Room for Murder - Tim Myers [10]
After naming several of the nearby mountain ridges, Alex saw Doc Drake’s car pull up beside Mor’s truck below them.
“Lenora, there’s something I need to take care of. Are you interested in coming back down with me?”
She shook her head. “I want to stay up here and soak this all in, perhaps do a few sketches. You go ahead, Alex. Thank you for the tour.”
“My pleasure. If there’s anything else I can do to make your stay a more pleasurable one, just let me know.”
She smiled slightly, more in her eyes than her lips. Lenora said, “There will come a time when I do just that, but it is not here yet.”
Now what in the world did that mean? “Just let me know,” Alex said as he jogged back down the steps.
He didn’t want Drake to get out of there without giving him a clue as to what exactly had killed Toby Sturbridge.
An ambulance had pulled up behind the doctor’s car as Alex trotted down the steps, and Drake was already in the process of examining the body slumped behind Mor’s steering wheel when he caught up with him.
Doc Drake was a wiry little man with more energy than four normal folks. There was a look of intense focus on his face as he concentrated on the body.
Alex asked over the doctor’s shoulder, “Any luck yet?”
Drake shook his head, still partially inside the truck examining the body. Irene stood nearby, filming the examination for her own records.
She said, “Step back, Alex. You’re blocking my shot. What the eye might miss, Irene would have on tape.
After his preliminary examination, Drake muttered, “I can tell you this, there’s nothing all that obvious that just jumps out at me.”
He started shaking his head as he kept looking, checking the eyes, the rigidity of the body, and a dozen other things Alex couldn’t begin to interpret.
Finally, Drake said to the two attendants waiting nearby, “Okay, let’s take him out of the cab.”
As they gently eased the body out of the truck, Irene zoomed in for a closer look. It wasn’t work for the fainthearted, that was certain.
After Sturbridge was on the stretcher, Drake gave the body a more thorough examination. Finally, he raised his head and made eye contact with Alex. “If you want my professional opinion, I don’t have a clue. There are no obvious signs of trauma, at least nothing I can find out here. Alex, it could have been a dozen things, including natural causes. I need to get him to the hospital and take a closer look.”
Irene had vanished, and Alex saw her zooming in on something under Mor’s front seat. He looked and spotted a dozen red roses pushed under the seat.
Irene said, “I wonder if these were from Mor, or from old Toby over there.”
Alex said, “I don’t have any idea. Is there a card with them?” He started to bend down to get a better look when he heard tires crunching on the gravel drive nearby.
Sheriff Armstrong was back, and for a man of his bulk, he joined them with astonishing speed.
“What’s going on?” he asked, fighting to catch his breath.
“We just found something,” Alex said.
Armstrong said, “Alex, why don’t you leave this to the professionals? I’ll come find you when we’re done and bring you up to speed.” He forgot about Alex instantly and turned back to Irene. “Now show me what you’ve got.”
Alex stepped back a few paces, but he wasn’t about to leave. After all, whatever had happened to Emma’s ex-husband had happened at Hatteras West on Winston land, and he had a right to know what was going on.
Alex glanced over and saw the body being quickly loaded into the ambulance as Doc Drake headed for his car.
Alex caught him before he could drive away. “Are you still stumped?”
Drake admitted, “They’re not all as obvious as a knife wound in the back of the neck, Alex. This one’s going to take a little time.”
Alex asked softly, “Doc, give me a call when you find anything, will you?”
Drake said, “Did you know the man, Alex? What’s your interest in this case?”
“He’s Emma Sturbridge’s ex-husband, and she and Mor are most likely going to be the sheriff’s main suspects. Besides,