Home Before Midnight

by Virginia Kantra

WITNESSES lied.

  Bodies didn’t.

  Not as long as the medical examiner knew his stuff.

  Or in this case, her stuff, Steve thought, watching as Dr. Elizabeth Nguyen bent over the body of Helen Stokes Ellis. The ME was small, dark, and decisive, with black-rimmed glasses above her blue surgical mask and slender, gloved hands. She’d appeared surprised by Steve’s presence in her autopsy room. But when he didn’t badger her with questions or puke on his shoes, she seemed to warm to him.

  Or maybe she just warmed to her work.

  She examined the body clothed and then naked, photographing and cataloging it with reassuring thoroughness: hair color, eye color, weight, scars, moles, dental work, age and general condition. The damp hair streaming over the table’s edge gleamed with expensive highlights. The legs were waxed and tanned, the eyebrows plucked, the manicured hands scrupulously maintained. Delicate scars from cosmetic surgery traced the jaw and hairline.

  Looking at the pale, crepey skin of the body’s naked belly and upper arms, Steve felt a stab of profound pity. A flood of regret. Helen Ellis had been able to cheat age, but not death.

  You could never cheat death. All you could do was make the most of the time you had.

  Teresa had tried to show him that, but he’d learned it too late.

  Nguyen paused and clicked off her mike. “I’ll want an X ray of the skull,” she told her assistant. She glanced at Steve. “You have a witness who claims the victim was drinking?”

  The specter of Bailey’s white, determined face and anxious eyes joined Steve’s personal ghost gallery. Helen usually fixed herself a nightcap at bedtime.

  He nodded.

  “Well, I won’t have the tox screen results for a couple of days,” Nguyen said. “But based on the head laceration, I can tell you now that the victim didn’t slip and fall.”

  The back of Steve’s neck prickled.

  It was an accident, Bailey had insisted.

  Wrap this up as quick as you can, the chief had said.

  Bodies didn’t lie.

  “What does the head laceration tell you?”

  “In the crime scene photos, all the pool surfaces are rounded. If your victim slipped and struck her head against the side, the steps, even the railing, I’d expect to see a single impact site with non-specific bruising. No laceration and, obviously, very little blood.”

  Nguyen positioned the head on the table and then gestured for Steve to join her behind a screen. The X ray hummed.

  So far she hadn’t told him anything the responding officer hadn’t seen. He waited until the ME resumed her position beside the table before he asked, “So what do you see?”

  “Single impact site. Linear laceration.” She traced it for him with the instrument in her hand. “The scalp is split. Your victim was struck with a heavy blunt object with at least one sharp edge and sufficient force to break the skin.”

  Fine. That accounted for the blood. But did it account for the death?

  “Enough force to kill?” Steve asked.

  “Probably not,” Nguyen admitted. “I’ll examine the lungs, of course, but my guess is she was still conscious, or at least alive, when she entered the water.”

  “Signs of struggle?”

  Nguyen shook her head, continuing her deliberate examination of the body. “There are no defensive wounds on her arms or hands. No residue under the fingernails. She could have been unconscious, although there’s no sign the body’s been dragged. She may simply have been dazed by the blow. Disoriented. Possibly drunk, as well.”

  So she was nightcapped. Literally.

  “Any chance the injury was sustained after drowning?” Steve asked without much hope.

  “Unlikely. X ray will tell us more, but from the angle of the laceration, I’d say she was struck from above and behind. She probably never knew what hit her.” The ME switched her mike back on, signaling the end of their conversation.

  Steve didn’t mind. He already had the information he came for. Now he needed to decide what to do with it.

  Water hissed from the tap and drummed in the deep metal sink. The air was cold. Steve thrust his hands into his pockets as the medical examiner made the first shocking cut from shoulder to shoulder across the breasts and then the midline incision, chest to pubis. The body sighed open. The cavity yawned, slick and red.

  He could leave now.

  The internal exam wasn’t likely to tell him anything Nguyen hadn’t already divulged.

  But he stayed, driven less by his detective’s need to know than by an impulse to be there for the plucked and pampered woman on the table in a way he’d failed to be there for Teresa, to accompany her into death. He stayed out of pity and respect, the way other cops attended the funerals of other crime victims.

  Because Helen Ellis’s death was a crime. He was sure of that now.

  But to prove it, he needed to find the weapon. A motive.

  The murderer.

  BAILEY thrust her hand to the back of her parents’ mailbox, ignoring the barking of her neighbor’s dog and the rumble of traffic behind her.

  Although classifying the single car cruising down this one-and-a-half lane rural road as “traffic” just proved she’d already been home too long.

