Death Comes Silently by Carolyn Hart Page A

ineffectual rich guy whoquoted poetry. He got his hair cut at the same time I did every month, and every other sentence was a quote from somebody you never heard of. Look, I know you mean well”—he was trying for patience—“but I deal in facts, and I’ve got facts and I’m looking for a fugitive.”
     
    “That card in his pocket was a fact.” Annie said hurriedly, “What if someone came from the Hathaway house to pick up the card? Gretchen would have handed it over, but I know she would have chattered. I can hear her now.
I didn’t want to disturb the family. But I thought you would want to know.
She would have been quivering with excitement. It wouldn’t take
a
minute for a listener to know this was a garrulous, gossipy woman who, after whispering this was so confidential, would regale people she knew with the message she found in Everett Hathaway’s jacket.”
     
    “Let me get this straight.” He was almost sarcastic, unusual for Billy. “One, you say Hathaway was murdered. Two, a card in his jacket contained information his murderer had to keep quiet. Three, Gretchen left a message about the card at the Hathaway house. Four, the murderer saw that message and came to Better Tomorrow. Then what?”
     
    “On the way out”—she spoke slowly as she tried to follow a shadowy figure from the sorting room—“the killer’s thinking fast. There are racks of coats, scarves. Maybe the killer stops and grabs a scarf.”
     
    “A scarf?”
     
    “Gretchen was a small woman. If someone came up behind her, it would be easy to drop a scarf over her head and strangle her.”
     
    “She wasn’t strangled.” His voice was sharp.
     
    “No.” Annie tried to imagine that shadowy figure, a scarf or muffler in hand, perhaps turning back toward the hall and the sorting room and then a memory of an axe propped by chopped wood. Obviously a handyman’s prints would be on the handle. A swift decision. Out to the woodpile, picking up the axe with the scarf, carrying itinside. “I think the murderer remembered the axe and decided to get it, maybe even thinking ahead that someone’s fingerprints would be on the handle and if the axe were used, the workman would be suspect. Which is exactly what happened, didn’t it?”
     
    Billy was impatient. “If, if, if… You don’t have a single fact to support your suggestions. Besides, the clincher is that Jeremiah ran away.”
     
    “He’d been in prison. He came inside and found a woman battered to death with an axe he’d used to chop wood. Let’s say that instead of running, he had called you. Would he be suspect number one, especially after you heard her messages on my cell?”
     
    “Her purse was taken.” Billy’s tone was dogged.
     
    “If I’m right, this murderer thinks fast. Gretchen’s purse was probably on the floor behind the sorting table. How easy would it be to grab the purse to make her murder look like a robbery gone wrong?”
     
    “Maybe you should write some of those books in your shop.” He was dismissive. “You’re making something out of nothing and you ignore the facts.”
     
    Her hand tightened on the phone. “There’s one fact you’ve ignored.”
     
    “Oh?”
     
    “Where is the card that Gretchen found in Everett Hathaway’s jacket?”
     
    “She put it in her purse for safekeeping.”
     
    “That isn’t what she said.” Annie concentrated, trying to recall Gretchen’s words. “She told me that she’d left a message that the card and some coins and a pocketknife were there and could be picked up anytime. She said she put them on the table in the sorting room. What did you find on the table in the sorting room?” She heard a faint rustling of papers.
     
    “Three quarters, two dimes, four pennies. A Buck folding pocketknife.” He rattled off the model number. “Gretchen Burkholt’s fingerprints overlay unidentified prints, likely those of Everett Hathaway.”
     
    “Did you find an index card?”
     
    He blew out a