Lineage Most Lethal (Ancestry Detective)

by S. C. Perkins

  She gave a piteous little moan, leaning her head back on the backrest. “Oh, Lucy, it’s just so hard to believe. I can’t stop thinking about it, and at the same time, it’s impossible to imagine Chef Rocky is dead. I feel like I could just walk into the kitchen and find him joking around with the kitchen staff, but it’s not going to happen.” Meeting my eyes again, she said, “But right now, my worries for my mom are taking precedence over anything else.”

  I pounced on the opportunity. “How is Roselyn? What happened after you went to the police station?”

  She sighed. “Mom’s a person of interest, apparently, but hasn’t been formally arrested.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  Pippa shook her head. “She was too broken up over Rocky to say much,” she said, a bit stiffly. “Though she must have said a lot to the police or our lawyer, because they were satisfied enough to let her go home. She’s not supposed to leave the city, however.”

  I wasn’t surprised. “And you?” I said. “I don’t think I even asked if you had an alibi for the time frame. I just trusted you were innocent.”

  Pippa gave a hint of her throaty laugh and speared one of her sausage links, putting it on my plate. Obviously I hadn’t been so subtle.

  “Thank you for believing in me,” she said. “I wish I’d felt the same vibe from the police, though I get that they’re just doing their job.” She sipped her coffee. “I have a cast-iron alibi, with security-camera proof, no less. I was at the hotel with family in the morning, at lunch with more family after that, and then I gave tours to two prospective brides”—her voice briefly darkened—“since Mom wasn’t available.”

  Boomer had sat up hopefully, and she gave him half of her other sausage link. “Anyway, the only other time I left was around five thirty, to go to Chef Rocky’s house. When I saw what had happened, I immediately came back to look for Mom, then for Uncle Dave. I found you instead, and you know the rest.”

  “Did the police say when Chef Rocky died?” I asked.

  Pippa’s mouth turned down. “We don’t have an exact time frame yet—or not one we’ve been told.”

  “Do you know if any of the staff said anything of interest when they were being interviewed by the police?” I asked. I then told her about my conversation with Terrence, and how he’d forgotten how Chef Rocky had asked about hiring personal security for a friend.

  The frown lines between Pippa’s eyes deepened over this. “Detective Dupart has checked a few facts with me, but nothing remotely suspicious. Mostly about a handful of employees’ whereabouts, like confirming Ysenia, Chef Rocky’s sous chef, had been cleared to come in late; that Mrs. P. had been asked by my mom to run some errands for the New Year’s Eve gala; and one of the groundskeeping staff, who didn’t show up for his shift on time, had called to say he’d blown a tire and was at a tire shop getting a new one.”

  On her kitchen island, her phone began ringing and she got up, adding in a determined voice, “I’ll definitely make sure Terrence tells his story to Detective Dupart, though. If Chef Rocky was involved in something shady, I want the detective to find out what it was so that we can make sure the hotel won’t be touched by it further.”

  “Good idea,” I said, as Pippa picked up her phone.

  “It’s one of our suppliers for the gala. I’ll be just a minute. Help yourself to more coffee.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Pouring myself another cup, I half listened to Pippa discussing details of a shipment of extra chairs and table linens and felt an inexplicable relief at knowing that my client had such a tight alibi. Remembering how I’d overheard Roselyn saying she hadn’t killed Chef Rocky, I hoped against hope that her assertion of innocence was true.

  And yet … there was a part of me that kept musing on how Pippa was so protective of her mother, constantly giving Roselyn leeway on her bad behavior.

  What if Roselyn were indeed guilty of Chef Rocky’s murder? Could Pippa, out of filial loyalty, have been involved in some way?

  It made me heartsick to think that way about Pippa for even a second, so I made myself concentrate on other possible suspects. I had one in mind as soon as Pippa sat back down.

  “What do you know about one of the kitchen staff, Lacey Costin?” I said.

  “The brunette prep cook? What about her?” Pippa said, sipping her coffee.

  I explained about going down to the kitchen to find Chef Rocky, but meeting Lacey and her pan of root vegetables instead.

