Dead Tease (17 page)

Head down and staring at his feet, Jim nodded. He knew what was coming. “Okay, you two, if you are not too cold in this night air, let’s talk up on the patio.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The halogen lights from the side of the house turned the patio with its round table and four chairs into a surreal version of an interrogation booth. The EMTs had left and only Ray and Bruce remained down at the boathouse where they cordoned it off until morning.

“I’ll be here first thing in the morning, Chief,” said Bruce. “Left a message for the lab that we had a new development and not to expect me in the office.”

“You both look exhausted,” said Lew addressing both Ray and Bruce. “Go home, get some sleep, and we’ll sort all this out in the morning.”

At Lew’s request, Osborne had settled into the fourth chair on the patio. Feeling fatigued—it was after three
A.M.
—he felt the best he could do right now was listen hard and take notes.

“Jim,” said Lew, “tell me about your relationship with Dr. Daniels. Her car was found parked on the access road on the other side of those trees,” Lew pointed in the direction of the trees. “Her purse was there, other personal items. Her mother was called and confirmed that she was not at home—nor was she at the clinic.

“We believe the remains found in the boathouse are those of Cynthia Daniels.”

Twisting his head from side to side as if to deny what Lew had just said, McNeil erupted: “That woman—that woman keeps barging into my life! A month ago I thought I made it clear we were over. She seemed to understand … then.”

Sitting across from her husband in a chair pushed back from the table, Leigh asked in a voice so firm it surprised Osborne: “Jim, how long had this one been going on?”

“Hold on,” said Lew. “Leigh, please, no more questions. I’m willing to let you sit in because we haven’t determined the nature of Dr. Daniels’s … accident—but I have to be the one to ask the questions.” Leigh nodded.

“Back to your wife’s comment,” said Lew. “Have there been others, Jim? More women than Cynthia?”

“Yes.” McNeil pursed his lips. “One before Cynthia and …”

Leigh looked off into the dark, and Osborne got the distinct impression her husband’s philandering came as no surprise.

“I became involved with Cynthia about nine months ago,” said Jim. “We got together during a national health conference in San Diego. Didn’t take long before I knew I’d made a mistake—”

“Why is that?” asked Lew.

“She wanted too much. She invaded my life. Always e-mailing, following me around. She would show up uninvited at clinic business meetings, staff luncheons. I’d go into the cafeteria and she’d be across the room. The woman was smothering.”

Jim leaned across the patio table, hands clenched. “I can see today she was unbalanced. But I’ve known jealous women to do stuff like that. Just took awhile to realize how extreme she was. God, what was I thinking?” He threw his hands high and sat back in the chair.

“You were concerned she would do what?” asked Lew. “Call your wife?”

“Yes. I don’t want a divorce. Believe it or not,” he raised desperate eyes to meet Leigh’s: “I love you. I’m sorry I’m such a … such a fool.” He broke into sobs.

Leigh sat still. “Little late,” she muttered. “Sorry,” she said with a glance at Lew.

“Back to earlier this evening,” said Lew, pen poised over her notepad, “how did Dr. Daniels know where you would be tonight?”

McNeil struggled to pull himself together. He wiped at his nose and face with a handkerchief. “I, um, one of the techs at the clinic told me she’s been accessing my secretary’s computer—and my schedule. The woman is not stupid—she is very smart. That’s what makes her a good physician.”

Leigh snorted.

“So your schedule for today—”

“Included nine holes of golf, then dinner at the club and a twilight cruise back here on my boat. I imagine she planned to surprise me. She did it a couple times early this summer.”

“With a happier ending I assume,” said Lew. Jim dropped his head.

“The other women. Who were they?”

Osborne noticed a slight hesitation before Jim said, “Woman. Two years ago, I had a brief relationship with one of our bookkeepers, Corrine Jensen. She’s since moved to Appleton.”

“That’s everyone?” asked Lew.

“Yes.”

“Jim, I have to ask you this question: did you kill Cynthia Daniels?”

“No, of course not,” said Jim with a weak laugh. “If anyone has any doubts, I can account for every minute of my time from four o’clock this afternoon until I got here….”

“Do you think Cynthia Daniels was capable of murder?”

