Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

by Diane Capri

  “I am now. We’ve already had a couple run-ins.”

  “Such as?”

  Piper told him some of what had transpired since she moved in, repeating what she’d told Dr. Lowdell only days ago. “They know I’m on to them. So I have reason to be concerned. Especially now, if they’re responsible for Vera’s death.”

  “Well, don’t worry, we won’t let on that you pointed a finger in their direction.”

  She felt more apprehensive than ever. “You are going to check them out, aren’t you, to see if they have criminal records? Talk to Mrs. Squire—privately?”

  “Yeah, we’ll look into it. I assure you, Ms. Lundberg, if there’s any indication of foul play, we will check them out thoroughly.”

  If? Her apprehension became compounded by exasperation. Why didn’t they just seal the area until they could do a proper autopsy? Then there would be little chance of contaminating what could be a potential crime scene. She told the detective as much.

  “You’re in the crime field, are you, Mrs. Lundberg?” he asked.

  “No. But I read. I watch TV.”

  “Did you play a detective on TV?”

  “Very funny.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “These days everybody’s an expert.”

  Piper heard voices in the hallway, wheels rolling on hardwood. An attendant pushed the gurney that carried the shrouded remains of Vera Wade. The coroner came through ahead of the gurney.

  “Looks pretty routine to me,” he said to the detective after glancing at her. “She was under a physician’s care for her heart. Nitro.” He shook a prescription bottle. “But we’ll open her up just to be sure.”

  She sat back in the chair, relief flooding through her. Finally someone was going to do something.

  “The deceased has been dead for at least twelve hours, maybe as long as sixteen. Rigor is pretty much complete.”

  “You last saw her alive at what time, Mrs. Lundberg?” Detective Bower asked.

  “At eight p.m. But it wasn’t until around midnight when I noticed her car was gone.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “When I fell asleep around ten it was there. It was gone at twelve.”

  “So she was still alive at ten.”

  “Unless, of course, she didn’t drive herself home.”

  The detective turned to the doctor. “Doc, any indication the body was moved postmortem?”

  “Lividity doesn’t seem to have been compromised. But we’ll know more at the post exam.”

  “They could’ve drugged her, drove her home, and killed her here.”

  The two men exchanged looks.

  “Like I said, I’ll know more when I do the post. No point speculating about it now.” The coroner followed the gurney and attendant out the door to the waiting van.

  Detective Bower tapped his notebook. “Sybil Squire was big in the fifties. I remember her. She played a gun moll in that gangster movie back when those kinds of movies were really hot. What was the name of that film?”

  “Shady Lady.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Trust me, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “Mrs. Lundberg, if you’re so concerned about this actress’s welfare, why don’t you call Social Services again?”

  “And say what? Mrs. Squire won’t admit that she’s being mistreated or that she’s in any danger whatsoever.”

  “Then I’d say let it be. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying that, Detective. I’m sure you’ve been involved in more than your share of domestic abuse cases. The battered spouse refusing to press charges.”

  “Laws have changed. Now we can arrest the abuser without the victim’s say-so. But we have to be relatively certain a crime has been committed. Eyewitnesses, obvious signs of physical abuse, and so on. But in the end it’s up to the abused party to make a clean break.”

  “What if there are no eye witnesses? What if she has no choice but to pretend to be okay? Detective Bower, you don’t live next door to her. You don’t see what I see. She’s deteriorated considerably since I first laid eyes on her. I think she wants help, she’s just scared.” Piper sat forward. “Look, I am not one of those nosy, meddlesome neighbors. In fact, I pretty much keep to myself and try to mind my own business. Only this is different. There’s something going on over there. I just can’t ignore it, now can I?”

  He stood, touched her elbow to bring her to her feet. “You go on home. We’ll take it from here. We appreciate your involvement. If you hadn’t found Mrs. Wade, she might’ve lain in there unnoticed for a long time. Do you know if she had family we can notify?”

