Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  It was probably a heart attack. A stroke. Something like that. He’d been drinking something, though—bourbon, by the smell of it—and he’d keeled over and died. A guy without known health problems, who’d bragged about how his doctor called him “a bull,” with one of those looks that let you know what he was talking about. Now, he was lying dead with a huge lump on his forehead.

  They sure as hell needed an autopsy.

  “Every door locked? You sure?” Jim pressed Eileen now. They had been when Jim had checked. Unusual for around here. “Front door, too? Anything out of place when you came in?”

  She bobbed her head emphatically. “Yes. No. I mean, nothing out of place. It was all locked, always. He barely wanted me to have a key.”

  “How about the burglar alarm? Were you the one who switched it off?”

  “He didn’t turn it on, at least the days I came. I don’t think he wanted me to have the code.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Her hands were twisting in her purse straps. “I don’t know. I just cleaned, that’s all. He paid me with one of those bank things. The check came to my house. From the bank. I just cleaned.”

  Too much protesting. “Uh-huh.” Jim scratched the back of his head and looked at her, keeping his gaze neutral. “How often did you come out here?”

  “Thursdays.” That answer came fast. “Like today. Every Thursday.”

  “How long did you spend out here?”

  The hands were twisting again. “Hours. He made you clean everything, even if he didn’t use it. Even though the only room he ever really used was the kitchen. He never did the dishes.”

  “Hours.” Jim kept looking at her, and her eyes dropped. She hadn’t mentioned Henry’s bedroom or bathroom. Huh. “Did he ever come home while you were here?”

  Her mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes met his, shifted away. “I don’t know. Sometimes, maybe.”

  “What did he do when he came home?”

  She wasn’t answering. She was just staring at him like a deer in the headlights. The way Henry had probably shot those trophies. He’d been the kind of guy who’d shoot from his truck, who liked his prey helpless.

  “I can’t . . .” she whispered. “I needed this job. My kids . . . I’ve got kids.”

  “Did Henry ask you to do more than clean?”

  Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “He didn’t ask. And I’m a single mom.”

  “You couldn’t afford to lose this house,” he guessed.

  “It’s my best house.” Her brown eyes begged him to understand, and Jim looked at her again. No makeup, old clothes, unflattering hair. Looking as unattractive as she could when she came here, but that hadn’t discouraged Henry. “I got other houses out here because I cleaned his. And he told me he’d say something to the others if I didn’t do it. That I’d stolen something.” She was pleading now, and Jim didn’t think it had anything to do with being a possible suspect. He didn’t think she’d even realized she might be one.

  Jim got the rest out of her, little by little, and what a sordid tale it was. “And that’s been going on for almost a year?” he asked. “Did you think about calling us?”

  The bitterness twisted her mouth again. “Who would’ve believed me? I clean houses. He’s rich. And he paid me extra. You’re going to find that out anyway. I know how you guys work. He paid me with a check, with the ‘bonus’ listed in the line at the bottom, you know, so there’d be a record. He said . . .” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “That he could even write off his whores. But I’m not. I didn’t ask him to pay me. I didn’t want to get . . . money. I just wanted to feed my kids. I just wanted to do my job.” She was crying now, the red blotching her thin cheeks. “I didn’t want to use the money at all, but I had to, some of it. My son got sick, and I . . . I . . .”

  “How did you spend the last couple days?” Jim asked. “Tuesday and Wednesday?” In case this was anything, he’d ask her now, while she was shaken up, scared. You couldn’t be a nice guy and do this job.

  She was scared, all right. In fact, she looked terrified. “Uh . . . during the day, I was doing houses. Then . . . umm, night before last—I was home. With my kids. Watching TV. Last night, I was home with my kids for dinner, of course, and I took them to Bible study at First Methodist. To day care there, you know, while I was at the class. Do you mean . . . I need an alibi? But he didn’t—did somebody kill him?”

