A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries) (6 page)

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” I asked.

“All the red blood cells, no white. The body never tried to repair itself. That and the fact the bruising is minor tells me that all this bruising,” he waved his hand over the Y incision, “is from resuscitation.”

“Didn’t you already know that?”

“Yes, but when I examined the rest of the body I saw this.” Dr. Grace went back to the table with me in tow, rolled Gavin on to his side and pointed to a shaved section of his shoulder. There was a large reddish bruise outlining the shape of his shoulder blade.

“That was not caused by resuscitation,” said Dr. Grace.

He took me back to the microscope, changed slides, and I took another look. I could see some white cells among the red. Dr. Grace smiled at me when I straightened up. “The repair process had begun, but it didn’t get very far. There was at least an hour between this bruise and those the paramedics gave him. This is pretty deep damage. It took some force to cause it. I don’t believe it was from a fall resulting from the MI. There’s also a similar bruise on the back of the head.”

“Gavin was in a fight?” I said.

“Doubtful. If it was a fight, as you say, it was short-lived.”

“It caused the MI?”

Dr. Grace shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why didn’t Forester notice this?”

“Your friend Gavin here was pretty hairy. I didn’t notice it at first glance either, and Forester didn’t have the benefit of Tommy’s feeling either. He was looking for an ordinary MI and that’s what he found.”

“He was sloppy,” I said.

“Yes, and no.”

“Give him the benefit of the doubt, in other words.”

“I think we have to, in this case. I could’ve missed it myself,” he said.

“I doubt that.”

Dr. Grace smiled and led me to the other side of the table.

“Tell me what you see,” he said, pointing to Gavin’s chest.

I looked over the area slowly, not wanting to miss anything and let Dad down. Whatever was there, he wouldn’t have missed it. I saw another shaved area next to Gavin’s neck. It was small, the size of a quarter. Inside the area were two quarter-inch-long marks, identical and about a half inch apart.

“What’s that?”

“Can’t be sure yet, but if I had to guess I’d say burns from a stun gun.”

“Like in that Maryland cop case?”

“You read,” he said.

“An unfortunate habit of mine.”

“And a good memory to boot. Ever think of a career in forensics?”

“Not for a minute,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Too bad.”

“How on earth did you notice these with all this black and gray hair everywhere?”

He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. “I smelled them.”

“Say what?”

“I have a very sensitive sense of smell.”

“Bet you wish you didn’t.” The smell in the room, although mild, was getting to me. Dad told me a thousand times that death has its own odor. The antiseptic wasn’t helping the situation either.

“Not at all. My sense of smell has helped me on a number of occasions like this one. The instrument used to make those marks burnt the hair on top of them. I smelled the hair. Now look at his mouth.”

Oh crap. Do I have to?

“Come on, I have to show you.”

I looked at Gavin’s face and was surprised how different he looked in death. Like his wife, he needed wakefulness to make him recognizable as the man I knew.

“You shaved his beard,” I said. Dixie was going to be pissed. Gavin had a beard for as long as I could remember.

“Couldn’t be helped. After the burn marks, I started looking for a cause of the MI, needle marks, something like that.”

“Just being attacked couldn’t have caused it?”

“Maybe, but I had to be sure there wasn’t a direct cause from an outside source. I think we can assume whoever stunned him didn’t do it for kicks.”

I leaned over the table to get a better look and saw a portion of Gavin’s thigh was shaved. “Is that a puncture?”

“Looks like it to me. My guess, he was injected with something that brought on the MI.”

“Like what?”

“Could be any number of drugs or poisons. I’m waiting for more extensive labs to come back now.”

“Did you call the cops?”

“Your dad’s old shop to be exact. Called them before I called you, but they’ve got their hands full today and he isn’t going anywhere. Should’ve called before the autopsy, but I was hoping I wouldn’t find anything. I should’ve known better.”

“You didn’t break any rules bringing me down here, did you?”

“Depends on who you ask. Don’t let on though.”

“No problem.” He pulled the sheet back up over Gavin’s head and we left the room. I thanked Dr. Grace in the reception area that was now empty and left the hospital. I went straight to my parents’ house to see if Dixie was awake and willing to give me her house keys for no good reason. I wasn’t ready to tell her that her husband had been murdered.

Chapter Five

UNCLE MORTY’S JEEP sat at my parents’ back gate, parked caddywhompus as usual. I gritted my teeth and considered turning around. I was not in the mood for Morty. He asked too many questions and I had no answers, at least not yet. But there he was, and it wouldn’t do to avoid him, as if that were possible for any length of time. Uncle Morty liked to turn up when I least wanted to see him. He was a total bloodhound and my father’s best friend, if you didn’t count my mother. Plus, he wasn’t my real uncle which made him more annoying than blood family and just as hard to get rid of.

Uncle Morty waited, in ambush, on the back porch. I was halfway up the garden path when a drizzle started, making the long grass shiny green, and the sky took on a thick purple cast. The wind picked up, swirling the leaves and lawn clippings around my feet. The heavy air and dread slowed me, as I walked the twenty yards toward him.

Uncle Morty waited, not moving a muscle. He stood at the edge of the stairs, a menacing statue with his arms crossed and his driving cap tipped low on his forehead. Given the rest of his getup, the hat should’ve looked ridiculous. He wore a gray sweat suit washed within an inch of its life, a pair of Nike high-tops circa 1985 and a Members Only jacket that hadn’t fit in ten years. I doubted Morty noticed he was carrying another person around his middle.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at him. Rain dripped off the brim of his hat and he looked at me from behind thick glasses. I couldn’t read his expression. The lenses were fogged from the rain and he made no attempt to wipe them. He stood and waited, and I wished my eyes would stop burning.

