No Way to Die

by Warren C Easley

  Claire winced visibly. “When can I see Sissy?”

  Mimi smiled politely, but her dark eyes flashed a warning. “You can’t. You could be involved in this case if it ever goes to trial.”

  “Oh,” Claire said, blinking back a tear. “Of course.”

  * * *

  When we left Mimi’s office, Claire suggested we stop by Coffee and Subversion to see Rori, but I argued against it. “I don’t know what in hell to tell her right now, Claire. She’s probably expecting me to say I’m scaling down the investigation and going back to Dundee. Let’s wait to see how the Hail Mary comes out. Maybe we’ll have something new to tell her.”

  Claire shot me a stubborn look. “If there’s more work to be done, I’m staying, Dad.”

  That’s my daughter, I thought but didn’t say.

  * * *

  On the way back to the beach house, we stopped in Charleston and got the fixings for paella—some local pink shrimp, chorizo sausage, rice, an onion, a bell pepper, some outrageously expensive saffron, and a sourdough baguette. I was on edge, and so was Claire. Cooking a big meal—perhaps our last at the beach house—might relax us, we figured.

  After taking Archie for a long walk on Lighthouse Beach, Claire set to work chopping as I peeled the shrimp. Although neither one of us said so explicitly, it was understood that while we cooked, we wouldn’t discuss the case but simply wait to see what came back from San Francisco. The paella came together beautifully, and while it simmered on the stove, we rewarded our hard labor with a glass each of a nice pinot I’d brought from the Aerie—a 2012 Le Petit Truc.

  The wine put Claire in a wistful mood. “I wish I would have gotten some of Mom’s artistic ability. I would love to paint like her. Her watercolors are so, I don’t know, so delicate and calming, at least the early ones.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “She had a wonderful gift. And she was a great teacher, too.”

  My daughter looked at me. “Why don’t you hang some of her paintings in the Aerie, Dad? I don’t get it. It’s been a long time since she passed, and they’re all still up in the attic.”

  “I know. I, uh, they bring back so much. Looking at those paintings is like staring into your mom’s eyes again, Claire. It’s difficult.”

  Her sapphire blue eyes locked on me. “You should do it, Dad. It’ll be cathartic, trust me. And it would brighten up the Aerie. God know the place needs it.”

  I stirred the paella and stayed silent for a long time. Finally, I nodded. “Okay. I’ll consider it if you agree to help me place them.”

  She smiled. “Deal.”

  * * *

  When it got to be ten thirty, and nothing had come in from Ramón and Felix, we both began to worry. Then, at ten forty-five, a series of images pinged into my email account with this note—

  Sorry for the late reply. We missed the subject at the Fairmont and at the entrance to the opera but caught her coming out. We hope these photos are what you are seeking.

  Sincerely,

  Ramón & Felix

  I clicked on the first photo, a large crystal-clear image in which Twila Jenson appeared to be looking directly into the camera. I regarded it for a moment then thrust a fist into the air. “Yes!” I pointed at the jade necklace draped around her neck. “That necklace has got to be the one that belonged to her grandmother. I saw it in a painting at her place. She told me it was her favorite piece of jewelry, and I figured that if she had it, she’d wear it to the opera.”

  “She couldn’t bear to part with it,” Claire said. “I don’t blame her. It’s magnificent.”

  “Yes, I think that’s it. The opera was too big a temptation, and San Francisco probably seemed far enough away for her to chance wearing her jewelry.” I gestured at the file folder holding the insurance photos, and Claire slid it over to me. I opened it and found a close-up of the necklace, a three-tiered piece consisting of delicate beads of jade strung on gold. It was a perfect match with the one she was wearing.

  Claire, who stood behind me at this point, clutched my shoulder with a hand. “She took the jewelry to make it look like a robbery. She killed him, Dad.”

  I let out a breath in disgust. “I misread her completely. I thought what she was exhibiting was depression from grief. I even felt sorry for her, offered some advice. Of course, it was all about the guilt. I mean, she bludgeoned her husband to death and let Kenny take the fall. Why the hell didn’t I see that?”

