A crowd had gathered around Sedge’s grocery store.
Police tape, of course, prevented onlookers from coming too close. An emergency vehicle stood near the front door, helping the police create a shield to stop the curious from looking in.
John Alden, after conferring with one of the medical examiners, looked up to see that Sam was there with Jenna at his side.
He walked over to them and lifted the tape.
“It’s not what you think-you can see for yourself. And this is a courtesy, just so that you don’t get conspiracy theories running around in your mind,” John asked.
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” Sam asked in reply.
“You’re thinking the old guy was murdered, that he was being shut up just in case the D.A.’s office decided to charge Malachi with the Earnest Covington murder. But Milton Sedge wasn’t murdered,” John said.
“Okay. Then how did he die? Heart attack? What happened?” Sam asked. It was just too damned convenient that Sedge-the one voice to stand against the boys who claimed to have seen what they hadn’t-was dead.
“Damnedest thing-well, he was an old coot, you know. And I couldn’t believe it myself at first, but he was done in by olive oil.”
If John Alden weren’t so grimly serious, Sam would have been tempted to laugh. As it was, he couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Excuse me?” Jenna finally said.
“Bad shelving, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” John explained. “He was having a special on those gallon tins of olive oil. Extra-extra-virgin olive oil. We have a large Italian community up here, you know… Sometime this week, they’d done up a display with tin on top of tin. He must have jounced against the stack, and the tins and the shelf and everything came down. I just talked to the medical examiner-he received a lot of good head wounds, but it is possible that his old ticker stopped when all those gallons upon gallons crashed down on him. They’re heavy as hell, especially for an oldtimer like Sedge-test them yourselves one of these days.”
“I’ve held a gallon of olive oil, John,” Sam said.
“Well, then you imagine dozens of those suckers coming down on you,” John said.
Sam glanced to the side. A group of Sedge’s employees had gathered there. They were sobbing softly, from some of his cashiers-nearing retirement themselves-to his younger stock and bag boys and girls.
He walked over to the crowd. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
One woman let out a loud wail and fell into his arms. She took him by surprise, but he put his arms around her to pat her gently on the back. “So sorry,” he said again. “There, there,” he said ineffectually, but it seemed to help.
The woman tried to compose herself. “It was all my fault!” she wailed.
“Mabel!” another of the elderly cashiers protested. “Honey, it was not your fault. Mr. Sedge wanted that display, and he told everyone exactly how he wanted it set up.”
“No, no…” Mabel moaned. “I left. I left. I walked to the back and said that it was all closed up and I was leaving. And I told him to come lock the door. I should have waited. We should have left together!”
Sam kept trying to console the woman, but he felt a new spark of anger and suspicion. He held Mabel at arm’s length. “Mabel, you’re saying that you left him alone in the store, with the door open?”
“Oh!” She started to sob again.
“No, no, Mabel, this wasn’t your fault!” he said quickly and lifted her chin. “Was the store empty when you left?”
She frowned, looking at him. “Well, yes. I mean, well, yes, I think so. I did the call over the announcement system. I asked everyone to check out, and announced that we were closing. I turned off the lights-except, of course, we have the safety lights. And the lights were still on back in the office, but it gets kind of dark in here- shadowy, at least. Oh, that’s it! He didn’t see that he was going to run into the display. Oh! Oh, no, it could have been a child. But the shelving was behind the tins…” She broke down in tears again.
“There, there,” Sam said.
Jenna had come to stand quietly beside him. He looked at her helplessly.
She slipped in, putting her arms around the woman. “Mabel, none of this is your fault, and you get that out of your head.”
“He missed his wife, honey,” another woman said hopefully. “At least he’s with her now.”
“Yes, that’s true, that’s true…” Mabel agreed, but then she sobbed again. “But he loved his kids and his grandkids!”
“But he’s with his wife, and he probably missed her terribly,” Jenna said.
Jenna managed to get Mabel into the arms of another of the women.
She grabbed Sam’s sleeve. “I want to see the body,” she told him.
He frowned, staring at her.
“Sam, I’m an R.N. Not a pathologist or anything, but I’ve been around an emergency room a time or two. I want to take a look at the body.” She looked up at him with her green eyes earnest and clear.
He nodded, caught her hand and made his way to John Alden.
“You really want to allay my suspicions-and those of anyone else, should questions arise, which you know they will,” Sam said. He added, “Please.”
John started to let out a sigh of exasperation, but then he looked at Jenna, and he seemed to hesitate, perhaps remembering the fact that she’d brought in the horned god costume that yielded results.
He groaned. “What? What? What now?”
“I’d like to see him, please,” she said.
John scowled. “The medical examiner has cleared us to have the body taken to the morgue.”
“I’ll only need a minute or two,” Jenna said.
“What now, what now?” John demanded.
“What now-you’re a good cop. And, of course, that doesn’t mean that you have to agree to do any favors for me. But, come on, John. You don’t want me having to question you later, or say that you were willing to accept the obvious with no question.”
“Pain,
“But I’m right sometimes,” Sam said.
“You got two minutes. And be careful-hell, I don’t want either of you dead or crippled by olive oil.”
Then John called to the officers who were holding the line at the door. “Let them in!”
Inside, techs were still marking off positions. It was obvious, though, that the rush had been to attempt to save a man’s life, not preserve the scene. Towels had hastily been spread on the floor to keep emergency help from sliding into mayhem themselves, and the offending cans had been tossed everywhere.
But a path had been cleared to the body, and Sam watched as Jenna carefully made her way to Sedge’s bloodied and crumpled form.
“Excuse me?” the medical examiner, who had been writing on a chart, asked with a frown.
“Alden’s permission, Doctor,” Sam said. The M.E. lifted an eyebrow, but he didn’t protest.
“We’ll be taking him out in just a minute,” the doctor said.
“There will be an autopsy,” Sam said.
“Of course. Accidental death,” the M.E. assured him. “And that didn’t take a medical opinion. Just look at what happened here. Of course, that’s not official. As you said, certainly, there will be an autopsy.”
Jenna didn’t touch the dead man. She went down on her knees, heedless of the conditions around her, and studied the injuries. As she looked down, she felt a strange ripple down her spine. She looked up.
And the dead man was there, looking down at her and at his broken body, incredible sadness in his eyes. He looked from his mangled form to her eyes, and he formed a single word with his ghostly lips.
“
Jenna looked back to the corpse. Then, true to her word, she was up in a minute. She smiled her thanks to the M.E. and the techs that had paused to watch her.
“R.N.,” she said weakly.
“Honey, he’s way past that!” one of the techs said.
“Yes, I can see that,” Jenna assured the woman.
