The Candidate Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  “What’s special about that tissue?”

  “The color is kind of unusual. I thought we might make quicker work tracking the color of the lipstick rather than waiting for weeks for the DNA.”

  Fenway kept examining the bathroom: opening the cabinet, examining the floor behind the toilet, looking closely at the grout on the shower.

  Ms. Hernandez sighed. “I should get back. I don’t think I ought to leave the front desk for this long.”

  “Okay,” McVie said. “We’ll close up when we’re done and come let you know.”

  Ms. Hernandez scrunched up her face. “I’m not comfortable having you in here without a representative of this resort.”

  “You’re free to stay, too,” said McVie. “Nobody’s stopping you.”

  Ms. Hernandez put her hands on her hips and sighed loudly, but Fenway studiously ignored her. She stole a quick glance at the sheriff, whose easy, quiet demeanor became even more soporific.

  After another sixty seconds ticked by, Ms. Hernandez said, “Make sure you come by and see me after you’re finished in here.” Then she spun on her heel and walked out.

  The sheriff’s phone dinged. “From Melissa,” he said, looking at it. “She found a gun on the beach, in the surf. It may be unrelated, or maybe the killer tried to get rid of the gun in the ocean.”

  “What kind of gun?”

  “Let me see.”

  McVie texted Melissa back and turned to Fenway. “See anything else in here you want to get bagged up?”

  “I want to ask Melissa or Kav about this powder on the bathroom counter.”

  “I take it you don’t think that’s baby powder.”

  “No,” Fenway said. “I bet it will match the powder under Mr. Potemkin’s nose. I think they were in the middle of a weeklong party. And I definitely want the fingerprints here.”

  “In a hotel room?”

  Fenway shrugged. “We’ll probably get three hundred different fingerprints, but maybe the daughter isn’t as bad a housekeeper as her mom thinks she is.”

  “That will be a lot of work for the fingerprint people to go through.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Fenway. “Maybe I can help out in the lab in the next couple of days. Can you find out Melissa’s ETA?”

  McVie texted again.

  “Maybe an hour, she says.”

  “Can she come now? We’ve got a window of time here and I’d prefer not to piss off the front desk lady any more than we have to.”

  McVie looked sideways at Fenway. “You do know we’re the cops, right?”

  Fenway smiled sweetly. “And it doesn’t take a genius to know we might need something else from Ms. Hernandez and coming back in an hour because we forgot something won’t keep us on her good side.”

  McVie chuckled as he texted. “We stopped being on her good side as soon as we asked to see the room.”

  MELISSA ARRIVED ABOUT forty minutes later with the fingerprint kit, grumbling. The transport van had arrived just as Melissa was leaving, and she had to help get the body moved into the van and on its way to San Miguelito. Officer Huke assisted as well, but he was getting nervous about working the crime scene rather than reporting to the sheriff’s office. He had to call his supervisor, who wasn’t crazy about letting him stay longer, but wasn’t about to argue, as he was helping the sheriff. Officer Huke was itching to get to the station, and Melissa had left Kav to process the rest of the scene while she was at the hotel.

  Melissa arrived with Ms. Hernandez, who didn’t seem happy about yet another public employee traipsing through the Potemkin villa.

  Melissa had brought the gun—a Ruger RCP II, a compact .380 with a short barrel—in an evidence bag. She placed it on the dresser for them to examine.

  “Hmm,” McVie said. “Interesting.”

  “What’s interesting?” asked Fenway.

  “For one thing, this isn’t a super-expensive gun.”

  “You can probably get it around here for three hundred bucks or so,” said Melissa.

  “So—we’d be looking for—what? A middle-class owner?”

  “Maybe,” said McVie, rubbing his chin. “So the second thing is it’s popular with women.”

  “Popular with women?” Fenway repeated.

  “Yeah. It’s a pretty serious caliber—a hell of a lot better than Rachel’s .22 for protection—but it’s got a light recoil. And it weighs nothing. Great to carry in a purse.”

