by P. L. Gaus
“I don’t want you talking to Martha Lehman, Mike. You’re to stay out of that part of this case.”
“OK.”
“I mean it, Mike.”
“We’ll find her.”
“No, you won’t. My people are gonna do that. You’re gonna stay the hell out of it. You can handle the college people for background, but that’s it.”
Branden studied the sheriff’s eyes and saw raw determination there, mixed with anger. He ruffled his brown hair and said, “All right, Bruce.”
“Nothing whatsoever to do with Martha Lehman,” Bruce said with emphasis.
“All right,” Branden said, allowing some exasperation to sound in his voice.
“And you’ll let me know what you find out about the college people who were at dinner last night.”
“Right,” Branden said, sounding distracted.
“Maybe you’d better just stay out of the case altogether.”
“No, look. I can still be of some help.”
“What do you propose to do?” Robertson asked.
“I need to call Caroline,” Branden said, and turned into the empty squad room.
Alone in the hall, Robertson allowed his mind to wander over aspects of the case. The blood on Martha Lehman’s clothes was a bombshell. And Martha had driven Sonny’s car back out to the Favor residence early that morning, when Juliet Favor had evidently been killed. Other aspects of the case seemed less important, but Robertson knew not to disengage from them now. It was a tangled ball of string, when taken whole. The problem was, there were a hundred loose ends in this ball of string. None as prominent as bloody clothes, but that would have to wait for Missy Taggert’s analysis before it meant anything solid in this case. But, in addition to the Martha Lehman string, there was the Sonny/Sally string, tied to a motive of inheritance? Or maybe just kids hating their mother. The dinner party string, tied to a couple dozen motives, all having to do with the financial reorganizations Juliet Favor had been poised to institute? Branden, who knew the players better than anyone, was the key to unraveling that tangled mess. There was also the physical evidence. That might prove to be the most promising. Dan Wilsher’s search of the house and grounds. Bobby Newell’s green pitcher and the other items at the scene. Which connected, Robertson thought, to Missy Taggert—crime scene analysis and the actual, official cause of death.
Robertson walked back into his large, paneled office and dialed the morgue in the basement of Joel Pomerene Memorial Hospital. After two rings, he heard Melissa Taggert answer, “Taggert.”
“Hi, Missy. Do you have any bloody clothes to test?”
“Don’t know anything about that.”
“One of Mike’s students turned up at Evelyn Carson’s office this morning with blood on her clothes.”
“Nothing like that here, Bruce.”
“Have you heard from Dan Wilsher?”
“No. Should I have?”
“According to Mike Branden, he’ll be bringing in clothes with blood samples to test.”
“Don’t have them yet.”
“Then I’ll have Ellie get him on the radio.”
“OK, but whose clothes are they?”
“Belong to Sonny Favor’s girlfriend.”
“Good grief, Bruce.”
“I know. Mike screwed up.”
“You’ll have to explain that one to me.”
Robertson gave her a brief rundown and said, “She’s been in no shape to talk, anyways, but now she’s also missing.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Caroline Branden and Evelyn Carson were taking care of her. First they couldn’t get her to talk and now she’s skipped out, and they don’t know where she is.”
“Evelyn Carson will do what’s best for her patient, Bruce.”
“I know that. But Mike could have brought her in sooner.”
“If she needed to be in the care of a psychiatrist, then Mike probably couldn’t have done that. Carson would be calling the shots, not him.”
“Mike doesn’t believe this girl could have killed Juliet Favor.”
“Why?”
“She’s Mennonite.”
“Then I’d have to agree with Mike.”
“I backed him off the case a bit.”
“I don’t have to tell you how much you can trust Mike Branden.”
“I just don’t like the idea of him staying involved with the Martha Lehman aspects of the case.”
“OK. Are you still coming for lunch?”
“I thought we could go home and grab something there.”
“It’s a working lunch, Bruce. I told you it’d be that way this morning. There’s too much that doesn’t make sense about Juliet Favor. You can bring something from home.”
