by Elaine Viets
She left to make her call and I studied the books on Terri’s shelves: fat, worn history and math textbooks, and five shelves of novels, including the Harry Potter series, the Vampire Diaries, and saddest of all, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. That touching novel was about trying to live your life to the fullest when your time is limited. Did Terri sense that her time was limited, just like her mother believed she knew when the young woman had died?
Mrs Gibbons came back and announced, ‘Bobbie is on her way. She works in downtown St. Louis, and she should be here in about forty minutes, if the traffic’s not too bad.’
‘I’ll stay with you until she arrives,’ I said, and saw the gratitude on the woman’s face. I quickly switched the subject. ‘Your daughter’s quite a reader.’
‘Yes, she is.’ Mrs Gibbons smiled, eager to brag about her daughter, then the smile slipped from her face. ‘I mean, she was. From the time she learned how to read, we had a monthly book date, where we’d go to a bookstore and she’d pick out a new book. If she hadn’t won the track scholarships, she could have had an academic scholarship. She’s that smart.’
Mrs Gibbons looked ready to cry again, then stopped herself. ‘The police detective, Budewitz, is a kind man,’ she said.
‘Yes, he is,’ I said. ‘He’s the best.’
‘Would you like to go sit in the kitchen?’ she asked.
I followed her back there. After we sat down, she said, ‘I have a question. Did my daughter – I mean – did the dead girl suffer?’
‘No!’ I said.
My mind flashed on the green string with the slip knot around the dead woman’s decomposing neck, proof that I was lying. I didn’t care. It was the only comfort I could give that poor woman. Let her believe that Terri died quickly and painlessly. Parents who knew how their children really died tortured themselves for the rest of their lives. Mrs Gibbons was in enough pain.
I was relieved when Jace returned and said, ‘We should have an answer for you in less than an hour, Mrs Gibbons.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It will be good to know one way or the other. Would you like some cinnamon coffee cake? I baked it today.’
‘That sounds good,’ I said. Jace agreed, and she cut us two generous slices. I’d missed lunch and dinner and was surprisingly hungry, but I hoped wolfing down the cake would be seen as a compliment. Jace quickly demolished his cake, too.
‘Where was Terri – uh, the body – found?’ Mrs Gibbons asked.
‘In Chouteau County, deep in the woods off Gravois Road,’ Jace said. ‘A hiker found them.’
‘Them? Then there was more than one person?’ she said.
‘We believe there were three,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been identified yet.’
‘But if all the … dead … are deep in the woods, they must have been killed by someone local,’ Mrs Gibbons said.
‘We don’t know yet,’ Jace said.
We heard a car pull into the drive, and Mrs Gibbons said, ‘That must be my cousin, Bobbie.’
She hurried to the front room, and we heard both women weeping. Jace’s cell phone rang, and he stepped into the living room to take the call. Mrs Gibbons and Bobbie hurried into the kitchen. Bobbie was about sixty, with short gray hair and eyes red from crying. Her black business suit and blue blouse had a tired, end-of-the-day look. After she sat down, I poured her a cup of coffee, and introduced myself.
Jace appeared at the door, and I could tell by his face that he had news. So could Mrs Gibbons. She looked at him and said, ‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gibbons,’ Jace said, ‘but the body has been identified as your daughter, Terri Gibbons.’
Bobbie let out an unearthly shriek, and fainted dead away. She fell face-forward on the kitchen table, knocking over her coffee.
‘Bobbie!’ cried Mrs Gibbons, and began working on reviving her cousin, while Jace and I mopped up the spilled coffee with paper towels. Smelling salts finally brought the woman around.
‘I’m very sorry,’ Bobbie said. ‘I skipped lunch.’
‘No need to apologize,’ Mrs Gibbons said. ‘You were Terri’s favorite aunt. Let me fix you some dinner.’
Jace and I left Mrs Gibbons, who was ministering to her distraught cousin.
FOUR
It was almost nine o’clock when I left Terri’s mother. Jace walked me to my car and I waved goodbye. I nearly fell into the driver’s seat, feeling like my strings had been cut. The horrors of the day – the death investigation of the young woman and the terrible grief of Terri’s mother – had drained me. There was no cure for the unbearable heartache this killer had unleashed. I rolled down my driver’s side window, hoping the blast of chill air would revive me, then checked my cell phone messages.
