Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

The ground floor was safe, she was sure. There wasn’t enough furniture for anyone to hide anywhere. The basement was another matter. With the furnace and shelves that held old jars of canned vegetables, it would be harder to see an intruder. She took the chicken’s way out and locked the door, then wedged a kitchen chair under its doorknob. If anyone was down there, they could stay there until they got the coal bin doors pried open.

At last, it was time to look upstairs. She used only the one bedroom and the bath. The other two rooms were empty. Making her legs go up the steps, she held the Mace in front of her. The knife she kept in a firm grip by her side, ready to ram. She made her way down the upstairs hall with her back against the wall. No one was going to take her by surprise. She checked the two empty rooms first. Empty.

When she reached the open door of the bathroom, she hurriedly whipped a hand in and flipped on the light switch. No sound. Her eyes swept the room, then stopped. Bile rose in her throat, and she turned her head in horror.

Betsy McCormick lay in the tub, blood staining her throat and the front of her shirt and the porcelain of the tub. Blood from an ugly gash that sliced her neck so deeply that her head looked as if it were dangling from a thread.

Caryn’s knees shook, then her whole body caught the tremor. She pressed herself against the hallway, taking deep breaths, trying not to vomit. It took all of her effort to make her way to her bedroom and sink onto the old quilt of her double bed.

The killer might be in this room. She knew it, but she was too numb to care. Instead, she reached for the phone on her nightstand and dialed the courthouse.

“Hello?” She wasn’t sure whom she was talking to, but it didn’t matter. “This is Caryn Lockhart, on County Road Six. Betsy McCormick is dead in my bathtub. Someone should come get her.” Then she hung up and curled into a fetal position. And she wept.

She told the sheriff everything she knew.

“And Jake Greeley was pulling out of your driveway while you were pulling in?” he asked again.

“Yes, his father had sent him to help me with the furniture.”

“He says.”

“I’m sure you can verify that,” Caryn said.

“You don’t think he killed her, do you?”

Caryn sighed. She’d replayed her return home over and over again in her mind. “If he did, he’d have to be an awfully good actor to be so cheerful when I met him. From what I’ve heard, I kind of doubt that. He didn’t have any blood on him, either. It seems to me that whoever killed Betsy...” She shut her eyes and swallowed hard. “Whoever did that should have gotten bloody.”

Sheriff Taylor nodded. “I’m not trying to make this difficult for you, ma’am, but people often remember a few more things the second time they talk to me. Like what you said just now, that helps.”

She took a good long look at him. In his late fifties, his face was as creased as a pug’s. His eyes had the same wistful quality, too. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I want to help you as much as I can.”

“You are, ma’am. You’re holding up real good. Now, I hate to ask you, but was there anything you noticed when you first saw Betsy?”

“All the blood,” she answered immediately. “And that it was sticky, that it wasn’t running anymore. It had stopped.”

“And when did you leave for the auction?” Sheriff Taylor asked.

“Saturday morning, about ten-thirty.”

He nodded. “Probably most of the town knew you were going.” He walked to her kitchen counter and poured them each another cup of coffee.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” she admitted. “I talked about it with Mrs. Henderson at the grocery store and with my students at school.”

“So anybody would have known they could use your house while you were gone.”

She sipped her coffee, studying her hands. “I thought I’d move to the country and leave all this behind. Instead, it’s even closer.”

“Closer?”

“In the city, people were getting shot or mugged all the time. I read about it in the newspaper every morning, but it always felt far away from me. Every once in a while it might be a student from our building, but I taught Honors English. It wasn’t anyone I knew very well, and it still bothered me. But it was nothing like this.”

“I’ve never gotten used to it,” he told her. “You get used to dealing with it, but I don’t think it would be healthy to get too calloused about it. I think it says a lot for you that you still care.”

A short while later, he waited while she packed a few things, then he drove her into town to stay in a little efficiency apartment over the jewelry store. “Don Porter used to live over the shop before he and his wife built a fancy house on the edge of town. A clerk lived there for a while, but it’s empty now. It’ll be awhile before we’re done at your place. Don said you can stay here as long as you want. There’s separate stairs coming up.”