Sense of Deception

  “That’s a bit of a leap,” Dutch said.

  I sat down and thought through the theory a little more. “But it’s possible, Dutch. Someone who knew intimate details about Skylar’s house and could gain access to it broke in and murdered her son. Maybe Mulgrew got into Noah’s room because he was after the Nolan Ryan baseball. I mean, what’s something like that worth, anyway?”

  “Depending on the year and the game, probably anywhere between three hundred bucks and a thousand.”

  “So it’d be valuable,” I said.

  “Somewhat,” Dutch said. “But I don’t know that I believe it’d be worth killing over.”

  “But what if Noah woke up as Mulgrew was taking his most prized possession?” I argued. “Seriously, Dutch, what if Mulgrew panicked and stabbed Noah to shut him up?”

  Dutch’s expression told me he wasn’t buying it. “I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t know that I’d hang my hat on it.”

  I took the picture of the Mulgrews from him. “Yeah, well, I don’t think we can afford to leave any stone unturned here. I’m gonna have Candice check out Ted Mulgrew and I’m gonna ask Oscar to come with me to interview him.”

  Dutch reached out and rubbed the back of my neck. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been until his magic fingers began working on the muscles there. “Okay, Sherlock, but for now let’s call it a night.”

  I purred under the massage. “Keep doing that and I’ll offer you every penny currently in the swear jar.”

  He chuckled. “I’d rather have the IOUs. They gotta be worth double what’s in the jar.”

  “Triple,” I confessed. “But who’s counting?”

  * * *

  The next morning I was on the phone with Candice and Oscar. Both of them listened to my argument, but neither of them expressed much enthusiasm for my theory. Basically they both mirrored Dutch’s rebuttal; the timing didn’t really seem to fit. “I’ll admit that it’s possible, Sundance,” Candice said after I kept pushing the theory. “But it still doesn’t explain the missing footprints from the hallway.”

  “He went out the window, Candice,” I said with a little irritation.

  “On his way out? Possibly. But what about on his way in?”

  “Again, the window,” I said, and then realized what I’d missed.

  “Okay, then why aren’t there footprints in the hallway from when he went to get the knife from the kitchen?” she asked. “That’s the thing that’s really bothering me about this whole case. We need a plausible reason why the killer would’ve entered the home from the front door, taken the knife, avoided the hallway, retraced his steps out of the house, and headed out and around to the back of the house to climb in through Noah’s window.”

  I sighed. “I haven’t figured that part out yet. But that doesn’t mean Mulgrew didn’t take the knife at some earlier point. Like maybe he was invited in for some lemonade or something and he snatched it then.”

  “Didn’t Skylar say that she’d used the knife earlier that night?” Oscar asked.

  “She did, but I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “Maybe Skylar only thought she used the same knife to cut up the salad she’d had for dinner. Maybe she’d used another knife and simply got confused. I mean, that knife was a part of a set. There had to be other knives she could’ve used and the shock of her son’s murder sort of scrambled her memories a little.”

  Candice and Oscar were both silent for a bit before Candice said, “That is actually a more possible scenario. I’ve been doing lots of research on eyewitness testimony, and it’s common for people to replace certain objects in a memory with other familiar objects. The shock of her son’s murder definitely could’ve scrambled Skylar’s recollection.”

  “The timing for Mulgrew to have done it is still too tight for me,” Oscar said. “And he’s only wearing an Astros hat in the photo, Cooper. It doesn’t mean he was involved. Plenty of people are Astros fans.”

  “More so some years than others,” Candice muttered, with a smile in her voice.

  “True,” Oscar said. “If they ever win a game again, I’ll get back to rooting for them.”

  “Can we keep this on point?” I snapped. I really wanted to interview Mulgrew, and didn’t appreciate the idle chitchat about the freaking Astros’ winning/losing average.

  “Sorry,” Candice and Oscar said together. “Okay, Abs,” Candice said. “I’ll look into Mulgrew’s background, while you and Oscar go interview him.”