“You coming up or what?” Morty said.

I grasped the railing and put my right foot on the first step.

“Get a move on. Shit. I ain’t got all day.”

I climbed the stairs, pulled out my key and unlocked the back door. I walked into the butler’s pantry with Morty close at my heels and hung my rain-soaked jacket on the coatrack by the door and watched as Morty rummaged through the cabinets. The pantry was wonderful with its floor-to-ceiling cabinets, secret drawers, and odd-shaped cubbies. As a little girl, I spent hours trying to find the pantry’s secrets. I doubt I’d discovered them all. The man who built our house was a master woodworker and I suspected deeply crazy. There were secret drawers and doors all over the house. His masterpiece was the pantry with its beveled glass, hidden hinges, delicate carvings, and unique temperature. The small room was freezing. Josiah Bled designed his house to keep the pantry at a steady forty degrees. It didn’t matter if the doors to the kitchen and dining room were left open; it never warmed. Dad spent hours trying to figure it out. Architects were called. Structural engineers examined it. No one had a clue. Every couple of years, Dad made a fresh attempt to discover the secret, but he couldn’t make any headway.

I rubbed my shoulders and watched Morty pulling out drawers. Morty liked the pantry too, but only because Dad kept his booze in there. Then he stopped, shut a drawer with a flip of his wrist and looked at the liquor cabinet. The cabinet was original to the house although it was fifty years older. It was tucked in a cubby in a bank of built-ins. It looked like Josiah Bled placed the liquor cabinet in there and the rest grew in around it. It stood four feet high on delicate cabriole legs that looked as if they might snap under its weight. The front had four false drawers inlaid with five different types of wood in a star pattern. The sides were probably inlaid too, but we couldn’t see them. Josiah built around the cabinet with only one millimeter to spare, and it couldn’t be removed. Wooden hands and vines came out from the built-ins and wrapped around the legs. You’d have to snap off the legs or break the woodwork to get it out. Josiah made sure his cabinet would never leave.

Uncle Morty turned the key in the top drawer, pushed the top up and laid the front down. The door revealed an open space for wine and other bottles, but Mom used it for her old cookbooks.

“There you are, you little bitch,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked.

Morty held up a slender wine bottle with a wooden cork. He rubbed the dust off the label with his jacket, smacked his lips, and closed the cabinet.

“Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Wine?” I asked.

“Not just wine. It’s the peach stuff Tommy ordered from Germany a couple of years ago. I knew he was holding out on me. Bastard said there wasn’t any left.”

Imagine that.

“Let’s have a glass and toast to Gavin, God bless him.”

“Maybe we should wait for Dad.”

Morty ignored me and walked into the kitchen. I followed and sat down while he filled a couple of juice glasses with a flourish. He handed one to me. “Here’s to Gavin. A good man gone to his reward.”

“I didn’t know you were religious,” I said.

“I ain’t, but Gavin was, so bottoms up.”

He drained his glass, and I sniffed mine. It smelled too good to drink. A hundred ripe peaches smelled like they were squashed in there. The scent filled the kitchen and breathing it was enough to get me tipsy.

“Sit down Mercy, and let’s us have a talk,” said Morty.

Great, just what I wanted.

“You tell Tommy yet?”

“Tell him what?”

“That Gavin was murdered.” Morty poured a second glass.

“That was quick. How’d you know?”

“Sources.”

“You must know Dr. Grace,” I said.

“Don’t know the man from Adam. You told Tommy?”

“Not yet. I just got back from the morgue. Seriously, how’d you know?”

Morty took off his glasses and wiped them on a dish towel. He poured another glass of wine and sipped it.

“You might as well wait till he gets back. No use working him up when he can’t do anything on that damn boat anyway.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

“Meanwhile, we better get moving on this thing.”

We?

“Dixie upstairs?” he asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“See if you can get the keys out of her, so we can check out the house before the Keystone Cops.”

“Pass.”

“Get the keys,” he said.

“Let the cops handle it. It’s their job for heaven sake.”

“You want to let the cops handle Gavin’s murder?” Uncle Morty banged his glass on the table.

I didn’t, but I couldn’t stand having Uncle Morty dogging my every footstep either. No keys for him. I’d check out the house by myself.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Tommy will kick our asses, if we don’t move on this.”

Before I could think of a reasonable answer, the doorbell rang. What luck! Morty shot me an irritated look as I left the kitchen. I went down the hall into the receiving room. On the other side of my parents’ enormous front door were two tiny figures. They could only be the Bled sisters, Millicent and Myrtle. They were nieces of Josiah Bled and lived down the street in another of his creations. Millicent and Myrtle were also my godmothers. Once when I was ten, they told me Josiah didn’t design the pantry to stay cold, but caused it all the same.

Josiah’s mistress disappeared in 1921. It was a big news story at the time since Bernice Collins was rumored to be a former prostitute, and Josiah was heir to the Bled Brewery fortune. Josiah was never charged with any crime, but his nieces told me he killed her in the pantry hence the constant cold. My parents have Millicent and Myrtle to thank for most of my childhood nightmares.

One of the sisters rapped on the stained glass. I ran my fingers through my hair, pinched my cheeks, and attempted to straighten my damp shirt. It was hopeless.

I unlocked the door and opened it to find two tiny elderly ladies clutching enormous handbags, umbrellas, and casserole dishes.

“Mercy dearest, we heard and came as soon as we could,” they said.

“What did you hear?”

“About Mr. Flouder, of course. Sweet man, such a shame,” said Millicent.