“You must be kidding—she’s in the business of healing people. Now, do I think she was capable of stalking me? Yes. The awful thing is she had me convinced that Leigh was the crazy one.”

“May I say something?” asked Leigh. Lew nodded for her to go ahead. “Jim’s not the only person who thought I was crazy. For months I’ve thought I was losing my mind. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that suicide has crossed my mind.

“I’ve had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’ve been having panic attacks and—who knows? If things had gotten much worse … That Daniels bitch almost pulled it off.”

“Thank you, Leigh,” said Lew. “One last question, Jim—and I know we’re all tired, so I’ll be brief. Has there been another woman
in the past month
with whom you have been intimate besides Cynthia?”

McNeil shook his head “no.”

Lew sighed. “That’s not what I have heard from a credible source. One of your colleagues….”

“All right, okay—Jennifer Williams.”

Leigh gasped and pushed her chair back farther.

“Had you ended that relationship?”

“No.” McNeil’s voice was a whisper.

“Did Dr. Daniels know about Jennifer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I know she had nothing good to say about her.”

The patio was very still. Only the sound of a distant cricket.

“Do you know who killed Jennifer Williams?” asked Lew.

“Oh my God no. I wish I did.”

“Did you kill Jennifer Williams?”

Leigh sucked in her breath.

“No.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Half an hour before she left for home the other day. The night she was killed.”

That was it for Leigh. Reaching for a glass of water on the table, she stood and hurled it at her husband. He ducked, but it bounced off his head and shattered on the patio cobblestones. Leigh turned and walked off without a word.

“We’re finished here for the time being,” said Lew, getting to her feet.

Before Lew and Osborne had reached Lew’s cruiser, the front door opened. Leigh was framed in the light of the foyer. “Here,” she said in a loud voice to the person behind her, “I’m throwing your travel kit in the front yard. You can get your clothes in the morning.”

“Leigh, please,” they could hear Jim’s voice, “you’ll be alone. You need me—”

“I need a goddamn lawyer is what I need.
Get out!
”

“Let’s scoot, Lew—before we have another crime scene,” said Osborne, tugging on Lew’s sleeve.

It was nearly four in the morning when Osborne reached to turn out the lamp on the night table. He turned to Lew. “Why on earth didn’t Jim McNeil tell us up front about Jennifer? What was he thinking?”

“The man’s been lucky too long,” said Lew. “I’m sure he’s lied to his wife their entire marriage. From what we’ve learned about Jennifer, with the exception of her close friendship with Kerry Schultz she was pretty much of a loner. I imagine he thought she kept their relationship a secret. He was hoping to get away with it.”

“How did he keep it from his wife?”

“Oh, Doc, we are all guilty of seeing only what we want to see. Those two lead parallel lives. I imagine the intimacy of friendship has been missing from that marriage for a long time.”

Osborne thought that over. She was right of course. He had been there himself: there are times when confronting reality can be too much to bear.

One goodnight kiss later, Dr. Paul Osborne and Loon Lake Police Chief Lewellyn Ferris were sound asleep.

Down near Osborne’s dock, a mother duck guided her brood toward the overhanging boughs of a white pine and tucked her head under one wing. The little ones did the same. Over at the McNeils waves lapped lightly under the boathouse. A pink stain colored the sand along the shoreline.

In the Daniels mansion, Gladys lay in bed: eyes wide open.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Late Monday afternoon Bruce poked his head through the doorway to Lew’s office. “Got some reports in, Chief. Do you have a minute?”

“I do,” said Lew, pushing aside the letter she had been studying. It was from Chet Tillman asking her to sign off on the city’s agreement for her retirement: benefit details, termination date.

The mayor had set a deadline for her to sign and return the agreement by the end of the month, not quite two weeks away. Lew resisted the urge to sign off and be done with it. That was the easy way out. That was something a girl would do.

Setting her jaw, Lew decided to complete the investigation into Jennifer Williams’s death—then concentrate on how to fight city hall. She’d done it before and won.

“Okay, what have we got?” said Lew with a welcoming wave. Bruce loped through the door, took a seat in front of Lew’s desk, and, crossing his right leg over his left knee, he opened the first of three files.

“The autopsy report on Jennifer Williams doesn’t offer much. She died of a stab wound that pierced her heart. No defense wounds, no trace evidence—just clean-cut edges with no bruising. We’re assuming the victim was caught by surprise.”

