Cutwork (4 page)

Mike stood and said to the uniform standing outside the tent, “Ask if anyone remembers moving or tipping over the cash box. And get the guys with the camera back in here.”

His thin mouth was pulled into a tight, satisfied smile. If the box hadn’t been tipped over by the crew, a major clue was right here.

He looked at the print. He knew that kind of pattern. It came from one of those very expensive sports shoes young males liked—and it wasn’t a brand new pair. Shoes that had been worn awhile developed wear marks on their soles, marks as distinctive as a fingerprint. Mike had dealt with many young criminals and was pleased at how many of them didn’t realize this. They’d climb through a window from a grimy alley or freshly spaded flower bed and leave a sharp footprint on a windowsill or the floor.

No, this wasn’t screwy after all. Only sad.

2

Of all the unpleasant duties of police work, one of the worst is going to tell a family that one of its members has been killed.
That,
thought Jill,
is probably why Mike shoved the job off onto me
. She nearly shoved it off again, onto a patrol officer, then reconsidered.

She had joined the police with the notion of becoming a detective. In Excelsior that couldn’t happen until one of the two investigators left. Jim was seven years from retirement, and Mike was looking for a job opening as sheriff in some quiet upstate county, one with a lake full of bass. He’d been looking for that position for a very long time, and there was no hint that it was going to happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Mike was hot on the trail of a suspect—but hot suspects sometimes cooled off. Jill decided that having an experienced peace officer—herself—taking the initial measure of the victim’s family couldn’t hurt. And it would give her a chance to do a little investigating without Mike feeling she was walking on his turf.

Excelsior was a small town, with a tiny police force. During the daylight and evening hours, there were only two squad cars on patrol—late at night, only one. But law enforcement rules dictate that making an official call took two officers. Since Jill could not take half the street force out of jurisdiction, she called the current graveyard-shift patrol officer from his bed to drive her in the spare squad car to Maple Plain. He was a lanky man named Nelson, and she filled him in on the drive out.

The McFey house in Maple Plain was one of those elaborately windowed clapboard mansions the upper middle class was building. An itinerant wood carver never bought a place like this. Nelson agreed. “Maybe his wife has money,” he suggested.

The house was pastel green with white trim and a for-sale sign on the broad, professionally landscaped front lawn. The door was opened by a thin teenaged girl in outsize overalls. She had a nose ring, spiky hair, and blue fingernails. Her pro-forma sulky look turned authentically wary when she saw their uniforms.

“Is Mrs. McFey at home?” asked Jill.

“Sure. I mean, I guess so. Is something wrong?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Is Mrs. McFey your mother?”

“Yes.” The girl’s eyes widened. “Is this about Coy?”

“Who’s Coy?” asked Jill.

The girl looked relieved. “Come in, I’ll get Mommy.” She led them into a beautiful parlor done in shades of brick, colonial blue, and cream. “Wait here.” She walked away and Jill noticed she was barefoot under the enormous legs of her denim overalls.

They took their hats off and looked around, at the blue leather couch and complex window dressings, the cream silk flowers in a big Chinese vase. “Nice,” Nelson murmured.

Jill took her notebook out, wrote something in it.

Three minutes later a trim woman in a white silk shirt and dark blue trousers came in alone. Her hair was streaky blond, freshly combed, her lips lightly touched with color. She wore a clunky gold necklace and earrings. “Is there something I can help you with?” she asked, only a little anxious, her light blue eyes wide with concern.

“Are you Pamela McFey?” asked Jill.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Won’t you sit down, please, Mrs. McFey?”

The look of concern deepened to fear. “What’s wrong, what’s happened?” she asked.

But Jill insisted gently, “Please, sit down, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

Mrs. McFey obeyed, perching on the very front edge of the couch, her eyes flicking from Jill to Nelson and back again. “Is it Coy?”

“No, ma’am, it’s Robert, your husband.”

She looked so relieved, Jill hated to say it. “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

She blinked rapidly, but the relief was still there. “Oh, my, that’s sad. I suppose Dr. Moore was right the first time.” She looked up at Jill, and was surprised at Jill’s look of surprise. “I mean, he’s had this liver disease for a long time, he’s already lived two years longer than Dr. Moore thought he would.”

