Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
He found a picture of Lily’s husband upstairs in the master bedroom, a black-and-white photo in a wooden frame on the end table next to the double bed. The picture showed a plain-faced man in khakis. Lily’s sister had explained that he was airborne, killed in Korea when the Chinese overran his outfit, November 1950.
Lily’s jewelry box, overturned on the dresser, was dirty with black fingerprint powder, as were the drawers the burglar pulled out, tossing Lily’s clothes across the floor. Lily’s dresses, yanked from their hangers, littered the closet floor, as well as a dozen shoe boxes and shoes, mostly black and brown.
When he spotted the broken glass box under the bed, he knew he’d have to call the crime lab back to take a picture and dust it for prints. Nothing picked up fingerprints better than glass.
He found a color photo of Lily’s son, who looked a lot like his father, only he was in fatigues and wore a helmet. Beau could see jungle in the background of the photo. The son was killed at Da Nang during the Tet Offensive, 1968.
Beau realized when he saw the son’s room that it hadn’t been disturbed, except for dusting, since the sixties, that the entire house had an old feeling. He went back through it and found nothing new, as if the house and its contents had been frozen in time. No microwave in the kitchen, no answering machine next to the phone, no home computer, no VCR.
He found hundreds of food coupons carefully clipped from the newspaper, generic drugs in the medicine cabinets, Lily Chauchoin’s well-worn clothing, old sofas, mismatched lamps. Beau went back to Lily’s purse, which he’d found in the kitchen cupboard, behind a can of flour.
He found nine dollars in cash and a checkbook but no credit cards, no bank debit card. Thumbing through her checkbook confirmed what Beau suspected. Although she lived in a large house on one of the most exclusive avenues in uptown New Orleans, although she kept the exterior of her home immaculate, even the lawn, she had little money for anything else. He carefully put everything back in the purse and put it back where she’d left it.
In the closet where Lily’s body was found, Beau discovered another piece of glass, rectangular in shape. As he called Howland back to the scene, he bent over and saw the glass was actually the lid from the glass box upstairs.
After photographing them, Howland lifted three partial prints from the glass box beneath Lily’s bed and one excellent thumb print from the glass lid from the closet. Beau thanked him for coming back so quickly.
“It’s what I live for,” Howland snarled, then smiled. “See you at the autopsy.”
DiMarco’s Grocery, along the first floor of a two-story wooden building painted pale blue, sat at the corner of Hampson and Burdette Streets. The smile on Sal DiMarco’s face disappeared when Beau told him what had happened. Sixty-six years old, five seven, a hundred and forty pounds, with thick gray hair and a matching mustache, Sal’s eyes teared up and he had to take a seat.
Beau leaned against the counter and accepted a Coke from Sal’s son Joe, who was missing both hands and used old fashioned metal hooks, instead of prosthetic hands.
“Was a firefighter,” Joe explained. “Lost both hands in a fire back in ’61. In the French Quarter, thought we’d lose an entire block, but only lost two houses and two hands.”
Joe delivered Lily’s groceries. His last delivery was three days earlier. Lily would call in her order and he’d deliver it, but never went inside. Lily always met him on the back porch, always paid with cash, and always carried her own stuff in from the porch.
“Do you know what drugstore she used?” Beau chided himself for not copying the names of any pharmacy from the prescriptions in Lily’s bathroom cabinet.
“Ours.” Joe explained they had a pharmacist in the back. “I offered to carry the stuff in every time, but she never let me. Rich people are sometimes odd. She was very quiet, never really looked me in the eye, but I liked her.” Joe, in his late forties, stood six three, two-eighty, balding, lifted his apron with the hook on his right hand and wiped tears from his eyes.
“You’re from Homicide?”
Beau nodded, taking another sip of Coke.
“She was murdered?”
Beau nodded again.
“This is horrible,” he said. “Absolutely horrible.”
“How long was Lily a customer?”
Sal answered for his son. “Forty years. More. She used to come in till her son was killed in Vietnam. We been deliverin’ ever since.”
As Beau jotted the DiMarcos’ contact information in his notes, Sal leaned on the counter and asked, “Did Lily suffer?”
Beau gave him the stare, the expressionless stare of his ancestors, those lean plains warriors who said little and showed no emotion in their faces, ever, even when dying at the hands of the white man.
The old man’s eyes became wet again.
Beau thanked them for the Coke and left his business card, in case they heard anything. He spent the next four hours in a futile canvass of Hampson and the side streets around the house with the twenty-one steps.
Standing in front of Lily’s gate in his tan suit pants, badge clipped to his belt, Beretta in the new beige canvas holster on his right hip, Beau removed the evidence tape he’d forgotten to remove the previous evening. He slipped on his extra-dark Ray-Ban sunglasses. Time to canvass.
Nine A.M., time people should be up. Beau had attended Lily’s autopsy at six A.M., confirming the manner of death was homicide, the cause of death: asphyxia from ligature around her throat. The pathologist carefully removed the curtain cord from Lily’s frail neck. Beau had already found the cord’s source, a front room window. The pathologist set the time of death between four and eight P.M. the evening before the body was found.
Beau walked over to Louisa Smith’s small brick home and rang the bell.
Louisa cracked open her door and peeked through the screen door. “What is it now?” She seemed more annoyed than frightened.
“I forgot to ask if you knew what lawn service Lily used?”
“Lawn service?”
“Yes, who took care of Lily’s yard?” Beau moved to the side and pointed toward Lily’s yard.
“I’ve been using the same gardeners for twenty years, but Lily used people going up and down with lawn mowers. Kids sometimes. Men too, but nobody steady.”
Beau asked for the name of Louisa’s gardener and had to explain he needed to speak with anyone remotely connected to the neighborhood.
“Wait a second.” Louisa shut the door and came back a minute later with a card she pressed against the screen door and told Beau he could take down the information, but she couldn’t understand why.
The lawn service was in Metairie. Something to follow up later.
“Have you seen anyone from the electric company, gas company, phone company around lately?” Beau had already made a note to check with those companies for any recent service in the area because you never knew, they may have a murderer working for them, or if they came around, they might have seen something.
Louisa’s eyes narrowed. “That man up on the pole yesterday.”
Beau leaned closer. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Of course. Except for you bothering me.”
Beau thanked her again and she huffed, “With all Lily’s money, I don’t know why she didn’t have a regular lawn man.”
He rolled his sleeves up and continued his canvass of Lily’s neighbors.
Three doors from Lily’s house, at another white house, this one with twelve steps leading up to its front gallery, Beau found Sally Branson: forty-four years old, tall and thin, with light brown skin, hair cut in a short afro, brown eyes, and a ready smile. Sally wore a white maid’s dress and white shoes.