Little Black Book of Murder (9 page)

I turned on the water. The pig began making agitated squeals and pushed against her fence, so I dragged the hose over to her pen and aimed the water at her trough. She drank thirstily.

But I forgot about the pig.

Inside her pen, half-­covered in muck, lay a person.

The body was facedown and motionless in the mud, arms flung out. The mud was mixed with blood.

I dropped the hose and seized the fence railing to keep from collapsing to my knees.

“Swain?” I said.

Because that was who it was. I recognized his jeans, his fancy red boots, his tailored chambray shirt.

Overhead, the sun began spinning, the light blinding. The silence of the farm became so complete that I could hear my own blood rushing in my head.

“Swain,” I said. My voice barely came out of my throat.

With shaking hands, I hauled myself over the fence and landed in the wet earth on the other side, scattering the startled piglets. I staggered over to him and stood for a horrible second, frozen with indecision. Swaying over his body, I knew that he was gone. Blood had pooled around him, soaking into the ground. The next moment, though, I knelt beside him and rolled him over. Hoping he was breathing. Hoping he was alive.

But his body was stiff, his face a muddy mask of death. His chest had been perforated—­over and over. I reeled back from the horror of the wounds.

“Emma,” I called—­still too shaken to make myself heard. I gathered my wits and shouted, “Emma! Zephyr!
Emma!
”

I clapped one hand over my mouth to hold back a sob. He'd been stabbed through the chest many times. Now on his back, his eyes half open and cloudy, he stared at nothing.

Whoever had killed him—­was that person still around? A murky surge of darkness flooded up around me, and I felt my knees give out again. In the next moment, I was kneeling in the mud beside him, fighting to stay conscious. I touched his arm. Rigid. And cold.

Which meant the killer had to be gone. Long gone.

My brain steadied. A pitchfork lay in the mud near the fence, tines up. I knew instantly it was the murder weapon. I could see gore on the tines. Someone had used it to stab Swain through his chest and had thrown it down afterward. With intensified concentration, I found myself focusing on everything else about the muddy pen—­the better to block out the horror, maybe.

Three yards away lay a half-­buried set of keys.

My vision sharpened. I knew those keys. I recognized the high school logo on the ring—­it was the school my nephew Rawlins attended. And the second key on the ring was an old skeleton key.

To the back door of Blackbird Farm.

Rawlins had been here.

Behind me, I heard Emma calling. She came up to the fence and skidded to a stop. When she saw what lay on the ground beside me, she cursed.

“It's Swain,” I said, still unable to get up. “He's been killed.”

Emma cursed again, prayerfully this time. “Get out of there. Come on. Let's go. We could be in danger or—”

“He's been dead for hours.”

Emma steadied herself on the fence, reassured that the killer wasn't still hanging around. “Did you call 911?”

“Not yet.” I turned to look up at my sister. “I'm afraid to look for Zephyr.”

Emma met my gaze, and her jaw hardened. “You think she's dead, too?”

“I'm afraid to look,” I said again. “She must be in the house. She might be alive, though, and need help.”

Emma yanked her phone from her pocket and tossed it to me. “I'll go in the house.”

“Wait for the police.”

“If somebody comes after me, they'd better be prepared for a fight.”

“Be careful,” I warned.

Her face grim, Emma ran up the hillside ­toward the house. I heard her calling Zephyr's name.

My hands were trembling so hard, I could barely hit the numbers on Emma's phone. I spoke to the dispatcher, answered her questions, but I must have hung up on her. I don't remember how, exactly, but I must have communicated that we needed the police.

One fact was very clear in my head.

I put the phone in my pocket and crawled over to Rawlins's keys.

I picked them up and slid them into the pocket of my jeans.

I'm not sure how long it took, but Emma came back. “Nobody's up there. The house is empty.”

“The police are on their way. They'll need help getting through the gate.”

“I'll go. You okay?”

I managed to nod.

“Wait over here,” Emma suggested.

