Murder in the Dog Days (Maggie Ryan) by P.M. Carlson Read Free Book Online

Cracked windowpane. Gouges in the edge of the desk. Story about the crash of Representative Knox’s plane last January. Lunch eaten. Lamp bashed and bloody. Some notes by the phone, and a tape recorder on the desk. And a bunch of tapes missing by the stereo there.”
    Holly looked at the gap on the shelves indicated by the pointing finger. “You say missing. You saw tapes there earlier?”
    “Yes. I sat on the arm of the sofa here while we got organized to go to the beach, talking to one of Colby’s daughters about a book. I remember noticing how neat Donna kept everything, books, magazines, tapes. Even newspapers. At home we drown in newspapers.”
    “I see.” Holly made a note about the missing tapes. “What were the tapes?”
    “I couldn’t read the labels from here.”
    “We’ll ask. Did you notice anything else?”
    “Not that I can remember now.” She leaned forward eagerly. “But the big problem is how it was done. I mean, that door was really bolted. From the inside.”
    “We’ll get to that. Right now let’s go over what you did from the time you arrived.” Sometimes that jogged memories, and Holly had to admit that this annoying witness seemed to be more observant and a hell of a lot less dazed than poor Donna Colby had been.
    Maggie leaned back and flopped a rangy arm along the back of the sofa. “Okay. We arrived sometime around nine. The kids had been cooped up during the drive, and it was cool. So they all wanted to play, and ran around. We encouraged them, I’m afraid. You’ll find lots of little footprints all over the yard. And Nick and Jerry ran around too. But I don’t remember them going in the backyard.”
    “The children were in the backyard?”
    “From time to time.”
    “By the den windows?”
    “I wasn’t there. I know they ran all the way around the house sometimes, but I didn’t see the exact route.”
    “And the rest of you?”
    “Let’s see. Donna went in as far as the dining-room door for a second, called to Dale that we were back. Then she came back out and helped us unload the van. She left the kitchen door open and we just stuck things inside the door. It took a while because we hadn’t really packed carefully to leave the beach. The storm was coming and we just tossed things in the van, so we needed a lot of trips unloading. Oh, and Donna dropped the picnic basket on the driveway and we had to clean up all that too.”
    “About how long did this take?”
    “Twenty minutes, maybe. We also had to discuss getting pizza and who was going to go get it. You know.”
    “No one wondered why Mr. Colby didn’t come out?”
    “Yeah, sure, it crossed my mind, but not enough to worry about at first. No one said anything about it, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Okay.” Holly wrote that down. “Then what?”
    “Nick and Jerry and Tina were elected pizza committee, and they took the van to Cedar Lane Center for it. The rest of us went into the kitchen. Donna called Dale again and started fixing iced tea. I was looking for my daughter’s clothes in the heap. She was still in her swimsuit. Olivia finally went down to knock on the den door.”
    “Right.”
    “And the rest I’ve told you. Donna got worried and went to help Olivia, and I popped outside to look in the window.” She straightened her leg and waggled a sandal toward Holly. “You’ll find my footprints out back too. I stood right outside the window.”
    “I see.” Holly noted it down.
    “Do you have any idea whether he was killed before or after the rainstorm?”
    “The ME will tell us. Any special reason you ask?”
    “Just curious. If it was before the storm, any traces of a person out there might have been wiped out by the rain, right? Not by us?”
    “Maybe,” said Holly noncommittally. “Now, you all used the kitchen door when you came in?”
    “Kitchen door. Every one of us.”
    “Every time? There was a lot of running in and out, wasn’t there?”
    “Not as much as you’d think. We