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

mean it was full of car crashes, naked bimbos, and jokes about flatulence.”
    “Well, John Wayne definitely sounds more like the sort of movie Everett would watch.” Ash looked thoughtful. “So, we’ve probably narrowed down the time of death to between five-forty-five and sometime before the movie ended at seven P.M.”
    “Yep.” I leaned over to press the mute button on the TV remote. “Do you see anything else significant?”
    “The unfinished dinner . . . if you can call a beer and canned chili a dinner. Poor Everett. He probably never learned to cook, and with Lois gone . . .”
    “He made whatever was easiest. This guy was living my worst nightmare,” I sighed, suddenly recalling how close I’d come to losing Ash back in September when we were visiting California. “Anyway, something made him get up and leave his meal to go outside.”
    “Maybe he saw Chet’s headlights up on the ridge.”
    “From this chair?” I sat down in the recliner and craned my neck to look out the adjoining window. “You might be able to see the bottom of the hill from here, but not the upper part. The porch roof is in the way.”
    Ash turned and headed for the kitchen. “Maybe there’s another explanation.” I pushed myself up from the chair and followed her. “What have you got?”
    “Take a look at this.” Ash pointed to some items on the white tile counter. “The kitchen is pretty clean. Yet we’ve got a crumpled-up, chili-stained paper napkin and an unopened bottle of beer.”
    “Which might mean he was in the kitchen getting another bottle of liquid bread when things went south. Good obs.”
    Ash leaned over the counter to look out the window. “Maybe not. You can’t see the upper part of the hill from here either. The porch roof is still in the way. Could that mean Everett saw someone in his yard?”
    “And that person ran to the hill? That fits the evidence we have right now, but . . .”
    “What?”
    “If you’re going to ambush someone, do you make a point of ensuring that your victim sees you before you spring the trap?”
    “Brad, honey, none of this adds up.”
    “I know, so we keeping digging until it does. Now, if you’ll move, I’ll get some pictures of the kitchen.”
    I completed the photos, and then we moved on to the dining room, the laundry room, and then what looked to be Rawlins’s office at the back of the house. Unlike the kitchen, the office wasn’t tidy. Paperwork was piled in haphazard stacks on the desk and chairs and in front of the dark computer monitor.
    “Ransacking?” Ash asked.
    “No, it’s too neat for that. It looks more as if he was trying to find some kind of document.” I pointed to the open drawer on an old metal filing cabinet.
    “I’ll bet Lois handled all the bills and paperwork.”
    “Which probably meant he didn’t know where anything was.”
    I photographed the office, and then we started upstairs. I don’t move fast under the best of circumstances, and stairs slow me down to the speed of a DMV clerk. Ash took my cane and I kept a death grip on the banister as I carefully mounted each step. The slow journey to the second floor afforded me a glimpse of the Rawlins family’s life in an array of framed photos on the wall. There was a faded color portrait of Everett and Lois’s wedding, a picture of a much younger Everett wearing a navy uniform, a shot of a grinning Lois holding an enormous pumpkin, and several photos of a boy I assumed was their son, Kurt, as he grew up.
    Upstairs, we checked the master bedroom, the bathroom, and Kurt’s boyhood bedroom. We didn’t find anything that qualified as murder evidence, but we did locate a .357 magnum revolver in Rawlins’s nightstand drawer. However, the handgun was unloaded, which suggested Rawlins hadn’t considered himself in any sort of danger.
    There was a buzz of static, and then Tina’s voice sounded from Ash’s portable radio. “Mike-One to Mike-Eleven, can you come out? The ME just