“Hard to find this place. I must have missed the drive the first time.” She smiled, in sort of a weary way. None of us get enough weekends off. She'd probably been counting on this one. “So, Carl,” she said as we paused in the atrium, “just what do we have here, anyway?”
I told her, in about two minutes. Told her that it could be a homicide. Told her that it looked like a suicide.
“So, are you leaning either way?”
I shrugged. “It doesn't look right. The clothes, or lack thereof. The wound, although that could be self- inflicted, God knows.” I'd told her what Doc Z. had said about the arterial spurts and the bruises. And the Coumadin.
“But we don't know, yet, if there was any major arterial damage caused by the wound?”
“Right.”
She smiled again. “So, do I just sign for the free pathologist and lab team, or am I going to have to work today?”
“I feel so transparent,” I said, grinning back at her. “No, I'm afraid you're going to have to work on this one.” I told her about the body in Wisconsin.
We went into the parlor, and I introduced her around. We left Borman in charge downstairs, and I took Hester up to meet Edie.
Afterward, we compared notes, Hester seated at Edie's vanity, and me leaning against the bathroom door, where I could keep an eye on the door to the hallway.
“You got an extra pen in that camera bag of yours?”
“Sure.” I handed her the bag. “Right-hand front pocket, there.”
“I want the lab team here,” said Hester, peering into my camera bag. “I don't know just exactly what we have here, but we can't wait for them to come up to process the scene until after the autopsy.” The lab team had to come from Des Moines, some four to four and a half hours away.
“I'm for it,” I said, as brightly as possible. This third visit to the tub had been difficult. “What do you think? Can we move the body out now? I'd like to get her out as soon as practical.”
“No problem. I don't think the victim has any more to tell us until the autopsy.”
“Good.”
She found the pen, and browsed absently through the bag. “You've got just about everything in here, Houseman. Exam gloves, bags, labels, fflm, batteries, pens, scissors, tweezers… ” She unzipped the side pocket, and looked up. “Girl Scout cookies? Are these Girl Scout cookies?”
“Caught me. Want one?”
Hester ate the chocolate mint cookie in two swift bites, and then looked for a place to put her notepad on the vanity.
“Look at the neat stuff.”
“Pardon?”
“Her makeup,” she said. “Lipstick colors. Interesting. Like these: Tar, Bordeaux, Garnet, Pulsing Blood… ”
“Oh.”
“With foundation names like Porcelain. And glitter for the eyelids. Little stick-on holograms. Neat stuff.”
“You betcha, Hester.”
“No, really. This isn't your mother's kind of makeup, chances are. And not the shades and colors that are usually worn around here.” She gave me a smug look. “Sort of a gentle rebel, this Edie. Look more closely. She took very good care of all this stuff. It's orderly. Neat. Her appearance was important.”
“I caught the neat part right away,” I said. “Always makes me feel out of place. Speaking of makeup, you notice her nails? The multicolored thing. Does that mean something?”
“Probably not. Whimsy, I'd think.”
“Whimsy. Like with the frilly clothes?”
“You mean the brocades, the lace, the velvet and satins hanging over there?” She gestured toward the walk- in closet.
“Yeah.”
Hester smiled. “I'd think she enjoyed being a girl.”
“Oh.”
She ate one more cookie, then pulled her walkie talkie out of her pocket and went on to the mobile repeater channel. That was so neat. She was talking to her car radio via a secure channel, which, in turn, transmitted to State Radio repeater towers down to Cedar Falls State Radio, also via secure link, and enabled her to order up the lab team without the media getting wind of it.
Being from the wrong side of the government procurement tracks, I went into the hall, and down the first half flight, where I could see Borman standing in the doorway to the parlor. I caught his attention, and told him to use the residence phone to call our office and get the hearse coming.
I got back to Edie's room, and couldn't see Hester. I looked around the door frame into the bathroom, and saw her checking the contents of the bathroom cabinet.
“Got something?”
She turned. “No, and that's just the problem,” she said slowly. “No open shampoo, no open soap, no razor, just blades.”
Oh. “Yeah. Doesn't sit right, does it?”
“Like you said, Carl. Where's the stuff you'd use in a tub or shower?”
We'd talked about that during her first pass through the bathroom area. Although it was barely possible that someone would run out of everything currently in use at the same time, it was unlikely as hell. The problem was, there wasn't a really good explanation as to why it was gone.
“I don't get it,” said Hester. “Why isn't it here?”
She came toward the door, and I backed out of the doorway to let her pass. “It isn't like somebody would enter her bath and cut her throat in order to gain possession of a used bar of soap and half a bottle of shampoo… ”
“Souvenir?” I just tossed that in.
“Right.” She shook her head. “First things first. I want to know where that knife came from.”
“The kitchen?”
“I'd bet. We couldn't be so lucky as to have it come from anywhere else.”
“Right now,” I said, “if this case were on a balance scale, I'd have just about a quarter of the weight in the suicide dish.”
She sighed, pulling off her latex exam gloves. “Maybe a bit less. We really need that autopsy.”
We moved back into the bedroom.
“So,” said Hester, “what can you tell me about the group who lives here?”
I explained that they were local, or very close. Marched to a bit of a different drummer than some, but were known to us as pretty decent people. Those I knew were bright. They caused no trouble, which in cop parlance meant a lot.
“Some, like the one they call Huck, just strike me as people who would really like things to be different. But who know they can't make it happen.” I considered. “Like, at a party, when some nice person knows that if they join in the conversation, there's going to be an argument. So they sit on the couch, and are pleasant, and pass the dip, and kind of let the flow go around them.”
“Like the hippies used to be?”
“This is going to date me,” I said, “but they remind me more of beatniks.”
“Angry? Intellectually rebellious? Cynical? Depressed?”
“You got it. All the above. Caused by life in general.”
Hester smiled. “You sure this isn't a bunch of retired cops?”
When the hearse arrived, it came complete with two attendants. One of them was about seventy, and the other was a small man in his thirties. This meant that Borman, Hester, and I had to glove up again, and help lift Edie's body from the tub. Messy, if you didn't watch your step. We got the chromed portable stretcher up the stairs, noticing how the bend in the stairway at the first landing was going to make this a tough movement on the way
