by Elaine Viets
Roxy kept coming back to refill my cup and ask, ‘Ready to order now?’ At ten-twenty, I ordered blueberry pancakes. I figured I could watch Becky eat when she finally showed up. At ten-thirty, there was still no sign of Becky.
I called the Hoffstedder. After ten rings, a woman with a whiskey-and-cigarettes voice answered the hotel’s phone. I didn’t know Becky’s last name, but I said, ‘Do you have a woman named Becky registered at your hotel?’
‘You mean the one who was in Jessica’s show? Yes, she’s staying here, but she doesn’t have a phone in her room.’
‘She was supposed to meet me for breakfast at ten o’clock.’
‘She isn’t up yet, hon,’ the clerk said. ‘I haven’t seen her this morning.’
I thanked the clerk, left the money for my bill and a tip, and drove two blocks to the Hoffstedder. The once-grand hotel was reduced to an SRO – single room only – home for people down on their luck. The limestone front was thickly crusted with pigeon droppings and the brown brick was dingy.
As I walked inside, the smell hit me first: mold and unwashed bodies with top notes of stale urine. The lobby was dingy: unmopped linoleum, a sagging orange plastic couch, a dusty silk plant and a single bulb in an overhead fixture. In the dim light, I could make out some of the late-nineteenth century ornamental plasterwork on the ceiling – wedding cake swags of flowers and swirls – now cracked and water-stained. Behind a Plexiglas barrier was the desk clerk, a seventy-something woman with her white hair in a cotton-candy beehive, puffing away on a Marlboro. She was fashionably dressed in a chic black-and-white suit.
‘What can I do for you?’ she asked. There it was, that same husky voice I’d heard on the phone.
‘I called earlier,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Becky.’
‘Oh, right. She’s still in her room, hon. Three-twelve. Take the elevator over there.’ She pointed to it with a nicotine-stained finger.
Inside, the elevator looked like someone had beaten the walls with a baseball bat. It jounced and jerked up to the third floor. I was relieved when the doors opened into a small lobby with a cracked mirror and a gilt table piled with take-out menus.
I passed a housekeeping cart on the way to room three-twelve. Becky’s room was at the end of the hall. Her door was thick, dark wood and had an actual transom at the top. I knocked and called Becky’s name. No answer. I pounded on the door. Still no answer. Now I was worried. What if Becky was sick? Why else would she miss a free breakfast?
My pounding on the door attracted the attention of the housekeeper, an older woman in a turquoise uniform.
‘Problem, miss?’ she asked in heavily accented English.
‘My friend in here’ – I pointed at the door – ‘may be sick. Can you open her door, please?’
‘Sure, miss, sure.’
She took out a brass key and unlocked the door, then stepped back and watched me. The room was dark and the shade was down on the one window. I flipped on the overhead light and saw the room was a mess. The only chair had been overturned, along with a take-out cup of soda. Clothes were scattered about, and the covers were pulled off the narrow bed. I saw a shoe sticking out of the pile of bedding on the floor. A newish square-heeled black leather shoe.
Strange. Becky had been wearing a powder blue suit when I saw her in the hospital, and she didn’t have shoes that expensive. There was a bit of hot pink wool near the shoe. I stepped carefully across the worn carpet and lifted the bedding. The pink wool was a pantsuit. Quite a good one, really.
I moved closer to examine the pantsuit. The arms were flung out, and a pink-and-blue flowered scarf was tied tightly around the neck.
Neck?
My fogged brain finally put the picture together: Becky was wearing the pantsuit, and she’d been strangled by the flowered scarf around her neck.
Now my death investigator senses kicked in: I saw the scratch marks she’d made around the neck as she tried to save her life. Her face was red and bloated, her eyes were popping and her lips were blue. Becky was dead.
That’s when I screamed. Loud and long.
It was most unprofessional.
SEVENTEEN
I spent the morning with the St Louis police. I knew the routine. I showed them my Chouteau County death investigator ID, and they treated me like a pro. I told them the truth. Mostly.
I explained that I’d met Becky at Jessica Gray’s show. I’d talked with her at the Du Pres party and encouraged her to get a job. I’d put Becky in touch with Women’s Work, a group that helped homeless women, and she’d told me she’d had a job.
