“And Mrs. Becker knew that?”
“Of course she knew. We talked about it before she left. It didn’t look like a problem because like I said, she’d be back just before I would be leaving. We did this kind of thing all the time.”
“Go on.”
“Well, she decided to stay a little longer in Chicago. That’s where we blew it, because she apparently called and left a message on the answering machine, but I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t see it or you didn’t look?”
“I didn’t look.” Kensington shrugged. “Dumb, dumb, dumb, I know. Normally I do make a point of checking for messages, but I had Chicago on the brain. I’m getting a house up there and I have a man there to go with it—” she winked— “and I guess I wasn’t as together as I normally would be.”
Claudia doubted Kensington had ever demonstrated a truly together moment in her life, which looked to be about thirty-five years long. “So you took off before Mrs. Becker got home?”
“I did leave a note, you know,” she replied defensively. “I’m sure Barbara explained that much. I felt a little bad, leaving Henry and all, but I had a two-thirty flight and I had to boogie no later than eleven to make it. It’s not like the airport’s next door, and anyway, I thought she’d be back within a few minutes of me leaving.”
Dipshit. Irresponsible dipshit.
“What was Mr. Becker doing when you took off?”
“Well, he’d already had breakfast, but I left out a plate of crackers and cheese for him to snack on, and got him settled in front of the TV. He loved CNN, and he could watch for hours, so that’s what he was doing when I left. He wasn’t as far gone as you might think. He had memory glitches now and then, sure, but it’s not like he was in diapers yet or needed someone to wipe drool from his lips.”
“Apparently he was ‘gone’ far enough to wander clear across the golf course and drown in the canal.”
“But he strolled over there all the time! There and other places! I used to joke with him, called him the ‘traveling man.’ He loved that. No one could make that old goat get a little fire in his eyes like I could.” Kensington threw back her head and laughed. “Jeez, he was something, Henry was. Him and his toy trains . . . did you see them?”
Claudia nodded.
“Yeah, well that’s not the only thing he liked, old or not, Alzheimer’s or not.” She winked conspiratorially. “I think that’s why Barbara kept me around, you want to know the truth.”
“What are you saying? That you slept with him?”
“No! Don’t be ridiculous. I mean, sorry, but . . . no. Not that! But I would let him play a little peek-a-boo. That kind of thing.”
“And that was okay with Mrs. Becker? She knew?”
“Well, we didn’t exactly discuss it, but she must have. She sure didn’t keep me around just because of my nursing skills.”
“But my understanding is that you’d had experience with Alzheimer’s patients.”
Kensington rolled her eyes. “Yeah—to the extent that I worked as an aide in a nursing home for two months, which is as much as I could stand. Barbara knew that. What mattered more was that Henry liked me. He adored me. And as long as he was adoring me and didn’t need a high level of care yet, it was a situation that worked all around.”
“How did you and Mrs. Becker happen to meet?”
“Aren’t we really off the subject now?” Kensington looked at her watch. “No offense, but I have a ton of stuff to do this afternoon.”
“How’d you two meet?”
Kensington sighed dramatically. “At the nursing home. She didn’t know squat about Henry’s condition yet and had brought him in for a visit. I guess she wanted to get a feel for the home and see how Henry reacted just in case he wound up there. One of the staff people grabbed me to give the grand tour. Well, Henry hated the nursing home, but he loved the hell out of me. He flirted shamelessly—you know, like old men do—and I flirted right back. Barbara called me a couple weeks later and offered me a job. As the saying goes, it was too good to pass up.”
“So your job with the Beckers, it was all a money thing?”
“Mostly, sure. It’s not cheap to buy a house and the job paid more than I’d make anywhere else with my skills. But I liked Henry all right, and Barbara too. I wouldn’t have stayed when he hit the babble stage—I’m not the kind who can handle that—but as long as I only had to keep the old guy company, why not?”
Claudia closed her notebook. “Miss Kensington, will you be available if I have any follow-up questions?”
