by Joanne Pence
Angie turned to see what the fuss was about, and on the floor, Kevin Blithe writhed in agony.
CHAPTER TWO
Paavo hurried across the ballroom. Blithe was in the grips of a severe seizure, but then, almost as quickly as it started, it ended. He lay on the ground not breathing, his face red. No one touched him until Paavo loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt.
“I’m a doctor. Let me pass, please.” An older woman pushed her way through the crowd. She dropped to her knees next to Paavo to checked over Blithe.
Paavo pulled out his badge and showed her. She nodded. “His pulse is very weak and he’s not breathing,” she said as she performed CPR on his heart in an attempt to restart it beating.
After a while, Paavo placed his fingers against Blithe’s neck. He shook his head.
Blithe’s face grew increasingly florid and he didn’t respond at all to the doctor’s efforts. She was attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as the paramedics arrived. Although the doctor hadn’t given up, everyone was pretty sure by that point that Kevin Blithe was dead.
“Was it a heart attack?” The question rang over and over through the crowd.
The crowd inched backward, away from the body. Only Madrigal remained near, horror and agony etching her face.
No one went up to her, touched her, or tried to comfort her. She looked completely alone, completely lost.
Paavo stared at the bright red color Blithe had turned. He’d only seen that skin tone and the quick death accompanying it in cases of poison. As soon as the paramedics arrived, he dialed Homicide and explained what was going on. The dispatcher would send uniformed officers there to secure the crime scene as well as to call the Crime Scene Unit and the Medical Examiner.
As he spoke on the phone he walked to the security guards who huddled together watching all that was going on. He put his phone away and pulled out his badge. “Paavo Smith, Homicide,” he said. “I want you to guard the entrances and exits. Don’t let anyone leave.”
“Homicide?” One guard asked, his eyes wide. “You think he was murdered?”
“I don’t know what caused his death,” Paavo offered. “But I need the names of the people in this room and contact information for all of them. The police will be here any minute. Let them in and they’ll handle it.”
The guards nodded and one of them immediately ran to the door as two couples headed toward it. From what Paavo could tell the couples weren’t happy at being told they had to stay. The guard kept pointing at Paavo, and he immediately became the focus of their ire.
Paavo noticed Angie walk over to Madrigal, take her arm and gesture toward some empty chairs.
Madrigal all but fell against Angie as if her legs gave out. Although thin, she was much taller than Angie, who struggled to keep her upright and moving. Paavo wasn’t amused at the way no one helped them, just as no one had helped Kevin Blithe.
o0o
Angie stayed seated at Madrigal’s side as uniformed police and investigators moved onto the scene. Angie immediately knew something was up. Paavo wasn’t one to overreact. It was his job to decide if a death seemed natural or if it should be looked into further. Now, watching him, and watching the expression on the city’s Medical Examiner’s face as she spoke to him, Angie guessed they suspected something other than a natural death had taken place.
She noticed that the crime scene detectives took the glass Kevin had been using, and were marking all the other glasses and open bottles of champagne in the room. Since nearly two hundred guests had been invited to the event, and most were still in attendance, CSI was going to be busy for some time analyzing everything.
Angie remembered seeing a waiter bring glasses of champagne to Madrigal and Kevin, but she hadn’t paid any attention to what the waiter had looked like. She had been more interested in the tense exchange between the married couple. She also remembered that Madrigal had refused to take any of the champagne offered. If Angie was right that the police suspected poison, Angie couldn’t help but wonder if Madrigal’s glass had been dosed with it as well.
She saw Kevin eat one of the small hors d’oeuvres on the same tray. Could that have been the source of the poison (if poison was suspected, she reminded herself). But if so, anyone could have eaten it.
The thought played in her mind: was Kevin Blithe a terribly unlucky victim of a random killer, or had someone poisoned him on purpose? And if a case of bad luck, she or Paavo could just as easily have been a victim.