I didn’t mention that Becky had information about Jessica’s murder. Greiman had ignored Becky’s information, but I wasn’t going to let it die with her. I was determined to free Mario.
Before the cops showed up, while the housekeeper alerted the front desk, I recovered enough to wrap my hand in a towel and do a quick search of the apartment. I didn’t find any alcohol, but there were two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills hidden under the mattress. One of the bills had a phone number with a Beverly Hills area code written on it. I photographed the bills and that number with my cell phone.
Where did Becky get that money? Was it seed money from Women’s Work? Did she blackmail someone? Steal it? Or was she working somewhere for cash?
I didn’t know. I heard footsteps in the hall, and dropped the towel where I’d found it on the dresser. I ran downstairs to wait for the police. The rest of the morning, and a good chunk of the afternoon, was spent with the detectives.
It was three o’clock by the time I signed a statement and the cops cut me loose. I was on call as a DI until six o’clock, and relieved that so far Chouteau County didn’t need my services. I grabbed a burger and headed back to the Forest.
I’d just turned off I-55 into the Forest when my work cell phone chimed. By the ring tone, I knew it was the newest Chouteau County detective, Jace Budewitz. I pulled into a parking lot to answer my phone.
‘Angela,’ he said, ‘I need you. We have what looks like a drug overdose. Vera DePaul, age seventy-seven. Her daughter, Lydia, found her. She lives with her mother. The daughter’s pretty shook.’
‘Did Lydia find her mother in their house?’
‘Yes. The victim died at her home. Thirty-nine Westminster Close. Off Gravois.’
‘I know it. I’ll be there in five.’
I liked working with Jace Budewitz. He was a complete professional. A Chicago transplant, he’d worked the worst neighborhoods in that city before he came to Chouteau County. Jace was often puzzled by the Forest’s customs, until I explained the rich here were gangs in designer garb. Slowly, he was starting to understand the place.
The late Vera was the matriarch of the DePaul clan, with two sons and four daughters scattered across the country. She was a tall, horse-faced woman with iron-gray hair and an iron will. She’d decreed that her youngest daughter, Lydia, stay at home and take care of her, and in the finest nineteenth-century style, that’s what Lydia did. Vera had enjoyed bad health for more than twenty years – she loved to discuss her symptoms – and Lydia was her willing servant. Only in the last year, when Vera had been diagnosed with cancer, had she been seriously sick.
The Westminster house was a gothic horror, with turrets, pinnacles and parapets, the perfect setting for a dead body. I parked my Charger in the circular drive and rolled my DI kit up the gray marble steps to a front door that belonged on a medieval castle.
I waved to Rick, the uniform on the porch. ‘Detective Budewitz is in the front room,’ Rick said, holding the door open. ‘Go on in.’
The vast entrance hall was dismal: dark maroon rugs and thick heavy mahogany furniture. A Chinese vase with funereal calla lilies was on a round table big enough for a poker tournament.
I was relieved to see Jace’s friendly, open face, a beacon of life in this death house. Jace was six-two with one of those faces that stayed boyish forever. His buzzed blond hair was rapidly retreating.
‘We’
re in the living room,’ he said, and lowered his voice. ‘Lydia is pretty upset. I made her tea.’
That kind gesture was pure Jace.
‘I don’t think she tried to clean up the scene. I saw a half-empty bottle of sherry and two pill bottles, for Percocet and zolpidem. Lydia says her mother doesn’t drink and she doesn’t take Percocet. The daughter swears her mother accidentally overdosed on zolpidem.’ That was generic Ambien, a sleeping pill.
‘It’s possible,’ I said, ‘but I doubt it. Fortunately, it’s the ME’s job to decide if Mrs DePaul killed herself accidently or on purpose.’
‘I didn’t see any suicide note,’ Jace said, ‘and no copy of Final Exit.’
We saw that book by Derek Humphry at some suicide scenes. Final Exit deaths followed the precise instructions Humphry had laid out. We had to look for the plastic bag that was placed over the decedent’s head, the pudding container for the pills, and the last will and testament. Readers of Final Exit made it clear that they were committing suicide. Many families, for cultural or religious reasons, try to cover up a suicide.
