“Ida?” I finally managed to choke her name out after another second or two.
She still didn’t stir, and an ominous weight sank in my stomach.
Carefully, I entered the shed and stepped around Ida so I could crouch down near her head. Her chest wasn’t rising and falling, and when I pressed two fingers to her throat, no pulse beat beneath my touch. My eyes traveled from her throat to the side of her head, where dark blood had matted her hair against her scalp.
Swallowing hard, I stood up and took a cautious step backward, trying to disturb the scene as little as possible. I wanted to clutch on to the possibility that Ida had simply fallen and struck her head on the way down, but the likelihood of that scenario evaporated when I spotted the antique lamp base I’d purchased the other day. It was lying on its side on the dirty floorboards of the shed, and when I leaned in for a closer look, I noticed a smear of blood on the edge of the base.
My stomach turning, I stumbled out of the shed, nearly tripping in my haste. I bumped against the door and it flew wide open, hitting the outer wall of the shed with a thump. Casting a glance at Ida’s body, I dug through my tote bag, searching for my phone. My fingers closed around the device and I pulled it from the depths of my bag.
“Is that you, Ms. Winkler?”
My phone slipped from my fingers and hit the grass. I spun around, my heart thudding, but I couldn’t spot the owner of the voice.
“Hello?” I said the word tentatively, not knowing where to direct it.
“Ms. Winkler?”
The woman’s voice sounded more uncertain this time. It had come from the other side of the tall fence, almost hidden by the same blackberry bushes that threatened to swallow up the shed.
“No, my name’s Marley,” I said as I retrieved my fallen phone from the grass. “I stopped by to speak with Ms. Winkler.”
“Is she there? Because I need to have a word with her too. And if she thinks she can ignore me and my daughter, she’s got another think coming.”
“Um…” I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “She is here, but…” I swallowed again as I glanced Ida’s way. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”
A lengthy pause followed my words.
“Dead?” The woman echoed eventually. “My word!”
“I’m just about to call 911.”
I punched the numbers into my phone and drew in a shaky breath before reporting the situation to the dispatcher. I had just assured the dispatcher that I’d stay put until the authorities arrived when a gate leading to the alleyway creaked open.
A fifty-something woman wearing a white blouse with navy-blue walking shorts entered the yard, picking her way through the tall grass in her high-heeled sandals. As I ended my phone call, the woman reached my side. I looked toward the shed, and the woman followed my line of sight. Her eyes widened and she pressed a hand to her chest.
“Oh, my heavens! She really is dead?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh dear.” The woman patted her perfectly styled golden hair and turned away from the garden shed. “How terrible.”
I decided it would be best not to mention what I strongly suspected—that Ida’s death wasn’t accidental or natural. Not sure that we should be lingering so close to the scene of what I believed was a crime, I moved toward the back steps of the house, hoping the woman would follow my lead.
“You live next door?” I said as we neared the house.
“Yes. Forgive me. My name is Sheryl Haynes. When I heard someone moving about, I thought it must be Ms. Winkler, and I was hoping to have a word with her.” She put a hand to her chest again. “Heavens. I guess that won’t be happening.”
“Do you need to sit down?” I asked.
Sheryl eyed the grimy, rickety steps with distaste before shifting her gaze up to the back porch, where two folding chairs sat on either side of a small round table. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that would be a good idea.”
Fervently hoping the stairs would support our weight, I followed Sheryl up to the porch. She carefully lowered herself into one of the chairs and I took the other, hoping Sheriff Georgeson and his deputies wouldn’t object to us settling in this spot. I didn’t want to mess up their investigation in any way, but I also didn’t want Sheryl to faint on me. Although I didn’t know what the woman normally looked like, she seemed a bit pale to me and I figured it was safer to have her sitting than standing.
“I should tell my daughter where I am.” Sheryl patted the pockets of her shorts. “But I didn’t bring my phone with me.”
“You can borrow mine, if you’d like.” I held the device out to her.
“Thank you, but that’s all right. I’ll just wait until the shakes subside and then I’ll go back home.”
“Are you feeling faint?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t still at risk of passing out even while sitting.
“Oh, goodness, no. I’m just feeling a bit unsteady, that’s all. It’s a…a shock, you see.”
“It is,” I agreed. “Did you know Ms. Winkler well?”