Robertson grimaced. “I can’t eat lunch if you’re gonna be cutting something, Missy.”
“All the cutting is done, Bruce. Now, it’s just samples, instruments, and analysis.”
“If you promise,” the sheriff said. “Are you going to be able to finish by tonight?”
“What time’s our flight tomorrow?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“I’ll get enough done for now. Have you told anyone we’re leaving?”
“I told Ellie,” Robertson said. “I’ll tell Bobby and Dan later this afternoon.”
“Are you sure we have to go?”
“Like I said, Babe, I’ve got plans.”
HALF an hour later, Sheriff Robertson lumbered into the basement labs at the hospital with tuna fish sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Coroner Taggert was seated at her desk in the little office off the larger lab, draped in a white lab coat. When she saw the chaotic sheriff, she instinctively closed several manila folders that she had open on her desk, and slipped them safely into a drawer.
Robertson picked up a stack of graphs, 8.5 x 11 sheets stapled together, and started turning the pages.
“No you don’t, Big Guy,” Missy said, and took the pages back. By the time she had those safely tucked into a drawer, Robertson had taken two or three microscope slides off her desk, and was holding one up to the ceiling light. She reached up, lifted it out of his fingers and held out her hands for the others. “Hand them over, Sheriff,” she ordered.
Robertson smiled and shrugged. “Just trying to help,” he said.
“I need your help in here like I need a hole in the head.”
“People say you’ve already got a few holes in your head, engaged to me.”
“Oh? Are we engaged now? Who told me?”
“I thought we might give that a try.”
“Give it a try? Sounds sooo romantic.”
“Ah, Missy. You know what I mean.”
“If you’re going to propose to me, Bruce Robertson, it had better be the most seriously romantic thing you’ve ever done in your entire life.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“It is. Now, where’s my lunch?”
Robertson eyed the beautiful coroner for a long twenty seconds and considered the weight of what he had just heard. Done properly, it seemed, Missy Taggert had just given him better than half a chance of proposing successfully. “The most seriously romantic thing,” he repeated in his mind. He froze with a hundred amazing thoughts, and he seemed to lose his place in the world for a moment. He had held the idea out to her as a single impulsive rose, and she had transformed it to a dozen arbors in full summer bloom. Nuances were sometimes lost on Sheriff Bruce Robertson, but this one he got. He knew in that brief exchange that their relationship had transcended itself. They were to be engaged. He was to do it right. He gazed into her eyes and made a silent covenant with his heart.
For her part, Missy noted the reverence that had passed over his eyes, and she said, “Tuna fish, Bruce?” When his eyes were focused again, she was lifting the sandwiches out of their brown paper bag.
“Best I could do,” he said.
“It’ll be fine.”
Robertson sat down beside her desk and ate quietly, watching
her eyes. She ate quietly, too. When they were finished, she stood up and walked into the lab, where Mrs. Favor lay under a white cover, head tilted to the left, the gash at the back of her skull lighted from above. Robertson came alongside, and Missy said, “She took a tremendous blow to the back of her head, here. A really vicious blow.”
Robertson leaned over to study the wound.
“Bone fragments from the skull penetrated the brain, but that didn’t kill her,” Missy said.
“There should have been a lot of blood, but we can’t find any out at the house,” Robertson said.
“There wouldn’t have been much,” Missy said. “Everything says she was already dead when she got clobbered.”
“Are you sure?”
“County pays me to be.”
“Then how did she die?”
“I don’t know, yet. The tox screens are negative, at least at this preliminary stage.”
“We were going to have you test a green pitcher and the contents of several sink traps.”
“I already did that. Those were the papers you rifled on my desk.” She retrieved them. “These are GC/MS plots for all the water samples. There is nothing out of the ordinary in them.”
“I thought that was going to be a good angle.”
“All I found was low levels of pesticide residue and the things you normally expect in well water. You might want to tell the family to drill a better well. This one is marginal.”
