelope and spreading the photos across my desk. The police photographer had panned his camera around the bedroom. Four photos told the story, one shot toward each wall. Against the first wall stood a dresser beside a door, presumably a closet. The next photo showed the room’s outer wall with a single, wide window with a room-darkening roller shade, no curtain. Underneath the window was a low cedar chest. Continuing the pan, the next wall held what would be the door to the bathroom, still closed, likely still locked.

The last photo was the most dramatic. At left was the bed, probably a queen-size, still neatly made. At right was the shattered doorframe and the open door. In between, slumped against the wall, head bent forward, legs splayed as if she were an abandoned rag doll, was the body of Trish Vanderark. Between her body and the bed, her arm looked as if it had been flung outward by the gun’s recoil. The revolver was still in her grip.

I reached in a desk drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Then I looked very closely at each photo in turn. Even Sherlock’s 19th-century technology seemed light years beyond that available to old Gaius.

4

When all else failed, Gaius Chrysanthus hied himself to a corner wine bar to soak up any gossip that might help solve a case. I settled for coffee at the counter of the Dixie Diner.

The owner, standing behind the counter, was a self-described “scrawny old dame,” a town legend. I didn’t know her real name. Maybe no one did. For some long-forgotten reason, everyone called her Bubbles.

Midafternoon. The lunch crowd was gone. I was the only customer. Bubbles set a mug of coffee in front of me and went back to wiping down the counter.

“I heard about Trish Vanderark on the news.” I lied, but I knew the story had been on the radio. And I could hear Bubbles’ radio playing in the kitchen. She probably kept it on all day.

“Damn shame.” Bubbles continued wiping. “She was a nice kid. Too good for that partner of hers.”

“Darla Hoffman.”

“Yeah.”

I floated out an idea. “I heard they argued a lot.”

“Jealous one, that Darla gal.” Anyone under fifty was a “gal” to Bubbles.

“Yeah?”

Bubbles finished wiping and leaned back against the counter.

“They were jawing in the back booth just the other day. Got pretty heated. I caught a snippet or two, walking back and forth to the kitchen.”

“What did they argue about?”

“Darla accused Trish of seeing someone else.” Bubbles caught herself up. “You a friend of theirs?”

“Never met either one. Just heard the report on the radio. Curious. You know?”

“Yeah. Well, all I can tell you is that Trish was a pretty nice girl. Good worker, as students go. Neat. On time.”

“You say she and Darla argued yesterday?”

“Before Trish’s shift. She was here to work the dinner hour.”

“Darla stick around?”

“Nah, she stamped out in a huff. Trish came round to the back, put on her apron, and went to work. Later on, when she had a break though, I saw she was writing a card. Showed it to me. Left it in back, saying she’d give it to Darla when things had cooled down.”

“Mind if I take a look at it.”

Bubbles shot me a look but then shrugged. “Suppose it doesn’t make any difference now.” She disappeared into the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and returned with the card. The flowery front said “I’m Sorry.” Inside, Trish had written in a sloping backhand, “Darla, I know you find it hard to believe sometimes, but you are my one true love. Honestly. Love, Trish.”

I read the message a second time and handed it back. I must have hmm-ed.

“Hm, what?” Bubbles asked.

“Just noticing the handwriting, that’s all.”

The bell on the door jangled, and Bubbles and I turned. Against the outside light, the silhouette could have been a man or woman. Thickset, parka, jeans, boots. Then, as the figure came closer, I realized it was a woman.

“Darla,” Bubbles greeted her in a neutral tone.

Hoffman nodded. “I came for Trish’s things.”

Bubbles shrugged a sigh and headed for the kitchen.

I said, “I was sorry to hear about your partner.”

Hoffman’s dull, lifeless eyes found my face after a beat or two.
It was plain that she hadn’t slept yet. She got a word out,

“Thanks.”

Bubbles returned with a shopping bag and handed it to Hoffman, who muttered thanks again and shambled out.

As Hoffman retreated beyond the glass, Bubbles pointed a gnarled, accusing finger. “I heard her say she’d kill Trish if she ever caught her cheating on her.”

“Yeah?”

“Guess Trish saved her the trouble. Sad, don’t you think?”

“You think she was cheating on her?”

“Trish was young and pretty. Who knows. But, no, I don’t think so. I think she was being like she said in that card — honest.”
I paid for the coffee and started back to the campus.

5

Walking washes the mind, thought Gaius Chrysanthus. The flapping of his sandals on the cobblestones of a quiet side street on the Esquiline Hill blended with distant sounds in other streets — oxcart drivers shouting at their beasts, street-sellers hawking their wares....

