Poppy Done to Death Page 0,3

unusual. And if she'd been up to her usual shenanigans ... I had to press my lips together to hold in my anger.

I stomped up the stairs, yelling Poppy's name the whole time. She'd missed Uppity Women, and she'd missed lunch, and, by golly, I wanted to know why.

The master bedroom looked as though she'd just stepped out. The bed was made and her bathrobe was tossed across the foot of the bed. Poppy's bedroom slippers, the slide-in kind, were in a little heap on the floor. Her brush was tossed down on her dressing table, clogged with red-gold hair.

"Poppy?" I said, less certainly this time. The bathroom door was wide open, and I could see the shower enclosure. The wall was dry. It had been quite awhile since Poppy had showered. I could see my reflection in the huge mirror that topped the two sinks, and I looked scared. My glasses were sliding down my nose, which is a very insignificant feature of my face. I'd worn the green-rimmed ones today to offset my bronze-colored jacket and tobacco brown sheath, and I took a little moment to reflect that autumn colors were really my best.

Well, I could think about myself any old time, but right now I needed to be searching. I went back down the stairs faster than I'd gone up. Melinda, waiting out in my Volvo, would be wondering what had happened to me. I, however, was wondering why the central heating was roaring away on this cool but moderate day, and why I was feeling a draft of chilly air despite the heating system's best attempts.

I muttered a less ladylike word under my breath as I strode farther down the entrance hall to the kitchen, though striding is a moot word to use when you're four eleven. Moosie wove in and out between my ankles and darted ahead when it suited him. The kitchen was a mess; although big and bright, it was scattered with dishes and crumbs and pieces of mail and baby bottles and car keys and the St. James Altar Guild schedule - a normal kitchen, in other words. To my left, dividing the room in half, was a breakfast bar. On the other side of it was a family dining table, positioned by the sliding glass doors so Poppy and John David could look outside while they ate. A mug of coffee was on the breakfast bar. It was full. I laid my finger against the side of it. Cold.

Over the top of the breakfast bar, I could see that the sliding glass door was open. This was the source of the intruding cool air. A sharp-edged wind from the east was gusting into the kitchen.

My scalp began to prickle.

I stepped through the narrow passage between the end of the breakfast bar and the refrigerator and looked to my right. Poppy was lying on the floor just inside the open sliding glass door. One of her brown pumps had fallen off her narrow foot. Her sweater and skirt were covered in blotches.

A spray of blood had dried on the glass of the doors.

I could hear a radio playing from the house behind Poppy's.

The tune wafted over the high privacy fence. I could hear someone splashing through the water of a pool: Cara Embler, doing her laps, as she did every day, unless her pool was actually frozen. Poppy, who had laughed about Cara's adherence to such an uncomfortable regimen, would never laugh again. The processes of life and living, continuing in the houses all around us, had come to dead stop here in this house on Swan-son Lane.

Moosie sat by Poppy's pathetic, horrible body. He said, "Reow." He pressed against her side. His food bowl, on a mat by the breakfast bar, was empty.

Now I knew how Moosie's fur had gotten stained. He'd been trying to rouse Poppy, maybe so she would feed him.

Suddenly, I had to escape from that suburban kitchen with its horrible secret. I flew out of the house, slamming the front door behind me. I had a fleeting impulse to scoop up Moosie, but taking charge of him was too much for me at that second. I dashed down the sidewalk to the curb, where Melinda was waiting. I was making the "phone" signal as I hurried, little finger and thumb pointing to mouth and ear, respectively. Melinda had turned on the cell phone by the time I got to her car.

"Nine one one," I said, gasping