  “She made it quite clear that she, and probably the whole kitchen staff, knew about your mom and Chef Rocky’s relationship. Her jealousy was such that the kitchen staff likely knew about her crush on Chef Rocky, too.”

  Pippa’s eye roll was both frustrated and resigned. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised. When Mom and Rocky first started seeing each other, they were never exactly unprofessional, but they also weren’t as discreet as they should have been.”

  “Why did they break up?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Mom said it just burned itself out—that they were better off as friends who enjoyed each other’s company when they felt like it.” She reached down to pet Boomer’s head. “While there was an age difference between them, yes, there was also something, I don’t know, deeper with them, like a truly solid friendship. Rocky was actually a good friend to her, you know. He called my mom out when she needed it, but also made her feel good about herself. They seemed to enjoy spending time with one another.”

  I said, “Okay, so with your mom still very much in the picture in one way or another, and more women waiting in the wings, do you think Lacey Costin’s jealousy could have led her to do something stupid?”

  “I don’t know,” Pippa said slowly, then narrowed her eyes. “Come to think of it, Lacey was written up a couple of weeks back, though I don’t remember why. Chef Rocky and his sous chef, Ysenia, managed all their staff themselves, but I have all the HR reports. Come on. Let’s go into my office and check the files.”

  A few minutes later, we were reading the report on Lacey Costin, who’d been written up for having a verbal altercation with one of the female pastry chefs. The pastry chef claimed Lacey said things she considered to be threatening, but refused to detail exactly what had been said.

  “Do you know this other staffer?” I asked, scratching Boomer behind the ears.

  Pippa made a kinda-sorta motion with her hand. “Incredibly talented with pastries, but don’t know her personally.” She picked up her cell phone. “But Mrs. P. knows most of them, and those she doesn’t know, she hears about. Let me check with her.”

  While Pippa left the room to get intel from Mrs. P., I looked around her elegantly minimal office. There was a sitting area with two comfortable armchairs and a rug that spanned most of the room. Her desk, an electric sit-stand model with a glossy bamboo-wood top, held decorative bins for her pens and sticky notes. Two dome-shaped glass paperweights held down various papers.

  I picked up the smallest paperweight, which held a photo of Boomer under its glass. Underneath were torn-out magazine pages with party favor ideas for the New Year’s Eve gala. One used twisted satin cording to tie a sachet containing Texas wildflower seed “bombs,” which guests could later toss wherever they wanted wildflowers to grow. The other page showed handmade chocolate-covered caramels in a pretty little box. A sticky note on the top page in Mrs. P.’s handwriting reminded Pippa to pick up the seed bombs and caramels so that she, Mrs. P., could assemble the sachets.

  What made me smile, though, were the framed photographs on the wall between two large windows, and I locked on to one Pippa had scanned and sent me weeks ago. It was a photo of her great-grandfather James and his wife, Nell, taken on V-E Day in 1945, not long before they were married. They were both in uniform—his British, hers American—and looked so in love.

  Pippa came back in and sat down. “Mrs. P. said the pastry chef got along like a house on fire with Chef Rocky, but there was never any romance.”

  “Did
she say anything about Lacey?”

  “Yep. A few weeks ago, the kitchen team was out for drinks after work and Lacey became aggressive with a woman who had flirted with Chef Rocky. Lacey actually had to be carried out in a fireman’s hold by one of the other kitchen staff because she was so riled up. Mrs. P. described her as impetuous and hot-tempered. She also said that Rocky had been staying well away from Lacey in recent weeks, which had likely made Lacey even more upset.”

  “Did she know if Rocky and Lacey had a relationship?” I asked.

  “Apparently they flirted a lot, but that was it.”

  “Lacey might have seen much more into that flirting, though,” I said.

  “Should I call Detective Dupart and ask him to check her out?” Pippa asked, uncertainty in her voice. I could tell the thought of accusing one of her employees without a really good reason was not what she wanted to do, and I didn’t blame her.

