Price of Innocence

by Patricia McLinn

  “But not before I do more grunt work on this case.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Maybe I do need a vacation.”

  “More like a lobotomy.”

  Their departure was perfectly timed, with Terrington reaching the break room door as they exited, and Roy Isaacson heading for it from the far entry to the detectives’ bullpen.

  * * * *

  “Did you hear what that asshole podcaster said today?” Roy Isaacson asked loudly enough to be meant for general consumption.

  Only Terrington responded. “Oz, the asshole podcaster from Death, Murder, Violence? What did he say?”

  Terrington sounded like one of those guys making late-night TV ads for their own company. Not just wooden, but concrete.

  That brought a few heads up — not from interest, judging by the smirks, but as commentary on the performance.

  Isaacson was passably normal, though unnecessarily loud. “He was down on law enforcement. Some other media described it as ridicule. Especially over the investigation of the Old Town murder.”

  “Wow.”

  Terrington’s response drew several low-voice chuckles.

  His face reddened as he followed Isaacson into the break room.

  “Left in the nick of time,” Landis muttered.

  * * * *

  They worked steadily through the reports, with more coming in and Landis corralling detectives to pick up several of the threads.

  Danolin followed up with the management company by phone, ambling over to share before he wrote up what he’d learned.

  “Only took three, four transfers to get the guy dealing with the Sunshine Foundation. Very circumspect, of course, but his take is pretty much what Celeste Renfro told you guys. Financials are solid. If Jamison Chancellor could have cloned herself, she wouldn’t have needed them. She could handle each job, but couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  “She’d considered hiring more people, but decided — wisely, from their biased point of view — that she’d still be a bottleneck. So this outside management company, which specializes in helping nonprofits navigate growth spurts, considered Sunshine a good prospect — financials solid — and was preparing to come in. Hendrickson York called them first thing after her body was found — they hadn’t even heard the news — and said the Sunshine Foundation had to wait to make a final decision.”

  “Don’t know it’s her body,” Landis said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Danolin dismissed the fly the size of a dinosaur in Landis’ ointment. “Thing is, a final decision was made. Jamison Chancellor signed the papers before she left for Labor Day. The management company has them. All valid.”

  “How’d Hendrickson take that?” Landis asked.

  “They didn’t mention it to him. Being sensitive in this difficult time. But don’t think they’re not aware they have a signed contract. Implementation was supposed to start two weeks after her scheduled return.”

  * * * *

  It was just over an hour after lunch — ordered in and shared by most in the break room — that Landis called Terrington over to his desk.

  “Look into Bethany Usher who hasn’t returned to the Sunshine Foundation.”

  “She left without bothering to give notice,” Terrington said.

  The guy had pouted over checking what they’d been told about ownership of the houses around Jamie’s, so you’d except him to appreciate being singled out for this, but he rocked from foot to foot like a kid dying to be let out of school for summer.

  “Find out. Check where she lives, neighbors, a landlord if she’s got one. See if you can get a line on friends. If you can track her down, great. Otherwise, start working backward on her work history. Has anyone reported her missing?”

  Terrington looked at his watch.

  Belichek’s peripheral vision picked up movement. Without looking toward it, he recognized Isaacson taking an unobtrusive route to the break room.

  Twice in one day. How did they get so lucky?

  “Check with the people in the restaurant that’s on the first floor of the Sunshine Foundation building. See what they say about the foundation dynamics. Go back to all the people at the Sunshine Foundation. Push them harder for more people she might be close to. There’ll be different volunteers there today. Talk to them.”

  Terrington’s eyes lit up, presumably at the prospect of getting a toe over the threshold into the main areas of investigation. But all he said was, “I’ll get right on this, Landis.”

  He belied that pledge by heading for the break room.

  “Boy, that was rough, seeing how he ignored you,” Landis said. “Hurt your feelings, Bel?”

  “A display of studied ignorance,” Jenkins said.

  That drew hoots.

  “Good one,” Danolin agreed. He looked at Landis and Belichek with anticipation, “You going to pry him out of there and tell him to get his ass in gear?”

  “No need.” Belichek didn’t look up. “Glass offices.”

  Half the detective section sneaked peeks at the Chief of Detective’s office and saw Wilson Palery staring at the break room door.

  * * * *

  Landis ended a short phone call.

  “Come on. According to the uniforms patrolling the neighborhood, that next door neighbor, Phil Xavier, just returned home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The house was twice as wide as the others on the block, though it matched in style and brick. But as soon as the door opened — which happened only after a male voice demanded who they were through a speaker, then demanded they hold their IDs up to a tiny camera — they stepped into a different world.

  The décor, like the young woman who led them to the living room, sported angles and spangles capable of triggering a migraine. A blue and white rug of swirls that seemed to move erratically could qualify as psychotropic.

  “My husband’s coming,” the young woman said, voice and expression bored.

  Landis turned on his auto-charm. “Thank you. Must be unsettling for you with what happened next door.”