  “So,” Fenway said, “maybe we want to prioritize finding Catherine the Great.”

  “Finding who?” Melissa said.

  “It’s a whole thing,” Fenway said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Fenway bent down to look at the gun through the clear evidence bag. She saw a distinct serial number above and to the left of the trigger—and below the etched lettering that said Read instruction manual before using firearm.

  “How about that,” Fenway said.

  “I know,” Melissa said. “A serial number that hasn’t been filed off.”

  “Think this is the murder weapon?”

  Melissa shrugged. “I don’t know. The bullet hole might be a .380. Could be a nine-millimeter. And this gun might not have had anything to do with it.” She paused. “But there are five bullets in it.”

  “And how many does the magazine hold?”

  “Six.”

  Fenway nodded; the odds were good they had found the murder weapon. “Great work, Melissa. And before you start with fingerprinting, take a look at the white powder on the bathroom counter.”

  She went in, taking a brush and a vial out of one of her kits. She looked at the fine, off-white crystalline powder closely before sweeping it into the vial.

  “Is that cocaine?” Fenway asked.

  “I think so,” Melissa said. “We’ll have to get it back to the lab to be sure.”

  “Do you think it’ll match the powder under our victim’s nose?”

  “If I remember right, it’s a visual match.”

  After she capped the vial and sealed it in an evidence bag, Melissa started fingerprinting. While there were a large number of prints on the dresser and the handles on the drawers, the nightstands and the bases of the bedside lamps were relatively clean.

  “It looks like there are twenty or thirty fingerprints on the lamp bases,” Melissa said, “but on this side, I only see four or five unique fingerprints, and on the other side, about seven fingerprints, and I think two or three of them are the same as this side.”

  Fenway looked at McVie and smiled. He appeared nonplussed.

  “Let’s get those prints prioritized,” said McVie, stating the obvious. He folded his arms as Melissa moved to the bathroom counter. “If you don’t need my help here, I’m going to talk to Ms. Hernandez again. See if she can give us a description of this Mrs. Potemkin character. Maybe get a sketch artist. Maybe see if the car they came in is still around.”

  “We’re fine,” Fenway said. “Go do your thing.”

  With Fenway’s help, Melissa began to collect the fingerprints from the rest of the surfaces. Some areas had the same sets of fingerprints as the bedside lamps; others had dozens and dozens of different prints.

  Melissa photographed many of the out-of-place items. They collected several dozen bags of evidence as well: the clothes hanging in the closet, the hair from the drain, the abandoned suitcase, and a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo sneakers.

  “No luggage tag on the suitcase,” Fenway noted. “No business cards, nothing.”

  “This obviously wasn’t a business trip,” Melissa said. “Either that or Mrs. Potemkin made sure we’d have a hard time identifying who shared this room with her. And look at those shoes. Definitely more like a rich guy off his meds.”

  “Or a rich guy who can afford cocaine.” Fenway cocked her head to the side. “Those shoes cost eight hundred dollars.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “How do you think? My father owns two pairs.”

  Melissa smirked and then kept going over
her patch of carpet. “So what was it like growing up with a rich father?”

  Fenway scoffed. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “What?” Melissa said. “You didn’t grow up with him?”

  “Nope. My mom and I were pretty much on our own since I was eight. I grew up in Seattle. I lived in her house until she passed away earlier this year.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, cancer’s a real bitch.”

  They were silent for a few minutes.

  Fenway’s phone dinged. It was a text from McVie.

  Says she sometimes saw him in a silver SUV, no make or model

  Doesn’t know what car they arrived in this time

  Fenway repeated it to Melissa, who nodded and continued to work.

  After a few more minutes, Melissa asked, “Will you be glad when the campaign is over?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Yeah, Dominguez County politics have always been a little more intense,” Melissa said. “I think it’s because there isn’t anything else to do here.”

  “There’s the beach. And the mountains. There’s Coast Harbor State Park.”