Angie continued to sit by Madrigal’s side throughout the period of hubbub as the police took contact information from the guests and slowly allowed them to leave. At the same time, the crime scene unit took photos and collected evidence, and the medical examiner and her team dealt with the body.
Angie found it frankly amazing that no one attending offered to take Madrigal home or to help her in any way. Several did come by to offer quick condolences, but they seemed to be acting from a sense of obligation, not friendship.
Angie patted Madrigal’s shoulder.
“He’s dead,” Madrigal whispered.
“I’m so sorry,” Angie said softly.
Paavo and the uniformed officers dealt efficiently with the guests. Those near Kevin Blithe when he collapsed and those who might have seen anything were sent to one side of the room to be interviewed. The others were allowed to leave after filling out papers with their names and phone numbers and having them checked against driver’s licenses or other IDs.
“Is there anyone I can call to help you?” Angie asked Madrigal.
“No. I’m quite alone now.”
“There must be a friend or a relative you’d like to see?”
“It would be helpful if you talk to my housekeeper, Vera. She should know what’s happened. My driver will see me home.”
She punched the number into her cell phone and handed it to Angie. Angie had never had to tell anyone that there’d been a death before. She gawked at the phone as it rang, not sure what to do.
“Cambry residence,” the older voice said.
“Is this Vera?” Angie asked.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
As gently as she could, Angie explained what had happened and that Madrigal would be home as soon as the police said she could leave. Vera asked a few questions to be sure the call wasn’t a hoax, and then, realizing Angie told her the truth, she began to cry and hung up.
“My goodness,” Angie said handing Madrigal back the phone. “She took that very hard. I’m sorry. I tried to break it to her as gently as I could.”
“It’s okay. She’s Kevin’s mother.”
“What?” Angie couldn’t believe Madrigal’s words.
“Yes. She worked for my father for years and after he died she came to live with us.”
“But … you called her your housekeeper!”
“She knows how to run our home much better than I do, I’m afraid. She said she didn’t want me to feel she was usurping my duties in any way, and asked that I think of her as the housekeeper. So I do.”
Angie gawked. She’d heard of strange families before, but nothing like this one. She couldn’t believe Madrigal had just put her into such an insensitive position.
She wondered if it was because of such thoughtlessness that no one tried to comfort Madrigal now.
CHAPTER THREE
As Paavo entered the bureau at eight-thirty the next morning, the loud, boisterous voice of his partner, Homicide Inspector Toshiro Yoshiwara, filled the main office where all the detectives had their desks. “Can you believe this guy?” He gestured towards Paavo. “I can’t let him go anywhere! He was supposed to be at some kind of fancy party with his rich girlfriend and what happens? I get a call that there’d been a murder. We aren’t even the on-call team, but since Paavo was already there, I was ordered to join him. I had to leave a beautiful prime rib that I cooked myself.”
The only other people in the room, Inspectors Luis Calderon and Rebecca Mayfield, chuckled.
Paavo just shook his head. He knew Yosh’s outrage was 99% shtick. His partner liked to joke around and was quite the extrovert, the complete opposite of the serious, reserved detective. As he crossed the large main room heading for his desk, he shot back, “Yeah, and you ran out first chance you got. Or was I just dreaming that I was here alone until three a.m.?”
“I was hungry,” Yosh cried. “Besides, I figured one of us needs our beauty sleep. And I came in here at six this morning to run the names of the people at the reception against our databases. Aside from being criminally wealthy, none of them came up as having any kind of felony. Some DUIs and a couple of misdemeanors from years back were as serious as it got for any of them.”
“Are you guys saying someone was murdered at the reception you went to?” Rebecca asked Paavo.
“The Palace Hotel, no less,” Yosh said, waggling his little finger in the air. “And the victim was the husband of the woman who sponsored the whole thing. CSI is running tests, but it looks like he was poisoned.”
“Poisoned while there?” Calderon asked. “With a bunch of other people?”