  “Thank you,” I said, relieved I’d have company when I went to talk to Skylar’s neighbors.

  “Pick you up in twenty,” Oscar said.

  Oscar met me at the door, and I was armed with my argument and the two photos I wanted to throw in Mulgrew’s face when I accused him of murder. I was convinced I was on to something, and I had a frantic passion to make this theory stick. In the back of my mind I knew without a doubt that much of what was fueling me was a sense of desperation, because time for Skylar was definitely running out. We had very little to offer Cal for the appeal, and his warning to me from the day before when I’d brought him up to speed, that we would need nothing short of a confession from either the actual murderer or Chris and Faith Wagner about their arrangement, was what was fueling my efforts to push the line.

  The trip to Skylar’s old neighborhood was unencumbered by traffic. Not much moves in Austin on a lazy Sunday morning and I felt a little bad about snapping at Oscar on the phone, so I asked him how Amigo was doing.

  “Oh, man,” he said, with a sweet smile and a shake of his head. “That pup is so damn cute. No heartworm or parasites, which is great, and the vet thinks he’s only about a year old. We both also think he belonged to somebody, because he walks well on a leash, knows sit, stay, and shake, and he’s obviously housebroken. There wasn’t a microchip, though, and a search of local Web sites for lost dogs didn’t come up with a hit. I’ll keep looking to see if I can reunite him with his owner, but, like I told you before, I really hope I get to keep him.”

  I leaned back in the seat and relaxed the tense set to my shoulders. The positive changes in Oscar’s life were such a nice little respite from the awful business of Noah’s murder and Skylar’s impending execution. “Amigo’s yours, buddy. It was meant to be.”

  “You sure?” he asked, sliding a sideways glance at me. “I really like him, Cooper, and I don’t want to get my hopes up if some little old lady from South Austin pops up to claim him.”

  I tapped my temple to let him know my radar had already looked into it. “You’ll have no such bad luck, honey. The pup is yours for keeps.”

  Oscar’s grin widened. I think he was happier about Amigo than he was about the new house or the prospect of getting a girlfriend.

  When we arrived at Skylar’s old neighborhood, Oscar parked across the street from her house and we got out and surveyed the house to the right, as there was nothing but a drainage field on the left. The Mulgrew residence was bigger than her home, but not by much. At least not in outward appearances.

  I noted that the gate leading to Skylar’s old backyard was within a few feet of the gate leading to the Mulgrews’. “See?” I said, pointing to the gate. “He could’ve ducked through the backyard and into his own yard without anybody being the wiser.”

  Oscar nodded, but his expression remained skeptical. “You want to take the lead? Or me?”

  “Me,” I said, marching forward to the front door. I checked my watch before ringing the bell. It was ten a.m. Not too early, not too late for a Sunday. I hoped.

  It took a minute, but we eventually did hear footsteps shuffling behind the door. They came to a stop and I smiled brightly at the peephole. After another slight hesitation, the door opened and a round-shaped woman in a big baggy purple T-shirt stood there. “Yes?” she asked.

  I glanced quickly at the photo in my hand. She’d aged quite a bit in ten years, but
she still looked enough like the woman in the photograph for me to be certain we’d come to the right place. “Mrs. Mulgrew?” I said, pulling on the lanyard with my ID, and offering it out in front of me so that she could read it. “My name is Abigail Cooper, and this is my associate Oscar Rodriguez. I know it’s early, and a Sunday, but we’re doing some investigative work on behalf of Skylar Miller, and I was wondering if I could ask you a question or two.”

  She pulled the door open a little more so that she could inspect my ID. Oscar offered up his badge and photo ID too, just to make it official (unofficially speaking, of course . . . ahem).