  “We don’t know what happened yet,” Jim said. “I’m getting information, that’s all. We’ll be asking lots of questions. Hang on a minute and I’ll write out a statement, have you sign it.”

  “I don’t have to say about that, do I?” she asked. “Is everybody going to know? Please don’t tell anybody what I did. I’ll lose all my jobs. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  Jim was already writing. “The statement’s about what happened today. About finding him, what you did today when you came out here, and when the last time was that you saw him. If I need more, I’ll come ask you for it. None of the rest of it will come out unless it has to. If you didn’t do anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to be scared of.”

  “That’s not how it works,” she said, and he wished he didn’t know that was true.

  He had her sign the brief statement, then reached into his pocket for the card case and pulled one out. “Here,” he told her. “Give these folks a call. They can help.”

  She stared down at it. Rape Crisis Center of the Palouse. “But I wasn’t . . .”

  “Did you want to have sex with him?”

  Her thin shoulders shook as she shuddered. “No,” she said with the most energy she’d showed today. “No.”

  “If he made you do it, it’s sexual assault. Doesn’t have to be force. Coercion counts. Threats count.”

  “I’d be so ashamed, though. How could I tell anybody? How could I stand them to know what I . . . what he did?” The hand holding the card was shaking, the nails cut brutally short. Her whole persona said, “Don’t look at me. Erase me.”

  “I’m guessing that’s something they’ll talk to you about,” Jim said. “That you aren’t the one who needs to be ashamed. Call them. They’ll say it so you can hear it.”

  He walked her out to her car afterward. She climbed inside, then looked up at him through the open window and said, “If somebody else gets the house—maybe they’ll need a cleaner. Do you think it would be soon?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  She drove off, passing the van with the crime scene guys coming the other way up the driveway. And Jim stood there and waited for them and thought, Son of a bitch is dead.

  It was a good feeling.

  DOORKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS

  Jim was in the den, watching the doctor stripping off her gloves and two guys bagging the body, when DeMarco walked in.

  “Ask and ye shall receive, huh?” the detective asked. “What have we got?”

  “Not much,” Jim said. “Unknown causes. Died between seven thirty and eight thirty last night.” He glanced at the doctor.

  “Nine at the very outside,” she said. “But more like eight thirty. Air-conditioned in here, temps were constant.”

  “Hmm.” DeMarco gazed at the body, face-up now, the mouth stretched wide, the eyes open and staring. “That bump on the head enough to do it?” It was a red swelling the size of a half dollar, rising high on one side of Henry’s forehead.

  The doctor said, “Can’t say until they do the post. I didn’t feel an obvious depressed fracture. No mushiness, to use the technical term. No bleeding from the nose or eyes. He fell and hit his head. That’s all I can say at this point.”

  “Huh,” DeMarco said. “Could be heart attack or something, then the fall. Older guy like that, with a gut.” The zipper closed over Henry and the two techs took off up the stairs with the bag, and DeMarco glanced at the fingerprint tech, dusting along the bar now. “So why all this? Why the crime scene tape?”

  Jim went to the d
oor leading to the garage, standing open now, its knob gray with fingerprint powder. “Just a feeling at first. But take a look. His rig’s there. He drove home and parked, came inside, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So take a look at this doorknob.”

  “Huh,” DeMarco said again. “Smudged.”

  “Yep. He came in from the garage, presumably. Vanessa—” Jim nodded back in the direction of the den, toward the fingerprint tech. “She got some partials where you’d expect them, down low on the knob. Inside and outside of this door. And full sets on the knobs on the door to the den, so he opened that one.” He twisted a curled hand as if he were opening a door. Fingers, thumb.

  Vanessa had come to join them in the hallway. “But this smudge that’s overlying his prints on these knobs,” she said, “that’s different. Could be somebody in gloves, or . . .” She pulled the sleeve of her coveralls over one hand and flapped the white material at them. “Covering their prints. After the last time Cavanaugh’s bare fingers touched it.”

  “Work gloves?” DeMarco suggested.

