Glutton for Punishment by Cecile Lamalle

Author:Cecile Lamalle [LAMALLE, CECILE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC022000
ISBN: 9780759520790
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2000-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Country Squire

C harly handled Amanda’s note carefully. He picked it up by a corner and dropped it in a manila envelope. This time, Charly vowed, the police would have no cause for complaint.

“Good afternoon, Officer. Is Chief Stark in?” Stark, hearing Charly’s voice, came out of his office and beckoned Charly in.

“Well, Charly, I take back everything I said. We’ve had some surprising news from Hy Bingham, he just called. He hasn’t written up the autopsy report yet, but he wanted me to know. Amanda’s hyoid bone was fractured on both sides and there are bruises around her neck, indicating that she was strangled to death. Her eyes were filled with petechiae, you know, little red hemorrhages, plus there was skin lividity around her throat. The gunshot came after she was dead.”

“Ah.” Charly wasn’t surprised. “I am shocked.”

“Right,” Stark said and thought, good thing he doesn’t make a living at being an actor. “Yep, after she was dead, someone stuck a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. There was no gunshot residue on her hands, but that doesn’t mean much. Nobody bagged her hands, we were sure we were dealing with suicide.”

“So now it is murder,” Charly said.

“Yep.”

“And, Chief, look at what I find this morning.” Charly explained to Stark that after Amanda had left the restaurant Friday afternoon, she told Patty she’d lost her list. They’d looked around the kitchen, but the list had not been found. He remembered that particularly, since both he and Patty had joked about making lists, and how they then lost the lists.

“Now I see what happen. Amanda dropped the list in the mushroom box when she put down her purse. This is the first time since Friday that I open the box.”

“I wonder who she was writing to?” Stark mused.

“She was going to visit her sister in Massachusetts,” Charly reminded Stark. “She probably write to a friend who live nearby. I do that when I visit my family. I write to my friends, asking if maybe we can have lunch.”

“So do I,” Stark agreed. “Or I call. I called several people last summer when Betty and the girls and I went to Maine. Just to alert them.”

“And,” Charly continued, “she is not pleased with what she say, so she throw away the page. Then, being of a frugal nature, again something that I do, she use the other side for list. She write badly, Chief. So she probably ruin several sheet of paper.”

“I did check the wastebaskets in the house,” Stark said, “just out of habit. There was one in Amanda’s office, and it was empty. The one upstairs in their bathroom had normal stuff, and there was none in their bedroom.”

“So there were at least two page that she throw away,” Charly mused. “The one found near her body, and the one in the mushroom box. Probably more thrown away by the killer.”

Stark got up, indicating that his interview with Charly was over. Enough was enough. Now, Charly wanted to waste time on theorizing.

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