“She was drugged before she was injected. There’s no food in here, the wine is the only thing.” She took a picture of the wineglass and pill bottle. She’d already photographed the body and the puncture wound. She wished Trevor hadn’t moved the body, because lividity hadn’t set in. She could guess, based on the slight discoloration along the right curve of Vanessa’s waist, that she’d been lying on that side for over an hour when she died. Because Trevor had now laid her on her back, the blood and fluids would be pooling on her underside.
Still, Lucy had taken the pictures and hoped someone with more experience than her would be able to decipher them.
“If I ask Grace for plastic bags for evidence collection, she’ll be tipped off that we think Vanessa was killed,” said Patrick. “I think it’s best we keep the likelihood of homicide to ourselves.”
“I have some Ziploc bags,” Lucy said.
He raised an eyebrow. “You normally carry evidence bags around with you?”
“I keep them for travel. Makeup, toothpaste, shampoo. I have some that haven’t been used.”
She opened the door and was startled when she saw lodge owner Grace and her sister, Beth, in the hallway. Had they been listening at the door? Lucy didn’t think so but she made no assumptions.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Grace said. “Why did you and Patrick lock the door? What happened to Vanessa? Trevor is distraught-”
“I thought you were going to stay with him.”
“Angie and Heather are with him in the library,” Grace replied. “He didn’t want tea. I gave him scotch. Steve told me you had him call the sheriff. What happened to Vanessa?”
“We don’t know exactly,” Lucy said, obfuscating.
Patrick walked up behind her. “Vanessa is dead, and the sheriff needs to be notified about any unattended death. I can’t tell whether or not she died of natural causes. I don’t know her medical history. I need to talk to her husband first, and then hopefully the sheriff can contact her immediate family and doctor and see if there was some other contributing factor to her death.”
“Oh.” Grace sighed and rubbed her face. “I’m sorry, it’s just so distressing that someone died here at the lodge. Steve is really upset.”
Lucy said, “Steve said something strange. He said, ‘What more could go wrong?’ Do you know what he meant?”
Grace shook her head, but Beth said, “Grace, we can’t keep it secret.” She put her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “There have been several mishaps since Leo died. One of our main generators broke down. It was under warranty, but it still required us to close for two weeks before it could be repaired. The root cellar was left open one night and most of our food was eaten by a bear. That cost us thousands, to repair the door and replace the stock. Steve had an accident last month, totaled his truck, and was lucky he wasn’t injured. That boy has been working himself too hard, trying to make this place into everything his father wanted.”
“Leo was special,” Grace said. “He had a way about him.”
Beth frowned. “He also left a lot of things undone, spent all his savings to keep the place up. We can’t simply avoid the seriousness of the situation. And with Steve’s illness-”
“Beth, please!” Grace rubbed her temples. “It’s going to be fine.”
“What about Steve’s illness?” Patrick asked.
“He’s been forgetting things,” Beth said, ignoring Grace’s plea. She lowered her voice. “We think he forgot to secure the root cellar. But he won’t go back to the doctor, and we’re both worried sick about him.”
Patrick said, “We need to move the body.”
“Why?” Grace asked.
Lucy said, “The warm house will accelerate the rate of decomposition, and the smell will spread. In addition, there are health issues to take into consideration, as all the bedrooms share ventilation.”
“I didn’t think about that,” Grace said. “But where? How?”
“I’m going to ask Alan and Kyle to help me move Vanessa’s body to the root cellar.”
“But our food is down there!” Beth said.
“Can you bring up as much food as you can store inside? Anything that isn’t canned or vacuum-sealed. Lucy and I will wrap the body securely, to minimize any contamination. And if you have any large plastic sheets, we could use them.”
Beth paled, and Grace said, “I’ll get it. The food we can’t fit in the lodge, we’ll bring to my house, Beth.”
As they walked down the hall, Lucy overheard some of their conversation.
“You need to sell this place, Grace.”
“It would destroy Steve. I can’t.”
Lucy hurried down to her room and retrieved her baggies-she had four that she hadn’t used-and returned to Vanessa’s room. “Let’s use these judiciously.”
“The wine. I want to save the glass as well-but we can put it in a paper bag.”
“That I don’t have, but there’s stationery in every desk. We can wrap it in that.”
“Good idea.”
They preserved the wine and the glass, then finished searching the room. Lucy went through Vanessa’s purse. She hadn’t changed her driver’s license, it was still under her maiden name of “Russell,” but there was a copy of the marriage certificate. They’d been married in Phoenix, Arizona, last week. The best man was Nelson Russell-Vanessa’s brother maybe? — and the maid of honor was Christina Morgan.
Lucy went through the camera one last time to make sure she had taken all the pictures she thought the police would need. The body, the wine, the pills, the general layout of the room, close-ups of the possible lividity and the needle mark. She’d also taken pictures of Vanessa’s hands and arms, which didn’t indicate that she’d fought back-no obvious bruising, scratches, broken nails, or fibers. She scrolled through earlier pictures and noticed that Vanessa or Trevor had taken a lot of pictures of the grounds-the lodge, the barn, the surroundings. Some were dark and hadn’t come out, but Lucy didn’t delete any in case the police needed them as evidence. She didn’t want any photos to be missing-each was digitally numbered.
The earliest pictures were of Vanessa and Trevor on their wedding day. They seemed happy. Trevor beamed at Vanessa. The wedding was lavish, at least from what Lucy could tell from the few pictures saved on the camera.
She set aside the camera. She looked through Vanessa’s address book, then went through her receipts.
“Anything?” Patrick asked.
“Nothing that stands out to me.”
“I’m going to ask that no one come in the room, and ask for all the keys, but that’s no guarantee that there isn’t an extra floating around.”
“Grace probably has a master key as well.”
“I wrapped her body in the sheet and top blanket,” Patrick said. “When we get the plastic sheet, I’ll have Alan and Kyle help with the body. You find Steve and ask what the sheriff said. Then we’ll talk to her husband, Trevor. It’s time for you to put that criminal psychology degree to work, sis.”
IV
While Patrick and the others took Vanessa’s body to the root cellar, Lucy found Steve in the lodge’s office. He sat slumped at the desk with his head in his hands.
“Hey,” Lucy said softly, sitting across from him. “You okay?”
He shook his head. Though he had a lot of responsibility, he was still a young man, not even twenty-one, and this situation seemed to be taking its toll. He picked up a quart carton of orange juice that was on the desk next to him and took a long gulp. Drinking from the carton reminded Lucy of her brothers growing up. Her sister Carina would have a shit fit if she caught them, and always found an innovative way to get back at them. Once, Carina poured hot sauce in the orange juice. Patrick had been the brunt of that spicy etiquette corrective.
“Did you call to the sheriff?” Lucy asked.
