A Lie in Every Truth

by Jamie Lee Scott

  “That’s great.” Piper looked at Lydia. “I think going through her posts for at least the last few months would be a good idea. Was she the type to share a lot about her life?”

  “Edie liked attention, so she shared a lot. Not that I saw everything she posts. But I’ll be happy to look.” Lydia’s body language had done an about face, totally relaxed and interested.

  “Clive mentioned Edie going days without sleep,” Piper said. “This smacks of meth use.”

  Lydia turned her body toward Piper. “It wouldn’t surprise me. She always wanted to try whatever new drug that was available to stay skinny.”

  “Goes back to her being vain again,” Piper said as she scribbled in the margins of her paperwork.

  “If you’d like, I can tell you what I know about her,” Lydia offered.

  Piper and I stared at Lydia.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Let me know if I’m being long winded,” Lydia said, then dove right in. “Mimi already knows about her days of sun worshiping. Her first bout with skin cancer put the fear of God in her. Thank goodness they caught it early. She must have tried every self-tanner on the market to find the right shade. Then she bought a case of it, afraid they might discontinue it or worried that the company might go out of business. She’s not the type to do anything halfway. We weren’t close in the last few years, but I do know she left Clive because she felt she couldn’t trust him anymore. He cheated on her.” She stopped for a second. “You can’t mention this to Clive. She never told him she knew.”

  I nodded along with Piper.

  “Okay, good. I think that’s the reason they kept separating. She tried so hard to be young for him. To dress well, to make him proud. But to tell you the truth, I think he cheated because he wanted reassurance he was still handsome and desirable. I could be wrong. I’ve never spoken with him about Edie in that way.”

  “Makes sense. But what a slap in the face. She lived for him and wanted to do everything to make him only see her,” I said.

  “There’s only so much you can do if a man is going to stray. I say, don’t marry a guy unless his entire world begins and ends with you,” Lydia smiled as if she’d found that man.

  It made me wonder, had Dominic been that man? Did his world revolve around me? Or was there something else? After the incident at the fruit stand, my entire world had been turned upside down. After seeing Dominic’s virtual twin, I thought I’d lost my mind.

  Was Nick that guy? He’d never been married. Why was that? Because he’d never met a woman he wanted to give his life for? I’d give my life for him, I knew that for certain. If I wasn’t sure he felt the same way, it would be a mistake to marry him.

  “Mimi?” Piper asked.

  She brought me back to the case at hand, which wasn’t about me or Nick. “Yes, I’m sorry, what?”

  “Nothing. I just wondered if you heard what Lydia just said.”

  I looked at Lydia.

  “I was saying I don’t trust Clive. Not that he’s a bad guy, or would do anything, but he did cheat, and as far as I know, he never came clean.”

  “Was he cheating on her recently?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll see what her posts say. Now I wish I’d been closer with her. Not that I have time for more friends with this job,” she laughed. “What about her phone?”

  Piper reached in her pocket. “Here.” She handed it to Lydia. “And here’s the sheet Clive gave us with all of Edie’s passwords. He said he couldn’t get into her phone.”

  Lydia took the page of information from Piper and looked at it. “Who makes their spouse share all logins and passwords?”

  “Someone who is guilty and because of that, doesn’t trust his spouse,” I said.

  Lydia stood. “I don’t really want to see the crime scene photos, so I’ll get started on this.”

  “Sounds good. If you can’t break the password on the phone, ask Charles,” I said.

  Lydia walked away, then stopped. “I just want to add, I think Clive loved Edie, but he was insecure enough that he needed to know someone else might want him, too. At least that’s the vibe I got when he asked me out that time. I felt like I needed to stroke his ego, but more importantly, I had to say no.”

  I cringed. I didn’t want her stroking anything on that guy. So glad my mom was smart enough to not date him.

  “Good to know. Thanks. And I look forward to working with you, Lydia,” Piper said.

  “Let’s dive in,” I said.

  “It looks like a lot. Let’s take my copies and spread them out, and we can take notes as we go.” Piper straightened her pages and closed her folder.

  “The kitchen table is big, but I think the conference table in the dining area would be better. Less traffic in and out. And no wind blowing in if someone comes in the back door.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to looking at the photos of Edie, but I had to do my job.

  Eight

  Mimi

  Piper spread the pages of the investigation out on the long, oak conference table while I went to the kitchen to make coffee and pour it into a thermos. I had no idea how long it would take to get through the pages of the report.

  Just like I thought would happen, the kitchen door opened, and Charles came in, along with a gust of wind. Two things could always be counted on if you lived in Salinas: fog and wind.

  “What’s up, buttercup?” he said as he closed the door behind him.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I said.

  “Not really. Some young douchebag in a 1990-something Lexus with overly tinted windows and wheels that were too small for his car, cut me off and nearly crunched my front bumper.”

  “Well, you seem like you’re in a good mood. I’m sure you let him know just how you felt about his driving,” I said.

  “I honked, and he flipped the bird at me as he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and puttered away. I caught him at the next light. He rolled down his window to glare at me. I’m pretty sure he crapped his pants instead.”

