Cold Heart

by Karen Pullen

  “No great loss. I hated him. But I loved Kent.” She sighed raggedly.

  I was puzzled. She called him by his first name. “Was he a good friend?” A special friend, I wanted to ask but prying might shut her down.

  Turned out I didn’t need to be so delicate in my questioning, for she inhaled a big gulp of air and wailed, “We were lovers!” More tears. I handed her tissues, feeling a pang of pity for her genuine sorrow.

  “The police will ask you about your relationship,” I said. I would have to tell Anselmo. A teenage girlfriend—with all the complications that implied—could contribute to a motive for the murder. She’d told Deputy Chamberlain she was seventeen, over the state’s age of consent, so the law couldn’t have stopped their relationship. His furious wife, her dismayed parents, or an angry boyfriend—this particular match-up could have triggered rage in any number of hearts.

  “I don’t care who you tell,” she said, and blew her nose. “My mom knows. People know.”

  “He was married, you said.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I recognized denial, but Nikki would be talking about it, sooner rather than later.

  Her house was another mini-mansion, red brick with black shutters, white azaleas, and a koi pond surrounded by flagstone. She hauled her backpack out of my car. Her sad face was smudged with mascara. “I’d ask you in but my mom’s home and you do not want to see her freak out over this.”

  I sped back to 1146 Fair Oaks Lane, warning Merle there would be no hike today. With a deep sigh, he stretched along the full width of my backseat, accepting disappointment graciously. The police will find Mercer’s drug stash, I thought. Who else had bought from him? Had his killer been after his drugs? His money? Where did he get them? How much business did he do? Anselmo would want me to fill in the blanks.

  A dozen technicians busied themselves in the victim’s house, on the deck and patio.

  “Let’s talk,” Anselmo said. “Away from the crowd.” I followed him along a narrow path leading through scrub and pines, down to the lake. Mid-afternoon sun had converted moist air into a steam bath. He took off his jacket and loosened his tie. “Chamberlain filled me in on her interview with you and the babysitter. What else can you tell me?”

  A rocky strip of sand encircled the lake. I sat on a fallen tree. “Kent Mercer manages a restaurant, Clemmie’s,” I said. “I bought oxycodone from him last night.”

  “That’s Lincoln Teller’s restaurant.” Anselmo picked up a flat stone and skimmed it out onto the lake. One, two, three bounces, waking a turtle that disappeared with a splash. He tried again with another stone. Four bounces this time. “Nice place. Didn’t know it was a drugstore.”

  “This guy seemed to be an independent contractor.”

  “I definitely need you on this case. Find out his sources, his customers. His murder might be a drug buy gone south.” He turned to face me. “But. Keep yourself safe. I mean it. No more driving off bridges.” He was referring to the last time we worked together, a case that ended with me inside my car, underwater.

  “You’ll have to call my boss at the SBI.” Richard controlled my fate. But he was usually responsive to requests from local law enforcement, so I allowed myself to feel a surge of hope. Working with Anselmo, finding Mercer’s killer—a dream assignment.

  I threw my own rock into the lake. Plop. A breeze picked up, turning the lake’s surface into sparkling ripples. An osprey cheeped overhead and, as I scanned the trees to find its nest, I noticed a metallic glint on the otherwise pristine lakeshore, about twenty yards away. Curious, I walked over and saw a new-looking mini-CD, the blank kind you can record on. Clifford was hand-printed on its label. Anselmo picked it up with a handkerchief and we started back to the house.

  A door slammed. The ambulance had arrived. Two EMTs hopped out and came around the house to the patio. Chamberlain and I watched as they wrapped the body for transport to the medical examiner’s office in Raleigh. She’d found a smear of blood on a decking support. “I think maybe the killer stood there,” she said. “He had blood on his clothes, or his body, and brushed against the wood. There’s a distinct fingerprint, a pocked loop.”

  “Good find,” I said. I meant it. Under a deck wasn’t a place for much of anything but spiders, but a bloody fingerprint was a five-star piece of evidence.

  Chamberlain showed me pills she’d found on the floor of his office. “Seemed to be part of the contents of the dumped filing cabinet. Odd that they weren’t taken.” Also odd—they weren’t in bottles but sorted into snack-size baggies, labeled with the pill’s trade name, hand-written. Each baggie held small quantities of sedatives, tranquilizers, antidepressants, and painkillers. All prescription drugs, but without the bottle we couldn’t contact a pharmacy, trace the script back to a doctor.

