Grave Matters

by Max Allan Collins

  “A lot of older people make their lives simpler,” Catherine said, “and keep to a room or two in the house.”

  “Maybe. That’s not what this feels like.”

  Catherine didn’t express her agreement with Warrick, but she felt it. Being alone wasn’t always a good thing….

  More plants in the bedroom, everything freshly dusted.

  “Someone was definitely taking care of this house while Vivian was laid up,” Catherine said in the hallway.

  “Who?” Warrick asked.

  “This doesn’t feel like the Merry Maids. I’ll bet it’s a friend.”

  The trio of investigators headed down to the living room to share their thoughts. Vega began by catching them up on what he’d found out already.

  Referring to his notes, Vega said, “Husband’s name was Ted, retired electrician, passed away last year at seventy-five. Daughter was Amelia, died in a car accident when she got hit by a driver who fell asleep from too much weed. That was 1970—they never had any more kids.”

  Shaking her head, Catherine said, “They went over thirty years without their child…a loss they obviously never got over…then Ted dies, and Vivian is left alone. Who would want to harm her?”

  Vega shrugged.

  “Hate to borrow trouble,” Warrick said, a humorless half-smirk digging a hole in one cheek, “but how sure are we that Vivian’s recent car crash was an accident, and not just the first attempt to kill her?”

  “Pretty sure,” the detective said. “She got hit by a drunk who ran a red light on Tropicana.”

  “You’re positive,” Warrick said.

  “If it was a murder attempt, it was a lousy one.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Vega shrugged again. “Drunk ended up dead.”

  Warrick’s eyebrows lifted. “Guess that qualifies as ‘lousy.’ ”

  “Also qualifies as freaky,” Catherine said.

  Vega frowned. “Why’s that?”

  “Two deaths in one family? Both getting hit by impaired drivers?”

  “I’ve seen weirder,” Vega said.

  They all had—and they let it go. For now, at least.

  Warrick said, “So—Vivian wasn’t a target, in the car crash…but could she have been trying to kill herself, in the manner her daughter died?”

  “That’s sick,” Vega said.

  “I’ve seen sicker,” Warrick said.

  They all had.

  “What are you saying, Warrick,” Catherine said, shaking her head, smiling in a glazed fashion, “that Vivian waited, engine idling, till a drunk came by, to pull out in front of?”

  And they let that go, too.

  “Maybe it was just bad luck,” Vega said. “In this town, I’ve seen worse.”

  And indeed—they all had.

  Catherine said, “Only now, Vivian’s luck’s finally turned from bad to just plain shitty.”

  “Got that right,” Warrick said.

  “No disagreement here,” Vega said. “Now what?”

  “Now,” Catherine said, glancing at Warrick, “we really get to work.”

  “I’ll take the living room,” Warrick said. “You wanna start with Vivian’s bedroom?”

  “It would seem the most promising place, yes.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Vega said, “I’ll canvass the neighbors and see what I can come up with.”

  “A best friend, maybe?” Catherine said.

  “A best friend, maybe.”

  The two CSIs unloaded their equipment and went back inside while Vega headed for the house next door. Warrick and his crime-scene kit took the living room while Catherine and her kit entered Vivian’s bedroom.

  But Catherine started with the dead woman’s private bathroom, going through the medicine chest first. Other than some Paxil, which treated anxiety disorders, she found nothing stronger than ibuprofen. The Paxil made sense—a seventy-one-year-old woman living alone in a house with shrines to the family taken from her, her only child gone at an early age. Who the hell wouldn’t have anxiety attacks?

  In the bedroom, Catherine went through the dresser and came up with nothing in particular, then the armoire, where she found some of Ted’s old clothes; she got no help from the TV stand or the bed either. She moved on to the other, larger bathroom and discovered nothing that seemed pertinent. The sewing room-cum-Amelia shrine gained the CSI nothing. Finally, she went into the bedroom/office.

  Though she expected little in the way of help from the computer, you never knew what information lurked inside those devious little boxes. She photographed the machine and all its connections, then called Tomas Nunez, a computer expert who had worked with her and Nick on several cases—not a cop, but an outside specialist on the LVPD’s approved list.

  When she finally got him, Tomas said, “Hola, Cath—good to hear your voice!”

  “That’s just because you know my voice means greenbacks…. Where are you, anyway? Sounds like a circus!”

  “Sports bar at the Sphere, doing a favor for a friend.”

  “How long are you going to be?”

  “You got business for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, business trumps favors. What’s the sitch?”

  She explained and gave Nunez the address.

  “Twenty-five minutes,” he said.

  He was there in twenty.

  If the neighbors had seen Tomas Nunez arrive, they were now busy locking themselves in their houses, assuming the Hell’s Angels had invaded this quiet respectable ‘hood. Six feet and rangy, the top computer expert in Vegas had slicked-back black hair, a mustache that looked like an old shoelace, and a face with the color and sheen of your favorite brown leather belt. He wore black motorcycle boots, black jeans, a black leather vest, and a black T-shirt with the logo and name of a band called, provocatively enough, Molotov.

  As she walked him back to the bedroom office, Nunez cased the place.