But I couldn't leave the body. It felt wrong to abandon him there. I knew Swain had been dead for some time, but it felt disrespectful to leave him alone. I remembered the night Todd was shot, the hours I spent at his side, knowing he could not survive, yet holding him, willing him to live. His last moments would forever be branded in my mind—­along with the dreadful notion that I had failed him. I stayed for hours after his last breath, unable to tear myself away—­perhaps arguing with myself until I reached a hazy conclusion about his life. It had not been wasted. His research had been important. His parents had loved him. His sister, too.

So I sat with Swain out of respect for his life.

But I could not stop myself from wondering about Rawlins. Had Rawlins come back after the party? Surely he had not been here at the moment Swain died.

Surely not.

Please, I said to a greater power. Please don't let Rawlins be mixed up in this.

A
t Blackbird Farm, Michael was helping another one of his wiseguys into a car. The man was clutching his hand as if it pained him. Another household repair gone awry?

Michael came over to the truck.

“Where have you been?” he said, pulling me out of Emma's pickup almost before she had it stopped. “There's something going on up the road. Cops and an ambulance and everything. First I thought—­I was afraid there was another shooting.”

“I tried phoning you. We went to Starr's Landing. What happened here?”

“The furnace is out again. We tried your kick-­start thing, but—­never mind.” By that time, Michael had seen the mud all over my jeans and recognized something in my face. His hands turned gentler on my shoulders. “What's wrong?”

“We've been with the police. Swain Starr has been murdered.” I began to tremble again, and I felt myself losing control. “Stabbed with a pitchfork. He's dead, and I—­we couldn't leave without answering a lot of questions. I phoned you from Emma's cell, but you didn't answer.”

Emma leaned over from behind the wheel and spoke tersely out the open door. “It's a long story, big guy. She needs a little TLC.”

“Come inside, Em,” I said.

Michael's arm tightened protectively around me.

Emma shook her head. “I'm going to help the neighbor who's taking Starr's animals to another farm. Go relax. Take it easy for the rest of the day.”

Michael took me inside, sat me down on the library sofa, brought me a cup of tea and a piece of toast to settle my stomach. The house was stone cold again, so he threw another log on the fire and poked it until a warm flame jumped up. Then he sat on the coffee table in front of me while I nibbled the toast and told him the whole story.

“What do the cops think?” he asked when I'd explained the grisly afternoon.

“They didn't share any theories with me. Swain must have been killed last night. He was—­his body was cold, and there was so much blood that I—­I—”

Michael steadied me with hands on my knees. “You gonna be okay?”

“Getting there,” I said with a smile that felt wan. “I just hope it wasn't Marybeth who killed her ex.”

Michael looked grim. “You think she went back and took care of unfinished business? With a pitchfork?”

Although Marybeth had behaved in a reckless way at the party, my instinct was that she'd been prepared to make a scene yesterday, but not really hurt anyone. I said, “I can't imagine she'd do such a thing.”

“But that's what the cops will think, right? She was taking potshots a few hours earlier.”

“Trying to frighten Swain, that's all. That's a long way from stabbing him over and over.” I had a sudden vision of Swain on his belly in the mud and realized he must have been crawling away, trying to escape, when he died. I shuddered again and tried to push the thought away. “The big question is where Zephyr has gotten to. What if she's hurt? Or someone took her away?”

“Or maybe she's the one who killed her husband and ran off.”

“Why would she do that? He changed his life for her!” I shook my head. “And she's such a nice person—­kind to animals, so attentive to her husband. No, I have to hope the whole thing was a kind of random break-­in.”

“In that case,” Michael said grimly, “we better get some serious security around here.” He took the empty plate from me and set it aside. “I don't think anybody'd sneak onto a rich guy's farm to steal an organic tomato and end up killing him by accident. On the same day his ex pulled a trigger? Coincidences like that don't happen, Nora.”