  The engine idled to a stop behind her. Bailey braced. All she needed to make her day complete was a verbal assault from a redneck in a truck.

  “Come here often?” a man drawled.

  Her heart raced. She knew that flat, deep voice. Clutching her parents’ mail, she withdrew her arm and turned.

  Lieutenant Steve Burke leaned across the bench seat of a black Ford pickup, his windows rolled down and his eyes amused.

  She felt a jolt of . . . surely that was dislike?

  “Not if I can help it,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to tell you the body’s been released. You can have your funeral.”

  She refused to feel grateful. “Shouldn’t you tell Paul?”

  Steve raised his eyebrows. “I did. He said you were making the arrangements.”

  His voice was neutral, no accusation at all, but she rushed to Paul’s defense anyway. “He’s very upset.”

  The detective unfolded from his seat, reminding her all over again how big he was—the kind of ex-jock who’d hung over her sister’s locker in high school. He probably tried to use his size to intimidate people, Bailey thought scornfully as she watched him round the hood of his truck toward her.

  She bet it worked, too.

  “Upset enough to call a press conference?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “That’s what he told my chief. Told me to wrap up the investigation, or he was talking to reporters.”

  Oh, dear. No wonder Steve’s voice sounded flat. He was probably ready to murder somebody himself.

  Not that anybody had been murdered, she told herself. It was purely a figure of speech.

  Burke leaned against the door of his truck. “So tell me about this new book he’s writing,” he invited.

  She eyed him warily. “Why?”

  “Maybe I’m curious.”

  Maybe. And maybe he was looking for a way to defend his department by discrediting Paul.

  She cleared her throat. “Well . . . It’s about the Dawler murders. Are you familiar with them?”

  “Mother was a prostitute. Grandma and probably sis, too. Kid gets drunk, decides he can’t live with the shame anymore and, instead of offing himself, kills his entire family with a kitchen knife.”

  “That’s an oversimplification of the story, but yes.”

  “Yeah, I heard your boss thinks the police case left things out.”

  “I think Paul wants to tell the whole story,” Bailey said carefully.

  “So he’s going to sell a bunch of books by glorifying a killer and exploiting the deaths of two women and a fifteen-year-old girl.”

  “You don’t understand the genre,” she said. “Paul is very talented. This book is his way of doing jus
tice to the memory of the victims.”

  “You do justice to the victims by putting their killer in jail. Not by making a living off their tragedy.”

  She crossed her arms. “Lawyers make a living off of tragedy. Police, too.”

  Acknowledgment lit his dark eyes. “Guess you could look at it that way. So, what’s your role in all this?”

  “I’m a former editorial assistant. I do research, correspondence, filing, publicity—whatever Paul needs me to do.”

  “Give me an example.”

  She drew a deep breath. “For example, right now I’m trying to find out how long it will be before we can get back into the house.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her change of subject. “Your boss gave his consent to search.”

  “Last night. But Regan—Helen’s daughter—is flying into town tomorrow. She won’t want to stay in a hotel.”

  “My team won’t be out of the house until the day after.”

  “Thursday?” Bailey heard her voice rise and struggled to control it. “But . . . That’s the day before the funeral!”

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  No apology, she noticed. As if his best was plenty good enough for her.

  “You did get a signed death certificate, though, right?” she asked.

  He inclined his head.

  She didn’t want to ask. She had to know. “Cause of death?”

  “Drowning.”

  Relief weakened her knees. “That’s all right, then.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Isn’t it?” Bailey pressed. “If the medical examiner says Helen drowned—”

  “Cause of death is drowning,” he repeated. “Manner of death is still pending.”

  Bailey squeezed the letters in her hand until the envelopes crackled. “What does that mean?”

  “It means the ME is waiting for the results of the blood alcohol test to determine if loss of consciousness contributed to Mrs. Ellis’s fall.”

  That sounded reasonable.

  Her chest hollowed. Too bad she didn’t quite believe him.

  Why would his team need another two days in the house? What was he looking for? And how could she get him to tell her?

  “Would you like to come in for a minute?” she blurted. “For”—What? Coffee? Questioning?—“something to drink?”

  His eyes narrowed in surprise. Well, no wonder, she thought, her heart thudding. She’d surprised herself.

  “You’re inviting me in for a drink.” A statement, not a question.

  “Yes, well, I thought . . .” She wasn’t thinking. Did she really want to introduce this man to her mother? “It’s awfully hot.”

  He smiled at her, teeth white in his dark face, and the temperature climbed another ten degrees. “Yes, it is. But I’m afraid I can’t.”

  No. Of course not. Good, she told herself, pretty sure that rush she felt was letdown and not relief.