“I’ll be in and out.”
“But reachable?”
“Sure. Barbara can always get me.”
“All right. Thanks.” Claudia stood.
Kensington hooked her fingers around the glass of scotch and pushed away from the table. The ice tinkled like wind chimes. “Look, I hope you don’t think I’m just some kind of bloodsucking, money-grubbing insect, what with all I’ve told you. I did like Henry and I’m truly, truly sorry that he’s dead.” She set the glass on the table and walked Claudia to the front door. “I know he couldn’t have been long for the world, but . . . well, I miss him. He was a good guy.”
“You don’t need to persuade me of your good intentions, Miss Kensington. I just needed to clarify some points.”
“All right. Give a jangle if you need anything else.”
“I’ll do that. And tell Mrs. Becker I’m sorry I missed her.”
Kensington sang out what sounded to Claudia like “toodle-loo,” which gave her one more thing to dislike about the woman. She got in her car and followed the circular driveway around the fountain, then took a left onto the road. The Jag she’d seen before was just pulling into the Becker estate, and she gave a half wave. If the driver saw her—Adam, Alan, Aaron, something like that—he made no acknowledgement. Claudia sighed. Barbara Becker seemed like a bright enough woman, but evidently she was clueless when it came to picking friends.
* * *
Dark clouds were building in the east. Claudia stopped for a traffic light and debated whether to go straight to the station or swing by Farr’s trailer on a hunch. Most cops treated hunches with quiet reverence. An author whose name she didn’t recall had even written a book about them, drawing some kind of parallel between hunches and instincts. She vaguely remembered the author’s argument that human instincts weren’t dead, not exactly, but that they’d gone underground in direct proportion to technological and sociological advancements. Why sniff the air for danger when you could punch a code to set your alarm system at night? The book included helpful tips on how to flog instinct back to the surface, at which point Claudia stopped reading. Still, when the light turned green she headed toward Farr’s trailer. A half hour more on the road wouldn’t make her or break her.
Ten minutes later she pulled into the small clearing and got out of the car. She half expected to see cats skulking around, but either animal control truly had captured them all or the felines were smart enough to know their meal ticket was gone forever. The crime scene tape was still in place, which didn’t surprise her. If Raynor had come back to look for his glass or anything else, disturbing it would’ve raised a red flag. Even so, Claudia felt a tug of disappointment. She wanted clues, damn it. Clues the size of shoeboxes. Clues obvious enough that a rookie cop would recognize them.
Methodically, she made her way around the trailer, looking for anything, looking for nothing. Vague scuff marks on the ground might have been footprints, but the previous night’s rain rendered them too indistinct to know with any certainty. She turned and looked toward the woods. Raynor’s trailer wasn’t visible through the trees, but she knew it was an easy walk between the two homes and had half a mind to cross the distance herself. Those silent dogs, though . . .
He’d been here, she knew it. Knew it. Even if Booey hadn’t seen the flicker of a flashlight, it was in Raynor’s voice on the phone. He’d been here. He was looking for something.
Claudia gazed
around the clearing once more, then turned back to her car. She smiled ruefully. Whatever it was that had pulled her to the trailer felt a lot less like instinct or a hunch now, and a whole lot more like wishful thinking. Maybe she should write her own book.
Chapter 14
For the first time in days, laughter boomed from the chief’s office. Claudia hesitated outside his door, hand poised to knock, and watched him for a second. The door was open but Suggs was on the phone, his chair turned to the wall so that all she could see was his back. Interrupting his phone call didn’t bother her. Knowing she would be the one to cripple his good mood did. She glanced once at the page of notes in her hand and rapped twice. Suggs swiveled in his chair and waved her in.
“Yeah . . . yeah,” he said into the phone. “Just remember what I said about protection.” He laughed again, playfully rolled his eyes toward Claudia, then said to the caller, “Look, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later. Uh-huh. You too.”