Was Mrs DePaul taking zolpidem? That drug had a lot of weird side effects, including depression.
‘Lydia is calm enough to talk if you want to ask her some questions,’ Jace said.
I parked my DI kit in the hall, took out my iPad and called up the form for ‘Death Due to Ingestion of Alcohol and/or Medications and/or Poisons.’ Thanks to the current opioid epidemic, I knew most of the questions.
The living room was as dark as the hall, with heavy red velvet and grim mahogany. Lydia was sitting on a camelback sofa upholstered in some slippery red fabric. A silver tea tray was in front of her on a dark table.
Lydia must have been a late-life baby. She was thirty-five and looked ten years older in her drab brown dress. Her long hair was pulled into a bun. She had pale, even features, and gray eyes with dark smudges beneath them. I itched to take her to Mario for a makeover. She could have been a knockout. But Mario was in jail, and Lydia was trapped in this gloomy house.
She was drinking Earl Grey tea in a thin, flowered cup, and offered to pour for me. I took the cup. Her thin hands trembled slightly when she lifted the ornate silver teapot.
‘Mother had stage three pancreatic cancer,’ she said. ‘She was supposed to start another round of chemo on Monday at the hospital.’
‘How did your mother feel about that?’ I asked.
‘She hoped it would give her another four to six pain-free months,’ Lydia said.
‘Was she in pain last night?’ I asked.
‘Some,’ Lydia said. ‘But Mother is – I mean, was – a fighter.’
‘When was the last time you saw your mother alive?’
‘About nine o’clock last night. She asked me to bring her a glass of water. I offered to warm some milk, but she said no, she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to sleep.’
Lydia’s voice wavered. ‘She was in pain and she thought a sleeping pill would help.’ She wiped away a tear with her hand.
‘Did your mother take the pill while you were in the room?’
‘Yes. I kissed her goodnight, turned off the light, and went to my own room, which is down the hall from Mother’s. I watched TV until about eleven o’clock. That’s when I went to sleep.’
‘Did you hear your mother any time during the night? Did she get up and move around? Did any strange noises wake you up?’
‘No, I’m a sound sleeper. I slept late – until well after ten this morning. Then I found her.’ Now Lydia was crying so hard she couldn’t talk. I sipped my tea and let her compose herself. After she’d dried her eyes with a tissue, and sniffed delicately, I asked, ‘Did your mother take pain pills?’
‘The doctor prescribed Percocet and OxyContin, but Mother didn’t like to take them. She said they muddled her brain and she hated that she couldn’t think straight. Mostly she took Aleve. Only if the pain got really bad would she take a Percocet.’
‘Was she allergic to any medications?’
‘Just penicillin.’
‘What about foods or substances?’
‘She was allergic to shrimp. We never ate shellfish.’
‘Who was her internist?’
‘Dr Carmen Bartlett.’ Doc Bartlett saw most of the Forest families.
I took a deep breath before I asked the next question. ‘Lydia, did your mother have a drinking problem?’
‘Of course not!’ Lydia looked offended.
‘Did she enjoy a cocktail?’
‘Mother would have a glass of sherry to be sociable, but that was all. Alcohol did not mix with the drugs she was taking for her cancer. Since she’s been sick, she’s rarely had a drink.’
‘Has your mother been depressed?’
‘No!’ Lydia was agitated now. ‘My sister Christine is expecting a baby next month. Mother was looking forward to this grandchild.’
I asked a soothing question next. ‘How many grandchildren does your mother have?’
‘Six, all girls. Christine was going to have a boy and Mother was very excited. She wanted to hold her first grandson.’
‘What time did you find your mother this morning?’
‘About ten-thirty. I dressed and went in to check on her, to see how she was feeling and what she wanted for breakfast. Our housekeeper is on vacation. As soon as I entered the room, I could see Mother was … gone.’ Lydia suppressed a slight shudder.
