Remember Murder

by Linda Ladd

  “That’s right. We got an anonymous call. I sent a coupla patrol officers down there to check it out. They saw the body through the front window. They kicked in the front door in case she was still alive, but she was already long dead.”

  “Your nurse’s dead?” Bud was saying to me. “Are you shittin’ me?”

  Claire ignored him and tried to get out her words. “Oh, my God, Charlie. That’s awful. I was just out with her the other night.”

  “How quick can you get over there?”

  After he told her the address and she repeated it to Bud, Bud said, “Tell Charlie we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Claire did so, and then she hung up and stared at Bud’s profile as he did a screeching U-turn and put the blue flashing light atop the roof. She could not wrap her mind around perky, sweet little Monica being murdered in her own house. How? Who would do such a thing?

  Bud pretty much floored the accelerator because there weren’t many cars out in the boondocks, not this early. Not ever, she guessed, by the looks of the thickly wooded tracts on both sides of the road.

  “How did she die, Claire?”

  “He didn’t say. Buck and the team are on their way, too.”

  After that, Claire just sat there and rode in stunned silence. Monica Wheeler was dead? It just didn’t seem possible, but it was true. And she was going to have to look at her new friend’s corpse, and the idea made her sick to her stomach. She spent the rest of the drive steeling herself for what was to come. Nancy would be there, too. Oh, God, what had happened to Monica? Who had done this? And where was Jesse? They’d have to tell him, too. Or was Jesse involved? He was so peculiar that she pegged him as a top candidate first off. Then again, he seemed to care so much for Monica.

  When they reached the crime scene, way far out on a rural road but not too far from Cedar Bend Lodge by water, there were two patrol cars and Charlie’s vehicle was double-parked out front. Bud and Claire jumped out and headed to the front door, where they were still stringing crime scene tape.

  “You got a positive ID that it’s Monica Wheeler?” Claire asked the officer at the door.

  “That’s the name on the mailbox out on the road. Buck can tell soon enough.”

  Good, maybe it wasn’t Monica. God, she hoped it wasn’t her. She’d been a good friend to Claire when she had so desperately needed one. How could she be dead?

  Hurriedly donning their protective booties and snapping on gloves, they stepped through the front door. The first thing she noticed was the temperature. It was so cold inside that she could almost see her breath. And the victim was Monica. No doubt about it. She was lying on the floor not far from the front door, her feet almost under the dining room table, faceup, a black belt cinched so tightly around her neck that her face had turned purple and her lips were black and bloated. But it was Monica.

  Unlike the woman at the duck blind, Claire knew this woman. Monica had watched over her, helped her get well, fed her meds, and laughed with her. She swallowed down bile and tried not to think about any of that, tried to disassociate herself from those thoughts. Black was going to be really upset. He had been delayed, and there was a storm building somewhere in the middle of his flight plan. She was glad he was gone. He wouldn’t take this well. Claire wasn’t taking it well.

  “Has anything been touched?” she asked the young blond patrol officer. She didn’t know him, and Bud didn’t introduce them. Bud was freaked out, too.

  “Not a thing. I kicked open the door, checked her pulse, and then called it in. I stood outside and waited for you.”

  “Good work.”

  Bud said, “It’s pretty obvious she was coming in the door and was surprised by the killer.”

  Claire looked around. “There are two place settings still on the table. Maybe he left fingerprints. It looks like he tore out of here in a hurry.”

  “Nope, he didn’t take time to clean up, all right. This place is a mess,” Bud said, stepping carefully over broken glass and the cans and fresh fruit scattered all over the floor.

  When Claire looked closely at the dinner table, she recognized the silverware and plates. “This stuff came from Cedar Bend’s restaurant. Two Cedars. Even the goblets are from there.”

  “Maybe she stole herself a whole set to get started with.”

  “Maybe, but Monica wasn’t a thief. Black paid her a lot of money for dropping everything and coming down here. She told me that herself and talked about how grateful she was to him. They were old friends.”

  “Nick brought her in special, just to help him take care of you, right?”

