Dead Calm

by Annelise Ryan

  Penny stops at the bottom of the bed, her arms folded over her chest. She gives me an exasperated look. “This is an awful invasion of privacy,” she grumbles. “Is it really necessary for you to go digging around in their things?”

  I force my expression into something I hope looks halfway professional. I don’t like Penny, and it’s not just because she looked like she wanted to saddle up my husband and ride him home. I get the sense that she’s a prickly person, the kind with a sense of entitlement and a no-holds-barred attitude when it comes to speaking her mind. So I decide to give like for like. “My husband and I try to be very thorough with every case we investigate,” I say. I see her expression falter for a second, and her eyes dart toward my left hand. Message received, I think with a little smile. Then I turn on my camera to start filming and switch topics. “What kind of work do you do, Ms. Cook? Or is it Mrs.?”

  “Ms. is fine,” she says with a little pout that would look cute on a four-year-old but seems kind of pathetic on a woman Penny’s age. “I’m divorced.”

  “And do you have an occupation?” I ask since she ignored that question.

  “I have three kids and a house to manage. Does that count?”

  Given what a challenge I’ve had managing a house with only two kids, I feel obligated to nod. Then, just to firm up my claim on Hurley, I say, “Detective Hurley and I have two kids, and that keeps me plenty busy, so I can imagine how crazy your life gets. Does your ex help out any?” I’m filming things in the room as I talk, trying to keep some level of conversation going to keep Penny distracted and talking.

  “My ex-husband owns several car dealerships,” Penny says. “He helps out when he can with the kids, but he’s pretty busy most of the time.”

  “Any of the dealerships here in town?” I ask.

  She nods. “He owns the Chrysler-Dodge place over on the south side of town, and two others between here and Madison.”

  “Whose side of the bed is that?” I ask, pointing to the right side.

  “Pammy’s,” she says without hesitation.

  I find this interesting. I couldn’t tell you what side of the bed belongs to my sister or her husband. “You and Pamela are pretty close, I take it.” I move to Craig’s side of the bed as I say this and film the top of his nightstand. It’s ordinary enough: alarm clock, reading glasses, a current thriller novel open and facedown, a remote for the blinds on the windows above.

  “I more or less raised Pammy,” Penny says as I reach down and open one of the two drawers in Craig’s nightstand. It contains dozens of rolled-up pairs of socks. I rummage through them to make sure there isn’t anything hiding in there and give most of the socks a squeeze. It’s a surprisingly common hiding place.

  “Our parents died in a house explosion when I was nineteen and Pam was twelve,” Penny continues as I shut the top drawer and open the one beneath it. “There was a leaky gas line, and they think the gas ignited when my mother lit a candle. It killed them both instantly and destroyed the entire house. Fortunately, Pam and I had both left for school when it happened—I was attending a local community college at the time—or we probably would have been killed, too.”

  “How awful,” I say, giving her a sympathetic look.

  “It was,” she acknowledges, looking sad. “At first, the authorities wanted us to go and live with some aunt in California, but I turned twenty a few days after the explosion, and I was able to convince social services that I could take care of the two of us. I still had a year to go to obtain an associate’s degree in nursing, but I was able to get a license as an LPN.”

  “I’m a nurse,” I tell her, an effort to bond. “An RN. I used to work at the hospital here in town. Did you ever go back and finish your degree?”

  Penny’s lips thin. “No,” she says after a moment. “I meant to. In fact, at one time I had plans to transfer my credits to the university and pursue a four-year degree, but it never happened. I became a single mother literally overnight. Our parents had a nest egg of retirement savings between the two of them, and there was also a little money from the insurance on the house. So it wasn’t like I had to become a big breadwinner right away. It gave me time to focus on getting Pammy and me back on our feet emotionally.” She pauses and takes on a distant look, a hint of a smile on her face. “Our parents were both smart financial planners—I think that’s where Pam gets her affinity for number crunching and finances.”

