Drop Dead Lola

by Melissa Bourbon

  “She’s the one who hired me,” I said. “And she’s the only one who can fire me.”

  “She just had some follow-up questions,” Anne said.

  Still, he fumed. “Such as?”

  Anne put her hand on her father’s arm. “Dad. If they hadn’t been there, we might not have found her in time.”

  Tim Haskell blinked slowly. The realization that his daughter was right made his anger deflate. Apparently he wasn’t the type to apologize for his bad behavior, but his wife’s current state excused that. “Where’s the doctor?” he demanded, having forgotten his question to me.

  “He said he’ll be back to talk to us a little later, but we can probably ask a nurse to call him,” George said.

  Tim and George went off in search of help, but I caught Anne’s eye. She glanced over her shoulder at the men, but turned and came over to Jack and me instead of following them. “Would you keep us posted on your mom?” I asked.

  “You can text me,” Jack said.

  Anne took her phone from her purse and opened a new contact. She handed the cell to Jack who entered his name and number. “I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything,” she said, taking the phone back from him.

  He hugged her again and we left the Haskell family to console each other and keep watch over the matriarch.

  “I need to go to the office,” I told Jack. I had information and questions spinning in my head and needed to get it down on the white board I’d designated for this case.

  “My day’s clear,” he said.

  I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “You want to come with me?”

  “I’ll go anywhere you go, Cruz,” he said. On any other day, the statement might have come off as flirty, but today we were both melancholy, especially Jack. First his childhood friend had died, and now that friend’s mother was in critical condition. He was coming with me because he needed to help if he could.

  Reilly looked up from her typing when we passed her desk at Camacho and Associates. “Why hello, you two,” she said with a big grin.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Reilly,” Jack said. He smiled, but it didn’t extend to his eyes.

  Reilly had been part of the PI firm long enough to develop solid observation skills. Right now she looked from me to Jack and back again. “Okay. What gives? You two look like you’ve had a rough morning.”

  “That would be accurate,” Jack said.

  Reilly pushed her chair back, crossed one leg over the other, and clasped her hands in her lap. The front of her lavender gray hair was pulled into a barrette, the rest falling in soft waves around her face. She looked at us with complete earnestness. “I’m here to listen, mis amigos. What is going on?”

  “Marnie Haskell, the lady from yesterday?”

  “Right,” Reilly said.

  “We found her in her car today, barely alive.”

  She leaned forward, her mouth agape. The leg she had crossed on top of the other slipped, her foot landing with a thump. “She was in a car accident?”

  Jack and I both shook our heads. “She was in the garage with the car running.”

  Reilly slapped her open palm against her mouth. “Oh no,” she said, the words muffled. “Is she going to be okay?”

  He looked at his phone. I could see that there were no new text messages. Nothing from Anne yet. “We don’t know.”

  I looked around. Aside from Reilly, the place was deserted. “Where is everyone?”

  “Out and about,” she said.

  I exhaled the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding in my chest. There would be no interaction between Jack and Manny. Gracias a Dios.

  Jack sat at the conference table, his phone in his hand. I went to one of the white boards, wrote PHILIP HASKELL on the top, and proceeded to talk through what I knew so far. I started with the questions.

  1. Did Philip take his own life?

  People who think YES

  - Tim Haskell

  - George Haskell

  - Joe Quaffman

  People who think NO

  - Marnie Haskell

  - Gemma

  People Unsure

  - Anne Haskell

  “Add me to the NO list,” Jack said, so I did.

  I shifted to the next question.

  2. Why did Marnie try to kill herself?

  “Tim Haskell seemed pretty put out that he didn’t know I was meeting with Marnie this morning,” I said.

  Jack looked up from his phone. “So?”

  “Let’s assume that Philip was killed. That means Marnie is a threat to the killer.”

  Jack sat up straighter and looked at me intently. “You don’t think Tim could have killed his son and tried to kill his wife,” he said.

  “If Philip was killed, we can’t rule anything out, Jack. You know that.”

  “Tim is a good guy. He loves his family.”

  “You’re not objective, Jack,” I said.

  Reilly had gone back to her typing, but now her fingers stopped. She was ear-hustling, as Antonio liked to say.

  “I can put my personal feelings aside, Lola. I’m telling you, Tim is not capable of hurting his children or his wife.”

  I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t shake the way he looked at me and his anger when he’d come to the hospital. To me it felt as if we now had two potential crimes to investigate, rather than just one. And if they were crimes, then, logically, they were related to one another. I didn’t press the issue with Jack, though, and instead I moved on to my next question. “It was storming the night Philip died. High wind advisory,” I said. This led to my next question:

  3. Could Philip have hanged himself given the wind?

  I didn’t know how we could prove that he could or couldn’t have based on the weather, but the wind advisory that night and how he died bothered me. Fighting the wind would have been a huge challenge alone. No one would have been out in the park, meaning anyone else could have been there with Philip and no one would have seen.

