Read Online Who's sorry now? by Jill Churchill - Free Book Online

features. The boys made jokes about where he hid his tomahawk. And was he a good shot with a bow and an arrow? As he grew older, however, he realized that girls liked him better than the other boys. He was taller, darker-haired than most of the Dutch boys, and more handsome.
    That was when he came to terms with himself. He was only one-eighth Indian but had overridden those powerful Dutch genes the whole rest of his family had acquired from his tough, practical great-grandmother.
    Still, he felt oddly sad about the poor little Indian girl, buried under what would eventually become huge dead bushes. What kind of life had she had? Lily had told him about Dr. Toller’s theory that she’d possibly lived in a cave. At least her family had buried her properly laid out in her best clothing with all the beading on her clothes and shoes. They made sure her feet didn’t get cold and wet in the winter.
    As he took a bite of the doughnut, his phone rang. It was the fingerprint expert.
    ”Have you identified it?” Howard asked.
    ”No record of anything like it in the records. It’s distinct, though I didn’t notice it until I used the magnifying glass. It’s a thumbprint, of course. But it also has a long-healed cut right up through the middle of it. Quite distinct if you look closely.”
    ”If I happen to figure out who painted the swastika on the tailor’s shop, we’ll know he’s the perp from his thumbprint then? Which thumb?”
    ”The left. He was probably right-handed and handled the can with his left hand and rested it at some point on the window.”
    ”It was stupid of him not to notice and clean it up,” Howard commented.
    ”Not necessarily. Maybe he didn’t have cleaning rags handy and didn’t want to wipe it off on his clothes—if he even realized he’d left a fingerprint.”
    ”Thanks for letting me know,” Howard said.
    The moment he’d hung up the phone, it rang again. It was Harry Harbinger. ”Chief, Edwin McBride has been murdered in that shed we set up for him. Come quickly. We haven’t touched him. We knew better.”
    Edwin was indeed dead. Dr. Polhemus was already there before Chief Walker arrived. Howard would have been happier with almost any other doctor to sign the death certificate. Howard wouldn’t have even recognized Edwin except for his brown hair and plaid shirt and brown trousers, both much patched. His face was reddish-blue, his blue eyes were wide open, and his mouth was open with his purple tongue protruding as if he were still gasping for breath.
    ”Strangled with a fine wire,” Polhemus proclaimed. ”Must have died hours ago. The flesh has swollen, concealing it, all but at the back of his neck. A thin piano wire, probably.”
    Or some other kind of wire, Howard thought, but said nothing.
    Both Harry and Jim Harbinger were seriously upset. ”He was a nice, hardworking man,” Harry said. ”Who would do such a horrible thing to him?”
    ”He had no enemies?” Chief Walker asked.
    ”Not a chance,” Harry said firmly.
    ”We’ll have to get him to a pathologist. I know several of them,” Chief Walker said. ”It’s clearly a murder, not an accident. First, I’m calling the funeral home in Beacon to pick him up until I can find someone to do a thorough examination.”
    ”Be careful stepping outside,” Harry said. ”Jim found him and upchucked near the shed door. I’ll wash it away soon.”
    Howard asked for permission to call the Beacon funeral home from the Harbinger house and had an ambulance around in record time. By then Chief Walker had contacted the pathologist who’d been at Grace and Favor when the skeleton was discovered.
    Dr. Meredith gave Walker the address of the morgue in New York City.
    The ambulance was still present, so Walker gave them the address to deliver the corpse. The guy driving the ambulance said, ”I can’t go that far. We don’t have the budget for using that much gasoline. But there’s a good pathologist in Newburgh. Could we deliver