Copycat Killing

6

Maggie made a strangled sound in the back of her throat and scrambled down the steps, her foot skidding on the fourth one from the top.

I grabbed the back of her sweatshirt. Momentum pulled us forward and for a moment I thought we were both going to end up in the cold, dirty water. I reached out blindly with my free hand for something to hold on to and found the top stair post, and Maggie somehow managed to keep her balance.

I sucked in a breath. “You okay?” I asked.

She sagged against the railing and nodded, her face pale. I let go of her shirt.

Jaeger’s feet and the bottom half of his legs were on the stairs, the rest of his body was in the water. My left leg was trembling and I could feel my pulse thumping in the hollow just below my throat. I was pretty sure Jaeger was dead but somebody had to make sure. I sank onto the top step and eased my way down to the next one and then the next one.

“Careful,” Maggie warned. Her voice was shaky. “It’s wet.” Her right hand hovered in the air, ready to grab me if I slipped.

Most of the top part of the body was underneath the water; just the eyes and nose were above the surface. Jaeger’s head was turned slightly to the right, his eyes were half closed, and his mouth was partly open.

I reached forward, keeping most of my weight on my good leg and lifted his left arm, feeling for a pulse at the wrist. It was icy cold and his body already seemed to be stiffening. There was a cut on the fleshy part of his palm and the skin around it was puckered and wrinkled. Clearly he’d been in the water for a while.

There was no pulse.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Maggie asked.

I turned to look at her. “Yes,” I said.

“Should we…pull him out of the water?”

I shook my head. “No. I think we’ve already touched more than we should have.”

She held out her hand and I grabbed it, stood up, and climbed carefully back up the steps. Maggie glanced back over her shoulder at the body and then we went out into the storeroom. I wiped my hands on my jeans and pulled out my cell phone. She slumped against the wall.

“We should probably go wait by the front door,” I said after I’d made the call.

Maggie nodded without saying anything and we made our way back to the front of the building. I leaned by the door, watching for the first police car. I was afraid if I sat down I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. She dropped onto the steps, leaning her elbows on her knees.

“What was Jaeger doing in the basement?” she said after a minute.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Seeing how much water there was for some reason, maybe.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. We were just down there at the meeting a couple of hours ago.”

“You said that you didn’t think Jaeger was going to let this sponsor thing go. Maybe he was looking for—something, I don’t know—something he could use to make his case.”

Maggie shook her head. “In the basement? In four feet of water?”

A police cruiser came around the corner then, no siren, pulling in at an angle behind my truck. The paramedics were right behind them. I wasn’t really surprised when Ric and his partner got out of the ambulance and grabbed their gear.

I’d seen the police officer that had responded around town and in the library a few times with his kids. He was tall, with dark hair cut close to his scalp and the kind of posture and assured bearing that suggested he was ex-military.

Heller? No. Keller. I couldn’t remember his first name.

Maggie got to her feet and pulled out her keys. “I’ll take them,” she said as I opened the door. “You should sit down.”

“Ms. Paulson?” the officer asked. I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes.

I nodded. “The uh…body’s in the basement.”

Maggie gestured toward the storage room. “This way.”

Ric nodded hello, but didn’t say anything.

“Please wait here, Ms. Paulson,” Officer Keller said. The three of them followed Maggie through the empty store to the back of the building.

Movement out on the street caught my eye. Another vehicle had pulled in at the curb. I realized it was Marcus’s SUV just as he got out of the driver’s side.

I met him on the sidewalk, trying hard not to limp. “Hi,” I said. I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that this was the second body I’d found in as many days.

He gestured at the building. “Hi. What happened?”

“Maggie and I found one of the artists—Jaeger Merrill—in the…uh basement. It looks like he fell down the stairs and drowned.”

He exhaled slowly. “That’s two bodies in two days, Kathleen.”

I shifted uneasily—and painfully—from one foot to the other. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t blaming you,” he said, quietly.

I cleared my throat. “I thought you’d still be out at Wisteria Hill.”

Marcus shook his head. “Dr. Abbott and her team are finishing setting up a grid to search the area where you found the remains. There isn’t anything I can do out there right now.” He gave me a quick, appraising once-over. “How are you?”

“Just a little stiff.”

His eyes narrowed as though he didn’t quite believe me but for once he didn’t challenge what I’d said.

“Marcus, do you think those bones actually could be Roma’s father’s?” I asked.

His mouth moved and he pulled a hand back over his hair before answering. “This stays between you and me,” he warned.

