Death Comes Silently by Carolyn Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

put the index card on the table in the sorting room. What was written on the card?”
     
    Billy shook his head. “We haven’t catalogued everything in the room. We spotted the pocketknife and change that she mentioned but we didn’t find an index card. There are a couple of possibilities. We’ll check with the Hathaways. There are only four calls on Gretchen’s cell. Three to you and one to the Hathaway house. Someone from the family may have come by and picked up the card but left the knife andthe coins. If so, she was alive at that point. It would be helpful to find out when Gretchen was last seen. She left the second message on your cell at two fifteen. Your nine-one-one call came in at three nineteen.”
     
    Annie remembered the comfortable sense of relaxation at Death on Demand, the coffee she’d shared with Henny and Ingrid while at Better Tomorrow death moved ever nearer Gretchen, who loved to star in her own little dramas, spinning out visions of a dangerous handyman and scandal in the pocket of a dead man’s jacket.
     
    “What’s the other possibility?”
     
    Billy’s face was grim. “We haven’t found her purse. Maybe she put the index card in it for safekeeping. The purse is missing. So is Jeremiah Young.” Again that flicker of sadness. When had a Scout turned into a thief?
     
    Annie was stricken. “Do you think he killed her to steal her purse?”
     
    Billy looked weary. “Maybe she came in the room and found him in her purse. Maybe he wanted to take a couple of dollars, thought she wouldn’t miss them. If she caught him and called the police, he would be back in jail ASAP.” His cell rang. Billy unhooked the phone, lifted it, listened. “Right. Good work.” He rose, gave Annie and Max a brief nod. “The axe killed her. Trauma to the back of the head. She was struck by the blunt end, not the blade.” He pressed his lips together for an instant before he spoke. “Fingerprints on the shaft match Jeremiah Young’s.”
     
    I appreciate your coming by.” Billy Cameron was a police officer. He was also a Southern gentleman always aware of how to treat a lady. He pulled out a chair at the central table for Henny Brawley.
    Henny took her seat. “Of course I came. I’ll do everything I canto help. I’m terribly sorry for poor Gretchen. I understand you are looking for Jeremiah? Oh, Billy, are you sure? I can’t believe he would hurt anyone.”
     
    Billy was somber. “I know. I would have bet that he was going to get straightened out after he came home, but he was at Better Tomorrow when Gretchen left her last voice mail on Annie Darling’s cell. She said she was afraid of him. His fingerprints are on the weapon that killed her. He wasn’t there when we arrived and his bike is gone. There is no evidence to suggest anyone else visited Better Tomorrow this afternoon. Gretchen made three calls to Annie Darling, and in each one she expressed fear of Jeremiah. She also told Annie that she had called the Everett Hathaway residence to report that she’d found a card and some change and a pocketknife in the pocket of the jacket Hathaway wore the day he died that she thought the family would want like to have. We checked with Mrs. Hathaway. She said there wasn’t a message from Gretchen on the pad by the main phone but possibly someone may have seen and discarded it, deciding it wasn’t important. In any event, so far as Mrs. Hathaway knows, no one from the family came by Better Tomorrow. We’ll keep checking to make sure. If one of them dropped by, they might know something useful.”
     
    “If someone from the family came, Gretchen should have noted a visitor in a log at the front desk. The volunteer on duty is asked to record the number of visitors every hour.” Henny’s tone was rueful. “That’s what volunteers are supposed to do. A lot of them don’t bother or just make a guess at the end of the day.”
     
    “Do they get the names?” Billy looked eager.
     
    Henny shook her