Cynthia Hamilton - Madeline Dawkins 02 - A High Price to Pay

by Cynthia Hamilton

  “What? And miss out on having this glamorous career?”

  “Which one?” Madeline asked sarcastically.

  “Well, the perks are definitely better in the event planning business,” Mike said through a mouthful of dessert.

  “As fabulous as it is to work with a chef like Philippe, I don’t know if I can handle doing that line of work anymore.”

  “I get that you’re burnt out after dealing with Cherie so long, but it did land us our first big case.”

  Madeline couldn’t argue with that. And the Story case was the kind of job that could lead to others, if they could manage to solve it. With that objective in mind, Madeline opened her computer and got to work. Finding what she was looking for, she got up and turned on the printer. She came back a couple minutes later with new photos. She rearranged the boards and regarded the picture of Vivian and Teresa she had taken in the garden, back when the biggest worry either of them had was the upcoming party. She stood there for a moment, lost in thought. She let out a deep sigh and continued her task.

  The rest of the photocopies were taken from video coverage of the event. She hung a picture of Sally as she put the finishing touches on Cherie’s makeup. Next to that, she put a picture of Helen in profile as she oversaw the festivities from the exterior doorway to the kitchen. The final picture was of the birthday girl in all her glory.

  “Have I left out anyone?” she asked as she stood back to regard the changes. Mike got off the sofa to take a closer look.

  “I guess that’s the short list.” They let their eyes wander over the photos and index cards, each changing the order to make the story they told more sequential.

  “Okay…we’ve got everyone who was seen on the stairs immediately prior to and after Vivian’s death,” Mike said, looking to Madeline for confirmation. She got up closer to scrutinize Sally’s photo. She tapped it several times with her fingernail before taking it off and moving it to the bottom of the board.

  “Why’d you do that?” Mike asked.

  “Sally is seen going up the stairs at 9:37. It would take her about a minute to reach Vivian’s bedroom. She was in Cherie’s dressing room probably a minute, minute and a half before I left to go see Vivian. It would’ve taken me well over a minute to reach Vivian’s room, knock, wait for an answer and then discover her body. I placed the 911 call at 9:43.” Mike did the math in his head.

  “You don’t think she had enough time to have done it,” he surmised.

  “No, I don’t. She would’ve had to know where all the players were. And how could she be sure Vivian would be alone?”

  “Okay, that leaves us with two suspects…”

  “That we know of…” Madeline said.

  “Cherie and Helen. And you don’t think Cherie had enough presence of mind to pull off a strangulation…”

  “Not in her condition,” Madeline maintained.

  “And you don’t think her condition was cleverly orchestrated?” Mike challenged her.

  “You think she’d wreck her own star-studded party? After planning it for a year?”

  “Maybe she was planning Vivian’s death along with it…”

  Madeline shook her head in exasperation. “You haven’t spent as much time with that woman as I have. Trust me, her idea of heavy mental lifting is packing for a two-week vacation. Pulling off a murder when there were so many variables—like over a hundred—I find inconceivable.”

  “She could’ve been acting dumb all this time,” Mike suggested.

  Madeline laughed out loud. “Right. If her acting ability was that good, she’d be an Oscar winner herself. Besides, if she’s so damn clever, why would she hide the murder weapon in one of her own drawers?”

  Mike narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingers while he considered this. “Good point,” he conceded. “Unless things happened faster than she had anticipated and she couldn’t dispose of it as planned. You showed up in her dressing room. Sally came in to fix her makeup, which she was doing when you discovered Vivian’s body. After all hell broke loose, she was sedated.” Mike shrugged as if to say the ball was in her court.

  Now it was Madeline’s turn to capitulate. “Okay, that is within the realm of possible, if Cherie is the ruthless mastermind you claim she is.”

  “I’m not claiming anything,” Mike said defensively. “I just think we have to look at this from every angle.” Madeline walked back to the desk to take a sip of her coffee.

  “Well, if that’s the case, let’s take a tug at Helen’s alibi,” she challenged.

  “Okay…you start,” Mike said, a lopsided grin on his face. Madeline let out a weak laugh and went back up to the board to examine the cards under Helen’s picture.

  “All right…Helen is seen going up the stairs at one minute after nine, twelve minutes after Vivian and Teresa went up. Ten minutes later, Helen and Teresa are seen leaving down the backstairs.” Madeline paused, as her mind tried to find any farfetched motive to go with the opportunity.

  “So…there’s a ten-minute window in which Helen walks to Vivian’s room, agrees to take Teresa home and then makes it to the back staircase with Teresa in tow.” Madeline stared at Mike while she strained her brain to come up with the part about Helen killing Vivian.

  “Helen and Teresa are walking down the hall and Helen stops—she’s forgotten to tell Vivian something. She has Teresa wait for her in the hallway. She goes back into Vivian’s room on some pretense. Vivian goes about her business of getting ready for bed. Let’s say Helen fiddles with the drapes to close them tighter or something. She casually removes one of the silk cords, sneaks up behind Vivian, chokes her with the cord and she’s back out in the hallway. The whole thing takes less than two minutes.”

