by B. T. Lord
She made a mental note that Jace’s hands bore no traces of bruising. If the marks on his face were a result from a fight with Eli, the altercation must have occurred after Jace became drunk. She’d never known him to pick a fight. But he’d never backed down from one either. Could this clash with Eli have triggered a retaliatory rage in the young mechanic?
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice hoarse and barely intelligible as he tried to speak past his swollen mouth.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she ripped off a paper towel from the roll and tenderly wiped the vomit from his chin and mouth. He winced when she tried to maneuver around the split in his lip. When she was done, she felt Rick came up beside her. Looking up, she wondered if she was going to have to clean him up as well. His face looked green and his jaw was clenched as if he were fighting against throwing up. He jerked his head towards the body.
“It’s Eli, Cam. He’s dead.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You know why I left with Eli last night. I explained it to you.”
Jace’s breath came out in short, angry bursts. He was unsteady on his feet, still hung over from the night before. It didn’t stop him, however, from narrowing his good eye at her and sneering, “Oh yeah. Something about threatening notes. Tell me, did you actually find those?”
“Jace, this is not the time –“
A harsh snort. “Just as I thought. A ploy to get you out here. To get into your pants –“
“Enough!” Cammie snapped, her own anger overtaking her. “I’m not going to get into this with you. We have a much more serious situation here and you’re right in the damned middle of it!”
Crap. She hadn’t meant to lose her temper. Things were spiraling out of control – the one thing she couldn’t afford to happen. She clamped down on her emotions, and took a deep, steadying breath.
“Rick is going to take you home and stay with you until I get there.”
“And then what? We do this all again? Fuck that. Just arrest me now.”
“Push me and I will.”
They glared at each other, both at an impasse until Rick intervened.
“Come on, bro,” he replied, putting his hand on Jace’s arm. “The sheriff knows what she’s doing.”
Jace started to say something, then changed his mind. He turned his back on her, grabbed his parka and stumbled out of the room.
“Stay with him and don’t let him out of your sight,” Cammie ordered.
Rick frowned. “You honestly think Jace would make a run for it? Shit Cammie, he can barely walk, much less try to escape.”
“Rick, this entire investigation is going to be under a microscope. I need to make sure we cross every 't' and dot every 'i'. Neither one of us can afford any screw-ups. No, I don’t think Jace would run, but –“
“I know, I know. Cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’”.
“Exactly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going over to Doc’s to get the autopsy results.”
“And then?”
She met Rick’s gaze. “We’ll see,” she answered shortly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening by the time Cammie arrived at Doc’s. In her career in law enforcement, she’d been to her share of autopsies. However, this was one autopsy she opted out of. Her feelings about Eli were in enough of a tangled mess without having to witness the slicing up of his body.
All the way to Doc’s, self-doubt threatened to suffocate her. This was a perfect example of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. If she arrested Jace, she’d be crucified. If she didn’t arrest him, she’d be crucified.
Then there was the matter of Eli’s death. Twin Ponds’ number one son was dead. People around here had always lived through him. He’d made something of his life. He was a success, beyond what any of them could ever have imagined for themselves. Part of the fantasy they’d created around Eli was the inability to acknowledge his apathy towards his home town. When he joined the NHL, he not only turned his back on Cammie, he’d also turned his back on every person who’d ever cheered him on in Twin Ponds. Who had ever believed in him.
But he was dead now. All that would be forgotten. What mattered was that someone had taken his life. Cruelly and ruthlessly. The irony was the mystery of that death was now being investigated by a woman whose past with the victim was shrouded in time and secrecy. To add insult to injury, this woman couldn’t even solve the mystery of bird feeder thefts. Would she really be able to solve this?
No matter which way she looked at it, she was screwed.
Cammie took a deep breath. And pushed aside all these distressing thoughts as she climbed out of her vehicle. She was tired, dispirited and ready to get this day over with. She climbed up the wide steps to Doc’s enormous, custom built log cabin and rang the doorbell.
Dr. Samuel Westerfield, known as Doc to the inhabitants of Twin Ponds, was an anomaly in this remote corner of Maine’s backwoods. Born into a blue-blooded Boston family, he’d met Cammie one night in Boston’s posh Beacon Hill neighborhood when, during her days as a private investigator, she’d rescued him from a mugging. At the time she’d believed she was rescuing a woman. The victim seemed more upset at a tear in her stunning Stella McCartney black lace, full skirted dress than in the fact she’d been attacked. It wasn’t until Cammie frightened the mugger away and helped the woman up from the pavement where she’d been knocked down that she discovered she was a he. From this inauspicious beginning, they struck up a close friendship.
Doc introduced her to a world she’d only read about in novels or seen on Masterpiece Theatre. It was a world of sitting rooms and plush Beacon Hill townhouses, and a front row seat at the Boston Symphony’s opening night. It was a world of clipped accents and perfectly preserved bodies. It was a world, Cammie noticed with astonishment, where everyone looked eerily the same – women with perfectly coiffed blonde hair and pearl necklaces and men wearing their standard uniform of blue blazers and khaki trousers. It was the WASP version of the Stepford wives.
