By the time we got back to Fulton, Carrie was in full hunger mode. Charlotte and I had grabbed a quick bite—very quick, and very cheap—to eat along the way, but I hadn’t been able to feed her and drive at the same time, so she had been cheated of her afternoon meal. When I pulled up to the curb outside the house, she was starting to whimper. I knew from experience that the next thing would be a full-blown wail.
“I’m just going to stay here in the car and feed her,” I told Charlotte. “There’s nothing to sit on inside, other than the floor, so I might as well just stay here, where it’s comfortable.”
She nodded.
“Would you mind getting the baby out of the seat and giving her to me?” I was already scooting the driver’s seat back and unbuttoning my coat. “If you want, you can walk across the street and see if Mrs. Oberlin is home, and ask her if she knows where to find Rodney Clark, while I do this. I’ll help you carry the tile and wood inside afterwards.”
“Sure,” Charlotte said. She unbuckled Carrie from the seat and hauled her around the car, and put her in my arms.
I turned her and helped her find what she was looking for. When she was latched on and making noises like a hungry piglet, I told Charlotte, “If Mrs. Oberlin doesn’t know where Rodney lives, ask about his parents’ names or where he used to live. He’s probably not in the phone book,” most young people these days aren’t, “but his parents may be.”
Charlotte nodded. “You going to be all right?”
“I’m going to be fine,” I said. It was broad daylight, and I was sitting in my own car. I’d just shut the door again once she walked away, and nobody would realize I was here, let alone what I was doing.
So Charlotte wandered across the street toward Mrs. Oberlin’s house. After a couple of minutes, she came back down the driveway and across the street again. I rolled the window down. “Nobody home?”
“The dog’s there,” Charlotte said. “I can hear it barking. But nobody’s answering.”
“She probably went to the store or the library.” Or to lunch with a friend or wherever older ladies go to spend their time. Mother does all those things, in addition to trips to the spa and time with Catherine or Dix or me. “We’ll try again later. Maybe, by the time we’re done for the day, she’ll be back. Would you mind starting to carry in the things we bought while I finish up with Carrie? I’ll help you when I’m done.”
Charlotte nodded and went around to the trunk. I popped the button, and she started carrying in boxes and bags while I finished tending to Carrie.
We spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out how to tile the backsplash in the kitchen. It wasn’t a big area, and I’m sure someone who knew what he was doing could have had it done in an hour or so. It took us four, but by then it was done, all the way up to the ceiling around the window.
“That doesn’t look too bad,” I told Charlotte at the end of it, as we were standing side by side in the middle of the kitchen floor looking at our handiwork. “Maybe it would look more professional if a professional had done it. But once we grout it—tomorrow—that’ll help. And seeing as it’s our first time, I think we did all right.”
Charlotte nodded. “It’s pretty tile. That helps.”
It did. And once the new cabinets doors—with the sparkly gold handles—were in, that would help, too. Not to mention the expensive-looking countertops.
“This is going to look great when it’s done.” I could see it in my mind’s eye, all clean and white and new.
“So we’re done?” Charlotte asked.
I nodded. “For now. Tomorrow, we’ll grout. But for now, let’s go home. After we knock on Mrs. Oberlin’s door again.”
“Like this?” Charlotte looked at me and down at herself. If she was anything to go by, we both looked a bit worse for wear. Not quite as bad as we had Friday night, maybe, but bad enough that paying visits on people was questionable.
“We won’t go inside,” I told her. “Looking like this, she probably wouldn’t invite us in anyway. Her place was pristine yesterday. Old-fashioned, you know—all dark wood and flowery furniture—but spotless.”
Charlotte nodded.
“But it won’t hurt to knock on the door and see if she’s back. I’d like to talk to Rodney Clark. Just in case he killed Natalie. Or Steve Morris.”
Charlotte shivered. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“That’s all right. You don’t have to.” If it had been my head on the chopping block, I’d talk to anyone I had to, to get the suspicion off myself. But to each their own. “Just come across the street with me, and then we’ll go home.”
Charlotte agreed, grudgingly, and kept in step with me as we crossed the road.
The light beside the front door was on now—or maybe it had been on earlier, too, and I just hadn’t noticed in the bright light of day. By now it was going on five, and getting darker.
“She turned it on yesterday afternoon around this time, when she let me out. I remember that. And she probably shut it off again this morning, when the sun rose. So maybe she’s back home.”
