Four to Score (Stephanie Plum 4)

There were more bloody towels in the sink and a bloody paring knife on the counter. My first thought had been gunshot, but there were no guns in sight and no sign of struggle.

“You better call this in for the ME,” Carl said to the second cop. “I don't know exactly what we've got here.”

Sally and Lula had taken positions against the wall.

“What do you think?” Lula asked Carl.

Carl shrugged. “Nothing much. She looks pretty dead.”

Lula nodded. “That what I thought, too. Soon as I saw her I said to myself, Hell, that woman's dead.”

The second cop disappeared to make the call, and Lula inched closer to Mrs. Nowicki. “What do you think happened to her? I bet she fell an

d hit her head, and then she wrapped her head in a towel and croaked.”

That sounded reasonable to me . . . except for the paring knife with blood and pieces of hair stuck to it.

Lula bent at the waist and examined the towel, wrapped turban style. “Must have been a good clonk she took. Lots of blood.”

Usually when people die their bodies evacuate and the smell gets bad fast. Mrs. Nowicki didn't smell dead. Mrs. Nowicki smelled like Jim Beam.

Carl and I were both registering this oddity, looking at each other sideways when Mrs. Nowicki opened one eye and fixed it on Lula.

“YOW!” Lula yelled, jumping back a foot, knocking into Sally. “Her eye popped open!”

“The better to see you with,” Mrs. Nowicki rasped out, alto voiced, one pack short of lung cancer.

Carl stepped into Mrs. Nowicki's line of sight. “We thought you were dead.”

“Not yet, honey,” Mrs. Nowicki said. “But I'll tell you, I have one hell of a headache.” She raised a shaky hand and felt the towel. “Oh, yeah, now I remember.”

“What happened?”

“It was an accident. I was trying to cut my hair, and my hand slipped, and I gave myself a little nick. It was bleeding some, so I wrapped my head in a towel and took a few medicinal hits from the bottle.” She struggled to sit. “Don't exactly know what happened after that.”

Lula had her hand on her hip. “Looks to me like you drained the bottle and passed out. Think you took one too many of them medicinal hits.”

“Looks to me like she didn't take enough,” Sally murmured. “I liked her better dead.”

“I need a cigarette,” Mrs. Nowicki said. “Anybody got a cigarette?”

I could hear cars pulling up outside and footsteps in the front room. The second uniform came in, followed by a suit.

“She isn't dead,” Carl explained.

“Maybe she used to be,” Lula said. “Maybe she's one of them living dead.”

“Maybe you're one of them nut cases,” Mrs. Nowicki said.

Lights from an EMS truck flashed outside, and two paramedics wandered into the kitchen.

I eased my way out the door, to the porch and onto the lawn. I didn't especially want to be there when they unwound the towel.

“I don't know about you,” Lula said, “but I'm ready to leave this party.”

I didn't have a problem with that. Carl knew where to find me if there were questions. Didn't look like there was anything criminal here, anyway. Drunken lush slices scalp with a paring knife and passes out. Probably happens all the time.

We piled into the Firebird and hauled ass back to the office. I said good-?bye to Lula and Sally, slid behind the wheel of my CRX and motored home. When things calmed down I'd go back with some sort of long-?handled mechanism for retrieving the bottle. I didn't want to explain to the cops about the clues.