Deadly Descent Read Online Free PDF Page B

handwriting. There’s some shapes here that intrigue me.”
    “Of course.”
    “Bludgeoned.” Stroking Tosca, Josie speculated on the night’s events. “Sounds like an unreliable way to kill someone. I would just bet the person didn’t go in intending to kill her. There’re smarter ways. I don’t know anything about profiling, but there are some things here that are very obvious. This murder was impulsive and the murderer had to be a strong person.”
    “Not necessarily. Zelda was frail. If the first blow landed just right and managed to crush her skull, it wouldn’t have taken much strength at all.”
    “Did the St. Johns keep money around? Jewelry? Antiques? Any chance they would be singled out by a thief?”
    “No. Rumor has it they were very hard up.”
    I jumped when a stick snapped in the fireplace. It did not seem possible we were sitting in my living room calmly discussing macabre details as if Zelda St. John were some anonymous distant person.
    “Sam Abbott. You seem to be bosom buddies.”
    “We are. We did our horses together.”
    She quirked an eyebrow.
    I laughed. “Carlton County has its own carnival. When we got our carousel, volunteers painted all the horses. Sam and I just happened to be working at the same time. We talked a lot.”
    “No Mrs. Sam?”
    “Nope. He’s a widower. He lost his only son in Vietnam.”
    We talked for hours. About her work. About my work. But we kept coming back to Zelda St. John over and over again until we were exhausted. We finally gave it up and headed for bed.
    She turned on the staircase. “I have one more question.”
    “Yes?”
    “The horses. What was his, what was yours?”
    Miffed by her playing psychologist, I sulled up.
    “Come on, come on, come on,” she teased. “Pretty please?”
    “Mine was Princess Di. Jewel colors and feathers. Sam’s was a patriotic Desert Storm horse.”
    Her laughter pealed through the house.
    ***
    Bettina volunteered to go with me to the St. Johns for my traditional death-in-the-family call the following afternoon. I placed my usual food offerings in a wicker basket in the back of my Tahoe. A meat loaf for those who needed something solid and real to stomach death, and a custard pie for those who had a hard time getting food past the lump in their throat.
    The radio was tuned to our local station, and I listened to the account of Zelda’s death for the second time that day.
    “Zelda St. John, wife of local businessman Maxwell St. John, was murdered last night. St. John was the aunt of state senator, Brian Hadley, who is campaigning for the United States senate seat now held by Pat Roberts. Her body was discovered at approximately nine o’ clock by her husband, Maxwell St. John, who had returned from a meeting at the local Lions Club.
    “Although the actual cause of death has yet to be officially established, pending an autopsy being conducted by County Coroner, Dr. William K. Kasper, she appears to have died from blows to her head with a blunt instrument.
    “Brian Hadley is expected to arrive from Wichita later today to be with the family. Details of the funeral service have not been announced.”
    There were several cars parked in front of the St. John’s. The sprawling white farm-house has multipane windows framed by peeling dark green shutters. Overgrown pfitzers blotched with dead branches sagged at both sides of the doorway. Elephant skin blisters marred the lapped siding.
    I rang the doorbell, stilled by the solemnity of death. It’s always sudden, even when it’s not murder. As shocking as a bolt of lightning. Even if a family has been keeping a cancer vigil for a year.
    Zelda’s and Maxwell’s only child, Judy, opened the door. A waif with spiked orange hair, her huge blue eyes were red and swollen.
    I knew her well through helping with the Carlton County Neighborhood Entertainment Company. She had perched beside me between scenes when we produced
The King and I
and told me her time-old teenage story.