High Country Fall

CHAPTER 17

Within moments of recessing, I heard some of the rumors swirling through the halls back of the courtroom. They said Norman Osborne had been found somewhere below Joyce and Bobby Ashe’s house. He had tripped over the railing on the lower terrace and banged his head. He had been beaten to death. He had been knifed. He had collapsed from a heart attack. Take your pick. The only thing everyone agreed on was that he was dead.

Dead?

That big easygoing man who’d stood on the terrace beside me last night and teased me for being a bootlegger’s daughter?

That successful, hard-nosed businessman, who hadn’t been at all shy about singing his love for his wife in front of a crowd?

Even though I’d only met him last night, I felt a touch of the shock and dismay that must be running through the people who’d known him better.

Poor Sunny. I had enjoyed making music with her and Joyce last night. What could she be feeling now? Still so much in love with her husband, so dependent on him for emotional support. She must be shattered.

And the Ashes. So pleased with the prospects of their brand-new partnership, a partnership now abruptly ended.

Mary Kay declined my offer of a cinnamon roll— “I’m doing the no-carbs thing this week”—and went off to see what she could find out.

In the end, I wound up sharing with George Underwood. We nodded to each other as he moved through the hall amid attorneys, parole officers, and assorted law personnel, and when he stopped inside my door, I saw him looking hungrily at the rolls.

“Have one,” I said. “I’ll bet you missed lunch.”

He didn’t have to be asked a second time.

There was an extra cup sitting on Rawlings’s bookcase, and I gestured for Underwood to help himself from the coffee carafe as well.

“I didn’t realize you were head of the detective squad.”

“It’s not a very big one,” he said. “Probably half the men your Major Bryant supervises.”

“But it’s true what they’re saying about Norman Osborne? That he died from a fall off the Ashes’ terrace last night?”

“’Fraid so. I heard you were there?”

“Well, I didn’t actually see him fall, but yes, I was there when he went missing.”

“The way they described it, you would’ve been facing the room, playing the guitar?”

“Yes, but if you’re asking me who came and went before his wife missed him, I can’t help you. Most of the faces were unfamiliar. The only ones I could say for sure were in the room the whole time before he disappeared were Mrs. Osborne and Mrs. Ashe.”

“What about before the music started? Did he have any words with anybody?”

“Like a fight? No. It was all very pleasant. They were celebrating the new partnership. I guess you heard about that?”

He nodded.

“The only thing halfway argumentative was when someone called Dr. Ledwig a bigot and Osborne defended him and—oh my God!” I said. “It’s the same as Ledwig! He took a fall just like Osborne. Was Osborne hit over the head, too? They were friends. Are the two deaths related?”

“Whoa, slow down,” he said, sounding for a moment just like Dwight. “It’s early days for that. Yes, he was hit on the head, and yes, he seems to’ve been thrown over, but it could be a complete coincidence. We’re still looking for the weapon. We found blood on the railing of the bottom terrace and along the edge of the tiles. Looks like someone hit him so hard, he fell across the railing, and then they probably grabbed his legs and swung them over and let gravity do the rest.”

He had finished the bun in three bites, so I tore a small piece off mine and passed the rest of it over to him.

“You sure you don’t want it?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” I lied.

“Thanks. The others were going to pick up some hot dogs at the Trading Post, but I was afraid I’d miss court if I stopped to eat. Anyhow, the EMT who looked at his head said it was probably loss of blood that actually killed him, not the blow and not the fall. If he’d landed with his head up, he might have lived. We’ll have to wait and see what the autopsy shows. The blow was to the back of the head, not front like Ledwig, and it was only one laceration.” He held his thumb and index finger about two inches apart. “But the EMT thinks it was a full-thickness tear and being on the head and him hanging head down …”

“You don’t have to elaborate,” I said. “A medical examiner once told me that under the right circumstances you could bleed to death from a relatively small scalp wound in fifteen or twenty minutes, that the scalp is nothing but a mass of tiny blood vessels.”

“Be good if we could find the weapon,” said Underwood.

I had been visualizing the lower level of the Ashe home, the pottery, the photographs of their children and grandchildren, the long ledge crowded with candlesticks, the— Wait a minute! Candlesticks?

“Could it have been one of those candleholders?” I asked, describing the oak shelf where they stood.

He knew it and nodded. “We thought of that, but there must be forty-five or fifty on that shelf, and just eyeballing with a magnifying glass, we didn’t see blood on any of them.”

“Because it’s not there anymore.”

“Huh?”

“Last night, when everyone was looking for Norman Osborne, I noticed that some of the candlesticks had been knocked over. I straightened them, but there was one extra candle left. I stood it up at the back, so maybe you didn’t notice?”

“We didn’t,” he admitted. “I didn’t.”

“That many candles, why would you? But the missing holder has to be fairly massive because the leftover candle’s one of those tall fat ones and I noticed that Joyce varied them in proportion to the holder. The base is probably six or eight inches in diameter. At least.”

“That would certainly cut a two-inch gash,” he said. He drained his coffee cup and stood to go. “I’ll get the guys back out there. Whoever did this probably heaved the thing as far as they could. God knows where it could have rolled to. Maybe you could adjourn early this afternoon? Ride up with me and show me where the candlesticks were when you noticed them?”

“Sure,” I said.

“That might trigger Mrs. Ashe’s memory. She didn’t think any were missing.”

“My fault. When I set them up, I must have covered the gaps.” I glanced at my watch. Break time was over. “Meet you at four o’clock?”

“I’ll be downstairs,” he said.