there some hanky panky going on between them?”
“Between Dave and Leann? No. I’m certain nothing like that was going on.”
“Look,” Carol said, shaking her head. “You can’t be sure, not unless you were with her twenty-four hours of every day. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that they were fooling around a little. One way or another Thompson learns about Leann’s sexual preference, and he freaks. He flips out completely and decides to kill her. After all, it’s the second time this has happened to him. And then, when it falls apart and she gets away, he comes to his senses, realizes that he’s about to be caught, and doesn’t want to face the consequences. So he bolsters his courage with a little more booze and does himself him. You did see the empty vodka bottle on the bedside him, didn’t you?”
Joanna shook her head. “No, I didn’t. And I don’t understand what you’re saying. What do you mean the second time this happened?”
“It’s the second time Dave Thompson fell for a lesbian,” Carol answered. “His wife left him for a woman, not for another man. I thought you knew that.”
“No,” Joanna said. “I didn’t know. But what about the other women, Serena and Rhonda? What about them?”
“We’re working on it,” Carol answered. “Anyway, thanks for coming and helping us I.D. him.” The detective looked at her watch. “I guess you’d better be getting back to the hotel. It’s almost four-thirty. Aren’t you supposed to be having dinner with your family?”
“That’s at five,” Joanna said. “I have plenty of time.”
Just then two men came pushing a body-bag-laden gurney into the garage. One of them waved at Carol Strong. “What’ve you got?”
“Suicide,” she answered. “We’ve already identified him for you.”
“Good,” the other replied. “That’ll save time. If I’m not home for dinner by six, my wife will kill me.”
Despite Carol’s urging, Joanna wasn’t ready to leave. “Doesn’t it all seem just a little too pat?” she asked.
“What?”
“Dave tries to kill Leann in a fit of rage and then takes his own life.”
“It happens. As soon as Leann Jessup is well enough to talk to us about it, we’ll get the whole thing cleared up. So let’s leave it at that for the time being.”
With that, Carol turned as though to follow the medical examiner techs back toward the car.
“Did you find Leann’s panties, then?” Joanna asked.
“Not yet,” Carol answered. “They weren’t in Thompson’s apartment or we would have found them by now. Maybe they’re still on him—in a pocket or something. Or maybe he hid them in the car.”
“What if you don’t find them?” Joanna prodded.
Carol shook her head emphatically. “Then maybe they never existed in the first place,” she said.
For a moment, the two women stood looking at each other. Homicide detectives are judged by a very public scoreboard—by cases opened and by cases promptly closed. Here was a classic twofer. The attempted homicide/successful suicide theory cleared two of Carol Strong’s cases at once and in less than twenty-four hours. With that kind of payoff waiting in the wings, the mysterious disappearance of a pair of panties diminished in importance. And two pairs of missing panties linked the deaths of
