When she was out the door, Lucas heard one of the men give a slow whistle.
Lucas turned to Tim, who was still staring dumbly after her. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said.
Tim looked for a moment like he might try to explain, but he thought better of it. It was a brief struggle. “Yes, sir.”
“She has a thing for the contractor,” Lucas said. “I doubt her parents have a clue. I don’t even know that Powell suspected it before they had their knock-down drag-out.”
“How do you know? That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“When I interviewed her right after Karin’s death, she was too high on him. Very defensive. But now he’s let her down. Her sister’s dead, and he still doesn’t want her. Life’s a bitch.” He couldn’t let Tim see how relieved he was that he’d been right. It had been a huge risk. “It still doesn’t clear the Powell guy of anything else, in my book. But, son-of-a-bitch, could this day get any worse?”
Chapter 55
After checking on his crews first thing, Gerard headed for the funeral home. The woman he dealt with was organized and responsive to what he wanted. There would be no maudlin hours of visitation or long speeches. Just a short service in the main parlor of the big house that was now the funeral home, then Karin’s body would be taken, unaccompanied, to their off-site cremation operation. He gave her Karin’s parents’ address for the delivery of the ashes. Karin’s memory, and the things she’d touched, would be all around him, every day, for a long time. He didn’t need a Porcelain Elegance Keepsake urn full of dust and teeth to remind him of her.
Dust and teeth. Karin would’ve been horrified at the image.
Leaving the funeral home, he looked across the street to see the day care center—another renovated old house—where the wealthier people in town sent their kids to play with other privileged kids. Karin would have insisted that their child go there while she worked. Maybe he couldn’t have handled looking at the other dads’ faces when he came to pick their son or daughter up, constantly wondering if one of them were its real father. He would never know for certain.
Walking to his car, he looked for the blue sedan that had been dogging his steps for the past few days, but didn’t see it. Had they given up now that he’d actually done something that had landed him in custody?
All of his jobs were a few days behind schedule, but no one would fire him in the end, because of Karin’s—I have to say it. Think it.—death. Instead, he headed to Nick Cunetta’s office a block from the courthouse, stopping to pick up a coffee on the way. The pretty brunette at the coffee house’s counter smiled at him and self-consciously tucked a thick curl of hair behind one ear. Gerard guessed that she’d seen him pull up out front, because she had his usual order ready.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” she said, sliding his cup across the counter. “She was really nice.”
“Yeah,” he said quickly.
When he saw her face fall, he immediately felt bad about being so short with her. She was a good kid working her way through nursing school.
“It’s been kind of rough,” he said. “Thanks.”
When she smiled again, it hit him that he was now single. No longer was he married to one of the town’s most visible women. For years he’d ignored the not-so-subtle advances of the attractive, bored women who were often his clients. Advances that flattered him but also made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t that Karin would’ve complained. She’d had no right to complain. But she had taken all his energy—emotional energy, anyway. And he could see in the eyes of this particular girl that emotional energy was what she was looking for.
When he got to Nick’s office, he found Nick’s secretary closing and locking the front door. A quaint BACK IN 10 MINUTES sign hung on the other side of the glass was swinging to a stop.
“Is Nick in?” Gerard said.
Nick’s secretary was as quaint as her sign, with bifocals dangling from a jeweled chain around her neck and a slight stoop to her shoulders. Gerard vaguely remembered meeting her at one of Nick’s holiday parties.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve been messaging him all morning, and he has court this afternoon. You don’t have an appointment, do you?”
Gerard introduced himself, but there was no responding flicker of recognition in her eyes. “No appointment.”
“I’m going to pop over to the house and make sure he hasn’t overslept. Sometimes he does that.” She shook her head like an indulgent mother. “Silly thing.”
