Notoriously Neat (3 page)

Vega looked uphill to where another of his cops stood looking down at us.

“What is it?”

“Those EMS guys are making a fuss.” The cop jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder. “They claim they’re in some kind of hurry.”

Vega put on a sudden burst of speed. He reached the sidewalk, took the steps leading uphill two at a time, and disappeared into the house.

I tried to stay close on his heels. Although I couldn’t have explained why, not at that moment, I couldn’t resist the urge to see what had happened with my own eyes.

“Whoa . . . hold on, miss!” Connors said from behind me. I’d reached the bottom of the wooden steps. “We’re supposed to be going—”

I knew where we were supposed to be going, and didn’t care. Rushing up the steps, I followed Vega through the entrance—and almost crashed into a pair of white-uniformed emergency technicians standing just inside the vestibule.

Both turned to face me as I came to a halt. I was back to feeling congested—with the sinus-opening wasabi having worn off, the dash from Shoko’s Minka left me gasping for breath.

“You again,” one of them said with a frown.

“
Her
again.” The other scowled.

I recognized them immediately. The first guy was named Hibbard. The other was named Hornby. Hibbard had brown hair, Hornby blond. Hibbard was about fifty and pudgy, Hornby thirtyish and thinner. Hibbard was a certified paramedic, while Hornby’s training qualified him only as a basic emergency tech. The men would often insist on pointing out there was a difference, a para being able to administer injections, IV drips, and the like to a patient, whereas a tech couldn’t legally stick a needle in anyone. It seemed to me that Hornby deferred to and admired his older partner, possibly hoping to someday rack up the hours and test scores needed to attain his specialized rating.

“Me again, right,” I said, wondering why they seemed so unhappy with my arrival. “Is something wrong with that?”

“Nope,” said Hibbard.

“Not a thing,” stressed Hornby.

“Except,” Hibbard said, glancing at his partner.

Hornby returned the look and nodded.

I stared at the mellifluously paired EMTs. “Except what?”

Hibbard hesitated but didn’t say anything.

“W
hat?
” I repeated.

The para was silent another moment. Then his eyes abruptly grew large. “Hey!” he said. “There’s an animal hanging on to you.”

“It took you
this
long to notice?”

“Don’t pull his leg,” Hornby said. “He’s serious.”

“I’m not pulling anybody’s leg. Of course there’s an animal hanging on to me.”

“Is it a baby chimpanzee?” said Hornby.

“Or a possum?” said Hibbard.

“How about a koala? I heard koalas have strong grips like this one’s got.”

“He’s a monkey.” I tried to look past the EMTs toward the staircase, but they were standing right in my line of sight. “Now would you two please excuse me . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” Hornby persisted. “That thing looks to me like one of those Aussie marsupials I saw on the National Geographic Channel. Like maybe a wombat. Or a kangaroo, I’m not sure which . . .”

“I told you, he’s a monkey,” I said impatiently. “How in the world can you two not tell he’s a monkey?”

“Before you get started on that, how can
you
tell it’s a ‘he’ and not a ‘she’?”

I looked at him.

“You’d kind of have to be blind not to know,” I said. “It isn’t as if he’s wearing monkey pants.”

The techs stared at me. Okay, make that stared at “us.” Me and my monkey friend, I mean. I hitched him defensively up in my arms.

“Look, you don’t have to get snippy,” Hornby said. “We’re emergency responders for when humans get in trouble, not veterinary techs.”

“Meaning we can’t identify every single creature in the animal kingdom,” Hibbard said.

“Which, come to think, the victim probably could’ve done if she wasn’t deceased . . .”

“Something we can officially state is her present condition, being that a coroner’s assistant accompanied us to the scene this time. As opposed to
last time
we were all together under similar circumstances,” Hibbard said. His eyes beaded on me. “Or the time before that. When Dr. Maji didn’t have an assistant to send along with us. Which he does now, probably because we’ve had a big spike in suspicious deaths since a certain somebody came to the Cove.”

