by Elaine Viets
‘What happened to the housekeeper?’ I asked.
‘She was fired,’ Briggs said. ‘Without references. I deducted the cost of the meat from her severance pay and sent her packing.’
‘What’s this housekeeper’s name, sir?’ asked Jace.
‘Rosanna,’ Briggs said. ‘Rosanna McKim.’
‘Where does she live?’ Jace wrote this down in the notepad he kept in his pocket.
‘Somewhere in Toonerville.’ Again, the Forest elite’s derisory nickname for the working section of town was used.
‘Where?’ Jace insisted.
‘I don’t know exactly. My assistant has her address.’
‘Where did she buy the meat?’
‘The Forest Specialty Meat and Fish Mart.’
‘Would you open the vehicle, please?’ Jace asked.
Briggs opened the driver’s side door, and the unmistakable odor of death poured out. The lawyer looked sick to his stomach, and even I felt a little green.
‘We’ll have to tow this vehicle to the station for examination,’ Jace said.
The lawyer opened his mouth, but Jace cut him off before he could say anything. ‘We have that right and you know it, Mr Obert.’
Briggs retreated inside the mansion with his lawyer. All the way to the house, the lawyer tried to scrape the mud off his shoes on the stone path.
By the time the tow truck arrived and carted off the Range Rover, the search was concluded.
As we were leaving, Briggs presented me with a colorful bouquet of nasturtiums, tulips, daffodils and even pink dogwood.
‘For you, Angela,’ he said, trying again to charm me. ‘They are as lovely as you are.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I managed to take the huge bouquet without touching him.
I climbed into Jace’s car. I was weary, and wanted out of there.
TEN
As we drove out of the Bellerive estate, Jace was positively gleeful. The detective was ready to break out the champagne. He listed the prizes from this search.
‘We’ve got a number of small things to tie him to the victim, like that green jute gardening string. I’ve got a ball that looks like the same kind that garroted the victims. We’ve got the clove gum, so we can tie that to him. I noticed that Briggs has a brand-new wheelbarrow. That made me suspicious. Someone who’s been gardening that long should have an old battered one.
‘But best of all, we have the death car!’ He slapped the steering wheel in celebration. ‘That’s thanks to you. There’s no doubt what’s causing that stink.’
‘Briggs says his housekeeper let two hundred pounds of meat rot in there,’ I reminded him. ‘Her name is Rosanna McKim. I think I went to school with her older sister, Diana McKim. I didn’t want to interrupt your interrogation to ask him.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t say anything. I had a rhythm going there and that would have put me off. I know this Briggs is guilty, Angela. You know it, too. When I told him that Terri’s body had been found, he never asked me where, like an innocent person would.’
Maybe, but I was worried. I wondered if Briggs was slyly taunting us with the gum, the flowers, and the car, but I wasn’t going to say anything to bust Jace’s bubble. Let him celebrate for now.
Once we were on the main road, I said to Jace, ‘Pull over. I want to dump these flowers.’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘They didn’t do anything. It’s not their fault they were grown by Briggs.’
‘They give me the creeps.’ I couldn’t suppress a shudder just looking at them. Every time I saw them, I pictured the dead Terri with that wilted flower in her pocket.
‘There are nasturtiums in that bouquet, right? The same kind that were in Terri’s pocket. We can test their DNA. Plants have DNA just like people.’
‘Will the CFPD pay for a plant DNA test?’ I asked.
‘I doubt it, but I have a professor friend in the biology department at City University,’ Jace said. ‘I knew him when I worked on the Chicago force and he’ll do it for free.’
‘They’re all yours.’ I turned around and placed the bouquet in his backseat. I was relieved to be rid of it.
Soon we were back at my home. ‘Thanks, Angela,’ he said, as he pulled into my driveway. ‘You were a big help.’
‘Just don’t tell anyone,’ I said. ‘I’m not supposed to be investigating cases.’
‘Deal,’ he said.
I waved goodbye. As I was unlocking my front door, my work cell phone rang. Damn. I could tell by the ringtone it was Detective Ray Greiman. I hated working with him.