  “Sure,” she said, folding her hands over her middle. She appeared eager to talk to us, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I dove right in. “I know that Skylar came to your house the night of Noah’s murder,” I said, trying to be discreet as I peered around her into the house to see if her husband was perhaps inside.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, shaking her head as if the memory was a terrible one to recall. “Poor Skylar. Poor Noah. What an awful thing that happened to them. You know, I told my husband that we needed to move, because I didn’t want to be in a neighborhood where you could get murdered in your sleep, but he said no, so I ordered an alarm for the house, and then of course we found out that Skylar was the one who killed Noah, and he made me cancel the alarm.”

  I squinted at her. She was giving me a lot of information. “So, you believe that Skylar murdered Noah?”

  Doreen Mulgrew made a face, as if she couldn’t quite decide. “I mean,” she said, “we lived next door to them for only a year, and she seemed really nice, but like, didn’t Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors say they thought he was really nice too?”

  “I’m sure they did,” I said. “But you still seem to have some doubts.”

  Doreen sighed heavily. “I just can’t account for it,” she said. “Every time we saw them together, Skylar was hugging Noah or he was hugging her. They seemed to really love each other. And at his birthday party . . . he was just so happy and outgoing, you know? You could tell that kid didn’t have a worry in the world, which just didn’t fit with what they were saying about Skylar. My mom drank, and I don’t ever remember a day I wasn’t scared or worried for her.”

  I remembered the photo of Noah and Skylar from his last birthday party. They had indeed both seemed so happy. “So you were at Noah’s ninth birthday party?”

  “We were,” she said.

  “Do you remember who else was there?” I asked, more to keep the conversation going while I assessed her energy.

  “Well, let me think,” she said, tapping her lip. “Skylar invited us, I’m sure, only because so few people showed up. There aren’t many kids in this neighborhood, and other than us and the neighbors from up the street—the Barclays, who moved out about six years ago—that was it for the neighborhood. Noah’s grampy and grammy were there at the start of the party, but they had to leave because Mr. Miller had to go get his chemo treatment, and then later Noah’s dad came but just for a minute to drop off Noah’s present. He wouldn’t even stay for cake, even though I baked it myself and told him it was homemade. Kind of looked down his nose at the house and all of us too. The grandparents were also a little snooty to us, but I found out at the trial that they were loaded, so it figured. Anyway, it was kind of a sad party, but Noah didn’t seem to mind. He was the happiest kid you ever met. His grampy had given him a baseball signed by a real famous player and he carried that thing around like it was his prize possession. He was so cute! And, I’ll be honest, I don’t even like kids very much, but I liked Noah. And, to be even more honest, I liked Skylar. She—”

  “Dory?” came a voice from the back of the house. “Who’s here?”

  I leaned to the side a little to see around her, but her form was blocking the hallway. “Just some people asking about Noah,” she called back.

  “Are they reporters?” he said, and I could hear a note of eagerness in his voice.

  “No, Ted,” she said. “Go back to your ESPN.” Then she turned to me and said, “If you were reporters, he’d be all over you to give his opinion. That man loves to talk.” She laughed and nudged me as she said it, and I chuckled right along. Mostly at the irony.

  “So,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track, “the night of the murder, you and your husband were sound asleep and you heard, what? Screams?”

  Doreen shook her head. “No,” she said. “I heard this pounding, like, bam, bam, bam, bam!” She took a moment to demonstrate on her own door how loud it had been. “Woke me out of a dead sleep,” she continued. “I jumped out of bed, heart racing, and ran to the door, thinking there was a fire or something.”

  I held up a finger. “Wait, you ran to the door? Your husband didn’t go with you?”

  She laughed. “Ted couldn’t run if his life depended on it.”

  I didn’t get the inference, but I said, “Ah,” and pretended to make a note on the small pad of paper I’d brought with me. “So you left him in the bedroom, and rushed to the door.”

  She appeared thoughtful for a moment, and said, “No. No, he was asleep on the couch. I remember because when I opened the door and found Skylar standing there all bloody and hysterical, I had to yell a few times for him to come to the door and help me.”