Paavo turned toward Rebecca. “You probably know the victim. Kevin Blithe. He was Oliver Cambry’s son-in-law. Didn’t you and Sutter handle Cambry’s death?”
“Kevin Blithe?” Rebecca asked. “My God, really?”
“Really,” Paavo said. “Blithe’s wife, Madrigal, sponsored the reception in honor of her father.”
“Madrigal Cambry Blithe,” Rebecca murmured as she remembered the woman. “She was a strange one, but so was everyone in that family. And the house! It was referred to as ‘the Cambry mansion’ but it looked like something out of an old horror movie. I could easily imagine Boris Karloff walking up and down the steps, silently going from room to room, staring at everything and everyone with dark, googly eyes. The place gave me the creeps.”
“Do you remember much about the case?” Paavo asked.
“Absolutely. It bothers me to this day, in fact. Let me get the folder. I’ve got photos.” She found her personal files about the case and flipped through them.
He went over to her desk and sat while she flipped through the file. She gave him a friendly smile, not the slightly love-struck smile she used to wear in his presence before he and Angie became engaged. It would make him more than a little uncomfortable around her since the other guys in Homicide were always joking—or not joking—that he and Rebecca would be perfect for each other. They often told him he was nuts not to see or act on it. And even more nuts when he started dating Angie, who they saw as a rich dilettante who would soon tire of a homicide cop’s way of life. They were sure it wouldn’t last.
So far, at least, they were wrong.
“Ah, here’s a photo of Oliver Cambry.” Rebecca handed him a picture of a man in his sixties with a fringe of black hair near his ears, bald on top, with brown eyes and black-rimmed glasses. His tight shirt collar caused his neck and jowls to bulge like a chipmunk storing nuts. “The case only happened two months ago. It was considered ‘solved’ before Sutter and I even arrived on the scene. A bodyguard had been in the house making sure there were no intruders—”
“A bodyguard?” Paavo repeated.
She nodded. “The guy was rich and paranoid. Hardly a surprise these days. So, when Cambry was found dead in his bedroom in the morning everyone thought he had died of a heart attack. The man was overweight, drank heavily, and had high-blood pressure. We heard nothing about the death until we received a call from the funeral home.”
“That’s odd,” Paavo said.
She gave a nod. “Apparently, the family doctor and lawyer took care of everything for Madrigal, who was apparently quite a basket case at the time. And the Cambry’s seem to be rich enough to make their own rules. In any case, a mortician questioned the color of Cambry’s skin. With cyanide poisoning, the skin often turns a bright red right after death and then darkens over time. Also, when he drained the blood, it looked purple—another sign of cyanide. He did some simple tests of stomach contents, and then called the San Francisco ME’s office. Doctor Ramirez contacted Lieutenant Eastwood, he gave the case to Sutter and me, and we asked for an autopsy.
“Believe me, the family howled about that, and Kevin Blithe was their spokesperson.”
Paavo wasn’t surprised. Many families objected to autopsies per se, and also to the delays they caused in burial arrangements.
“Ramirez found evidence of cyanide poisoning. But by then, Sutter and I had several problems. First, the entire ‘crime scene’ had been cleaned. We thought we were going to have to dig deep into that strange family when, almost simultaneously, a jewel thief was found dead in his studio apartment with diamond and emerald jewelry from the Cambry mansion and two capsules filled with cyanide powder. The make-up of the cyanide matched that which killed Oliver Cambry—it was the type of powder that would dissolve in liquid if the capsule was broken open. The jewel thief, it seemed, had died of an overdose of heroin, thus ending our investigation before it even started.”
Paavo shook his head. “Well, aren’t you the lucky one. Your cases just solve themselves.”