I put my finger on the doorbell and listened to the sonorous ding-dong from inside. A few seconds passed, and then came the barking and scrabbling from Chester.
“Hi, Chester,” I told him through the door. It didn’t calm him down at all. In fact, it sounded like it made things worse. Chester was throwing himself at the door, yipping hysterically.
Other than that, there were no sounds from within. No sign that Mrs. Oberlin was making her way toward the door. I applied my knuckles to the wood—just in case she hadn’t heard the bell—and raised my voice. “Mrs. Oberlin? Are you there? It’s Savannah from across the street.”
We waited a bit longer. Once I stopped talking and knocking, Chester calmed down, although I could still hear him growling on the other side of the door.
“I don’t like this,” I told Charlotte.
She looked around. “She’s probably just out with a friend, like you said earlier. It isn’t that late.”
It wasn’t. And there wasn’t any reason, or at least none I could put my finger on, why I was feeling uneasy. I just felt like Mrs. Oberlin should be there, that Chester shouldn’t be alone. That if she wasn’t answering the door, it was because she couldn’t.
Charlotte’s eyes popped when I reached for the door handle. “Savannah, you can’t…!”
I could, and if the door had been open I would have. It wasn’t, though. The knob turned, and the dog went crazy, but the door was locked.
“Stay here with Carrie for a minute,” I told Charlotte, and let go of the knob as I put the baby carrier down. “I want to go around the back and check the kitchen door.”
Charlotte opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. I just want to make sure.”
She nodded. I gave her a bracing pat on the shoulder, and then I left her there and headed around the corner of the house to the backyard.
Mrs. Oberlin’s backyard looked pretty much as I had expected it to look. Very green, just like the front. Lots of plants and bushes, and spindly sticks that would turn into vegetation again as soon as spring sprang. She clearly enjoyed gardening. There was even a small garden shed, with the same cheerful red door as the main house, and the kitchen window had one of those bump-out greenhouse windows you see, that look like it belongs on a submarine. It was full of green plants.
I wandered over to the back door and put the tip of my nose to the glass. “Mrs. Oberlin? Hello?”
There was no answer, but Chester must have realized I was here, because I heard him bark as he came closer, skidding through the house to get to me.
“It’s just me,” I told him through the door. It didn’t make any difference. He lunged at the door, yapping hysterically. I could see his dog bowls from here, tucked in the corner by the fridge—a matching pair of ceramic with paw prints along the rim—and they were both bone dry.
I tried the knob, but like the front, the door was locked.
“I can’t get in,” I told Charlotte after I’d trudged back around the house to the front step. “The door’s locked and there’s no answer.”
Charlotte nodded. I could see her gearing up to suggest that we just head home, because Mrs. Oberlin was probably just visiting a friend somewhere. And I didn’t want to hear it, so I looked away before she had time to say anything. “Chester’s bowls are dry. He has no food and no water. I wonder whether there’s a hide-a-key somewhere.”
“We can’t just go in…” Charlotte said, but she didn’t say anything else. And when I went up on my toes to feel along the top of the door, she didn’t tell me to stop, either.
It wasn’t on top of the door. It wasn’t under the mat, either. Or under the flower pot on the stoop. I looked around. No fake rock or convenient pile of fake doggie doo-doo in the grass next to the porch. Mrs. Oberlin probably wouldn’t stand for something like that in her yard anyway, and no one who knew her would think, for a moment, that she’d allow something like that to stay around for more than a moment.
I headed for the flower bed and the concrete turtle. It was heavy, and had no hidden compartments that I could see. The head didn’t come off, and there was no convenient panel on the underside. I turned to the gnome, and then to the metal dragonfly in the other bed. And that’s where it was, glued to a small magnet that attached to the underside of one of the dragonfly wings.
I lifted it triumphantly. “Got it!”
Charlotte smiled, but looked acutely uncomfortable. “Are you sure we should be doing this?”
“If she’s not home, there’s no harm done,” I told her, as I stepped back onto the stoop and pointed the key at the lock. “If she’s not here, we’ll just lock the door behind us and pretend we never opened it. After we feed the dog.”
Charlotte looked unconvinced, but she didn’t turn tail and run when I inserted the key in the lock and twisted it. “Mrs. Oberlin?”
