Mystery!

by Chantelle Aimée Osman

  “Of course there’s security,” Porter said. “But they’re not frisking people.”

  Behind me the office door opened, and I turned to see a woman in an increasingly familiar gold lamé sheath dress and the same kind of formal-length vest. Hers was a geometrically tooled dark red, though, instead of Beth’s Chinese blue. The shoes were identical, too. She had a puzzled and slightly tense look on her face, though she was clearly trying to look calm and controlled. Close behind her was a nervous middle-aged man with salt-and pepper hair and a tailored beard.

  Close behind both of them was Jacoby.

  “This it?” I asked. “Ms. Porter said she saw three other dresses.”

  “There were four more besides this one,” Jacoby confirmed. “None of them fit the parameters.”

  “What parameters?” the new woman asked, her puzzlement increasing as she looked around. “Where’s the body?”

  “Downstairs,” I said. “Didn’t you see the crowd?”

  “I assumed you brought me here to look at the body,” the woman said, frowning. “I’m a doctor.”

  “A medical doctor?”

  Her confusion morphed into strained patience. “Of course a medical doctor. Dr. Renée Mercier.” She gestured to her companion. “This is my friend, Dr. Jan Darrian.”

  “Not a medical doctor,” Darrian hastened to add. “I’m a chemist, consulting with Dr. Mercier on drug development.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I’m Detective Quince. I presume you know your hosts, Mr. and Ms. Porter?”

  “Certainly,” Renée said, nodding politely to Porter and his wife. “By name and face, anyway.”

  “You’re not prospective investors?”

  “The exact opposite, actually,” Renée said. “We were hoping for a chance to talk to Mr. Porter about possibly funding our new project.”

  “Though now, of course, talk of money seems a little…inappropriate,” Darrian murmured.

  “What did she mean about parameters?” Beth asked.

  “The other women wearing your same dress were either too tall, too short, or too, ah, wide,” Jacoby explained. “Gender mimicking isn’t a problem, but doppels can only shift their height and physique by a limited amount. You and Dr. Mercier are the only ones within the normal range. One of the women also wasn’t wearing the right shoes.”

  “That’s unusual,” Beth commented. “The dress and shoes are usually sold as a set.”

  “Joivivre is definitely cleaning up this season,” Renée agreed.

  “I’m surprised a mere doctor can afford them,” Jacoby said.

  “Dr. Mercier is hardly a mere doctor—” Darrian began.

  “It’s all right, Jan,” Renée cut him off. “Yes, the outfit was a serious strain, even for a doctor’s income. But they say you should dress for the job you want. The job of going down in medical history usually requires genius, hard work, and money.” She gestured to Darrian. “Jan has the first, we both have the second, and we both need the third.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly intrigued me,” I said. “Tell us about this project.”

  Renée snorted. “No offense, Detective, but this isn’t something we just want to announce to the world at large.”

  “Well, then, try this for size,” I said. “There was a doppel at the party tonight. She was murdered. She was impersonating one of you. That means—”

  “One of us?” Renée gasped.

  “The only advantage a doppel has over a regular thief is the ability to impersonate someone,” Jacoby said. “You’re the only two she could have been impersonating. She had to be after something worth stealing, and worth getting killed for.”

  “Samson Four,” Darrian murmured.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Jan,” Renée said warningly.

  “They have to know, Renée,” Darrian said. “Detective Quince says the doppel was killed for something someone wanted to steal. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the killer was going after you and killed the doppel by mistake.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Renée insisted. But her fingertips were stroking restlessly at the inner edge of her vest. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

  “You’re the driving force behind Samson,” Darrian said. “If someone wants to beat us to the punch, taking you out would be a perfect way to do it.”

  “Oh, God,” Renée muttered, her eyes darting around at the rest of us. “Do you think that could be it, Detective? A horrible case of mistaken identity?”

  “At the moment, everything’s on the table,” I said. “Tell us about Samson Four.”