She grinned. “If only they’d all work that way. To tell the truth, everything about the case stank to high heaven. Too neat and tidy, you know? And since when do burglars kill their victims—and with cyanide capsules no less. It’s crazy! I tried to convince Sutter, but he refused to listen. He said that after I gained more experience in homicide, I’d find that some cases are simply what they seem, that there’s nothing rational about the criminal mind, ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ and so on. I was tempted to go to Lieutenant Eastwood, but that would have meant I’d be looking for a new partner. Sutter would never forgive such disloyalty. Also, Eastwood had made it clear the last thing he wanted was to do anything that might further upset the Cambry family. Still, I tried to push Sutter to my way of thinking, but soon thereafter, we found ourselves with a complicated case. Sutter insisted we devote all our time to it. By the time it was over, I had pretty much convinced myself to let the Cambry situation go. It seemed a lose-lose—especially for me. I tried not to think about it until now.”
“So you never got to look for evidence of what you suspected?”
“I thought I might, if I had time. But I haven’t. Besides, my partner and boss both had reasons to decide the case was solved, right? End of story.”
“You mentioned that a bodyguard was present through all this,” Paavo added. “The family might have believed that Cambry was simply paranoid, but doesn’t his murder lend credence to his fear someone wanted him dead?”
“The family was basically his daughter and son-in-law. There was also a brother, plus his wife and their two adult children, but that branch of the family had nothing to do with Oliver’s. Still, all insisted Oliver was mentally ill and that he’d developed the kind of dementia that includes paranoia. They believed he was more in need of tranquilizers and a nursing home than a bodyguard, but he wasn’t bad enough for them to go to court and force a conservator on him. They believed the robbery and death had nothing to do with his everyday paranoia.”
“So what did his bodyguard say?”
“There were two of them, each with twelve hours on, twelve off. The bodyguard who wasn’t present said he made sure the house was locked up before he left. It has deadbolt locks and a security system. The incoming bodyguard also checked them. They were told that the only people who knew the security system password were Cambry and his wife, who happens to be dead. The bodyguards were, frankly, weird. They all but implied the wife came back from the dead—or maybe not so dead—to murder Oliver Cambry. Bottom line, their statements did more harm than good.”
“Strange. Did you look into the bodyguards?”
“I did.” She flipped through her folder. “They work for Hallston and Sons. Rico Bigelow and Joey Schmitz.”
“You’re kidding me,” Paavo exclaimed. “They were the two bodyguards Angie hired when someone wanted her dead back wh
en I first met her.”
Rebecca pursed her lips. “I hate to say it, Paavo, but from what I saw, and what they said, if Angie relied on those two crackpots for protection, she’s lucky she’s still alive.”
o0o
Angie felt terrible for Paavo’s sake about all that had happened the evening before. It was bad enough that she had convinced him to wear a tuxedo, but she had also promised him a romantic evening with good food. Instead he ended up with a murder to investigate, she ended up going home with a cab driver, and she hadn’t even had the chance to complain about talking to the victim’s mother as if she were hired help. What a miserable night out!
All that, simply because she had hoped to meet someone who might help her sagging and all but non-existent career. And all she got out of it was a potential magazine article. It was better than nothing, but it was hardly a career move.
Angie hoped that meeting with a kitchen remodeler at the house she and Paavo were buying would cheer her up. It was an older home, built in the 1950s, and had a controversial history. The house had been a rental for a while, but after the young couple who had rented it some thirty years earlier had been murdered in its back yard, others were loathe to rent it—or if they did rent it, they soon moved. As a result, it had stood empty for years.
Normally, that sort of history was a deal breaker in real estate. Who would want to live in a home where someone had been murdered? But, when one of the potential buyers was a homicide detective, the thought of a dead body or two wasn't all that scary. Besides, the young couple had been killed outdoors, not inside the house.
There were also rumors that the house was haunted. Of course, Angie didn't believe in ghosts, and neither did Paavo, but he did want to be sure Angie loved the place and would feel comfortable living there. Angie admitted to a few qualms—at times she had even imagined seeing things move around by themselves, and had thought she’d smelled someone’s perfume—but her love of the house quickly overcame any such silliness her too vivid imagination conjured up.
