Rich Doyle Mysteries: Rose

Chapter 2: The Scene of the Crime

The limousine ride was actually rather pleasant. Bob was in shock, guzzling multiple different kinds of soda from the cooler in the middle of the seats. I found a bag of store brand chips and started snacking on those; I'd missed breakfast and lunch. Rich was driving. Apparently he'd sacked his chauffeur after the man had said he wasn't really a British man. I made a mental note never to mention Rich's fake accent.

Too quickly, I was brought back to reality when Rich pulled up in front of a large Victorian-style home. Police tape and cruisers sat around the house, and Bob got out of the car when they swarmed our limousine. Rich and I were seconds behind. "He's hired Richard Doyle as her lawyer and detective, and he's demanded a look at the scene of the crime," Bob was insisting.

Police Chief Calloway, the man who had arrested me, finally gave us permission to enter the crime scene. He warned us, with a particularly stern glare in my direction, that tampering would not be tolerated and would result in all of us being thrown in prison.

We walked up the long circular drive and climbed the white porch stairs. "Fancy place," I commented, trying to speak around the lump in my throat.

Rich eyed it critically, adjusting his glasses. "Not too bad," he said, "but my house is bigger." Then he walked through the open door.

Bob looked at me. "He really is very strange, isn't he?" he asked me gleefully.

I nodded glumly. He was the complete opposite of me; I consider myself to be a perfectly normal teenager. He was as far from normal as he could get. And I'm not really sure Rich wanted to be normal. He was weird like that.

Bob and I trailed after Rich as he entered the sitting room, where Mrs. Graham had apparently been killed the previous night. There was no sign of the body, which I was grateful for, although there was a suspicious red stain on the cream floral carpet. A policeman stood around, taking notes and final pictures. "Hello, Bob," he said. "Investigating?"

"Yeah," Bob said. "Any useful tidbits?"

"Yeah. The old woman died right there, obviously, where she had apparently been doing some late-night sewing," the officer explained. "Shot right through the heart from behind. Mostly deaf, she's supposed to wear a hearing aid but we found it upstairs. She probably didn't hear a thing. She has no living relatives and left all of her money to her serving staff. There's five of them total, but none of them were here at the time of the murder."

"Are they still here?" Rich asked, sticking his thumbs under his suspenders and snapping them as he thought. "I'd like to speak with them if they are."

"They are," the officer confirmed. "Helena is the housekeeper, Carmen is the cook, Jeremy is the gardener, Arnold is the butler, and Missy is the maid."

"Good, good," Rich said, nodding approvingly. "Thank you, sir."

The man seemed amused by Rich. "You're very welcome, young man. I wish you and Miss Doyle the best of luck in proving her innocence." Tipping his cap to us, he left the room.

"He was laughing at us," I said.

"With us," Rich corrected me. "Now let's have a look around, shall we?"

I avoided the blood stain on the carpet, trying not to think about the innocent old woman who had died there last night. The police had required that we wore gloves to avoid smudging fingerprints, and I drifted to the tan wall near the grand piano in the large room. Hanging above the piano was a bunch of pictures, most of them with Mrs. Graham with what had to be her family. With a startling crown of white hair and smiling black eyes, she looked like she should have been someone's grandmother. There was only one picture of her with a man and that looked to have been taken some time ago. I turned to Bob. "What happened to Mr. Graham?" I asked. "And why didn't her family get any inheritance from her?"

"She outlived her two siblings," Bob explained. "Her parents died several years ago, leaving her as the only one left in her family. As for Mr. Graham ... well, it's strange. He died in an accident not long after they were married. His car overheated and exploded one day, and he didn't make it out. Terrible thing. Happened about forty years ago, I'd say."

"What about his family?" I wondered aloud.

"They rejected Mrs. Graham. They didn't approve of her marriage to their son, and they openly disowned them both when they married. I'm not surprised she didn't share any of her inheritance with them," Bob said.

"Isn't that a motive?" I said. "Y'know, how they disowned and shamed her when she married their son? What if one of them murdered her?"

"Not likely," Rich piped up from beneath the piano. "His parents died shortly after his death, and with no other heirs to inherit, all the money was given to their closest living relative. Mrs. Graham. His family and hers are all dead. She's the last Graham and the last Brently."

"Her maiden name?" I guessed.

"Bingo," Rich said. He came out from under the piano empty handed and ran over to the coffee table in front of the couch. "Care to play us a little tune while we search, dear cousin?"

"I think that qualifies as 'tampering'," I said. "Besides, I don't know how to play the piano."

"Nonsense," Rich answered. "Every gentleman and gentlewoman should know how to play the finer things in life—instrument. I myself am gifted in the art of the piano and have been compared to Beethoven and Mozart."

"Get on with the search, Amadeus," I retorted. "I don't need to get into any more trouble with the police, thank you very much."

"Oh, true," Rich conceded, and crawled underneath the coffee table. "AHA!"

I crossed my arms, convinced that Rich had probably found a "crumpet" or something. My faith in Rich's detecting skills was rapidly diminishing with every passing moment.

He crawled out from under the coffee table, banging the crown of his head against the bottom as he hurried out. That didn't lower his enthusiasm at all. He held up a ring with a garnet jewel in the center triumphantly. "A clue!" he said with great glee.

Bob was shocked. "We've been over this room with a fine-toothed comb!" he exclaimed. "No—two! How did you find that?"

"Simple," Rich said in a fake-modest voice. "There was a small indentation in the carpet where the ring hit, bounced, and went under the table." He examined the positioning of the room. The chair with the bullet hole in the back of it was to the left of the sofa, far enough from the coffee table that Mrs. Graham wouldn't hit it when she fell.

Looking at it from Rich's point of view, I realized he was wondering how the ring had bounced from behind Mrs. Graham's chair to under the sofa. I had a more important fact about the ring to worry about, though. After the original elation at Rich's find, I realized I'd seen the ring before. I should have known from the garnet—the January birthstone. "Rich," I said, "that ring doesn't belong to the murderer."

"What?" Rich deflated like a balloon I'd taken a pin to. "How do you know that?"

"Because," I said, plucking the gold ring from his fingers, "it's mine."