Foursome by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online Page B

part was looking up at the house. The architectural hand was no more evident here than at the rear. The structure fit its setting like a beer fart at a wine tasting.
    I said, “At least the chimes seem right.”
    Willis grimaced. “Bear scares.”
    “What?”
    “Bear scares. Folks up here rig things to keep the black bears away from the trash and food smells. Most use tin cans with stones in them. Others have a deadfall.”
    “Deadfall?”
    “Like a log or some lumber. It gets tripped, the noise and movements send the bear a-packing. Your client, though”—she moved her hand at the house the way she had at the footbridges—“he likes chimes.”
    The deck was supported by eight-inch square posts that went up twelve feet or so to the joists of the deck itself. Back at the northeast stairs, Willis stopped.
    She said, “We figure Shea was somewhere between here and the brush when he shot the Vandemeer woman on the deck up there.”
    “How about innocent till proven guilty?”
    Willis left her face neutral. “You didn’t see the bodies or Shea that night, mister. I did.”
    “You even have a motive, Sheriff?”
    Still neutral. “In this county, we like to leave that to time of trial.”
    I swung my head from the brush to the deck above us. “You’re going by the angle of entry of the bolt into her chest?”
    “And body position. Apparently your client didn’t try to move her.”
    “Okay.”
    Willis climbed the steps. “We figure he got up here before the doctor—the husband Vandemeer—come out.”
    “Why is that?”
    She stopped at the deck itself. “Had to reload. Once the lab boys finished with the crossbow, I tried it. Takes a time.” Her arm moved through the air. “The husband got it out on the deck, crashing back through the screen door. Figure he come out because he saw or heard something, closed the screen behind him. Your client must have already been ready with the next shot. Got the husband straight through the heart. Lab found some tomato juice on his hands and a couple of seeds under his nails, and there were tomatoes sliced out in the kitchen, like he was helping Shea’s wife make a salad or something.”
    “Which door?”
    Willis walked to the center of three sliding doors. “This is where the doctor went through. We figure your client stepped over his body here, got some blood on the shoes, then went toward the kitchen and caught his wife coming out of it.” The sheriff turned to me without looking at me. “You saw the photo of … her and the paper towel?”
    “Yes.”
    Willis nodded once, abruptly. “Your client must have noticed he was tracking blood and went upstairs there to his bedroom to change shoes. He drove to the country store as cool as you please to buy his little bag of groceries, then come back and play the horrified husband.”
    I thought about it. Shea’s changing shoes still didn’t feel right. “Can we go inside?”
    “We can. Let me just go around to one of the doors with an external lock on it, use the key.”
    “Sheriff?”
    “Yes?”
    “I understand they kept a key to the house outside it, like they did with the boathouse.”
    She nodded. “Back stairs, on a nail under the riser for the third step. But like I said, we figure your client come from the front deck and worked his way through the house from there.”
    Willis walked around the north side of the deck. I heard a key and a door open, then saw her through the sliding glass door coming toward me across the big room at the lake or east side of the house.
    She unlatched the glass door and slid it open for me. “Come on in.”
    A combination living room/dining area with vaulted ceilings, exposed beams, and hardwood floors with some discoloration in dark brown that didn’t match the grain around it. Blue leather couch and imitation Eames chairs with ottomans, some kind of dhurrie rug on the floor in front of a walk-in fireplace. Teak entertainment center with television, VCR, stereo amplifier, CD