A Desperate Place

by Jennifer Greer

  “That coincides with approximate time of death.”

  He nodded. “At least that’s something.”

  As an avid reader, Riggs admired the selection of books. “Looks like she enjoyed reading. Perhaps something of a student? According to Celeste Cordero, she studied her craft and took acting very seriously.”

  “Seems like it. The housekeeper said she pretty much lived in this room when she was home in the winter.”

  “Mind if I browse?”

  “Help yourself.” Panetta stepped over to the desk in the corner, sifting through drawers.

  With a thoughtful eye, she shot pictures of the room, then pulled latex gloves from her pants pocket and put them on. Her gloved fingers traced the titles of several hardbound books in the bookcase—some popular fiction, a complete collection of classic literature, art and theater and history books. Fitness magazines and several medical journals lay fanned out on the coffee table along with two movie scripts Niki had probably been considering. Riggs picked up a New England Journal of Medicine; the page was folded back to a story on cancer research. Another journal had been paper-clipped on a lengthy article about spinal injuries.

  Riggs asked Panetta, “Do you know if Niki had ever been diagnosed with cancer?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “That’s what she was reading about.” It was like déjà vu. The first weeks after being diagnosed with melanoma, Riggs had inundated herself with information on current cancer treatments, health foods, natural remedies, and so on, taken from books, journals, and the internet. Her interest in medical issues perked up, so when a position opened with the medical examiner’s office, she applied. Once accepted, she immediately transferred from homicide. She eagerly attended every training course available. All things that led to death fascinated her. Not that she was obsessed or anything—even though Richard, her husband and a solid, no-nonsense, down-to-earth prosecuting attorney for the state, had accused her of just that. He wasn’t too keen on her transfer to the ME’s office and insisted she’d developed a morbid curiosity about death. In her defense, she’d contemplated a nursing degree in college, but after one of the girls in her dorm went missing and was never found, her curiosity turned to criminology instead.

  It just seemed odd for Niki to have all this focus on medical issues unless she was sick. “What about a spinal injury? Did the housekeeper say anything about her health?”

  “No. Except that she had complained of a headache and nausea last week and refused lunch on Monday. That was the last time she was seen alive.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Her kitchen is stocked with thousands of dollars of health foods, supplements, that kind of thing. She also has a pretty extensive gym, but don’t all actors? They have to stay in shape to make the big bucks. Especially cougars.”

  “True.” Riggs rummaged through the other medical journals and fitness magazines. The lady had obviously been interested in staying healthy. Panetta was right. Actresses were in fierce competition for prime roles. And Niki was definitely in the cougar category, competing against much younger women.

  Riggs wandered down the hall and up the sweeping staircase to the master bedroom. This would be the most intimate room in the house and should hold clues to Niki’s personal life.

  Unprepared for the grandeur, she felt her jaw drop when she entered the massive room. Unlike the study with its functional, cozy furniture, the bedroom screamed self-indulgent luxury, bathed in gold and cream colors fit for royalty. Rich perfume permeated the air, so strong it was as if Niki had just slipped from the room. This was hardly Riggs’s first residence search, but in the hushed quiet she suddenly felt like an intruder, like Niki would walk in at any moment. Of course she knew better, but the sensation persisted. Maybe because she had a guilty curiosity about how the famous actress had actually lived that had nothing to do with police procedure. A natural curiosity, she supposed.

  She shot photos of the huge canopy-draped bed with its gold silk–padded headboard and cascading gold-embroidered white drapes. The lounge area in the center of the room had a cream couch and chairs with a few gold accents. The gold chandelier in the arched ceiling dangled crystals and cream shades. It reminded her of a tour she’d once taken of the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.

  She crossed to the nightstand, which was covered in fine powder. The room had already been tested for prints. Riggs opened the drawer, oddly surprised to find a Bible. She flipped through it, reading some of the underlined passages.

  Also in the drawer was a book on bipolar disorder, and a well-frayed script. Apparently in Niki’s upcoming shoot in New York, she’d been scheduled to portray a teacher suffering from bipolar disorder who eventually became teacher of the year. Riggs wondered who else might have wanted that role and if they might have been willing to kill for it.

  Another nutritional book at the bottom of the drawer held a couple of local restaurant menus offering organic ingredients and a brochure for Eden Retreat. She opened the brochure. At the top of the page, Niki had written REST. There was no date. Maybe she’d gone there to rest after filming a movie. The only other items were a bottle of melatonin and some Tylenol. So the actress probably had trouble sleeping and suffered from headaches or joint pain. Fanning all the drawer’s contents out on the bed, Riggs shot a picture.

  Someone connected to any of these fragments of Niki’s life might be the killer. A jealous actor competing for the next Oscar role, a jilted lover, even a crazed fan.

  “Anything?” Panetta asked from directly behind her shoulder.

  She jumped nearly out of her skin. “I hate it when you do that! Sneak up on me.”

  “Must be my pantherlike stride,” he said with his quirky smile.

  Riggs inhaled slowly to steady her pulse. At least Panetta appeared to be in a better mood. He reminded her of her oldest brother, Ben. He had that same gift of banter, but when it came to serious matters of the heart, he stuffed his emotions until he was ready to explode. “Any luck with her planner?”