  The smile disappears, and she refocuses on me. “Anyway, we had a little money to tide us over for a while, and I found us a nice rental house just outside of town. I took some nursing odd jobs here and there when I needed to, but I tried to be home as much as possible for Pammy. I got her through school and on to college, and basically ran the household until she graduated. Then she met Craig and moved out a couple of months later.”

  “When did you get married?” I ask as I survey the second drawer. It contains more books—spy thrillers—some sex lube, and a copy of the Kama Sutra. Craig was adventurous, it seems, and I wonder if he was sleeping with both his wife and Meredith Lansing, or if the marital bed had grown cold.

  Penny has moved beside me and is watching everything I do. I shut the drawer and head for the walk-in closet, Penny on my heels.

  “I got married not long after Pammy moved in with Craig,” she says. “I’d known Chip for a couple of years, and he initially proposed to me when Pammy was still in college.” She sighs. “I turned him down that time, telling him I felt like I needed to be there for my sister. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Chip was persistent and loyal. He hung in there and proposed again right after Pammy graduated.” She pauses, sighs, and rolls her eyes. “And since I was five months pregnant at the time, I accepted.” She looks wistful for a moment. “Wish I’d known then what I know now.”

  “It must have been difficult for you, taking on the role of mother to your sister,” I say as she follows me into the closet. The two sides are divided into his and hers: Pamela’s stuff on the right, Craig’s—perhaps fittingly given his left-handedness—on the left. After snapping pictures of everything, I paw through the shirts and sports coats hanging on Craig’s side, giving any pockets I find a squeeze.

  “It wasn’t that hard,” Penny says. “I mean, losing our parents that way was a shock, but the two of us were always close, and we leaned on one another for support.”

  I find nothing in the hanging clothes and move to the built-in drawers beneath them. These, too, provide nothing in the way of clues other than the fact that Craig was a boxer man. I move to the other side and do the same with Pamela’s things.

  “Divorce is hard,” I say, working to keep the conversation going. “I went through one myself.” Penny perks up at this, and I feel obligated to clarify. “We split up right before I met Detective Hurley,” I add, “so I suppose it turned out to be a good thing. But it was quite the emotional roller coaster.”

  “Why did you split?”

  “He cheated on me.”

  “That seems to be the male way,” Penny says in a bitter tone, making me wonder if that’s what happened to her marriage. “No kids?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “That’s fortunate. It really complicates things. Chip and I are still fighting over custody of the kids.”

  Pamela’s side reveals little of interest other than some fancy lingerie, so I move on, with Penny still at my heels. The bathroom is huge and luxurious. The towels are thick, beige cotton, and there are two robes hanging on hooks just inside the door. I guess the floral-patterned one is Pamela’s. Craig’s is a blue-and-red plaid number.

  Penny stands by silently, watching me as I film, and then I look through the various drawers and cupboards in the vanity. Once I’m done with those, I look through the medicine cabinet.

  “You’re very thorough,” Penny says, and I detect a hint of irritation in her voice.

  “It’s helpful to learn as much as possible about our victims. I know it seems intrusive, but it’s necessary.�
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  “Whatever,” she says with a sigh. She glances at her watch.

  The medicine cabinet offers up nothing helpful. There are no prescription medications, just the usual assortment of over-the-counter pain and cold remedies, along with some vitamin and mineral supplements.

  “How long have Craig and Pamela been married?” I ask Penny.

  “Eight, almost nine years now. They lived together for a year before that.”

  I do a quick mental calculation and figure Penny must be pushing forty. “No kids?” I ask.

  Penny shakes her head. “It hasn’t been in the cards for them. They’ve been trying for years. Pam has seen a fertility specialist, and apparently they are . . . were at the point where they were going to have to consider in vitro. It’s quite expensive, but Pam was determined for a while. Then she said the stress of it all was starting to weigh on their marriage, and that Craig told her if they couldn’t do it naturally, then it wasn’t meant to be.” She pauses and gives a half-hearted shrug. “Maybe that’s what made Craig stray. Who knows?”