“I guess you're right.” I risked taking a sip of tea and was glad not to choke on the few dribbles that made it down my throat. “And Swain—­whoever killed him left him in the pigpen—­maybe hoping the animals would destroy evidence.” My cup rattled dangerously in its saucer, and I set it down before the tea spilled. “I just can't imagine—­I don't understand how people can be so awful.”

“I know.” Michael pulled a cashmere throw from the arm of a nearby chair. He wrapped it around me and kissed the top of my head. “It's one of the best things about you.”

He settled beside me, and I leaned against him. When I could speak again, I said, “There's one more thing.”

“Don't think about it anymore.”

But I reached into the pocket of my jeans and fumbled for the set of keys I'd taken from the mud. Instinctively, Michael put out his hand, and I dropped the dirty keys into his palm.

He went very still.

“You recognize them?”

One-­handed, he thumbed the skeleton key away from the others. “Not many houses use these anymore. And the high school emblem on the ring? These belong to Rawlins.”

“Michael, I found them near Swain's body. On the ground, just a few feet away from him.”

He closed his palm around the keys as if to hide them. “Oh hell.”

“I don't know how the keys got there.”

As if I had not spoken, Michael said, “I knew there was something fishy going on yesterday.”

“But Rawlins came here during the party,” I argued. “Swain was alive then. He was murdered much later. By that time, surely Rawlins wasn't anywhere near Starr's Landing.”

“I thought you said Libby came here last night, asking for him.”

I closed my eyes to shut out the possibilities. Last I'd heard, Rawlins hadn't come home at all, and Libby was still looking for him.

Michael sat back against the cushions and looked at me. “What did the cops say?”

“I told you. They didn't share their theory with me, but Swain must have—”

“I mean about the keys.”

I met his gaze uncertainly.

His expression changed, going from concern to laserlike intensity in a heartbeat. “You didn't tell them, did you?”

“No. I took the keys. I didn't tell anyone, not even Em. I just—­if Rawlins was at the farm last night . . .” My voice trailed off. I couldn't bring myself to complete the thought.

“It's okay.” Michael put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. “You don't have to explain to me. But you'll need to get your story straight for the cops.”

I winced at the thought of getting my story straight.

“The police will come looking for you, Nora. You found the body. They'll want to talk to you again when you're calm and thinking straight. You'll have another chance to tell them about finding the keys. But explaining why you took them—­that's going to need some spin.”

I felt my cheeks turn warm. For all my worry that Michael might be turning to the dark side, here I was the one who'd broken the law by removing evidence from a crime scene. Softly, I said, “I need to talk to Rawlins.”

“Yeah, you do.” He released me. “Just in case, use one of my cells.”

He meant one of the telephones he used when he wanted to be sure law enforcement wasn't listening in. The thought of needing to be careful on behalf of dear Rawlins made me feel cold all over again. Michael brought me the phone and left me alone. I phoned Libby's house.

“I just heard the news,” Libby exclaimed. “Emma says you discovered Swain Starr dead in a pigpen! And his new wife nowhere to be found!”

“It's a shock,” I agreed.

“Emma said maybe Marybeth killed him. The Howie's Hotties heiress stabbed her husband? What a scandal. It'll be all over the national news any minute. Do you think they'll have to recall the hot dogs? I mean, the idea of a dead man being eaten by pigs is revolting.”

“The pigs didn't eat anything,” I said. “He was dead, but otherwise untouched.”

“Maybe they ate Zephyr!”

“Don't be ridiculous, Libby.”

I must have sounded undone, because she said contritely, “Are you okay? Did you faint?”

“Not this time,” I said, rubbing my forehead, but grateful for her concern. “Libby, listen. Is Rawlins around? Did he come home?”

“That boy is pushing the limits! He didn't get home until the middle of the night.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“He's still sleeping.”

I looked at my watch. Nearly five in the evening. Demanding that Libby wake him up to talk to me was only going to arouse her suspicions, though, and suggesting that her son might be involved in a murder would certainly send my sister into an epic tailspin. Keeping her in the dark seemed like a good idea for the moment. I tried to sound casual. “Could you have him call me when he wakes up?”