“No poisons? Sedatives?”
“Just water, Bruce, plus the trace contaminants everybody has in their wells. I’m afraid pure water samples are hard to come by, these days.”
“I think she hit her head on the foyer floor. You say it cracked her skull?”
“Something did.”
“Then how’d she get back upstairs?”
“She didn’t move herself anywhere, after this injury, Bruce. Aside from the fact that she was already dead, it would have been instantly fatal.”
“Somebody moved her, then.”
“Trouble with that is, she didn’t lose much blood at all, wherever she was killed. Her blood volumes are right where they should be. Remember, the head wound didn’t kill her.”
“We thought that maybe she was drugged before she died.”
Taggert stepped to the bench along the back wall and held up a small bottle with a ground-glass stopper. “I thought of that, too. This is DMSO.” She pointed out the label on the bottle.
“And that is?”
“It’s a solvent, for one thing, but it’s also known for its ability to penetrate skin. From what I understand, she used this for migraine headaches.”
“How’s that fit with poisoning?”
“You could put a sedative in the DMSO, and it would go into the skin right along with the solvent.”
“You found no poison in it?”
“Just DMSO and water. It’s unusual to mix it with water, but that’s all it is—water.”
There was a knock, and they turned to see Captain Dan Wilsher rapping his knuckles on the metal frame of the door to the lab. He carried in a brown plastic garbage bag and set it on the floor next to the coroner’s autopsy table. As he took off coat and gloves, he said, “We haven’t found any bloody rags or clothes at the Favor residence, Bruce, inside or out.” To Missy, he greeted, “Coroner.”
“Captain,” Missy said and nodded at the garbage bag.
“Right,” Wilsher said. “You’ll want some gloves and tongs or something.”
Missy snapped into a pair of examination gloves and took a large pair of forceps out of a drawer. She set the garbage bag on its side, on the table at Favor’s feet, and teased the opening wide with the forceps. Reaching inside, she clamped down on fabric and drew out a long, green skirt, heavily wrinkled. Next came out a pair of black panty hose and a white lace prayer cap with long string ties. There was also a pink blouse. From the bottom of the bag, Melissa pulled out a white apron crusted in the middle with a moderate amount of dried blood.
“This all came out of the trunk of Sonny Favor’s Lexus,” Wilsher said.
28
Saturday, November 2 12:30 P.M.
WHILE Missy sorted through the clothes a second time, Robertson returned to her desk and dialed the jail. “Ellie,” he said. “Is Mike Branden still there? OK. Tell him to stay put. What? You’re kidding. Who did that? No. No. Right, that’s a parking violation, so there’s a fine. Plus the towing fee. Doesn’t matter. Once Ed Lorentz hooks onto your bumper, that’s a towing fee whether he moves it five miles or five feet.”
When the sheriff entered the jail by the back door, there was pandemonium at the far end of the hall, where Ellie Troyer-Niell stood defensively behind her counter, shaking her head emphatically as Henry DiSalvo held out a check. When the sheriff reached her, Ellie was saying, “You have to pay those fines at the courthouse.”
Robertson said to DiSalvo, “What’s going on, Henry?”
DiSalvo said, “Ed Lorentz won’t release the Favor limousine until we’ve paid our fines, and the courthouse isn’t open for business on Saturdays.”
Daniel Bliss, behind DiSalvo, stepped forward and began, “Now, see here, Sheriff.”
Robertson cut him off. “Just hold on there, Bliss.” To Ellie he said, “What’s the total?”
Ed Lorentz piped up from near the front door. “My fee is $150, and that’s final!”
“Really,” Bliss turned and said. “I doubt your whole truck is worth that much.”
Lorentz said, “Oh, yeah?” and took a step forward. Robertson came out from behind the counter.
“Oh, please!” Bliss said to the approaching Lorentz, and raised his hands in disgust.
