The Treacherous Teddy by John J. Lamb Read Free Book Online Page A

the house, where we found what I assumed was Everett Rawlins’s Ford F-250 pickup truck parked a few yards from the back door.
    Ash nodded toward the truck. “When we searched the house for other victims and suspects, I checked the hood. It was cold, so he hadn’t driven anywhere for a while.”
    I took a couple of photographs, and then we moved to the east side of the house, which faced toward the mountains. Again, there wasn’t much that was noteworthy. There were another four windows, an electric utility box, and some more holly bushes. The only thing that even slightly caught my eye was a bit of damage in the vinyl siding, about six-and-a-half feet up the wall and near the front corner. It looked as if the bracket from a flag holder had once been mounted there and then been torn off by high winds. The same thing had happened at our house, back during the late spring when a hellacious thunderstorm struck the region. I took several pictures of the wall, and then we returned to the front of the house.
    We mounted the porch steps and went into the home, where we were greeted by both the faint spicy smell of what was probably chili and the sound of Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey singing a sardonic ditty about the joys of money. There was a coat closet near the front door and I opened the door. Inside, I saw a pump-action shotgun leaning against the interior wall.
    “Well, that’s one way to handle annoying door-to-door solicitors,” I said, taking a picture of the weapon.
    “Actually, it’s pretty common for folks to have a weapon like that handy,” said Ash. “Back when I was growing up, we still had bear on our side of the river. Daddy kept a double-barreled shotgun in our front closet.”
    “You want to check to see if it’s loaded?”
    Ash nodded and removed the firearm from the closet. As she began removing cartridges from the shotgun, she said, “It’s a twelve-gauge, loaded with rifled slugs.”
    “Which will make a doughnut-sized hole in a man. So why didn’t Ev take his miniature antitank gun with him when he went outside?”
    “Because he was in a hurry?”
    “Or didn’t feel there was a threat.”
    “So maybe we’re back to this being a hunting accident?”
    “It’s way too early to tell, my love. But you know how much I hate a mystery.”
    Ash worked the gun’s pump mechanism to ensure she’d removed all the rounds. “What do you want me to do with this stuff?”
    “Put the shotgun back in the closet and the rounds on the upper shelf. We’ll collect it as possible evidence later.”
    We went into the living room, where, as expected, the sofa and easy chair faced in the direction of the television. I noted a small logo in the lower right-hand corner of the screen that indicated it was tuned to the Turner Classic Movies channel, which was airing Cabaret . A rectangular end table stood next to the easy chair and on it was a television remote control, a copy of TV Guide , a nearly empty bottle of Yingling beer, and a soup bowl that was about half-full of what looked like canned chili. A lonely man’s lonely meal , I thought. Leaning against the inside rim of the bowl was a spoon, which suggested Mr. Rawlins had been interrupted during his supper.
    Nodding toward the TV, I said, “So what’s wrong with this picture?”
    “How do you mean?” Ash asked.
    “ Cabaret ? You knew Everett Rawlins. Does that seem like the kind of movie he—or any other guy around here—would watch?”
    “As a matter of fact, no. That probably means he was watching something else when he went outside.”
    “Exactly, which might help us establish a tentative timeline.” I took several photographs of the room and then picked up the TV Guide . Finding the listing for Thursday night, I said, “ Cabaret started at seven. Before that, it was She Wore a Yellow Ribbon . Interesting choice for a double feature.”
    “Is that a John Wayne movie?”
    “Yeah. It’s a classic guy film from an era when that didn’t