  Renée looked at us, then the Porters. “Hey, I’m in the same boat,” Beth said, trying for a smile that didn’t quite come off. “The killer might have been trying for you, but he also could have been trying for me.”

  “Why would he want to kill you?” Renée asked. “I mean—no offense.”

  “None taken,” Porter said. “Beth’s my inspiration and chief sounding board. Without her—” He swallowed visibly. “Detective Quince is right. He needs to know everything if he’s going to solve this.”

  “I don’t know,” Renée said hesitantly.

  “It’ll be all right,” Beth soothed her. “Come on. You tell us about Samson Four, and we’ll tell you about the Portal Seven.”

  “Renée?” Darrian prompted.

  “All right.” Renée turned to me, visibly bracing herself. “Samson Four is an experimental drug that—we hope—will permit addicts to throw off their addictions with a single treatment.”

  Behind her, Jacoby’s eyes widened, mirroring my own interest. Most addiction treatments took several sessions, and even then had unimpressive success rates. “How does it work?” she asked. “Does it shift the addiction focus to something less damaging?”

  “Ah—you’ve been reading Singh’s work,” Renée said, her reluctance momentarily eclipsed by approval.

  “My brother died of an overdose,” Jacoby said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Renée said. “No, we tried the focus shift, but the results weren’t as consistent as we wanted.”

  “Well, I haven’t read Singh’s work,” I put in. “Explain to me why in the world you’d want to swap one addiction for another.”

  “It’s a matter of mental focus,” Renée said. “Take away a heroin addiction and you leave an open gap in the addict’s habits and mental patterns. If you instead give a new passion—something safe like knitting or gin rummy, for example—that gap remains filled and the patient isn’t driven to look for something else.”

  “And of course knitting is a much easier passion to get rid of later if the patient so decides,” Darrian added. “But as Renée said, the results were disappointing, so we tried a new approach with Samson Four.”

  “Which is still highly confidential,” Renée said firmly. “Sorry, but that’s all we can tell you.”

  “How expensive is the treatment likely to be?” Porter asked.

  “If it works as expected, much cheaper than conventional treatments,” Renée said. “A third, possibly a quarter of the cost of anything currently on the market. And again, it would only take one session.”

  “It will get even cheaper once we start mass-production,” Darrian added. “What we need now is an infusion of cash—serious cash, I’m afraid—for the last leg of the research.”

  “As I said, Mr. Porter, we were hoping your foundation might be interested in our work,” Renée said.

  “Beth’s foundation, you mean,” Porter said, nodding toward his wife. “She’s the one who handles all of that. I don’t suppose you brought any of the documents or formulas for our chemistry people to look at?”

  “Better than that,” Renée said. “We brought some samples so they can see just how close we are.”

  “Sounds like the four of you have a lot to discuss,” I said. “Anyway, Sergeant Jacoby and I need to go talk to the police downstairs. I’ll leave Officer Walden here in case you need anything.” I inclined my head to Renée. “I’ll instru
ct him to stay by the door so he won’t be able to eavesdrop.”

  “Thank you,” Renée said, coloring slightly. “Sorry I was so…you know. Uncooperative. But industrial espionage is a huge problem, and if we lose Samson Four we’ll have lost a huge amount of time and our own money.”

  “No apology necessary,” I assured her. “If that’s the worst attitude we get this week, I’ll take the squad out for drinks. Come on, Jacoby.”

  A minute later, we were on our way downstairs. “A miracle phone and a miracle anti-drug drug,” Jacoby commented. “She’s right about the espionage aspect.”

  “I know,” I said. “This was definitely the happy hunting grounds for someone.”

  “I presume you recognized the third possibility?”

  “That the doppel was killed purely for herself and not mistaken for either of the ladies upstairs,” I said. “You find out who she was?”

  She nodded. “Suzanne Tizt. No regular employer on file, and the department doesn’t have any paper trail patterns on her, so she’s probably a freelancer who does spec jobs and sells to the highest bidder.”

