Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(88)

Given the circumstances, she had to alert Seth Porter. “I’m terribly sorry to involve you,” Olivia explained over the telephone, “but, I’ll have to tell the police the gun is yours. I’ll say I borrowed it; borrowed it because I was fearful for my life.”

“What gun?” Seth Porter, a man deaf in one ear, asked.

“The Browning shotgun that was in your storage bin; I’m ashamed to say I took it without asking and I’d prefer to tell the police it was borrowed.”

“That old Browning? What would you want with that thing? It’s likely as not rusted through. If you’re looking to borrow a gun, what you want is—”

“Thanks Seth, but I’ve already made use of the Browning,” Olivia sighed, then hung up.



When the Wyattsville police arrived, Clara was still standing outside the apartment with her ear pressed to the door, but she’d been unable to hear a single word of what was going on. Once the door was finally opened, there in the foyer was a mountainous hulk of a man—dead as dead could be, and spilling blood all over the carpet.

By then, Ethan Allen was dressed in pajamas, his bedspread had been folded back and the pillow crumpled to match the shape of his head. Still wearing the dress splattered with Scooter’s blood, Olivia was sitting on the sofa. She was trying valiantly to hold onto her composure, although her fingers, having a mind of their own, were twitching and twiddling. “Clara,” she said, “perhaps you should take Ethan Allen back to your place, this isn’t something a boy of his age should see.”

Clara grabbed hold of Ethan’s hand but before they were out the door, the police sergeant, said the boy had to stay until they’d heard his version of what happened. A rookie named Timothy Michaels was on his first full tour of duty that night and he’d turned queasy at the sight of Scooter’s body. Taking note of his condition, Clara asked, “Would you care for some Pepto Bismal? Or tea maybe?”

Officer Michaels shook his head and then with Clara leading the way, he tromped off to ask if the neighbors had seen or heard anything. The questioning of Olivia was left for Sergeant Gomez to handle.

After having released Sam Cobb earlier in the day, Gomez breathed a sigh of relief when he arrived at the Wyattsville Arms apartment building and discovered the attacker was Scooter Cobb, not Sam. Knowing Mahoney had identified the elder Cobb as a murder suspect,” Gomez immediately put in a call to the Eastern Shore Precinct. For hours Mahoney had been bouncing from bar to bar in an effort to find Scooter; when he heard the news of what had happened he turned the car around and headed for the mainland. He pulled onto the last ferry of the night, with not a minute to spare.

Gomez was a man with a bushy black mustache, he was low to the ground and round as a pumpkin, as different from Charlie Doyle as a man could possibly be; but when he spoke Olivia could swear it was the voice of her dead husband. “There are questions I have to to ask,” he said, “but it’s simply so that we can get an understanding of what happened here; it’s nothing to worry about…”

Olivia, who was already a nervous wreck, broke into tears.

“Now, now,” Gomez said and patted her hand in the most comforting manner.

Olivia’s sobbing grew louder.

“This is routine procedure,” he assured her, “there’s no reason…”

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled, “it’s just that you remind me of Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“My husband; Ethan’s grandfather.” She immediately segued into a lengthy tale of what happened—not an explanation of how Scooter Cobb was shot to death in her foyer, but the story of how Charlie had died of a heart attack while they were still on their honeymoon.”

“That is a tragedy,” Sergeant Gomez said sympathetically, “…but, let’s get back to what happened here tonight.”

“Well,” Olivia sighed, “I was in the kitchen, preparing pineapple upside down cakes for the bake sale…” She hesitated a moment and asked if he’d care to have a piece; when the Sergeant shook his head, she continued on. “That’s when the doorbell rang. After Sam Cobb was here last night, I borrowed a shotgun from Seth Porter, and I had it right here on the hallway table. When I opened the door and saw who it was, I grabbed hold of the gun.”

“He was the one at the door,” Gomez pointed to the body, “right?”

She nodded.

“So, why’d you open the door?”

“I thought it was my downstairs neighbor, Barbara Conklin, delivering the box of sugar I’d asked to borrow.”

“You have a neighbor who looks like him?”

“Barbara doesn’t look anything like him! I just didn’t look.”

“Do you normally do that; open the door before you check through the peep-hole to see who’s standing there?”

“No!” she answered indignantly. “But, I was busy in the kitchen and I figured for sure it was Barbara. I’d spoken with her a few minutes earlier and she said she’d be up in a few minutes, so—”

“What did he say, when you opened the door?”

“Say? He didn’t say much of anything, just came charging at me.”

“That’s when you shot him?”

“Yes. If someone came charging at you, wouldn’t you shoot them?”