‘I dropped into the chair by her bed as if my strings had been cut. I could not move. It was nearly half an hour before I could call nine-one-one. The paramedics got here right away and they said it was too late. They did not try to revive Mother. The police came after that.’
‘Did your mother leave any kind of note?’ I steeled myself for the blast.
‘Mother did not commit suicide!’ As she said that, Lydia looked remarkably like her late mother at her most formidable. Her face was severe and her eyes were snapping with anger.
‘But she did have stage three cancer. Did she give you any instructions about her final arrangements or her will?’
‘Mother’s lawyer has those,’ Lydia said. ‘She made her will after Father passed away and kept it updated.’
‘Thank you, Lydia,’ I said. ‘I’ll go up to see your mother now.’
‘But I haven’t had a chance to clean her up!’ Lydia half-rose from the couch, as if to stop me. ‘Mother was such a dignified person.’
‘I know she was,’ I said. ‘The whole Forest admired your mother’s elegance. But the medical examiner will have to see her the way she is.’
‘You’re going to cut up Mother? You can’t do that! I’m calling our lawyer!’ Lydia burst into fresh sobs.
EIGHTEEN
Lydia’s tears finally stopped. I didn’t think she was faking them. She was genuinely horrified by the thought of her mother being autopsied.
‘Ms DePaul,’ Jace said, ‘you’re welcome to call your lawyer, but he—’
‘She!’ Lydia said.
‘She will tell you the same thing: Your mother’s death was unattended and the medical examiner must conduct an investigation. Your mother died in an unusual manner. It may have been an accident or suicide.’
‘Mother did not kill herself,’ Lydia said. ‘I told you that.’
‘Yes, you did. But the medical examiner has to make that determination.’
‘Mother had cancer,’ Lydia said. ‘When my father died of a heart attack at SOS there was no autopsy.’
‘That’s because he died in a hospital under a physician’s care,’ Jace said. ‘There’s a chance the ME’s investigation may not include an autopsy.’
I doubted that, but kept my mouth shut. Jace was doing a good job of calming her.
‘I’m still calling my lawyer,’ Lydia said, her mouth set in a firm line. ‘And I want to talk to her in privacy. I’ll be in my study.’
Lydia stomped up the winding wood staircase. Jace looked at me and shrugged. I poured myself more tea and asked, ‘Jace, if she
’s upstairs, can she go into her mother’s room?’
‘Nope, I have a uniform posted at the door. Matt won’t let her even look inside.’
I should have known. I was too used to working with Greiman. Jace was careful.
Ten minutes later Lydia marched down the stairs, her white face flushed with anger. She looked almost pretty in her fury. ‘My attorney says you may proceed,’ she said.
Of course she did, but Jace and I didn’t rub salt into Lydia’s wounds by commenting. ‘Please stay down here,’ Jace said. ‘We’ll call if we need you.’
Jace and I proceeded up the dark, steep stairs, watched by the leering gargoyles lining the staircase. I was grateful for the distraction of my heavy death investigator kit. I didn’t want to damage the stairs by rolling the suitcase, so I carried it the whole way.
The scene in Vera’s bedroom was grim. The poor woman did not have an easy death. The tangled sheets were covered with vomit and feces, and the chilly room had a sour, sickly smell. Someone – either her daughter or the paramedics – had rolled Vera onto her back. She wore a thin blue cotton nightgown, stained with fluids. Her head was nearly hairless, possibly a side effect of chemo, and her body was a skeleton wrapped in almost colorless skin. Vera didn’t have many reserves left to fight the cancer attacking her. I was no friend of Vera’s, but I felt sorry that the stately old woman had been reduced to this.
She looked lost in the massive mahogany four-poster bed draped in maroon velvet. I couldn’t imagine a young Vera – or anyone, for that matter – frolicking in that bed. Especially under the disapproving gaze of the frowning, side-whiskered men in the gold-framed paintings. The room’s maroon Oriental rug was the size of a parking lot and three tall windows were smothered with heavy velvet. The shades were down and the overhead light was on.
‘Who turned on the light?’ I asked. I needed to know if the decedent had left the lights on.
‘The daughter,’ Jace said. ‘She says it was off when she came in the room this morning. So was the lamp on the bedside table.’