by Sharon Dunn
Detective Mallory stared at the piece of salami and celery sticks in her Ziploc baggies. Living with a growling stomach appealed to her more than downing this snack. It was nearly two in the morning. She collapsed onto a couch in the lobby. A college-age blonde in a black dress slept on the couch opposite her. The young woman used her pink cardigan as a blanket.
Jacobson was supposed to meet her here with an update. Something must have delayed her. Mallory closed her eyes. Her muscles relaxed. Her thoughts drifted. Cartons of chocolate chip mint ice cream floated around her. Bowls of it with chocolate sauce were set in front of her.
She sensed that someone was staring at her.
Jacobson had slipped noiselessly into the chair kitty-corner from her. Like part of a Vegas magic act, she had just suddenly appeared.
“What have you got for me?”
“Sorry for taking so long to get here. We had some setbacks”—Jacobson cleared her throat—“but we have an ID on the body.”
“The suit belonged to a Xabier Knight, right?”
The blonde on the opposite couch stirred, rolling over on her side but not waking.
“Correct. It was his costume, but it wasn’t Xabier who was in the suit. The victim is a Dustin Clydell; he owns the Wind-Up. Dustin’s first wife, Gloria, identified the body. We have been unable to locate Xabier Knight.”
“Let me do the math. Xabier, who is missing, has a different last name than his parents, one of whom is dead.”
Jacobson nodded.
The blonde stirred again, pulling her sweater toward her chin.
“Does the ex-Mrs. Clydell know where he is?”
Jacobson shook her head. “She’s pretty shook up. Plus, she’s weak from a chronic illness. I didn’t want to push her.”
For lack of something better to do, Mallory pulled a celery stick out of her baggie. “You said something about setbacks?”
“Two things. I sent a uniformed officer up to tape off Dustin’s apartment, and it had been ransacked. Two, we took the bear suit off the victim. Forensics bagged it. Somewhere in transport, someone lifted it.”
Mallory bit into her celery stick. “Have a uniformed officer watch the apartment. I’ll get the crime-scene people up there when they’re done outside.” She rubbed her temples. What sort of comment do you make about a stolen bear suit? “Is there anything else?”
“I’ve started to put together a list of people we need to question. Gloria Clydell and Xabier when we find him. Dustin had another ex-wife, Elise Rosemond, a.k.a. Tiffany Rose, chorus-line dancer.”
Mallory rose to her feet. “Good, we got an ID and a place to start. Lets all go home and get a couple hours’ sleep.”
Jacobson checked her notebook. “You might want to question Earl and Ginger Salinski again. We have a witness who says Ginger threatened Dustin, something about a dispute over a spot on the conference floor.”
Cynthia Mallory cupped Jacobson’s shoulder. “Good work. Let’s get a little sleep.” She stumbled toward the entrance but turned. “I totally forgot to ask. What does the prelim exam suggest the cause of death is?”
Color rose up in Jacobson’s cheeks. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t quite know how to put it. Of course, we’ll know for sure after full autopsy.”
“Cause of death?”
“They found … fur in his mouth.”
Mallory connected the forensics dots. “Death by squirrel. You, ah … don’t see that every day.” She had been sucked into an alternate universe. Just keep it as official as possible. “Suffocation?” Did she want to hear this?
Jacobson nodded. “We do have bruising on the neck and some petechial hemorrhaging, so the exact sequence of events has to be worked out.” Jacobson threw her arms up. “Into every life, a little weirdness must fall.”
Mallory stared across the expanse of checkerboard floor. How angry did you have to be to use a squirrel as a weapon?
Ginger slumped down on a bench beside the lake. She managed one more lackluster cry for Phoebe. Stars twinkled in the night sky, and a soothing breeze came off the water. Heaviness seeped into her muscles. She bent forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Time to give up.
Part of the dock area was still sectioned off with police tape. Traffic noises from the other side of the street increased in volume, and people bustled by on the boardwalk surrounding the lake. She could see the lights of the park and golf course that bordered the lake on the far side of the Little Italy Hotel.
