Savannah couldn’t imagine such a thing, but she kept it to herself. Ethan seemed to be not only grieving but embarrassed on behalf of his deceased friend.
Suddenly, he stopped and stepped as far to the side as the narrow walkway would allow. “I don’t want to see her again if I don’t have to,” he told them. “Setting eyes on something like that once in a lifetime is more than enough. I don’t know how you people can stand to do that sort of thing for a living.”
“I’m sure it helps if the bodies aren’t someone you knew and loved,” Savannah said as she and Dirk maneuvered around him, then headed deeper into the corner, where he had pointed.
Dirk pushed ahead, working his way through the piles of clothing. Some garments were filthy and crusty with mold and mildew, while others still had tags and were in their original designer packaging.
After coming to the end of the trail, facing a wall, he said, “I don’t see a body back here.” He turned to Ethan. “Are you sure you—”
“Under that pink satin comforter thing,” Ethan replied.
A warning bell went off in Savannah’s head. “Is that how you found her, Ethan?” she asked as she spotted the gaudy flamingo pink throw. “Was she covered up like that, or did you . . .”
“I covered her,” he said. “I had to. I couldn’t just leave her like, well, you’ll see.”
She saw another violent shudder go through him, and for a moment, she was again concerned that he might pass out. She decided he was in too fragile a state for her to lecture him about how unwise it was to tamper with a crime scene in any way at all. Even to modestly cover the body of a woman you held in high esteem.
Why make him feel any worse than he already did?
“Don’t ever mess with a crime scene, man,” Dirk barked. “Especially a murder. At a time like this, catching who did it is a lot more important than guarding a woman’s modesty. It ain’t like she’s gonna mind at a time like this, huh?”
Savannah cringed. In all the years she had spent with Dirk, she had yet to impress upon him the value of civility. He considered “tact” a waste of time at best, and at worst, evidence of a weak, sneaky character who didn’t possess the courage to speak their mind.
No, Dirk Coulter was a manly man who had never entertained an unspoken thought. No filter whatsoever. No pesky childhood training like Granny’s “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” to cramp his style or burden him with the nuisance of forethought or the onus of empathy.
But you always knew where you stood with Dirk.
Whether you wanted to know or not.
Savannah moved closer to the covered body as Dirk took a couple of pictures of it and the surrounding areas with his cell phone.
She noticed that one foot was sticking out from beneath the duvet. From the skin texture and the condition of some of the toenails, it was obviously the foot of an older woman. But the nails were meticulously painted in a crimson polish, and the high-heeled slipper was a black satin mule, accented across the top with marabou feathers.
A long-forgotten image stirred in Savannah’s memory. The red toenails. The glamorous black footwear. But before the full picture could form in her mind, she was distracted by Dirk pulling some surgical gloves from his inside jacket pocket and handing a pair of them to her.
“Don’t touch anything if you don’t have to,” he grumbled. “The scene’s been interfered with enough already.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Ethan and saw him wince. The verbal dart had found its mark, to be sure.
“I think enough’s been said about that already,” she whispered to her husband. “If it hadn’t been for Ethan, you’d probably be searching through this hoard by yourself, looking for the missing woman. What a grand, fun time that’d be, huh?”
“Yeah, well, whatever,” was the lackluster reply.
“I’m going to step away now, if that’s all right with you guys,” Ethan said. “Like I said, I really don’t want to have to see her again.”
“No problem,” Savannah said. “You can wait for us outside if you prefer.”
“Or better yet,” Dirk added, “you could go get that gal, Mary, and tell her I’ll meet her out front in a few minutes. I’m gonna have to ask her some questions, whether she feels like talkin’ or not.”
“Okay. I’ll do what I can.”
Ethan disappeared in an instant, and Savannah couldn’t blame him—on so many levels.
She turned back to Dirk, a couple of choice statements on the tip of her tongue. But she quickly swallowed them, because he had uncovered the body.