“Not really. We’ve lived next door to each other for several years, but we…well, we didn’t really mix, if you know what I mean. She wasn’t particularly…sociable.”
I gathered that was a polite way of saying Ida was unpleasant and in no way someone Sheryl would have spent time with by choice. I remembered what she’d said when I’d spoken to her through the fence. “But you wanted to talk to her today.”
Sheryl swallowed. “Yes. Now it all seems so unimportant, but there’s been an issue with the fence between our yards. It’s a bit of a wreck in places and I was planning to have it replaced. Naturally, I was hoping Ms. Winkler would pay half the cost, but she refused and also took issue with having anyone come onto her property to do the work.”
There would be no more objections from Ida, I noted silently, but I didn’t read too much into that since I thought it highly unlikely that anyone would kill another person over a fence dispute. Still, Juliette Tran had said that Sheryl’s daughter was pounding on Ida’s door earlier.
“Is that what your daughter was upset about?” I asked, trying to keep the question casual. “The problem with the fence?”
Sheryl’s eyes widened with surprise. “My daughter?”
“Maybe I have the wrong person,” I said, although I doubted that was the case. “Juliette Tran mentioned that a neighbor’s daughter was on Ms. Winkler’s front porch earlier, upset.”
“Oh, that.” Sheryl smoothed out imaginary creases in her shorts. She cleared her throat. “That was nothing, really.”
I highly doubted that, but the rumble of an approaching vehicle caught my attention. The engine cut off and a car door slammed shut. Seconds later, the tall gate leading to the back alleyway opened with a groan and Deputy Kyle Rutowski stepped into the yard.
I stood up and descended the first two steps as he crossed the grass.
“Marley, I understand you reported a death.”
“Ida Winkler,” I confirmed. I pointed at the shed. “She’s in there.”
Sheryl stood up behind me, but Rutowski held up a hand to halt any further movement. “Stay put for the moment, please.”
As he headed for the shed, I turned back to retake my seat. Dried leaves had collected in the corners of the porch and a flash of white among the brown caught my eye. I leaned over for a closer look, reaching out to pick up what I now realized was a scrap of torn paper, but I stopped myself from touching it when I read the partial sentences written on the paper.
Kirk, I know all about what you’re…don’t want the police to know, put $200 in cash…the drinking fountain in Wildwood Park before…
With a sense of unease, I glanced over my shoulder, but Rutowski was still in the garden shed. Sheryl was staring in that direction, her hands clasped in her lap, and hadn’t noticed that something had caught my attention. Leaving the scrap of paper where it was, I sat down again, deciding not to draw the woman’s attention to what I’d found.
I had no idea if it was related in any way to Ida’s death, but even if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to be responsible for starting any wild rumors. And I figured the note—or what remained of it—was most definitely fodder for rumors. I didn’t know anyone named Kirk in town, but whoever he was, it seemed as though someone had tried to threaten him. Ida, perhaps?
I wouldn’t have put it past her to be involved in blackmailing someone. But if she’d written a threatening note in an attempt to extort money out of someone, why would a piece of it be on her own property? A change of heart before she delivered the note?
Deputy Rutowski stepped out of the garden shed and I brought my thoughts to a halt.
“Do you think she had a heart attack?” Sheryl asked quietly as Rutowski paused outside the shed and spoke into his radio.
I hesitated, not wanting to voice my strong suspicions to her. “I’m not sure.”
Footsteps sounded nearby, and a second later the back gate opened and Sheriff Ray Georgeson entered the yard. He nodded in my direction when he spotted me with Sheryl, but he continued on across the yard to speak with his deputy. I’d met the sheriff and a couple of his deputies back in March after Cousin Jimmy was killed. Even if I hadn’t met him in his official capacity, I would have crossed paths with him anyway since he was Brett’s uncle.
After exchanging a few words with Rutowski, Ray put covers over his shoes and disappeared into the shed. The deputy also had covers over his shoes now, and he seemed to be giving the area around the shed a quick examination.
Deputy Devereaux arrived next. When Ray emerged from the shed a minute or so later, he conferred with both his deputies, casting a glance toward the porch. Devereaux nodded at something Ray said and broke away from the group.
“Ma’am, you are?” the deputy asked of Sheryl as he came our way.
“Mrs. Sheryl Haynes. I live next door.”
