Read 52 Steps to Murder Online
Authors: Steve Demaree
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Humor & Satire, #Humorous, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Cozy, #Culinary, #General Humor
52 Steps to Murder
52 Steps to Murder
Steve Demaree
A woman is found poisoned in her home located fifty-two steps above the street. A neighbor sitting on her porch and another neighbor seated by his picture window say that only two people entered or exited the house, but the medical examiner's report does not agree. This old-fashioned whodunit is filled with clues and red herrings, and comic moments of the ups and downs of solving this mystery.
Copyright © 2013
Steve Demaree
All Rights Reserved
This book is dedicated to the two people I love the most and whose love I deserve the least, my wife, Nell, and my daughter, Kelly. May God continue to bless me with their presence in my life.
This book is also dedicated to those people who come to me personally to get my books at bookstores and libraries where I’m doing book signings, art and craft fairs, town festivals, and book fairs, as well as to all my friends on Facebook. If you are not yet a Facebook friend, send me a request to become friends.
May each of them and each of you enjoy this book.
Books by Steve Demaree
Dekker Cozy Whodunit
Mystery Series
52 Steps to Murder
Murder in the Winter
Murder in the Library
Murder at Breakfast?
Murder at the High School Reunion
Murder at the Art & Craft Fair
Santangelo PG-Rated
Mystery/Thriller Series
Murder in the Dark
Picture Them Dead
Body Count
Aylesford Place Series
Aylesford Place: The First Year
Aylesford Place: The Second Year
Aylesford Place: The Third Year
Non-Fiction
Lexington & Me
Reflecting Upon God’s Word
Table of Contents
Cast of Characters
Lt. Cy Dekker - The lead detective of the Hilldale Police Department
Sgt. Lou Murdock - Lt. Dekker’s partner
Mrs. Ethel Nelson - A Hilltop Place resident who is found dead in her home
Miss Angela Nelson - Ethel Nelson’s granddaughter
Officer Dan Davis - A rookie police officer who, along with Angela Nelson, finds Mrs. Nelson’s body
Stanley Silverman - A man who lives across from Mrs. Nelson who keeps a watchful eye on the happenings in his neighborhood
Irene Penrod - Mrs. Nelson’s next-door neighbor. The last person known to see Mrs. Nelson alive
Mrs. Reynolds - A cranky resident of Hilltop Place who is not liked by any of her neighbors
Jimmy Reynolds - Mrs. Reynolds’s son, who suffered a mental breakdown during the war
Mrs. Wilkens - A talkative Hilltop Place resident who sees quite a bit of what happens from her porch
Mabel Jarvis - A wheelchair-bound resident of Hilltop Place who never strays from her home
Fred Hartley - The mailman on Hilltop Place
Harry Hornwell - Mrs. Nelson’s attorney
Bobby Cooper - He delivers groceries on Hilltop Place
Don Hampton - A homeless person who is found on Hilltop Place
Mrs. Murphy – Mrs. Nelson’s cleaning lady
Lt. George Michaelson - A friend of Lt. Dekker and a fellow member of the Hilldale Police Department
Frank Harris - The medical examiner
Sam Schumann- A policeman who does much of Lt. Dekker’s investigative work
Dr. Muriel Davenport - A police psychiatrist
Heloise Humphert - Lt. Dekker’s irritating next-door neighbor
Twinkle Toes - Heloise Humphert’s dog
Rosie - The daytime waitress at the Blue Moon Diner
Thelma - The nighttime waitress at the Blue Moon Diner
Betty McElroy - A friend of Lt. Dekker’s whom he sometimes dates
Thelma Lou Spencer - Sgt. Murdock’s girlfriend
1
When the call came in, I knew it was time to go to work. A young woman had called on her grandmother, who didn’t answer her front door. Her grandmother was always home, so she called the police, and a rookie cop responded. After calling in, he broke in the house and the young woman found her grandmother dead. Foul play was suspected. That was when I received a call. I’m Cy Dekker. Lt. Cy Dekker, head of homicide for the Hilldale Police Department. My partner on each case is Sgt. Lou Murdock. We’ve been partners on the force for over twenty-five years, friends for a lot longer than that.
My first inkling that we would have to put in a full day that day was when I picked up Lou for breakfast. As soon as he sat down in Lightning, the yellow VW bug that is my choice of transportation, he told me the bad news.
“Cy, we’d better eat breakfast in a hurry.”