“Sure,” Libby said, clearly uninterested in what I might want to discuss with her son. “I have to go. I'm helping the twins memorize some lines for a mayonnaise commercial.”

“A mayonnaise commercial?”

“It's just for practice. Bye-­bye!”

Rawlins didn't call me back.

 • • • 

A
t the ungodly hour of five minutes to seven on Monday morning, I presented myself at Gus Hardwicke's office, determined not to look as if I had spent the night tossing and turning. I wore my trusty Calvin Klein pencil skirt with a crisp white shirt and a simple knee-­length coat—­my favorite shade of blue was making a comeback—­with kitten-­heeled Ferragamos and black hosiery, which I hoped made me look more professional than my tulip-­printed party dress.

The Pendergast Building was nearly deserted until I reached the floors where the
Intelligencer
was produced. There, the offices were a hive of activity. Normally, I arrived just as the rest of the staff was clearing out for the day, so I stepped off the elevator and was surprised by the noise and bustle of my coworkers.

I picked up the morning issue from the table beside the elevator door and scanned the headlines.

Fashion Designer Dead
Supermodel Missing

Not quite three inches tall, but definitely screaming. With the paper under my arm, I headed for the executive suite and steeled myself for another trying confrontation with my editor.

Gus's assistant—­the latest young, attractive, unpaid intern from a local university—­was just removing her coat and a red beret that gave her a jaunty look not matched by her dour expression. She tipped her head ­toward the office where we could both hear Gus shouting. She said with remarkable calm, “He's busy at the moment. He had three appointments before yours.”

“Does he ever sleep?” I asked.

“I think he's a vampire, but not the sexy kind,” she said in a tone that told me she wasn't planning on sticking around after her internship was up. “There's been a big celebrity murder, so he's all excited.”

I guessed this savvy intern would find a good job as far away from the
Intelligencer
as she could manage.

The office door burst open, and Rick Mendenhall, the medical-­desk editor and part-­time book reviewer, came barreling out, his face flushed.

Gus shouted after him, “If I wanted a bloody bad story about tumors, I'd be running the
New England Journal of Medicine
! Bloody hell! Get me a story that will sell papers! Nobody cares about experimental treatments!”

Rick banged the outer door shut. Gus stalked out of the office and glared after him.

“Nobody cares about experimental treatments unless they have sick relatives,” I said calmly.

Gus slapped his forehead. “So that's what's wrong with the newspaper business! We don't have enough dying subscribers!”

“Good morning,” I replied, determined to remain composed. “Should I have brought you coffee? You seem a little sleepy.”

He gave me a sour look. “Tea. I drink tea. Don't try jollying me this morning. Unless you're bringing a new headline on Swain Starr's murder. I hear you discovered the body.”

“I did.” Although he hadn't invited me, I preceded him into his office. “I am not bringing you any new headlines, however. As far as I know, there have been no developments in the case since I left Swain's house.”

“Then you're behind the times.” Gus followed me into his office and closed the door.

The office of the
Intelligencer
's editor-­in-­chief was a domain I had entered only once before—­on the day the newspaper's owner took me to meet my new boss, a man who had lasted in his job only a few more months. Today the office looked as if Gus also didn't intend to remain long, or else he traveled light. Gone were the diplomas and framed awards from civic organizations—­the kind of decor that most executives hung to remind themselves of past glories. Instead, Gus had stripped down the office to its barest essentials. He used a tall desk without a chair, as if he were too energetic to sit. His open laptop sat on the desk, e-mail program blinking. A wooden boomerang decorated with tribal markings lay beside it, making me wonder if he sometimes threw it out of frustration. Large sheets of newsprint were tacked haphazardly on the walls, and someone had used a fat red marker to furiously sketch the next day's layout on the paper—­the first sign that perhaps Gus didn't embrace technology the way nearly everyone else in the building did.