  Piper shook her head. “Sybil Squire was a close friend—she’d know.”

  He blinked, then scratched out something in his notebook. “I’ll pay her a visit.”

  The detective gave Piper his card, then walked her to the back door. He stayed behind to lock up the house. The killer dog next door jumped at the chain link fence when she stepped out of the kitchen door, making Piper jump. As she passed the VW, she looked inside, remembering the umbrella she’d lent her and wondering if it might be in the car. She didn’t see the umbrella, but something else caught her eye. Barely visible under the seat on the passenger’s side was a lime green strap. Vera carried a lime green purse. She looked back at the house. The detective was nowhere to be seen. The last patrol car had just pulled away and the coroner’s van was backing out onto the street. She opened the car door and pulled on the strap, hauling the purse out from under the seat. It flopped open. She rummaged through it, looking for the two things Vera had bragged about. The two things that had given her the courage to stick her neck out, and may have cost her her life. The house key and the metal canister of pepper spray. Both were gone.

  “What’ve you got there?” Detective Bower said, coming up behind her. The dog barked louder.

  Piper’s hands shook, but she managed to respond in a normal voice. “Her purse. It’s here in the car. Why leave it in the car? Women don’t do that.”

  “Hmm.” He lifted it out by the strap. “Thank you. I’ll just put this inside the house for now.”

  Piper nodded toward the barking dog. “You might want to ask the neighbors if they saw or heard anything. That dog would’ve woke up the whole neighborhood.”

  “I’m on it.”

  She turned away then turned back. “Last night I lent Vera my umbrella. She took it with her to the Squire house and—”

  He cut her off. “If I come across it I’ll let you know. Mrs. Lundberg, LAPD doesn’t need any amateur sleuths. Go home. Please.”

  She climbed into her car and sat, staring straight ahead, wondering how someone could be so alive one day and gone the next. Had Vera died because she got in the way? She was sure the nurse and her sidekick were responsible—directly or indirectly. They wouldn’t get away with it. Not if she could help it.

  She looked up to see the detective staring at her through the front window of the house, his head tipped to the side as though trying to figure out what she was up to. There was something about the man that told her they’d possibly butt heads. If he did his job, everything would be fine and dandy. If he did his job.

  #

  That night when Piper climbed into bed, she considered the possibilities. Perhaps Vera had left on her own volition, was followed home and killed there. Or, before she could talk to Sybil, she was overtaken and killed at the mansion. However, if they’d moved the body, it would’ve shown up through lividity—the blood settling in the lowest area of the body. Or she could have been rendered unconscious, driven home and killed in her own bedroom. Either way, it had been a surprise attack. What little she knew of Vera Wade, her spunky nature, her loyalty to her mistress, told her she wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.

  She awoke to what sounded like footsteps on the deck, stopping at the glass door. Her heart raced. She rolled off the Murphy bed in the p
itch-black room and kneeled on the floor, her eyes darting to the windows and the door. She crawled to the door, to the light switch on the wall and flicked on the porch light. There was no sound of footsteps running away. Had she dreamed hearing the steps? She separated the vertical slats and peered out onto the deck. No one stood at her door. Feeling braver now, she hurried from window to window and peered out. The deck was empty.

  She left the porch light burning. Knowing sleep would be impossible, she dragged the club chair across the room to the corner windows, the ones facing the Squire house. There she spent the rest of the long, long night.

  By morning, despite the fog clinging to the basin, the mere presence of daylight lifted her spirits. Vera’s death scene suppositions began to break down bit by bit, a Swiss cheese scenario filled with holes. After she finished her second cup of coffee, she called Lee. She had to tell someone or she’d burst.

  “Okay, that’s settles it, I’m coming over,” Lee said. “Just have to clear my calendar.”

  “And do what? Have a nail biting contest? Look, I’ll be fine. I think my imagination got the best of me. I even thought I heard someone on the deck last night.” She opened the door and stepped out onto the deck.