  “You say she lived here alone?” Nunez asked.

  “Yeah—husband’s been gone almost a year.”

  Inside Amelia’s shrine, Nunez looked at the computer on the desk and shook his head. “I’ll buy you dinner at the top of the Sphere, if the old gal has anything more exciting than a cake recipe on this puppy.”

  Catherine said, “Prejudging, are you?”

  “Hey, I’m an expert. That’s an expert opinion.”

  “We don’t do ‘opinions’ at CSI.”

  He gave her a sideways look. “You gotta hang with somebody besides that Grissom character, Cath; you’re gettin’ contaminated. Hey, you know I’ll do a first-class job.”

  “For first-class pay.”

  “You want the best, don’t you? You ready for me?”

  She nodded. “I took pictures of everything. The husband’s computer is in his study, but it’s unlikely to have anything of interest.”

  He unhooked the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and phone line. Then he packed the CPU under his arm and headed for the door. “I’ll put this in the truck,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later, the process had been repeated with the computer in the study. He hauled that CPU to his vehicle, then returned to the living room to tell Catherine, “Two days.” he said.

  “Two days for cake recipes?”

  “Two days for two computers.”

  She just looked at him.

  He said, “You think I’ve got nothin’ else on my plate? Nothin’ and nobody else in my life but Catherine Willows, girl detective?”

  She kept looking at him. She was using her best half-smirk and single arched eyebrow.

  So, of course, finally he caved. “Give me a call tomorrow. I might have something.”

  She beamed at him. “I know you’ll come through. Adios, amigo.”

  He grinned and waggled a finger at her. “Patronize me, chica, and see where it gets you.”

  Then he and the two CPUs were gone.

  With the computers out of the way, Catherine went back to th
e bedroom office and started going through the desk and all the files. Soon she found Vivian’s checkbook in a drawer. That was something, at least.

  The balance was just over a thousand dollars. Catherine found paperwork from a lawyer and a financial advisor, as well as envelopes with statements from June that Vivian had evidently opened just before her car accident.

  Vivian had a money market and an annuity. It wasn’t a lot, but it was far from nothing. Murders were committed in Vegas for pocket change every day. And Catherine estimated the value of Vivian’s estate at just about a hundred thousand, not figuring in the house.

  She joined Warrick in the living room. “Anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not unless you count chicken pot pies in the freezer or a half-bottle of Canada Dry in the fridge. How about you?”

  She told him about the money.

  “With hubby and baby gone,” Warrick said, “who inherits?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know yet. The mysterious guest? The best friend? Who are maybe one and the same.”

  “None of this makes sense,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would anyone go to all this trouble to kill this woman?”

  Catherine said, “The money isn’t chump change—but other than that, I can’t see any reason to do it.”

  “Where’s the money now?”

  “Still invested, I’d assume. I’ll call the financial guy and the lawyer when we get back to the office.”

  Warrick looked at her for a long moment, then his voice grew quiet and serious. “Please tell me we’re not on a wild-goose chase.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Yeah, but as backed up as we are right now, can we afford chasin’ wild damn geese?”

  “Doc Robbins thinks it’s murder. That air bubble says so. Can we afford not to chase what might be a wild goose, if somebody murdered the nice old lady that lived here? She may have had a sad little life, in the end…but it was hers. And she deserved to finish it out at her own speed.”

  Warrick’s expression had sobered. He nodded. “Yes she did…and she deserves our best damn effort.”

  “Yes she does.”

  Vega came in through the front door.

  “What did you find out?” Catherine asked.

  Vega had that wide-eyed look he got when he finally had something. “The neighbor to the west thinks Vivian was the most wonderful person she ever met. She’s a widow lady, too. Her name’s Mabel Hinton—she’s the one that’s been watching the house.”

  Jazzed by this news, Catherine asked, “Did she visit Vivian early this morning?”

  “Like, right before she coded?” Warrick put in.

  Vega said, “She says no. But do we buy it?”

  Catherine held out open hands. “Who else could be our mystery lady? And now we have a suspect.”

  “Yes we do,” Warrick said.

  “Hold those horses, gang,” Vega said. “This gal’s a basket case. She hadn’t even heard about Vivian’s death before I told her. She came frickin’ un-glued!”

  Warrick said, “She could be acting.”

  “If she is, Meryl Streep could take lessons.”

  But Warrick pressed. “Was this Hinton in line to inherit any of that dough?”

  “No! That’s the crazy thing—no one was. Several neighbors told me Vivian planned to leave everything to some charity!”

  “We’ll have to confirm that,” Warrick mumbled.

  Catherine said crisply, “Anybody say which charity?”

  Vega shook his head. “No one knew that for sure.”

  “Another reason for me to call the lawyer,” Catherine said, almost to herself.

  Vega threw up his hands. “Everybody said Vivian Elliot was the grandma for the whole neighborhood! Everybody’s kids were welcome and accepted here. She baked more cookies than Mrs. Fields.”

  “Greeaat,” Warrick said.

  “Well, somebody didn’t accept her,” Catherine said, hands on hips. “Where there’s a murder, there’s a motive.”