Raised to be his mother’s idea of a gentleman, Gerard told the secretary that he’d be glad to drive her over, or go and knock on Nick’s door himself. When she insisted that she wanted to walk, he asked her if she didn’t mind if he went along. He didn’t tell her that he was anxious to put more pressure on her boss. Nick’s insistence that the Bliss kid wasn’t Karin’s lover—or at least not the lover who had gotten her pregnant—felt false to him, and he wanted more answers.
A few minutes later, standing in the fraught silence of Nick’s meticulously kept house, he wished he’d just gone to check on his jobs as he’d planned.
Chapter 56
“Clusterfuck, like I said.” Lucas stretched a pair of Latex gloves onto his hands.
Nick Cunetta’s garroted body lay sprawled across one of the two couches in his silent living room. The satellite company’s logo drifted across his television screen. In the kitchen, an EMT was treating his secretary for shock. Gerard Powell sat a few feet away from her, silent, looking like he might never be able to speak again. There was a uniform standing nearby in case he did. Or in case he tried to leave.
Lucas could hardly blame him if he did. It looked bad. He knew the temptation killers experienced wanting to be around their victims and their crime scenes, but he still didn’t think the guy had it in him. Gerard Powell was aggressive, as he’d proved by beating up the Bliss kid. But he’d had a damned good reason—even if his response was way out of line. How many times had Lucas had to keep his own temper in check? And Powell couldn’t have been worried that his wife had been sleeping with Cunetta. At least that was out of play. Nick Cunetta hadn’t had a heterosexual bone in his body.
A deputation of state crime scene techs were unloading their gear and hauling it into the house. Neighbors had begun to gather outside, a few of them in tears.
He lifted one of the dead man’s badly injured hands. The smell of bleach was strong around the body, and the soft leather of the couch and much of Nick Cunetta’s bathrobe were splotched, drained of color. Getting any DNA from his hands or from under his nails would be nearly impossible.
The deputy, Tim, came in from the kitchen. “What did our contractor have to say?” Lucas asked.
“Says he just wanted a word with his lawyer. Stopped by the office and found the secretary was on her way over here. The door was locked, but the lady had a key.”
Lucas looked up to see Gerard Powell standing in the doorway from the kitchen. Another county deputy hovered behind him. Why the hell wasn’t he doing his job, keeping Powell and the woman away?
“You’re going to take me in, aren’t you?” Gerard said.
Lucas heard the tremor in his voice. Not so much the tough guy now. Powell had lost his wife, been taken in for assault, practically accused of murder, and had walked in on a dead man who’d been murdered in a thoroughly nasty way. It sucked to be him, and it showed. There were a couple of days’ growth of beard on his face, and the skin beneath his eyes sagged. His eyes were almost more red than hazel. If he’d slept more than two or three hours in the past twenty-four, Lucas would’ve been surprised. But the more worn down he was, the more they’d get out of him. If there was anything to get.
“We’ll need a statement,” Lucas said. “And that’ll be done more easily at the office. We’ll drive over there as soon as we’re finished here, and give you a ride back to your truck later. You two walked over here, right?”
“I think he knew,” Gerard said, looking past Tim to Nick’s
body.
“Knew what?” Lucas said.
It was as though Gerard couldn’t look away from Nick, at the man he’d disliked for so long. The man his wife had trusted with her life and her secrets. If he could only shake him, get him to speak, to give up what he knew.
“I think he knew who killed Karin. Who she was sleeping with. He acted like he didn’t, but I think he did.”
“Mr. Cunetta was an officer of the court. You don’t think he would’ve told us if he knew who killed your wife?”
Gerard looked from Nick to Lucas. “I knew him a hell of a lot better than you people. He had his own agenda, and it mostly had to do with what Nick wanted.”
“Did he make a pass at you or something?” Lucas said. “Maybe he had different ideas about what was wrong between you and your wife?”
Powell didn’t flinch. “You think this was about Nick being gay?” he said quietly. “I don’t give a shit who he spent his nights with, Detective. It’s none of my business. He never tried to get me in the sack, if that’s what you’re asking. We didn’t like each other very much. I’ve got no reason to hide that fact.”