  “Yeah. They met when they worked together at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. She worked some for a Dr. Brunt and a Dr. Margenthaler, but mainly in the Cardiac I.C.U.”

  Bud said, “I never really got to know her. I just saw her when I went up to visit you. What was she like? A party girl?”

  “Not that I know of. We went out the other night, and she got up on the stage and sang karaoke. She was drinking, but she never was drunk.” Claire stared down at her friend’s lifeless body. “She was just a regular girl, a good nurse. Took good care of me. She was going to stay here. Black said she didn’t want to go back to St. Louis. Black will know all this stuff. We need to interview him and look at her employee record at Cedar Bend. And Jesse will know, of course.”

  “Who the hell is Jesse?” Charlie asked.

  “That’s her boyfriend. He was gonna move in here with her. He was with us Friday night, too.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Nancy said his last name is Jordan. Monica always called him Jesse. He works at Cedar Bend in the restaurant. Human Resources over there ought to know. Where is Nancy, anyway?”

  “She got a call to get back down to New Orleans. A workplace shooting came up and they’re shorthanded. She’s packing up as we speak.”

  Bud said, “We’ll get Monica’s next of kin at Cedar Bend, too.”

  “I guess we better take a quick look around,” Claire told them. “I’m not sure, but I think she just moved in here. It had to be within the last few days. She stayed in the penthouse while I was in the coma and then for a while longer, until she bought this place.”

  “Yeah, there’re a lot of empty boxes out in the carport.”

  Monica Wheeler’s house was very small, only two bedrooms. One was completely empty. The other had a double bed and not much else. She hadn’t even bought furniture yet. Only the living room and dining room were furnished. They checked out the closets, the single bathroom, which had brand-new white towels on the towel racks and new cosmetics inside the medicine cabinet. She lifted the lid on the wicker dirty clothes hamper. There were clothes inside: a man’s shirt. Somebody had lived there with Monica.

  Claire dropped the lid back into place and turned when she heard Buckeye Boyd’s voice in the living room. She walked back and found Shaggy and Vicky there, dressed in their white lab jumpsuits. Vicky was already snapping pictures of the victim. She moved around the room, taking her crime scene photographs, while Bud and Claire joined Buckeye beside the body.

  Buck said, “Okay, Claire, Bud. What’ve we got here?”

  “Female victim. Her name is Monica Wheeler.”

  “What?” That was Shaggy’s outburst. Heartfelt, too. “That’s your nurse’s name, man. What a bummer, Claire. She used to bring me up ice-cold Mountain Dews from downstairs when I sat with you. She was awesome.”

  “Yeah, I met her once up in your room, too. Nice girl.” Buck frowned. “God, she must’ve fought like a son of a gun. Just look at this place.”

  “Hope that means the perpetrator left us something to nail him with,” Claire said slowly, but something about all of it didn’t pass the smell test. Not with her. She had a bad feeling, but then again, who wouldn’t?

  “He must’ve surprised her. She’s such a small woman; she couldn’t fight him off.”

  Buck went down on one knee beside the body. “She’s been dead a while. Looks like
cause of death is strangulation. See the petechial hemorrhages in her eyes? Lack of oxygen ruptured the capillaries. I’ll have to do the autopsy to be sure, but it’s fairly apparent somebody used that belt as a ligature and asphyxiated her.”

  Claire watched Buck turn Monica’s body over and empty the pockets of her black shorts. She was wearing a simple white cotton peasant blouse and sandals with silver studs on the straps. Her toenails were painted coral pink.

  “She was just coming home,” she said. “I think he was already here waiting for her. Or she could’ve let him in, or he might have broken in.”

  “No sign of any breakin,” said the officer.

  “Then she knew him. Monica was friendly. Helpful. Maybe somebody came to the door and said his car broke down, that he was lost. Once he was inside, he killed her, and then took off.”

  “She’s been here a while. Air conditioner kept down the rate of decomp, and the smell.”

