ago, have always had a twisted sense of humor and it was never more apparent than when they named their daughters. The girls seem to have taken to their nicknames and the family business to a surprising degree. Not only are they both very involved in the day-to-day work, they both look the part with Morticia-like skin, builds, and hair.
After bidding Hans adieu, I take the twins into Minniver’s room and assist them as they wrap him up, strap him up, and load him into their transport vehicle, which looks more like a soccer mom’s minivan. I head out to my hearse and follow the funeral home car to the morgue.
Other than weighing Minniver on the huge floor scale in our take-in area, I leave all the rest of the processing for morning. After the sisters help me place Minniver’s body in the fridge for the night, I finish my paperwork and leave.
Five minutes later I am in front of Minniver’s house expecting to see a yellow-taped crime scene area, but the place looks like every other house on the street. As I pull into Minniver’s driveway to park, a squad car pulls in behind me. I watch in my rearview mirror as Ron Colbert climbs out, and then I grab my evidence kit and get out to greet him.
“How come there’s no crime scene tape here?” I ask him.
“Wasn’t aware there was a crime,” Colbert says with a shrug. “They said the guy had a heart attack.”
“They who?”
He thinks a minute, scowling. “His daughter told us he had a cardiac history. And the EMTs said it looked like a heart attack.”
“Looked like doesn’t mean it is. And in this case, it probably isn’t. The guy’s heart was given a clean bill of health recently. Don’t you guys typically preserve a scene until you know the cause of death?”
Colbert looks abashed, but then he brightens. “Well, we did lock the place up after the ambulance left so no one could get inside.”
“No one without a key,” I say, dangling the one Minniver’s daughter gave me in front of his face. “Plus he kept a spare one hidden.” I lead the way to the front porch, feeling my stomach knot when I see that the top to the porch light is open. Sure enough, there is no key there. “Interesting,” I say.
“What?” Colbert asks.
“His spare key is gone. His daughter said he kept it taped to the underside of this lid,” I explain, pointing at the light fixture. “We might need to dust that lid for fingerprints.”
Colbert frowns again and asks, “Are you saying you think there’s something fishy with this guy’s death?”
“I think he may have committed suicide,” I tell him, filling him in on what I’ve learned. “I want to take a look at his car to see if it was running. Your guys didn’t take the keys out of the ignition or anything like that, did you?”
Colbert blushes and looks guilty as hell, making my hopes sink. “I don’t know, to be honest. Let’s go take a look.”
I unlock the front door with the key Patricia gave me and step inside. It’s a tidy Cape Cod furnished with comfortable-looking, mismatched pieces. Several lamps that were left turned on lend the interior a warm glow. I see an ashtray on a table at one end of the couch and inside it is an intricately carved pipe. The air smells of apple-scented tobacco, a scent that triggers a vague memory in my mind of a tall, brown-haired, pipe-smoking, smiling man I think is my father. But since my father left my mother when I was five, I can’t be sure. My visual memories aren’t nearly as vivid as the olfactory ones and whenever I’ve asked my mother what my father looked like, her response has always been “Like the devil himself.”
“Should we glove up?” Colbert says, trying I imagine, to make up for the lack of protocol earlier. I nod, set down my evidence case, open it, and remove two pairs of gloves: one pair for me and one pair for Colbert. I also take out two pairs of booties, which we stretch on over our shoes.
I take my camera out and turn it on as Colbert leads the way. After taking a few shots of the living room, I follow Colbert toward the kitchen. There we find a plate of partially eaten food on the table bearing the remnants of Minniver’s last meal: baked macaroni and cheese, broccoli, ham, and a glass of what looks like iced tea. His fork, still holding a few bits of macaroni in its tines, is on the floor beneath the table. I snap pictures of all of it as well as a few shots of the room.
From there Colbert heads to the garage, which is just off the kitchen. Parked inside is Harold Minniver’s car, a Toyota Rav4. I head around to the driver’s side door, which is still open, snapping pictures as I step over several ripped-open, empty packages: debris left from the EMT’s efforts. Harold’s keys are still in the ignition but it is not turned on. After taking a picture of it, I reach in and flip the ignition over. The car starts up without hesitation.
“The gas tank is full,” I tell Colbert, watching as the needle rises to the top and then taking a picture of the gauge. I’m not sure if I’m overdoing it with the picture thing, but since this is the first scene I’ve been to without Izzy, I want to err on the side of caution. “It looks like he never started the car, that he died right after getting in. The food on the table and the fork on the floor make me think that whatever happened to him, happened while he was eating. He dropped his fork, headed for the garage, and died before he could get his car started.” I turn and look at Colbert. “His daughter told me she found him slumped behind the wheel and that the car wasn’t running. It wasn’t running when you guys got here, was it?”
Colbert shakes his head. “No. That much I’m sure of.”
“So much for my suicide theory then,” I mutter. I turn the engine off, bag & tag the keys, and hand them to Colbert. Then I take some pictures of the garage interior.
“So we have another incident of foul play?” Colbert says, his eyes huge with eager excitement as he watches me. You got to love that about new cops; murder and mayhem to them is like a freezer full of Ben & Jerry’s to me.
“Not necessarily,” I say, dashing his hopes. “There are plenty of other natural causes that might have killed him.”
“Like what?”
“Like a blood clot in his lung, or a ruptured brain aneurysm.”
“So you’ll be able to tell what it was when you do the autopsy?”
“Hopefully, though sometimes we don’t find an immediate cause of death.”
“What do you do when that happens?”
“Run toxicology tests, look at the blood work, reexamine the scene . . . but in this case I’m betting that we’ll find something physical. There really isn’t anything to suggest foul play.”
“What about that key you said was missing?”
I frown at that. The missing key does bother me, but even so, I doubt it’s very significant. I say so to Colbert but then caveat my statement by adding, “But just to be thorough, we should get someone to come out and dust the light for prints.”
Colbert gets on his phone and calls into the office to arrange for an evidence tech to come out. While we’re waiting, we look through the rest of the house but nothing else looks out of place. When the evidence tech arrives, we watch as he dusts the light cap, but the surface of the cap is pebbled and he tells us he’s not likely to pull anything off it because of the texture. His prediction proves true and he’s gone a few minutes later. Colbert and I prepare to follow suit but a niggling thought makes me head back to the kitchen. After rummaging through some of Minniver’s drawers, I find some plastic baggies and collect what is left of his last meal. I pour a sample of his drink into an evidence vial from my scene kit, and then I put his fork and empty plate into a paper bag, sealing it all with evidence tape.
After locking the house, I head back to the morgue with Colbert following me. He watches as I log in the evidence, looking thoughtful, and I wonder if he’s mulling over the possible ramifications of screwing up a crime scene.
As soon as Colbert leaves I head for the library, which serves double duty as my makeshift office, to finish my paperwork.
Just as I’m about to shut down the computer for the night, I take one last look at my notes and see where I jotted down Minniver’s daughter’s comment about her father being involved in a lawsuit of some sort with a neighbor. At the time she said it, I hadn’t yet made the connection between Minniver’s address and Hurley’s. A strange tingle runs down my spine as I consider the possibilities, but even as I do, I dismiss the idea as ludicrous. It has to be a coincidence. There is no way Hurley could be involved in this death, too. Is there?
My hand hovers over the mouse, ready to click on SHUT DOWN, but I hesitate. Thirty seconds later my