  “How about this?” I said. “Let’s check the security footage first to see if she was on the premises during the hours Chef Rocky would have been murdered. If she wasn’t here, or we see anything suspicious, then we can call Dupart.”

  She agreed, and we began going through yesterday’s security footage from the kitchen. It was strange seeing Chef Rocky alive and well in the morning, knowing what would happen to him just a few hours later. The kitchen staff went about their business, including Lacey. However, a few minutes into the footage, she beelined it to Chef Rocky, cornering him by the stove. We couldn’t tell what they were saying, but Rocky shook his head vehemently. Lacey kept talking to him, at one point reaching out to him, but he moved smoothly away from her. Seconds later, he was walking out of the kitchen, Lacey glaring after him. Then she stalked over to her prep station and began angrily cutting up potatoes.

  “Check the footage for outside the ballroom, near the bathrooms,” I told Pippa, explaining about Grandpa seeing Chef Rocky and Roselyn.

  Sure enough, they were there, and Grandpa could be seen passing Rocky as the chef threw up his hands in irritation. Grandpa then went into the men’s room, while Roselyn disappeared into the ladies’. We followed Rocky’s path through the hotel, his body language giving off waves of frustration. At one point he strode past Mrs. P., who said something to him. Chef Rocky responded without looking at her, but had been so close to the camera we could read his lips.

  “It looks like he said, ‘I’m going home,’” Pippa said, and I agreed. Moments later, we saw Chef Rocky striding out to the staff parking lot in back and then driving off in a black Porsche.

  “Check the kitchen again, please,” I said. “We need to see if Lacey is still there.”

  We watched the footage for several minutes, and no Lacey. Pippa fast-forwarded the kitchen footage, and Lacey was seen arriving again at 5:23 p.m. She didn’t speak to anyone, but began pureeing some roasted butternut squash. We stopped the footage seconds after she yanked the immersion blender out too fast and a slash of orange squash puree ended up across her chest.

  It was the angry outburst we witnessed afterward that made Pippa call Detective Dupart. She was careful not to accuse Lacey, but laid out the facts and suggested his officers question her on her whereabouts.

  “Will do, Ms. Sutton,” I heard Dupart say, adding that he wanted to see the security footage.

  Pippa told Dupart she would make the footage available to him whenever he needed it.

  “I can’t say I want Lacey to be guilty,” Pippa told me after hanging up. “I want someone I don’t know to be behind this. Someone evil and easy to despise. But if telling Detective Dupart about anyone who might have had a motive to kill Chef Rocky helps to clear my mom’s name, then it’s worth it.”

  “I feel the same way,” I said.

  Pippa was quiet, picking up her coffee cup, holding it between both hands like its warmth could soothe her frayed nerves. “My mom … she can be selfish, vain, unthinking, petty, and neurotic, but she’s not like that when it comes to me. To me, she’s smart, hardworking, warm, funny, generous, kind”—she let out a frustrated laugh—“and only occasionally selfish and neurotic. I don’t believe she’d hurt Chef Rocky, Lucy. I just don’t believe it.”

  Outside her office window, a blue jay landed on the sill and flew away just as quickly. I squeezed her fingers. “I don’t believe it, either,” I said, which I realized was the truth in my heart. “I’m hoping I can help prove her innocence, too.”

  Pippa sat up straighter. “How?”

  I hesitated, thinking of Hugo’s list. I still had so little to go on, and I hadn’t proved anything yet.

  “I can’t tell you right now,” I said. “Just give me a little bit of time to look into it. I wouldn’t want to be wrong and get your hopes up.”

  Pippa surveyed me for a long moment. Then she said, “Whatever this is, have you told the police? Do they know what you’re thinking?”

  “They don’t,” I said, then hurried to add, “and nothing I will be doing will interfere with their investigation at all. If I find something of note, though, I will absolutely tell them.”

  Pippa waved that off with a dismissive noise. “Hell, honey, interfere away if it clears my mom’s name and helps find Rocky’s killer. I don’t care.”

  I laughed, and put my hand on her shoulder. “You are so much easier to convince than a federal agent.”

