1 52 Steps to Murder

  52 Steps to Murder

  Steve Demaree

  A woman is found poisoned in her home located fifty-two steps above the street. A neighbor sitting on her porch and another neighbor seated by his picture window say that only two people entered or exited the house, but the medical examiner’s report does not agree. This old-fashioned whodunit is filled with clues and red herrings, and comic moments of the ups and downs of solving this mystery.

  Copyright © 2013

  Steve Demaree

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is dedicated to the two people I love the most and whose love I deserve the least, my wife, Nell, and my daughter, Kelly. May God continue to bless me with their presence in my life.

  This book is also dedicated to those people who come to me personally to get my books at bookstores and libraries where I’m doing book signings, art and craft fairs, town festivals, and book fairs, as well as to all my friends on Facebook. If you are not yet a Facebook friend, send me a request to become friends.

  May each of them and each of you enjoy this book.

  Books by Steve Demaree

  Dekker Cozy Whodunit

  Mystery Series

  52 Steps to Murder

  Murder in the Winter

  Murder in the Library

  Murder at Breakfast?

  Murder at the High School Reunion

  Murder at the Art & Craft Fair

  Santangelo PG-Rated

  Mystery/Thriller Series

  Murder in the Dark

  Picture Them Dead

  Body Count

  Aylesford Place Series

  Aylesford Place: The First Year

  Aylesford Place: The Second Year

  Aylesford Place: The Third Year

  Non-Fiction

  Lexington & Me

  Reflecting Upon God’s Word

  Table of Contents

  Cast of Characters

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  Cast of Characters

  Lt. Cy Dekker - The lead detective of the Hilldale Police Department

  Sgt. Lou Murdock - Lt. Dekker’s partner

  Mrs. Ethel Nelson - A Hilltop Place resident who is found dead in her home

  Miss Angela Nelson - Ethel Nelson’s granddaughter

  Officer Dan Davis - A rookie police officer who, along with Angela Nelson, finds Mrs. Nelson’s body

  Stanley Silverman - A man who lives across from Mrs. Nelson who keeps a watchful eye on the happenings in his neighborhood

  Irene Penrod - Mrs. Nelson’s next-door neighbor. The last person known to see Mrs. Nelson alive

  Mrs. Reynolds - A cranky resident of Hilltop Place who is not liked by any of her neighbors

  Jimmy Reynolds - Mrs. Reynolds’s son, who suffered a mental breakdown during the war

  Mrs. Wilkens - A talkative Hilltop Place resident who sees quite a bit of what happens from her porch

  Mabel Jarvis - A wheelchair-bound resident of Hilltop Place who never strays from her home

  Fred Hartley - The mailman on Hilltop Place

  Harry Hornwell - Mrs. Nelson’s attorney

  Bobby Cooper - He delivers groceries on Hilltop Place

  Don Hampton - A homeless person who is found on Hilltop Place

  Mrs. Murphy – Mrs. Nelson’s cleaning lady

  Lt. George Michaelson - A friend of Lt. Dekker and a fellow member of the Hilldale Police Department

  Frank Harris - The medical examiner

  Sam Schumann-A policeman who does much of Lt. Dekker’s investigative work

  Dr. Muriel Davenport - A police psychiatrist

  Heloise Humphert - Lt. Dekker’s irritating next-door neighbor

  Twinkle Toes - Heloise Humphert’s dog

  Rosie - The daytime waitress at the Blue Moon Diner

  Thelma - The nighttime waitress at the Blue Moon Diner

  Betty McElroy - A friend of Lt. Dekker’s whom he sometimes dates

  Thelma Lou Spencer - Sgt. Murdock’s girlfriend

  1

  When the call came in, I knew it was time to go to work. A young woman had called on her grandmother, who didn’t answer her front door. Her grandmother was always home, so she called the police, and a rookie cop responded. After calling in, he broke in the house and the young woman found her grandmother dead. Foul play was suspected. That was when I received a call. I’m Cy Dekker. Lt. Cy Dekker, head of homicide for the Hilldale Police Department. My partner on each case is Sgt. Lou Murdock. We’ve been partners on the force for over twenty-five years, friends for a lot longer than that.

  My first inkling that we would have to put in a full day that day was when I picked up Lou for breakfast. As soon as he sat down in Lightning, the yellow VW bug that is my choice of transportation, he told me the bad news.

  “Cy, we’d better eat breakfast in a hurry.”

  I knew immediately what he meant. Every time a murder has been committed, Lou gets a message. I call them his messages from God. Actually, each day we’re working on a case a clue comes to Lou about the case we’re working on. I don’t know why Lou’s the one who always gets the message. Maybe I’ve done something to upset God. Or maybe it’s Lou’s sole contribution to each case.

  “So, Lou, what’s today’s message?”

  “52 steps to murder.”

  “Is this something like that Van Johnson movie from the fifties, 23 Paces to Baker Street?”

