Perish

by Lisa Black

  “Of course,” Jack agreed.

  “At least Natalie would. Hannah, I might have to take a page from Joanna’s book and bribe the admissions office. But then I’d buy a yacht and sail around the world.”

  “You don’t know how to sail,” Jack guessed.

  “Doesn’t matter. With that kind of money I’d have a crew of twenty … a captain, a navigator, a babe in a corset whose only job would be to bring me a beer whenever I wanted one.”

  Jack paged through the contents of the small filing cabinet, again, looking for anything related to defaults, bank accounts, or Carter & Poe. “And leave the PD? You’d miss it.”

  Riley laughed uproariously at that one. “Sorry, partner, but I’d be out of that place so fast I’d litter the linoleum with skid marks. I’d call my pension rep from the marina to get the paperwork started. I might leave a Post-it on your desk to say good-bye.”

  “What, I’m not invited on this yacht?”

  “Sure you are. Anytime. It looks like she’d been making steady deposits to this account, nearly every month. This could be her salary, you think? Bonuses?”

  “Mearan certainly didn’t think so.”

  Riley moved on to the credenza. “Boy toy may not have known as much as he thinks he did.”

  “Lauren Schneider disavowed any knowledge as well,” Jack reminded him.

  “That type would disavow having been born. Though if it were legit she’d have no reason to. Besides, Joanna had her salary directly deposited into this account”—he held up a form—“at Ameritrust. Regular checking, regular savings.”

  “But how could Joanna embezzle that much from her own company without anyone knowing it? Yeah, she was the boss and yeah she was a control freak, but—”

  Jack heard the click of a closing door, somewhere in the house. He and Riley both stared at the open doorway; in unison their hands fell to gun butts and holsters unsnapped. Jack moved toward the hallway, his steps silent and quick. If someone had come in, the same someone who had brutally murdered two women, they needed to exercise extreme caution. If someone had just left, then he was getting away while they dawdled.

  The department’s victim advocate suddenly appeared in the doorway, startling them both.

  “Sorry,” she said, a small woman with bird-like movements and uncontrollably curly blond hair. “The door was open. I didn’t mean to scare you, you big, tough homicide detectives.”

  “Super tough,” Riley confirmed, resecuring his weapon. “We chew bullets for breakfast.”

  “I’ve got the victim’s sister here.”

  “Here?”

  “She appeared at my desk practically the minute I set the phone down. Says she was passing through the state anyway. She wanted to see the house, so we were going to do a drive-by… but then I saw your car and that the seal had been broken. Okay if I let her in? Do you guys want to talk to her?”

  “Yes, we want to talk to her,” Riley said.

  “Her sister’s blood is all over the living room,” Jack warned. Victim advocates didn’t usually play chauffer, but this one had a particularly soft heart.

  “I’ll put her in the kitchen, then,” she said, and disappeared again. The detectives looked at each other, dropped their papers, and followed.

  But the sister from Iowa had not waited on the porch. They found her in the living room, gazing down at the blackened, flaky blood that had spilled from her sibling’s macerated body. Jessica Moorehouse had the roots of Joanna’s dark hair as well as her sister’s eyes and pale skin and height, but Jessica’s frame seemed more wiry than slender, and she had, not recently, bleached the dark tresses to a dried-out straw color. She didn’t quite have her sister’s flair for simple designs, wearing instead blue jeans with a complicated pattern of deliberate tears and bright new ballet flats. From the breast pocket of a print T-shirt both plunging and tight enough to restrict breathing she pulled a white handkerchief trimmed in lace. “Is this where she died? My sister?” she asked as soon as they entered the room.

  “Yes,” Riley said. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

  She pressed the handkerchief to her nose.

  “If you’re feeling up to it, we’d like to ask you some questions about Joanna.”

  “Have you arrested anybody?”

  “No, not yet.”