Hibbard and Hornby went back to exchanging meaningful glances. We’d had two murders—and maybe three now—in town since I moved up from New York. There was poor Abe Monahan at the Millwood Inn last spring, and then Kyle Fipps at the Art Association’s Christmas party. The common thread being that I’d just so happened to be the person who stumbled on the bodies. Well, okay, I shared the ghastly honors with my best friend, Chloe, when it came to finding Kyle. The thing was, though, that I didn’t like what Hibbard had implied any more than I appreciated the looks he kept swapping with his pal.

“Are you saying I’m some kind of
jinx
?” I asked.

The EMTs shifted uncomfortably on their feet.

“You hear anybody use that word?” Hibbard replied. “I know I didn’t use that word.”

“But say he would’ve used it. He might have also pointed out that you’re two for two so far . . . three for three if you want to count the present occasion,” Hornby said. “Not that either of us believes in jinxes. As technical personnel we aren’t superstitious types.”

I stared at him. The monkey reached a finger up and strummed my lower lip. I pulled his hand, or paw, or whatever it was, away from my face so I wouldn’t blubber.

“If it wasn’t too idiotic to even discuss,
I
could point out that you both showed up ahead of me tonight,” I said. “But I won’t. Considering there are more important things going on.”

They seemed taken aback.

“There you go getting touchy again,” Hibbard said.

“We’re just trying to do our job,” Hornby said.

“Something you might want to explain to your, uh, good friend Chief Vega, since his officers seem clueless about what that job happens to be.”

That was enough for me. I’d had it with those two big galoots.

I frowned and pushed past them into the hallway.

Seeing Dr. Pilsner’s body near the foot of the stairs came as a huge shock. It didn’t matter that I’d expected it. There was no way to avoid being shocked when you saw someone who’d been full of vitality with his or her life suddenly and prematurely snuffed out. And when a life was snuffed out by what looked to be a terrible, vicious act, the insult to the senses seemed all the worse.

Gail Pilsner had handled the creatures entrusted to her care with a gentle kindness that made her the most popular vet in town, endearing her even to people who weren’t animal lovers or pet owners. But it was clear at once that there was nothing kind or gentle about how she’d met her end. She lay in a heap amid broken, splintered pieces of the banister, wearing a lab coat that had been partially torn off to reveal the plain plaid blouse and khaki slacks she had on underneath. Bent into unnatural positions, her outspread arms and legs looked almost boneless—but, of course, I knew that just meant a great many of Gail’s bones had been shattered.

As shattered as the rail and spindles that had gone crashing from the stairs to the floor with her.

I emerged from between Hibbard and Hornby to find the new assistant coroner crouched over the body, a suitcase-sized metal crime-scene kit open on the floor beside her. A slim woman in her mid-thirties with narrow black-rimmed eyeglasses and blond hair pulled severely back from her face, Liz Delman had been working under Dr. Maji for a couple of months now. Though she’d bought a saltbox home not far from the Fog Bell Inn, where I was staying on with Chloe and her husband, I hadn’t gotten to know her too well . . . and neither had anyone else in the Cove. Liz mostly ignored people and seemed almost motorized in the way she’d hurry past you on the street.

“She’s only been dead a short time,” she said to Chief Vega and two or three other officers standing around her. “My estimate would be less than an hour.”

“Any ideas about the COD?” Vega said. In police jargon that was short for “cause of death.” Though I don’t suppose anyone would have confused it with “cash on delivery” given the circumstances.

Liz was packing away her equipment. “There’s serious damage to the C-three vertebra.”

“A broken neck,” Vega said.

“In layman’s terms, yes.”

“You think it happened before she went through the rail? Or as a result of the fall?”

“I don’t do instant reports, Chief,” she said curtly. “That’s why we conduct autopsies at the hospital.”

Vega watched Liz latch her kit shut and rise to her feet. I didn’t think he appreciated her condescending attitude. But I also didn’t think he intended to call her out on it . . . not at that very inappropriate point in time.

The two EMTs chimed in before I could find out for sure.

“This is exactly what we’ve been telling your boys, Chief,” Hibbard said. “Thanks to the assistant coroner, we can state for the record that we have a deceased, nonresuscitable person here.”