The first was a text from Katie, the assistant ME: Be at my office at nine a.m. I’ve found something.
The only thing she’d text me about was Terri Gibbons’s autopsy. The carefully worded message told me Katie had found an important clue. Did I miss something during my DI examination? Or did we have some hope of catching the evil creature who killed Terri? I’d have to wait until tomorrow.
I also had a voice message. I smiled when I heard his voice, warm enough to chase away the evening chill. ‘Hey, Angela, it’s Chris. How about dinner tonight? I miss you.’
I could picture Officer Christopher Ferretti, the Chouteau Forest force’s newest hire: six feet four, close-cut blond hair lightly touched with gray, kind blue eyes, big shoulders and muscular arms. He smelled like starch and Old Spice.
What more could a woman want?
I wanted what I could no longer have – Donegan, my late husband. He’d died suddenly of a heart attack two years ago. I liked Chris, but I still loved Donegan, and I kept the police officer at arm’s length. Like I was doing now, when I returned his call.
‘Sorry, Chris,’ I said. ‘I’m too tired to go out. I had to inform a poor mother that her daughter was dead.’
‘That’s rough,’ he said. ‘You could use comfort. Want to come over? We could order pizza. Or I could come to your place and bring one.’
And then what? I wondered, but I knew the answer. I was too skittish to see him. And he was being so damn understanding.
‘Thanks,’ I lied. ‘I’d rather be alone tonight.’
Chris wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘How about dinner tomorrow night?’ he said. ‘Someplace nice.’
‘Deal,’ I said, mostly to get him off the phone.
‘Pick you up at seven o’clock?’
‘See you then.’
I mustered the energy to drive home, and parked my black Charger in the garage. A bone-white spring moon shone on my two-story house, bleaching the stone walls tombstone white. The dark windows looked like dead eyes.
My home had been a guesthouse on the Du Pres estate until crafty Old Reggie Du Pres sold it to my parents. My mom and dad had worked for the man who ruled Chouteau Forest, and I inherited the house when they died. Donegan and I had been so happy here. It was hard to go home to an empty house.
I opened the front door and flipped on the light, wishing I’d summoned the energy to see Chris tonight. But that would lead to complications I wasn’t ready to tackle.
I’d fix myself dinner after I dumped my stuff upstairs, but my bed looked so inviting I laid down for just a moment …
And woke up at seven the next morning, still wearing my black suit. I threw my wrinkled, slept-in clothes in the laundry basket, showered, dressed, and revived myself with toast, eggs and strong black coffee.
By then it was eight a.m., a sun-gilded spring day, and I was anxious to hear what Katie had to say. I picked up two coffees at Chouteau Has Beans, the local coffeehouse. Ten minutes later, I was at the county morgue in the back of the sprawling Sisters of Sorrow Hospital. I parked my car far enough away to avoid the funeral home vans and desperate smokers huddling by the hospital Dumpsters.
I keyed in the access code at 8:14, and was hit with the morgue’s sharp disin
fectant smell covering the faint sweet odor of decomp. And the sadness. That had its own special smell, and I thought it seeped into the walls. But that could be my imagination.
I was early, but I knew my friend Katie would be there. Sure enough, she was shoe-horned behind her desk in her office, a closet-sized cubby with barely enough room for a file cabinet and a wire contraption that passed as a chair. One wall was decorated with a fall woodland scene. The grinning plastic skull pasted into the leaves on the ground gave me the willies today. It was too close to what I’d seen yesterday.
‘I brought you coffee,’ I said, and handed her the steaming cup.
Katie smiled. ‘Bless you, my child. The office brew can strip paint.’
At first glance, Katie seemed plain. She had neat, short brown hair, sensible shoes and a brown suit under her lab coat. But then you saw the intelligence that flashed in her brown eyes, and she was transformed. Katie had snared Montgomery Bryant, the Forest’s most eligible bachelor. I knew he called her his ‘nut-brown maid’ and she’d slice me with a scalpel if I ever revealed that.