  “There’s a fine line between grief and guilt, Dad. They can both lead to depression.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe so.”

  Claire patted my shoulder. “But you figured it out.” She laughed. “Well, with a little help from Jackson Pollock and some well-timed synchronicity.”

  We went through the rest of the photos of Twila Jenson at the opera. The last one showed a clear image of her right wrist, which bore a lovely diamond bracelet, a dead ringer for one she’d reported missing.

  “Frosting on the cake,” Claire quipped.

  Sitting below the Jackson Pollock, we talked far into the night, and when Claire finally started off to bed, we had the semblance of a plan for the next day. “This will be interesting,” I said as she walked away with Archie trailing her. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

  And we weren’t. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter Fifty

  The next morning broke bright and clear, and the Pacific got its color back along with a horde of hungry, cawing seagulls that dived and swirled out beyond the deck. I got up first and took Archie for a run on the beach, and when we got back, I made Claire and me a stack of French toast with the last of the eggs and sourdough bread. Over breakfast I said, “I left a voice mail for Chet Rice to call me.”

  “Good,” Claire said with a wry smile. “I know where Twila’s hiding the jewels.”

  That raised my eyebrows. “Where?”

  “At her place on Seven Devils Road. It’s remote, you know. She’s hiding damning evidence, so she’ll want psychological security.” Claire smiled again. “She probably has them in a wall safe or some cool place like that.”

  I had to chuckle at my daughter’s enthusiasm. “Good point. It’s no given that I can convince Rice to go for a search warrant, and he’ll need a green light from Stoddard. Then, there’s no guarantee a judge would grant one based on the photographic evidence alone. And that’s all we’ve got at this point.”

  Claire’s smile crashed. “With the law, there’s always a catch.”

  * * *

  Rice didn’t call back until late that afternoon. I explained I needed to see him right away, that I had significant new evidence in the Sonny Jenson case. “It’s visual,” I said. “We need to meet face to face. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Sorry, Cal, I’m slammed the rest of the day and tied up tonight. Got a meeting at the state forensic lab early tomorrow. Looks like they got a match on the cable and cutters we found in the barn. I can meet you tomorrow afternoon, earliest.”

  I had no choice but to agree. He was right, after all. His priorities lay with nailing the Barton brothers. New evidence in a four-year cold case? From his perspective that could surely wait.

  * * *

  Time passed that day at glacial speed. At mid afternoon, Claire, who had been busy at her computer most of the day, wandered out on the deck. “Do you think Twila’s back from San Francisco yet?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “I was just thinking, you should update her on the Sloat incident, right? I mean, she’s been cooperating and all. You owe it to her.”

  “Talk to her?”

  “Why not? You can get a face-to-face read, if you do. Maybe she’ll reveal something. She’s conflicted, right? And there’s no risk of tipping our hand.”

  “Beats sitting around here,” I agreed.

  * * *

  Twila Jen
son answered on the third ring. “Well, hello, Cal.” I could hear water running in the background. It sounded like she was drawing a bath.

  “How was the opera?” I said brightly.

  She paused for a couple of beats. “It was, ah, quite good. I just got back from San Francisco not more than an hour ago.”

  Her voice was flat and tinged with wariness. I instantly regretted making the call. But there was no turning back. “Say, I was wondering if I could stop by. There have been some significant developments in the investigation that I wanted to discuss with you.”

  The pause was longer this time. Finally, she sighed heavily into the phone. “You’re a busy little beaver, aren’t you? That man with the camera outside the opera. He was photographing me. I saw him. You must have sent him.”

  “What man?” I said, trying to project total innocence. But I knew she had me.

  “You’re cleverer than I thought, Cal. I’ll give you credit for that.”

  I caught something in her voice, a note of resignation. I decided to go for it. “I know what you did, Twila, and I know how you did it. And I know you’re carrying a lot of guilt around. Isn’t it time to unpack it? Living a guilt-ridden life is no life at all.”

