Kinsey Millhone - 02 - B Is for Burglar by Sue Grafton

Author:Sue Grafton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780312939007
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2005-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

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I read through everything quickly, just to get an overview, and then I went back and noted the details that interested me. The official version of the story, as much as I knew it, and the interviews with Leonard Grice, his sister Lily, neighbors, the fire inspector, and the first police officer on the scene more or less spelled out events in the same way I'd been told. Leonard and Marty were scheduled to go out for their traditional Tuesday-night dinner with Leonard's widowed sister, Mrs. Howe. Marty wasn't feeling well and canceled out at the last minute. Leonard and Lily went out as planned and got back to the Howes' at about nine P.M., at which point a call was put through to Marty to let her know they were home. Both Mr. Grice and his sister spoke to Marty and she finally terminated the call in order to respond to a knock at the door. According to both Lily and Leonard, they had a cup of coffee and chatted for a bit. He left at approximately ten o'clock, arriving at Via Madrina twenty-some minutes later to find that his house had burned. By then, the blaze had been brought under control and his wife's body was being removed from the partially destroyed residence. He collapsed and was revived by paramedics at the scene. Tillie Ahlberg was the one who'd spotted the smoke and she'd turned in an alarm at 9:55. Two units had responded within minutes, but the blaze was such that entry couldn't be effected through the front door. Firemen had broken in through the rear, extinguishing the fire after thirty minutes or so. The body was discovered in the entryway and removed to the morgue. Identification had been established by full-mouth X rays supplied by Marty's local dentist and through an examination of stomach contents. She'd apparently mentioned to Leonard on the phone that she'd fixed herself some canned tomato soup and a tuna sandwich. The empty cans were found in the kitchen wastebasket. The time of death had more or less been fixed in a narrow framework between the time of the telephone call and the time the fire alarm had been turned in.

I read through the autopsy report, mentally summing up a lot of technical details. The pathologist reported no carbon granules deposited in the bronchial passages or lungs and no carbon monoxide in the blood or other tissues. It was therefore determined that she had been dead when the fire broke out. Additional lab tests had revealed no alcohol, chloroform, drugs, or poisons in the system. The cause of death was attributed to multiple skull fractures apparently caused by repeated blows with a blunt instrument. Because of the nature of the wounds, the pathologist estimated the object to be some four to five inches in width, speculating that it might have been a two-by-four wielded with great force, a baseball bat, or some kind of club, possibly metal. The murder weapon had never been found.

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