‘Why so early?’ she asked, and gulped down half her coffee. ‘Damn, I needed that.’
‘I’m here for Terri Gibbons’s autopsy report,’ I said. ‘I assume that’s why you texted me.’
‘You’ll have to wait until Jace shows up. And speaking of cops, how are things going with that hunky cop of yours, Chris Ferretti?’
I bristled at her comment. ‘He’s not mine, and we’re having dinner tonight.’
‘And?’ she said, drinking the rest of her coffee.
‘And that’s it,’ I said.
Katie tossed her empty cup in the trash. ‘What the fuck, Angela? You’re living like a freakin’ nun.’
‘That’s my business,’ I said. I felt the anger rise up inside me.
‘I know you loved Donegan, but it’s been two years since you buried him. Hell, you didn’t crawl into the coffin with him. He loved you, too. What would he want?’
Furious tears filled my eyes. ‘What would Donegan want? He’d want to be alive, that’s what he’d want!’
With that, Jace knocked on Katie’s office door. He immediately detected the fraught atmosphere. ‘Morning, ladies. Everything OK?’
‘Fine,’ Katie said, giving him a false smile. ‘We were just talking about dinner.’
Jace left that alone, though he had to know by my angry face that Katie was lying. I was comforted by Jace’s friendly, boyish manner. Unlike some cops, he was faithful to his wife, and that made him easy company.
‘Tell us what you found out about Terri,’ he said.
‘She had probably been kept alive for several months before her death,’ Katie said, ‘and she was well fed.’
‘Kept alive? Somewhere here in the Forest?’ I asked.
‘I can’t tell,’ Katie said. ‘She was strangled. The hyoid bone in her neck was broken. There may have been bruising around her neck, but the decomp was pretty far advanced.
‘Angela noted the green string around the victim’s neck. I confirmed it’s common jute garden string, used to tie plant stems. I believe the victim was garroted with the garden twine.
‘I’ve sent it to the lab for further examination, but the knot in the twine looks like a taut line hitch. It’s a slide that can tighten or loosen the loop around the victim’s neck, so it could have been used to control her – do something the killer didn’t like, and he’d choke her.’
Katie was a farm girl, and knew her knots. I was pretty sure the lab would back up her conclusions.
‘The bastard,’ I said.
‘Was she raped?’ Jace asked.
‘I didn’t find any semen or DNA on the victim,’ Katie said. ‘She was too badly decomposed.’
‘What about the flower I found in her shirt pocket?’ I asked.
‘City University’s botany department is taking a look at it.’
‘What flower?’ Jace asked.
‘I found a flower in her shirt pocket. I wondered if she was sending us a message.’
‘If so, she sent us another message,’ Katie said. ‘Look at these photos. I found this under the inner sole in Terri’s right shoe.’
So it wasn’t something I’d overlooked, I thought, and felt relieved. I couldn’t remove any of the decedent’s clothing.
The photos showed a flat bit of aluminum foil. Katie had photographed it inside the shoe, then removed it with tweezers and photographed it again.
‘That foil looks like it was torn off a gum wrapper,’ I said.
‘That’s what I think,’ Katie said. ‘I’m having it tested.’
The message was on a scrap of paper, and it appeared to have been scratched with a ballpoint that was almost out of ink.
Jace and I stared at the message in shocked silence. It said, Briggs Bellerive drugged me and locked me in his house. If you find this, he’s killed me.
‘Who’s Briggs Bellerive?’ Jace asked. He was new to the Forest and its ways.
‘A problem,’ Katie said.
‘A big problem,’ I said, echoing her.
FIVE
‘At the risk of sounding like a giant owl,’ Jace said, ‘who the hell is Briggs Bellerive? Damn, I hate the secrets in this place.’
Jace had my sympathy. I wasn’t a Forest insider by any means, but I grew up here and I knew how it worked. It was a frustrating place for an outsider like Jace. All the old families had something to hide, and one way or another, those of us who served them helped with the cover-ups.
‘He’s the Forest’s most eligible bachelor,’ I said. ‘He always has Desiree Gale, an international model and TV personality, on his arm.’
