Murder on a Hot Tin Roof by Amanda Matetsky Read Free Book Online Page B

sad attempt at humor, I gave her a deceptive but perfectly reasonable explanation for my discourse with the bath linens. “After I went next door to call the police,” I said, using my most professional tone, “I realized the killer could still be here, hiding in Gray’s apartment. I thought I’d better come back and check the place out, inspect all the rooms and closets, make sure you weren’t in any danger.”

    “That was very sweet of you,” she said, with just a hint of a whimper, “but as you can see, I’m quite safe. The bastard who killed Gray is long gone. There’s no sign of him anywhere. No murder weapon, either.”

    “You looked?”

    “In every room.”

    “What about the closets?”

    “They’re clean.”

    “Well, then, the doorknobs aren’t so clean,” I said, worrying about the evidence again. “They’ve got your bloody fingerprints all over them now. I thought I told you not to touch anything.”

    “I didn’t!” she protested. “I opened the doors with a dish-towel over my hand. Which is more than I can say for you , Little Miss Perfect.” She shot a glance at my bare hands, then aimed her gaze at the open linen closet. “Whose prints do you think are decorating that doorknob?”

    She had me there. I’d left my share of fingerprints at the crime scene. And my bloody footprints were probably all over the place, too. The homicide dicks were not going to be happy.

    “Okay, so we both goofed up,” I admitted. “But we can’t do anything about that now. All we can do is make sure we don’t corrupt any more evidence. We’ve got to vacate this apartment immediately. We have to go next door and wait for the police to come.”

    “Oh? . . . well . . . if you think so . . .” Abby reluctantly agreed. Some color had returned to her cheeks, but her lips were still trembling. “It breaks my heart to leave Gray here all alone,” she said, dark thoughts gathering like storm clouds in her grief-stricken eyes, “. . . but I guess he won’t mind.”

Chapter 5

    TWO HOURS LATER, ABBY AND I WERE still sitting on the purple couch in apartment 2A—the poshly decorated domain of Gray’s pudgy blond neighbor, Willard Sinclair—answering Detective Sergeant Nick Flannagan’s relentless and repetitious questions.

    “So, let me get this straight,” Flannagan said for the umpteenth time, “you both got covered with the victim’s blood because you were kneeling in it?” His thin, youthful, clean-shaven face was wrinkled in disgust and disbelief (as it had been every time he’d made the same inquiry). “And then you hopped up and tracked it all over the place without realizing it?”

    “Yes, that’s right, Detective Flannagan,” I wearily repeated, “except for the hopping part. I’m sure we didn’t hop anywhere.” I was so ashamed of my heedless behavior at the crime scene that I couldn’t raise my voice above a murmur. “We were both in shock, you see, and in a kind of stupor. We didn’t know what we were doing.”

    “Yeah, that’s what you stated before,” he said, glowering at me as if I were his prime suspect. “You also claimed you didn’t notice whether or not there were any bloody footprints on the carpet before you discovered the body. But, you know what, Mrs. Turner? Much as I want to believe you, I just can’t bring myself to accept that explanation. It seems farfetched to me. It seems very unlikely that—”

    “Things aren’t always as they seem,” Abby interrupted, brown eyes flashing with fury. Detective Flannagan was getting under her skin. Way under her skin. “Paige has given you the facts, ma’am, just the facts,” she seethed, quoting the corny, overused line from the Dragnet television series—and casting aspersions on Flannagan’s masculinity in the same breath. And with a totally straight face.

    Luckily, Flannagan didn’t catch on.

    Under different circumstances, I’d have laughed my head off. (Abby really slays me sometimes.) In