Love Is Murder (3 page)

Grace walked over to the guests and said, “Please go downstairs. Give us a moment.” She closed the door over concerned protests.

“Trevor,” Lucy said firmly, but with great deliberation and calm. “Trevor. Please.” She waited until he looked at her before she continued. “You need to put your wife down.”

Trevor stared at her. “Who are you?”

“Lucy Kincaid. We met last night, remember? At dinner, with my brother Patrick. You talked to him about how you grew up in Laguna Niguel. We’re from San Diego originally. Do you remember?”

Trevor nodded. “Can you help Vanessa?”

“Trevor, Vanessa is dead. You need to put her down.”

He blinked rapidly, then he looked at his wife as if he hadn’t realized he was still holding her in his arms. He stared at his dead wife for several moments. Grace tried to talk, but Lucy silenced her.

“Oh, dear Lord,” Trevor said laying Vanessa’s body back on the bed. He stood and looked at her lifeless body, finally understanding there was no bringing her back.

“Grace, please take Trevor downstairs,” Lucy said.

“You need to come, too,” Grace said.

“I will. I want to cover the body.” That wasn’t the complete truth.

“We can wait.”

“Trevor should go now.” She looked at Grace pointedly, and she didn’t know if the hostess understood, but she did walk Trevor out of the room.

“Let’s get a cup of tea, all right?” Grace said as she led Trevor out to the hall. She shot Lucy a scowl, but didn’t insist she join them.

Kyle DeWitt was still hanging out in the hall. Lucy said to him, “Please go to the barn and get my brother.”

“Can he do anything?”

“He was a cop for nearly ten years, he’ll know what we need to do since I don’t think the police or an ambulance will be able to reach us tonight.” Lucy also knew they had limited options—they had to get the body someplace cold to slow decomposition. Otherwise, as the gases and bacteria broke down, there would be a horrid stench, especially in the warm lodge. If the authorities couldn’t reach them by morning, they would have no choice but to move the body.

After Kyle left, Lucy closed the door and locked it before going back to Vanessa’s body. Six years ago she couldn’t have imagined viewing a dead body much less touching one, but between the sheriff’s department and the morgue, Lucy had lost any squeamishness she might have had.

She hesitated before touching anything else in the room. She saw a pair of leather gloves on the dresser, which she remembered Vanessa had been wearing that morning. Lucy put them on, then inspected Vanessa’s body. Touching her skin, she realized that rigor wasn’t well developed. Lucy would guess from the facial muscles and thin, cloudy film over her eyes that Vanessa had been dead at least an hour, but because rigor was still limited to the outer extremities, she didn’t believe she’d been dead longer than three hours. If she had more training, she might be able to pinpoint time of death more closely. The sooner a body was discovered, the more accurate the time of death could be determined, but coroners had more tools at their disposal, as well as more experience.

Lucy glanced at her watch. 5:24
P.M
. Vanessa had died roughly between 2:30 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Lucy was confident that she’d been dead longer than an hour, but three hours was a guess, so she pushed her window to 1:30
P.M
. Patrick had been an e-crimes cop and never liked forensics, but he also had a lot of training and might have more insight.

Lucy studied her surroundings, imagining the likely scenario that had led to Vanessa’s death. Shower. Bathrobe. Pills. Lucy had a degree in criminal psychology, but had studied a variety of mental illnesses, including depression. Identifying a suicide was difficult, but there were reliable indicators. Lucy hadn’t seen any of the standard signs of depression in Vanessa Russell-Marsh, though many clinically depressed people didn’t show outward signs, especially if they were on meds. Vanessa had been the quietest at dinner, but introverts were uncomfortable in groups of strangers and, like Lucy and Patrick, the Marshes had arrived yesterday afternoon. Vanessa had seemed to have a quiet affection for her more extroverted husband, and had been polite if a bit standoffish.

Suicides sometimes made themselves attractive prior to killing themselves—showering, putting on makeup, dressing in their nicest clothes—so that their loved ones would see them at “their best.” The shower itself didn’t throw Lucy off—it was that Vanessa had showered but
not
dressed or made herself up.