  I leave the bathroom and go over to Pamela’s side of the bed. The contents of her nightstand bear out Penny’s story. There are books on fertility, some ovulation test strips, and a thermometer.

  Satisfied, I leave the room and move back out into the hallway. There are two other bedrooms and another bathroom off the hall. One of the bedrooms is done up for guests; the other is nearly empty, boasting nothing more than a rocking chair and a dresser. I guess that the emptier room is, or was, designated to be a nursery, if and when the happy day ever came.

  The main bathroom is clearly set up for guests as well, and it yields nothing of interest. We head back out to the kitchen, where we find Hurley and Pamela seated at the breakfast bar, sipping coffees.

  “I was just explaining to Mrs. Knowlton about our evidentiary procedures,” Hurley says. Pamela looks at her sister with a scared, confused expression. “Mattie, if you would please escort Mrs. Knowlton to her room, she is going to remove the clothes she is wearing so we can collect them as evidence. I’ve just checked her hands for GSR and that came up negative.”

  Penny, who looked like she was ready to resume her flirtatiousness when we first entered the room, now looks angry and startled. “What the hell are you doing?” she says, her hands on her hips. “You can’t treat Pammy like this. Her husband just died, for cripes sake. Just because he’s a murderer doesn’t mean she is, or that she had anything to do with it.”

  I put out a hand to Penny and try to calm her. “It’s merely routine. It’s important to be thorough in any investigation we conduct. The woman victim’s husband might come back later and say Pamela was involved somehow. If we don’t have evidence to the contrary, then you’ve got a problem on your hands.”

  Penny gives me an impatient look, heads straight for her sister, and stands in front of her, looking her in the eye. “You don’t have to do this, Pammy,” she says. “You don’t have to listen to them, you don’t have to give them anything, you don’t even have to let them in your house.”

  Pamela, tears welling in her eyes, gives her sister a pleading look. “I want to get this over with,” she says in a small, quiet voice. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Penny says. “They might find a way to use evidence they collect against you later on. At the very least, you should call a lawyer.”

  Pamela drops her head, and a tear falls from her face to the floor. Silently, she sidesteps past her sister and heads for the bedroom. I follow, leaving Penny and Hurley in the kitchen together—not the greatest idea, in my opinion.

  In the bedroom, Pamela walks over to her closet, grabs a T-shirt and a pair of shorts from a shelf, and then takes out a pair of panties and a bra from a drawer. Wordlessly, she carries them to the bed, tossing them on top of the spread, and then kicks off her shoes. She then strips herself down until she is naked, handing me each item of clothing as it comes off. I have brought my scene kit along and have bags at the ready for the items. As I bag, seal, and label, I also steal a few surreptitious glances at Pamela’s body to determine if she has any wounds, bruises, or other markings that might be indicative of a struggle. There is nothing.

  “I’m sorry to put you through this, Pamela,” I say. “I know it must be humiliating.”

  She shrugs. “It’s no different than being in the gym locker room,” she says, pulling on her panties and then her shorts.

  “Penny told me about your parents,” I say. “What an awful experience that must have been for you.”

  Pamela stares at me as she picks the bra up from the bed. Her eyes look dead. She shrugs into the bra with her eyes still locked on mine. “It was definitely a shock,” she says, reaching behind to hook the bra. When she’s done, she grabs the tee, and slips it on over her head. “So is this. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that Craig did something like this. I mean . . . an affair I could maybe understand. But killing someone? And then himself? That’s not the man I knew. Or the man I thought I knew,” she clarifies, her posture sagging. Tears well again, and she turns away from me. I finish my evidentiary duties and then stand there, staring at the floor, letting her have some semblance of privacy.

  “Are we done?” she says after a minute or two. I look up, see her face is tearstained but dry, and nod. She heads back toward the kitchen, and I follow, carrying my evidence and scene kit with me.