  She was immune to the Landis charm. Belichek would have indulged a moment of satisfaction at that if he wasn’t seeing the garish dining room through open doors at the end of the room.

  “Nah. Not like somebody knocked on our door.”

  “Victorina means she’s had no dealings with events next door.” Phil Xavier spoke as he entered, adding a hand gesture to his wife to scat.

  Landis subtly countermanded the order. “Before you go, ma’am. Did you see Jamison Chancellor at any time on the Friday before Labor Day or after that?”

  “No.”

  “You, sir?”

  “No. And—”

  “Did you see her car?”

  A flash of intelligence showed behind the indifference in Victorina’s eyes. “Her car without—”

  “Yes, her car without seeing her.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Phil said.

  Landis concentrated on the wife.

  “No,” she said after a moment. “Not her car or any car I noticed around.”

  “Like I said, she doesn’t know anything,” Xavier said. His voice bounced off the hard surfaces, amplifying it. On the other hand, Belichek realized, they’d heard nothing from outside since the front door closed behind them. The place was well sound-proofed. “Go on, get out of here, Victorina.”

  She did, her boredom restored.

  “No Jamie Chancellor, no cars, no nothing. That, too, is all I can contribute.” Xavier sprawled untidily on a modern day bed upholstered in silver material so reflective it looked like tin foil.

  He didn’t invite them to sit.

  Landis did anyway, a sharp contrast to the other man despite occupying a purple and green pseudo-leopard-print chair.

  “Were you aware Jamison Chancellor was going away for a month to finish her new book?”

  “I’d heard something about her being away a while. Didn’t know how long or anything about a book.”
/>   “How did you hear about her plans?”

  “No idea. Pick things up. Don’t remember where.”

  “How long have you and your wife lived here?” Landis already knew, since it was part of the material Terrington confirmed. But it was a soft entry to the discussion.

  “Since March.”

  “Would you say you have good relationships with your neighbors?”

  “They’re okay.”

  Belichek would bet that what he knew of Jamie’s movement came from his wife. Why not admit it? Protecting her or minimizing the entire topic to fortify the notion of his indifference? Or he truly didn’t remember because it wasn’t important to … and did that reflect his view of his wife or of Jamie?

  “You consider the relationships good even though your efforts to buy their homes have grown … contentious?”

  “They’re whining to the police because I want to pay them for their sheds? Contentious? I’ll give you contentious. That rat’s ass real estate agent told us there’d be no difficulty expanding and then has the gall to say there was no guarantee. Didn’t know his head from his asshole. Told me the guy behind us would be eager to sell and then it turns out the guy living there doesn’t even own the place.”

  Belichek, still standing, found himself focusing on the baseboards, which appeared original and weren’t headache inducing.

  “Total obstructionist jerk wouldn’t even tell me who owned the house. Made me get somebody to look it up. And it’s the guy’s father, the shit. So now the old man’s not selling to me because his snot-nosed kid went running to him. Should’ve sued him.”

  “Which one?” Landis asked, deadpan.

  “Both of ’em. Might still.”

  “When did you first approach Ms. Chancellor with an offer to buy her house?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with trying to buy something from someone.”

  “When did you first approach her?”

  “March.”

  “She said no?”

  “She didn’t say yes. So, I sweetened the offer.”

  “Did you have any other interaction with her?”

  “Sure. Said hello. More than once. She said hello back,” he said with sarcastic accuracy.

  “Did she say hello first or did you?”

  Xavier exploded at Landis’ deadpan. “Jesus H. Christ. I don’t know. She did probably. Is that what you want to hear? Lock me up because I didn’t say hello first to a neighbor?”

  “You were the one to initiate conversations about trying to purchase her property, though.”

  “So what? So, the fuck what? Until then, unless she read my mind, she didn’t know I wanted the property. So I asked her.”

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Too many to remember.” Landis appeared to write something in his notebook. “That must have been frustrating.”

  “I would have kept at it until I got what I wanted. That’s how I operate. No law against that.”

  “What were you doing Labor Day weekend, Mr. Xavier?”

  * * * *

  “Boating and golf. Shit,” Landis muttered when they were back on the sidewalk.

  Knowing how his partner’s mind worked, Belichek said, “You couldn’t have gotten more out of him if you’d gone with conciliatory charm.”

  “Couldn’t have gotten less, either.”

  “I don’t know. We got a good view of him and a decent view of the lay of the land.”

  Landis shook his head in pseudo-disbelief. “A trophy wife who decorated the place to look like a trophy.”

  “Pink dining room,” Belichek agreed.

  “Salmon, not pink. Wasn’t even the worst of it. That rug. People with too much money and no taste. You’d think they’d have more respect for someplace built in 1800.”

  “Jamie’s was built then. Not his. About 1870.”

  “So that’s his excuse? Not even good modern stuff. Looks like he bought it off some shopping channel. Jamie’s is the real deal. It would be a crime if she’d sold to him. Hope Mags and the other cousin don’t.”

  It figured a crime against aesthetics got under his partner’s skin.