And why here? If it was an accident, why would she take sleeping pills in the middle of the day? Especially Seconal. It made no sense, and made it appear more like a suicide than an accident. Yet, just because the bottle was there didn’t mean Vanessa had ingested the pills. The bottle was half-filled and closed. But if she hadn’t overdosed on sleeping pills, what had killed her?

Lucy continued her visual examination of the body. Vanessa’s fingernails and toes were painted dark red, and it appeared fresh—no chips. Lucy couldn’t remember if Vanessa had painted nails last night, or what color they were.

Her engagement ring was a huge marquise-cut diamond. Too ostentatious for Lucy, but it fit Vanessa and she could see Trevor giving it to her. Her wedding band, on the other hand, looked like an antique, a thin, unpolished gold band with seven tiny diamonds embedded in an intricate pattern. It was dwarfed by the engagement ring, but Lucy thought it was the more interesting and attractive piece of jewelry.

What a waste
, she thought. Vanessa was a beautiful woman, newly married to a man who appeared to adore her, and she was dead.

Always look from the inside out. Husbands, boyfriends, exes—nine times out of ten, when a woman is found murdered, it’s someone she knows
.

Lucy frowned. Murder was a far cry from an accident or suicide. But the idea stuck in Lucy’s head that Vanessa hadn’t died naturally or by her own hand. Lucy looked at the scene like a cop.

“It could be natural causes. She could have had an embolism or an aneurysm,” she whispered to herself.

Lucy had only minimal medical training, some human biology classes that had enabled her to land the internship at the morgue, but she was more interested in the process than in actual autopsies, despite her assistant pathologist certification. She had no idea how to inspect the body for signs of such natural causes of death, but it would be clear in an autopsy.

Maybe she was too suspicious. Did Lucy really expect the worst in every situation? She didn’t want to think that she was such a negative person, but when she worked on a body in the morgue, she was most interested to learn the cause of death—natural, accident, or murder? At the sheriff’s department, she’d worked closely with one longtime cop near retirement. Joe Marquez’s philosophy was, “Everyone is guilty of something.” Lucy hadn’t believed it, but in Joe’s life more often than not people lied, even if they weren’t killers or rapists. Wives lied to protect their husbands; women lied about assaults out of fear; juveniles lied about minor crimes because they didn’t want to get into trouble—and sometimes to see if they could get away with it. Fear of cops was a motivator for many, but Joe didn’t have a lot of faith in people or the system. Had some of Joe’s skepticism about the human condition rubbed off on her? Or was it her own past experiences that made her unusually suspicious?

She opened the bottom drawer of the dresser where in her room were extra sheets and blankets. They, too, were in here. She took out a top sheet and covered Vanessa’s body. She said a quick prayer, and as she was about to cover her face she noticed something on the side of her neck.

Lucy carefully moved Vanessa’s hair and turned her head slightly to get a better view. A tiny red pinprick on the side of Vanessa’s neck looked suspiciously like a needle mark. She cursed herself for not having her cellphone with her to take a picture, but up here there was no reception so she’d left her phone in the car. She searched the room, looking for another camera. If the Marshes didn’t have one, she’d ask the others, though she’d then have to explain why.

Vanessa’s death now appeared much more like murder.

III.

A loud knock on the door was followed by Patrick calling out, “Lucy! It’s Patrick.”

She again put the sheet over Vanessa’s body in case anyone else was with him, and ran to the door, the digital camera she’d found in Vanessa’s purse now strapped to her wrist. Kyle DeWitt was there, along with Steve. She didn’t want anyone else in the room, and said, “Out of respect for the deceased, I think only Patrick should come in.”

“What’s going on?” Steve demanded. “Is Mrs. Marsh really dead?”

“Yes,” she said. “Please—”

“Oh my God.” Steve ran his hands through his mop of hair. He looked panicked. “This is terrible. What more could go wrong?”

The comment was cryptic, but Lucy didn’t ask him to elaborate. She caught Patrick’s eye and signaled to get rid of the other men. Patrick picked up on this and filled the doorway. “Steve,” he said, “I need you to contact the sheriff’s department.”

“They won’t be able to get up here—”

“Call them. You have a landline, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“I know, it might be down, so try now before the storm gets worse. Tell them we have a deceased female, cause unknown, and to send a unit and coroner as soon as possible. Get a contact name and number, and tell them that there’s a retired police detective on scene.”

