Devil Sent the Rain

by Lisa Turner

  She turned on her heel, thought better of it, and came back. “This is a terrible shock, but our clients depend on us to look after their interests. It’s what Caroline would have wanted.”

  Back in her office, Rosalyn poured coffee from the silver service and drank the entire cup while standing there. Her daughter was dead, murdered. Everyone would be watching to see how she handled this crisis—their clients, business associates, and especially her enemies. Those bitches at the club who pretended to be her friends would be eager to fawn over the grieving mother, expecting tears. Jackie Kennedy never publicly broke down over Jack. She wouldn’t cry about Caroline either. Setting the tone was her responsibility. She didn’t just represent the firm; she was the firm. She wouldn’t let gossip tarnish the Lee Law Firm’s reputation or her own.

  She glanced down at her suit, the red Armani of all things. Lavonia at the house could bring over the black Dior. No, the navy was more appropriate. The right costume would carry her through. Lavonia didn’t need to know about Caroline yet. She had no more tolerance for tears.

  She poured more coffee and went to her desk, already composing in her mind the notification of Caroline’s death to the firm’s attorneys, a statement they could refer to when calling their clients. She wrote quickly, emphasizing key phrases—deeply saddened, anticipating a just resolution. Set the tone, something easy that everyone would stick to. Next, she told Glenda to call Martin’s assistant at the bank. She would meet with him in the bank’s conference room in an hour to prepare a plan. The firm and the bank must present a united front.

  She looked up Caroline’s client list, which was much larger than she’d realized. The most important clients she knew personally. She would call them herself. The rest she would leave for her other attorneys to contact with assurances of a smooth transition. The Lee Law Firm represented multi-million-dollar trusts spanning two and three generations. She had no intention of losing those fee-paying clients.

  Would the timing of her calls seem coldhearted? She continued to write. No, not if she asked to be remembered in their prayers.

  She clicked the TV remote. On the local NBC news channel, a BREAKING NEWS banner ran below the video, footage of Caroline’s Camaro shot from overhead. The driver’s side door was open. Thank God the camera angle revealed only a trail of white dress spilling over the doorsill.

  The camera zoomed in on Able and his partner standing at the car’s open trunk. Able looked up, frowning. She hadn’t recognized him at the door this morning until she’d read his ID. Billy was taller than his father and more muscular, but the resemblance was especially clear seeing his face on the TV screen.

  Years ago, she’d been aware of the summer romance between Caroline and Jackson Able’s son. She’d said nothing, knowing that it would be a brief fling for her daughter on the poor side of town. She’d done the same thing when she was young.

  She ran the footage back to Able’s upturned face and froze the image. He had his daddy’s Irish good looks and those eyes. So angry. He must have known it was Caroline in the car. She turned from the screen. Jackson Able had once said his name, derived from Gaelic, meant “able to defend.” Having Jackson’s son investigate Caroline’s murder might work to their advantage. Or it might work against them. Too soon to know. She would discuss it with Martin at the meeting.

  At her computer, she pulled up the photo of Caroline she’d forwarded to Glenda, a candid shot taken seven weeks earlier at the final fitting of the wedding gown. The dress had been stunning on Caroline—a tight silhouette with a mermaid train. The designer had incorporated lace on the sleeves and bodice from Great-Granny Lee’s bridal gown.

  She hadn’t realized how thin Caroline looked in the photo or the shadows under her eyes. An aura of depression showed through her smile.

  You see, she thought. I warned you about choosing the wrong man. You wouldn’t listen.

  Able had wanted access to the files in Caroline’s office, giving the excuse that a client among them might be the murderer. Ridiculous. Caroline had taken over the majority of her father’s client list, all good families, not the type who murder people. She opened her center drawer and took out the key to Caroline’s office. She would remove the files now. Able couldn’t demand to see what he didn’t know was there. She would do it herself and not leave it for that idiot Zelda.