  In the kitchen, an answering machine blinked. As soon as it had been dusted for prints, Anselmo pushed “play.” The first message was Nikki—“Hey, I’m at school waiting. You’re not answering your cell. Thought you were gonna get me.”

  The second was delivered in a familiar voice. “Hey, Kent, weren’t we supposed to meet at two thirty? Get your butt over here.”

  “Sounds like Lincoln Teller. What’s he got to do with this guy?” Chamberlain asked.

  “He owns Clemmie’s, where Mercer worked,” I said. Just then the wall phone rang. Anselmo put it on speaker and answered it.

  “Who are you?” The caller was a man.

  Anselmo identified himself. “And you are?”

  “Wesley Raintree. Kent’s stepfather. What’s going on? Where’s Temple? Is Paige okay?”

  Anselmo took his address and told him only that someone would be there soon to explain. This man was the closest kin to Kent Mercer we had at this point, since no one knew where Temple, his wife, was. I felt a twinge of misgiving at Raintree’s mention of Paige, the toddler. Nikki had said Paige was supposed to be here. Perhaps she was with her mother.

  While I waited for Richard to call Anselmo back, I went through the French doors onto the deck, to think. I had trouble with the scenario. Disarray in the office might indicate a robbery. A computer was apparently missing and shelves in the living room were bare. But why hadn’t there been a struggle? Mercer looked well able to defend himself. The patio stones were damp from the mid-day rain but rain hadn’t diluted the pool of his blood, so he’d died in sunshine, after it stopped. Lying there with open arms, as if welcoming the knife.

  I heard a car door slam and went back through the house to the front door. A very pregnant woman stood in the driveway, glowering at Chamberlain. Her rosy cheeks and round belly contrasted with heavy black eye shadow, long hair teased into a pouf, and acrylic nails painted like silver foil. That rarely seen Blessed-Mary-meets-Jersey-Shore look. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What happened?”

  “You’re Temple Mercer?” Chamberlain asked. “I’m so sorry. I have dreadful news. Your husband is dead. Agent Lavender here discovered his body about two hours ago.”

  Temple grasped my arm and I recoiled—those nails were like claws. “Who are you? What is she talking about?”

  In jeans and a Haw River Festival t-shirt, I looked like a casual passerby. I dug out my ID and explained that I’d driven Nikki to this house when Kent didn’t pick her up.

  Her eyes searched my face. “What happened to him?”

  I told her, as gently as I could, what I knew about her husband’s death.

  She closed her eyes. “Unreal. You’re saying he bled to death? Where is he now?”

  “The body’s with the medical examiner,” I said. “This must be a terrible shock. I’m so sorry.”

  “Is my daughter inside?” Her voice quavered. “Did your people take her somewhere?”

  Dammit. I’d hoped she knew where the child was. “No,” I said. “Nikki came here to babysit but found only your husband.”

  Temple frowned. “Maybe she’s with her grandpa, Wesley.”

  I shook my head, r
emembering how Wesley, on the Mercers’ phone, had asked if Paige was okay. “She must be with someone. Give me names.” I handed her my notebook and a pen.

  “Oh my God, this isn’t real.” She took the pen, closed her eyes in thought, scribbled names. “That’s everyone I know. None of them would take her and not tell me. Unless they told Kent. Oh, what a nightmare. What should I do with this?” She waved the notebook.

  I led her to Anselmo. I was not much more than a bystander at this point, not yet cleared to work on this case. Anselmo told Chamberlain to contact everyone on the list. “While she’s calling,” he told Temple, “tell me where you were today.”

  “Spa.” She waggled her silver nails. “I was frantic to get out of the house. This baby’s due any minute, and I am sick of looking like a manatee. This morning I was cranky enough to— . . . Never mind. Was it robbery? What happened?” We led her around the house to the patio encircled with yellow tape. She pointed to the blood stains. “That’s Kent’s blood?” She turned to face me. “I honestly don’t know how I feel right now, sort of numb, like it’s not real. Now I’m exhausted, can you blame me? I can’t even—Kent’s dead! Where’s Paige? You’re standing here asking stupid questions, and my child is missing!”