  * * * *

  Danolin intercepted them before they sat at their desks.

  “Got the nephew of that neighbor, Enderbe. After bitching about what time I woke him up out there in California — after eleven for shit’s sake — it was as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

  “Confirms he was playing an online game with Garrison Enderbe, a k a Uncle Garrison until after midnight his time, which makes it after three our time. Better, he says it was Saturday night — Sunday morning here — his uncle went out to move the car. Remembers because he was about to win and he thought his uncle was trying to postpone the inevitable. Came back and was flustered about someone nearly running him over. Uncle was gone seven to ten minutes. Uncle Garrison would be hard-pressed to run out his front door, around the block — with a shotgun — blast the victim and get back to his game in that time. Even going out the back door, he’d either have to go around the rest of the block to get to the victim’s front door or — if he went in through the back, he had to maneuver the victim into place in order to shoot her in the hall like that. No way he could fool forensics about that positioning.”

  “Thanks, Danny.” Landis meant it, but he wasn’t cheerful about it.

  He and Wilson Palery had been called to the chief’s office to give an update.

  Eliminating avenues of investigation didn’t always translate well to the glass offices as progress.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The woman who walked up to Belichek’s desk and took a chair uninvited also didn’t wait for him to look around from the computer screen.

  “You didn’t call me from the scene.” Not a question, an indictment.

  “Why would I—? No.”

  The last word came far too late to cover his mistake of starting the question. Never give Nancy Quinn that kind of opening.

  By job title, she was Maggie’s assistant in the Commonwealth Attorney’s office.

  In reality she was a forceful woman, multiplied by a network of regional connections unrivaled for depth, spread, and utility.

  “Why? Because I would have been there. Instead of — him. You didn’t think of the talk that would start?”

  “I thought about what she needed.”

  “Hmpf.” That held unexpected approval. “About time one of you did, all she’s done for you and Landis.”

  Not giving him a chance to say they’d done right by Mags, too, which is what made them a good team, she had more.

  “What’s the status of the investigation?”

  He eyed her across his desk. The woman was really rattled to ask. She knew where they’d be this far into it and that he wouldn’t tell her anything.

  Hell. Nancy Quinn rattled.

  Did that mean Mags was falling apart more than he’d picked up on?

  He spoke none of that.

  “Landis is primary.”

  “I know that.” She packed a lot of disdain into three words. “That’s why I’m not bothering him. Keep all his attention on getting the bastard. But you’re not even officially the second.”

  In other words, fair to bother him.

  “Early days.”

  “You still don’t have an ID.”

  “Not official. Not yet.”

  “Not yet? Medical’s a no-go. They’ll have to use her mother or siblings for DNA, since her father’s dead. Dental’s out.” How did the woman know so much? He answered his own question. Because she was Nancy Quinn. “Then what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She snorted her opinion of his non-answer. “So it’s making the mother go through DNA and the wait.”

  He wasn’t going to say the next part, until he remembered she already knew it or soon would. “The forensic anthropologist confirms white female, most likely late twenties-early thirties.”

  “Most likely? Wha
t good—?”

  “You know age is toughest to pin down.”

  “So, you’re going with the neighbor who found the body saying those were her clothes?”

  “How do you—?”

  Again, he didn’t bite it off fast enough. Maybe he did need a vacation. Especially since fast enough with Nancy meant not having the thought.

  “Give me a break,” she snapped. “No firm ID, yet you ran to the family and broke their hearts—”

  “Nancy, I don’t want it to be Mags’ cousin, either. But look at it. White female, right age range, in her house, wearing clothes a witness says were hers. Best thing you can do is support Mags in accepting this and let us do our jobs.”

  He met her flinty gaze. It took more than half a minute before she stood.

  “Then do your damned jobs.”

  “We are.” Before she responded — it wasn’t going to be complimentary — he added, “What can you tell me about Jamison Chancellor?”

  She sat. “First half-intelligent things you’ve said. Probably the first half-intelligent thing you’ve done on this investigation.”

  “Thank you.”

  And damned if the corners of her mouth didn’t twitch.

  “Maggie said she talked to Jamie, but they weren’t real close. How do you see her and Maggie? What was their relationship?”

  “You’re going to make Maggie out as a suspect?” Disdain, not outrage.

  “Insight to the victim as a person.”

  “Jamie wanted to draw Maggie into the Sunshine Foundation fold, have closer connections to the family, and be a happier and more sociable human being. You know she and Ally — the other cousin — planted bulbs at Maggie’s townhouse?”

  He grunted. He hadn’t. But he had noticed the remarkable appearance of daffodils in a vase on Maggie’s desk when she returned from Bedhurst in the spring.

  “Thing is, Maggie liked them. Never would occur to her to plant them for herself, but with them growing there and blooming, she liked them. Jamie realized that and planted summer flowers, too — the kind that will come up year after year and Maggie doesn’t have to do anything. Maggie kept saying no, but Jamie did it anyway. That’s how she and Ally met Carson. They showed up at Maggie’s to plant unannounced and there he was.”