Read 52 Steps to Murder Online
Authors: Steve Demaree
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Humor & Satire, #Humorous, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Cozy, #Culinary, #General Humor
As the plan became more of a possibility, Angela and Hornwell communicated only by personal ads in a metropolitan newspaper. If either of them wanted to meet, he or she placed an ad in code, always paid cash, and the two of them met to discuss Hornwell’s plan. Finally, Angela agreed to go along. Unless either of them foresaw a complication, they agreed to follow through upon Angela’s return. The plan was open-ended. It called for Hornwell to sneak over to the house he owned at the other end of Hilltop Place in the middle of the night on Friday night, before the lookouts arose. Without being seen, he prepared to keep watch on the neighborhood’s proceedings and Angela’s arrival. As soon as Irene Penrod’s taxi left Hilltop Place on Saturday morning, Hornwell hurried underground and raced to Mrs. Nelson’s house, where he gave her a sedative. Then, he waited inside Miss Penrod’s house to see if Angela would be able to commit both murders. If not, he would take care of Mrs. Jarvis. Everything went well until Hornwell hurried underground to Mrs. Nelson’s house. He was almost tackled by a deranged man. When Hornwell realized that the police were taking Angela away, he hurried to Mrs. Jarvis’s house. This time the deranged man was nowhere to be seen.
Angela Nelson continued her confession until we knew everything. Sadly, Lou and I turned away. It was not the first time we had seen a young person waste his or her life by committing a terrible crime. The two of us walked out and decided that it was again time to eat. Years on the job had enabled us to eat, even when we didn’t feel like eating. As Lightning bolted in order to satisfy our hunger, Lou opened up.
“Cy, you never cease to amaze me.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you, or without all the help we both had.”
“But how did you arrive at Angela Nelson and Harry Hornwell as our murderers?”
“Well, I admit it took me a lot longer than it should’ve. There were too many clues, many of which had nothing to do with the murder. Each of them made things more complicated. Nothing seemed to make sense, so I decided to try to narrow things down a bit. It helped when we got the phone records. Last night I was thinking about those two phone calls on the morning of the murder. The call Mrs. Jarvis made to Mrs. Nelson and the one Irene Penrod made to the cab company. It got me to thinking about the time issue and the most important clue we had.
“Frank told us that someone had given Mrs. Nelson something to put her to sleep forty-five minutes to an hour before the poison was administered. I had thought of that before, but only to try to figure out why someone would put her to sleep. What I needed to do instead was add the time needed to put her to sleep to the time it took to kill her and see where we stood. I added them together to see if I could eliminate any of the suspects. I looked over the clues and alibis we had been given for that morning and considered all of them gospel if they were confirmed by two or more people. It turned out that I could eliminate almost all of our suspects.
“Supposedly, Angela Nelson and Officer Davis found Mrs. Nelson dead at around 10:45. Using the quickest time period Frank accounted for, that means that someone had killed her by at least 10:30, but probably a little sooner, and had administered the sleeping tablet by at least 9:45. Irene Penrod could have administered the sleeping tablet after Hartley left, but she couldn’t have killed Mrs. Nelson. Hartley was off the hook too, because he was seen delivering the mail after he left Mrs. Nelson’s house, and when I checked, he went immediately to an adjacent street and continued his deliveries. So, that eliminated him.
“With the two of them eliminated, I decided to see who else I could cross of my list. I checked on Mrs. Murphy, the maid. She was feeding the homeless at her church. Witnesses accounted for her being there from 6:30 until after 11:00. Bobby couldn’t have done it, because witnesses confirmed that he had delivered groceries at 9:45 and 10:05. He couldn’t have entered the Nelson house before or after. The only way to enter the house was by way of the front door, which was being watched the entire time, or by underground, which no one could do unless they were already inside one of the houses on the street.
“Other than our ultimate murderers, that left us with only the people on the street. Mrs. Wilkens confirmed that she saw Jimmy, Mrs. Reynolds, and Silverman often enough that none of them had time to hurry through the tunnel, kill Mrs. Nelson, and hurry back to establish an alibi. The only time they were unaccounted for was after Angela Nelson arrived. That left me with only Angela Nelson and Harry Hornwell as possible murder suspects. The problem was that Angela didn’t enter the house until she and Officer Davis discovered her grandmother, which presented another problem. I had already confirmed that Angela’s plane arrived at 9:17 and that she left the airport in a taxi at 9:52. That taxi pulled up in front of Mrs. Nelson’s house at 10:20, or exactly an hour before we arrived. Two witnesses kept her in their sights the entire time until Officer Davis arrived.
“There was only one possibility. I called Officer Davis, and luckily, he admitted his shortcoming. When I asked him if he confirmed that Mrs. Nelson was dead, he told me that he was too scared at the time to do so. All of us assumed that Mrs. Nelson was dead when Angela and Officer Davis entered the house. All of us assumed wrong. As soon as Officer Davis left to report the murder, Angela went to work. She poisoned her grandmother and hoped she would die before we arrived to confirm the death. The only problem was that while Angela could have murdered her grandmother, there was absolutely no way she could’ve put her to sleep. She had to have had an accomplice, and Hornwell was the only one who could’ve done it.”
“But what about his alibi that he was at his cabin?”