  I showed her the mini-CD I’d found on the lakeshore, Clifford hand-printed on its label. “Do you recognize this?”

  “Yeah, it’s Paige’s. Kent recorded stories for her, since he works evenings and misses her bedtime. She carries them in her boom box. Where’d you find it?”

  I exchanged glances with Anselmo. How much more could this woman take? “On the lakeshore.”

  “What?” Her voice rose. “Oh, my God,” she moaned, rocking sideways. “Do something! What is wrong with you people?!”

  I pulled Anselmo aside. “My dog’s trained to track. He’s outside in my car. What if . . .” He nodded, and I ran inside. Upstairs, in the child’s room, I found a tiny sock in a laundry bin. Pink with white ducks on the cuff.

  Merle’s leather harness was in the trunk of my car. It was his signal to go to work. I buckled it around him and led him to the back of the house, to the patio. “Check,” I whispered, waving the sock under his nose and removing the lead. Nose down, he circled the patio, ignoring the puddled blood, pausing at the foot of the stairs, then charging into the scrubby woods. I could barely keep up and called him to slow. He looked up for an instant but he was a dog on a mission, a little-pink-sock mission. He paralleled the lakeshore for a hundred yards, through brambly underbrush that scratched my legs. I could only imagine what it had done to a toddler’s tender skin.

  He paused in a clearing, over what he’d found: a disposable diaper, dry, recently dropped. A diaper? Why? He waited for me, then took off again, drawn by a scent that must have been strong. I pushed away dark thoughts and trampled after him, finally catching up at the rocky lakeshore where he trotted, nose down, one way, then another, then back. He’d lost the scent.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  A breeze rippled the lake’s surface, disturbing the reflection of whipped-cream clouds and bluer than blue sky. Blue, despondent, wretched, downcast—pick any or all, that’s how I felt.

  Paige Mercer was probably in the lake.

  CHAPTER 5

  Monday afternoon

  When I told Anselmo that Merle had lost the child’s scent on the lakeshore, pain flickered over his face as the implication sunk in. “We might have to drag the lake but it’s early days. Listen, I talked to your boss and he okayed it—you’re officially on this case. I need you to take over the interviews. Start with Raintree and Teller. I’ve got to focus on the child.”

  Inwardly excited, I kept my face solemn. “Anything. Glad to help.”

  He wanted to keep Temple’s car overnight for a forensic once-over, so I gave her a ride to a friend’s house a few blocks away, and waited as she struggled to pull herself out of the car and trudged up to the door. I felt sick for her, for her tragic loss, the uncertainty about her toddler, giving birth alone. Though from what I was learning about Kent Mercer—dealing pills, unfaithful—he was a poor husband. Would she be better off by herself? Had she decided to do something about it? Her alibi would probably check out, I thought, but it wasn’t impossible to arrange a murder. If you knew the right people.

  I rushed home to drop off Merle and change into more suitable clothes—a black pantsuit and ankle boots, my work uniform—before I went to Wesley Raintree’s house. The “someone” Anselmo had told him to expect was me.

  Wesley, Kent Mercer’s stepfather, lived ten minutes from Silver Hills, in a brick ranch with a lush green lawn, picture-perfect proof of the miracle of chemicals. Ex-military, I thought, observing Wesley’s buzzed gray hair and a lean, muscular body held very straight—I could almost see the uniform.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, waving me into a dust-free living room pleasantly furnished with chintz, dark wood, and plush carpet.

  I’d heard that bad news should be delivered like removing a band-aid—quickly. “Mr. Raintree, your stepson, Kent Mercer, is dead. He was murdered today, at his home.”

  “Murdered? Really?” Disbelief flickered across his face as I nodded yes. “Well, he was a slime ball. Have a seat.”

  Bingo. I sank into a squishy chair covered with a cheerful floral. “Not what I expected you to say.”

  He spoke gruffly but decisively, like a man used to being listened to. “He’s my wife’s son from her first marriage. In her eyes, perfect. In mine, an all-around loser.” Wesley counted off on his fingers. “One, he ruined my son Bryce—that’s his half-brother. Two, he borrowed money from his mother countless times and never paid it back. Three, he cheated on his wife.”