  “That’s all outdoors stuff. Lots of people here aren’t big fans of nature. They’re the ones who get all crazy during election season.”

  “Another reason for me to hate politics,” Fenway said. “If I win, I won’t have to worry about it for another four years, and if I lose, I won’t have to worry about it ever again.”

  “You don’t honestly think you’re going to lose to Ivanovich, do you?”

  Fenway looked up at Melissa. “I don’t trust polls, especially when my father pays for them.”

  They worked for another half hour and then had to make several trips to the front of the hotel to carry the evidence bags to the CSI van. Melissa got a call from Kav as they were making their final trip out; he had finished up as well. McVie had made it back and he was going to give Officer Huke a ride to the sheriff’s office.

  “Is that the last of it?” asked Fenway.

  “I think so.”

  “Want me to give you a ride back to your car?”

  Fenway looked around. It was still chilly and she liked the cold breeze on her face—a perfect day to take the trail down to the secluded beach. But she had the teachers’ union luncheon to prepare for, and sighed. “That would be great, Melissa. Thanks.”

  Melissa put her arm on the back door of the van to close it, and then hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I think we need to check their files. See if either of the Potemkins signed anything, or if Mrs. Potemkin did. Fingerprint the pages. Maybe one of them is in the system.”

  “Maybe both of them are.”

  Melissa laughed. “You’re cute. I would have thought you’d have lost your optimism by now.”

  “Maybe the hotel even wrote down a license plate number of their car.”

  “Now you’re just talking crazy.” She picked up her kit from the back of the van then closed the door. “You want to do the honors?”

  Fenway shook her head. “Mrs. Hernandez hates me.”

  “She’s not crazy about me, either.”

  They both looked at each other and held their fists out.

  “One, two, three,” they said in unison.

  “Shit,” Melissa said, looking down at her hand, held out flat.

  “Scissors cut paper,” Fenway said. “Have fun with the world’s sweetest hotel owner.”

  “Fine. You go do a final sweep of the villa.”

  Fenway started walking back along the path.

  “Oh,” Melissa said, “can you call McVie and tell him we’ll put a rush on the prints? But tell him not to hold his breath on the DNA.”

  “Sure thing.” As she walked, Fenway pulled her phone out and called the sheriff.

  “McVie.”

  “Hey, it’s Fenway.”

  “Hi, Fenway. You still at the hotel?”

  “Yeah. Melissa wanted me to tell you they were putting a rush on the prints.”

  “Good. And we’ve got an ID. Officer Huke found the victim’s wallet on the beach.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. No money in it, but there was a driver’s license. Jeremy Chauncey Kapp.” McVie paused.

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” She suppressed a yawn, put her purse down on the concrete walkway next to the planter, and stretched her right arm above her head.

  “He’s a landscape architect. Does a lot of rich people’s houses. I think they did a profile of him on one of the gardening shows last year. He’s kind of a big deal.”

  “Oh. I don’t really need a landscape architect where I live.”

  “No, I guess you don’t,” McVie said, a brief chuckle escaping. “Anyway, he lives in Birdland in Paso Querido.”

  “Oh, fancy.”

  “Right. Whippoorwill Terrace.”

  “What’s he doing out in a run-down beachfront hotel?”

  “I don’t know.” He cleared his throat. “You didn’t see a Jaguar at the hotel, did you?”

  “No, but I wasn’t looking for one. Why?”

  “He has a Jaguar roadside assistance card. Thought you might have seen something I didn’t. I’m about to call the P.Q. office and talk to Gretchen,” McVie said. “She can have a couple of her officers go by the house.”

  “Is he married?” Fenway said.

  “Yes, with a couple of kids. And he has a record. A DUI three years ago. Two calls earlier this year for domestic disturbance, one of them called in by a neighbor, one of them called in by Cricket Kapp.”

  “Cricket?”

  “That’s the wife.”

  “What the hell kind of name is Cricket?”

  “Let’s see.” Fenway heard McVie tapping. “Oh, it’s a nickname, apparently.”

