Chapter 3
Dear Natasha,
Your show on decorating porches was fantastic. I was so involved that I missed the trick you shared! Would you please tell me what it was? My front porch is a nightmare.
Embarrassed by My Veranda in Porchtown,
New Jersey
Dear Embarrassed by My Veranda,
Pick three colors. The first must be the color of your front door. The second should be the color of your house, shutters, or your porch. The third can be anything you like. Use those colors to decorate with planters, urns, wreaths, chairs, pillows, house numbers, etc. Sticking to those colors will bring everything together.
Natasha
Daisy and I entered the yard and I closed the gate behind us. We followed Thomas to the back. I could make out a turquoise blue sneaker in the grass.
Daisy and I ran toward the blue shoe, which was still on Lark’s foot.
She lay near the back porch on her stomach, her right arm bent, and the fingers of her right hand outstretched to a flower garden. Next to her was a ladder. The kind that extended as far as a person needed.
“Lark!” I exclaimed. I reached for my cell phone and called 911. I punched speaker on the phone and knelt beside her.
“Lark?” I said her name softly and gently patted her cheek, but she didn’t respond.
The 911 operator came on the phone. “Where is your emergency?”
Lark felt cold. Dead cold.
I gasped and drew back, my hands shaking. With the other hand, I reached for Lark’s neck. Deep inside, I knew she was dead, but I sought a pulse anyway.
I told the dispatcher the address and in the vain hope that Thomas wouldn’t hear me and be scarred for life, I whispered, “I think Lark Bickford is dead.”
Every fiber in my body wanted to stay with Lark, but I had to get Thomas out of the yard first.
I scrambled to my feet. It was then that I realized she had drawn something in the mulch. Dried up chunks of wood aren’t the best medium for drawing. Why couldn’t it have been sand? I stared at it, realizing with a chill that Lark had left a message. At the risk of completely grossing out Thomas, I whipped out my phone and took three quick photos of it.
I took Thomas’s hand. “Let’s go get your mom.”
“Is Grandma alive?” he asked, looking up at me with scared eyes.
I dodged the question. “We’ll know more when the rescue squad gets here.”
Still holding Thomas’s hand, I opened the gate and marched him toward his mother, who was speaking with a chubby woman about my height. Short dark hair fluffed in large curls around her face. One of the Eames boys had attached himself to her leg. The others ran among the canopy tents across the way.
“Excuse me. Paisley,” I said softly, “there’s something wrong with Lark. It’s probably best if Thomas waits out here.”
Paisley looked at her son. “What did you do?”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not him. He’s a hero because he found her.”
At the word hero, Thomas’s little chest swelled with pride.
“Frank! Help your mom watch the boys. Thomas, stay here with Dad.” Paisley followed me through the yard and screamed when she saw her mother on the ground.
Fortunately, the gate swung open again with a creak and Officer Wong strode toward us. She had let her hair grow out into a sleek bob that framed her face. One of those modern cuts, high in the back and longer in the front. She walked with calm reassuring confidence, as if there wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. From what I had seen of her in terrible situations, I thought that was probably true. The African American Wong had had a terrible marriage and been glad to divorce her husband, but she’d kept his last name anyway.
Like me, Wong had never met a cupcake she didn’t like. Her uniform strained against a generous bosom. I had never understood why women’s police uniforms fit them so poorly. Women had been on police forces for ages. Surely someone in charge had noticed that problem by now.
She nodded at me briefly while assessing the situation.
Paisley kneeled beside her mother, tapping her cheek and talking to her.
“Ma’am? Could you please step aside for me?” she asked Paisley.
Paisley reluctantly got to her feet. In a flash, Wong was on her knees beside Lark. I could hear her talking into her radio to make sure an ambulance was on the way.
“Is she . . . ?” asked Paisley.
Wong stood up and turned to Paisley. She pulled out a pad and a pen. “Are you related to her?”
“I’m her daughter, Paisley Eames. Will she be okay?”
“Can you tell me what happened?” asked Wong.
“No.” Paisley squeaked, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I guess my son found her. Sophie came to get me. Is she conscious?” Paisley started toward her mother.
“Hey, Sophie,” said Wong. “How about you and Paisley go to the gate and make sure the EMTs know where to find us?”
Wong was a master of finagling a difficult situation. She wanted Paisley to stop tampering with the crime scene. But it would sound so terribly cold to actually say that.
“Absolutely.” I wrapped an arm around Paisley and walked her to the gate where Frank waited anxiously.
“What’s going on?” He tapped his watch. “Should I start school?”
Paisley wiped tears from under her eyes with her fingers and sniffled. With a bright smile, she said, “They wouldn’t want to miss school.”