“Meaning there’s no sense in us hanging around,” Hornby said. “If it’s all the same to you, we’d like to load her up in the wagon and be on our way—”

Vega cut him short with a glance. He seemed ticked, putting it politely. “A woman’s been killed. As of right now this is a crime scene,” he said. “You’ll wait till I’m finished inspecting it and collecting evidence.”

In fairness to the techs, I thought they looked sort of contrite. They went back to shuffling their feet, finally stepping aside as Liz Delman shouldered past them to the door.

Vega quietly studied the broken handrail. After what seemed a long while, he turned to an officer who’d been in the hallway with Liz when we arrived.

“It would’ve taken a lot to send her clear through that rail,” Vega said. “A whole lot.”

I could guess what he was thinking. Gail was five six or so and weighed maybe 110 pounds. A woman that petite wouldn’t have taken down what appeared to be a solid mahogany banister unless she was pushed hard—and with very deliberate intent.

Vega kept looking at the cop, a young rookie with a dimpled baby face—I swear he could have been mistaken for a high school kid—named Jerred. And in case you’re wondering, I knew he was a rookie from a story my kinda sorta ex Mike Ennis had written in the
Anchor
introducing him to the town’s residents.

“You answered the nine-eleven?”

“Right,” Jerred said. “With Connors.”

“I don’t remember you being on tonight’s duty roster.”

“I wasn’t, Chief. But Elroy called in sick and I offered to cover for him.”

Vega rubbed the back of his neck. This was something he did when he was thinking hard. “Who found the body?”

“The woman outside giving a statement,” Jerred said. “She’s got that little shaggy dog . . .”

“Her name is Corinne Blodgett,” I said. “I think her dog is Zsa Zsa.”

Vega faced me abruptly. I could tell he was surprised to hear my voice, and realized he’d been too preoccupied taking in the scene to notice my exchange with the medical techs.

“Sky,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

I shrugged. Hadn’t I wondered that myself?

“Being helpful,” I said. “I think.”

“Didn’t I ask Connors to bring you to the other side of the house?”

“She got away from me, Chief.”

That, naturally, was from Officer Connors, who’d shoved past Hibbard and Hornby after following me through the door. All of a sudden the hallway felt really crowded.

It had also gotten increasingly tense in there, due in large part to Vega’s obvious unhappiness with Connors and me. He stood frowning at us without comment and then returned his attention to Jerred.

“Okay . . . so Ms. Blodgett finds the body,” he said. “Do we know how she got in the door?”

“It was open,” Jerred said.

“Open as in slightly ajar? Or wide open? Or just unlocked?”

“Unlocked, sorry,” Jerred said. “Ms. Blodgett was bringing in her dog for a dental cleaning. She works at City Hall . . . I think in the county clerk’s office or something. Told me she has an early meeting tomorrow morning.”

“Actually, she’s with the human resources department,” I said. “The meeting’s at eight a.m. sharp . . . I had to clean the main conference room today to get it ready. Corinne must have arranged to drop off Zsa Zsa tonight, figuring she’d be too rushed tomorrow.”

Chief Vega gave me a look. I wasn’t sure at first if it was because he appreciated the information or was annoyed at being interrupted. Or because the monkey had clambered up onto my shoulder and started making nervous squeaking sounds. After a second I decided it was a little of all three.

Meanwhile, he’d turned back to Jerred. “Corinne arrives with the dog, lets herself in the door. How come she doesn’t go around to the office entrance?”

Jerred shrugged. “Beats me.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“No, sir.” Jerred had gone from shrugging to squirming in a blink. “I, ah, left that to Clarke. Since he’s outside taking her statement—”

“Corinne probably used this door because it’s already after seven o’clock,” I said. Not that anyone had asked me. But I thought I knew the answer to Vega’s question, and felt bad watching Jerred cringe.

Vega shot another glance in my direction. “And the reason that’s important is . . . ?”

“Dr. Pilsner’s office hours are only till five. If she made special arrangements with Corinne, she probably asked her to use the home entrance. That’s where she would have expected to be.”

“At home as opposed to in the office.”

“Right.”

Vega tugged his chin. It was another gesture I’d gotten used to seeing when he was deep in thought.