“Would you mind if my partner and I conducted a little experiment?”
Rhea looked at her husband, back to Madison. “What is it?”
“I’d like you and I to go where you were when you heard the noise, and Detective Grant will knock on the different doors you have. Then you can tell me if any of them sound like what you heard that night.” Madison realized there was the risk Rhea would confirm the sound out of desire rather than it actually being the noise, but it was worth a shot. Madison looked at Terry and nudged her head at him. “I’ll call you once we’re in position. Mrs. Bernstein?”
Rhea set her mug on the coffee table in front of her and led Madison down the hall to the master bedroom. Really, it was a suite with a small walk-in closet and a private bath complete with double sinks, jetted tub, and shower stall. A transom ran above three large windows on the back wall. To the right was an exterior door, and beside it, the entrance to the bathroom. That’s where Rhea stopped.
“I was right here.”
Madison called Terry on his cell phone and told him to knock on the door off the lower deck. She watched Rhea as Terry pounded in varying rhythms and heaviness. “Any of those sound like what you heard in the morning?”
Rhea’s eyes were closed, and she shook her head.
“Try the door on the upper deck, Terry,” Madison told him.
A few seconds later, Terry knocked on that door.
“That the sound?” Madison asked Rhea, and again she shook her head. “Okay, Terry. Thanks.” She was disappointed as she had convinced herself Carson had tried to wake the Bernsteins for help.
“That! That right there,” Rhea declared.
Madison looked out the window. Terry was climbing down the wooden staircase.
“I’m certain that’s the noise I heard.”
“Okay,” Madison said to Rhea and stepped into the hall. In her phone to Terry, she added, “Mrs. Bernstein heard someone on the back stairs. Is there any sign of blood?” She thought she’d ask, but she wasn’t too confident that the answer would be positive, given the rain.
“Not that I see,” Terry replied, “but I’ll have Cynthia and Mark take a look.”
“Sounds good. You might as well come back in.” Madison returned to Rhea.
She was looking at Madison with wide, wet eyes. “What does this mean?”
It would seem Carson had climbed the stairs to knock on the back door. There would be no easy way to tell the woman that Carson had likely tried to get their help, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie either. She laid it out as kindly as she could.
“I could have…” Rhea sobbed, and Oliver entered the room.
Seeing him made Madison curious, though. “You didn’t hear anything in the night, early this morning?” She’d asked him before but thought she would again.
“Once I’m asleep, I’m out,” Oliver said.
“She tried to get us, Olie.” Rhea put her arms around her husband, and he held on to her.
Madison told him it was likely that she’d knocked and the sound his wife had heard was Carson going back down the stairs.
Oliver’s chin quivered, and he drew his wife tighter to himself.
“You can’t blame yourselves for any of this. Do you hear me?” Madison asked.
The couple nodded.
“Please keep us informed.” Oliver pulled back from his wife.
“I’ll do my best, and call me if you need anything.” With that, Madison saw herself through the house. She found Estelle sitting in the front room, staring off into space. “There’s no reason you have to stay,” Madison told her. “Officers will remain on the premises for a while yet.”
The Bernsteins joined them. Terry was standing in the breezeway by the back door. Madison gestured to him that she’d be there shortly.
Estelle’s gaze went to the couple, and her brow pinched with concern. She glanced at Madison, but she didn’t say anything.
“She’s right, Estelle,” Oliver said. “You can leave if you’d like.”
“Thank you, Oliver, but I’m good to stay a bit longer.” Estelle rubbed her arms.
Madison went out the front door with Terry, and they convened in the driveway. She noted that Terry had arrived in a department car, whereas she’d come in her own Mazda. “Want to follow me home? I’ll drop off my car.”
“Sure.” Terry turned to leave.
“Actually, let’s meet up at the station.” Truth was she didn’t want to run into Troy and possibly get sucked into a conversation. She just needed to keep moving with this case because the clock was ticking.
“That your final answer?” he teased.
“Yeah. And it would be great if you could pull the report on Carson so it’s ready for when I arrive.”
“Yes, your majesty.” Terry smirked and bowed.
“Cut it out.” She kept Terry around for several reasons, but he was certainly good for entertainment.
“You said that Higgins was sending it to you, though, didn’t you?”
“Would be nice to see it on paper.”
“Fine.” He went on his way.
As she was pulling away from the house, she thought about how unpredictable life could be. Alive one minute, gone the next. She doubted anyone woke up thinking, Today’s the day I die. Plans were always on the horizon, as if people preferred to play in a world without acknowledging death. It wasn’t until it slapped them in the face that people were reminded of their mortality. Otherwise, most harbored fantasies of beating or outsmarting the Grim Reaper. But poor Chantelle Carson had failed, and Madison doubted she ever would have envisioned herself stabbed and bleeding out in a shed.
