Below the Surface

by Karen Harper

  The funeral director had asked Bree and Amelia if they would like to view the body before closing the casket, but they’d both declined. Bree wanted to shut out the horrid picture of how Daria had looked when they’d found her body, and Amelia just repeated, “I can’t. I’m so sorry, so sorry…”

  Bree tried to concentrate on the service, but she kept wondering whether her attacker—and maybe Daria’s murderer—was here. Fred Holliman was the perfect height, but would a wig have stuck to his head after a fall in a ditch when his baseball cap came off? And that bruise on Ric’s cheek. She had no doubt Sam Travers would give everything he had to see Bree suffer as he had since Ted died. No, she was going crazy, carrying everything too far. Where was the line between self-protection and paranoia?

  Over Amelia’s protest, Bree had insisted the Salazars sit just behind their family. Manny was deeply grieved today, and his wife, Juanita, kept crossing herself. Lucinda sat next to her older sister, Carianne. Their family was all in black and wearing large crucifixes, even Lucinda.

  The members of the Clear the Gulf Commission were here and sitting together, except for Cole, who kept prowling the perimeter of the church and now was standing off to the side as if he’d been hired to keep order.

  The congregation sang “Eternal Father Strong To Save,” which Bree knew as the Navy Hymn, with its resonant, haunting chorus of “O, hear us when we cry to thee/ For those in peril on the sea.”

  Oh, yes, she could cry right now. Amelia was sobbing silently, her shoulders shaking despite the fact Ben had a firm grip of her left wrist. Bree clasped her other hand. Crying would do no good. It was finding out who had possibly hurt Daria and making that person pay that would bring some closure. Bree would find a way to forgive, but only after truth and justice had its way.

  She stared at Daria’s favorite diving mask on top of the casket. The diffused sun glinted strangely off the plastic as if two bright, unearthly eyes stared out from behind it. Someone here was wearing a mask. Someone here might be pretending to be grieving and be staring at her even now. Had Daria’s murderer meant to kill her, or was it an accident and he or she had simply fled before the boat was taken by the storm and bashed on the seawall? Had that same killer come after Bree? And the most terrifying thought of all: could the murderer have meant to kill Bree but mistook Daria for her twin?

  The benediction was from a Bible verse Bree and Daria had always liked because it seemed to them it asked for the Lord’s blessing on daily work. Starting out their business, they’d needed all the help they could get.

  “So teach us to number our days

  That we might have a heart of wisdom…

  And let the beauty of the Lord our God be

  upon us,

  And establish the work of our hands for us;

  Yes, establish the work of our hands.”

  After a final prayer, Pastor Wallace announced that everyone was invited to stay for a luncheon served by the women of the church here on the lawn, after which there would be a private burial for family only. Everyone stood while the pallbearers carried the casket to the hearse for now.

  Bree took Amelia’s arm and walked her inside, with Ben on her other side and both boys keeping close. Amelia was trembling so hard that Bree’s heart went out to her. She had denied coming into their apartment and searching Daria’s room for mementos. Bree believed her, but even that inquiry must have shaken Amelia. Her older sister must also be mourning the times she had never had with Daria, and the lack of precious memories to cherish.

  “I just can’t face everyone right now,” Amelia said, pulling away. “I’m going to ask the pastor if there’s someplace I can lie down.”

  “I’d go sit with you,” Bree said, “but someone besides Ben has to mingle.”

  “Yes, of course. Besides, everyone’s feeling sorry for you, not me.”

  “Amelia, I—”

  “It’s all right, Bree,” Ben said. “You boys stay with Aunt Bree until I get your mother settled down.”

  “Not much wailing and no kneeling, not like when Grandpa died,” Lucinda told her family in English as they ate sandwiches and salads on the lawn between the church and the bay. “Feels funny not to have a mass, too.”

  “It is their way, and it’s okay,” Manny told her.

  “Glad you can accept different ways of thinking and doing things,” Lucinda muttered.

  “Don’t start!” he said, shaking a finger in her face.

  “Don’t either of you start,” Juanita said. “She set you up for that one, sí? Let’s just get along today, all right? This the United States of America, and thanks to Bree, we accepted here right with the money and power people.”

  Manny just glared at Lucinda as he finished his lemonade. “Maybe when word gets out I’m Bree Devon’s partner, people ’round here won’t like that,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “When I went with Cole to that place I told you ’bout, if looks could kill, I be dead. And that backwoods bar not even up to Turtle Bay.”

  “Shh!” Juanita scolded. “It bad luck at a funeral talk about your own death. It mean, if you not die within the next year, the next of kin of this one buried today be dead.”

  Manny rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, mi Juanita, I see why our Lucinda want to run from our ways. Next you be telling me just ’cause this a sad day, our quinceañera for her be cursed. Let’s say adios to my partner Briana and head home, sí?”

  When they made their farewells, he was surprised that Bree and Lucinda hugged each other. And annoyed when he heard Bree say quietly to her, “Remember what I said, Cindi.”

  The ceremony at the grave site was blessedly brief, because Amelia was still a wreck and that was destroying Bree’s hard-won poise, too. They all walked to their cars. Ben put Amelia in theirs—the boys had gone home with a friend—when Bree said, “I’m staying until they close the grave.”