  “We look for evidence, Cath,” Warrick said.

  “The evidence can show us the motive.”

  “True.”

  Vega’s and Warrick’s skepticism was understandable to Catherine. It certainly seemed like they had a crime—someone had to have administered Vivian her deadly shot of air…but who in hell would want to murder the neighborhood’s grandma?

  And why?

  5

  DUSTIN BLACK HAD about as much color as his clients before the makeup; unlike the dead he served, however, he was sweating.

  Right now the obliging mortician, leading them down a hallway at Desert Haven Mortuary, was assuring Brass and Grissom that he could not understand how they might think the bodies had been switched here at Desert Haven; and, still, the answers Black gave to their questions all sounded just…off.

  “Gentlemen!” Black said, up ahead, holding open a door for them. “This is the preparation room….”

  They stepped into a large chamber that might have been a morgue—three steel tables in the middle, walls lined with countertops and cupboards. Over to the far wall was a double door; three embalming machines lined up against the near wall. At this moment, the room was empty of either the living or the dead—not counting Brass, Grissom, and Black, of course.

  Brass asked, “What’s the procedure, exactly?”

  Black frowned in confusion. “I’m not sure I know what you’re asking.”

  “The whole deal—the funeral home routine.”

  “We don’t really think of it as a ‘routine,’ Captain….”

  Vaguely uncomfortable, Brass tried again: “What happens when, say, my ex-wife dies?”

  Grissom gave Brass a quick arched eyebrow, as if to ask, Wishful thinking?

  The mortician tented his fingers; his voice assumed a slow, calming cadence. “You would call us, of course. We would arrange to pick up the body of the deceased, wherever the final moments took place—her home, perhaps, a hospital….”

  “Keep walking me through, Mr. Black.”

  “All right. We would bring your ex-wife here…you’d be handling the arrangements yourself, despite being divorced?”

  “Let’s say we’re not divorced.”

  Black frowned again. “But you indicated this was your ex-wife….”

  Fighting exasperation, Brass said, “Hypothetically speaking, Mr. Black—make it my wife.”

  “Sorry…. In that case, you and either myself, or one of my staff, would make decisions concerning the disposition.”

  “Disposition? Of the body, you mean?”

  A solemn nod. “Either burial or cremation. We offer both services here.”

  “Always nice to have options,” Grissom said pleasantly.

  Brass winced; his headache was coming back. He managed to get out, “Let’s say I decide to bury her.”

  “Then,” the mortician said, “the next step would be embalming, which would happen in this room…. Did you want me to go into that process, in detail?”

  Brass held up a palm. “No.”

  Black nodded again, exhaled, gestured to one of the trays. “After embalming, your wife would be dressed in clothing selected by you or other family members, and our cosmetics expert would make her up for viewing, probably using photographs you provided for reference as to her preferred style. May I assume there’d be a viewing?”

  “You may.”

  “The viewing would probably be the afternoon and/or evening before burial, with visitation, followed by the service, perhaps in the morning or afternoon, after which your wife would be laid to rest for eternity.”

  The only thing creeping Brass out more than the mortician’s Addams Family demeanor was Grissom’s little smile; the CSI was standing there, arms folded, lapping up the information.

  Black was saying, “As you can see, gentlemen—the deceased would always be with someone…and frankly, in this controlled environment and situation, I don’t begin to know how someon
e could ever have exchanged the bodies.”

  Grissom’s smile disappeared. “You don’t see anywhere in this process when the corpse would be left alone for a significant time?”

  “We don’t use the term ‘corpse’ in this facility, Doctor Grissom. It’s disrespectful.”

  Grissom’s brow knit. “It is?”

  Brass said, “Could you answer Doctor Grissom’s question, Mr. Black?”

  “Certainly. I don’t see any window of opportunity for this ghoulish thing to have occurred.”

  Grissom asked, “Obviously, the visitation is attended by friends and family, looking at the…body in an open casket? So a switch can’t have occurred until afterward.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So, any switch would have to have been made after that. Visitation for Rita Bennett was the night before the service?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anyone here after hours?”

  Black looked uncomfortable. “No, but obviously the mortuary is locked for the night and our security is first-rate.”

  “You use a service?” Brass asked.

  “Yes—we have a contract with Home Sure Security. They drive by on a regular basis…and all the doors and windows are wired. No one gets in without the security code.”

  “Who has the code?”

  “Myself and five employees.”

  “Which gives us at least six suspects,” Grissom said, almost to himself.

  “Suspects?” Black’s eyes and nostrils flared. “I cooperate like this, and you call me, and my people, suspects?”

  Grissom, innocently, said, “Why? Is that another disrespectful word here at the facility?”

  “You have no right—”

  “We have every right, Mr. Black,” Grissom said, his tone as gentle as his words were not. “Someone switched those bodies, and the best opportunity was right here in your shop. The body that replaced Rita Bennett’s was that of a murder victim…and that makes this a homicide investigation. So, yes—you and your people are all suspects.”

  Black’s eyes darted around the empty room, as if confirming no one was hearing Grissom’s accusations.

  “Now,” the CSI said, “let’s get back to how and when the bodies could have been switched.”