  “Ninety degrees out yesterday,” Jim said. “Even at night, who’d have gloves on while he drove? Besides, his prints are there on the steering wheel of his rig, and on the driver’s side door handle, too. No smudges. No gloves. And here, we’ve got smudges. On the garage door switch, too,” he said, flipping on the garage light and showing DeMarco the glowing switch on the wall. “They cover their hand to get out, punch the garage door opener with that same covered hand, punch it again when it starts opening so it starts to close again, duck under it, and they’re gone. And then there’s this.” He indicated the broom handle that had fallen across the hood of Henry’s truck.

  “A broom,” DeMarco said flatly. “Yeah, that’s damn suspicious. What, the person poked him in the head from across the room with the end of a broom handle? Book ’em, Danno. Does it have smudges on it, too, at least? Dare I hope for prints?”

  “No,” Jim said. “Not other than Henry’s. Not even the cleaner’s. She didn’t do the garage, she said.” He led the way back into the den again with DeMarco following. The fingerprint tech was back at the bar again, working on the liquor bottles. “But the broom falling across his rig like that? It’s out of character. Somebody let their cart bang into his door in the parking lot at Walmart once and he went ballistic, took up two spaces every time from then on. He wouldn’t have knocked it over in the first place, and he wouldn’t have left it there if he had. Somebody was leaving, and they knocked it over.”

  “So that’s what you’ve got,” DeMarco said. “Smudges and a broom.”

  “And the kind of guy he was.”

  “Enemies?”

  “Only everyone who knew him. What do you say, Doc?”

  “Not a popular man,” Dr. Marilyn Wright agreed, zipping up her bag.

  “He was drinking,” Jim said. “Sitting on the couch. Something happens, something sudden, and he spills his drink, stands up, then falls over and hits his head.”

  “Get the glass and body checked for toxins,” DeMarco said. He looked at Dr. Wright. “What works that fast?”

  She shrugged. “Plenty of things. Most of them you’d taste, though. And fast-acting poisons aren’t something you can buy off the shelf.”

  “Would you taste it in bourbon?” DeMarco asked.

  “Maybe not,” she conceded. “Not if it was neat bourbon, anyway. If something’s there, though, it should turn up when we run the toxicology screen. There aren’t actually as many undetectable poisons of the Amazon rainforest as people seem to think.”

  “I know it sounds like a stretch,” Jim said, “but I keep thinking he could’ve been pushed down onto the table, too. Hitting right at the corner like that, right on that rivet . . . maybe that was finishing him off. And the TV . . .” He explained about the TV not being on, then ended with, “Maybe he was even having, I don’t know, some kind of survivable episode, and somebody gave him an extra shove to make sure he didn’t survive it.” He glanced at the doctor again.

  She sighed. “I’m not psychic, guys. This is why we put him on the table, you know? And if that’s it, I’m going. I have alive people who need me.”

  The fingerprint tech took off, too. She’d tried doing some dusting upstairs without any success. The cleaner, Eileen, had been right. She’d wiped every surface down thoroughly. Too thoroughly? The only prints had been hers, and there weren’t many of them. Front door, light switches. That was about it.

  “Who found him?” DeMarco asked when everyone else had left.

  Jim explained about Eileen, and DeMarco whistled and said, “Bible study’s a pretty good alibi, though.”

  “Bible study at First Methodist is over at eight,” Jim answered. “Assuming she took the kids home first, it’d take her at least ten, fifteen more minutes to drive out here. The timing would be tight, if she stayed at the church for the whole thing, but it’s an outside shot.”

  “He sounds like a piece of work,” DeMarco said. “Maybe the hand of God just caught up with him.”

  “I don’t know,” Jim said. “Maybe.”

  “Why are you so hot to think it could be murder?” DeMarco asked. “If he’s sitting down here with somebody, drinking, and he’s not a guy with many friends, he must have known the person pretty well. Burglar alarm didn’t go off. Doors weren’t forced. With a rich guy like this, you’re thinking money, right? So who inherits? He got family?”