“Oh,” said Jill. “Well, I’m afraid he didn’t die of liver disease, ma’am.”

“No?” She floundered for words, gesturing helplessly.

“Well, then, what? Car accident? No? Not . . . suicide, surely?”

“No, ma’am. He was at the Excelsior art fair, and I’m afraid he was found in his booth a few hours ago. I’m sorry to tell you this: He was murdered.”

Mrs. McFey gaped at Jill, then at Nelson. “No,” she said. “Robbie? Oh, no, that’s ridiculous!” A new thought came and was swiftly suppressed. “That’s ridiculous,” she repeated, and looked down at her fingers, which had clasped themselves without her volition. She pulled them apart, rested them on her knees. “I don’t understand,” she said, asking for more information.

“He was stabbed,” said Jill. “Another artist found him and raised the alarm, but . . .” She gestured helplessness. “Nothing could be done for him.”

“Oh!” She made a face, a twist of disgust, horror, and dismay. “Why would—who did this terrible—who would do such a terrible thing?”

“We don’t know, not yet. It may have been a robbery. We’re investigating, of course, and a detective will be by later to talk to you. Do you know of any enemies your husband might have had?”

“Enemies? No, of course not! I mean, who would hate Rob enough to—stab him?” She seemed surprised even to ask such a question, to connect his name with such a deed. “But you said it was a robbery, right? I mean, he had money with him, he had this metal box, to make change out of.” She gestured the shape of the box with both hands, accurately.

“Yes, ma’am, the box was found, and it had been emptied.”

“Yes, I see. Was, was there a struggle?” Her eyes widened as her imagination glimpsed an unpleasant scene.

Jill recalled the small amount of disorder in the booth. “I don’t think so. He was probably taken by surprise, perhaps walking in on someone emptying the cash box. His death was quick.”

Pam grasped that crumb of comfort. “Yes. Thank you.”

“What did your husband do?” Jill asked. She raised her ballpoint pen, prepared to write.

“Well, you saw them, didn’t you? Those animals he carves? He does big and small pieces—he did big and small pieces—” She stopped to swallow, overtaken by the need for past tense, and touched two trembling fingers to her lips.

Jill looked around the expensively furnished room in this big, costly house. “He didn’t have another job?”

She nodded. “Yes. Well, he used to. He owned Information Please, an advertising agency. But he sold it a few years ago.”

Jill wrote that down. “Who is . . .” Jill went back a page. “Coy?”

“Coy?” Her head swiveled toward the door to the entrance hall, as if the pause had been to query someone’s sudden appearance in the doorway. Finding it empty, she looked back at Jill, saw the notebook, and said, “Oh, Coy is our son. Coyne is his name, actually.” She spelled it. “He’s named after his grandfather. He’s not here right now.”

“You have just two children?” asked Jill.

“Yes, Coyne and Skye. You met Skye, she’s fifteen. Coy just turned twenty. They’re good children, we’re proud of them.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Funny what people found relevant at times like this. “Do you know where Coy is?”

“Out looking for a job. He’s enrolled at Northwestern University. He got a scholarship, but it’s a small one, and he has to make up the rest himself now, since I can’t afford his tuition.” She saw incomprehension on Jill’s face and said, “Since the divorce. Rob quit working in advertising, you see, when he found out he was dying. But then he”—she lifted her hands and shoulders in a bewildered shrug—“didn’t. Die, I mean. The company was doing well, he sold it for cash and stock but the buyer went belly up six months later.” She shrugged again. “Rob always wanted to be an artist, he’d carved those things for years as a hobby. He was good at it, some of his work surprised me because it was so good, and when the doctor said six months, he got out of advertising as fast as he could and started growing his hair and he bought some expensive wood and started going to art fairs and galleries.

“When all the money was gone, and he hadn’t died, I said, ‘What about the house, Coy’s college expenses, Skye’s tuition at Blake School?’ He said, ‘I guess I should’ve told you I’m not going to die of hepatitis after all. So you won’t be getting my insurance as soon as you thought, huh, Pam.’ As if it were a joke. And he said I’d better find a job, hadn’t I. Well, goodness, what kind of a job could I get? I haven’t worked outside our home for twenty years! So now we’re losing the house, and Coy has to work his way through college and Skye’s going to have to quit Blake and start all over making new friends with new teachers at a public school this fall . . .” There was the slightest emphasis on public, as if she were forced to say a rude word.

