Murder in the Hearse Degree Read Online Free PDF Page A

Severn.
    I picked up this information from a woman named Judith, who was manning the front desk at the Annapolis police station. It turned out that Judith was a sister of the account executive and in her excitement over the single degree of separation from a real live corpse—so to speak—she was incapable of anything even approaching professional discretion. Mike Gellman had been called in late in the afternoon yesterday, Judith told me, to identify the body, after which the police had managed to track down Sophie’s parents. They had been vacationing in Florida in the town of Rat Mouth (you’ll see it translated on most maps as Boca Raton) and, according to my loquacious source, had flown in first thing this morning to claim the body.
    Judith rapped a painted fingernail against her blotter and gave me a knowing nod.
    “They’re here.”
    Libby was taking a beating. She was standing in a dimly lit hallway that was lined with plaques. A tall woman was seated in a chair along the wall, her face buried in her hands. It was a stout man with small ears and a flat nose who was working Libby over. The sneer on his face was a cross between Edward G. Robinson’s and Elvis A. Presley’s, which is only to say it wasn’t a pretty sight to behold. The man was mainly bald—a few errant wires poking out of his skull—with a narrow horseshoe of dyed black hair. There was a small egg stain on his tie. I picked up on the harangue as I stepped over to them. His voice was loud and instantly irritating.
    “. . . I just don’t understand . The girl goes missing and what do you do? You wait for an entire day before you call the police? What the hell is that about?”
    I could tell from the look on Libby’s face that she’d been getting this treatment for some time now. She spotted me and threw out an S.O.S. The guy had started slapping the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other.
    “. . . she lived in your house, for Christ’s sake, under your roof—”
    I stepped in. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt.” Libby’s relief was so palpable I could have torn off a piece and taken a bite of it. The man gave me a nasty look.
    “Who’re you? You the husband?”
    “I’m not.” I introduced myself. The experience didn’t seem to rock the stout man’s world.
    “Hitchcock is an old friend of mine, Mr. Potts,” Libby said. “He was trying to help locate Sophie.”
    Potts studied my face. His eyes looked like little black raisins. “Well, I guess you can stop looking.”
    “I’m very sorry about Sophie, Mr. Potts,” I said.
    But Potts wasn’t listening to me. “Where the hell’s the husband?” he snarled. “That’s what I want to know.”
    “Mike should be along any minute,” Libby said. The strain in her voice matched the strain in her eyes. “I don’t know what’s keeping him.”
    “What are the police saying?” I asked.
    “What I’ve heard so far is they don’t have signs of anything criminal,” Libby said. “They’re thinking Sophie jumped from—”
    “No!”
    The word came out on a roar from the woman who was slumped in the chair. Her hands dropped from her face and she rose on wobbly knees. She was tall, much taller than Potts, with deeply set eyes, rimmed in red from crying. There was something quietly regal about her; maybe it was the way she roped her arms over her small breasts and straightened to her full height. The woman had high round cheekbones and a slender hooked nose. Frosted blonde hair caught up in a green scarf.
    “No,” she announced again. It was a husky voice, thick with accent. “Sophie did not jump.”
    Potts moved to put a hand on her shoulder. “Now Eva—”
    “No!” The woman shrugged the hand away. “Sophie did not do this! I want this to stop. I do not want to hear it.”
    There was a slight smirk on Murray Potts’s face as he turned back to me. Women. They can be so emotional.
    His wife glowered at me. “You were looking for Sophie?”
    “I