  “Does your husband often sleep on the couch?” Oscar asked.

  “Sometimes,” Doreen said, and then she cast suspicious eyes at him. “Why?”

  Oscar offered her a sheepish smile and a little white lie. “I snore. My wife keeps telling me to move to the couch, but it’s not very comfortable.”

  “So, Ted would’ve been at the rear of the house, I assume?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And he didn’t hear anything unusual coming from the Millers’ backyard?” I asked.

  “Naw,” she said. “He was fast asleep until I started yelling for him.”

  “Are you sure, Doreen? Maybe he heard something and went back to sleep?” I asked the question because I wanted to see if maybe they’d had a conversation about it, which I wanted to believe had been Ted’s cover story. That he’d been fast asleep on the couch when really he’d been sneaking back in from the yard.

  “Well, you can ask him yourself,” Doreen said, turning to yell for her husband.

  While she was calling to him, I shuffled the photo of Ted in his Astros hat to the top of my pad of paper. I wanted to push him a little on my theory to see how he reacted. When I looked up, Doreen was stepping to the side a bit farther than I would’ve guessed she’d need to, and then I saw why. Ted rolled up in a wheelchair and looked at us expectantly.

  “Oh,” I said when I saw him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you . . . I mean, I didn’t realize you . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because there was no way to be politically correct about asking him what the heck had happened to him in the last ten years.

  “Wheelchair got your tongue?” he asked me. Then he laughed uproariously, and his wife joined in. I had a feeling they’d done that bit before.

  “Sorry, Mr. Mulgrew. It’s just in this photo”—I turned it around for him—“you’re standing. So I didn’t expect to see you . . . er. . . . sitting today.”

  He peered at the photo and nodded. “Yeah. That was before I couldn’t walk anymore.” Thumbing over his shoulder, he said, “I’ve got arthritis in the spine real bad. Can’t walk more than a few steps without needing to sit down.”

  Doreen patted him on the shoulder. “He still gets around all right,” she said proudly. He put a hand on hers, then took it and kissed it sweetly. I couldn’t help feeling some serious doubt while I watched how affectionate and caring they were with each other. Could a guy with arthritis in the back have climbed through the window of Noah’s room, murdered him, attacked Skylar, then shuffled back out to run around to his rear door and pretended to be sleeping? I
n my gut I knew there was no way.

  Still, there was that baseball cap. Not giving up entirely on my hypothesis, I pointed to the hat in the photo and said, “You an Astros fan?”

  He leaned forward to look at the photo. And then he looked up a bit sadly and said, “Noah gave me that. His granddad used to play for the Astros and he got it for him, but it was too big to fit his head, and I guess he felt sorry for me shuffling over to the mailbox all bent over. He was such a sweet kid.”

  And then, I swear to God, tears formed in his eyes and he ducked his chin. Doreen leaned down and hugged his shoulders. Oscar looked at me like, “Game over, Cooper.”

  “Thank you for your time,” I said to the couple.

  Doreen looked up in surprise. “Oh! Is that it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Thank you both. Sorry to have interrupted your Sunday.”

  She batted her hand at the air. “Bah. Don’t you worry about it. We’re glad to help.”

  With that, we took our leave.

  On the drive home neither one of us said much until Oscar finally broke the silence. “Sorry that didn’t pan out, Cooper.”

  I stared out the window feeling pretty low. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was failing Skylar, which was exactly what Candice had warned me about when I’d started this case. “It was a long shot,” I said.

  I called Candice and filled her in on the interview. She was really sweet and said that she’d looked into the Mulgrews’ background and there was nothing there that spoke of them being anything other than good people. “I’m going to try to find the missing baseball, though,” she told me. “It’s a total long shot, Abs, but if it was a valuable ball, maybe somebody tried to sell it.”

  I nodded even though I knew she couldn’t see me. It was all just so defeating.