‘I’ve seen her,’ Jace said. ‘Tall, blonde, tight dresses.’
‘The bandage dress she wore on TV yesterday was more like a tourniquet,’ I said. ‘Briggs is a square-jawed hunk. He’s in his early thirties – thirty-one, I think. He and Desiree go everywhere together in his vintage E-Type Jaguar or on his private jet.’
‘He’s also richer than God,’ Katie said.
‘And connected,’ I added.
‘Connected how?’ Jace said. ‘And to what?’
‘To everything and everybody who’s anybody,’ I said. ‘His mother was a judge and his father a US senator. They’re both dead now, but they did a lot of favors for the Forest – and people here have long memories.’
Jace was pacing Katie’s tiny office, taking up all the room and most of the oxygen. Katie stayed behind her desk and I retreated to the uncomfortable wire chair, which poked me in the back and creaked when I moved. It was like sitting on a pile of hangers. I’d drunk my coffee and poured myself a cup of the office paint stripper. It was so bitter I used it mainly to keep my hands warm in the sub-zero air-conditioning.
‘So this Briggs guy flies off in his private jet with his hot babe to have dinner in London or Paris,’ Jace said.
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘He goes to London for his suits and shoes, but he prefers dinners at his home. He likes to cook for his friends.’
‘He’s also a gardener,’ Katie said. ‘He grows prize nasturtiums.’
‘You can eat them,’ I said.
‘Why would I want to eat flowers?’ Jace said.
I shrugged. ‘Beats me. You won’t find me munching marigolds.’
‘Briggs is in the papers all the time,’ Katie said. ‘Puff pieces by the Forest Gazette and the St. Louis papers featuring his house decorated for Christmas, or his latest dinner party.’
‘With recipes,’ I said. ‘He’s also a big donor to the local charities. He gave a new hospital wing to SOS in honor of his parents. And he agreed to cook dinner for six at his home for a charity auction. It sold for six thousand dollars.’
Jace whistled.
‘I was one of the guests,’ I said. ‘I went with my friend, Mario.’ Mario is my gay hairstylist. He was between boyfriends at the time.
‘Did you eat flowers?’ he asked.
‘We did,’ I said. ‘
We had a salad with nasturtium seed pods, which were pickled and used like capers. It was pretty good. We also had nasturtium mayonnaise with our broiled lobster. I liked them both but I couldn’t bring myself to eat the nasturtium garnish.’
‘Sounds odd, but foodies eat lots of weird things now,’ Jace said. ‘What’s that fizzy fermented tea that’s so popular?’
‘Kombucha,’ Katie said. ‘Supposed to be good for your gut.’
‘OK, I get it,’ Jace said. ‘The guy’s a rich foodie. But what’s wrong with me going over to his place for a little talk?’
‘You’re going to accuse Mr Perfect of murdering three women and burying their bodies in the woods?’ I said.
‘Give me some credit,’ Jace said. ‘I’ll just talk to him and get a feel for what he’s like.’
‘He’s smart,’ Katie said. ‘If even one of your questions makes him uncomfortable, he’ll lawyer up – and his lawyer will complain to the police chief, who will shut down your investigation.’
‘He’s got enough money to get the police to back off?’ Jace said.
‘You’re talking about the CEO of Bellerive Industries,’ I said.
Finally. A light dawned in Jace’s eyes. He whistled. ‘They make that tranquilizer, Calmatay.’
‘Right. Half the world is tranqued on Calmatay,’ Katie said.
‘And Briggs knows lawyers,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t always perfect. About fifteen years ago, he killed his best friend, and it took the best New York suits to get him out of that scrape.’
‘Killed him? How?’ Jace asked.
‘Strangled him,’ I said.
Jace frowned. ‘Even more reason for me to talk to this bird now.’
‘But you won’t find any record of that murder,’ I said. ‘It was covered up, and since Briggs and the boy he killed were juveniles, the file was sealed. Briggs’s best friend, Craig Wendell, heir to a shoe fortune, died in Briggs’s bedroom the summer before their senior year in high school.
‘Briggs claimed the boy’s death was accidental – his story was that he and Craig were just “goofing around in his room” and he accidentally strangled his friend with his belt.’