  “Then meet me for lunch,” Lee said. “One-thirty at The Grill.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try.” At the threshold of the door, a large snail lay crushed on the wooden planks. The snails had overtaken the flowers in the planter box attached to the railing, so she was used to seeing them on the deck. “Gotta go, bye.” The dead snail had not been there when she went to bed last night. She squatted down. Leading away from the snail, every few feet, was a circle of slime. Whoever had stepped on it had squished it good, carrying the slime on the bottom of his or her shoe. The trail led to the edge of the staircase and down several steps.

  #

  Piper pulled out the short stack of mail from the mailbox. The Squire’s mailbox stood only a few feet from the Vogt’s, separated by the property wall. Since moving in, she’d never run into any occupants of the mansion at the mailboxes. So when she heard footsteps on the pavement she retreated behind the wall. Her skin tightened at the base of her neck. If she were a cat, the hairs would be standing on end.

  Mr. Moto bypassed the mailbox, walked to the edge of the street and bent over, inspecting something on the pavement. A wad of something pink. Gum? Vera’s gum? With a dry raspy cough, he picked it up and pocketed it. Piper edged closer. A twig snapped under her foot. Moto jerked around. She stood frozen in place staring back into his face. His eyes behind the round glasses were inflamed and bloodshot. The skin red.

  As calmly as possible, Piper turned and walked slowly up the driveway, sorting through the mail. She wasn’t going to let him see she was scared. When she reached the safety of the guesthouse, she hurried inside, locked the door, and dropped down on the couch. She buried her face in her hands. Behind her closed lids, she saw his raw, bloodshot eyes. Eyes that looked ravaged by a strong chemical. What chemical? Chlorine from the pool? Not strong enough to do that kind of damage. Pepper spray. Had Vera managed to get off a shot? If so, where was the canister? If the police searched for and found the canister at the Squire house, it would prove that Vera had been there and that Mr. Moto had taken a hefty dose of it in the face. That would certainly suggest foul play. Her mind reeled.

  She wasted no time calling the number Detective Bower had given her. He came on the line immediately. She told him about the pepper spray and how the male caregiver looked like someone who’d taken a direct hit.

  “You never mentioned anything about pepper spray,” the detective said.

  “Well, it didn’t seem important until I saw the guy next door wheezing and all teary-eyed and I remembered the pepper spray canister Vera showed me, which later was missing from her purse. It…well…all came together then.”

  “How do you know the spray was missing from her purse?’

  “I looked. In her purse…in the car yesterday. When she was at my house, she showed me a house key and the pepper spray. The key was going to get her inside, and maybe it did. The pepper spray was going to protect her. Well, obviously it didn’t.”

  “This man who you think just committed homicide, who took a shot of mace in the eyes, strolls out to pick up the mail?”

  Moto holding the pink wad crossed mind. “Wait—” she said to Bower. She took a moment to assimilate Moto’s actions. He was not collecting the mail. He was picking something up off the street. What looked like a wad of gum. Only it wasn’t gum. It was a hearing aid. Vera’s hearing aid.

  “Did anyone find Mrs. Wade’s hearing aid?” she blurted out.

  “What?”

  “She wore a hearing aid. I think that’s what the Asian man was picking up when I came up on him. That’s where her car was parked. Was a hearing aid with her personal effects at the morgue or the house?”

  “I don’t know anything about a hearing aid.”

  “Ask. Will you please ask?”

  “Okay, I’ll check into it,” the detective said. “Anything else?”

  “No. Not that I can think of.”

  “Good—oh, and Mrs. Lundberg?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let me remind you that by digging around where you shouldn’t be digging around, you could be tampering with vital evidence, making it of no use to us. If there is a crime, your meddling could set the guilty party free on something as simple as a technicality. You wouldn’t want to do that, now would you?”

  “Well…no.”