  “What about the cord?” Mike asked, amused by Madeline’s fanciful imagination.

  “She takes it with her.”

  “How?”

  “She hides it in her ample bosom.” Mike chuckled at the thought. “You’ve seen her—she’s a big woman.”

  “I think someone would notice if she had a tasseled rope stuck in her blouse, along with everything else.”

  “Okay…” Madeline said, reworking the supposition a different way. “Just past Vivian’s suite is a walk-in linen closet. I passed it one day while Helen was taking inventory.” Madeline paused and then began to pace as the scene worked its way through her head.

  “So…Helen hides the cord—one way or another—and as she approaches Teresa, who’s been waiting in the hallway for her, she pops into the linen closet, stashes the cord under a stack of whatever’s closest, and rejoins Teresa.” Madeline came to a stop and regarded her partner, who was watching her with a sly smile.

  “What’s wrong with that theory?” she asked. Before Mike could answer, the first notes of Harlem Nocturne heralded a new text message. He pulled the phone from his pocket and read the message with a frown. He tapped out a hasty reply and slipped the phone into his pants pocket. When he returned his gaze to Madeline, he found her smiling at him in a way that meant she knew what that was all about.

  “Forget something, or should I say ‘someone’?” she asked with feigned innocence.

  “Nothing that can’t keep,” Mike said, avoiding eye contact. Madeline looked at her watch. It was quarter after eight.

  “We’ve been going at this all day. Go on, make someone happy,” Madeline teased.

  “It’s fine. She’ll get over it.” As soon as the words left his mouth, another text came through. Looking irritated, Mike left the room to make a call. Though she wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, it was impossible not to hear snippets of the conversation. It didn’t sound pleasant.

  During their apprenticeship with Russell Barnett, Mike would never let work stand in the way of his social life. Being financially well-off, thanks to the inheritance from his father, he always considered his foray into private investigations
as something of a lark. Madeline found it heartening that he felt differently about it now that they had their own agency. Then again, she reconsidered, maybe it has more to do with the girl in question.

  “Look, these things are going to happen in my line of work…” Mike said as he paced in front of his office doorway.

  Somebody’s pissed, Madeline thought, trying to get her focus back on Vivian’s murder. Mike’s voice receded and became so quiet she could actually concentrate again.

  As she stood there staring at the board, she realized there was a phone call she needed to make. She looked up the number Ross had given her for Helen’s cell phone. She was weighing the benefits of making the call when Mike came back into his office.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem,” Madeline said, eyeing her phone intently.

  “You calling someone?” Mike asked.

  “Thinking about it,” Madeline replied vaguely. Mike waited a few seconds, hoping for further enlightenment. Madeline could feel his need to know what she was thinking. She propped herself against his desk and appeased his curiosity.

  “I was going to give Helen a call.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “I guess I’d like to hear her story again, see if it’s changed at all.”

  “Are you just going to come out and ask her to repeat it?” Mike asked in a challenging manner.

  “No, I don’t want to do that,” Madeline said distractedly. “But I do have a good conversation starter, sad as it is.” She looked up at Mike, their eyes meeting and holding. “I don’t suppose anyone has thought to inform her about Teresa’s death.” The light of comprehension shone in Mike’s eyes.

  “Ah, I see where you’re going…” Madeline stood up suddenly and went back to the board.

  “The focus so far has been on Vivian’s murder. We haven’t really speculated much about Teresa’s.”

  “Okay, let’s shift gears. Tell me what you’re thinking,” Mike said, coming to stand beside her.

  “Is it really just a bizarre coincidence that Vivian and Teresa were killed on the same night?”

  “Are you suggesting the same person killed them both?” Mike asked. “If so, that would rule Cherie out, because she was incapacitated.”

  “I know. That only leaves Helen.” Mike crossed his arms and regarded her skeptically.

  “I know it seems weird, but think about this…what if Helen did strangle Vivian…What if she was caught in the act, or if Teresa walked back into the room and saw Vivian lying on the floor, the way I found her. Instead of calling for help, Helen hustles Teresa down the backstairs and into her car, the threat of deportation keeping Teresa’s movements in check. Helen knows she’s going to be seen on several cameras, so she plays it cool. But now she knows she’s got to get rid of the girl too, so she takes her somewhere and slits her throat, wraps her body up in something to keep the blood contained, then moves it to Rattlesnake Trail. She comes back with this cockamamie story about driving out to Isla Vista, but that’s just to cover for all the time she’s been away.”

  Mike drew back and inhaled deeply as he tried to get his head around this new hypothesis. “I think all that sugar and caffeine have put your brain in overdrive.”

  “What don’t you like about that theory?”

  Mike leaned against the wall while he dissected it. “Well, I guess I could go along with the first part, but slitting Teresa’s throat in one place and moving her somewhere else seems very problematic. For starters, there would’ve been a lot of blood. It would be almost impossible to not get it on some part of her car, even if Helen wrapped her in something.”

  Madeline considered this. “True, but Helen is conveniently out of town before we learned of Teresa’s death.”

