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Drawing Blood: A Sketch in Crime Mystery © 2016 by Deirdre Verne.
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First e-book edition © 2016
E-book ISBN: 9780738746654
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Cover Illustration by Bill Bruning/Deborah Wolfe Ltd.
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Acknowledgments
Until I wrote this book, I assumed the contents of my recycling bin landed in an enormous heap in a town far, far away. Not so. The wonderful folks at the Daniel P. Thomas Recovery Facility in Yonkers, New York, were nice enough to give me a behind-the-scenes tour of my local recycling center, where I learned all about the travels of a discarded metal can. Their expertise was instrumental in developing the plot.
As always, a big thanks to the Midnight Ink family—my editors Terri Bischoff and Nicole Nugent, and publicist Katie Mickschl. Of course, my books would never have found a home at Midnight Ink without the support of my agent, Victoria Skurnick. And to Bill Bruning, thank you for capturing the essence of my books through your wonderful cover designs.
A special thanks to Marta Tanrikulu, who read my first draft. Marta played a key role in getting this book into shape.
Finally, a special thanks to my family—Chris, Peter, and Mats. What would a family dinner be without a few plot pitches?
For Christoph
one
friday, april 18
The Gremlin grunted. Not exactly a death rattle, but pretty close. I gave the car about two weeks or two miles, whichever came first. At this point, I’d be thrilled if it made it across the grass field to a parking spot at Cold Spring Harbor’s Earth Day celebration, a three-day environmental extravaganza. It would be hard to say goodbye to the thirty-year-old clunker, but Big Bob, the king of the town dump, assured me last week that he had a guy willing to part with a 1982 Chevy Nova for less than $500. I recalled the conversation from my regular run to the dump as I rolled the Gremlin into an empty space.
“Can you get him down to $75?” I’d wheedled.
Bob’s chuckle had started below his ears and reverberated south, settling in his third chin. His Dumpster-diving cronies coined it “the pinball tilt,” because once Bob got to laughing, he was a goner. It appeared my low bid had pushed him over the edge.
I’d ignored Bob’s convulsing and handed over a bag of dismembered doll parts I’d been collecting from the non-recyclable plastics bin for the past year.
“Holy cow.” Bob’s laughter ground to a halt as he withdrew a severed head. “A Dawn doll? I haven’t seen one of these in years.”
I swung a miniature torso no more than five inches in length in front of Bob’s face. His eyes, mere slits at his current peak weight of three hundred pounds, lit up like torches.
“Two-fifty for the car. It’s my final offer,” I’d said as I handed over the matching body.
Bob reassembled the doll and pushed it deep into his pant pocket for safe keeping. “This baby is not going anywhere,” he said as he patted his hip.
“Talk to your car guy. For now, Dawn’s on loan. If you can’t cut me a deal, I’m selling her on eBay.”
Big Bob will come through, I thought. My life literally depends on it, I thought, as I jammed a rock behind the Gremlin’s rear wheel in place of the broken emergency brake. The doll parts were a great find for an avid collector like Bob. If I was lucky, and Bob worked his magic, I’d be tooling around in a different automotive relic within days. I manually released the hatchback and loaded trays of jelly jars onto a Radio Flyer red wagon.
“Don’t move,” a shrill voice called from across the parking lot. An overly-sunbaked woman with impossibly blond hair signaled me from an SUV window. “Are those Kat’s Kans jellies? I have to have a jar.” The woman pulled up behind the Gremlin in a car built like a tank. She climbed out and produced a purse that exceeded the airport weight limit for carry-ons.
“Ten dollars a jar.” I smiled, doubling the price. Katrina, my housemate, best friend, and business partner, would be pleased. It was Friday, the first day of the Earth Day festival, and at this rate, we might sell out of our inventory before Sunday. “Fifteen percent off if you buy a case,” I added.
“A case? That’s a lot of jelly.”
“I dig that sticker on the window.” I pointed to the cartoonish cutout of a family with three kids affixed to her rear window. “Homemade jellies make great teacher gifts.”
“Oh, you are so right,” the woman agreed eagerly as she popped her trunk. “Don’t you just love Earth Day?”
“I just do,” I responded. I deposited a tray of jelly in the rear of the SUV, a hunk of metal and plastic named after a group of Native Americans that hadn’t roamed North America in over three centuries. “You ever take this off road?”
“Off road? Why would I do that?” the woman replied as she climbed back into the driver’s seat.
I simply smiled and waved her off, then stuck the cash in my jeans pocket and headed over to the park entrance, wondering if SUV really stood for Suburban Useless Vehicle. I put the thought aside and tried to remember how much I really did love Earth Day. The venue for the three-day weekend festival, the Cold Spring Harbor State Park, was a forty-acre spread tumbling precariously down to the shores of Long Island Sound. I took in the field of colored tents sprinkled across the open green. Swarms of visitors had dug deep in their closets to recover their one tie-dyed shirt reserved for the holiday when we could all be hippies.