He hung up and chuckled. “That was Boo. I was gonna give him hell this morning when he said he was taking a personal day, but he is wicked with bug bites.” Suggs leaned into his desk, his voice confidential and his eyes twinkling. “The boy won’t say much except that he and some woman were ‘talking’ in a parking lot last night, but you know what I think? I think there was a little more than talk goin’ on. He turned red as his hair when I asked him was he sure all those bites were just from insects.”
Claudia offered a noncommittal smile.
The chief laughed again and shook his head. “I had my doubts, but maybe young Boo is from the same tree as the rest of us Suggs men. So Hershey, what brings you into the lion’s lair today? Jeez, you look like hell.”
“Well, I—”
“You eat yet?”
“What? Actually, yes.”
“Too bad. I was gonna buy you a hot dog at the bowling alley.” Suggs leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach. “Feelin’ pretty good today, Hershey.”
Claudia looked at the bottle of Maalox on his desk. “Good. Good to hear it.”
“Yeah. So what’s up?”
“I just talked to the M.E.’s office, a Dirk Lorren over there.”
“I know, I know . . . Farr’s ‘pending,’ but that could change if you shag ass and bring in some real evidence. I got my own sources, you know.”
“That pending thing, that was from the first time I talked to him. This was a call-back. The message he left was ‘don’t shoot the messenger.’”
Suggs grinned, playing. “Ah. So what’s the word now? Farr ain’t dead at all?”
Claudia leaned into the desk and slid the Maalox closer to Suggs. “This isn’t about Farr. It’s about Henry Becker. They went ahead and did his autopsy, too.”
“What!” Suggs abruptly sat forward. “I thought we were maybe gonna nix it, let the doctor sign off. You led me to believe that’s how you were leanin’. How the hell’d this happen, Hershey?” He waved a finger at her. “I told you I wanted to be fully informed, but—”
“They screwed up,” she said swiftly. “Actually, they screwed up twice.” She told him about the mix-up over her name with the Farr autopsy, how Morrison had to leave on a family emergency, and finally, how an assistant medical examiner moved ahead with the Becker autopsy, trying to score points with his boss by assuming some of the caseload that Morrison had left sitting. “What it comes down to,” she said, “is that one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing.”
Suggs pushed to his feet. “Aw, man, this is worse than a plague of locusts,” he said. “It’s, it’s . . .” He sighed and idly began straightening the fish mounted on his wall behind his desk, a leering twelve-pound bass with its mouth open. Then he turned back to her. “I didn’t tell you this before, Hershey—didn’t want to see your lips curl the way they do when you’re pissed—but . . . well, I talked to Mrs. Becker earlier, told her we had to go through the motions but that the chance of an autopsy actually happening was just about nil.”
“You told her that—”
“See? Already, there goes your lip, Hershey. But our own communication, right now that’s not the real problem. The real problem is—”
“The real problem is that Henry Becker was murdered.”
Suggs slapped the back of his chair. “Damn it, Hershey, don’t interrupt, all right? Just once, I’d like to . . . hold on, hold on—what did you say? Just now. What did you say?”
“You heard right.”
She gave him a second to take it in, discreetly looking away when he reached for the Maalox, chugged some down, then burped silently into his hand.
“Well. That’s . . . a real show-stopper, Hershey. You’re sure?”
Claudia shrugged. “The M.E.’s office is.”
“What’s the story?” Suggs settled heavily back into his chair.
“Becker drowned. But here’s the twist—he didn’t drown in the No-Name.”
“Say again?”
“He had minute bits of pond debris in his mouth, but none in his lungs. If he’d drowned in the pond he would’ve sucked in a lot of water from it. Algae, bits of vegetation, sedimentation—it would’ve shown up. It didn’t. His lungs were clean, or at least too clean to be consistent with drowning in the No-Name, which means he went in there when he was already dead.”
Suggs thought about that. “They know where he did drown?”