  Thanks to cable TV, I remembered the movie well. I wasn’t alive in the 1950s, but suspense movies always interested me, and I watched some of the old classics with my parents. Van Johnson plays a blind man. One night he’s in a London bar and overhears someone in the next booth planning a crime. Johnson feels it’s his job to solve the crime, even though he doesn’t know what the crime is.

  Lou looked at me and gave me a dumb look, as if he knew the answer to my question. Lou looks at his messages as the difference between speaking in tongues and having the gift to interpret the message. He’s merely the messenger.

  By the time we got the actual call, we had just finished breakfast and had just plopped back down in Lightning. At least we were able to eat breakfast the way God intended for us to eat, shoveling it in, and shoveling in a lot. At an early age I already knew that breakfast was the most important meal before lunch. I knew that both of them were the most important meals before dinner, or supper, or whatever you call the meal that you eat like there’s no more food until tomorrow.

  I’d lived my entire life to that point in Hilldale, and yet I’d never set foot on Hilltop Avenue. If I had, more than likely I would’ve gotten sick as soon as the call came in. As it was, I didn’t get sick until we turned down Hilltop and reality set in. Things didn’t get any better when I pulled up in front of the house where the dead woman lived until that morning. I understood where Lou’s 52 steps to murder came in.

  I s
tepped out of the car and looked up at the house. Or was it the summit. I’d seen mountain ranges that were closer to sea level. Well, actually I hadn’t, but I was sure there were some.

  Neither Lou nor I have ever been in favor of exercise. Walking is something someone does to get from the parking lot to the inside of their favorite restaurant, or if they are old, from their easy chair or the bed to the bathroom. Running is something you do only if you are seeking an office. Swimming is something you do only if someone throws you in the water and you don’t want to drown. I think you get the idea. Back when I was in school, gym class was one of the classes that kept Lou and me off the honor roll. At least in those other classes that kept me off the honor roll I didn’t have to wear those short blue gym shorts. I only wanted girls to laugh at me if I told a joke.

  I turned to Lou. We waited until we were sure no one was sending a tram down to get us.

  I turned and looked at my partner.

  “Lou, we’ve got some greenhorn upstairs, and the department wants us to check this out. The old woman probably keeled over of a heart attack after climbing these steps, but we need to find out. Are you ready, Tonto?”

  “Ready when you are, Lone Ranger.”

  “Remember, don’t look down, and try to think of it as Mt. Everest without the snow and the wind.”

  “You really know how to make a situation sound better, Cy. I think I’ve already spotted the place where I plan to pitch my tent tonight. If I can drive the stakes in far enough that we don’t get blown down the hill, I think we can make it all the way to the summit tomorrow.”

  “Just look at the bright side, Lou.”

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “Yeah, neither you nor I have to carry the old lady down the steps.”

  Lou laughed, and then commented.

  “That’s comforting, although if we dropped her I doubt if she’d complain.”

  I wondered how many steps it was to the top and decided to count them. Halfway up I lost count, but there was no way I was going back to the bottom and start counting again. I didn’t care. When it came time to tell this story to those who were not there, I would double the number of steps, invent a howling wind, and recall how our hands stuck to the frozen railing as we fought to keep our feet from sliding down the icy steps. Should I also add how I saved Lou’s life as I protected him from the two gunmen who shot at us from above?

  What seemed like an hour later, after multiple stops to curtail the latest wheezing, two homicide detectives made it to the front porch, tried to catch our breaths, and reached for the front door. I opened the door and entered the house. Lou followed. Another doorway stood a few feet in front of me. I assumed it led to the back of the house. The living room was to my left. As soon as we entered, the rookie police officer rose from a chair. He looked worse than I expected. He could not have been any wetter behind the ears if water had dripped down the back of his neck. Could it be that unbeknownst to me the department had started hiring extra men when our workload was heavy, much like construction companies do? I merely nodded at him. Was this another case of minimum wage for minimum age? I didn’t want to scare him out of the house before I found out if he knew anything that had happened there that day, so I nodded to him and smiled briefly to calm his uneasiness.

  I turned and looked at the young woman, hoping she had held up better. She hadn’t. Her eyes were red. Her cheeks were tear-stained. And her ringing hands had already shredded a handful of tissues. All of this overshadowed her beauty.

  I saw the need to lighten the moment and took advantage of the opportunity. “We would’ve been here sooner, but it took the Saint Bernard a while to find us. We got lost on the north face.”

  The young woman gave me a look that seemed to say that these two clowns are no better than the first one. I turned to Lou, who was doing his best to suppress a grin, then turned to face the young woman.

  “I’m Lt. Dekker and this is Sgt. Murdock. And who might the two of you be?”

  The young woman looked at me, and then turned to the young officer, giving him the first chance to answer. My guess was that she was curious, as was I, to see if he remembered his name.

  “I’m Officer Dan Davis. This is my first day alone.”