  “We don’t know where Phil’s cell phone is,” Jack said.

  Right. I added that question to the board, followed by several others that had come to mind.

  4. Were there drugs in Philip’s system?

  5. Where is Philip’s cell phone?

  6. Why was Philip’s and Gemma’s engagement on the down low?

  Finally, I added the names of Philip’s baseball buddies. After checking about the tox screen, they were going to be the next people I contacted. “Reilly?”

  She spun around in her chair to face us, an expectant look on her face. She was ready, willing, and able to help with whatever I needed. She might be Manny’s Girl Friday, and Neil’s girlfriend…lover…or whatever, but she was one of my closest and most trustworthy friends. “Bring it,” she said.

  “Did Manny get a tox report from the police on Philip Haskell yet?”

  “I’ll pull the file,” she said. A second later, she had the brown file folder in hand and scanned through it. “Nothing yet.” She immediately picked up her phone. “Texting Manny.”

  Bueno. With any luck, his connections to the police force would expedite getting that information.

  Jack had been scrolling through his phone, but at my question to Reilly, he stopped and looked up. “You think he was on something?”

  That was a possibility, but not in the way he was asking. “If we go with the theory that Philip was killed, there’s still the question of how someone managed to hang him from a branch of a tree in the park on a high wind night.”

  Jack gave a single nod, understanding my train of thought. “He’d have to have been either unconscious or drugged.”

  “Unless it was an assisted suicide by hanging—”

  “Doubtful,” Jack said.

  “I agree. And he wouldn�
�t have just willingly stuck his head in the noose for someone trying to kill him.”

  Jack leaned forward. “Let’s walk through this,” he said.

  I sat down opposite him, and Reilly rolled herself over to join us on her office chair. “Forgetting about the motive for now, let’s just go with Marnie’s view that he was killed. Someone had to have met him at the park, right?”

  Reilly clapped her hands and her eyes grew wide. “Or whoever killed him could have come with him, then walked away from the park after it was done!”

  I thought about that scenario. “So he—”

  “Or she,” Reilly interjected.

  “Right, or she, although unless it’s a particularly strong she, I can’t see how that would have worked.”

  “More than one person?” Jack offered.

  I tapped my finger against my lips, thinking. With two people, the whole thing would have been far easier. Finally, I said, “Posiblemente. And if that’s the case, one person could have driven with Philip under some pretense of going to the park.”

  “And the other person could have driven separately,” Jack said, “so they had a way to leave afterward.”

  Reilly rubbed her fingers over the back of her head. Her nose crinkled. “You’re saying that the killer—or killers—planned it—”

  “Death by hanging had to be planned. People don’t go around with a noose in their car,” I said.

  “Do you think they did it at the park and tried to make it look like suicide because of the weather?” she asked.

  Good question. “I don’t know, but it seems pretty likely. What do you think?”

  Reilly just nodded, her face a puzzle of confusion.

  “Makes sense to me,” Jack said. “The flaw with that plan is that the police investigate suicides—”

  “Like with a toxicology screen,” Reilly said.

  “Right. And if that shows there were drugs in Phil’s system that incapacitated him, it makes it murder, not suicide.”

  As if on cue, Reilly’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. She scanned the response, then looked at us. “It’s Manny. He said he doesn’t know anything yet.”

  “Something that incapacitated him,” I murmured, the idea knocking something loose in my brain, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “What’s next, Cruz?” Jack asked.

  “The park,” I said. “I want to see where Philip Haskell died.”

  Chapter 11

  April in Sacramento could be spectacularly romantic, especially if you spent any time strolling through the rose garden at McKinley Park. If I ever got married, I’d consider bypassing a ceremony in the Catholic Church in favor of a matrimonial celebration under the archway and surrounded by the garden’s 1,200 rose plants.

  Of course the space only held two hundred guests, and there were sound limitations. No loud music. No drums. No amplification. My family and friends alone would far exceed the maximum occupancy, and my brother Ray was a DJ, so the reality was that the pretty venue was not the best choice for a Cruz wedding. Leti was getting married at the Cathedral for the Blessed Sacrament on Eleventh Street. She’d switched from her neighborhood church before she even knew Mark Landry all so she could be a member and get married there. I had to admit, the Cathedral was beautiful, but St. Francis was my parish, and it always would be. That would be where I got married—if I got married, as much as I loved the roses at McKinley Park.

  The place felt a little bit tainted at the moment. I couldn’t get the image of a body swinging from a noose in the crazy wind out of my mind as Jack and I walked along the jogging track. “Do you know where it happened?” I asked Jack.

  “This way.” He held my hand as we walked past the pond. He pointed to a massive Southern Oak—the tree Philip Haskell had been found hanging from. It had to be close to sixty feet tall with a short trunk and massive horizontal branches that formed a crown. “Did you come here after it happened?” I asked.

  Jack nodded. “I had to see for myself. I couldn’t make sense of it.”