She shrugged again and frowned. Then, as if replaying all she’d said, she looked up at Jill and said in mild amazement, “I’m sorry, this isn’t why you’re here, is it? To hear all our petty little problems.” But now she saw the pen moving, looked away again, and continued, “But really, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And now, Rob’s dead, and it’s really all on my shoulders. And he’s not dead the way he was supposed to go, but murdered, actually murdered. I don’t know what to say—but I just can’t seem to stop talking.”

She made a fist and put it in front of her mouth, pressing hard, clearing her throat to give a reason for the gesture. Her other hand clenched hard onto her knee. “This is embarrassing, it’s as if I don’t know how to shut up!” She took the fist down, opening her hand to stare at it, as if she’d never seen a hand before. She pressed her lips very firmly together and swallowed, trying to gather herself.

Jill said, “It’s all right, Mrs. McFey. You’ve had a very bad shock. Perhaps a drink, or a cup of tea, or coffee—?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll ask Skye . . .” Her eyes widened. “Does she know?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh, dear, this is going to be hard, she loved her father very much.” She raised her voice. “Skye? Skye darling!”

The shush of denim on a wooden floor was heard and the teen came into the room. She stopped short at the sight of her mother’s pale, set face. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

“Come here, darling.” She held out her hand and Skye came to take it. “Listen very carefully to me. Your father is dead. He’s been murdered.”

Skye gave a little shriek and pulled her hand free. “No, no, no!” she cried. She turned to Jill with a look so angry Nelson stepped up beside Jill. “That isn’t true! That can’t be true!”

Jill said, “I’m so sorry, Skye, but it is true.”

Skye’s eyes searched Jill’s face. “How? Where did it happen?”

“At the art fair in Excelsior.”

“Excelsior? Oh, yes, he said he was going to be there. He always tells me where he’s going to be. Sometimes I come and sit with him . . .” She turned on her mother. “I told you I wanted to go, but you wouldn’t drive me!” There were tears in her eyes, and in her voice.

“I told you, darling, the real estate agent is coming today and I have to be here for him . . .” She thrust her fingers into her hair. “I suppose I should call and cancel. Or should I? This is important, I think he has someone seriously interested. But of course our plans may change now, with this happening. Or will they? I can’t think, my brain is simply whirling! I don’t know what to do, this is impossible, I can’t take it in!”

“It’s
not
important,
nothing’s
important! Oh, what does anything matter! Daddy’s dead, my daddy’s dead! If I’d been there, this wouldn’t have happened!”

“What could you have done?” The two stared at one another for a horrified second, and Mrs. McFey said, “For heaven’s sake, darling, if you’d been there, I might have lost you, too! Oh, my God,
I might have lost you, too!
” She reached to touch her daughter, but the child flinched away. Mrs. McFey looked at Jill. “You suggested a drink, I believe.” She looked back at Skye, who had covered her eyes with both hands. “Darling, could you go get your mother a little brandy?”

Skye dropped her hands and said dully, “I could have stopped it, I know I could have stopped it. I should have been there.”

“No,” said Jill firmly. “Don’t take any blame for this. This is not your fault. It’s a very sad thing, losing your father, but I doubt very much if you could have done anything to help him. And your mother’s right, you could have been hurt yourself.”

Mrs. McFey began suddenly to weep, folding herself in half so her forehead rested on her knees, hands falling to her ankles. Skye sat down beside her, touching her lightly on her back. “It’s all right, Mommy, I’m here.” She looked up pleadingly at Jill.

Jill was not very good in situations like this. Her own reaction to pain or sorrow was to become silent. When others abandoned themselves to grief, her first reaction was to step back.

Nelson was different. He moved to kneel beside Pam McFey, placing his hand on her shoulder. “This is scary and awful, and I know you’re hurting,” he said. “But it’s very important that you try to get it together and listen to us, just for a short while. Then you can take the time you need to be alone, and to cry. But you see, we can’t leave until some questions we have are answered.”