The Calamity strip stirred to life when most people were long past ready for bed. She closed her eyes. I will not think about Phoebe dodging speeding cars. What was God doing? Now even that stupid cat had been taken from her. If they didn’t find a distributor and see a return on their investment, they might not be able to make payments on the second mortgage. They could lose the house.
Footsteps sounded on the wooden pier. “Do you mind if I sit by you?” The voice was female, with a warm quality.
Ginger scooted over to make room. She cleared her head of the thoughts of being homeless and turned her attention to the person beside her. The dim light provided a silhouette of a woman with a hat and gloves on. She wore a leather jacket. The hat brim shadowed her face.
The desert night could be chilly, but the winter getup seemed like overkill or a sign that the woman was a couple slices short of a loaf. “Lots of room on this bench.” Ginger inched toward the edge.
The woman tilted her head toward the night sky. “Did you come out here to pray too?”
Pray? Why was that always the last thing she thought to do? Ginger rested her forehead in her palm. “My cat ran away. I can’t find her.”
The woman’s voice was filled with compassion. “I am so sorry.” She scooted a little closer and patted Ginger’s back. “We get attached to our pets.”
This lady seemed pretty normal. Ginger regretted her initial judgment. “What a night.” She slumped a little on the bench. “I’m sure you’ve heard the news.”
“I heard.” The woman paused. Her breathing was raspy and shallow. “I was afraid it was my son Xabier. It was his costume. I just found out it was my ex-husband. I didn’t think it was possible to feel relief and unbearable pain at the same time.”
Ginger’s troubles suddenly paled beside this poor woman’s. “I am sorry. I didn’t realize you knew the victim. We met Dustin’s ex-wife. You’re not Tiffany. You must be Gloria, the other wife.”
“Dustin has … had made his personal life very confusing. How did you know my name?”
“It’s a long story. You know Dustin’s glass elevator? Your birthday is his code.”
A small laugh that was more of a sigh escaped Gloria’s lips. She shook her head for a moment. “He never forgot my birthday. Always sent a card, even after we were divorced. It’s a blessing to know I was on his mind enough that those were the first numbers he thought of.” Gloria sat up a little straighter and turned slightly toward Ginger. “That was sweet of you to share that with me.”
A family from the veranda of the Little Italy’s restaurant stepped out onto the pier and walked by the two women. The father put his arm around a boy of about eleven while mother and daughter trailed behind. Gloria folded her hands in her lap, then unfolded them and tucked them under her skirt. She bent her head.
The intensity of Gloria’s pain was almost tangible in the cool night air. Ginger leaned into Gloria’s shoulder. What could she say? A year ago, she had lost her best friend at the hands of a killer. She knew from experience that the last thing she needed to do was offer clichés. “It is peaceful here at night, isn’t it? I see why you like it.”
Gloria nodded and then tugged at the puckers in her skirt. “My son Xabier has disappeared. No one has seen him since the body was discovered. He hasn’t spent much time with Dustin in the last ten years. He wanted to reconnect with his father. I’m afraid that the reality of being with his dad didn’t match the fantasy. I tried to warn him.” She shuddered. “The last time I talked to Xabier,
he was angry.”
Ginger focused on the water lapping against the shore, choosing her words carefully. “So many unknowns in your life right now. Sometimes it’s easier to deal with bad news than an unknown.”
“Yes, true. Waiting to hear if I had a chronic illness was way worse than knowing what I had.”
Maybe the winter clothes had something to do with her illness.
“I don’t think my son is capable of murder.” Gloria hugged herself and leaned forward. “Then again, Dustin has this … had this ability to drive people to do things they never thought they would do.”
“I noticed that about Tiffany. He makes her angry and yet she’s working for him.”
“My ex-husband is … was poison of the sweetest kind. My guess is that he filled Tiffany’s head full of promises and strung her along, worked his charm on her. I warned Xabier that that would happen, but he wanted a father so badly.”
