No Accounting for Murder

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

"Are you sure?" Carly had already asked that question enough times in the past few days to last her a lifetime. She knew what the answer would be but couldn't stop herself from asking anyway.

"Coroner said so. That's good enough for me. He said the time of death and the time of the accident were very close together, but the injuries from the accident didn't indicate the mayor was alive when the car went over. Something about bruising and blood settling and no major blood loss."

Carly's stomach did a flip-flop. She understood some of the implications, having recently watched a documentary on public television about that very thing. She sipped her tea, her mouth suddenly dry. "What does he say about time of death?"

"No more than an hour before the accident, maybe as little as ten minutes."

"Did he know the cause of death?"

"Broken neck."

"So this isn't an accident at all. This is murder." Carly hated to think someone she knew could be behind this. Then she had a thought. "Bert? What was the odometer reading on the mayor's car?"

"Odometer reading? Let's see." Papers rustled. "Oh, here's the mechanic's report on the vehicle. Hmm-the reading is 24004. What are you thinking?"

"Just wondered. You know me-I love numbers." Carly picked up the notebook she was using to keep her clues and suspects straight. Flipping through several pages, she came to the notation she had made earlier about skid marks. "What did you find out about the skid marks and marks in the gravel?"

"We made some cast marks to compare the skid marks with the tread marks in the gravel and found they weren't related. The tire marks where a vehicle turned around and the ones that went off the road were the same, though. Both were made by the mayor's car."

"So he turned around first and went back down the road toward town." Carly shared her thoughts with him. "And then he came back again for some reason."

"Or maybe he was driven there after he was killed."

"Or maybe he drove back and was killed there. In that case-" Carly gasped at the vivid picture her imagination conjured. "In that case-"

"In that case, what?"

"Nothing. Just talking to myself. Talk to you later, Bert." She hung up before he could ask any more questions. She'd already been made to look foolish enough by Mike for suspecting Walter Daniels. She didn't want to tip her hand before she had all the facts in.

Carly grabbed Mike's keys and headed for her car, locking the front door securely behind her. She checked for the flashlight she always kept in the trunk of her car, making sure the beam was still strong. She didn't want to wander around town in the dark.

She drove slowly out of town, taking the same route Mayor Wells had taken. His last car ride. Someone had purposely killed the mayor. If she could figure out why, she'd know who.

Carly easily found the spot where the mayor's car went over the embankment. Yellow police tape streamers-reminding her of the ones around the overweight canary rental car-flittered from a couple of scraggly shrubs on the edge of the gravel.

Carly stopped her car immediately before the crime scene, leaving her headlights on. She knew the police were done gathering evidence, but she didn't want to take the chance of messing up evidence they might have overlooked.

She played her flashlight beam over the pavement, picking out the skid marks. Following their line of travel to the edge of the gravel, she noted the marks didn't line up with the gravel tread marks, exactly as Bert described them. The tread marks showed that a vehicle had turned around. And she saw the tracks where the car had gone over the embankment.