Five little boys protested simultaneously. Only Thomas remained silent. He watched his mom carefully. When she walked outside the gate, he wrapped his arms around her and clung to her.
Frank frowned at her. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head from side to side. “We . . . we might need to call Mrs. Gurtz to help us out with the kids for a few days.”
She whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear.
“Nooo,” he said sadly. He gently brushed her hair back off her face and kissed her cheek before hugging her. “What happened?”
“It looks like she fell off a ladder,” choked Paisley with tears streaming down her face.
When Frank let her go, he clapped his hands and acted happy. “Okay, gang. Let’s go.”
Thomas didn’t move. “Me too?”
Frank ran a fond hand over his hair. “Yeah, you too. Avo will take you. You’re going to learn about the planets today.”
After a glance at his mom, Thomas hurried off with his brothers and the dark-haired woman.
Their timing couldn’t have been better. The emergency medical technicians walked up and in through the gate. Paisley and I followed them.
While they worked, they asked her questions about her mother’s health. One of them came over to Wong, who stood beside me. “I think you’d better call the medical examiner.”
Wong nodded and asked for a medical examiner on her radio.
Seeing Lark’s lifeless body pained me to the core. She had been such a lovely person, kind to others, and generous with her time. The scene was oddly incongruous with Lark sprawled on the grass, her colorful garden blooming all around.
As I looked at her, I became curious about Lark’s position. She lay with her head close to the house. The ladder had landed beside her. I walked closer for a look at the ladder. I didn’t see any broken rungs.
Wong whispered to me. “If she fell off that ladder, wouldn’t she be lying in the opposite position?”
“That’s what I was thinking. And wouldn’t the ladder be on top of her, or askew?”
“Mmm,” she murmured. “Too perfect. Somebody placed it there.”
“She just got back from a trip last night,” I whispered. “It was dark when their plane arrived. It doesn’t make sense for her to be out here cleaning gutters or washing windows at six in the morning.”
“You wouldn’t catch me doing it that early. Must have been dark then. Have you been in the house?”
“Yes.”
“Did she make coffee?”
“There are two mugs in the sink,” I said.
“And just how would you happen to know that?” asked a nicely masculine voice that I knew very well. I turned to find Wolf Fleishman of the Violent Crimes Unit of the Alexandria Police. Wolf and I had dated for a while. We parted under unusual circumstances, but I was happy to say that we remained friends. He had a wife and took care not to be alone with me so as not to upset her. I respected that even if it was sometimes inconvenient. Wolf fought a battle with his weight, too, but he looked quite handsome, if not exactly the image of fitness. He had dark brown hair that had gone silver around his temples, and the most aggravating poker face that I have ever encountered. It was next to impossible to determine what he might be thinking.
“Her daughter, Paisley, asked me to get some bungee cords for their tent.”
A man with a terrific tan and beautifully trimmed hair arrived. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat. The EMTs and Wolf appeared to know him well.
A police photographer and a couple of crime scene investigators followed him in.
He walked toward Lark but stopped to introduce himself to Paisley. He murmured condolences with the ease of someone used to death and the attending pain of their loved ones. I had a bad feeling that Daisy and I were about to be kicked out of a crime scene.
He kneeled and uttered, “Oh no. Not Lark!”
Wong whispered, “The most sought-after man in Old Town. Kind of a young Richard Gere.”
Why didn’t I know this good-looking guy? “More like Hugh Grant. Where did he come from?”
“Dr. Peter Chryssos,” she whispered. “Joined the medical examiner’s staff about a year ago. Newly divorced and available.” She gave me a sharp glance and grinned. “Try to restrain yourself.”
“No problem.”
Dr. Chryssos stood up and stepped back. Much as Wong and I had done, he gazed up at the porch roof and down at the ground where the ladder lay. “What’s your assessment?” he asked Wolf.
“I think her killer staged this scene. He must have been in a hurry because he didn’t think it through.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” said Dr. Chryssos. “I’ll know more about the time of death from the autopsy, but I’d guess no more than two or three hours ago.”
Paisley gasped and cried, “No! Not an autopsy. She would hate that.”
Dr. Chryssos gazed at her in surprise. “I’m sorry, Paisley, but autopsies are required by the state when there is an unexplained death.”
Paisley looked pained. “Unexplained? She fell!” Paisley covered her face with both of her palms. “I knew she was too old to live alone. I should have done something. Made her move in with us.” She dropped her hands, weeping. Wiping them like a child, she looked my way. “She would have hated that, but she would still be alive.”
“I need to get her out of here,” whispered Wong. “No one should have to see this part.” Wong wrapped an arm around Paisley. “Let’s see if we can find your husband.” They walked toward the street.
“I gather you noticed that her body is the wrong way around. If she had fallen off the ladder, her head would be away from the house,” said Dr. Chryssos to Wolf.