  “No. I’m getting her cell phone records. I’ve collected all the data from her email account. She deleted everything up to the day she disappeared, so we’re taking the computer to the lab. I think we’re going to have a very wide net for this one. A lot of ground to cover.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, but I’d like to start with her medical records. Where can I find the housekeeper?” With her help, she might be able to reach Niki’s doctor tonight. It would facilitate the morning’s report.

  “She’s in her suite on the other side of the kitchen. She went straight to bed after viewing the body. Autopsy still on for ten?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  With wry humor, he said, “Can’t wait. You can’t get that kind of blood and guts at the movies. I’m gonna go hunt down a cup of coffee.” With a salute, he disappeared through the door, his retreating footsteps soundless.

  Riggs found the housekeeper heavily sedated in her room but managed to get Niki’s physician’s data, and asked if the actress had ever had any serious health issues.

  “Actually, she looked pretty good.” Annie said, shaking her head. In her midthirties and stout, she had the faintest of British accents. A swath of dark hair dislodged from a high ponytail and fell across her brow, half shielding a red-rimmed nose. She’d clearly been crying. She sniffed as if to prove the point, and clutched the lapels of her white terry cloth robe. “In fact, I kinda thought she’d had a few nips and tucks. Secret, of course, but I never saw. She even stopped using reading glasses. Said she didn’t need them. Kinda odd. But she might have had that Lasik surgery. I don’t know. Seein’ her tonight was …” She brought a tissue up to her nose, eyes squeezed shut.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  “I’ve worked for her going on six years. Moved up from LA with her. She wasn’t snobby like some of those actresses that come by. She made me family.”

  “She seemed like a nice person. Anything else happen the past week or two?
New friends? Old friends? Anyone come into the picture?”

  Annie shook her head sadly. “It was pretty quiet the past month. When she’s studying for a new movie, she doesn’t socialize all that much. Always studying for the new role. She visited some with Celeste Cordero, up the road. And of course her weekly visits to her psychiatrist.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Dr. Heinemann at Eden Retreat. She’s been seein’ him for several years now. Swears he does magic. ’Course Niki and Celeste go to the retreat for massage therapies as well. She even bought me the full spa package last Christmas.” Her face crumpled at the memory.

  Riggs reached out and squeezed her hand. “Did you notice anything else?”

  “No.” She kept her head down. “Just that she looked especially happy and healthy the past few months; well … until that last few days.” Her head suddenly snapped up, face tearstained. “Oh, I’d nearly forgotten. Maybe I was imaginin’ stuff, but I thought I saw fear in her eyes that last morning. I was passing through the kitchen just as she got off the phone and could have sworn she was frightened. For a moment I thought she’d gotten bad news about her son or something.”

  “Who was she talking to?”

  “Don’t know. I asked if everything was all right, and she nodded but didn’t say anything.” Annie shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t want to pry, so I just gathered my purse and shopping list, and that was the last time I saw her.”

  “Did you hear any of her conversation?”

  “No. Wish I had.”

  Panetta would pay close attention to all the calls that last day from her cell phone records, but Riggs would remind him of that call anyway.

  For the next thirty minutes Riggs poked around in Niki’s kitchen, photographing all the health products and vitamins. She turned all the items to face label out and shot another picture. Many had labels from Eden Retreat. She’d pay a follow-up visit to the spa tomorrow. Stepping back, she eyed the pantry. A virtual health food store was lined up shelf after shelf. By the time she left the kitchen, Riggs felt she understood Niki’s drive for perfection, because that’s what it really was. More like an obsession.

  Unfortunately for Niki, all that effort and energy hadn’t prolonged her life after all.

  CHAPTER

  7

  LOCATED DOWNTOWN IN an old brick building, the Medford Daily Chronicle was sandwiched between Engelhard’s Linen Supply and the Gospel Mission’s soup kitchen. The interior of the building had been renovated many times over the years, and as newspaper budgets had fallen fast with the advent of twenty-four-hour television news and the internet, which siphoned off advertising dollars, the carpets and lighting could have used a good influx of hard cash. The place smelled like an old leather shoe. The paper had transitioned to online news a few years before Whit arrived, thanks to a team of young media geeks.

  The newsroom, located on the second floor, housed fourteen desks arranged in huddled cubicles, which were mostly vacant now—except for the sports reporter in the opposite corner, as everyone had filed their stories and gone home for the day. It was well past nine and the night crew had settled into their jobs. Travis, one of the copy editors, cruised down the hall to the lunchroom for some leftover cake. Forsythe and Clayburn were working on page layout. Their familiar voices drifted to Whit where she sat at her desk, observing the summer storm through dark glass. The scanner chatter buzzed in the background, mingling with television news, which was monitored by a couple of sleepy interns.

  Whit could practically feel the deadline chewing away at her frayed nerves. Normally she fed off the adrenaline of an approaching deadline. Journalists were generally adrenaline junkies. She was no different than most, but that was before …

  She cracked her knuckles one at a time, and with a deep breath she turned and faced her computer. Precious minutes ticked by as her hands hovered over the keyboard. Nothing.