“I think I saw some of that sweet poison.”
“I don’t know if this makes any sense, but Dustin was like a drug. You hate yourself for staying; you leave in a rage. But then you start to crave his sweet talk, so you go back. It took me years and lots of prayer to get him out of my system, to not fall under his spell. It made me nuts that he was one person out in public, Mr. Make Nice, and an entirely different person in private. He could be … pretty ugly to Xabier and me when we didn’t live up to his fantasy of what a good Christian family should be. The hardest part is that he wasn’t so self-absorbed when we were first married. I kept waiting for the old Dustin to come back.”
“I think I understand.” Ginger shifted on the bench and hugged her travel purse to her chest. “Poor Tiffany is probably in the midst of withdrawal.”
“Thank you for listening to me rant.” Gloria touched Ginger’s arm. “What’s your cat’s name?”
Considering what Gloria was going through, she was touched that she showed interest in something as silly as a cat. “Phoebe.”
“That’s a pretty name for a cat.”
“Thank you. I met your son when we had that alarm problem. He’s a real nice boy. I think he likes my young friend Kindra.” It seemed a bit odd that Xabier hadn’t acknowledged that Dustin was his father. And why was Xabier’s last name different from his parents? She wanted to know, but this was not the time to ask.
“I think he said something about a Kindra.” A tremble permeated her words. “I did the best I could with Xabier.”
Ginger put her hand over Gloria’s gloved fingers. “Parenting is never easy. I have four kids myself. And you did it alone.”
In the distance, a boat motor sputtered. A group of people carrying champagne bottles burst out of the back doors of the Wind-Up laughing and chattering. Their revelry faded as they made their way to the street.
“Okay, boys and girls, lets play a game called Calamity PD Profiler.” After four hours of sleep and a cheese and onion omelet, Cynthia Mallory’s confidence had returned. Alex Simpson had identified the dead squirrel as his Binky a few hours ago. Forensics was going over the last place Dustin was seen alive, the backstage areas of the inventors convention floor. Unfortunately, they had to close down the convention. The investigation was moving along.
She paced Dustin’s ransacked apartment and addressed her audience of two, Jacobson and a uniformed officer. “Crime-scene people combed through this place early this morning. There is no reason to believe the murder, and we are calling it murder at this point, took place here.” Mallory pulled a piece of gum from her back pocket. Gum was almost like food; at least you got to chew. “Dustin Clydell’s apartment is still useful to us for two reasons. Jacobson, what are those two reasons?”
Jacobson stepped forward, embracing the role of eager student. She addressed the officer. “One, the apartment tells us what kind of a person the victim was. Two, the apartment was gone through around the time of the murder, so the murder and the B and E may be connected.”
Mallory turned toward the officer, who leaned against the door. Her experience was that the more the uniformed officers felt like they were part of the crime-solving process, the more likely they were to bother pursuing leads they ran into on patrol. “So why would someone do this to the victims place after he is dead?”
The officer planted his feet shoulder-width apart, straightening his posture, a pose suggesting a military background. “Leftover rage or looking for something.”
“Excellent.” Mallory took note of the officers nod and smile. “Lets face it. Stuffing a squirrel down someone’s throat is a crime of rage.”
Mallory continued to pace, hands linked behind her back, chewing her gum in rhythm to her steps. Desk drawers had been opened and dumped and books pulled off shelves. Towels, silverware, crackers, and boxes of chocolate had been dumped on the counter. Her guess was that it wasn’t about rage; the destruction appeared to be a search for something specific and small. Enough books were scattered across the floor to suggest that the ransacker was looking for something flat, a document, maybe.
“No doughnut this morning, Jacobson?” The comment was filler while she paced and tried to think of the next line of questioning.
“I ate it before you came, and I had the $2.99 breakfast buffet. They have really good—”
Mallory held up her hand and chewed her gum with furious intensity. “Don’t go there.”
“What if I only mention protein products?” Jacobson raised her eyebrows.