  She glanced at the floor again, then around the room. Abruptly she moved away from the bloodstains and circled around the leather sofa, eyeing the areas that hadn’t been stained. Next she moved over to the vast windows and their view of the shore. “How does that work with lakes? Does she own all the way to the Canadian border?”

  The victim advocate exchanged a look with the cops. “Just the waterfront, I believe.”

  “And this is Joanna’s outright? No mortgage?”

  The VA said, “No, she paid cash. Somewhat ironically for a woman who founded a home mortgage business.”

  Jessica Moorehouse turned from the window with a deep breath. “Well, Joanna always said real estate was the best investment a body could make. I’ll be happy to tell you anything I can, Officers. I want you to find who killed my big sister.”

  *

  They settled her in the kitchen, on the other side of the house. The VA got her a glass of water and then went out to her car to return some phone calls. Jessica Moorehouse sat at the head of the large table, showing a brave face to the detectives but unable to keep her gaze on them. Instead it darted to every inch of the kitchen as if memorizing the space, from the granite countertops to the intricate light fixture.

  “Thank you for getting here so quickly,” Jack said.

  “Oh, no prob. As I said, I was passing through anyway, on my way to visit a cousin in Maine. I’d been thinking of dropping in on Joanna, since I hadn’t seen her in a while. But I didn’t have this address. This new address.” Looking down and giving a little sniff, she added, “I guess I was too late.”

  “The VA said it had been ten years since you’d heard from Joanna?” Riley asked.

  “I’m sure it hadn’t been that long. Maybe five, probably less. She’d call—we’d call each other once in a while. But we hadn’t visited in a number of years, no. We’re not a very good family for keeping in touch. Too busy, I guess.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “Ballpark. One year, four years?”

  “I really couldn’t say,” she repeated, and pressed the handkerchief to a pair of eyes that, Jack now realized, were utterly dry.

  “Okay. Whenever it was, what was going on in her life? Did she express concern about any aspect of it?”

  “No … the usual sister chitchat, you know.” She seemed fascinated with the stainless steel side-by-side with the subzero drawer.

  “Did she talk about her boyfriend?”

  “Joanna was never the kiss-and-tell type.”

  “What about Sterling?”

  She drummed the chewed fingernails of one hand on the tabletop. “Who’s Sterling?”

  “Her company,” Riley said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, of course! Sorry, my brain was still on boyfriends. She didn’t talk to me about work—I never had a head for figures. Except my own,” she said, and gave them a good look at what there was of it as she abruptly stood. “Joanna and me … we didn’t grow up in a place like this. Hell, we couldn’t have imagined a place like this. I was ten before Mama had the cash to buy half a trailer—before that it was falling-down motels and abandoned buildings. We lived for three years in a condemned hotel. Believe it or not, that was the nicest place I remember. Somehow one of the guys who lived there—we weren’t alone, the place was full of families—kept the water turned on no matter what the water company did, and sometimes we had electricity. Joanna and I caught the school bus on the next corner even though we weren’t on the driver’s roster. They weren’t so fussy about those things back then. We didn’t leave until the city tore the place down. The trailer,” she
continued as she began to open cabinets, examining their contents, “we had to share with another lady and her two boys. They were younger than me and Jo but tough little shits, made picking on us their purpose in life. Jo and I finally caught the older one alone and dragged him out into the woods, beat half the life out of him. He told his mama some boys had done it, wouldn’t admit it was girls. But they stopped teasing us. We even got to be sort of friends after a while.” She pulled a heavy plate out from a shelf, held the plain white saucer in her fingers, smoothing a thumb over the surface. “He probably would have been my first baby daddy if his ma hadn’t died and they had to go live with their dad. Who promptly kicked them out anyway.”

  “And Joanna—” Riley prompted, trying to speed up this trip down hardscrabble memory lane.

