Dearly Departed by Carly Winter (best affordable ebook reader .txt) 📕

chuckle for a good thirty seconds as I twisted the phone cord around my finger, growing more irritated by the moment.

“Okay, Patty. Now I'm curious. Tell me how you've solved a murder that the police haven't.”

And there was the rub. Who did I think I was, calling the FBI with my crazy conjecture? “I didn't say I solved it,” I muttered. “I said I may have solved it.”

“I'm all ears. Tell me your theory.”

“I think Mrs. Wilson killed Charles.”

He hesitated a beat before asking, “The little old lady?”

“Yes.”

“Patty, have you been downstairs smoking dope with the hippies?”

“No! Just listen to me!”

“Do you have any proof? Like did she confess or show you the bloody knife?”

“No.”

“She's a sweet, old woman, Patty. I don't see how—”

“Will you please stop talking and listen?!”

“Fine,” he replied with a huff. “This should be rich.”

A knock sounded at my door again, but I ignored it and took a deep breath while keeping my gaze focused on the paper in front of me. Ringo pranced out of the bedroom and curled up on the couch next to me, as if urging me on, yet comforting me at the same time. “I just got back from New York and we had left a key for Mrs. Wilson to use to come in and feed Ringo.”

“Okay...”

“Well, when she gave it back to me a little while ago, I realized that Donna had left her the wrong key. She'd given Mrs. Wilson the key to Charles' apartment, the one he'd given us.”

“And?”

“There was no way for her to access our apartment while we were gone, Bill. We'd never exchanged keys with her, but we had with Charles.”

“I'm confused, Patty.”

Closing my eyes, I rubbed my temple again with one hand while holding the phone with the other. The headache seemed to be growing worse by the second. “Charles had our key. Mrs. Wilson didn't, but she did have a key to Charles' apartment. I've seen her use it. What if after Charles died, she went in and made copies of our key and used it to feed Ringo?”

“What if she grabbed your key from Charles' apartment to take care of the cat?”

I shook my head. “We took it back a couple of days ago. She had to have made a copy before then.”

Bill remained silent for a long while. “Even if she did make a copy of your key from Charles' apartment, that doesn't make her a murderer. What's her motive?”

“Charles' nightmares. She's mentioned how much they scared her and how they kept her awake. She said since his death she's sleeping so much better. She hated the screaming.”

It sounded as if Bill was tapping a pen against the table. “A sixty-something-year-old lady doesn't kill out of the blue.”

“What if she's done it before and gotten away with it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her husband,” I said with a sigh. “He died falling down the stairs here in the apartment building a few years ago. What if it wasn't an accident? What if she pushed him? Or tripped him?”

“I think you're grasping at straws,” Bill replied. “What happened to your suspicions about the girlfriend, Karen? Or the wife, Claudia?”

“I've thought about that. Here's the thing: Mrs. Wilson has been there every step of the way, casting doubt away from herself and onto everyone else, planting seeds and ideas in everyone's head. I didn’t even realize she was doing that until just a few moments ago. She called Claudia a shrew, but then was rude and mean to her to force her to act like a harpy. We found a will that Charles had supposedly typed mixed in with a book he'd been writing that stated Karen was to get his estate. Mrs. Wilson had access to the apartment so she could have typed that out and slipped it in the stack of papers for someone to find, which would have been Karen's motive. She also said Wayne, Charles' friend, is a drug dealer, which is true, so he's seedy and could've killed Charles.”

“What about the hippy downstairs?”

In-the-Buff Bob. “She told me she hated the way he treated Charles and he could've done it as well. Don't you see? She's actively worked to cast blame anywhere but on herself.”

“Let me think about this,” Bill grumbled.

I remained quiet, tossing around all the pieces of the puzzle. “One other thing,” I said. “We found a note under our pillow that was a threat, telling us not to get too close or we'd be next. It had been typed on Charles' typewriter.”

“How do you know that?”

“I went over there and looked at the ribbon. I could make out the words on it.”

“And Mrs. Wilson had access to Charles' apartment?”

“Yes. They'd traded keys.”

“Wouldn't you have heard her stabbing him? I'm assuming he would have yelled for help or something.”

“Not necessarily. Donna and I weren't here, but even if Mrs. Wilson killed Charles after I got home, I probably wouldn't have heard anything. The anti-war protesters were so loud, I couldn't have the window open. I also had music on while I tidied up.”

“Interesting.” He was finally taking me seriously!

“She knew him, Bill. She could have walked right up to him and shoved that knife into him. He never would have felt threatened by her, because as you said, she's a sweet, little old lady. They were friends and neighbors.”

“And you think she has the physical strength to do something like that?”

“She may be older, but she's not infirm. Mrs. Wilson is a strong woman.”

“You put all this together over a key?” Bill asked, his voice incredulous.

“When she handed it back to me, I realized Donna had left her the wrong one. In order for her to get Ringo, that meant she'd have to have made a copy of ours, which she’d retrieved from Charles' apartment. No one else has a key.”

“Karen had access to Charles' apartment. I'm assuming she had a key since she was the girlfriend. And what about Claudia? You said you found her inside