  My chin almost hit the floor. “I’m not sure I even want to know what you did.”

  He smirked and pulled out his wallet. He had an old volunteer firefighter badge. “Smug little jerk didn’t know it wasn’t a cop’s badge. He didn’t stomp so hard on the gas when the light turned green. I had a good laugh.”

  Charles looked sharp even when dressed casually. He wore a gray sweatshirt over a white tee and layered a short, double-breasted navy suit jacket over that. On anyone else, the jacket would have looked a size too small, but on Charles, it looked like he’d consciously substituted it for a denim jacket. He wore the ensemble with faded jeans and topsiders.

  “You’re starting the day right,” I said.

  “I am,” he agreed. “I had a great night with friends, and I might be going to a funeral.”

  I looked at him and furrowed my brows. “Who gets excited about going to a funeral?”

  He placed his left hand flat over his chest. “Me. I don’t know the dude, so I don’t have any skin in the game. He’s an old guy, so he lived a good long life.”

  This had me curious. He hadn’t mentioned anything about it before. “Who?”

  Charles walked over and opened the upper cabinet door, pulling down a coffee mug, he said, “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  I shoved him. “You’re so weird.”

  “I’m not even kidding. I can’t tell you. It’s all surreal.”

  “More surreal than the stuff you disappear for?” I asked.

  “Not even in the same ball park. This is like…well, I don’t even have the words. I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ll be asked to attend, but I’m so there if I am. Just in case, I’m clearing my calendar for a few days.” He reached over and grabbed the nearly full coffee pot.

  “Funerals take a few hours, not a few days,” I said, wanting to grab the coffee pot from him, telling him to make his own. “And we’re already way behind on cases. I’m goin
g to have to reschedule a lot of clients.”

  “You won’t have to do anything, Uta is already taking care of it. We’ll be fine. If a spouse is cheating today, he or she will still be cheating next week.” He leaned against the counter, holding his cup in both hands.

  “Not necessarily,” I said.

  “You aren’t going to win this one. Statistics are on my side. Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

  “And a few days for a funeral?” He had something up his sleeve, I knew it.

  “We know the date, it’s the other stuff that needs to be put in place.” He turned around and poured more coffee in his cup, spilling a few drops on the counter. As he picked up the dish towel and wiped up his mess, he added, “I’ll tell you more when I can. Just don’t give me anything I can’t get out of quickly.”

  “I don’t have anything for you.” I poured what was left of the coffee in a thermos and twisted the lid. “We did take the suicide investigation. Piper and I are looking at the police investigation files right now. Want to have a look?”

  Charles sipped his coffee. “Nope. I can’t be distracted. I have too many things to do.”

  As I watched him walk out of the kitchen, curiosity niggled at the back of my brain. But it would have to wait. We needed to get through the police file, and with two people taking notes, it might take a long while.

  I hung two coffee cups from the handles with my finger, grabbed the thermos, and reached into the refrigerator for the creamer. I wasn’t sure what Piper liked, but I wasn’t a waitress, so I just grabbed the flavor in front, which was white chocolate mocha.

  Looking at the conference table, or lack thereof, because of the photos and papers spread across the surface, I grimaced. Piper had moved all but two chairs from the table, and one of the chairs had my copy of the file in a folder.

  Piper looked back at me. “Reinforcements.”

  “Yep.” I sat the thermos and creamer on the side table and unhooked the coffee cups from my finger.

  “Detective Douglas at least put together a nice file. There’s a lot to look at,” Piper said as she walked over. We both poured creamer and coffee into our cups.

  “That looks like a lot for just calling it in,” I said.

  “I agree. Maybe the detective looked at this the right way from the start. I guess we’ll see when we delve in. I’m still perplexed at the lack of interviews.”

  “Maybe the evidence didn’t warrant any.” Heck, I had no idea.

  Piper had obviously already skimmed the file, and I hadn’t even opened it beyond page one. So much for reading by myself, then discussing. But maybe discussing each piece together would be a better approach.

  “I laid everything out in the order it was copied. This way, you can flip through your pages and photos easily, and we can look at the whole picture at the same time.”

  I sipped my coffee and looked at the photos of Edie. She didn’t look like the Edie I remembered, and it had nothing to do with half of her head missing. She looked gaunt and sallow, with bags under her eyes. I could see her neck and shoulders in the image I stared at, and even though she’d always been thin, she looked downright skinny. Not a healthy skinny, either. I knew her face looked bad because of the way she died, but I felt there was more to it.

  Her not sleeping, and the idea of maybe doing meth, did make me think her skin and weight were also related. For all of Edie’s vanity, she always came across as happy. I wondered what had happened in recent years, because this woman didn’t look happy. Fine, I realized she was dead, but my mind went to the minutes, hours, and days before she died.

  I hoped my mom would be able to get some insight through Edie’s social media, emails, and maybe her phone. Texts, images, and voice messages might tell us more.

