Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

oven, along with an unappetizing bowl of tuna fish steeped in mayonnaise. On the floor near the overflowing garbage pail was an empty bottle of Booth’s gin.
    Wetzon was hungry, but not that hungry. There was something about Penny Ann that made her queasy. “Have we disturbed your lunch?” Wetzon asked. The woman looked dazed. “Why don’t you finish. Come on. We’ve already eaten,” she added hastily, just in case food was to be offered. “You have to eat to keep your strength up.” There was also something about Penny Ann that made Wetzon talk in clichés.
    Rambo placed himself in the doorway to the dining room and snorted and snarled. Then he farted loudly.
    “Lord,” Smith murmured. She was trying not to breathe.
    With a bit more animation, Penny Ann picked up a glass of milk and made a move for the rolled-up magazine. Before Penny Ann even picked it up, however, Rambo backed off, scampering noisily into the next room, and Wetzon and Smith followed her into a carpeted, wood-paneled room with high beamed ceilings; the room held a round dining room table surrounded by chairs. The single place mat next to a paper napkin contained a plate with a sandwich. On a tall oak sideboard a basket of fruit, still in its yellow cellophane, had just begun to rot, raising steam under its wrapping.
    Framed hunting prints decorated the walls, and a moose head complete with antlers stared down at them from the mantelpiece over a working fireplace.
    “My life is shit,” Penny Ann said suddenly. “First Wilson, then losing the arbitration, now Tabitha.” She bit into the sandwich.
    Smith wandered through an archway, was gone a moment or two, and returned in time for Rambo’s second pungent fart. “Charming home, dear.” She made tracks for the other side of the room and studied the hounds-at-bay print on the far wall.
    “I’ve put it on the market. I can’t stay here—”
    “Penny Ann.” Wetzon pulled out a chair and sat down. It had a pink oilcloth cushion tied by strings to the back rails. Penny Ann’s upper lip wore the remnants of a milk mustache. The odors from the fruit coupled with the noxious dog made Wetzon’s eyes tear. The house had a musty smell, as if it had been closed up for some time. “What did the police want?”
    Smith came over and leaned on the back of a chair.
    “Wilson’s gun. They said Wilson’s gun killed Brian and Tabitha. It couldn’t have. Wilson has been dead for over a year.”
    “Did you give the gun to someone?” Wetzon asked.
    Penny Ann shook her head emphatically, too emphatically. Could this wreck of a woman have beaten and abused her child? Had this woman speculated in the stock market with her husband’s insurance money?
    “Who abused Tabitha, Penny Ann?” Smith said suddenly, staring at Penny Ann with loathing. “You or your husband? Or did you take turns?”
    Penny Ann burst into tears, which mingled with the tuna salad left on her face. She put her head on the place mat.
    “Jesus, Smith.” Awkwardly, Wetzon patted Penny Ann on the back.
    “ Who, Penny Ann?” Smith’s voice was chilling.
    “Wilson. Wilson did it,” she blubbered. “He had such a terrible temper, and then the brain tumor must have been growing—”
    “And you didn’t do anything about it?”
    “I tried in the beginning, but he could be ... cruel, vicious when he was crossed. I couldn’t ...” Tears were gushing out of her eyes.
    “Oh, Lord, I’ll never understand women like you,” Smith said.
    “What about Brian, Penny Ann?”
    Wetzon’s question just increased the blubbering. “Brian ... made my baby pregnant.” Gasping for breath, wiping her face with her hands, Penny Ann said, “We had a terrible fight. I wanted her … to have an abortion, but she said ... Brian would marry her. Oh, God, I wanted to kill him—”
    “What about the gun?” Wetzon prompted.
    Penny Ann rose. She motioned them through a living room of faded chintz, past another fireplace, more animal heads and hunting prints, into another room, which was a study in leather, an office, with a desk and bookshelves on a long wall. Penny Ann walked right up to the bookcase and pressed a button on one of the shelves, then stood aside. With a click, three of the shelves swung open. On the wall behind the shelves hung an arsenal. Handguns, rifles, each in its allotted place.
    “My God,” Wetzon gasped. But there were—Wetzon looked at the wall carefully—three empty spaces.
    “Who knows about this?”