“You?” Kyle said. “You’re young to be retired.”

“Long story.” Patrick handed Steve one of his Rogan Caruso Kincaid business cards. “That’s my contact information and P.I. license number. I’ll call in as soon as I have something to report.”

“But what happened to her?” Kyle asked.

Lucy hesitated, then said, “I don’t know.”

Patrick glanced at her. Lucy was the world’s worst liar, and Patrick realized the situation was serious. “Kyle, would you go downstairs and tell everyone to see what they can do to comfort Trevor? As soon as Lucy and I get a handle on this, we’ll be down.”

He closed the door before either Steve or Kyle could object, then turned to Lucy and said, “What’s going on?”

“I found a needle mark on Vanessa’s neck.”

Patrick walked over to the body and was about to remove the sheet when he saw that Lucy was wearing gloves. “You do it.”

“They’re not latex, but it’s better than nothing,” she said.

“You must have been suspicious from the beginning to put them on.”

“Well, a little. The lid is on the pill bottle.”

“So?”

“Suicides aren’t usually so tidy. She could have put it on, out of habit, but then there’s the fact that she took a shower, but didn’t dress. I just thought—be careful. All the training beats it into you.”

“You can say that again.”

She pulled down the sheet. “Do you see it?” She pointed to the mark.

“Yes, but you must have been looking to notice something so small. At first glance, it could be a new pimple or minor skin blemish.”

“I saw it and—” She stopped and turned Vanessa’s head more to the right. “She’s had a face-lift. It’s good work, too—I didn’t notice the marks at first, but I wasn’t looking for them.”

Patrick stared. “I can barely see anything.”

“Like I said, excellent work. But right here under her ear—” She put her finger on the scar. “And there’s minimal tightness, so I think she already had good skin and complexion, no excessive sun exposure. She’s someone who has been well taken care of most of her life.”

“Someone killed her,” Patrick said flatly.

“I think so, but I couldn’t say definitively. We should secure her body and this room.”

“How long has she been dead?”

“One to four hours. Probably closer to three hours.”

“We need to question everyone. But Lucy—if the killer suspects that we’re onto the fact that Vanessa Marsh was killed, no one here is safe.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. Lucy, you’ve never been able to lie. Let me ask the questions, okay? I’m going to tell everyone that we need to move the body to a cold environment for health reasons.”

“That’s true.”

“Then you can say that.” Patrick rubbed her arm. “Then I’ll say we have no idea what happened, but it looks like an accidental overdose or possibly natural causes.”

“Before I saw the needle mark, I thought embolism or aneurysm.”

“Good—”

“But will anyone believe she took sleeping pills in the middle of the day and accidentally overdosed?”

“Not everyone thinks like a cop, Lucy. We need to search this room now, before we move the body. I’ll need help, Steve and Kyle.”

“Do you think Trevor killed her?”

“The husband is always the first suspect, and often guilty.”

“He just doesn’t seem—” She cut herself off. Killers didn’t always look the part. “I like him,” she said simply.

“So do I. But we’re cops in this scenario. You didn’t kill her and I didn’t kill her. Therefore, right now we’re the only people we can trust. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“I’ll start here. You take the bathroom and their luggage.”

Lucy started in the bathroom. The shower floor was still damp, the hair dryer was plugged in. She put herself in Vanessa’s shoes—take a shower before dinner, dry her hair before dressing. She’d set out her clothes—another indication that she planned to go downstairs to eat. Vanessa’s makeup, jewelry box, and toiletries were organized neatly on the counter. She wouldn’t leave the hair dryer plugged in all day. She would have put it away. The meticulous way the bathroom was set up indicated that.

How did the killer get the needle into Vanessa without a struggle? It had to be someone she trusted to get that close. And what drug could have such an immediate effect that she would have no time to scream or fight back? It would have to have a paralyzing effect. Had she been drugged while lying in bed? Then why had she lain down in the first place?

Maybe Trevor came in and suggested a midday lovemaking session. They got into the bed and during foreplay he injected her. Up close and personal. Intimate. Watched her die. Was she surprised? Did she beg for her life or demand to know why?