“Thar she blows,” I said, spotting my own home across the bay. Harbor House, a rambling nineteenth-century building, had been in my family for generations, and I had spent the last ten years renovating the property. Today it was a self-sustaining organic farm managed by me and my housemates—Katrina, her boyfriend Jonathan, and Charlie.
My great-great-great grandfather was Cold Spring Harbor’s first harbor master, and I had inherited the home as part of my trust fund. For a century our Prentice family lineage was as pure
as the waters the early settlers fished. Now, of course, the sound was a polluted waterway with glowing sea animals weaned on toxic sludge. And, sadly, the Prentice family name too was no better than mud, thanks to my father. Close to my house was another sad sight: the world-renowned Sound View Laboratories. My brother, Dr. Theodore Prentice, was murdered there just twelve months ago. My father, had he the ability to scale down his own ego, could have prevented it.
I shook off the memory of Teddy’s death with a shimmy of my shoulders and a shake of my butt.
“Hey, hot stuff!”
“Charlie,” I said, steering the wagon his way, “take these to the booth. Katrina is probably running low.”
“That’s it? I call you hot and you give me a job to do?”
I leaned in and pecked Charlie. “Sorry, I left my sketchbook in the car.”
Charlie knew better than to step between me and my sketchbook. Some people are addicted to their cell phones, but my vice was a pad with sheets of empty paper. Portraits, my specialty, supplemented my subsistence living, and thankfully there was still the occasional wealthy patron who insisted on a mantel show piece. Or the occasional police matter that hinged on an accurate likeness. A year ago, I’d never have guessed my talent would be the deciding factor in a criminal investigation. I was just as surprised as the police when my sketches had provided crucial evidence in my brother’s murder case.
“Go on,” Charlie said as he led the wagon toward the entrance.
two
On my return from the car, I made my way to our booth, taking careful note of competing vendors. There were a good number of people selling canned goods, but when I came across our stand, I felt that Kat’s Kans offered something special. It helped that Katrina looked like she had swallowed a watermelon sideways. Her condition drew the sympathy traffic.
“Don’t hide your stomach. You’re doing the Martha Stewart thing,” I said as I lined up the jelly jars on our authentic farm table. Each jar was unique, culled from various recycling bins in the neighborhood. The finished effect was charming in its unevenness. The bright red Kat’s Kans label, designed by yours truly, pulled it all together.
“What’s the Martha Stewart thing?” Katrina asked.
“You’ve got the jars strategically blocking your stomach. Martha Stewart never takes a photo without a picture frame or an industrial mixer covering her midsection. Unlike Martha’s midsection, your belly is a crowd-pleaser. Show it off.”
“I’m a house,” Kat moaned as she popped open a jar and stuck in a spoon. “I’m not going to last another two weeks.”
“If only it were your decision,” I replied. “What’s up with Jonathan? Is he going to make it back in time or am I filling in at the old birthin’ table?”
“He’s trying to move his rounds.” Katrina offered me a sinfully delicious dollop of raspberry jam. Damn, we had gotten good at this jelly-making venture.
“Doula, doula, doula, do you love me?” I sang.
“Doula, doula, doula, do you care?” Katrina sang back.
I wiped my mouth and reached for my baby, my sketchbook. “Jonathan is two years away from finishing medical school. I’d put my money on him as your doula or labor coach or whatever the baby brigade is calling it now.”
“As long as they’re not calling it Charlie,” Charlie said, juggling a hacky sack with his feet. “Sign me up for cigars.”
I blew on the end of my pencil and showed my friends my latest sketch of an adorable young boy who had just dashed away after tasting our jellies.
Katrina scrutinized the boy’s picture. “Not him.”
“Nope,” Charlie added.
I tore the sheet from the pad, signed it An uncanny likeness, compliments of Kat’s Kans, and handed it to the boy’s mother, who promptly bought three jars of our peach jam.
I scanned the crowd. My new drawing obsession was any child under the age of seventeen. I had trained myself to eliminate Asians, Hispanics, and biracial children. Nothing personal, just not my kid. In a crowd the size of Earth Day’s—maybe a few thousand at any one point in time—I could knock off fifty images in a few hours. Since Teddy’s death, only one child had seriously caught my attention. A boy of about five at the public library. He had the telltale wispy white hair and piercing blue eyes like my own. Unfortunately, his white-haired, blue-eyed mother was not particularly pleased with my sudden interest in her son.
I have a way with people. Sometimes it’s just not the right way.
