"Nancy Springer - Silent End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

detective the next day. She hadn't slept well at all, she was not yet allowed
to reopen her shop for business, she was losing money, Personal Pottery
was headlined in the morning paper as a murder scene, life stunk. "I told
you who did it."
Seated across from her at one of Personal Pottery's tables, the detective
sighed through his large nose. He was an aging man with elephantine
earlobes and a snout to match. Judith wondered whether any other body
parts had grown as he got older. Probably not. Probably the opposite. She
got the feeling he did not like women as he said, "You think your former
husband did it."
"He's mean enough. He put a Calvin-pissing-on-an-X sticker on the
window of his pickup."
The detective didn't even blink, just went on woodenly. "And you claim
that the broken merchandise was removed before the kiln started to heat on
Sunday evening -- "
"No claim about it. Simple fact." It would mean third-degree burns to
open the kiln after its first hour of heating.
"What if he had a welder's mask and gloves?"
"Maybe ... No. The overglaze is still blue. Those things had barely
begun to fire."
The detective accepted this with a snort of his potato nose. "Well,
ma'am, if the break-in was Sunday night, you can forget the idea that your
ex did it. He was at work. Thirty-five miles away from here."
Judith took this in slowly, with a chill, as bisque figurines looked on
white-eyed from the shelves all around her. "Are you sure?"
"Twenty coworkers say he was there."
"But who else ... I mean, it's so weird...." If somebody really needed to
get rid of a corpse, there had to be a thousand ways. Why break into her
shop? If they really wanted to burn it, every factory in the county had an
incinerator; why use the kiln?
In a cold, bored tone the detective asked, "You still think time of death
was Sunday night?"
"Yes! I mean, no, I don't know when she was killed, if she was dead
when he put her in there -- " Dear God, please let that poor woman have
been dead, or at least unconscious.
"But the perpetrator must have come in Sunday evening, knowing that
the crime would not be discovered until Tuesday morning."
"Right."
"So it must have been someone familiar with your routine."
"Not necessarily." He wasn't going to pin it on her, dammit. "Anyone
could look at the store hours. And I advertise delivery on Tuesdays."
"You seem to have a lot of answers, ma'am. Maybe you can explain
this." Reaching into a pocket of his suit jacket, the detective pulled out a
zip-locked, labeled plastic bag containing a white blob of something.
"What's that?"
"You tell me. It was found along with the ashes in your kiln."
He pronounced it with the final n. "Kill," Judith said just to put him down.
"The 'n' is silent." She peered at the white blob with black spots in it. "Is that
plastic?"
"Yes."