I nodded. I’d kind of expected to get his stay-out-of-my-case speech. Maybe we were finally moving beyond that.

“Dr. Abbott doesn’t think it’s a smallpox burial site. She doesn’t believe the bones are that old.”

I rubbed my fingers over my bandaged thumb, picking at a loose edge of adhesive tape with one nail. “So it’s possible?”

He shrugged. “It’s just way too soon to tell.” He gestured toward the co-op building. “So why were you here?”

By now I was used to the way the conversation could abruptly change course with him. I looked back over my shoulder. “I brought the truck down to help Maggie take some things over to her studio at River Arts. She had some orders from the co-op Web site to pack.”

“Okay.”

“After we had the truck loaded, she wanted to check on the basement again. Larry Taylor may have a line on a pump, but there’s more rain in the forecast and there’s a lot of water down there already.”

“Who found the body?”

I stuffed my hand in my pocket before I could pick off the tape that was holding the gauze in place on my thumb. “We both did. When I realized Jaeger was dead, Maggie and I went out into the storeroom and I called 911.”

He nodded and looked around as though maybe there was something important here on the sidewalk. “The body was in the water?” he asked.

“Partly. His…feet were on the stairs. He…uh…was faceup, just the eyes and nose out of the water. There was water on the steps. They’re old—just painted wood—without any safety treads so they get slippery.”

He nodded again. Marcus never wrote anything down, that I’d ever seen, but he remembered everything. His blue eyes were focused on my face, but I could see that his mind was already working, shifting through my words. Just then Ric came out the door, stopping to pull off a pair of blue latex gloves. He looked at Marcus and gave a quick shake of his head.

“Do you want Maggie and me to stay around?” I asked.

Marcus patted his pocket. Looking for his phone, maybe? “No you can go. Where are you going to be?”

“At River Arts for a while,” I said, pointing down the street. “Then the library. Then home.”

“I suppose I’d be wasting my time to suggest you take it easy for the rest of the day?” he said, almost smiling at me.

“Pretty much,” I agreed, and I did smile back at him.

Ric joined us. Like Marcus he looked me over quickly. “How’s the ankle?” he asked.

“Better, thank you,” I said.

“What about your thumb?”

I pulled my hand out of my pocket and held it up so he could see the bandage was still in place.

“Try to keep it dry,” he said.

I nodded. Ric turned to Marcus and Marcus looked at me. I was about to be dismissed. “I’ll talk to you both later,” he said.

“All right,” I said. Maggie was waiting by the door and I walked over to her.

“I thought you said Marcus was out at Wisteria Hill,” she said.

“He was, but the anthropologist has more work to do out there. It’s going to be a while before they figure out…” I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

“Before they figure out if it’s Roma’s father.”

I thought about what Marcus had said. “They need to be certain how old the remains are first.” I was picking at the tape on my thumb again without realizing it. I jammed my hand back in my pocket.

Maggie looked past me at Marcus and Ric still talking on the sidewalk.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Is it okay?”

“Uh huh. Marcus said we could leave. He’ll have some questions later.”

“I should give him my keys,” Maggie said, running a hand back over her short blond hair so she looked a little like a poodle that had just had its head scratched.

The men stopped talking as we came level with them. Maggie held out her key ring. “The silver-colored one is for the front door,” she said. “The gold one is the basement lock. You might have to wiggle it a bit. It sticks sometimes.”

Marcus took the keys from her. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll talk to you both later.” His eyes slid briefly over to my face. I wasn’t sure whether I should say anything or not. Not getting the third degree from him felt a little strange. I settled for a slight nod and a tiny smile.

Maggie got in the passenger side of the truck. I checked the boxes we’d loaded into the back and then squeezed between the truck bumper and the side of the police car to get around to the driver’s side.

Once I’d eased the truck out from between the police cruiser and Marcus’s SUV and started down Main Street, I glanced over at Maggie. “Are you okay?” I asked.

She stared at me blankly for a moment. “What? Oh, yeah, I’m all right.” I watched the road and waited for her to find the words she needed for what she wanted to say. “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said finally. “There was no reason for Jaeger to be down in the basement. None.”

“It doesn’t have to have been a reason that would make sense to anyone else,” I said. “Just to him.”

“How did he end up down there?”

“The stairs were wet. He didn’t have boots on.” I pictured Jaeger’s feet on the steps. He’d been wearing leather shoes—black, with red laces and red stitching. Not gum rubbers or anything with a good tread.