  I could have added: four, he was a pill pusher. Wesley didn’t hold back his feelings, and I appreciated that. No murky waters here. Where to begin? “Despite those feelings, you called him today,” I said.

  “I try to get along with him. I want to be part of Paige’s life, not absent like I was with my son.”

  At the mention of the toddler, I tried very hard to keep my face expressionless. “Purpose of your call?”

  “To see if Temple needed any help. She’s going to have another baby any day now.”

  Something about the other son nagged at me. “Mr. Raintree, you mentioned your son, ‘ruined’ by his brother?”

  Wesley stared at me, his self-discipline seeming to hold him rigid as he rubbed his face hard. “My son has issues. Of no interest to you.”

  I nodded. “Of course, but we’ll be talking to him. Want to give me a preview?”

  “He’s eighteen. Dropped out of high school to be a bodybuilder.” Wesley fell silent for a moment, as if deciding what I should know. “Bryce is smart. He could have achieved anything, but Kent taught him to cheat, slide through school, have fun, let someone else do the work.” Wesley gritted his teeth, working his jaw muscles. “My wife indulged both of them, gave them anything they wanted. Then she got sick and I had to retire from the Navy to take care of her, after thirty-three years.”

  “Where is your wife now?”

  He cleared his throat and for a moment sadness etched his face. “Sunny died eight months ago. Cancer. It’s been tough.”

  His only son a loser in his eyes, his wife dead, a retirement he resents. “And Bryce?” I asked.

  “Right this minute, you mean? No idea. He lives in a room behind my garage, but he comes and goes as he pleases. Right before Sunny got sick, she made us all go to counseling. She was afraid I’d kill him, I guess.” Wesley flushed. “I mean, I was hard on the kid, fed up with him leeching off his mother. This therapist had us work out an agreement where Bryce pays rent. I don’t bail him out of trouble, don’t help him. He has to earn money for his gym. Be responsible for himself.”

  I wondered if that was Wesley’s fingerprint under the Mercer house decking, though his disappointment in Bryce, blaming Kent Mercer, didn’t seem a sufficient motive for murder. I asked him to go to the sheriff’s o
ffice and get fingerprinted, to rule himself out.

  Unless there was something he hadn’t told me.

  I called Richard to give him an update, confirm he’d talked to Anselmo. “Yeah, he called. No problem. Just keep me informed.”

  “I’m on my way to interview Lincoln Teller.” I reminded him that the murder victim had managed Lincoln’s restaurant, Clemmie’s.

  Richard hissed in a breath. “Any way to keep that under your bonnet?” His acute sensitivity to media interest in SBI cases bordered on paranoia.

  “Short of an injunction, no,” I said. “As soon as the press learns about the murder, they’ll know where Mercer worked.”

  “Don’t you mention it.”

  “I promise. Can you assign me a researcher?”

  “I got you the best. Your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” A useless protest, since Richard said that only to annoy me. He meant Hogan. My ex-fiancé, Hogan Leith, dumped by me when I found he’d been secretly texting lassies he’d found on stupidslut.com.

  Still, I had to work with him. Hogan was an SBI researcher, a gifted and talented information seeker. He could look up your cat’s vaccination records, your electric bill, what you watched on cable. He was an online genius. Too bad he was so self-serving in the application of those talents.

  Lincoln Teller’s vintage Jaguar convertible was parked by Clemmie’s front door. Raindrops beaded on its polished marine-blue finish. I peeked in the window to admire the immaculate black leather seats and walnut trim. At four thirty in the afternoon, the parking lot was nearly vacant, but crowds would begin to fill the place in an hour.

  An African-American football hero who’d grown up in Verwood, Lincoln had spent a dozen years in the pros, then returned home to open Clemmie’s, the restaurant named after his wife, Clementine. He’d been enormously popular in the community and throughout his career, a gentle giant who earned everyone’s respect with his warm and courteous nature, reflecting his mother’s firm training in civility and manners. It was hard to believe he’d spent years in such a violent sport. He and I were acquainted from a couple years back when I’d helped Clementine locate her father. The old guy had walked out on gambling debts, and she’d been afraid for his safety. With the help of my favorite researcher, Hogan, I found her father in—where else?—Las Vegas, trying futilely to improve his financial picture.