“Uh-uh. They’re guessing a pool, but not all of the toxicology tests are in yet. When we get those, maybe we’ll know more.”
“I just can’t . . . how hard did the M.E. really look? Did the old guy have any other problems? Maybe a bum heart? Like that?”
“Mild hypertension. That was it. Lorren said that physically, Becker was in damned good condition for his age. He was drowned, Chief. It is what it is.”
Suggs inhaled, then released a whoosh of air. “Shit, Hershey. What kind of time frame they give us on this thing?”
“They think last Thursday, maybe Friday. We’re looking at about a week ago.”
“So we’re late gettin’ into it.”
“Very.”
“Who looks good to you on this?”
“Off the top, it’s what you’d think. We’ve got to look at the wife. We’ve got to look at the caregiver. They have to be first.”
“The caregiver—what’s her name again?”
“Barbara Kensington.”
“She was the last one with him, right?”
“That’s the story.”
“You don’t buy it.”
“I don’t know what to buy now. We’re at square one.”
“Nothin’ random about this, huh?”
“Not a chance, Chief. Someone wanted to make it appear like Becker drowned in the No-Name, like he wandered over there in an addled state and fell in, maybe off that rickety footbridge. It fits with the Alzheimer’s profile. Very believable.”
“Which is why the wife didn’t want an autopsy.”
“Could be. Or it could be like she said, that she didn’t want the indignity of an autopsy.”
Suggs brushed at his computer keyboard with a finger, shifting dust around, mulling things over. “Here’s another little Catch 22 for you, Hershey. I’m not the only one Mrs. Becker talked to. She got on the horn with the mayor’s office at some point and raised a stink about how unsafe the No-Name is, wonderin’ how it was that such a hazardous place could be so accessible to the general public.”
“Did she threaten a lawsuit?”
“Not yet. But she persuaded the mayor to yank that wispy little bridge the rest of the way down. Took a crew of four no more than two hours to do that, less than forty minutes more to put up some no-trespassing signs.”
“So it’s gone. Potential evidence was removed.”
“No one knew we had anything but an accidental drowning. Public safety looked to be the only issue. So what are our next moves?”
“I’m going to need Moody and Carella full-time now, Chief. I can’t half-step on two homicide inves
tigations.”
“You still don’t know about Farr for sure.” He made a sour face and eyed the Maalox bottle.
“If you want to bag it, that’s your call. But it would be a mistake.”
“Says you.”
“Says Wanda Farr,” she replied softly.
Suggs grunted and picked up his phone. He buzzed Sally and told her to find Carella and Moody. Then he called Booey and told him to get his tail in, bug bites or not. He hung up and said, “All right, Hershey. The troops have been summoned. Let’s meet again in an hour. That oughta give you plenty of time to figure out new ways to club me over the head.”
She started to protest, but he motioned her off, and this time he closed the door behind her.
* * *
If you set your mind to it, you could do a lot in an hour. Claudia did, beginning with Dennis. They hadn’t spoken since Booey’s shimmy up a tree. Dennis wouldn’t pick up when she tried to call him afterward, and he hadn’t picked up since. Now they were playing stubborn with each other. He wouldn’t call. He wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t leave a message on his machine. Someone had to budge. An hour, she thought, an hour was enough time for her to be the adult.
His car was in the driveway. She looked it over, a vintage Mustang that brought them together when she’d backed into it at Philby’s grocery store. Good. Unless he refused to open the door, he had to see her. They could sort this thing out.
Lizards scattered from the walkway at her approach. She’d grown so accustomed to seeing them dart around that she didn’t even notice. Her eyes were on the front door, and a minute later, on Dennis’s face when he opened it to her knock. He didn’t say anything, just stood there for a second, and then finally stepped back and gestured for her to come in.
“Something came up the other night, Dennis,” she said.
“Not even a preamble, huh?”
“It was an emergency.”
“It always is.”
The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries Page 37