  “Leave it to us. I promise you there will be a full investigation.”

  She wanted to believe him, but somehow she wasn’t convinced. Gordon would’ve insisted she back off. Nana would’ve encouraged her to follow her gut. “Have they done the autopsy?”

  “I doubt it. They’re pretty backlogged at county.”

  “Ask them to look for pepper spray on her hands.”

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Lundberg.”

  #

  The days passed with nothing further from Detective Bower about Vera’s death. Four-twenty a.m. and unable to sleep, Piper rose out of bed and went to the window. Gazing at the house next door had became a habit, as automatic as brushing her teeth or making the bed, though she didn’t expect to see anything, not tonight, not so soon after Vera’s death. So when she caught sight of someone below, it snapped her awake. A flashlight beam crawled over and under the bushes next door. The half moon in the cloudless sky illuminated the area enough for her to see that the bearer of the flashlight looked to be male. Mr. Moto? What was he looking for at four in the morning?

  The light continued to play over the shrubs near the rear door. What was he looking for? The pepper spray canister? The umbrella?

  She grabbed the camcorder and began filming. Without night vision apparatus, the chances of catching anything more than the beam of light was remote, but it was all she had. The man bent and retrieved something. He held it under the flashlight beam. Whatever it was, it fit between his thumb and forefinger. Small, the size of Vera’s canister. Headlights approaching the intersection at the corner washed over the house, illuminating the man briefly. The light held long enough for her to make out the back of a bandana-wrapped head. She gasped. How many people were involved? The car headlights passed, the flashlight beam went out, and the man was gone. She knew for certain, along with him, a piece of vital evidence would also disappear.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sybil Squire Husband Dead: The manner of producer Paul Winger’s death was grisly, serving only to fuel the rumors. Why did Winger kill himself? Who was the mystery woman at the couple’s Pacific Palisades home that evening? What did Sybil Squire’s ten-year-old daughter witness that fateful night?… “Everyone wants to make something sensational out of this tragedy,” said Transworld Artists studio executive Edward Hill to reporters at a news conference. “This is real life, folks, not a horror show.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  The callousness displayed by t
he media regarding the tragic death of her second husband only proved that the public did not accept that Sybil had a real life.

  —Excerpt from the biography of Sybil Squire: The Platinum Widow

  by Russell Cassevantes

  On the third floor of the glass and steel building of the Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles, in the Robbery-Homicide Division squad room, a female patrol officer directed Piper to the desk of Detective second-grade Jason Bower. The squad room, with its old wooden filing cabinets, outdated venetian blinds, and bright overhead fluorescent tube lights, gave Piper the feeling she was on a 50s film noir movie set. The men in the room were all dressed conservatively in dark suits and white shirts. Detective Bower, leaning against his desk with a phone to his ear, wore a deep blue suit and matching tie. He looked over at Piper, a surprised look on his face. He pulled a metal chair around and indicated for her to take a seat. He finished his conversation, hung up the landline, and turned to her.

  “Mrs. Lundberg?”

  “Detective Bower, I was wondering if you’d heard anything from the coroner. It’s been over a week.”

  “Coroner?”

  “The Vera Wade case.”

  “I know what case you’re referring to.” He shuffled through some papers and files in an ‘in’ box and those on the desktop. “No. I haven’t gotten the coroner’s report yet.”

  “Did you mention in your report to the coroner to look for pepper spray on her hands?”

  “You could’ve phoned, Mrs. Lundberg, you didn’t have to come all this way to ask me what I’m doing on the case.”

  “I thought I did. My call didn’t seem to be very effective.”

  “Any new problems over there? Anything suspicious?”

  “Yes.” She crossed her arms and told him about the bandana-headed man with the flashlight at the Squire house in the wee hours of the morning.

  “Oh?”

  “I videotaped it, but it was dark.” Piper brightened. “Maybe you have equipment that can enhance the footage. I can email you a copy of the video.”