“Yet he helped you out yesterday when you might have ended up in jail,” Lucas said, curious. He wondered if Cunetta had felt as sorry for the guy as he did. Or maybe he had done it because of the dead wife.
“What’s your point?”
“Why don’t you tell us what made you decide that Jefferson Bliss was the one spending time with your wife?”
A cough at the other end of the room brought their attention to the waiting forensics team. It was as though the three men in the room had forgotten the fourth—the dead man.
Lucas and Tim searched the house and discovered that a casement window in one of the three bedrooms had been pried open. It was one of the tougher types of windows to open from the outside, but the double-paned glass had been neatly cut and the window pulled open, so that the killer could pop the indoor screen from its place. Because it was still open, there was no indication that the killer hadn’t left that way as well.
When Tim returned from directing the forensics team to search for evidence outside the forced window, he found Lucas checking out the closet.
It was a strange exercise for Lucas. He’d known plenty of men who had died, but he’d never spent the night with any of them. Together, the neatly hung suits, sportcoats, and pants gave him a more complete picture of the man, but strangely enough it was the careful way that he’d arranged his shoes that affected him. Each pair was in a clear, labeled storage box: Boat Shoes-Tan; Boat Shoes-Chestnut; Wing-Tips-Black; Wing-Tips-High Shine-Black; Loafers-Tassel-Tan; Loafers-Tassel-Gray; Loafers-Drivers-Pebble Brown; Loafers-Penny-Oxblood. There were fifteen or twenty more boxes, but on the box with the penny loafers’ label, another hand had written, in smaller print: Ha! Such a dork!—xo. The tenderness of the comment took him by surprise. Someone had been in the closet and wanted to tease Nick. Had it been Karin Powell? Lucas didn’t think it was her style.
He’d liked Nick well enough. But he’d gotten the vibe that Nick was looking for more. That somebody had cut off any possible future that Nick might have had by strangling the life out of him made Lucas angry. He would have to work to keep his anger from messing with the investigation.
“Whoa. This guy had a boatload of clothes,” Tim said. “There’s stuff in here with the tags still on it.”
“Do you have kids?” Lucas asked.
“Two,” Tim said. “Four and two.”
“If you were a lawyer in your forties, unmarried with kids, you could afford a closet full of suits, too. Hey, you didn’t tell Powell what I found out at the doc’s this morning, did you? About his wife’s miscarriage?”
“No, sir. Why would I do that?”
Lucas shrugged. “I don’t think he needs to know just yet. Now that we’ve got this . . .” He gestured toward the living room where Nick Cunetta’s body was still on the couch. “We want to see where it goes.”
He walked over to the custom-built desk that took up most of one bedroom wall. It had three monitors, all dark, sitting in a comfortable arc in its center. The high-end desk chair sitting in front of them looked as though it probably cost at least a month of Lucas’s state salary. He passed a gloved hand near the computer’s mouse pad, gently nudging it. The computer built into the center monitor hummed, and all three monitors blinked to life.
“Shouldn’t we wait for a warrant?” Tim said.
“Oops,” Lucas said.
“Why would someone need three computer monitors?” Tim asked.
“Gaming? It’s a pretty sweet setup for that.”
“Got it,” Tim said. He came closer. “You don’t think there’s a bunch of porn on there, do you?”
Lucas glanced back at him. “We’ll do what we have to do, yeah? I mean, the guy’s dead. It’s our job. I guess you never worked vice, either.”
Tim blushed.
Lucas smiled and turned back to the computer.
“Sometimes I think if it weren’t for dumb luck, no murder would ever get solved,” he said.
The center monitor was covered with neat rows of application icons on top of a photo of a smiling Nick Cunetta in sunglasses, shirtless on a rocky beach, his arm around a taller and slightly younger blond man whose smile seemed tentative but nonetheless genuine. The left-hand monitor had a photo software program open, with an image of an old barn that Cunetta had been editing. But it was the third monitor that grabbed and held their attention.
