words were, she didn’t want to say them in front of Les.”
“I wonder how come.”
“I wish I knew. I wish I’d managed to get her alone for a few minutes. But I didn’t. And that one’s on me.”
“Don’t go blaming yourself for this, girlfriend.”
“Mitch, I can’t help how I feel.”
“If Ada didn’t want to speak to you in front of Les, then we have to take a good hard look at him, don’t we?”
“For sure. Only, what’s his motive?”
“You said it yourself. This place-it’s worth millions.”
“Not to Les it’s not. Aaron gets it all. Les knew that. He’s the executor of Norma ’s estate.”
“Then that makes Aaron the prime candidate, no?”
“Aaron has the most to gain from Norma ’s death,” Des acknowledged. “Plus he has a girlfriend and a way pissed-off wife. Hell yeah, he’s our early front-runner.”
“Do we know exactly where he was when Ada got strangled?”
“He went upstairs looking for Carly is all we know right now.” Des started for the stairs, then stopped. “We do know something else-we know that the first murder was planned and the second one wasn’t.”
“And how do we know that?”
“Because whoever killed Norma would have gotten away with it if they hadn’t gone and killed Ada, too. Most likely, there’d have been no autopsy of Norma. Now there will definitely be one. And it will definitely turn something up. Count on it. The only way something this stupid goes down is if the play is blown. I’m talking total desperation, as in Ada accidentally seeing something, maybe. Something so heavy that the risk of her spilling it outweighed the risk of exposing Norma’s death to scrutiny. Real world, that is my idea of beyond desperation. That is plain, pure loco. Because, damn, we are snowed the hell in up here. No way Ada’s murder doesn’t fall on somebody.” Des shook her head disgustedly. “All right, enough of this. I’d better go do what I’ve got to do. Watch my back, okay?”
“Absolutely. There’s nothing in the whole world I enjoy more than watching your back-with the possible exception of watching your front.”
She stood there looking at him as if he were the loco one.
“Sorry, I blather when I’m knocked out of my comfort zone. I know this about myself.” He parked his generous bottom in the chair, facing the hallway.
“You’re doing good, baby,” she assured him. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Sure it will.”
Des was halfway down the stairs before she abruptly stopped and returned and said, “Okay, I have to know how it turns out.”
“How what turns out, Des?”
“This old movie of yours.”
“Trust me, you really don’t want to know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, okay, you asked for it,” Mitch said, clearing his throat. “No one gets out alive.”
“Oh, that’s just great.”
CHAPTER 10
“We are all victims in the end.”
Des photographed Ada Geiger’s body from a dozen different angles with the digital camera that she kept in the trunk of her cruiser. She moved nothing as she snapped her pictures, and she touched nothing. That would be a job for the crime scene technicians when they got there-if they got there. For now, her job was to produce photos and protect the scene, even though what she really wanted to do was sit down with her 18-by-24-inch Strathmore 400 drawing pad and a piece of graphite stick. She yearned to capture the spirit of fight that remained in Ada’s ancient, intricately lined face. The absence of fear in that face despite the certainty of what was coming.
Acceptance without surrender.
This was the essence of Ada Geiger in death. Yes, there was the unfathomable stillness. But there were also courage, defiance. Even in death, Ada Geiger spolie. And Des felt a desperate need to listen with her graphite stick. But there was no time for that now. It would have to wait for later, when she could take heed in her studio with these photos pinned to her easel.
Right now, she had a killer to catch.
Des took a quick look around for the gloves that Ada’s killer must have worn, taking care not to disturb anything. She found none. She did take the time to glance under the bed for them-a ritual of hers that dated back to one of the first cases she’d caught as a rookie in uniform. She’d found an East Granby woman lying dead on the bedroom floor of her home, stabbed sixteen times in the chest and neck. Des did not see the murder weapon anywhere. She was just about to call it in when, strictly as an afterthought, she’d thought to glance under the bed. That was where she found the bloody knife. If she hadn’t done that, she would have looked like a consummate bimbo when the Major Crime Squad people got there and found it. She’d never have lived that down. So she always looked under the bed when she caught a murder. Call it a superstition.
There was nothing under Ada’s bed.
Des went back out in the hall now and locked the door behind her. She stretched a length of yellow crime scene tape across the doorframe, sealing it off.
“Find anything?” Mitch asked anxiously from his guard post at the top of the stairs.
“Not so much as a dust bunny.”
She unlocked the room next door and went in to photograph Norma, well aware that this crime scene had already been thoroughly compromised. Les had been alone in here with her before he’d called out to them. Hell, he had been in the damned bed with her. Ada had come in to say good-bye to Norma, as had Teddy.
When Des was done snapping her photographs, she slipped on a pair of latex gloves and had herself a closer look at Norma. Opened an eyelid, shining her flashlight into Norma’s eye. No hemorrhaging of the blood vessels. This told her that Norma had not been smothered with a pillow. Nor had she been strangled. Not that there was any obvious indication of strangulation. There was no bruising on her neck-or at least none that was visible to Des’s naked eye. An autopsy might prove otherwise, of course. She examined Norma’s scalp for wounds. Gently lifted her heavy head, fingering the back of it for welts or bruises. Nothing. There was no broken skin, no trace of blood on the pillow underneath. She examined the surface of the quilt that Norma lay under, searching for any hairs or fibers that might be foreign to her person. Nothing obvious jumped out at her. Carefully, she pulled the quilt back, followed by the blanket and sheet. Les had not neatened Norma’s flannel nightshirt when he’d tidied her. It was all bunched up around her thighs. Des pulled it up toward Norma’s neck, shining the light around on her mammoth, fleshy nakedness. A gross violation of the lady’s dignity, to be sure. But there was absolutely no way to be delicate when it came to examining the dead. Des found no obvious bruises or welts or cuts. The sheet underneath Norma appeared to be free of bloodstains. Also semen stains.
If the medical examiner and crime scene technicians had been standing right there alongside of her, Des would have flopped Norma over onto her stomach now and proceeded to check out her backside. But she was alone, and didn’t want to disturb the crime scene any further. So she stretched the quilt back over Norma, knowing full well that she’d already done quite a bit more than a first responder was typically supposed to do. There were two reasons for this. One was that she didn’t know when the crime scene technicians would get there. The other was that Des had been in the game. Once you have, it’s damned hard to pull yourself back.
Especially when it’s not in your nature to pull back
There was the half-empty water glass on Norma’s nightstand. Des bent down and sniffed at it. No odor. Not chlorine, not sulphur, not anything. And there was no mineral residue in the bottom of the glass. Still, she carefully