“Would you come with me, please? I’d like to take your statement.”
Sheryl pressed a hand to the base of her throat, but then stood and smoothed out her blouse. “Of course.”
She descended the rickety steps and followed Devereaux toward the back gate.
“How well did you know Ms. Winkler?” I heard the deputy ask as they disappeared into the alley.
As Rutowski went back to his examination of the area around the shed, Ray came my way, stopping at the base of the steps.
“I’ll take your statement, Marley, if you’ll follow me.”
“There’s something on the porch I think you should see,” I said as I made my way carefully down the steps. “I don’t know if it’s important or not, but it’s a scrap of paper with some writing on it.”
I pointed out the torn note once Ray had climbed the steps, and he crouched down next to it. He studied it for several seconds without touching it and then rejoined me at the bottom of the stairs.
“Thanks for bringing that to my attention.”
He didn’t go on to say whether he thought it was important or not, but I didn’t expect him to.
“We’ll go out to my car.” He was about to guide me toward the back gate when Rutowski called for his attention.
“Sheriff, I’ve got something here.”
“Just wait here a moment, please,” Ray said to me.
I stayed put as he joined his deputy by the open door to the shed, only a few feet away from where I stood waiting. Rutowski pointed to something on the outer wall, next to the doorframe. It looked like a scrap of red fabric had caught on a protruding nail. Ray said something to his deputy in a low voice and pointed toward the back porch. Then he stepped away from the shed, gesturing for me to follow him. He held the back gate open for me and I preceded him into the unpaved alley, where two sheriff’s department cruisers were parked. Ray opened the front passenger door of one of the vehicles and asked me to take a seat. After circling around the vehicle, he joined me in the cruiser, settling into the driver’s seat.
“I understand you were the one to discover the body,” Ray said as he removed his hat and set it on the dashboard.
“Yes.” I swallowed, wishing I could forget the sight of Ida lying dead, her frizzy hair darkened with blood.
“Did you enter the garden shed at all?”
I nodded. “I went in far enough to check for a pulse at her throat.”
“Did you touch anything else?”
“No.” I shifted in my seat. “She was murdered, wasn’t she?”
Ray hesitated briefly before answering the question. “At this point, her death does seem suspicious.”
“The lamp base…the one on the floor of the shed with the blood on it.” I paused to draw in a steadying breath. “It was mine. She stole it from me yesterday.”
His forehead creased. “Did you report the theft?”
“Yes. Rutowski came by my place.”
Ray opened his notebook and wrote something down. “What brought you to Ms. Winkler’s house this morning?”
“She’d been making prank calls to the pancake house, yesterday and today, and then she stole the lamp base from my porch. It was getting ridiculous. I was hoping to talk some sense into her, to get her to stop the phone calls and vandalism. I knew it was a long shot, but I had to try something.”
“You approached the house from the back?”
“No, I knocked on the front door first, but there was no answer. One of her neighbors came by and suggested I try around back. When I got into the yard I saw the shed door open, so I went to take a look and…that’s when I found Ida.”
“Was this neighbor the same one who was on the porch with you?”
“No, she lives on the other side of Ida’s house. Juliette Tran.”
Ray made another note in his book.
“Oh, Juliette mentioned something else.” I told him what the woman had said about Sheryl Haynes’s daughter pounding on Ida’s front door before I arrived. “Apparently she didn’t get an answer either.”
So perhaps Ida was already dead.
I didn’t have a chance to consider that possibility any further. Ray asked me some more questions and then requested that I provide a written statement. I completed the statement there in his cruiser, signing it once I was finished.
“I know it must have been a shock to find the body,” Ray said once I’d handed him my statement. “How are you doing?”
“It definitely wasn’t pleasant, but I’m all right. I’d like to get back to The Flip Side though, if that’s okay.”
“It is.”
We both climbed out of the vehicle. I almost asked him if I’d get my lamp base back eventually, but I stopped myself. It seemed like an insensitive question, and I realized that I didn’t want it back anyway. Now that I knew it had likely been used to kill someone, I never wanted to lay eyes on it again.
I exchanged some parting words with Ray and set off along the alley on foot. I walked briskly, anxious to get back to the comforting, familiar atmosphere of the pancake house and to leave the scene of Ida’s death well behind me.