Five-minute Mysteries 3. Ken Weber

Shoots Self!’ Of course,” she added, bitterly, “the fact that he is – was – the first black captain in the history of the force is icing on the cake. As if that’s not enough, the wife’s white, and – and – she was having an affair! A mess!”

      She drew a long, audible breath, then exhaled even more noisily. “Once more,” she said. “Tell me one more time.”

      Detective Furst opened his notebook, although he knew the details by heart. It helped him detach his eyes from those of his boss. He began. “The driver waits by the sidewalk at 7:15 this morning, like every other morning. When Max doesn’t show up, he goes to the door. It’s open. Max and Beatty had a small den just off the front foyer. Place for reading, watching TV, and that. He looks in there and they’re both dead. Or look dead, anyway. He calls ... er ... how much detail do you want, Chief Voltz? Do you want me to ...”

      “Keep going.” Chief Voltz swept her watch arm round again. “I’ll interrupt if I have to.”

      “Yes.” Furst cleared his throat. “I arrived on the scene at 7:48 with ...”

      “Never mind who else. What did you see? First impression.”

      Furst cleared his throat again. “First impression is murder/suicide. Beatty is on the floor, her back to the door. Of course, the first thing I see is the cuffs. She’s cuffed behind her back.” The detective looked at the chief uneasily. “They’re Max’s cuffs, Chief Voltz. Or at least ... well, they’re our issue, and his prints are on them.”

      The chief’s expression did not change. “Keep going,” she said again.

      “There are heavy welts and marks around her neck. We found a kid’s skipping rope underneath her. What ... what it looks like ... is he cuffed her and then ... it looks like he choked her.”

      “And Max?” Underneath the gold braid, the chief rotated her shoulder slightly, a habit of hers when she was becoming impatient. “Ate his gun then, right?”

      Detective Furst was not finding this easy. “It appears he put the barrel in his mouth and ... he was lying a few feet away. We estimate it all happened between about 10:00 last night and midnight.” He looked at Marjorie Schenk for confirmation.

      “That’s right, Chief Voltz,” the medical examiner picked up the narrative. “The thermostat was set unusually high in the house and the heat made it hard to be more precise than that.”

      Schenk paused until Voltz nodded to go on.

      “Everything I found is consistent with the interpretation of events as Detective Furst describes them.” Marjorie Schenk tended to lapse into a witness-box style at moments like these.

      “The entry and exit wounds on Captain Winters ... er ... Max ... are consistent with self-inflicted harm. Entry in roof of the mouth. Exit at the top of the skull with significant damage. The top and back of the skull are pretty much destroyed.”

      “He used a dum-dum?” the chief wanted to know.

      “We found it in the wall, Chief Voltz.” Detective Furst interjected. “Too smashed up to be sure, but it looks like it.”

      Voltz sighed. “What next? Now we’ve got an upper-level member of the force with illegal bullets.” She sighed again. “Go on, Marjorie.”

      “Except for the cause of death factors, there are no other wounds or marks at all on Cap–, Max. The same is true for the wife. No marks except for the ones on her neck, but they’re significant. Intense pressure applied just below the larynx.”

      “Then he didn’t kill her.” The room went starkly silent. It was “Miss Brooks.” The others looked at him and then at each other as if they had heard an echo.

      “Miss Brooks” carried on, eyes fixed firmly on the surface of the table. “It’s evident Captain Winters did not strangle Mrs. Winters. In fact, what is more likely is that a third person killed them both, and has made it appear to be a murder/suicide. Perhaps to embarrass the force. That’s only my opinion, of course.”

      ?

      On what basis does “Miss Brooks” conclude – correctly – that Captain Max Winters did not strangle his wife?

      Solution

      

8

Collecting a Betrayal Fee

      Yesterday afternoon, one of the big double doors to her father’s study had been slightly ajar, and Sophie Andros had slipped in and taken half a million dollars in bearer bonds from the wall safe.

       Call it a betrayal fee, Daddy. For what you did to me and Mom. I just wish she were still around to enjoy this.

      Sophie wasn’t sure she believed in God anymore, but she had to admit that the door being open yesterday suggested a force of some kind trying to tip things in her favor. Oh, she’d planned to do something if she ever got back into this house. Just what she didn’t know, but yesterday everything happened so naturally and so easily, and she hadn’t even had a plan!

      To begin with, she’d shown up at the house for the first time in twenty-four years, and nobody had answered the front door.

       OK, so I wasn’t expected until today. But see, I knew Aspen would be out. You could be taking your last breath, Daddy, but she wouldn’t miss her spa day, would she? And what the heck! Twenty-four years! I wanted to prowl around a bit.

      She’d stood in the cavernous foyer for the longest time, taking in all the remembered sounds and smells.

       Not the sights, though, Daddy. Not a thing here I remember ever seeing before. “Decorator Queen,” Mom used to call her. I can see why.

      When there was still no response, she had walked around the wide, sweeping staircase and down a dark hallway to where a huge pair of oak doors with brass knobs in the shape of lions’ heads marked the entrance to Constantine Andros’s study. The door on the right was open, and she’d gone in.

       And there you were, Daddy. In the same chair you were sitting in when Mom took me away that day. I was crying so hard. Mostly because I didn’t understand. All I knew was Aspen was in and Mom was out. Like trading in a car for a newer, shinier model. Do you even remember, Daddy? You didn’t know me yesterday, but then you don’t know anybody anymore, do you?

      Constantine Andros had been sitting at his desk yesterday, his back to a fireplace scoured of its carbon and ashes. Like the rest of the study, it had a look, not of neglect, but of disuse. Like a no-touch diorama in a museum, where the curators had succeeded in capturing and holding a moment in time. Constantine was part of the display. No movement. An empty stare. Only the shallowest of breaths. He’d been placed in the chair by a curator of his own, a nurse who, as though to confirm Sophie’s sense of a mysterious, balancing force, was suffering from stomach cramps and had left the old man to goto the bathroom.

       How I used to love that room! You let me go in there – the only one allowed to, because I was your favorite. You were my favorite too, Daddy. And it was such a room! All the books ... books from floor to ceiling, that big, ugly moose head over the mantel, and great big chairs. And the smells – leather and sherry, the fireplace. The bay window ... my spot! I’d lie there on the window seat with the morning sun in my face and watch the birds feeding in the gazebo. You knew the name of every bird, too, didn’t you? Do you know any of them now?

      Sophie had walked slowly around the study, touching this, feeling that. She went over to the bay window and looked out, shaking her head slightly. The yard ... it had seemed so huge when she was little. Had it shrunk? Did backyards get smaller in twenty-four years?