  “Mostly thieving, then?”

  “Thieving and data gleaning, with a bit of extortion and blackmail on the side,” Jacoby said. “She’s also done her share of industrial espionage, so that fits.”

  “Funny you should mention fits,” I said. “Did you notice anything unusual about our late Ms. Tizt?”

  “Besides her pallor and lack of real human features?”

  “Think about our ladies upstairs.”

  “Ah,” Jacoby said, nodding. “You’re talking about the fact that Ms. Tizt wasn’t wearing a vest.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And unless she planned to lure Beth or Renée somewhere quiet, conk her on the head, and help herself to her vest, there’s no way she could impersonate either of them dressed the way we found her. Too many other people would have already seen them in their full get-ups.”

  “So we’re playing duck, duck, vest?” Jacoby asked. “Great—I’ll start. She came in with her own copy of the vest. She stole whichever of our two prizes she was after and dumped the vest in order to make a casual and anonymous exit. The thievee caught up with her, brained her on the sink, took back the goodies, and is playing coy.”

  “Not bad,” I said. “Question. It’s a pretty large house, with people everywhere including the back forty. There’s really no way for the thievee to know for sure how many guests are wearing gold lamé dresses, so there’s no way she could know that this Joivivre customer is the thief.”

  “Looking at her own face might have been a clue.”

  “Why would she still be wearing that face?”

  “Oh,” Jacoby said, sounding chagrinned. “Of course she wouldn’t. Dumping the vest without dumping the face would be way too stupid for someone with Tizt’s experience.”

  “Of course, it’s possible that the thievee walked in on her before she had a chance to dump either,” I said. “But in that case—”

  “In that case, why risk someone walking in on you while you’re stripping off the vest?” Jacoby finished for me.

  “Right,” I said. “Granted that leaving, say, a blue vest on the victim would point a big arrow at Beth. But if she takes the phone off the body and gets it back in her husband’s pocket before he misses it all we’ll have is suspicion.”

  “DNA traces?”

  “In Beth’s own house?”

  “Yeah,” Jacoby said, wrinkling her nose. “Renée can’t pull off the I-live-here defense, but she was probably in that powder room at least once this evening. Hints, but nothing solid enough for a warrant.”

  “And doppel DNA is a bit wonky anyway, testing-wise,” I said. “But the killer might not have been thinking that way. She might have panicked enough to risk someone walking in on her in order to get rid of the vest.”

  “No,” Jacoby said firmly. “Not those two. You saw them up there—smart, cool, and confident. I can’t see either of them panicking.” She lifted a finger. “Especially since she already needed to engineer the confrontation when no one else was in the powder room. That took planning and forethought.”

  “Or luck,” I said, thinking it through. “Tizt might have been able to avoid a confrontation if she’d dumped the vest and grabbed a new face. But if she hadn’t stolen the prize yet…?”

  “Then how did Beth or Renée know who she was and what she was after,” Jacoby said. “One of them had to catch her with a duplicate face somewhere along the line. Shall we go back and ask them to retrace their steps?”

  “Later,” I said. “We agree that Tizt had a vest. Let’s go find it.”

  The crowd around the powder room had mostly thinned out by the time we arrived. Possibly they’d gotten tired of waiting and wandered off for reflection and more liquor. More likely, the ME had taken away the body and with it the chance to see something ghoulish. I found a Porter House security man, confirmed what Walden had said about no cameras inside the house or the interior of the grounds, then grabbed every cop I could find who wasn’t otherwise engaged. Jacoby and I split the group into two teams, and we started our search.

  The house was huge, and the party had been pretty wide-ranging over the entire ground floor. Still, a tooled formal vest wasn’t exactly a needle in a haystack, and there were only so many places someone without a well-stocked toolkit and half an hour of spare time could hide something that big.

  The search took us nearly that same half hour. In the end, we found nothing.