  Piper pointed to Edie’s head. “From this angle, how did the sunroof get broken? Do you think maybe she hesitated and shot the roof out first? I mean, with the entry here,” Piper pointed to the right side of Edie’s throat, “and the exit wound here,” she pointed to the upper left rear of Edie’s head, “the bullet would have ended up in the back seat with the bone and brain matter.”

  “Is there a chance it ricocheted off the side of the car and hit the sunroof?” I asked, standing over the table to get a better look.

  “Maybe, but I can’t see it from this angle in the photo.” She moved the pages around, as if maybe one might be covered by another. “I had hoped there was a photo taken after they removed her body. But I don’t see one.”

  I didn’t, either. “Where do you want to start?”

  “The report said the call came in at 10:38 pm. The caller identified herself as living across the street. See here?” Piper pointed.

  I opened my file to find the same sheet. I could read it easier while holding it than looking across the table.

  “Apparent suicide. She went out to check because she saw the car parked there earlier and noticed it still there with the lights on. I thought she said she heard gunshots. I don’t see that here.”

  Piper picked up the paper. “Oh, it’s on the next page. She says she heard what she thought were gunshots earlier in the evening but didn’t think anything of it because someone was always shooting.”

  “It is out in the country. All those houses are on at least ten to twenty acres, some even more. Lots of horses. And the land across the road, where Edie’s car was parked, is all fenced for cattle. No homes, at least not until you get a little way down the road.”

  Piper picked up her iPad off the corner of the table. She typed in something, then tapped and swiped a few times before showing me the screen. “Google Maps street view. Sure would be helpful if it updated every few minutes.”

  I looked at the area she had on the screen. The caller’s house had tall hedges, like a windbreak, at the front of her property. So how did she see the car? I looked a little closer to see the driveway, where Edie’s car was parked was at an angle. If the woman looked out what appeared to be her kitchen window, she would definitely have noticed the headlights.

  “Imagine walking out to the car to see if the person needed help, and finding this,” I said.

  “What I don’t understand is why she’d go out there alone in the first place. I’m a cop and I carry, so I’d have no issue. Did this woman carry a weapon? Would you go out in the dark on a country road to see if you could help without being armed?” Piper crossed her arm in front of her and rested her elbow on her other forearm as she sipped her coffee.

  I didn’t have the heart to point out Piper was no longer a cop, so I let that one go.

  “I’d send Nick out,” I said. “But if I was alone, I’d do it. But only because I’d be armed.”

  “Maybe she was. It’s not in the 911 call. She said she shined a flashlight and saw the woman, then she looked and saw the gun in her lap.”

  “In her lap?” I looked at the images of Edie. “I don’t see a gun on her lap.”

  Piper looked closer. “You’re right. The only photo with the gun is on the console.”

  “She could have worded it wrong. I mean, she’d just found a dead body; she probably wasn’t thinking straight.” And the console was close to her lap, I thought.

  “Clive talked about her not wanting to be found this way. But she didn’t blow her face off. It’s as if she deliberately angled the gun to only blow out the back of her head.”

  “Her hand is still on the gun. Is that weird?” I asked.

  “It depends. I mean, if she shot herself, she might not have completely dropped the gun as her hand dropped. Being in a sitting position when she died would make a difference. If she’d been standing and fell backward, or even forward, and still had the gun in her hand, I’d be extremely suspicious.”

  “Good point,” I said.

  Looking at the photos of the area around the crime scene, I saw footprints, but there looked to be more than one set. The responding officer may have tried to get into the car from the passenger side. That would dirty up a crime scene. Then I
looked at the images from the car.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. I filled my coffee cup and walked down the hall to Lydia’s office.

  “How’s it coming along?” I asked.

  Lydia looked up from her computer screen. “Slow going. I’m not getting much from her Facebook profile. I’m not sure why, but she unfriended me. I’m waiting for Charles to help me hack into her accounts and her phone.”

  “That’s too bad. But it’s never really easy, is it?”

  “Not for us, it seems.”

  “I wanted to ask you a question about Edie,” I said.

  Lydia raised her brows as if to say, “Go ahead.”

  “I know she was fastidious about her appearance, but was her house clean?”

  Lydia’s brows immediately dropped down. “That’s a weird question.” I could see her thinking about it. “I don’t ever remember her house being dirty. But she did have a cleaning service.”

  “What about her car? Did you ever ride in the car with her?”

  “Sure I did. Many times. She hated to be a passenger, so if we went places together, we took her car. I remember I hated that yellow Mercedes she had. Now I think she has the same color car, but BMW. Tight little two-seater. I always felt like we’d be squashed if we ever got in an accident.”

  “Was it clean?”

  “Yes. I can say that for a fact. She had it detailed once a month and kept it spotless. She didn’t want the people at the car detailing place to think she was a pig. She even had a vinyl garbage bag next to the console on the passenger side. It attached with Velcro.”

  Interesting.

  “Thanks. I’ll let you get back to it.” I turned to leave.

  “Why? What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Nothing yet. We’re looking at photos of the scene.”

  I sipped my coffee and walked at the same time, taking my life into my own hands and nearly tripping on the threshold between the hallway and the dining room.

  “You okay?” Piper asked as I bounded toward the conference table trying to catch my balance.