It was a sight that she would never forget. A vision that she was quite certain would reappear in nightmares for a long time. Maybe for the rest of her life.
Chapter 6
“It’s the pose,” Savannah said, studying the body sprawled atop the garbage on the floor. “Her famous calendar girl shot.”
“I ain’t got a clue what you’re talking about. How famous could it be?” Dirk said as he tossed the hot-pink satin duvet that had covered Lucinda Faraday onto a pile of clothes next to her body.
Savannah took her phone from her jeans pocket and began an Internet search. A moment later, she shoved it beneath Dirk’s nose. “That one,” she said. “It was taken back in the forties.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember seeing that,” Dirk replied, squinting at the small screen. “I think I heard a lot of the Second World War GIs had it on their lockers or whatever. Pretty racy stuff for back then.”
Savannah took the phone back and read the caption beneath it. “Says here they found out later that she was underage when she posed for it. Barely sixteen.”
“She sure didn’t look sixteen.”
“No, but she certainly looks like she does here, pose-wise anyway.” Savannah pointed at the body, which had been placed in the same suggestive position as the old photo.
Savannah could better understand why Ethan had felt the need to cover his friend. The overtly sexual positioning had been considered inappropriate by many censors in its day. But the same pose on a ninety-year-old gave the impression that the killer had arranged the corpse that way to dishonor the woman, to insult her memory.
Savannah hated to think what the papers would do with this information if it leaked . . . and it was bound to. Such salacious details almost always came to light sooner or later, especially if they involved a celebrity.
“She’s even holding the long cigarette holder,” Savannah said, comparing the picture with the smoking tool in the body’s hand.
“The killer obviously wanted to make a point of some sort.”
“They wanted to embarrass her.”
“Embarrass her? She’s dead. How can you embarrass a corpse?”
“Spoken like a true guy. We women have the ability to be mortified about our appearance and a lot of other things long after death. Believe me.”
He shrugged. “Okay. If you say so.”
She put her phone away and turned her attention to the body. The negligee’s chiffon had some holes in it and the lace edge was ragged. The feathers on the slippers were sparse and limp. The carved ivory opera-length cigarette holder was stained from years of smoke.
“Her clothes,” she said. “They’re old, like antiques. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re the exact same ones she wore in the picture.”
“She saved them all these years?”
“Probably. You’ve been wearing that same Harley-Davidson T-shirt since I met you.”
“I’ll have you know I replaced that first one ten years ago.” He pointed to the logo on his chest. “This is a second edition!”
“Oh, okay. I stand corrected.”
She tried to move closer to the body, but the limited space and a large wire bird cage stuffed with Christmas decorations prevented her from getting a good look at the head and face area. All she had was a vague impression of a blond wig, sitting askew, maybe even backward, atop the victim’s own gray hair and some garish red lipstick and turquoise ey
eshadow, smeared around the mouth and lids.
“Any obvious cause of death?” she asked him. “Blood maybe?”
“No blood, but it’s not hard to figure out the cause of death.”
Carefully, he stepped into a plastic milk crate containing a dozen or more assorted ashtrays to make room for her to move forward.
Shining the flashlight from his phone onto the head and neck area, he said, “I’ll take a wild guess and say it was strangulation.”
She gasped when she saw what he was illuminating for her benefit. A stocking was wrapped around the victim’s neck, then knotted. It had been tied so tightly that, in places, the cloth was actually embedded in the flesh and invisible.
“Wow. I’d say whoever did that relished the task, if you know what I mean,” she said.
“It was personal, that’s for sure,” Dirk replied. “Nasty. Also, the killer was strong.”
“Or at least, quite revved up at the time.”
Savannah turned on her own phone’s light and looked closer. “That’s an old stocking, too,” she said. “Silk, not nylon.”
He bent beside her and looked closer. “How can you tell?”