“The only time anyone could confirm that Hornwell was in the vicinity of his cabin was when he stopped at the general store on Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. Hornwell left his home on Friday afternoon, all right, drove to the general store to establish an alibi, then waited until dark and sneaked undetected into a house he owned on Hilltop Place. A magnet he carried gave him access to any house on the street by way of the underground tunnel. Except for the time that he left to commit his crimes on Saturday morning, he remained in his house until after dark on Saturday night, at which time he hightailed it to his cabin to establish another alibi. The Thursday night rain gave him the tracks and footprints he needed to establish that he’d been at the cabin. To make sure he had an alibi for the entire weekend, he stopped by the general store on Friday and Sunday.”
“But how did you know things didn’t happen as Angela said?”
“Two things. One, the woman had to have been given a sleeping tablet an hour or so before she was murdered. Irene Penrod denied giving her a sleeping tablet, and both Irene Penrod and Fred Hartley said the woman was not groggy when they talked to her. Also, we have the tape Angela gave us. I timed it. The tape was longer than the time of the phone call she made to her grandmother that morning. Besides that, the doorbell that rang at the end of the tape did not match the one at Mrs. Nelson’s house, but the one I heard as I rang the bell at Angela’s.”
“Of course I didn’t know anything about the tape until we arrived at Miss Nelson’s. Luckily, once I arrived at my conclusion, I memorized everything I could about any of Miss Nelson’s phone calls. When I narrowed my suspect list and decided who murdered Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Jarvis, I had to devise a plan to capture her. It was then I thought of the two, white envelopes that Miss Penrod told us about and the two envelopes Hornwell made sure Officer Davis saw. Our murderers knew Miss Penrod might tell us about the envelopes, so they had to have a story ready in case we confronted them with it. After some thought, I came up with the idea of trying to get Miss Nelson to agree to assisted suicide. If we could get her to agree to that and catch her in a lie, I felt we could get her to break.
“In addition, we got a search warrant for Hornwell’s cabin. Just before I left the house this morning I received a phone call telling me that the rest of Mrs. Jarvis’s money had been found. Yesterday afternoon, a Mr. Anderson contacted the department. He said Mrs. Jarvis knew someone found out where she had hidden her money, and she thought that person or those persons would try to steal it. She confided in Anderson, who isn’t known to anyone else on Hilltop Place. Mrs. Jarvis gave Anderson a list of all the serial numbers of the bills and told him that under no condition would she allow the money to leave her house before her death. An officer picked up that list and Mrs. Jarvis’s note from Anderson last night. Some of the serial numbers matched the money we found in the house Hartley rented from Hornwell. The others matched the bills they found in the safe in Hornwell’s cabin.
“But that’s not all, Lou. We found some samples of Mrs. Jarvis’s handwriting. I believe we will find that tests will prove that the note about the money is actually her handwriting, while the “will” Hornwell has is a forgery. And one more thing, the guys up north did some more checking today. They located the people who have the cabin next to Hornwell. They arrived at their cabin around noon on Friday and left Monday morning. They said Hornwell wasn’t at his cabin at any time on Friday, but arrived sometime late Saturday night. Hornwell had not arrived by the time his neighbors walked their dog around 10:00 Saturday night, but his car was there when they took the dog for a walk early Sunday morning. The couple even commented that they were surprised to see Hornwell’s car on Sunday morning, because on the weekends Hornwell uses his cabin, he arrives sometime early Friday evening and leaves Sunday afternoon. Other than the weekend of the murder, his neighbors have never known him to vary from this routine. While his neighbors didn’t see Hornwell arrive, they did see him leave Sunday afternoon. They were sure it was Hornwell. He waved to them as he left. Our boys up north had already determined that there was only one set of tire tracks and one set of footprints leading to and from the cabin. Evidently, Hornwell only went to the general store on Friday, then hightailed back to Hilltop Place and never set foot in his cabin until late Saturday night when he called his wife from the cabin phone to establish an alibi.”
“Cy, you just never cease to amaze me, but there are a couple of things I still don’t understand.”
“Such as?”
“First of all, why didn’t they just strangle Mrs. Nelson? Why such a production?”
“Miss Nelson said Hornwell called the shots. First of all, Hornwell is the kind of guy who wants to match wits with the police, to show that he is smarter. Second, Miss Nelson said Hornwell thought with all the modern technology we would’ve been able to prove murder anyway. If he choked her, marks would show on her throat. If he used a towel, we might’ve been able to find fibers in her mouth. Plus, Hornwell was so afraid that Mrs. Jarvis would talk and cast suspicion on one or both of them, so he felt they had to do away with her, too. He didn’t figure anyone would believe two deaths by natural causes so close in proximity and time.”
“But why didn’t Hornwell kill Mrs. Nelson instead of taking a chance on Miss Nelson being able to do it?”
“This is all conjecture on my part, but I believe that Hornwell wanted Angela Nelson in as deep as he was. I don’t think Hornwell would’ve committed either murder unless he had to. When we sent Angela away, Hornwell had to make a decision. Either he had to let Mrs. Jarvis live, or he had to kill her.”
“Well, like I said, Cy, you never cease to amaze me.”
“I should’ve amazed you sooner.”
“Or I should’ve amazed you. After all, I was privy to most of what you knew.”
“So what are we going to do now?”
“I’m not sure there’s anything to do. We just need to wait for the trial, if there is one.”
“No, I mean now.”
“Oh, you mean now now. Well, it looks to me like it’s lunchtime.”
Lou and I were happy to conclude another case. A closed case meant more time for eating, dating, reading, and watching TV. But who knew when we’d get called in on another murder case? As it turned out, another murder has already taken place. I’ll fill you in later.
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