  “One brother. Younger. Worked for him.”

  “Promising. No kids?”

  “Just one,” Jim said. “A daughter in Seattle. Hallie.”

  Jim was back at the office on Monday evening, dropping off some paperwork and about ready to head out, when DeMarco stuck his head in the squad-room door.

  “Hey,” he said. “The ME’s report on Cavanaugh finally came in.”

  They went into the conference room, sat down, and DeMarco handed it over. “Idaho,” the detective said. “How can reports take this long? Weekends off, that’s why.”

  “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Jim said absently. He flipped through the report, scanning, then reading more closely.

  “Huh,” he finally said. “That’s weird. Haven’t heard that one before. Traces of bourbon in his larynx. But only traces. How would that kill you?

  “But then the skull fracture,” DeMarco said. “Possibly not enough to kill him under normal circumstances, either, but enough to keep his body from dealing with the asphyxiation. A perfect storm.”

  “Choked on a tiny bit of bourbon?” Jim said. “And died? How could that happen?”

  “Ice cube,” DeMarco said, reaching over and flipping a page. “That’s what the doc thinks. Some microtrauma in his larynx, and clear signs of asphyxiation.”

  “You telling me he drowned on an ice cube,” Jim said.

  “I’m not telling you. The ME is.”

  “And the fall?”

  “No bruising on his back, but a shove wouldn’t necessarily leave bruising, of course. Looks like he choked, staggered around some, tripped on the rug, fell, hit his head, and died. And if anybody was there . . . well, being there isn’t a crime. Could be that cleaner after all. She’s the only other person in the house that we found evidence of. Fingerprints, and two hairs in the sheets that she’d taken off the bed. Fluids, too, I’ll bet.” None of which had been tested yet. They’d been waiting for the ME’s report.

  Jim considered. “Could be her, of course. The sheets and towels were in the laundry basket, though, left in the hallway. She was about to put them in the washer, but she looked in the den and saw the body. That’s what she said. If she’d been the one there when he died, and she’d had the presence of mind not to leave fingerprints? All she’d have had to do was to turn the washer on the next day, then ‘find’ him and call us, and those hairs and fluids would have been gone. Wiping the fingerprints, but not washing the sheets, and then telling me about what he was doing to her, setting herself up to be suspected? No.
And anyway—no. I’m not buying it. Even if the times worked, she’d have had to leave her kids alone to do it, or brought them with her. And that, I’m not buying. They’re four and six. I don’t care what he was holding over her head, she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “You’re a romantic,” DeMarco said.

  “No,” Jim said. “I’m sure not. Women are capable of anything. That woman—I’d buy her killing for her kids, but not leaving them alone at night. Let alone the other inconsistencies.”

  “Probably not the brightest bulb in the chandelier,” DeMarco said. “A cleaning lady.”

  “My cousin Luke’s married to a cleaning lady.”

  “Oh.” DeMarco had the grace to look discomfited. “Kayla? I thought she was a waitress.”

  “She wasn’t always. But this whole thing . . .” Jim sighed, tapped the pages of the report together, and handed it back to DeMarco. “Feels hinky to me.”

  “Might be hinky,” DeMarco said, “but there’s no good evidence of a crime. The DA wouldn’t waste time prosecuting even if we had a suspect, and you know it. The guy goes to work like normal. Secretary leaves at five fifteen, and he bitches at her like normal. He leaves his office at six fifteen like normal, goes to dinner at Ruby’s like normal, reads the paper, doesn’t talk. Leaves at seven fifteen like normal and gets in the truck alone. His prints in there, both doors. His prints at home, and nobody else’s. No evidence but a smudged doorknob and a broom that fell over. So—what? Tell a jury that somebody made a guy choke on an ice cube? They’d laugh. There’s no case. This is coming in as accidental death. Release the body to the grieving family, take the tape off the scene. We’re done.”