I knew immediately what he meant. Every time a murder has been committed, Lou gets a message. I call them his messages from God. Actually, each day we’re working on a case a clue comes to Lou about the case we’re working on. I don’t know why Lou’s the one who always gets the message. Maybe I’ve done something to upset God. Or maybe it’s Lou’s sole contribution to each case.
“So, Lou, what’s today’s message?”
“52 steps to murder.”
“Is this something like that Van Johnson movie from the fifties,
23 Paces to Baker Street?”
Thanks to cable TV, I remembered the movie well. I wasn’t alive in the 1950s, but suspense movies always interested me, and I watched some of the old classics with my parents. Van Johnson plays a blind man. One night he’s in a London bar and overhears someone in the next booth planning a crime. Johnson feels it’s his job to solve the crime, even though he doesn’t know what the crime is.
Lou looked at me and gave me a dumb look, as if he knew the answer to my question. Lou looks at his messages as the difference between speaking in tongues and having the gift to interpret the message. He’s merely the messenger.
By the time we got the actual call, we had just finished breakfast and had just plopped back down in Lightning. At least we were able to eat breakfast the way God intended for us to eat, shoveling it in, and shoveling in a lot. At an early age I already knew that breakfast was the most important meal before lunch. I knew that both of them were the most important meals before dinner, or supper, or whatever you call the meal that you eat like there’s no more food until tomorrow.
I’d lived my entire life to that point in Hilldale, and yet I’d never set foot on Hilltop Avenue. If I had, more than likely I would’ve gotten sick as soon as the call came in. As it was, I didn’t get sick until we turned down Hilltop and reality set in. Things didn’t get any better when I pulled up in front of the house where the dead woman lived until that morning. I understood where Lou’s 52 steps to murder came in.
I stepped out of the car and looked up at the house. Or was it the summit. I’d seen mountain ranges that were closer to sea level. Well, actually I hadn’t, but I was sure there were some.
Neither Lou nor I have ever been in favor of exercise. Walking is something someone does to get from the parking lot to the inside of their favorite restaurant, or if they are old, from their easy chair or the bed to the bathroom. Running is something you do only if you are seeking an office. Swimming is something you do only if someone throws you in the water and you don’t want to drown. I think you get the idea. Back when I was in school, gym class was one of the classes that kept Lou and me off the honor roll. At least in those other classes that kept me off the honor roll I didn’t have to wear those short blue gym shorts. I only wanted girls to laugh at me if I told a joke.
I turned to Lou. We waited until we were sure no one was sending a tram down to get us.
I turned and looked at my partner.
“Lou, we’ve got some greenhorn upstairs, and the department wants us to check this out. The old woman probably keeled over of a heart attack after climbing these steps, but we need to find out. Are you ready, Tonto?”
“Ready when you are, Lone Ranger.”
“Remember, don’t look down, and try to think of it as Mt. Everest without the snow and the wind.”
“You really know how to make a situation sound better, Cy. I think I’ve already spotted the place where I plan to pitch my tent tonight. If I can drive the stakes in far enough that we don’t get blown down the hill, I think we can make it all the way to the summit tomorrow.”
“Just look at the bright side, Lou.”
“There’s a bright side?”
“Yeah, neither you nor I have to carry the old lady down the steps.”
Lou laughed, and then commented.
“That’s comforting, although if we dropped her I doubt if she’d complain.”
I wondered how many steps it was to the top and decided to count them. Halfway up I lost count, but there was no way I was going back to the bottom and start counting again. I didn’t care. When it came time to tell this story to those who were not there, I would double the number of steps, invent a howling wind, and recall how our hands stuck to the frozen railing as we fought to keep our feet from sliding down the icy steps. Should I also add how I saved Lou’s life as I protected him from the two gunmen who shot at us from above?
What seemed like an hour later, after multiple stops to curtail the latest wheezing, two homicide detectives made it to the front porch, tried to catch our breaths, and reached for the front door. I opened the door and entered the house. Lou followed. Another doorway stood a few feet in front of me. I assumed it led to the back of the house. The living room was to my left. As soon as we entered, the rookie police officer rose from a chair. He looked worse than I expected. He could not have been any wetter behind the ears if water had dripped down the back of his neck. Could it be that unbeknownst to me the department had started hiring extra men when our workload was heavy, much like construction companies do? I merely nodded at him. Was this another case of minimum wage for minimum age? I didn’t want to scare him out of the house before I found out if he knew anything that had happened there that day, so I nodded to him and smiled briefly to calm his uneasiness.