  But Jessica didn’t seem in any hurry, exploring each cabinet as if they held royal jewels instead of pots and pans, some with the price tags still attached. “Jo got old enough to get a job at a grocery store. She started bagging but then worked in the office.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Fourteen. She looked a lot older. She figured that was why the manager hired her, but he never tried any funny stuff, she said.” She laughed, fingering a coffee mug. “She’d have cut him in half if he’d tried. Joanna might have been tough, but she was no slut. She could have ruled our little town if she wanted to, could have gotten the mayor into her bed with a glance, but she didn’t care about that. All she wanted to do with our little town was get the hell out of it.” She shut the last cabinet. “Can’t blame her for that. I wanted that too, but where did I go? She always was stronger than me.” She ran her fingers along the polished counter, feeling its hard surface. “But, on the other hand, I’m still alive.”

  None of this seemed helpful. Jack said, “So she moved to LA?”

  “Headed west. Only she didn’t care about getting into the movies, just getting a job. I don’t know how she came here, to Ohio.” She opened a drawer and loose silverware rattled, adding, “I’m sure she told me, but I don’t remember.”

  “Can you remember anything she mentioned about her life, about Sterling Financial, any legal issues?”

  The dark roots quivered as her head came up. “What legal issues?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to determine, if she had any worries in her life.”

  “No. Nothing. We … we mostly talked about family things. Our cousins. Kids we went to school with, that sort of thing.”

  And how were you talking, Jack thought, when there were no Iowa area codes in Joanna’s call history, no family e-mails, and she didn’t have a Skype or Facebook account.

  Unless she had a second phone that the killer had taken with him. “What phone number did you call to talk to Joanna?”

  “I … can’t remember the number offhand. I had her in my contacts.”

  “Can you show us? We need to make sure that we’re aware of all of Joanna’s telephone numbers.”

  A hand went to her left butt cheek as if to protect the rectangular piece of electronics resting there. “I got a new phone a few weeks ago. The contacts didn’t transfer right, so I’ve actually lost Joanna’s number…. That was one of the reasons I planned to stop by on my way to Maine.”

  Except that she had neither an address nor a phone number to “stop by” to. “Uh-huh.”

  Jessica peeked into the garage, scanning that area. “Have you … found … ?”

  “Who killed her? We’re working very hard on that.”

  She faced them, handkerchief forgotten. “A will. Did Jo leave a will?”

  “We haven’t found one. But then we weren’t looking for one.”

  “She didn’t marry, had no children, right? That lady told me that.”

  “As far as we know, but that’s up to the probate court to determine.”

  “But without a will this all goes to next of kin, right? That’s me.”

  “Your mother,” Riley said, standing as well. They might as well give up on this interview. Obviously Joanna had had no contact with her sister since walking out of the family trailer ten years earlier.

  “And me,” Jessica repeated, examining the alarm panel. She opened the hinged door and peered at the controls.

  “I believe Ohio law says next of kin is parent, before sibling. But as I said, that’s probate’s department.”

  Jessica closed the alarm panel with a snap. “Didn’t I tell you? Mama passed,” Jessica assured them. “Not very long ago.”

  “Sorry for your loss,” Riley said automatically. Jack said nothing.

  “Thank you. You’re so kind. So there’s this house, and that Beamer in the garage, and—what about bank accounts? How much did she have in the bank?”

  “I really couldn’t say,” Jack told her, and if she caught the sarcasm she gave no sign. He didn’t even have to signal his partner to know that they would not be mentioning the remaining millions in the Banco de Panama. If it had been illegally siphoned from Sterling it would have to be repatriated. No point letting Jessica Moorehouse salivate over a sum she may not receive. “Again, that’s up to the probate court to research and determine.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How long will that take?”

  Riley said, “We don’t know. Thank you for your time, Miss Moorehouse.”

  “Okay,” she said easily. “Good-bye.”

  “I’m afraid you have to leave as well. We’re not authorized to turn over the keys—”

  “But this place is mine now,” she stated, in a voice turned to stone.

  “Not officially, I’m afraid. We have not released it as a crime scene, and after that it’s up to the Medical Examiner’s office. They will let you know when you can take possession.”