  I understood. His childhood friend was gone and this was where he had drawn his last breath. The park didn’t provide any answers, but being there, in the same place Philip had been, had been important to Jack. I didn’t think it had given him any peace, but it may have given him closure of some sort.

  A slight breeze rustled the leaves of the oak, as well as what seemed like a million other varieties of trees in the neighborhood park. I tried to imagine how fierce it would have been during the high wind advisory. Had Philip been drugged and dragged through the park? How long had the whole thing taken, from their arrival at the park to this death? Had the killer—or killers—waited until they knew for sure he was dead before they left, or had they taken off the second Philip was strung up?

  We walked around the massive trunk. I put my hands on the rough bark, peering up through the whispering leaves. If only they could tell us what had actually gone on here that night. “Give me a boost,” I said to Jack, already hiking one leg up to a knot on the trunk that created a foothold.

  “No way, Lola. It’s dangerous. You could fall.”

  I twisted my body to stare him down. “You can help me—or not—but I’m going up.”

  He heaved a frustrated sigh and I could tell he knew I was speaking the truth. If I set my mind to something, nothing was going to stop me. And I’d set my mind to this. Either Philip, or a killer, would have had to string the rope Philip had hanged from, up and around one of the tree’s branches. Unless they’d brought a ladder, which would be a bit conspicuous, they’d have to have climbed the tree. That meant it was doable. I didn’t hope to find any evidence, but I did hope to get a feel for what either Philip or the killer went through.

  Jack came up behind me and interlaced his fingers together. I lowered my leg and put one foot in the bridge he’d created with his hands. I bent that leg and pushed off, letting his strength help propel me upward. I put my other foot on the knot of the trunk again and stretched as high as I could for the nearest branch.

  I left Jack’s help behind as I pushed myself up with my right foot, finding a new foothold with my left. “You good?” he asked.

  “I think so.” Slowly but surely, I worked my way up the massive trunk, taking care to find solid handholds to keep me from falling. Sweat dripped from my temples and I panted at the effort. I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was in elementary school. Being a black belt in Kung Fu, running, and yoga classes didn’t work the same muscles I was currently using. I needed to add tree climbing to my workout regimen.

  Finally, I reached the branch Philip Haskell had most likely hung from. I swung my leg over so I was straddling it, then slowly edged my way across it. If Philip had climbed the tree to string up the rope himself, he was made of steel. To have the focus, knowing you were going to use it to kill yourself, meant it had to have been almost an out of body experience.

  I called down to Jack. “If there is a killer and he—”

  “Or she.”

  “Right. If he or she was up here, the rope would have had to be strung up much earlier, in preparation for the hanging.”

  “Or Philip was unconscious or restrained. Probably in a car.”

  I kept moving, inch by inch, looking at the branch and wondering where, exactly, the rope had been. Then I saw it. I hollered down. “Jack!”

  “Shit. What? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. But there’s something here.”

  He stood right below me, holding his arms out slightly, as if he could catch me if I fell. A pang of concern rippled through me. I’d gotten up here, but how was I going to get down? I shook my head. I couldn’t think about that right now.

  “What do you mean, something’s there?” Jack asked.

  “It looks like…it could be…” I stopped, trying to decide. “Definitely fibers. It has to be rope, d
oesn’t it?”

  Jack made a noncommittal sound.

  I didn’t touch but leaned my upper body down to get a better look. “Jack. I think there’s…”

  “What?” he prompted when I paused.

  “Blood. I think there’s blood on some of it. Maybe whoever was up here cut himself. Or herself. Call Manny. He needs to get the police out here to do forensics.”

  Jack grumbled, but he took his phone from his pocket and dialed. I’d expected that he’d have to look up the number for Camacho and Associates, but apparently not. He had it in his contacts.

  I started to back up, slowly, clasping my thighs together to keep myself perpendicular to the branch. Below, I heard Jack greet Reilly, then ask for Manny. A few seconds later, he conveyed what I’d found and my request that the police come take a look, then hung up.

  I’d made it to the trunk of the tree and carefully swung my leg over the branch, letting my foot hang and search for a foothold. Nothing. I yelped, struggling to hold onto the branch with just my arms.

  “Lola, are you okay?” Jack hollered, panic in his voice.

  “I can’t find a foothold.” I tried to keep the panic from my voice but didn’t quite manage it.

  Jack was underneath me now, peering up. “Okay. Move your foot a little more to the right.” I turned my head, trying to look down, but my arms slipped. “Hang on, Lola!” Jack called. “A little more to the right. There’s a knot in the tree. Almost…almost…”

  My foot found the obtrusion, but it wasn’t enough. “I can’t hold on!”

  “Yes you can, Lola.”

  I sucked in a breath, trying to focus. A fall wouldn’t kill me, would it? But if I landed on my back…Or got a head injury…Hijole de tu madre.

  The blood pounding in my ears made Jack’s voice sound far away. “Okay, there’s a spot on the right side of the trunk. You can hold on with one hand there.”