  The line went quiet, except for her breathing. Finally, she said, “Well, you have a point there. It is no life at all. Goodbye, Cal Claxton.” With that, she disconnected.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit,” I said, staring down at my cell phone in disgust.

  “What?” Claire said, who’d been standing by as I made the call.

  “She made Ramón at the opera. He wasn’t as good as Nando advertised.” I stood there for a moment before it hit me—her, “goodbye,” rang with existential finality. “Come on,” I said. “We’re going to Seven Devils Road.”

  “Why?” Claire asked, following me out the front door. When I didn’t answer, she said, “How do you know she’s there and not in Coos Bay?”

  “I don’t, but she just got back in town. She’s probably putting her jewels away, right?”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  We left Archie whining at the front door of the beach house, and by the time we crossed the one-lane bridge on Seven Devils Road twenty-six minutes had elapsed. “She’s there,” I said when the house came into view with the Lincoln Navigator parked in front. I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I said to Claire, “Wait here. I’m going to check it out.” Claire nodded. I went to the door and knocked loudly. Nothing. I knocked again. No response. I let myself in and called out her name. Deathly silence.

  The first floor was deserted. I took the stairs to the second, calling out her name. The door to the master bedroom was ajar. I opened it, looked in, then entered. The door to the bath was shut. I went to it and knocked. Silence. I tried the door. Locked. Shit!

  Kicking a door in is not as easy as it looks in the movies, but it finally yielded in a splintering crash after several tries.

  “Oh no,” I said when I saw her, naked in an elegant, clawfoot bathtub filled with pink water. Her head was tilted back, her left arm draped over the edge of the tub and her right submerged. I pulled her arm out of the water. The wrist was slashed deeply and efficiently and was leaking blood at an awful rate. I took my belt off and tied a crude tourniquet around her upper arm. Then I stripped a blanket off the bed, and after scooping her out of the bath, wrapped her in the blanket and hustled her downstairs.

  Claire gasped when she saw us. I opened the rear door of the Subaru and managed to get in, holding Twila in my arms.

  “Is she alive, Dad?”

  “Yes, I think so. Drive, Claire. The hospital.” I wrestled my phone free of my jeans pocket, scrolled down to Rice’s number, and punched it in with my thumb. He picked up. “Chet. Listen. I’ve got Twila Jenson in my car. She’s slit her wrist. We’re way down on Seven Devils Road. Can you have a deputy meet us at the Cape Arago junction? We need a police escort to the hospital, or she’s not going to make it. We’ll be in a burgundy Subaru sedan. I can’t talk now. I’ll call when we get to the hospital.”

  He said he’d take care of it. Next, I loosened the belt on Twila’s arm and applied pressure with two fingers on her brachial artery just above the elbow to stanch the bleeding. She groaned, telling me she was still alive.

  Claire did a great job driving, pushing the Subaru to high speed where she could but not being reckless. That daughter of mine. A county patrol car was waiting in the right lane as we swung onto Cape Arago Highway. Claire flashed her lights, and the white SUV pulled out in front of us with its blue lights flashing. The escort parted the traffic beautifully, and when we arrived at the emergency entrance, a doctor and two attendants were waiting at the curb with a gurney.

  When Twila finally disappeared through a set of swinging doors, I heaved a sigh of relief. Claire looked at me, her face ashen, tears in her eyes. “Do you think she’ll make it? She can’t die, Dad, she just can’t.”

  “I know, Claire.” I took her in my arms and hugged her. “I think we caught her in time, but we’ll just have to wait now.”

  “Not again,” she said.

  * * *

  We plopped down in the waiting room after scrounging around for things to read. Rice called thirty minutes later, and although I didn’t want to present my case over the phone, I had no choice but to sketch in the situation. When I finished, he said, “Jesus, Cal, if you’re right, this is huge.”

  “I’m right, but I need you to help me prove it. We need a warrant to search for the jewelry, Chet.”