  Not enough. The smell was faint, not like at Miriam Long’s crime scene, but it was familiar and awful and crept into Claire’s very pores. She knelt down and picked up Monica’s hand. “Her fingernails are broken off. Maybe she got some DNA off him.”

  “I’ll get on that as soon as I can get her downtown.”

  After the initial examination, they loaded the body on a gurney and rolled it out the front door. Shaggy began his work, serious now, dusting the plates and glasses for fingerprints, while Vicky videotaped everything throughout the house.

  Shaggy looked at Claire, nodding in triumph. “We got lucky here. These latents are pristine.”

  “Good.”

  Claire moved to the coffee table after Vicky finished dusting. She opened Monica’s small red purse and dumped out its contents: billfold, lipstick, chewing gum, comb, compact. No key chain, no personal notes, nothing that would help them. There was about seventy dollars in her wallet. “He wasn’t after her money,” she said.

  “Claire, c’mere. I got her laptop, and it’s open to her personal calendar. She’s got it set up as a diary.”

  Claire hurried to join Bud in the kitchen and caught sight of the kitchen towel set and oven gloves that she’d given Monica as housewarming presents. Bud was sitting on a kitchen chair, intent on the Dell laptop open atop the kitchen table. She looked over Bud’s shoulder as he started scrolling through the pages of the diary.

  “Daily entries. Starting way back in August, right after she got here. Whoa, I do believe we just got lucky.”

  Claire frowned. “Hit control and home and go back to the beginning.”

  Bud did so, and read the first line on the page. “Got to Cedar Bend Lodge today around noon. Saw Nick. I still can’t believe he likes me enough to bring me all the way down here. He’s as good-looking and charming as the first day we met.” Bud stopped and looked up at her.

  “Let me see that,” Claire said, pushing him out of the chair and sitting down. Bud handed it over, but bent low so he could read it with her.

  Silently they skimmed the following entries and found:

  I hope there’s more than one reason that Nick brought me here. My heart goes wild every time he walks into the room. I’m still crazy about him, and he’s interested in me this time, too. He told me that he thought about me a lot when we were apart. The patient I’m to tend is a young woman named Claire Morgan. She’s in a deep coma and has been since a car accident about a week ago. He’s extremely concerned, but not so much that he didn’t invite me to have dinner upstairs with him in his own kitchen. Oh, God, help me, I really do think now that he might love me. Why else would he choose me to come here and live in his apartment with him? I can only pray that’s true. I’ve loved him for so long.

  “Oh, my God, Bud. She was in love with Black. She says he’s in love with her.”

  “No way. Let me see that.”

  They read more of the diary together while Claire scrolled down through the days that Monica spent at the lake. The nurse talked about the private time she and Black spent together, that he seduced her and took her to bed while Claire still lay unconscious in the next room.

  When Claire looked at Bud, the expression in his eyes told her the whole story.

  “I don’t believe it, Claire. Are you kidding me? Black messin’ around while you were right there, sick and maybe dying? No way, no freakin’ way! I don’t know why she wrote down this kinda stuff, but I don’t believe one word of it. And you shouldn’t, either.”

  Claire stared mutely at him. Shocked by some of the more intimate details that the nurse alleged went on during all those days Claire was unconscious and unaware, she wanted to know it all. So she sat right there and read every single word, while Bud paced around the kitchen and muttered cuss words and tried to convince her that none of it was true. Oh, God, Monica wrote down that they had sex in Black’s bed while Claire slept in her room a couple of doors down the hall. No, no, it could not be true. Black wouldn’t do that to her. Or would he? How well did she really know him? All she knew was what he told her. And he was rich and handsome and controlling. She’d seen for herself how women reacted to him. He could have anyone he wanted. Maybe he did have a fling with Monica. Maybe he killed her to cover it up.

  “Black wouldn’t do this. It’s just not in him,” Bud said softly, squatting down beside Claire again. Earnestly, he searched her eyes. “Don’t think it. This has got to be pack of lies, some kind of setup.”

  Claire held up the laptop. “No? Then how do you explain this? That it’s Monica’s big fantasy, that she made up all these details, just for the hell of it?”