  It wasn’t like he was actually rejecting her. She wouldn’t care if he did. She was an aspiring writer, a veteran of New York’s Dating Wars. She should be inured to rejection.

  Anyway, it wasn’t personal.

  She stuck out her chin. “Right. You wouldn’t want somebody to catch you getting chummy with a suspect.”

  “Actually, I have a prior engagement,” he drawled.

  Like a date? He was dating someone?

  Maybe it was personal.

  “Well, hello.” Dorothy Wells’s greeting flowed down the drive, sweet and sticky as molasses.

  Trapped like a fly, Bailey turned to see her mother picking her way down the gravel driveway in size six strappy slides from Marshalls.

  Dorothy smiled at Steve like a toddler spotting the cookie jar. “And who is this?”

  He nodded at her politely. “Steve Burke, ma’am.”

  “Burke,” Dorothy repeated. “Eugenia Burke’s boy?”

  Most men would have revealed some discomfort at being referred to as “boy.” The police detective didn’t even twitch. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dorothy’s smile widened. “And you’re here to see Bailey?”

  Bailey groaned silently. Of course. Steve Burke was practically designed to her mother’s specifications: a white, Southern professional. Not a practicing Methodist—anyway, Bailey didn’t recall seeing him at Sunday services—and at least ten years older than Bailey. But clearly Dorothy was prepared to compromise.

  Bailey was not.

  “He was just leaving,” she said, fixing Steve with a “run away, run away” look.

  “Oh.” Not every fifty-six-year-old woman could pull off a pretty pout, but Dorothy had been practicing in her mirror since 1958, and even Bailey admitted the effect was charming. “Won’t you at least come in for a minute? Bailey has so few friends in town anymore.”

  “I never had friends in this town, Mama,” Bailey said, deliberately flip. Steve Burke already suspected her of lusting after her boss, not to mention murdering her boss’s wife. Her lack of a social life wasn’t likely to lower his opinion of her any. “Let the man go.”

  “Actually, I’d love a cold drink,” Steve said, making Dorothy beam and Bailey’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “If you all don’t mind.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed as they strolled up the drive to the house. Dorothy minced ahead, her heels punching holes in the ground.

  He looked down his strong, crooked nose at her. “Accepting your invitation.”

  “What about your ‘prior engagement’?”

  He actually glanced at his watch. “I have a few minutes. We can talk some more about what kind of work you do for Paul Ellis.”

  Was that why he’d changed his mind? Because he saw the opportunity to pump her?

  “Not with my mother listening.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows. “She doesn’t like your job?”

  Not her job, not her life, not her wardrobe.

  “Crime stories make my mother uncomfortable. She doesn’t even read the newspaper.”

  “You should be glad.” He opened the kitchen door, earning another approving smile from Dorothy.

  Bailey paused on the stoop. “Why?”

  “Because if your boss holds a press conference, your name’s going to be in a lot of papers. Your mother won’t like that.”

  He was right.

  She scowled. “How would you know?”

  Humor touched his hard mouth. “Because if she’s anything like my mother, she believes a lady’s name should only appear in the paper three times—when she’s born, when she marries, and when she dies.”

  “Who’s getting married?” Dorothy called from the kitchen.

  “Nobody, Mom.” Bailey stalked inside and turned to face the detective, crossing her arms over her meager chest. “Lieutenant Burke is here because somebody died.”

  FIVE

  DOROTHY Wells’s expectant face collapsed like a leaking balloon.

  Not good, Steve thought, and did his best to defuse the situation.

  “I’ll bet your mother already guessed why I’m here.” He smiled wryly at Dorothy. “Those middle of the night phone calls are tough on parents, aren’t they? You think your children are grown, but when something like this happens, they need their mamas.”

  “Actually—” Bailey said.

  “She didn’t call.” Bracelets jangling, Dorothy opened a cabinet, a petite, well-put-together woman with a mission and a grievance. “Her sister would have called. Not Bailey. I didn’t even know something was wrong until I came down this morning to make Frank’s coffee and found her sitting at the kitchen table.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” Bailey protested.

  “And what time was that?” Steve asked.

  “Six-thirty? Seven?”

  Bailey had told him she got home at three. What had she done for three or four hours?

  The memory of her white face and dilated pupils tugged at him. She might have been in shock. She could have been too numb or strung out or flat
-out exhausted to make up a story that would satisfy her parents.

  Or she could have been with her married lover.

  That thought didn’t sit well with Steve at all. He was tired, hot, and sweaty. Now he had to make time to talk to Lewis and the clerk at the desk to find out when Ellis had checked into his hotel. And with whom.