  “Even if she went somewhere to clean the trunk, let’s say, forensics will more than likely find some residue that the human eye can’t detect. And you’re making a big assumption that Helen had something in her car that she could use to wrap the girl up in. That would have to be premeditated, whereas your idea is founded in spur of the moment necessity. Besides, what’s Helen’s motive?”

  Madeline was stymied. It hadn’t taken Mike long to shoot her theory all to hell. But something was still nagging at her.

  “What if she grabbed something like a sheet or blanket out of the linen closet when she stashed the cord?” Madeline proposed, making Mike chuckle.

  “Did it look like she was carrying a blanket on the CCTV footage?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer. “You really do have a grudge against this woman, don’t you?”

  “Not at all. The problem is we only have two suspects—”

  “That we know of,” Mike reminded her.

  “None of the French doors off the balconies had been opened all day. You found that out for yourself. There was no one else seen going up either staircase who didn’t come down prior to Vivian and Teresa going up. And don’t forget, it was all hands on deck because of the party. If the smallest cog in the wheel went missing for any length of time, someone would be sure to notice.”

  “Now, think about what you just said. If one of Helen’s staff had stolen Vivian’s jewelry, they would have reason to silence Vivian. Remember Vivian’s note…it was ‘urgent’ that she see you ASAP.” A pang went through Madeline’s heart as she thought of how Lauren’s lollygagging had probably cost Vivian her life.

  “But no one else had the opportunity,” Madeline said, putting them right back where they started.

  “All right, for argument’s sake, let’s assume it was Helen. You speculate that she seized the opportunity to kill Vivian. Then she gets caught in the act by a hapless Teresa. Forget the ‘how’ for a moment. What about the motive? Why would Helen kill Vivian Story?”

  “Because Vivian figured out who had stolen her jewels?”

  “And who do you think that was?”

  “One of Helen’s own staff?” Madeline suggested. “Maybe Helen herself?” she added half-heartedly.

  “And how did Helen find out Vivian knew?” Mike drilled her.

  “I don’t know. She must’ve sensed something. Maybe she saw the note being passed. She already knew I’d been hired to find out about the missing jewelry.”

  “I don’t think Helen could get arrested for murder on such a weak hypothesis,” Mike said, sitting down on the corner of his desk, feeling just as frustrated as his partner.

  “I know. We definitely have more blanks than we have answers. But we must know something we’re just not putting together yet…”

  Madeline chewed on a fingernail while she ran over what information they knew for certain: Cherie and Helen appeared to be the only suspects; Teresa was last seen walking down the back staircase with Helen before supposedly disappearing in I.V.; Cherie was sedated and couldn’t have killed Teresa.

  Was it possible for Cherie to have killed Vivian and Helen to have killed Teresa? she asked herself. Possible, but very hard to imagine. They were hardly pals, so it would’ve been very unlikely they were in on it together, which makes it more implausible.

  “I think we’ve worn out our brains enough for one day,” Mike said, stretching his arms and back. “We need sleep to process this mess. Let’s go home.”

  “You’re right, we’re punch drunk. But I really think I should give Helen a call first.” Mike started to protest, but Madeline cut him off. “It’s going to bug me all night if I don’t at least get a gut-level read on her.” Mike started to argue, but decided to defer to her judgment.

  “Before you do that, I’d like to boggle your mind with one other conundrum,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Lionel Usherwood.” Madeline pulled back as if she’d been struck.

  “What about him?” she asked crossly.

  “We’ve been so absorbed in the two deaths, we haven’t been thinking abou
t our own safety, or yours, at any rate.”

  “Yes, and it’s been like a vacation,” Madeline said, her tone accusatory. “So why bring him up now?”

  “Because, until we came back to the office, my car was parked at either the Alexanders’ or the sheriff’s office, places Usherwood couldn’t access or wouldn’t dare risk being seen.”

  “We were also at Rattlesnake Trail,” Madeline added.

  “A media and law enforcement circus,” Mike countered.

  “So what’s your point?”

  “I’m not really up for a night of playing find the booby-trap. And it’s too dark to scout around for bad guys lurking in the parking lot. I suggest we take a cab home. Have it pick us up out front, leave all the lights on in here, pretend we’re stilled holed up inside, and then we can deal with my car in the morning, when it’s light out and hopefully we’ve gotten some sleep.”

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had yet,” Madeline said, feeling a good deal of the tension in her body seep away. Though she had been quite preoccupied with everything else that had been going on the last several days, thoughts of Lionel Usherwood had not been far from the surface, lurking like a crocodile waiting for one vulnerable moment to make his strike. “You make your call, I’ll make mine.”

  “How much time do you think you’ll need?” Mike asked as he searched for a cab company on his phone.

  “Ten minutes, at the most.”

  “Good. I’ll see what I can get.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Madeline dialed Helen’s cell phone number and listened to it ring several times, wondering if she should leave a message if the call went to voicemail. Suddenly, she heard Helen’s voice on the other end.

  “Hello?”

  “Helen, it’s Madeline. I’m sorry to disturb you on your much-deserved day off,” she said in her most diplomatic tone.

  “How did you get this number?” Helen asked, not so diplomatically.

  “Ross gave it to me.” This seemed to give the housekeeper pause.