A Good Month for Murder by Del Quentin Wilber

Author:Del Quentin Wilber
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805098822
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

“That’s a musical,” Barnhardt says helpfully.

“You know it?” Hill asks Delaney.

“I’m a Renaissance man,” says Delaney, smiling and continuing to sing:

Ray, a drop of golden sun …

As they head for the elevator, Hill, Barnhardt, and Cosby cannot resist. They join in, becoming a motley choir:

Me, a name I call myself

Far, a long long way to run.

CHAPTER 4

4:30 p.m., Saturday, February 9

Detective Andre Brooks walks into the living room and halts at the blood-smeared hardwood floor. Tapping his left leg with his notepad, he stares at the crimson smudge for a full minute before shifting his gaze to the sun setting behind patterned window shades. He blinks to clear his vision of the golden glare and steps back to better scan the cluttered room. Against the far wall is a leather couch with a split seam; on the opposite wall is a twin-sized bed. The room is littered with open boxes, food containers, a portable toilet, a tilting bookcase. Jesus, thinks Brooks. Figuring out if anything was stolen from this place is going to be a bitch.

Returning his attention to the floor, Brooks wonders how such a violent death spilled so little blood. He feels a surge of anger over the slaying of his victim, an innocent seventy-one-year-old homebody named Geraldine McIntyre, whose corpse is already on its way to the morgue. Two hours earlier, a visiting relative had found the woman bleeding and unconscious in this very spot, not three steps from the front door. Stabbed numerous times in her torso, she was rushed to the hospital, where she died in the emergency room.

Brooks scowls. He cannot understand why someone would kill an elderly lady, let alone in such a horrible way. McIntyre wasn’t just old, Brooks has learned—she was defenseless. Partly paralyzed from a stroke, McIntyre somehow had been caring for her disabled forty-six-year-old daughter, who slept on the bed in the living room. Fortunately, the daughter wasn’t home today; she was at a nearby hospital being treated for bedsores.

After walking through a small hallway, Brooks enters McIntyre’s bedroom, where evidence technicians are taking photographs. On the unmade bed are a TV remote, a plastic bag filled with prescription bottles, a stack of mail, and a DVD case; next to the bed is a small table covered with personal items. In the left corner of the room is an overstuffed white armoire. Clothes are scattered across the floor, and a woman’s brown hat rests on a plastic fan.

Brooks’s attention turns to an upside-down black milk crate on a knee-high white stand. Pressed against the far wall, the crate is perfectly positioned for someone watching television in bed, but there is no TV. The detective steps closer, and an evidence technician points to the floor. Brooks dips his head and sees a severed coaxial cable.

Brooks has no doubt about what happened here: McIntyre’s television has been stolen.

Pivoting, the detective finds his partner, Mike Delaney, standing behind him. “You know what kind of set she had?”

Delaney has just finished speaking to

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