  Out in the kitchen, we find Penny and Hurley sitting at the breakfast bar. Hurley has his back to me. Penny is leaning on the bar with one arm bent, her face resting on the back of her forearm. She is smiling that coy little smile again. As soon as she sees me. she straightens up and adopts a guilty expression, something I suspect is a deliberate ploy.

  After a few instructions on what to expect from here on out, Hurley and I load up our evidence, which includes Craig’s laptop, the office printer, and some files from his desk, say good-bye, and leave. Outside, we have to walk past Pamela’s car and a beige, older-model sedan that’s parked behind it, which I assume is Penny’s car. Once we have everything, including ourselves, loaded in the car, I give Hurley a summary of what I found in the house—which was essentially nothing—and what I learned from Penny.

  “How about you?” I ask him when I’m done. “How was your time alone with Penny?” I tease.

  Hurley looks at me and rolls his eyes. “That woman reeks of desperation.”

  “Understandable, I imagine. It sounds like her ex treated her like crap.”

  “Maybe. There are always two sides to these things.”

  “I guess.”

  “Jonas sent me a text while you and Penny were in the bedroom. The serial number on the gun we found in the motel room came back registered to a man named Philip Conroy, who reported it stolen a year ago. So that’s a dead end unless we can find a connection between this Conroy fellow and the Knowltons or Lansings. I didn’t see a file in Craig’s home desk with that name on it. I’ve got the guys looking for one in the office files.”

  “I have to say, I found both Lansing’s and Pamela’s reactions very convincing. And the only motive I see so far is revenge for the affair. That means one or both of them is an excellent actor and liar.”

  Hurley nods, looking thoughtful. “Well, I did find a million-dollar life insurance policy in Craig’s desk, so that’s a possible motive.”

  “Does it exclude suicide?” I ask. “Most policies do for a period of a year or two after the policy is written.”

  “Good question,” Hurley says. “I don’t know. It’s in that box in the backseat. Have a look.”

  I take off my seat belt and reach around to rummage through the boxes he has loaded into the car. Eventually, I find the policy and skim through it. “This is interesting,” I say when I get to the second page. “Suicide is excluded for one year.” I flip to the last page and check the signatures and the date the policy was signed. The first thing I notice is that the person who issued the policy is Patty Volker, my ex
-husband’s new wife. I log that in a mental file and then look at the dates. “Wow,” I say. “This thing was signed one year and a day ago.”

  Hurley shoots me a look. I can tell he’s intrigued. “We need to go back and have a longer chat with John Lansing and find out if his wife had an insurance policy, too,” he says. “Now that we know this thing isn’t what it seems, we need to take a closer look at him.”

  CHAPTER 8

  John Lansing is clearly surprised to see us back. “What is it now?” he says. In the time we’ve been gone, he hasn’t showered, dressed, or—judging from his breath—brushed his teeth. I get a sense that good hygiene wasn’t high on his list before, and now that his wife isn’t around to nag him on the topic, it will deteriorate even more. He looks tightly wound and ready to flinch at whatever news we have to deliver this time.

  Hurley says, “We need to take a look at some of your wife’s things, to help us clear up some questions about the case.”

  “Such as?” Lansing says irritably. “First you tell me my wife has been murdered by some love-struck asshole, and then you say the two of them were having an affair. Now you want to paw through my wife’s things? What the hell for?”

  As if Lansing isn’t angry enough already, Hurley ramps up the man’s ire with his next question. “Did Meredith have any life insurance?”

  Lansing blinks at Hurley, staring at him in disbelief. “She has a small policy, nothing big. We both do. They’re for ten grand each, enough to take care of a funeral and maybe pay off a few expenses. Though I think Mer also had some coverage through work, through the hospital. I think she said it was equal to a year’s earnings, or something like that.” He pauses and frowns. “How could that possibly have anything to do with this?”

  “There are some irregularities in this case that we need to clear up,” Hurley says with imminent patience. Lansing is still standing in his doorway, and he doesn’t look inclined to invite us inside.