“When Belle screamed, I ran in there and saw Margot, checked her pulse. I used to be a nurse and I knew she was dead. I ran back to my purse and got the phone and called nine-one-one,” Hart said.
“Did you touch her?” Virgil asked.
“Yes. I knelt down and I touched her shoulder and her neck, to see if she had a pulse, but that’s all. I touched her shoulder, kind of pushed her, and her neck, but there was no pulse, and I ran and called nine-one-one.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Penney said, “except scream.”
“You didn’t hear her talking to anyone?”
“No—we told Jeff—no, there wasn’t any talk. Three claps and the door closed. And then... nothing.”
“Do you know what time it was?”
“I...” Hart said, cocking her head, “I called nine-one-one. Probably one minute after she was shot.”
“Longer than that,” Penney said. “Five minutes.”
Hart shook her head. “No, it wasn’t, Belle. Think about it. We were sitting here—we thought she’d be right back—we didn’t hear her walk or say anything, and we didn’t wait too long before you went to look. Maybe not a minute, but not two minutes, either. Quicker than two minutes.”
Purdy came in from the living room and said, “I heard that. We got the call at nine-one-one at seven-fourteen. So, probably, in the couple of minutes after seven-ten.”
“Good enough,” Virgil said.
Bea Sawyer stepped into the kitchen and said, “Don’s getting our stuff. What do we got?”
“You’re running the scene,” Virgil said. “It might be the freshest murder you’ve ever been to. I’ve got to take off, talk to a guy.”
“You need help?” Purdy asked.
“Is that Pweters guy working?”
“He can be,” Purdy said.
“He knows Fred Fitzgerald, the tattoo guy, pretty well. I’d like him to meet me at Fitzgerald’s shop.”
“I’ll call him,” Purdy said. “He’ll meet you there.”
—
Pweters called Virgil as Virgil was driving south on Main. “I was in class. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Virgil parked across the street from Fitzgerald’s shop. There was light coming through a white curtain on the second floor, but the shop itself was dark. Virgil sat and watched as the light played off the curtain: somebody was either watching television or had left a television on. If Fitzgerald was the killer, he was cool and already home.
He’d been waiting for five or six minutes when Pweters pulled in behind him. Virgil got out of his 4Runner and said, “Let me guess: computer programming.”
“What?”
“Your class,” Virgil said.
“Oh. No. It’s a class in how to carve and paint decoy ducks,” Pweters said.
“Huh. Cool. I write outdoors articles, you know? For magazines...”
“I’ve googled a couple,” Pweters said. “They weren’t terrible.”
“Thanks. Maybe I could get something out of a duck-carving class... if the ducks are decent.”
“They’re actuallyverygood; the instructor is in that folk art museum in New York City,” Pweters said. He looked up at Fitzgerald’s window. “Jeff told me what happened... Damnit, Margot was a nice lady.”