  Ben turned to face her. “It will depress you even more. You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know. But I came into the world with her, and I want to see her settled and at peace, as they say.”

  He took her arm and walked her away from his car. In the distance they could see the funeral director talking to the cemetery crew with their waiting backhoe.

  “Bree,” Ben said, obviously fighting to keep his patience, “she’s at peace. Now you have to work on that, too, not keep causing waves.”

  “That’s a good one,” she said. “Not causing waves.”

  “You know what I mean. I can tell you’re not really letting the dead be dead. I’m not the county prosecutor for nothing, and I can read between the lines about what you’ve been thinking all of a sudden. If you pursue a half-cocked murder scenario, you’re only going to get yourself upset or worse, hurt.”

  She pulled away from his hand on her arm and turned to face him squarely. She was tempted to tell him she’d been attacked, but she didn’t want him insisting she stay home or with Amelia. And what he’d just said almost sounded like a threat. “Hurt, meaning?” she asked.

  “To use another cliché, you’re going to stir up a hornet’s nest if you go around suspecting people of some sort of wrongdoing, accusing them—”

  “I will accuse them if I find out someone staged that so-called accident. I thought a county prosecutor might call a possible murder a little more than ‘some sort of wrongdoing.’”

  “Amelia said you think someone broke in and searched Daria’s room. If I get a CSI tech to come out there and take prints, will you lay off?”

  “I’d appreciate that. I was going to try to get the police to do that.”

  “I said, will you lay off then?”

  “No. Someone clever enough to pop the lock on my veranda doors and desperate enough to climb up onto the second story to do that needs to be stopped. But if CSI does turn up a set of prints other than mine or Daria’s, will you pursue it?”

  “Of course I will. Look, I’ll see if I can call in a favor and send someone over tonight.
We wanted to have you come back to the house, but Amelia needs to take a tranquilizer and go to bed. She’s never gotten over what she considered desertion by her mother, then her father.”

  “That’s not the way it was.”

  “But if she thinks it’s true, it’s reality to her, and I can’t risk her losing you on top of Daria. There’s my bottom line.”

  So he wasn’t actually threatening her. He was just worried about Amelia, and that was completely understandable.

  “And another thing,” he said, in what seemed a lame attempt to change the subject so she wouldn’t argue about Amelia and their father, “is Cole DeRoca.”

  “What about him? He only saved my life and has been more help to me than anyone. Please don’t tell Amelia that, but it’s true. Jordan and James like him and—”

  “I like him, too, but think about it. He’s overly possessive and protective of you, and you’ve only known him a week. I’m advising, in the emotional state you’re in, not to get either psychologically or physically involved with him.”

  That advice reminded her of what she’d just told Lucinda, but this was different. She was not some adolescent girl in rebellion against her parents.

  “Actually,” she told Ben, “I had met Cole once before. I even had lunch with him, but he was going through a divorce and nothing came of it right then.”

  “See, then he might be emotionally vulnerable right now. You know—the rebound effect.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Phil.”

  “I admit it’s a blessing that he found you on the beach and saved your life. But he’s too convenient. He’s always in the right place at the right time. His office and workshop are right next to the Grog Shop at the end of town, right?”

  “Yes. And?”

  “Are you positive he didn’t know Daria, if he’d bumped into you before?”

  “What are you implying? He knew of Daria, because he’s on the Clear the Gulf Commission. But we were given our assignment to observe and photograph the sea grass meadow without actually appearing before the commission. My report tomorrow will be the first time I’ve been there live, so to speak. Ben, you’re wrong about Cole. If I can’t trust him, I can’t trust anyone.”

  But those last words tasted bitter in her mouth. If she hadn’t known her own twin sister, her lifelong best friend, could she really trust a man she’d known only a week?

  16

  True to his word, Ben sent a CSI tech to Bree’s place that night. Foolishly, she had been expecting someone like she’d seen on the various TV shows featuring forensic scientists, but it was a young, plain, overweight woman. Her ID card hanging on a bright blue cord around her neck read Marilyn Davis but she asked Bree to call her Mari.

  “You’ll see this makes a bit of a mess,” Mari said as Bree led her toward Daria’s bedroom, “but I want to lift a lot of prints, then eliminate yours. If you have something you’re sure your sister touched—a glass in the bathroom you haven’t cleaned yet, something like that, I’ll eliminate hers, too. Oh, this place has really been tossed, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so. I had searched it earlier but someone else did, too, and those are the prints we hope to identify.”

  “Did you report the B and E—breaking and entering?” she asked as she tugged on latex gloves and got to work, leaving small pools of dark powder here and there.

  “No, because several people had keys. Evidently nothing of value has been taken that I could report.”

  “Okeydoke,” she said, her voice darkening with disapproval. Bree almost told her that Ben hadn’t suggested reporting it either, but it was none of her business.

  “You know,” Mari said, perhaps eager to change the subject, “I’ve never dusted a place where identical twins were involved. A lot of people figure they have identical prints, but that’s not so.”