There was no answer, although Chester came scrambling around the corner from the kitchen again, yipping. I braced myself, but instead of launching himself at me, snarling, he aimed for the space between my legs and Charlotte’s, and ran, full-bore, past us and into the grass, where he lifted his leg with a relief I could practically feel.
I turned back to the open door. “Mrs. Oberlin? Are you here? It’s Savannah Martin. Collier.”
One of these days I was going to get that out without the period first, but today was obviously not that day.
Mrs. Oberlin didn’t answer. Behind me on the grass, Chester moved a few feet, and squatted to do the rest of his business.
“Doesn’t look like he’s been out today,” I told Charlotte.
She shook her head, her lips clamped shut.
I turned back to the door. “I’m going in.”
“I’ll stay here with the dog,” Charlotte said. “We don’t want him to run into the street.”
No, we didn’t. Not that I thought that was really the reason she didn’t want to go inside.
But there was no sense in pushing it. I pulled my coat closer around myself—a sort of instinctual need not to brush against anything—and stepped across the threshold.
The living room and dining room were empty, and looked just as they had when I’d been here yesterday. The kitchen was empty, too. The counters were pristine, and there were no dirty dishes in the sink. I continued down the hallway toward the two bedrooms, my heart knocking harder against my ribs now.
The bathroom was empty. I stuck my head into the door of the smaller bedroom on the back of the house. It had a pristine bed with an old-fashioned chenille throw, unwrinkled.
I backed out again and turned in the other direction.
The door to the bigger bedroom on the front of the house was closed. I drew some air into my lungs and knocked on it. “Mrs. Oberlin?”
There was no answer, and at this point, I think I would have freaked out if there had been.
I reached for the doorknob and pushed the door open. And let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “Mrs. Oberlin?”
I guess a part of me was still hoping, even though I knew better, that she was just a heavy sleeper. Maybe she’d been taken ill and that’s why she was still in bed. But it was no surprise at all to stop at the side of the bed and see that there was no movement of the chest underneath the blankets.
I backed away, and then turned and headed out. By the time I reached the stoop and Charlotte, I already had my phone in my hand.
“Everything all right?” Charlotte asked.
I shook my head. “She’s dead. Flat on her back in bed. I have to call it in. And get somebody out here.”
Charlotte nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
She sounded worried but composed. I guess not seeing the body made a difference, because she hadn’t been this calm across the street last Saturday.
I started to dial 911 and then reconsidered. The phone rang once or twice on the other end, and then a voice came on. “Grimaldi.”
“Detec…” I began, and then caught myself. “Tamara.”
“Savannah.” Her voice was dry.
“I found a dead body,” I said.
She went from dry to crisp in a heartbeat. “Where?”
“On Fulton. Across the street from the house we’re renovating, where Steve Morris was murdered.”
“Do you know the victim?”
I thought I could hear the scratching of her pen as she took notes, although it was probably just my imagination. I mean, I’m sure she was taking them. I just didn’t think it was likely that I’d be able to hear it.
“It’s Mrs. Oberlin, the woman who lives here. She’s dead in bed. No sign of anything wrong, or none that I could see, but she’s definitely dead. I thought you might want to send somebody out.”
“Did you have someone in mind?” Some of that dryness was back in her voice.
“I wanted you to have a chance to consider it,” I said, “or I would have called 911. Like I said, nothing here looks like a crime. She’s an elderly woman in a nightgown lying in bed with the blankets up to her chin. But it is the fourth death on this street in four years. And the third in the past year. The second in a week. She lived across the street from where Steve Morris was stabbed. She might have seen something she didn’t realize she saw.”
“What other deaths are you talking about?” Grimaldi wanted to know.
“Natalie Allen. Raped and murdered between three and four years ago. Another neighbor, Ida Burns, last year. She testified in the first trial that she’d heard Morris argue with Natalie before she was killed. Then Morris ended up stabbed on Friday night. And now Mrs. Oberlin is dead. She told me just yesterday that she never thought Morris killed Natalie.”
Grimaldi didn’t say anything, but that imaginary scratching of notes was getting louder.
“If there’s a chance it’s related to Morris’s murder,” I said, “I thought you might want to put Jarvis on it. Or alternatively, not put Jarvis on it.”
“You have a problem with the way Jarvis is doing his job?”
