Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(64)

—

Virgil got to Moore’s house four or five minutes later. There were six sheriff’s cars in the street, two at either end of the block with their flashers going. Virgil was waved through, parked, and hustled up to the house. A cop on the front porch told him that Margot Moore was lying in the doorway and directed him around to the back.

Purdy and another deputy were in the kitchen with two stricken-looking women; both were crying off and on, seated over the beginnings of a Scrabble game. As though God had taken him by the hair and twisted his head to make him look, Virgil noticed that one of the words spelled out in the game was “MURDER,” seventeen points, the “M” and “E” on triple letter scores.

Purdy said, “Good, you’re here. C’mon.”

He led the way through a short hallway into the living room, where Moore’s body was flat on its back, three small bloody holes in the middle of the forehead, along with dime-sized powder burns. The crime scene crew would tell him better, but it appeared to Virgil that the gun had been only inches from Moore’s forehead when she was shot.

He looked at the body for a moment, growing increasingly pissed off, then told Purdy, “Keep everybody away—our crime scene crew is on the way.”

“Okay.”

Virgil walked back to the kitchen, pulled out a chair, got the womens’ names, and said, “Tell me what happened.”

They told him, with details—but no good details.

Sandy Hart said, “She went to answer the doorbell. I was trying to figure out a word—”

“So was I,” Belle Penney said.

Hart continued, “—and we heard her open the door. There was this sound; it sounded like somebody clapping hands, like she’d gotten a FedEx or something. We both heard a kind of clunking sound—we told Jeff about it—we think it might have been her, falling down, but we didn’t know that . . .”

“We heard the door close,” Penney chipped in. “We were sitting here, looking at the board, and after a minute or two, when Margot didn’t say anything and didn’t come back in, I called to her. I said, ‘Margot? You’re up.’ She still didn’t say anything, so I got up and walked in there, into the front room, and saw her on the floor, and saw her head . . . I started screaming . . .”

“When Belle screamed, I ran in there and saw Margot, checked her pulse. I used to be a nurse and I knew she was dead. I ran back to my purse and got the phone and called nine-one-one,” Hart said.

“Did you touch her?” Virgil asked.

“Yes. I knelt down and I touched her shoulder and her neck, to see if she had a pulse, but that’s all. I touched her shoulder, kind of pushed her, and her neck, but there was no pulse, and I ran and called nine-one-one.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Penney said, “except scream.”

“You didn’t hear her talking to anyone?”

“No—we told Jeff—no, there wasn’t any talk. Three claps and the door closed. And then . . . nothing.”

“Do you know what time it was?”

“I . . .” Hart said, cocking her head, “I called nine-one-one. Probably one minute after she was shot.”

“Longer than that,” Penney said. “Five minutes.”

Hart shook her head. “No, it wasn’t, Belle. Think about it. We were sitting here—we thought she’d be right back—we didn’t hear her walk or say anything, and we didn’t wait too long before you went to look. Maybe not a minute, but not two minutes, either. Quicker than two minutes.”

Purdy came in from the living room and said, “I heard that. We got the call at nine-one-one at seven-fourteen. So, probably, in the couple of minutes after seven-ten.”

“Good enough,” Virgil said.

Bea Sawyer stepped into the kitchen and said, “Don’s getting our stuff. What do we got?”

“You’re running the scene,” Virgil said. “It might be the freshest murder you’ve ever been to. I’ve got to take off, talk to a guy.”

“You need help?” Purdy asked.

“Is that Pweters guy working?”

“He can be,” Purdy said.

“He knows Fred Fitzgerald, the tattoo guy, pretty well. I’d like him to meet me at Fitzgerald’s shop.”

“I’ll call him,” Purdy said. “He’ll meet you there.”

—

Pweters called Virgil as Virgil was driving south on Main. “I was in class. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Virgil parked across the street from Fitzgerald’s shop. There was light coming through a white curtain on the second floor, but the shop itself was dark. Virgil sat and watched as the light played off the curtain: somebody was either watching television or had left a television on. If Fitzgerald was the killer, he was cool and already home.

He’d been waiting for five or six minutes when Pweters pulled in behind him. Virgil got out of his 4Runner and said, “Let me guess: computer programming.”

“What?”

“Your class,” Virgil said.

“Oh. No. It’s a class in how to carve and paint decoy ducks,” Pweters said.

“Huh. Cool. I write outdoors articles, you know? For magazines . . .”

“I’ve googled a couple,” Pweters said. “They weren’t terrible.”