His Partner's Wife

Or were they after something else? Something small?

What? he wondered in frustration. He’d have to ask Natalie whether Stuart had any collections that might be valuable. Coins? Stamps? Hell, he’d collected enough junk to have lucked out and hit on something worth taking. Or did Natalie have jewelry? She hadn’t said, and John thought she would have. He remembered seeing her at the Policeman’s Ball, drop-dead gorgeous in a simple green velvet sheath, but the only jewelry he could picture were sparkly earrings. Diamond, maybe, but tiny, not ones worth killing over.

Figure out why murderer and victim were in this house and not the neighbor’s, and he could as good as snap those handcuffs on. Unfortunately, the why was the true mystery here. Murders happened all the time, even in Port Dare. Just not this kind.

He sighed. Better find out what the neighborhood canvass had turned up. Too bad the Porters hadn’t seen anything. According to Natalie, they were the only near neighbors who were stay-at-homes and nosy to boot.

Geoff shook his head when John tracked him down a block away.

“Nada. Zip. Nobody was home. Not even latchkey kids.”

“Why am I not surprised?” John rocked on his heels and looked back. Meadow Drive curved, and this was the last house from which anyone could have seen Natalie’s. “You get everybody?”

“A few haven’t come home yet.” Geoff glanced down at his notebook. “Four. No, three. The place down there is for sale, and empty right now.”

“What about the houses behind hers?”

“I sent Jackson. But what are the odds?”

Nada. Zip. Of course. But they had to try.

“Looks like the coroner is here. Shall we go hear what she thinks?”

Elected in this rural county, Dr. Jennifer Koltes was a pathologist at St. Mary’s, serving in addition as part-time public servant. Hereabouts they didn’t need a full-time coroner yet. John was counting on it staying that way.

A tall skinny redhead, Dr. Koltes was in her mid-thirties, married to a cardiologist. Currently, she was pregnant, easily six or seven months along. Maybe John was old-fashioned—okay, he undoubtedly was—but the sight of a pregnant woman checking the body temp of a corpse with a smashed skull struck him as jarring.

Hearing their arrival, she glanced up with a pleasant smile also at odds with the scene. “Detectives. Haven’t seen either of you for a whole day or two.”

The last body had been the result of a bar shoot-out. Neither victim nor shooter, both tattooed, black-leather-garbed motorcyclists, had been locals.

“Busy days,” John said laconically.

“Well.” She was already closing her bag. “Cause of death looks obvious from here, although you never know. We might be surprised when we get him on the table.”

“Weapon?”

“Something darned heavy. Probably smooth and rounded.” She pursed her lips. “A metal pipe, maybe. There are a few flakes caught in his hair that might be rust.”

“Time of death?”

“I’m guessing morning.” She groaned and pressed a hand to her lower back as she straightened from her crouch over the body. “Say, ten, eleven o’clock.”

Both men had both taken involuntary steps forward when she began to heave herself to her feet. Now they exchanged a glance.

“That’s consistent with what the home owner says.”

“Which is?”

Geoff told her about the cat that had napped on the fabric. “And the old couple down the street, the neighborhood snoops, would have been grocery shopping about then.”

“I wonder,” John said thoughtfully, “whether the Porters go grocery shopping every morning. Or the same morning every week.”

Geoff made a note. “Easy to ask.”

Dr. Koltes left after conferring with the uniforms who had been delegated to bag the body. “I can do the autopsy tonight,” she said, promising. “You’ll have my report tomorrow.”

Gazing with distaste at the corpse, John said, “Time to have a look.”

He checked back pockets—no wallet. Ditto for the pockets of the crumpled linen jacket. The jacket interested him. Men in Port Dare leaned more to denim or heavy flannel, maybe a dark suit if you worked in a bank or law office. This looked…hell, like Miami Vice.

He called for the paramedics, who put a collar on the neck to protect the bashed skull for Dr. Koltes’s benefit, and then rolled the body onto a gurney. Face-up, a man who could have been mid-thirties to forty tops stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Longish brown hair, brown eyes, a stubble of beard—this guy had stumbled out of TV land, John thought again. On a wrist that had been under the body was an obviously expensive watch, the kind that probably told you the time in Paris, the altitude and your heart rate.

Sinking back on his heels, John contemplated the face.

“Damn it, Baxter, he looks familiar.”

His partner nodded. “I was thinking the same.”

“If we know him, he’s probably not a realtor or the manager of the Rite Aid pharmacy.”

Geoff gestured toward the watch. “Drugs?”

“Could be.”

They stood back and let the photographer get full frontal pictures as well as close-ups of the face.

“I want those as soon as possible,” John said, and was answered with brisk nods.

“Fingerprints?” he asked.

“The victim’s,” he was told. “Half a dozen others. Mrs. Reed’s, presumably. We’ll need to get hers tomorrow.”

Feeling uncomfortable admitting it for reasons he didn’t like to examine, John said, “Mine will be here, too. I used that bathroom just last week when I was treating the back deck.”

To his relief, nobody gave sly or knowing glances. Nobody made an off-color joke about widows—one that would have been deeply regretted.

It helped when Baxter said, “Hell, mine’ll be here, too. Natalie had Linda and me to dinner Friday night.”

He and Baxter took their time studying the den once the body was carted out. It was a room that could have used Natalie’s lighter touch. John guessed that she stayed out of it.

Stuart had smoked cigars, or at least liked to have one clenched between his teeth curling noxious smoke into the air. The smell, faded with time, nonetheless still lingered in here. Walls were papered in a masculine navy-and-tan-striped paper. Bookshelves held Stuart’s favorite bedtime reading: Ken Follett, John Le Carré and the ilk.

A monster, the desk was one of those huge oak ones that had probably graced the office of a CEO in the 1920s. The finish was yellowing, the top covered with a blotter. In its own way, the computer that sat atop it was as much an antique, a 385, maybe a 485. Forget Pentium. No telephone line to it, which meant no internet access. No CD drive. In fact, the floppy drives were for the outmoded bigger disks. The keyboard was covered, the monitor screen a little dusty.

Using a handkerchief, John carefully opened drawers. The top one held nothing but paper clips, pencils that needed sharpening, a staple remover, markers and packing tape. The big drawer was set up with hanging files, all labeled: 1986 tax return. Ditto ’87, ’88, and so on through the year before last. MasterCard statements. Appliance warranties. Household receipts.

On the face of it, nothing of any interest to anyone but the IRS doing a back audit. And, damn, was Stuart ready. No midnight scrabbling for torn receipts for him. It was almost a shame the IRS had never, to the best of John’s knowledge, chosen to audit Reed.