“Nobody’s doing anything to catch the killer?”
He started walking to the kitchen. “You mean, did anybody comb the area, ask all the neighbors when was the last time they’d seen Ms. Thomas?” He stopped at the window over the sink and gestured at the skinny trees and the empty fields beyond them.
I looked out at nothing. “Nobody is close enough to have seen anything.”
“You got it.” He pointed at the green linoleum floor beneath the back door window. “The intruder was very careful at first. He tapped out the glass, pulled the pieces outside and tossed them in the bushes, then reached in to unlock the door.”
“To be silent?”
He nodded.
I looked down at the floor. Something had changed. The black banana and the yellow box of Cheerios still lay on top of the spilled flour and sugar, but the only cans that remained were the ones that had been opened. The full tins of vegetables and fruit were gone. At least one pot, a big two-quart aluminum thing, had disappeared as well.
We walked through the living room to the door to the bedroom.
“She was struck high on the back of the head, which I think means that she was seated at that table, maybe typing,” he said, pointing at the old Underwood on the table across the room.
“The blood spatter shows that,” I said.
“He knocked her out,” he went on, “then started rummaging through everything.” He gestured at the pulled-out drawers, the clothes mingled with the newspapers that littered every inch of the tiny room.
“A robbery.”
“I want to think that, but something bothers me.”
I went for the obvious: “Why break into a shack like this looking for valuables?”
“Not that,” he said. “Some of the people around here will steal for chump change.” He walked over to the worktable, and tapped the old Underwood. “She fell forward, over this. We can assume that because there’s blood spatter on the side of the typewriter, and on the wall behind the table.” He turned around. “But there was no paper in the typewriter, no ribbon, either. In fact, I couldn’t find one sheet of anything typed in the whole place.”
“The cops took whatever she was typing as evidence?”
“Could be.” He said it vaguely and then looked down at the typewriter on the table, as though hoping it would speak.
I waited.
“Or the killer took whatever she was working on out of the typewriter and still searched the rest of the house,” he said.
“Looking for something more that she’d written?”
“Or to make sure he grabbed everything that would point to his identity.”
“What about all these newspapers?”
“That I can’t figure.” He looked at me with unblinking eyes. “You must have known her, if she named you executor.”
“I don’t remember her. She might have worked for one of my past clients.”
We walked into the living room and stopped to look again at the two shattered windows.
“I figure she came to while he was searching the house,” he said. “She tried to escape by throwing herself through those windows.”
“Multiple impacts. He kept grabbing her, dragging her back.”
“Jesus,” he said.
We walked out onto the porch.
I pointed to the dime-sized spots of blood. “You saw the blood in here as well?”
He nodded, looking where I was pointing. “She fought here, too, poor thing.”
“This was no ordinary home invasion gone bad,” I said. “Not with the paper missing from the typewriter.”
“And no other paper, blank or otherwise, anywhere else.”
“Damned shame, nobody investigating.”
He paused at the porch door. “I’ve got no pull with the sheriff. I do what I can, but it’s just a couple hours a week. That’s what I was doing when you pulled up, checking her car. I’ve stopped at all the occupied houses in Rambling, which is about ten. Nobody knew Louise Thomas.”
“Her lawyer told me she’d just started renting this place.”
“She showed up last spring, paid a year’s rent up front. The landlady can’t remember if she paid by check or not.”
“That means Louise paid with cash.”
“You bet,” he said, grinning as he stepped down onto the ground.
“Any idea where she banked, or where she worked?”
“I don’t know anything about her.”
We walked back to his SUV. The sun was high enough now to be bright on the snow.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Sort out what can be given away and what’s trash. Should take me a day,” I said. “Then I’ll call the sheriff, see what he knows.”
He paused by his driver’s side door. “I’ve been doing what I can. Any more, I could lose my job.”
“I’ll take a look at my records. Maybe they’ll jog my memory.”
He turned to look back at the shabby little cottage. “Nobody should die so…” His voice trailed off as he hunted for the right word. “Anonymously?” I offered.
He nodded as he opened his car door. “Crappy way to die.”
There was nothing to say to that.
Five
With a spatula picked off the kitchen floor, I began poking through the spilled, opened tins that had been swept from the refrigerator. Louise Thomas had liked canned fruit-pineapple chunks and sliced peaches and fruit cocktail were mixed in among the peas, corn, and salmon. She ate frugally, saving partial cans, and she ate nutritiously. I imagined her to have been a slender woman.
I stood up, certain. The tins on the floor had all been opened. The full cans I’d seen the day before were gone.
For one crazy second, I thought about picking up the few metal spoons, forks, knives, the plastic plates, the saucepan, and dropping them into the sink. The water had been shut off, though, and executors, even seven-hundred-dollar ones like myself, weren’t responsible for cleaning up, especially when the executor himself disdained metal utensils and used only what plasticware he could grab from fast-food restaurants. Still, for a moment, the mess on the floor nagged. It wasn’t about cleaning up for the landlady; it was about respect. I was beginning to shape Louise into a woman of propriety, someone who’d be troubled at leaving disorder behind.
I looked inside the few cabinets. Every one was empty. That fit with the stolen canned goods. Rambling was poor, and the rips in the plastic sheeting were wide. It wasn’t like the dead woman would need the food. Someone in that worn town had seen an opportunity and had taken it.
Outside, automobile tires crunched on the driveway. A second later a car door slammed and heavy feet pounded up the two wood stairs to the porch.
I hurried through the living room and got to the porch just as a short, stout, gray-haired woman wearing a long greasy red coat was raising a key to the porch door lock. Behind her, a Ford station wagon, loaded with empty cardboard boxes, had been backed into the drive. I put on a neighborly face and opened the door.
“Name’s Sturrow,” the woman said, trying to push her way in. “I own this place.”
Amanda tells me I’m too quick to form dislikes, but that’s usually when she’s conned me into taking her to unfathomable places, like sushi restaurants or opera performances. Still, there was no doubt it was happening now, with Mrs. Sturrow. I disliked her pushiness instantly and was eager to dislike more.
I stood in the doorway, blocking her entry. “I’m Elstrom, court-nominated executor,” I said, fumbling with the lint in my pocket as though looking for a business card.
She wasn’t impressed. “I own this place,” she said again, pressing her bulk between my right side and the doorjamb.
I stood my ground, being a full head taller and ballasted by more Oreos than she could ever eat. “I can’t let you in,” I said, pressing back. “In addition to being a crime scene, this is a court-nominated site of executing, and I’m here to protect the interests of the judicial system.”