  Pippa laughed, too, finally, and then her phone beeped. She looked at the screen, tapped on a notification, then groaned. “I think I need to temporarily unsubscribe from the news alerts I get. I used to like staying current, but now I feel like I only see negative stuff.”

  She turned the phone toward me, and I saw a photo of a smiling, gray-haired woman.

  “Some poor woman from England was found dead on the other side of Lady Bird Lake early this morning.” She swiped the news story away, but not before I saw the caption under the photo.

  Penelope Frances Ohlinger, 74, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.

  Another name from Hugo Markman’s list.

  THIRTY

  I don’t think I breathed properly until I left Pippa’s cottage and ran back to the hotel, all thoughts of a morning walk forgotten, and only barely aware of Pippa telling me our dinner with her family was rescheduled for tonight at Eighteen Ninety-Five.

  Once in my room, I practically lunged for my iPad on my bed. I’d noted the web page Pippa had shown me; it was for the local news station. I brought it up and scanned the short accompanying story.

  It appeared that Penelope Ohlinger’s body had been discovered by an early-morning jogger on the south side of Lady Bird Lake, in a protected area where grasses grew high and thick in the winter and would house native wildflowers in the spring and summer. At present, the grasses were very tall and her body had not been noticed for several hours after her death, until the jogger’s dog began barking at the grass. The jogger initially thought his dog had detected a snake or maybe an armadillo, and had been shocked to find a body.

  I read on. Mrs. Ohlinger, a widow, was reported to be on vacation and had been a guest at the nearby Carlingford Hotel, which had a path leading down to the lakeside trail. She had traveled to Austin on holiday to meet up with a friend. Initial toxicology reports were forthcoming, but her two adult children said she was on medications for a heart issue and hadn’t been sleeping well due to jet lag. The article ended by saying the death was being treated as accidental at this time.

  Hugo Markman’s raspy last words were in my ears.

  Keep them safe.

  I felt wretched for this woman I had never known and would never meet, and my gut was telling me the chances her death had been accidental were slim.

  I was hardly doing a good job of keeping anyone safe thus far, was I? Time to remedy that.

  I had my laptop with me, which had all my genealogy programs on it. My iPad did, too. But I felt like I needed the big guns for this. I needed my two big computer screens and the power of the super-fast internet we enjoyed at the office.

  I c
hanged into jeans and a Fair Isle sweater. Grabbing my coat and my tote, I was halfway down the back stairs, hoping I wouldn’t run into Roselyn, when my phone rang. I’d already put in my wireless earbuds to call the hospital and check on Grandpa, but when I saw the contact photo of a man with a kind face and smiling blue eyes, I grinned. It was just the man I had been waiting for.

  “Sean, hi! It’s so good to hear from you.”

  “Well, if it isn’t my favorite scrappy genealogist,” Sean said, greeting me warmly like the pseudo older brother he’d always been. “Hot on the trail of another ancestry investigation, from what it sounded like in your message.”

  I had to laugh. Sean and I had worked with each other during a sixteen-month period between the years I worked at the Hamilton American History Center and the day I finally hung out my shingle as a fledgling but fully trained and accredited professional genealogist.

  The job was at a university library in Houston, and the only reason I didn’t love it was because of three female coworkers who could have shown NPH and Bertie a few things about being catty.

  Through that period, my saving graces had been in the form of two people: a lovely genealogist named Ginger, and Sean, who was our head librarian before moving up in the world and over to Washington, DC. Being as his own personal research passion were the two world wars, once he found I had an equal passion for hearing about them, we’d often have lunch and talk World War history.

  Or, rather, he would give me a professorlike lecture on some aspect of one of the wars, and I would eat my lunch and listen in thoroughly focused silence.

  Now, as I drove out of the hotel parking lot and my phone connected with my car speakers, Sean and I spent a few minutes catching up on each other’s lives. I asked him about his lovely wife and young son, both of whom he absolutely adored, and I could practically see his face lighting up with joy as he talked about them.

  Through the phone I heard a knock, a man’s voice saying, “Meeting still in ten?” and Sean replying in the affirmative before the door closed.