My eyes narrowed in on a subject. I drew quickly. This one came easily. A mop of dark curly hair, purposeful gait, and movement in the jaw. I shifted in the lawn chair as my target approached. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Detective Frank DeRosa made his way over to the Kat’s Kans booth, a package under his arm.
I closed my book. “I’m finding it hard to believe my ultra-conservative boyfriend found something to purchase at Earth Day.”
Frank peeled back a thin layer of tissue paper. “It’s a present.”
“For me?”
Frank nodded. “I need your help down at the station,” he said as he handed me a brand-new recycled sketchbook.
“Now?” I asked.
“Now would be better than later,” Frank said as he gave Katrina an apologetic look.
Katrina huffed. “Oh, Charlie and I will be fine. Just go.”
three
“Let me get this straight,” I said, pulling up a chair in Frank’s office at the Cold Spring Harbor stationhouse. “You’ve got two warehouses full of garbage.”
“Technically, its tech equipment,” he replied, pleased with his alliteration. “Used computers, phones, fax machines. Anything with a cord.” Frank opened a picture on his iPad to reveal a football field–sized warehouse crammed floor to ceiling with equipment. “This photo was taken at one of the storage units at the industrial park near the railroad tracks.”
The office door swung open and Officers Cheski and Lamendola, both of whom were instrumental in solving my brother’s murder, joined us.
“How about that picture, CeCe?” Cheski said, taking a seat. “It was so dense in the warehouse, we needed our cellphones to keep track of each other,” he added, pointing eagerly at his rookie partner, Lamendola. I was happy to see that Cheski, who was near retirement, had not lost his vigor for the job.
“Looks like a great place for a paintball party,” I commented.
“See? You always got me,” Cheski said as he patted my back. “I’m so glad to see you,” he added, and then turned to Frank. “Here are the files you wanted.”
He opened a folder. “The warehouses are in separate industrial parks, owned by different companies.”
“Did the owners call the police?” I asked.
“No,” Cheski said. He slid another manila folder, marked EPA Hazardous Contaminant Report in red block letters, across the table. “There’s a local environmental group called GroundSweep.”
“Sure,” I confirmed. “I know them. It’s a national organization with local chapters. Group members plan weekly hikes in high-risk areas to measure air and ground quality. I’m guessing they step up their efforts as Earth Day approaches.”
“Yeah, well apparently, one of the hiker’s meters went berserk on their tour of these two industrial parks.” Cheski tapped his phone and retrieved an app. “Can you believe this? There’s an app for metal meter readings. Anyone cruising their neighborhood can get a quick count just like the GroundSweep volunteers.”
The arrow on Cheski’s phone wobbled unevenly to the right. His face flinched. I led his hand away from the metal topped desk, and the arrow repositioned itself to zero.
“I think we’ll live,” I said, and turned to Frank. “I’m assuming GroundSweep uses something more reliable than a phone app meter?”
“They do,” Frank replied. “Their local leader reported their finding
s to the Environmental Conservation Board where it made its way up to the EPA.” He narrowed his eyes, picking key facts from the report. “Their chapter leader, a woman named Janice Bates, called it in and that’s when it got ugly. The EPA slapped the storage unit owners with fines upwards of fifty thousand, and Ms. Bates now claims she is being harassed by the owners for filing the complaint.”
“Those EPA guys,” Lamendola added, “it’s like they fine by the pound.”
“I’m confused,” I said. “How are the Cold Spring Harbor police involved?”
“The warehouses are within town lines,” Frank explained. “As it turns out, the storage unit owners may have been scammed. The lessee, a company called United Eco-Systems, rented space at both warehouses, paid five years in advance, and disappeared, leaving tons of electronic waste. And, Ms. Bates, also a resident of Cold Spring Harbor, is requesting police protection.” He rolled his eyes. “The last part is probably a public relations play on the part of GroundSweep.”
I flipped through the EPA report. It read like the first broadcasts from Chernobyl. I had visions of office workers fleeing the industrial park tearing at their eyes. I blinked reflexively.
“I’m sufficiently freaked out,” I admitted. The surroundings didn’t help. The last time I’d been in this room I had sketched the woman ultimately responsible for my brother’s death. Talk about a pencil-gnawing situation. I could have gone through a box of number twos faster than a team of beavers that day. The Cold Spring Harbor police station wasn’t a feel-good place for me.
“What do you want from me?” I asked as I held up the new sketchbook. “Drawing garbage is not my forte.”
“But you do have a certain familiarity with garbage,” Cheski said, referring to my Dumpster diving.
“I just need information at his point,” Frank cleared his throat. “Four days ago, I took the liberty of introducing myself to your friend Bob at the town dump. I called him, told him I knew you, and he said he’d be happy to help.”
Drawing Blood Page 1