Olivia rang the doorbell and waited. When she heard no movement from within, she peeked in through the clear panes, but Nick Plumley didn’t appear. She could easily see into the kitchen and noted the evidence of the author’s breakfast—half a bagel, an apple core, and a coffee cup.
“We hardly want to start banging away if he’s in the shower,” Olivia said to Haviland and decided to wait for Plumley on the back patio.
After placing the canvas bag containing the painting on a wooden dining table, she settled onto a cushioned chaise lounge, crossed her legs, and sighed.
“Maybe I can come up with ideas for the rest of my chapter,” she told Haviland, who had begun a round of investigative sniffing.
Ten minutes later, Olivia became too impatient to remain seated. When the doorbell went unanswered once again, she decided to peer in the windows on the side of the house, allowing her a glimpse of nearly every square foot of the lower level.
With her inquisitive poodle at her heels, Olivia followed a flagstone path around a group of low bushes, walked over a bed of raked gravel, and blatantly stared into the house.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to a splash of blue in the middle of the bleached pine wood floor. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing, but when it became clear, she sucked in her breath and jumped away from the window.
Fumbling in her pocket, she withdrew her cell phone, cast a frightened glance over her shoulder, and dialed Rawlings’ direct line.
“Good morning, Ms. Limoges,” he said cordially.
“Chief, you need to get down to Nick Plumley’s rental house. I think he’s dead.”
She took a step closer to the window and then hastily stuck the phone back in her pocket, cutting off whatever Rawlings had started to say.
Olivia raced to the front door and grabbed the handle, but the door was locked. She ran to the back door, adrenaline surging through her, but experienced the same result.
Sensing her agitation, Haviland began to bark.
“He could still be alive!” Olivia yelled, searching the ground for a large rock. There was nothing but gravel.
Desperate, she grabbed one of the patio chairs, dumped the cushion on the ground, and raised it waist high into the air. Made entirely of metal, it was cumbersome, but Olivia smashed it into the glass door with all the force she could muster.
The glass splintered but didn’t break. She heaved the chair against the fractured door again and again until it crashed inward, chunks of ragged glass scattering across the floorboards, shards lethal as icicles raining everywhere.
“STAY!” Olivia shouted at Haviland and, only after being certain that he would obey, darted inside and fell to her knees alongside the prone writer.
Gently, she rolled him over and then cried out in shock. Covering her mouth with a trembling hand, she retreated.
“Too late,” she whispered, her voice echoing in the light-riddled room.
Chapter 7
Nick Plumley’s glassy eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His mouth was misshapen, stretched unnaturally like a python expanding its jaw in order to swallow a fat rabbit. His lips were blue. A wad of paper filled the entire cavity of his mouth.
Olivia knew she should go back outside. There was nothing she could do to help the dead man, and though every fiber of her being longed to remove the papers crammed into his mouth, she knew that an influx of fresh air would provide him no relief. His lungs would never again expand or contract. They would no longer be invigorated by the sea breeze or by the sharp wind that raced ahead of a thunderstorm. The smoke from wood fires wouldn’t irritate the sensitive bronchioles. They’d never feel the keen ache of being outside on a frigid February morning or tingle as they were infused by the magic of the season’s first snow.
Exhaling slowly, as though she feared her own body might be affected by the writer’s immobility, Olivia tore her gaze from Nick Plumley’s frozen expression of agony. As her eyes traveled down the length of his body, she noticed an angry red welt encircling his neck, just above the larynx.
Plumley was clad in a cotton robe of blue and white checks and matching boxer shorts. He was barefoot and smelled of soap. Olivia noticed that he’d yet to put on his watch and that his hair was still wet. As her eyes returned to his face, she noticed a bead of dried blood on his chin, indicating that he’d cut himself shaving.
Olivia stared at the bright red drop. It was too vivid on a face that had already taken on the waxy pallor of death. She imagined him at the mirror, a handsome man in his midfifties, wiping away the fog with the corner of a towel. After squirting a cone-shaped measure of shaving cream into his palm, he’d have spread the foam over his face, noting the contrast between its whiteness and his tanned skin. Pivoting from side to side, he would have performed the daily ritual he’d begun many years ago as a shrill-voiced, lanky teenager. He would have winced at the cut, briefly, more irritated than injured, and stuck a shred of toilet paper on the wound to soak up the initial rush of blood.
“And then someone came to the door,” Olivia mused aloud. “And you let them in dressed like this. Did you recognize the killer?”
Knowing her proximity to the body could contaminate the crime scene, she tarried only long enough to examine the hardcover resting near Nick’s right arm. The book had been opened toward the middle and a handful of pages had been roughly torn from the binding. The header on an intact page identified the book as
“Jesus,” Olivia whispered and stood up. Carefully maneuvering around the shards of glass, she returned to the patio. The force of the sunshine burned her eyes, but she was grateful for its heat. The wash of light made her acutely aware of her vitality, and she threw her arms around her agitated poodle.
“It’s all right,” she murmured as he bathed her face with kisses. “The chief’s on his way.”
Olivia and Haviland walked around to the front of the house. In the lee of a nearby sand dune, they waited for the police to arrive.
Rawlings was in the lead car. He jumped out, readjusted his utility belt, unclipped his holster with the practiced flick of a finger, and strode up to Olivia. Echoing her words to Haviland, he issued a firm command. “Stay here.” He then signaled to one of his men. “Please wait with Ms. Limoges.”
The officer in question tried to conceal his disappointment over having to babysit a civilian, but Olivia rendered his assignment void the moment she rushed after the chief. “The front door’s locked. I had to break a window around back to get in.”
Rawlings stopped and turned, blood rushing to his face. “And you did that because?”
“I had to see if I could help him,” Olivia stated with a calm she didn’t feel. “I couldn’t just sit on the patio and wonder if the man inside could be saved by CPR.”
Mumbling under his breath, the chief gestured at the officers following in his wake and jogged around the side of the house. Olivia glanced at the uniformed watchdog standing beside her and said, “I’d better show the chief what I touched in there.”
The young man was too eager to argue. He led the way with Haviland shadowing after him. Like most of