  Officer Davis looked like he wished he could have taken back the last sentence as soon as he uttered it.

  “Well, you don’t look so alone to me,” I replied. “And who is your friend?”

  From the looks on their faces, “friend” did not appear to be the word either of them would have used to describe the other. Obviously, it had been a trying morning for both of them.

  “I’m Angela Nelson. That’s my grandmother upstairs,” she said as she pointed to a staircase that led upward from the other side of the living room, as if Sgt. Murdock and I might have trouble discerning the meaning of “upstairs.” The thought of her dead grandmother changed Angela Nelson’s mood from indignation to sadness, and she began to cry.

  “Miss Nelson, why don’t you stay here and calm down while Officer Davis shows Sgt. Murdock and me where we can find the deceased.” The word “deceased” added sobs to her tears.

  I realized my bad choice of words and tried to comfort the young woman.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Nelson. Would you like for Sgt. Murdock to keep you company?”

  She shook her head, and then replied. “No, I’ll be fine,” she said as she removed another tissue from her purse.

  “Okay, well, come on, men. We’ll be back in a few minutes, Miss Nelson.”

  Lou and I let Officer Davis lead the way, and the three of us climbed the stairs. As I sneaked a peek back at Miss Nelson, it appeared that Lou and I were doing a poor job of hiding our labored breathing.

  The steps creaked as we mounted them, not as if they found our weight painful, nor to scare us from continuing, but more to let us know that we were not welcome.

  +++

  Lou and I looked briefly at the woman who lay on the four-poster bed, her face badly bruised, her body heavily bandaged. A cast covered one arm and one leg. The obvious injuries happened many days before her death, but I wondered if they had anything to do with it. Did someone try to murder her before and return to complete a botched job? I made a mental note to find out. The sergeant and I planned to examine the body extensively after Officer Davis and Angela Nelson left.

  Once again, I tried to put the young officer at ease. I asked him about his trek up Mt. Hilltop. He lied. At least, I think he lied. Either that or he had already forgotten the difficult climb. Officer Davis turned and looked at the dead woman. He still seemed ill at ease in her presence.

  “Officer Davis, have you ever known anyone who died?”

  “Y-yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Well, have you ever been to visitation at a funeral home or to a funeral.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, just think of her as those dead people you’ve seen; only the casket is missing. Don’t let the bandages fool you. This is not Lazarus. This woman will not come back to life. If she does, Sgt. Murdock and I will protect you. Okay?”

  Officer Davis managed a sheepish grin.

  “Now that we’ve established this much, tell us what happened here today.”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. I wasn’t here when it happened.”

  I looked at the young officer and wondered how he had passed the tests necessary to become a policeman.

  “Let, me rephrase that, Officer Davis. Tell me what happened to you, beginning with the time you received the call to come to Hilltop Place. You do remember receiving the call, don’t you, Officer Davis?”

  “Of course, Lieutenant.”

  With a little prompting, Officer Davis related his story. Dispatch had contacted him and directed him to proceed to this address. A young woman had phoned, concerned because her grandmother did not answer her front door. He arrived and found Miss Nelson on the front porch. She seemed frantic and wanted him to break in so she could see if her grandmother was oka
y. Because he was afraid to call headquarters in her presence, he went back to his cruiser and called in. Headquarters granted permission for him to break into the house.

  I tried to suppress a smile and wondered if he would admit to calling in three times.

  Officer Davis continued his narrative. He forced the window to gain entry to the house. Once inside, he checked the front door while Miss Nelson checked the back of the house. A couple of minutes later, the two of them headed upstairs where Miss Nelson found her grandmother. Officer Davis needed to report Mrs. Nelson’s death. He convinced Angela Nelson to go downstairs with him. As they descended the staircase, both of them heard someone running through the living room and out the front door. By the time Officer Davis got to the front porch, the intruder had vanished.

  Officer Davis ran down the front steps and looked both ways. He did not see anyone, so he ran a little ways up and down the street, but still did not locate the intruder. He called the department and reported what had happened. After he called in, he waited by the cruiser for a few minutes and then returned to the house.

  Officer Davis finished his version of what had happened. I suspected that he’d left out a few details, but I hoped that Miss Nelson would fill in the cracks. I led the way as the three of us left the bedroom and rejoined Miss Nelson.

  2

  As we returned to the first floor, I glanced at Angela Nelson. She seemed to be somewhat composed. At least she hadn’t added to her used tissue pile. I waited for everyone to get settled, looked down at the young woman seated before me, and began my questioning. Even though this young woman had just lost her grandmother, I somehow thought that she might be more help to me than Officer Davis had been.

  “Miss Nelson, I know this has been a trying morning for you, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant. I’ll do my best.”

  I subconsciously reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a Hershey Almond candy bar, still slightly cold from resting in my refrigerator overnight. I wouldn’t have noticed what I’d done if I hadn’t seen Miss Nelson’s eyes follow my actions.