‘Angela,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a vehicular fatality, right off I-55.’
I got the exact address and said, ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
I made it in eight, never mind that the traffic was backed up at the scene. I drove on the shoulder of the road until I got to the knot of official vehicles. I saw Greiman near the wreckage of a black Beemer that had slammed into a towering oak. The car’s glossy front end was trashed. The Forest homicide detective looked camera-ready in his sharp navy suit and starched white shirt. Badge bunnies loved his dark good looks.
Greiman was talking to a fluffy brunette in her late twenties wearing red high heels and summery white dress, spattered with blood. Was she an accident survivor? I pulled my DI case out of the car trunk, and rolled it over to the scene. Greiman had guided the brunette to his car, wrapped her trembling body in a blanket, and helped her sit in the passenger seat. Her long, dark mane hid her face.
As I got closer, I could hear her crying. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said, her words nearly drowned by her tears. ‘One minute we were on the road and the next Dr Bob hit the tree. Do you think he had some kind of seizure?’
Greiman looked up. ‘Oh, hi, Angela, you finally made it.’
I didn’t take the bait. He was always trying to rile me. I vowed he wouldn’t succeed today.
The brunette was sniffling into a tissue and dabbing at her eye make-up, which was running down her cheeks. She had doll-like features and blue eyes. An ugly bruise was coming out on her forehead.
I pulled Greiman away from the woman long enough to get the case number and the accident facts.
‘The victim is Dr Robert Beningham Scott,’ he said.
‘The big-deal plastic surgeon?’ I asked. Dr Bob, as he was known in the Forest, was the leading local doctor for breast implants and assorted nips and tucks. Rumor had it that Dr Bob enjoyed test-driving his clients’ newly improved chests and gave ‘special injections’ in hotels.
‘Couldn’t you tell by the size of her tits?’ he asked.
‘I was looking at her face,’ I said. ‘I heard her say she thought the doctor might have had a seizure.’
Greiman sniggered. ‘Only if she grabbed his cock with cold hands. He died with his junk out.’
‘Oh.’
‘This case is gonna be trouble,’ Greiman said. ‘He’s a married society doc and she’s someone else’s trophy wife.’ Greiman didn’t mention the woman’s name. She was just a brunette who ‘belonged’ to another rich guy.
‘What’s her name?’ I asked.
‘Melissa DeMille.’
‘Is she married to Joe DeMille, the hedge funder?’
‘Retired hedge funder,’ Greiman said. ‘Melissa is his fourth wife. They’ve been married six months.’
‘And she was the only passenger?’
He nodded. I’d talk to her later.
‘She says they were coming back from a business lunch at Solange,’ he said.
Odd, I thought. That restaurant was off Gravois and they both lived in the Forest. They wouldn’t need to take the highway to go to Solange or their homes.
‘How fast was the car going when it hit the tree?’ I asked.
‘She says it was going forty, the exit ramp speed. I’m guessing it was going at least seventy miles an hour from the way that car hit the tree. This is one of the newer BMWs. I think it has a “black box” or EDR, Event Data Recorder, on
board. If not, we’ll have to get an accident reconstructionist.’
Greiman had pronounced Dr Bob dead at 3:46 p.m. In Missouri, a quirky law allows any adult at the scene to pronounce someone dead.
I opened my iPad to the Vehicular-Related Death form and put on four pairs of nitrile gloves. I would pull them off during the exam so I wouldn’t cross-contaminate the body. The doctor was in the driver’s seat, and he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. His head had hit the windshield, which was spider-webbed with cracks. The windshield was drenched in blood.
The doctor had been a handsome man with a thick mane of graying hair, now bathed in blood. He wore a charcoal three-piece sharkskin suit, light blue shirt, and rep tie, and yes, the suit pants were unzipped and his private parts were in his lap – exposed but attached, thank goodness. Still, the Scott family jewels looked like butcher shop rejects.
I brought out my point-and-shoot camera and began photographing the victim. Greiman came running over, eyes wild. ‘Angela! Stop! You aren’t going to photograph him the way he is?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s my job.’