I could use that, I thought, hanging my coat behind the office door and rubbing the chill out of my hands. Rome was probably a good deal warmer than Indiana, at the moment. Sandals indeed. I kicked off my wet shoes, wondering why I hadn’t put on boots this morning, then remembering that I’d left the house in a rush. I padding over to my desk in stocking feet and opened the drawer where I’d place the envelope of crime scene photos. I looked at the one that showed Trish Vanderark lying dead against the bedroom wall, her arm flung out still holding the revolver. I could have just looked at the image in my mind’s eye. It was accurate. But I wanted to double-check. Then I punched in Foster Newkirk’s phone number.

He answered on the second ring.

“The trouble with locked room murders is you get to thinking the room actually was locked.”

“Uh. Okay,” said Foster.

“I assume you’ve been keeping an eye on Darla Hoffman. I saw her at the Dixie Diner awhile ago.”

“Yeah, I’ve had a man watching her. She told the policewoman she wanted to be alone about midmorning.”

“Have you let her back into the house?”

“No, it’s still a crime scene — for now. I’m not going to be able to hold it for long.”

“You won’t have to.”

“You figured it out?”

I told Foster my reasoning. I told him about the doors, the fireplace, the lamp, and so on. It must have been convincing. When I finished, he said, “Jeez, you make it sound obvious.”

I let the comment slide.

“From what I saw this afternoon, Foster, Darla Hoffman is a mess. If you want my advice, confront her. My guess is she’ll simply give it up.”

6

The next day, Foster Newkirk invited me for coffee. Not at the Dixie Diner.

We met in the Student Union coffee shop. Midmorning. A few students sat at scattered tables studying or quietly talking, but the place was mostly empty. Foster and I sat across from each other in one of the booths, mugs of coffee steaming between us. With a little imagination we could have been back in school together.

“I knew,” said Foster, tapping the nail of his index finger on the table top, “I knew something wasn’t right. It was the blood smear. It was above the splatter, rather than below it.”

“There are ways that could have been done, but, yeah, your intuition was accurate.”

“Someone shoots himself — herself — through the mouth, it’s gonna blow out the back of the skull and splatter the wall,” he continued. “Which it did.”

“So the only way she could have made the downward smear of blood is if she’d been crouching when she shot herself. That way the splatter would have hit the wall and she might — might — have been thrown up against the wall and then slid down leaving the smear of blood above the spatter. But that was pretty unlikely.”

“Very unlikely,” he agreed.

“It seemed more likely that Trish Vanderark’s head was bloodied before she was shot, or before she shot herself,” I said. “During the argument, Darla Hoffman might have hit her with enough force to bloody the back of her head but not kill her. Trish, hurting, fed up, goes to the bedroom, locks herself in, gets out the gun, slumps against the wall leaving the smear. Then she kills herself and that leaves the spatter.”

“Sure. That works. But like you suggested, that wasn’t what happened.”

“No, I was pretty sure it wasn’t. There didn’t seem to be anything lying around that Hoffman could have hit her with. Sure there was the broken lamp but it was a pretty flimsy affair. There was no evidence that it was used as a weapon. It simply got knocked over and broken.”

“But you were right when you said yesterday that you wondered if Vanderark was dead or dying before she was shot.”

“The timing was off. That was the real clue. There were two unaccountable delays, if Wodz could be believed. One was between the end of the argument and the gunshot, and the other was between the gunshot and the crash of Darla breaking down the bedroom door. Why?”

“Well,” said Newkirk, “your theory proved to be true. Hoffman and Vanderark argued, which led to a scuffle. The lamp wasn’t all that got broken. Hoffman confessed that she shoved Trish, who lost her footing and fell, cracking her skull on the fireplace hearth. Literally. That’s when Darla Hoffman panicked. Trish Vanderark was either dead or certainly looked dead to Darla.”

“Big time panic was my guess, because she knew that people — Bubbles at the Dixie Diner for one — had heard her say that she’d kill Trish if she caught her cheating on her. Now Trish was dead, or seemed to be. And she was sure to be blamed.”

“So,” Foster picked up the narrative, “she carried Trish into the bedroom and set her against the wall, leaving the smear in the process. Then she got her gun and put it in Trish’s hand, stuck the barrel in Trish’s mouth, and pulled the trigger.”

We both shuddered at the cold calculation that must have taken.

Foster swallowed some coffee and continued, “Her whole motive was to cover up the fact that Trish was already dead or at least dying. The exit wound would hide the fact that Trish’s head had been bashed in by the fall against the brick hearth.”

“I can’t even imagine what that would take to do that to your lover,” I said.

Foster took another noisy slurp. “Hoffman would have been running after that,” he continued. “Her clothes are blood-splattered. She tears them off — by the way, how’d you know she stuffed them up the chimney?”