  But first she took out a hand mirror, smoothed her hair, and checked her lipstick. At times like this, appearance was everything.

  Chapter 8

  The front door key wouldn’t work. Frankie pulled the door tight and tried again. She pushed hard, jiggled it. The two officers standing next to their vehicle on the street were watching her with their arms crossed. A third cop with hands like mitts and a slab of flesh for a nose stood on the porch directly behind her. The three officers had secured the outside of the victim’s Cape-style house. Now it was time for her to do her job. But she couldn’t get the damned door open. The victim must have changed the lock and not given her mother the new key, possibly on purpose.

  The cop behind her belched, emitting an odor like tuna fish.

  “Need a hand with that lock, Detective?” he said, crowding in. He had pockets of fat beneath his eyes and an inner tube of flab circling his waist.

  “No thanks. Would you step back please?”

  Some of the uniformed officers believed she’d been promoted to homicide because of the attention she received after the Sid Garrett case. To hell with them. Six years of patrolling the streets of Key West and Memphis and she’d dealt with drunks, petty criminals, crazy people, and plenty of regular Joe tourists she had arrested for aggravated ignorance. She’d earned the promotion to homicide with her top fitness report and nearly perfect test scores. That, plus Billy’s recommendation, had landed her a spot on the squad.

  So, she wasn’t about to let this damned house key throw her.

  She took out a bump key, a blank with the pins filed down to the lowest point. Positioning the key in the lock, she simultaneously turned and whacked it with the back of the hard plastic brush she carried for these occasions. The door opened. She stepped in and entered the alarm code.

  The officer with tuna breath was now standing in the driveway, munching a Snickers Bar. She decided to nickname him Snackbar. It lightened her mood.

  “We’re in,” she called, and stepped inside.

  The house smelled of green apples and cedar. Nothing appeared out of order in the living room, a space lit by sunlight filtering through French doors. She could see that the front hall led to a large tidy kitchen. A study opened on the right of the entry with a desk, a laptop, and a wall of built-in bookcases. Several shipping boxes had been stacked on a card table and on the floor by a corner window. She saw no evidence of a struggle or that the place had been tossed.

  Snackbar followed her in crinkling the candy wrapper as he shoved it in his pocket. At least he hadn’t dropped it on the driveway.

  “Check the laundry room, back entry, and garage,” she said. “I’ll take the rest of the house.”

  He grunted and lumbered down the hall.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she called after him.

  She drew her SIG for the walk-through of the two guest bedrooms, two bathrooms, and into the master at the back of the house. She checked bathtubs, showers, closets, and under the beds as she went. The entire place was show-house neat, not a book out of place or a piece of clothing on the floor.

  Snackbar was waiting for her in the entry. “All clear. It’s a damned clean house except for the litter box in the laundry room.”

  “Did you see the cat?”

  “Nope. Must be hiding.”

  “Please wait on the porch. And let me know when the investigators show up to knock on doors. Detective Able will bring a photo of the victim.”

  She pulled out her mobile and used the video recorder to pan across the study, stopping at the desk for a quick look through a stack of folders. Inside were household receipts and paperwork from the
wedding. These would go with her to the Criminal Justice Complex. Because the victim was an attorney, the laptop would have special encryption that would take the computer techs a couple of days to hack.

  A coat tossed on the desk chair caught her eye. So far it was the only thing she’d seen out of place in the house.

  She went to the bookcase and videoed family photos, most of them snapshots of the victim as a child. One was of five kids in their Sunday clothes grouped on the lawn in front of a grand house and holding Easter baskets. She recognized a young Martin Lee by his dark hair and glasses. There was little Caroline in her pink smocked dress, holding her basket in front of her with both hands. A taller sturdy kid grinned at the camera, his arm draped over the shoulders of a young boy who was squinting against the sun. Standing a little away from the group was an awkward-looking girl with frizzy hair and gawky legs.