“It’s seamed, a matte look, not shiny like nylon. I’d say . . . silk crepe, extra fine forty-five gauge with a dull luster. Color, Toffee Apple.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wow, you know your stockings. I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. That’s all written on the bottom of the foot.”
She stood up, turned off her light. “Like I keep telling you, boy, you gotta download that magnifier/light app. In your line of work, it’d come in handy.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” He began to punch in a number on his phone. “Might as well call Dr. Liu. Get ’er over here.”
“She’s not going to be happy that you moved the duvet. How many times has she told you not to—”
“—move the body or anything over it, under it, or around it?”
“Yes. That. She gives you the same speech every time you get to a scene before she does.”
“Goes to show, you can’t make that gal happy. If she gets her liver in a quiver over a little thing like that, it’s on her.”
“O-o-kay.” Savannah clucked her tongue and shook her head. “But I’ve gotta question the wisdom of getting on the bad side of an ill-tempered woman who makes her living by cutting up bodies with a scalpel.”
“Good point.”
* * *
When Savannah and Dirk finally made their way through the maze of mess and out the mansion’s front door, they found Ethan sitting on the bottom porch step.
A woman sat close beside him. He had one arm around her shoulders and was holding her hand in his. She had short salt and pepper hair, and was a slender woman, possibly in her late sixties. She wore a crisp white blouse and black slacks with sharp creases. It occurred to Savannah that the garments had been carefully ironed and had the look of a manager’s uniform.
Ethan said something to her in a low, comforting tone, and she responded by laying her head on his shoulder.
But when Ethan heard them close the door and step onto the porch, he immediately released her, stood, and turned to them.
His eyes searched Savannah’s, then Dirk’s. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked. “Did you see what I saw? Why I knew it wasn’t an accident?”
“Yeah,” Dirk replied. “I’ve called the county medical examiner. She and the CSU are on their way.”
Ethan looked relieved. “Oh, good,” he said. “I guess they’ll take Lucinda, I mean her body, to . . . wherever. . . .”
“To the morgue for the postmortem,” Savannah offered. “Then, after that, they’ll send her to a mortuary to be prepared for burial or for cremation, as she preferred.”
The woman, who was still sitting on the porch, her back to them, stirred a bit. Ethan seemed to remember she was there.
“Oh,” he said, turning to her, “I’m sorry. Mary. These are friends of mine, Savannah Reid and her husband, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter. Savannah and Dirk, this is Ms. Mary Mahoney. She’s, um, was Lucinda’s housekeeper and companion.”
“Companion,” Mary said. “As I’m sure you can tell, there was no housekeeper for years. Not since I gave up trying.”
Mary struggled to stand until Ethan reached down, placed his hands on her waist, and lifted her onto her feet.
Savannah watched her closely and noted that she grimaced, as though she was in terrible pain, even from such a mundane action. Her hunched shoulders, the way she moved, all indicated that her muscles and tendons might be tight, her bones and cartilage brittle, resisting even the smallest shift in position.
Savannah knew better than to offer her a handshake. Having met too many people suffering from severe arthritis, she knew the friendly gesture could cost the woman dearly in pain.
“How do you do, Miss Mahoney?” Savannah said instead. “I’m so sorry for your loss. A terrible thing to happen, and right here in your home.”
“Oh, I don’t live there!” she said as though she had just been accused of a terrible crime. “I have my own apartment in the back of the house. It has a separate entrance and everything.” Her already florid face flushed even darker. “I would never. I could never live like—”
“I understand,” Savannah said, feeling sorry for the woman, who was obviously embarrassed by her mistress’s lifestyle. “I’m sure your apartment is nice and tidy.”
“Not like the rest of this dump heap,” Dirk chimed in.
A heavy, awkward silence descended on the porch. As Savannah waited, what seemed like years, for it to end, she thought how many times her husband had created such an unnatural vacuum.
Too many to count.
It was just part of the wonder that was Dirk.