‘Aren’t you going to zip him up?’
‘No, I can’t interfere with the body.’
‘That’s disrespectful.’
‘That’s the way he died,’ I said.
Greiman sneered at me. ‘You can sound all high-and-mighty, but what about his poor wife?’
I knew Greiman didn’t give two shakes about Dr Bob’s wife – he was worried about offending the local bigwigs, including Melissa’s hedge fund husband, Joe DeMille.
‘It’s up to the medical examiner whether he wants to mention this in his autopsy report, but I’m not interfering with a death scene.’ I tried not to sound too sanctimonious.
‘By the way, are you going to charge Melissa DeMille with causing this accident?’
Greiman looked at me like I had two heads. ‘No, it would be tough to prove she caused it,’ he said. ‘Unless she starts babbling and says she was blowing him, or he has bite marks on his dick – and he doesn’t – or she chomped it off and we have her DNA on the stump – again, negative – I can’t charge her. Even then, I don’t see a criminal case. After all,’ he said, his voice growing increasingly righteous, ‘the doctor could have pulled over to pee on the side of the road and forgotten to repackage things.’
‘Really? With an attractive young woman in the car?’ I said. ‘He just forgot?’
‘Or maybe he took things out and tried to get her to play and she declined,’ Greiman said.
‘So the doctor ran into a tree and killed himself?’
‘Just do your job, Angela, and I’ll do mine.’ He turned on his Fendi-clad heel and left.
For once, Greiman made sense. I went back to work. I bent down to check the victim’s shoes to see if there was the imprint of the gas pedal on the sole – usually a sign of suicide. But Dr Bob had had his foot on the brake pedal when he’d hit that tree. Along with the coppery odor of blood, the decedent smelled strongly of alcohol. I noted that odor and mentioned that the doctor may have been drinking. The ME would check his blood alcohol level.
Next, I answered the form’s road condition questions. The accident occurred on a concrete highway exit ramp, and the vehicle was southbound. The roadway was dry, there was no debris, and there was no rising or setting sun to blind the driver. The form had no boxes to check for the fatal distraction the doctor had probably encountered.
The vehicle was a black 2020 BMW M4 with a red leather interior. It could seat five. I noted the license plate number. The airbag, which might have saved him, was disabled. There were no attempts to resuscitate him at the scene.
After I’d photographed the decedent, and the police tech had photographed him and videoed him inside the car – all of him, just the way he was – I began the body actualization. I spread out a sterile white sheet from the ME’s office.
Greiman was busy ‘comforting’ Melissa, the surviving passenger, but Mike, a patrol officer, helped me move the decedent’s body onto the sheet face up.
I measured his height at six feet and estimated his weight at two-hundred-ten pounds.
Now I could see Dr Bob’s injuries more clearly.
I started with his head. He had a six-inch cut on his forehead – so deep I could see the yellow-white frontal bone – and his nose appeared broken. From the angle of his neck, it also seemed to be broken. Head and facial wounds bleed a lot, and it was hard to see his features – and his hands.
The doctor had put his hands out in front of him when the car hit the tree, and they were badly fractured: three metacarpals on the left hand and two on the right had what looked like compound fractures – the delicate bones stuck up through the skin. If the doctor had survived, I wondered if he’d ever have been able to operate again. Two nails on his left hand were broken. The decedent had surgeon’s hands, long, slender and well-cared-for. There was no dirt or skin under his nails, but both hands were bloody. Because of the damaged condition of his hands, I protected them with paper bags secured with evidence tape.
On his right arm, he wore a Cartier tank watch with a brown leather band. He did not wear a wedding ring or any other jewelry. His blood-soaked clothing had been beautiful. His shirt cuffs were monogrammed and his handsome charcoal suit was a Tom Ford, the same designer who dressed Daniel Craig in the James Bond movies. He had a black alligator card case in his pocket. I left it there for the ME to examine.
Dr Bob’s suit was torn at the knees, and both patellas had two-inch ‘cut-like defects.’ I couldn’t say he had cuts on his kneecaps. If this case went to court, and those marks were something besides accident-related cuts, the lawyers could tear me apart. I suspected both legs were fractured, but the ME would determine that when the body was X-rayed.