When she told Doc of her father’s death and her need to return to Maine to tie up some loose ends pertaining to his estate, she was surprised at his announcement that he was coming with her. No matter how hard she tried to talk him out of it, he insisted. He was tired of the condemnation of his Brahmin family.
Despite four marriages, all done to please his forbidding parents, he could no longer deny his homosexuality or his penchant for dressing in women’s clothing after a hard day tending to the sick at Boston’s prodigious Brighams & Women’s Hospital. He hoped that in the remote corner of Maine, he’d be left alone to live his life the way he chose to.
As it turned out, his arrival in Twin Ponds was a godsend. With his vast medical training, he was quickly appointed coroner, working under the auspices of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta. He also became the quintessential country doctor. Sharp and forthright, he was dedicated to his patients. The women in particular loved him. His bedside manner included expert medical care mingled with excellent fashion tips picked up over the years during his forays to the fashion runways in Paris, Milan and New York.
Despite their divergent backgrounds, he and Cammie made an excellent team. They respected each other’s abilities and Cammie knew she could always count on him for an erudite and intelligent opinion on anything. It wasn’t unusual for her to stop by and discuss her latest case, whether it was a simple traffic accident, a near drowning, or in recent weeks, the disappearance of bird feeders.
Doc lived on Twin Ponds’ other lake, named Waban after the Abenaki word for water. Although he’d left his aristocratic existence behind, he couldn’t rid himself of his taste for the finest things in life. He’d had his large log cabin built with the best materials. It had a wide wraparound porch, while inside it boasted three opulent bedrooms, a fireplace made of river stone and furniture that wrapped itself around you like a warm, cushy blan
ket.
On the walls were original works of art and, strategically placed here and there, magnificent pieces of abstract sculpture. Downstairs in the basement was his work area where he performed his autopsies and where his medical offices were located. He’d had a large freezer built, not only to keep the autopsies stored, but to keep the bodies of those people who died during the harsh winters until spring time when the ground thawed enough to bury them. People began to call his work area the ‘Crypt’ and the name stuck.
After a few moments of waiting in the frigid night air, the door swung open and she gratefully entered. Doc wore a white lab coat over his round 5 ft. 6 inch frame. On his feet, he wore a pair of pink fluffy slippers that reminded Cammie of her grandmother. His thin ginger colored hair was standing up on all ends, a sign that he’d been deep in thought. He regarded her with his large green owlish eyes over his wire-rimmed glasses as she slipped out of her parka.
“You look worse than my cadavers,” he said in his crisp John F. Kennedy-esque accent. “Come in while I pour you a stiff drink.”
“Technically I’m still on duty.”
He rolled his eyes. “As if anyone in this wilderness would care. Well, I at least am dying for some caffeine, excuse the pun.”
Cammie followed Doc through the living room to the back of the house where the kitchen was. A fire was roaring in the fireplace and once again she felt slightly intimidated as she passed through his beautifully hand hewn living room filled with antique furniture, expensive artwork and plush Moroccan rugs. She glanced longingly at the soft inviting recliner situated near the heat. Exhaustion washed over her. The adrenalin she’d been running on was just about tapped out and it took all her effort to keep her mind focused.
They entered his sparkling kitchen with the imported Italian tile floors and the latest in kitchen gadgetry. He was already brewing a pot in his black Bunn coffee maker and opening the shelves, he withdrew two, oversized black mugs.
“I hope you like Ethiopian blend. It’s exquisite.”
“Does it taste anything like Nescafe instant?”
Doc shook his head. “I know you do that to goad me.” He poured out the coffee, handed her the cup and they sat down at his rectangular imported teak dining table in chairs that felt like marshmallows. He took a sip, closed his eyes and moaned in pleasure.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, quietly studying her.
She started to offer the customary ‘I’m okay’, but she couldn’t. Not with Doc. She heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s a complete clusterfuck, if you really want to know.”
Doc nodded. “You always have such an incandescent way of expressing yourself. But in this case, I’d say you’re being overly generous. So, do you want the bad news or the bad news?”
“If you’re going to tell me Eli’s dead, I think I’ve got that covered.”
“I always knew you were smart.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Preliminaries first. Eli was killed by a bullet wound through the chest, which I’m sure your background in law enforcement led you to establish that fact when you first arrived on the scene. I’ve recovered the bullet and bagged it for shipment down to Augusta. I’m not much of an expert on bullet types, preferring to sail rather than shoot, but it certainly appeared to be that of a 38 caliber. By the angle of the shot, I’d say he was lying down when the suspect shot him at point blank range through the heart.”
“So the killer stood directly over him and shot him.”
“I would say so.”
“There were no defensive wounds anywhere on his body?”
“With the exception of the bruising on his knuckles, which by the way, correspond nicely to the bruises on your significant other’s face, I found none.”
She shook her head to dislodge exhausted cobwebs. “Wait. Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that someone managed to get Eli to lie down on the bed, then shot him point blank without Eli putting up any kind of a fight? That’s crazy! There’s no way Eli wouldn’t have defended himself. And I can’t see Jace--” Her words trailed off.