  “We’ve been asked that more than once over the years,” Bree told her as she leaned in the entry to the bathroom and watched her work. “The prints are supposed to have similarities, though.”

  “True. Identicals have the same genetic makeup and their DNA is virtually indistinguishable, but fingerprints are not completely a genetic characteristic. They’re partly determined by each separate embryo’s environment in the uterus. Their ultimate shape can be influenced by position in the womb and a few other things I can’t recall from my forensic classes.”

  Bree went into the bathroom to get Daria’s drinking glass and gingerly took Daria’s mascara and powder from her makeup drawer. She could see visible prints on both plastic cases. Many more cosmetics were here than Bree had recalled her using, including seven tubes of lipstick, when she almost never wore that. But she was getting used to being surprised about her sister. There had been a man in her life she had not wanted to tell Bree about. She only hoped that she hadn’t done something that kept Daria from confiding in her. Surely, it was something about the man himself that made Daria remain silent, and she needed to find out what that was.

  She rifled through the rest of the cosmetics drawer but found nothing. Perhaps she’d find nothing, prove nothing. She was becoming more and more certain that someone had harmed—killed—Daria, and that now, somehow, she’d become a target, too. Her stomach fluttered in fear, but she beat the feeling down as she put the items in a towel and took them to Mari.

  She stared at the thin white gloves encasing Mari’s busy hands. Maybe the person who’d searched this room had worn gloves, too.

  “I appreciate your taking care of this so quickly,” Bree said, leaning in the doorway again. She couldn’t stand the silence in the room as Mari moved about like a ghost.

  “Orders from the top.”

  “My brother-in-law, Ben Westcott?”

  “Him and some other big brass.”

  “Josh Austin?”

  Bending intently over a brass pull of the dresser, she shrugged her shoulders, but admitted, “The whole CSI unit is amazed at how fast the autopsy report was completed and released. At least, most of it.”

  “What do you mean, most of it?”

  Mari straightened. Her eyes widened, as if she realized she’d overstepped, however much Bree knew about Ben and Josh pulling strings.

  “Probable cause of death was the key thing, that’s all.”

  “But what else wasn’t released yet?”

  “Forensics differs with different situations. I’m sure you’ll see everything in black and white soon.”

  She’d obviously clammed up. Was there something else about Daria’s death? Surely she had not been beaten or assaulted, because no one could pass that off as an accident. What else could an autopsy reveal? Could she have been hiding some sort of serious, even terminal, illness? Maybe if word of that got out it might look like she’d committed suicide and neither Ben nor Josh would want that. No, impossible. People with fatal diseases didn’t make appointments to get their teeth whitened. It all came back to the fact that Daria would never have left Bree alone out in the gulf. But, a little voice taunted her, the woman who died that day was not the woman you thought you knew.

  As soon as Mari finished and left with her collection of prints, Bree locked the place up tight and drove to Ben and Amelia’s. Good. Lights were still on in their spacious home. She hoped Ben hadn’t gone to bed, because she planned to question him about the rest of the autopsy report.

  She knocked instead of ringing the bell. The porch light clicked on, then off, and Ben opened the door. She gasped when she saw he held not only the evening paper but a pistol at his side.

  “Don’t mind this,” he said, putting it down on the table in the hall. “When I answer the door late at night, it’s just a precaution. In my position—”

  “In your position,” she interrupted, following him into the den, “you tend to play God.”

  “What? Did the CSI person come? What are you talking ab—”

  “Don’t blame her, but she let something slip about the rest of the autopsy report—you know, the rest of the story.”


  Leaning over the back of his tall, leather chair, he frowned. Hands on her hips, Bree faced him.

  “What about it?” he asked. “You and Amelia didn’t need to see all those chemical readouts of blood, bladder and stomach tests, ad infinitum, or diagrams of dissections. She wasn’t on drugs, she wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t ill, so—”

  “I want to see it, all of it.”

  “A lot of that stuff takes days. I thought it best if the family got her body back and had her laid to rest. The county medical examiner could have held her body for up to ten days when it needed to be embalmed, not just refrigerated, especially in this hot weather. There. You wanted the facts, you’ve got them. It was hard enough as is and didn’t need to be dragged out.”

  “I’d like to drag the truth out of you!”

  “Now look,” he said, pointing at her and raising his voice before he lowered it again. “My goal in all this—to protect Amelia first, and then you.”

  “Amelia, fine, but you have no right to make decisions for me or for Daria. And, of course, none of this has a thing to do with protecting your reputation, especially with the election less than two months away.”

  “That didn’t even enter my mind.”

  “Let’s say I partly believe that, but I want to see the autopsy report. Do you have a copy here?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m going to the Collier County Medical Examiner’s office first thing tomorrow, before I dive the Trade Wreck, and demand to see—”

  “All right, damn it,” he said, and finally came around his chair to slump in it. Bree was horrified to see how ashen and haggard he suddenly looked. It was as if he’d been drained of fight and energy. “You asked for this,” he said, “so just sit down and brace yourself. Swear to me you won’t spring this on Amelia, because she’s really shaken—grieving for all she’s lost over the years, as well as for Daria.”