He wasn’t a cruel man. Quite the contrary, in fact. But he had never felt the need to weigh words before spitting them into a room, or across the front porch of an art deco mansion with the hoard from hell and a murdered woman inside. Who would have thought such circumstances required delicacy?
Certainly not my husband, she thought. Nope. Not ol’ Blurt-It-Now-and-Think-About-It-Later-If-At-All-Dirk.
“How long has the place been like that?” he continued. Obviously, still not thinking.
“For years,” Mary whispered.
“Well, yeah.” Dirk nodded solemnly. “I mean, you sure couldn’t accomplish something like that in one day!”
“I used to try to keep it clean. But the last twenty years or so, she got worse and worse. Finally, she wouldn’t let me throw anything away. Nothing. Not even real garbage.”
Suddenly, Mary was overcome with a coughing fit that turned her face from red to a deep purple. Savannah was alarmed. It wasn’t a normal, mundane chest cold or the hacking brought on by allergies. It sounded like the deep, strangling lung spasms that would come out of someone who wasn’t long for the world.
“Are you okay, Mary?” Ethan asked her, seemingly as alarmed as Savannah.
Mary nodded, unable to speak.
“We can drive you to the hospital, if you need to go,” Savannah offered. “You should probably have that looked at.”
Finally, Mary recovered and said weakly, “I’m okay. I’ve been to the doctor about it. Not much they could do, what with me living here, you know, in that.”
“What’d you keep workin’ here for?” Dirk asked. “If breathin’ that mess was causin’ me to hack up a lung, I’d be movin’ on.”
Tears flooded Mary’s eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and grabbed her upper arms tightly, as though giving herself a badly needed long, hard hug.
“I don’t have any place to go,” she admitted, “and after all the years I’d spent taking care of Miss Lucinda, I couldn’t leave her. She wouldn’t have made it this long without me. She doesn’t have a lot of friends or family.”
“Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that,” Dirk said. “We’ll need to inf
orm the next of kin. Who is it?”
Both Mary’s and Ethan’s faces darkened at the question. Savannah knew it wasn’t going to be a cheerful reply.
“She had a great-grandson,” Ethan said. “But the way she spoke about him, I didn’t get the idea they were close.”
“He’s still around, and they weren’t at all close,” Mary added. “Far from it. In fact, they hated each other.”
“Any particular reason?” Savannah asked.
“Yes.” A look of intense anger crossed Mary’s face. “Because he’s a horrible excuse for a human being. That’s why. She disowned him years ago, and I don’t blame her one bit. He gave her no choice.”
“All right,” Dirk replied, watching her intently. “I’ll keep that in mind when I inform him of his loss. Anyone else that she was close to?”
Ethan thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Not that I know of. She and I did a movie together about three years ago. That’s how we met. It was her last role, a cameo appearance. She was amazing. Took me under her wing and taught me everything she knew. But I didn’t get the idea she had a lot of friends or family.”
“She had nobody,” Mary said. “She either chased them away, or they ran off on their own steam for their own reasons. Lucinda was alone and lonely. Had been for years.”
“That’s sad,” Savannah observed, thinking of the picture of the vulnerable fifteen-year-old, exploited for her exceptional beauty, her innocence robbed, her life forced down an unsavory, dangerous path before it had even begun.
Savannah recalled seeing headlines that proclaimed Lucinda Faraday the most beautiful woman in the world. “Every man wants her! Every woman wants to be her!”—or so said the publicists, as they scrambled to sell her to adoring throngs.
Seeing Lucinda Faraday back then, at the height of her beauty, who would have thought she would end up like that? Savannah wondered. Murdered and thrown onto the refuse heap that had come to define her life?
Savannah could see a convoy of white vehicles turning from the highway and heading toward the mansion. The vans’ sides bore the county’s official seal and the letters CSU.
Dr. Liu and her crime scene unit had arrived.
And the Killer Is . . . Page 6