Bliss stood next to DiSalvo. Sonny Favor stood back from the counter, holding himself apart from the fracas. Sally and Jenny held hands near the Pepsi machine, and a new man in a suit stood next to them. Branden was leaning on an elbow at Ellie’s counter, Ricky Niell to his left. Robertson took a position between Ed Lorentz and Daniel Bliss. Instantly, everyone was shouting, and just as instantly, Ellie put two fingers between her teeth and gave out an ear-shattering whistle that brought the whole crowd to silence. Forcefully, she said, “I’m not a cashier, so you all clear on out of my lobby!”
Robertson’s grin went ear-to-ear. DiSalvo quietly slipped his check into the vest pocket of his three-piece suit. Daniel Bliss threw his hands in the air, to the great entertainment of Ed Lorentz.
“My office, everyone, now,” Robertson ordered. Once they were all packed into his office, Robertson said, “Ed, will you take their check?”
“Cash only!” Lorentz intoned.
“Oh, great!” Bliss said and took out his wallet. He counted out bills, held them out stiffly to Lorentz, and turned his back once Lorentz had taken the payment.
The man in the suit stepped forward and laid his card on the sheriff’s desk. “I’m John Lumbaird, Miss Radcliffe’s lawyer.”
Robertson ignored the man.
DiSalvo said, “We’ll be leaving now,” and led out the door. Sonny followed first, and then the rest, leaving Professor Branden beside the credenza, where he poured a cup of coffee and smiled to the point of outright laughter.
“Oh, you think this is funny?” Robertson barked and sat down behind his desk.
Branden shrugged and stirred creamer into his coffee. A silence ensued, during which Branden sprawled in his usual place, a low leather chair in front of Robertson’s desk. The sheriff studied the card left by Jenny Radcliffe’s lawyer. To Branden, he said, “Anything about Martha yet?”
Branden frowned, shook his head, stood up, and moved to the windows facing west onto Clay Street. Heavy snow fell in large, soft flakes as traffic splashed through the slush on the pavement. Branden thought about the fresh tracks in the snow that Caroline had described when he had called her from the empty squad room. So, Martha had called Sonny. They knew that from the *69 call-back. But, had she mentioned her pregnancy? That did fit Sonny’s reaction. “You’ll have to tak
e care of that on your own,” he had said. No wonder she ran away. But, to where? Or to whom? Could Sonny Favor cut and run from a relationship, just like that? Probably. Branden knew the boy as well as anyone did, short of his doctors and family. It was the bloody apron, though, that seemed to register most with Robertson. And why not? Nothing else struck bone like that. Not in this case. Two dozen suspects, an equal number of motives, and Martha Lehman coming to her senses, and doing what? Running.
Ricky Niell came into the room and sat down in front of Robertson’s desk.
“I really don’t know where she is, Bruce,” Branden said, turning from the snowfall outside. “If I did, I’d bring her in myself.”
“Not if you thought she killed Favor.”
“You don’t think she did that, any more than I do, Bruce. At most, she’ll serve as a material witness. Testify as to what she saw.”
“I want her, Mike. Right now.”
“I can’t produce her. I’m getting tired of telling you that.”
Robertson threw up his hands and leaned his swivel-rocker back as far as it would go. He stared up at the ornate squares of the hand-hammered tin ceiling tiles and said, “Missy doesn’t think the blow to the head is what killed Favor. Says she was dead some time before she got hit in the head.”
Branden’s attention soared. “Then all the bloody apron tells us is that she was there after Favor was killed.”
“It doesn’t tell us where your Martha was before or during the murder,” Robertson said. “But, I don’t get it. What’s that crack in the marble floor, anyways?”
“Now you’re coming around to my way of thinking,” Branden said.
“Then we really don’t know how she was killed,” Niell said.
“We’re nowhere in this case, Bruce,” Branden said.
“How could Mrs. Favor die first, and then haul herself upstairs?” Niell asked.
“She couldn’t,” Robertson said, frustrated. He reached instinctively for a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, and cursed aloud.