“Unless she’s got a missing cat who was on the porch roof, I can’t think of any reason for her to be climbing a ladder in the dark of night. Cause of death?” Wolf asked.
“Not sure. Right now, I’d guess blunt force trauma resulting in traumatic brain injury.”
“I thought you agreed that she didn’t fall,” said Wolf.
“Not from a fall. From a blow to the head.” Dr. Chryssos kneeled beside Lark as Wolf looked on. “There’s definitely blood on the back of her head. It’s largely hidden by her hair, but someone whacked her from behind.” He squatted and studied the mulch. “Looks like she left us a message.”
Wolf peered at it. “A circle with a dot in the center?”
“Or possibly a G,” opined Dr. Chryssos. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Can’t say that it does. But mulch isn’t the best medium for writing.” Wolf glanced at the photographer, “Make sure you get some good shots of this before someone accidentally steps on it.”
When Dr. Chryssos stood up, he turned and spied Daisy and me. Daisy readily introduced herself, wagging her tail and kissing up to him. He peeled off his gloves and squatted to pet her. “Lark didn’t mention that she had a dog.”
He rose and I held my right hand out to him. “Sophie Winston. Daisy is my dog.”
His eyebrows actually jumped. I could hear Wolf stifling a laugh.
“I’ve heard about you,” said Dr. Chryssos.
“Don’t believe half of it,” I responded.
He smiled at me. “Has anyone been inside? I’d like to have a look.”
I volunteered to fetch the keys. Maybe if I made myself useful, they wouldn’t be so quick to throw me out. I found Paisley and Wong in front of the house with Frank. A crowd had gathered. It was awful. Half of them were whispering and watching, the other half were clustered around Paisley, crying and asking what had happened.
I pried Paisley away and asked for the house keys.
She extracted them from her purse. Her face wrinkled with grief and tears stained her cheeks. Holding a tissue to her nose with one hand, she handed them to me with the other. I was glad to leave the scene in the front and return to Wolf. Wong came with me.
Chryssos, Wolf, and Wong pulled on gloves. It was already apparent that someone had murdered poor Lark. As much as I wanted to go inside with them, I knew I couldn’t take a chance that I would further contaminate the crime scene with Daisy’s fur. And they would only kick me out anyway. Besides, I had been in the house earlier and Lark had probably already been dead by then. The only things I had touched were the coffee machine and the drawers in the laundry room, so I didn’t think I had ruined any evidence, unless something had been contaminated by a loose bit of Daisy’s fur that had wafted off inside the house.
The photographer got to work right away. Lark was fully dressed in blue pedal pushers, a blue and white tunic top with three-quarter-length sleeves, a chunky white necklace, two bangle bracelets, one blue, one white, and lapis earrings. Not the attire for sleeping or cleaning gutters. She must have been up early, otherwise she would have been wearing bedclothes. And she must have been killed before her family arrived to set up the tent. Otherwise, she would have gone outside and said hello to her family or invited the children in for cinnamon toast and juice. Not to mention that she would have been wearing a sweater or jacket at that hour if she had planned to be outside for any length of time.
I approached Wolf. “Just so you know, Daisy and I were in Lark’s house this morning.”
Wolf looked chagrined. “Of course you were.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic. It’s not like I knew she had been murdered. You can ask Paisley about it. She requested that I go in the house and she gave me her keys. I’m just telling you in case you find Daisy’s fur or my fingerprints.”
He tried to suppress a grin. “Yeah, okay. Thanks for letting me know.”
It would take a while for them to go through the house. They were still suiting up in protective gear to avoid contamination when Daisy and I left.
Frank must have unloaded a van while I was in the back. A beautifully renovated sideboard was under the tent, along with two sets of nightstands, a vanity, headboards, and assorted tables and chairs. A couple was admiring them and asked me the price of a set of nightstands. I couldn’t exactly say someone had been murdered and ask if they could come back later. I was stammering a bit when a man with cinnamon brown hair and a high forehead stepped up and stated a price.
I had never met him before. He was confident and surprisingly knowledgeable about Paisley’s pieces. He chatted up the couple with ease, brushing his hair out of his eyes a few times. I assumed it was supposed to stay up but insisted on falling flat. I put him in his late twenties, short in stature with well-muscled arms that strained the sleeves of his t-shirt. He had a stubble beard that was quite short, except for an odd fluff under his bottom lip.
The couple wrote a check for the furniture, which he promptly tucked into his jeans pocket. He loaded the nightstands on a dolly and offered to wheel them to their car. The three of them chatted merrily as they walked away. Clearly, he had to be a friend of Paisley and Frank. I couldn’t imagine a stranger having the moxie to accept money and sell their goods.
I waited for him to return, not completely sure that he would.