It was a split screen. One box held an image of Nick Cunetta’s bedroom—specifically the bed, which was covered with a simple brown spread and had an opulent pile of pillows at its head. The second was of the front step of the house. It was a fish-eye view, and they could even see the front fence and a bit of the forensics van. The third box looked like a scene from a television crime show.
A forensics tech was bagging Nick Cunetta’s burned hands, her face not far from his, just as the murderer’s must have been.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Lucas said, unable to suppress his astonishment. There had been nothing about Nick Cunetta that suggested he might like to record himself—or himself with others. The bedroom camera spoke to Nick’s obvious loneliness. The same thing that had almost sent Lucas to Nick’s doorstep the previous night. He’d even slowed the car as he’d approached the neat little house. If he had stopped by, he might have saved Nick’s life.
Holy shit.
“Wow,” Tim said. “I think we may be the luckiest bastards on the planet.”
Lucas closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Maybe.
Chapter 57
Rainey threw a forearm over her eyes to block out the sun. She swore unintelligibly in her half-sleep then caught herself, remembering that Ariel had come to bed with her. Rolling onto her side to check on her daughter, she saw the other half of the bed was empty. She also saw that it was after noon. No wonder Ariel was already out of bed.
Sleeping so late wasn’t like her at all. The previous day had been insane, with one terrible event after another, and then the haunted, unfamiliar look in Ariel’s eyes. The fear in her voice. But there had been that moment of relief at the end, when Ariel had broken down and allowed herself to be vulnerable to her, and huddled close as she drifted off to sleep, just as she had when she was five or six. It gave Rainey hope that—despite the strange things that had happened to them since Karin’s death—they might have some kind of normal relationship.
She called for Ariel, thinking she might be in the bathroom. No answer. That the bedroom curtains were open confused her. It was her habit to shut them at night just like she’d done back in St. Louis, even though they lived far out in the country. In one of her very few light moments, Ariel had teased her about it.
“Really, Mom? You think there are wild turkeys in the trees, or bears trying to spy on us?”
Rainey had laughed, telling Ariel that she’d heard the local black bears were famous peeping toms. But in the ba
ck of her mind she had been thinking about Mr. Brodsky, who’d killed his wife out in the woods. Sometimes she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She was glad Ariel hadn’t brought it up lately.
The sudden appearance of a dark streak in her sweet Ariel worried her. Was it that she’d grown up too fast since the accident? The way she’d spoken to Gerard, with that vicious, predatory look in her eyes, had been alarming. Even her voice was different: older, more confident. Not just confident, but commanding. This was an Ariel who terrified her. It was wrong that she should be frightened by her own daughter.
Perhaps there really was a sinister presence in the house. One that was stealing Ariel away.
No! I’ve got to stop this.
She squeezed her eyes shut, once again forcing the thought from her mind. She had to focus on Ariel and what was going on here and now. Her friend Bertie was hurt, and a woman had died—was probably murdered—in her house. She knew she hadn’t killed Karin Powell, and neither had Ariel. But there had been someone besides Karin in the house after the party. Someone who had either stayed behind to kill Karin, or had come into the house later.
This house. So much I don’t know about it.
Bliss House had been the biggest impulse purchase of her life. She had only wanted to get away, to get out of St. Louis and go somewhere safe and different and engrossing enough to consume all of her guilty energy.
No. It couldn’t be the house. It was anger possessing Ariel. That was all. Ariel couldn’t let it go. And, obviously, neither could she.
But she could help Ariel let it go, couldn’t she? If she loved her enough, she could make it happen. She just had to try harder.
“Honey?” she called. “Ariel, sweetie?”
Rainey used the bathroom and threw on a new robe that she’d hung on the back of the bathroom door. The rich turquoise color was one that Will had loved to see on her, so she felt special while wearing it. Sunny, like the day outside the window.
Bliss House: A Novel Page 26