  Frankie moved on to a recent shot of the victim wearing a black bikini and sitting by a pool in the shade of a striped umbrella with a frosted drink on the table beside her and a cigarette in her hand. She held herself with the cool confidence of a Ralph Lauren model, blond hair swept back from her face. Her eyes appeared to be following someone outside the shot with a hint of smolder in her gaze. Frankie glanced around, not seeing a single photo of the victim with her Indian fiancé. Had she been angry about the breakup and ripped up his pictures out of spite?

  Moving to the shipping boxes on the card table, she poked around in the bubble pack, uncovering sterling serving pieces and crystal stemware. A folder labeled Wedding Gifts Returned contained a list of two hundred names and addresses, most of them lined out in red. The boxes on the table must be the gifts left to return.

  Down the hall, the kitchen was like those HGTV makeover shows—granite countertops, a farm sink, a Sub-Zero fridge, custom cabinetry, a six-burner gas stove, and two ovens stacked in the wall so the cook didn’t have to throw out her back lifting a twenty-five-pound turkey. No smudges on the stainless steel appliances, no crumbs on the counter.

  Frankie’s duplex had a forty-year-old kitchen with ripped linoleum and an electric stove with only two working burners. She had to prop the oven door closed with the back of a chair. She loved to cook, so yeah, she envied the victim her kitchen. But she didn’t envy the part about being dead.

  She opened the fridge expecting to see skinny people food. Instead, she found four bottles of Cordon Rouge Brut and six bottles of Piper-Heidsieck Champagne lying on the bottom shelf. The only food was four containers of zero fat Greek yogurt, an apple, and a solitary head of iceberg lettuce in the vegetable bin.

  “For God’s sakes,” she mumbled, and removed the lettuce, snapping off the plastic bottom to pull out a wad of hundreds. Every burglar who can bump a lock or pop out a pane of glass knows about these fake lettuce safes. Better to leave five twenties in plain sight for a snatch-and-run rather than have scumbags tear up your house looking for cash. In the freezer, another favorite hiding place, she found eight containers of gelato, all nearly empty. The victim was either eating every meal out or binging on gelato and champagne. One cabinet contained forty-eight cans of cat food. At least the cat was well fed.

  She’d been through the entire house and was videoing the living room when Billy came in.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “She kept this place like a showroom. How did you do with the ladies?”

  “Lots of tears. Nothing of consequence except Caroline’s assistant said that Caroline and her cousin Zelda had an argument behind closed doors on Monday. The assistant assumed it was a family matter. The cousin is the artsy type. Drama is a staple in her repertoire. Definitely something to follow up.”

  They went outside to meet with the ten uniformed and plainclothes investigators who would conduct the neighborhood canvass. Frankie distributed Caroline’s photo and briefed them on the kind of information they were after. Had anyone seen the victim on Monday evening? Was someone with her? Had they noticed a strange car in her driveway or parked on the street? Any unusual sounds or an argument? Had the victim expressed concern for her safety?

  Those were the direct questions. Then there were the rumors and innuendos a good investigator can cajole out of the neighbors. That sort of information won’t hold up in court, but it can point in the right direction.

  The photo Billy brought for the canvass showed a very different person from the confident woman Frankie had seen posing under the beach umbrella. This Caroline was frail-looking with hollows around her collarbones and a forced smile. Frankie wondered if her weight loss had been due to wedding jitters or the stress of having her mother ride her about marrying an Indian national.

  She held up the photo for Billy. “I’ll bet she starved herself for the wedding. She called it off and regained the weight by eating gelato and drinking champagne. Probably the reason she couldn’t zip the dress.”

  “Good eye. What else?”

  “Follow me.”

  Chapter 9

  Caroline’s bedroom reminded Billy of the second-story boudoir of a New Orleans lady friend he had occasion to visit on trips to that city. This room had the same shadowed, sweet atmosphere with billowy silk draperies and a crystal chandelier over the king-sized bed. The antique lamps on the nightstands must have cost more than he made in three months.