  Anger pushed aside all pretense of grieving. “But this is my place now. I need to stay here. I’m not paying for a hotel when there’s this huge house all empty. Where’s the sense in that?”

  “We’re trying to find who murdered your sister,” Riley reminded her. “This is still a crime scene. We can’t allow you to remain.”

  Her face flushed, but she had been beaten back often enough in life to know which battles to pick. “All right. Fine. Just snap it up.”

  She stalked past them without another word and marched out to the driveway, her new shoes making snapping sounds along the tile and concrete. The victim advocate now stood in front of the car but Jessica ignored her to throw herself into the passenger seat.

  “You didn’t make a friend,” the VA observed.

  Riley said, “I think she expected to haul her suitcase up the front steps as soon as we left. She said the mother is dead.”

  “She is? I didn’t see a death certificate while checking vitals. When?”

  “Miss Jessica didn’t say. Frankly, she didn’t say much. How quickly did she get here after you called?”

  “I swear it was overnight. I didn’t locate a number for her until after quitting time, and she showed up at my desk bright and early this morning.”

  “How long does it take to drive from Iowa?” Riley asked Jack.

  “Never been there,” Jack said, which wasn’t entirely true. Actually it wasn’t true at all, but that would be another memory lane that did not need a stroll right this minute. “It would depend where in Iowa, but she could probably do it overnight.”

  Riley said, “Or she was already here, stops by like she says to look up dear old sis, realizes dear old sis has been holding out on her and isn’t interested in letting country-girl sibling hone in on her new sophisticated lifestyle. They argue, baby sis knows exactly who’s going to inherit…. I can totally see this chick getting funky with a butcher knife. She’s probably slaughtered hogs by the dozens.”

  The VA laughed. “Okay, living in Iowa doesn’t automatically mean living on a farm.”

  “Do me a favor anyway—you talked to the deputies in that town, to make the notification?”

  “Yes.”

  “Call them back. Ask them if Jessica was in town yes
terday, and if Mama is, in fact, dead. If she’s still breathing then they need to seriously consider protection before Ma has an accidental fall or eats some bad toadstools.”

  “That’s a bit … imaginative.”

  Riley threw a dark glance toward the car’s occupant. “Hog slaughterer.”

  “And,” Jack said, still reasoning out the homicides, “how would she even know Tyra? Or have any motive to kill her?”

  “To cover the motive. Make it look like it’s all about Sterling and that missing six hundred million.”

  “How many million?” the VA asked.

  “Never mind. Just make sure we know exactly where baby sister is staying, her current address, everything. Please. I don’t want her disappearing.”

  The VA nodded toward the mansion’s facade. “She thinks she’s going to inherit that. Take my word for it, we couldn’t budge that girl out of Cleveland with a crowbar and baby oil.”

  Chapter 17

  Maggie drove back from the Medical Examiner’s office, where she had picked up Tyra Simmons’s fingernail scrapings and clothing tapings. The clouds had parted without actually raining, leaving the baking earth with a sense of incompleteness.

  Her route took her past Sterling’s offices, where the usual group of about fifteen protesters thronged the sidewalk—with two additions. Ned Swift stood at their forefront, facing a pale Anna Hernandez. The chat did not look friendly.

  Maggie hesitated. She needed to get back to the lab and spare some time to prepare for whatever Gerry Graham’s defense attorney decided to throw at her—she could not let some fast-talking shyster bamboozle the jury. But before she knew it she had pulled the car to the curb and joined Anna, the sun and the protesters’ stares equally glaring. They were hot, tired, and frustrated.

  Thus, she entered the argument in the middle. “… rewarded fat Wall Street firms by bailing them out,” Ned finished.

  Anna said, “Would you have preferred to jump back to the early thirties, when thirty-eight percent of banks failed because credit dried up? Everyone knows recessions are even worse when people and businesses already have high debt levels. Collapsing consumer spending sent production and employment reeling. Someone had to spend, and that was the government.”