I hesitated. “I wouldn’t say I have a problem. I mean, he seems to be pretty focused on Charlotte. Which makes sense, since she was there and had motive and all that…”
Charlotte stared at me, wide-eyed. Grimaldi didn’t speak. “But she didn’t do it, and I’m not getting the impression that Jarvis is working awfully hard to come up with anyone else. He did the same thing when Natalie Allen died. Zeroed in on Morris, to the exclusion of everyone else, and arrested him.”
“He wouldn’t have been arrested if there hadn’t been a case against him,” Grimaldi said.
“I know that. But Morris didn’t do it. Or at least the jury acquitted him. And if they’re right, the real killer must still be out here somewhere.”
Grimaldi didn’t respond to that. “Stay where you are,” she said instead. “I’ll let Jarvis know what’s going on.”
I opened my mouth, and she added, before I could get anything out, “The Morris murder is his case. The Allen murder was his case. If I keep him out of the loop on this, he’s going to wonder why.”
True. “I guess we’ll just deal with Jarvis.”
“I’ll deal with Jarvis. You just stay where you are and wait.” She hung up.
I dropped the phone back in my pocket. “She said to stay here. Jarvis is coming.”
Charlotte made a face. “Do you think he’ll try to pin this on me, too?”
“I don’t see how he can,” I said. “You didn’t go inside the house, so none of your fingerprints or DNA will be there. And it didn’t look like murder, anyway. It’s probably just a natural death that happened at a weird time.”
Charlotte nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“You can leave.” She hadn’t gone inside with me, so it wasn’t as if she’d have anything to contribute. We’d been together all day, except for the minute or two I’d sat in the car with Carrie while Charlotte walked up to Mrs. Oberlin’s door and knocked on it. She’d been in sight the whole time, though, so it wasn’t like she’d had the opportunity to kill Mrs. Oberlin then. And unless I missed my guess, Mrs. Oberlin had been dead since sometime overnight, anyway. Poor Chester clearly hadn’t been outside yet today.
Speaking of Chester…
I looked around and saw him nosing his way down the driveway. “Come here, Chester. Don’t go in the street.”
He lifted his head and turned to look at me. After a moment, he came trotting back.
“What should we do with him?” Charlotte asked. She wasn’t making any moves toward her car, or toward leaving before Jarvis got here.
“I guess we could let him back inside. He’s been in there all day, so if he was going to destroy any kind of evidence, he’s probably already done it.”
“It seems kind of mean, though, to shut him inside with his dead owner.”
Maybe it did. I flashed back to Pearl, tied under an old trailer while her owner lay dead on the grass twenty feet away.
“Feel free to pick him up,” I said, “if he’ll let you. We can go sit in the car while we wait for Jarvis to arrive.”
Or we could go inside and wait in the living room. If there was a crime scene inside the house, it would be in the bedroom.
Chester took the decision out of our hands when he trotted up the two steps to the stoop and then through the door. I stretched my head around the door jamb to watch as he grabbed his nylon bone and settled into the middle of the carpet to chew on it.
“I think I’d better stay out here,” Charlotte said. “That way I don’t have to worry about there being anything of mine in the house.”
Good point. “Feel free to go sit in the car. Really. We don’t both have to stand here.”
“I don’t mind,” Charlotte said, and turned toward the road as there came the sound of a car approaching. “Surely that can’t be him already?”
It didn’t seem likely. And in fact wasn’t likely. It was Carl Enoch’s truck that came rolling up the street and came to a stop outside his house. Enoch got out and stood for a second looking around. And must have noticed us standing here, because after another second he crossed the street and headed across the grass toward us. “Something wrong?”
“It’s under control,” I told him, politely. It wasn’t his case, after all, and Jarvis might not want him trampling all over the crime scene. Again.
He looked from me to Charlotte to the open door, and back to me.
I sighed. “Mrs. Oberlin passed away. We’re waiting for the police to get here.”
“I am the police,” Enoch said.
Of course he was. “Jarvis is on his way. In case this has something to do with the Morris case.”
Enoch arched his brows, but didn’t say anything. He also didn’t listen to me, but pushed the door open and stepped across the threshold. Chester looked up and started growling, but when Enoch headed for him, he scurried out of the way. Enoch strode past and into the kitchen. We heard his footsteps disappear down the hall toward the bedrooms.
Charlotte looked at me, raising her brows. I shrugged. Not my business to keep him out. He and Jarvis could duke it out if they wanted to, once Jarvis got here.