  A three-by-five-foot painting by acclaimed artist Tom Donahue hung on the wall across from the bed, a portrait of Caroline seated next to her father, her head resting on his shoulder. She wore a demure dress with long sleeves, her golden hair brushed straight and tucked behind her ears. Saunders Lee looked older than Billy had expected. Most of his hair was gone, his high forehead and rimless glasses giving him a professorial appearance. His hands lying clasped in his lap touched his daughter’s hands, creating a connection between them. All the emotion in the portrait came from Caroline, but there was no mistaking how Saunders Lee felt about his daughter. Caroline was his heart.

  Billy wondered how an overnight guest sleeping in Caroline’s bed would feel about a portrait of her father staring at him. Perhaps intimidated. Caroline may have hung it there as a test.

  “I thought rich Southern women were all about ritual, tradition, and really good monogramming,” Frankie said. “Our victim appears to be more complex than that.”

  “Use her name, please,” he said. “It’s Caroline.”

  “We agreed first names make the case too personal.”

  “This is personal.”

  “Got it,” she said. “I have something to show you.”

  She led him to the spa-like bathroom—the walls covered in marble tiles, a claw-foot soaking tub, heated towel bars, and a seamless glass shower big enough for a couple to use together.

  “I was going through her closets,” she said, opening a door. “Here we have Oscar de la Renta, St. John, and Armani. Lovely business attire for a woman in her forties but not a young woman like our victim … I mean Caroline. Everything still has Neiman Marcus tags attached. Not one suit has been worn.”

  She opened the door next to it, a much larger walk-in closet. “These are the clothes she wore, all classics from the sixties and seventies—Pierre Cardin sheath dresses, Gucci Italian leather jackets and slacks, Yves Saint Laurent suits, dresses and blouses by Pucci, Chanel jackets. Mixed in are these great current pieces—ripped jeans, custom leather jackets by LA designers, that sort of thing. And this.” She pulled out a drawer. “French lingerie, very expensive.”

  “How do you know these designers?” he asked.

  She gave him a look. “I just do. The first closet reads like a Memphis matron. The second says rebel with style.”

  They left the closet. She directed him to the bathroom counter. “Here we have the pharmacy.” She opened a cabinet hidden behind mirrors, four shelves lined with prescription bottles.

  “Some are duplicate scripts from three different doctors going back five years. I’ve recorded everything by drug type. The earliest scripts were Lithium, an antipsychotic, a
nd Klonopin for panic attacks. The most recent are Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. Those are SSRIs for anti-anxiety. A doctor, a psychiatrist, wrote the last group. Seems he was searching for the right cocktail.”

  “What’s your take after your walk-through?” he asked.

  “There’s a thousand in cash in a lettuce safe and more stuck in drawers about the house. It’s around two thousand total. There’s no real food in the house, and she has a neatness obsession. Between her job and her nutbar family, I’d say she was a highly stressed basket case with epic behavioral disorders. The pills and her doctor-shopping certainly indicate script abuse at some point.”

  He thought about Caroline’s position as a trust and estate attorney responsible for the transfer of millions of dollars from one generation to another. The implications were troubling. Still, this was his Caroline they were talking about.

  He thought back over the years, remembering when he was seventeen and Caroline had called to say her parents were out of the house for a day trip. She’d wanted him to come over. He made up an excuse to his uncle and borrowed the car.

  That day they had Airlee to themselves. They ate beef and cheddar cheese sandwiches in the front parlor, drank her daddy’s good bourbon, and slow danced. Odette surprised them by coming in early to start supper. They snuck out to the barn where they made love in the loft surrounded by sweet-smelling hay and the sound of horses shifting and blowing in their stalls. They fell asleep. He had awakened to Caroline dozing in the crook of his arm.

  He looked up to see Frankie staring at him in the bathroom mirror.