She slumped back against the seat. “No, I don’t mean how did he end up in the water. I mean how did he get into the basement in the first place. The door was locked. I remember locking it after the meeting, Ruby was standing beside me, and”—she gestured with one hand—“you saw me unlock it before we found…before we found him.”

“Does anyone else have keys to the building?” I asked, turning into the narrow alley that led to the art center’s parking lot.

“Ruby. But I don’t see her giving them to Jaeger.”

Ruby’s truck, the twin to mine, was parked in her assigned spot. “Neither do I,” I said. “But she’s here. We can ask her.”

I backed up to the rear door of the building and got out to help Maggie unload, moving stiffly around the side of the truck. It showed how preoccupied Maggie was that she didn’t notice.

We piled the boxes at the bottom of the stairs and I pulled the truck into Maggie’s parking spot—she’d left her bug at home.

“I can carry this stuff up, Kath,” Maggie said, setting the roll of green bubble wrap on top of the stack of boxes.

“I’m okay,” I said. I was starting to sound like a broken record.

She frowned and looked pointedly at my left hand with the overbandaged thumb.

“I’ll take the bubble wrap and the brown paper,” I said. “Neither one of them is very heavy.” I wanted to make sure Ruby actually was in her own studio. I didn’t want to leave Maggie by herself to brood about Jaeger and I did need to get to the library at some point.

I grabbed the roll of paper and tucked it under one arm. After a moment Maggie surrendered the bubble wrap. She took the top two boxes from the stack and headed up the stairs.

Ruby must have heard us. As we came out of the stairwell she stepped out of her studio, holding a mug of what I guessed was herbal tea. It smelled like lemon and cranberries.

“Hi,” she said. She was wearing a paint-spattered denim shirt with the sleeves cut off over her jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt. She looked from Maggie to me, and her smile faded. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t tell me that there’s more water coming in at the store?”

Maggie sighed and set down her boxes. “No, it’s Jaeger,” she said.

“Good dog!” Ruby said, shaking her head, which made her little pigtails bounce. “What did he do now?”

I held up a hand before she said something that in another minute she might be sorry had come out of her mouth. “Ruby. Jaeger’s dead,” I said quietly.

Her mouth fell open. “Dead? But…but how? We were all just at the meeting. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Maggie said.

I nodded.

For a moment Ruby didn’t seem to know what to do with her free hand. Finally she wrapped her arm around her midsection, like she was hugging herself. “What…what happened?” she asked.

I glanced at Maggie. Her face was gray and there were tiny, pinched lines between her eyebrows.

“He, uh, fell down the basement stairs.”

“You mean at the co-op?” Ruby shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. That’s not possible. I saw him come up the steps and…and…I saw him leave.” Her face had gone pale as well.

Maggie looked down at the floor for a moment. “He came back,” she said, finally. “I don’t know why. And I don’t know what he was even doing down there.” She bent and picked up the boxes again. “I’m going to put these in my studio.” She moved past us, fished out her key to unlock the door and then went inside.

Ruby was still shell-shocked. She took a couple of steps toward me. “Kathleen, did Maggie find…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she was asking.

“We, uh, we both did.”

Her face softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then finally she noticed my scraped forehead. “What happened to you? Are you okay? You didn’t fall down the stairs too, did you?”

I shook my head. “No. I slipped out at Wisteria Hill. I’m all right.”

“Good.” She looked over at Maggie’s open studio door, and then shifted her attention back to me. “None of this makes any sense. What was Jaeger doing in the co-op basement? How did he get down there, anyway? I saw Maggie lock the door and put the keys in her pocket.”

She had the same questions Maggie had been asking and I still didn’t have any answers. I shrugged. “I don’t know. The police are going to have to figure all of that out.”

Ruby made a face, her mouth twisting to one side. “I wish I could remember where I know Jaeger from. I have the feeling it’s important.”

I couldn’t see how Ruby figuring out where she may have seen Jaeger Merrill before was going to turn out to be important, especially now that he was dead.

“I need to put these in Maggie’s studio,” I said, picking up the brown paper and bubble wrap again.

Ruby had been staring off into space, but she looked at me when I spoke. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “There’s something I need to check out on the computer, anyway.” She indicated her own open studio door. “Tell Maggie I’m here if she needs anything.”

“I will,” I said.

Mags had put the two boxes on her big worktable in the center of the room. She was just taking the last figure from a carved, wooden chess set out of the smaller of the two cartons.