“—drunk and disoriented as he was, standing over anybody,” Doc finished for her. “In the state he was in, he couldn’t shoot a moose standing two feet away, much less subdue a six foot two inch man and shoot him in the chest.”
She gave him a weary smile. “You must be psychic.”
He waved his hand at her. “If I was, I wouldn’t have married wife number three.” He paused as he took another sip of his coffee. “However, my dear, there were those bruises on Jason’s face.”
Doc was the only person in Twin Ponds who insisted on calling Jace by his given name. It always sounded odd to Cammie’s ears. Like someone calling her by her given name Camilla, which she hated, rather than Cammie, which she preferred.
“When I saw Eli last night, the bruises were already on his hand, so obviously whatever happened between those two took place earlier in the evening. Besides, even if I hadn’t spotted his knuckles, it’s impossible the fight would have taken place in Eli’s house. Nothing was disturbed or smashed. If those two had gotten into a scrum at the house, believe me, nothing would have been left standing. I’ve seen both Jace and Eli throw a mean punch on the ice.”
“A punch thrown during a sporting event hardly measures up to a punch thrown in the throes of a response fueled by jealousy.”
Cammie frowned. “So you’ve been listening to the gossip mongers.”
Doc shrugged. “When you’re buried in snow over half the godforsaken year, there are only two things to do. Gossip and fornicate. Unfortunately, no strapping lumber jack has made his way down my driveway yet.”
“Have you finished the autopsy?” She was careful not to use Eli’s name. If she could keep the autopsy impersonal, it would help keep the emotional breakdown at bay.
“Just before you arrived.”
“And you still think he was killed between 3 and 6 am?”
“I do.”
She took a sip of coffee and tried to hide her grimace. She was a coffee-in-my-milk type of drinker and the Ethiopian blend was much too strong for her taste. But with a half hour ride home, not to mention Jace and Rick at the end of it, she needed to stay awake. So she girded herself and took another sip.
“From the first minute I entered the bedroom, I was suspicious about the lack of blood. There was practically none under his body, nor was there any blood splatter on the walls or rug. What do you make of that?”
Doc blinked his owlish eyes at her. “I was wondering when you were going to bring that up. Interesting little tidbit, don’t you think?” Doc sat back in his chair and absently stroked his chin. “The obvious answer would be that he was shot elsewhere, then brought back to his house and gently laid upon his bed where he expired shortly afterwards. That would explain the small amount of blood found on the bedclothes, as well as the lack of blood splatter.”
Cammie nodded.
“Very good, Sheriff Farnsworth. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re a lousy cop. However I’m going to have to burst your bubble. The pattern of lividity indicates that he died where you found him.”
“Damn,” Cammie muttered. “So how do we explain no blood splatter on the walls, and negligible amounts under the body? That bedspread should have been saturated. ” She told Doc, in brief terms about her visit to Eli's the night before. "He was wearing the suit when I arrived."
"Exquisite suit," Doc mused. "Armani."
"Well, I doubt very much he would have put on an Armani suit to show me the notes. He must have had other plans for the evening. Unfortunately, the notes, the hockey trophy, a photograph of Eli and I when we were teenagers, and the animal carcass lying on his back step are all missing. Except for the carcass, it's just my word that they ever existed."
"It's odd that the trophy and photo are missing, I'll grant you that. The animal could have been taken by predators. But as to the notes, why didn’t you take them with you when you left Eli’s house last night? Isn’t that what you wen
t over there to do in the first place?”
Cammie averted her face. Doc leaned in. “Off the record, Cammie.”
She looked up into his owlish eyes. “It has nothing to do with any of this. Let’s just say I left the house in a hurry and left them behind.”
She felt his eyes boring into her. She wasn’t ready to talk about the kiss, about Eli begging her to stay. It was still too fresh. Right now, she had no time for emotion. She took a sip of coffee to stall for time, then swiftly changed the subject.
“There were too many tire marks in his driveway to single out any one vehicle. He’d told me he was getting constant visits from fans. However, from what I could see, it didn’t look like his Navigator had been moved from the time I arrived last night until this morning. So whoever he was meeting must have come to him. Maybe they got into an argument and this person shot him.”
Doc studied her a moment longer, then let it go. Until she was ready to tell him the whole story, he would respect her privacy. Instead, he considered her statement, then shook his head. “Don’t forget. Eli wasn’t moved after he was shot.”
“Okay. Maybe this person was a woman. Maybe they went into his bedroom to do the horizontal. He laid down on the bed and she shot him.”
Doc’s mouth twitched. “The horizontal?”
Cammie groaned. “God, I’ve been hanging around Rick too long.”
“How plausible do you think that is?” he asked as he got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. She waved him off when he tried to refill her cup. She needed to stay awake, not have hair sprout on her chest.
“At this point, anything’s possible.”
“How does Jason figure into all this? Besides the fact that it was no secret around town that he was jealous of Eli, nor the fact the two obviously had some sort of altercation.”