  Bud met Claire’s angry stare. “It’s not like it’s in her handwriting, Claire. Anybody coulda typed this stuff in. We’ll ask Nick and see what he says. It’s not true, and you oughta know that.”

  “Yeah, I ought to know that. But I don’t.”

  Charlie walked into the kitchen and listened intently while Bud ran the case so far, including the part about the incriminating diary. Claire just sat there and said nothing.

  “Where’s Nick?” Charlie asked her.

  “As far as I know, he’s either in Miami waiting for the weather to clear, or he’s in the air on his way back. At least, that’s what he told me. He might’ve been right here in this house all weekend, for all I know.”

  “So you can’t alibi him for the last few days.”

  “No, he’s been in Florida at an A.M.A. meeting. That’s what he said.”

  “I don’t believe he’s capable of doing anything this heinous,” Charlie said quietly. “Do you, Claire? Really?”

  She jumped up, paced around some herself. “I don’t know. I don’t know him. I don’t even know you very well. All I know is that this diary, right there on that table, puts him as number one on our suspect list. And I think everybody here has got to agree with me.”

  Buck, and Shaggy, and even Vicky stopped what they were doing and looked at her. What they said then was that they couldn’t believe Nicholas Black could possibly be involved. On the other hand, not a one of them could explain the incriminating words in Monica’s diary, and so they worked the rest of the scene without much conversation. Not even when they emptied the clothes hamper and found that the shirt she’d seen earlier was one of Black’s expensive, tailor-made white dress shirts wadded up in the bottom of the hamper. She hadn’t recognized it until she saw his initials monogrammed on the cuff.

  This was indeed looking pretty grim for the man who said he loved her so much. Worse than grim, if you really got down to it. He was probably going to turn out to be this young woman’s killer, unless he could find a way to prove otherwise. One thing Claire did know for a fact: She wasn’t going back to his place at Cedar Bend Lodge, not now, maybe not ever. For sure, she was keeping her distance from him until he was ruled out as Monica’s killer. If he was ruled out, and she was no longer sure that was going to happen.

  Bud and Claire worked the crime scene until almost seven o’clock, and then returned to the sheriff’s office. Now they sat in Charlie�
�s office, watching him where he sat behind his desk, carefully reading a printout copy of Monica Wheeler’s computer diary, his bifocal reading glasses perched atop his nose. Claire tried not to fidget as the minutes lengthened. She felt about as bad as any human being could feel. The thought of the two of them, her doctor and her nurse, her self-avowed lover and her friend having sex while she lay next door struggling to wake up from a coma, was so awful to consider that she tried desperately to clear it out of her mind, but not with a lot of luck. So there they all sat, waiting. Solemn. Sick at heart.

  When Charlie finished, he looked straight at her. “How do you feel about this?”

  Ha, what a question. “Terrible. Betrayed. How do you think I feel?”

  “So you believe this crock of shit?”

  “It was her private diary, written on her personal laptop. Why in God’s name would Monica make up these kinds of lies?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Well, I don’t know, but I don’t believe a damn word of it. I’ve seen how Black is about you, how anxious he was when you were lying in that hospital bed. He was distraught with worry. He couldn’t fake something like that. He wouldn’t look at another woman during that time. It’s simply impossible, to my mind.”

  “I don’t remember him as well as you do, Sheriff. You’ve been friends with him for a long time. I don’t know if he’s had other women on the side while we were together, or not. I don’t know if he has one in Miami and is with her right now. I do think he’s slick enough to pull it off, if he wanted to.”

  Heaving a giant sigh, Charlie shifted his gaze to Bud. “What’d you think, Bud?”

  “I think something like that is the last thing Nick would ever do. I don’t believe anything in that diary for a New York minute.”

  Well, Claire did feel a little better that they both believed so steadfastly in Nicholas Black’s innocence, and his feelings for her. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he could explain all this away. Right, oh, sure, she thought. She didn’t see how he could.

  Charlie said, “Are you sure the shirt we found out there belongs to him?”