-
Eight
Madison beelined for her desk, her mind on the top right-hand drawer and her stash of Hershey’s bars. If she just ate one, it should be enough to hold her for a while. It was going on six thirty, and despite the onset and offset of nausea, she could eat, just not anything too heavy. She rummaged in the drawer, pulled out a bar and tore the wrapper back.
“Why am I not surprised?” Terry was walking toward his desk, which faced hers.
“Never mind. Did you print the report?” She bit off some chocolate.
“No, I thought I’d just lay my head down, catch a couple winks while I waited on you.”
“Your sarcasm is alive and well.”
“I learn from the best. That’s you, just in case you needed a clue.”
“Very funny.”
“Are you really eating a chocolate bar for dinner?”
She laughed. Terry, her food monitor. “I’m not sure why that would surprise you.” They’d been partners going on eight years, and for that length of time, she’d always had a chocolate—more specifically, a Hershey’s—addiction.
“I was hoping we’d stop somewhere, hit a drive-thru on the way to the ex-husband’s—”
“Because that’s so much healthier.” She mumbled, “Vegetable,” just before taking another bite of heaven.
“If that’s what you have to tell yourself to soothe your conscience.”
She scowled at him while her mouth was full of gooey milk chocolate. “Ymm,” she moaned and closed her eyes.
“You really have a problem. You know that?”
“Whatev—” She chomped on another chunk. “Ymm.”
Terry shook his head. “While you masticate that bar like a—”
She stopped chewing, her glare daring him to finish his sentence.
“In direct answer to your question, yes, I printed the background on Carson.”
She finished her mouthful and looked at Terry. “And?”
“Carson got divorced eight months ago. She and her husband have had separate addresses for a couple years. He stayed in Deer Glen where the couple had lived together for twenty-seven years, and she moved to
a house in Rosedale after their separation, until two months ago when she moved into an apartment in the east end.”
Deer Glen and Rosedale were both high-end communities in the north end of Stiles. It was the type of suburbia that employed groundkeepers and maids.
“What made her move?” she asked.
“Not something the report tells us.”
“Smart-ass. Was she fired or—”
“Not from what I can see. She started working at Southern Life around the time of her separation, and it looks like she was still there.”
“Those reports aren’t always up-to-date.”
“Well, there’s no way we can drop by and confirm her employment at this time on a Saturday.”
“They’re an insurance company, yes? So, what if a customer needs to make a claim? There has to be a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week number.”
“Sure, but it’s not like anyone at the call center could verify Carson’s employment. We’ll need to wait until Monday and go into their local office.”
She hated to concede that he was right. “What about her ex-husband, what does he do?”
“He’s some bigwig manager with Stiles Insurance Company.”
“They’re huge.”
“Yep. Boasted sales into the high eight figures last year.”
“What I’m stuck on is…it seems the wife went to work for the competition. Because insurance was what she knew, or to stick it to her husband in some way? Where did she work before Southern Life?”
“For Stiles Insurance Company, but that’s going back twenty-five years.”
“And she was married for how long?”
“Twenty-three.”
“You said they lived together for twenty-seven years, so that means she left her job…” She really hated math.
“It would have been around the same time as when they got married.”
“Okay. Well, they must not have needed her money.”
“I’d say not. Bill Carson doesn’t need to work either. He has a net worth of eleven mil.”
“All from selling insurance?”
Terry shook his head. “Family money. He inherited when his parents died. Bill would have been fifteen.”
“Quite a fall for Chantelle Carson to go from living the lifestyle of the rich and famous to an apartment in the east end.”
“I’d say.”
“So, what took her there? You said she had a nice place in Rosedale even after they separated, yet she took a job almost right away. Maybe more to keep busy than for the money? We need to notify Bill Carson, but we also need to ask him some questions.”
“I agree.”
If she wasn’t deeply rooted to her chair, she might have toppled over—Terry had actually agreed with her on something. “Did the couple have any kids?”
“Nope. And her parents are gone. But I’ve got Bill’s address already in my phone, and I’d be happy to tell you where to go.”
She stuffed a big piece of chocolate into her mouth and spoke. “I’m sure you would.”
“Oh—” Terry moaned in disgust and held up a hand to block his view of her.
She got up, taking what was left of the bar, and headed to the station lot. She didn’t know what she’d do without Terry in her life. He really was like the brother she never had, and it was so easy to get him riled up.
-
Nine
Madison was driving with Terry to Bill Carson’s when her phone rang. She silently cursed. She’d escaped all talk with Sergeant Winston down at the station—a miracle—but she might have gotten excited too soon. She glanced at the caller ID. It wasn’t Winston, but it was someone else she really didn’t want to talk to right now.
“You going to get that?” Terry prompted from the passenger seat.
“Didn’t think you liked it when I talked on the phone and drove.”
“Since when does what I think stop you from doing anything?”
“Fair point.” She’d smirk if her stomach wasn’t clenched tight. With each trill of her phone, she felt stabbed with remorse. It was Troy, and she was ignoring him. She’d never done anything like that before. The ringing stopped, and she took a deep breath. “See, they’ll get voicemail, leave a message…”
“Please tell me that you didn’t just ignore Winston.”