  Damn!

  She pictured Stu’s face turning purple at the thought of a missed deadline that would leave a big hole in the paper. No, better still, he’d pace behind her and use little frantic gestures with his hands and rattle off pithy little machine gun–style sentences: “Make it snappy. Put the story to bed. Bust it out. Deadlines don’t wait.” And so on.

  Cursing under her breath, she sat drumming her fingers on the desk and watched flashes of lightning. Rivulets of rain, reflecting the city lights, trailed like glitter down the windows. Nothing set the mood to write like a good storm. Unfortunately, the nightmare of today’s flashback repeated like a reel playing in a loop, tormenting her with horrible clarity of that dreadful day in Afghanistan. Try as she might, this time she couldn’t push the images into the recesses of her mind.

  The profound pain of knowing she had failed him, urged him to his death even, was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Every ounce of energy in her begged to hit rewind. If only she could relive it. She’d do it all differently. At the very least, she might have tried to bargain with their captors. Tried to buy some time. The finality of John’s death left a well of almost unbearable pain. A deep ache she feared would never leave her.

  If John were here, he’d say, “Eyes on the story.” Because that’s how he saw the world: through the lens of his camera. He was a conduit that brought to light the best and the worst of humanity. So was she. This was not a job she could walk away from. It was who she was. The more she focused on her job, the less she had to think about Afghanistan.

  Eyes on the story.

  Yes. She could lean on John’s strength until hers returned. He might not be there physically, but he was there in every other way. She could imagine him with her now. By her side, at least in spirit.

  Feeling calmer now, she flipped through her steno pad; the interview notes slowly drew her back into the story. Facts for the fire were scarce. She had to fill in with backstory. The fire chief had confirmed a fatality. The victim’s wife had identified the body and confirmed Bobby Delano as the deceased. Cause of death “undetermined” pending the autopsy report. The fire was listed as suspicious and still under investigation.

  Barbecue boy, Jim Jorgensen, had suggested that Bo Delano was probably drunk and lit the house on fire by mistake. After witnessing Delano wandering around his front yard in a pair of pajama bottoms mumbling to himself the day of the fire, Jorgensen had ventured across the street to ask Delano if he was all right, and the attorney had flipped him off.

  Several phone calls to Delano’s wife proved futile, so Whit gathered details from the fire chief, neighbors, and work associates. According to all of them, Delano did not have a drinking problem. He was health conscious and belonged to a running club from which he had won numerous first-, second-, and third-place awards. But clearly he had some kind of a problem. Most people did not like to speak ill of the dead, so her initial interviews were not as productive as she would have liked. She needed to reinterview Delano’s work associates, put a little pressure on them. Maybe they would open up. Instinct told her to dig deeper, and she would, tomorrow.

  Gradually the story took shape in her mind. A troubled man who’d lived a respectable life as a highly regarded attorney with a caring wife and family, whose life suddenly slid out of control and ended with bizarre behavior that led to a separated marriage, an untimely death, and the charred ruins of his million-dollar home.

  Not to be jaded, but it sounded like Mr. Delano had been on drugs. She would never insinuate that in her story, but that’s probably where her investigation would lead.

  Back in the saddle, Whit’s fingers flew over the keyboard. The tapping keys and pelting rain were music to her ears. She wrapped up her thirteen-inch story, ran the spell check, and emailed her work to Travis in layout. Today’s story would run with just the facts. She no longer had a leisurely week of collecting facts to weave together for an in-depth report as she had at the L.A. Times. A small newspaper ran with a skeleton crew, and each reporter pumped out multiple stories at once. She had adjusted to the pace. Hit it and q
uit it. She would write a follow-up feature, and it would take a few more days to gather the facts and collaborate witnesses and get the coroner’s report.

  She clicked on a new screen and began the lead for her Applegate story.

  Her cell phone buzzed. Whit smiled. The text was from her fifteen-year-old daughter, Emma.

  Mother … when are you coming home?

  Emma had yet to adjust to not having a full-time mom at her disposal. Since John’s death, Emma seemed more clingy, while Jordan, a year older and driving on her own, kept pushing her away. The truth was that both girls were more emotional and needy in their own way. Working outside the house was like a guilty pleasure.

  You know I have to work late tonight. Are you all right?

  Yes. Jordan and I made mac’n cheese for dinner. Im bored.

  Enjoy it while you can. School starts next week.

  Ugh!

  Get some sleep its after 10

  Reggie misses you!!!

  Whit’s thirty-two-pound fawn pug was a spoiled beast who slept in her bed and snored like a drunken fat man. He had been a gift from her dad six months ago, so “she wouldn’t be lonely.” Within a few days he had captured her heart.

  Give him a kiss for me. And Jordan too. Is she all right?

  Yes. She’s watching the history channel. Boring! I went downstairs. Watched the Kardashians.

  Lovely choice. Are the doors locked?

  Yes.

  Okay. Double check. I really have to go. Good nite. Love you.

  Love you too!

  At the sound of whistling, Whit glanced up.