His black socks were extra-long and appeared to be silk, and his shiny black lace-ups were bespoke. There were no injuries to his feet.
‘Mike, can you help me turn him?’ I asked the patrolman, and he obligingly helped me roll the heavy body over. ‘Whoa?’ he said. ‘What’s this? Looks like it fell out of his back pocket.’
I picked up the white paper. It was a receipt for the Parkside Hotel, an elegant St. Louis boutique hotel. It was dated today at 2:25 p.m. That explained why the doctor was driving off an I-55 exit ramp – he and Melissa had been at a hotel in the city.
I showed the bill to Mike. ‘Wow! Eighteen hundred dollars. That’s more than I make in a week.’
‘The good doctor treated his lady well,’ I said. ‘He paid nine hundred dollars for the suite, and the rest for an in-room lunch of caviar, chicken and a magnum of Roederer Cristal champagne. I don’t know if 2008 was a good year, but at seven hundred dollars it was definitely a good price.’ Mike whistled at the champagne price. I photographed the receipt front and back, then bagged it. It would go with the body. I found nothing unusual on the back of the body, except a thirty-seven-inch patch of blood on the shirt collar and suit jacket.
Now it was time to interview Melissa DeMille, the accident survivor, and see what lies she would feed me about her lunch with Dr Bob.
ELEVEN
Melissa DeMille told me she was twenty-six, but she looked even younger. Greiman had given her a white handkerchief, and she’d wiped the tear-smeared make-up off her face. Now she was weeping even harder. I couldn’t tell if it was for the dead doctor or for herself.
‘When did you first encounter the deceased today?’ I asked. I was writing down her answers on my iPad.
‘I drove to the restaurant – Solange – for a lunch meeting,’ she said, through her tears. ‘I’m co-chair of the Forest Holiday Ball, and I wanted to discuss a sponsorship with Dr Bob. He’s so generous.’
‘What did you have for lunch?’ I asked.
‘I had the lemon sole and he had the porterhouse. We had Caesar salads mixed at our table.’
Lie number one, I thought. No, two lies. They’d had lunch in St. Louis, not at Solange.
Melissa delicately
wiped her tear-stained eyes, and the sun caught her diamond ring and nearly blinded me. The rock was the size of an almond and her wedding band glittered with square diamonds.
‘Dr Bob agreed to a Premier sponsorship – that’s twenty-five thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘He signed the donor form. Do you think I can collect it from his estate?’
I had a hard time hiding my shock. Under that pretty exterior was a heart as cold as an arctic winter.
‘You’ll have to ask his wife,’ I said, mostly to see her reaction.
Melissa gave an unladylike snort. ‘She didn’t deserve a good man like Dr Bob. They had an open marriage. He couldn’t divorce her because she’d take everything he’s worked for.’
Lies three and four, courtesy of Dr Bob. I’d bet my next paycheck Dr Bob didn’t have an open marriage or a greedy wife. Why did women still fall for those shopworn lines?
‘What happened after he signed the donor form?’ I asked.
‘He was taking me home when we had this terrible accident.’
Her blue eyes were clear and untroubled and she delivered yet another lie without blinking.
‘Melissa,’ I said. ‘You told me you live on DuBarry Circle, seven miles west of here. Solange is on Gravois, ten miles west. Your home is three miles straight down Gravois. Why would Dr Bob go ten miles out of his way and take the highway?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t driving.’
OK, time for some truth. ‘Melissa,’ I said. ‘We found a receipt on Dr Bob for an in-room meal at a fancy hotel in St. Louis.’
‘Yes.’ She was wide-eyed, but not particularly innocent.
‘Why were you two having lunch at the Parkside Hotel?’
‘Oh, that,’ Melissa said. ‘He was checking my implants, but he didn’t want to examine them in his office. That’s so clinical. It’s better if he can see them under natural circumstances.’
Right. I wondered if Melissa’s insurance would cover the eighteen-hundred-dollar hotel bill.
‘Was Dr Bob drinking?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said.