almost apologetic that they hadn't observed any of what they termed “suicide triggers.” I did think it a little unusual that both of them were that familiar with the subject of suicide. I said as much.
“We've read about it,” said Melissa, “because some of our friends have been really depressed sometimes. We worry about them.”
“But Edie didn't fit in that category?” I asked.
“No. I mean, there's depressed, and then there's depressed,” said Melissa. “Things not going right, that can depress you, but it's something you get over. Lover leaving, grandparent dying, that sort of thing. You know. But, the kind of thing where you just have to end it, that's much deeper, and much more prolonged. Oppressive, always there.”
“Okay.”
“I'm afraid I'm not saying this very well,” she said, and looked toward Hanna.
“It feeds on itself,” she said, helping Melissa. “It controls you. The suicide kind.”
“But Edie didn't show any sign of that?”
She hadn't, and according to them, Edie really seemed to have her life under control. They were both sorry they hadn't been more help.
What they'd actually done was to inadvertently add another bit of weight to the side of the scales that was labeled “murder.”
“So, then,” I said, “let's just say for the sake of it that it wasn't a suicide. Do either of you know of anybody who might be, say, an enemy; that would want to kill Edie?”
Absolutely not. They were both in complete and emphatic agreement on that point.
I persevered. “Anybody threaten her? Been bothering her? Harassing her?”
“Just her lame excuse for a mother,” said Melissa. “That's been happening for years, I guess. Not new. Why? Do you really think she didn't commit suicide?”
I shrugged. “We have to treat every unattended death as a homicide, until we're sure it isn't.”
“Sure,” said Melissa.
“Okay,” I said, “now, I don't want you to take this in the wrong way at all. But I'd like to know if either of you could tell me if Edie was doing any dope, or alcohol, or anything even prescription, that could affect her moods.”
“Is that really your business?” asked Melissa. “Not to be taken in the wrong way, of course.”
“Fair question,” I said. “The answer is, probably wasn't my business yesterday. Now that she's dead, and my problem for now, yep, it is.”
“Aren't you going to do a blood test? I mean, won't you know from that?”
“Sure. But it won't be back for a few days, and when it arrives, it only gives the chemical information, not the substance. You know… it might say acetaminophen, but not a brand name. So if she took Tylenol for a headache, say, it would be a help to know that. That sort of thing.” I was also fishing for a known substance, although I didn't say that. A blood scan for everything cost a fortune, and took forever. You had to give them parameters.
“Oh,” said Hanna. “Oh, sure. Well, I know she'd drink a beer now and then, maybe some wine. No dope…?” and she looked at Melissa.
It was hard not to grin.
“She smoked clove cigarettes,” said Melissa quickly.
“That's it.”
“Okay,” I said, making a note. “You do know what those are?” Melissa wasn't being insulting, she was just a sincere twenty-something talking to a fifty-something. Usually, the only people my age she'd be likely to know were her parents, aunts, and uncles.
I smiled. “Either of your parents cops?”
“What?”
“I strongly suspect that your folks and I have vastly different, oh… What? Life experiences?”
“My father's a minister and my mother is a music teacher.” She paused as it dawned on her. “Oh.” A small smile started forming on her lips.
“Right. I think we definitely move in different circles.” The small smile grew larger, into a full-fledged one. “I'd say so.”
“And the real point's this: If she did occasional dope here, that's something we have to know. If there's a fair concentration in her fluids, and she did it here, that's one thing. If there's the same concentration and she didn't do it here, that's another thing altogether.”
Both the young women looked away from me as soon as I said that. I attributed it to the fact that there was probably at least some dope in the house, even as we spoke.
The phone in the hallway rang, and Hanna answered it. It was for me. As I left the room, I could hear both young women talking to each other in low tones. My best guess was that they were discussing narcotics.
I answered the phone. “Houseman.”
“Hey, no kidding?” Sally, at the office.
“Yeah. What's up?”
“There was a man here, came to talk with Lamar. Lamar said for you to talk with him instead, because he was going to have some family things to attend to.”
“Sure, okay.” Great. Not that I didn't understand, but I really didn't need the distractions, either. Ah, well. I could never say that Lamar didn't delegate.
“Man's name is”-she paused just an instant, so that I knew she was reading from her notes-“William Chester, from Milwaukee.”
My first thought was a pathologist that Harry had contacted regarding the death of Randy Baumhagen, late boyfriend of Alicia Meyer. “What does he do? Or want?”
“Beats me. He looks pretty straight arrow, though. About forty, but that's not all bad. Nice eyes. Slender. Still has all his hair… ”
“That's not quite what I wanted.”
She laughed. “I don't know. Not an attorney, that's for sure. I asked Lamar that, 'cause I knew you'd just shit-pardon the expression-if we sent somebody like an attorney up there.”
“You sent him here?”
“Well, to Freiberg. He'll get hold of Byng or somebody, and connect up with you later on. Not at the Mansion, though.”
“Okay.” That was a relief. “Anything else?”
“Nope. Lamar just said to let you know. He's over at his sister's, I think.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, and guess what?”
I was too tired to play. “Tell me.”
“I'm assigned to duty as a reserve tonight, up there! Isn't that just so cool?”
I grinned to myself. “It's cool. Just remember to bring cookies.”
At that point, Hester and Toby came back. Hester was holding a legal pad, making the final touches to a diagram of the second floor. She handed it to me. According to her diagram, Edie's room was the first one at the top of the stairs, on the right. The northeast corner. The next room on her side of the hall was Toby's; the room after that was Hanna's. Across the hall from Edie was Melissa in the southeast corner, then Holly, known as Huck, and then Kevin.
“They're all about the same,” she said. “Basically thirty-six-foot by eighteen-foot rooms, with a dividing wall for the individual bathrooms at about ten feet from the end.”
Like I said, it was a big house. Over a hundred feet long, and about forty-five feet wide.
Hester handed me the pink copy of the “Seized Property” form, listing the knife from the tub. “It's from a set in the kitchen,” she said. “No doubt at all.”
As they sat down, Melissa handed the copy of the Freiberg Tribune and Dispatch to Toby. “Seen this?”
Toby looked a bit surprised, said he hadn't, and opened it up. He looked up at Melissa, rather startled.
“That's freaky,” he said, mostly to her.
I was curious. “What?”
“The bit about Dracula,” he said. “Just floating outside the second-floor window, I mean. Wow.”