  “Let me think about it,” he said. “I’ll want to see the pictures, of course. Approaching my boss is going to be tricky, to say the least.”

  “I’ll call you in the morning. If you’re religious, pray for Twila Jenson.”

  Claire and I went down to the cafeteria and bought the last two sandwiches in the case. I got a coffee, figuring I wasn’t going to sleep that night anyway, and she got an orange juice.

  Two and half hours later, a stern-faced nurse came into the waiting area and asked for me. “The patient you brought in is insisting on seeing you.” She allowed a thin smile. “I think she wants to thank you for saving her life.”

  I turned back to Claire and gave her a thumbs-up as I followed the nurse to a recovery room. Twila Jenson’s eyes were closed. She had a large bandage on her right wrist but was otherwise unencumbered with tubes, wires, and fluorescing screens. I cleared my throat, and she opened her dark eyes, the lids at better than half-mast.

  “Hello, Cal,” she said with a wan, crooked smile. “You should have let me die, you know.”

  “Not on your life, Twila.” I returned her smile. “How are you feeling?”

  She looked off to one side as if pondering the question. “Strangely enough, better than I’ve felt in a very long time. I thought I wanted to die, but now I’m not so sure. I feel like I need to put my burden down, so to speak.”

  “What burden is that, Twila?” I said, my voice as soft as I could make it.

  She showed the smile again. “You know what I’m talking about. I killed my husband and stood by while a young kid took the blame. I didn’t plan it. I just flew into a rage.” She brought her eyes to mine. “I’m tired of carrying that guilt, and I’m so sorry for what I’ve put Kenny Sanders through, deeply sorry.” She sobbed a couple of times and tears broke loose.

  I stepped closer and handed her a tissue from a box on the table next to the bed.

  She dabbed her eyes and looked pensive. “You know, it was weird. When you showed up with your dog and your daughter, all eager to help Kenny, I tried to throw you off the scent, but I knew at some deeper level I was going to break.” She shook her head. “You were just too…too goddamn decent, I guess.”

  I sat there for a moment in silence. “It takes courage to do the right thing, Twila. You won’t regret this. Can you tell me what happened that night?”

 
She brushed a lock of streaked hair off her forehead with her left hand. “Before I cut myself, I, ah, left a video selfie confession on my phone. It’s probably still in my bedroom at Seven Devils. I wanted to make sure Kenny would be exonerated.”

  “That’s good, Twila, but I’m guessing it wasn’t very detailed. Would you mind taking me through the events of that night? It’s important. Trust me.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I’ll try. I was painting but had left a couple of tubes of paint and some brushes back at the house. I went out the back way of the Tioga to get them.”

  “Why did you come in via the front entrance earlier but leave out the back?”

  “After I stepped off the elevator, I realized I still had on my coveralls. I didn’t want anyone to see me looking like a house painter. Sonny was in his workshop and didn’t hear me come in. When I went into the bedroom, the bed I’d made that morning was messed up, and I could smell Krysta Sanders.”

  “Her perfume?”

  “No.” Twila’s face grew hard. “The aftermath of her having fucked my husband. That’s what I smelled. I went to Sonny to confront him. He didn’t even bother to deny it. He told me to get over it, that our marriage was boring. Then he just kept working on his stupid bookcase with his back to me. He was a crappy carpenter, by the way.” She looked at me, her eyes leaked tears again, and her voice trembled. “We’d been married twenty-six years and he wouldn’t even acknowledge my…my right to object. I hardly remember the rest. I took a hammer to him.”

  “What happened to the hammer?” I asked next, relieved that she seemed willing to give me a detailed account. Kenny’s legal exoneration would demand nothing less.

  “I wiped my fingerprints off it using a garden glove, then decided I’d better not leave it behind. I took off my bloody coveralls and put them and the hammer in a garbage bag. On my way back to the Tioga I pulled over and threw the bag into the South Slough. It’s there somewhere in the mud.”

  “What about the jewelry, the cash, the wedding ring?”