I set the paper and bubble wrap on the end of the table.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll just go get the other couple of boxes.”

While Maggie went downstairs I put some water in her kettle and plugged it in. I waffled for a moment between the box of peppermint tea bags and the canister of dark chocolate cocoa mix. The chocolate won.

“Are you making tea?” Maggie asked when she came back in with the last three cartons.

“I was going to make hot chocolate,” I said. “But I can make tea if that’s what you’d like.”

She set the boxes on the table and rolled her head slowly from one side to the other. “No. I want chocolate,” she said. “Lots and lots of chocolate.” She stopped in mid-neck roll. “Look in there, on the bottom at the back.” She pointed to the old pie safe where she kept the mugs and the tea and the electric kettle. “I think I have some marshmallows.”

The marshmallows were in a little snap-top plastic container. I could smell vanilla when I popped the lid. “Hey, did you buy these at the market?” I asked.

She had one arm behind her head, stretching, pulling down gently with her other hand. Maggie was very flexible. “Dina made them,” she said.

“Dina?” I said. The water was boiling. I filled both cups. “The Jam Lady?”

“Uh huh.”

I’d been a little homesick and a lot heartsick when I’d arrived in Mayville Heights just over a year ago. I’d eaten a lot of toast smothered in The Jam Lady’s strawberry rhubarb preserves in those first few lonely weeks. And a fair number of brownies too. If it weren’t for all the walking I’d have ended up looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy. And I probably wouldn’t have Hercules and Owen either.

Maggie emptied the boxes and when the water boiled I made the hot chocolate and added marshmallows to both cups. I gave one to Maggie. She took a long sip and then smiled at me over the mug. “Ummm, that’s good. Thank you.”

I took a drink from my own cup. The mix of dark chocolate and vanilla tasted as good as it smelled.

Maggie pulled her hand over her hair again. “I can’t believe Jaeger’s dead,” she said, her expression troubled.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know,” she said, but there was something in her voice that told me she wasn’t completely convinced. I looked at her, without saying anything else, until she lifted her head and met my gaze.

“What?”

“Jaeger’s not dead because he wanted to bring in a corporate sponsor for the co-op and you didn’t. It’s not your fault he was in the basement. It’s not your fault the stairs were wet.”

“I know. I do. I just keep thinking if we hadn’t had the meeting today maybe he wouldn’t have gone back down to the basement.”

“Then you would have had it another day. And Jaeger could still have been down in the basement this morning. Or this afternoon, or next Tuesday.”

I leaned against the worktable to take the weight off my ankle “It was an accident, Mags. An awful, stupid accident.”

“Why are you always so sensible and logical?” she said, the beginnings of a smile pulling at her mouth.

I took another drink of my hot chocolate. “Probably because my mom and dad are masters of drama.” I set the cup down. “Right before I came here my father broke his ankle. Can you guess what he was doing?”

“Probably not taking out the garbage.”

I shook my head. “Uh uh. He was doing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. My father. On the fire escape. In January.” I sighed. “No wonder I’m sensible. It was the only form of teenage rebellion left.”

Maggie laughed. She’d never met my family in person, but she’d heard a lot of my stories about them.

“Seriously Mags, I know you feel bad. But it’s been raining for a week. You’re tired. You’re wet and if you’re like me, there are probably some funky mold spores growing in your boots.” I tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear, wincing when I inadvertently touched the edge of my scraped forehead again.

“I’m sorry about Jaeger,” I said. “I really am. But it’s not your fault.” I hugged her and I could feel some of the tension seep out of her body.

“I should get these parcels packed,” Maggie said, breaking out of the hug.

“And I need to check on things at the library.” I grabbed my cup and drained the last of the cocoa. “You’re still coming for supper?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t want to disappoint Owen.”

“You’ll be the highlight of his little kitty day,” I said. “Call me if anything changes.”

Maggie was already unrolling the bubble wrap. She waved over her shoulder in my direction.

I stopped in the hall to pull out my keys and glanced through the open door to Ruby’s studio. She was on the floor, underneath one of the tall windows, her back to the door, chin propped on one hand, surrounded by books, engrossed in whatever she was reading.

It had seemed pretty obvious when Ruby told me she had something to check on her computer that what she was planning to do was stick Jaeger Merrill’s name in a search engine. I was happy to see that she’d given up on trying to figure out where she’d first seen him. It didn’t matter now, anyway.

Of course I was wrong.

On both counts.