  Which left only one possibility.

  The fire pit out behind the house had burned down somewhat, but it was still going reasonably strong. Certainly strong enough to consume an article of clothing in record time.

  “It had to have happened right after the body was discovered,” Jacoby said sourly as we gazed at the dancing flames. “Everyone rushed inside except the killer.”

  “Who rushed outside, pulled the vest out from where she’d hidden it under her own and tossed it on the fire, then reversed direction and joined in the general flow,” I said, turning to look at the house. If there were only a couple of doors, we might be able to find someone who’d seen someone else going the wrong direction.

  But no. The yard and fire pit were highlights of Porter House parties, and there were at least five doors I could see just from where I was standing.

  “Maybe,” Jacoby said slowly. “Maybe the killer was afraid that there was blood on her vest.”

  “The wounds didn’t bleed.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know that,” Jacoby said. “There’s a lot of misinformation about doppels out there. Or maybe there was a struggle and her vest got torn.”

  “So you’re saying it wasn’t Tizt’s vest she burned?” I asked, finally seeing where she was going with this. “It was her own?”

  “With Tizt’s vest doing a stand-in,” she said. “Ooh—wait a minute. You remember how expensive the dress and vest are?”

  “As in the price of a starter house?”

  “And probably out of the price range of even a successful thief,” Jacoby said. “Which suggests that unless Tizt already had a backer for the theft—which wasn’t her usual pattern—then her dress might have been a cheap knockoff. If the dress is a knockoff, maybe the vest is, too.”

  “Which means that if the killer didn’t realize that when she switched vests, she’s blissfully wearing the evidence of her crime,” I said. “Let’s see if the ladies upstairs will let us take a closer look.”

  The four of them were standing in a small group, drinks in their hands, when we arrived. “Any progress?” Porter asked.

  “Possibly,” I said. “Ms. Porter, Dr. Mercier, I wonder if we can take a look at those vests?”

  “What for?” Porter asked before either woman could answer.

  “Just part of the investigation,” Jacoby assured him.

  “Is it,” Porter said, his eyes narrowing. “I suppose you have a warrant?”

  “This is a crime scen
e,” I reminded him.

  “Downstairs is a crime scene,” he countered. “Up here, you need a warrant.”

  “It’s all right, Thomas,” Beth put in, slipping off her vest and handing it to Jacoby. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Neither do I,” Renée added, handing her vest to me. “Just be careful—that’s worth two months of my salary.”

  For most people, distinguishing knockoff clothing from the real thing was a challenge. But then, most people didn’t have police ID scanners, or would know how to find the hook-and-thread marks woven into every official trademark.

  It took us barely a minute to discover both vests were genuine Tomás Varisis.

  “Will there be anything else?” Porter asked, in a tone that strongly suggested there had damn well better not be.

  I watched the women put their vests back on, my brain scrambling through the logic and trying to find a foothold. If Tizt had had a backer for once, and therefore had had the funding for an authentic vest, the killer could still have safely swapped out her vest. In that case, the evidence of murder might still be in front of us.

  But Porter was right. Without a warrant we couldn’t confiscate either of the vests for closer testing. And if the look on his face was any indication, Jacoby and I were about to be kicked out of the family section of the house and banished back to the crime scene.

  And then, something deep in the back of my mind clicked. Crazy…but if I was right…

  “Just one more question,” I said. “Dr. Mercier, you said you and Dr. Darrian were working on Samson Four. Tell me about Samsons One through Three.”

  Renée seemed taken aback. “What about them?”

  “Which ones used the addiction focus shifting you told us about?”

  “Samsons One and Two.”

  “And a little with Three,” Darrian added. “That was mostly looking at parameter profiling.”

  Renée’s eyes flicked to him, flicked back to me. “We also told you we abandoned that approach when we started with Four.”

  “What’s parameter profiling?” I asked. “How you make someone fall out of love with opiates and into love with knitting?”