“The guy might irritate the shit out of—sorry, crap—out of me, but I’m smart enough to take his calls.”
“If it wasn’t him, then who was it?”
She pulled into Carson’s driveway, shut off the ignition, and got out of the car.
“So?” Terry was at her heels.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?” She really wanted to tell her partner to mind his own business, but then he’d immediately go to her personal life, and she didn’t want to shine the spotlight there.
The house was a gray-brick mansion with a two-story entrance and columns banking each side of the door. Large windows yawned into the night, and light from inside pooled out to the front lawn. Anyone in the front room would have been on stage, but no one was there now.
She pressed the doorbell and tapped a foot.
“It couldn’t have been a business call,” Terry said, prattling on. “If it was Cynthia or someone else from the lab or— Oh.”
She pushed the ringer again, refusing to look at Terry.
“It was your mother?”
Good guess. She and her mother didn’t see eye to eye on most things—most being marriage and babies.
“Was it—”
“It’s none of your—”
The door cracked open, and a woman was standing there in a black-and-white maid’s uniform.
Madison held up her badge. “Detectives Madison Knight and Terry Grant of the Stiles PD. We’d like to speak with William Carson.”
The woman’s brow pinched, and she looked back and forth between them.
“Bill Carson, ma’am,” Terry said.
She slowly looked at Terry, and her face softened. “Yes, just one minute, please.” She closed the door in their faces, and Madison glanced at Terry.
Madison said, “I just assumed that Bill was short for—”
“That’s the problem with assume. You make an ass out of you and—”
The door opened again, and a trim man in his fifties stood there, dressed in formal slacks and a white, collared shirt. The top three buttons were undone, and his tie was loosened around his neck. He studied the two of them and slipped his hands into his pockets.
“Mr. Bill Carson?” she asked to confirm.
“That’s me, and you are police detectives?”
“Yes. I’m Detective Knight, and this is Detective Grant.” Madison gestured to Terry. “There’s something we need to tell you. Do you have someplace we could sit?”
“Sure.” He stepped back to let them inside.
A tiered chandelier dripped over the entry, its lights twinkling through the crystals and casting small rainbows on the walls. The flooring was travertine and polished to a high shine. She could use her missing sunglasses again.
“Someplace to sit?” she prompted Bill when he hadn’t moved.
Bill Carson regarded them with curiosity but relinquished with a nod and led them to the “stage.” He sat on a cream-colored sofa, and Madison and Terry dropped into two facing chairs.
“We have some bad news about your ex-wife, Chantelle.” Madison stopped talking when a teenage girl entered the room. Madison glanced at Terry. He’d said that Bill and Chantelle didn’t have children.
“Tiffany, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Bill told the girl, his voice stiff.
Tiffany let her gaze linger on Madison and then Terry, but eventually she left in the direction from which she’d come.
“Sorry about the interruption,” Bill said, matching g
azes with Madison.
“Beautiful girl,” Madison began. “She’s your—”
“Stepdaughter. Well, not legally yet, but I’m engaged to her mother. We all live here together, so I think of her as—” Bill waved a hand. “Never mind all that. You said you have bad news about Chantelle?”
“She was found stabbed to death this afternoon.” Notifications were best delivered without any sugarcoating. The worst responsibility of the job, and she and Terry used to take turns, but lately it always seemed to be her.
Bill blew out a puff of air and leaned forward. “I don’t know what to say.” He met Madison’s eyes, and his were full of tears. “When was she—” He pinched his nose, sniffled and dropped his hand.
“She was stabbed between nine last night and two this morning.” Though if Carson had tried the Bernsteins’ door, that timeline would more accurately be between midnight and one thirty. “From what we could see, you’re her next of kin. Her parents are dead, and she didn’t have any siblings, and you never had children together.”
“No.” Bill raked a hand through his hair and bit his bottom lip. “Not for the lack of trying. She wanted kids, but it just wasn’t meant to be, I guess. She couldn’t have them, and she was devastated by that.”
“Is that what led to your separation and eventual divorce?” Madison was trying to paint a picture of Chantelle Carson’s life.
“It would be easier on me if I said yes, but it wouldn’t be the truth. Maybe it curdled under the surface, existed in the words that went unspoken, but that time of our lives passed us by. I poured myself into work, and Chantelle managed the organization of numerous charity events and benefits.”
“For business or…” Madison prompted.
“Personal interest. She took her responsibility toward the community seriously. She often said that we all need to do our part, and if we don’t, we have no right to complain.”
“Sounds like she was a smart woman,” Terry interjected.
Bill looked at him. “She was.”
“Then why did you end up getting divorced?” Madison asked.
Bill’s face became hard angles and shadows. “I fell in love with Stephanie. I’d like to say it was because things between Chantelle and I were rough, but…”
What We Bury Page 4