A moment of shared humor passed between the two detectives. Mallory rolled her eyes. She was taking this diet thing too seriously. It was making her hostile in weird ways. What kind of person forbids other people to mention certain kinds of food? Mallory circled the room. “Let’s go back to our first reason. These are less-than-perfect circumstances, but pretend like everything is in its place. What does this apartment tell us?” Mallory swept her arm across the room. “What kind of a guy designs a hotel around a classic-toys theme?” The officer looked like he was barely out of his twenties. “There are no wrong answers here. Brainstorm with me.”
He shifted his weight, ran his hands through his hair. “A guy who is still a kid inside.” His words were measured out with careful pauses.
“Good one,” Mallory said.
The compliment must have given the officer some confidence because he blurted his next comment. “Maybe he didn’t have much of a childhood.”
“Yes, exactly.” Mallory wandered over to a window that looked out on the convention floor. She checked her watch. It had been almost eight hours since the body was discovered. “Jacobson, what can you tell me about the guy based on the type of books he read?”
Jacobson scanned the bookshelf and then the volumes scattered across the floor. “Big on self-improvement. Turns everything into math.”
Mallory cocked her head. “What?”
“Seven secrets of this, five ways to get rich quick. Improve your life in three minutes a day. Six unhealthy habits of mediocre people.”
The officer grinned. Jacobson was in good form this morning.
“Got a lot of books about Ted Turner, Donald Trump, Sam Walton, and Bugsy Siegel, the guy who had a vision for Vegas. Empire builders.” Jacobson rose to her feet and continued to inventory the shelves. “No fiction. No poetry. No books about art and architecture. The guy wanted to improve every part of his life but one.”
Mallory shook her head.
Jacobson stood back. “Lots of how to make your business better, but nothing on how to make your relationships work.” The younger detective placed her hands on her slender hips. “My shelves at home are filled with how to make your marriage better and get along with your kids and neighbors books.”
The revelation that Jacobson read books on relationship improvement surprised Mallory. Jacobson’s life seemed so perfect, two kids and a supportive husband. Mallory had two failed marriages under her belt and a daughter who called on Mother’s Day and made a guest appearance at Christmas.
Mallory stalked toward the desk. �
�Walk around, people; tell me if the room reveals anything else about this guy.”
“There’s nothing showy about the place.” The officer stopped beside a stack of magazines. “The guy is on every regional magazine he can get his face on. Total publicity hound. You would expect his place to be more ostentatious.”
Ostentatious? The officer must have read his word-of-the-day calendar this morning. He disappeared into the bedroom.
Mallory turned a half circle. “We surround ourselves with what feels comfortable. Plain and simple felt comfortable to Dustin in private.”
“Look what I found.” The policeman emerged holding a Bible. “It was in his nightstand drawer.”
Jacobson stepped toward him. “Does it look like he read it every night?”
“The pages are crisp. I thought it was interesting because there’s a photo of a lady and a kid.” He paused on the inside cover. “There’s a dedication dated four years ago.” He angled the Bible to read. “‘Dear Dustin, hope this helps you find your way home. Love, Gloria.’” The officer handed the Bible to Mallory.
The photograph had to be of Gloria and Xabier. It was old. She’d been told that Xabier Knight was twenty-three. The boy in this picture was maybe ten. “My guess. If he wasn’t reading it, he kept it close because it was a gift from his first wife.” She flipped through it and saw yellow. A single highlighted verse in 1 Timothy 6. “‘Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.’”
Mallory set the Bible on the desk where disheveled stacks of paper collected. She picked up the Day-Timer. Interestingly, Dustin’s last appointment was at ten-thirty at night with someone named Edward Mastive. He had penciled in a Victoria Stone for ten o’clock and the word speech for nine-thirty. Dustin’s body had been found around eleven. She handed the planner to Jacobson. “We need to find out who Edward Mastive is. He may have been the last one to see Dustin alive. Track down this Victoria Stone too.”
Jacobson recorded the names in her notebook.