10

NEWPORT CHIEF OF POLICE CHET BROWER STOOD ASIDE AS the police photographer snapped pictures of the crime scene. Aside from the wrenching fact that someone in his jurisdiction had been savagely murdered—Nuala Moore had suffered multiple blows to her head—there was something about the entire picture that bothered him.

There had been no reported incidents of housebreaking in this area for several months. That kind of thing started when many houses were closed for the winter and so became favorite targets for looters looking for television sets and such. Amazing how many people still didn’t have an alarm system, Brower thought. Amazing, too, how many people were careless about locking their doors.

The chief had been in the first squad car to answer the 911 call. When they had arrived at the house, and the young woman who identified herself as Mrs. Moore’s stepdaughter pointed to the front window, he had looked in and seen just what she had reported. Before forcing the front door, he and Detective Jim Haggerty had gone to the back of the house. Careful to barely touch the doorknob to avoid smudging existing fingerprints, he had found the door unlocked and they had gone in.

A flame was still flickering under a pot, now burned black. The acrid smell of charred potatoes overwhelmed the other, more pleasant scent. Roasting lamb, his mind had registered. Automatically he had turned off the stove’s burners before going through the dining room into the living room.

He hadn’t realized that the stepdaughter had followed them until they reached the body and he heard her moan. “Oh, Nuala, Finn-u-ala,” she had said as she sank to her knees. She reached out her hand toward the body, but he grabbed it.

“Don’t touch her!”

At that moment the front doorbell chimed, and he remembered noticing that the table in the dining room was set for company. Approaching sirens announced that more squad cars were on the scene, and in the next few minutes the officers had managed to get the stepdaughter and other arriving guests into a neighbor’s house. Everyone was told not to leave until the chief had a chance to talk to them.

“Chief.”

Brower looked up. Eddie Sousa, a rookie cop, was beside him.

“Some of the folks waiting to talk to you are getting kind of restless.”

Brower’s lifelong habit of frowning, whether in deep thought or annoyance, furrowed the skin of his forehead. The cause this time was annoyance. “Tell them I’ll be over in ten minutes,” he said testily.

Before leaving, he walked through the house once more. The place was a mess. Even the third-floor studio had been ransacked. Art supplies were thrown on the floor, as though hastily examined and discarded; drawers and cabinets had been emptied. Not too many intruders who had just committed murder would have taken the time for so thorough a search, he reasoned. Also, it would seem obvious from the overall appearance of the house that no money had been spent on it in a long time. So what was there to steal? he wondered.

The three second-floor bedrooms had been subjected to the same search. One of them was tidy, except for the open closet door and yanked-out dresser drawers. The bedding had been turned back, and it was obvious the linen was fresh. It was Brower’s guess that this room had been prepared for the stepdaughter.

The contents of the largest bedroom were scattered everywhere. A pink leather jewelry chest, the same kind he once gave his wife for Christmas, was open. What was obviously costume jewelry was scattered on the surface of the maple lowboy.

Brower made a note to ask Nuala Moore’s friends about any valuable jewelry she might have had.

He spent a long moment studying the bedroom of the deceased in its disarray. Whoever did this wasn’t a vicious, common thief, or a drug-addicted burglar, he decided. He had been looking for something. Or she had been looking for something, he amended. Nuala Moore had apparently realized her life was in danger. From the look of things, his guess was that she had been running in an attempt to escape when she was struck down from behind. Anyone could have done that—man or woman. It didn’t require great strength.

And there was something else Brower noticed. Moore had obviously been preparing dinner, which suggested she was in the kitchen when the intruder arrived. She had tried to escape her attacker by running through the dining room, which meant the intruder must have been blocking the kitchen door. He or she probably came in that way, and since there was no sign of forced entry, the door must have been unlocked. Unless, of course, Mrs. Moore had let the intruder in herself. Brower made a note to check later whether the lock was the kind that stayed open once it was released.

But now he was ready to talk to the dinner guests. He left Detective Haggerty to wait for the coroner.