“What about the knife wound? Any defining characteristics?” asked Lew.

“No, sorry. The exact details of the wound are in here,” said Bruce, handing over a manila file. “As I expected, it’s not possible to confirm that the knife you found was used to inflict the wound.”

“Okay,” said Lew, “what’s next?”

“The accident in the boathouse. I’m sure the insurance company will send their own investigator, but I took a good look and I can tell you what I think happened.”

“Thanks, Bruce. I’ll arrange for the department to pay for your time. We’ll call it ‘death under suspicious circumstances.’”

“Only if it’s easy, Chief. I know you’re under a lot of pressure.”

“You heard, huh?”

“Doc mentioned something to Ray.”

“Well, we’ll see how it goes. Tell me what you found.”

“My best guess—and it’s a good one—is the woman was wearing a beach-type dress, kind of long and flowing. No underwear, no swimsuit. The dress appeared to have snagged on the lift gears as she was climbing into the boat and in trying to yank it loose, she accidentally tripped the ‘On’ switch. Happened in an instant: the force pulling her into the gears was relentless. That boatlift is designed to hold heavy boats thirty feet long. It does not ask questions.”

“Whew,” said Lew. “Hell of a way to go.”

“One thing you need to know—I had a call this morning from the crime lab. The victim’s mother is insisting on an autopsy and a criminal investigation. She is insisting her daughter was pushed.”

“What do you think?”

“I see no sign of foul play. That would assume premeditation, and I don’t see how that could fit with the sequence of events. But …” said Bruce with one of his signature blinks, “her allegation may make it easy for you to cover my time.”

He opened the third file with a smile of satisfaction, “The good news is—and I leaned on a buddy of mine to rush the DNA analysis through for no cost so long as I promise to take him out on the Rainbow Flowage next time I’m up north—the blood on the broken glass found in the McNeils’ basement laundry room belonged to Cynthia Daniels.

“And that,” he said with a waggle of his right index finger, “is not all. The footprint in the mud on the clothes dryer is a match to the pattern on the bottom of one of Dr. Daniels’s running shoes. Same for the footprints outside the kitchen window night before last: exact matches. I even have some of the dirt from the bottom of the shoes being analyzed to see if it matches the mix of soil and mulch on the McNeil property.”

“So we can tie Cynthia Daniels to the stalking of McNeil’s wife but not to the death of Jennifer Williams. No link there—correct?”

“Not that I have found. I’ve initiated a search of Dr. Daniels’s home and office but nothing yet. I will say that mother of hers is a hawk. When I went into the cottage where Cynthia Daniels has been living, back behind the family’s big house—she tried to follow me in. I made her stay behind the police tape but she never took an eye off me. That old woman is fierce.”

A knock on the door caused Bruce and Lew to look up at Dani, who started into the room, an open laptop braced on one arm. “Chief Ferris, I found something you might find interesting—”

“Pertinent to the Jennifer Williams case?” asked Lew.

“No, but—”

“Later, Dani, I’m busy with crime lab reports right now. I’ll get back to you.”

“But—”

“Dani, you heard me. I’ll get back to you when I have the time.”

Bruce got to his feet. “That’s everything I got so far. You locate that Marski guy yet?”

“No,” said Lew. “His probation officer called this morning to say he’s still missing. If he doesn’t show soon, he’ll be looking at an extended sentence. Meantime, I’ve got Dani e-mailing his photo to every convenience store in a four-state region: the guy is bound to run out of cigarettes.

“The only other major development I’ve had is that Doc checked with the clinic staff late this morning and it appears that Cynthia Daniels’s absences from the clinic—whether she was on call or not—coincide with the hours during which an intruder was spotted in or near the McNeil home. At least I’ve got that one solved,” said Lew with a weak smile.

“Hey, Chief, in my book—you’re doing great. Day off tomorrow?”

“Day off or die,” said Lew with a wide grin.

“Isn’t that the Wisconsin state slogan?” Bruce chuckled at his own joke.

After Bruce left, Lew braced her elbows on the desk and stared down at the reports that he had delivered. She sat there thinking, not reading. Finally she picked up the phone and dialed Dani’s extension. “Would you come in here a moment?” asked Lew.