  Fenway’s ears perked up. “A nickname? Is her given name Catherine, maybe?”

  “No. Esmerelda.”

  “How did they get Cricket from Esmerelda?”

  McVie ignored Fenway’s question. “They’ve been married twenty-one years. Two kids, a daughter named Blair, age eighteen, and a son named Donovan, age sixteen.”

  “So Cricket isn’t Catherine,” said Fenway.

  “Right. And it wouldn’t make sense anyway. Men who have a nice house in P.Q. don’t usually rent a room at a rundown beachfront hotel. Not with their wives, anyway.” He kept tapping. “No passenger in the car for the DUI.”

  “Okay,” Fenway said.

  “All right, I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “I’ve got a teachers’ union luncheon to go to.”

  “Luncheon? It’s only ten.”

  “Yeah, but I’m in my sneakers. I’ve got to get ready.”

  They said their goodbyes and Fenway hung up and stretched again, this time with both arms above her head.

  As she bent down to pick up her purse, a ray of sun broke through the mist, and something near the edge of the planter glinted.

  Fenway looked more closely. She took a step toward the edge of the planter and bent down. It looked like a piece of jewelry caught in one of the flowering plants—an expensive piece of jewelry, with multiple diamonds, one of them quite large. For a moment Fenway thought it might be cubic zirconia instead of diamonds. She used her phone to take pictures of where it lay.

  Fenway pulled a glove out of her purse and snapped it on, getting another evidence bag as well. She reached down and pulled gently, the plant readily giving up its hold on the jewelry.

  An earring.

  An unusual pendant earring at that: a large hexagonal-shaped diamond, easily two carats, hung below a vertical line of five small diamonds that ended near the stem. Platinum rivets held all the diamonds in place.

  It was a custom-made piece Fenway immediately recognized.

  She swore under her breath.

  “Dammit, Charlotte.”

  Chapter Five

  FENWAY THOUGHT FOR a few minutes before calling McVie again. She wondered if her
dislike for her young stepmother was coloring her perceptions. Was it actually the same earring she had seen Charlotte wearing—and bragging about—a few months before? Was it her dislike of everything Charlotte stood for that led Fenway to immediately think Charlotte was not only cheating on her father but had holed up in the beachfront hotel room with Jeremy Kapp? And did Fenway believe Charlotte could put a bullet in his forehead?

  She wondered if her father even noticed if Charlotte was gone. Perhaps he was working late, or on a last-minute business trip to China or Dubai or New York. Or maybe, Fenway considered, he had his own affair he was conducting. Charlotte was turning thirty-six in a couple of weeks; maybe her father was turning her in for a younger model.

  The thought both disgusted and thrilled her.

  Then she called McVie back.

  “McVie.”

  “I found something. In the planter just outside of the villa.”

  “What is it?”

  “An earring.”

  McVie paused. “You think it’s related? It could have been in this planter for weeks.”

  “I don’t think so,” Fenway said. “It’s an incredibly expensive earring. Six diamonds, and one of them has got to be two carats.”

  “Two carats? Are you sure it’s real?”

  “Almost positive,” Fenway said. “And you’ve seen this earring before, too.”

  “Me?”

  “Remember when we had dinner with my father a few months ago? When we convinced him to hire that private investigator?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Charlotte wore these exact earrings.”

  “Your stepmother? Charlotte?”

  “Yes.”

  McVie hesitated. “That doesn’t necessarily prove anything. There are lots of rich folks around here. I’m sure a lot of them have expensive diamond earrings.”

  “No,” Fenway said, “it’s from a custom designer in Santa Barbara. My father gave them to Charlotte for their anniversary in June.”

  McVie paused. “You’re sure it’s the same earring?”

  “Not a hundred percent positive, I guess. But I’d be pretty shocked if it wasn’t.”

  “Ah. That’s not good at all.”

  “Why do you say that? She’s not your stepmother.”

  “No, but this complicates everything,” McVie said. “First of all, give that earring to Melissa right now.”