Charlaine Harris - Poppy Done to Death

I walked around the breakfast bar and looked out the sliding glass door. Arthur came to stand beside me. We exchanged glances.

“It was Mrs. Embler’s radio,” he said.

“I’m guessing it was. What did she tell you about that morning?”

“Just that she swam as usual. Didn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary. Not too surprising, considering the fact that she was wearing a swimming cap and the radio was on, and there’s a privacy fence in between the houses.”

“But the gate in the privacy fence had to be open at some point,” I said. “She’s got Moosie.”

“The cat? You saw Moosie in the house after Poppy was dead?”

“Yes, I did.” I stared at the boards of the high privacy fence, the fence the declawed Moosie couldn’t climb. “You know, Arthur, I could swear that when I was standing here, looking out, the day Poppy died, Cara was swimming then. She had the radio on.”

“So?”

“Still swimming? In this temperature? From the time Lizanne got here, waited, left; then Sandy came, found Poppy dead, and left; until the time I came in and found her body?”

“That could be,” Arthur said, but he sounded doubtful.

“And Moosie-who can’t climb the fence because he hasn’t got claws-vanished, between the time I came in the house and the time the police arrived.”

Arthur stared at the back gate.

“What the woman across the street didn’t see was anyone leaving,” he said very quietly. “Anyone except Sandy and Lizanne, that is. Yet I’m fairly certain neither of them killed Poppy. So where did this talking person, the one Lizanne heard, go?” He turned to stare down at me. “I should have been taken off this investigation,” he said expressionlessly. “I should have gone to the chief, I should have told him the whole story of my involvement with Poppy, and he should have put someone else on it. I thought I’d been away from her long enough, but I hadn’t.”

“Maybe someone did sneak out between the time Sandy took off and Melinda and I got here. Maybe Moosie got out the front door. Maybe I left it ajar while we were waiting for the police and ambulance after I’d found the body. But I don’t think so. I think I shut Moosie in the house when I came out to tell Melinda. I think someone came in to check the backyard, maybe for something they’d left there, while Melinda and I were sitting out front. I think that person came through the gate in the fence, from the Embler’s yard. I could hear Cara splashing while I stood here, with this door open, by Poppy’s body. I remember that clearly. But Cara usually swims at ten in the morning and at three in the afternoon. Everyone knows that. When I was here, it was about one. And I know what I think I saw on the concrete of the pool area.”

“What?”

“Wet marks. I think they were wet footprints.”

“You didn’t remember until now?”

“I didn’t realize what they were. I was so upset at seeing the body, I didn’t think too much about the splotches on the concrete. But when I think of them in terms of what we just figured out, I realized that what I saw were footprints.”

“That’s hardly conclusive evidence.”

“I know. Did you see any when you came?”

“I was so overwhelmed by the sight of Poppy dead-I owe your family my sincerest apology. I didn’t notice half of what I should have noticed, didn’t ask half the questions I should have asked.”

“Arthur, just get the right person now. I’m glad you cared for Poppy. I’m glad someone who cared for her was there with her.” I wasn’t altogether sincere, but I didn’t want Arthur to spend any more time bashing himself. I wanted action. “I’ll bet she came back through the fence to dry up the water,” I said absently. “That’s why you didn’t see it. And that’s when Moosie escaped.”

“Maybe, if I get a search warrant, we can find the knife.”

“I’ll bet she threw it away. It’s in the garbage right now, and today is pickup for our part of town.” At every house but Poppy’s, garbage cans were sitting at the curb, waiting to be emptied.

“Then I’ll have to hurry to get a search warrant.” Arthur turned on his heel, ready to run out the front way, but I put my hand on his arm. I could hear the garbage truck coming down Poppy’s street, and next it would turn onto the Emblers‘. There wasn’t time. I had to do something.

“Just wait a minute” I said.

“What are you doing?”

“Come with me, and wait on this side,” I said. I’d had a sudden idea, and I was determined to carry it through. I remembered Poppy done to death on her own floor, in her own kitchen. I owed her this.

I walked around Poppy’s pool, knocked on the gate, turned the knob, and walked through.

Cara Embler was drying her short hair with a huge fluffy white towel. A little puddle of water had trickled down her legs and lay pooled at her feet. By her back door, there was a table piled high with identical towels, all snowy white and neatly folded. Organized, not prone to impulse, that was Cara.

She was surprised at my appearance in her yard, but not shocked. After all, she’d called me about Moosie. He was sunning himself on the patio, and when I came in, he jumped up and ran to me, stropping himself around my legs as he’d done on the day I’d found Poppy. I saw her two dogs looking through her set of sliding glass doors. They barked energetically when I walked through the gate and pulled it to behind me. I didn’t close it all the way.

“Hi, Roe,” Cara said, turning down the radio, which was sitting on a table by a matching chair. “I would have gotten all Moosie’s stuff together and put him in a carrier if I’d known you were coming. I’d gotten him some cat food and some litter, and a toy.”

She did love animals. “I just came over on impulse,” I said, which was the truth. “Are you ready to come home with me, boy?” I lifted him up into my arms and scratched his head.

“I’ve enjoyed having him, but the dogs go nuts when he teases them,” Cara said. The schnauzers were peering anxiously out of the glass door, yipping from time to time. They were beautiful animals, obviously well cared for. “Why’d you come in from Poppy’s side?” Cara asked. She combed her short hair.

“I had to get some things out of the house for John David. Things for Chase,” I replied, lying. I was feeling my way, and I was suddenly cold down to my heart. What had I done? But having come through the gate in the fence, seeing Cara’s assurance, I could not stand the thought that she might walk free. I could not imagine why, out of all the women Poppy had cuckolded, this one would strike back, but I knew in my gut that Cara Embler had killed my sister-in-law.

“Want to come in? It’s a little brisk out here.” But Cara seemed to be used to it. She wrapped a white terry robe around her. She started to put on a pair of yellow plastic clogs, then seemed to reconsider. I wondered why. She swept a hand toward the house invitingly.

If we went inside, Arthur couldn’t hear.

“How many times did you go through the fence that day?” I asked.

Cara looked stunned for a second. “What day?”

“The day Poppy died. When you killed her.”

The words hung between us, enormous and terrifying.

Cara’s eyes changed then. The veil she’d held between the world and herself dropped, and the real Cara looked out at me.

“You don’t know anything,” she said contemptuously.

“I found your husband’s ID tag, the one from the hospital.”

“You did, huh? That was where Stuart lost it?”

“Isn’t that why?”

“Why I killed her? Over my husband poking his thing in her? If I killed everyone he fucked, there’d be a lot of dead women around Atlanta. That hospital is like Peyton Place. Granted, one in my own backyard is over the top. But consider the woman.” Cara’s face shone with malice. “She gets pregnant so easy, she doesn’t even know who the father is. She thinks I don’t even know my husband’s had her, that that’ll scare me! But at least I can be sure it’s not him, because his sperm count is so pathetic, we had to adopt. You know how hard it is to get a healthy white male infant? Not as hard for a prominent cardiologist and his wife as it would be for a garbage man and his wife, but still… difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. And then he doesn’t even love us! We brought him up as ours, we gave him everything, and he doesn’t even love us!”